Empires don’t end with a bang.

They end when the people running the institutions stop believing in them and start carrying the furniture out the back door.

Last week, the FBI arrested a senior CIA official, David Rush, with 303 one-kilogram gold bars, $2 million in cash, and three dozen Rolexes stacked inside his Virginia home, none of it held in the currency his agency exists to defend. The only charge so far is fudging his time sheets, not the $40 million in metal the agency handed him and then couldn’t find. This is a working definition of a Fourth Turning moment. The insiders stop trusting the institutions before the rest of us do.

The New York Times reports:

F.B.I. Arrests C.I.A. Official With $40 Million in Gold Bars in His Home

“A senior C.I.A. official was arrested last week after investigators found hundreds of gold bars worth over $40 million stashed in his Virginia residence, a small fortune that he apparently brought home from work, according to court papers.

The official, David Rush, is being held in jail while he awaits a detention hearing in the coming days on charges of stealing public money by filling out fraudulent time sheets. The charging documents filed in Alexandria, Va., still leave a lot unanswered about his recent conduct.

The only charge lodged against Mr. Rush is that he inflated his academic credentials and obtained military leave pay worth tens of thousands of dollars. The authorities say he falsely claimed to be a member of the Navy Reserve when he was discharged.

The court papers describe Mr. Rush as a “former senior executive service-level employee at a United States government agency.” People familiar with the investigation say he until very recently held a senior position at the C.I.A.

In a joint statement, the C.I.A. and F.B.I. said the arrest occurred on May 19, after the agency alerted the bureau.

“After a C.I.A. internal investigation identified potential violations of the law, C.I.A. Director John Ratcliffe referred the information to the F.B.I. for a law enforcement investigation,” the statement said.

A lawyer for Mr. Rush declined to comment. A woman answering the phone at Mr. Rush’s house hung up on a reporter.

From last November to March, the court papers say, Mr. Rush asked for, and received, “a significant quantity of foreign currency and tens of millions of dollars in gold bars for work-related expenses.”

When the C.I.A. conducted a review of where the gold and currency were stashed, the agency was “unable to locate the gold bars or significant amounts of the foreign currency,” according to court papers.

On May 18, F.B.I. agents searched Mr. Rush’s home and found “approximately 303 gold bars, each of which weighed approximately one kilogram,” according to an affidavit. Based on the price of gold, the affidavit said, the estimated value of the gold exceeded $40 million. Investigators also seized nearly three dozen luxury watches, many of them Rolexes.

The court papers do not indicate why Mr. Rush appears to have kept so much gold, and $2 million in U.S. currency, in his home, or what work project would have required him to amass such wealth.”

The  story is that this is one bad apple with a creative attitude toward his time sheet. Maybe, but the texture of the thing is what gives it away. An agency can requisition tens of millions of dollars in gold bars for “work-related expenses,” hand them to an employee, and then be unable to find them. The trust that once gave credibility to institutions like the CIA and FBI is near zero.

Another side note:

Notice the form the money took. The man was holding “technically” untraceable assets. Not, treasuries, USDs, or stocks. He bought gold bars and Rolexes, the same hard assets that have outlived every currency the human race has ever inflated into confetti. Who knows what the real story is on this one, but those in government are revealing the worth of real money. Whoever owns gold hold the power. It can be traded under the table, or across the table.

For every Empire that has declined throughout history, the looting has always started at the top. It may be surprising, but tens of millions in gold bars in your neighbours basement is probably just the tip of the iceberg.

The post An Empire in Decline: The Looting Starts at the Top appeared first on Activist Post.

• Independent testing of 51 toothpaste brands found 90% contained lead, 65% arsenic, 47% mercury and 35% cadmium.
• Heavy metals enter toothpaste through contaminated raw ingredients like hydroxyapatite, calcium carbonate and bentonite clay.
• Lead and cadmium disrupt cellular functions, causing kidney damage, osteoporosis, anemia and other health complications.
• Toothpaste manufacturers have refused to remove heavy metals and some have used legal threats against whistleblowers.
• Homemade toothpaste using coconut oil, baking soda and essential oils offers a safer alternative.

The investigation: What was found and why it matters

In May 2026, Lead Safe Mama, an advocacy organization focused on consumer safety, updated their report about testing results that sent shockwaves through the oral care industry last year. The analysis of 51 popular toothpaste brands revealed a troubling pattern: 90% contained lead, 65% contained arsenic, 47% contained mercury and 35% contained cadmium. Only six products tested clean across all four heavy metals.

The investigation, led by environmental activist Tamara Rubin, began 12 years ago when she noticed a common toothpaste brand among families whose children had been exposed to heavy metals. Her work has already prompted six product recalls.

How heavy metals enter toothpaste

The contamination originates in raw materials used during manufacturing. Rubin’s research identified three primary culprits:

• Hydroxyapatite – extracted from cow bone and added to help teeth absorb calcium
• Calcium carbonate – added to remove stains from teeth
• Bentonite clay – used as a cleaning agent

Products containing bentonite clay showed the highest heavy metal levels. When tested individually, hydroxyapatite and calcium carbonate also showed concerning lead concentrations. The systematic review published in Frontiers in Dental Medicine analyzed 11 studies from Asia, Europe and Africa, confirming this pattern is global. In some cases, lead levels reached 6,313 parts per billion—far exceeding the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s limit of 20 parts per million.

Health risks: Cellular damage and chronic disease

Heavy metals disrupt bodily functions at the cellular level. Cadmium interferes with kidney filtration systems and has been linked to lung and pancreatic damage. Even low-level exposure increases osteoporosis risk and causes mitochondrial dysfunction.

Lead targets multiple vital functions. Symptoms of exposure include appetite loss, weight loss, vomiting, constipation, anemia, kidney failure and irritability. The federal government acknowledges that no level of lead exposure is safe, yet current regulations allow concentrations that violate Washington state’s stricter limits.

Industry resistance and consumer options

Despite the evidence, toothpaste manufacturers have not committed to removing heavy metals. Some companies have argued that lead occurs naturally in the environment and is impossible to avoid. Others sent Rubin cease-and-desist letters, which she published on her blog.

The researchers who conducted the systematic review called for “specific guidelines on the limits for heavy metals in toothpastes, with a clear distinction between essential and nonessential metals.” They emphasized the need for stringent quality assurance processes.

For consumers seeking alternatives, the options include choosing brands that undergo third-party heavy metal testing, using oil pulling with organic coconut oil as a supplement to brushing, or making toothpaste at home. A DIY recipe uses sterilized eggshell powder, baking soda, xylitol and coconut oil.

