CMR is the leading provider of funding and management support for small to medium-sized businesses and entrepreneurs 

Authored by J.B. Shurk via American Thinker,

Until then, it’s open season on all of us...

Reports last week confirmed that former special counsel Jack Smith “secretly arranged” to preserve evidence in his criminal cases against President Trump in order to maintain the threat of future prosecution once the president leaves office.  This is not a big surprise.  

Democrats have thrown every civic norm out the window in their ruthless efforts to target Trump’s businesses and send him to prison for life.

In his quest to imprison an American president, Jack Smith accused Trump of engaging in a conspiracy to “overthrow” the 2020 election, as well as retaining possession of classified documents after leaving the White House.  Both allegations are ridiculous, and Smith’s own words make him sound like a lawfare hitman and anti-MAGA zealot.  He told members of Congress in January, “Our investigation revealed that Donald Trump is the person who caused Jan. 6, it was foreseeable to him, and that he sought to exploit the violence.” 

 Smith stated emphatically that Trump committed “serious crimes.”

Serious crimes?  You mean like using the FBI to spy on all the Republican presidential primary candidates in 2015 and 2016?  Oh right, that was President Obama.  Or fabricating intelligence in order to justify a counterintelligence operation against candidate Trump?  Oh, that was Obama’s corrupt CIA director, John Brennan.  Or paying British Intelligence operatives to manufacture a fake “Russia collusion” dossier implicating Trump?  Oh, that was Hillary Clinton.  Or using the FBI and CIA to frame President Trump as a Russian spy?  Oh, that was Obama and Clinton, too.  Or sabotaging President Trump’s administration by using a Democrat spy on the National Intelligence Council to construct a false story about an innocuous phone call in order to trigger a bogus impeachment?  Oh, that was Intelligence Community Democrats attempting to hide Joe Biden’s corruption in Ukraine by, again, framing President Trump for a quid-pro-quo “crime” he never committed.  Or submitting fraudulent documents to the FISA Court in order to maintain spying operations against President Trump?  Oh, that was corrupt James Comey, corrupt Robert Mueller, corrupt Andrew Weissmann, corrupt Norm Eisen, corrupt Mary McCord, and their Democrat accomplices in the FBI and DOJ who covered up Obama’s illegal spying operations while framing President Trump as a criminal, spy, and traitor.

Listening to Jack Smith call President Trump a “serious” criminal sounds ridiculous when serious criminals Obama, Clinton, Brennan, Comey, and legions of their Democrat colleagues, subordinates, and co-conspirators in the DOJ, FBI, CIA, D.C. courts, and FISA Court (see Judge James Boasberg’s impeachable offenses) have never been properly investigated or punished for undermining President Trump’s election, sabotaging his administration, and framing him for treason.  The most powerful Democrats in the country organized a coup d’état in broad daylight and dragged the country through a barbed-wire field of partisan propaganda for the last ten years, and Jack Smith wants Americans to be upset that President Trump retained documents that he was entitled to possess?  It’s just such lunacy.  The constant gaslighting from D.C. operatives is equally infuriating and exhausting.

Glossing over the Democrats’ monstrous Russia Collusion Hoax, their relentless efforts to subvert the Trump-led government, and their continuing obsession with tossing the president in prison for imaginary crimes is bad enough, but Jack Smith does what all Democrats do: He pretends that the January 6, 2021, protest for election integrity was an attempt by Trump and his supporters to overthrow the government.  This lie is so brazen that it’s astonishing how Democrats can keep telling it with straight faces.

The people who showed up at the Capitol that day had one objective: to express their strong belief that mail-in-ballot fraud, violations of multiple states’ electoral statutes, and numerous voting discrepancies had tainted the 2020 election.  Several senators intended to make these very arguments before the certification of the election’s results.  The people who gathered outside the Capitol were exercising their First Amendment right to assemble peaceably.  They were unarmed.  Most had no criminal records.  A large number had served their country in various capacities.  Most who entered the Capitol walked around as tourists, took pictures, interacted in a friendly manner with Capitol Police, and posed no threat to anyone.

Only after law enforcement officers chose to fire flash-bang grenades on the assembled crowd did a section of the protest turn into something that could be described as a riot.  Trump supporters — not police officers — died on January 6.  Ordinary Americans exercising their constitutional rights were thrown into a state of fear of being hurt or killed.

Nevertheless, Smith continues to propagate the lie that the three-hour event at the Capitol was somehow the greatest threat to the country since 9/11, Pearl Harbor, and the Civil War (real comparisons that Democrat propagandists continue to make).  Smith and his fellow Democrats desperately wish for Americans to believe that a hot-chocolate-drinking gathering of grandparents, revelers, and veterans was somehow going to topple the government of the United States.  If a crowd of retirees is capable of overrunning Washington, what’s the point of a trillion-dollar military budget?

