<If you live in California, how much you pay for electricity will soon be tied to much you earn. A state law passed last summer requires the California Public Utilities Commission, or CPUC, to approve a pricing structure that incorporates a flat fee with a sliding scale based on income.

Currently, Californians pay for the energy they use and the cost of upgrading the grid, settling lawsuits related to wildfires and providing assistance to low-income customers is built into the per-kilowatt-hour price.

Under the new system, however, funds for these programs would come from "income-graduated fixed charges."

Proponents say the change is needed because, as energy prices continue to increase in the state, poorer households are seeing a bigger chunk of their paychecks going toward repairing California's aged energy infrastructure.

It's an unprecedented move: In an April blog post, energy economist Ahmad Faruqui said more than 170 investor-owned utilities nationwide incorporate a fixed rate -- the median being $10 and the highest $40.

None has an income-based component.

Legislators left exactly what this new system would look like -- and how customers' income would be verified -- up to the CPUC, which put the call out for proposals.

The law affects customers of California's three largest investor-owned utilities -- Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric. Combined, they service approximately three-quarters of the state.

The utilities jointly proposed a plan that would "support affordability and increased bill stability," according to their testimony to the CPUC.

It incorporates four income tiers, starting at the federal poverty level for a family of four. Because they're different sizes and cover different regions, each company would charge their customers a different dollar amount.

The retail price for electricity in California is among the highest in the nation. In March, the average per-kilowatt-hour rate was about 27 cents, almost double the national average.

With a fixed charge in place, SCE estimates its customers' per-kilowatt-hour rate will decrease by about a third, KTLA reported.

SDG&E customers, who pay the highest price for electricity in the continental US, will reportedly see their rate drop by 42%.

"This is really about taking our existing rates and really changing how electricity is priced for customers," SDG&E senior vice president Scott Crider told KPBS. "To make it simpler, to make it more predictable and to really create that saving for low-income customers."

Lower- and middle-income customers will see savings right away, Crider said. Many high-earners will eventually benefit, he added, as the popularity of electric vehicles and heat pumps increases.

But Faruqui warned the plan would punish customers who use less electricity, especially higher earners.

"They would be penalized for using less energy, which is the opposite of the state's goal to use energy efficiently," he wrote. According to Faruqui's calculations, a household in the highest bracket now paying $50 a month would see their bill soar 140%.

"Millions of customers fall in this category," he added. "Many spent thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars, to make their house energy efficient and to supply it with self-generated solar energy. Their investment will be rendered wasted."

Andrew Gong is a research engineer with Aurora Solar, a software company that develops rooftop and commercial photovoltaic systems.

Gong said it would be "unfortunate" if the power companies' costlier plan was chosen, "but we're not worried."

"It may take longer to pay back, but solar will still be a good value for most homeowners," he added.

The commission is looking at almost a dozen proposals. The Utility Reform Network (TURN), a nonprofit advocacy group, pitched a more modest flat fee that would average out to about $36 a month for all customers.

The Sierra Club's proposal would come to, on average, $28 for PG&E customers, $37 for SCE customers and $30 for SDG&E customers. The environmental group has historically opposed flat fees.

"It discourages energy conservation and efficiency," Sierra Club attorney Rose Monahan told Canary Media. "And if you have a high fixed charge, it can discourage people from investing in rooftop solar or a battery."

Whatever system is chosen, it could be in place by 2025: According to a spokesperson for the CPUC, an administrative law judge should issue a decision on the proposals in the first quarter of 2024. The CPUC board then has until July to approve the plan or come up with its own.>

<Former President Donald Trump has been indicted in Florida for obstruction of justice, false statements, violations of national security laws, and other crimes. The place he is being prosecuted in is very telling, and a sign that prosecutors view the case as a slam dunk and that Trump actually committed the crimes he has been charged with.

Under federal venue rules, Trump could probably have been indicted in Washington, DC, instead. That’s where federal prosecutors bring weak cases against Republicans, because juries in Washington DC contain typically contain 11 Democrats and 0 or 1 Republican. Judges in Washington, DC are overwhelmingly Democratic appointees, and some of them are radicals. Left-wing DC juries have convicted even innocent Bush administration officials of crimes, while letting even guilty Democratic lobbyists off the hook.

By contrast, a jury in Florida will include Republicans, so it won’t railroad Trump. The judge currently assigned to Trump’s case is a Republican, and the South Florida judges the case might be reassigned to are not radicals (even the Democratic judges in the district in Florida where Trump has been indicted mostly received a “blue slip” from Florida’s Republican senators, meaning they had to be mainstream liberals, not radical leftists, to get a “blue slip”).

Among the charges are that Trump allegedly directed aide Waltine Nauta, who is also charged, to move boxes of classified docs to hide them from the FBI, the Grand Jury, and his own attorney. He also allegedly suggested his attorney “hide or destroy “ the documents. That is a straightforward obstruction of justice. He then allegedly made false claims to a grand jury and the FBI about whether he turned over all the records, while withholding many of them.

As a leading Republican lawyer, who helped select a Republican vice presidential candidate, notes,

I would add that the decision to bring the indictment in ‘the Southern District of Florida] instead of trying to forum-shop this to D.D.C. where it would be difficult for a Republican to get a fair jury trial independently suggests a great deal of confidence in the strength of the case: why have a venue fight if you can win anywhere? I’d be more open to the idea that this was a political hit job if it were in D.D.C., or if Trump had actually used the last two years to follow the law and cooperate with DOJ like the cases of other politicians and inadvertent retention and they still charged him. In short, Romney is right, and the evidence against Trump is likely going to pull the rug out from under you if you go out on a limb defending him and attacking Smith and Garland here. Hold your powder dry until you see what the case looks like.

As NPR reports:

The federal indictment of former President Donald Trump in the classified documents probe has been unsealed.

The indictment lays out 37 federal charges against Trump, including obstruction and unlawful retention of defense information for storing dozens of classified documents at his Florida resort and refusing to return them to the FBI and the National Archives.

Also named in the indictment is Walt Nauta, a former presidential aide to Trump who remained in his employ after Trump left office. Nauta faces six charges.

Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith defended his team’s work and emphasized the seriousness of the charges.

“Our laws that protect national defense information are critical to the safety and security of the United States, and they must be enforced,” he said.

Smith also noted that the defendants “must be presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law,” adding that the special counsel’s office will seek “a speedy trial on this matter consistent with the public interest and the rights of the accused.”....>

<....Here is a summary of the counts, which are listed starting on page 28 of the document embedded below:

Willful retention of national defense information: This charge, covering counts 1-31, only applies to Trump and is for allegedly storing 31 such documents at Mar-a-Lago. Conspiracy to obstruct justice: Trump and Nauta, along with others, are charged with conspiring to keep those documents from the grand jury.

Withholding a document or a record: Trump and Nauta are accused of misleading one of their attorneys by moving boxes of classified documents so the attorney could not find or introduce them to the grand jury.

Corruptly concealing a document or record: This pertains to the Trump and Nauta’s alleged attempts to hide the boxes of classified documents from the attorney.

Concealing a document in a federal investigation: They are accused of hiding Trump’s continued possession of those documents at Mar-a-Lago from the FBI and causing a false certificate to be submitted to the FBI.

Scheme to conceal: This is for the allegation that Trump and Nauta hid Trump’s continued possession of those materials from the FBI and the grand jury.

False statements and representations: This count concerns statements that Trump allegedly caused another one of his attorneys to make to the FBI and grand jury in early June regarding the results of the search at Mar-a-Lago.

False statements and representations: This final count accuses Nauta of giving false answers during a voluntary interview with the FBI in late May.

According to the indictment, each one of those charges carries a maximum fine of $250,000, with maximum prison sentences between five and 20 years.

<Former President Donald Trump’s indictment on charges of mishandling classified documents is set to play out in a federal court in Florida. But hundred [sic] of miles away, part of Trump’s defense is well underway in a different venue — the halls of Congress, where Republicans have been preparing for months to wage an aggressive counter-offensive against the Justice Department.

The federal indictment against Trump, unsealed Friday, includes 37 counts, including allegations that the former president intentionally possessed classified documents, showed them off to visitors, willfully defied Justice Department demands to return them and made false statements to federal authorities about them. The evidence details Trump's own words and actions as recounted by lawyers, close aides and other witnesses.

The Republican campaign to discredit federal prosecutors skims over the substance of those charges, which were brought by a grand jury in Florida. GOP lawmakers are instead working, as they have for several years, to foster a broader argument that law enforcement — and President Joe Biden — are conspiring against the former president and possible Republican nominee for president in 2024.

