Zero Rss

Unitree IPO Finally Puts A Real Price On Profitable Humanoid Robots

Chinese robotics maker Unitree formally launched its IPO on Shanghai's STAR Market on Thursday, opening the books on a deal that aims to raise about 4.2 billion yuan (roughly $618 million) at an implied valuation near 42 billion yuan ($5.9 billion). Once the shares start trading, the listing will put a real, daily market price on a profitable humanoid-robot maker operating at scale - the first the sector has had.

Until now, humanoid robotics companies have been raising capital based on numbers nobody could really challenge since nobody has had to actually clear a market. So far we have Figure AI sitting on a $39 billion private valuation, and a clutch of Chinese rivals each pushing past $3 billion in the primary market. A public listing swaps the euphoria of those private rounds for the discipline of a secondary one. Regulators approved the registration in early July after a review that took roughly 104 days from acceptance, one of the fastest STAR Market clearances on record. Observers have linked the speed directly to Beijing's push to channel capital toward strategic robotics and AI champions. That said, Unitree has been designated a Chinese military company in the US, and Washington is weighing action against subsidized Chinese robotics imports even as the machines turn up for sale on Amazon.

A Rare Profitable Name in a Sea of Losses

Unitree makes an unusually clean test case because unlike most of its peers, it actually turns a profit. The company reported 2025 revenue of about 1.7 billion yuan and adjusted profit around 591 million yuan - a net margin north of 35 percent that, in a field defined by cash burn, is close to an anomaly. It shipped more than 5,500 humanoid robots last year, more than any other company globally, alongside cumulative quadruped sales above 33,000 units. Overseas revenue has consistently run past 40 percent of the total. Founder and chief executive Wang Xingxing controls roughly a third of the business. The prospectus earmarks the proceeds for robot "brains" and model research, robot bodies, new products, and a manufacturing base.

The rest of the field looks nothing like it. UBTech, which is pursuing its own A-share listing, has put its Walker S humanoid through more than 50,000 hours of training on BYD production lines but keeps running losses. It just launched a consumer-grade bionic robot priced as high as 990,000 yuan (about $146,000) in a bid to crack the home market. Overseas, Tesla's Optimus is slated to reach mass production this year. Every player in the space has a demo reel and a private valuation nobody has to defend. Unitree is about to have a share price that trades every day and settles the argument in public.

Whatever Unitree prints when it debuts becomes the benchmark for the entire "embodied intelligence" trade.

Tyler Durden Fri, 07/31/2026 - 22:10

Trump Defends Anti-Weaponization Fund But Admits It's Effectively 'Dead'

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

President Donald Trump on Friday said that he still wants compensation for people he said were victimized by a weaponized federal government while acknowledging that a planned $1.776 billion anti-weaponization fund is “dead” after the Department of Justice walked it back amid congressional opposition and court rulings.

“It is dead,” Trump said at a Cabinet meeting on Friday.

“But I wish it weren’t, to be honest with you. I think people were horribly treated, horribly abused … and I’d like to see them compensated for their pain.

“Their families have been ruined. Many, many suicides—they’ve committed suicide,” he also said in the meeting, which was held at Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland.

“People that were very successful, that wanted to go to a rally or an event and ended up spending the rest of their lives in horror.

“And this fund, this fund was not for me,” he said.

“This fund was for those people.”

Earlier this year, the Justice Department announced the fund as part of a settlement agreement in a lawsuit where Trump had sued the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to provide money for individuals who claimed to have been targeted by “weaponization and lawfare” under the previous administration. Trump’s lawsuit with the IRS was over a leak of his tax returns.

The fund, however, was met with legal setbacks as a federal judge blocked it from going into effect. That block was extended in mid-June.

Plaintiffs who sued to block the payouts argue that the government can’t legally divert taxpayer money into what they alleged was a slush fund for compensating Trump’s allies.

Also in June, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told Congress that the government is scrapping its plans for the fund in the face of a bipartisan backlash, and government attorneys have argued that lawsuits challenging the fund are now moot.

During a House hearing on June 2, Blanche said, “We are not moving forward with the fund, period.”

“Not moving forward ever?” asked Rep. Grace Meng (D-N.Y.).

“Correct,” Blanche answered.

Earlier on Friday, Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that the fund was meant to defend “the great American Patriots who were hunted down like dogs and whose lives were unfairly and illegally destroyed” by the Biden administration.

The president added that regarding the alleged victims, “perhaps there has never been a group of people treated so badly in our Nation’s history.”

“They are suffering still, many ruined, and I felt that they should be given compensation for what has been done to them,” he said, adding that Blanche should also be approved as attorney general by the Republican-controlled Senate.

Friday’s meeting is the first televised Cabinet session ever conducted at Camp David. The Trump administration previously attempted to hold the meeting in May, but it was scrapped due to bad weather.

During his first term in office, Trump held a Cabinet meeting at the presidential retreat that was closed to the press.

Tyler Durden Fri, 07/31/2026 - 21:45

The Strange Reason Scientists Still Need Pre-1945 Steel

The world's most sensitive radiation detectors sometimes rely on low background steel produced before the first atomic bomb test in July 1945, according to a new report from SpaceDaily.

Steel manufactured before the nuclear age lacks the tiny traces of radioactive fallout that atmospheric weapons testing later introduced into the environment, making it valuable for experiments searching for extraordinarily rare particles and faint radiation signals.

The report says that this gave rise to the popular story that scientists depend on steel salvaged from pre war shipwrecks resting on the ocean floor. While there is some truth to that, the claim has been greatly exaggerated. Some laboratories have indeed used steel from old warships for shielding, but it is not true that nearly every sensitive detector depends on sunken ships or that science faces a crisis as this supply disappears.

The reason low background steel matters is that, in cutting edge physics experiments, even the detector's own walls can generate enough background radiation to interfere with measurements. Facilities searching for dark matter, rare nuclear decays, or other elusive phenomena go to extraordinary lengths to eliminate every possible source of interference, often operating deep underground and surrounding detectors with multiple layers of carefully selected shielding materials.

Today, researchers no longer rely exclusively on pre 1945 steel. Advances in metallurgy allow laboratories to manufacture and rigorously screen modern stainless steel, titanium, copper, and other materials with extremely low levels of radioactivity. In many cases, these newly produced metals perform just as well as their pre war counterparts, making the finite supply of old ship steel far less important than popular accounts suggest.

The enduring lesson is not that modern science depends on scavenging sunken fleets, but that the atomic age permanently changed the way physicists design their experiments.

When scientists are trying to detect just a handful of events over the course of an entire year, even the manufacturing history of the steel surrounding an experiment can make the difference between finding a signal and measuring nothing but noise.

Tyler Durden Fri, 07/31/2026 - 21:20

Trust In Higher Education Hits Another Low As The Public Rejects Institutional Bias

Authored by Jonathan Turley via JonathanTurley.org,

According to the latest Gallup poll, only 38% of U.S. adults have a "great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in higher education. One of the Gallup experts told Fox News that one of the key reasons for the continued slide in public trust is "the perception that there's a political agenda being taught." That perception is well documented after most departments purged their ranks of any republican, conservative, or libertarian faculty members. At the same time, many faculty oppose the long-standing principle of institutional neutrality for universities, the subject of a recent debate that I had with the President of the American Association of University Professors.

Gallup's expert added that there is also a view that we are "not teaching people the right kinds of things they need to succeed in the job once they finish."

As I have previously written, this generation of administrators and faculty has destroyed not just public trust in our institutions but their financial viability. Colleges are closing at an alarming rate as both tuition and revenue fall. Yet, faculty members would prefer to lose their jobs than their bias in hiring and teaching.

According to Gallup, roughly a third of polled individuals cited partisan bias or indoctrination on college campuses. Bias was the leading reason for given for the lack of trust, ahead of tuition costs. That is a large chunk of potential applicants and their families. Worse yet, they are not wrong.

Our campuses have been ideological echo chambers where collective orthodoxy is more prominent than academic inquiry. This group think has created an overtly hostile environment for more than half of this country that consider themselves conservatives or libertarians. As schools struggle to maintain financial stability, they are literally cutting away half of their potential applicant pool.

Currently, only 37% of Americans report having "some" confidence in the institution. In any other industry or area, that record of alienation and mistrust would prompt massive changes in management. In higher education, however, colleges and universities remain captive to administrators and faculty members who replicate their views and values to the exclusion of many others.

The result is evident in multiple surveys which reveal widespread self-censorship among students, particularly conservative students. When I confronted a Harvard Law professor in a debate at Harvard Law School with those surveys, he responded by calling these students "conservative snowflakes."

