by Elwood Watson

From now on, far-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos will have to promote his fringe conspiracies and racial controversies in Great Britain after being deported by the U.S. last month.

And early and staunch supporter of Donald Trump, Yiannopoulos was arrested by ICE just a few weeks after hurling unfound accusations at conservative podcaster Benny Johnson and Laura Loomer, a close ally of the president. Loomer seemed to be quite the happy pundit last week publicly taking credit for Yiannopoulos’ deportation.

Yiannopoulos was previously deported almost a decade earlier after becoming an early and prominent supporter of Trump’s initial presidential campaign. His influence was fleeting at best. In a 2017 video, he advocated adult sexual relations with boys as young as 13 and seemed to minimize pedophilia by Roman Catholic priests.

At the time, such disturbing comments cost him a lucrative book deal, then his position at Breitbart and an invitation to speak at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, also known as CPAC. It’s such a delicious irony this adamantly anti-Muslim, pro-immigrant crackdown, pro-ICE, pro-deportation individual has now suddenly found himself a victim of such restrictive policies.

Yiannopoulos has a long and sordid history of making outlandish, abrasive, and offensive comments about marginalized groups. He has been all too eager to assist in the conservative right’s dirty work. In an interview he informed Tucker Carlson “mainstreaming homosexuality in the Republican Party is the great regret of my life.”

As for his many flaws, Yiannopoulos larged received a pass from the far right, people for whom racism, anti-Semitism, misogyny, homophobia, xenophobia, etc. are de rigueur. He also kept his eye on national politics, working on the 2024 presidential campaign of Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, who fell from grace after praising Adolf Hitler and making a series of anti-Semitic comments.

Yiannopoulos should have known from the outset the “inclusion” afforded to him was temporary at best and came with strings attached. He would have to genuflect to his far-right audience and financial benefactors, could never speak ill of real racists and homophobes in the conservative ranks, and had to hammer the left ruthlessly by increasingly ramping up his acerbic, acid-tongue rhetoric. By pleasing his benefactors, he would receive ample compensation from right-of-center business groups and conservative political organizations.

His recent attacks on the Trump administration aroused the wrath of largely intolerant mainstream conservatives.

Modern-day conservative politics is deeply populated with numerous officials and candidates who have demonstrated fierce and unmistakable allegiance toward Donald Trump and the larger MAGA movement. They expect the commander in chief would reward such loyalty only to recognize the dispiriting and demoralizing realization that he would throw them to the wolves when they needed his support. Mike Pence, Kevin McCarthy, Reince Priebus, Mo Brooks, Ronna McDaniell, Elise Stefanik, etc. all suffered the same fate.

Loyalty is something Trump expects to receive, not reciprocate. We can now add Milo Yiannopoulos to the list of the disregarded allies who learned this humiliating lesson.

No one should feel too sorry for Yiannopoulos. Like many fabulists, he is likely plotting his return to the public arena. To quote P.T. Barnum, “a sucker is born every minute.” Thus, we can expect Milo to charm and weave his way successfully into the good graces of some gullible factions looking for a colorful personality, no matter how morally flawed or compromised. Yiannopoulos is well suited for such a task.

Copyright 2026 Elwood Watson, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate Elwood Watson is a professor of history, Black studies, and gender and sexuality studies at East Tennessee State University. He is also an author and public speaker.

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Republican President George W. Bush’s stupid war in Iraq (launched on false premises and bogus promises) triggered a blue tsunami in the 2006 midterms and resulted in Democratic takeovers of the House and Senate.

Today, Republican President Donald Trump’s stupid war in Iran (launched with inept planning and bogus promises) could help trigger a blue tsunami in the 2026 midterms, resulting in Democratic takeovers of the House and Senate.

History doesn’t repeat itself, but on occasion it rhymes. This may be one of those times.

Granted, the parallels are imperfect. By 2006 Bush had been waging the Iraq war for nearly four years, and Democratic candidates in the midterm races (including a Senate hopeful named Barack Obama) kept the issue front and center. By contrast, Trump’s Iran war is only six months old, but a solid majority of grassroots voters in every poll recognize his war and his inflationary economy are intertwined. Support for the war has fallen to 31 percent, a six-point slide since March.

It’s a virtually foregone conclusion the Republican House will fall to the Democrats, and now there are serious indicators the Senate may go blue as well, with Democrats potentially flipping seats in red states like Alaska, Iowa, North Carolina, Ohio, and perhaps even Texas. Many issues besides the war are in play – especially Trump’s tariffs, which are hurting rural midwesterners who normally vote MAGA – but the war is a perfect metaphor for everything the guy does and say wrong.

One of his slogans is “Promises Made, Promises Kept.” Remember those words as we monitor how the warlord has run his mouth.

March 2: “I always thought that (the Iran war) would be four weeks. And we’re a little ahead of schedule.”

March 9: “I think the war is very complete, pretty much.”

March 24: “This war has been won.”

April 6: “We are the winner. We won, OK?”

April 25: “We won everything, we have all the cards.”

June 12: “We ended the war with Iran today.”

June 24: “For the first time in 3000 years, we are finally going to have peace in the Middle East.”

July 8: “As far as I’m concerned, it’s over.”

Aug. 26, in an AI image: “Mission Accomplished 2026.”

As the writer Mary McCarthy famously said of her rival Lillian Hellman, “Every word she writes is a lie including and and the.” That’s an apt summation of Trump at the six-month mark of his war. He has won no victory. Iran controls the Strait of Hormuz; before his war began roughly 130 ships passed through it daily, but thanks to him the daily tally is around 12. He has seriously diminished our munitions stockpiles, to the point where we have less readiness to defend American interests elsewhere in the world. Oh, and the average domestic price of gas was $3 when his war began, but now it’s $4.10.

Lest we forget, Bush and his surrogates kept insisting they invaded Iraq because it supposedly posed “an imminent threat” to America. My favorite lie was when Bush said, in September 2002, that a “new” report by the International Atomic Energy Agency put Iraq “six months away” from building a nuke – whereupon the IAEA released this priceless statement: There’s never been a report like that issued from this agency.”

The “imminent” con may sound familiar, since it was resurrected and presented anew, just a few short months ago, by Trump’s flunkies. Spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt (now departed) said ballistic missiles from Iran could “pose a risk” to us “one day,” and that Trump had “a feeling” the threat was imminent. Lindsey Graham (now really departed) said that future Iranian missiles could reach us “eventually.” And Pentagon beefcake Pete Hegseth (un-departed) defined imminent in his own fashion, saying that Iran might “eventually get to a place” where they could build and protect nukes.

Richard Haas, who was director of policy planning at the State Department when Bush invaded Iraq (and who had reservations at the time), succinctly assessed Trump’s war the other day in remarks to The New York Times: “This has been a fiasco. That’s the harsh reality. He can declare ‘mission accomplished.’ He can try to sell the argument as he often tries to, almost to create reality. But it’s going to be a hard, hard sell.” Especially in a hostile election environment.

