Authored by Mary Prenon via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Staffing agencies provide job and career opportunities to more than 10 million Americans, including more than 1.7 million in California. While the state has the nation’s largest temporary employment market, experts said staffing agency fraud is rampant due to a lack of oversight.

Many employees are unable to access workers’ compensation due to these fraudulent practices, and taxpayers ultimately bear these medical costs, the experts noted.

According to the California Department of Insurance, authorities identified 2,932 suspected workers’ compensation fraud cases in the 2023–24 fiscal year in the state, resulting in 128 arrests and potential fraud losses of about $157 million.

Legitimate Firms Undercut

Siyamak Khorrami, host of The Epoch Times’ “California Insider,” recently spoke with employment and legal experts in the state to explore the issue.

“The staffing companies have the employees, and they assign those employees to their client employers,” said Jennifer Lentz Snyder, a former Los Angeles County district attorney.

“They are the employer, so they’re responsible for things like workers’ compensation insurance and payroll taxes and all of that.”

Snyder noted that when these staffing firms offer their client companies deals that are “too good to be true,” they often quote a rate that would not permit them to pay into the payroll tax funds that legitimate businesses pay into for workers’ comp premiums. In the end, she said, these illegitimate staffing agencies are competing unfairly with legitimate staffing firms.

“They’re absolutely taking advantage of the workers, and they’re lining their pockets at the expense of the legitimate businesses,” Snyder added.

“In an environment where we want to create a robust and maintain a robust economy in California, the last thing you need to do is to permit this cheating to continue.”

As a result, legitimate entities have to pay more than their fair share as workers’ compensation costs continue to escalate, she said.

Fraud Runs Into the Billions

“It’s now significantly more profitable and less risky to engage in workers’ compensation fraud than it is to rob a bank,” Mike DiManno, CEO of EmployInsure, said.

According to DiManno, an “underground market” for workers’ compensation and staffing has existed for nearly 30 years. He noted that clients hiring temporary staff are often unwilling to accept insurance certificates from some staffing agencies because they often fear that those certificates are not legitimate. As a result, the client would be responsible for any claims.

However, when demand for labor increases, he said, employers have no choice but to rely on these “shady” agencies to provide the personnel.

“The state doesn’t slap them on the hand, and so now, especially after COVID, there’s absolute, complete disregard to check and make sure that a staffing agency has workers’ [compensation],” DiManno said.

“You know if you can come in and undercut the legitimate players, the market share goes to you, and right now, all of the honest staffing owners can’t compete.”

When that happens, DiManno said, those legitimate agencies start leaving the business and are placed by “criminals” engaging in workers’ compensation fraud.

“When you put a criminal in charge of that with no governance, they start stealing tax money, and they start stealing wage money from these workers who don’t have attorneys to defend themselves, and they don’t have the knowledge to really understand what’s being done to them,” he said.

DiManno said that the fraud runs into the billions. For example, he noted, bad actors can buy a small company, “a little landscaping company with, let’s say, 12 employees on it,” and get an insurance policy under that company. Then they attach an inflated payroll to the policy and defraud insurers into paying out fraudulent claims.

In such a scheme, DiManno said, if an employee suffers minor injuries, the employer pays them under the table. However, if the injury is more serious, the employer is likely to shut down the company and start another, thereby bypassing any responsibility to pay the claim. That leaves the State of California to foot the bill.

Banks and factoring companies usually helped prevent fraud, DiManno said—but the COVID-19 pandemic changed everything. During that period, he said, all staffing agencies—both legitimate and illegitimate—received funds from the federal Paycheck Protection Program and used them to pay off their bank debts.

Sitting on huge stacks of cash and realizing that little enforcement was applied to these schemes, banks and factoring companies began financing the agencies without verifying their insurance, DiManno said. As a result, the fraudulent practices “exploded,” he said.

“This worker’s [compensation] practice is kind of like the gateway where the criminals have entered this trust business called staffing, where I can undercut somebody and get all of the cash flow, the wages, the taxes, and you tell the client, we’re taking care of everything, and you know, it’s my liability, and I just steal,” DiManno said.

Workers Also Take a Hit

Shaddi Kamiabipour, a former senior deputy district attorney for Orange County, told Khorrami that much of the fraud began with larger firms seeking seasonal help in manufacturing or warehousing.

“They don’t want to have people year-round. They want to have staffing during their high season, right when they’re doing that kind of work,” she said.

Nationally, U.S. staffing firms hired 12.7 million temporary and contract employees from 2023 to 2024, according to the American Staffing Association.

Nearly 73 percent worked full time, with 36 percent in industrial jobs, 24 percent in clerical or administrative positions, 21 percent in managerial positions, 11 percent in engineering and tech roles, and 8 percent in healthcare roles, according to the American Staffing Association.

If someone is injured on the job, Kamiabipour noted, both the employer and the staffing agency are technically liable under workers’ compensation to provide services to the employee. However, she said that, too often, employees who ask for compensation face retaliation in the form of reduced job offers.

The reason this exists is that there’s no oversight in the nation’s most populous state, according to Kamiabipour.

“Even in California, there’s only a small category of businesses that have special licensing for staffing, yet California has the biggest temporary employment market in the country,” she said.