It did not matter that only a third of Harvard students felt comfortable expressing their views in classes or on campus. Since Harvard has also shown the same bias in admissions, only roughly nine percent of the students identify as conservative. Thus, the vast majority of the students who are saying that they self-censor are liberals. This is the environment that the current generation of administrators and faculty have created.

As I have previously written, parents and students who value free speech must increasingly look to public universities where faculty are subject to constitutional guarantees. Public universities may be the final line of defense for free-speech advocates.

We now largely have two systems of higher education for those seeking education with a diversity of opinions and viewpoints. Except for outliers like the University of Chicago and other private universities holding the line on free speech, the orthodoxy found at private universities remains a barrier to many conservative and independent thinkers.

If we are to protect these bastions of free speech, legislatures will need to play a more active role in addressing the exclusion of both faculty candidates and speakers on public campuses. Too many faculty members continue to take the view that citizens are a captive audience expected to continue funding their departments, while excluding conservative or dissenting views held by many, if not most, citizens in a given state.

If faculty members want to continue maintaining echo chambers for their own viewpoints, they should have to seek private donors to sustain such intolerance and orthodoxy.

Legislatures can demand evidence that schools are maintaining intellectually diverse faculties in determining the level of continued support from citizens.

When some of us have argued for such campaigns, academics hypocritically claim that we are calling for political litmus tests or hiring based on political parties. It is an absurd argument that I have previously addressed, including in my book "The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage."

The call is for donors and legislators to withhold funding until they see real reforms, including greater diversity on faculties. They are not directing the hiring but looking at the results. The faculty members objecting to such calls have watched passively (or actively supported) the purging of conservative or libertarian faculty from universities and colleges.

When confronted by their own obvious ideological litmus tests, they shrug. Some acknowledge that their departments are overwhelmingly liberal, but insist that they just cannot find "competent" or "intellectually promising" conservatives. A few will admit that they do not believe that conservative views have a place in their departments.

It is impossible to deny the purging of faculties to create an academic echo chamber. If a large corporation effectively eliminated women or minorities while claiming no conscious discrimination, they would be trounced in court.

For years, I have raised concerns about the intolerance in higher education and surveys showing that many departments no longer have a single Republican as faculty members replicate their own views and values. There is no evidence that any faculty members (including those acknowledging the loss of virtually all faculty from the right of center) are honestly willing to reform their schools.

That ideological echo chamber is hardly an enticement for many facing rising tuition costs and relatively little hope of being taught by faculty with opposing views.

A Georgetown study recently found that only nine percent of law school professors identify as conservative at the top 50 law schools - almost identical to the percentage of Trump voters found in the new poll.

We are watching the demise of American higher education by its own hand. It will be up to legislators and donors to save these institutions from themselves.

Tyler Durden Fri, 07/31/2026 - 20:55

US Withdraws Troops, Patriot Batteries From Northern Iraq Amid Iranian Attacks

There are new reports Friday of more US troop pullback initiatives in the wake of the last couple weeks of US-Iran fighting, and Iranian ballistic missile and drone strikes which have targeted American bases with increased regularity, especially in Jordan and Kuwait.

One regional media publication freshly reports, "The United States military has started to draw down its last remaining forces from Iraq stationed in the vicinity of Erbil's airport in the Iraqi Kurdistan Region, well-placed sources with close knowledge of the process confirmed to Al-Monitor."

via AP

Significant US anti-air defenses are also being pulled back, given they and their radar systems have increasingly been targeted.

"Patriot mobile air-to-surface air-defense systems that detect and shoot down incoming missiles, drones and other airborne enemy equipment have already been removed from the military compound, the sources said, without providing further details," Al Monitor continues.

The pullback from the Iraqi Kurdistan region reportedly began last week and is still in progress, given all the heavy equipment has to be pulled out.

The missile batteries are expected to be 'redeployed' - but this could be further away from within the vicinity of Iran and the Persian Gulf, such as in Israel. Al Monitor notes:

Regional officials described the pullout as routine and in line with the US commitment to withdraw all its forces from Iraq by a Sept. 30 deadline that was agreed with Baghdad.

However, coming amid sustained attacks by Iran and its Shiite proxy militias, and on the Kurdistan Region of Iraq in particular, the withdrawal has left the Kurds feeling badly exposed.

It's not just Iran which has targeted US personnel and assets in Iraq, but Iraqi Shia paramilitary units have at times targeted Erbil facilities going back years:

While the Patriot systems were deployed to protect US forces, the Kurds have benefited immensely from the security umbrella as well. Erbil's airport has come under constant attack from Iran and Iran-backed militias since the start of the Iran conflict in February, including this week. US interceptors successfully deterred at least 95% of those attacks, the sources said.

The bulk of Iranian and militia attacks have targeted armed Iranian Kurdish opposition groups based in the Kurdistan Region. However, the Erbil compound has also been targeted multiple times. The Patriots have an operational range of between 60 to 100 miles (100-160 kilometers).

Iran's strategy seems to focused on permanently pushing US forces back in the region, while expanding the scope of the war, in what some analysts have called 'horizontal escalation'.

Iran expels America from yet another MENA base. https://t.co/BcZjvVR0W1

— Mark Ames (@MarkAmesExiled) July 31, 2026

One writer calls this a process of 'debasification':

In contrast to the previous hot phase of the war, in which Iran targeted bases across the entire theater simultaneously, this wave started with the targets close to Iranian shores, and has progressed steadily to the Israeli border. After destroying much of the radar network protecting regional US Axis bases in the previous hot phase of the war, Iranian planners have prioritized targeting fuel storage, drone hangers, refueling tankers, and barracks. The American response has been to pull assets back ever further from Iran, to bases in Israel and Jordan. We’ll call this process debasification. Iran’s debasification strategy takes advantage of the inherent asymmetry between the vastly different force structure and capabilities of Iranian rocket forces and US Axis air forces.

Iraq's north has long been a place where US forces can feal more at ease with 'friendly' Kurdish groups, rather than the dwindling presence in the rest of the country. But the Kurds have also come under immense pressure within the Iraq war, especially given headlines alleging they were ready to support an Iranian Kurdish uprising inside the Islamic Republic.

Tyler Durden Fri, 07/31/2026 - 20:30

Students Seek To AI-Proof Their Careers With Trades Over College

Authored by Autumn Spredemann via The Epoch Times,

For years, students were told the future belonged to college graduates with a four-year degree. Now, some of the fastest-growing opportunities are in skilled trades, where there is an escalating demand for labor and a higher level of job security amid the rise of artificial intelligence.

An instructor teaches a student about brazing—a metal joining process used in heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems—at a construction trade school in Homestead, Fla., on May 9, 2026. Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Vocational schools and specialized training programs are seeing a surge of interest among Gen Z students and younger workers who are considering options beyond traditional higher education.

And the timing couldn't be better. Major infrastructure projects and the rapid buildout of AI-related facilities are fueling demand for workers with hands-on technical skills. Workforce experts say the convergence of these trends could reshape how Americans think about education and career pathways going forward.

"The past couple of years, people have been flocking to things that are considered safe from AI, but then this tailwind came in where there's also a lot of need for these roles to support the labor movement," said Brady Colby, head of market research at Validated Insights, which analyzes trends in higher education and trade school.

He told The Epoch Times that while interest in vocational studies had seen slow, steady growth in recent years, it "really took off" in the past six months.

"It's harder to recruit for some of these skilled trades than it is for computer programmers now," he said.

Validated Insights noted in its June report that trade school revenue surpassed all expected growth in 2025, expanding 11.4 percent and surpassing $19 billion. That's nearly double the original growth forecast.

The Philadelphia Technician Training Institute states on its website that many Gen Z members are choosing vocational colleges "because these institutions provide quick applied education that leads directly to rewarding professions with reliable salaries."

Mike Nager, author of The Smart Student's Guide to Smart Manufacturing and Industry 4.0, told The Epoch Times: "For decades, four-year degrees were seen as the only path for a safe future. Trades were seen as a fallback for those who couldn't or wouldn't go to college and get a degree."

But now when it comes to choosing a four-year degree path as the default, "the payback just isn't there anymore in many cases," he said.

He also believes an interest in education alone won't be enough to replenish the widening gap in America's skilled talent pool.

"Kids have to be shown what the trades are, get some firsthand experience. This is where the industry needs to step up, create outreach programs to address the 'awareness gap' for trades," he said.

The "awareness gap" is the disconnect between rising demand for skilled professionals and the public's perception of these careers. For years, some say it fostered the societal stigma that vocational career paths led to either overly physical or just low-paying work. On the flip side, this perception created a favorable atmosphere for standard university education.

Changing the Narrative

Cyrus Kennedy, a behavioral analyst and CEO of The Ad Firm, said attitudes toward vocational careers are definitely changing.

