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Waste Of The Day: Education Fraud Sweeps Nation

Authored by Jeremy Portnoy via RealClearInvestigations,

Topline: Since 2019, school districts across 24 states and Puerto Rico have lost $225 million to fraud confirmed by the U.S. Department of Education inspector general's semiannual report to Congress. No more than $67 million has been recovered.

Key facts: Open the Books and the State Financial Officers Foundation documented 74 instances of confirmed school fraud, averaging over $3 million each. There are far more that have gone unprosecuted or undetected.

Florida and Illinois schools each had the most instances of fraud with 11.

Indiana lost the most money - $44 million - due to inflated attendance numbers that increased state funding to two schools. The schools' founder then allegedly sent the money to companies he owned. The schools closed in 2019, and four alleged conspirators were charged in 2024.

At Broward County Public Schools in Florida, information officer Anthony Hunter allegedly used district funds to buy $17 million worth of school supplies from a friend's business, ignoring the competitive bidding process. In return, the friend hired Hunter and his son to work a security job and sold Hunter a house for $150,000 below market value, state prosecutors claim

Chicago Public Schools received $1 million of federal grants meant for Native American students, using an application that included more than 1,000 students of South Asian descent. The district was unable to verify how many students were actually in the program, and agreed to repay the money.

Fraud arguably hits small school districts the hardest because they have fewer budgetary resources to begin with. When Janis Bucknor, former head of Community Preparatory Academy in California, admitted to stealing $3 million from the school over five years, it amounted to one-third of all the school's state and federal funding.

Bucknor spent $220,600 of the money on Disney vacations and also funded her internet shopping and private school tuition for her kids. She was sentenced to three years of home detention and ordered to repay the money.

Summary: The government loses hundreds of billions of dollars to fraud annually, but redirecting money away from children's education is especially egregious.

The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com

Tyler Durden Thu, 07/23/2026 - 21:45

India Targets Five Small Modular Reactors By 2033

India expects to build domestically five small modular reactors (SMRs) by 2033, India’s Atomic Energy Minister, Jitendra Singh, said. The five SMRs would be part of India’s push to accelerate nuclear power capacity installations over the next two decades, the minister told lawmakers in a written reply to questions as carried by local media.

The Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), India’s premier nuclear research facility under the Department of Atomic Energy, is currently developing a 220-MW Bharat Small Modular Reactor, a 55-MW reactor, and a high-temperature gas-cooled reactor designed to produce hydrogen, Singh said quoted by OilPrice.com.

As per India’s nuclear energy roadmap, the country aims to boost its installed nuclear power capacity from 8.78 gigawatts (GW) now to about 22 GW by the 2031-32 fiscal year, the minister said.

India goal is to boost its installed nuclear power capacity to 100 GW by 2047, up from just 8.8 GW now. This would require as much as 19.28 trillion Indian rupees, or $200 billion at current exchange rates, of cumulative capital, a panel set up by India’s power ministry said in the ‘roadmap to 100 GW’ report last year.

At the end of 2025, India’s government approved the landmark Atomic Energy Bill, which allows private companies to invest in its nuclear energy industry for the first time, as the country looks to boost nuclear power capacity tenfold within two decades.

The so-called SHANTI (Sustainable Harnessing of Advancement of Nuclear Energy for Transforming India) Act could drive huge investments from private companies in India’s nuclear energy sector.

Yet, Indian state-owned NTPC Ltd, the biggest utility in the country, is expected to account for 30% of the new nuclear power capacity installations by 2047.

NTPC, currently the only nuclear power generator in India, is now looking to acquire stakes in uranium assets globally to secure fuel for the expected massive expansion of India’s nuclear power capacity.

Tyler Durden Thu, 07/23/2026 - 21:20

Behind America's Growing 'Food Freedom' Movement

Authored by Jeff Louderback via The Epoch Times,

Joel Salatin wants to liberate Americans from over-regulation with neighbor-to-neighbor food commerce.

Salatin, who runs Polyface Farm in the hills of Virginia's Shenandoah Valley, is pitching the concept of a "Food Emancipation Proclamation."

