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For too long, the debate over permitting reform has been confined to the wonky world of Washington insiders — endless discussions about transmission lines, pipelines, lawsuits, and administrative procedures. Policymakers fixate on the bark while missing the trees, let alone the forest. The stakes are far higher than connecting a natural gas plant, wind farm or data center to the grid. The most important reason for permitting reform is to grow the U.S. defense industrial base at the speed, scale and cost efficiency needed to deter a major conflict with China, and to quickly prevail if deterrence fails.

This imperative requires a sustained U.S. capability to outperform our adversaries in the production of weapons, ships, munitions, and material. Yet for more than two decades, America’s national security, economic policies, and stifling environmental review processes hollowed out domestic manufacturing and largely transferred our defense-related industrial capabilities and control of global supply chains to China.

The results are stark. China dominates global manufacturing, particularly those industries indispensable to defense. Its steel production exceeds America’s by roughly 12-to-1. In shipbuilding, China possesses capacity roughly 230 times that of the United States. A single major Chinese shipyard can exceed the total output of the entire U.S. commercial shipbuilding industry. American policymakers — both Democrats and Republicans — have been comatose on this front for far too long.

'THIS IS NO DRILL': CHINA'S DOMINANCE OVER US SHIPBUILDING SPARKS BIPARTISAN EFFORT

Recent conflicts offer sobering previews of how profoundly these disparities matter in wartime. In Ukraine, U.S. and allied munitions production has struggled to keep pace with demand. For example, America ramped 155mm artillery shell output from about 14,000 per month to around 40,000, falling far short of Ukraine’s needs — estimated at 150,000–200,000 shells monthly — and exposing fragile, just-in-time supply chains. Similar constraints appear in meeting our own requirements and supporting Israel against Iranian-backed threats. Peacetime atrophy — dormant production lines, retired skilled workers, overseas dependence, and regulatory bottlenecks — has left the U.S. defense industrial base ill-equipped for sustained, high-intensity conflict.

History underscores the danger of underestimating industrial power. Nazi Germany developed formidable new technologies during World War II: the Me 262 jet fighter, V-2 ballistic missiles, and advanced tanks. These "wonder weapons" stunned Allied forces when they appeared on the battlefield. Yet America’s overwhelming manufacturing juggernaut is what proved decisive. Mobilizing factories across the heartland, the United States produced nearly 300,000 aircraft, 86,000 tanks, and thousands of ships, vastly outproducing the Axis powers combined.

Similarly, in the Civil War, 90 percent of our manufacturing economy was in the North — which produced 20 times more pig iron and 32 times more firearms than the South — which was still primarily an agrarian economy. Perhaps more ominously is the lesson we can draw from the North’s embrace of mechanization, which allowed threshing to be done 12 times faster than slave labor. Today’s corollary is Artificial Intelligence (AI) — the Great Power which dominates AI will gain the upper hand easily in any conflict, just like the North did, dominating the South which clung to the morally repugnant — but also ineffective — manual labor. Both mechanization and AI need reliable, dispatchable power to provide their economic and industrial benefits.

Today, China enjoys the advantage once held by America. China’s defense industrial base and supporting infrastructure can much more easily shift to a wartime footing, surging output of ships, munitions, and material with little or no bureaucratic or legal constraints.

RAPID RISE OF AI PUTS NEW URGENCY ON CONGRESS TO UNLEASH AMERICAN ENERGY

Reversing America’s defense industrial decline requires more than a tweak to an administrative process, increasing permitting staff, or changing deadlines for filing lawsuits. It demands a fundamental change in mindset of how, and why, government places so many obstacles in the way of the rapid expansion and rebuilding of our defense industrial base. Roads, bridges, ports, rail, power generation and delivery and computing infrastructure are foundational infrastructure. Factories cannot hum without affordable and reliable power. Mines and processing facilities for critical materiels — essential for munitions, electronics, and advanced weapons — cannot secure funding and achieve necessary scale amid regulatory paralysis.

Without this complex industrial ecosystem, we risk strategic vulnerability no amount of technological innovation can offset. American spirit and ingenuity are real assets, but cannot conjure raw materials and weapons systems from thin air when supply chains falter and projects languish in endless reviews. Congress and the administration must treat permitting modernization as a core national security priority.

