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That's a matter of op-onion |
Opinion, as we all know, almost has the word onion in it. And the Facerock Creamery in Bandon, Oregon, is selling classic aged cheddar with a "bold dose" of onions and chives. This cheese is my spirit animal. |
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Now today's cheddlines are both objective, subjective, and more: |
Cheddlines You Need2Know |
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We'll always have our opinions. |
—Matt Davis, Need2Know Chedditor |
P.S. We've got a flying car on the 'gram. Of course we do. |
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Quote of the Day |
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Should You Check Your 401(k) Today? |
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President Donald Trump, it turns out, is not against all immigration. Dubbed the "gold card" visa, his new proposition offers a path to citizenship for those willing to invest $5 million, effectively replacing the 35-year-old EB-5 investor visa program, which allowed foreign nationals to get into America for a mere $1 million. |
At its core, the "gold card" represents a green card (or permanent legal residency) with an escalated price tag aimed at wealthy investors. It's positioned as a strategic move to boost economic growth. Trump elaborated on the expected benefits, highlighting increased spending, tax contributions, and job creation as primary outcomes. |
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick further detailed that the new scheme is slated to replace the existing EB-5 visas within two weeks. The EB-5 program, established by Congress in 1990, targets foreign investors willing to allocate approximately $1 million to a venture that employs at least ten individuals. However, the "gold card" is set to raise the stakes. |
Investor visas are not a novelty on the global stage. Over 100 countries offer similar "golden visas" to high-net-worth individuals, among them the UK, Spain, Greece, Malta, and Canada. These programs are designed to attract foreign capital and stimulate economic growth, with varying degrees of success and scrutiny. |
The proposal, while ambitious, has not been without its critics. The absence of job creation requirements in Trump's announcement has raised eyebrows, considering that employment generation is a cornerstone of the EB-5 program. Furthermore, the suggestion to issue up to 10 million "gold cards" as a deficit reduction strategy could have significant ramifications for the nation's social and economic fabric. |
Moreover, while Congress typically determines qualifications for citizenship, this initiative purportedly won't require legislative approval—raising legal and ethical questions about bypassing established immigration laws and processes. |
Meanwhile, I've worked with refugee organizations for years and have met countless people who came to this country escaping torture back home. What's remarkable about them all is both their resilience when they get here—many of them start successful businesses—but also, the fact that they tend to become politically quite conservative once they get themselves established. I often say that a refugee is just a person who fled horrific stuff. Without the labels they have just as much a right to get into this country as, say, a multimillionaire. |
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In a heart-wrenching turn of events, West Texas has become the epicenter of a measles outbreak, marking the first death from the illness in the United States since 2015—a school-age child who was not vaccinated. The tragedy unfolds amid a larger outbreak spanning Texas and New Mexico, signaling an alarming wake-up call to the nation about the importance of vaccination. |
With over 130 individuals afflicted, the vast majority children under 18, the outbreak traces its origins to Gaines County, a tight-knit community of roughly 23,000 residents, including a significant population of Mennonite ranchers. This region, cherished for its community spirit, is now under the watchful eye of health officials as they grapple with an illness that was declared eliminated in the U.S. in 2000, thanks primarily to the widespread adoption of the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine. |
Measles, a highly contagious respiratory disease, once accounted for 400–500 deaths annually before the vaccine became available in 1963. Thanks to vaccination efforts, such fatalities had become a rarity in the U.S., a testament to what can be achieved with public health initiatives. Yet, in recent years, vaccination rates have dipped alarmingly below the CDC's recommended 95% threshold necessary to prevent outbreaks, with Gaines County reporting rates as low as nearly 82%. |
"This is an entirely preventable death. That's the tragedy of it," Dr. Daniel Kurizkes, who leads the infectious diseases division at Brigham and Women's Hospital, told NPR. |
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told reporters at a cabinet meeting yesterday that measles outbreaks are normal and happen every year. |
