Today, the man who has been called “both bonkers and brilliant” became the world’s first trillionaire with the launch of his SpaceX blockbuster Initial Public Offering (IPO).

Elon Musk’s “sprawling rocket-building, satellite-launching and artificial intelligence company” which trades under the ticker symbol “SPCX,” has as its mission statement, “to revolutionize space technology, with the ultimate goal of enabling people to live on other planets.” Its vision statement reads, “to make life multi-planetary by establishing a self-sustaining city on Mars.”

Numerous articles have been written to try to put Elon Musk’s wealth into perspective and to help visualize the magnitude of one trillion dollars.

On Elon Musk’s wealth:

• Only 19 countries have GDPs that surpass $1 trillion, ranging from the U.S. to the Netherlands, according to World Bank data.

• That wealth makes Musk richer than the bottom 46% of the world’s population, or a combined 3.8 billion people, according to Oxfam. (A global confederation of non-governmental organizations dedicated to ending poverty, fighting inequality, and providing humanitarian aid worldwide.)

NBC News puts it this way: “In terms of purchasing power, Musk’s trillion could buy 8,880 Boeing 737s or the New York Knicks 102 times over. Put another way, it would take the typical U.S. household, earning almost $84,000 a year, nearly 12 million years to accumulate that much wealth…”

Yahoo Finance: “All the property in Houston, both residential and commercial, is worth less than Musk’s fortune.”

There are plenty of ways to help one visualize the sheer magnitude of one trillion dollars ($1,000,000,000,000).

My “AI assistant” with the help from YouTube tells me:

• If you were to count to one trillion out loud, saying one number per second continuously, it would take you about 31,546 years.

• A stack of one trillion $1 bills would reach roughly 67,800 miles high. Laid end-to-end, they would wrap around the Earth roughly 4 times.

• Transporting one trillion dollars in physical cash would require nearly 80 Boeing 747 cargo planes. If stacked in a room, you would need a massive warehouse covering the length of a football field to securely hold it.

NBC News:
“If one were to spend $1 million every hour every day, it would still take more than a century to spend $1 trillion.”

Verdantu:

• Earth is about a trillion meters far from the Moon
• The Galaxy contains about a trillion stars
• There are around 3 trillion trees on Earth

And how about this one:

As I started reading NBC’s “1,000,000,000,000 by any other name: A trillion in words and graphics,” I was advised:.

You’ve started reading.
We’ll track how long you spend on this article. When you reach the end, we’ll show how much money you would win if you were awarded $1 billion for every second you spent on this page.

And lo and behold, at the end, the statement below appeared

The post The World’s First Trillionaire (In Words and Numbers) appeared first on The Moderate Voice.

Not one to avoid controversy, President Trump has proposed that civil service employees sign extraordinarily broad non-disclosure agreements (NDAs). Supposedly, an employee may refuse to sign but that could lead to dismissal.

The Atlantic points out that there’s a reason the federal government hasn’t already implemented NDAs: they aren’t necessary. Employees “who work with classified information already sign a binding agreement, known as SF-312, to never share sensitive material.”

Moreover, sharing unclassified information has no broad criminal ban.

Other laws prohibit federal employees from sharing personal information residing in government databases. After all, as Office of Personnel Management (OPM) Director Scott Kupor told Federal News Network in May, “Americans should be able to trust that their personal data and sensitive government information are being handled responsibly.”

Remember the controversy last year when DOGE accessed Social Security Administration (SSA) databases? A whistleblower reported that DOGE employees put some of that data on a “vulnerable cloud server.” That’s not responsible handling of personal data.

In January 2026, the SSA updated 2025 “testimony given by top agency officials” in a lawsuit alleging that DOGE was illegally accessing Social Security data.” Yes, DOGE employees (not civil service but definitely covered by federal law) “secretly and improperly shared sensitive personal data last year.”

Then this month, we learned via a whistleblower that DOGE “planned to mark 2.7 million living people as dead in Social Security records as part of an immigration enforcement push.” This is the risk of political appointees with fealty to the president working in agencies rather than civil service employees.

That’s why the Pendleton Act of 1883 ended the spoils system, where politicians handed out jobs as political rewards. That Act created the nonpartisan civil service.

Forcing civil service employees to sign broad NDAs is a step towards turning them into partisans.

For example, Joe Spielberger, senior policy counsel at the Project on Government Oversight, told the Federal News Network that the NDA proposal appears “more designed to protect against potentially politically damaging information from getting out … and to further shield the administration from more transparency and oversight.”

The stated goal, after all, is to reduce press leaks. Yet there’s no mention of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s infamous Signal chat that included a journalist and disclosed secret military information. Nor is there any indication that the NDAs would be extended beyond civil servants to political appointees like Hegseth or DOGE.

It’s worth noting that Trump’s prior efforts to silence employees have met repeated court challenges. For example, during his 2016 presidential campaign, he had staff sign NDAs that were designed to “chill the speech” of staff “about matters of public interest,” the judge wrote when finding the NDAs illegally broad.

This NDA proposal is equally broad. It covers federal information including, but not limited to, “internal agency operations, personnel matters, procurement processes or any sensitive, pre-decisional or deliberative material that is not currently publicly available.”

But what about information that could be publicly available via a Freedom of Information Act request? Under what reasoning might Trump lump it into an NDA? Unexplained.

This NDA proposal privileges secrecy over transparency, which should be a core aspiration of a democratic government. And the Trump Administration has repeatedly claimed to be the “most transparent in history,” despite its record.

The silencing works on multiple levels.

According to Pat Parenteau, emeritus professor at the Vermont Law and Graduate School, the Administration is “trying to persuade, intimidate, threaten employees who are disclosing deliberative process information that discloses attempts by agencies to hide facts that the public is entitled to.”

Nick Bednar, a law professor at the University of Minnesota, narrowed that technique to one of intimidation in a conversation with The Atlantic. “As I see it, the goal of the NDA is to chill employees who would otherwise whistleblow on unlawful activity or mismanagement,” he said.

“Taken alone, today’s proposed rule may seem relatively harmless, but taken in context, it is a significant move toward building a federal workforce loyal to the President above all else,” David Kligerman with Whistleblower Aid, a nonprofit law firm representing whistleblowers, said in written statement.

This proposal would sideline the independent Merit Systems Protection Board which determines eligibility for federal employment. More importantly, it strips away the board’s role in protecting civil servants from partisan political coercion, handing both functions to the White House via the OPM.

Muzzling public servants is the wrong thing to do. Censoring them after they leave government, except for classified information, is also unconstitutional. But this NDA would do that as well.

There are solid reasons to oppose broad federal NDAs. First, since 2017, federal agencies have been prohibited from entering into a contract with an outside firm that requires employees to sign NDAs. Moreover, before bidding on a federal contract, a firm must certify that they do not employ NDAs.

If that is a good rule for contractors, it should be good for civil service employees as well.

Moreover, NDAs are being abused in the private sector and, subsequently, have been restricted by law and courts.

Trump’s proposal is more than importing a private sector technique of dubious practice into government. This is the government importing a practice that even the private sector is being forced to curtail.

Once upon a time, NDAs were reserved for C-suite executives, people who knew lots of private information about products and services in the corporate pipeline. Today, however, between 33% and 57% of U.S. employees must work under an NDA or a similar mechanism. For those in “computer or mathematical jobs,” about 3-in-4 employees report being forced to sign an NDA.

Some NDAs even prevent employees from revealing that such an agreement exists.

There is an intrinsic power imbalance between employer and employee here that employers are manipulating. Employers get silence; employees get a figurative gag.