“Today is indeed a dark day for the United States of America,” tweeted House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, soon after Trump said on his social media platform Thursday night that an indictment was coming. McCarthy blamed Biden, who has declined to comment on the case and said he is not at all involved in the Justice Department’s decisions.

McCarthy called it a “grave injustice” and said that House Republicans “will hold this brazen weaponization of power accountable.”

Republican lawmakers in the House have already laid extensive groundwork for the effort to defend Trump since taking the majority in January. A near constant string of hearings featuring former FBI agents, Twitter executives and federal officials have sought to paint the narrative of a corrupt government using its powers against Trump and the right. A GOP-led House subcommittee on the “weaponization” of government is probing the Justice Department and other government agencies, while at the same time Republicans are investigating Biden’s son Hunter Biden.

“It’s a sad day for America,” Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan of Ohio, a leading Trump defender and ally in the House, said in a statement on Thursday evening. “God bless President Trump.”

Arizona Rep. Andy Biggs was more strident. “We have now reached a war phase,” he tweeted. “Eye for an eye.”

Democrats say the Republicans are trafficking in conspiracy theories, with potentially dangerous consequences. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, both Democrats from New York, issued a joint statement Friday urging calm around the Trump case, saying everyone should “let this case proceed peacefully in court.”

Recent Republicans rhetoric “not only undermines the Department of Justice but betrays the essential principle of justice that no one is above the commands of law, not even a former President or a self-proclaimed billionaire,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee.

Key elements of the GOP strategy are to discredit the prosecutors and investigate the investigators — a playbook that Republicans employed during Trump’s presidency as his own Justice Department probed his connections to Russia, and also used in April when Trump was charged in a hush money investigation in New York.

In the days leading to the New York indictment, House Republicans laid out a full-on campaign against Alvin Bragg, the Democratic district attorney in Manhattan who brought the case against the former president....>

<....Charging that the prosecution was “pure politics,” Jordan held a field hearing near Bragg’s New York offices to examine what they said were his “pro-crime, anti-victim” policies. Jordan is also the top Republican on the weaponization subcommittee.

As special counsel Jack Smith was preparing this week to release the indictment, Trump's allies on Capitol Hill were working overtime to prepare the defense of the former president. Jordan issued a series of letters to the Justice Department, demanding documents related to his investigation into Trump’s handling of classified records. Jordan cited the recent report by special counsel John Durham that found that the FBI rushed into its investigation of ties between Russia and Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and routinely ignored or rationalized evidence that undercut its premise.

In the June 1 letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland, Jordan requested information about the ongoing investigation in order to “ensure any ongoing investigations are not poisoned by this same politicization.”

Just as the indictment was unsealed on Friday, Jordan sent another letter to Garland, this time laying out testimony from a former FBI official who testified to the committee about the raid at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. The Ohio Republican wrote that Steven D’Antuono, a former assistant director at the FBI’s Washington Field Office, told the committee the Justice Department “was not following the same principles” as previous raids.

Defending Trump also has the potential to ease tensions among House Republicans as they face their own troubles on Capitol Hill, after a conservative-led revolt over the recent debt ceiling deal divided the party this week and halted most legislation from passing on the floor.

But even if Republicans are able to shape public perception of the probes, there is one thing they cannot do — control the outcome of Trump's trial. The former president is at great legal risk, no matter what the public believes, under two indictments — and potentially more as prosecutors in Georgia and Washington investigate his actions leading up to the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Still, some Republicans maintain that the multiple indictments could help Trump improve his standing in polls of Republican voters and solidify the impression that the government is conspiring against him.

Republican Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina told CNN she believes the indictment “handed Donald Trump the nomination” in the 2024 GOP primary.

And as the House panel has ramped up its efforts to defend the former president, the word “weaponization” has taken root among Trump’s Republican allies. Nearly every GOP lawmaker used the term — as did a member of Trump's legal team hours before the charges were unsealed to the public.

“It puts a stamp of reality on something that really is unreal in terms of the weaponization of the Department of Justice,” said James Trusty, one of Trump’s lawyers, on ABC Friday morning. Trump announced later in the day that Trusty was leaving his team.

Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas tweeted that “the weaponization of our Department of Justice against enemies of the Biden admin. will do enormous damage to the rule of law & have a lasting impact.”

Cruz’s GOP colleagues in the Senate were more muted, with Republican Leader Mitch McConnell and others who have criticized the former president declining to weigh in on the indictment.

Republican Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, the only GOP senator to vote to convict Trump in both of his impeachment trials, was a rare voice of criticism. While Romney stressed that Trump is entitled to presumption of innocence, he said he believes the charges are serious and Trump brought them on himself.

“These allegations are serious and if proven, would be consistent with his other actions offensive to the national interest,” Romney said.>

<Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA.), an ally of former president Donald Trump, told a Republican crowd that Trump’s indictment was an indication that Democrats are trying to ensure that the GOP will “never win elections again.”

Greene posted a snippet of her appearance in a tweet that referred to the 37 charges against Trump as “phony,” citing supposedly ignored, alleged evidence against President Joe Biden. She used the indictment to rile up the crowd, stating:

“You should be outraged. … But let me tell you something: it’s going to get worse. It is not going to get better. It’s going to get worse because they are going to continue. They don’t want you to ever win elections again. They do not want you to ever be able to pick who you want to live in the White House and run this country, or hold any other political office. They don’t want you in charge. They want to be in charge.”

Greene shared the clip on her Twitter account.

When the indictment was unsealed, Greene called the 37 counts “election interference.”

She also appeared on Fox News’ The Ingraham Angle last night pushing the theory that the charges came down the same day as a distraction away from the Biden story and calling the Trump indictment a “hoax.”>

<Last year, production at American factories increased — and so did the production of factories themselves.

According to data from the Census Bureau released last week, construction spending by U.S. manufacturers more than doubled over the past year. For April 2023, the annual rate reached nearly $190 billion compared with $90 billion in June 2022, with manufacturing accounting for around 13% of non-government construction.

The US government has offered billions of dollars in subsidies for the production of electric vehicles and solar panels to compete with countries such as China and to fortify US leadership in sectors including clean energy. According to the World Bank, China makes up around 30% of global value added from manufacturing, about double the U.S. Over the last few decades, Asia has taken up a greater share of global factory manufacturing.

Factories are being constructed everywhere from deserts to resort towns as the U.S. tries to bring back manufacturing of goods commonly imported from lower-cost countries. Many battery and electric vehicle factories have popped up in the Rust Belt, while solar panel and renewable energy factories now span much of the South and Southeast.

The U.S. has added around 800,000 jobs in manufacturing employment over the past two years, employing around 13 million workers per the May Bureau of Labor Statistics jobs report. However, according to the National Association of Manufacturers, the manufacturing skills gap — caused by the labor market's struggle to find workers with highly technical and manual expertise — could lead to 2.1 million unfilled jobs by 2030.

Manufacturing, though, has accelerated its move back to the US from other countries over the past year. According to Kearney's 2022 Reshoring Index, 96% of American companies have shifted production to the US or are evaluating reshoring operations — a spike from 78% in the 2021 index.

The sudden rise in factory construction corresponds with passage of the CHIPS and Science Act in July 2022, which provided $280 billion in funding to boost manufacturing of semiconductors, as well as the Inflation Reduction Act in August 2022. The IRA has sought to create new jobs in manufacturing, construction, and renewable energy, estimated to create up to 1.5 million jobs by 2030.

Construction spending in most areas of the US economy has fallen in contrast, including office, health care, and educational construction. Residential construction has also declined amid a big cooldown from the pandemic housing market boom.

Census Bureau data reveals manufacturing construction spending has escalated from January 2020 until April 2023 in every region except New England and the Mid Atlantic.

While the spending boom could lead in turn to a future manufacturing boom, the new factories need to actually get built first. Much of this spending may go toward legal setbacks or delays from the National Environmental Policy Act, requiring projects with federal involvement to conduct environmental impact reviews.

Some Chinese companies have recently moved supply chains out of the country, following in the footsteps of some Western countries following the 2018 trade war with China. Tensions with the US and rising costs have pushed some Chinese companies to look to India, Thailand, and Vietnam for manufacturing.>

<Former President Donald Trump on Saturday lashed out at the criminal indictments that were filed against him by United States Department of Justice Special Counsel Jack Smith.