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The most important element is time. Time is power — China builds three times faster than we do. Time is money — Chinese defense output costs a fraction of ours. Every year a U.S. defense infrastructure project is hung up in permitting adds 10-20 % to its final cost. Typical delays of more than five years lead to projects costing two or three times more than they need to. Eliminating this delay would not only unleash defense production with the speed and scale needed to keep the peace, but deliver it while saving hundreds of billions of dollars in defense spending.

To accomplish this, Congress and the states must reach across the aisle and legislatively approve maintenance, replacement and new construction of defense industrial supply chains and preclude any further environmental review, permitting, and judicial review of such process.

I’ve worked with sincere Democrats like Martin Heinrich (D-NM), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and John Hickenlooper (D-CO) to build consensus and extend my thanks and trust to them. We all are committed to assuring environmental protection and reaffirm these industries must comply with all specified environmental performance requirements. They will remain subject to the full array of legal requirements for monitoring, reporting, inspection, enforcement, citizen suits, judicial review and punitive civil, criminal, and damages liability for any noncompliance. Ample bipartisan precedent for this approach has long been in place in non-security related laws such as health and safety, financial transactions, and border construction, while recent targeted federal and state laws waived permitting for public housing, fracking, pipelines, and chip manufacturing plants.

The need to tackle the challenges of this permitting reform forest is clear: America’s ability to deter conflict, or to win if deterrence fails, rests on American industrial might. Permitting reform is the essential first step toward rebuilding it. The time for tepid measures and insider debates is over.

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BLUE HILL, Maine - Graham Platner, the progressive left, and Donald Trump appear to be the big winners in Tuesday's high-profile primaries in Maine and South Carolina.

Platner, the oyster farmer and military combat veteran who has been facing plenty of incoming fire amid mounting controversies, cruised to the Democratic nomination Tuesday in left-leaning Maine and will now face longtime moderate Republican Sen. Susan Collins in a key race that is among a handful which will likely determine if Republicans hold their Senate majority in the midterm elections.

Meanwhile, in solidly red South Carolina, Trump-backed Sen. Lindsey Graham won a majority of the vote in the Senate GOP primary and will avoid a runoff against a primary challenger from the right.

And the candidate the president endorsed in the state's Republican gubernatorial primary, Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette, finished on top of a crowded field of contenders and will advance to a runoff election in two weeks against longtime South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson, who came in second.

Here's what we learned in the key June 9th primaries.

DEMOCRACY ’26: STAY UP TO DATE WITH THE FOX NEWS ELECTION HUB

The left storms back

The convincing victory by Platner, who was backed by progressive champions Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, and Rep. Ro Khanna of California, looks to be another feather in the cap for the left in their intra-party face-off with the establishment.

The primary in Maine was held a week after Iowa state Rep. John Turek, who was supported by longtime Senate Democratic Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer, won the Democratic Senate primary and will face Republican Rep. Ashley Hinson in another crucial midterm showdown.

Turek, a wheelchair basketball player who won two Paralympic gold medals, defeated the more progressive candidate, state Sen. Zach Wahls. The divisive and expensive primary battle was viewed as a proxy war between the establishment and anti-establishment wings of the party.

Fast-forward a week and the ballot box performance by Platner, who promotes an economically populist agenda as he takes aim at corporate influences and advocates for the working class, gives a boost to the left.

"The Democratic establishment and powerful interests spent months trying to stop Graham Platner. Instead, they demonstrated that voters in Maine and across America want to elect shake-up-the-system outsiders," Progressive Change Campaign Committee co-founder Adam Green emphasized.

And Green warned that Platner's victory "should be a wake-up call for a Democratic establishment that has spent too long underestimating the appeal of economic populism and outsider politics."

EMBATTLED PLATNER WINS DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY TO TEE UP CRUCIAL MIDTERM SHOWDOWN

What controversies?

Platner in recent weeks has been facing one of the roughest stretches of his bid for the U.S. Senate.

The candidate has been playing defense the past month, amid multiple controversies. They include inflammatory online comments made on Reddit, a well-publicized and now covered-up tattoo on his chest that resembled a Nazi symbol, recent reports that he exchanged sexually explicit messages with several women while married, and new allegations last week from ex-girlfriends of a history of rape fantasies, heavy drinking and violent episodes. Platner has called the latest allegations of violence untrue.