As an example, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) found Amazon’s confidentiality agreements so overbroad that they impeded the employee right to organize a union. According to a lawyer in the case, the agreement affected “almost a million” employees. There was also a non-compete agreement, which the NLRB’s counsel “retroactively rescinded.” Relevance? Amazon is the country’s second-largest private employer.

Ironically, research suggests that employers may be increasing costs with those broad NDAs: more narrow NDAs reduce worker turnover.

NDA abuse has gotten so extreme that almost 20 states have taken action to curtail employers that silence workers about harassment, discrimination and unsafe conditions.

Washington state’s law (2022) is considered the gold standard: it prohibits employers from banning discussion of“[c]onduct that the individual reasonably believes to be illegal discrimination, illegal harassment, illegal retaliation, a wage and hour violation or sexual assault.” Nor can an employer prohibit discussion of conduct that violates a “clear mandate of public policy.”

There’s another reason there’s been no such action at the federal level: NDAs are traditionally used to protect business trade secrets that have monetary value. Federal employees aren’t protecting a market position; they’re being silenced about the public’s own government operations.

This OPM proposal ostensibly does not prohibit employee disclosures about fraud, abuse and misconduct, otherwise known as whistleblowing. However, severe institutional barriers exist right now.

For example, imagine you work for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as a career civil servant. It’s 2015, and you’ve witnessed something troubling, whether data are being manipulated or an enforcement action has been quietly buried. You know the law protects you. You file a whistleblower complaint with the Office of Special Counsel (OSC). That year, OSC referred 62 of the 1,965 disclosures it received for formal investigation. Your odds: roughly 1-in-32.

Those aren’t great odds. But the system existed, it functioned and it occasionally delivered results.

Fast forward to 2025. You’re still at the EPA, or what’s left of it. You’ve watched scientific findings being suppressed. You’ve signed the required nondisclosure agreement as a condition of continued employment. The NDA tells you that whistleblower channels remain open. So you file a complaint. This year, OSC referred 27 of the 2,535 disclosures it received for formal investigation.

That’s less than half of the referrals from 10 years earlier with a 25% increase in complaints. Your odds drop dramatically: roughly 1-in-94. Turns out 2025 was the “worst year on record” for investigating whistleblower complaints.

A path to reporting is technically open. Its door simply leads nowhere.

Everett Kelley, the president of the American Federation of Government Employees, told CNN: “This proposed NDA is another attempt by the administration to purge the civil service of nonpartisan career employees and replace them with loyalists who won’t speak out against waste, fraud, and abuse.”

Replacing nonpartisan civil servants with loyalists is the opposite of transparent government. As the masthead of the Aspen Daily News says, “If you don’t want it printed, don’t let it happen.”

This post first appeared at Substack.

The post NDAs were already a problem. Trump wants to bring them to government. appeared first on The Moderate Voice.

As World Cup fever sweeps the world once again, with the first match about to begin in Mexico City’s Estadio Azteca, I am sure most soccer aficionados have already picked their favorite team to walk away with the iconic, golden 2026 FIFA World Cup Trophy at the end of the 39-day “biggest sporting spectacle on earth.”

For most people, as is for this writer, the choice is easy and obvious: One’s native or adoptive country.

But that doesn’t mean that, with 48 countries participating in 104 matches across the U.S., in Canada and in Mexico, there will not be other teams to cheer for.

But there can be some “quandaries.”

Take this writer: Born in Ecuador; brought up during his early youth in Curaçao, then part of the Dutch West Indies; educated in the Netherlands and with Dutch ancestors; finally, a naturalized American.

To make things more interesting, the author’s bride of 65 years is a native of England.

Of course, I will be rooting for the USA team from their very first match against Paraguay on June 12, until they hopefully reach the finals five weeks later at the “New York New Jersey Stadium.”

And I’ll be rooting for Ecuador when they play Côte d’Ivoire this coming Sunday in Philadelphia. And for Curaçao in their match against Germany the same day. And for the Netherlands in their game against Japan, also the same day. And for England in their match against Croatia on June 17.

Those are easy calls. Things get more interesting and complicated when these latter four countries play against each other.

For example, Ecuador plays against Curaçao in Kansas City on June 20.

Let us look at these two countries and their teams.

Ecuador, my native country is, in my opinion, the most beautiful country in the world. I have frequently acclaimed its beauty, a paradise stretching from the emerald Amazon rainforest (El Oriente), across the majestic Andes Mountains (La Sierra), into the tropical Pacific lowlands (La Costa). Even then, there is more beauty, for six hundred miles from its sun-kissed beaches, across the azure Pacific, lie the enchanted Galápagos Islands.

Ecuador, a small country with a rich in diversity population of nearly 19 million, secured the FIFA 2026 World Cup qualification after a (scoreless) draw against its southern neighbor, Peru, in June 2025.

The Ecuador team members can proudly call themselves “¡Somos mundialistas!” (We are World Cup Participants) as this will be the fifth World Cup appearance this century for the “La Tri” (La Tricolor) team.

I lived on the Caribbean island of Curaçao — then part of the Netherlands Antilles — from ages ten to fourteen. Just as in Ecuador, life on this small sun-drenched island, with shimmering turquoise waters surrounding dozens of powdery-white-sand beaches, pristine coral reefs and a magnificent marine life, was idyllic…a life, a country easy for a young person to get attached to and to fondly remember for the rest of his/her life.

Today this small, “autonomous constituent country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands” is defying the oddsmakers and is, for the first time, participating in the World Cup, after an unbeaten CONCACAF campaign (“the premier annual continental club football competition in North America, Central America, and the Caribbean”) and after a hard-fought scoreless draw against Jamaica in November 2025.

The achievements of Curacao’s “Blue Wave” team with its rallying cry, “Nos ta e Ola Blou” (“We are the Blue Wave” in Papiamento), become even more amazing when one considers that Curacao is the smallest country, both by land area and population, to ever participate in the World Cup.

There are countries orders of magnitude larger than Curacao (in area and population) that, despite their size and passionate fan bases, have never qualified for the World Cup. One of them, with a population of more than 1.4 billion people.

On June 20, Ecuador and Curaçao will be facing each other in Kansas City.

I’ll be there is spirit rooting for both countries, knowing that only one will triumph and hoping it will be “my team.”

With the first of a trilogy of World Cup 2026 opening ceremonies taking place today in Mexico City, I am sure you already have your favorite team(s) selected.

I hope your choice(s) wasn’t/weren’t as cumbersome as mine and, as always, may the best team win.

The post World Cup Quandaries appeared first on The Moderate Voice.

For years, Hunter Biden was less a person than a political symbol. Republicans turned him into a one-man crime wave, Democrats often treated him as a liability to be ignored, and much of the media covered him as a walking scandal.

Now, in one of the strangest political plot twists, he’s becoming a major social media star, attracting nearly one million followers on X by doing something radical: talking honestly about his own failures.

He’s hailed for candidly discussing his recovery, for his self-depreciation and wry wit, clashes with media figures and right wingers, and defending his family.

He doesn’t deny his past, he leans into it. That’s a very different approach to 21st century American politics where everyone usually denies, deflects, blames or attacks.

If someone insults him as a drug addict he often responds with variations of “Yep. That’s my story” When one person called him a “meth head” Biden replied: “You mean crack head.” And when hit with homophobic slurs he shoots back, “And all your gym pictures with your greased muscles are really hot.”

He has some critics.