The historical context: Why this news matters today

The discovery of heavy metals in toothpaste represents the latest chapter in a decades-long pattern of chemical contamination in everyday products. The same industrial systems that introduced formaldehyde into hospital curtains, phenol into tin can linings and chlorine into tap water have now been shown to taint oral care products.

This issue connects to broader environmental health concerns that have emerged since the 1940s, when synthetic chemicals began saturating consumer goods. As researchers noted in the systematic review, heavy metals in toothpaste contribute “to the already high level of heavy metal pollution in the environment from industrial and agricultural processes.”

The challenge mirrors what chemically sensitive individuals have faced for years: contaminants accumulate in the body over time, and no regulatory agency has established comprehensive safety limits for nonessential metals in toothpaste. The gap between what science reveals and what policy addresses continues to widen.

A call for transparency and action

The evidence is clear: Most commercial toothpastes contain heavy metals with well-documented health risks. While industry pushes back against accountability, consumers must take matters into their own hands. Choosing verified clean products, adopting traditional oral hygiene practices like oil pulling and making homemade toothpaste offer practical steps forward. The broader question remains: how many more common products must be tested before regulators establish meaningful safety standards? Until that day comes, individual vigilance remains the most reliable defense against chemical exposure.

Sources for this article include:

ChildrensHealthDefense.org

PubMed.com

PublicHealthToxicology.com

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BSTR co-founder Sean Bill says many Bitcoin treasury companies lack the “ability to actually deploy Bitcoin.”

The Bitcoin treasury company space is becoming more divided between firms with actual financial strategies and those leaning more on promotion, according to one industry executive.

“I think a lot of them don’t have the right capital structure, right. They don’t have the ability to actually deploy Bitcoin,” Sean Bill — co-founder of Bitcoin treasury company BSTR, alongside Adam Back  — said during an interview with Cointelegraph published to YouTube on Tuesday.

“They’re really planning on having Bitcoin do all the talking for them,” Bill said. “I do think that you have a lot of carnival barkers in this space,” Bill said.

Bill said that works well to an extent if a company has “cheap and easy access to leverage in the marketplace.” If not, companies must engage in other activities to add value beyond just holding Bitcoin, Bill explained. “Otherwise, investors will go to an ETF, you know, and just use a simple product like that, Bill said.

Bitcoin treasury companies have been one of the most talked-about narratives of the cycle, but questions have lingered over whether the sector is forming a bubble. While corporate Bitcoin treasuries have helped drive demand, they also introduce systemic risks. In a June 3, 2025, note to investors, Geoff Kendrick, head of digital assets at Standard Chartered Bank, said that a sharp price drop could trigger significant liquidations, while regulatory and market maturation may erode the premium for Bitcoin proxy stocks.

Related: Bitcoin plums new six-week lows as analyst eyes BTC price dip ‘end’ at $72K

There are 198 public companies collectively holding around 1.25 million Bitcoin, according to BitcoinTreasuries data. Michael Saylor’s Strategy is the largest public corporate holder, with a treasury of 843,738 Bitcoin.

On Wednesday, Cointelegraph reported that Bitcoin treasury company Nakamoto (NAKA) stock is down by about 67% year-to-date (YTD) and by more than 99% since its May 2025 peak of about $34 per share, reaching a low of about $0.16 per share in April before the reverse stock split on Friday.

Nasdaq warned the company in December that its shares would be delisted after trading below $1 for at least 30 consecutive days, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing.

Magazine: HYPE chases $100 target, ETH could dump below $1800: Market Moves

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JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon has drawn a battle line in Washington: the Clarity Act, as written, is dead on arrival — and Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong is the enemy driving it.

In a Fox Business interview on Friday, Dimon unloaded on the pending crypto market structure legislation, calling it a threat to the financial system and a gift to an industry that wants the privileges of banking without the responsibilities.

“It allows cryptocurrency firms to effectively pay interest on deposits — stablecoins or something like that — without the protection that they should have,” Dimon said. “It has almost no legal protections.”

His core argument: if a crypto platform walks like a bank and talks like a bank, it needs to be regulated like one. That means Anti-Money Laundering compliance, Bank Secrecy Act obligations, FDIC insurance, capital requirements, liquidity rules, and the full weight of financial oversight that traditional banks carry. The Clarity Act, in his view, lets crypto firms skip all of it.

The fight over stablecoin rewards sits at the center of the dispute. Banks say allowing crypto exchanges to pay customers for holding stablecoins would accelerate deposit flight from traditional institutions — a ticking clock on the business model that has defined American banking for a century. 

Crypto advocates counter that such incentives are a natural evolution of payments infrastructure. The bill’s markup is approaching, and neither side is backing down.

Dimon also flagged the AML problem with cross-border stablecoin payments.

“The first one may be legitimate,” he said, “the second one may be a sex trafficker.” Once money lands in a digital wallet overseas, it can move to a third wallet, a fourth — with no visibility and no accountability. That, he said, is the unresolved risk hiding beneath the optimism around stablecoin utility.

Dimon: Coinbase CEO Armstrong is full of sh*t

But Dimon reserved his sharpest words for Armstrong. The Coinbase CEO, he claimed, is spending hundreds of millions of dollars in Washington to push the legislation through. “No one is going to bow down to this guy,” Dimon said, calling Armstrong “full of sh*t.” 

It was not the first time — Dimon made similar remarks at the World Economic Forum in Davos earlier this year.

JPMorgan is not alone. The American Bankers Association, community banks, and credit unions are aligned in opposition to the bill’s current form.

Dimon made clear this is a fight — not a negotiation. “We’ll fight it,” he said. “If we lose, we lose. But it will be fought.”

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“You want to defend the United States of America, then defend it with the tools it supplies you with—its Constitution. You ask for a mandate, General, from a ballot box. You don’t steal it after midnight, when the country has its back turned.”—Seven Days in May (1964)

Who is actually running the government?

That is no longer a rhetorical question.

As America’s war with Iran lurches from escalation to ceasefire to renewed threats of military force, Americans are being asked to trust that someone, somewhere, knows what they are doing.

But who?

The president who boasts one moment of imminent peace and threatens the next to “finish the job”? The Pentagon officials who insist the war is going according to plan? The vice president who has reportedly questioned whether the Defense Department is giving the president the full picture? The intelligence agencies, defense contractors, war planners, foreign allies, billionaire donors, political handlers and unelected power brokers who operate behind the curtain?

This is the constitutional crisis hiding in plain sight.

The question is not merely whether Donald Trump is fit to lead. The question is whether any president still leads in any meaningful constitutional sense once the permanent war government gets moving.