On Monday, a day before the primary election, a former high-level staffer from the Platner campaign wrote in the Washington Post that Platner "is not someone who would be good for Maine or for the country."

While the mounting controversies triggered some Democrats in the nation's capital to question whether Platner was damaged goods and needed to be replaced, the candidate this past weekend thanked Maine voters for continuing to support him.

"When hurtful things I said on the internet a decade ago came out into the public as I shared my personal journey through PTSD and darkness of recovery and accountability and growth. Maine had my back," Platner said at a rally Friday not far from his hometown in Down East Maine. "Now, as every single piece of that past and journey gets dug up, litigated, and weaponized, you have my back. And when politically motivated, serious and false accusations are made against me. Maine, you have my back."

THE GROWING LIST OF CONTROVERSIES THREATENING DEMOCRAT GRAHAM PLATNER'S MAINE SENATE BID

And voters in Maine's Democratic Senate primary seemed to shrug off the controversies.

"In trying so hard to understand me, they failed to understand that this is not about me at all," Platner said in his victory speech as he dismissed news reports about his past misdeeds as immaterial to the Senate election.

"This is a movement about us, about the far too many working far too hard and struggling far too much."

Trump has a big night

The president wasn't on the ballot in South Carolina, but he had plenty on the line in the GOP Senate and gubernatorial primaries.

One week after Trump's endorsement-winning streak in high-profile Republican primaries was snapped, the president's immense clout over the GOP was on the line again, this time in South Carolina.

And the president easily passed the test.

The candidate Trump endorsed in the Palmetto State's GOP gubernatorial primary, Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette, finished first in a crowded field of candidates and clinched one of the two tickets in the race for the nomination.

TRUMP ALLY LINDSEY GRAHAM SURVIVES CHALLENGE FROM GOP'S ANTI-ESTABLISHMENT WING

Evette, who repeatedly spotlighted Trump's support, now advances to a Republican runoff election in two weeks against South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson, the second place finisher, in the race to succeed term-limited GOP Gov. Henry McMaster. 

Since no candidate topped 50% of the primary vote to land a majority, Evette and Wilson will battle for the nomination in the June 23 runoff, and the winner will be considered the clear favorite in the general election in the solidly red southeastern state.

Meanwhile, in the South Carolina GOP Senate primary, longtime Trump ally Sen. Lindsey Graham did win a majority of the vote, and will avoid a runoff, the Associated Press reported.

Graham, who was endorsed by Trump, was facing primary challenges from five candidates, including conservative businessman Mark Lynch, who took aim at the senator over his support for the war in Iran. Lynch was backed by some MAGA leaders who have been critical of the president.

Graham's campaign and allied political groups spent nearly $20 million to highlight Trump's support. And the president joined Graham and Evette for a primary eve tele-rally.

The brute force of the president's endorsement power has been on display in GOP primaries over the past month, with his candidates ousting incumbents he targeted in showdowns in Indiana, Louisiana, Kentucky and Texas that grabbed plenty of national attention.

But his 11th-hour endorsement of Republican Rep. Randy Feenstra of Iowa a week and a half ago — which came on the same day he also backed Evette — in the race to succeed retiring GOP Gov. Kim Reynolds wasn't enough to muscle the three-term congressman to victory.

Feenstra was narrowly edged by Zach Lahn, a businessman, farmer and former political strategist who was backed by the political wings of MAHA — the acronym for the Make America Healthy Again movement aligned with Trump Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — and Turning Point USA, the powerful conservative organization co-founded by the late Charlie Kirk.

In the South Carolina GOP gubernatorial primary, the major contenders had long been highlighting their support for Trump and his agenda, in hopes of landing his support.

Trump, after staying neutral for months, endorsed Evette, praising her as an "America First Patriot" and a "WINNER" in his announcement.

In her primary night speech, Evette thanks the president and touted that she's a "Trump-endorsed businesswoman and conservative who's going to take the fight to the radical left."

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A federal judge on Tuesday permanently blocked Alabama executing death row inmate Jeffrey Lee with nitrogen gas after finding that it violates the U.S. Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

U.S. District Judge Emily C. Marks handed down the ruling hours after an appeals court reversed her initial finding that the controversial execution method was constitutional. She permanently barred the state from using nitrogen gas to execute Jeffrey Lee, 49, who was scheduled to be put to death on Thursday.