“A lot of Biden’s posting is unobjectionable and sometimes even wholesome — at least by the standards of online attention-seeking behavior,” writes MS NOW’s Zeeshan Aleem. “But there’s an aspect of his new identity that I find more troubling: his attempts at cross-partisan political populism. Regardless of what his intentions are, he’s exhibiting a naiveté about noxious right-wing ideas.”

What has surprised many is Hunter Biden’s social media presence isn’t built on denial or image-polishing. He speaks with remarkable candor about addiction, often using humor at his own expense while reminding followers that addiction nearly destroyed his life. He argues that recovery is indeed possible. In an era where public figures often hide their failures, his willingness to discuss his addiction openly may be one reason so many people find him relatable.

Meanwhile, Biden’s life has been a roller coaster.

When he was a child a car accident killed his mother and sister and devastated his father, former President Joe Biden. Hunter became a successful lawyer and businessman. Then he lost his brother, Beau Biden, to brain cancer. He spiraled into crack and alcohol addiction. He faced years of congressional investigations, political attacks, lawsuits, leaked private material, and relentless public scrutiny. He has now been sober for seven years.

Hunter Biden’s story taps into something deeply American: the belief that a person’s worst chapter doesn’t have to be the final chapter.

Consider some famous second acts:

Ulysses S. Grant flopped in business, struggled financially, and was considered washed up before becoming the Union’s most important general and later president. Winston Churchill was considered a political has-been before becoming Britain’s historical wartime leader.

Johnny Cash’s addiction nearly destroyed his career and he made one of music’s greatest late-life comebacks. Robert Downey Jr. went from arrests and addiction to becoming a Hollywood mega-star. Muhammad Ali lost years of his career and public standing before becoming a global icon. Martha Stewart went from prisoner to media powerhouse again. Betty Ford transformed personal struggles with addiction into a legacy of helping others recover.

The common thread is not perfection. It’s survival.

And perhaps the appeal isn’t really Hunter Biden at all. Perhaps it’s because in an age of spin, excuses, denials and endless finger-pointing, people are encountering someone who says, “Yes, I made terrible mistakes. No, I’m not proud of them. But I am here.”

The strange thing isn’t that Hunter Biden is finding an audience. It’s that after years of investigations, hearings, leaks, accusations and headlines, the thing people seem to like most about him is the one thing nobody expected:

He sounds human.

People who spent years telling us Hunter Biden was finished may have overlooked something. Americans love comeback stories. We make movies about underdogs. We cheer when Rocky gets off the canvas. We admire people who refuse to stand down.

Never underestimate the power of a second act.

Copyright 2026 Joe Gandelman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

UPDATE: Hunter Biden just posted this. Click on the SHOW MORE button to read it in its entirety:

To everyone so eager to cancel someone for a tattoo they got at age 22, a drunk text, a selfie they took in the middle of a mental health crisis:

Show us your laptop.
Show us your iCloud.
Open your entire digital life to your worst enemy. No context. No filter. No explanation.…

— Hunter Biden (@HunterBiden) June 12, 2026

The post America loves a comeback. Meet Hunter Biden (UPDATED) appeared first on The Moderate Voice.

With recent donations the total needed now is $331

The Moderate Voice is now dealing with a legal issue and has to raise $700. TMV has been around since 2003 and now has a wider reach since Google News has picked it up as a news source and also the SmartNews phone app also runs some of its posts. This current crisis came out of the blue.

$50 was donated to our last fundraiser so I’m deducting that from the $750 that must be paid for a goal of $700. No amount is too small and certainly no amount up to $700 is too big:)

If you know of someone who might want to donate to TMV please spread the word. Since it’s inception The Moderate Voice has been 100 percent independent and has no very big donor, no corporate support. It operates on donations from readers and quite modest ad revenue which is paid quarterly.

Donations can be made on the right on the Go Fund Me link.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

The post URGENT FUNDRAISER TO RAISE $331 (UPDATE 4) appeared first on The Moderate Voice.

Kirk Bowman, Georgia Institute of Technology

Soccer purists have long feared the “Americanization” of the game. But in one key respect, it is already happening: ownership.

Americans now own more than 40 European soccer clubs, including current English Premier League champion Arsenal, Italian Serie A champion Inter Milan and storied teams such as Manchester United and Liverpool. Americans are also investing heavily in the lower leagues, taking ownership of two dozen clubs outside the top division, including Birmingham City, whose ownership group includes former NFL star Tom Brady, and Norwich City, purchased by Milwaukee Bucks owner Mark Attanasio in 2022.

And while global fans may carp at superficial changes that hint at the growing influence of American culture – halftime shows, cheerleaders and the use of “soccer” over “football – the reality is, it is at the level of ownership where Americans have the biggest capacity to change the game. It is a trend my colleagues and I have been charting for several years.

The yanks are coming, the yanks are coming!

U.S. sports ownership norms and rules differ greatly from the traditional European model: U.S. owners tend to operate like “emperors” who can move franchises from city to city in pursuit of bigger profits; European owners are more inclined to act as “caretakers” and traditionally come from the local business community. They see their teams as passion projects that they’re willing to sink money into.

But the global rise of soccer has seen wealthy Americans increasingly take an interest in European teams. It began in earnest in 2005 when American businessman Malcolm Glazer bought Manchester United. The Glazer-leveraged buyout sparked protest from the club’s supporters trust at the time and has grown as the owners sucked out more than 1 billion pounds from the club to pay back debt interest, repayments, dividends and fees.

But such opposition, which has only accelerated since 2018 with the entrance of U.S. private equity groups, has done little to put off American owners.

Today, there are 11 American ownership groups in the English Premier League – and they are more accustomed to the U.S. way of doing things. Combined, they own six NFL teams, four NBA teams, two MLB franchises and four NHL clubs. Stan Kroenke, the owner of English champion Arsenal, also owns the Los Angeles Rams, the NBA’s Denver Nuggets and the NHL’s Colorado Avalanche.

Ownership of these franchises has made some very rich men ever more wealthy as the value of top teams grew. But traditional soccer fans are increasingly concerned about this shift toward a profit-driven style of ownership.

The ups and downs of the pyramid system

But there is a potential barrier to these American owners making megabucks: the structure of soccer itself. It represents a battle between U.S. “closed” leagues – that is, with fixed franchises – and a European pyramid structure in which teams can drop down divisions, wiping millions of dollars off their valuation in the process.

To understand why U.S. and English leagues have these different models, you need to look back to how professional sports leagues in the two territories were originally designed. Until the late 19th century, sports in England and the U.S. followed similar trajectories, with the baseball teams in America and soccer teams in England playing in organized leagues with predictable schedules.

Then, in 1876, baseball’s National League was founded with territorial exclusivity for teams and, by 1891, a constitution that enshrined eight permanent members. New franchises were not absorbed into the National League but instead formed the American League. Underperforming professional baseball teams could not be ejected or relegated to a minor league even if they lost every game. Meanwhile, franchises could relocate to new cities at will.

Other U.S. sports adopted baseball’s monopolistic system of fixed teams with all-powerful owners – a system that, by the 21st century, produced regular profits, the world’s highest-valued sports teams and absolute power for owners.

In contrast, England’s Football League, which began life in 1888, had a fluid membership – exchanging its weakest teams with the strongest teams from the rival Football Alliance to create a two-tier system. The English pyramid system took shape after another rival league was absorbed in 1894 as the third tier.

From the outset there was the possibility of teams moving up – or being promoted – based on their performance on the pitch. Conversely, teams could be demoted if they played badly.

This pyramid structure quickly became the norm for soccer around the world and enshrined in FIFA statutes.