That war government—the military industrial complex, the intelligence apparatus, the surveillance state, the federal police bureaucracy, the defense contractors, the private-sector profiteers and the unelected functionaries who keep the machinery running—does not need tanks in the streets to take over.

It already has the budgets, the weapons, the secrecy, the technology, the classified briefings, the emergency powers, the corporate partners and the political class in its pocket.

All it needs is for the American people to keep believing the fiction that elections alone are enough to keep tyranny in check.

They are not.

The Constitution was supposed to keep power on a short leash. Congress was supposed to declare war, control the purse strings, restrain the executive and answer to the people. The president was supposed to execute the laws, not rule by decree, wage undeclared wars, or serve as front man for an empire. The courts were supposed to serve as a check against government abuse, not rubber-stamp the national security state’s worst excesses.

Instead, we have inherited a government of permanent war, permanent surveillance, permanent emergency, permanent secrecy and permanent power.

Call it the Deep State.

Call it the Police State.

Call it the Military Industrial Complex.

Call it the Techno-Corporate State.

Call it the Surveillance State.

Whatever name you give it, the result is the same: a government that keeps expanding no matter who occupies the White House, no matter which party controls Congress, and no matter what the people actually want.

This is bigger than Trump.

Trump may be reckless, transactional, vindictive, distracted, authoritarian in impulse and dangerously unfit for the powers he wields. But the machinery now surrounding him did not begin with him and will not end with him.

Every modern president has inherited the same war powers, the same secret agencies, the same emergency apparatus, the same surveillance systems, the same defense contractors, the same militarized police forces, and the same bipartisan addiction to power without accountability.

Trump didn’t create the permanent war government.

He inherited it, fed it, enlarged it, weaponized it and, like every president before him, became its salesman.

The Iran war is merely the latest test case.

We are told the president is in command. We are told the Pentagon has the situation under control. We are told American weapons stockpiles are strong, the strategy is working, victory is near, diplomacy is proceeding, and the next escalation—if it comes—will be necessary.

Yet the reporting suggests something far more troubling: confusion, competing narratives, disputed assessments, growing concerns about depleted missile stockpiles, and possible gaps between what military officials are saying publicly and what political leaders privately fear.

According to Reuters, Trump insists that the U.S. is still not satisfied with the terms of a possible Iran deal and is not considering easing sanctions. He also reportedly threatened to blow up Oman if they did not cooperate over the Strait of Hormuz.

The Associated Press reports that a new analysis by the Center for Strategic and International Studies warns the U.S. could need years to replenish key advanced weapons stockpiles depleted by the Iran war, including Tomahawk cruise missiles and Patriot and THAAD interceptors.

And The Atlantic reported that Vice President J.D. Vance has repeatedly questioned the Defense Department’s depiction of the Iran war and whether the Pentagon has understated the depletion of U.S. missile stockpiles.

Read between the lines.

If the president is not getting the full picture from his own Pentagon, then who is really making the decisions?

If the Pentagon is shaping the narrative to tell the president what he wants to hear, then what remains of civilian control?

If the war machine keeps moving even when the public cannot tell who is steering it, then what remains of constitutional government?

This is the nightmare Rod Serling warned about in Seven Days in May.

Released in 1964, Seven Days in May imagined a dramatic military coup: generals plotting in secret to overthrow an unpopular president because they believed they knew better than the American people what was best for the nation.

The premise is straightforward enough: With the Cold War at its height, President Jordan Lyman signs a nuclear disarmament treaty with the Soviet Union. General James Mattoon Scott, head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, believes the treaty leaves the United States vulnerable. Convinced that the president is weak and the people are blind, Scott plots a military takeover of the government.

The coup is eventually foiled. The republic is saved. The Constitution survives.

At least on screen.

In the real world, the plot has thickened and spread out over decades.

The old fear was that the military might seize power from the civilian government.

The modern reality is that the permanent government does not need to seize power.

It already has it.

The coup no longer requires generals in smoke-filled rooms plotting to overthrow the president at midnight. It does not require tanks on Pennsylvania Avenue or soldiers storming the Capitol. It does not even require an official suspension of the Constitution.

All it requires is secrecy, fear, endless war, executive power, emergency declarations, classified intelligence, compliant courts, cowardly legislators, corporate profiteers, militarized police, and a public too distracted, exhausted or frightened to resist.

That coup has been underway for decades.

It is the coup that occurs when Congress surrenders its war powers to the president.

It is the coup that occurs when presidents of both parties wage war without meaningful constitutional authorization.

It is the coup that occurs when intelligence agencies spy on the American people and then hide behind national security.

It is the coup that occurs when federal agencies arm themselves like military units.

It is the coup that occurs when local police are transformed into extensions of the military.

It is the coup that occurs when whistleblowers are punished, dissenters are surveilled, protesters are treated like enemies, and the public is told to trust whatever version of events the government chooses to release.

It is the coup that occurs when unelected bureaucrats, contractors, data brokers, intelligence analysts, defense executives and crisis managers exercise more practical control over government policy than the voters do.

This is how freedom disappears: not all at once, not in one dramatic seizure of power, but incrementally, bureaucratically, profitably and in the name of national security.

Dwight D. Eisenhower warned us about this in 1961.

A five-star general who understood war better than most modern politicians ever will, Eisenhower cautioned Americans to “guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex.” The danger, he warned, was that “misplaced power” would endanger liberty and democratic processes.

He was right.

The military industrial complex has become one of the most powerful governing forces in America.

It consumes trillions of dollars. It shapes foreign policy. It drives domestic policing. It fuels surveillance. It manufactures enemies. It feeds off fear. It rewards failure. It profits from war whether the wars are won, lost or simply kept going forever.

War is no longer merely a policy choice.

It is an economy.

It is a governing philosophy.

It is a way of life.

The permanent war government needs enemies the way a furnace needs fuel. If there are no enemies abroad, it finds them at home. If there is no declared war, it invents undeclared conflicts. If the public grows weary of one threat, it introduces another.

Terrorists. Extremists. Immigrants. Protesters. Hackers. Drug dealers. Foreign powers. Domestic radicals. Enemies of the people. Threats to democracy. Threats to order. Threats to national security.

The names change. The machinery remains the same.

Once the government convinces the public that it is surrounded by enemies, almost anything can be justified: surveillance, censorship, raids, checkpoints, databases, militarized policing, secret courts, indefinite detention, asset forfeiture, no-knock warrants, drone warfare, emergency powers and more war.

This is how a constitutional republic gets converted into a battlefield.

The battlefield is not just Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Ukraine or whatever foreign conflict is next on the docket.

The battlefield is also Main Street.

It is the protest zone. The airport. The school. The public square. The church. The campus. The internet. The courthouse. The traffic stop. The home.