Chickens, turkeys, and cows at Polyface Farms, in Swoope, Va., and The Family Cow, in Chambersburg, Pa., in these file photos. The regenerative farms are part of a growing push for “food emancipation”—neighbors feeding neighbors. Courtesy of Polyface Farms, Courtesy of The Family Cow

Through what he envisions as a federal declaration, consenting adults would be allowed to buy and sell homemade and farmstead food directly, without the costly commercial infrastructure and cumbersome government regulation currently in place.

Salatin's mission reflects a push among homesteaders and independent farmers to cultivate local food networks, where food is grown and raised without chemicals and consumers can gain a more transparent connection to how food is produced.

The Next 15 Years

At its core, food emancipation and local food networks are about neighbors feeding neighbors, sidestepping a system many no longer trust.

Salatin told The Epoch Times that the American food system is at a historic inflection point. He points to an aging farm class; the average American farmer is now around 60 years old.

Around half of U.S. agricultural equity is expected to change hands in the next 15 years, he said.

"That's the most unprecedented peaceful transfer in modern history," he said.

In 2025, Americans spent 56.3 percent of their food dollars on items prepared outside the home, at restaurants, at fast-food chains, and through takeout delivery services. Overall, out-of-home food spending reached a record $1.41 trillion out of a total $2.51 trillion in national food spending, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

Meanwhile, the farmer's share of the retail food dollar after production expenses has plummeted to roughly 5.8 cents today, according to the USDA. That figure was 40 cents in the mid-20th century.

The idea of food emancipation is simple: Let small producers legally and freely sell directly to the people who want their food.

Salatin notes that the real barrier to young people entering farming is not access to land alone, but the inability to profit from small-scale, value-added food production under existing rules.

He illustrates the gap with a simple calculation.

On a couple of acres, a farmer might raise 1,200 pastured chickens, selling them as whole birds or cut-up parts at an average of about $30 per bird, yielding $36,000 in gross income, he said.

If that same farmer could legally turn those birds into homemade chicken pot pies - free of dyes, seed oils, and industrial additives - and market them as high-quality convenience food, the average value per bird could jump to around $200, he explained, turning the same flock into $240,000 in revenue on the same land.

Once a farmer moves from raw ingredients to prepared foods, the regulatory threshold explodes, going from a home kitchen with existing equipment to what he described as "a half-million-dollar requirement to sell one chicken pot pie."

Saving The Family Farm

Pennsylvania dairy farmer Edwin Shank told The Epoch Times that his family nearly lost a four-generation farm after expanding from 40 to 300 cows under university-driven advice that prioritized volume above all else.

Despite filling a tractor-trailer with milk every two days, the Shanks were going bankrupt.

Milk checks came once a month - whatever the processor felt like paying. His banker warned that if nothing changed in three to four months, the farm would be gone.

A family portrait from that period, he said, looks idyllic - flowers, six children, a tidy yard - but behind the smiles they "were losing the farm."

"Inside the fence, hope is outside the fence," he said, quoting a conventional dairyman who described it as "a hard time to be a farmer these days."

The Shanks' response was to step outside the fence.

They converted their operation to certified organic; then, with borrowed money and little capital, they began selling raw milk directly from the farm under Pennsylvania's permit system. They couldn't afford a modern facility, so they bought used refrigerated semi-trailers - or reefers - for a few thousand dollars each and bolted them together into a makeshift cold-storage complex.

Business started to flourish after a phone call from New Jersey. A mother in Trenton asked if Shank could deliver raw milk across the state line. Legally, he could not, but he took a cue from Salatin.

"I told her, 'I can't deliver to you alone, but if you have enough friends, I can meet you at the state line,'" Shank recalled. The customer organized five families. That was enough for Shank to load his minivan and make the three-hour trip.

He drove down I-95 and reached the exit ramp to New Hope.

"Right there, it went through me," he said. "God, are you telling me something?"

That first drop point grew into a network of 55 delivery locations. Shank's business, The Family Cow, ships raw dairy, grass-fed beef, pastured pork and poultry, and other regenerative products five days a week to thousands of households.

