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Visitors to downtown Sacramento expressed appreciation for the added security.

The trio’s tip spread, helping 19 others illegally rake in thousands.

The Real Threat To Young Americans' Jobs Isn't AI. It's The National Debt...

Authored by Ken Buck via The Epoch Times,

The rapid proliferation of artificial intelligence and supercomputing technologies has many Americans worried about the future of their careers. In a survey last month, more than half of U.S. workers expressed concern that AI could take their job or the job of a family member. Another survey in December found that almost 60 percent of young people believe AI poses a threat to their job prospects.

Americans are not naive. They realize that fast-evolving technologies will disrupt how we do business, just like the Industrial Revolution replaced blacksmiths and the horse and buggy. Many young people, particularly, are already pivoting toward “AI-proof” career fields that promise long-term stability.

However, while concerns about AI automation have dominated headlines and sucked the oxygen out of the room, a bigger, more immediate threat to Americans’ job prospects and wages continues to go virtually ignored: That is the crowding-out effect of the rising federal debt on private investment.

Our national debt is not a theoretical boogeyman. It’s a bona fide job-killer that is impeding economic growth and driving up costs on everyday families. And it will only get worse the longer it is ignored.

An analysis by Ernst & Young projects that on the 2025 debt path, which has accelerated in the current fiscal year, the United States will lose over 1 million jobs by 2035, 2.7 million by 2055, and 3.6 million by 2075. These losses will disproportionately impact young people, who are more sensitive to labor market conditions.

At the same time, evidence indicates that the “crowding-out” effect of the national debt—whereby the high cost of servicing the debt pushes investment into Treasury bonds instead of private, job-creating capital—will reduce income growth by 16 percent between now and 2055.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office pegs that number even higher. A 2023 report estimates that the rising debt will cut income growth by a third, or more than $14,000, over the next three decades. It notes that every dollar of federal borrowing causes a 33-cent reduction in private investment.

In other words, our national debt and the interest costs that accompany it are stifling job creation and wage growth, and the situation will only get increasingly worse as our federal debt load continues to balloon.

What’s more, the interest on our national debt—which costs about $2.8 billion per day and is projected to grow to nearly $6 billion per day by 2036—is driving up borrowing costs for consumers, exacerbating the affordability crisis. A Yale Budget Lab report found that every 1-point increase in the permanent deficit relative to GDP adds between $600 and $1,240 per year in loan costs for the median U.S. home.

Sadly, young people bear the worst of these job losses, wage stagnation and borrowing cost increases. Last August unemployment among 20- to 24-year-olds peaked at over 9 percent, more than double the general rate of 4.3 percent. Since 2023, younger Americans’ job-market optimism has fallen 23 points, similar to the Great Recession—which caused millennials to earn about 20 percent less over their careers, with roughly half the wealth of their parents at the same age.

Coupled with Social Security’s 2032 depletion date, all these factors are squeezing young workers from every angle: disappearing jobs and lower wages today, and a shrinking safety net tomorrow.

Our massive national debt and the significant costs it imposes on ordinary Americans is a problem of Washington’s own making. It will take leaders with political courage to address it—leaders who are willing to say no to reckless spending our country can’t afford, even when it may cost them their job.

Government spending builds dependence on the welfare state and obstructs private-sector growth, consolidating power. A powerful government that “provides” for all, picks winners and losers, and usurps personal liberties.

There’s only one problem: This socialist vision doesn’t work. It never has. That’s because government doesn’t create wealth; private enterprise does. As Winston Churchill famously explained, “The inherent vice of Capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.”

Young people are not wrong to worry about the economic disruptions AI could bring about, but our out-of-control national debt is the bigger, more pressing elephant in the room. And we cannot afford for lawmakers to kick the can down the road.

Tyler Durden Sat, 08/01/2026 - 13:25

Paul Skenes’ ho-hum 2026 season took an ugly turn Friday night. 

“The working assumption is that it is Iranian threat actors,” Annie Fixler, director of the cyber and technology innovation center at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told JNS.

From Charli XCX to Lorde, scroll through to see all the biggest performances of the weekend.

From Charli XCX to Lorde, scroll through to see all the biggest performances of the weekend.

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Wilson was reportedly fired from the heavy music metal group after performing with them for 28 years.

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Verizon Blames 'Human Error' For Burying A Jack Smith Subpoena From Congress

Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and fifteen colleagues sent a letter to Verizon on Thursday demanding the telecom giant explain how a 2023 grand jury subpoena tied to Jack Smith's "Arctic Frost" investigation vanished from its own paperwork for more than two years - only to resurface after the company chalked the omission up to "human error."

