Evidence-Based Information and Analysis
Laurel Fitzhugh— Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, July 2025
Bessent’s admission came during a policy panel on the Trump administration’s new “savings accounts for children.” Stripped of euphemism, this is about privatizing Social Security—the bedrock retirement program serving nearly 70 million Americans. The implications are staggering.
Clinoptilolite zeolite shows safety in medical use, detoxifying toxins while sparing nutrients and supporting gut, immune, and antioxidant function.
In July 2025, Congress passed what President Trump called the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” allocating an unprecedented $165 billion over the next decade to the Department of Homeland Security.[1] The massive funding surge, justified as essential for border security and national defense, has triggered what industry observers describe as a contractor “gold rush”—with companies flooding DHS agencies with proposals while normal competitive bidding processes are bypassed in the name of urgency.
Seven months into this spending spree, a clear pattern has emerged:
When María Branyas Morera died in 2024 at the age of 117, she was the world’s oldest living person. Scientists studied her in extraordinary detail, uncovering genetic, metabolic, microbial, and epigenetic clues that reveal how health and extreme age can coexist.
A friend recently made some important points about violence in America. He’s right that we’re seeing widespread nihilism – people losing faith that life has meaning or that their actions have positive consequences. The question is: what created these conditions? When people work full-time jobs that still leave them one emergency away from homelessness, something breaks down inside. The nihilism makes sense when legitimate paths to security are blocked off.
After a decade of community organizing, Corpus Christi City Council rejected a massive desalination plant that would have forced residents to subsidize industrial water supply while facing drought restrictions themselves. The September 4, 2025 decision came after a contentious 13-hour meeting with multiple arrests, ending a project whose cost estimates had exploded from $160 million in 2019 to $1.2 billion.
People who make sunscreen at home can assess its effectiveness using simple testing methods. UV-sensitive beads and construction paper tests provide practical ways to compare homemade formulations against commercial products and verify UV protection performance using basic materials and direct sunlight exposure.
When politicians abandon their signature policy names, they signal fundamental problems they will not or cannot solve. Trump’s team quietly stopped calling his major legislative package the “One Big Beautiful Bill” and falsely rebranded it as “Working Family Tax Cuts” because the old name is now political poison. This is political desperation masquerading as strategy.
Successful political movements don’t rebrand their victories. The New Deal remained the New Deal, and the Great Society kept its name. Trump built his political identity around being a master problem solver but, sadly, people are finding their problems increased. It contradicts his core claim to competence.
This follows a predictable pattern: when you cannot fix the underlying problem or product, you change what you call it and hope messaging can overcome reality. Standard, last ditch corporate strategy.
DOGE’s “efficiency” agenda is expanding federal spending, not contracting it. This article dives into how cuts and restructuring under DOGE are driving record costs to Americans.
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