'Survival Of The Collaborators'

Around 90 percent of the business is now online, Shank said, with about 10 percent sold through a new on-farm retail store and cafe that offers sourdough-based sandwiches piled high with organic, grass-fed meats and slathered in real butter.

Shank abandoned the idea that his farm had to produce everything it sold. He opted to develop what he calls "survival of the collaborators."

Multiple family farms share production.

Two dairies supply raw milk, seven families produce pastured eggs, and 11 families raise grass-fed beef. Other families specialize in pastured pork, turkeys, and piglets.

The Family Cow brought aboard three young families to raise pastured poultry. The farm provided the market, butchering, and marketing know-how, while the families provided the labor and land. In their first year, the group produced 10,000 chickens.

Shank is open to suggestions from entrepreneurs. A mother and daughter approached him, offering water kefir priced at $5 per jar. Initially, Shank acknowledged that he doubted customers would pay.

Within six months, they sold 10,000 jars through The Family Cow network, Shank said.

Getting Healthy

Max Kane, a raw milk activist and farmer in Wisconsin, reversed a life-threatening illness by changing his diet and has emerged as a leading voice in the fight for food sovereignty, raw milk access, and local farm-based economies.

Diagnosed with degenerative Crohn's disease at 11, he spent more than a decade cycling through surgeries, supplements, and medications with little improvement. The Chicago native rejected the conventional medical path and switched to an all-unprocessed, farm-direct diet from local producers. That restored his health and allowed him to leave federal disability assistance and become what he calls "a functional, contributing member of society" in his mid-20s.

Today, Kane operates a 211-acre farm in southwest Wisconsin and a raw milk buying club that has served Chicago-area families for around two decades.

In 2009, he said, the USDA, Food and Drug Administration, and state authorities tried to put him in jail for 18 months over his raw milk deliveries to Chicago. The experience spurred his advocacy for legalizing raw milk and reinforced his view that Americans must have the freedom to opt out of the industrial food system and to form private food networks between farmers and consumers.

He created Farm Match, an online marketplace he described as "Etsy for local food." The platform connects consumers directly with vetted farms and buying clubs.

Homesteading at any level - whether it involves full rural homesteads, balcony gardens in urban high-rises, or suburban backyard gardens - is on the rise because of the failures of the current industrial food system, defined by ultra-processed foods and unpredictable supply chains, Kane told The Epoch Times.

Industrial supply chains lack true transparency and traceability, which allows ingredients to be legally hidden from labels and makes it difficult for consumers to understand what they are eating or to track the source of contamination when something goes wrong, Kane noted.

Economically, this "takes the money out of the local economy and sends it far away, undermining rural communities and small producers," he said.

"Simply put, the food people eat is the single biggest determinant of their ability to perform their life, no matter what they do for a living," Kane said. "If citizens cannot legally build private food systems that nourish their bodies and minds, they risk becoming permanently dependent on an infrastructure that leaves them sick, disempowered, and economically sidelined."

Sally Fallon Morell agrees. The founding president of the Weston A. Price Foundation - a nonprofit that promotes traditional diets, whole foods, and the consumption of animal fats - shared a simple grassroots strategy that bypasses corporate supply chains and empowers small, pasture-based producers during her discussion with The Epoch Times.

"If we asked people to spend half their food dollars on direct purchases from farms, it would change everything, and we'd get back to the kind of farming that we want to promote," Fallon Morell said.

Her vision includes buying raw milk, eggs, and meat directly from regenerative farmers, and supporting local artisans and small-scale producers of sourdough bread, sauerkraut, and other traditionally prepared foods.

This encourages interdependence and local networks, she added.

"The goal is a resilient local web of producers and eaters, not a homestead cut off from the broader world," she said.

Customers wait at Raising Canes Chicken Fingers in Washington on March 12, 2026. In 2025, Americans spent around 55 percent of their food dollars on items prepared outside the home at restaurants, fast-food chains, and through takeout delivery services. Madalina Kilroy/The Epoch Times Tyler Durden Thu, 07/23/2026 - 20:55

These Are The States Where Speeding Is Most Likely To Kill You

Montana has the highest rate of speeding-related traffic deaths per capita in the United States, underscoring a reality that runs counter to how most people think about dangerous driving, according to a new study by Siegfried and Jensen. 