The war comes home because the war machine must keep moving.

That is why local police now look like occupying armies. That is why federal agents are armed to the teeth. That is why surveillance cameras, drones, license plate readers, fusion centers, biometric databases, AI tracking systems and predictive policing programs have become routine features of American life.

The government has spent decades training Americans to accept the architecture of martial law as the price of safety.

First, it sells the public on the threat.

Then it sells the public on the solution.

Then it makes the solution permanent.

This is not a left-right problem.

Both parties built this.

Republicans and Democrats alike have funded the wars, renewed the surveillance powers, armed the police, expanded executive authority, protected intelligence agencies, rewarded defense contractors, and treated the Constitution as an inconvenience whenever fear could be used to silence dissent.

One president abuses power. The next one inherits it. The next one expands it. The next one normalizes it. The next one weaponizes it.

This is how emergency powers become everyday powers.

This is how temporary measures become permanent law.

This is how the president becomes a king in all but name.

And this is how the people become spectators in their own government.

The genius of Seven Days in May was that it understood the temptation of power. General Scott believed he was saving the country. He believed the people were too weak, too foolish or too uninformed to govern themselves. He believed the Constitution was expendable if national security demanded it.

That is always the excuse.

The tyrant always claims to be saving the country.

The general always claims to be protecting the people.

The bureaucrat always claims to be following procedure.

The president always claims to be acting in the national interest.

The police state always claims to be keeping us safe.

But the Constitution does not exist for easy times. It exists for moments of crisis, fear, panic, uncertainty and war. It exists precisely because government officials cannot be trusted to restrain themselves when power is on the line.

That is why the founders divided power.

That is why Congress was given the power to declare war.

That is why the Fourth Amendment restrains searches and seizures.

That is why the First Amendment protects speech, dissent, assembly and the press.

That is why due process exists.

That is why civilian control of the military matters.

That is why secret government is incompatible with self-government.

A people cannot remain free if they do not know what is being done in their name.

A people cannot control a government they are not allowed to see.

A people cannot restrain a war machine whose decisions are hidden behind classified briefings, private contracts, executive privilege and national security claims.

A people cannot be sovereign if the most consequential decisions—war, peace, surveillance, policing, spending and the use of force—are made by unelected power centers beyond their reach.

That is not a republic.

That is managed democracy with a military chain of command.

The Founders did not trust standing armies. They did not trust concentrated power. They did not trust executives who could wage war without the consent of the people’s representatives. They understood that liberty cannot survive when the machinery of force is allowed to operate without meaningful restraint.

Yet that is exactly where we are.

We have allowed the government to wage war without declarations of war.

We have allowed intelligence agencies to operate behind walls of secrecy.

We have allowed presidents to rule by executive order.

We have allowed Congress to become a spectator.

We have allowed the courts to defer to national security.

We have allowed police to become soldiers.

We have allowed corporations to profit from fear.

We have allowed unelected officials to make decisions that alter the course of the nation.

And then we act surprised when no one seems to know who is actually in charge.

The answer is as obvious as it is disturbing.

The permanent war government is in charge.

The machinery is in charge.

The system is in charge.

The president may bark orders, give speeches, post threats, stage photo ops, hold rallies, sign directives and claim victory. But behind him stands an entrenched apparatus of power that survives every election, outlasts every scandal, feeds off every crisis and answers to no one in any meaningful way.

This is the coup that does not end.

It is the coup that hides in budgets, briefings, contracts, classified memos, emergency powers, fusion centers, surveillance systems and military deployments.

It is the coup that does not need to overthrow the president because it can manage him, flatter him, manipulate him, brief him selectively, feed him talking points, and keep the machinery moving while he performs leadership for the cameras.

It is the coup that does not need to abolish Congress because Congress has already surrendered.

It is the coup that does not need to silence the courts because too many judges have already been trained to defer.

It is the coup that does not need to repeal the Constitution because the government has learned how to work around it.

This is the lesson of our age: the greatest threat to freedom is not always a madman seizing power in a single moment of crisis. Sometimes it is a bureaucracy that never sleeps, a war machine that never stops, a security state that never shrinks, and a political class that never says no.

So what do we do?

We stop pretending that elections alone will save us.

We stop confusing partisan victory with constitutional restoration.

We stop trusting presidents to police themselves.

We stop allowing Congress to hide behind fear, party loyalty and national security.

We stop accepting secret government as normal.

We stop treating war as inevitable.

We stop allowing the government to turn every crisis into a blank check for more power.

And we start insisting, relentlessly, that those who claim to defend the United States must defend it with the tools the Constitution supplies.

Not drones. Not secret memos. Not emergency decrees. Not militarized police. Not classified wars. Not surveillance dragnets. Not executive fiat. Not corporate profiteering. Not propaganda.

The Constitution.

If the government wants war, make Congress vote on it.

If the government wants surveillance, make it get a warrant.

If the government wants to police dissent, make it answer to the First Amendment.

If the government wants to spend trillions on war, make it explain why the American people are being robbed blind to enrich defense contractors.

If the government wants emergency powers, make it prove the emergency and surrender the powers when the crisis passes.

If the Pentagon wants to run foreign policy, remind it that in a constitutional republic, the military answers to civilian authority, and civilian authority answers to the people.

The hour is late.

As Seven Days in May warned, you don’t steal a mandate after midnight when the country has its back turned.

Unfortunately, it is long past midnight.

The question now is whether the American people will finally turn around and see what has been done in their name, with their money, against their freedoms, and under the cover of national security.

The permanent war government has had its turn.

It has given us endless wars, bankrupting debt, militarized police, mass surveillance, constitutional erosion, fear-driven politics, and a republic that increasingly resembles an occupied territory.

Enough.

If we are to remain free, the war machine must be brought back under constitutional control.

The generals, bureaucrats, contractors, intelligence agencies, police forces and presidents must all be reminded of the same truth: They do not own this country.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, they do not rule us.

They work for us.

And if they cannot defend America with the Constitution, then they are not defending America at all.

WC: 2903

The post The Permanent War Government: Who’s Really Calling the Shots in Washington? appeared first on Activist Post.

A new study in Scientific Reports serves as a serious warning to regulators, physicians, parents and public health officials about synthetic biology-derived foods, including synthetic milk. The study found that the molecular composition of synthetic milk was not equivalent to milk from cows. The differences were measurable, extensive and biologically relevant enough to warrant serious scientific and regulatory attention.

A newly published molecular analysis of precision-fermented milk products raises urgent questions regarding pediatric safety, unidentified fungal metabolites and the growing regulatory vacuum surrounding synthetic biology-derived foods.