Trump wrote at 10:22 a.m.:

AMERICA WENT TO SLEEP LAST NIGHT WITH TEARS IN ITS EYES. SOMEDAY SOON, HOWEVER, IT WILL BE ABLE TO WIPE AWAY THOSE TEARS AND SMILE, BIGGER THAN EVER BEFORE, FOR WE WILL HAVE DEFEATED THE RADICAL LEFT MARXISTS, FASCISTS, COMMUNISTS, LUNATICS, & DERANGED MANIACS, & CLEARED THE PATH TO PUT AMERICA FIRST & THEN, QUICKLY, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!

<Now that my favorite president, Donald Trump, is facing a 37-count indictment from the feds, I join with my brothers and sisters in MAGA, and with all sensible Republicans, in saying this: I’m not sure I want to live in a country where a former president can wave around classified documents he's not supposed to have and say, “This is secret information. Look at this,” and then be held accountable for his actions.

I mean, what kind of country have we become? One in which federal prosecutors can take “evidence” before a “grand jury,” and that grand jury can “vote to indict” a former president for 37 alleged “crimes”? Look at all the other people out there in America, including Democrats like Hillary Clinton and President Joe Biden, who HAVEN’T been indicted for crimes on the flimsy excuse that there is no “evidence” they did crimes. THAT’S TOTALLY UNFAIR!

It’s like Republican Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin wrote in a tweet Friday: “These charges are unprecedented and it’s a sad day for our country, especially in light of what clearly appears to be a two-tiered justice system where some are selectively prosecuted, and others are not.”

What kind of country holds a president accountable for alleged crimes a grand jury charges him with?

Or as Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn tweeted: “Where are the investigations against the Clintons and the Bidens? What about fairness? Two tiers of justice at work.”

GOP sticking with Trump: Trump indicted again, and STILL Republicans flock to support him. Sad!

TWO TIERS! One tier in which President Trump keeps getting indicted via both state and federal justice systems and another in which the people I don’t like keep getting not indicted via all the things Fox News tells me they did wrong.

It’s like America has become a banana republic, as long as you do as I’ve done and refuse to look up the definition of “banana republic.”

Regardless of the Trump indictment, it's clear this is all Biden's fault

And of course, you know who’s behind this travesty of justice, right? It’s so-called President Biden, who is both frail and senile and also a laser-sharp master at conducting witch hunts.

Sure, they’ll tell you the indictment came via a special counsel investigation, and that the federal special counsel statute keeps such investigations walled off from political influence. But that’s complete nonsense, unless we’re talking about special counsel John Durham, who was appointed by Attorney General Bill Barr while Trump was president and tasked with investigating the NEFARIOUS LEFT-WING CRIMES committed in the Trump-Russia probe. Durham was above reproach, and the fact that the New York Times reported he “charged no high-level F.B.I. or intelligence official with a crime and acknowledged in a footnote that Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign did nothing prosecutable, either” is something I will ignore....>

<....This is a WITCH HUNT, and I believe that because Trump said so!

Current special counsel Jack Smith, on the other hand — he’s bad news. I know this because Trump has said repeatedly that Smith’s investigation is a witch hunt, and I’ve never known Trump to lie about anything.

Keep in mind, in 2016, Trump said: “I’m going to enforce all laws concerning the protection of classified information. No one will be above the law.”

So after he said that, you expect me to believe he didn’t protect classified information? Just because, according to the indictment, there’s a recording of him holding a classified document in his office at his club in Bedminster, New Jersey, and saying to two staff members and an interviewer: “See, as president I could have declassified it. … Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret.”

Winners of Trump indictment: The former president and Joe Biden. DeSantis? Not so much.

You call that “damning evidence,” I call it, “What about Hunter Biden’s laptop?”

Putting Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and Hunter Biden in prison? Now THAT makes sense! Now I can already hear all the libs out there whining and saying that if it was Biden or Hillary or Hunter getting indicted, I wouldn’t be saying a word about two-tiers of justice or the weaponization of the department of justice or anything like that.

Well, those whiners would be right, but the difference is I believe Biden and Hillary and Hunter are all guilty and should be locked up for life, whereas with Trump, I believe he is great and innocent and the best president America has ever known.

It’s like this: If Hillary got indicted for murder, I would say, “Yes, she is absolutely a murderer. Lock her up.”

But if in some outrageous scenario President Trump was indicted for murder just because he told a bunch of people that he did a murder, I would say: “HOW DARE YOU CHARGE THIS MAN WITH MURDER WHEN OTHERS IN THE U.S. HAVE NOT BEEN CHARGED WITH MURDER! THERE ARE CLEARLY TWO TIERS OF JUSTICE, ONE IN WHICH MY FAVORITE PRESIDENT, WHO SAID HE MURDERED SOMEONE, IS CHARGED WITH MURDER AND ONE IN WHICH PEOPLE WHO HAVEN'T MURDERED ARE NOT CHARGED WITH MURDER!”

And that, my liberal friends, makes perfect sense to me and my MAGA companions. So watch out. The Trump Train’s a comin’.>

<"Our generation has no expectations," says 24-year-old Yin.

The medical student, who only wanted to share her last name, has a licence to practise, and is pursuing a graduate degree, hoping to get a job at a big hospital. But she is not sure it will help. Degrees, once highly valued in a competitive Chinese job market, have lost their sheen as graduates have outpaced jobs.

"Now, a graduate degree is worth what an undergraduate degree was some time ago. In the future, PhDs will be as good as a graduate degree is now," Ms Yin says.

The disillusionment is echoing through young people in China, where a fifth of those between the ages of 16 and 24 are jobless, according to official figures released in May. And it's finding expression in viral memes inspired by a famous short story from more than a century ago. The tale of Kong Yiji, a failed scholar who lived in poverty, has now become a code word for discontent among millions of graduates confronting a bleak future.

These memes - or Kong Yiji literature as they are known in Chinese - run into the hundreds, and can be found on nearly every social media platform in the country. They range from comments, drawing on literary metaphors, to whole rewrites of the tale. The latter have taken the form of an animated video and even a rap song - the last was a step too far for Beijing, which scrubbed it from the internet.

The man and the meme

Ms Yin finds the state's reaction to the memes hypocritical.

In one commentary, state broadcaster CCTV said students should "take off the long gown", referring to a crucial element of the story, perhaps its most abiding detail. The "long gown" worn by Kong is what divides the rich and the learned from the uneducated poor who wear "short jackets". So CCTV's advice, it appears, was that students should swallow their pride, discard the long gown, and find whatever jobs they can.

"They said our future would be bright and beautiful, but now we have discovered that our dreams have been shattered," Ms Yin says, adding that until now, young Chinese had always been told that the years spent studying and chasing degrees would pay off.

For her and so many others, the similarities with Kong are striking although his story takes place in what is widely believed to be late 19th Century Qing-ruled China. Kong, we are told, failed the "keju", a gruelling imperial exam to enter the prestigious bureaucracy. Without what was then the only channel for social mobility, Kong is forever cast to the side. His story has endured as a scathing criticism of the system - and is now resonating with yet another generation of Chinese, jobless and frustrated by an exam culture that is just as exacting.

The Kong-inspired memes first appeared on Weibo, China's version of Twitter earlier this year.

"I thought education was a stepping-stone. But I have gradually realised that it's a pedestal from which I can't come down, and long-gowned Kong Yiji couldn't take off," one Weibo user said.

They blew up in mid-March when CCTV published their take, blaming Kong's tragic life on his failure to adapt, and find whatever job was available. And yet it insisted that "the Kong Yiji-era has gone, and ambitious young people will never again be stuck in the long gown".

Angry young people reacted with a flurry of posts and comments, pointing to what they saw as wrong and unjust: the mismatch among education and jobs, the lack of a safety net for the unemployed, and the shrinking options for social mobility. Some likened the CCTV response to "gaslighting".

China changed

"If a single university student cannot find a job, perhaps he is to blame. But unemployment among undergraduates is so high. Can we blame them all for not taking off Kong Yiji's long gown?" asked a user on the Quora-like platform Zhihu.

She was among several people who spoke of the many years Chinese students spend studying - time, they now felt, they had been cheated of, and if they gave up their dream, what was even the point of it all?

"People live like ascetics for 10 years or more to educate themselves well," wrote another Zhihu user. "They don't do much for fun and rarely interact with the other sex. Their families spend a lot of money, buying houses in good school districts or sending their children abroad to study."

"A low salary is not the scariest thing. The lack of social welfare protection and opportunities to acquire new skills is," he added.....>

<....Their comments repeatedly expose the gaping holes in China's safety net - of its urban workers have [sic] unemployment benefits. They also reflect dawning gloom over not just their future, but their country's.

