This month, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists at the University of Chicago is scheduled to announce whether the hands of its famous Doomsday Clock will move closer to midnight. It feels like a safe bet that Armageddon is drawing nearer today than it has in a long, long time.

The Doomsday Clock started almost 80 years ago, when physicists who developed the Bomb grew alarmed at its use against Japan to end World War II.

Between the late 1940s and the early 1990s, nuclear war wasn’t a remote possibility: It almost happened, repeatedly, as America and the Soviet Union fought the Cold War. Chicago’s atomic scientists moved the hands of their clock from seven minutes to midnight at its start in 1947 to just two minutes to midnight as of 1953, when the U.S. and Soviets started testing enormously powerful hydrogen bombs.

Fortunately for humanity, the 1990s ushered in a period of relative peace and proactive disarmament. In 1991, after the U.S. and Soviet Union signed the START treaty reducing strategic nuclear stockpiles, the clock was turned back to 17 minutes before the hour. The stockpile of nuclear warheads shrunk from more than 60,000 in the mid-1980s – an insane level of overkill – to an estimated 12,000. Test explosions became increasingly rare.

Today, unfortunately, the world is entering a new, more dangerous phase. The number of doomsday weapons and the number of countries wielding them threatens to grow. The clock gives humanity just 89 seconds to reverse course, its most perilous setting ever. Yet fewer people are paying attention,

The de-escalation that started in the early 1990s never would have happened without intense public pressure. That included mass demonstrations demanding an end to the arms race. And don’t underestimate the impact of 1980s movies such as “Threads” and “The Day After,” with their plausible depictions of death and horror after a nuclear exchange.

People in those days were scared, and rightfully so. Now, the fear factor is way down. It shouldn’t be.

New START, one of the landmark disarmament treaties that helped to pull the world back from the brink, is set to expire in February with barely a whisper of acknowledgement. In April, the United Nations will host a non-proliferation conference, and it appears likely that short-sighted national interests will outweigh concerns about the common good. Nuclear-weapons testing could make a destabilizing comeback in 2026.

Countries across the world are re-arming, as they recognize increased threats to their security. People forget that South Africa once had the bomb, and Ukraine was rife with atomic weapons after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Russia’s war on Ukraine is especially troubling. Drone incursions, sabotage and the vulnerability of nuclear reactors to attack are turning Europe into a dangerous flashpoint. The militarization of space, expanded anti-missile defenses and the potential risks of AI could create additional instability.

Proliferation is a red-alert risk again. One of arms control’s greatest successes — keeping the so-called nuclear club to nine countries — could fall by the wayside in short order.

When Ukraine agreed to give up the nuclear weapons on its soil in the mid-1990s, Russia provided a security guarantee that proved worthless. Now Europe has reason to doubt President Donald Trump’s commitment to NATO’s nuclear defense, forcing a reassessment among countries that depend on the U.S. for deterrence.

In Asia, South Korea and Japan are widely viewed as capable of producing nuclear weapons on short notice. With China and North Korea expanding their nuclear arsenals, and the U.S. increasingly viewed as unreliable, regional rivals may decide they need nuclear weapons for self-defense.

In the Middle East, Iran has flirted with joining the nuclear club for years. The joint U.S.-Israeli bombing of its nuclear facilities over the summer has driven the Iranian program farther underground, beyond the reach of international inspectors. If Iran gets the bomb, Saudi Arabia probably will want one too.

None of this is inevitable. It would be madness to resume nuclear testing, let treaties lapse and expand arsenals that already could wipe out the planet. Diplomacy worked for decades, mainly because of an understanding that avoiding nuclear war was essential to humanity’s future. Today’s global leaders need to start acting accordingly.

— The Chicago Tribune

According to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Santa Claus will continue delivering bundles of joy in the new year to U.S. taxpayers, who will receive whopping tax refunds during 2026’s first half. Some $100 billion will flow from a retroactive tax cut contained in the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” passed in July. And there are some special gifts for corporate America still waiting in Santa’s sled as well. Along with cash for consumers, the legislation brings large reductions in corporate taxes.

Some think the fiscal effects of all this will be large enough to add half a point to America’s GDP growth in the first quarter of 2026. But then there’s another, more ominous, possibility: a new surge of inflation. The price of gold, long understood to be the investor’s refuge against a deteriorating dollar, is sounding an alarm. It soared from $2,400 an ounce in January 2025 to nearly $4,500 now.

Will this time be different? There’s a lot to consider.

If the story sounds familiar, it’s because not long ago — when President Joe Biden was doling out generous piles of emergency funds to taxpayers — the price of gold reacted mildly, and inflation shot through the roof a couple of years later. Now, it seems, investors may be on higher alert.

