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A new achievement by physicists at a thermonuclear reactor brings the production of clean thermonuclear energy closer. In the Huanliu-3 experimental thermonuclear reactor, which is located in China, physicists managed to create a special magnetic field, which is an important step for obtaining clean and limitless energy in the future. This achievement is important for future experiments at the world’s largest fusion reactor, ITER, which is located in France, writes Popular Mechanics. Thermonuclear reactors are sometimes called an artificial Sun, because they are capable of reproducing the reaction that occurs in the core of our star, and all stars. We are talking about thermonuclear fusion, when atoms of hydrogen or its isotopes are fused together, which leads to the release of huge amounts of energy. This energy is clean, that is, waste-free and practically limitless. Scientists around the world are working to obtain it. But it is assumed that it will be possible to obtain thermonuclear energy only in 10-20 years. Nevertheless, it is necessary to create all the conditions for this to happen. Physicists at the Huanliu-3 fusion reactor have achieved another important milestone on the path to unlimited energy. They managed for the first time to create a magnetic field, which is completely new in its design. It is worth saying that this reactor is not capable of operating stably or producing more energy than was expended to produce thermonuclear fusion. But the Huanliu-3 rector is a testing ground for testing certain technologies that will help operate the largest fusion reactor, ITER, in France. Like the ITER reactor, Huanliu-3 is a tokamak, that is, a torus-shaped reactor. The installation holds very hot plasma inside using a strong magnetic field. It is in the plasma that the thermonuclear reaction necessary for the emergence of thermonuclear energy occurs. The problem is that physicists have not yet achieved long-term plasma stability so that constant thermonuclear fusion continues, as in the core of the Sun. Therefore, it is necessary to create a completely new magnetic field in its design to contain plasma with a temperature of tens of millions of degrees Celsius. It is this magnetic field that will allow us to obtain clean energy in the future. There are a number of problems with the way modern tokamaks create magnetic fields. Therefore, work is underway to create super-powerful magnets that are being improved. The new magnetic field configuration could be a huge step forward not only for the Huanliu-3 reactor, but also for the ITER reactor. The post On the way to limitless energy: artificial Sun created a special magnetic field appeared first on Anomalien.com.

The final flurry of U.S. Supreme Court rulings at the end of June brought several highly positive developments and one major disappointment. Multiple decisions curtailed the power of the federal government’s executive agencies, a much-needed corrective that begins a dismantling of the unconstitutional federal regulatory state.Even more importantly, the rulings laid the groundwork for a restoration of the nation’s constitutional order to be developed much further in future cases.'Courts interpret statutes, no matter the context, based on the traditional tools of statutory construction, not individual policy preferences.' We’ll see about that. This includes reestablishing the separation of powers among the three branches of the federal government and the states’ authority over police powers and other matters the Constitution does not explicitly assign to the national government. There is much more work to be done on the latter, but this session’s decisions are a good start.In a decision written by Chief Justice John Roberts, the court ruled the Securities and Exchange Commission cannot use agency proceedings to prosecute people for fraud. Such cases must be decided in federal courts, the justices ruled in a 6-3 vote. Use of agency proceedings violates people’s Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial, the court said.The decision will probably extend to other regulatory agencies and enforcement mechanisms. I agree with Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent that the ruling is “a massive sea change” and “the constitutionality of hundreds of statutes may now be in peril, and dozens of agencies could be stripped of their power to enforce laws enacted by Congress.” Sotomayor and the other dissenters argue that the dismantling of the regulatory state would be a very bad outcome. On the contrary, it would be extremely beneficial to the American people. Even more importantly, law enforcement without a trial is unconstitutional and profoundly anti-American.In another 6-3 decision written by Roberts, the court ruled against prosecution of January 6 defendants for obstruction of justice under a law meant to stop people from destroying documents or otherwise tampering with evidence in criminal investigations. The majority recognized that the law was never intended to apply to every conceivable “obstruction” of “an official proceeding.” Meanwhile, two of the four charges in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s case against Donald Trump are based on this statute.In dissent, Justice Amy Coney Barrett argued that “statutes often go further than the problem that inspired them, and under the rules of statutory interpretation, we stick to the text anyway.” Such expansive interpretation of federal laws is judicial activism, plain and simple, and has been causing trouble for decades. Now, the justices argue regularly over the texts of the laws and the Constitution in the cases before them, a position known as textualism. That is a great improvement from the court’s many decades of activism.Reining in activismIn a similar fashion, the court found in Snyder v. United States the prosecution of state and local officials for bribery under federal law is wrong because that authority belongs to the states. The states have the “prerogative to regulate the permissible scope of interactions between state officials and their constituents,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote for the majority. This decision is an important affirmation of states’ authority to use their police