"It's a mix of a math problem and a psychological shift," he told The Epoch Times. "Gen Z has watched older millennials drown in six-figure student debt for degrees that don't guarantee a job."

Kennedy said this trend toward vocational studies as higher education is happening at a time when there's "growing fatigue with purely digital, screen-bound work."

"Young people are realizing that specialized trades offer immediate earning potential, job security that AI can't easily displace, and a clear path to entrepreneurship without the financial chokehold of a four-year degree," he said.

Kennedy said another assumption being reexamined about working in skilled trades is the alleged cap on career growth and the risk of physical burnout.

"In reality, the trades are one of the fastest pipelines to business ownership," he said. "An apprentice plumber or electrician doesn't just learn how to fix a pipe; they learn a business model. Many transition into project managers, estimators, or business owners. It requires high-level cognitive problem-solving, customer psychology, and financial literacy."

Steven Morgan, a licensed master plumber and certified HVAC technician at 24hr.Supply, agreed. However, he said there's still a serious physical element involved in many trade professions that shouldn't be taken lightly.

"The body takes a beating. You're in attics in August, and the real money comes after years of licensing and hard experience," he said. "What students overlook most is the ceiling - field tech, foreman, estimator, then running your own shop. The ones who see that from day one go furthest."

He also doesn't find the surge in interest surprising.

"Young people watched a generation take on serious debt for degrees that didn't guarantee much, and they did the math," he said. "An apprentice earns while learning instead of paying to learn. The work also can't be shipped overseas or handed to software.

"Nobody's replacing a licensed plumber with an app."

Industries that have reported the highest number of skilled worker shortages in 2026 include electricians, welders, HVAC technicians, plumbers, and heavy equipment mechanics.

Meanwhile, the median pay in many of these professions now matches or exceeds that of many that require four-year degrees, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

Growing interest in technical careers is also reflected in public polls. A Resume Templates survey of 1,250 Gen Z adults in January found that six out of 10 respondents planned to pursue "blue collar" work in 2026. The main reason cited was better long-term job security against possible AI-related job loss.

In May, Challenger, Grey & Christmas published research showing there were 38,579 planned job cuts due to AI - the highest monthly total they'd ever recorded for that specific reason. AI-related downsizing accounted for 40 percent of all announced cuts, up from just 7 percent in January and 26 percent in April.

One-Two Punch

When it comes to rebuilding America's skilled labor force, there are two major factors converging. On one hand, there are millions of trade workers planning to retire through 2032.

On the other hand, there's the ongoing U.S. data center and infrastructure buildout, which is driving a technician talent crisis.

Between now and 2032, 18.4 million workers between the ages of 55 and 64 with post-secondary education plan to retire. This drastically outpaces the 13.8 million workers between the ages of 16 and 24 who will enter the labor market with the same qualifications, according to a Georgetown University analysis.

Concurrently, a Randstad analysis showed the need for skilled labor in the United States is escalating due to the data center boom. Demand for robotics technicians is up 107 percent, HVAC professionals up 67 percent, and construction-related roles up 30 percent.

Students attend a heating, ventilation, and air conditioning class at a construction trade school in Homestead, Fla., on May 9, 2026. Recent statistics show that people are exploring alternatives to the four-year degree, with many opting for trade schools. Joe Raedle/Getty Images Tyler Durden Fri, 07/31/2026 - 20:05

F-35 Stealth Jet Suffers "Mishap" At San Diego Airbase

A US Marine Corps F-35B assigned to the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing suffered a "mishap" at MCAS Miramar in San Diego earlier today, according to Fox News.

Viral videos have circulated on X showing the $100 million fifth-generation fighter jet in flames.

BREAKING: Emergency crews are responding to an aircraft mishap appearing to involve an F-35 at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar in San Diego after the incident was reported earlier this morning.+

Authorities have not released details about what happened, and it remains unclear… pic.twitter.com/PqTBisE7Jo

— Fox News (@FoxNews) July 31, 2026

Here's more from the report:

Emergency personnel responded to what the Marine Corps described as an "aircraft mishap" on the flight line at about 10 a.m. local time involving an F-35 assigned to Marine Aircraft Group 11, said 1st Lt. Blake Starbuck. The aircraft was based at MCAS Miramar.

The incident was a "Class A mishap involving a Marine Corps F-35B in the vicinity of MCAS Miramar," the U.S. Marines told Fox News. The pilot ejected and was recovered.

At least 14 F-35s have crashed or been written off in major accidents since 2018, including today's Miramar crash. Only one F-35 crash has killed a pilot, involving a Japanese F-35A in 2019.

Tyler Durden Fri, 07/31/2026 - 19:40

China-Focused Influence Program Courted Senior US Media Figures With Sponsor-Paid Trips

Authored by Arthur Zhang via The Epoch Times,

A journalist's review of Committee of 100 (C100) records has renewed scrutiny of sponsor-paid trips that brought senior figures from major U.S. news organizations to China and recorded changes in their views and professional plans.

A tour guide stands near a display showing images of people at locations described as vocational training centers in southern Xinjiang at the Exhibition of the Fight Against Terrorism and Extremism in Urumqi in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in China on April 21, 2021. Mark Schiefelbein/AP Photo

In response to questions from The Epoch Times, C100 confirmed that it covered travel costs, selected the participants, set their itineraries, and chose whom they met.

The organization rejected journalist and media host Natalie Winters's description of the trips as "pay-for-play," saying no coverage was exchanged for the travel and participants retained editorial independence.

Winters published her review on Substack on July 28, characterizing the multiyear journalist delegation program as a "propaganda pipeline." Her report drew attention to documents posted on C100's website.

A 2012 trip report on the website marked "Internal Use" placed the cost of a nine-day delegation for five journalists at approximately $60,000.

The report said the program sought to improve perceptions of China and encourage participants to share their experiences with professional peers.

The five journalists represented The New York Times, The Atlantic, the Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, and WNYC. A page about the delegation on the C100 website says they traveled through Beijing, Shanghai, and Hangzhou from Nov. 25 through Dec. 3, 2012.

The trip report described lodging, meals, transportation, sightseeing, corporate and cultural visits, and about 20 arranged meetings with Chinese officials, academics, media representatives, students, and business executives.

C100 Recorded Changes in Views

Winnie O'Kelley, then-deputy business editor at The New York Times, said she would return from the trip with several story ideas and "shape my staff across Asia in some different ways," according to the report.

Gary Silverman, then-U.S. news editor and deputy managing editor at the Financial Times, said he would not again "think or write about China" without reflecting on what he had learned.

WNYC host Brian Lehrer was described as saying his perception of China had changed "in 100 ways."

Jonathan Tepperman, then-managing editor of Foreign Affairs, said the trip had given him a "much deeper, more subtle and more nuanced" sense of China and elite opinion in the country.

He said he had made contacts he intended to continue consulting and called it the best press trip he had attended.

Clive Crook, then-senior editor at The Atlantic, said the visit reinforced his view of China as a "huge and fascinating story" and told organizers to "keep it up."

C100's report highlighted two articles Crook published after the trip: "Why China and the U.S. Can Be Capitalist Comrades" and "China's Ghost Towns Won't Have a Hard Landing."

C100's delegation page links to those articles, another Crook article, three Lehrer broadcasts, and a Silverman column. The page says the visit gave participants information and perspectives for their later reporting.

Shen Dingli, a professor at Fudan University in Shanghai who met the delegation, responded to the participants' assessments with a remark recorded in the trip report.

"You made the change!" Shen said.

Participants From Major Newsrooms

C100 began its journalist-delegation program in 2007 and told The Epoch Times that it continued through 2014.

Over that period, C100 records identify participants from The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, PBS, Politico, Time, Newsweek, The Atlantic, the Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, WNYC, The New Yorker, USA Today, and other outlets.

A C100 account of a gathering of 2011 and 2012 delegates described the program as an opportunity for American thought leaders to witness China's development and challenges and meet officials, experts, journalists, businesspeople, artists, and students.

The 2012 trip report said the program sought to improve perceptions of China and expected participants to share their experiences with professional peers.

In a December 2012 message, then-C100 Executive Director Angie Tang wrote that the journalist and civic-leader delegations were "shaping the U.S.-China dialogue on the frontlines."

The 2012 delegation met Cui Tiankai, then-Chinese vice foreign minister; CCTV executive producer Cheng Yue; Sinopec Chairman Fu Chengyu; Shanghai financial official Fang Xinghai; and academics, corporate leaders, students, and local journalists.

C100 also held discussions with Chinese officials during the same period.

Its account of those meetings says C100 leaders met Chinese Culture Minister Cai Wu, Hong Kong Chief Executive-Elect Leung Chun-ying, and C.H. Tung, chairman of the China-U.S. Exchange Foundation, a Hong Kong organization established in 2008.