In the words of one user: "Can someone from a humble background achieve great success? I am afraid it is rather difficult now… Wealthy people are not even in the same lane as us."

For decades, an unspoken social contract has assured power for the party in exchange for prosperity. But now China's economy is faltering after decades of breakneck economic growth. And young Chinese who grew up watching their parents succeed are struck by how much seems to have changed.

"When I was a child, my dad found a career and worked hard. He was confident in his future and looked forward to it," says 25-year-old Wang Yuxi. Her own excitement at making it to graduate school has now turned to disappointment. How would she describe her prospects? "Whatever".

"Our parents staunchly believed a good job equals success," Ms Yin says. "Now, we have found that they experienced a period with opportunities. We no longer have those opportunities."

China is expecting a record 11.5 million graduates this year. Already some 60% of 100-odd leading companies have reportedly said they will be hiring fewer graduates. The government is well-aware of the challenge: the growing "anxiety, disappointment and confusion of university students" may affect the economic confidence of society, an official report said back in November 2022.

While the frustration and disappointment was already visible on social media last year, Kong Yiji has lent it a fresh poignancy.

The 'top sage'

The story was written in 1919 by Lu Xun, a Chinese literary giant often compared to Dickens and Orwell. Lu's biting critiques of feudalism and oppression are familiar enough for them to turn into viral, even subversive memes - and yet safe enough from the censure of the Party.

How do you silence the work of a man the Party has canonised? Leader Mao Zedong called him the country's "top sage".

Students might complain of his difficult style, but he still "remains in the recess of the mind", ready to strike a chord when the time right, says Eileen Cheng, a Chinese literature professor at Pomona College in the US.

"Lu was a radically independent spirit... an outspoken critic of government brutality and [he] opposed the suppression of individual voices."

The Party, scholars say, manages Lu's legacy by arguing that his criticism was directed at a bygone China because he had died well before the People's Republic was founded in 1949.

But now after years of reading him as part of Communist lore, students are finally "questioning Lu Xun's canonical status" and using his texts in subversive ways, says Professor Sebastian Veg of the School for Advanced Studies in Social Sciences in Paris.

As the space for dissent in China shrinks, the legendary Lu Xun it appears, is finally breaking through.>

<Americans are tipping less often for a variety of services, demonstrating a steady decline over the last few years, according to new data from Bankrate released this week.

Also, two-thirds (66%) of the survey's respondents have a negative view about tipping, including 41% saying they feel like businesses should pay their employees better rather than relying so much on tips. And, people are feeling annoyed about pre-entered tip screens (32%), sharing that the present tipping culture has gotten out of control (30%), and noting they would be willing to pay higher prices if they could do away with tipping (16%), and being confused about who and how much to tip (15%), according to Bankrate’s report.

Ted Rossman, Bankrate’s senior industry analyst, says in his opinion, what’s causing negative tipping views for the past year is the economy.

"The biggest change, within the past year at least, is that inflation is leaving people with less money to go around," Rossman tells FOX Business. "A lot of people seem to feel like things cost enough already, so they’re not as likely to tip on top of that.

Also, he says the "groundswell of appreciation" for service industry workers that was evident early in the pandemic seems to have faded.

"But we were seeing a tipping decline even before the pandemic. It seems like the ‘tip creep’ that’s occurring – being asked to tip for things that didn't warrant a tip – is annoying a lot of people."

Tipping is becoming increasingly ingrained in our society and workers depend on it, says Rossman.

"Consumers aren’t going to want to pay higher prices, and if you don’t tip generously, you’re hurting the worker, not the business," he says.

The tipping acceptance topic with regard to food items often involves the type of service and can include sit-down dining, quick-service stops and delivery services.

"I think everyone should be tipping 20% at a sit-down restaurant, unless the service is really bad," Rossman tells FOX Business. "Many waiters and waitresses make as little as $2.13 per hour (the federal tipped minimum wage), with tips expected to boost their compensation."

Rossman cites from research that just 65% of sit-down restaurant diners always tip, down from 77% four years ago, and he notes that only 44% tip at least 20%, down from 50% last year.

"I think we should always tip for delivery, too. The exact figure depends on the size of the order – for example, instead of a percentage, it might make sense to tip something like $5 for a pizza," Rossman adds.

Consumers may not know that a service or delivery fee often doesn’t go to the delivery person.

"I don’t think you should feel compelled to tip if you’re picking up takeout. That was more of a thing during the pandemic when sit-down dining was shut down," he continues.

Bankrate’s study suggests high inflation and unease about the economy contribute to stingier consumers.

"I understand that money is tight for a lot of people, but I’d also note that tipping often involves discretionary expenses," Rossman says. "Honestly, if you can’t afford to tip 20% for sit-down dining, you probably shouldn’t be going to that restaurant. When tipping is customary, like it is at restaurants, I think consumers need to build these costs into their budgets."

Rossman does think that sometimes the tip creep goes too far.

"I was recently asked to tip by a self-checkout machine at Newark Airport. I also don’t like how Hopper, the online travel agency, asks for tips when people book travel on their website. I’ve even heard of some doctors’ offices asking for tips," Rossman says. "These all feel like overreaches and blatant revenue grabs."

According to Rossman, tipping should be more of a reward for service, and is often expected when someone is serving you food or carrying your bags.

"It’s not usually for self-service or highly paid professionals such as doctors," he says.

And, in his view, pre-populated tip screens can be awkward.

"Because the cashier is often looking right at you when you decide whether or not to tip them, and customers behind you in line might be snooping too," adds.

The amounts are also very strategic. They typically are 10%, 15% and 20% or 20%, 25% and 30%.

A lot of people tip in these instances out of guilt.

"Starbucks, for example, says half of its customers who pay with credit and debit cards leave a tip," reports Rossman. "These pre-entered screens shift the tipping dynamic from needing to actively decide to tip (like putting spare change or a couple bucks in a tip jar) to actively declaring that you don’t want to tip (which isn’t always easy on those pre-entered screens). I suspect a lot of people don’t really want to tip for something like a coffee or food truck order, but they’re guilted into it, and then they feel bad afterward....>

<....The survey reports that people said they would tip better during and after the pandemic, but that hasn’t really lasted, says Rossman.

"At present, 14% of Americans say they’re tipping more than they did prior to the pandemic, and 9% say they’re tipping less," he explains. "Other components of our survey point to a marked decline in the frequency of tipping for various services. Every single category is down from the recent past."

Bankrate’s report outlines that Americans are tipping less often for numerous services, demonstrating a steady decline over the last few years. According to its research, Gen Zers (ages 18-26), millennials (ages 27-42), and men stand out for being the worst tippers across multiple service categories.

In general, Rossman says, older Americans tend to be better tippers.

"I think this is mostly because they have more money, but also perhaps because they’re more ingrained with the social norms surrounding tipping," he says.

This pattern continues across the majority of other services, with differences in how Gen Zers, millennials and men in particular tip hair stylists/barbers, food delivery people and taxi/rideshare drivers, says Bankrate.

The study reports that "While 53% of U.S. adults who have a hair stylist/barber always tip them, just 24% of Gen Zers, 40% of millennials, and 46% of men always do so, compared to 60% of women, 67% of Gen Xers, and 70% of baby boomers."

Similarly, 50% of U.S. adults who order food delivery always tip the delivery person, but just 31% of Gen Zers, 42% of millennials, and 45% of men do the same, compared to 54% of women, 63% of Gen Xers, and 62% of baby boomers, Bankrate’s study reports.

Finally, according to the study, while 40% of U.S. adults who ride in taxis/rideshares always tip the driver, just 22% of Gen Zers, 30% of millennials and 36% of men always tip them, compared to 45% of women, 51% of Gen Xers, and 56% of baby boomers.

Tipping culture general feedback, according to the study, says 30% of U.S. adults overall say that tipping culture has gotten out of control, with the tendency to feel this way increasing for older generations and higher earners. Thirty-three percent of Gen Xers and baby boomers agree with this sentiment about tipping culture, compared to 27% of millennials and 22% of Gen Zers.

Forty percent of those in the highest-earning households (earning $100,000-plus annually) say tipping culture has gotten out of control, according to Bankrate’s data, compared to 34% of those earning between $80,000 and $99,999 annually, 33% earning between $50,000 and $79,999 annually and 23% in the lowest-earning households (earning less than $50,000 annually).

And, benevolence surely still matters, as the study says that 35% of people say they feel good when they leave a generous tip.

Bankrate's survey was conducted May 3-5, 2023, with a sample size of 2,437 U.S. adults.>

<Even Dan Rather, 91, believes Donald Trump has a good shot at taking the White House!