powers and a welcome limitation on the federal government.In Grants Pass v. Johnson, the justices voted 6-3 to strike down a lower court’s ruling that a city could not fine or imprison people for violating public-camping ordinances if there are more homeless people than shelter beds “practically available” to them. “The enforcement of generally applicable laws regulating camping on public property does not constitute ‘cruel and unusual punishment’ prohibited by the Eighth Amendment,” the court ruled.In addition, although the cruel and unusual punishment clause of the Eighth Amendment “prohibits certain methods of punishment a government may impose after a criminal conviction ... it does not impose [any] substantive limits on what conduct a state may criminalize.” For decades, the Supreme Court had been constricting the authority of states and local governments while expanding the reach of the federal government. The Grants Pass decision is a welcome reversal of that unconstitutional habit of judicial activism, restoring to states their full range of police powers.Good riddance to Chevron deference Finally, in a long-awaited decision, in Loper v. Raimondo the court removed federal agencies’ permission to craft regulations as they see fit provided that their interpretations of ambiguously worded congressional legislation are not embarrassingly unreasonable. Federal regulators have run wild for four decades under this doctrine, known as Chevron deference after a 1984 Supreme Court ruling, though the practice originated in the New Deal era.The Chevron decision upended the constitutional order and promoted the massive expansion of the regulatory state. Members of Congress passed laws larded with generalities they could rely on the permanent bureaucracy to transform into greater government power while distancing the legislators from responsibility for those decisions.The court’s decision to undo that harm in Loper is sweeping and unambiguous: “The Administrative Procedure Act requires courts to exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority, and courts may not defer to an agency interpretation of the law simply because a statute is ambiguous; Chevron is overruled.”Writing for the 6-2 majority (Ketanji Brown Jackson having recused herself), Roberts flatly stated Chevron does not make sense and wrongly limits courts’ authority to decide on the legality of executive branch actions.“Chevron cannot be reconciled with the APA by presuming that statutory ambiguities are implicit delegations to agencies,” the chief justice wrote. “That presumption does not approximate reality. A statutory ambiguity does not necessarily reflect a congressional intent that an agency, as opposed to a court, resolve the resulting interpretive question.”Resolving statutory ambiguities is, in fact, the courts’ responsibility and area of expertise, Roberts noted: “Perhaps most fundamentally, Chevron’s presumption is misguided because agencies have no special competence in resolving statutory ambiguities. Courts do. The Framers anticipated that courts would often confront statutory ambiguities and expected that courts would resolve them by exercising independent legal judgment.”The court’s decision to strike down Chevron deference does not encourage legislation from the bench, Roberts argued: “Courts interpret statutes, no matter the context, based on the traditional tools of statutory construction, not individual policy preferences.” We’ll see about that. Chevron deference arose as a way of keeping courts from making absurd reinterpretations of federal laws. The Supreme Court made the right decision in ending it, however, as it is indeed the judiciary’s job to make those mistakes if anybody is going to do so.A First Amendment setbackUnfortunately, not all the court’s final-week decisions were decided as sensibly as these. In Murthy v. Missouri, the court gave the government permission to threaten, cajole, and bribe media organizations into supporting the president’s re-election campaign by suppressing bad news about the president and quashing readers’ and posters’ comments critical of Biden.Instead of making a judgment on the facts of the case, which centered on the federal government’s actions, the court’s majority decided that the plaintiffs failed to “demonstrate a substantial risk that, in the near future, they will suffer an injury that is traceable to a Government defendant and redressable by the injunction they seek.”The decision indicates the plaintiffs could sue the media organizations for damages for past actions, though of course the lawsuit was aimed at alleged Biden administration wrongs. The majority refused to stop the Biden administration now because the trial courts did not identify enough evidence to prove to their satisfaction that Biden’s team would pressure media organizations to do the same thing again this time around.The dissent written by Justice Samuel Alito (with Thomas and Gorsuch concurring) argued that the plaintiffs provided plenty of evidence showing the Biden administration’s actions harmed the defendants.“For months in 2021 and 2022, a coterie of officials at the highest levels of the Federal Government continuously harried and implicitly threatened Facebook with potentially crippling consequences if it did not comply with their wishes about the suppression of certain COVID–19-related speech,” Alito wrote. “Not surprisingly, Facebook repeatedly yielded. As a result, Hines was indisputably injured, and due to the officials’ continuing efforts, she was threatened with more of the same when she brought suit.”Alito concluded the court’s majority shirked its responsibility to defend the public from censorship instigated by the federal government: “It was blatantly unconstitutional, and the country may come to regret the Court’s failure to say so.” The dissenters are right. The majority indulged in excessively cute reasoning to avoid a hot political issue.Overall, the Supreme Court made significant progress this term toward restoring the nation’s constitutional structure. It emphasized separation of powers and the rights of states and people to govern themselves without federal interference in areas outside the Constitution's authority. This is an extraordinary and unexpected development of historical significance.