C100 leaders also discussed possible collaboration on the organization's teacher and journalist delegations to China with He Yafei, then-deputy director of the State Council's Overseas Chinese Affairs Office.

C100 Defends the Program

"Committee of 100's journalist delegation program was an open professional exchange that last ran in 2014, during a period when the two economies were rapidly integrating [and] expanded U.S.-China engagement was the stated policy of both American political parties," C100 said in a statement to The Epoch Times.

The organization said the program was intended to give American editors direct exposure to a country often covered from a distance.

"The program's purpose, described openly for years, was understanding through direct experience," the statement said. "Participants disclosed their trips and retained full editorial independence. Nothing in the record shows anyone wrote or edited a story at anyone's direction."

C100 also confirmed that it independently selected the participants, set their itineraries, chose whom they met, and covered travel costs.

The organization did not respond to follow-up questions asking whether the claimed disclosures were made to employers, audiences, or both; requesting examples of those disclosures; and asking whether participants and their employers received advance materials describing the program's aim of improving perceptions of China.

Newsrooms Asked About Approval, Disclosure

The New York Times, The Atlantic, the Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, and WNYC were asked by The Epoch Times whether they approved the 2012 travel, whether they paid or reimbursed any expenses, and what sponsored-travel and disclosure policies applied at the time.

They were also asked whether C100's sponsorship was disclosed to readers or listeners in work connected to the trip.

O'Kelley, Silverman, Lehrer, Tepperman, and Crook were separately asked to verify the statements attributed to them and explain whether the trip affected any reporting, editing, staffing, sourcing, or broadcasting decision.

None of the participants or news organizations responded by publication time.

Arranged Access, Restricted Reporting

C100's program emerged during an era when engagement with Beijing was mainstream U.S. policy. Chinese authorities, however, had long treated exchanges, hospitality, and managed access as tools for shaping foreign perceptions - a practice that continues even as U.S. policy toward Beijing has hardened.

On July 27, 19 media workers from Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam, and Bangladesh began a six-day visit to Baoshan in Yunnan Province under the guidance of the CCP's Baoshan Municipal Propaganda Department, according to a Xinhua report.

The itinerary directed participants toward coffee production, historic towns, traditional crafts, cultural heritage, agriculture, tourism, and local-development projects.

Five days earlier, a Baoshan government account said authorities in Tengchong had trained more than 300 elementary school guides and university volunteers as local narrators tasked with carrying CCP theories and approved local accounts into communities and households.

Foreign correspondents trying to report outside official programs described a different experience in the Foreign Correspondents' Club of China's (FCCC's) 2025 media-freedom report, titled "The New Abnormal."

The survey found that 94 percent of respondents said reporting conditions in China did not usually, or almost never, meet international standards. Some 64 percent reported interference, harassment, or obstruction while reporting, while 77 percent said sources had declined or canceled interviews or required permission before speaking to foreign media.

Most respondents to the FCCC survey declined to be identified because they feared retaliation against themselves or their news organizations.

One unnamed European journalist said a Chinese Embassy invited the reporter on a government-organized trip to Xinjiang. After returning, the journalist was summoned by the Chinese Foreign Ministry and warned that subsequent reporting would be monitored to ensure it was "unbiased."

Another unnamed European journalist said police surrounded a reporting team investigating detention sites and prisons in Xinjiang, examined its cameras and phones, copied footage, and deleted material.

The FCCC said government-organized tours were occasionally offered in Tibet, but journalists who joined them reported having no opportunity to work independently. No surveyed correspondent received permission to enter the Tibet Autonomous Region independently in 2025.

The survey also found that 40 percent of respondents said their Chinese colleagues had faced pressure, harassment, or intimidation from officials or while assisting with field reporting.

C100 said the journalists on its delegations disclosed their trips, but it did not provide examples or specify whether readers and listeners were told who financed the travel.

Chinese police detain a journalist at a checkpoint on the road to the riot-affected Uyghur town of Lukqun, Xinjiang Province, China, on June 28, 2013. Mark Ralston/AFP via Getty Images Tyler Durden Fri, 07/31/2026 - 19:15

Argentina's Milei Borrows Warren Buffett's Idea To Punish Deficit-Spending Politicians

More than two years after campaigning to "blow up" Argentina's central bank, President Javier Milei has announced his "Fiscal Shackle" bill - a permanent rule aimed at preventing Argentina from approving or maintaining budgets with fiscal deficits that could have consequences for politicians.

On Thursday, in a speech recorded at the Casa Rosada and broadcast nationwide, Milei proposed an overhaul that would restore the Central Bank of Argentina's sole mandate of preserving the currency's value, stop direct and indirect financing of the Treasury, provinces, and municipalities, and expose officials who violate the rules to criminal charges. "It will be considered fraud and illicit association," he explained.

Milei said this is the "most important set of structural reforms in the last 91 years," taking the year of the Central Bank's founding, 1935, as the starting point for that period. He argued that the central bank has functioned as "a tool for theft" and indicated that his reform proposal seeks "to put an end to the scam of counterfeiting money to finance high-level politics, whose most evident manifestation is the inflation rate."

The plan would also strengthen independence of central bank officials, making them more difficult for future administrations to remove. Milei said the reforms were an effort to end decades of deficit monetization, the primary source of Argentina's recurring inflation and currency crises.

He said the "Fiscal Shackle" bill would impose an automatic shutdown mechanism if public accounts remain in deficit and Congress fails to restore balance. Nonessential government functions would halt, while new spending, hiring, and discretionary provincial transfers would be frozen. Top political officials would stop receiving salaries, although pensions, family benefits, unemployment insurance, health care, and security services would remain protected.

"The results of the Central Bank's portfolio can only be transferred to the Treasury for debt cancellation. The scam of the Non-Transferable Letters will be eliminated... This will include the Fiscal Shackle: it will ensure that Argentina cannot sustain a deficit budget," Milei said.

Remember, the Oracle of Omaha told CNBC's Becky Quick in a 2011 interview that he "could end the deficit in five minutes."

Warren Buffett explained, "You just pass a law that says that any time there's a deficit of more than 3% of GDP, all sitting members of Congress are ineligible for re-election."

Tyler Durden Fri, 07/31/2026 - 18:50

Judge Rejects States' Attempt To Block Medicaid Work Requirements

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

A federal judge on July 30 declined to block new work requirements for Medicaid recipients that states must implement by Jan. 1, 2027.

Judge Richard Stearns of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts turned down a request for a preliminary injunction made by Massachusetts and 25 other states to block the work requirements as the states’ legal challenge proceeds.

Stearns said in a six-page decision that the harms about which the states complained—added costs to comply with the new requirements—are largely reimbursable, since the federal government has said it will pay for 90 percent of the costs.

States have also complained that officials face a “tight timeline” to implement the requirements, which include mandating that beneficiaries aged 19 to 64 work, volunteer, or participate in job training for 80 or more hours per month. The timing, though, was set by Congress in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act in 2025, not by the defendant, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, in its guidance on implementing the requirements, the judge said.

“There is a certain point at which damages fail to justify the issuance of such an extraordinary measure,” Stearns wrote later. “Plaintiffs have not shown that their damages rise above that minimal threshold here. Moreover, the additional costs that may be incurred by the States are unlikely to bloom disproportionately given the familiarity of the responsible state agencies with the tasks to be performed.”

Lawyers for the states and the government did not immediately return requests for comment.

In addition to the Jan. 1, 2027, deadline to implement changes, states in their motion for an injunction noted that under the guidance, they also must inform Medicaid recipients of the looming update in notices by Sept. 1.

The states also opposed the guidance on how to determine whether a person is medically frail, which would exempt them from the work requirements. The guidance suggests that in no case can states base their determinations of whether an individual is “medically frail” solely on their records that an individual has a “particular diagnosis or condition” and improperly limits the short-term hardship exception for individuals experiencing an emergency declared by the president to those who can establish that the emergency renders them unable to comply, state lawyers told the court.

Government lawyers said the One Big Beautiful Bill Act delegated the definition of medically frail to the federal government, and the states are seeking to impose “arbitrary limits” on that authority. They also said the state plaintiffs had not met the standards for a preliminary injunction.

Stearns said on July 30 that the court’s denial of the injunction request “is not a reflection or anticipation of its ultimate views on the merits of the underlying litigation,” which will proceed.

“As illustrated in the pleadings and briefings to date (and in the arguments of counsel during the hearing), this case presents difficult issues regarding the scope of Congress’s delegation of interpretative authority to the Secretary and the faithfulness to Congressional intent with which the Secretary performed his task,” the judge stated.