Of course, there’s more to consider. First and perhaps foremost, the Biden administration was dealing with an economy suffering from a pandemic shutdown. The U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve Board were in cahoots. Unheard-of quantitative easing had been introduced in an effort to curtail financial panics and protect the U.S. banking system. The Fed was directly purchasing new Treasury debt to the tune of $3.5 trillion; together, they were printing money to cover costs.

Obviously, some circumstances have changed. In December, the United States had $36 trillion in public debt on the books and holding. Because of President Donald Trump’s efforts to gain tariff-fueled revenues and reduce the scope and pace of public-sector spending, the nation has just reached an operating point where we are spending less than we take in. According to the Bipartisan Policy Center, the federal government’s cumulative deficit for fiscal year 2026 through November was $439 billion — 19% lower than the same time the previous year. Revenues increased by 18% and outlays increased by 1% from fiscal year 2025.

This may not last, but it at least offers the prospect of less debt and therefore less need to print money and fuel more inflation.

If so, why the runaway price of gold? We must remember that gold is ultimately money, a store of value universally accepted to extinguish debt. It’s also the ultimate disaster hedge. When economies and life itself become disrupted, as in the Middle East, Ukraine, Nigeria and Venezuela, people convert assets to gold as they reorganize. There is also a sizable and growing industrial demand for gold to be used in the production of computers and other electronic devices. Taken together, these rising demand forces are pushing the price of gold higher.

So, will the soon-to-be received fresh bundles of cash be vaporized by inflation? Or will inflation’s forces be cowed by America’s reduced need for printed money?

For the next couple of years, at least, I am betting against surging inflation. But looking farther out and considering that America has yet to definitively get its fiscal house in order, I fear that the printing press will again become a policy tool and inflation will continue to be a constant threat against prosperity.

Bruce Yandle is a distinguished senior fellow with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, dean emeritus of the Clemson College of Business and Behavioral Sciences, a former executive director of the Federal Trade Commission, and a former senior economist on the President’s Council on Wage and Price Stability. He wrote this column for Tribune News Service.

Donald Trump has a bit of Barney Fife in him. Armed with a badge and bullet ― and lots of guns ― he’s hell-bent on locking up all the bad guys in town.

The president who promised to always put America First and decried foreign interventions that lead to nation-building is now standing astride the globe with the ambition of bending it to his will. CNN calculates that over the past year, Trump has either threatened or attacked one of every 15 nations worldwide.

In 2019, Trump declared, “Our policy of never-ending war, regime change, and nation-building is being replaced by the clear-eyed pursuit of American interests. It is the job of our military to protect our security, not to be the policeman of the world.”

Yet look at him now. Trump joined Israel in dismantling Gaza and the Hamas terror network ― a worthy mission ― but then crafted a plan that would put himself in charge of rebuilding and governing the Palestinian territory and commit American troops to keeping order.

Last year, he dropped bombs on Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia, Syria and Yemen.

Trump began the new year with a nighttime raid on Venezuela, where American troops and law enforcement personnel snatched President Nicolas Maduro and his wife from their bed and hauled them to New York to stand trial on drug trafficking and other charges.

And he’s not done, apparently. Our friends in Europe have their knickers in a knot over renewed rumblings from the White House about annexing Greenland to secure the North Atlantic. His top aides are leaking that Cuba may be next on the regime change list.

For a guy who swore off foreign entanglements, Trump has the United States as tangled as a cheap fishing reel.

A case can be made for nearly all of Trump’s interventions. The targets got exactly what they deserved. And America may well be more secure because the president acted.

Or maybe Trump was right in 2016 when he said, “toppling regimes with no plan for what to do in the day after only produces power vacuums that are filled simply by terrorists.”

As for Trump’s latest mission as the world’s top cop, what happens in the coming days is murky. At the post-raid press conference, Trump said the United States would run Venezuela until it was once again a prosperous, functioning democracy.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has since tempered that pledge, saying the U.S. would simply point big guns at Caracas to assure they do what we tell them to do. But it still sounds as if the United States is committed to policing Venezuela long-term.

Maduro was just one corrupt guy on a roster of thousands, just like him, embedded in every aspect of Venezuelan life, from politics to business to the military.

The drug gangs that pulled Maduro’s strings are not going to dissolve because Trump has captured their puppet. There’s too much money at stake. Stabilizing Venezuela will require rooting the gangsters out of the jungles, executive suites and capitols. Ultimately, that risks American lives and resources.

