Has the Department of Government Efficiency delivered on promises to downsize federal employment, cut regulations, and reduce federal spending?

President Donald Trump has said American citizens can expect money back from the country's tariff income. Recently, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent talked about what would need to happen for people to get a cut of the funds. Could you see the money this year?

Have you ever looked back at your parents’ high school yearbook and thought that all the 11th graders looked like they were in their early 30s? Whether they were in school in the ‘60s and the kids had horn-rimmed glasses or the ‘80s with feathered hair, they looked at least a decade older than today's high school kids. One wonders if in 30 years, kids look at a yearbook from 2025 and see boys with broccoli cuts and girls with nose rings and they think, “What are they, 35?”The folks at Bright Side did a deep dive into the phenomenon and found a few reasons why people looked so much older in the past than they do now. It’s a mix of how our minds perceive older fashion and why people age more gracefully in modern times.Why did people look older in the past?“Specialists have looked into this phenomenon, and it does have some scientific facts to back it up,” the narrator states. “It's not necessarily that our ancestors looked older; it's more that we appear to look younger. And younger as generations go by, that's because over time humans have improved the way they live their lives in the us alone over the last 200 years.” - YouTube www.youtube.com A big reason people looked much older when photography became common in the late 1800s is that it coincided with tremendous advances in public health. The 1880s to the 1920s were a time of rapid advancement, when we began to understand infectious diseases and how they spread. “We gained access after safer types of foods, and we understand the importance of clean water. Our individual lifestyle choices can impact the way we look,” the video says.The way we work has also drastically changed how people look. Working in an office for eight hours a day in air conditioning will keep you a lot younger-looking than working all day as a Victorian chimney sweep. Plus, for people who work outside, sunscreen has made it much easier to protect our skin and decrease wrinkles.Let’s not forget the importance of a straight, white smile. Advances in dental care also help make people look younger. A "girl gang" in 1976.via Earthworm/Flickr Why do people wearing styles from the past appear older?Finally, there’s the clothes issue, and, yes, this does have a big impact on how we view the age of people from the past. “Our brains are wired to associate old trends with being old,” the video says. “For example, your grandpa might still have the shirt he wore in that 1970s picture, and it's because of that shirt that you retroactively associate that trend with being old, despite the fact that your granddad does look younger in the picture than he looks today. “ GIrls in class in the 1960s.via Phillips Academy/Flickr The interesting thing for people getting up in age is that if they want to appear younger, they have to be diligent about not wearing outdated styles, whether it's their makeup, hair, clothing, shoes, or how tight their jeans are. However, there's nothing that looks more foolish than a man in his 50s trying to dress like he's in his 20s, so what are we supposed to do? Humans are wired to figure out others' biological age, or how young they are, based on health cues, so instead of buying some new jeans, it may be better to hit the gym. In the end, the fact that people look much younger today than they did in the past is a testament to how the quality of life has drastically improved since cameras were invented. However, that doesn’t mean that fashion has improved at all. You have to admit that your dad with that fly butterfly collar in his 1977 graduation photo looks better than that multi-colored, Machine Gun Kelly-style hoodie you see guys wearing in high schools today.This article originally appeared in June.

A funeral is a time to bid goodbye to the ones we love, but they are also be moments to celebrate the life and memories made with our lost loved one. Funerals are bittersweet in this way, straddling the line between joy and deep sorrow. They're not only a time to run through the accomplishments and events of a life, but they're also an opportunity to remember the person for the unique individual they were, in all their multifaceted glory—the good, the bad, and everything in between. In 2019, a grandpa from Dublin called Shay Bradley was having his last rites performed by family and friends, per Dublin Live. Surprise struck when the mourning family members heard a “Hello!” coming from the coffin. Seriously. Coffin says, "Hello!" Canva PhotosThe grandfather of eight was known for his jovial, heartwarming wit and sense of humor. Clearly, one of his final wishes was to remind his family that even a time like this was ripe for the ultimate "granddad" joke. Ben Bradley, one of Shay's grandsons, posted a video of his grandfather's last joke on X. In it, Shay’s loved ones are seen surrounding the burial spot. In the seconds after Shay’s coffin is lowered into the ground, a loud “Hello!” is heard. It's followed by a loud knocking and then, "It's Shay! I'm in here; let me out!" Though clearly shocked and confused at first, the family members break into smiles and tearful laughter. In just a moment, Shay's final prank brought humor and levity to the tearful graveside, something Shay was well-known for while he was alive. “For anyone who hasn’t seen, My grandad was a one-of-a-kind character and has left his legacy for the world to see,” Ben wrote in his caption. He followed with the hashtag #shayslastlaugh.The rest of the recording was Shay breaking into a sarcastic sing-song voice and trying to convince his family members he was "unwillingly stuck in the coffin." “Hello again, it’s me. I’m here to say goodbye,” he sang. — (@) By the end of it all, Shay's family was gifted a last memory of their beloved grandpa, just as he intended. His daughter, Andrea, shared a picture of her late father on X. “Here is a picture of the legend himself," she wrote in the caption. "My dad, Shay Bradley. It was his dying wish that we played this at his funeral. What a man... To make us all laugh when we were incredibly sad..... He was some man for one man... Love you forever, Poppabear. #Shayslastlaugh” One commenter wrote, “Glad he was sent off with a laugh, after all, it is a celebration of his life..” Another added, “His video is now making people smile around the world. What a legend!” — (@) What a legend indeed. This article originally appeared in September. It has been updated.