“This, in turn, requires an examination of the data relied upon by the Secretary and the judgments (some medical) that underlay his amplification of Congress’s legislative outline.

“These are determinations that, in the view of the court, should be made on a developed record of the kind that informs a court’s decision at the summary judgment stage of a case.”

Tyler Durden Fri, 07/31/2026 - 18:25

Memory-Chip Crunch Hits Smartphone Demand Across China

Prices for electronic devices reliant on advanced memory chips, from smartphones to gaming consoles, have risen as the AI data-center buildout tightens supply and drives component costs higher. The resulting memory-chip crunch is now weighing on consumer demand, with Goldman’s latest note showing that the pressure is increasingly visible in China’s handheld-device market.

Goldman analyst Allen Chang, who focuses on everything from smartphones to semiconductors, AI, EVs, and robotaxis, cited new data on Friday showing that China’s smartphone shipments fell 17% from a year earlier and 36% from May, to 17 million units in June.

Second-quarter shipments totaled 69 million units, little changed from the previous quarter and a year earlier but above Goldman's 59 million estimate. Chang expects full-year 2026 shipments to decline 10%.

June 5G shipments fell 12% year over year to 16 million units, representing 85% of the market.

"We expect 2026 shipments to decline at 10% YoY, given rising memory cost weighing on demand," Chang wrote in the report.

Chang noted that the average number of cameras per handset declined to 2.9 this year, down from a 2022 peak of 3.8, while the share of cameras with resolutions of at least 20 megapixels increased to 66% of the total, up from 57% in 2025.

Model pricing for various foldable smartphone brands

Smartphone model launch pipeline

Professional subscribers can read more about the memory chip market, data center buildouts, and smartphones at our new Marketdesk.ai portal.

Tyler Durden Fri, 07/31/2026 - 18:00

Trump Orders Heavy Attack On Energy-Related Targets In Iran, To Commence This Weekend Summary

• Trump orders major strikes on Iran, likely to start this weekend.
• US adds sanctions, Bessent says Tehran can't pay troops, as Iran faces growing pressure.
• Most Americans say the Iran war isn't worth fighting: AP poll.
• Iran claims drone strike on US base in Kuwait - after no new US strikes overnight.
• Oil rises as fears of wider conflict grow and lack of talks.

//--> //--> //--> US announces end of Iranian blockade by August 15, 2026?
Yes 20% · No 80%
View full market & trade on Polymarket

*  *  *

Trump Orders Major Weekend Strikes

The Wall Street Journal and CBS are reporting that major US strikes - perhaps harder than anything of the last two weeks - are set to imminently commence. The attacks could be initiated at any point this weekend, after Trump gave the 'order' - it's being reported:

President Trump has ordered a fresh attack on Iran aimed at getting Tehran to surrender that could begin as soon as this weekend and would last a few days, U.S. officials said.

Earlier on Friday, he told reporters that he planned to resume heavy military strikes to force the regime to come to the negotiating table. He predicted that if the U.S. hit Iran hard enough, the hard-line regime would eventually “peter out.”

Trump made clear earlier at Camp David that the Iranians can't be trusted, are 'dishonorable' - and so he's not pursuing talks.

The late afternoon Friday CBS report is more alarming, given that "The United States and Israel are planning what would be one of the harshest bombing campaigns to date against energy infrastructure targets in Iran, multiple sources told CBS News, with strikes possible throughout the weekend."

It adds, "There was some discussion about trying to conclude by the time financial markets open Monday because of concern about how the bombings will affect the U.S. and global economy, but an end point wasn't locked in."

Earlier this week there were reports of Trump exploding at his own advisors amid ongoing debates about how the crisis should be handled, and finding an exit strategy.

"Well, they always want to talk, but they break their words so often," Trump said Friday at Camp David, putting his frustration on display later adding: "All they do is make me angry."

A key line from WSJ point to where things are likely headed: "Some U.S. officials believe Iran will continue to drag out negotiations, banking that Trump will abandon his war efforts in the long term in the face of mounting domestic political opposition."

Keep Hitting Them: Trump

Trump is holding a Cabinet meeting on Friday at Camp David. He claimed that the fight against Iran is "going well" and stated that American forces are "hitting them very hard" - adding that "eventually" Iran will have no choice but to "come home" - meaning full surrender.

"It’s going well. Everything we can do is keep winning," Trump also told Fox News. "But we are hitting them hard, shaking them up, and we’re just continuing to win." He suggested there will still be strikes ongoing in coming weeks, and that he's losing faith in the idea of talks with "dishonest" Iran "because they lie".

Additionally, Trump's Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is claiming that Iran is unable to pay its troops - though without offering specific evidence to back this, and that the US continues searching for Iranian assets to seize "all around the world". This is after Thursday Washington rolled out yet more sanctions.

Trump: "We'll be hitting them. We'll be hitting them very hard. At some point they're gonna say, 'We just can't take it anymore.'" pic.twitter.com/DT1Fcf57EN

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 31, 2026

In the meantime, the American public continues souring on the Iran war, which has predictably turned into yet another quagmire in the Middle East. Per a new Associated Press poll:

Most Americans say the war in Iran has not been worth fighting, and President Donald Trump’s approval rating on Iran has fallen slightly since last month, according to a new AP-NORC poll.

The results are a stark repudiation of the Republican president’s approach to the conflict, which has dragged on far longer than he originally predicted.

About two-thirds of U.S. adults say the war with Iran, which began Feb. 28, has not been worthwhile, according to the new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. That includes the vast majority of Democrats and independents, as well as about 37% of Republicans.

Iran Boasts it Hit Kuwait Base

"We note with concern that the security situation remains precarious," said Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesperson Tahir Andrabi on his country's mediation efforts to find peace between the US and Iran. Talks "are ongoing to normalize the situation, particularly the situation in the Strait of Hormuz," he told reporters as a week full of renewed fighting as come to a close. But there essentially are no current talks, and US officials have indicated they are not even seeking them.

Early Thursday had seen the last major exchanges of tit-for-tat attacks, followed by a window of relative quiet into Friday - but the Iranian military has said it newly targeted strategic US military facilities at Kuwait’s Ahmad Al-Jaber airbase in a drone attack. This was cast as 'retaliation' for US attacks of the day prior which focused on Qeshm island. Several Iranian troops had been killed in the prior assault, and separately a family was slain when their home was reportedly hit.

AFP/Getty Images

Semiofficial Tasnim news agency said the armed forces had targeted hangars, satellite communication systems and equipment warehouses using drones - based on the military statement.

No New US Strikes Overnight

"Iranian state media reported the strike on Ahmed Al Jaber Air Base early Friday, but Kuwaiti officials and the Pentagon have yet to comment," Newsnation summarizes, adding of the current standstill in fighting, "Notably, Iranian media did not report any American strikes hitting targets inside Iran overnight, a change from Wednesday, when the U.S. carried out what officials called a heavy wave of strikes against Iranian positions."

The day prior saw the Iranians heavily target an American outpost in Jordan. Iran believes the US is amassing equipment there in preparation for further rounds of attacks. As for the Friday targeting of Kuwait: "Iran cited a U.S. strike that killed a mother, father and their 2-year-old child in a home on Qeshm Island as part of its justification for the reported Kuwait attack."

'Horizontal Escalation'

On the question of where the crisis goes from here, a Tehran-based researcher at the Center for Strategic Studies, Ali Akbar Dareini, gave Al Jazeera some interesting insight into Tehran's likely thinking:

He said Iran is likely trying to preempt any future attacks by the US in its current targeting in the region. Iran does not want to “allow the US to decide when to start the war, when to pause temporarily and when to restart the war”, he added. “Iran is now targeting the staging grounds of future operations.”

Dareini explained that while Washington has been pursuing “vertical escalation” by ramping up military attacks against Iran, Tehran has sought “horizontal escalation” by expanding the conflict’s “geographical scope”.

“Iran wants a complete, permanent end to war, or it’s going to be a wide-scale regional war,” he said.

As for the latest on potential US-Israeli plans to escalate against the Islamic Republic...

The U.S. and Israel are reportedly considering a land blockade of Iran to increase economic pressure after months of military action failed to force Tehran back to negotiations.

The proposal would involve persuading neighboring countries—such as Iraq, Pakistan, Türkiye,… pic.twitter.com/uBHO7qx9po

— Clash Report (@clashreport) July 31, 2026

In the Strait of Hormuz, Iran's Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) has claimed its forces struck a pair of tankers attempting to pass though the narrow waterway under the "air escort" of the US military.