"There have been four measles outbreaks this year in this country, last year there were 16," he told a reporter from Trump's cabinet meeting. "It is not unusual, we have measles outbreaks every year." |
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Physicians, meanwhile, have rung alarm bells, saying that measles outbreaks are far from normal, particularly given that the disease was eradicated from the U.S. a quarter century ago. Kennedy once wrote that Americans had been "misled" into believing measles is a deadly disease: |
 | Aaron Blake @AaronBlake |  |
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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in a 2021 book wrote that Americans had been "misled ... into believing that measles is a deadly disease." He said measles outbreaks had been "fabricated" to push people towards vaccines. |  Dylan Scott @dylanlscott
First death in the ongoing measles outbreak, per the Texas health department. Unvaccinated school-aged child. |
| |  | | | 4:51 PM • Feb 26, 2025 | | | | | | 4.05K Likes 1.5K Retweets | 94 Replies |
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Oregon Senator Ron Wyden hit back at the suggestion that measles deaths are normal: |
 | Ron Wyden @RonWyden | |
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Nothing about kids dying from measles is normal. Anti-vaxxers like RFK Jr. and the Republicans who enable them are responsible for every single one of these deaths. |  Acyn @Acyn
RFK JR on Measles Outbreaks: It is not unusual. There are measles outbreaks every year. |
| | | 6:13 PM • Feb 26, 2025 | | | | | | 474 Likes 147 Retweets | 86 Replies |
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From @cheddar |
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A Southwest Airlines flight, just inches from landing, was forced to abort its descent earlier this week in Chicago to avoid colliding with a private business jet that had mistakenly entered the runway. The near-miss incident, occurring on a busy Tuesday, underscores the ongoing challenges and necessity of stringent air traffic control measures to ensure the safety of all air travelers. |
The incident involved Southwest flight 2504, which was arriving from Omaha. As the Boeing 737 Max8 approached the runway, its pilots were compelled to perform a last-second maneuver, powering the engines to climb away from the danger that had unexpectedly crossed its path. The offending aircraft, a FlexJet Bombardier Challenger, was taxiing across the runway, seemingly cleared for one part but miscommunicating about holding at another. As the Southwest flight resumed its course, it passed overhead the smaller jet at an approximate altitude of just 250 feet—an alarmingly close call that could have led to a severe accident. |
The event was captured on video. The FAA confirmed that the private jet had "entered the runway without authorization," and an investigation into the incident is currently underway. |
 | Collin Rugg @CollinRugg | |
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NEW: Planes nearly collide at Midway Airport in Chicago, Illinois, forcing a Southwest plane to abort the landing. A small jet could be seen crossing the runway, forcing the Southwest plane to touch and go. The incident was similar to an incident at LAX in December, where the… x.com/i/web/status/1… | |  | | | 5:38 PM • Feb 25, 2025 | | | | | | 3.99K Likes 720 Retweets | 322 Replies |
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Chicago Midway Airport, a hub predominantly serving Southwest Airlines, has seen its fair share of air traffic. While runway incursions remain relatively rare, this incident is part of a troubling trend of close calls in post-pandemic air travel. Despite a decrease in serious runway incursions in 2024, from a high 0.4 per million in 2023 to 0.124 per million operations, every incident like this is a stark reminder of what's at stake. Say, wouldn't it be great if we had somebody on-hand to fix air traffic control communications systems? |
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A satellite company owned by the world's most reclusive billionaire has the inside track to potentially take over a large federal contract to modernize the nation's air traffic communications system. |
Equipment from Musk's Starlink has been installed in Federal Aviation Administration facilities as a prelude to a takeover of a $2 billion contract held by Verizon, according to government employees, contractors and people familiar with the work. |
Musk said that the network used by air traffic controllers is aging and requires drastic and quick action to modernize it. |
"The Verizon system is not working and so is putting air travelers at serious risk," Musk on Monday posted on X, the social media site he has owned since 2022. |
 | Elon Musk @elonmusk | |
| | Replying to@AutismCapital | The Verizon system is not working and so is putting air travelers at serious risk | | | 1:47 AM • Feb 25, 2025 | | | | | | 2.24K Likes 243 Retweets | 162 Replies |
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The emergence of Starlink as a potential replacement for the Verizon-led effort underscores the extraordinary conflicts of interest inherent in Musk's position as both a senior White House adviser and a business mogul in charge of a sprawling array of companies. It is not clear what role Musk might be playing in helping Starlink parent company SpaceX win such business. |