The pro-democracy opposition in Venezuela is also weak. Notably, Trump left Maduro’s Number Two, Vice President Delcy Rodriguez, as the titular head of the country, rather than elevating Nobel Prize winner Maria Corina Machado, who was cheated out of the presidency in the rigged 2024 election. This, even though Machado gushed about Trump as if she were a member of his cabinet. Flattery got her nowhere.

Trump’s scheme for building a new Venezuela commits American oil companies to investing billions in restoring the country’s broken-down petroleum industry. But despite the lure of vast oil reserves, they aren’t rising to the bait. With crude oil hovering at around $57 a barrel, the return on investment doesn’t justify the risk. And if American workers do go into Venezuela’s oil fields, American troops will have to go with them.

We know from experience that toppling a bad dude isn’t necessarily the first step toward peace and prosperity. Look what’s happened in Iraq since we ran off Saddam Hussein. Or in Libya, after we joined an international coalition to oust Muammar Gaddafi. Or in Afghanistan, after we subdued the Taliban. No one can argue that those interventions worked out as we had hoped.

Maybe Venezuela post-Maduro will turn out better. There are 8 million Venezuelan exiles who, if they could be persuaded to return, might make a difference.

But Venezuela has the makings of a classic quagmire. The very thing Trump promised to avoid in swearing off America’s role as the world’s policeman.

Nolan Finley is the editorial page editor of the Detroit News.

Minnesota’s Department of Human Services is pausing new provider enrollments in 13 Medicaid-funded services administered by the state as the agency works with the federal government to address fraud concerns in high-risk programs.

The agency announced the new step on Thursday. It comes at the order of the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which threatened last month to cut off Medicaid funding to the state unless it did more to address widespread fraud. Provider enrollment is the process to establish reimbursement from the government for services.

“This action is one more step we are taking to disrupt fraudulent billing,” temporary Human Services Commissioner Shireen Gandhi said in a news release. “We must safeguard Medicaid resources, always mindful that access to these programs is a lifeline for so many Minnesotans.”

State officials haven’t set a start date for the freeze, but it is supposed to last for up to six months, according to department officials. Existing providers can continue to operate and the freeze does not stop new clients from enrolling in services.

Adult day care licenses

In December, CMS Director Mehmet Oz demanded that the Human Services Department place a six-month freeze on enrollments in high-risk providers and confirm existing providers’ legitimacy.

Soon after, Human Services said it would stop accepting license applications for adult day care providers from Feb. 1 to Jan. 31, 2028. The move came amid allegations of fraudulent activity and allegations of kickback schemes in the program. Licensing is the process of getting authorization to operate.

Adult day services is one of 14 programs undergoing a third-party audit after being deemed high risk by state officials in the fall of 2025.

State Human Services officials stopped issuing licenses for new home and community-based services providers on Jan. 1, a pause that also will likely extend for two years.

Programs deemed high-risk

The expanded freeze announced Thursday will apply to the rest of the operating Medicaid-funded state programs deemed high-risk.

They include: Early Intensive Developmental and Behavioral Intervention Services for Autism; Integrated Community Supports; Nonemergency Medical Transportation; Peer Recovery Services; Adult Rehabilitative Mental Health Services; Adult Day Services; Personal Care Assistance/Community First Services and Supports; Recuperative Care; Individualized Home Supports; Adult Companion Services; Night Supervision; Assertive Community Treatment; Intensive Residential Treatment Services; and Housing Stabilization Services.

One of the 14 high-risk programs, Housing Stabilization Services, is no longer operating. Human Services ended the program in October after learning of a federal investigation into allegations of significant fraud.

Third-party audit underway

A third-party audit of those high-risk programs is already underway. Human Services flagged 14 programs as high-risk based on evidence of fraudulent activity, suspicious patterns and general vulnerabilities. They are also subject to stricter oversight, such as “enhanced fingerprint background studies,” initial screening visits and unannounced visits.

Results of the third-party audit are expected later this month, according to department leaders.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office has said there is significant fraud in federally funded programs in Minnesota, though the exact amount remains up for debate.

Related Articles

Arne Carlson, et al: Let’s take the road to excellence, Minnesota

MN audit finds weak oversight, fraud risk in Human Service grants

MN Republican lawmakers testify on fraud before U.S. House panel

What will keep the Minnesota’s paid leave program free of fraud?

With Tim Walz bowing out of the 2026 governor’s race, what comes next?

Assistant Minnesota U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson in December said fraud in the 14 high-risk Medicaid programs could top $9 billion since 2018, though Gov. Tim Walz has pushed back against that figure, calling it “defamation” of the state as it has not been backed by hard evidence.

A report released by the nonpartisan Minnesota Office of the Legislative Auditor this week found weak oversight and fraud risk in the Department of Human Services’ Behavioral Health Administration, which administers grants in programs for mental health and addiction treatment.