We have entered an era in which food is no longer simply grown, raised, or produced traditionally.

Increasingly, it is being engineered through synthetic biology labs capable of generating novel proteins and fermentation-derived compounds with minimal, if any, knowledge of their effects on human consumption.

And now, these products are being offered as substitutes for one of the most biologically important foods in childhood: milk.

A newly published study in Scientific Reports serves as a serious warning to regulators, physicians, parents and public health officials alike.

The paper directly challenges one of the central assumptions driving the synthetic milk industry: that these products are substantially equivalent to natural dairy and therefore safe enough to enter the food supply under existing regulatory frameworks.

The findings suggest otherwise.

Researchers conducted detailed molecular analyses of a commercially available synthetic milk product produced by precision fermentation.

What they discovered raises alarming concerns not only about these products themselves, but about the regulatory inadequacy that allowed them onto the market with limited independent scrutiny.

The synthetic milk product analyzed in the study contained 236 fungal proteins and 93 unidentified fungal metabolites. Researchers also found major differences in amino acid composition and nutrient profile when compared to bovine milk.

Perhaps most strikingly, the product consisted largely of fungal proteins rather than the singular milk protein consumers are often led to believe they are purchasing.

This is not a trivial finding.

The illusion of equivalence

The concept of substantial equivalence has become one of the most consequential assumptions in modern food regulation.

If a synthetic product appears nutritionally similar to a conventional food on paper, it is often treated as though it functions biologically the same way in the human body.

But biology does not operate on marketing language or for that matter, like an engineering project.

Small molecular differences may carry significant biological consequences, particularly in developing children whose immune, neurological, endocrine and metabolic systems are still under construction.

The assumption that a synthetic biology-derived product is automatically interchangeable with natural dairy simply because it contains a targeted protein ignores the profound complexity of real food.

This new study directly challenges that assumption.

The molecular composition of the synthetic milk product was not equivalent to bovine milk. The differences were measurable, extensive and biologically relevant enough to warrant serious scientific and regulatory attention.

A clinical lens: why fungal metabolites matter

Certain fungal metabolites are already known to exert profound biological effects in humans, even at very low concentrations.

Mycotoxins such as ochratoxin A, aflatoxins and trichothecenes have been associated with immune dysregulation, mitochondrial injury, endocrine disruption, neurotoxicity, gut barrier impairment and carcinogenicity.

Importantly, the unidentified compounds found in this study were not themselves identified as established mycotoxins.

However, their presence highlights the basic principle that fungal-derived metabolites may exert biologically significant effects that warrant extensive safety evaluation prior to widespread dietary exposure.

This concern becomes especially important in pediatrics. Children are not mini adults.

Infants and children possess immature detoxification pathways, developing immune systems and highly sensitive neurological and endocrine networks.

Early childhood nutrition is not merely caloric intake; it is biological instruction. Every exposure during infancy helps shape immune tolerance, microbiome development, neuroendocrine signaling, metabolic function and inflammatory response patterns that may persist throughout life.

What happens when developing children are repeatedly exposed to dozens of unidentified metabolites and hundreds of novel fungal proteins that have not undergone long-term pediatric safety evaluation?

The honest scientific answer is that we do not yet know.

And that uncertainty alone should demand far greater caution than we are currently seeing from regulators and industry alike.

GRAS was never designed for synthetic biology

In medicine, we do not introduce a novel biologic into infants and children without years of toxicology, allergenicity, developmental, immunologic, reproductive and longitudinal safety testing.

Yet, synthetic biology-derived food products are now entering grocery stores under a regulatory framework that frequently allows corporations to determine safety largely on their own.

This framework is known as GRAS: Generally Recognized As Safe.

To the average consumer, GRAS sounds reassuring. In reality, the modern GRAS system has evolved into something far different from what the public assumes it to be.

Companies may self-affirm safety determinations for novel food substances without requiring extensive independent pre-market review by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

While some manufacturers voluntarily notify the agency, many ingredients can enter the food supply through industry-led safety conclusions rather than rigorous long-term human testing.

That system was never designed for an era of synthetic biology.

It was not designed for genetically engineered microorganisms producing novel proteins. It was not designed for precision fermentation platforms generating compounds with limited histories of human consumption.

And it was certainly not designed for products aimed at children during the most biologically vulnerable windows of their development.

Public relations is moving faster than toxicology

The precautionary principle exists for a reason. When widespread exposure could affect vulnerable populations, especially infants and children, the burden of proof must rest on demonstrating safety before commercialization and not after the public has already become exposed.

Unfortunately, the opposite is now occurring.

Synthetic biology companies are fast-tracking products into the food system under the guise of sustainability, innovation and climate solutions, while fundamental biological safety questions remain unaddressed.

Public relations campaigns are moving faster than toxicology. Regulatory oversight is lagging behind technological capability. And once again, children risk becoming unwitting participants in a large-scale nutritional experiment.

This issue extends far beyond milk.

We are witnessing the rapid normalization of genetically engineered microorganisms throughout the food supply: engineered yeasts, fungi, bacteria and fermentation-derived compounds designed to replace traditional foods.

These technologies are advancing far more rapidly than independent long-term safety science. At the same time, regulators continue relying upon outdated assumptions of equivalence that may no longer apply in the age of synthetic biology.

An immediate call for action

At a minimum, these findings warrant:

• An immediate independent review of synthetic milk products marketed toward children
• Mandatory long-term toxicology and allergenicity testing
• Developmental and reproductive safety studies
• Microbiome impact assessments
• Transparent labeling requirements
• A temporary suspension of GRAS determinations for synthetic biology-derived food products until comprehensive reevaluation occurs.

Consumers cannot provide informed consent when the science itself is not transparent and incomplete.

As a pediatrician who has spent over four decades caring for increasingly chronically ill children, I view this study through a clinical lens that is impossible to ignore.

We are already witnessing unprecedented rates of immune dysregulation, food sensitivities, neurodevelopmental disorders, inflammatory disease, metabolic dysfunction and microbiome disruption in children.

Against this backdrop, introducing poorly characterized synthetic food systems into early childhood nutrition without robust and honest independent safety science is not precautionary medicine. It is regulatory recklessness.

The question is no longer whether synthetic biology will transform the food supply.

The question is whether society will demand meaningful safety science before these technologies are normalized in children’s diets.

Food should nourish development, not become an uncontrolled biological experiment conducted in real time on the next generation.

For more information on children and milk products, including GMOScience’s infant formula toxic metal investigations, please visit the series at Got REAL Milk?

Originally published by GMO Science.

The post Synthetic Milk: Children Must Not Become Experimental Subjects appeared first on Activist Post.