In a recent interview, the iconic journalist shared his thoughts on the ex-president's attempt at retaking office in 2024.

"I don't think anyone in the press kids themselves — and no one in the public should kids themselves — should he be the Republican nominee, once again, he can win," Rather said.

"I'm not predicting he will win, but I'm simply saying it would be foolish to say, 'Oh, well, after all these things that have gone under the bridge, what we now know about President Trump, he couldn't possibly win.' I would say be careful. I don’t think that’s the case," the former CBS reporter explained.

Rather then discussed the controversial town hall CNN held for Trump last month.

"I think it's clear it was a mistake to do the kind of quote 'town hall' unquote that CNN put on," he spilled. "It allowed straight out propaganda. It was an unpaid political commercial."

In the same interview, the legendary news correspondent also touched on the firing of Tucker Carlson from Fox News after the network settled their lawsuit with Dominion Voting Systems for $787 million.

"Given the situation of the lawsuit, it's no surprise that Tucker Carlson lost his job because in the end, what it was about — beginning to end — was all about money," he stated. "As long as Tucker Carlson turned out considerable revenue and great profits for Fox and the Murdoch operation, he would be exceptionally well paid himself and would be seen as a valuable, if not the most valuable property that Fox had."

"The second it became about big money, even by Murdoch standards — a billion dollars or anything approaching that — then no surprise that Tucker Carlson became expendable. Having said that, I want to emphasize that what I know about the inner workings and decision making process in the tiers of Fox News could be written on the stomach of a germ, which is to say, I don't know much about it, but I think it is pretty obvious that it, in the end, it was about money and Tucker Carlson paid the price," Rather concluded.>

<The federal charges against Donald Trump will test his supporters’ tolerance for the growing scandals weighing on his White House comeback bid, as Republican rivals look to wrest the 2024 nomination from the former president.

Trump, who leads other GOP candidates by double-digit margins, assailed the indictment by a Florida grand jury as politically motivated.

“This is nothing but a disgusting act of Election Interference by the ruling party,” he said in a fundraising appeal to supporters that echoed the grievances that spurred Republicans to back him in the past.

The long list of allegations against Trump have not deterred his base in the past. The former president enjoyed a surge in fundraising and standing in polls among primary voters in April, after he was indicted in a Manhattan court over alleged hush money payments to adult-film actor Stormy Daniels.

Trump’s first in-person response to the charges is expected to come at Republican state conventions he’s scheduled to attend on Saturday in Georgia and North Carolina.

Yet the 37-count indictment over his alleged mishandling of classified documents — unsealed by the Justice Department on Friday — marks a significant escalation in his legal exposure and cuts to the heart of his competency to be commander in chief. That opens a lane for Republican rivals to offer themselves as an alternative to his third bid for the Oval Office.

What remains to be seen is whether Trump will again be able to execute what is now a familiar play: deflect grievance onto his adversaries and away from his actions.

For now, key Republicans are lining up behind Trump in calling the charges an abuse of power by President Joe Biden. Trump’s top competitor in the GOP race, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, railed against government overreach, while House Speaker Kevin McCarthy — facing his own revolt from Trump loyalists on Capitol Hill — tweeted that Thursday was a “dark day for the United States of America.”

Biden said Thursday he hadn’t spoken to the Justice Department about the case.

The charging document paints a picture of a former president who knowingly flouted the strict procedures surrounding classified documents designed to protect the nation’s security. Federal prosecutors allege that Trump willfully deceived the government and pressured his aides and attorneys to do the same.

The indictment includes the transcript of a recording of Trump at his New Jersey golf club showing off military documents that he calls “secret” and acknowledging that they were classified.

The case represents a stark contrast with the presidential campaign that Trump waged in 2016 against Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, whom he accused of endangering the nation’s secrets by using a private email server for official work when she was secretary of state.

It’s too early to tell whether Republican primary voters, who have so far been fiercely loyal to Trump and his populist policies, have the stamina to keep standing by their man.

Trump will be campaigning for the nomination weighted down by a trial early next year on the 34 felony counts in Manhattan and awaiting trial in the documents case. In August, he’s potentially facing more indictments in Georgia over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results there.

News of the federal indictment erupted just days after one-time allies, former Vice President Mike Pence and ex-New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, entered the GOP race with sharp criticism of Trump’s penchant for drama and fitness for office.

“This is irresponsible conduct” that’s “particularly awful for someone who has been president and who aspires to be president again,” Christie, a former US attorney, said in a CNN interview after the indictment’s release.

Trump’s actions as laid out by prosecutors are “damning,” he said. “And that’s what I think we as a party should be looking at.”

Pence stopped short of attacking Trump on Friday, hours before the indictment was unsealed.

“The American people will be able to judge for themselves whether this is just the latest incident of weaponization and politicization at the Justice Department, or if it’s something different,” he said on the Hugh Hewitt Show.

While it’s unclear if Trump’s legal woes will impede his path to the Republican nomination, they are sure to give pause to the independents and moderate GOP voters he would need to win a general election.

Doug Heye, a Republican strategist and frequent Trump critic, said candidates should jump at the chance to weaken Trump’s campaign.

<There are plenty of reasons why Republicans are running for their party’s presidential nomination. For most, winning isn’t one of them.

That’s why it’s pretty ridiculous for media outlets to refer to them as “White House hopefuls.” They are “White House hopefuls” in the same way that a three-year-old riding a bike with training wheels is a “Tour de France hopeful.”

It would be more accurate to describe most of them as “book deal hopefuls” or “VP pick hopefuls.” And then there are a few candidates whose motivations are true mysteries.

Take Doug Burgum, the governor of a place called North Dakota, who announced his candidacy this week.

Doug Burgum?

Chances are that most North Dakotans don’t even know who he is. In fact, there is a decent chance that distant and not-so-distant cousins at large family gatherings walk up to him and say things like: “It’s Dave, right?”, “I’ll have another lemonade when you get a chance,” or “Aren’t you the dermatologist from Fargo? Can you look at this mole?”

However, there is one Republican whose candidacy is the most puzzling of all because he has absolutely no chance of winning: Mike Pence.

There is no conceivable reason for him to join this race. He doesn’t need a higher profile. In fact, considering the way MAGA Republicans feel about him, he should probably lay low for a few more years. He just wrote a book, so it’s not about that. And, let’s face it, there is no other person on this planet who is less likely than Pence to become Donald Trump’s vice presidential nominee.

There really is only one conceivable explanation: A higher power must have told him to run. That means either some deity Pence prays to, or “Mother.” Our money is on the latter on account of her being real.

Now, you may ask yourself, how it is possible that winning the GOP nomination is more difficult for Pence, a former vice president with a direct link to God, than for… whatever the Dakota guy’s name was.

That’s because Dave Burgum merely has to prove to Republican primary voters that he is an actual human being, that North Dakota is a place, and that he is, umm… governing it.

Then, once that has been accomplished, all that is left for him to do is convince about 40-50 percent of them that he is more worthy to be president than the orange messiah they have been worshiping for seven years.

Easy-peasy.

Pence’s challenge is a lot more daunting.

His main problem is that the voters he needs to win do know that he exists, but they wanted to hang him a couple of years ago.

Therefore, the first order of business for his campaign has to be to quell that murderous rage so many of them felt toward Pence.

After that, the only thing left to do is to get these voters to abandon Trump, i.e., the man on whose behalf they wanted to kill Pence, and support the former vice president instead.

Oh, actually, there is one more thing: Pence has absolutely nothing to offer to Republican primary voters, and nobody likes him.

That’s not just us talking, by the way.

Here are some of the things Republican voters participating in focus groups had to say about the former vice president:

“He has alienated every Republican and Democrat, … It’s over. It’s retirement time.”

“He just needs to go away.”

“He’s only gonna get the vote from his family, and I’m not even sure if they like him.”

So, what’s in it for him? No idea. Maybe he likes eating corn dogs in Iowa fairgrounds or chatting up folks in New Hampshire diners.

Or, and this would be our favorite scenario, this is all some WWE-style plot where he is trying to get revenge on Trump for January 6. For example, he could hit him with a folding chair on the debate stage. Now that would be entertaining.

Apart from that, it seems absolutely pointless for him to run.

There is one more possibility: Maybe there is a God who does have a plan for the former vice president and we are all about to find out that the Lord really does work in mysterious ways.

After all, the title of Pence’s autobiography is So Help Me God.

But, to be honest, even that may not be enough.>

<John Eastman, an architect of Donald Trump’s last-ditch bid to subvert the 2020 election on Jan. 6, is about to go on trial — but not in a criminal court.