The judge wrote that the appeals court found the method carried "a substantial risk of serious harm." A three-judge panel from the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday said the three minutes that it could take for an inmate to lose awareness is an "intolerable" time frame, "given the suffering that would likely take place under Alabama’s nitrogen hypoxia protocol."

Marks also ruled that the state could change the form of execution to Lee’s preferred method, which is a firing squad. Inmates challenging execution methods must suggest an alternative method.

ALABAMA DEATH ROW INMATE INSISTS INNOCENCE, URGES GOVERNOR TO MEET HIM BEFORE NITROGEN-GAS EXECUTION

"Therefore, Lee has shown by a preponderance of the evidence that the protocol constitutes cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment," Marks wrote.

Marks' order blocks only the state from executing Lee by nitrogen gas. The state has two other authorized execution methods: lethal injection and the electric chair. She said Lee is "not entitled to an injunction barring the state from executing him using one of those methods."

Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall's office is appealing the decision, according to a new court filing. Alabama officials have maintained that the method is constitutional.

The issue appears likely bound for the U.S. Supreme Court, which has never ruled a state's execution method to be unconstitutional.

"Were Alabama to adopt firing squad as a method of execution, that method would likely be challenged as well. Indeed, there is likely no method — no matter how humane — that would be immune to constitutional challenge. But the Constitution does not guarantee a painless death, and human life cannot be purposefully extinguished without some risk of pain. The Court, the condemned, and the State must all confront that sobering reality," Marks wrote in her ruling.

Alabama began using nitrogen gas for executions in January 2024, when convicted killer Kenneth Eugene Smith became the first person in the country to be executed using that method.

The execution method, which involves strapping a respirator onto the inmate's face and replacing breathable air with pure nitrogen gas, causing death by lack of oxygen, has been criticized by opponents as inhumane and torturous.

"Three minutes of conscious suffocation is torturous. If that doesn’t violate the constitution, let alone international law, nothing would," Bernard Harcourt, a professor at Columbia University Law School and who represents one of several other Alabama inmates challenging the method as unconstitutional, told The Associated Press.

Nitrogen has been used in eight executions in the U.S., with seven of them in Alabama and one in Louisiana. Lee was set to become the ninth person executed with nitrogen before Marks' order.

Opponents of the death penalty and critics of the controversial execution method praised Marks' ruling on Tuesday.

ALABAMA VIOLATED CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS OF MAN SENTENCED TO DEATH, COURT RULES

"I pray that we are witnessing the collapse of this horrific method nationwide," said the Rev. Jeff Hood, who served as spiritual adviser at two nitrogen executions.

Lee is being held at Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore for his conviction of two counts of capital murder for killing Jimmy Ellis and Elaine Thompson while robbing a pawnshop on Dec. 12, 1998. Prosecutors said Lee entered Jimmy’s Pawnshop with a sawed-off shotgun and shot Ellis, who was the owner of the store, and Thompson, an employee at the business.

A jury voted 7-5 that Lee should be sentenced to life imprisonment, but a judge overrode that recommendation and sentenced him to death.

Alabama later ended the ability of a judge to disregard a jury’s sentencing decision in death penalty cases.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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This week, the nation watched as California grappled again with the ordinarily straightforward task of counting votes in an election. While large states such as Florida declare election winners within 24 hours, California may take up to two weeks to count all the votes.

Even Los Angeles cannot count its votes in the time of large states despite giving the Clerk an annual budget of $336 million and a $448,179 a year salary with the help of 1,100 budgeted positions.

In most states, voters would be outraged by the incompetence, waste, and inefficiency. However, in the Golden State, voters shrug, as if they can demand no more from their elected officials than subpar performance.

Call it the Politics of Low Expectations and California is the model for the nation.

CALIFORNIA’S SLUGGISH VOTE COUNTING RIPPED ACROSS THE POLITICAL SPECTRUM: 'EXTREMELY EMBARRASSING'

For years, my students have asked me what the secret is to a successful marriage approaching four decades (For full disclosure, there is an ongoing contractual dispute over my counting eight years of monogamous dating — leading to two dates on our anniversary cakes). The answer is simple. I reduced her expectations so low that I have exceeded them on a daily basis.