Little Tech is our term for tech startups, as contrasted to Big Tech incumbents. Little Tech has run independent of politics for our entire careers. But as the old Soviet joke goes, “You may not be interested in politics, but politics is interested in you.” We believe bad government policies are now the number-one threat to Little Tech. When this cycle is allowed to play out, when big companies can weaponize the government against startups, the result is stagnation and then decline. We believe American technology supremacy, and the critical role that Little Tech startups play in ensuring that supremacy, is a first-class political issue on par with any other. The time has come to stand up for Little Tech. Our political efforts as a firm are entirely focused on defending Little Tech. We do not engage in political fights outside issues directly relevant to Little Tech. But we will fight for Little Tech — for the freedom to research, to invent, to create jobs, to build the future — with all of our resources. We find there are three kinds of politicians: Those who support Little Tech. We support them. Those who oppose Little Tech. We oppose them. Those who are somewhere in the middle — they want to be supportive, but they have concerns. We work with them in good faith. We support or oppose politicians regardless of party and regardless of their positions on other issues. We are in this for the long haul. America America led the 20th century because we are pre-eminent in three dimensions: Technology – America drove the Second Industrial Revolution through the 1930s and then the Computer Revolution since the 1940s. Economy – America’s free market system created enormous societal wealth and dramatic improvements in quality of life for everyday people. Military – American military might drove victory in World War I and World War II, then catalyzed the unilateral surrender and dissolution of the Soviet Union. Each of these dimensions reinforces the other two: Our technology pre-eminence powers our economy and our military. Our economic growth pays for our massive investment in technology and in our military. And our military dominance keeps us safe from foreign threats and hostile ideologies that could crush our technology, our economy, and our people. And America’s success has positive global spillover effects to much of the rest of the world. American technology is the global standard. The American economy is the leading production and consumption partner of many other nations. And the American military has maintained overall global peace and prosperity since World War II to a level unprecedented in world history. Naysayers say America’s best days are behind us, that the 21st century will see America play a diminished role in all three dimensions. We disagree. There is no reason American technology, economic, and military leadership cannot continue for decades to come. There is no reason the 21st century cannot be a second American Century. Startups American technology leadership is the result of a complex system built over the last 150 years that includes our pioneering spirit, our work ethic, our rule of law, our deep capital markets, our higher education system, and long-term government investment in scientific research. And university, government, and corporate labs have all played key roles. But the vanguard of American technology supremacy has always been the startup. From Edison and Ford to Hughes and Lockheed to SpaceX and Tesla, the path to greatness starts in a garage. A startup is what happens when a plucky group of outcasts and misfits come together with a dream, ambition, courage, and a particular set of skills — to build something new in the world, to build a product that will improve peoples’ lives, and to build a company that may go on to create many more new things in the future. The enormous advantage of any startup is a clean sheet of paper — a single shot to imagine and realize a different and better world. But startups start with every other disadvantage. Specifically, they must go up against incumbent companies that have overwhelmingly superior brands, market positions, customer bases, and financial strength — incumbents that are out to strangle startup competition in the cradle. Incumbents often have another enormous advantage — the ability to wire the government against startup competitors. Dominant companies don’t start out that way. In fact, they start as startups, fighting their way uphill until they reach a position of power where they seek to lock in their gains, to pull the rope ladder up behind them. They inject themselves into the political system and seek regulatory capture — a wall of laws and regulations that protect and entrench their positions and that new startups cannot possibly scale. The historical result of regulatory capture in market after market has been government-enforced monopolies and cartels. And the motto of every monopoly and cartel is, “We don’t care, because we don’t have to.” When this cycle is allowed to play out, when big companies can weaponize the government against startups, the result is stagnation and then decline. There are many signs of stagnation and decline in the American economy today. Economists measure the rate of technology improvement in the economy as productivity growth. And productivity growth today, after 50 years of the proliferation of the profoundly powerful technologies of the computer and the internet, is lower than before the 1970s. The real-world consequences are staggering: Low productivity growth means low economic growth. Low economic growth means a low rate of improvement in quality of life for regular people, if not outright backsliding. See, for example, skyrocketing prices and stagnating quality of education, health care, and housing — sure signs of regulatory capture. Low economic