When we hear the name Maria Von Trapp, most of us conjure an image of Julie Andrews as the young would-be-nun who fell in love with Georg Von Trapp, a widower with six children, in "The Sound of Music." In the film, the love story between Maria and Georg is irresistibly swoon-worthy, with meaningful glances, a highly charged dance scene, and ultimately a confession of love under the moonlight. As it turns out, the real love story between the real Von Trapps is even more fascinating than the fictional film version. - YouTube youtu.be The National Archives has collected information about what's fact and what's fiction in The Sound of Music, which is based on a real family in Austria named Von Trapp. The film was generally based on the first section of Maria Von Trapp's 1949 autobiography, The Story of the Trapp Family Singers, with some of the details being true and others fictionalized for a movie audience.For instance, Maria was actually hired on as a tutor for just one of Georg's children, not as a governess for all of them. The children, whose names, ages and sexes were changed, were already musically inclined before Maria arrived. Georg was not the cold, grumpy dad he was portrayed as in the beginning of the film, but rather a warm and involved parent who enjoyed making music with his kids. Maria and Georg were married 11 years before leaving Austria, not right before the Nazi takeover. The Von Trapps left by train, not in a secret excursion over the mountains.But perhaps the most intriguing detail? Maria was not in love with Georg at all when they got married. The real-life Maria and Georg Von TrappPublic domainWhile it may not make for a great Hollywood romance, the Von Trapp love story began with marriage for other reasons and only later evolved into a genuine love story. Maria wrote that she fell in love with Georg's children at first sight, but she wasn't sure about leaving her religious calling when Georg asked her to marry him. The nuns urged her to do God's will and marry him, but for Maria it was all about the children, not him. When Georg proposed, he asked her to stay with him and become a second mother to his children. "God must have made him word it that way," Maria wrote, "because if he had only asked me to marry him I might not have said yes.""I really and truly was not in love," she wrote. "I liked him but didn't love him. However, I loved the children, so in a way I really married the children."However, she shared that her feelings for Georg changed over time. "…[B]y and by I learned to love him more than I have ever loved before or after." Georg Von Trapp in "The Sound of Music" Giphy The idea of marrying someone you don't love is antithetical to every romantic notion our society celebrates, yet the evolution of Maria's love for Georg has been a common occurrence across many cultures throughout history. Romantic love was not always the primary impetus for marriage. It was more often an economic proposition and communal arrangement that united families and peoples, formed the basis of alliances, and enabled individuals to rise through social ranks. Some cultures still practice arranged marriage, which limited research has found has outcomes identical to love-first marriage in reports of passionate love, companionate love, satisfaction, and commitment. The idea of marrying someone you don't already love is anathema to modern Western sensibilities, but the reality is that people have married over the centuries for many reasons, only one of which is falling in love.Maria's marriage to Georg actually was about falling in love, but not with him. She loved his children and wanted to be with them. It definitely helped that she liked the guy, but she wasn't swept off her feet by him, there were no moonlit confessions of love a la "Something Good," and their happily ever after love story didn't come until much later. - YouTube www.youtube.com Ultimately, Maria and Georg's love story was one for the ages, just not one that fits the Hollywood film trope. And it's a compelling reminder that our unwritten rules and social norms determining what love and marriage should look like aren't set in stone. Do marriages for reasons other than love always evolve into genuine love? No. Do marriages based on falling in love first always last? Also no. Should a marriage that starts with "like" and develops into to a genuine, deep love over years be considered "true love" in the way we usually think of it? Who can say? Lots to ponder over in this love story.But Maria's description of learning "to love him more than I have ever loved before or after" is a pretty high bar, so clearly it worked for them. The Von Trapps were married for 20 years and had three more children together before Georg died of lung cancer in 1947. Maria would live another four decades and never remarried. She died in 1987 at age 82 and is buried next to Georg on the family's property in Vermont.If that's not a compelling love story, what is? This article originally appeared in June.