While speeding is often associated with crowded urban highways and aggressive commuters, the greatest danger appears to exist on long, open rural roads where higher speed limits, lighter traffic, and longer emergency response times can turn a single mistake into a deadly crash.

Speeding claimed 11,288 lives across the country in 2024, making it the second-leading cause of fatal crashes behind only alcohol-impaired driving. It was a contributing factor in roughly 29% of all traffic fatalities, meaning nearly one out of every three people killed on American roads died in a crash where speed played a role.

A new analysis by Siegfried & Jensen ranked states by speeding deaths after adjusting for population. Montana finished first, followed by South Carolina, Wyoming, New Mexico, and North Carolina. Many of these states have similar characteristics, including vast stretches of rural highway, relatively high posted speed limits, and significant distances between towns, hospitals, and emergency responders.

The findings challenge the conventional wisdom that speeding is primarily an urban problem driven by congestion or road rage. Instead, the data suggests rural highways may be even more dangerous. Drivers often feel comfortable traveling well above the speed limit on open roads, but when crashes occur at those speeds, the consequences are far more severe. With fewer barriers, longer response times, and higher impact forces, accidents that might be survivable elsewhere are much more likely to become fatal.

There is also a seasonal pattern to these crashes. Fatal speeding accidents climb sharply during the warmer months, with May, June, and September each recording close to 1,000 deadly crashes involving excessive speed. The trend remains elevated throughout late summer and into early fall, suggesting increased travel, vacations, and heavier highway traffic all contribute to the higher death toll.

Despite decades of public awareness campaigns, stricter enforcement, and tougher penalties, speeding remains one of the nation's deadliest driving behaviors. Unlike some other traffic risks that have gradually improved through advances in vehicle safety technology, excessive speed continues to claim more than 11,000 lives every year.

The report also notes that speeding's true role in fatal crashes is likely even larger than official statistics indicate. A crash is only classified as speeding-related when investigators determine a driver was speeding, racing, or traveling too fast for road or weather conditions. In many serious collisions, speed may contribute to the outcome without ever being officially recorded as the primary cause.

The broader findings suggest geography plays an enormous role in roadway safety. While the country's largest states record the highest raw number of traffic fatalities, smaller and more rural states consistently post the highest death rates after adjusting for population. Long travel distances, limited transportation alternatives, and high-speed rural roads appear to create a particularly dangerous combination.

The analysis serves as another reminder that speeding is far more than a traffic violation. It remains one of the leading causes of preventable deaths in the United States, and the places where drivers feel safest putting their foot down may ultimately be where the risks are greatest.

Tyler Durden Thu, 07/23/2026 - 20:30

Authorities Arrest Fugitive Behind Alleged $547 Million Medicare Fraud

Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times,

A man on the FBI’s Most Wanted Fraudsters list, accused of a scheme to defraud Medicare of $547 million, was arrested by authorities on Monday.

The foreign national, Khalid Satary, 54, owned and operated multiple diagnostic testing laboratories in the United States between 2016 and 2019 that billed Medicare for “expensive and medically unnecessary genetic tests,” the Department of Justice (DOJ) said in a July 21 statement.

Satary is accused of conspiring with several patient recruiters and telemarketing services to generate unnecessary cancer genetic test samples that were reimbursed by Medicare at the rate of $10,000 to $20,000 per sample.

To run the operation, Satary allegedly paid millions of dollars in bribes and illegal kickbacks to patient recruiters and doctors.

The defendant was initially indicted in 2019. However, Satary was later released on bond, with the condition that he doesn’t work in the healthcare sector. While on bond, Satary allegedly conspired with labs in Texas to continue submitting fraudulent genetic testing claims to Medicare.

A federal arrest warrant was issued against him in December 2022. However, Satary failed to appear for a court hearing and was believed to have escaped the United States. On July 20 this year, the defendant was arrested in the Middle East with a fake Mexican passport using a fake name. He was then transferred to U.S. authorities.