Kamiabipour noted that temporary work is attractive for employers because of the costs often associated with running a business. However, she believes there needs to be an incentive or disincentive for employers to avoid transferring liability to a temporary agency rather than carrying it themselves.

New Bill Targets Staffing Fraud

In discussing solutions, DiManno mentioned a new bill proposed by California state Sen. Eloise Gómez Reyes, a Democrat, on Feb. 10, which would require licensing, background checks of staffing agency owners, and legitimate certificates for workers’ compensation insurance.

The bill would require staffing agencies to register annually with the California Labor Commissioner, provide their financial status and proof of workers’ compensation coverage, submit the names and addresses of the firms’ owners, partners, or those with a financial interest, and pay a $5,000 fee at the time of registration.

The bill would also require the commissioner to post a list of registered staffing agencies on the California Department of Industrial Relations website. Under the bill, businesses must verify a staffing agency’s registration before using its services.

The bill would further allow a registered staffing agency to take action against an unregistered agency or a business that uses an agency without verifying its registration.

Snyder is confident that the new bill is a good first step to ending the fraud.

“Every employer in California has to have workers’ [compensation] insurance or be self-insured,” she said. “Why should staffing agencies be any different?”

OpenAI claimed  Friday that a so-called technical glitch was the culprit behind ChatGPT slapping safety warnings on links to affected links to WinRed, the leading online fundraising platform for the Republican candidates. Unsurprisingly, ActBlue, the main Democrat fundraising platform, did not trigger a similar warning.

The issue was flagged in an X post by Mike Morrison, an eagled-eyed digital marketer, when he asked ChatGPT to produce links from WinRed and ActBlue.

“WILD. ChatGPT universally marks [WinRed] links as potentially unsafe,” Morrison told his followers. “Of course ActBlue links are totally fine.”

WILD. ChatGPT universally marks @WinRed links as potentially unsafe.

Of course ActBlue links are totally fine. pic.twitter.com/DXzPuwSP80

— Mike Morrison 🦬 (@MikeKMorrison) March 20, 2026

When ChatGPT provided links to GOP-affiliated stores hosted on WinRed, it appended a warning urging users to check whether the link was “safe,” adding that it may contain data from your conversation that will be shared with a third-party website. Morrison said that the OpenAI chat bot did not replicate the same warning for the Democrat fundraising platform.

WinRed CEO Ryan Lyk blasted the blatant bias, calling it “election interference.”

This is election interference. @OpenAI @sama https://t.co/xMGOt2v9Hv

— Lyk – WinRed.com (@RyanLyk) March 20, 2026

An OpenAI spox scrambled to save face for the company, telling the New York Post in a statement that “this shouldn’t be happening and it’s getting remedied.”

OpenAI was so jilted by getting caught (errr, finding the bug), that another press person from the AI behemoth issued a longer statement attempting to cover it’s behind.

“As soon as we saw the post, we reached out to the individual and looked into it,” OpenAI’s Kate Waters said in a statement to the Post. “This wasn’t about partisan politics. The model generated some website links that weren’t in our search index yet for both WinRed and in one instance for ActBlue, and our systems flagged them as AI-generated as part of our standard safeguards.”

“The issue is now in the process of being fully resolved,” Waters added. “The company added later that “this issue is related to how URLs are discovered.”

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Authored by Troy Myers via The Epoch Times,

The Department of Justice (DOJ) is looking to permanently dismiss the cases against two former Louisville police officers connected to the night Breonna Taylor was killed six years ago, according to court documents filed Friday.

Former Detective Joshua Jaynes and former Sgt. Kyle Meany were accused of falsifying a warrant that led to the botched police raid on her apartment the night she died. Federal prosecutors said in the motion that their charges should be “dismissed in the interest of justice.”

Lawyers for Jaynes, Travis Lock, told The Epoch Times in an email that he and Jaynes were “extremely happy” to learn of the DOJ motion.

Michael Denbow, lawyer for Meany, wrote in an email to The Epoch Times that “Kyle [Meany] is incredibly grateful for today’s filing.”

“He is looking forward to putting this matter behind him and moving forward with his life,” Denbow said.

Taylor’s mother, Tamika Palmer, criticized the motion by the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division to dismiss Jaynes’s and Meany’s cases.

“I am compelled to express my extreme disappointment in [President Donald] Trump and the Department of Justice,” Palmer said in a post on Facebook.

Following Taylor’s death, the city of Louisville paid a $12 million wrongful death settlement to her family.

Previously a federal judge dismissed the most serious charges—deprivation of rights with an enhancement of use of a dangerous weapon causing death—brought by the DOJ under President Joe Biden against Jaynes and Meany.

Taylor, 26 years old at the time of her death in March 2020, was shot by police while three officers served a no-knock warrant as part of a drug investigation into her boyfriend, suspect Kenneth Walker.

While carrying out the raid, Walker fired a shot that hit an officer in the leg. He later said he acted under the belief that intruders were breaking in.

Police returned fire, and several bullets struck and killed Taylor. Walker was not hit. Taylor’s death came a couple of months before the police custody death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, sparking nationwide protests and violent, damaging riots.

The only officer to serve prison time in connection to Taylor’s death, Brett Hankison, was sentenced to two years and nine months with three years of supervised release over blindly firing 10 rounds through Taylor’s windows the night of her death. None of his shots hit anyone.

