Category: The Washington Free Beacon
Roomba maker iRobot files for bankruptcy, putting it in Chinese hands
Autonomous vacuums could go extinct unless they are made in the United States.
This is the harsh reality affecting companies like iRobot, the creator of Roomba, which just filed bankruptcy.
‘… with no anticipated disruption to its app functionality.’
Despite the company generating over $680 million in 2024, iRobot has been crippled by U.S. tariffs. Due to a 46% import tariff on Vietnam, iRobot’s costs were raised by $23 million in 2025, according to Reuters, which reviewed the court filings.
The court filings also reportedly noted that while Roomba is still dominating in U.S. and Japanese markets, it lost too much money on price reductions and investments in technological upgrades in order to maintain pace with its competitors.
According to the Verge, the company said it will continue to operate “with no anticipated disruption to its app functionality, customer programs, global partners, supply chain relationships, or ongoing product support.”
Simply put, after more than 20 years on the market, the Roomba is able to operate without online connectivity.
The bankruptcy will put iRobot under Chinese control moving forward, with the manufacturing company that controls its debt.
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Photo by: Andrew Lipovsky/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images via Getty Images
Court documents reportedly showed that Picea, a Chinese manufacturer, purchased iRobot while taking its debt on board, which is estimated to be about $190 million. The vacuum company took on the debt in 2023 to refinance its operations, Reuters claimed.
The debt came even after Amazon paid a $94 million termination fee after backing out of a $1.7 billion acquisition deal in 2024, according to the New York Times.
It has not been that long since iRobot had a massive market value at $3.56 billion in 2021; it is now estimated to be worth just $140 million.
New owners Picea will take 100% ownership of the company and cancel the $190 million in debt, while also canceling a $74 million debt that iRobot owed through a manufacturing agreement.
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Not only did iRobot need to deal with Vietnamese tariffs, other manufacturing that was established in Malaysia in 2019 was also likely affected.
It was not announced that Roomba had cut manufacturing from the country, and if it remained, would likely have been subjected to a 24% tariff rate from the Trump administration, which included taxing machinery and electronics.
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Trump Admin Reportedly Orders Dozens Of Ambassadors Home In Shakeup
‘This is a standard process in any administration’
DHS to send illegal aliens ‘home for the holidays’ with new Christmastime incentive
The Department of Homeland Security is running an end-of-year Christmas special to further incentivize illegal aliens to self-deport.
DHS Secretary Kristi Noem announced that the department will be tripling the cash incentives from $1,000 to $3,000, urging illegal aliens to leave the country on their own. Illegal aliens who choose to self-deport through the CBP Home App will receive this bonus through the end of the year and may be eligible to re-enter the country legally in the future.
‘We’ll buy your ticket.’
“Well, it’s home for the holidays season,” Noem said on “Fox & Friends” Monday.
“Not only are we returning those kiddos back to their families that Biden lost, we also are saying that if you voluntarily want to go home now to your country, if you’re in this United States of America illegally, we will give you $3,000 through the holidays to send you home,” Noem added.
Photo by ALEX BRANDON/POOL/AFP via Getty Images
Since President Donald Trump took office in January, an estimated 1.9 million migrants have self-deported and another 622,000 have been removed by law enforcement. Noem is looking to boost those numbers, noting that illegal aliens who self-deport may have a future path to legal residency unlike migrants who are deported by Immigration and Customs Enforcement or other law enforcement agencies.
“We’ll buy your ticket, give you $3,000 to go home, and that includes people that have not been detained, maybe have interacted with us, are detained and don’t have criminal charges against them,” Noem said. “Raise your hand! We’ll help you get home. We’ll facilitate it, and you might get the chance to come back to this country the right way someday.”
Photo by Alex Brandon-Pool/Getty Images
“If you wait until we interdict you and detain you and arrest you and have to deport you ourselves, you’ll never get the chance to come back.”
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Vance refuses to throw Tucker Carlson under the bus, emphasizes America is a ‘Christian nation’
Several speakers at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest offered competing and ostensibly irreconcilable views of the way forward for the MAGA coalition, in some cases identifying one another as cowards, saboteurs, or worse.
In his speech closing out the conference in Phoenix, Vice President JD Vance emphasized that “President Trump did not build the greatest coalition in politics by running his supporters through endless, self-defeating purity tests.”
‘Do I have disagreements with Tucker Carlson? Sure. I have disagreements with most of my friends.’
Vance, the Republican front-runner going into 2028 whom TPUSA CEO Erika Kirk endorsed last week for president, faces mounting public pressure to throw Tucker Carlson under the bus over his criticism of Israel and perceived bigotry as well as to censure Nicholas Fuentes, the head of the so-called Groypers who has been particularly critical of the vice president.
Andrew Kolvet, executive producer of “The Charlie Kirk Show,” told the Washington Post, “The reasonable actors can see that JD is being a reasonable arbiter of this debate, and that’s a really important signal to send out — that Israel is our ally. They’re an important ally. They’re not our only concern, though.”
“I think JD understands the needs, wants, and concerns of young Americans as well, if not better than, any other leading politician in the country,” added Kolvet.
“I didn’t bring a list of conservatives to denounce or to deplatform,” Vance told the crowd of thousands gathered on Sunday.