The letter, addressed to Verizon CEO Dan Schulman, is the latest turn in Grassley's monthslong excavation of Arctic Frost - the Biden-era FBI/DOJ probe-turned-Trump-prosecution that has already produced a House criminal referral for Smith himself, revelations that his team accessed the actual text messages of 44 lawmakers, and now a fight over what one of the country's largest phone companies knew and sat on.

What Subpoena?

Back in October 2023, Grassley asked Verizon to search its files for every DOJ or federal law enforcement request touching Senate devices between January 2016 and October 2023, part of his long-running Crossfire Hurricane oversight. Verizon wrote back that it generally keeps legal process on file for four years and had no records predating October 2019.

What it didn't mention: a May 25, 2023 grand jury subpoena issued by Smith's Arctic Frost team for senators' phone toll records, including two numbers belonging to the Senate Sergeant-at-Arms.

Congress didn't learn the subpoena existed until 2025, when Verizon told Grassley's office the 2023 omission came down to "human error." Grassley isn't satisfied with that. His new letter wants to know whether Verizon actually found the subpoena during its 2023 search and stayed quiet, or genuinely missed a live federal legal demand sitting in its own compliance files for two years.

Two of the numbers swept up in that May 2023 subpoena weren't just any senators' lines - they belonged to the Senate Sergeant-at-Arms. Under a contract Verizon signed with the Senate in May 2022, that's supposed to trigger automatic notice to the SAA any time a Senate device or line gets subpoenaed. Grassley's letter effectively asks how a contractually mandated notification simply never happened.

There's also a significant timing gap to explain. The gag orders that typically accompany these subpoenas run about a year. If a standard gag applied here, it would have lifted by mid-2024 - well over a year before Verizon finally volunteered the "human error" explanation in 2025. Once free to speak, nothing stopped Verizon from coming forward. It didn't, until Grassley's office came asking.

What Grassley wants - and by when

The letter, co-signed by Investigations Subcommittee Chairman Ron Johnson (R-WI) and fourteen other senators, demands Verizon:

• Disclose the exact dates Schulman, Hans Vestberg, Craig Silliman, and Vandana Venkatesh were first told about the May 2023 subpoena
• Turn over internal records from May 2023 through October 2025 discussing whether Verizon believed it had a duty to notify Congress or the SAA
• Explain, in more than two words, what "human error" actually means

Verizon has until August 13 to respond. (Schulman only took over as CEO in October 2025, meaning he wasn't at the helm for either the original subpoena or Verizon's flawed 2023 response - which is exactly why senators want to know precisely when he was personally briefed.)

Twelve of the sixteen senators who signed the letter - Grassley included - had their own phone toll records or text messages swept up by Smith's investigators. For most of the people demanding answers here, this isn't abstract oversight.

Other Carriers In The Crosshairs

Verizon isn't the only carrier under scrutiny. Grassley and Johnson's joint oversight has identified more than 400 Republican individuals and organizations swept into the broader Arctic Frost dragnet - including, per Grassley's disclosures, Turning Point USA, founded by the late Charlie Kirk. Separately, the two chairmen have tallied 84 Arctic Frost-related subpoenas sent specifically to Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile, ten of which sought toll records for 20 sitting or former GOP members of Congress.

Notably, Verizon complied with Smith's subpoenas while AT&T pushed back - a contrast Senate Judiciary Republicans have highlighted approvingly. The subpoenas were accompanied by gag orders signed by Judge James Boasberg, an Obama appointee who has repeatedly clashed with the Trump administration on unrelated matters. The House Judiciary Committee, under Chairman Jim Jordan, has opened its own parallel probe into the telecoms.

Smith, for his part, has called the entire controversy overblown, maintaining his office's collection was lawful and noting that special counsel Robert Hur similarly obtained President Biden's toll records, and that DOJ under Trump's first term seized phone records belonging to Reps. Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell.

Last month we reported on DOJ records showing Smith's team bypassed the department's own privilege-screening "filter team" and directly accessed text messages between 44 members of Congress - from both parties - and Trump White House officials including Mark Meadows and Kash Patel, in apparent tension with Smith's own sworn testimony that his office sought "just toll records." Weeks later, House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan escalated matters further, referring Smith to the Justice Department for possible criminal prosecution over the same records dispute.

Verizon's August 13 deadline will determine whether this becomes another entry on Grassley's growing pile of unanswered questions, or the start of the same reckoning AT&T and T-Mobile executives already faced before the Judiciary Subcommittee earlier this year. Either way, sixteen senators - a dozen of whom found their own names in Jack Smith's files - aren't inclined to let it drop.

Tyler Durden Sat, 08/01/2026 - 12:50

What was supposed to be the highlight of a 40th-wedding anniversary cruise turned into a nightmare when a Connecticut man was dragged underwater and mauled by a shark.