That began with our eloping on New Year’s Eve. We were married after an actual shotgun wedding where the clearly expectant teenage bride’s family was screaming profanities at the teenage groom. After paying $50 and using my high school ring for a wedding ring, we stepped out on the street of Old Town Alexandria as a drunk was retching in the gutter. That left only room for improvement.

On any given day, my wife is simply grateful that I have not traded the house and car for a handful of magic beans.

California Democrats seem to have applied my approach to matrimony to politics, creating a politician’s dream voter with few expectations.

That is most evident with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s infamous high-speed train to nowhere.

In 2008, voters were promised a 500-mile High-Speed train running from San Francisco to Los Angeles for $33 billion. It is now projected to cost somewhere between $126 billion and $231 billion. After roughly two decades, no track has been laid, and the current plan is to focus on building a track between Bakersfield and Merced.

Without any track to display, Newsom recently stood before a freight train on an existing track to insist that his train is moving speedily along.

One would think that citizens would be coming for their leaders with torches and pitchforks. Instead, there is a collective shrug as if it is perfectly normal to spend more than the entire budget of Amtrak on a non-existent train.

The same leaders have burned billions in other boondoggles, including a massive solar power farm that produced energy at a higher cost and incinerated thousands of birds a year.

HOUSING FIRST IS A DISASTER. I SAW SACRAMENTO'S HOMELESS CHAOS FIRSTHAND

California is facing a growing crisis of rising homelessness, dismal education scores, and an exodus of business and wealthy taxpayers. It has also imposed taxes that make gas the most expensive in the nation while suppressing its own energy industry.

Now, after many voters took the unprecedented step of voting for Republican candidates for governor and L.A. mayor, citizens will wait for weeks to learn the results of an election that would have been called days ago by third-world countries.

The same politics of low expectations are evident in other states. In New York City, voters just shrug when told that they have a budget rivaling that of the entire state of Florida, resulting in awful educational, infrastructure, and other conditions.  Voters have watched as wealthy taxpayers have taken their money and jobs to other states.

In return, figures like Mayor Zohran Mamdani promise state-run grocery stores, which will cost tens of millions of dollars to build and operate at a loss.

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In Minnesota, elected officials allowed billions to be stolen in fraud while businesses fled a state rife with rioting and homelessness.

In virtually every major city from Los Angeles to Chicago to New York, public schools are spending massive amounts on education to graduate many students who lack basic proficiency in English and Math. In Baltimore, a student failed all but three of his classes and was ranked in the top half of his graduating class.

Yet, voters reelected the same leaders who have denied generations any real opportunity for advancement. While other countries maintain superior school systems at a fraction of the cost, urban voters cast their ballots like lemmings for the same party and politicians.

In states like California, politics has long been run on Henry Ford’s pitch that you can have any color Model T so long as it is black. This election seemed to offer voters something they had not seen in many years: a real choice between a Republican governor and an L.A. mayor.

As California slowly counts its votes, the odds still heavily favor the continuation of California as a one-party state. Poor services, rising crime, rampant homelessness, hundreds of billions in waste and other failures are treated as virtually inevitable. The result is an electorate that only a politician would love: passive voters who expect little from their government and receive even less.

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Vice President J.D. Vance Monday announced that he has referred allegations involving Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison to the Justice Department's fraud division for a potential criminal investigation over alleged fraud in federally funded social services programs.

Vance made the announcement during an appearance on Fox News' "Jesse Watters Primetime," when he was asked about a report released by the House Oversight Committee alleging that state officials, including Walz and Ellison, were warned of fraud in the state but did not take action to stop it in part because of litigation threats and concerns about being accused of discrimination.

"We're certainly going to investigate this, Jesse, and I guess now I can make a bit of breaking news because I left the White House to come here to do this interview with you. And before I did, we actually referred this particular case to the Department of Justice for a full criminal investigation. We are not going to do what the Biden administration did and make judgments of the law before all the facts are in," Vance said.

MINNESOTA FRAUD REPORT ACCUSES STATE AG OF 'INCOMPETENCE, WILLFUL BLINDNESS OR WORSE'

"But here's what's particularly troubling about this to me is, Jesse, you had people within Governor Walz's office who were saying, you know what? This looks like fraud. It looks like these Somalian illegal immigrants are doing something that's very shady, and then you had people who shut them down, who shut these whistleblowers down and said, you know, you're a racist or you're a xenophobe for asking questions about where taxpayer money is going," he continued.