growth also means the rise of smashmouth zero-sum politics, as gains for one group of people necessarily require taking things away from other people. Zero-sum politics lead to corrosion of the national spirit of opportunity and growth. We can feel this corrosion all around us. The way to prevent this outcome is to encourage new startups — to drive innovation, competition, and growth — and to prevent big companies from weaponizing the government to crush them. Problem The American government is now far more hostile to new startups than it used to be. For example: Regulatory agencies have been greenlit to use brute force investigations, prosecutions, intimidation, and threats to hobble new industries, such as Blockchain. Regulatory agencies are being greenlit in real time to do the same to artificial intelligence. Regulatory agencies are applying direct pressure to banks to cut off disfavored startups and founders from the financial system. Regulatory agencies are punitively blocking startups from being acquired by the same big companies the government is preferencing in so many other ways. The federal government as a customer in critical sectors like defense and intelligence is more wired than ever to favor big incumbents over innovative startups. And the government is currently proposing a tax on unrealized capital gains, which would absolutely kill both startups and the venture capital industry that funds them. The anti-startup bias that is increasingly pervasive across the American government is a clear and present threat to the health and vitality of American technology success — and therefore to the American economy, the American military, and the American people. Why is this happening? In part, explicit decisions. In part, inertial drift. But also because tech startups as an industry do not show up in Washington, D.C., and in the political system the way big companies do. As long as this imbalance persists, the war on tech startups and the resulting threat to America will continue. Therefore the need to politically defend Little Tech. Opportunity Reversing ruinous policies is just one side of the coin. We can also imagine positive policies that encourage tech startups to flourish — benefiting those startups and their customers and forcing big incumbents to stay vital and dynamic due to startup competition. For example: Regulatory reform in important industries like health care, education, and housing, to strip incumbents of their current regulatory capture and drive higher quality at lower prices. Policies to reconstruct the American manufacturing sector around automation and AI, reshoring entire industries and creating millions of new middle-class jobs. Reinvention of the American military industrial base by new companies building defense systems on the leading edge of autonomy and AI. Environmental reform to encourage the development and deployment of nuclear power for unlimited clean energy production. Expansion of high-skilled immigration to encourage foreign graduates of American universities and others to build new companies and industries here. And a whole-of-government program to drive the success of U.S. technology companies globally against a hostile China and a regulation-crazed EU. We have no doubt that an American government that actually wants startups to succeed and new industries to flourish would drive enormous increases in the standard of living of regular Americans and underwrite many more decades of American technology, economic, and military strength. The glory of a second American Century is within our reach. Let’s grasp it. Editor's note: This article was originally posted as a thread on X.

Cowboy boots likely originated in 16th-century Spain. From there, they made it to Mexico, an essential part of the vaquero’s uniform. But it wasn’t until they wound up on the feet of frontier Americans that they became truly iconic. As student of the Western, I thought it behooved me to know something about the legendary footwear that won the West. Every American Should Own a Pair of Anderson Bean Boots www.youtube.com So I set out to find the most authentically American bootmakers in business. It has been a humbling experience. I’ve discovered that I know very little about cowboy boots. I was originally going to feature Ariat Boots. I own a pair. They’ve gotten me through some vital moments: shoveling snow and trenching through floodwater yet also working perfectly at a wedding or funeral. Let’s just say that after dealing with Ariat as a company, I no longer feel the same. It's a blessing in disguise, prompting me to venture into the unknown. So I set out to learn about real cowboy boots. I polled a lot of people: What are the most American boots available? I also discovered that I know a lot of people who know a lot about boots. My surveying led to three clear winners. Third place was Lucchese. I spoke with someone on the company's media/PR team who was incredibly nice but in a somewhat off-putting way. Lucchese crafts breathtaking boots. But the price tag is enough to make you woozy. So to be fair, I can only afford to try them on. A few of the people I talked to said that Luccheses are the only boots they’ll wear. The Duke wore them, and so did Gene Autry. Tecovas came in second. Affordability, for one. $300 isn't outrageous for boots — good boots. I recently visited a Tecovas store in Austin, Texas. Quality gear. I never heard back from any of the company's publicists. But one company earned the most votes by far: Anderson Bean Boots. A co-worker even connected me to Ryan Vaughan, the CEO. Before we began the interview, we prayed. It was lovely. The conversation flowed in a blessed way. I walked away certain not only that he’s a good man and a God-loving man but also that he is at the helm of one of the more interesting small businesses I’ve