In the words of long-dead French literary critic Marcel Proust, war is “a pathological condition because it admits of accidents which not even a skilled physician could have foreseen.” What voters outside the MAGA cult know well by now is that the present war, at the six-month mark, is being waged by a fraud who markets lies for a living.

The day of reckoning is near. I think.

Copyright 2026 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes the Subject to Change newsletter. Email him at dickpolman7@gmail.com

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As the 2026 midterm elections enter the final stretch, it’s important to know your rights in case your vote is challenged.

The best way to ensure that your vote is counted is to advocate for yourself. I’m a an attorney and lecturer for the University of Southern California’s undergraduate civil rights advocacy initiative, Agents of Change. Here are several straightforward ways to ensure your vote is counted and two practical remedies for you to consider if your vote remains challenged.

A major part of ensuring that you are able to vote is doing the necessary preparation before you even get to the polling place. Read on to find out how and where to register, where and when you can cast your ballot, and what numbers to call for any information you can’t find online.

Are you registered to vote? Check it out

Before you vote, you need to ensure that you’re registered to vote. You can verify your registration status using this tool. If you can’t use an online tool, then call your local election office or a voter help line like the ones listed in the hotline section below.

If you find you’re not registered, you can use this tool from the National Conference of State Legislatures to find your state’s online registration application. If you need to do this in person, then call your local election office for instructions.

At this point, you may have missed your state’s deadline for voter registration. But it may not be too late to register.

Many states allow same-day registration at the polling site. You can find your state’s same-day voter laws detailed here. Ask the poll worker, at the correct polling location, for a same-day registration form; complete the form and then ask for a “conditional ballot.” A conditional ballot allows election officials to count your vote after verifying your voter eligibility. If you can’t research online, you can call your local election office to find out if you can register on Election Day.

Gather documents to verify your identity

If you live in a state that requires identity verification to vote in person, gather the required documents – which may range from a driver’s license to bank statements with identifying information – before traveling to the correct polling place. You can find your county election office’s contact information here. This webpage includes a table listing each state’s acceptable ID documents and possible exceptions for some people. You may also call your local election office to find out what’s required.

Absentee voters: Locate your state’s identity verification rules here.

Find the correct polling location

You can ensure that you’re headed to the right polling place with this tool. Or call your county election office to find your polling place and its hours of operation; you can look up your county’s election office contact information here.

Once you know your polling place and its hours, you can go there and check in. In most cases, you’ll be handed a ballot, shown where to vote and asked to put your ballot in a machine or a box, and then you can go merrily along your way.

But the moment of check-in is where things might go wrong.

Problems at your polling place

Here are potential vote challenges and ways to overcome them.

Possibility No. 1: Out-of-order polling machines.

If you’re asked to leave because of malfunctioning machines, don’t. Instead, ask for a paper ballot.

Possibility No. 2: You’re in line and officials announce the polls have closed.

If you’re in line at the polling location before it closes, don’t let them turn you away at closing time if you haven’t voted. You have the legal right to vote under those circumstances, so stay in line and wait to cast your ballot.

Possibility No. 3: You’re not on the registered voters list.

If you’re told you can’t vote because your name is not on the voter roster, ask the poll site worker to check again and to check what’s called the list of supplemental voters. If they still can’t find your name, ask the poll worker to verify that you’re at the right location.

Possibility No. 4: Someone claims you shouldn’t be allowed to vote.

If your voting eligibility remains challenged after ensuring you’re at the right polling location, ask to cast a provisional ballot, which is available in every state except Idaho and Minnesota. You can find details about your particular state’s provisional ballot rules here.

Track your provisional ballot here.

Call a hotline

If you are not given a provisional ballot, call an election hotline for help. Here are four hotlines, run by members of the nonpartisan Election Protection coalition, that can help you:

English: 866-OUR-VOTE/866-687-8683, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law

Spanish: 888-VE-Y-VOTA/888-839-8682, the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials Education Fund

Asian Languages: 888-API-VOTE/888-274-8683, Asian and Pacific Islander American Vote

Arabic: 844-YALLA-US/844-925-5287, Arab American Institute

Report voter intimidation

If someone tries to scare you into voting or not voting for a candidate, stand your ground and demand a ballot from the poll site, call one of the hotlines above to report the intimidation, and file a claim with the FBI later by phone at 800-CALL-FBI – 800-225-5324 – or online at tips.fbi.gov.

File a lawsuit

If you are still blocked from voting, consider legal action – but get advice on your exact situation from one of the hotlines, which have free lawyers on hand. It’s a good idea to write down the names of people who prevented you from voting and to ask people who witnessed the incident for their contact information.

This is an updated version of a story that was originally published on Oct. 28, 2024.

Karen Figueroa-Clewett, Lecturer, Agents of Change program, Department of Political Science and 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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New Mail Voting Rules Moved Forward Despite USPS Officials’ Concerns About Mass Disenfranchisement

Top U.S. Postal Service officials tasked with issuing new regulations on mail voting expressed concerns in internal meetings about how the rules they were drafting could delay or block ballots from reaching large swaths of eligible voters for the upcoming midterms, but the rules moved forward anyway, ProPublica has learned.

The revelations about the discussions, from someone familiar with the rulemaking process, come as a separate anonymous federal employee filed a whistleblower disclosure with U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, warning that the new system is untested and error-prone, and could lead to mass disenfranchisement in the upcoming election. The whistleblower described the entire process as “secretive, rushed, chaotic, and fundamentally flawed.” 

In a March executive order, President Donald Trump directed the Postal Service to create the new rules, including requiring states to give USPS a list of all voters eligible to receive a ballot in the mail and requiring USPS to use those lists to determine which ballots get sent to voters. USPS officials were tasked with crafting the details of how the new system would work, including the creation of a new portal for states to upload their voters’ information and the back-end software that would allow mail delivery sites and local post offices to track, and potentially block, ballots entering into the mail on their way to voters. 

Voting rights organizations, state officials and Democratic political groups filed lawsuits challenging the new rules, and a federal court has temporarily blocked the requirements for states. The merits of the new rule are expected to reach the Supreme Court before the November election. Even if the Supreme Court allows the plan, though, election officials and experts say that the new system could not be ready in time for this election, given that ballots for people who are in the military or overseas must be sent out this month.

During meetings in which top USPS officials discussed how to comply with the executive order, there was much discussion about the controversial nature of what they needed to do, according to the person familiar with the discussions who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals. The focus was on limiting the impact to voters while also complying. One repeated concern regarded how to avoid invalidating an entire batch of ballots if one voter among thousands couldn’t be confirmed as eligible. Some in the meetings recommended trying to limit harm to voters by not rejecting the entire batch, according to the person familiar with the discussions. Despite that, according to the whistleblower who contacted Blumenthal, the directive to reject entire batches if they included just one unverified ballot moved forward.

