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— Hesiod, "Works and Days" |
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Signs of the Chinese regime’s influence are becoming more prevalent on YouTube, especially in English-language content about China.
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The Supreme Court has granted President Donald Trump’s request to remove legal protections for Venezuelan nationals, opening them up to potential deportation.
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Convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein died by suicide, according to FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino.
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In what could be a game changer for the Trump administration’s deportation efforts, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for California’s Central District and federal partners launched a program to “neutralize California’s sanctuary state policy.”
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🍵 Health: Known as nature’s “liquid gold,” honey has long been used as a sweetener, supplement, and traditional remedy. However, not all forms of honey are created equal, and some people may need to exercise caution.
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☀️ Good morning! It’s Tuesday. Thank you for reading the Morning Brief, an exclusive newsletter for Epoch Times subscribers. |
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| Ivan Pentchoukov
National Editor |
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The U.S. Supreme Court in Washington on May 19, 2025. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times) |
The Supreme Court has granted President Donald Trump’s request to remove legal protections for Venezuelan nationals, opening them up to potential deportation.
The decision came in a brief order on Monday. It noted that the order was “without prejudice” toward a challenge to the policy implemented by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson would have denied the administration’s request, according to the order. The Supreme Court’s block was temporary and allows the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to weigh in on the issue. If the justices take up the case for more thorough consideration, the stay will expire when they issue a judgment.
In early May, the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to remove a lower court’s block on its decision to remove temporary legal protections for more than 300,000 Venezuelan nationals. The order came after another decision on May 16 in which the Supreme Court blocked the president from deporting suspected Venezuelan gang members under the Alien Enemies Act. U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer, addressing the temporary legal protections case, told the Supreme Court in a brief on May 1 that a federal judge in California had overstepped his authority.
“The court contravened an express bar on judicial review, sidestepped black-letter law authorizing agencies to reverse as-yet-inoperative actions, and embraced a baseless equal-protection theory on the road to issuing impermissible universal relief that intrudes on central Executive Branch operations,” Sauer said.
He argued that the order “upsets the judgments of the political branches, prohibiting the executive branch from enforcing a time-sensitive immigration policy and indefinitely extending an immigration status that Congress intended to be” temporary. (More) More Politics: |
- The Department of Justice said it may drop its criminal prosecution of Boeing over allegations that the company deceived federal regulators before two 737 Max crashes that killed 346 people.
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The Food and Drug Administration is going to provide an update on COVID-19 policy this week.
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The Department of Homeland Security said that the first flight of illegal immigrants opting to self-deport was chartered, sending 64 individuals back to Colombia and Honduras.
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The Trump administration said it will end a Biden-era pause on liquefied natural gas export approvals, saying increased exports are in the public interest by boosting the economy and supporting allies, while posing minimal environmental risks.
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Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that reciprocal tariffs could return to the levels set by President Donald Trump on April 2 if trading partners don’t negotiate in good faith.
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Illustration by The Epoch Times, Shutterstock |
Signs of the Chinese regime’s influence are becoming more prevalent on YouTube, especially in English-language content about China.
Paid agitators are flooding comment sections, propaganda videos are being masked as grassroots content, and influencers are being offered cash or crypto to push the regime’s message.
Aside from content that artificially boosts the regime’s image, much of the propaganda aims at discrediting Beijing’s critics, particularly religious and ethnic minorities persecuted in China, as well as the United States more broadly.
The propaganda content on YouTube largely lacks any disclosure that its progeny traces back to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Many times, it’s produced by American or European YouTubers with no apparent connection to the regime.
“[The CCP] has manipulated the public opinion space, especially on YouTube, in the past two, three years, to really focus on using foreign faces, and not people from China … to try to legitimize their claims,” said David Zhang. He runs the “China Insider with David Zhang” channel with more than 1.3 million subscribers and previously hosted a news program at NTD, a sister media of The Epoch Times. The CCP uses influence operations as part of its unrestricted warfare doctrine with the goal of deposing and replacing the United States as the world’s leading superpower. In contrast to regular propaganda, these influence operations usually don’t disclose their connection to the regime. (More) More U.S. News |
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Scott Adams, the longtime cartoonist behind the “Dilbert” comic strip, said that he has the same type of aggressive prostate cancer as former President Joe Biden and that he has only months to live.
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Lawmakers are pushing to bring whole milk back to school cafeterias after it was banned in 2012. It’s a battle years in the making, but milk may be the wrong fight.
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The National Transportation Safety Board said that a Mexican Navy tall ship appeared to increase its speed moments before striking the Brooklyn Bridge on Saturday evening in front of shocked onlookers.