At his sentencing in July 2025, Hankison apologized to Taylor’s friends and family, adding that he would have acted differently if he knew about the issues surrounding the no-knock warrant.

“I never would have fired my gun,” he said in the courtroom.

Prosecutors did not charge the other two officers, deeming their return fire justified.

It remains unclear when a judge could rule on the DOJ’s motion to dismiss with prejudice the charges against Jaynes and Meany.

A steady flow of headlines continue to point in the direction of escalation in Iran and around the Persian Gulf, even as President Trump has touted backchannel dialogue with Tehran, which Iranian leaders have denied.

The NY Times writes Monday afternoon, “Senior military officials are weighing a possible deployment of a combat brigade from the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division and some elements of the division’s headquarters staff to support U.S. military operations in Iran, defense officials said.”

US Army file image

A combat brigade would suggest some 3,000 additional elite soldiers, as the thousands of Marines currently still en route from Japan as well as from San Diego. The first group of Marines is reportedly expected to arrive to the Mideast region Friday, which would coincide with President Trump’s announced five day pause on energy infrastructure strikes.

US officials speaking to the Times have made clear that the Airborne planning is just that – a preparatory phase which has not formally been ordered by the Pentagon or CENTCOM.

All of this comes amid speculation that Trump could order some kind of assault and takeover of Kharg Island:

Another possibility being considered, should President Trump authorize U.S. troops to seize the island, is an attack by about 2,500 troops from the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit, which is on its way to the region.

The airfield on Kharg Island was damaged by the recent U.S. bombing raids so former U.S. commanders said it was more likely to first bring in Marines, whose combat engineers could quickly repair airfields and other airport infrastructure. Once the airfield is repaired, the Air Force could start flowing matériel and supplies, as well as troops, if necessary, by C-130s.

In that scenario, it is possible that the troops from the 82nd Airborne would augment the Marines. The upside of going with paratroopers is they can arrive overnight. The downside is they do not bring any heavy equipment, such as heavily armored vehicles, that would offer protection if Iranian forces counterattacked, current and former officials said.

The whole proposed mission laid out above seems like a longshot, in terms of the potential to go well, and without the US side sustaining a lot of casualties. Army Airborne troops can be rapidly deployed, and would likely support a bigger Marine assault.

Kharg Island is after all hundreds of miles deep into the Persian Gulf and strait, where Iran controls the coastline and can fire on any vessel from there. The Pentagon has said it is softening Iran’s defenses along the coast, but what can be accomplished by airpower alone is limited, according to most sources. An airborne or heliborne insertion also carries huge risks.

The ‘realist’ publication run by the Quincy Institute, Responsible Statecraft, has gone so far as to call it a suicide mission:

Kharg Island has been on the map for Pentagon planners for decades. President Jimmy Carter weighed bombing it or seizing it during the 1979 Iran Hostage Crisis but demurred. Incredibly, in 1988, Donald Trump himself suggested seizing Kharg during his “Art of the Deal” book tour.

Today, Kharg appears to be back in the headlines thanks to Michael Rubin, an American Enterprise Institute scholar and former Iraq Coalition Provisional Authority official who says taking Kharg is a “no-brainer” and has pitched the operation to White House officials.

…The tactical picture is even worse. For the troops unlucky enough to receive orders to take Kharg, the operation would land somewhere between a suicide mission and a self-imposed hostage crisis.

Given the size of the objective (five miles long), the substantial civilian population there, the need to hold it indefinitely, and the lack of surprise, the U.S. would need thousands of troops for the mission. Available units include the incoming MEU’s 1,200-strong Marine battalion landing team, the 82nd Airborne’s “ready brigade” (the 82nd just cancelled scheduled maneuvers, fueling speculation that it could be headed to the Middle East), the 75th Ranger Regiment, and other quick-to mobilize units, or even regular Army battalions already deployed to Kuwait. In theory, Trump has over 10,000 troops at his disposal in coming weeks, though there’s been no public discussion of sending that large a force (yet).

Lindsey Graham on Kharg Island: “We did Iwo Jima. We can do this.” pic.twitter.com/JQJ5lZdvJ8

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 22, 2026

Even if the US did take Kharg, this would immediately present the next problem of ‘what next?’. The US would have to hold it, perhaps while waiting for some kind of political capitulation from Tehran which is unlikely to come. 

Indefinitely defending a strategic island so deep in Iran’s own backyard and territory, with all the logistical challenges, would present all new challenges.

* * *

Getting closer to boots on the ground?…that one thing Trump repeatedly pledged never to do:

Deployment of the 82nd Airborne Division from Ft. Bragg, as well as other units with the U.S. Army, appear to now be underway from bases within the Continental United States towards the Middle East, as staging continues for potential ground operations in Iran. https://t.co/E3QzoDvbKG

— OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) March 23, 2026

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Authored by Paul Sperry via RealClearInvestigations,

Carter Page wasn’t the only adviser from Trump’s first campaign wiretapped by the FBI. Walid Phares was electronically monitored for a 12-month period between 2017 and 2018, according to the Washington-based FBI agent who was assigned to investigate him as part of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia collusion probe.

As in Page’s case, the bureau withheld evidence exonerating Phares from the court to secure surveillance authorization, according to newly declassified FBI documents.

