Starbucks founder Howard Schultz joins the growing list of billionaires moving to Florida — a move that is quickly becoming a trend. In past two months alone, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Google CEO Sergey Brin, former Google CEO Larry Page, and now Howard Schultz have announced their migration to Miami.  Schultz has lived in Seattle since 1979, where he built Starbucks into a global brand. The billionaire says he’s making the move in order to pursue his next adventure. “We [Schultz and his wife, Sheri Schultz] have moved to Miami for our next adventure together. We are enjoying the sunshine of South Florida and its allure to our kids on the East Coast as they raise families of their own,” he explained. After 44 years in Seattle, Schultz — worth $6.6 billion — will settle into a $44 million penthouse at the Surf Club, Four Seasons Private Residences in Surfside, about fifteen miles from Miami. The five bedroom penthouse is 5,500 square feet and has a rooftop terrace. While his nonprofit, the Schultz Family Foundation, will remain in Seattle, his family office will relocate with him.  Schultz’s announced his decision on the same day that the Washington State House of Representatives approved a new millionaire tax. The measure passed 52-46 on Wednesday and advanced to the Senate. If it passes, Washington will lose its status as one of the nine states without an income tax. The legislation would impose  a 9.9% tax on income for earners making above $1 million. Washington policymakers argue that only 0.5% of tax payers would be subject to the new levy.  State Rep. Ed Orcutt, one of the 46 legislators who voted against the bill said, “The problem is overspending. There is no tax or combination of taxes that can keep up with a legislature that continually overspends revenue.” Schultz did not mention the tax in his announcement, much like Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos did not mention the Washington State 7% capital gains tax — on sales of stocks and bonds exceeding $250,000 — when he decided in 2023 to leave Seattle for Miami. Like Schultz, Bezos cited only personal reasons. In recent years, a growing number of CEOS have relocated from blue to red states. But while Schultz is moving to a red state, his political views lean left. In 2019, during a media tour for a potential 2020 Presidential run, Schultz said, “I should be paying more taxes. And more people who make this kind of revenue, and are of means, should be paying more taxes.” That same night, Schultz also said, “No one wants to see him [Donald Trump] fired more than me.” Starbucks is also relocating to the south — and to a red state as well. The company announced the move to Nashville, Tennessee, in the beginning of March describing it as part of a broader plan to expand across North America and “establish a strategic presence in the Southeast region of the United States.”  Justin Owen, the President & CEO of the think tank, Beacon Center of Tennessee, welcomed the decision.  “We welcome all businesses to the free state of Tennessee. We encourage them to remember and embrace why they came here: our low tax, low regulation, pro-worker freedom environment,” Owen said. 

The following is an edited transcript excerpt from The Michael Knowles Show. * * * Self-help guru Tim Ferriss, one of the biggest names in the modern “optimize your life” universe, has apparently just arrived at a conclusion I’ve been yelling about for years: self-help is very, very bad for you. Self-help is self-harm. Now, I have to admit something up front: I don’t know much about Tim Ferriss. I’ve heard the name before. But I avoid all self-help. It should be clear to you by now that I don’t like self-help literature. It smells like a scam from 100 miles away. I want to improve myself, yes. I want to improve. But the self-help stuff? No. When I was a teenager, I read a little bit of it like “The 48 Laws of Power” by Robert Greene. Or the really famous one by Dale Carnegie, “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” That’s the classic of the self-help category. And, as I remember it, all it boils down to this: be nice to people and remember their names.  That’s it. I just saved you ten bucks on Amazon. And I guess that’s good advice. But a lot of the self-help stuff is pretty noxious. I’ve thought this for years. And apparently Tim Ferriss agrees — at least partially. Ferriss’ “Road To Damascus” Moment Ferriss seems to have had a Road to Damascus moment — not necessarily with a religious conversion, but with a recognition that what he’s been doing might be wrong. According to an article in The Telegraph titled, “The self-help guru who decided he might be doing more harm than good,” Ferriss is confronting his most profound insight yet in his latest blog post, “The Self-Help Trap.” The piece is about 3,000 words. It’s got all the usual “optimization” language — optimizing is one of the words they all use. Ferriss, now 48, asks whether his own industry might, with some important caveats, be making desperate people worse rather than better. And then he says, quote: “The older I get, the more I think that self-help can be a trap. Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease. I say this after around 20 years of writing self-help, and a lifetime of consuming it … What if self-help itself is actually creating or amplifying unhappiness?” Ferriss says modern self-help contains a “built-in flaw: to continually improve yourself, you must continually locate the ways you are broken.” He gets so close. I love so much of what he’s saying — and then he totally misses the point. The point just goes right over his head. But he gets very close, and so I give him credit for the introspection. Some people are reading this cynically: is he just doing a new kind of self-help? Has Self-help ruined your life? Read my new book: “Ten Easy Steps to Get Over Self-Help,” by Tim Ferriss! No. That’s not what he’s doing here. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. I think maybe he’s being sincere. He’s in the middle of his life’s journey, and he’s had this realization. Self-Help Is A Trap And You Can See It In The People Who Buy It Ferriss says, “I think self-help can be a trap.” That’s true. The people who are most obsessed with self-help, in my experience, are the most messed up, depressed people. And you might say, well, yeah — they’re messed up. They’re trying to get help. Well, it ain’t working. It’s like your friend or relative who’s been going to the therapist — usually just means drug dealer, but, you know, the psychiatrist — for 30 years. They never get any better. And maybe they get more dope, but they don’t ever get any better.  And you say, hey, have you thought about trying something different? And they say, oh, I couldn’t, I’m so messed up—could you imagine if I lost my psychiatrist? Hold on. Maybe you’re going that backwards. Maybe your psychiatrist is actually not helping but even compounding the problem. I think that’s what happens with self-help, but not for the reason Tim Ferriss gives. The Problem Isn’t “Finding What’s Broken.” It’s Denying What’s Broken. Ferriss says self-help has this in-built flaw: to continually improve yourself, you must continually look at the ways you are broken. That’s not the problem. You know what else impels you to continually reflect on the ways in which you’re broken? Christianity does that, when you examine your conscience, and especially when you go and confess your sins to a priest. You have to sit down and think of the number and kind of all the ways that you are broken. The problem with self-help is that it doesn’t do that. The whole premise of self-help, actually, is a denial of the fundamental ways in which we are broken, because self-help, at its root, I think, denies original sin. The whole point is that you really can help yourself. And not just help yourself a little bit. You can save yourself. You can optimize your life. And ultimately you can’t. You can exercise. You can work-out. You can practice certain habits of virtue. But ultimately, you can’t save yourself. This is what the Church formally declared when it condemned the heresy of Pelagius. The problem with self-help is it misses out on the best way you can help yourself, which is looking to Someone beyond yourself. Not looking to Tim Ferriss. Not looking to Dale Carnegie. Not looking to whatever other guru is trending on the internet this week. But looking to Someone who is greater than you — who is so far beyond humanity and yet mysteriously takes on humanity, and so understands us intimately. Not only who created us, but who has lived as one of us — who is like us in all respects, except sin. That’s what it’s about. A Christian Offshoot With All The Fun Parts And None Of The Obligations Just as liberalism is a perversion — it’s kind of a spin-off of Christianity that tries to keep all the fun parts of Christianity without any of the obligations and the duties and the limits — this is the same thing with self-help. The self-help literature I’ve read, some of it, it spins out of Christianity, and it takes away all the limits and all the essential stuff. It takes away the parts that acknowledge that not only are you broken, but you’re so broken that there is essentially nothing you can do without grace. So, if you want to read some self-help literature, a good writer on this would be Saint Thomas Aquinas, who points out that without grace, every human being will fall into mortal sin. And even if you’re in a state of grace, you’ll still fall into venial sin. That’s how broken we are. The Ferriss Moment We Should All Root For Ferriss is close. He’s very close. We’ve got to help Tim Ferriss be great. Wouldn’t it be great if one of the big proponents of self-help actually turned people on to real help? Because the trap isn’t noticing your flaws. The trap is believing you can fix the deepest ones alone — believing that the answer is always inside you, always one more habit, one more hack, one more optimization away. And that’s not liberation. That’s just a nicer-looking cage.