encountered. And by “small,” I mean that the company is devoted to crafting boots that will last a lifetime. Anderson Bean’s gorgeous footwear is truly handmade at the Rios Family factories in Mercedes, Texas. Over the course of 30 minutes, Ryan and I discussed why he loves the boot business, the importance of retailers, and the demands of outfitting the Michael Jordans of horse training. ALIGN: So I polled a ton of people to determine the best boot, and they overwhelmingly said, “Anderson Bean.” RYAN VAUGHAN: Well, that's always music to our ears. It's nice when people can appreciate it, too, but that's obviously not what we're in it for. You bring up a bigger mission, and we always say we're not saving lives here, but we're trying to create opportunities. And that was actually felt at one point that I might be called to full -time ministry work and went and did a come-and-see weekend. I figured out that the Lord said there's other ways that you can serve me, by plugging back into our community here and community service and then leading this company and trying to create opportunities. I want a better way of life for everybody involved. Our core values, the first one is we will honor God in all that we do. And then we'll do the right thing when nobody is looking, and we go through the quality and supporting our retail partners. But we've got 235 lives that depend on what we're doing here, and families, and making sure that they can see what doing business the right way is. And hopefully the way I love my wife and love my kids and serve and [we] serve each other. So it's a tremendous responsibility. There's a reason why there's not a lot of footwear manufacturing left in the U.S. You've got to do things the right way, and thankfully we've got people that respect it. We just had our human resource department put together a little list the other day. We've got 62 employees that have been with us for 10 years or more, and then you get up into the 40, and we've got three guys that have been with us 50 years or more. You get in, I think 12 in the 40 range, and that doesn't happen overnight. My father-in-law created an incredible foundation in this industry. So it's a heavy load to carry, but it's well worth it. Like I said at the beginning, when you follow God's will and go where he plants you, it's fun to grow there. ALIGN: What does the title “Rios of Mercedes” mean, and how did that get started? VAUGHAN: So the Rios family has been making boots since 1853. They started down in Mexico and came up to the border area of South Texas around the turn of the century. That was kind of when the border was getting secured. We had the U.S. military down here setting up Fort Brown and Fort Ringgold and Brownsville and Rio Grande City and policing to try to protect and try to create some opportunities for farming to come down to South Texas and take advantage of what we call the Magic Valley, which is a fertile valley area along the Rio Grande River here. Zeferino Rios and his family moved up here to follow the money, and Zeferino settled in the town of Mercedes, which is the town where we still are, and his brother Abraham went up to Raymondville. So Abraham was Rios of Raymondville. He really focused on making boots for the ranching families up in the cattle areas of Texas, and then Zeferino's family really focused on a lot of the dressier boots for all of the Midwestern folks that were moving down here to raise cotton and farm and vegetables and stuff. So that's the Rios of Mercedes. So yeah, a lot of people think it's Rio, Rio Grande River, but it's Rios of Mercedes. ALIGN: That’s a classy name right there. VAUGHAN: Yeah, any time I'm checking into a hotel and I tell them my email address, they always think I'm like a Mercedes-Benz dealer or something. (Laughs) ALIGN: So are you from South Texas? VAUGHAN: Yeah, from the Valley, my family's four generations down here. We were one of those families that came down here to farm. My great-grandfather was a cotton farmer, and they were up in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, further north than that, moved down. And my grandfather ended up buying into a chain auto parts store called Burton Auto Supply, which was a store that started in 1919 down here. And my brother is still running it. My dad and uncles took it over, and then my brother runs it. ALIGN: How did you wind up at the helm of Anderson Bean Boots? Take me back to the beginning. VAUGHAN: My family was in the auto parts business. So we didn't really do a lot of ranch-y stuff. We were more neighborhood kids, played baseball. We had a big old half-pipe ramp in our back yard. We skateboarded and played football and soccer and everything, basketball. And my brother started chasing a gal in high school. She was a barrel racer, and he got in the show and cattle. He was four years older than me and doing the show cattle thing. And so after I got out of junior high and moved into high school, I followed right in his footsteps and started doing that, at the FFA show cattle deal, and did FFA leadership and district, and he chased his girlfriend up to Sam Houston State in Huntsville, and she was a barrel racer up there. Anyway, we ended up both going through the ag program, ag business, and yeah, it was a great path to take. I knew my now-wife since pre-K, so I grew up with her, and her dad was in the boot business, obviously. They've been doing it for 50-something years, and so I always was kind of around it and knew what they did, and we dated in high school and stuff. So I'm very familiar with the industry, and thanks be to God, God put me in the Western industry for good. Not where I expected I was gonna be, but boy, it sure is a perfect place for me. ALIGN: Amen. That's the beauty of where God takes us. VAUGHAN: Yeah, it's following His will, it brings peace, and exactly