Problems like sexism and racism don't just pop up out of nowhere in adulthood. These prejudices are deeply embedded in culture, and the seeds of them are sown from a young age. Telling boys they can't like pink, pushing girls to play with princesses and dolls, and sometimes, it gets even more blatant than that.A dad named Robert Sutcliffe recently shared what happened when his 8-year-old daughter brought home a worksheet with a... let's called it outdated... question on it.Sutcliffe shared a picture of his daughter’s homework, which focused on a basic English lesson. The homework was designed to teach the students the concept and use of “ur” in words and how they are pronounced. Many questions featured words containing the letter “ur” to teach students how to use them.One question, however, stood out — not just for its content, but for how the teacher marked Sutcliffe's daughter's response.The question clue read “Hospital Lady” followed by a blank for the students to fill in. Sutcliffe’s 8-year-old wrote down a reasonable and logical (and correct) answer: "Surgeon." The teacher, in red pen, offered a correction that had the Internet up in arms. — (@) Despite the student filling in the word “surgeon,” the teacher sent back the sheet with a correction “or nurse.” The creators of the worksheet may have meant "nurse" when they wrote out the question, but "surgeon" is a perfectly acceptable and accurate answer. Technically, the teacher didn't mark the girl's answer as wrong, but there was really no need to correct it.The best part? Sutcliffe and his wife are both surgeons, which is likely where their daughter learned to see through the common stereotype. woman wears green face mask Photo by Artur Tumasjan on Unsplash People in the comments weren't too pleased with how the teacher handled this scenario:“Teacher excels at passive-aggressive marking, bravo," wrote one.“I wonder if she had written nurse, would the teacher have written surgeon," said another.But the overwhelming sentiment in the response to Sutcliffe's post was a resounding round of applause for his whip-smart daughter.“More power to your daughter! Go girl! Be anything you want to be.” “Nurse = 'hospital lady' will be disconcerting for the 10% of nurses who are gentlemen.” "And then people get furious if you dare to suggest that gender roles have anything to do with societal pressure.” “Good on her, gender should know no bounds.”Practicing physicians are more likely to be men, but that ratio has been rapidly shrinking. The latest polls show that about 39% of doctors are women and women currently outnumber men in America's medical school programs. About 12% of nurses, too, are men – not an insignificant number. - YouTube www.youtube.com Attitudes and stereotypes, however, lag several years behind. So, too, do the textbooks our kids use. Eagle-eyed social media users noted that the homework Sutcliffe's daughter brought home was designed in 1997. More concerning than the slight but unnecessary correction by the teacher are the horribly outdated educational materials our kids are bringing home. No matter how you slice Sutcliffe's assignment, it doesn't meet the standard for education in 2025.This article originally appeared 3 months ago. It has been updated.

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High standards. The post The band James Brown said could never play with him: “Too complicated” first appeared on Far Out Magazine.