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CBS News CEO Wendy McMahon has announced her resignation, describing the past few months at the network as “challenging.”
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China’s official COVID-19 infection rates doubled in April, according to the latest report from the communist regime’s health authorities. Meanwhile, since early May, Chinese citizens across the country have been reporting a new wave of respiratory infections, causing hospitals to become overcrowded again. Experts who spoke with the Chinese-language edition of The Epoch Times suspect the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) continues to cover up and downplay the true scale of the COVID-19 outbreak in the country, noting that Hong Kong and Taiwan have reported an increase in infections in recent weeks.
The May 8 report published by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (China CDC) acknowledged that the COVID-19 positive rate in China—excluding Hong Kong and Macau—had jumped from 7.5 percent in the first week of April to 16.2 percent from April 28 to May 4.
The China CDC’s report said that the main pathogens detected in respiratory samples of patients with influenza-like symptoms in outpatient and emergency departments of sentinel hospitals were SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19, rhinovirus, and human parainfluenza virus.
Beijing’s Chaoyang District Center for Disease Control and Prevention issued a notice on May 12, attributing the rising COVID-19 infections in the region to the NB.1 strain, a descendant of the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron recombinant lineage XDV.
XDV-related recombinant variant XBB caused a massive outbreak of COVID-19 in China from late 2022 to 2023, according to the health agency. (More) More World News: |
- China, Russia, and Iran are colluding with cartels to smuggle fentanyl into the United States via Canada, according to FBI Director Kash Patel.
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The UK agreed to the most wide-ranging deal on defense and trade with the European Union since Brexit.
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Russia and Ukraine will immediately begin ceasefire talks, President Donald Trump said following a lengthy call with President Vladimir Putin.
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Syria’s post-Assad regime has given independent armed factions 10 days to merge with the state-run security apparatus or face punitive measures, according to Syrian Defense Minister Murhaf Abu Qasra.
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Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski and historian-turned-politician Karol Nawrocki began courting supporters of their eliminated rivals after taking the top two spots in Poland’s first-round presidential vote.
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Israel will ease its blockade and allow limited amounts of food into Gaza as its military begins extensive ground operations in the territory
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📷 Photo of the Day: Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki erupts as seen from Pululera village in East Flores, in Nobo on May 19, 2025. A volcano in eastern Indonesia erupted on May 19, spewing an ash cloud more than a kilometre high after authorities raised the country's highest alert level. (Arnold Welianto/AFP via Getty Images) |
🎙️ Podcast: AI Robots are on the cusp of mass production in China this year. The CCP may produce 6,000 to 10,000 units by 2027. The regime is also developing AI weapons that are increasingly capable of making their own decisions. Join Terri Wu on China Watch as she unpacks China’s wild AI landscape (Listen)
🎤 Sponsored Interview: For many, air travel comes with the persistent fear of catching a cold—or worse—on the journey. Considering the close-quarters contact and recycled air involved, this fear is not ungrounded. But could the fruit of the Sambucus, or elder plant, which has been used throughout the ages for everything from skin conditions to fractures and fevers, offer a modern-day, antiviral solution? (Watch)
✍️ Opinion: Don’t Take the Black Pill by Jeffrey A. Tucker
🎵 Music: Barber - Adagio for Strings (Listen) |
"Gods, Heroes, and Us: Greek Myths in the Modern Era" by James Sale. |
Most people think that myths are just stories. This is evident in the everyday use of the word: “That’s just a myth.” We are taught that it is bad to “perpetuate” myths, and that it’s a cause for celebration to “debunk” them.
James Sale, one of The Epoch Times contributing writers, doesn’t agree with this assessment. He thinks the entire modern world has gone down a wrong path, precisely because it has forgotten the lessons that myths can teach us.
In “Gods, Heroes, and Us: Greek Myths in the Modern Era,” Sale argues that the Ancient Greek myths are still relevant. The stories about Apollo, Herakles, and Odysseus represent timeless truths about human nature and the moral order.
As Sale puts it, “Myths are making the invisible visible,” so that people can better understand reality. In doing so, we can combat the widely held views of relativism and scientism that are undermining our civilization.
Sale begins at the top with Zeus, the king of the Greek gods. The author points out that while Zeus rules Mount Olympus, he doesn’t rule arbitrarily. He’s not a tyrant, but subject to the laws of the cosmic order.
This is an important point. In the modern age, we’re taught that “equity” is the solution to everything, while order and hierarchy are bad. The irony here is that forced equity destroys order, and this can result in chaos, anarchy, and the very opposite of what is intended by utopian schemes. (More)
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