where thankfully I landed was exactly where I needed to be. And boy, that's what people always say. What do I love most about my job? And it's this industry that I get work in. I mean, mom-and-pop retailers all over the country. And for the most part, they're second, third generation. They're in small community, rural community areas that are super conservative, Christian background, morals, values, they stand up. You can't have a successful small business in a small community if you're not doing things the right way, because you're going to see those same people that you're selling to at church and at school and in the restaurants. And you've got to be doing things the right way. And thankfully, that's what a lot of our retailers build their business around. ALIGN: Do you remember the first time you put on a pair of Anderson Bean boots? VAUGHAN: Well, I actually had my first pair that my father-in-law gave me up here. They were actually some Rios Mercedes, and they didn't fit me very well because I didn't know what size I was wearing. I worked at a sale barn in Huntsville, a cattle sale barn, all through college, and I was wearing Red Wings and who knows what other boots, and he finally gave me a pair of boots. I felt pretty cool because I knew how expensive they were. I had never worn boots that fancy. But they were some old rejects out of the outlet store, and I've still got them up on my trophy wall. ALIGN: So where does the name Anderson Bean come from? VAUGHAN: In the mid-80s, my father-in-law, Trainer Evans, and his partner, Pat Moody, decided that they needed to build a boot that was a little bit more price-point-oriented but still domestically made. So they took the model of Rios Mercedes and just shortened up a few steps in the labor process and tried to streamline some of the options and made it a little bit more of a production-type boot. My father-in-law, he's a fifth-generation West Texas feedlot cowboy. He said that the women who ran the ranch never got the praise and the credit they deserved. The ranching guys always used to go out and have the biggest dogs and kill the biggest deer and do all that, all the big cowboy stories. The women were at home raising them. He named it for his great-grandmother and his grandmother and his mother, Helen Anderson and Macie Bean. And he just saw those women needed a little bit more credit and so named the boot company after them. ALIGN: What makes Anderson Bean boots unique? VAUGHAN: A lot of it starts with where we start. And that's really good relationships with our suppliers and that we try to treat our suppliers the way we want to be treated from our retailers. And that's being really loyal and paying well, giving them plenty of time to procure the materials and to do things the right way and just really build up relationships. And so if you don't have good leather and good high-quality materials, the boots are not going to hold up, and so really building those relationships with the supplier, so that they know what our customers are putting the boots through to make sure that we have high-quality materials going into it. And that was one of the things that we started off with. We can build a cowboy boot in the United States ... made pretty much completely with materials to come in from other parts of the world, especially Mexico. [But] we decided that if we're going to build a boot in the U.S., we need to use U.S. suppliers. We want to support the supply chain. A lot of the manufacturing moved out of the country, and it left a lot of our suppliers high and dry. And so we want to be really loyal to them. And thankfully they serve us really well. So it starts off with the materials that we select, but then a lot of it is the construction, doing things the right way with a leather insole, a leather heel counter, and people go, “Well, what does that mean?” It means that the boot molds to your foot. The more you wear it, the more it molds. Any time you get leather wet, the pores open up, and it just shapes around your foot. And then just using high-quality lining leather that rubs against your leg. We use a latex water-based glue on a lot of the processes that breathes a lot better since it's water-based. A lot of other companies use a rubber cement that's cheaper and quicker. It creates a water barrier, a vapor barrier, so the boots get hotter. In Texas and Oklahoma, in summertime, people go, ”My gosh, I'm going to wear a sandal, I'm going to the beach, it's so hot.” Our customers kick it into full gear. I mean, that's when all of our team roping started up, all the high school finals, rodeos, and in fact, we've got the International Finals Youth Rodeo going on in Shawnee in a couple of weeks. There's nothing better than a boot that you can take to the local cobbler, he can pull the sole off of them and knows how to rework them because they've got the guts in them. And so if you take decent care of a pair of leather boots, you can re-sole them four, five, six, seven times. And I mean, that boot, you may spend 350, 400 bucks on them, but 150 bucks every time you get a pretty much brand-new boot. ALIGN: You often describe your boots as being useful. Like they're a tool. So what kind of beating can they take, and what does that mean for them to be a tool? VAUGHAN: A lot of our core customer base is competitive horse show world, and so cutting horse, reining horse, reining cow horse, these are trainers. It'd be like if you were going to put Michael Jordan in a pair of cowhorses. These guys are the top of their industry, and people pay them hundreds of thousands of dollars to train their horses. It's kind of like when you go to the Kentucky Derby, you watch it on TV. The trainers or the top notch, well, they're just training other rich people's horses for the most part, right? But those guys and all of their staff