Smith’s perpetuation of the Democrats’ J6 propaganda is bad enough, but the fact that he treats that day as equivalent to the Civil War is all the more preposterous given that Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and their fellow Democrats openly encouraged Black Lives Matter domestic terrorists to burn down neighborhoods, loot businesses, and murder civilians throughout the summer of 2020.  If President Trump “caused Jan. 6” and the events of that day were “foreseeable” to him, then the violence and mayhem of 2020’s so-called “summer of love” were certainly foreseeable to Democrats.  The BLM riots of 2020 were the most costly in American history, and Vice President Harris encouraged Democrats to donate money to a bail fund that put arsonists, rapists, and murderers back on the street.

Were the Democrat-organized riots of 2020 “foreseeable”?  

Of course.  

Did prominent Democrats “exploit the violence,” as Smith accuses Trump of doing with January 6?  

They absolutely did. 

Biden and Harris ran for the White House on the message that the violence would end once they were elected.  

Will preening, self-righteous Jack Smith investigate, harass, arrest, or prosecute any of these Democrats?  Of course not.  Will Democrat rioters be tossed into pre-trial solitary confinement and refused bail by partisan prosecutors and judges?  Definitely not.  To this day, Democrats celebrate BLM and Antifa domestic terrorists as champions for civil rights.  When Democrats burn cities to the ground, the arsonists get statues.  When MAGA Americans protest for free and fair voting, they are condemned for crimes they never committed.

Unfortunately, this is how leftists all over the world now operate.  

Brazil’s communist President Lula has imprisoned his predecessor, President Bolsonaro, for supposedly trying to overthrow the government.  French President Macron has permitted his political opposition, Marine Le Pen, to be prosecuted and convicted for similarly bogus “embezzlement” crimes.  Germany has flirted with designating the popular anti-immigration party, Alternative for Germany, a “terrorist” organization and banning its candidates from running for office.  When the “wrong” candidate won Romania’s presidential election eighteen months ago, the country’s Constitutional Court annulled the outcome by blaming “Russian interference.”

If President Trump hadn’t possessed the financial resources and sheer grit to face down the onslaught of malicious and meritless prosecutions against him, he would likely be in a courtroom or a prison today.  If he hadn’t been re-elected a third time, January 6 defendants would still be awaiting trial or serving time in prison for an imaginary “insurrection.”

Screw Jack Smith.  He’s no lawman, and he has no principles.  He’s nothing but a corrupt propagandist, partisan hack, and lawfare assassin.

Nothing will change until prominent Democrats are prosecuted and convicted for their crimes.  Until then, it’s open season on all of us.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ZeroHedge.

Nearly 15 million Americans moved in 2025, with many relocating across state lines in search of lower costs, job opportunities, and warmer climates.

This map, via Visual Capitalist's Gabriel Cohen, shows net migration per 10,000 residents across all 50 states in 2025, revealing where population inflows were strongest and which states saw the biggest outflows.

The data comes from HireAHelper.

Southern and Mountain West states dominated the rankings for inbound migration, while several high-cost coastal states continued to lose residents.

The data reflects large-scale shifts happening in the country’s population distribution, both from the Eastern half to the Western half, as well as shifts away from more expensive states to cheaper, often inland ones.

The Mountain West Over the West Coast

In 2025, the Western half of the U.S. saw a continuation of post-COVID trends as people left behind coastal states like Washington (-10.7) and Oregon (-9.0) in favor of more inland Mountain West states like Wyoming (+26.0), Utah (+7.3), and especially Idaho (+63.2).

The data table below highlights the net migration loss/gain per 10,000 inhabitants in 2025:

The more populous coastal states, which have long been hubs for key economic sectors like tech and aviation, have seen a number of moves in recent years owing to jobs either relocating or shifting to remote work.

Nowhere on the West Coast saw a bigger drop than California, which saw a net migration loss of -25.1, as nearly 100,000 residents left behind the increasingly unaffordable state in favor of cheaper neighboring states like Nevada, which lacks a state income tax.

The Cost of Living Factor

California is not alone in losing people over affordability issues. If net migration trends are any indication, other high cost of living states such as New York (-28.2) and Massachusetts (-37.9) also increasingly shed residents.

A majority of the Northeast fared similarly, with all states but Delaware, Maine, and New Hampshire seeing more people leave than arrive in 2025.

And in the immediate region surrounding the nation’s capital, the states of Maryland (-27.4) and Virginia (-13.7) also saw negative net migration, likely reflecting in part the large reduction in the federal workforce seen over the course of the year.

The Rise of the Sunbelt

If one region is seeing across-the-board growth, it’s the South, led by states like South Carolina (+79.7), Tennessee (+43.6), and Alabama (+36.6).