Rather, the attorney is fighting to save his California bar license from authorities who say he repeatedly breached professional ethics — and possibly the law — in his bid to keep a defeated Trump in power. And those proceedings, while not as prominent as the Jan. 6 select committee or as potentially punitive as a criminal prosecution, are slated to elicit some of the most revealing and comprehensive testimony from figures who aided Trump’s effort to derail the transfer of power.

That’s because Eastman and the California State Bar have amassed witness lists that include figures who have rarely spoken publicly about Jan. 6 but may hold valuable evidence — including Eastman himself, who is listed as a potential witness by the state bar’s trial counsel and by his own defense team. Their lists also include other high-profile figures, like former Bush administration lawyer John Yoo and Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, who are slated to testify as experts about constitutional law or election administration.

Eastman’s list features Kurt Olsen, a lawyer who spoke with Trump multiple times on Jan. 6 and who helmed legal efforts to unravel the election results in multiple states; Peter Navarro, the former Trump trade adviser who authored discredited reports on election integrity during the final weeks of 2020; Kurt Hilbert, a lawyer who worked on Trump’s post-election litigation in Georgia; Linda Kerns, a lawyer who worked on Trump’s post-election lawsuit in Pennsylvania; former Georgia State Sen. William Ligon; Doug Logan, the CEO of far-right election “audit” firm Cyber Ninjas; and Russell Ramsland, who was involved with a review of voting machines in Antrim County, Michigan, that became the source of pro-Trump conspiracy theories.

Trump talked to Olsen three times Jan. 6, 2021, including twice in the evening for a total of 21 minutes, according to White House logs obtained by the Jan. 6 select committee. But the content of those calls, as Congress was poised to reconvene after the riot had been largely pacified, remains unknown.

Meanwhile, the state bar plans to call its own notable list of witnesses, beginning with Greg Jacob, who on Jan. 6 was counsel to then-Vice President Mike Pence. Jacob tangled with Eastman in the days before Jan. 6 over Eastman’s claim that Pence could single-handedly prevent Congress from certifying Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 presidential election.

That theory is at the heart of the state’s case to punish Eastman on 11 professional charges, which include failure to support the laws and Constitution, seeking to mislead a court, misrepresentations to other Trump aides and the public, and moral turpitude.

“It is no overstatement that democracy stood on the precipice. Had Vice President Pence followed [Eastman’s] baseless advice … the country would have plunged into a ‘profound constitutional crisis,’” writes Duncan Carling of the California State Bar’s office of trial counsel in a pretrial brief. “[Eastman] and Trump’s plan violated our Nation’s most fundamental commitments to the rule of law and the orderly transition of power. And it rested upon transparently false claims of election fraud that continue to harm our democracy to this day.”

The bar proceedings, including a pretrial conference Monday and two weeks of testimony later in the month, are an example of the myriad forms of accountability facing those in Trump’s orbit Jan. 6 — particularly lawyers, whose roles are often shrouded in the murky domain of legal advice and attorney-client privilege. Though national attention has been riveted to the potential prosecutions of Trump and his allies in Washington and Georgia, state bars have also been marshaled to pursue investigations of these matters and in some cases have produced much quicker results.

For example, amid pressure from bar authorities in Colorado, Trump attorney Jenna Ellis admitted in March that she had repeatedly misrepresented evidence about the integrity of the 2020 election. Rudy Giuliani’s law license was suspended in December after D.C. bar discipline proceedings resulted in a finding that he violated professional ethics and rules. And former Justice Department attorney Jeffrey Clark is awaiting similar proceedings in Washington, which were cleared to proceed last week after an eight-month delay....>

<....Eastman spent the final weeks of the Trump administration stoking false claims of election fraud in order to put pressure on GOP-led state legislatures to appoint alternate slates of presidential electors. In Eastman’s view, those alternate slates would form the basis of a dispute that only Pence could resolve Jan. 6, when he presided over the joint session of Congress to count electoral votes and finalize the results of the election.

But no state legislatures agreed to appoint those alternate electors. Instead, in five states, groups of pro-Trump activists signed false documents claiming to be legitimate presidential electors — but without the backing of their state governments, which had certified the results in favor of Biden. Eastman would ultimately change tack, arguing that the false electors presented enough of a controversy for Pence to decide which ones to count — or at the very least refuse to count Biden’s votes and call for a delay in finalizing the election to permit those GOP-run states to revisit the outcome.

Jacob and Pence fiercely rejected that strategy, which they contended would require violating several provisions of longstanding election law with no credible evidence to support reversing the outcome.

But Eastman, undeterred, fought with Jacob even as rioters — infuriated by Pence’s refusal to acquiesce to Trump’s pressure — ransacked the Capitol. Jacob testified to the Jan. 6 select committee about his interactions with Eastman, even as the riot raged, and his email correspondence with Eastman from that day formed some of the most compelling evidence about Eastman’s efforts. Jacob has also testified to a federal grand jury in Washington.

Efforts by the Jan. 6 select committee to obtain Eastman’s emails from his former employer, Chapman University, also resulted in one of the most remarkable court rulings of the post-Jan. 6 era: A federal judge’s determination that Eastman and Trump likely conspired to obstruct congressional proceedings and defraud the public. That ruling, by California-based jurist David Carter, was part of long-running litigation that gave the select committee access to thousands of Eastman’s emails, including some after Carter applied the “crime-fraud” exception to attorney-client privilege.

In addition to Jacob, the California bar counsel plans to call election officials from five states, including Benson and Stephen Richer, the county recorder of Maricopa County, Ariz. The bar authorities also plan to call at least two constitutional experts to cast doubt on the legitimacy of Eastman’s interpretation of the law and Constitution.

Eastman has tapped Yoo to argue about his interpretation of the 12th Amendment. Carling indicated in a recent filing, however, that Yoo sat for a May 26 deposition and provided testimony that undercuts some of Eastman’s claims.

Carling and his colleagues are asking the judge presiding over the case, Yvette Roland, to prevent Yoo from opining on Eastman’s advice to Pence, which Yoo has already said in a deposition he was unprepared to delve into.

Roland has already agreed to prohibit at least some of the testimony of another expert Eastman intended to call, former Washington federal appeals court Judge Janice Rogers Brown.>

<One afternoon in the spring of 2017 Alex Jones furiously lunged at his video producer.

Robert Jacobson, at the time Jones' longest serving employee, was walking down a hallway at Infowars' south Austin office when seemingly out of nowhere the show's infamous host accosted him.

Jacobson had just finished editing a video of Jones riffing on the day's news — the sort of misinformation filled rants that were a staple of the company's daily output. But he had apparently added the wrong advertisement for one of the many snake-oils the host was hawking at the time.

Jabbing his fingers into Jacobson's face he yelled, "You're not going to ruin me, Jacobson. You're not going to ruin me!" According to Jacobson, Jones had to be restrained by another Infowars staffer lest he actually hurt him.

When Jacobson started working for Jones in 2004 he was best known as a TV figure on Austin public television. On Austin Community Access Television Jones perfected the high-octane rants about Waco and fluoride in the water that propelled him to an audience of millions on Infowars.com and platforms like YouTube and Facebook.

Jacobson had moved to Texas after being fired from a sound engineer job at the legendary recording studio Hit Factory, where Paul Simon recorded the album "Graceland" and Bruce Springsteen recorded "Born in the USA." Depressed and looking for adventure, he moved to Austin and was introduced to Jones by an acquaintance.

"I did watch Alex quite a lot," Jacobson recounted in an interview with Insider. "I was always into the conspiracy theory kind of stuff."

Enamored by Jones's showmanship Jacobson began editing Jones' documentaries before becoming a producer on his show. He edited Jones' films that suggested 9/11 was a false flag operation and Endgame, which baselessly claimed a group of powerful elites planned on exterminating 80% of the world's population while investing in technology to enable them to live forever.

Jacobson said he still takes pride in the work he did for Jones at this point, only for the craftsmanship of the videos he produced. It could be high-adrenaline work, like they were David taking aim at Goliath. Jones' conspiratorial, fact-challenged worldview deeply appealed to the lost, disaffected, youths he often recruited to work on the site. In interviews with Insider, Jacobson and three other Infowars employees said between bursts of anger he was also charismatic, generous, and at-times even a father figure. He took employees to movies and invited Jacobson to family holidays.

"He has a lot of charisma, yeah. And that doesn't go away once the camera's off. He doesn't just slump his shoulders and kind of slink into the corner," said Jacobson, who worked for Infowars from 2004 until 2017.

