NY Gov. Kathy Hochul Kills Plan To Allow Robotaxi Operations Outside NYC
New York Governor Kathy Hochul has withdrawn a proposal that would allow commercial robotaxi pilot operations outside New York City limits without a human safety operator in the vehicle. The decision was first reported by Bloomberg News earlier Thursday and is a major setback for Waymo as it attempts a rapid US expansion this year.
Bloomberg reported:
The proposal, which Hochul had included in a policy preview she presented last month, would have allowed autonomous-vehicle companies such as Waymo to apply for permission to pilot their services without human operators in the vehicle. The decision to withdraw the plan was confirmed Thursday by the governor's office to Bloomberg News.
"While we are disappointed by the Governor's decision, we're committed to bringing our service to New York and will work with the state legislature to advance this issue," a Waymo spokesperson said in a statement provided to Bloomberg.
Last week, Waymo co-chief executive Tekedra Mawakana told Bloomberg TV that the Hochul administration showed interest in launching robotaxis.
Even if it were outside the NYC metro area, "that gives us an opportunity to grow more fans," Mawakana said, adding that some customers of the service have been requesting robotaxis within city boundaries.
To note, Waymo is currently testing in NYC, but it is not yet operating a driverless commercial robotaxi service. As of early 2026, its activity includes a small fleet with safety drivers in parts of Manhattan and Downtown Brooklyn.
"We hear from thousands of New Yorkers who have experienced Waymo in other cities and want access to it at home," the Waymo spokesperson added. "They want the safety, privacy and comfort that riders in other major cities already enjoy."
Last month, Goldman analyst Eric Sheridan provided clients with an update on the North American autonomous-vehicle (AV) rideshare market, which is quickly gaining momentum. Read the report here.
"The rise in commercial autonomous vehicle deployments remains a key debate among investors and has continued to gain momentum throughout 2025. In the medium term, we believe that AV rideshare could represent a mid-single-digit percentage of total rideshare industry bookings," Sheridan said.
Current robotaxi operations
The lingering question: who persuaded Hochul to kill the robotaxi expansion proposal?
Canada Announces Plan To Recruit Foreign Soldiers For Fast Track Immigration
It's a common theme throughout history - When governments go authoritarian, they often hire foreign soldiers in order to better control their respective populations or wage war on their neighbors. The strategy is being implemented across Europe currently; with many nations taking in millions of third world migrants from Muslim nations and using targeted marketing to recruit them as police and military.
Not all mass immigration is about rigging elections in favor of socialists. It's sometimes about subjugation using people who have no loyalty to the native population.
Canada appears to be the latest progressive regime to introduce the integration of foreign military professionals into their ranks. The decision is part of the the country's new "Express Entry" program for migrants with skills that the government has deemed essential to the economy and to Canada's security.
Globalist Prime Minister Mark Carney asserts that Canada will "tighten" the open immigration policies of the Trudeau Administration but it will also increase opportunities for foreign professionals to easily obtain entry and citizenship. Canada's housing market has been crushed by inflation and a supply drought caused by a flood of 3 million immigrants (legal and illegal) over the past five years alone.
In country with a population similar to the state of California and with less housing, the migrant influx has been a disaster. Around 23% of Canada is foreign born. Around 15% are migrants from third world countries. The majority of these new citizens are low-skill and act as a drain on the nation's social welfare apparatus.
The announcement of tighter controls on immigration will probably come as a welcome surprise to most of the Canadian citizenry (if it actually happens), but the introduction of foreign assets into the Canadian military is a worrying sign.
Under Canada's new 2026 Express Entry category-based selection, announced by Immigration Minister Lena Metlege Diab on February 18, 2026, a dedicated category exists for skilled military recruits (also referred to as highly skilled foreign military applicants or Foreign Skilled Military Applicants). This targets highly skilled foreign military personnel specifically recruited by the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) for key roles (Start video at 13:30).
The purported focus of this recruitment is doctors, nurses and pilots. However, the categories for qualified personnel are rather broad, including leadership roles and:
Commissioned officers of the Canadian Armed Forces (NOC 40042)
Specialized members of the Canadian Armed Forces (NOC 42102)
Operations members (NOC 43204)
The parameters do not explicitly call for combat troops, but there is a loophole. There is no dedicated NOC for Canadian special operations forces (e.g., JTF2 or CSOR), which are typically drawn from combat arms backgrounds and involve advanced training rather than a distinct occupational code. Special operators often perform overlapping duties, such as operating weapons for defense, configuring surveillance systems, or using engineering for various tasks - elements already listed in 43204's main duties.