Long one of the more economically depressed regions of the country, a combination of lower costs of living and nicer weather has led to rapid growth for southern “Sun Belt” states such as Arkansas and Oklahoma, to say nothing of massive favorites like Texas and the Sunshine State of Florida.

If you enjoyed today’s post, check out The Decline of Housing Affordability in the U.S. on Voronoi, the new app from Visual Capitalist.

It's no secret that some humanoid robotics companies are training their machines for work on factory floors, while others are positioning their bots to enter homes in the coming years.

One of the first real signs of humanoids entering homes today is a new cleaning service in San Francisco that uses what appear to be Unitree humanoid robots trained to clean everything from floors and countertops to stovetops, mirrors, and nearly any surface in the house.

Called "Gatsby," the new service deploys humanoid robots to homes for a flat service charge of $150.

"We just made U.S. history. Today, Gatsby ran the first-ever consumer cleaning by a humanoid robot in the United States," Gatsby wrote in a press release earlier this month.

The company noted, "We picked someone random off our SF waitlist, they booked a cleaning, we delivered the robot, and it cleaned their entire apartment on its own. No humans inside. This is the first of its kind in the U.S., and we're proud to be the pioneers writing this line in the history books today."

For the average deep clean of a typical U.S. home, the price ranges between $200 and $400, and for much larger homes, $500 or more, according to Angi List. This means the robotic cleaning service can even undercut an independent cleaner or a professional cleaning company, which often employs migrant workers.

News of Gatsby's cleaning service comes as shipments of humanoid robots are expected to ramp up this year and accelerate by the end of the decade, according to a recent UBS note.

The goal of tech firms is very clear: deploy these bots first on factory floors, in warehouses, and at logistics hubs, then move into consumer markets once the machines become reliable enough for home use.

Once these bots enter the consumer market, they will begin to chip away at demand for migrant labor and drive down household costs for services such as cleaning, cooking, laundry, and other chores, which have traditionally required human labor and can cost hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars per month.

Progressive ideologues in entertainment are well known for avoiding responsibility for their failures at any cost, which is what makes them incredibly dangerous.  Scapegoats are targeted for destruction while activists elude scrutiny so that they can bungle another project or institution, and another, and another.  On and on it goes; like a bacteria they travel from one organ to the next, breaking it down from the inside.  

This is what people like Stephen Colbert represent.

From 2019 to 2025 The Late Show lost approximately 25% of its peak viewership.  Much like Jimmy Kimmel and other midnight comedy programs obsessed with politics instead of telling jokes, Colbert lost any ability to make fun of his own side.  Instead, he became a propaganda mouthpiece for the establishment and a complete disgrace as a conduit for Covid hysteria and vaccine mandates. 

Whatever esteem he might have had as an entertainer was lost.  His career was now tied to woke activism and running interference for the "elites".  He likely believed that in a town like Hollywood this would cement his position and keep him safe from cancellation.  However, despite their grand theatrics as "soldiers of the revolution", Hollywood executives still love money. 

Colbert's show was losing around $50 million per year.  His bloated production crew of 200 people and ludicrous salary of $20 million per season created an annual filming cost of over $100 million.  Ad revenues for the show dropped from $121 million in 2018 to $70 million in 2024.  Keep in mind, there are thousands of creators on YouTube that do essentially what Colbert does with almost no budget, and they bring in a far larger audience.

One of the great group shots of "The Late Show" staff posing on stage: pic.twitter.com/L2oknhvyos

— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) May 22, 2026

There's no doubt that Colbert will go on to other productions well after the cancellation of his disastrous Late Show.  Hollywood has pedestalized the former comedian as a martyr for the great woke cause.  The corporate media has done the same, suggesting that the death of the Late Show will be looked on by historians as "Exhibit A" of Trump's "attack on democracy".  But, it's still a fact that he lost his show because he was losing vast amounts of money for CBS. 

The key to satire, and most comedy in general, is to shine a spotlight on hard truths while suppressing one's inherent bias.  The ability to throw one's own sacred cows on the pyre is what makes satirists famous.  One cannot be a propagandist and be a successful satirist at the same time.  One cannot be a court jester and be afraid to take the risk of making fun of royalty.

The royalty in Colbert's case is not Trump, but the progressive elite and Big Pharma.  Attacking Trump in Hollywood or New York presents no risk.  Poking fun at the woke mafia presents incredible risk.  Colbert has long been a coward in this regard.  He has, though, thrown perhaps the biggest toddler fit in recent memory over the end of The Late Show in an attempt to make the event as political as possible.    

Colbert will never be out of work completely.  Recent announcements have him writing on the script for Peter Jackson's next Lord of the Rings spin-off film (which is shaping up to be a disaster).  He also made a surprise appearance on the cable access show "Only In Monroe" with an average audience of 12 people, which is perhaps a venue more suited to his talents. 