“I had no idea any of this was happening,” Phares told RealClearInvestigations in an exclusive interview Wednesday night. “This is shocking because they told my lawyer that I was only a ‘witness’ and that they just needed some information.”

“But these were huge abuses that I can see now,” he added. Phares said he intends to sue the FBI and Justice Department for damages.

The 68-year-old Lebanese American scholar said case agents and prosecutors grilled him for months, questioned his employer, and even went after his bank records. As a result, he said he lost his job at a university, his livelihood, and even his bank accounts and credit card after Wells Fargo canceled them.

“It was like a disaster for me financially and physically,” he said. “I also lost my Fox News contract” as an expert on terrorism and the Middle East, which he had held since 2007.

Phares was not hired by the Trump administration, even though he had been expected to land a high-level foreign policy position. “They scared the agencies from me so I would have problems with [obtaining] a security clearance,” he said.

‘No Corroborating Facts’

Investigators could find “nothing” criminal on Phares during their probe, according to the lead case agent, and in fact, they concluded he was “honest.” Yet Mueller’s team continued to secretly spy on Phares—without providing the powerful federal spy court any of the exculpatory evidence that could clear Phares as required by law.

The agent told investigators in a separate 2020 internal FBI review that “there were no corroborating facts that tied Crosswind [the codename for Phares’s case] to certain facts that we thought were originally true,” according to a transcript of his testimony, released after more than five years of concealment.

He added that “nothing” collected from Phares’s communications under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants, including phone messages and emails, “aided the investigation other than to prove the target was being honest with investigators,” who had interviewed him repeatedly.

Nonetheless, the FBI continued monitoring Phares as part of a Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) investigation. He was never charged with any violations of the act.

“There was a ‘let’s get him’ attitude among prosecutors on Mueller’s team,” the agent said, according to the new documents, noting that several prosecutors shared an anti-Trump bias and even tacked up negative cartoons of the president on the walls of their office.

The FBI agent, whose name is redacted in several pages of declassified FBI documents released by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, added that “there was nothing confirming Crosswind [Phares] received a large money payment, and nothing confirming Crosswind had a meeting in another country for the purposes of the initial allegation.”

Misleading the Court

When Mueller’s team applied for the fourth and final warrant to secretly surveil Phares in 2018, the agent argued that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) needed to be alerted to how new information “had changed our understanding of our initial analysis” that Phares was a foreign agent. He suggested several corrections, but was rebuffed by an FBI lawyer.

“I pointed out these specific corrections to the application in numerous instances throughout the FISA process,” the agent said. “I sent these edits to Kevin Clinesmith, who said, ‘We can’t send this to DOJ.’”

A senior FBI attorney, Clinesmith had also been assigned to Mueller’s team, which agreed the corrections were unnecessary.

It wouldn’t be the first time Clinesmith, whose internal texts and emails show he had an intense anti-Trump bias, withheld exculpatory evidence from the FISA court.

Clinesmith later pleaded guilty to altering evidence used in an application to renew a FISA warrant to spy on another Trump adviser, Page, whom the FBI falsely accused of acting as a Russian agent. To secure the renewal, Clinesmith changed the wording in an intelligence email that exonerated Page, reversing its meaning.

DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz found the FBI based its warrants targeting Page largely on a Hillary Clinton campaign-funded dossier of false opposition research. The IG concluded the FBI abused its FISA authority while spying on Page, including failing to disclose exculpatory evidence to the surveillance court. Far from aiding Moscow, the former Naval officer had previously worked with the CIA and FBI to help catch Russian spies, as RCI first reported.

The FISA court subsequently invalidated some of the warrants against Page, who was never charged with a crime and is now suing the FBI and DOJ for $75 million for violating his constitutional rights against improper searches and seizures.

His case is currently before the U.S. Supreme Court, but the DOJ’s solicitor general has repeatedly delayed filing a response to his petition, claiming he has other “pressing” matters. The high bench has set the next filing deadline for April 22.

The year-long FISA eavesdropping on Phares appears to be missing from both Horowitz’s and Special Counsel John Durham’s reports investigating FBI abuses in the Russiagate scandal, raising fresh questions about the thoroughness of those investigations. It is still not clear if the three other Trump campaign officials subject to Russiagate investigations—Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn, and George Papadopoulos—were also wiretapped.

A $10 Million Bribe?

In an RCI interview, Phares said the false allegations against him originated with the CIA, which issued a report in 2016 alleging he had taken a $10 million bribe from the Egyptian government intended for the Trump campaign during a meeting in Cairo.

John Brennan, an Obama appointee, was the director of the CIA at the time. He is currently under federal grand jury investigation for his role in the Russiagate hoax.

DOJ is building a “grand conspiracy” case against former Obama and Biden officials for allegedly committing political espionage against Trump and his advisers by manufacturing criminal investigations and depriving them of their rights under color of law. It’s not immediately known if the investigation includes the Phares case. The FBI and DOJ did not respond to requests for comment.

Although the Mueller investigation’s primary mandate was to investigate ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, it veered into additional investigative areas, including probing campaign contacts with other foreign governments.

Phares had taken trips to Cairo during the 2016 campaign while advising Trump on the Middle East.