A fans’ revolt

Promotions and regulations create drama, romance, season-long tension and fan passion that help make soccer the most popular sport in the world.

But it also terrifies many American owners.

Burnley and West Ham, English clubs with significant American investment, were recently relegated to the second tier of the English pyramid – a move that will likely devastate their budgets and valuations. American-owned Hellas Verona and Pisa in Italy and Girona and Mallorca in Spain were likewise demoted to the second divisions.

Spooked U.S. owners have begun to lobby for change – and the safeguarding of their lucrative sporting investments. And it was little surprise that American fingerprints were all over the April 2021 announcement of the “closed” European Super League. The elite competition would have guaranteed permanent participation for 12 to 15 teams, plus a handful of rotating annual participants, in a new, multibillion-dollar continental competition.

The breakaway league was to be financed with $4 billion from U.S. banking giant JPMorgan. Four of the teams – AC Milan, Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester United – are American-owned.

The European Super League would have Americanized elite European football in one fell swoop, with fixed franchises, no threat of relegation and league control by the owners or presidents of the permanent teams.

But fans, coaches and former players from the six English Premier League teams involved revolted against an elite competition without relegation, calling it an “ultimate betrayal.” All six formally withdrew within 72 hours of the league’s announcement, joining Germany’s two biggest teams, Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund, which refused from the outset to join. France’s Paris Saint-Germain also refused an invitation.

While the effort to create fixed franchises in Europe has, for now, been foiled, Americanization is still happening in smaller steps. Many of the changes are benign, such as cheerleaders and halftime entertainment. Other changes are more profound. American professional sports leagues often tweak rules to increase scoring, and FIFA is now experimenting with a new offside rule that would lead to more goals, reduce major upsets and benefit wealthier clubs.

Todd Boehly, co-owner of the Los Angeles Lakers and Los Angeles Dodgers, Strasbourg FC in France’s Ligue 1 and Chelsea in the U.K., is one of the American cheerleaders for this type of change.

He argues that the English Premier League should learn from American sports to increase revenue, including by introducing all-star games and postseason playoffs. Much of this is self-interest: Boehly’s Chelsea FC needs all the additional revenue it can find as the club announced record pre-tax losses of US$349 million for the 2024-25 season.

Welcome to … where now?

Some American franchise owners have given up on trying to change the European game and are looking elsewhere. U.S. capital is now being invested in a potential fixed-franchise league in Mexico. Mexico’s first division, Liga MX, whose television viewership in the United States exceeds that of the English Premier League and MLS combined, paused relegations for six seasons in 2020 due to the financial uncertainty brought on by COVID-19. Five of the 18 Liga MX clubs are now American-owned, and a return to relegations looks increasingly unlikely.

Hollywood actor Rob Mac (formerly McElhenney), who co-owns Wrexham FC in the U.K. with Ryan Reynolds, documented the romance of promotions in the TV documentary “Welcome to Wrexham.” But as a co-owner, with Eva Longoria, of Liga MX club Necaxa, Mac appears less enamored of the pyramid system in Mexico, pointing out “the potential value and devaluation of the clubs.”

Liga MX could soon become the first soccer league to fully transition from an established promotion and relegation system to a fixed-franchise model.

And that would be a significant step toward the global Americanization of the beautiful game.

Kirk Bowman, Professor of International Affairs, Georgia Institute of Technology

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The post Is soccer taking over America … or are Americans taking over football appeared first on The Moderate Voice.

A black female journalist stands up to a bully

Donald Trump had an interview with a national news network, and he got fact-checked. Obviously, this network was not Fox News, because it would typically allow him to lie unabated.

It was a wide-ranging interview with NBC News’s Kristen Welker that aired Sunday on Meet the Press, and ended abruptly in a hissy fit on his part. Trump claimed that the California gubernatorial primary is “rigged” in favor of Democrats. Instead of letting his lie slide by, Welker pushed back and pointed out that there is no evidence to his claim. Welker was professional and tried to move the interview forward after calling out his lie, but Trump would not let it go.

Trump has a tradition of castigating black female journalists, and he continued it with Welker, saying, “You’re either crooked or you’re stupid,” before ending the interview in a tantrum.

More than 35 minutes into the interview, after Trump defended his regime’s planned “anti-weaponization” fund for individuals who believe that the government “wronged them,” Trump repeated his false claim that the 2020 presidential election was “rigged” in favor of Joe Biden, who fairly defeated him and won the election, and said that “it’s happening again right now in California.”

Vote-counting is still ongoing in California, with 73 percent of the vote counted as of Sunday morning. Democrat Xavier Becerra will advance to the November general election with 27.2 percent of the vote, while Republican Steve Hilton is in second with 25.9 percent, leading Democrat Tom Steyer, who has 25.5 percent. There are 61 candidates for governor, so counting is taking a while.

Trump said that election officials in California are “crooked,” along with Welker and her media colleagues. “They’re crooked, just like you’re crooked, your press is crooked. And ‘Meet the Press’ is crooked,” said Trump.

Welker replied, “To be fair, I’m not crooked,” and attempted to move the conversation along. She also repeatedly noted that there is no evidence that the 2020 presidential election or the California primary was rigged. Trump could not take it. Kristen Walker is not Laura Ingraham. She is an actual journalist with nearly 30 years of experience. She is also a Harvard grad, so she is not stupid.

He said, “You’re either crooked or you’re stupid. You play right into their hands with this crap. You know that these elections are rigged. Your network knows that they’re rigged.”

Trump later said, “Your elections are crooked, and you’re crooked, and ‘Meet the Press’ is crooked. And so is ABC and CBS and CNN.” He then called NBC News a “one-sided crooked network.”

And your mom’s stupid and crooked, and so is your father. And your mee-maw, she’s stupid and crooked too. Stupid, stupid, stupid, and crooked. And your dog is stupid. Do you have a goldfish? Well then, he’s stupid too. What, you had a pet turtle when you were a kid? I bet he had a stupid and crooked face, stupid, stupid, stupid. Everybody’s stupid and crooked. Your cameraman is looking at me funny. I bet he’s stupid and crooked, too. Is that your producer over there in the corner? He’s stupid and crooked.

And then Trump said, “Sorry. Let’s call it quits because I’ve had enough. Thank you, darling. Have a good time.” Then Trump took off his microphone and tossed it to the ground.

You know, the last person to tell me to have a good time was the lady who sold me a hot dog in Reykjavík, except she probably actually meant it. Here, Trump obviously did not mean for Welker to have a good time with the results of the interview that she traveled to Wisconsin for to conduct in a barn that was leaking rainwater on top of them. And yeah, it’s weird when someone tells you to have a good time after you buy a hot dog from them. It wasn’t like I was going to take it dancing and try to get to second base with it. And if you saw that hot dog, you would know that nobody has a good time with an Icelandic hot dog. It has ketchup and remoulade on it. Do you know what remoulade is? It’s a gunky, yellow mayonnaise sauce, and here, it’s mayonnaise on a hot dog. You’re not going to have a good time with a hot dog slathered with ketchup and mayo, even if you do get to second base with it.

Before walking away, Trump said, “A country can never be great with a dishonest press.” Except that is exactly what Donald Trump and MAGA want.

Donald Trump wants a press that is dishonest and slanted in his favor. He wants a press that does not challenge his lies. He wants to change our laws that eliminate a free press. He wants the FCC to be able to cancel late-night talk shows that make fun of him. He wants critics to be limited in what they can say. Donald Trump does not want to be challenged. He especially does not want to be challenged by female journalists, especially if they are black. Donald Trump hates women, and he is a racist.