"He's still very charismatic, very friendly to people he wants to be friendly with, of course."

But by the time of the altercation Jacobson and Jones's relationship had started to sour.

Eventually, Jacobson gave a critical deposition of Jones during his first Sandy Hooks damages trial last July in Texas. He told the courtroom he was testifying because of his guilt in not doing more to challenge Infowars's coverage of the school shooting.

As Jones' empire crumbles, and he faces a $1.4 billion judgment from lawsuits filed by the Sandy Hook families, the ex-staffers' experiences help explain how Jones wielded his will and charisma over three decades to become the country's best-known purveyor of lies and misinformation.

Alex Jones did not respond to Insider's request for comment.

The Punching Game

On his first day at Infowars in the spring of 2013, 23-year-old Josh Owens, who had just won an online competition on the conspiracy site to come work at the company as video editor, expected Jones to disconnect from junior staff members such as himself.

Instead, he was surprised when the host invited him alongside other staffers to a premier of Iron Man 3 at a local Alamo Drafthouse Cinema.

Owens, who grew up in a rural town an hour outside of Atlanta in what is now a district represented by Marjorie Taylor Greene, had been questioning his fundamentalist Christian beliefs. He was drawn to what he saw as Infowars' extreme anti-establishment ethos.

"Jones was a guy at the time who was saying the world is filled with liars. The basis of our understanding of the world is constructed by a lie. But he had a path to an explanation," Owens said....>

<....At the theater, Jones asked Owens to sit next to him and ordered him a Royale with Cheese — a cheeseburger named after a John Travolta line from "Pulp Fiction." But the group was soon asked to leave because Jones was constantly checking the Infowars website on his phone.

Owens said he soon saw a darker side to Jones. One of Jones's favorite pastimes was playing a round of the punching game. It would often start by Jones passing around a bottle of Grey Goose vodka among his staff. He would insist that one of them repeat a made-up phrase like "succulent plump" or "juicy giblet."

He was a very volatile person, his behavior was manic. So, one second he would be laughing and joking around and the next second he would be in a blind rage.

"He would talk to them like they were babies like 'say this, say this,' and he wouldn't stop until you did it," Owens said.

Eventually, the game would devolve and Jones would ask one of the staff to hit him. "He would ask people who are beholden to him and he had power over to hit him," Owens said. "And when they said no, he kept pressuring until they said yes."

Sometimes as Jones appeared to grow more heavily intoxicated, things escalated.

"He would convince someone to hit him by badgering them consistently, and then he would get to hit them back. And they would trade punches back and forth. And there were times where people got, you know, visibly injured," Owens said.

To Owens, the punching game was one of several methods he used to manipulate and intimidate Infowars staff. Questioning Jones could also provoke a sudden and ferocious rage, he said. According to Owens, Jones would sometimes "pound his chest" and destroy office equipment. Sometimes, even physically hurting people.

"He was a very volatile person, his behavior was manic. So, one second he would be laughing and joking around and the next second he would be in a blind rage," said Owens.

In April 2017, Owens left Infowars. In the 6 years since leaving, in essays in the New York Times Magazine and interviews in The Atlantic, he expressed contrition for the rabid misinformation he was involved in spreading.

Money Bomb

For some Infowars staffers the job was a chance to learn from a charismatic radio figure and hopefully break into the industry themselves, even if they weren't true believers. One such employee, George, who requested to use a pseudonym because he feared retribution from Jones, began working for the site in the late 2000s with aspirations of one day having his own radio show.

"I was trying to get my own radio show. I really respected the way he created his own kind of infotainment dynasty. His whole thing I thought … it was genius," George said. "At the time I was like, maybe I can use these resources here and Jones can help catapult my radio career and I can go to the next level and do something similar to what he did."

He was in his 20s with little money to his name and two kids. Jones paid more and offered better hours than most broadcasting gigs. "He saw that I was perfect prey for him because I was kind of vulnerable," George said.

Jones would give out surprise bonuses often to reward good work.

"If you dance to the beat of his drum he'd be like … I'm giving you a $500 bonus," he recalled.

While George first thought Jones might be "kind of difficult" to work with like a big television, he found him an easy boss at the beginning. George appreciated Jones' penchant for the theatrical even if he didn't believe Jones's conspiracy theories.

"I would just be giggling my ass off because I was like, 'This guy's a joke.' The stuff that he would say and the way he was so animated, it was like theatrical to me. I just thought it was hilarious man," George said.

At times, he found Jones's cynicism to go too far. In one incident, George said he watched as Jones shamelessly accepted a woman's entire social-security check during a "money bomb" event in which the show raised money from dedicated listeners.

"This old lady is like, 'Alex, me and my husband, we're on social security and we're finding we're in the last stage of our lives and we believe everything you're saying and we know you're trying to save the country … We're on a fixed income and everything but we are gonna send you our whole social security check this month, just to help,'" George recalled the woman saying.

"And he goes, like 'Oh, thank you … you're saving the lord. God bless ya,'" Jone said, according to George.

George recalled thinking at the time: "Jones, come on, man, you're really gonna exploit these old folks like that? That's @#$%ed-up."

"But that's just what he did," George said. "He didn't give a damn, he just wanted the money, he wanted the credit, he wanted the fame."....>

<....Jones was promoting increasingly extreme conspiracy theories in his relentless quest to reach bigger audiences and drive greater profits. Eventually, they crossed the line into illegality.

But the longer George worked with Jones, he says a switch flipped and he became just another lackey for Jones to verbally abuse.

"It went from him being really nice to me and like, showing me a lot of love … to just being an a**hole and treating me like he did everyone else," George said. "Once he had someone and felt like he had control of them, then he would just be an ass."

And Jones never took George under his wing, to help him become a radio host himself. That's a dream that died a long time ago for George, who now works in a related, but different, industry.

"I tried to get my own little public access TV show as well, and have a little blog and things like that. It just didn't work out for me," he said. "I still hate that I'm never going to achieve it. To be involved creatively in a radio program."

Holidays with the Joneses

In 2005, Jones invited Jacobson to spend Thanksgiving and Christmas at his family home in Austin. Jones had extended the invite to the New York City transplant after learning he had nowhere to go during the holidays. For the next few years, Jacobson became a fixture on the Jones family holiday table.

One Christmas Jones brought a small plastic airplane to his parents house. At dinner, as his parents, wife, and children talked amongst each other, Jones would toss the plane and watch it fly across the room — all while making whizzing sounds with his mouth. His wife Kelly and his parents repeatedly asked him to stop, but Jones didn't seem to care.

"Alex would do weird things," Jacobson said. "I believe he made his parents uncomfortable. A lot of the time he'd act strangely at the dinner table, you know, say odd things and whatnot."

On other occasions, Alex and his father would talk about history or political trivia. But Jones had the habit of interjecting and adding his own conspiracy theories to the conversation, Jacobson said.

"I would never be able to carry on a conversation with him really," Jacobson said of Jones. Most of his time was spent chatting up with Jones' relatives about books.

By 2015, Jacobson became one of Jones' oldest employees but their relationship began to deteriorate.

In August of that year, Jones invited David Duke, the former grand wizard of the KKK, who was gearing up to run for the Senate from Louisiana, on Infowars.

During the appearance in which Duke accused Jews of controlling the media, the banks, and the federal reserve, Jones put Jacobson—who is Jewish—on air to challenge Duke.

In a later filing to the Austin Equal Opportunity and Fair Housing Commission, Jacobson accused Jones of racism and said the host put him on the show without his consent.

In other videos Infowars hosts referred to Jacobson as the "Resident Jew." Other staffers passed around a flier with Jacobson's face superimposed onto a caricature of an orthodox Jew with big bold print that read "The Jewish Individual."

But Jacobson said Infowars' anti-semitic culture wasn't always obvious to him.

"After reflection after the Photoshop was handed out, it suddenly occurred to me just how antisemitic everybody was. Yeah, I suddenly realized, you know, I reflected about all these moments in my life, and the same kind of treatment that I endured naively," Jacobson said.

By the end of his tenure, Jacobson's worldview had also shifted. He'd been reading books like "1776," a chronicle of the revolutionary war by historian David McCullough and other mainstream history books in an attempt to debunk them with perspectives more aligned with Jones. But eventually the books became more compelling to Jacobson. "I would actually find other books to read inside the bibliographies," he said. Eventually, he began questioning the conspiracy theorist and asking "Why would Alex leave this stuff out?"