If intelligence were to become a utility billed on a meter, then the intelligent age would only benefit the elite and those who could afford it: perspective

The intelligent age is replacing our cognitive capabilities with AI, and universities should prioritize teaching students how to capably use technology over teaching actual knowledge, according to WEF founder Klaus Schwab.

Livestreaming today at the University of Johannesburg in South Africa, Schwab spoke at length about what he calls ‘the intelligent age” and what it means for jobs, students, and humanity.

Comparing previous industrial revolutions to the so-called intelligent age, the grand architect of the great reset agenda said that our thinking abilities were now being delegated to artificial intelligence.

“What is the Intelligent Age doing? It is replacing our cognitive capabilities by algorithm, or by what we call our artificial intelligence”Klaus Schwab, The Intelligent Age and the Responsibility of African Leadership, May 2026

“Let’s go back to the Industrial Age; what does the Industrial Age do? It replaced our physical activities by the machine,” said Schwab

“What is the Intelligent Age doing? It is replacing our cognitive capabilities by algorithm, or by what we call our artificial intelligence.” 

MachineLearning & Artificial Intelligence

“In order to master this new intelligent age, we have to remind ourselves much more what really creates a human being. What makes us human?” he added.

According to Schwab, the winners in this brave new world where intelligence is delegated to algorithms will be those who are able to adapt.

However, we shall see that adaptability, or as the German-native Schwab calls it “adaptility [sic],” will mean having enough money to be able to afford access to AI knowledge bases and know how to use them to their advantage.

“People don’t really understand anymore what’s going on […] We feel we are not anymore in control of what’s happening […] We may be not anymore completely in control of ourselves, but we have to learn to adapt”Klaus Schwab, The Intelligent Age and the Responsibility of African Leadership, May 2026

“If you want to succeed in the intelligent age, the key word is adaptability, but combined with adaptability is also resilience,” sad Schwab.

“The world is changing so fast today, and the world has become so interdisciplinary, so complex, that people don’t really understand anymore what’s going on.”

“We feel we are not anymore in control of what’s happening […] I think we have to accept that we are living in a very fluid, in a very fast, exponentially changing world and that we may be not anymore completely in control of ourselves, but we have to learn to adapt very much to this changing world,” the WEF founder added.

Without knowing what is going on in the world — what is real, what is true, what is genuine, what is fake — and the overwhelming amount of information at our fingertips, Schwab said that the way to get to “the truth” was through LLMs like Claude or ChatGPT.

MachineLearning & Artificial IntelligenceKlaus Schwab, The Intelligent Age and the Responsibility of African Leadership, May 2026

“With artificial intelligence you have many more capabilities to find out what truth is. If I go today to Claude or to ChatGPT or whatever it is, if I make the necessary efforts, I can find out what the truth is” Machine Learning & Artificial Intelligence Klaus Schwab, The Intelligent Age and the Responsibility of African Leadership, May 2026

Notice how Schwab says, “if I make the necessary efforts?” Why is that? It’s because these AI tools scrape the internet and push forward the top ranking results. 

MachineLearning & Artificial Intelligence

Top ranking doesn’t always correlate with truth. The necessary efforts, therefore, are related to human research.

You can’t trust an LLM to bring you the truth because it will spit back whatever some spook had ghost-edited in Wikipedia, or what was allowed by censors at reddit, or what information wasn’t permitted by the gatekeepers at Google and their unelected globalist partners at the UN.

Nevertheless, Schwab puts his faith in AI and the big tech companies for providing all the knowledge we need.

In this scenario, universities are outdated, and according to the WEF founder, higher education should focus more on learning how to use new technologies rather than teaching actual knowledge.

“You don’t have to go to university anymore. For each knowledge question, you can go to Claude, you can go to ChatGPT or whatever. Knowledge is around us and is free of charge”Klaus Schwab, The Intelligent Age and the Responsibility of African Leadership, May 2026

“You don’t have to go to university anymore. For each knowledge question, you can go to Claude, you can go to ChatGPT or whatever. Knowledge is around us and is free of charge,” said Schwab.

“Should you invest four years to learn something, which you can read on your iPad in realtime whenever you need it, instead of being loaded with knowledge of maybe 90 percent you don’t need in your professional activities?“

So, instead of striving for the pursuit of knowledge, all you have to do is call on big tech and they’ll give you the correct answers for free?

Not if OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has anything to say about that!

In March, Altman declared that after bypassing all copyright and intellectual property infringements by scraping the entrie collective knowledge of humankind from the internet, he wants to sell it back to us on a meter.

“We see a future where intelligence is a utility like electricity or water, and people buy it from us on a meter”Sam Altman, BlackRock US Infrastructure Summit, March 2026

If intelligence were to become a utility tbilled on a meter, then the intelligent age would only benefit those who could afford it.

Everything Schwab said would be reserved for the elite. The poor would continue to be not just poor, but also dumb.

And it all starts with education.

According to Schwab, we should give up our pursuit of knowledge. We should instead focus on our “capabilities.”

And what types of capabilities are those?

The capabilities to interact with a chatbot, and you should go back to university every year to get your updated certificate as if it were a subscription to be beholden to AI and big tech for life. 

MachineLearning & Artificial Intelligence

Schwab calls this a transition from “learning for life to lifelong learning.”

“Of course you need a training, you need an education, but it should be mainly an education in capabilities and not so much in knowledge”Klaus Schwab, The Intelligent Age and the Responsibility of African Leadership, May 2026

With only the elite having access to intelligence on a meter and lifelong learning, Schwab acknowledged that the WEF has for long been criticized for being elitist.

However, he never actually denied being an elitist.

Instead, he doubled down on the notion that “we are part of global community,” which flies in the face of sovereign nations and of different cultural values that are not shared by a “global community.”

“Of course the forum was very often criticized for being elite […] I was very often called the elite globalist or whatever. Globalization should not be a philosophy or an ideology. We are part of a global community. We are globally interdependent”Klaus Schwab, The Intelligent Age and the Responsibility of African Leadership, May 2026

Speaking of the WEF, Schwab said he created it in 1971 as means to reject Nobel Prize lauerate and economist Milton Friedman, who said that the business of businesses was business.

Schwab said NO to that and came up with what he called stakeholdership to rival shareholdership and that the entire focus of the WEF was to be a platform to promote stakeholder capitalism.

“I was fascinated by Milton Friedman […] and he had written an editorial in the New York Times saying, ‘The business of business is business and everything that is social you leave to the government and that they should regulate it.’