Brooke Slusser took a stand for women in college sports. Now she’s the victim of vicious online attacks. In a recent interview with Fox News, the former San Jose State Volleyball player expressed shock at the hate and vitriol coming out now for simply saying she was not comfortable sharing a bed with a man as a college athlete. The attacks come years after Slusser joined the lawsuit against the NCAA, where she publicly spoke about her experience playing alongside Blaire Fleming, a biological male on the SJSU women’s volleyball team. “I honestly think what struck the biggest nerve is this is really the first time I’ve like sat and talked about just kind of like a day to day point of view, like, yes, we were good friends, like we’d share very like intimate details about each of our lives, like that’s a normal roommate tendencies do in a girl’s apartment,” Slusser told The Daily Wire. Credit: Brooke Slusser Since the interview earlier this week, Slusser has been called a “b*tch” and a “transphobe right-wing grifter” among other attacks for simply speaking the truth. “Someone texted me and was like, ‘I love you so much, I hope you’re doing ok,’ and that usually means that’s usually how I find out something’s going on about me on the internet,” Slusser said of the attacks. Slusser believed her coaches, support staff, and San Jose State admin when they told her Blaire was a girl. Slusser shared beds with the biological man on team trips and lived together for two seasons. Slusser said she was blindsided by the news that she had been living with a man, even though, in hindsight, she said things seemed off. “His doors were always locked, that’s what I remember, because like I said, we were all very good friends, and so it’s very normal for girls just to like barge into each other’s rooms unannounced,” Slusser said. “We always had to knock, and I just thought that was weird, but I was like, if a person likes their privacy, I’m not gonna be the one to push a button.” Slusser refuses to focus on the hate. Instead, she’s driven to ensure other girls don’t live through the experience of playing and living with a man disguised as a woman, which Slusser described as “hell.” Slusser said her coach, Todd Kress, never told Slusser her roommate was a man, and once news broke about Fleming’s biology, Kress encouraged his team to stay quiet. “They gaslit us so much, and the fact that like, if we spoke on this at all, even with like close family and friends, our scholarship would be in jeopardy,” Slusser said. In January, the Office of Civil Rights found San Jose State violated Title IX because of its handling of the trans-identifying volleyball player. The Trump admin said that if the university complied with a list of conditions, the university wouldn’t be punished. Instead of complying, like Penn did last year, SJSU and the California State University system decided to sue the federal government. SJSU President Dr.Cynthia Teniente-Matson released this statement on March 6 regarding the lawsuit: “This is not a step we take lightly. However, we have a responsibility to defend the integrity of our institution and the rule of law, while ensuring that every member of our community is treated fairly and in accordance with the law. Our position is simple: We have followed the law and cannot be punished for doing so. OCR has faulted us for following decisions from federal courts that bound SJSU; OCR has no authority to do that. We are asking the court to set aside OCR’s Letter of Findings and Proposed Resolution Agreement and prevent the Department of Education from terminating, freezing, or refusing to grant SJSU’s federal funding.” Slusser called her institution’s decision “blood-boiling.” “It’s mostly SJSU that needs to be held accountable,” Slusser said. “I achieved the dream of playing collegiate sports, and the last year I had was completely ruined. You can’t get that back.” During Slusser’s senior season in 2024, eight of San Jose State’s wins came from forfeits because other collegiate programs refused to play against a male. In the Mountain West Conference alone, Boise State, Wyoming, Utah State, and Nevada forfeited seven matches against SJSU. Slusser thought the nationwide pushback would address the issue, but she was proved wrong. “I was still trusting of Todd, my head coach, and I asked what happens if we just removed this one person and played as women, and he just cussed me out. I was like, oh, ok, that’s how we feel about this.” The 23-year-old is fighting alongside Riley Gaines as the two are part of a lawsuit against the NCAA. Slusser said it’s progressing well despite both the NCAA and Mountain West conference attempts to appeal. The slurs thrown Slusser’s way for speaking up thankfully don’t get her down. Even if they did, she said she would never stop standing up for women. “If I passed this up and had kids in sports later on and saw them going through what I did when I knew I could change it and didn’t, I would literally kick myself.” “I just think people need to know you can stand up and nothing is gonna happen to you.”