“As presently designed, if even one bar code on one single ballot in a bulk-mailing of 10,000 ballots fails to properly scan during the verification process, the entire batch is rejected and sent back to the state — effectively stopping the ballots from being mailed to voters,” the whistleblower wrote.

Election clerks raised similar concerns directly to USPS officials just days before the final rule was issued, at a mid-August National Association of Election Officials conference in Kansas City, Missouri, ProPublica has learned. 

There, an example was given of Maricopa County, Arizona, which often sends out more than 2 million ballots at a time in its initial mailing. USPS officials confirmed it was possible that one ballot with a bad barcode or wrong voter information within the more than 2 million ballots could delay the entire mailing, according to two people who attended the related committee meeting.

The Postal Service has defended its final rule in court, stating that it does not intend to seize control of administration of elections and that the rule “need not and should not prevent a single voter from voting by mail.”

In a statement to ProPublica, a Postal Service spokesperson said the agency is carefully reviewing the Blumenthal whistleblower’s concerns and that USPS has spent months developing its system, in a manner consistent with court orders, and will soon provide instructions for how election officials can use it.

“Regardless of political party or perspective, we share a common goal: ensuring that Americans can have confidence that their election mail will be handled securely and delivered reliably,” the spokesperson said.

Lauren Bis, a White House spokesperson, said in a statement to ProPublica that the process of building software to carry out the new mail ballot checks “is neither complex nor unique for USPS since the Postal Service regularly uses bulk mailing and intelligent mail barcodes for a wide variety of large customers.”

“Under President Trump, the federal government is working to ensure safe, transparent, and honest elections,” Bis wrote.

Blumenthal, the Connecticut Democrat who received the whistleblower disclosure, asked the postmaster general for detailed info about the plan in a letter this week. He told reporters on a call Monday that the new USPS rule puts all mail voters at risk, and he accused the administration of being “hellbent on changing the framework of casting ballots in this country, clearly for political reasons.”

Election officials and printing experts have told ProPublica that errors in the system are likely, given how difficult it is to design envelopes with a clear barcode for scanning and to keep voter information up to date. Seemingly small details have yet to be worked out that could throw the entire system into chaos, they said, such as what file format to use when uploading voter lists and whether to provide mailing or residential addresses to USPS.

“These are trivial things that create massive problems,” said Jeff Ellington, CEO of Runbeck Election Services, which prints ballots and ballot envelopes for counties. Beyond that, he said, most of the counties in the country don’t have the type of barcodes needed to make the system function. And the Postal Service hasn’t told local election officials how to design new ballot envelopes and get them approved by USPS in this short of a timeframe.

The Blumenthal whistleblower said the idea that entire batches will be delayed by one mistake is especially concerning because of significant operational problems that exist with the portal that will contain information about eligible voters and the lack of testing of the system. The whistleblower is concerned about how, while systems typically have a known error rate, there has been no internal acknowledgment that errors will occur in the new mail ballot system, and instead the USPS has adopted a “zero-percent failure policy.”

The whistleblower also alleges that the administration moved forward with steps to create the new system during two initial injunctions from the court, which would have violated the court’s order. USPS had stated when issuing its final rule that it was adhering to the injunctions and would not take actions to implement the rule for the 2026 election unless the injunctions were lifted.

Both the whistleblower and the person familiar with discussions about the executive order’s implementation said that the timeline for creating a sophisticated tracking system would typically be at least nine months. The whistleblower’s disclosure says that workers began to work on the system in mid-June and had only weeks before being given a Sept. 1 deadline. The person familiar with the discussions said it was common for priority projects within USPS to have crunched timelines. The internal goal, the person said, was to try to implement the new system by that deadline or to show why it couldn’t happen — which was typical of other directives the agency had faced in the past.

The whistleblower disclosure described confusion as the staff attempted to develop the systems without enough direction, within weeks, and without proper communication, and said several employees referred to the situation as a “shit show.” 

Republished from ProPublica

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by Jake Johnson
Common Dreams

An anonymous federal official warned in a whistleblower disclosure submitted to members of the US Congress that the Postal Service’s haphazard implementation of President Donald Trump’s executive order on mail-in voting could “derail the midterm elections” by preventing potentially millions of American voters from receiving ballots.

The disclosure was released in full on Tuesday by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), who included the document in a letter to Postmaster General David Steiner—Trump’s pick to lead USPS. Blumenthal said the whistleblower’s account provides “disturbing details about USPS’ seemingly illegal plot to interfere in November’s midterms.”

The new disclosure raises “significant concerns” about the Postal Service’s “secretive, rushed, chaotic, and fundamentally flawed process” for establishing “an entirely new and untested set of IT systems” in compliance with Trump’s March executive order, which is at the center of high-stakes legal fights just weeks before the November midterms.

Trump’s USPS directives have been blocked in federal court, but the administration is trying to get them reinstated ahead of the midterm contests—and the whistleblower complaint suggests the administration may be violating court orders by continuing to work on the new systems. Mail-in voting for the midterms is officially set to begin this week.

Described in the disclosure as the “Portal,” the new Postal Service IT systems “will govern the delivery of ballots to voters as soon as the 2026 mid-term federal elections and beyond.” The whistleblower raises “grave concerns” that the Trump administration has “hidden the high likelihood that the new ballot mail verification processes will result in major disruptions in mail ballots ever getting delivered to voters.”

“As presently designed, if even one bar code on one single ballot in a bulk-mailing of 10,000 ballots fails to properly scan during the verification process, the entire batch is rejected and sent back to the state—effectively stopping the ballots from being mailed to voters,” the disclosure states. “The whistleblower is particularly concerned that the Portal (where the bar codes are stored) will almost certainly have significant operating problems when released to the public, due to the rushed IT development; this will contribute to failures in the verification process.”

The whistleblower filing notes warnings that the Portal system could “completely crash” during rollout and quoted descriptions from IT workers at the Postal Service who described the entire process as “a shit show.”

Theme throughout Whistleblower disclosure is how USPS IT work is complete mess, likely to "completely crash."

"Workers have described the election ballot mail development process as 'a sh*t show."

Raises stakes enormously on any state officials thinking to go along with this. pic.twitter.com/e8GrLYxu1W

— Ryan Goodman (@rgoodlaw) September 1, 2026

Libby Liu, the CEO of Whistleblower Aid—a nonprofit representing the anonymous federal official—said in a statement that “the whistleblower’s service to our nation is warning the public that their ability to vote is in serious jeopardy.”

“We are crossing the Rubicon of American elections,” said Liu. “This dangerously defective mail-in ballot process could disenfranchise millions of voters, ensnaring ballots in red tape under the guise of solving a non-existent problem. People in states that rely heavily on vote-by-mail will have a more difficult time making their voices heard in our challenged democracy this November.”

The USPS whistleblower also provided their account to the House Oversight Committee. Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the committee, said in a statement Tuesday morning that the official’s account makes clear that “Trump’s attack on vote-by-mail for the 2026 election is more serious than previously understood.”