The investigating agent said the highly classified intelligence agency reports that Phares secretly worked with the Egyptian government to influence the incoming administration “were disproven.”

“Despite this, the [Mueller] team still went on with the third renewal of the FISA [against Phares],” he said.

The investigation was closed in 2019, and Phares was never charged with a crime. Mueller’s $30 million-plus investigation ultimately found no evidence of Trump campaign collusion with Russia or any foreign government.

Misconduct and Bias

Grassley said the FBI agent’s testimony “details substantial allegations of misconduct and political bias occurring within Special Counsel Mueller’s office during the investigation,” including “misleading the FISC,” or Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

The Republican senator has requested DOJ provide his committee “all FISA applications, predication material, and related reporting” from the Crosswind probe to understand the full extent to which the FISA court was misled.

The identity of the FISA judges who approved the top-secret warrants is not yet known. But the presiding FISC judge at the time was Rosemary Collyer, a George W. Bush appointee who personally signed off on the wiretapping of Carter Page. Before resigning in 2020, Collyer issued an order stating that the FBI in its sworn affidavits had “provided false information and withheld material information detrimental to the FBI’s case [against Page].”

RCI first reported that Phares was the subject of a FARA investigation approved by former Obama DOJ official David Laufman, along with four other Trump campaign officials. But the revelation he was also put under FISA surveillance—the government’s most powerful investigative tool—had not been known until Grassley’s disclosures earlier this week.

Phares said he suspected he might be under some kind of surveillance but didn’t know for certain until this week’s release of the declassified FBI documents. He said he recently received notices from Hotmail and Yahoo that the DOJ had sought records from his email accounts through an unspecified legal process.

“They were fishing,” he told RCI.

Although agents working with Mueller initially asked Phares about Russia, they soon zeroed in on his dealings with Egypt. Mueller’s prosecutors later told him he was merely a witness, not a target.

Phares said he was first interviewed in September 2017 by Washington-based FBI agents working for Mueller.

“Two agents showed up at my door flashing badges and asked if we could speak,” he recalled. “I welcomed them in because I was a lead lecturer at the FBI (on counterterrorism), but they took four hours questioning me, and it made my wife very uncomfortable.”

Added Phares: “I made a huge mistake not lawyering up earlier.”

‘Rougher and Tougher’

He said their questions got “rougher and tougher” over the next few months of interviews, which he said later included Mueller prosecutor Zainab Ahmad, who was originally hired at Main Justice in the Spring of 2016 by Attorney General Loretta Lynch.

Ahmad was one of the key Mueller team members responsible for handling the controversial perjury case against former Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, which was later thrown out. Like Flynn, Phares was an outspoken critic of Islamic terrorism, Obama’s Iranian nuclear deal, and the influence of the radical, pro-jihad Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and America.

He said he believes the Obama administration—including Brennan’s CIA—was also monitoring him during the 2016 campaign.

Declassified briefing notes from a meeting shortly after Trump took office between former deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe and Obama-appointed officials with DOJ’s national security division indicate that the FBI and DOJ were “working on a FISA application” targeting “Walid Phares” as early as March 2017.

“They knew they had nothing on Russia, so they went after me on Egypt. But the main target was President Trump,” Phares said. “They had to neutralize him and any of his associates who could carry out his agenda.”

Civil rights watchdogs have called the egregious spying violations against Carter Page the worst abuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act since it was enacted more than 45 years ago. Now another U.S. citizen may have been subjected to even worse abuses.

Elon Musk announced that his proposed “Terafab” chip factory will be built in Austin and operated jointly by Tesla and SpaceX, according to Yahoo Finance and Bloomberg.

The plan is to start with a smaller, highly advanced fabrication facility capable of producing and testing a wide range of chips, before expanding to a larger operation.

Musk argues the semiconductor industry isn’t scaling fast enough to meet his companies’ growing demand for AI and robotics, so he sees building his own supply as necessary. His long-term goal is to support massive computing capacity—eventually reaching a terawatt annually—though he hasn’t provided a timeline.

Yahoo writes that the project would likely sit near Tesla’s Austin headquarters and could produce cutting-edge chips, potentially at the 2-nanometer level. One set of chips would power vehicles, robotaxis, and humanoid robots, while another, more powerful line would be designed for space-based computing used by SpaceX and xAI.

Despite widespread concern about chip shortages, it’s unusual for companies to build their own fabs due to the enormous cost and complexity. Musk acknowledged existing suppliers can’t fully meet Tesla’s future needs as it shifts toward AI-driven products.

He also outlined broader ambitions, including space-based data centers powered by satellite networks. A prototype “mini” satellite could deliver about 100 kilowatts, with future versions reaching megawatt levels. These efforts are tied to SpaceX’s planned IPO and larger vision of expanding computing infrastructure beyond Earth.

Overall, the Terafab project reflects Musk’s push to vertically integrate chip production while supporting his longer-term goals in AI, robotics, and space technology.

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Authored by Ben Sellers via Headline USA,

A Brazilian legislator last week mocked one of LGBT activists’ core arguments in favor of transgenderism with a simple demonstration during a state assembly session in São Paulo.

Faviana Bolsonaro, a 32-year-old female member of the country’s right-leaning Liberal Party, took the dais on Wednesday to protest the appointment of Erika Hilton, a biological-male transgender activist, to the Chamber of Deputies, equivalent to the U.S. House of Representatives.