Urging Congress to take action against the abortion drug mifepristone, a woman named Elizabeth Gillete spoke out Wednesday about her horrific experience with the fatal pill. Speaking at a press conference organized by Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO), Gillette gave her story of how the abortion drug had harmed her when she was in her 20s and ended the life of her unborn baby. After pressure from her boyfriend, she said she took an abortion pill and said when the baby was expelled from her body he had recognizable eyes, limbs, and earbuds. “That was so different from the double period and the extra clotting that they told me that I would experience,” she said. “And in that moment, I had to decide if I was going to throw my child in the trash or flush my child down the toilet, and I chose to flush him into a septic tank.” She said the whole experience gave her post-traumatic stress disorder. “And instead of relief, I got horrible nightmares that started, where I would see people dying and people being murdered,” she said. “I would hear infants crying in the trash cans when I walked by them, I would hear infants crying in the toilet. I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, which I still suffer from this day.” Her comments came as Hawley announced Wednesday that he had introduced a bill that would ban the use of mifepristone for abortion nationwide. He said the bill was inspired by how the abortion rate has increased despite the overturning of Roe v. Wade.  “There are more abortions now in the United States than there were when Roe was still the law of the land,” Hawley said. “It is time for Congress to ban the use of mifepristone for abortion.” “Only Congress can address this situation. Only Congress is placed to regulate the flow of interstate drugs,” he added.  The proposal would also allow women who were harmed by the abortion drug to sue the manufacturers for damages.  A companion bill was introduced by Tennessee Republican Diana Harshbarger in the House.  Mifepristone has quickly become the most common method for ending the life of an unborn baby. The fatal drug, which ends a baby’s life by cutting it off from nutrients needed to survive, has largely fueled the nationwide increase in abortion. Abortionists and leftist activists, protected by so-called shield-laws, have shipped the drug through the mail bypassing red state laws banning medication abortions.  Data released in December by the pro-abortion Society of Family Planning revealed that the number of monthly abortions continued to increase in 2025 from 2024, which was itself an increase from 2023.  Pro-life advocates including Hawley have called for the Trump administration to repeal Biden-era regulations that allowed the drug to be shipped through the mail without an in-person doctor’s visit.  The Food and Drug Administration has said that it is conducting a safety study of mifepristone and has kept Biden-era regulations in place that allow the fatal drug to be sent through the mail with no in-person doctor visits.  Last month, Hawley told The Daily Wire that he thought it was time for Congress to get involved in the abortion fight.  “I think Congress needs to be involved. Congress shouldn’t be a spectator and just outsource this to other people. I think it’s time for Congress to get involved,” he said.  Those comments came after he attended a close-door briefing with FDA Administrator Marty Makary to discuss the regulation of mifepristone. He said he thought the safety study was a “dead end.”

The former Trump administration official who is centering a congressional campaign around her work for the ousted Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem is employing the firm at the center of a scandal-plagued $200 million contract, which is run by the husband of another one of Noem’s top confidants. Madison Sheahan, a junior political aide from Noem’s time as South Dakota governor who was installed as deputy director of ICE, is now running for congress in Ohio–while living with her parents–as the woman who oversaw “strategy and execution in support of border security” for the Trump administration. Doing work on her campaign is the Strategy Group, CEO Ben Yoho told The Daily Wire. Yoho is married to Tricia McLaughlin, who The Daily Wire has learned was closely involved in the procurement process that led to her husband profiting off of a $200 million ad campaign. A current DHS official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told The Daily Wire that McLaughlin, the former Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs, had significant involvement in the procurement process, and is on emails about the vendor selection. That information is contrary to Noem’s testimony to Congress, when she said that the contract “went out to a competitive bid and career officials at the department chose who would do those advertising commercials.” Noem was fired last week, in part over her handling of the $200 million ad campaign. She will leave her DHS post at the end of March. McLaughlin acknowledged to The Daily Wire that she was part of a group of officials that heard presentations from each company that was considered for the work in February 2025. One of the successful firms later subcontracted to McLaughlin’s husband’s company, though they didn’t marry until August. McLaughlin said DHS has no control over who a firm subcontracts with, and that she recused herself from any involvement after learning that it had subcontracted with her