The IRGC asserted that the "non-compliant oil tankers… were struck and brought to a halt, while four other oil tankers quickly changed course and returned to their previous positions." Meanwhile, two headlines that don't line up:

• US President Trump says the Iran war is going well; US is hitting Iran hard and "we just keep winning" (Fox)
• The Persian Gulf Waterway Management Authority announces that traffic through the Strait of Hormuz is not possible due to the continued aggressive actions of the US

Oil Climbs with No Offramp on Horizon

Still, despite of a lack of intense tit-for-tat so far on Friday, oil is rebounding significantly as there are no signs of offramp and the two sides aren't talking - but instead preparing for more rounds in the fight...

But this Friday's somewhat 'quiet' state of things could likely dramatically shift at any moment, as has been the pattern this summer. The aforementioned Tehran-based analyst Dareini describes a serious change and overhaul in Iranian leaders' strategic thinking, which has gone from defensive to proactive, with an understanding of the need to inflict pain on the US side in a preemptive way.

"Iranians are tired from suffering from limited US attacks," Dareini said, charging that the US uses its declared pauses as a "deception tactic" merely in preparation for future attacks and operations.

"There has been a profound change in Iran’s strategic thinking," he added. "The era of restraint is over. Iran has decided that, if needed, it has to take preemptive military action against the US."

Tyler Durden Fri, 07/31/2026 - 17:55

Saudi Arabia Planning Major Escalation In Yemen, Possible Ground Op: Reports

Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

Abdul Malik al-Houthi, the leader of Yemen’s Ansar Allah, commonly known as the Houthis, said Thursday that there were indications Saudi Arabia was planning a major escalation in Yemen, as the war between the two sides has been reignited following the July 13 Saudi strikes on the Sanaa International Airport.

"We will work to establish the equation of siege with siege, especially since indicators reveal that the Saudis are heading toward comprehensive escalation, and we will seek God’s help against him and confront his comprehensive escalation with comprehensive escalation," al-Houthi said, according to Yemen’s SABA news agency.

The Guardian also reported on Thursday, citing Yemeni sources, that Saudi Arabia was preparing for a major escalation against Ansar Allah by sea and possibly by launching a ground offensive in central Yemen.

Saudi Arabia is looking to launch a new Red Sea coalition to keep the Bab el-Mandeb Strait open, and the Saudi Defense Ministry announced that 14 countries backed the effort. The full coalition hasn’t been released, but according to Saudi officials, it includes—

• Kuwait
• Qatar
• Bahrain
• Pakistan
• Turkey
• Egypt
• Jordan

Ansar Allah imposed a blockade on Saudi ports following the Saudi strikes on the Sanaa airport, which were meant to prevent the landing of a plane that took off from Iran and was carrying members of a Yemeni delegation that attended the funeral of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Yemeni forces have also targeted oil infrastructure inside Saudi Arabia, and the Saudi military has launched additional strikes on Yemen of late.

Escalations against Ansar Allah are unlikely to achieve success since the group faced a brutal US-backed Saudi-UAE war from 2015 to 2022 and multiple US and Israeli bombing campaigns since then that failed to achieve their goals. President Trump has suggested that the US could restart bombing Yemen.

It seems that Saudi Arabia has forgotten how its army was defeated in Yemen. pic.twitter.com/jKEPPywSn9

— ابراهيم ناجي Ibrahim Naji (@Ibrahym22Nagi) July 31, 2026

Al-Houthi said in his comments on Thursday that the Yemeni people “are among the most suffering and targeted peoples by the Saudi regime within the framework of the American scheme, and in service of the Israeli enemy.”

Tyler Durden Fri, 07/31/2026 - 17:40

Trump's Jones Act Waiver Helped Avert Fuel Shortages Across These Key US Regions

The Department of Homeland Security has issued the broadest Jones Act waiver since at least the 1950s, just weeks after the US-Iran conflict erupted. The measure has allowed foreign-flagged vessels to transport fuel, crude oil, fertilizer, and other essential goods between US ports, bypassing domestic shipping restrictions to mitigate supply chain disruptions across various U.S. regions.

The Jones Act, a century-old law requiring goods transported between U.S. ports to be carried aboard U.S.-Built, US-owned, and US-crewed vessels, was immediately waived in the early days of the U.S.-Iran conflict by the Trump administration.

As of Friday, the waiver has entered its 135th day, suggesting that the administration is continuing to protect domestic supply chains and curb energy prices by temporarily easing maritime protectionist restrictions.

A recent Reuters report stated that the Trump administration was considering another extension of the waiver.

The Cato Institute's Jones Act Waiver Tracker shows that nearly 50 million barrels have been moved since the waiver took effect on March 17.

The tracker indicates that the waiver sharply expanded domestic fuel movements, allowing foreign-flagged vessels to supply regions where limited U.S. shipping capacity, high transportation costs, and vessel shortages had constrained trade.

After 135 days, waiver shipments to the West Coast totaled 13.9 million barrels, equivalent to 108% of the region’s projected full-year baseline. Puerto Rico received 5.02 million barrels, equal to 134% of its normal annual pace, while New England’s 1.25 million barrels represented an increase of 215%. Gulf Coast shipments were 426% above the projected baseline, albeit from a much smaller historical base.

The data suggest the waiver is unlocking trade routes that were previously uneconomical or unavailable under Jones Act restrictions.

The largest effects are being seen in isolated or import-dependent markets, particularly the West Coast, Puerto Rico and New England, while the impact on the well-supplied Lower Atlantic remains marginal. Cargoes have included gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, renewable diesel, propane and ammonia.

Without the waiver, import-dependent markets such as those in California would likely have faced severe fuel shortages, with gasoline prices potentially surging well above $10 per gallon. The quick action by the Trump administration and the Energy Department appears to have mitigated supply disruptions in those regions where fuel shipments expanded the most.

Recall that suspending the Jones Act was one of six policy options identified by JPMorgan’s head of commodity research, Natasha Kaneva, for how the Trump administration could contain energy costs at the pump. The latest shipment data suggest that this option has played a material role in stabilizing vulnerable regional markets.

Tyler Durden Fri, 07/31/2026 - 17:20

The Fourth Turning Is Here: The Old Order Is Breaking Down

Authored by Chris MacIntosh via InternationalMan.com,

In 1997, historians William Strauss and Neil Howe published “The Fourth Turning,” a cyclical theory of Anglo-American history built around generational archetypes and recurring saecular rhythms of approximately 80 to 100 years — roughly the length of a long human life.

Their framework identified four “turnings,” each lasting roughly 20 to 25 years, that repeat in sequence.

The First Turning, the High, is an era of institutional confidence and community solidarity following a great crisis. The rules work, people trust them, conformity is rewarded — think the post-WWII boom, or the post-Civil War Reconstruction era.

The Second Turning, the Awakening, is a spiritual and cultural awakening that challenges the institutional consensus of the High. Individualism resurges; the establishment is questioned — the consciousness revolution of the 1960s-70s, the Second Great Awakening of the 1820s-30s.

The Third Turning, the Unraveling, sees institutions weaken, individualism reach its apex, and civic order decay. Trust collapses — in government, media, corporations, each other — as it did through the Culture Wars era of the 1980s-90s, or the Gilded Age of the 1870s-90s.

The Fourth Turning, the Crisis, is a decisive era of institutional destruction and reconstruction, typically catalysed by an existential threat — war, economic collapse, or civilisational rupture. The old order is swept away; a new one is forged. The Great Depression and WWII. The Civil War. The American Revolution.

"History is seasonal, and winter is coming."

— William Strauss and Neil Howe, The Fourth Turning, 1997

The Current Position

By Strauss and Howe’s reckoning, the current Fourth Turning began around 2008 — the Global Financial Crisis being its catalytic spark — and will likely reach its resolution sometime in the 2025-2030 window. We are, in other words, in the heart of it. The battles being fought now — over monetary systems, institutional legitimacy, national sovereignty, and the nature of truth itself — are the defining conflicts of the crisis era.

What Fourth Turnings produce is not predictable in detail but consistent in structure: the old institutions are exposed as either corrupt or incompetent, a battle ensues between competing visions of the replacement order, and the outcome is determined by which faction can mobilise sufficient force — social, political, economic, or military — to impose its vision. The process is neither clean nor just. Fourth Turnings historically produce enormous suffering alongside the reconstruction.

The GFC was Act One: the revelation that the financial system was not a wealth-generation machine but a debt-recycling mechanism sustained by regulatory capture and central bank intervention. The quantitative easing programmes that followed — printing roughly $20 trillion across major central banks between 2008 and 2022 — bought time at the cost of massively inflating asset prices, concentrating wealth, and making the eventual reckoning worse.

Covid was Act Two: a simultaneous crisis of public health, institutional credibility, and civil liberties, weaponised by an apparatus of state control that had been building for decades and found in the pandemic a perfect justification for deployment at scale. More on this shortly.