TO READ THE REST GO HERE.

Visit Clay Jones’ website and email him at clayjonz@gmail.com.

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Gregory F. Treverton, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

President Donald Trump’s choice for acting director of national intelligence, Bill Pulte, has proved controversial. Pulte’s lack of background in national security matters has sparked resistance from Democrats on Capitol Hill, which is not surprising. But some Republicans, too, have expressed dismay at the president’s choice, a Trump loyalist who currently runs the Federal Housing Finance Agency.

“I see no evidence of any qualifications for that job,” said U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, a Republican from Texas.

The current director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, is leaving the job at the end of June 2026.

Here’s why it matters who holds the job of director of national intelligence.

Principal national security adviser

To speak of telling truth to power seems terribly old-fashioned these days, but as a veteran of White House intelligence operations, I know that is the essence of the job.

The director of national intelligence is the president’s principal adviser on intelligence, though the CIA director has remained somewhat co-equal in that role. In past administrations, the director of national intelligence has been responsible for both the President’s Daily Brief, where the most crucial and sophisticated intelligence is presented, and for the work of the National Intelligence Council.

Most of the President’s Daily Brief items are still done by the CIA, but the director of national intelligence or a deputy briefed the president, daily in most administrations but one or two times a week in the first Trump administration. Now, it is not clear the briefings take place.

The issues in those briefings lean toward the immediate and tactical: What is the situation on the ground in the wars in Iran and Ukraine? If the United States does X, how will the Iranian regime or Russian President Vladimir Putin respond?

But intelligence strives to push presidents and their colleagues to think more strategically: What are the implications of hypersonic missiles? What is the trajectory of the relationship between Russia and China? What are China’s geostrategic objectives, and what is the role of the Belt and Road Initiative in that vision? What if, far from toppling it, U.S. and Israeli attacks push the Iranian regime to become more hard line, or even produce some “rally ’round the flag” effect among previous opponents of the regime.

9/11 led to intelligence changes

I was chair of the National Intelligence Council from 2014 to 2017, providing day-to-day intelligence support to the National Security Council and its committees, as well as trying to find time to do more strategic intelligence, looking at trends and connections across issues, producing what are called National Intelligence Estimates.

The director of national intelligence, known as the DNI, sits atop the 17 agencies that make up what is called the U.S. intelligence community. The director neither runs those agencies nor has full control of their budgets.

Rather, the director of national intelligence coordinates them, which sometimes seems like the proverbial herding of cats. They assemble a combined budget for intelligence, but many of the big agencies, such as the National Security Agency, which makes and breaks codes and intercepts signals of interest, belong to the Pentagon.

The creation of the director of national intelligence position was a direct result of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The report of the 9/11 Commission was vividly damning about the failures of communication between agencies in the run-up to 9/11. In meetings in New York that summer, CIA and FBI officers were literally unsure what they could tell each other: The former wondered whether the FBI people were really cleared to hear this, while the latter feared that talking might blow a case they were working on. That lack of coordination played a role in letting the plotters slip through intelligence, often in plain sight.

The result of the commission’s work was the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, which created the director of national intelligence position.

Before that, the director of central intelligence wore two hats, as the director of the Central Intelligence Agency and loose coordinator of the broader intelligence community. Hardly surprisingly, directors of central intelligence spent most of their time running the CIA, for that was the source of their troops – and their troubles when they arose.

A score of blue-ribbon panels over 50 years had recommended breaking the director of central intelligence’s conflict of interest – coordinating agencies and their budgets while running one of them – and creating a director of national intelligence position.

James Clapper, the director of national intelligence for whom I worked as chair of the National Intelligence Council, constantly emphasized “integration.” Across agencies, integration mostly means talking to each other and sharing information. This works against the natural tendency to scoop your colleagues.

Across disciplines, integration means better aligning what information intelligence agencies collect with what analysts need.

How integration works

If presidents want to know what the CIA thinks about a particular issue, they can simply ask. Usually, though, the question is what does the intelligence community think, and then the question goes to the National Intelligence Council, the director of national intelligence’s interagency group for intelligence analysis.

The National Intelligence Council is organized like the State Department, with officers for regions and functions. Once a question has been presented, the relevant national intelligence officer will convene his or her colleagues from the other agencies. They will argue about the answer to the question, a process sweetly called “coordination,” then agree on the answer. If need be, the process can be done in a few hours.

Major strategic analyses – national intelligence estimates – like one done in 2022 on the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic out to 2026, may take months. In all cases, though, the analysis carefully records where there are differences of view in the intelligence community.

In my last year chairing the National Intelligence Council, of the 700 or so analyses we did, about 400 were responses to questions – called “taskings” in governmentese – from the national security adviser or one of the deputies.

National intelligence officers are national experts from inside or outside federal government, and their deputies – the heart and soul of the NIC – are all assigned from intelligence agencies. The largest number come from the CIA, but I worked with a cyber analyst from the Secret Service and a wonderful analyst from the New York Police Department.

Resolutely nonpolitical stance

What was striking then and has struck me both times I’ve had the privilege of running a U.S. intelligence agency is the dedication of the officers.

They work for the nation, not for a political party or ideology. As chair of the NIC, I had no idea of the politics of my people, save for the several closest to me. For them, telling truth to power is not a slogan. It is what they do. They are always worried about “politicizing” – producing an assessment to suit a policymaker’s preference or, worse, being pressured to do so.

The president’s daily briefers, for instance, give up a year of their lives to come to work at 4 a.m., learn their briefs and then fan out across Washington to brief senior officials. They like being “on the team” of the person they brief, but they become uncomfortable if the conversation turns political.

The director of national intelligence sets the tone for that resolutely nonpolitical stance and polices it through principles articulated in the agency’s analytic integrity and standards. As chair of the NIC, for instance, I’d receive regular assessments of both the quality of our analyses and whether we risked becoming “politicized.”

For their part, do politicians and agency leaders like it when their pet projects are assessed by intelligence as unwise or infeasible? Of course not. I’ve been on that side of the intelligence-policy divide as well. But the United States is much the better for it.

This story, originally published on Dec. 4, 2024, has been updated to reflect that Bill Pulte has been chosen by President Trump to be the acting director of national intelligence.

Gregory F. Treverton, Professor of Practice in International Relations, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Neha Gour, George Mason University; Ed Maibach, George Mason University, and Luis Ortiz, George Mason University

Every internet search, streamed video and AI-generated response depends on a data center somewhere. Driven by rapid growth in artificial intelligence, cloud computing and cryptocurrency, data centers have become the backbone of the modern digital economy. But though their key role is in enabling virtual and remote experiences, data centers are physical buildings in real communities around the nation and the globe.

The United States hosts more than 4,000 data centers – more than any other country. The U.S. Department of Energy expects that, taken together, all U.S. data centers will consume as much as 12% of all U.S. electricity by 2028. In 2023, data centers consumed about 4.4% of total U.S. electricity – roughly 176 terawatt-hours.

In the U.S., Virginia has more data centers than any other state – over 600, two-thirds of which are in the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C. In 2023, the state’s data centers consumed about 26% of Virginia’s total electricity supply – a higher share than in any other state.

We study science communication, climate science and public health, so we wanted to understand how data centers in Virginia affect the people who live near them and the broader public.

We found that the data centers that already exist affect nearby residents and the nation as a whole in five main areas: air quality, water quality, noise levels, land use and energy costs.

Air pollution

Data centers generally operate 24/7 and consume enormous amounts of electricity, which must be generated somewhere – either near the data center or farther away.