“This new secret tracking system at the US Postal Service is faulty, untested, and threatens to totally disrupt ballot delivery for millions of American citizens,” said Garcia. “We are fighting in court to protect the right to vote by mail for all and will continue to investigate. This unconstitutional and dangerous power grab must be permanently and immediately blocked.”

ID 392224 | Postal Service Envelopes ©
Donna Cuic | Dreamstime.com

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Once upon a time, Henry Kissinger and Saudi Prince Fahd bin Abdulaziz Al Saud signed a secret agreement that “promised military aid and equipment in exchange for the Kingdom investing billions of dollars of its oil-sale proceeds in U.S. Treasurys,” according to Paul Donovan, chief economist at UBS Global Wealth Management.

That time was 1974, on the heels of the 1973 OPEC oil embargo and the 1971 demise of the gold standard. Saudi Arabia was flooded with dollars; the U.S. wanted to prevent another embargo. Both countries had a reason to increase their mutual alignment. And the dollar had been the de facto global reserve currency since the end of World War II.

As oil-producing countries nationalized their reserves, western oil companies lost major ground. In 1970, they owned 85 percent of global oil reserves. By 1980, it was only 12 percent.

Eventually, the Kingdom began accepting only dollars for its oil, and soon the dollar was the dominant currency in the global oil trade. There was a bit of U.S. “cajoling” involved, of course. Today, 80 percent of global oil is traded in dollars, which helped solidify the dollar as the world’s reserve currency.

What does it mean to be a global reserve currency?

A global reserve currency is one that is “held in large quantities by a government or institution, in order to conduct international trade, investments or other interactions on the global market.” It becomes the currency used to value items or service for trade.

In the case of the dollar, it began with the Bretton Woods Agreement of 1944. Instead of linking to gold, world currencies (at least 44 of them) would be pegged to the dollar which could then be traded for gold. But in 1971, the gold standard went kaput and the global trading system changed to one of trust. The U.S. has the world’s largest economy and has been historically considered the most stable government in the world, which leads to trust. That stability is cracking, and there is competition in that first title, as well.

In wonky terms, it means the U.S. should get more favorable interest rates when it borrows money (think $40 trillion in debt). Theoretically, U.S. sanctions against Russia and Iran put pressure on other nations to avoid trade with them. However, U.S. sanctions can also increase tensions between nations, which lowers the desire to conduct trade in dollars. Of course, we can quietly waive sanctions due to poor planning on our part.

In the third quarter 2025, the dollar’s share of global foreign reserves was only 56.9 percent, down from a peak of 72 percent in 2001 and at its lowest level since 1995. That fall from its peak is known as de-dollarization, a decrease in the use of the dollar for global trade, finance and central bank reserves.

Currently the Euro is the distant second place reserve currency. Although countries like Russia, Iran and, to a lesser extent, Saudi Arabia are trading in the Chinese yuan, it remains in the back of the pack. For now.

Trump’s foreign policy hiccups: Iran

According to Fortune, Deutsche Bank analysts noted in March that petrodollars date to the 1970s with Saudi Arabia pricing oil in dollars and investing the surplus in U.S. assets. (The U.S. agreed to sell military weapons as well and provide on-site security, which included keeping the Strait of Hormuz open for shipping.) The note pointed out that trade through the Strait of Hormuz does more than power cars and trucks. It’s important for natural gas, fertilizer and “helium, which is critical to chipmaking.”

Trump’s gamble in his war of choice in Iran has not gone according to his plan, but arguably it has gone according to Iran’s. For all intents and purposes, the Strait of Hormuz remains closed to ship traffic. For example, on Aug. 23, one tanker and two dry bulk carriers made it through the Strait. On Aug. 8, 10 ships made it through, but only two were tankers. Before the U.S.-Israeli Iran War (launched on 28 February 2026 under the designation Operation Epic Fury), about 130 ships passed through each day.

A reminder that before the war, one quarter of the world’s seaborne oil passed through the Strait.

The Iran War has illustrated a weakness with the U.S. strategy of stationing forces around the world, including the Middle East. Just as Ukraine has shown its defiance against Russia’s invasion, Iran has taken the war to U.S. land targets through the Middle East.

According to Brookings, Iran has successfully attacked more than 200 targets in Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The U.S. underestimated the efficacy of Iran’s airborne defense.

Attacks on these sites had disruptive effects beyond the physical damage they caused, because they forced U.S. personnel to evacuate many additional locations that were deemed too vulnerable to further strikes.

This collection of Middle East bases crystalized after the 1979 Iranian Revolution and Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, according to Brookings. The value of disbursed regional assets proved itself in the 1991 Gulf War. Now, however, they are an Achilles heel, because they are “too close to Iran.” For Iran, they are legitimate targets because the U.S. uses that land and air space to launch attacks.

When 80 percent of the world’s oil is traded in dollars and the U.S. shoots itself in the foot regarding the 25 percent of the maritime petroleum supply that moves through the Strait of Hormuz, what does that do to the petrodollar? To the dollar as the global reserve currency of choice?

China has already traded places with the U.S. as Saudi Arabia’s largest oil customer. Although those transactions still rely on the dollar, analysts point out that the “door is open.” Ironically, the U.S. shift from importer in the 1970s to exporter in the 2020s means that higher global oil prices are now a benefit to, not a drag on, the dollar. However, increased prices hurt consumers at the pump (and increase inflation).

Russia, too, turned to China in light of U.S. sanctions early in the Obama Administration, a penalty for its annexation of Crimea. Iran strengthened its relationship with China after the U.S. reimposed sanctions during the first Trump Administration.

David Wight, a historian at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, told Fortune, “I think that the increasing aggressiveness of the United States in multiple fields—both in terms of sanctions and in terms of warfare—has caused more countries to kind of wonder, ‘Do we want to be completely tied or dependent on the dollar if things go sour for whatever reason?’”

Trump’s foreign policy hiccups: tariffs

Although Wight does not specifically mention tariffs, he does acknowledge “aggressiveness.” And Trump’s tariffs are clearly aggressive, whether we are discussing the illegal tariffs from 2025 or the yet-to-be-censured-by-SCOTUS illegal tariffs in 2026 (hello, Canada).

The tariffs and war have one thing in common: both are discretionary decisions that Trump has made against the advice of most experts in the country, as well as the western world, such as economists and military specialists.

It’s clear from the bond market that Trump’s economic policies are having a negative effect. Treasury published this quarter’s buyback schedule at the beginning of August then two weeks later overrode it. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent jumped in mid-month, an unprecedented intrusion, to buy back Treasury notes to shore up the dollar’s value. It had limited success.

Analysts at the Swiss private bank Julius Baer said that the buybacks have contributed to a weaker dollar, with investors turning “to gold and silver as potential stores of value.”

The Council on Foreign Relations argues that ending the Iran War and the Strait of Hormuz as a choke point to trade would reduce pressure on the bond market. Will economic conditions, such as inflation and employment, soften to the point where the Federal Reserve would consider lowering, not raising, interest rates? That’s not the International Monetary Fund forecast: they project increased global inflation and slower economic growth.