husband. The admission by McLaughlin means that both portions of Noem’s testimony–that the contracts were competed and were chosen by career officials–were misleading. The Daily Wire previously reported that only three firms – approached by DHS in advance – were allowed to bid. DHS said it selected them by reviewing “websites” and “industry publications,” even though such reviews would have brought up little information about the firms, all of which were politically connected. McLaughlin told The Daily Wire that the companies made pitches to “me and a group of officials.” A justification for departing from the practice of open bidding is signed by four people whose names are redacted. One, with the title “Program Office Representative,” might contain her signature, she said, since the ads fell under her department. Two of the three companies received contracts. Safe America Media LLC, which was incorporated just days earlier, wound up subcontracting production work to the Strategy Group, McLaughlin’s husband’s firm. Strategy Group had also done Noem’s media as governor, after, Bloomberg reported, the firm was introduced to Noem by Corey Lewandowski, her top aide at DHS and rumored affair partner McLaughlin said Safe America Media LLC was one of three that DHS asked to bid because the group of DHS officials knew it was run by Patrick McCarthy and Mike McElwain, who “are some of the best in the business, they’ve had a storied, illustrious career.” “I was just one of the people involved,” she told The Daily Wire. The second firm was People Who Think LLC, which had overlapped with Noem aides through a previous campaign in Louisiana for Gov. Jeff Landry. Lewandowski worked for the campaign, and Strategy Group ran ads for a PAC supporting his bid. “People Who Think is a storied company. These people all went through presentations,” McLaughlin said. McLaughlin sent a statement from DHS General Counsel James Percival calling allegations against her baseless. “I have personally reviewed the allegations against Ms. McLaughlin, and I find them to be baseless,” Percival said. “Nothing illegal or unethical occurred with respect to these contracts. Ms. McLaughlin was not involved in selecting any subcontractors.” Sheahan also previously worked for Landry. The congressional hopeful graduated college in 2019 before working as then-Gov. Noem’s political director. From January 2024 to March 2025, she worked for Gov. Landry as Louisiana’s Secretary of Wildlife and Fisheries, or so-called “fish cop.” An Ohio blog called The Rooster claimed that Sheahan’s appointment in the Landry administration was orchestrated by Lewandowski. It said after Louisiana fishermen were baffled by the pick, she cited her time on Ohio State’s rowing team as bona fides. Noem then baffled Washington by picking Sheahan, who turned 28 that month, for one of the most important positions in the Trump administration’s signature effort to deport illegal immigrants. Sheahan mused to New York Magazine: “At the end of the day, what really makes anybody qualified for any job?”” Screenshot of Sheahan ad featuring Kristi Noem Sheahan has been at the center of concerns about spending decisions at the department under Noem. NBC News reported last week that Sheahan steered a second set of lucrative contracts – this time advertising to recruit ICE employees – to the same two firms. NBC said that Sheahan “threatened the job of an ICE employee for suggesting that the agency consider other contractors, according to internal communications. Sheahan said the contract award was ‘a decision made by the secretary,’ according to internal communications.” In September 2025, the Associated Press photographed Noem, Sheahan, and Landry at a new ICE prison in the state, with Landry saying, “I’m proud to stand alongside Secretary Noem, General Bondi, Deputy Director Sheahan as we announce the opening of the Louisiana lockup, which will house the worst of the worst illegal criminal aliens.” ICE paid the state more than $1 million a month to use the facility. The Washington Examiner reported this week that Sheahan, with the support of Lewandowski, had ICE purchase millions of dollars in vehicles wrapped in flashy DHS logos and slogans. The vehicles were purchased without competition, and couldn’t be used because ICE apprehends illegal immigrants by deploying unmarked vehicles, the report claimed. DHS denied the vehicles weren’t being used in a statement to The Daily Wire: “Any allegation that these new vehicles are not being used is FALSE.” “Thanks to the One Big Beautiful Bill, ICE finally has the resources to grow its workforce to support ICE’s mission, and that will include all types of additional vehicles,” the agency said. “These specific vehicles are supplementing the existing ICE fleet and support operations across the country.” During the 2020 election, Sheahan was put in charge of a Wisconsin recount that wound up increasing Kamala Harris’ margin of victory, a GOP operative told The Daily Wire on condition of anonymity. “She was walking around with a lot of self-importance without actually doing a whole lot,” the operative said. He said Sheahan was brought onto the Trump campaign by Clayton Henson, a Trump campaign regional director who, like McLaughlin and Sheahan, is an operative from Ohio. Sheahan resigned from ICE in January to run for Congress in Ohio after, The Rooster claimed, Henson played a role in redistricting. She referred questions to a consultant, Bob Paduchik, who declined to speak on the record.