The Most Wanted Fraudsters list was announced by FBI Director Kash Patel last month. The White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud partnered with the FBI to compile the list, according to a June 19 X post from Vice President JD Vance, the task force’s chairman.

The task force was established through a March 16 executive order signed by President Donald Trump, which said criminals and other individuals were exploiting various benefit programs intended to provide American citizens with a safety net.

Trump ordered the task force to “coordinate and accelerate a comprehensive national strategy to stop fraud, waste, and abuse within Federal benefit programs.”

One of those on the list, Said Abdullahi Ereg, surrendered to law enforcement on June 10, according to the FBI and federal prosecutors. Ereg is accused of laundering millions of dollars from a program that aimed to feed needy children during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Another individual on the list, Herbert Leon Kimble, accused of $1.2 billion Medicare fraud, was arrested on June 11 in the Philippines.

In its latest statement, the DOJ said that Satary has been charged with various fraud-related crimes, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and paying bribes and illegal healthcare kickbacks. He faces a multi-decade prison term if convicted.

“The arrest of Khalid Ahmed Satary and return to the U.S. is the third Most Wanted Fraudster capture from this FBI and our partners in just five weeks—continuing the historic run of success for this new initiative,” Patel said in the statement.

“This is another subject who exploited a program dedicated to helping our most vulnerable and instead stole for himself. Satary has been on the run since 2022, but we got him thanks to great work and coordination from the interagency and our overseas partners.”

The Epoch Times was unable to reach Satary’s legal representative.

According to the FBI’s website, Satary is one among nine individuals currently mentioned on the Most Wanted Fraudsters list.

One of the individuals is a naturalized U.S. citizen of Somali origin wanted for allegedly being part of a fraud scheme that exploited the federal Child Nutrition Program during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Another individual, a female from Jamaica, is linked to a scheme that fraudulently obtained more than $32 million from COVID-19 relief funds.

A third person, a U.S. citizen, is wanted for alleged involvement in a mail fraud scheme in Georgia. The man allegedly defrauded at least $10 million from his victims.

Meanwhile, on June 23, the DOJ announced that a coordinated enforcement action involving a whole-of-government approach led to the arrests of 455 individuals for their alleged role in healthcare fraud and opioid abuse schemes.

The schemes, which involved more than $6.5 billion in false claims, posed “significant patient harm,” including death. Among the arrested were two Estonians connected to a $10.6 billion fraud scheme.

Tyler Durden Thu, 07/23/2026 - 20:05

Seven Pipeline Projects That Could Break Iran's Grip On Hormuz Chokepoint

Brent crude futures topped $100 a barrel (Read RBC note) as disruption at the Strait of Hormuz spread to Bab el-Mandeb in the southern Red Sea. Combined with intensifying Black Sea fighting between Russia and Ukraine, the widening chokepoint crisis has put the energy complex and broader global commodities market on edge.

"The curve on Brent and WTI is getting again very steep backwardated compared to when the diplomatic route to solve the Middle East conflict was on the table and seemed to be making progress," UBS analyst Claudio Martucci wrote in a note.

The reemergence of chokepoint chaos in the Strait of Hormuz, now spreading to Bab el-Mandeb, has provided Gulf states with a critical reminder of the risks associated with maritime export routes. This disruption is accelerating efforts to bypass vulnerable chokepoints and spurring a major infrastructure boom.

At least seven major pipeline projects are under construction, being planned or under discussion, according to the Associated Press.

Saudi Arabia's East-West pipeline already provides the region's most important alternative, carrying crude from Abqaiq to Yanbu on the Red Sea.

The UAE has also increased oil shipments to Fujairah on the Gulf of Oman, bypassing Hormuz. Together, the Fujairah route and Saudi Arabia's East-West pipeline had between 3.5 million and 5.5 million barrels a day of spare capacity before the war, according to the EIA. Both pipelines are now operating near capacity.

Even Dubai's state-owned ports and logistics giant, DP World, is planning to bypass the critical waterway with a new container port on the UAE's east coast in Fujairah.