I came to the conclusion, ‘No! A company is not just an economic unit; it’s part of society […]’

That’s the reason I created the World Economic Forum — as a platform to develop this idea of stakeholder capitalism”Klaus Schwab, The Intelligent Age and the Responsibility of African Leadership, May 2026

Stakeholder capitalism is only possible through public-private partnerships — the fusion of corporation and state. The stakeholders are governments, corporations, and civil society — the latter being academics and NGOs and unelected globalist think tanks.

It’s ruled by the so-called expert and technocrat classes that bribe the State into giving them more power and influence while the State delegates what it can’t do legally to the experts and technocrats.

But if you’re looking for well-documented and thoroughly cited research into Klaus Schwab and the origins of the WEF, look no further than investigative journalist Johnny Vedmore and his article “Dr. Klaus Schwab; or How the CFR Taught Me to Stop Worrying & Love the Bomb.“

Vedmore prefaces his investigation with the subheading: “The World Economic Forum wasn’t simply the brainchild of Klaus Schwab, but was actually born out of a CIA-funded Harvard program headed by Henry Kissinger and pushed to fruition by John Kenneth Galbraith and the ‘real’ Dr. Strangelove, Herman Kahn.”

After stepping away from WEF last year, the grand architect of the great reset launched the Schwab Academy as a platform to accompany his book series on the so-called intelligent age.

You can find the entire livestream of Klaus Schwab at the University of Johannesburg on the Schwab Academy YouTube channel below.

Image Source: Screenshot of Klaus Schwab speaking at the University of Johannesburg on May 29, 2026 via Schwab Academy YouTube channel

The post ‘The intelligent age is replacing our cognitive capabilities with AI’: WEF founder Klaus Schwab appeared first on Activist Post.

I spoke about this briefly in my last video: 

You are currently living in a lull before the storm… A manufactured calm created by depleting strategic reserves while the gears of the global economy grind to a halt in the Middle East.

It feels normal, doesn’t it? You go to the store, the shelves are stocked (mostly), you drive your car, and you scroll through your endless dopamine feed. But that’s exactly what they want you to think. This is the quiet part of the movie right before the soundtrack kicks in and the monsters rip through the screen.

In today’s video, Stew Peters and I talk about the reality that isn’t making it to the ticker on your cable news channel: The Strait of Hormuz has been effectively shut down for three months.

Think about that. For ninety days, the jugular of the global oil supply has been severed. Yet, you’re asking, why hasn’t the system collapsed yet? Why aren’t we seeing Mad Max scenes at the pump yet?

The answer is simple logistics and psychological manipulation.

The last oil tankers that left the Strait before the blockade commenced (around February 28th) have just arrived. These massive steel giants don’t travel at the speed of a 5G signal; they travel at roughly the speed of a bicycle. It takes them two to three months to cross the oceans. So, for the last 90 days, you’ve been living on the fumes of a shipment schedule that no longer exists.

The pipeline is dry.

To maintain this illusion of normalcy, the governments in the EU and the US have been draining their strategic oil reserves. They are burning through the emergency buffer just to keep the lights on and the bread and circuses running. But those reserves are flirting with empty.

This is an incredible operation, a feat of social engineering on a scale we haven’t seen since the early days of the plandemic. It’s calculated. It’s designed to keep you sedated until the exact moment they decide to pull the rug out.

When that realization hits, it won’t be a slow decline. It will be a switch flip.

We saw this movie before.

Remember the “two weeks to flatten the curve”? Remember the psychological operation that was COVID-19? One day, life was normal. The next day, you were a bio-terrorist if you wanted to breathe fresh air. You saw the panic buying. You saw the empty shelves where the toilet paper used to be. As if human beings didn’t know how to wipe their backsides before 2020. It was irrational hysteria programmed by the media.

That is nothing compared to what is coming.

Can you imagine the behavior of the average NPC when they pull up to the gas station and the pumps are wrapped in plastic bags? When they realize there isn’t just a shortage, but no fuel?

We are already feeling the pressure cook here in the US, especially with diesel fuel hitting around $6 a gallon. While the average suburbanite complains about the price of unleaded for their SUV, they are missing the real threat. It’s not about your commute. It’s about diesel.

Diesel is the blood of the industrial civilization. It powers the generators that produce the electricity. It powers the trains and the semi-trucks that move the food. It powers the agricultural equipment that harvests the crops. When diesel goes critical, the supply chain doesn’t just slow down; it stops.

You don’t eat without diesel. You don’t heat your home without diesel.

But why is this happening? Why allow the Strait of Hormuz to be choked off?

You have to look past the puppets in Washington and look at the strings. This war with Iran isn’t about nukes or terrorism. It is the last domino to fall on the way to Greater Israel. This is the final conquest in the Middle East, and it has to be done by any means necessary.

The United States is no longer a sovereign country in this regard; it is a vassal state. We are the blunt instrument, the attack dog, and the funding source for this expansion. The political class (bought and paid for by AIPAC, Ben Gavir, and their handlers like Miriam Adelson, Paul Singer, and John Paulson) is executing a script written in Tel Aviv. This is about bringing the USA into the New World Order one swamp monster at a time.

We are watching a geopolitical maneuver that is sacrificing the American economy for a foreign agenda.

But the plan extends beyond just a war zone. The endgame for North America is something far more insidious, something the technocrats call the “Technate.”

This is the theory that North America is currently being merged into a single subservient superstate. This isn’t just a trade deal. This is the erasure of borders to create a consolidated block from Canada down to Mexico, potentially reaching all the way down to Colombia and Venezuela.

The United States, as the Israeli vassal state, acts as the engine for this Technate. This new “American” superstate will serve as the enforcement arm and resource hub for the Israeli-controlled New World Order. In this system, the historical American population becomes a super minority in their own country – a managed labor force for the global elite.

This aligns perfectly with Agenda 2030.

The goal isn’t to fix the economy; the goal is to break it. To starve it. To make you so desperate and so dependent on the system for a crumb of food or a gallon of gas that you’ll accept anything. They want you in the smart city concentration camps. They want you eating whatever synthetic paste they allow you to buy with your Universal Basic Income.

If you cannot drive, you cannot travel. If you cannot buy food, you cannot stockpile. If you are trapped in the Technate, you are controllable.

They are already preparing the narrative for this. Remember World War III and the involvement of Congress and Palantir. The surveillance state is ready. The data collection is ready. They just need the crisis to justify the implementation of the total control grid.

Look at what is happening to the food supply while the oil dries up. The US planted the same amount of wheat this year as it did in 1919. Let that sink in. In 1919, the US population was roughly 100 million. Today, it is hovering near 400 million. We have four times the population with the same amount of grain production, all while the debt has skyrocketed from $24 billion to nearly $40 trillion.