Hilton, who is black, is a member of the opposing Socialism and Liberty Party.

A viral video showed that Bolsonaro (who changed her name in solidarity with former conservative president Jair Bolsonaro, no relation) applied blackface during her speech to underscore the point that wishful thinking could not change one’s inherent identity.

“I am a white woman. I’ve had the privileges of a white person my whole life,” she said, according to a translation from the original Portuguese. “Now, at 32, I decide to paint myself, to disguise myself as a black person … and I ask you: did I become black? Do I feel the pain that black people have suffered? … No.”

This post is misleading, not because you must agree with Fabiana Bolsonaro, but because it distorts what she actually said.

Here are her own words, translated as faithfully as possible:

“I am a white woman. I’ve had the privileges of a white person my whole life.”

“Now, at…

— Jose Alfredo 🇧🇷🔺 (@josealfredobh) March 20, 2026

Biographical details are unclear as to when and if Hilton fully transitioned to “female,” although reports suggest that the former sex worker has been living as a woman since at least 2015, when Hilton’s LGBT activism first rose to prominence.

Hilton and another transgender legislator, Duda Salabert, both entered the national parliament following Brazil’s highly controversial 2022 election, the equivalent of the 2020 election in the U.S., in which far-left President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva ousted Jair Bolsonaro — known as the “Trump of the Tropics” — under dubious circumstances.

Regardless of the electoral legitimacy, though, Fabiana Bolsonaro argued that Hilton was unfit to lead on women’s issues by virtue of lived experiences — or a lack thereof.

“It doesn’t matter if I paint myself — I don’t know what you went through,” she said.

“That’s why I cannot lead that agenda … because I am not black.”

She added a point that critics of the transgender agenda often seek to make: that many opponents are perfectly willing to respect an individual’s private choice to live a transgender lifestyle, so long as doing so does not intrude upon the rights of others who refuse to indulge it.

“Trans people must be respected. … I don’t want any trans person to suffer discrimination,” Bolsonaro noted.

Dramatic footage circulating on X appears to show a Colombian military Hercules C-130 transport aircraft crashing shortly after takeoff from Puerto Leguízamo in southern Colombia. The cause of the crash remains unknown, and Colombian authorities have not yet released an official casualty count. 

Local outlet Blu Radio reported that 110 Colombian soldiers were on board at the time of the C-130’s straight-out departure from the airport in the remote Amazon border region near Peru.

En un video aficionado quedó captado el momento exacto en el que un avión Hércules de la Fuerza Aeroespacial Colombiana (FAC) se precipitó a tierra solo instantes después de haber despegado del aeropuerto de Puerto Leguízamo, en el departamento del Putumayo. #VocesySonidos pic.twitter.com/HvbXwwR1cS

— BluRadio Colombia (@BluRadioCo) March 23, 2026

Defense Minister Pedro Sánchez said military units had already reached the crash site but noted that “the exact number of victims and the causes of the crash have not yet been determined.”

Sánchez’s translated X post:

Additional footage from the crash area has also surfaced on X.

Atención: Un avión Hércules de la @FuerzaAereaCol se accidentó saliendo de La Tagua, Putumayo. 110 soldados iban a bordo. Ya han sido rescatados 20 militares heridos. Situación en desarrollo. Vía @BluRadioCo pic.twitter.com/Jgb4tw74aP

— Ricardo Ospina (@ricarospina) March 23, 2026

#ATENTOS. Cerca de 100 personas iban a bordo de aeronave siniestrada en zona rural del Putumayo este 23MAR. El hecho fue confirmado por Min/Defensa Pedro Sánchez, quien indicó que el avión transportaba tropas de la Fuerza Pública y que aún se desconocen las causas del siniestro. https://t.co/oVJhzXgiY5 pic.twitter.com/jdhQ1RlAXw

— Colombia Oscura (@ColombiaOscura) March 23, 2026

The Colombian Aerospace Force operates a small Hercules fleet, comprising older C-130B models and newer C-130H variants, with a total inventory estimated at roughly 9 aircraft. The loss of the transport plane represents a meaningful hit to airlift capacity. 

Neither local media nor the government has provided clarity on whether the troops were engaged in a training mission, routine transport, or deployment tied to the escalating border crisis with Ecuador.

The crash comes just one week after Ecuador’s Interior Minister John Reimberg deployed 75,000 troops in the South American country to combat drug cartels, while Colombian President Gustavo Petro warned that Ecuador’s campaign was spilling over and that Colombia was being “bombed.” 

🚨¡OPERACIÓN “PODOCARPUS”: DESTRUCCIÓN DE 129 CAMPAMENTOS DE MINERÍA ILEGAL Y AFECTACIÓN ECONÓMICA DE $3 MILLONES A LAS MAFIAS PARA RECUPERAR TOTALMENTE ESTE TERRITORIO!🚨

➡️Con un gran despliegue militar, durante nueve días de operaciones sostenidas en el Parque Nacional… pic.twitter.com/acae76SmhX

— Ministerio de Defensa Nacional del Ecuador (@DefensaEc) March 16, 2026

Latest geopolitical report from the region:

“We’re At War”: Ecuador Deploys 75,000 Troops, Launches Anti-Cartel Missile Strikes; Colombia Warns “We’re Being Bombed”

The absence of evidence so far is foul play, well, at least in the initial reporting. But given rising tensions between Colombia and Ecuador and the broader crisis over the last week, the region warrants close monitoring.