When fossil fuels are burned to generate that power, they emit a wide range of air pollutants, including those linked to lung disease, cardiovascular disease, stroke and neurological conditions. They also emit heat-trapping pollution that causes global warming and climate change, which, in turn, worsens air pollution further.

Generating power for U.S. data centers in 2023 emitted the equivalent of 2.2% of the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions. Other air pollutants emitted from fossil-fuel combustion are associated with increased risk of ADHD and autism in children and risks of Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases in older adults.

Unless the energy powering data centers comes from clean energy sources, such as solar, wind or geothermal, generating that electricity also pollutes the air. People who live near fossil-fuel burning power plants, whether in communities that also host data centers or in distant states, are exposed to air pollution. And during electrical outages, on-site diesel generators kick in, releasing large amounts of air pollution that can harm data center employees and nearby residents alike.

Water consumption and pollution

Data centers require vast quantities of water to cool their servers. Globally, they are projected to consume between 4.2 billion and 6.6 billion cubic meters of water annually by 2027. In the United States, data centers already rank among the top 10 industrial water users.

In northern Virginia, data center water use has risen sharply. In Loudoun County alone, just northwest of D.C., potable water use by data centers more than doubled between 2019 and 2023, while facilities across northern Virginia consumed nearly 2 billion gallons of water in 2023.

This demand can strain local rivers, aquifers and municipal water systems, even in regions like the mid-Atlantic that are not usually prone to drought, but especially in regions like the U.S. Southwest that face persistent droughts.

Noise pollution

Data centers’ continuous operation means that cooling systems, including air chillers and cooling fans, generate a persistent humming sound around the clock – as do any generators that are in use to provide power.

In northern Virginia, some residents have complained about an industrial-scale “drone” or “hum.” Measurements at the data centers that were the subject of complaints found noise levels were between 40 and 59 decibels on residential property.

Those noise levels are quieter than a conversation with someone 3 feet away and not loud enough to damage people’s hearing or violate local noise ordinances. But they are close to levels the EPA says reduce people’s ability to work, sleep and exercise. Some people have complained that data center noise has given them trouble sleeping and concentrating, and some have said they avoid using their homes’ outdoor spaces, where the noise is louder.

Land use and community well-being

Data center expansion often targets land near green spaces, agricultural areas or rural communities where developers can secure affordable land with access to existing electricity supplies.

Converting green space into industrial facilities can diminish health benefits associated with being in and near natural environments, including opportunities for physical activity and improved mental well-being.

In Virginia, residents living near data center construction have reported increased exposure to truck traffic and diesel exhaust, which can contribute to respiratory and cardiovascular health risks, especially in children and older adults. While these effects are typical of large construction projects, they can be amplified when several data centers are clustered together.

In places like Prince William County, Virginia, developers have proposed data centers on roughly 2,400 acres of undeveloped land in the Rural Crescent, an area designated by the county’s planners to remain relatively undeveloped. Those data centers could transform open space and rural farmland into industrial zones, disrupting communities with long-standing ties to the land.

Rising energy costs

As data centers increase electricity demand, they put upward pressure on energy prices across the grid. A 2024 Virginia legislative report found that the state’s typical residential electricity bill could rise by $14 to $37 per month by 2040 because of grid strain tied to data center growth – a 9% to 25% increase over current average bills, and a figure that does not factor in potential inflation.

These higher costs are paid by all consumers, but they place a greater burden on families that are most economically distressed, who also tend to have more health problems. Lower-income families spend a higher share of their budget on electricity, and when bills rise, the consequences can include reduced access to adequate heating and cooling, increased risks of heat-related illness and cold-related cardiovascular stress, as well as difficult choices between paying for energy and food or healthcare.

What can be done

Many of these health harms can be mitigated through better planning and design.

Increasing the share of renewable energy used to power data centers would help reduce air pollution and associated health harms.

Using recycled water in targeted systems that cool individual server rows or racks rather than whole buildings can significantly reduce cooling energy demand, with some studies estimating reductions of up to 29%.

On noise, a Leesburg, Virginia, data center reduced low-frequency tonal noise by reengineering its fan mounts.

And on energy costs, requiring large-scale data centers to cover more of the grid costs they create could help protect residential customers from higher electricity bills.

The world’s digital infrastructure runs through data centers, and that is not changing. We believe that expanding this infrastructure without protecting the health of surrounding communities is an unacceptable option.

Neha Gour, Ph.D. Candidate in Science Communication, George Mason University; Ed Maibach, Distinguished University Professor Emeritus of Communication, George Mason University, and Luis Ortiz, Assistant Professor of Atmospheric, Oceanic and Earth Sciences, George Mason University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Panic spread through New York City’s Penn Station on Sunday evening after a stabbing attack left six people injured inside one of the nation’s busiest transit hubs.

The attack unfolded around 7 p.m. near the West 33rd Street and Seventh Avenue entrance, when the New York City Fire Department received a call reporting multiple stabbing victims.

Authorities said six people were injured. One victim sustained serious injuries, while four others suffered moderate or minor injuries. Those five victims were transported to Bellevue Hospital. According to a law enforcement official, none suffered life-threatening injuries. A sixth victim was transported to another hospital. Officials did not disclose the person’s condition or explain why they were taken elsewhere for treatment.

Witnesses described chaos inside the station as police moved in on the suspect. One witness told WCBS, “He was just screaming, waving his head around,” adding that they had seen him once before but did not believe he was capable of such an act.

Another witness said she was sitting with her father on the steps of Madison Square Garden when she heard a scream nearby. She said police cars and ambulances arrived shortly after, and she saw a food truck worker holding what appeared to be a bloodied towel to his head. “We feel scared … because today my dad came to drop me off from my job to the train station, but who knows, it could happen again,” Subul Sadaq told Spectrum News NY1.

Amtrak’s communications director told CNN that Amtrak police responded to the stabbing and that an investigation is underway. City officials said there was no disruption to rail service.

The attack comes one day before Monday, when the NBA Finals are set to be held at Madison Square Garden for the first time since 1999, prompting heightened security measures across the area.

Officials said extra deployments, increased camera monitoring, expanded intelligence sharing, and drone use are part of intensified security efforts in an elevated threat environment.

Federal authorities had already been developing a detailed security plan ahead of President Donald Trump’s expected appearance at Game 3 on Monday.

Penn Station serves as a major transit hub connecting subway lines and rail service to New Jersey and Long Island, and operates as New York City’s primary Amtrak station.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani issued a statement expressing sympathy for the victims and their families.

“My heart is with everyone who was injured, their loved ones, and all those shaken by this unacceptable violence. I’m wishing each of the victims a full and speedy recovery,” he said. He also expressed gratitude to Amtrak police and first responders for their rapid response.

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I am not a wine connoisseur. The last time I ventured into this cultured milieu, I made that abundantly clear.

Writing about China’s burgeoning wine industry a few years ago, I asserted my wine naivety at length.

Among my disclaimers: “I can’t tell the difference between a $7.95 and a $27.95 bottle of wine. I often buy and drink screwcap-bottled wine and even sniff the screw cap…” (I understand that many high end wines are now equipped with screw caps, “Stelvin closures.”)

I must admit, however, that I have slightly refined my palate as now I will splurge $17.99 for my favorite wine, a Meiomi Pinot Noir. Alas, I still cannot detect the promised “lush aromas of black cherry and toasty oak…followed by notes of dark berry, juicy strawberry, and toasty mocha.”

Now, about the title of this piece.

