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... When the Trump administration began upending U.S. scientific research last year, dismantling the federal grant-giving process and attempting to exert more political influence over what projects get funded, foreign universities saw an opportunity. They adopted programs to lure U.S. researchers abroad, promising more stable streams of funding and academic freedom.

Since then, many have taken the bait. While there is no way to quantify the overall change across the nation, scientists, researchers and professional groups say the shift is clear, unprecedented and concerning.

"You can almost talk to any vice president for research at a university and they will tell you of one or two top faculty that they've lost," said Tobin Smith, senior vice president of government relations and public policy for the Association of American Universities.

White House spokesperson Liz Huston said Trump is "ending waste" and is "committed to keeping America the world leader in scientific innovation, and that means funding real science."

But more than half of American states have lost scientists to recruitment programs in other countries, according to an April report from the Business for Federal Research Funding Coalition. Last March, early-career biomedical scientists were about 20 percentage points less likely to say they would "now" stay in the U.S., compared to their recollection of how they felt six months earlier. And physics Ph.D. graduates in 2025 left the U.S. at the highest rate in 30 years, according to the American Institute of Physics.

Countries including Canada, France, Belgium and Finland are touting their recruits from U.S. institutions, a disturbing and surprising development, scientists say, for a country that far and away leads the world in Nobel prizes for medicine, physics and chemistry. ...


Opinion: As it turns out, America lost the Cold War
www.msn.com

... It is starting to feel like all the history we learned was wrong.

We were taught we won the Cold War. But today, the President of the United States openly serves the interests of Russia. We have become, in fact, in crucial economic and security matters, a satellite of Moscow. The U.S. chief executive has publicly and repeatedly declared his loyalty to Russia's head of state. For more than a decade he has openly and covertly been advancing Russian foreign policy, often at the expense of the national security of the United States, the laws of the United States, and the interests of the United States and our allies.
Expand article logo Continue reading

It is such a shocking turn of events, so inconceivable to anyone who lived through the Cold War or its aftermath, that many Americans have been in denial about it for years. But the evidence is not only incontrovertible, but in recent days, the U.S. president has made the situation more explicit.

Trump's recent announcement that he had entered into an agreement with Russia to purchase diesel was a shock even to those who had long been in denial. Not only was Trump setting aside congressionally mandated U.S. sanctions policy, but he was offering a financial lifeline of billions of dollars to a cash-strapped Kremlin that could and almost certainly would use the extra liquidity to help fund its brutal, criminal aggression against Ukraine.

Never mind that the amount of fuel involved would make no impact on U.S. supplies, or that Trump could have gotten a better price purchasing the fuel elsewhere.

Never mind that the deal failed on its merits, economically and politically, as a form of relief for U.S. truckers and farmers squeezed by high prices.

What was worse and undeniable was that the U.S. was now helping to underwrite Russian attacks that were daily killing Ukrainian civilians and destroying Ukraine's infrastructure.

Furthermore, we were offering to help Russia at precisely the moment when the futility of its four-year escalation of a conflict that began in 2014 was becoming clear. Russia was no longer gaining ground. Russia was paying a huge price militarily, with over 1.5 million dead and wounded troops. Russia's economy could no longer afford the war. Ukraine had momentum. ...

Perhaps even more nauseatingly (if such a thing is imaginable), the world knows that Russia is actively supporting Iran. Credible reports suggest that Russia has been supplying vital intelligence to the Iranians and helping to resupply their missile stockpiles.

Which means that Donald Trump is directly sending U.S. taxpayer dollars to a country that will indirectly and yet inevitably serve to support potential attacks on our own military.

Trump is living up to his reputation as America's greatest enemy by actually using U.S. dollars to pay not only for attacks on our allies and, by extension, on the Western Alliance, but also by making it possible for Iran to target and kill more Americans.

Our president is at war with us. ...