Lawmakers have never met a market they didn’t want to control. And when they can’t do that, they try to crush them – sometimes after taking six-figure donations from competing lobbies. To wit; Sens. Adam Schiff (D-CA), and John Curtis (R-UT), on Monday introduced legislation that would prohibit federally regulated prediction-market platforms from offering wagers on sports events, targeting what they call a regulatory backdoor that has let online betting proliferate beyond state control. Reading between the lines, prediction market betting is clearly a threat to the old guard. 

The bill, titled the Prediction Markets Are Gambling Act, would bar entities overseen by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission – including leading platforms Kalshi and Polymarket’s U.S. operations – from listing or trading contracts tied to the outcomes of any sporting event or athletic competition. It would also extend the prohibition to “casino-style games” such as slot machines, video poker, blackjack and bingo. The measure marks the first bipartisan Senate legislation aimed squarely at prediction markets’ expansion into sports wagering.

The push comes as the broader U.S. sports-betting industry – legalized nationwide after a landmark 2018 Supreme Court ruling – generated a record handle of roughly $167 billion and gross gaming revenue of about $17 billion in 2025. More than 90% of those bets are placed online or via mobile apps operated by companies such as DraftKings Inc. and Flutter Entertainment Plc.’s FanDuel. Yet prediction markets, which structure wagers as yes-or-no event contracts under CFTC oversight rather than state gambling licenses, have carved out a parallel lane. These platforms, which gained prominence during the 2024 presidential election, now derive a significant share of volume from professional and college sports, offering bets even in states that prohibit traditional sportsbooks.

OF NOTE: The gambling industry contributed $111,876 to Sen. Schiff during the 2023-2024 election cycle, with California tribal gaming entities being particularly supportive – donating six-figure sums to pro-Schiff leadership PACs and related efforts. 

Meanwhile, the American Gaming Association (AGA), which represents licensed operators including DraftKings and FanDuel parent Flutter Entertainment, and the Indian Gaming Association (IGA) have publicly pressed Congress and states to crack down on prediction-market sports contracts.

A Regulatory Loophole Sparks Bipartisan Alarm

Schiff and Curtis argue that betting via prediction markets undermines state authority, deprives governments and tribal casinos of tax revenue, and exposes young people to addictive products without the consumer protections that accompany licensed sportsbooks. “The CFTC is greenlighting these markets and even promoting their growth,”  Schiff said. “It’s time for Congress to step in and eliminate this backdoor, which violates state consumer protections, intrudes upon tribal sovereignty and offers no public revenue.”

Curtis, whose home state of Utah remains one of the few without legal sports betting, highlighted concerns about youth access. “Too many young people in Utah are getting exposed to addictive sports betting and casino-style gaming contracts that belong under state control, not under federal regulators,” he said.

The legislation aligns with a companion House effort, the Event Contract Enforcement Act, introduced earlier this month by Reps. Blake Moore, a Utah Republican, and Salud Carbajal, a California Democrat. That bill would require the CFTC to prohibit event contracts related to sports and gaming, among other sensitive categories such as terrorism and elections, while giving states an opt-out for sports-related contracts. “Prediction markets also sponsor sports-related contracts against the wishes of many states, including Utah,”  Moore said in a statement.

States have grown increasingly frustrated. Attorneys general from 39 states and the District of Columbia have urged federal courts to uphold their authority. Nevada secured a temporary restraining order last week blocking Kalshi from offering sports, election and entertainment contracts without state licenses. Arizona filed criminal charges against Kalshi’s parent companies. Lawsuits and countersuits have proliferated, with platforms arguing exclusive federal jurisdiction and states insisting the products amount to illegal gambling.

The Supreme Court’s 2018 decision striking down the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act unleashed a wave of state legalization. Thirty-eight states plus the District of Columbia now permit sports betting, generating billions in tax revenue and creating thousands of jobs. Major leagues from the NFL to the NBA have embraced partnerships, sharing data for integrity monitoring and reaping sponsorship dollars.

Prediction Markets Exploding in Popularity

Prediction markets have exploded from niche election curiosities into a multi-billion-dollar parallel sports-betting channel. Kalshi posted roughly $17–24 billion in notional volume in 2025 (85–87% sports), while Polymarket reached $21.5 billion overall (sports ~39% globally, nearly 100% on its U.S. app). Combined monthly trading volume for the two platforms surged to nearly $18 billion in February 2026 and hit a record $26 billion in January 2026, with Kalshi alone handling more than $2 billion per week ahead of the Super Bowl. Valuations followed: Kalshi hit an $11 billion mark, Polymarket $8 billion, fueled by venture inflows and retail/crypto traders who treat contracts like liquid equities rather than traditional parlays.