In other words, foreign personnel could be brought into Canada through the Express program under the guise of being "support specialists" while acting as combat troops. This is only if the government decides it wants to hide the importation of combat soldiers into the country. Carney could also simply change the open policy whenever he likes without public input.
Most nations seek to avoid recruitment of foreign troops to prevent intelligence breaches and loss of unit cohesion. The US launched a similar foreign military recruitment program under Barack Obama in 2009, but this was shut down by the Trump Administration in 2017.
Canadian officials cite growing tensions with the US as one of the reasons for the decision. Canada is being forced to finally meet its NATO requirements, while the EU and Canada have expressed hostility towards US efforts to save the west from the mass immigration schemes of leftist politicians.
Carney, seeking to reduce reliance on the United States, announced a new defense strategy that aims to lift government investment in defense-related research and development by 85%, boost defense industry revenues by more than 240%, increase defense exports by 50% and create up to 125,000 new jobs (which will likely go to foreigners). Like other NATO members, Canada has pledged to raise defense spending to 5% of gross domestic product by 2035.
The Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) is experiencing a severe, long-term recruitment crisis, operating roughly 14,000 personnel short of its goals in 2025–2026. Critics suggest that Canada, like the EU, may be preparing for a war with Russia that could easily be avoided by staying out of Ukraine. Another problem to consider is the rise of draconian speech laws and gun confiscation programs.
Canada may be preparing to oppress the native conservative citizenry (around 40% of the population) as they expand progressive controls. This would require considerable outside resources (foreign troops) to reinforce their small contingent of 65,000 active duty members, many of whom would likely be opposed to martial law.
LIS Technologies (LIST) initiated its first engagement with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in preparation for starting up the company's laser uranium enrichment technology facilities.
LIST submitted a Standard Practice Procedures Plan for the company's smaller-scale demonstration facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. This is part of a process for obtaining approval from the NRC to start handling classified information related to nuclear technology.
It's a relatively minor step, but important in the context of finally engaging the regulator. The company is currently pursuing novel uranium enrichment technology that could dramatically reduce operating costs through improved efficiencies.
Laser enrichment technology is considered the third generation of uranium enrichment methods. The first was gaseous diffusion, which was only used back in the day of the Manhattan Project. Due to its extreme power consumption, newer technology was developed for the second generation – gas centrifuge. Centrifuges are still in use across the world today. For third generation technology, laser enrichment is currently under development by multiple companies including LIST, ASPI, Hexium, and GLE.
We recently detailed some of the major announcements from LIST regarding their newly announced $1.4 billion facility in Tennessee, as well as some of their recent funding rounds and ongoing coordination with Nano Nuclear. They are working towards creating a vertically-integrated fuel chain and reactor developer.
With the company now initiating the formalities of pursuing an NRC license for handling nuclear material and technology, “show me the money” will certainly start coming to the front of investors' minds. With the recent funding round only yielding about $17 million, the company will likely pursue more significant private placement events or potentially an IPO/SPAC.
Former U.S. President Barack Obama said in a Feb. 14 podcast interview that aliens are real but that none are kept at the secretive Area 51 military base in the Nevada desert, later adding that he didn’t see any evidence indicating that extraterrestrials have contacted Earth during his presidency.
In the interview, when asked, “Are aliens real?” Obama replied, “They’re real, but I haven’t seen them—and they’re not being kept in [Area 51]. There’s no underground facility, unless there’s this enormous conspiracy and they hid it from the president of the United States.”
Obama became the first leader of the United States to affirm the existence of extraterrestrial life when questioned by progressive podcaster Brian Tyler Cohen in a video posted on YouTube.
After the interview went viral, Obama said on Instagram that he wanted to “clarify” his comments to Cohen, writing that he was “trying to stick with the spirit of the speed round” while speaking on the podcast.
“Statistically, the universe is so vast that the odds are good there’s life out there,” he wrote. “But the distances between solar systems are so great that the chances we’ve been visited by aliens is low, and I saw no evidence during my presidency that extraterrestrials have made contact with us. Really!”
In 2013, Obama was possibly the first U.S. leader to acknowledge the existence of Area 51, an Air Force base built during the Cold War, which has long been rumored to house extraterrestrials and unidentified flying objects (UFOs).