When our debt load rises, we have to issue more bonds, which means demand has to increase for them to hold their value. Will demand for the U.S. dollar continue to decline due to Trump’s actions, and if so, how deeply? How will that affect the cost of the rising interest bill on the national debt?

Let’s return to Saudi Arabia

There’s a lot of macroeconomics pressure going on, from interest rates and bond values to petrodollars and reserve currency. However, Trump is spending a lot of time and energy with the country that helped set up the petrodollar in the first place. Why? In part because the allyship between the two countries is strained due to Trump’s war of choice in Iran.

However, last year, the U.S. and Saudi Arabia signed a $142 billion arms deal, the largest such deal in history, according to Trump. More than a dozen U.S. firms will be supplying air and missile defense, weapons and equipment. It was part of a $600 billion investment that includes tech partnerships.

Notably, the U.S. exports about one-third of its arms to the Middle East. The U.S. is by far the world’s largest weapons dealer, handling 42 percent of the world’s major-arms exports from 2021–2025, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

Recently, Trump has agreed to a 30-year nuclear deal that calls for the construction of AP1000 reactors in the Kingdom, a project that would benefit Westinghouse, jointly owned by Canada-based Cameco and Brookfield Asset Management. Congress has not weighed in; failure to do so means it goes into effect.

Note that both deals with the Saudis represent an ongoing infusion of a lot of dollars that have zero to do with petroleum. However, they keep Riyadh, and other Middle Eastern countries, inside the dollar system.

One final hedge

Trump recently announced a vague and questionable deal featuring Venezuelan oil reserves. The proposal seems to fly in the face of the Venezuelan constitution. Should it move forward, however, it would further enhance the U.S. position as an oil exporter. Whether oil prices go up or down, the effect would be dollars flowing into the U.S. (Never mind that we have no idea how many Venezuelan oil dollars have been flowing into the U.S. from existing arrangements nor where those dollars have landed.)

Would the Venezuelan deal be enough to offset the negative impacts of Trump’s protectionism (tariff wars) and sanctions (Russia, Iran), each of which leads to de-dollarization? And is it intended as a buffer in the oil world should Saudi Arabia loosen its ties to the dollar?

It’s a wonky question but one with long-term ramifications. Should de-dollarization continue, and the dollar find itself with real competition for the role of chief global reserve currency, that is a situation from which recovery is unlikely. After all, it used to be the pound.

This article first appeared on Substack. 

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Trump’s beef policies are going to make you sick

Donald Trump thinks it would be a great idea for ranchers to process their own beef and to bypass inspections by the FDA. Even ranchers think this is a bad idea.

In a post on Truth Social Friday morning, Trump called the Big Four meat-processing companies a “nasty Monopoly,” and said he would authorize farmers and ranchers the right to slaughter and process their own meat instead of using facilities inspected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. “This should move quickly,” he added.

It should move as quickly as four Big Macs in Trump’s digestive system.

You may be asking yourself, where did Trump get such a stupid idea? Glenn Beck. He got the idea while having a conversation with Glenn Beck. Trump was being interviewed by Beck, who is also a cattle rancher, last Wednesday on his show. Beck was raging against the “meat-processing cartel” and urged Trump to “break the back of those processing plants.”

Trump replied, “This is a very big thing you just told me, though, because you just gave me a very good idea.” It’s not like Glenn Beck doesn’t have a financial stake in this.

I’m sure the new programs will be phased in right about the time you’re overcoming your brand-new measles outbreak and getting over your explosive diarrhea from contaminated lettuce. Trump has already ruined Canada and Taco Bell for us, and now he wants to take McDonald’s away from us too?

On Friday, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association released a statement, saying, “NCBA supports more competition, more opportunities for small & regional processors, and eliminating unnecessary regulations but weakening federal meat inspection & food safety standards isn’t the answer. America’s cattle producers have earned consumer trust in U.S. beef over generations. That trust, and the gold standard food safety system behind it, shouldn’t be put at risk for a short-term political fix.”

That’s weird. Some of the people who produce our food don’t want to kill us with it.

The beef guys say that cattle producers have earned consumer trust, but when it comes to our food, we can’t trust the guy who brought back measles, gave us explosive diarrhea, and hired RFK Jr as our top health official.

Additionally, Trump is waiving tariffs for 300,000 metric tons of beef to be imported into the country over the next 90 days to help with a cattle shortage. Of course, this fucks over cattle ranchers who supported him. On top of that, Trump, whose supporters claim is the most transparent president in history, won’t tell us which nations the beef is coming from.

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

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Of all the moments that capture Dolly Parton’s musical talents, fierce intelligence and driving ambition, I often find myself thinking back to an awkward, ad-libbed live television duet on “The Porter Wagoner Show.”

The year was 1973. Parton had been performing alongside Wagoner on the syndicated variety show since 1967. Though this had been her big break in Nashville, Parton was feeling confined by playing second fiddle to Wagoner, who, as her producer, often took control of the musical arrangements of her songs. Despite Parton’s commercial success, he was often dismissive of her creative vision.

With Parton and Wagoner set to perform “Run That By Me One More Time” – a song Parton had written in 1970, about a marital quarrel – Wagoner begins by saying, “Me and my sidekick, she just kicked me in the side.” Dolly retorts, “Not yet, but I think I will after this.”

After the two sing the opening lines, Parton dives into her verse:

“Well you’re late again I see

What’s your excuse this time?

Don’t try to kiss and make up

When you smell so strong from wine.”

Right as Wagoner moves in to sing his excuse for coming home late, Parton unexpectedly interrupts him by singing a prolonged, “Well, I –” as if she were going to sing another line. Porter, caught by surprise, pauses. Parton laughs, “I thought I’d throw that in.” A flustered Wagoner asks Parton where they are in the song.

Back on track, Wagoner begins the next verse, demanding to know what Parton has done with the rent money. She ad-libs her explanation: “You seen me put that money in that cookie jar the same day you brought it home and one day I come back from shopping and I looked and every dime of that money was gone but I didn’t get it and you know I didn’t get it.”

She’s gone well over her allotted time, and Wagoner starts singing his planned retort. But Parton doesn’t let up and starts speaking over him: “I didn’t get it. I don’t know who got it but I don’t want you packing it on me no more.”

Guffaws are audible from the crowd. All Wagoner can do is awkwardly laugh as he says, “Would you run – me by that one more time.”

Wagoner eventually recovers and the two cheerfully finish the song to applause. But for anyone watching, it’s clear who’s in control and whose song it is.

A year later, Parton left the show after writing the hit songs “Jolene” and “I Will Always Love You.” Her 1976 album, “All I Can Do,” was nominated for a Grammy for Best Country Vocal Performance, Female.

The rest – 25 No. 1 country singles, 10 Grammy awards, 44 Top 10 country albums – is history.

Turning the tables

Parton, who died on Aug. 25, 2026, didn’t simply tell jokes for cheap chuckles.