"What that means to me, Jesse, is that clearly people weren't taking fraud seriously. Whether it rises to the level of a criminal violation, we're gonna investigate it, and of course, if it does rise to that level, we're going to prosecute it. We have to," Vance added.

MINNESOTA TAXPAYER DOLLARS FUNNELED TO AL-SHABAAB TERROR GROUP, REPORT ALLEGES

The vice president, who was tapped in February to lead the White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud after President Donald Trump announced a "war on fraud" in his State of the Union address, later reiterated his comments on social media.

"Minnesota state officials are not above the law, and if they facilitated fraud, lied under oath about what they knew, or harassed and intimidated whistleblowers, they must face justice," Vance wrote on X.

Vance and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz also previously said they were pausing federal Medicaid reimbursements to Minnesota, which Walz said at the time had "nothing to do with fraud" as he described the effort as a "campaign of retribution."

"Trump is weaponizing the entirety of the federal government to punish blue states like Minnesota," Walz said on Feb. 25.

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The marijuana legalization movement sold Americans a simple promise: legalize cannabis, regulate it, tax it, and the black market would disappear.

That promise has failed spectacularly.

Today, illegal marijuana dealers remain active across California and throughout the nation. Meanwhile, the "legal" marijuana industry — the very industry that was supposed to replace them — is struggling with declining sales, shrinking profits, surrendered licenses, and falling tax revenues and investment loses.

The problem is not that Americans have stopped using marijuana. That would be a great outcome for public health and safety. The reality is quite the opposite.

MARIJUANA IS NOT HARMLESS. THE OPPOSITE IS TRUE AND THE EVIDENCE KEEPS GROWING

National surveys show that cannabis use continues to increase. According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), past-month marijuana use rose from 37 million Americans in 2021 to more than 44 million in 2024, while past-year use also reached record levels. Yet during the same period, California's "legal" cannabis sales declined for three consecutive years. If demand is growing while "legal" sales are shrinking, the obvious conclusion is that consumers are increasingly obtaining marijuana from sources outside the licensed marketplace.

Three Consecutive Years of Sales Declines in California

Year — Legal Cannabis Sales:

2023 $4.4 billion

2024 $4.2 billion

2025 $3.9 billion

A cumulative decline of roughly 11% from 2023 to 2025.

This raises an uncomfortable question: What exactly has legalization accomplished?

The answer appears to be that legalization created a government-endorsed marijuana industry that now performs many of the functions once handled by the black market itself. Licensed marijuana dealers advertise cannabis products, normalize marijuana use, introduce new customers to the drug, expand public acceptance, and help grow overall demand. They operate attractive retail storefronts, develop sophisticated branding campaigns, and spend millions of dollars promoting marijuana consumption.

In doing so, they have effectively become the customer-acquisition arm of the broader marijuana economy.

Once consumers become accustomed to using marijuana, many discover that they can purchase the same product through underground channels at significantly lower prices. Illegal dealers do not pay licensing fees, testing costs, regulatory compliance expenses, labor mandates, security requirements, local taxes, state taxes, or federal tax burdens. As a result, they can often undercut "legal" sellers on price while benefiting from the increased consumer demand that legalization helped create.

In other words, licensed marijuana dealers are spending money to recruit customers who can later become customers of illegal marijuana dealers.

MILLIONS OF ILLICIT CANNABIS PACKAGES DISGUISED AS CHILDREN'S CANDY SEIZED IN CALIFORNIA

California's numbers tell the story. The state now has more than 10,000 inactive or surrendered cannabis licenses, exceeding the number of active licenses. Tax revenues that have been baked into city and state budgets are declining. In San Diego, cannabis tax collections have fallen dramatically from their post-legalization highs. Across the country, cannabis-related stocks have lost substantial value with a major cannabis-sector fund reporting a - 67.40% one-year return for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2025, while the S&P 500 was up 15.16% over the same period. Investors increasingly recognize that legalization has not produced the thriving, profitable industry that many predicted.

The industry's defenders argue that legalization has reduced criminal activity and increased consumer safety. Yet the black market remains enormous. By some estimates, over 60% marijuana consumed in California is still obtained outside the "legal" system.