In the long ago of my teenage youth (no, not yesterday), I had a book report assignment due in my 8th-grade English class. My choice of books was the then-bestseller of the moment — a book that was getting so many real-life headlines that two years later, there was the inevitable Hollywood movie, replete with a cast of the then-A-list stars of the day. The book I chose was a then-bestselling political thriller: Seven Days in May. Spoiler alert. The story revolves around a liberal president, Jordan Lyman (played by Fredric March), who has signed a highly controversial nuclear disarmament treaty with the Soviet Union. The president’s decision has drawn huge controversy, replete with protests around the country descending into violence. One of the leading opponents of the treaty signing is the decidedly well-known U.S. Air Force General James Mattoon Scott (Burt Lancaster) — the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. General Scott and his colleagues in the Joint Chiefs have decided enough is enough, and seven days down the road, they are secretly planning a military coup d’etat to overthrow the elected President Lyman and throw out the treaty. An aide to General Scott, one Marine Colonel Martin “Jiggs” Casey (Kirk Douglas) is a straight arrow who has been kept out of the coup plotters’ plan, and now slowly discovers it. Angry and shaken, Colonel Casey makes it his business to secretly inform President Lyman of what is afoot. With that the president uses Colonel Casey and a couple others of his close allies, including a sitting U.S. Senator, to quietly gather the evidence against General Scott over the next seven days (the coup is set to take place on the seventh day) and halt the plot in its tracks without revealing what had been going on to the public, which would, fears the president, signal a decided American weakness to its enemies around the world. This being the 1960s, the primary enemy, of course, was the then very much in existence Soviet Union. In real life of the day, the Cold War between the Soviets and the United States was in reality a major fact of life in the world. In 1961, the Kennedy administration had launched a failing invasion of Communist Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. By October of 1962, the world came as close to nuclear war as had ever been experienced when the U.S. discovered the Russians had been secretly shipping and installing nuclear missiles in Cuba, a mere 90 miles from Florida in the U.S. Which is to say, there were enough real-life Cold War tensions unfolding that the scenario created in Seven Days in May seemed all too real. There they are, looking Americans straight in the eye and speaking the language of sedition. All of this comes vividly to mind as the headlines produce this video from six real-life Congressional Democrats — whom The Times reports “all served in the military or the intelligence community” — behaving in a manner that recalls those Seven Days in May coup plotters. (RELATED: ‘Don’t Give Up The Ship’? Seriously?) There they are, looking Americans straight in the eye and speaking the language of sedition. There they are, just like the fictional General Scott, threatening to call a president’s actions illegal and vowing to oppose — overthrow? — those actions because they disagree with them. Safe to say, one suspects lots of Americans have had it with this business of Democrats threatening the government because they don’t like the winner of the last presidential election. Were these people elected? Yes. But so too was President Trump. And it is simply dangerous for elected officials to threaten the elected president of the United States by telling the honorable men and women in the American military and intelligence communities that obeying a presidential order is illegal or worse, criminal. This is clearly a seditious summons for the military to disobey a constitutional presidential order issued by the constitutionally protected president. If they want to disagree with a presidential order — fine. Take to the floor of the House or Senate, give your speech, and put out a press release. But this is a democracy, and urging members of the United States military to deliberately disobey a constitutional order from their commander-in-chief is nothing less than a call to sedition. If, in fact, a member of the military feels strongly enough that a presidential order is unconstitutional, then they are quite free to do the honorable and right thing — quit. And then take their case to the American public using their free speech. Until that moment, per the Constitution of the United States, members of the United States military are constitutionally bound to obey their commander-in-chief. The urging of Democrat members of Congress to believe otherwise notwithstanding. This is, it should not be necessary to say, real life in a constitutional republic. Not the sedition of Seven Days in May. READ MORE from Jeffrey Lord: The GOP’s 2026 Challenge Nick Fuentes: American Leftist The GOP Loss Is Not a Big Deal

Some things never change: despite radical growth in technologically driven material abundance, humans today fundamentally exhibit the same characteristics of those living at the time of Aristotle, roughly 2,400 years ago. Some are wise, productive, and virtuous; others are selfish, lazy, and scoundrels. Thus, some of the wisdom of Aristotle may then be relevant to how we collectively behave today. That came home to me in reading the first volume in the epic two-volume The Golden Thread: A History of the Western Tradition, by Allen Guelzo and James Hankins. “[T]here is no use in the most valuable laws … ratified by the … whole body of citizens, if these are not trained and educated in the constitution… for there is such a thing as want of self-discipline in a state, as well as in an individual.” Specifically, on p. 169, Aristotle says: “[T]here is no use in the most valuable laws … ratified by the … whole body of citizens, if these are not trained and educated in the constitution… for there is such a thing as want of self-discipline in a state, as well as in an individual.” Any objective analysis of modern American national politics would have to concede that there is a huge lack of “self-discipline” from our