In my work as a scholar of country music, I’ve written about how female country artists from the mid-20th century to the 2010s deployed humor to elbow their way into an industry that has often been hostile to women.

Throughout the genre’s history, female country artists could be treated as window dressing for the male main attractions. And when women did achieve success, the industry could be quick to portray them as climbers who abandoned their country roots in pursuit of pop stardom.

Women also traditionally have had a harder time getting recording contracts and radio airplay. As recently as 2015, radio consultant Keith Hill controversially said that country stations should play mostly male artists, describing men as the “lettuce” and women as the “tomatoes” in a salad.

One way female artists fought back? By using humor to upend expectations about how women should behave.

In Lulu Belle’s comedic take on marriage in her 1939 song “I Wish I Was a Single Girl Again,” she plays the part of the female rube. By assuming the caricature of female hillbilly, she was able to do or say things that a conventionally respectable female character couldn’t.

Similarly, June Carter often played the unruly country girl who aimed her punchlines at male hosts and duet partners, including Johnny Cash. And in the uproarious “Got My Name Changed Back,” the contemporary trio Pistol Annies use humor to turn the pain of divorce into a celebration of female empowerment.

But few have ever wielded humor as deftly as Parton. She used quick-witted retorts and self-deprecating jokes as weapons to disarm audiences and shine a spotlight on double standards and gendered biases.

She often did this by making men the butt of her jokes.

Take two of Parton’s first commercial hits: “Dumb Blonde,” written by Curly Putman, and her self-penned “Something Fishy.”

In “Dumb Blonde,” Parton tells the story of a cheating man who, upon being confronted, angrily accuses her of being a “dumb blonde.” After announcing that “this dumb blonde ain’t nobody’s fool,” the song’s narrator triumphantly declares, “If there’s one thing this blonde has learned, blondes have more fun,” before walking away from the relationship on her own terms.

“Something Fishy” is another song about a cheater. Parton’s lyrics contrast the man’s thin lies about “going on fishing trips” with her suspicion of his infidelities.

“Something fishy is going on,” she says wryly, playing up the pun. The audience is in on the mockery of this dim-witted man, whose astute wife can see right through him.

Dolly’s world

In the same way that Parton took the spotlight from Wagoner during that televised duet in 1973 – and makes it clear who’s in control and who isn’t – Parton also took control of the narrative of her career. When critics questioned her commitment to country, she demonstrated that popular stardom and country authenticity were not mutually exclusive. When they condemned her ambition, she made no apologies for wanting more. When they tried to ridicule her look, she owned her Dolly image by means of her wit.

As Parton would often say, “It costs a lot of money to look this cheap.”

There’s so much in that line. For one, it’s hilarious. But it also signals that she intentionally crafted her campy persona, and that her calculated appearance also contributed to her wild success.

That was Dolly: self-deprecating, self-aware, self-assured and, yes – wickedly funny.

Stephanie Vander Wel, Associate Professor of Music, University at Buffalo

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

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Major flash floods on the Nepal-Tibet border have destroyed homes, roads, bridges and local hydropower projects. The flooding of the Bhote Koshi river is affecting 50,000 residents. More than 100 people are dead, with hundreds more, including international tourists, missing.

This region of the Himalayas had not yet recovered from the Bhote Koshi flooding in 2025 that killed nine people as it washed away a “friendship bridge” linking Nepal and China, disrupting trade and transport for months.

In Sri Lanka, recent floods and landslides struck affected communities that were still recovering from Cyclone Ditwah, which had caused widespread damage only nine months earlier. With little time to recover from the cyclone, communities had no protection from further flooding. More than 15,000 people have been directly affected and 6,800 people were displaced this August.

Disaster risk usually considers how severe the next flood, wildfire, cyclone or drought will be. But the Nepal and Sri Lanka examples show another dimension that is often overlooked: how quickly can a community recover and will it do so before the next disaster arrives?

A disaster rarely leaves a place exactly as it found it. Roads and bridges may remain damaged. Families may have spent their savings. Businesses may still be struggling. Governments can still be financing reconstruction, while hospitals and other public services remain under pressure.

If another hazard arrives before these systems have recovered, it does not encounter the same community that existed before the first disaster. It encounters a place with less resilience and a weakened infrastructure.

A useful way to understand this is through the recovery gap: the relationship between how long recovery takes and how much time is available before another damaging disaster occurs.

Imagine two communities experiencing similar floods. In one, the previous major disaster occurred ten years earlier. Homes have been rebuilt, infrastructure repaired and emergency resources replenished. In the other, another disaster happened only six months ago. Roads remain under repair, families are still displaced or in debt, and public authorities are still paying for reconstruction. The new flood may be physically similar in both places. Its consequences may not be.

Incomplete recovery can substantially increase long-term losses. A 2025 study of recurrent flooding in the Philippines that losses increased by 40% between 2000 and 2018 because of incomplete recover. This suggests that repeated disaster losses are not always simply additive. The first disaster can change the conditions under which the next one occurs and the effects of subsequent disasters can be much more severe.

Recovery has many clocks

Recovery is often described as if a community is either recovered or not, a simplistic binary. It’s more of a sliding scale. Electricity and freshwater supplies may return within days. A damaged road may take months to repair. Rebuilding homes can take years. Businesses may reopen while still carrying substantial debt. Household finances, ecosystems and mental wellbeing can recover on entirely different timescales.

A place can therefore look recovered according to one indicator while remaining highly vulnerable according to another.

It took more than a decade for New Orleans in the US to achieve substantial physical and structural recovery following Hurricane Katrina in 2005. While basic emergency operations and power restoration took weeks to months, full neighbourhood rebuilding, population stabilisation and major flood protection system upgrades spanned 15 years or more. And this was in one of the richest countries in the world.

Recovery is also unequal. Wealthier households may have insurance, savings and access to credit. Poorer households often have fewer resources to repair homes, replace belongings or absorb lost income. In the case of Hurricane Katrina, many poorer households who had hurricane insurance were refused payouts as the damage was deemed to be flood-related because of the burst levees and not by the hurricane. So, it is not only the time between disasters that matters. It is also how much recovery can happen during that time.

This issue becomes increasingly important where climate change alters the frequency or severity of weather extremes. If reconstruction requires five years but another damaging event occurs after two, the interval between disasters starts competing with the time needed to recover. That should change how we manage disaster risk.

Measure recovery, not only damage

Governments are generally good at recording immediate losses: damaged buildings, displaced people, destroyed infrastructure and financial costs. But they also need to know what remains unrepaired months or years later. Recovery monitoring needs to include housing, infrastructure functionality, business activity, household finances, public services and displacement. The question should not stop at “how much did we lose?” It should continue with “how much vulnerability remains?”

Disasters are not isolated occurrences. Floods, wildfires, droughts and storms are often assessed separately. These assessments are essential, but communities experience these hazards through the same infrastructure, economy and population.