The math doesn’t work. They know it doesn’t work. It isn’t supposed to work. It is supposed to collapse.

We are seeing cracks in the facade everywhere. We’re talking about strange new sicknesses and ticks and bioweapon scares… distractions designed to keep you in fear. Just like with COVID, the solution will be worse than the problem. But you can’t even think about the biological threat if you can’t drive to the hospital or if the hospital has no power.

If you think the psychological operation of the toilet paper panic was bad, wait until the fuel riots start. When the trucks stop rolling, the shelves go empty in three days. Three days.

Europe, Australia, and parts of Asia will likely feel the crush first. North America is the “luckiest” purely because Canada produces oil and the US still produces some, but imports over 40% of its needs. That 40% is about to go away.

Even if they opened the Strait of Hormuz today, the damage is done. The supply chains for fertilizer, the disruption in planting cycles, the depletion of strategic reserves, it is a cascading failure. They are using World War III brought to you by CONgress, Trump and Palantir to enforce a reset that was planned decades ago.

If you signed up to the Dollar Vigilante newsletter, you know we are heading into a major disruption in the first quarter. This isn’t a conspiracy theory anymore; it is a logistical inevitability.

The last tankers have arrived. The reserves are nearly gone. The Strait is closed. The price of diesel is crippling the logistics networks.

The storm is here. You are just standing in the eye of it.

This is where the agenda stops pretending. The resources are being throttled to force you into the new system. The “green new deal” or whatever they are calling it this week is effectively a depopulation and deindustrialization weapon.

You need to be prepared for when this mirage of normalcy evaporates. You need to have your own systems in place. You need to be ready to disconnect from the Technate before the walls fully close.

They didn’t drain the strategic reserves to save you; they drained them to buy time for their own preparations. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

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The post Economic Collapse, Biological Warfare and the Death Cult: Inside the Plan for Global Depopulation and Smart City Enslavement appeared first on Activist Post.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says preparations are underway.

Preparations Underway

Please note US Treasury secretary confirms plans for $250 bill featuring Trump’s face

US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent says preparations are under way to print a new $250 banknote featuring President Donald Trump’s face, with lawmakers to decide whether the bills will be put into circulation.

US law bars any living person from appearing on US currency, but legislation was introduced last year to create an exception to allow current and former presidents to be featured.

“I don’t think that there’s anything untoward about having the president of the United States, the person who’s president of the United States, on the 250th anniversary bill,” Bessent told reporters.

A design mock-up obtained by The Washington Post showed the words “America 250 anniversary”, a nod to the US declaring its independence on July 4, 1776.

Behaviour of dictators, monarchs

A banknote featuring Trump’s face would be the latest example of the US president expanding his personal brand in his official capacity since returning to the White House in 2025.

In March, the US Commission of Fine Arts, led by Trump appointee Rodney Mims Cook Jr, approved the minting of a commemorative gold coin bearing the Republican president’s image.

The announcement, which relied on a legal loophole for commemorative coins, prompted a backlash from critics, who likened the move to the behaviour of dictators and monarchs.

Scott Bessent on Trump’s Face

Polymarket Odds

I rate the odds at substantially under one percent.

The problem is existing legislation does not allow a living person to be on currency.

There is a bill pending in the House to address that requirement. But I doubt it passes.

Even if passes the House, so can the bill get 50 votes in the Senate? My answer to that question is no, but the question itself is moot.

Since this is a non-budget item, it won’t make it past Senate budget reconciliation rules. That means it would be subject to filibuster needing 60 Senate votes.

This ridiculous measure is headed to the ash heap of history where it belongs. There is much less than a 1 percent chance we ever see Trump’s face on a $250 bill.

Meanwhile please note Judge Pauses Trump’s Illegal 1.8 Billion Anti-Weaponization Slush Fund

Here’s another Trump court loss. Big ones coming up.

This post originated on MishTalk.Com

Thanks for Tuning In!

Mish

The post Will Trump’s Face Be on a New $250 Bill This Year? Ever? appeared first on Activist Post.

Mapped: The World’s Most and Least Corrupt Countries

See visuals like this from many other data creators on our Voronoi app. Download the app for free on iOS or Android and discover incredible data-driven charts from a variety of trusted sources.

Key Takeaways:

• The global average Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) score fell to 42 out of 100, the first decline in more than a decade.
• Only five countries now score above 80, down from 12 a decade ago.
• The U.S. ranks 29th with a score of 64, its lowest-ever result in the index.

Corruption perceptions are worsening globally, according to the latest Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) from Transparency International.

The index scores countries from 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating cleaner perceived public sectors. In 2025, the global average fell to 42, while 122 of 182 countries scored below 50.

This map shows how corruption perceptions compare worldwide, from Denmark’s score of 89 to Somalia’s score of 9.

Fewer Countries Are Considered “Clean”

One of the most striking findings is how rapidly the number of top-performing countries has shrunk. In 2015, 12 countries scored above 80 on the CPI. By 2025, that number had fallen to just five.

This shift suggests that even nations traditionally associated with strong democratic institutions are facing mounting governance pressures. Transparency International points to rising political polarization, weaker institutional trust, and pressure on checks and balances as factors weighing on scores in several advanced economies.

The U.S. is one of the clearest examples of this shift. With a score of 64, it ranks 29th globally and has fallen to its lowest score in the index. The decline reflects growing concerns around transparency and institutional confidence.

Why Corruption Matters Economically

Corruption carries steep economic costs beyond political instability. Research published by the International Monetary Fund has linked corruption to lower investment, weaker economic growth, and reduced government effectiveness.

In many countries, corruption also distorts public spending priorities. Funds intended for infrastructure, health care, education, or climate adaptation can instead be siphoned away through bribery schemes or opaque procurement systems.

The effects are often most severe in lower-income countries, where weaker institutions leave governments more vulnerable to organized crime and state capture.

The Human Cost of Corruption

Beyond economics, corruption also creates significant human risks. Anti-corruption reporting remains especially dangerous in countries with weak governance protections. Since 2012, 150 journalists covering corruption stories outside of war zones have been murdered, with nearly all cases occurring in countries with high corruption levels.

International organizations including the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime continue to emphasize that fighting corruption requires stronger legal institutions, independent media protections, and cross-border cooperation.

While some countries continue to improve transparency and accountability, the broader global picture suggests corruption remains deeply entrenched and increasingly difficult to reverse.

Learn More on the Voronoi App

Explore more global governance and public opinion data on Voronoi, including this visualization of Which Countries Are The Most Corrupt?.

The post Mapped: The World’s Most and Least Corrupt Countries appeared first on Activist Post.