The idea that Colbert has been censored by a vengeful White House is complete fantasy.  The claim that this is an "attack on democracy" is merely designed to inflame more leftist madness.  No one is entitled under the Constitution to their own late night TV show, especially when they're burning $50 million a year. 

Losing the respect of a large swath of the American public, though, makes it unlikely that Colbert will do well in any future project.  In the end, he will fade from memory as just another establishment shill.    

Authored by Murray Lytle via The Epoch Times,

Are Canadians less adventurous than they once were? It’s hard to argue otherwise.

Alexander Mackenzie was only 24 when the North West Company named him chief fur trader at Fort Chipewyan, in what is now Alberta. A few years later, in 1789 he travelled north along what is now known as the Mackenzie River to become the first European to reach the Arctic Ocean overland. Four years later he crossed the Rocky Mountains and was the first European to reach the Pacific Ocean, beating Americans Merriweather Lewis and William Clark by a full dozen years.

In 1898, Martha Purdy arrived in Dawson City to escape a failed marriage and make her fortune in the Klondike Gold Rush. It was while climbing the notorious Chilkoot Pass that she discovered she was pregnant with her third son. She later remarried and, as Martha Black, was the second woman to be elected to Canada’s Parliament. She was also a successful entrepreneur and a world-renowned expert on wild flowers.

Canadian history is filled with tales such as these. Explorers, soldiers, settlers, and other restless souls who endured great hardships and did great things.

There is a natural sense of awe that arises when retelling such lives filled with adventure. To our modern selves, they appear as fascinating aberrations, gifted men and women with unusual appetites for risky or dangerous undertakings. Their willingness to set out into the unknown strikes us today as thrilling, unnerving, and more than a bit foolhardy. But while their accomplishments may be striking, they lived in more adventurous times.

Today, society shrinks from adventure and the unknown.

Through a combination of practical circumstances, changing social standards, and dramatic shifts in individual risk tolerance and government behaviour, opportunities for adventure have been drastically curtailed.

How can Canadians get that sense of adventurousness back?

“An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered”, G.K. Chesterton once wrote. “An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.” There is a case to be made that adventures are simply harder to come by these days.

There are no more blank spaces left on maps, and hence no places for modern-day Mackenzies to discover.

The omnipresence of the internet and GPS similarly makes it almost impossible to get truly lost anymore. And if you do, help is usually close at hand.

Beyond these practical limitations, however, it seems incontestable that society today is less interested in promoting, facilitating, or participating in adventurous life experiences.

No one talks of running away with the circus or joining the French Foreign Legion anymore, even in jest. According to Statistics Canada, twice as many millennials are still living at home as was the case with previous generations. And if any of these young adults do go away, it’s more than likely to be an adventureless “gap year” holiday between graduate degrees recorded in minute detail on Snapchat and Instagram.

The perpetual childhood of today’s younger generations contrasts sharply with the youthful accomplishments of past eras. William Wilberforce, for example, was elected to the British Parliament at age 21 and then proved instrumental in ending the trans-Atlantic slave trade. His friend William Pitt became Prime Minister at 24, and spent his career fighting the French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, who became a general at 24. Quite a lot can be accomplished when one starts early.

Other factors that limit the availability of adventure in our post-modern era include the suffocating impact of the welfare state. When Mackenzie left his family home at 15 to become an apprentice in the fur industry, it was because he had little choice. He needed to make his way in the world as a teenager. The same urgency applied to Black when she decided to escape a failed marriage by travelling to the Yukon. With no government to hold your hand, adventure follows. Popular culture in earlier eras also did its bit as well by celebrating explorers and adventurers as celebrities in the same manner that we laud singers and athletes today.

Just as adventure was once regarded as a social virtue to be admired, society today aggressively enforces the opposite expectation—that it is our duty to avoid risk at all costs. In their 2021 book “The Coddling of the American Mind,” social psychologist Jonathan Haidt and lawyer Greg Lukianoff take a close look at the impact of a creeping safety culture on the behaviour of younger generations.

Children, the authors observed, are now deliberately shielded from any sense of risk or uncertainty. How can anyone—young boys most of all—learn about the world around them when school principals announce at the onset of every snowfall that “all snow must stay on the ground.” The ideal of adventure and resilience has been replaced by a debilitating sense of fragility and risk-avoidance.

So is the dream of looking over an untravelled horizon that animated people like Alexander Mackenzie or Martha Black completely dead in the 21st century? Not exactly.

Adventure should properly be considered a spirit, not a place.

It is driven by a powerful mixture of curiosity, necessity, and an openness to experiencing new things. And it can be found wherever uncertainty reigns. Today, that might entail travelling to strange lands, meeting new people, or even engaging in uncomfortable discussions about whether Alberta should remain part of Canada forever.

Wherever the unknown lies, adventure can be found.