“We have far more important work to do than canceling each other.”
The vice president underscored that the “America First movement” constitutes a big tent welcoming those who seek to make America “richer, stronger, safer, and prouder.”
In a recent interview with Sohrab Ahmari, the U.S. editor of UnHerd, Vance provided some insights into why he refused to denounce Carlson or waste any time discussing Fuentes.
“Tucker’s a friend of mine,” he told Ahmari. “And do I have disagreements with Tucker Carlson? Sure. I have disagreements with most of my friends, especially those who work in politics. You know this. Most people who know me know this. I’m [also] a very loyal person, and I am not going to get into the business of throwing friends under the bus.”
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Photo by Olivier Touron/AFP via Getty Images
Vance noted further that “the idea that Tucker Carlson — who has one of the largest podcasts in the world, who has millions of listeners, who supported Donald Trump in the 2024 election, who supported me in the 2024 election — the idea that his views are somehow completely anathema to conservatism, that he has no place in the conservative movement, is frankly absurd.”
As for Fuentes, Vance intimated that a condemnation of the 27-year-old host of “America First” podcast wasn’t worthwhile.
“[Fuentes’] influence within Donald Trump’s administration, and within a whole host of institutions on the right, is vastly overstated, and frankly, it’s overstated by people who want to avoid having a foreign-policy conversation about America’s relationship with Israel,” Vance said in the interview.
‘Anyone who attacks my wife, whether their name is Jen Psaki or Nick Fuentes, can eat s**t.’
While the vice president maintains that Israel is an “important ally,” he indicated that he welcomes substantive disagreements with the Middle Eastern nation as well as debates at home about American foreign policy.
Vance told Ahmari that anti-Semitism and all forms of ethnic hatred “have no place in the conservative movement” but noted that “if you believe racism is bad, Fuentes should occupy one second of your focus, and the people with actual political power who worked so hard to discriminate against white men should occupy many hours of it.”
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Photo by Caylo Seals/Getty Images
Although recognizing Fuentes as an apparent sideshow to an important conversation, Vance did make a point of telling Ahmari, “Anyone who attacks my wife, whether their name is [former Biden press secretary] Jen Psaki or Nick Fuentes, can eat s**t.”
On the theme of America First’s genuine spirit of inclusion, the vice president made clear in his AmericaFest speech that the Trump administration and the broader movement supporting it has “relegated DEI to the dustbin of history, which is exactly where it belongs.”
“In the United States of America, you don’t have to apologize for being white any more. And if you’re an Asian, you don’t have to talk around your skin color when you’re applying for college, because we judge people based on who they are, not on ethnicity and things they can’t control,” said Vance. “We don’t persecute you for being male, for being straight, for being gay, for being anything. The only thing that we demand is that you be a great American patriot.”
‘It is better to die a patriot than live a coward.’
In addition to risking offense with his acknowledgement that white Americans needn’t apologize for their pigmentation and with his refusal to betray a friend, Vance realized the fears articulated in recent years by liberals and anti-Christian activists by noting in his speech that “the only thing that has truly served as an anchor of the United States of America is that we have been, and by the grace of God, we always will be, a Christian nation.”
For the benefit of those who might strategically misconstrue his meaning, Vance clarified that Americans don’t have to be Christian but that “Christianity is America’s creed,” despite the decades-long campaign by the left to remove Christianity from public life.
“That creed motivated our understanding of natural law and rights, our sense of duty to one’s neighbor, the conviction that the strong must protect the weak, and the belief in individual conscience,” continued the vice president. “Even our famously American idea of religious liberty is a Christian concept.”
The vice president noted further that the “fruits of true Christianity” are good men like his murdered friend, Charlie Kirk.
“The fruits of true Christianity are good husbands, patient fathers, builders of great things, and slayers of dragons,” said Vance. “And yes, men who are willing to die for a principle if that’s what God asks them to do. Because so many of us recognize that it is better to die a patriot than live a coward.”
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Make Mass Great Again
This Thursday is sure to see packed pews where they may otherwise sit empty. Catholics who regularly attend Mass might find themselves seated next to a CEO—not a “Chief Executive Officer,” but a “Christmas and Easter Only” Catholic. Protestant and Catholic churches alike advertise their times of worship for Christmas, expecting crowds too large to accommodate in one service. But this is not how it should be, according to Robert Cardinal Sarah. Instead, these churches should be full every weekend with reverential, traditional worshippers.
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I’ll Have What He’s Having
If you’ve never heard of Drew Nieporent, it’s okay, even if you’re something of a foodie. Stick with me to the end of this review, and there’s an excellent chance you’ll want to read this delicious memoir from a pioneering figure of the New York restaurant scene. Once you’ve read the book, it’s all but certain you’ll wish you could have dinner with him.
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Tolstoy’s Last Novel
Leo Tolstoy is the greatest writer in the Western world—greater, yes, than Shakespeare, Dante, Dickens, Dostoyevsky, and Proust. In evidence I would submit his two masterpiece novels War and Peace (1867) and Anna Karenina (1878), and 20 or so magnificent novellas and short stories, among them “The Death of Ivan Ilych,” “The Kreutzer Sonata,” “Father Sergius,” “Hadji Murad,” and “Master and Man.”
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