Act Three is visible on the horizon: the currency crisis that follows years of money creation, the geopolitical realignment driven by a rising China and a fragmenting Western alliance, and the social rupture of populations that have been systematically lied to discovering the magnitude of the deception. Fourth Turnings do not end until the crisis is resolved. We have not arrived there yet.

*  *  *

If we are deep into a Fourth Turning, the years ahead could bring far greater economic, political, and social disruption than most people expect. Understanding the forces driving this shift may be essential to protecting both your wealth and your personal freedom. Our free special report, Clash of the Systems: Thoughts on Investing at a Unique Point in Time, reveals the trends now reshaping the world, the risks they create, and how a contrarian investor could position to stay one step ahead. Get instant access to Clash of the Systems.

Tyler Durden Fri, 07/31/2026 - 17:00

From Nazi Tats To Kissing Cousins: Maine Democrats Go Full Jerry Springer

In the span of a few weeks, Maine Democrats replaced their U.S. Senate nominee amid a cascade of personal controversies, with a guy who's been banging his 2nd cousin for years. 

Platner's Collapse

Graham Platner, a Marine Corps veteran and oyster farmer, had emerged as a progressive populist challenger to five-term Republican Sen. Susan Collins. He secured the Democratic nomination in June 2026 despite a string of earlier controversies that included inflammatory Reddit posts, reports of sexually explicit texts sent to women while married, and a chest tattoo resembling the Totenkopf (a skull-and-crossbones emblem associated with Nazi SS units and concentration camp guards).

Platner said he got the tattoo in 2007 while drinking on leave in Croatia with fellow Marines and claimed he did not know its Nazi associations until the campaign. Multiple former romantic partners disputed that account, saying he had referred to it as "my Totenkopf" years earlier. Exes also described patterns of rough physical behavior, crude comments about women, and fantasies involving dominance through rape.

The decisive blow came in early July 2026, when a former girlfriend, Jenny Racicot, alleged that Platner had sexually assaulted her in late 2021 while intoxicated. Platner denied the claim, calling it false. Facing pressure from party leaders and the withdrawal of key support, he suspended his campaign and formally withdrew, clearing the way for a replacement under Maine party rules.

Enter Troy Jackson

Maine Democrats moved quickly. On July 25, 2026, they selected Troy Jackson, a fifth-generation logger from the remote Allagash area in the St. John Valley, former state Senate president, and progressive with strong union ties. Jackson had previously run for governor with support from Sen. Bernie Sanders and positioned himself as a working-class alternative. He won the special nominating process decisively and now faces Collins in a race that could influence Senate control.

Within days of Jackson's formal selection, independent reporting from The Maine Wire (followed by national coverage in the New York Post and Daily Wire) revealed that his longtime partner, Lana Pelletier - his high school sweetheart and the mother of his two adult sons, Chace and Camden - is his second cousin by blood.

Genealogical records and local knowledge show they share great-grandparents Thomas Pelletier and Edith Thibodeau:

• Jackson's maternal grandmother (Albertine Pelletier O'Leary) and Pelletier's paternal grandfather (Louis A. Pelletier Sr.) were siblings.
• This makes Jackson's mother (Colleen McBreairty) and Pelletier's father (Louis "Louie" Pelletier Jr.) first cousins.
• Therefore, Troy Jackson and Lana Pelletier are second cousins.

Via @SteveRob

 Oh... 

When your debate partner says he wants to introduce you to his wife and cousin but there’s only one person with him…. pic.twitter.com/9bqUuovFbs

— Magills (@magills_) July 31, 2026

The pair has been together for decades, raised two sons (who are simultaneously third cousins), and never obtained a marriage license. Jackson has sometimes referred to Pelletier as his wife in older materials but more often as his partner; she works as a clinical care specialist for the Maine Department of Health and Human Services. The relationship has been an open secret in the small, isolated Allagash community for years.

Second-cousin relationships and marriage are legal under Maine law with no special restrictions (unlike first-cousin unions, which face additional requirements). Genetic experts generally view the increased risk of inherited disorders as negligible compared with the general population. Such pairings are not unheard of in sparsely populated rural areas with limited dating pools and deep family interconnections.

Political Optics

The sequence was immediate and unsubtle. Critics and online commentators framed it as Democrats trading one set of personal liabilities - allegations of abusive behavior toward women and a Nazi-linked tattoo - for a nominee whose domestic life involves a blood relative of the second-cousin variety.

Just caught up with Troy Jackson in DC — asked him for some dating advice since he apparently knew the right places to take his cousin

📷 @townhallcom’s @storm_paglia pic.twitter.com/PbmdKOaR6B

— Matthew Foldi (@MatthewFoldi) July 31, 2026

Defenders noted that nothing illegal occurred, that the relationship predates Jackson's political career by decades, and that focusing on it distracts from policy differences with Collins.

Jackson has built his brand on authentic North Woods working-class roots. The revelation does not change the formal legality of his long-term partnership, nor does it involve any allegation of non-consent or criminality. It does, however, underscore how personal histories - whether tattoos, relationship conduct, or family trees - can rapidly dominate a high-stakes Senate race once they surface.

Tyler Durden Fri, 07/31/2026 - 16:40

Demoralizing The Whole Citizenry To The Max

Authored by James Howard Kunstler,

The Curse It Is Cast...

“I have nothing to hide. I can explain and validate everything that I’ve done.”

- Dr. Anthony Fauci, recorded for TV in 2022

However you cut this Fauci business, one thing Americans have learned is how slippery and treacherous this thing called The Law has become.

You saw it in the sundry Trump prosecutions of 2024, too - a marvelous demonstration of how to play Hide-the-Salami with the truth about anything and everything.

You saw it in the structured failure to adjudicate election fraud in 2020.

You saw it in the Jan-6 prosecutions and the Congressional Jan-6 Committee charade that followed.

And much more.

And one thing it’s good for is demoralizing the whole citizenry to the max. Who in this land was not mortally depressed watching Rand Paul’s Senate hearing Wednesday starring Dr. Fauci? (One last time, the center of attention!) We have become a procedural republic, slipping into an impotence of legalistic self-fuckery the way old folks slip into dementia, one lost memory at a time. There sits the murderer of millions cloaked in the banality of his evil — as it was at Nuremburg eighty years ago — and this time, you just have to lump it, America. The law can’t touch him at all.

Dr. Fauci ran his own titanically corrupt fiefdom out of the nation’s public health complex. Half-a-million a year wasn’t enough for — let’s call him what he was — an executive bureaucrat. He doled out millions in grants to universities, drug companies, and putative public service orgs, and extracted his vig, about a million bucks in prize money during the Covid-19 episode, not counting his share of royalties from drug patents. A modest million. He must have thought: who will even notice. . . who would ever be bothered by that tiny number when Congress, the Federal Reserve, and everybody else is drowning in numbers with so many zeros it gives them tachycardia just to glance at the balance sheet.

Plus, the thoroughly dishonorable news media was busy making Dr. Fauci a rock-star. He had everything but the stadiums. The grand old gals of Hollywood were going all moist over him. “Julia Roberts sent me flowers today,” he typed into his government-issue diary. Barbra Streisand called him on the phone. “I told her that I work listening to her songs on ALEXA,” He gushed. His work resulted in the deaths of millions and the injury of millions more. Neverminding that, he carefully tracked and marveled at his burgeoning fame:

“Big front-page article abut [sic] me appeared in the Washington Post, [Dr. Fauci wrote]. Very flattering. The situation with my national and international fame is explosive and really unimaginable. It is not hyoperbole [sic] to say that today I am the most famous and talked about person in the country and one of the most recognizable peson [sic] in the world.”

Did Dr. Fauci know that his work-product, the Covid-19 episode and the operations around it, were aimed at setting up conditions to get President Trump bum-rushed out of office in favor of the vacant and pliable tool that was “Joe Biden?” Did others on the White House Covid Task Force know how that would work? Did they know who or what they were in league with?

Anyway, it didn’t turn out as well as they’d planned, of course. The four years of “Joe Biden” only proved how much that coalition of Deep Staters, globalists, and domestic riffraff hated the old American republic and its pain-in-the-ass Constitution. But when they foundered in 2024 — when old Joe-from-Scranton finally gave away the game on that fatal debate stage — and the party had to stuff his idiot veep into the nomination, the Democratic Party crossed an event horizon into total detachment from reality, where they remain to this day.

So then, where did the Democratic Party get the idea that going balls-out Bolshevik-Jacobin would be their salvation after what they already did to try to wreck our country? And by Bolshevik-Jacobin I mean the marriage of murderous envy with civic psychosis. The line it is drawn; the curse it is cast, Dylan prophesied half a century ago. They’re in your face now. Just listen to them. They mean it. They want all your stuff and they want you dead. They want to put your sons in a cocktail dress. They want mutts from savage lands slavering on your daughters in a drainage ditch. Will half the people in this country really vote for that again?