The road damaged by one event may be needed for evacuation during the next. An electricity system weakened today may be supporting hospitals or water services tomorrow. Risk assessments should therefore consider plausible hazard sequences and the condition critical systems may be in when another disaster hits. This does not mean predicting the exact order of future disasters. It means abandoning the assumption that every new disaster meets a fully recovered system.

Recovery should not be seen only as the final stage of the disaster that just happened. It is also preparation for whatever comes next. Restoring infrastructure, supporting households and reopening essential services quickly can reduce the vulnerability carried into the next event.

But simply rebuilding the same vulnerable systems recreates the same risks. Recovery should therefore combine speed with adaptation: stronger infrastructure, better redundancy, improved emergency planning and greater support for communities that would otherwise take the longest to recover. Recent research shows that the government plays a critical role in ensuring rapid, efficient and effective recovery.

While asking “how severe could the next disaster be?”, we should also ask “how recovered will we be when it arrives?” Because the next disaster does not start from zero. It inherits what the last one left behind.

Taha Rezaei, Postdoctoral Researcher, Environment and Civil Engineering, University of Exeter and Mark Maslin, Professor of Earth System Science, UCL

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

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Trump pisses in Canada’s lake

The first troll is at it again. After placing a 50% tariff on Canadian goods, to which Canada responded with their own 50% tariffs while also rejecting Trump’s demand that all American packaging for Quebec be in English, Taco trolled Canada Tuesday morning with a post on Shit Social saying that his administration was “giving serious consideration” to renaming Lake Ontario to “Lake America.”

Trump’s base of yee-haw f–ers love this petty crap, like his executive order to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, but it doubles down on the fact that he is the bad guy in the situation. But then again, a–holes love being a–holes.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford, who seems to relish a good fight, dismissed Trump’s threat and said, “I think it’s a lot of rhetoric.”

Trump also said in his post that he did not “expect to be doing much business with Ontario any longer.” Ford pointed out that Canada is the “number one customer” for more than a dozen U.S. states.

Ford said, “We’re strong believers in being a sovereign country, and when President Trump wants to attack our sovereignty and attack our businesses and people in Ontario, I can’t roll over,” he said. “My job is to protect Ontario and Canada, and ironically, protecting the American people.”

On Monday, Ford made his own threats to Trump, and said he could cut Ontario’s power exports to U.S. states. Ontario’s power grid directly connects to Michigan, New York and Minnesota. Of course, those are blue states, so Trump may not care. Trump does not understand that it’s his job to protect the American people.

“We power 1.5 million homes and businesses. Everything’s on the table. I’ll do whatever it takes,” said Ford.

Ford called on both sides of the fight to bring down the temperature on Tuesday, acknowledging in an interview with CNN that “things got a little heated” between him and Trump. “Let’s negotiate a fair deal because it’s hurting the U.S. It’s hurting Canada, and we just want to make sure that we have a fair deal,” he said.

Ford said, “I do not understand why he wants to attack Canada nonstop. We’re the closest friends and allies, and make no mistake about it, Canadians still love the American people. They love the U.S.”

I’m not so sure about that.

CNN chief data analyst Harry Enten said on Tuesday that Canadians “hate, hate, hate the United States of America.”

Trump has “managed to pull a wonderful magic trick, that is take a longtime ally like Canada and all of a sudden, Canadians, they hate, hate, hate the United States of America,” Enten said on Tuesday’s broadcast of “OutFront.”

Enten noted polling that showed that Canadians’ net favorability rating of the United States stood at +13 points before Trump returned to office. But now, it has plunged to -33 points — a shift Enten described as “unbelievable” and “unprecedented.”

During Joe Biden’s presidency, 52% of Canadians expressed confidence in the American president, compared with 46% who did not. Under Trump, only 20% of Canadians say they are confident in the American president, while 79% are not.

Fact: most Canadians would call Donald Trump a “hoser,” and wouldn’t be caught dead sharing a donut and a cup of coffee with him at Tim Hortons. Only aboot 20% of them would give him the time of day.

Harry said, “Four in five Canadians are not confident in the president of the United States, and that is what is driving this dislike, dare I say hatred, that Canadians have in the United States overall.”

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It turns out that Donald Trump’s U.S.-Canada trade war will soon involve the weaponization of something dear to all Americans. Something that’s the thin white line between chaos and civilization. Something that’s the only thing that proves its value the second it’s gone.

Toilet paper.

Toilet paper prices will soon be going up, bigtime.

Using the bathroom or having a cry is about to become more expensive for North Americans as the US and Canada enter a full-fledged trade war that threatens to flush away decades of peaceful trading between the two nations.

After trade negotiations broke down between the two countries last weekend, Mark Carney, the Canadian prime minister, vowed to match US tariffs “dollar for dollar” and unveiled a list of nearly 900 American goods that will face 25% to 50% tariffs starting on 8 September.

Paper products are among the hardest-hit sectors, with Canada threatening to put tariffs of between 25% and 50% on “toilet paper or face tissue stock” from 8 September in retaliation for a 50% hike from Washington DC.

Though American toilet paper and tissues are often made domestically, they heavily rely on lumber-rich Canada for raw materials. Procter & Gamble, the owner of Charmin toilet paper, said last year that it would have to increase prices amid tariffs that were in place at the time.

The US imported $328m worth of toilet paper from Canada in 2024, according to the World Bank, making it by far the largest exporter of the product to the US. Retailers including Costco source much of their paper products from the country.

The US accounts for more than 20% of global tissue consumption despite having only 4% of the world’s population. The average American uses 141 rolls of toilet paper per year, making them No 1 for No 2s globally, just ahead of Germans, each using an average of 134 rolls annually.

It may soon seem like the bad, old days of Covid 19 or 1973.

The COVID-19 pandemic wasn’t the first time people emptied store shelves of toilet paper. In 1973 Americans created a toilet paper shortage after Tonight Show how Johnny Carson joked that there might be a toilet paper shortage. Although there was no widespread crisis at the time, millions of viewers rushed out to buy extra rolls, creating the very shortage they feared. During the COVID pandemic in 2020, panic buying stay-at-home orders, and a sudden shift from office to public restroom use to home use overwhelmed retailers, leaving shelves bare despite manufacturers continuing to produce large amounts of toilet paper.

History suggests that toilet paper shortages are often driven less by a lack of production than by psychology: once people believe supplies might run out, they stockpile, and the fear creates the shortage.

Some newspaper reports during COVID suggested some people resorted to using newsapers.

Now newspapers are dying and many are on-line and phones, laptops and PCs won’t do as replacements.

If toilet paper prices rise, the impact will be felt from Los Angeles, CA to Flushing, NY.

The weaponization of toilet paper may make Americans feel wiped out.

Because with toilet paper, you can’t just wait until things have bottomed out.