are on horseback every day, training four, five, 10, 15, 20 horses. And so they ride, they wash those horses down, they're in the stalls, they're in the pens, they're in the manure, they're in the urine, they're back up on horseback, and especially the cutting horse guys, because those guys, they just ride and ride and ride and ride. We always say it's best to kind of rotate your boots, let the leather dry. But these guys don't rotate. It's day in, day out. They're wet, they're dry, they're wet, they're dry. They've got spurs on them. And so if we can build a boot that can hold up to that kind of wear and tear of a guy who uses that boot — they've got to compete in them. They've got to train those horses whenever it is. The competition is on; they've got to go. And so that's when we say that's a tool to let that guy be successful. But then you get the real West Texas feedlot cowboys and these guys up in Montana and Dakota that are riding horseback — if you get a heel fall off your boot and you're in the middle of mountain country, there is no way to fix that. And so that's a tool that you've got to use, and you're riding up and down mountains and hills and in and out of streams and stuff. And so it's a livelihood for a lot of our customers that need those boots to actually survive and work. And so I guess that's kind of the framework — whether we can build a boot strong enough for those guys and it'll last good enough for any normal guys like me and you. ALIGN: Absolutely. Boots are so important. They’re what you wear to a wedding. They're what you wear to a funeral. They're what you wear in any really important event or even to the grocery store. VAUGHAN: I think that's one of the things that brings you credit, whenever those guys are wearing the boots and the rest of the guys go, “Man, if that guy is wearing them, then" — you know, the same way with Michael Jordan in the Nikes. That falls all the way down to the kids in sixth grade that are in the junior high team. They want a pair of those too because the best guys wear them, and that kind of works the same way with our world. And the other thing is, Oklahoma City, Fort Worth, Amarillo: There's a horse show event going on in those towns just about every weekend, and these guys come from all over the country, and if you've got enough money to be in this industry and you're flying in and bringing horse trailers and things, you're probably a pretty big wig in your community, and so whatever you take and see, hats and saddles and tack and boots from Fort Worth, Oklahoma, and Amarillo, and you go back to your community, everybody's watching you and seeing what you're wearing, seeing what you're coming back with, seeing what kind of saddle you've gotten, and so you create all these little disciples all over the country from these guys that are the big wigs in their community with the coolest, newest things, and hopefully the best quality as well. ALIGN: So Anderson Bean boots also happen to look really good. What goes into that aspect of it? VAUGHAN: We don't do any direct-to-consumer sales. So we drew a line in the sand that we are only going to support our retail partners that built this brand up. We've got about 10 sales reps that travel the country — in fact, we've got Dallas market going on right now at the World Trade Center in Dallas, and so retailers come and visit, and they see samples, they see swatches, and they design boots for their store. What that gives our retailers is that they are the design team. Leather suppliers will come down, and guys that don't know us will go, “Well, where's your design team?” I like picking out leathers, and my wife does a lot of stuff, but our retailers design them. So say you got Michael Kahn that has Dollar Western Wear in Lubbock, Texas. Sales rep Doc Watson will go out there and show him some different samples, and Michael says I've got a fresh batch of Red Raider kids, freshmen, coming in. He says I want a good black, smooth ostrich. I need a good price point for those kids, but I want a red top and I want white and black stitching with white side seam and trim, and those kids are gonna be dancing. Well, he'll design it exactly for that customer and that price point. But when those freshman kids roll in and they go, “Wow. I'll check out those boots," and they go in the store and they go, "Let me go see if I can find them cheaper online.” Guess what: He designed those things exactly for his store. So he gets to make a nice margin on it, which is what a retailer needs to be able to save, keep his doors open. And that kid gets something that's unique and different. And so what really drives the Anderson Bean creativity is always having something unique and different. And our suppliers know we pay good. They know we hit the market fast. We don't have to go through all this research and development and testing and things. I mean, I'll see a new skin and — in fact, we had our suppliers from South Africa our ostrich suppliers here a few weeks ago, and they brought in a cool olive green ostrich leather. Well, guess what, I'm showing that to retailers the next week. We're getting orders on it, and we hit the market, and you start seeing what different colors and different finishes there are. I don't want to say we're industry leaders because we're so smart or talented; it's just because we move fast and we listen. And that means listen to what our retailers are asking for. And we're not smart enough to figure out what's going to be hot in fall of 2027, the way all these fashion brands dictate kind of what's coming and what's new. But yeah, unique hides and skins are our name. I mean, we do carpincho, we do stingray, we do kangaroo, we do elephant, hippo. We do beaver tail. We do giraffe, zebra. I mean, a lot of exotics and everything. ALIGN: I saw a shark. VAUGHAN: Oh yeah, shark.