Yet great forces unseen just now are driving the nation to an autumn reckoning, and the main thing to be reckoned is the survival of the USA as a functioning republic with the credibility of law restored and the demons of lawfare crushed. The possibility of legislated election reform slips away day by day, it’s true. But, please understand, this president will not allow the coming election to get pounded down a rathole. If nothing else, we are going to get an intervention under a national security executive order, on the president’s constitutional duty (and his oath) to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.”

The ensuing fight over this will be short and decisive. These mad dogs will be put down, as mad dogs must be. We are going to take our country back. Depend on it.

Tyler Durden Fri, 07/31/2026 - 16:20

ICE Planning New Detention Facilities For 5,500+ Detainees In Four US Cities

Authored by Bryan Hyde via American Greatness,

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is currently moving to open four new major detention facilities across the United States with a combined capacity to hold 5,500 detainees.

Just the News reports that ICE has sent out a request for information seeking contractors who could operate detention facilities near Denver, Miami and Seattle, and central Pennsylvania.

The request calls for 1,500 beds near Denver, 1,500 near Seattle, 700 near Miami, and 1,800 in Pennsylvania.

Trump administration plans four new ICE detention centers to expand capacityhttps://t.co/r1s5D1iYjT pic.twitter.com/u5wMR9S76z

— RSBN 🇺🇸 (@RSBNetwork) July 30, 2026

According to federal solicitation documents, ICE wants turn-key existing facilities that would be ready to begin housing detainees within 30 days after a contract is awarded.

Each facility is required to be reserved exclusively for ICE detainees.

Solicitation documents indicate a massive shift toward centralizing legal proceedings directly inside the walls of these new facilities with each of the four facilities to include five immigration courtrooms and dedicated judges’ chambers.

Every site is also expected to feature at least 20 offices for ICE attorneys, allowing deportations and hearings to process rapidly without requiring the transit of detainees to outside federal buildings.

NBC News reports the solicitations require each facility to be operational within 30 days of a contract award, indicating the sites are expected to be largely staffed and equipped before opening.

A major point of contention that has surfaced is that ICE has published draft contract terms declaring that state and local laws “shall not apply” to these new facilities, according to Wired.

The legal maneuver is designed to shield the private prison operators from health, safety, and labor inspections mandated by individual states, coming on the heels of a massive legal battle over state oversight in Washington.

The push is part of the Trump administration’s broader immigration enforcement strategy, aiming to boost total agency bed capacity to 92,600 by November 2026.

Tyler Durden Fri, 07/31/2026 - 15:40

Five States Make The Cut For $50 Billion Nuclear Campuses 

The Department of Energy has selected Utah, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Idaho as the first five potential hosts for Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campuses (NLICs), advancing an effort that forced states to decide whether they support the entire nuclear industry or merely the convenient parts.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright signed Memorandums of Understanding with the five states after the DOE reviewed 28 applications from 26 states. The agreements allow the federal government and the states to continue exploring potential campuses. 

The potential prize is substantial, with NLICs potentially attracting up to $50 billion in capital investment, generating almost $10 billion in state and local tax revenue and creating 25,000 jobs each.

These would not simply be reactor parks. The campuses are intended to accommodate multiple parts of the nuclear fuel cycle, including uranium enrichment, fuel fabrication, reprocessing or recycling of used nuclear fuel, and the final disposition of material that cannot be reused. 

Depending on the state and location, a campus could also include advanced reactors, power generation, manufacturing facilities, and co-located data centers.

The DOE is offering states the opportunity to build entire nuclear industrial ecosystems, rather than collecting federal reactor grants while expecting somebody else to deal with the fuel afterward.

That distinction may explain why some supposedly pro-nuclear states are conspicuously absent from the first shortlist.

Texas has spent years presenting itself as the future capital of advanced nuclear power. In 2025, the state established the Texas Advanced Nuclear Energy Office and appropriated $350 million for reactor development, construction reimbursement, and supply-chain projects. State officials called it the largest state investment of its kind in the country.

Yet when Orano USA and Waste Control Specialists proposed a consolidated interim storage facility for used nuclear fuel in Andrews County, the state's enthusiasm for nuclear technology suddenly became rather selective.

Gov. Greg Abbott urged the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to reject it, calling the location unsuitable and warning that the facility could threaten the Permian Basin. Texas legislators subsequently passed a law opposing high-level waste storage, and the state fought the NRC license all the way to the Supreme Court.

Apparently, nuclear reactors are an economic-development opportunity, while the fuel that actually ran through them is somebody else's problem.

New Mexico produced an even clearer example.

The state has supported nuclear technology when it generates investment and high-paying jobs. It committed $3 million in economic-development funding and another $1.8 million in workforce assistance for Kairos Power's expansion in Albuquerque, where the company is developing molten-salt coolant and fuel-manufacturing technology for advanced reactors.

But New Mexico's reception was considerably less cheerful when Holtec International proposed its HI-STORE consolidated interim storage facility in Lea County.

The NRC licensed the multibillion-dollar project in 2023, but New Mexico's governor and legislature fought it through legislation, permit threats, and litigation. Even after a favorable Supreme Court decision revived the federal licensing pathway, Holtec abandoned the project, describing the path forward in New Mexico as “untenable” and saying it would look toward states that were more amenable.

That history likely did not make New Mexico an especially convincing candidate for a federal program explicitly centered on the entire nuclear lifecycle.

As we have previously detailed, used nuclear fuel has been stored safely in pools and dry casks for decades. The United States has accumulated roughly 95,000 metric tons of it, much of which remains stranded at operating and decommissioned reactor sites because anti-nuclear activists have spent decades treating every proposed storage location like the opening scene of a disaster movie.

The NLIC program offers a different bargain. States willing to accept the responsibilities of the complete fuel cycle stand to enjoy tens of billions of dollars in investments and thousands of high-paying jobs for their constituents.

Texas and New Mexico may enjoy calling themselves pro-nuclear when reactors, research grants, and factory announcements are on the table. But supporting nuclear energy also requires dealing responsibly with what comes out of the reactor.

Tyler Durden Fri, 07/31/2026 - 15:20

FCC Chair Carr Defends License Review As ABC Cries Censorship

Via American Greatness,

Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr is pushing back against Disney-owned ABC’s claims that his agency is engaged in “attempted censorship,” insisting the review of the network’s broadcast licenses stems from evidence of discriminatory hiring practices, not politics.

ABC leveled the censorship accusation in a 119-page regulatory filing posted Thursday, arguing the FCC’s scrutiny of its eight television licenses sends a chilling message to media companies nationwide. “The retaliation against ABC is a signal to every media company in the country: accommodate the Administration’s view of what news coverage should look like or pay the price,” the network’s lawyers wrote.

Carr has flatly denied that characterization. “I don’t view the FCC as the speech police,” he told Politico this week for an episode of the podcast “The Conversation.” The chairman has said the license review grew out of an ongoing investigation into ABC’s diversity, equity and inclusion policies, not a reaction to the network’s news coverage.

In the interview, Carr detailed the substance of that concern.

“The Disney case is about evidence coming to light, we haven’t made a final decision yet, that they had been discriminating inside the company based on race and gender, in terms of hiring, promoting, compensation, workplace opportunities,” he said.

“If that all ends up being true, based on all the evidence that Disney gets to put in, that’s a very concerning development, and it does raise fundamental questions about fitness to have a license.”

An FCC spokesperson echoed that stance, saying broadcasters must serve the public interest rather than “the narrow or partisan interests of a political party” and are barred from discriminatory practices, hoaxes and news distortion. “The FCC is going to hold broadcasters accountable to the full extent of the law, regardless of any disinformation campaign that some of them may choose to run,” the spokesperson said.

ABC’s filing leaned heavily on outside voices, citing more than 153,000 public comments and warnings from figures including Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, about regulatory overreach. Some conservatives and free-market advocates have separately raised concerns about handing an appointed federal agency sweeping authority over news content, regardless of which party controls the White House.

Not all conservatives are sympathetic to ABC’s position.

The Center for American Rights, which petitioned the FCC to deny the licenses, called Thursday for the case to proceed to an administrative hearing.

“Disney’s lawyers can wish upon a star, but they cannot make this record disappear,” said Daniel Suhr, the group’s president.

The dispute traces back to April, when Carr called up all eight Disney-owned stations for an early license review, and intensified this month after President Donald Trump publicly urged the FCC to strip both ABC and NBC of their licenses over their handling of a presidential address. ABC has hired prominent litigators, including former Solicitor General Paul Clement, to fight the review.

Tyler Durden Fri, 07/31/2026 - 15:00