"There's very limited transparency," Jessica Tillipman, a contracting law expert at George Washington University, told the Associated Press. Referring to Musk, she said: "Without that transparency, we have no idea how much non-public information he has access to or what role he's playing in what contracts are being awarded." |
Former FAA officials also told The Associated Press that they were alarmed at the prospect of Starlink being used as a critical part of the nation's aviation system without adequate testing, review and debate about its benefits and drawbacks. |
A Verizon representative said the company is unaware that the contract is being amended or terminated. Government ethics laws require that people who could profit from government work either recuse themselves from specific projects or first sell their financial holdings or sever ties with the company that could benefit. Here's the AP: |
"The FAA contract is not Musk's only conflict. His acolytes have also taken over many of the operations at the General Services Administration, which controls real estate and contracting for numerous government agencies. GSA currently offers other agencies the ability to launch payloads through an existing SpaceX contract —- putting the agency in a position to direct business toward Musk. The Department of Transportation regulates aspects of SpaceX and his electric car company Tesla. NASA and the Department of Defense are major customers of SpaceX. His brain-computer interface company Neuralink has regulatory issues in front of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration." |
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Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon and owner of The Washington Post, has announced a discernible shift in the newspaper's editorial direction. The shift narrows the paper's formerly broad opinion section to concentrate specifically on "defending personal liberties" and "the free market." |
Bezos's's's decision signals a strategic pivot that has reverberated through the ranks of the publication, resulting in the resignation of its opinions editor, David Shipley. From the New York Times, which loves nothing more than a meltdown at another paper: |
"Mr. Shipley is a veteran opinion editor with experience at organizations including The New York Times and Bloomberg Opinion. Since he joined The Washington Post in 2022, the newspaper has won two Pulitzer Prizes and two Loeb Awards." |
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Some observers argue that the shift may be a protectionist measure against the backdrop of an adversarial Trump era, while Bezos himself frames the change as a necessary "modernization." He posits that, in an age where the internet provides a plethora of viewpoints, there is a niche for a focused defense of "personal liberties and free markets." |
The new direction closely echoes the famed Wall Street Journal's editorial page mantra, "free markets, free people." Whether this resemblance is coincidental or calculated as part of an attempt to capture a certain reader demographic remains unclear. |
The past months at The Washington Post have been punctuated by significant changes, beginning with the controversial decision to abstain from endorsing a presidential candidate just weeks before the November election. The unexpected move, which deviated from a long-standing tradition of the editorial board, triggered a spate of resignations and a knock-on effect of thousands of subscription cancellations. |
Beyond editorial endorsements, individual voices within The Post have also been affected. Notably, cartoonist Ann Telnaes left following the rejection of a politically charged sketch. Former executive editor Sally Buzbee also resigned rather than spearhead a restructured division aimed at reversing waning readership. |
Senator Bernie Sanders is over the moon about all this: |
 | Bernie Sanders @BernieSanders | |
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This is what Oligarch ownership of the media looks like:
The second-richest guy in the world, Bezos, owns The Washington Post. He has now declared that the editorial page of that paper is going Trump right-wing.
Surprise, Mr. Musk agrees. We must support independent media. | | | 5:47 PM • Feb 26, 2025 | | | | | | 20.3K Likes 3.63K Retweets | 2.7K Replies |
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Will Lewis, the Post's chief executive, said in a memo to staff that changes to the opinion section were "not about siding with any political party." |
Musk, meanwhile, tweeted… |
| Elon Musk @elonmusk | |
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Bravo, @JeffBezos! |  Charlie Kirk @charliekirk11
🚨BREAKING SCOOP: Jeff Bezos has just sent an email to WaPo employees informing them that the opinion page will now write daily about two "pillars": 1- Personal liberties
2- Free markets He says that viewpoints which disagree with those positions will be written elsewhere.… x.com/i/web/status/1… |
| | | 3:02 PM • Feb 26, 2025 | | | | | | 64K Likes 6.28K Retweets | 1.72K Replies |
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