Via dune.com

This growth has turned the platforms into a measurable competitive pressure point. Kalshi’s sports-fee revenue is already running at an annualized pace that rivals roughly 25% of DraftKings’ projected 2026 take, while both operators now serve prohibition states that traditional books cannot touch. User bases have scaled rapidly – Kalshi monthly actives topped 5 million, Polymarket’s on-chain DAU records exceeded 150,000 in recent weeks – creating a younger, more tech-native cohort that bypasses state licensing, taxes, and responsible-gaming mandates. Traditional operators view the trajectory as existential if unchecked: without federal intervention, analysts project the sector could capture 3–5% of national sports revenue in 2026 and far more by decade’s end.

Industry Reaction and Market Moves

Traditional sports-betting operators appeared to welcome the news. Shares of DraftKings rose more than 7% in premarket trading Monday, only to settle up 2.3% as of this writing, while Flutter Entertainment gained nearly 9.5% (now only up 5.15%). The American Gaming Association, which represents many licensed operators, has long warned that unregulated prediction markets threaten state-regulated markets and lack responsible-gaming standards.

Kalshi pushed back sharply. “Banning sports on regulated prediction markets would just push this behavior offshore, where no regulation exists,” said spokeswoman Elisabeth Diana. “It’s clear this bill is motivated by casino interests that are threatened by competition.” Polymarket did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The prediction-market sector itself remains nascent but fast-growing, with platforms reporting billions in trading volume and attracting venture-capital interest. Proponents argue the markets promote price discovery and innovation; critics counter that sports contracts function indistinguishably from gambling.

The new bill joins a slate of bipartisan measures addressing sports betting. The SAFE Bet Act, backed by Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and Rep. Paul Tonko of New York, would impose federal minimum standards on state programs – including advertising restrictions during live events, limits on bonus bets and curbs on credit-card deposits. Separately, the POINTS Act would direct roughly one-third of the federal excise tax on sports betting – potentially $100 million annually – toward prevention, treatment and recovery services for gambling addiction.

Supporters frame the efforts as protecting consumers without dismantling an industry that has become a significant economic force. Opponents warn that heavy-handed federal intervention could stifle innovation, reduce tax revenue and drive activity to offshore sites.

Authored by T.J.Muscaro via The Epoch Times,

It has been the worst flooding Oahu has seen in more than 20 years, and as of the morning of March 21, the torrential rains and rushing waters continue to flow across the mountainous island and the rest of the Hawaiian archipelago.

The devastating milestone was announced on March 20 by Hawaii Gov. Josh Green, who said that damages could exceed $1 billion.

The cause is a type of winter storm called a “Kona Low,” which is southerly or southwesterly winds that bring moist air onto the islands. This is the second such storm that Hawaii has faced this month.

Green issued a statement on the morning of March 21, stating that no loss of life had yet been reported, although there were some serious injuries. But the back-to-back storms caused some areas to get between 40 and 50 inches of rain.

The first storm hit between March 10 and March 16 and delivered multiple feet of rain to parts of Kawai, Oahu, Maui, and Hawaii Island, as well as winds gusting 60–75 mph and even higher than 100 mph in some areas.

This second storm was expected to bring at least another 10 inches of rain to Oahu and more than a foot of rain to Maui between March 20 and 23.

Hawaii Emergency Management warned on March 21 that Maui and Oahu could still face dangerous rainbands capable of producing two to four inches per hour throughout the day, along with wind gusts reaching 45 mph.

“The storm will deliver another four to six inches of rain on Oahu throughout this weekend, but it’s now moving over to Maui, where we expect somewhere between likely four to eight inches, but as much as 10 to 12 in some areas,” the governor said.

He also said that the weather will also move over Molokai and the Big Island.

Flash flood warnings remain in effect for the entire island, which hosts military installations like Pearl Harbor and the state’s capital, Honolulu.

The National Weather Service’s Honolulu office has reported high flood waters closing and collapsing roadways, cutting off entire communities, and lifting homes off their foundations.

Honolulu mayor Rick Blangiardi said on March 20 that dozens, if not hundreds, of homes have been damaged in the storms, but no official damage assessment has been completed yet.

More than 230 people have been rescued, including 72 children and adults who were airlifted by the National Guard and Honolulu Fire Department from a youth camp retreat on Oahu’s west coast.

Ten people have been taken to the hospital to be treated for hypothermia.

More than 5,500 residents along the island’s North Shore were ordered to evacuate as the consistent rains threatened to cause the Wahiawa dam to fail, which would send rushing waters into their communities.

As of the morning of March 21, the dam remained intact, and some water levels had dropped. But Green later reported that water levels behind the dam were up to nearly 82 feet; 85 feet is the dam’s “threshold of great concern.”

Meanwhile, other Hawaiian islands also remain under flood threats through the weekend.

Maui’s Emergency Management Agency issued evacuation warnings for parts of the ʻIao Valley in Central Maui and parts of Kihei in South Maui because of a potential flooding threat, and it issued advisories for places in East Moloka’i, East Maui, and Lahaina. The agency clarified that neither warnings nor advisories were mandatory evacuation orders.

The Red Cross also deployed disaster assessment teams to Oahu, Maui, and the Island of Hawaii, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency announced that it was monitoring the situation.

“We are monitoring the severe flooding in Oahu and closely coordinating with [Gov. Josh Green] and [Hawaii Emergency Management Agency] as the state leads rescue and shelter operations,” FEMA said on X.

“Our teams on the island are embedded and ready to support if needed to help safeguard lives and communities.”