He also had less patience for Jones' unhinged fury. The final straw was that day in 2017 when he lunged at him for the seemingly honest mistake of which advertisement to include in a video....>

<....'You cannot say that people didn't die'

To many staff members who were present during the early days of Infowar, the site was a "close-knit" team. Christopher Jordan, a former Inforwars sound editor described staffers as "square in the trenches with [Jones]. And on the other side of the glass."

To Jordan, Jones was "one of the good guys."

"He reminds me a lot of my dad, like somebody that you'd like to go out and just hang out and have a beer with," Jordan said.

But he remembers butting heads with Jones about Sandy Hook. Following the infamous 2012 mass shooting at the Newtown, Connecticut elementary school, some of Jones' staffers repeatedly warned the host about the potential consequences of claiming on-air that the tragedy was staged by the government as part of a plot to restrict gun rights or that the grieving parents of the 20 children who were killed are "crisis actors."

The false claims led to a campaign of relentless harassment against the grieving parents. (Jones has claimed that he merely "investigated" theories about the attack and bore no responsibility for the parents' suffering or fears for their safety.)

Jordan and Jacobson both said they warned Jones of the likely consequences of defaming the Sandy Hook victims. But Jones was so drunk on greed and ambition and viral misinformation was good for business. He ignored their entreaties and doubled down on the claims.

The people we talked to that worked for him said that almost all of his employees, if not all of them, felt that they were just trapped in this crazy. "You cannot say that this did not happen. You cannot say that people didn't die. Like, you can't do that," Jordan said he told Jones, adding that Jones responded with indifference.

Jordan said despite deep disagreements with Jones, he felt no personal animosity towards him.

Jacobson also said he challenged Jones about promoting the false claims.

"It's a totally different league and dimension," he said he told Jones, contrasting the claims the site promoted about the atrocity with earlier coverage that often bordered on the tongue in cheek.

"I told them straight to his face. 'They're gonna get you, they're gonna get you, you know?' And that's really all I could say to Alex. He just stared at me. Like, sort of like somebody in the crossroads," said Jacobson.

Jacobson said that he spent several years looking for a new job, and believes the stigma of working at Infowars had made him unemployable.

"The job search went on for a long, long time. And you know, at that point, I mean, Alex, the relationship between me and Alex really was horrible," he said.

According to Megan Squire, a Deputy Director at the Southern Poverty Law Center, working at a conspiracy site like Infowars is often like joining a club or a social group that is extremely difficult to leave.

"The people we talked to that worked for him said that almost all of his employees, if not all of them, felt that they were just trapped in this crazy," Squire said.

This difficulty is compounded by the fact that Jones' employees are reliant on him for their livelihood. "They have to be able to see and access an off ramp, some kind of way out," she added....>

<....Eventually, Jones fired Jacobson on a thin pretext — being late for work.

Jacobson eventually left Texas for San Diego spending several years moving around the country doing stopgap jobs. He worked for free editing a movie, drove cabs for Uber and edited videos on UpWork.

Five years after leaving Infowars, he landed a job editing videos for a local news station in New Orleans. He never omitted working for Infowars, which he lists on his resume under its parent company Free Speech Systems LLC, but said his managers nor colleagues never asked about his past at the organization.

"I really did have a fear of not being able to find another job knowing what Alex was up to. I was like what sane group of media professionals will hire me?" he said.

Jacobson said he still fears for his safety from Jones and his followers.

"These people have guns and they're no joke. They're absolutely infatuated with Alex. They worship him. It's an irrational level of commitment they give to Alex and an irrational level of trust," he said.

At the end of the day, Jacobson said, Jones acted like the normal moral and legal constraints didn't apply to him. And for a long time, they perhaps didn't.

Owens also said he felt guilty about his complicity in promoting the Sandy Hook conspiracy theories during his time working there.

"Working for Jones was like drinking from a firehose. The amount of work was overwhelming and there was rarely time to focus on one thing. But none of this excuses my involvement. I worked for Jones, contributed to the harm he caused others and take full responsibility for my actions," he said.

Ultimately, he says, a "complete shift in my personal beliefs and a self-reckoning" led him to quit. Even Jones' offer to double his salary couldn't persuade him to change his mind.

'He's addicted to himself'

As his fame grew, Jones was courted by the rich and powerful. Rock stars and celebrities like Megadeath singer Dave Mustain and Ultimate Fighting Championship star Tim Kennedy visited his studio. They were soon followed by political figures seeking to court the anti-establishment, conspiratorial audience who revered Jones.

In 2015, Jones interviewed Donald Trump, whose campaign for the presidency was launched on the back of the racist "birther" conspiracy theory.

Prompted by the disinformation and conspiracy theories that flooded their platforms during the 2016 election, Jones began receiving increasingly frequent warnings from social media companies that his content had been removed, or restricted, for violating the rules.

But a series of lawsuits brought by the Newtown families, leading to that $1.4 billion judgment against Jones last year, changed things for Jones. In 2018, the years the lawsuits were filed, he was banned from YouTube and Facebook for violating their rules against inciting violence.

The trials offered a rare look inside Infowars. As it was broadcast live, Daria Karpova, a former Inforwars producer testified.

She claimed that Jones had trusted writers to fact check reports, and had not done so himself. She also said the backlash from the site's falsehoods about Sandy Hook had badly impacted Jones' health.

"This whole Sandy Hook thing has weighed heavily on him because people don't know the shooter's name, but they think Alex Jones murdered those children," Karpova testified. "People hearing the words Sandy Hook, they automatically think Alex Jones," she added.

The former employees who both admired and came to loathe Jones remain skeptical that Jones has reached the end of the road.

"In Alex's mind, it's his world," Jacobson said. "He gets away with everything. He's smarter than everybody. He runs everything. He controls everybody. That is how it works in Alex's mind, and if he loses control, things get ugly real fast."

"My hunch is that he'll never stop," said George, "He'll never stop doing his bit. He's addicted to himself.">

<Donald Trump Fans on Social Media: Indictment Could Spark Civil War - Pro-Trump extremists on social media warn that former President Donald Trump’s indictment in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case could spark a second civil war.

MSNBC’s Frank Fugluzzi, a former FBI assistant director for counterintelligence, warned that the indictment could be exploited for violent ends.

Fugluzzi said: “Yeah this is an important issue, in part from a security perspective, Ana, because everybody out there in Trump world is keying off of GOP high profile people. Senators Hawley, Senator Tuberville, Speaker McCarthy and all of the Fox News hosts saying this is nonsense, this is targeted, this is unfair. Yet as you said, we’ve got potentially a number of very serious charges here.

Fugluzzi continued: “Who did he conspire with and are they cooperating? As Joyce said, all of this goes towards this risk-and-threat picture that the FBI, the Secret Service, the U.S. Marshals are going to be assessing, because if indeed GOP high-profile people keep claiming, Trump keeps claiming ‘Unfair, fight back, we’ve lost our democracy,’ all things being said, right, we’re going to see people incited to violence if this doesn’t change.”

High Profile Trump Supporters Warn of Violence

Failed Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake vowed violence to protect the former president.

“I have a message for Joe Biden, Merrick Garland, and Jack Smith, and the guys back there in the fake news media, you should listen up as well, this one’s for you: If you wanna get to President Trump, you’re gonna have to go through me, and you’re gonna have to go through 75 million Americans just like me, and I’m gonna tell you, most of us are card-carrying members of the NRA,” Lake said at the Georgia State Republican Convention.

Republican Rep. Clay Higgins tweeted that Trump supporters should be ready.

“President Trump said he has ‘been summoned to appear at the Federal Courthouse in Miami on Tuesday, at 3 PM,’” Higgins tweeted. “This is a perimeter probe from the oppressors. Hold. rPOTUS has this. Buckle up. 1/50K know your bridges. Rock steady calm. That is all.”

Many online interpreted Higgins’ call about 1/50K bridges as referring to fighting.

Donald Trump Supporters Warn of Violence on Social Media

A Facebook page called “Knights of the Republic” warned following the indictment, “Greatest act of abuse of power, constitutional usurpation, and tyranny since the American Civil War. This will lead to Civil War.”

Extremists in other holes on the Internet similarly warned of civil war.

“We need to start killing these traitorous f**kstains,” wrote one Trump supporter on The Donald, a rabidly pro-Trump message board that played a key role in planning the January 6 attack on the Capitol. Another user added: “It’s not gonna stop until bodies start stacking up. We are not civilly represented anymore and they’ll come for us next. Some of us, they already have.”

Another user of The Donald called henri_delicte wrote, “What they don’t realize is that if they keep this up, President Trump will be back in the White House because we voted him in. But rather it will be because we shot, stabbed, or hanged anyone who dared oppose us.”>