#12 | POSTED BY EBERLY AT 2026-10-21 10:07 AM | REPLY

You are correct, it is a very complicated issue and constitutional issue. Under the U.S. Constitution, a federal wealth tax would likely be considered a direct tax. Unlike indirect taxes (such as duties, imposts, and excises) which must be geographically uniform, direct taxes must be apportioned among the states based on population, meaning each state's total tax contribution must match its share of the U.S. population. The federal income tax is a direct tax, but the 16th Amendment specifically carves out income taxes from indirect tax handcuff. You also have the "realization" issue in that generally there needs to be a realization event for a tax to arise - some accretion to wealth.

One popular alternative is to turn off the "buy, borrow, die" spigot. One planning technique used by the super wealthy is to borrow against appreciated assets and use those proceeds to generate gains at a rate higher than any interest paid. Borrowing is not a realization event - meaning if I own real estate with a fair market value of $10mil and a tax basis of $0 and I sold that property, I would have $10mil of taxable gain realized, if instead I borrow $5mil at an 8% rate against that property that isn't a realization event. So the wealthy lever up assets and then when they die the beneficiaries will get a step up in basis in the asset. So, that $10mil property with zero basis is now a $10mil property with $10mil in basis. If the beneficiaries turn around sell for $10mil, there is no gain. You can then use the proceeds to pay down any remaining debt. The idea would be to make the borrowing against the property a realization event for the super wealthy so that in the example above, when an owner borrows the $5mil, it will be taxable. That route is a lot easier than a wealth tax.

Meta may have a larger problem ...

Meta ordered to pay $25 billion penalty in New Mexico Cambridge Analytica case
www.cnbc.com

Meta was ordered to pay $25 billion in penalties related to the Cambridge Analytica scandal in New Mexico.

The penalty comes after a jury in a Santa Fe courthouse found the social media giant liable for misleading state citizens about how it safeguards and collects user data.

New Mexico district court judge said in the filing that "Facebook did not conduct the comprehensive investigation that it promised" following the Cambridge Analytica revelations. ...


@#2

2020 Electoral College Map
www.realclearpolling.com

...
Biden/Harris: 216
Toss Ups: 197
Trump/Pence: 125
...

Did you mean 2016?

www.realclearpolling.com

...
Clinton/Kaine: 203
Toss Ups: 171
Trump/Pence: 164
...



More from the article ...

... There is reason for concern. In addition to high-profile misses " the most prominent among them, the 2016 presidential contest that elected Trump " recent election cycles have witnessed cratering survey response rates, flawed weighting and turnout assumptions, and a rise in bad-faith actors, not to mention the challenge of vanishing landline phones.

This year, a handful of episodes have further undermined confidence. Polls predicted a slam-dunk victory for Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan's Democratic Senate primary -- he won by 1 percentage point. Francesca Hong, the democratic socialist running in Wisconsin's Democratic primary for governor, held a double-digit lead in preelection surveys -- she narrowly lost. And a poll in the Los Angeles mayoral race -- which spread widely after one of the candidates, Mayor Karen Bass, touted it on social media -- turned out to be entirely bogus. The Los Angeles Times later reported that the individual behind the sham poll said it was part of a "short-term social experiment" to examine how polling numbers could "spread through the political information ecosystem without independent verification."

The polling misfires, however, don't reflect the changes in the industry. There are new methods of reaching people, and new ways to account for the most elusive voters.

Those corrections have seemingly paid off; you may not realize it, but the polls largely nailed the results of the past two midterms.

Still, polls aren't meant to be predictive. They represent a snapshot in time, offering insight into public sentiment and voters' most pressing concerns.

"Certainly, given the polling misses in 2016 and, to some extent, 2020, there's an obvious fear factor," says Charles Franklin, director of the Marquette Law School Poll. "We've done a lot over this past decade to try to improve the control we have over those kinds of errors, but ultimately we can't force people to do polls, and so this remains always a background fear factor." ...

[emphasis mine]

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