nation’s elected officials in the legislative and executive branches of government that govern our fiscal policy. My scholarly field of economics is a major reason for this: self-discipline in matters of government finance prevailed until the Keynesian Revolution of the 1930s. Lord Keynes had famously said that “in the long run, we are all dead,” advocating expansionary fiscal policy in order to maintain high employment and prosperity: governments should sometimes deliberately spend more money than they receive from taxpayers. Budget deficits can therefore promote prosperity. (RELATED: 50-Year Home Loan the Worst Idea Since New Coke) Keynes was wrong on two fronts. First, history has shown that expansionary Keynesian fiscal policy (spending borrowed money) has only a so-so record of achieving goals like full employment — the 1970s, for example, was a period of substantial unemployment and budget deficits, giving us a new term, “stagflation.” Second, we are not all dead in the long run, and in any case, long-term prosperity and economic stability for our children and grandchildren is a real and worthwhile human objective. (RELATED: The Answer to Republicans’ ‘Affordability Problem’? Unleash Supply.) Before Keynes, our nation had what the late Nobel Prize-winning economist James Buchanan and some of his associates called “an unwritten fiscal constitution”: prudence dictates that in years outside of wartime threats to national security, nations should finance current spending entirely by taxation and other revenue-raising means such as land sales. Indeed, it should aim to reduce the national debt in periods of prosperity by running budget surpluses that could be used to reduce indebtedness. Compare the pre-Keynesian first three decades of the last century with the first quarter of this one. In the earlier era of the unwritten fiscal constitution, in over two-thirds of the years, the nation ran budget surpluses, including every year from 1919 through 1930. Since 2001, we have had budget deficits every single year. The self-discipline that Aristotle spoke about, once present, has dissipated. As in ancient times, nations and their leaders go through periods of responsible, disciplined behavior and eras of reckless overspending. Constitutional strictures are needed to moderate, if not eliminate, spasms of collective irresponsibility. Moreover, while a half-century or so ago the blame for deficit spending usually was a bit greater for Democrats (who favored Keynesian-style deficit spending deplored by more conservative Republicans), today, the blame falls on both parties. In the last year, amidst large deficits, the Republicans proposed a budget that maintained expiring tax breaks and added such costly (and not growth-inducing) provisions as exempting overtime and tip income from taxation. But the Democrats were willing to close the government down unless some very costly, ostensibly temporary pandemic-era health care benefits to some low-income persons were extended. Neither party seemingly has an ounce of Aristotelian self-discipline, necessitating a constitutional response. (RELATED: How Did We Reach a $38 Trillion Debt During a ‘Shutdown’?) The U.S., along with most of the rest of the world, is entering an unprecedented future economic challenge arising from a dramatic decline in fertility accompanying equally dramatic medical advances. We are becoming an age of old people, creating growing burdens on the working-age population. Our pension and health care programs aiding the elderly are already approaching insolvency. Something must happen, and shortly. Yet currently, our lawmakers perceive that usually the marginal political benefits of spending more, or taxing less, far exceed the marginal political costs. Deficit spending enhances job security. Constitutional restraints on that deficit spending would raise the political costs of it dramatically. By contrast, state governments, almost all of which have balanced budget amendments, are considerably more fiscally responsible than the Feds, although some have still found ways to behave irresponsibly, for example, by having generous public employee pension systems that are scantily funded. Probably wisely, the Founders made it difficult, but not impossible, to amend the U.S. Constitution — it has been a third of a century (1992) since the 27th amendment was ratified. There are two ways constitutional revision can happen: one initiated by two-thirds (34) of the states via a constitutional convention, and the second initiated by Congress (two-thirds majority in both the House and Senate) with subsequent approval of three-quarters (38) of the states. Late in the last century, an attempt using the first approach got somewhat close to approval, but no convention has been called since the original one more than two centuries ago. The American problem is a worldwide one, with national debt to output levels reaching extraordinarily high levels. In Japan, for example, the debt approximates two years’ national output, and high debt is a big factor in Japan’s relative economic stagnation over the past three decades. Many European nations likewise have worrisome debt-to-output ratios. In order to meet the obligations of paying off bondholders, an irresponsible approach would be to print money or the equivalent — make the real value of the existing debt less by lowering the value of the dollar. If the U.S. were to do that, its valuable role of having the world’s universally accepted currency — the dollar — would no doubt cease, having all sorts of negative consequences, including a loss of national pride from shrunken American economic exceptionalism. In short, the immediate political costs of easing this problem in the U.S. are quite consequential, but far less than the longer-term costs to our society arising from the fiscal profligacy that Aristotle warned required constitutional constraints. READ MORE from Richard Vedder: Promoting Campus Viewpoint Diversity: A Modest Proposal Concierge Service for Favored Universities? Higher Education’s Triple Crisis: Finances, Integrity, Leadership Richard Vedder is a distinguished professor of economics emeritus at Ohio University and senior fellow at both Unleash Prosperity and the Independent Institute.