This writing is not about finding that great Meiomi. Rather, it is about the historical backdrop to a recent unsealing of a massive collection of approximately 40,000 bottles of rare and historic wine, some dating back to the early 19th century, many “once part of the collection of the Romanov dynasty, the last imperial family of Russia.”

The vast trove of wines, once belonging to Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, is in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, now an independent country in the Caucasus region.

The wines are stored in a vault located deep beneath the streets of Tbilisi “covered in thick cobwebs and dust” and variously described as a “time capsule” and a “Pantheon of Wine.”

The story of how these wines ended up in Tbilisi is intriguing and offers a fascinating glimpse into Russian viniculture and wine tradition, including Georgia’s 8,000 years of winemaking heritage and the Tsars’ and Stalin’s passion for wine.

Following the Russian Revolution of 1917, the newly established Bolshevik state seized the large and prized imperial Romanov wine holdings. Joseph Stalin, a native of Georgia and himself a fervent wine drinker and collector, took custody of the collection and augmented it with his favorite Georgian wines, establishing several wine caches across the former Soviet Union.

During World War II, concerned that the Nazis might occupy Russia and loot his precious wines, Stalin ordered the evacuation of his oldest and most valuable wines, some 60,000 bottles – including prized wines from the legendary Massandra Winery in Crimea — to secure locations across the former Soviet Union.

One of these is the Tbilisi vault, a wine treasure that includes some of the rarest Georgian and French wines, many over two centuries old, some believed to have belonged to Napoleon Bonaparte.

The collection was recently opened to the public by the Georgian government which now plans to auction part of the collection and dedicate the proceeds to funding a state-of-the-art wine education and research center in Georgia. An institution that will train future generations of viticulturists, winemakers, and wine professionals.

Vinetur, a digital publication focused on the wine industry, reports:

For collectors, the cellar offers an opportunity to acquire wines with extraordinary provenance. For historians, it provides insight into how wine has intersected with power, politics, and cultural identity across centuries. For Georgia, however, the collection represents something even more important: a bridge between its rich winemaking past and its ambitions for the future.

While each of the more than 40,000 wines is priceless, some of the wines, especially those more than a century old, may have deteriorated over time despite careful storage.

I asked my young nephew Wallace Colyer, a Level 3 Sommelier, about it.

His answer is both interesting and – to this octogenarian – evocative, as it reminds me of life itself, how some people age well, some not so well…

My nephew explains the chemistry of wine — acidity, tannins, etc. — and how, over the years the compounds can transform the wine, sometimes for the better, sometimes for worse.

For example, he found a 1979 wine (below) he tried a couple of years ago (below) to be “absolutely fabulous.” “Ironically,” he adds, “part of the reason it was so good today is that it was not at all drinkable when it was young…What seems austere or even harsh at five years old can become elegant and complex after decades in the bottle…”

On the other hand, he points out, “A 100-year-old wine should not be expected to taste like the grape variety from which it was made…Dried fruits replace fresh fruits. Tobacco, tea leaf, leather, forest floor, mushroom, spice, and earthy notes emerge. The tannins soften…What makes a great old wine fascinating is not that it preserves youth, but that it reveals what remains after youth disappears.”

He concludes:

The real achievement is survival. If properly stored, a wine can evolve from an expression of fruit into an expression of time itself. At that point, you are tasting the cumulative effects of decades of aging, the decisions of the winemaker, the quality of the storage, and the remarkable resilience of a wine that managed to stay alive long enough to tell its story.

It reminds one of life itself and, indeed, many articles have been written comparing the ageing of wine to human life, “one of literature’s most enduring metaphors.”

Here is one, “Mastering Midlife Change: What can Wine teach us about Ageing.”

And here is an excellent one on all aspects of wine ageing,“Why Do Some Wines Get better with Age While Others Don’t?”

The post On Wine, a Wine Find, and on (Wine) Ageing appeared first on The Moderate Voice.

I don’t have a lot of memories of the nation’s bicentennial; I spent that summer in northern Europe. But I do know that President Nixon was accused of putting on a “buycentennial” because of the corporate money spent on the celebration.

President Trump is once again making Nixon look like a choir boy.

One of the first executive orders Trump signed in 2025, Celebrating America’s 250th Birthday, promised a “grand celebration” and set up a White House task force to make that happen.

The task force does not include a representative from the bipartisan United States Semiquincentennial Commission, created by Congress in 2016 to “provide for the observance and commemoration of the 250^th founding of the United States.” Instead, all members represent the executive branch.

That, by itself, is not necessarily a bad thing. But it is bad when the National Park Service (NPS) says on its website that the task force event, Freedom 250, is the “official national commemoration of America’s 250^th anniversary.” Because it’s not. The official Congressional event is America250, established by the bipartisan Semiquincentennial Commission.

Freedom 250 is an LLC set up by the National Park Foundation (NPF), the official nonprofit partner of the NPS, in December to manage fundraising and branding for the White House task force. The NPS is directly represented on Trump’s task force via the Secretary of the Interior. And Freedom 250, LLC, is overseen by that same White House, partisan task force.

Got a headache yet? It gets more complicated.

Freedom 250 was in the news this week because of a series of planned concerts at the Great American State Fair on the National Mall June 25 – July 10. Musical guests rushed to renege after they learned that the event was a partisan one closely tied to the president.

And the president’s response? Replace the concerts with a political rally “instead of having overpriced singers, who nobody wants to hear, whose music is boring, and yet who do nothing but complain.” Earlier he had claimed to be more popular than Elvis Presley while pitching himself as the keynote speaker for the fair.

Why did most musicians run away from Freedom 250? It’s a moneymaking scheme that grants donors access to the president. Donate $1,000,000 (or more), for example, and get, in return, an invitation to a private reception hosted by the president. All donors and donations are hidden from public view under the LLC umbrella.

Let’s return to the organizations for a moment. Congress allocated $150 million to America250; it has received $25 million. Somehow, $10 million was siphoned off for a Freedom 250 fleet of six “Freedom Trucks” (double-wide 18-wheelers) modified into mobile museums. Where is the remaining $115 million?

The museums are not without controversy. This Administration has a documented history of removing exhibits from national parks. For example, in January, NPS removed an outdoor exhibit from Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia. The topic? President Washington’s ownership of slaves. With the moving museums, the challenge isn’t simply whitewashing and pablum. It’s putting words in the mouths of founders using AI.

That $10 million was a present to conservative PragerU (not a real university) and Hillsdale College, a Michigan-based Christian liberal arts college. So it’s no surprise that “America is depicted as a white Christian nation.” As The Guardian continues, one placard states: “The truth that each person is made in the image and likeness of God is the basis of human equality.”

I’d like to remind you of the First Amendment to the Constitution, which makes it clear that the federal government can neither be hostile to religion nor can it promote one religion over others. Freedom 250 is a public-private partnership run through the White House. As such, it is subject to the Constitution, in this non-lawyer’s opinion.

Then there are fake AI quotes that PragerU created for the Founders Museum, a partnership with the White House and the U.S. Department of Education. Dennis Prager, 77, has John Adams say: “Facts do not care about your feelings.” Adams did not say this. Contemporary conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, a PragerU presenter, is the owner of that phrase.

You won’t find out much about the Freedom Trucks or the Great American State Fair on the Freedom250.org website. The site doesn’t link out to PragerU, for example, which has a much easier to read list of dates and locations than Freedom 250.