Despite voluminous reports over the last three years about the many ways the border invasion is dangerous to Americans, new threats are still emerging. They are coming not just from the invasion itself but also from the White House’s weak, half-hearted attempts to address the problems it has largely created.The New York Post recently told the story of a United Airlines flight from Los Angeles to Boston last year, when a man tried to stab a flight attendant and was stopped only because other passengers intervened. The intervention was necessary because, according to Sonya LaBosco, a retired supervisory air marshal speaking on behalf of the Air Marshal National Council, air marshals normally assigned to such cross-country flights have been redirected to the southern border to help with the security and humanitarian crises there.Air marshals are highly trained professionals. They should not be repurposed to make sandwiches and distribute diapers at our overrun border.But wait, defenders of the current administration’s chaotic immigration policies may argue, isn’t deploying more law enforcement personnel to the border a good thing? Under leadership with a sensible, America First border strategy, that would be true if the reinforcements were helping to prevent illegal entries.Alas, air marshals sent to the border are “handing out water, making sandwiches, Uber Eats runs ... bringing diapers and stuff into the facilities and unloading trucks,” LaBosco said. “It’s absolutely ridiculous.”This is some of the most direct evidence yet that, as critics have long said since 2021, Border Patrol and other law enforcement are not really defending our border anymore but serving as a welcoming committee to the masses who have flouted our immigration laws by illegally entering the country. It is one of the worst examples of government malfeasance at a time when Americans’ faith in their leaders sits deservedly at record lows.The Federal Air Marshal Service, as it is known today, began in 1968 and serves under the Transportation Security Administration. The need for covert law enforcement or counterterrorist agents on board commercial aircraft became urgent after the attacks of September 11, 2001, exposing the vulnerabilities of our air travel security.“The long-haul flights are super important for us to be on because those are the same flights the 9/11 hijackers actually targeted and took that day on 9/11,” LaBosco said.To compound the threat, potential terrorists may have an easier path into the United States today than they did in 2001 thanks to our surrendered borders. More than 400 foreign nationals from Central Asia and elsewhere identified as “subjects of concern” by the Department of Homeland Security have entered the country illegally in the past three years, brought in by an ISIS-affiliated smuggling network. Over 150 of them have been arrested, but 50 or more are still roaming the country. According to DHS’ Homeland Threat Assessment, federal agents have encountered a “growing number of individuals” on the FBI’s terror watchlist trying to illegally cross the southern border. Given the gaps in the unfinished border wall and the lawless environment at the border, it would be naïve to assume that none of the attempts of potential terrorists to cross the border have been successful. Adding insult to injury, more than 500,000 foreign nationals who so far have entered the country using the White House’s CBP One phone app are allowed to fly domestically without a photo ID, a privilege not granted to U.S. citizens and legal residents. A timeout is in order to process the logic at work here. Air marshals are being taken off commercial flights and sent to help with the border crisis. Potential terrorists have entered the country illegally and may be allowed to board commercial flights without photo IDs — the same flights that now no longer have air marshals on them to prevent acts of terrorism. Make that make sense.Even if another act of terrorism doesn’t occur on a flight, the threat to passengers from the lack of air marshals on board still exists. There is no shortage of news reports of unhinged individuals acting out during flights. Having an armed air marshal on the flight can neutralize a situation far more effectively than relying on other passengers to do so. The travelers on the aforementioned L.A.-to-Boston flight were able to subdue the potential stabber. Next time, a similar incident could just as easily result in someone being injured or killed for lack of a law enforcement agent on the scene.Air marshals are highly trained professionals doing a vital service for the country. They should be allowed to perform that service and not be repurposed to make sandwiches and distribute diapers at our overrun border. It is yet another insulting reminder of our government prioritizing the needs of foreigners over the safety of its citizens.