Cohen did not ask Obama a follow-up question on the issue. Instead, he asked the former president what his first question had been upon entering the White House. “Where are the aliens?” Obama joked in response.
Some critics, including British political commentator Calvin Robinson, said Cohen should have asked Obama for more information about aliens.
“When a former President of the United States says on the record there are aliens, YOU FOLLOW UP WITH RELEVANT QUESTIONS. You do not continue reading from your script,” he wrote on X.
The U.S. government first acknowledged Area 51’s existence in 2013 through a Freedom of Information request and has declassified documents detailing its history and purpose. The base has been a testing ground for a host of top-secret aircraft, including the U-2 in the 1950s and later the F-117 stealth fighter.
Trump Admin on Aliens
President Donald Trump has expressed skepticism about the existence of aliens, while acknowledging that “anything is possible.”
Trump addressed the subject in several media appearances during the 2024 presidential campaign. On a podcast with Lex Fridman, Trump said he would consider pushing the Pentagon to release additional UFO footage that many believe is classified.
“Oh yeah, sure, I’ll do that. I would do that. I’d love to do that,” Trump said, noting that public pressure to disclose records relating to UFOs is similar to that surrounding the John F. Kennedy assassination.
On Logan Paul’s “Impaulsive” podcast in June 2025, Trump said, “Am I a believer? No, I can’t say I am."
“But I have met with people, serious people, that say there’s some really strange things flying around out there.”
Trump added that given the size of the universe, “Why wouldn’t there be something, somebody?”
Vice President JD Vance has expressed his personal enthusiasm, telling the “Ruthless” podcast in August 2025 that he is “obsessed with the whole UFO thing.”
“What’s actually going on? What were those videos all about? What’s actually happening?” Vance probed.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said last August that she believes aliens may exist and that the U.S. government holds classified information on the subject.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard in Washington on Dec. 2, 2025. Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images
Gabbard pledged to share disclosures from ongoing investigations into UFOs amid growing discussion of the phenomena at the highest levels of government.
Pentagon Cases Unresolved
The Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) continues to investigate more than 1,600 reports of “unidentified aerial phenomena,” an official term that has largely replaced “UFOs.”
At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing in November 2024, AARO’s director, Jon T. Kosloski, detailed cases the military believes it has solved—such as the widely circulated 2016 “GOFAST” video, now thought to show an object flying at 13,000 feet rather than right above the water—as well as other incidents which have so far defied explanation.
Previous presidents, including Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, have discussed their curiosity about alien life without confirming a belief in it.
Carter reported that he saw an unidentified bright object in the sky when he was governor of Georgia in 1969, although he later said it was likely a natural phenomenon.
A view of Area 51. Google Maps/Screenshot via The Epoch Times
Clinton said that he was curious about the possibility of extraterrestrial life and that he had asked aides to look into both Area 51 and the Roswell incident of 1947, which gave rise to much speculation about a government cover-up. After Air Force personnel recovered metallic and rubber debris near Roswell, New Mexico, the U.S. Army Air Forces announced that they were in possession of a “flying disc” before retracting the statement within a day.
Clinton said he was told there was no evidence of alien life in connection with the incident. In 1995, he joked about the Roswell incident, saying, “If the U.S. Air Force did recover any alien bodies, they didn’t tell me about it.”
The American public is increasingly convinced that aliens exist and have visited Earth, according to recent polls. More than half (56 percent) of Americans believe extraterrestrials definitely or probably exist, according to a 2025 YouGov poll.
Democrat (61 percent) and Independent (59 percent) voters are more likely than Republicans (46 percent) to believe aliens exist, with 73 percent of Americans believing the government would hide evidence of UFOs if it had any, and just 13 percent thinking it would be transparent, according to the same survey.
The Trump administration came into office with a pledge to uproot waste, fraud, and abuse within the government’s system of transfer payments. Leading the charge would be Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
They began their work early on with earnest and passion, starting inauguration evening, with many long days and nights of data crunching and number slinging, under the assumption that auditing government would be similar to auditing a private company.
DOGE quickly found itself buried and overwhelmed. There were too many programs, too much leakage, no coordination between departments, strange sources of incoming and outgoing payments, shadowy institutions and names flying everywhere, and eye-popping levels of inefficiency. It became obvious that many decades had gone by without any scrupulous concern for how taxpayer dollars were used.
After months on the job, DOGE backed away from the big picture job and embedded itself in specific agencies with more focus and less in the way of press releases. Elon went back to his enterprises which had been suffering with his absence and distractions. Meanwhile, his small cadre of data mavens stayed on and got to work, agency by agency.