ID 49104194 ©
Vodickap | Dreamstime.com

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Donald Trump formed his own social network, Truth Social, in early 2022 after announcing his plans several months earlier. It is owned by the Trump Media and Technology Group and is an alternative to other social networks like Facebook and X. After the January 6th attacks on Congress, Trump had been banned by several social networks, and Truth Social provided him with a secure place to express himself. It was also felt that it would be a place where Trump followers and the MAGA Universe could go for information, often straight from the horse’s mouth.

However, because of its political and sometimes violent content, it was not available on Google Play and some other platforms. Though Trump would post on Truth Social multiple times a day and at all hours of the night, he could not always reach the audience he wanted, resulting in some financial problems for Truth Social. Early investors suffered significant losses and it was not ranked highly in terms of all social apps and websites. Surprisingly, some of the company’s funding came from firms in China and Singapore.

In July of 2026, Trump came up with a scheme to make some extra money from Truth Social. He allowed people or companies who subscribed to Truth Social and paid up to $100,000 monthly, to have advance access to posts by the president and others on the platform, that could affect the markets. On Truth Social, Trump would announce government policy, troop movements and military actions, and discuss other issues of concern to the nation. By providing this fast access to Truth Social that could move the markets, it allowed these preferred customers to have inside information to help direct their investment plans. This early access to people who paid a special fee was blatantly corrupt. But this did not appear to bother Trump nor his Department of Justice.

Trump was subsequently sued by some non-profits who labeled his manipulation of Truth Social as corrupt and unconstitutional. The suit filed by The Intercept Media and Freedom of the Press Foundation declared “There is no legitimate interest, let alone a significant one, in permitting President Trump to profit from selling government information.” Because this is a civil suit, Trump would not be criminally liable if the legal system did pursue him on this issue, which is not very likely. What does one more corrupt action by the president matter anyway?

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When the pandemic sent millions of knowledge workers home, many of them decided to stay home, just in a different city. Since 2020, nearly 4.9 million Americans have moved because of their remote jobs, according to JK Moving’s analysis of relocation data. The places absorbing most of that movement were not other major metros. They were mid-sized and smaller cities — places that had spent decades watching young professionals leave. Now those same cities are discovering that sudden growth comes with serious complications. Remote work migration, it turns out, is not just a win for the places that receive it.

A New Migration Pattern

Remote work migration is the large-scale movement of employees who, freed from office requirements, relocate to cities and regions where cost of living is lower, amenities are attractive, or family is closer. It differs from traditional labor migration because the move does not follow the job: the job follows the person.

The receiving cities have names that were once shorthand for affordable, livable, and manageable: Boise, Chattanooga, Asheville, Bend, Flagstaff. In the space of a few years, many of them became something else entirely.

What Is Driving People Out of Big Cities?

High costs are the primary push factor. Manhattan and San Francisco each lost close to 10 percent of their 25–54 age population between 2020 and 2021, according to U.S. Census data. That is not just demographic drift: it is a structural shift in where productive workers choose to live. Alongside economic forces, longer-term environmental pressures are reinforcing this trend: coastal and heat-exposed metros are losing residents to more temperate inland alternatives. Workers are not just leaving because it is cheaper elsewhere. They are also leaving because some large cities are becoming harder to stay in.

California’s Complicated Pull

California sits in an unusual position in this migration story. It has been one of the largest “sending” states, losing residents to Texas, Nevada, Arizona, and beyond, while simultaneously drawing new arrivals from elsewhere, particularly into tech-heavy corridors in the Bay Area, Los Angeles, and San Diego. The state’s labor market remains one of the deepest and most lucrative in the country, especially for remote-capable, high-income roles.

What Happens When the Moving Logistics Hit?

For many workers, the idea of moving to California is appealing right up until the paperwork starts. Sorting through shipping quotes, lease timelines, and state tax implications can feel manageable in the abstract; in practice, it often triggers a mini panic attack during a match of competing costs and deadlines, which is why people planning on relocating here for work tend to benefit from a structured guide before committing. Getting the logistics wrong in California, where deposits are high and lease terms are strict, can cost more than just money.

The state is still a destination, but the calculus has become more complicated. California added fewer workers overall between 2020 and 2023 than it had in comparable prior periods, even as certain sectors: technology, healthcare, and entertainment, continued to expand.

What Smaller Cities Are Gaining

The cities receiving remote workers have seen genuine economic gains. Tax revenues have grown. Restaurants and retail have expanded. Property values have risen. In some cases, long-stagnant downtowns have come back to life. Chattanooga, Tennessee, which invested early in gigabit internet infrastructure, became an early poster city for this transition, attracting digital professionals and young families who brought income and spending with them.

Is the Local Workforce Keeping Up?

The gains have not been evenly distributed. The local workers who staffed these cities before the migration wave, teachers, healthcare workers, service employees, and municipal workers, often earn wages tied to local pay scales that have not kept pace with the new cost of living. Flexible, platform-mediated work has expanded in these cities, but it has not replaced the stability and benefits that anchor middle-income households. The arrival of high earners lifts average incomes on paper. It does not automatically raise the floor.

The Housing Pressure Problem

Housing is where the pressure shows up most clearly and most quickly. When remote workers with San Francisco salaries start competing in the Boise or Asheville rental market, they do not experience local prices as unaffordable: they experience them as a bargain. For the people who already live there, the result is rapid rent increases that can displace long-term residents within a single lease cycle.

Research from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco found that remote work was responsible for more than 60 percent of total housing price growth between 2019 and 2021. Smaller cities with limited housing stock and slow permitting processes were especially vulnerable to this dynamic.

What Can Cities Do?

The honest answer is: not very much, quickly. Zoning reform, accelerated permitting, and public investment in affordable units are all effective over years, not months. Housing pressure in one city is not a local story: it connects to regional and national failures to build enough supply. Cities that received large remote-worker influxes without those tools in place are still working through the consequences.

The Balancing Act Smaller Cities Face

Remote work migration has genuinely revitalized places that needed revitalization. But it has also surfaced a tension that does not resolve itself on its own: growth driven by workers whose wages were set elsewhere tends to reshape a city for those workers, not for the people already there. The Economic Report of the President 2025, in its detailed chapter on how remote work is reshaping the economy, identifies the geographic redistribution of the workforce as one of the most significant labor market shifts of the post-pandemic period, one whose full effects on smaller communities are still unfolding.

Adjusting to Remote Work Migration

If you live in or lead one of these cities, the question worth asking is not whether remote work migration was good or bad. It is whether your community has the tools to channel the growth toward outcomes that work for everyone already there. That is a policy question, a zoning question, and an investment question, and the time to start answering it is well before the next migration wave arrives.

References:
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/ERP-2025/pdf/ERP-2025-chapter2.pdf
https://www.jkmoving.com/blog/residential-moving/remote-work-redefining-moving
https://www.frbsf.org/research-and-insights/publications/economic-letter/2022/09/remote-work-and-housing-demand/

Images:
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https://images.pexels.com/photos/6894221/pexels-photo-6894221.jpeg?
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https://images.pexels.com/photos/5847761/pexels-photo-5847761.jpeg?

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