The result is a policy outcome no legalization advocates anticipated but prevention specialists predicted. Rather than replacing illegal drug dealers, legalization created a second class of drug dealers — licensed, regulated, and taxed — who now compete with the original ones.

The irony is difficult to ignore. The "legal" marijuana industry has spent years helping normalize pot use, expanding consumer demand, and increasing public acceptance of the drug. But much of that expanded demand continues to benefit the very underground market legalization was supposed to eliminate.

The black market has thrived. The "legal" market is shrinking. And taxpayers should be wondering whether the grand promises of marijuana legalization were ever realistic in the first place.

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A Republican-led congressional oversight report alleges that senior Minnesota officials, including Gov. Tim Walz, D-Minn., failed for years to act on warnings about fraud in the state’s social services programs, allowing hundreds of millions of dollars in confirmed or alleged losses and placing billions more at risk.

The Walz administration had the power to stop fraudulent payments to high-risk entities receiving federal nutrition and Medicaid funds, but the state "repeatedly failed to act" after officials raised concerns, according to a 205-page final staff report released by the House Oversight Committee on Monday.  

Congressional investigators found that concerns about potential racial discrimination claims — rather than legal constraints — contributed to the Walz administration's decision to continue paying providers suspected of fraud. The committee also spoke to nearly 30 whistleblowers, some of whom accused the Walz administration of retaliation against state employees for sounding the alarm about potential fraud.

"Fraud warnings were elevated to the most senior levels of the Minnesota state government, meaningful corrective action was delayed or avoided, and payments continued long after credible signs of fraud emerged," the report reads in part.

OWNER OF DAYCARE IN VIRAL NICK SHIRLEY VIDEO CHARGED IN $4.6M DAYCARE FRAUD SCHEME, PROSECUTORS SAY

The committee found Minnesota is estimated to have lost $300 million in stolen federal nutrition funds intended to feed hungry children during the COVID-19 pandemic and that as much as $9 billion in Medicaid billing may have been fraudulent, an estimate attributed to a federal prosecutor and disputed by Walz administration officials.

Walz was allegedly aware of fraud associated with the now-defunct Feeding Our Future nonprofit that operated a constellation of fake meal sites as early as 2020, but payments continued flowing to the group for roughly two more years. The oversight panel also found Walz gave conflicting answers about when he first learned of the sweeping meal fraud. 

Federal prosecutors have charged more than 110 individuals in connection with various fraud schemes in the state. Many defendants in the Feeding Our Future case have been identified as members of Minnesota's Somali immigrant community, in connection with various fraud schemes in the state. Some of the convicted fraudsters used the stolen money for luxury purchases and state officials have investigated whether a portion of it was funneled overseas to aid terrorist groups in Somalia and the Middle East.

"Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison are responsible for one of the most stunning oversight failures this Committee has ever examined," Comer said in a statement. "It is now clear the Walz Administration chose to protect the system rather than protect the taxpayer."

The report caps a months long investigation into the Walz administration's handling of widespread fraud, which began in late 2025 and included hearing testimony from Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison as well as members of the Minnesota state legislature's fraud committee. Nine current and former state officials also participated in transcribed interviews with congressional investigators.

The panel is also probing alleged health care fraud in California and Ohio as part of Republicans' ongoing "war on fraud."

MINNESOTA TAXPAYER DOLLARS FUNNELED TO AL-SHABAAB TERROR GROUP, REPORT ALLEGES

The committee sent a letter to Vice President JD Vance urging a full review of Minnesota’s social services programs for potential fraud vulnerabilities, following the report’s findings.

Vance's anti-fraud task force has led to the arrest of at least eight people who allegedly participated in health care fraud schemes and the freezing of $1.3 billion in payments to home health and hospice providers suspected of defrauding the government. 

Earlier this year, the Trump administration suspended nearly $260 million in federal Medicaid funding to Minnesota over the Walz administration’s alleged failure to crack down on fraud.

The Trump administration has also required states to show they are aggressively probing potential Medicaid fraud or risk losing federal funding.

The report also comes as the House is expected to consider a slate of fraud-prevention bills this week. Republicans have argued that new legislative tools are necessary to prevent fraud at the state level amid alleged inaction.

The federal government loses an estimated $233 billion to $521 billion annually to fraud, according to a 2024 Government Accountability Office report.

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