This much became clear: the job was too much for them. They had to prioritize their work. It was decided that the most important priority would be to sync up the many random databases strewn here and there and everywhere into large packages that were manageable and could be checked, with lines of spending matching sources and purposes. Nothing like this existed before.
Once that was done, it became clear that the datasets were too large for a team of workers. They needed to open source all the data and enlist help from the public. In essence, the problems were just too big to isolate problem spending from legitimate spending. The decision was made to bundle it all up and do waves of file dumps on the public.
After all, we live in the age of the citizen researcher, people with fast Internet connections, large machines, high degrees of skill, and a passion to discover. For too long, the affairs of government have lived in a cloud of secrecy, probably for one hundred years or more. The excuse has always been discretion: It wasn’t the public’s business how the money was spent. But this is ridiculous; we are talking about taxpayer dollars. The citizens do in fact have the right to know. The goal of bringing all this out into the open would represent a fundamental change in the operation of public policy.
The most elaborate installation yet was just posted on the website of the Department of Health and Human Services, with a focus on Medicaid. This is a program designed to provide needed services to the poor. Annual spending exceeds $1 trillion a year, having entered into new upward slopes of spending in the COVID era where government unleashed the printing presses and spent money as if it were in infinite supply. This one program now accounts for 18 percent of U.S. health care expenditures.
Exactly where is all this going?
We now have a tool that helps show what is happening.
HHS has provided a full .ZIP file that anyone can download and examine. Nothing like this has ever happened in the history of the U.S. government or probably any government. It has also given us sample visualizations to help citizens understand the fullness of what is going on.
This effort has also involved Scott Bessent at the Department of Treasury. He has announced that anyone who can find fraud and submit the evidence to the website will be given 10 to 30 percent of the fines imposed on the receiving individual or organization. This means giving rewards to intrepid researchers who can find and prove fraud in the program. The efforts will take months or years, simply because there is so much of it.
Elon Musk and others have given low estimates of 5 to 10 percent of fraudulent Medicaid spending over the last 10 years, while others say the number is closer to 20 and 30 percent. Figures like $1 trillion are being thrown around as possible numbers on how much has been lost. They could be much higher. As we discovered in the Minnesota case, the fraud can be brazen and undisguised or it can be surreptitious and shape-shifting in order to avoid detection.
There are many features of this effort that are fascinating. To my knowledge, this is the first time that a strategy like this has been deployed to clear up the welfare state. It’s probably the largest data dump by government in history. The strategy of enlisting citizen researchers is also new and very brilliant, recalling bounty hunters of the Old West. People are talented and care deeply. Why not use that energy to clean up public spending?
The single most striking feature of this data release is that it was covered nowhere in the mainstream press. You might have thought otherwise—that the nation’s press would be all over this—but not so. I kept looking for the headline but they were nowhere to be seen apart from The Epoch Times, Townhall, and a few other venues. There is no question that mainstream media is quite anxious to bury the news. If not for Elon’s X social media app, and The Epoch Times, hardly anyone would even know about this!
What’s most fascinating about this is what it reveals about the politics and culture of major media operations. You might think that even left-liberals would be on board with rooting out corruption and abuse within government programs, if only to shore up public confidence in their operations. But, again, as we saw in Minnesota, the dedication from elite circles to silencing all public knowledge of how their money is actually being used seems to be an essential part of their messaging priorities. As a result, one of the most spectacular moves in history to clean up the operations of government has gotten almost no attention outside alternative venues.
In the bigger picture, the challenge that the Trump administration took on is larger and grander than anyone knew. The second term hit following the largest explosion of government spending ever recorded, with some $6 trillion -$8 trillion added in the name of public health in a few short years. Overall, total cumulative spending added across the years 2020 to 2025 totals roughly $33 trillion –$34 trillion.
I’m profoundly aware that no human mind can even conceive of numbers on that scale. They are simply incomprehensible. Remember too that government has no resources of its own; whatever it has to spend is taken from the public in one form or another: taxes, inflation, or debt paid by future generations. In essence, what we have seen over these years has set new records for profligacy.
I noted that after the first few months of DOGE’s work in 2025, a kind of demoralization set in. The problem they had sworn to tackle was just too big for even a great team of researchers. DOGE and the Trump administration deserve maximum credit for their persistence and coming up with a plausible strategy for achieving the goal. It’s a start, in any case, and sets a mighty precedent for the future.