And the website provides no details about the states and organizations it claims are participating in the Great American State Fair. Axios was able to get some details about Arizona and Florida; John Deere and Northrop Grumman will also be there, they say. Contrast that with America250, which has a comprehensive calendar of events by date or state and links out to each state’s website.

Then there’s the Freedom 250 UFC fight on the south lawn of the White House slated for June 14, Trump’s birthday. The $80 million event is being fully sponsored by TKO Holdings Group, which owns UFC. Politics has leaked through, reportedly. Sean Strickland, the reigning middleweight champion, says he’s been banned from the event for being critical of Trump.

In case you’re wondering what a mixed martial arts event put on by the UFC has to do with Independence Day … you won’t find an answer at Freedom250.org. If you frame it as spectacle, though, it’s on brand. After all, Trump himself admitted it is “a gimmick.”

Speaking of Freedom250.org, that website was developed by the National Design Studio (NDS), a three-year temporary agency created by an August 2025 executive order and run through the White House. That quasi-independent LLC looks very connected to the White House, doesn’t it?

The website includes events that do not appear to be affiliated with Freedom 250. For example, it lists the opening of the Teddy Roosevelt Presidential Library as a Freedom 250 event. There is no mention of Freedom 250 or its logo on the library website. Freedom 250 also gets the date wrong and doesn’t link out to the library.

The website also claims the 4^th of July celebration at Mount Rushmore. There is nothing about Freedom 250 on the NPS website promoting the event. Freedom 250 says there is only one day of events; there are three. (No link out to the event, as expected.) The NPS page acknowledges its partnership with the State of South Dakota, however. Mount Rushmore has 4^th of July events every year.

Somehow, the International Naval Review & Sail4^th 250 at the Port of New York and New Jersey is affiliated with both America250 and Freedom 250 but is certainly not unique to either. Sail4th got its start under President Kennedy. It held July 4^th celebrations during the 1976 Bicentennial, the 1986 Statue of Liberty centennial, the 1992 Columbus Quincentennial, the Millennium celebration of 2000 and the 2012 Bicentennial of The Star-Spangled Banner.

Freedom 250 is also co-opting the annual Independence Day fireworks display on the National Mall.

So there’s questionable content on the NDS-designed website. There is more razzmatazz that has an enigmatic connection to the Declaration of Independence. First up, an INDYCAR race, the Freedom 250 Grand Prix. Next, the group announced plans for a Patriot Games National Competition (page is 404 not found) for high school athletes this fall; it has drawn comparisons to the Hunger Games.

Let’s look at the website designer bona fides. The temporary head of NDS is Joe Gebbia, the DOGE alumnus and cofounder of Airbnb. As you know, DOGE is the subject of numerous federal lawsuits related to their controversial access to Social Security data. Given DOGE’s documented record on data access, his appointment warrants close scrutiny.

At least one security analyst has critiqued apparent data privacy issues associated with NDS built sites. It’s noteworthy that Congress established a web design system that resides in the General Services Administration. Yet the White House developed its own.

The more you investigate semiquincentennial events sponsored by the White House, the more you see it as a tangled and disjointed mess. The White House has sucked oxygen (and financing) away from the Congressionally created America250. It promotes opaque donations to curry favor with Trump. Most events have little if any connection to 250 years of American democracy.

If there is one thread, it’s all about Trump. His is the last video in the Freedom Truck museums. And a placard alongside reads: “My fellow Americans, get ready for an incredible future, because the golden age of America has only just begun.”

With him at the helm, of course.

First published at Substack.

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Adam Eichen, UMass Amherst; Jesse Rhodes, UMass Amherst, and Tatishe Nteta, UMass Amherst

During a Washington Nationals baseball game on May 17, 2026, three people unfurled a large banner from the upper deck of Nationals Park displaying a link to a white nationalist website.

The website, warning of the replacement of whites by people of color, called for the deportation of 100 million people from the United States.

The disturbing incident reflects the broader ascendance of the “great replacement theory,” the xenophobic conspiracy theory asserting that shadowy elites are embracing permissive immigration policies to replace native-born white Americans with immigrants of color.

Prominent Republicans, including President Donald Trump, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson and conservative podcaster Tucker Carlson, have echoed ideas associated with the great replacement theory. And conservative media outlets, such as Fox News, have disseminated them to millions of viewers.

But are the xenophobic ideas recently expressed at Nationals Park limited to a small number of extremists, or are they also endorsed by the broader public? If the latter, how do political and media elites contribute to their spread?

To answer these questions, our team has conducted several nationally representative surveys that ask Americans about their support for key tenets of the great replacement theory.

New immigrants as a threat

We consistently found that a substantial minority of Americans agree with the sentiment that new immigrants threaten the political, cultural and economic power of white Americans. In our latest poll of 1,000 Americans fielded in March 2026, 36% agreed with the statement: “Native-born Americans are losing their economic, political, and cultural influence in this country because of the growing population of immigrants.”

A notable number of Americans – 26% – also believed political elites are trying to “replace” the existing white population, agreeing with the statement: “There are people who secretly work to make sure immigrants will eventually replace real Americans.”

Support for these beliefs is concentrated most heavily among white Americans, Republicans, conservatives and self-identifying members of Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again movement. Indeed, more than 3 in 4 members of the MAGA movement and close to 6 in 10 Republicans agreed with the statement: “Immigrants invade and colonize the United States.”

But what explains this spread of the great replacement theory?

In our newly published, peer-reviewed study, we used nationally representative panel survey data that tracked over 500 white Americans over time to attempt to answer this question.

We found that white Americans who identified as Republican, who are conservatives and who have negative views of people from other racial backgrounds are all more likely to express support for key tenets of the great replacement theory. Moreover, we uncovered clear evidence that white Americans who watch Fox News are also more likely to agree with the conspiracy theory.

Given the popularity of Fox News, we believe this latter point deserved further investigation. As detailed in our paper, while 39% of all white Americans agree that immigrants invade and colonize the U.S., 61% of white Americans who watch Fox News agree with this view. Even when taking into account partisan identification, ideology, racial attitudes and demographic characteristics, Fox News viewership remains significantly associated with more support for the great replacement theory.

Additionally, because we tracked white Americans over time, we could observe changes in their support for the conspiracy theory in response to variations in their viewership of Fox News. Simply put, the more Fox News programming that a white American watches, the more likely they are to adopt the conspiracy theory.

Links to political violence

Our research builds on decades of work showing that public opinion is strongly influenced by media consumption. Recent scholarship, in particular, highlights the influence of Fox News on public opinion. It shows how exposure to Fox News leads Americans to express more conservative attitudes about the COVID-19 pandemic, immigration policies and criminal justice issues.

Given the attention that Fox News hosts, elected officials and pundits dedicate to the great replacement theory, our results suggest that this coverage has indeed influenced the views of white Americans. The great replacement theory is no longer purely on the fringes of society.

In our view, this is troubling, not only because the conspiracy theory treats immigration as an existential issue — where the stakes are framed as the very preservation of one’s self and country — but also because the theory is also linked to numerous instances of political violence directed at people of color and religious minorities.

As America approaches its 250th birthday, the nation will no doubt continue to grapple with the topic of immigration, race and what it means to be an American.

While there’s plenty of room for disagreement over immigration policy, conspiracy theories make it much harder to find common ground or craft political compromises. What we’ve found is that when prominent media embrace conspiracy theorizing, increased public endorsement of conspiracies will follow.

Adam Eichen, Ph.D. Candidate in Political Science, UMass Amherst; Jesse Rhodes, Associate Professor of Political Science, UMass Amherst, and Tatishe Nteta, Provost Professor of Political Science, UMass Amherst

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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