The UAE has plans to expand Fujairah's export capacity, and more recently, the US is backing talks to revive an oil pipeline from Iraq to Syria's Mediterranean coast. This would create yet another export route that would entirely bypass the Hormuz chokepoint and, in turn, erode Tehran's leverage over shipping traffic.

Our coverage on the Gulf energy rewiring:

• Gulf States Considering Network Of New Pipelines To Bypass Strait Of Hormuz
• Great Rewiring: US Supports Iraq-Syria Oil Pipeline To Erode Tehran's Hormuz Leverage
• Dubai's New East Coast Port Signals The Beginning Of End For Iran's Hormuz Leverage

What's key to understand here is that seven projects by U.S.-aligned Gulf states are set to rewire energy flows in the Gulf region, which will only erode Tehran's leverage over Hormuz.

Tyler Durden Thu, 07/23/2026 - 19:40

Justice Department Withdraws Subpoenas Of New York Times Journalists

Authored by Timothy Frudd via The Epoch Times,

The Justice Department has withdrawn subpoenas for three reporters from The New York Times following criticism from a federal judge.

U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian indicated on July 23 that he would have granted the request from the newspaper to reject the subpoenas if the Justice Department had not withdrawn them.

Subramanian said that the government was required to ensure that it could not obtain the information it sought from any other sources before subpoenaing journalists.

“Subpoenas are not the first thing you do; they are the last thing you do,” the judge said.

The Justice Department issued subpoenas to three journalists at The New York Times on July 10 after the newspaper published a report on alleged concerns about the new Air Force One, the plane used by the president, which was donated by the Qatari government.

The report alleged that the new aircraft lacked advanced security features, including anti-missile capabilities. It also said the Secret Service had urged President Donald Trump to use the old Air Force One as he departed from the NATO summit in Turkey earlier this month.

U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Jay Clayton, who was nominated by Trump to be the next director of national intelligence, issued the subpoenas.

During the July 23 hearing, Subramanian questioned government lawyers regarding the steps they took in their investigation. He cited rules protecting against violations of the First Amendment and said the department’s actions had turned the law “on its head.”

“When you see something like this, if this were a civil proceeding, what I would normally do is ask the parties to show causes why sanctions should not be issued,” the judge said.

A Justice Department spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email on July 23 that Subramanian threatened the government attorneys with sanctions unless the subpoenas were withdrawn. The spokesperson said the judge also blocked the government from “presenting the meticulous process of this investigation.”

“The grand jury has a right to hear testimony from all material witnesses in a federal criminal investigation,” the spokesperson told The Epoch Times. “This judge’s conduct overrides clear longstanding principles and common sense-blocking the grand jury from receiving core evidence in a national security investigation.”

Despite withdrawing the subpoenas on Thursday, the Justice Department spokesperson confirmed that the investigation remained ongoing.

“Make no mistake, this investigation remains ongoing, and we will pursue justice against those threatening national security by leaking classified information, a serious federal crime,” the spokesperson added.

In a statement on July 11, David McCraw, the senior vice president and deputy general counsel for The New York Times, criticized the subpoenas as an “attempt to prevent the public from knowing what is happening in their country by intimidating journalists from doing their jobs.”

The Justice Department’s rapid response account responded by saying that the department had an important role to ensure that people entrusted with classified information did not share it. “To be clear, reporters are not the targets; those leaking classified information are,” the department said.

On July 15, The New York Times asked a court to toss out the grand jury subpoenas. In a motion unsealed on July 20, the paper also said the Justice Department issued subpoenas to obtain phone records of the publication’s journalists and some of their family members.

“Two of the subpoenas seek records beginning on January 1, 2026, long before the events that are purportedly the basis for the Department’s investigation,” the publication wrote in a letter. “That timeframe strongly suggests that the Department is using this investigation not to focus on any purported concerns arising from the July 8 and 9 articles, but instead to forage for information about the Journalists’ source relationships more broadly.”

During his confirmation before the Senate Intelligence Committee on July 15, Clayton maintained that the Southern District of New York’s office followed protocol when issuing the subpoenas.

“I’m confident that the procedures that we have in place to protect the First Amendment and protect the freedom of the press and not result in intimidation of journalists or the like were followed,” he said.

Tyler Durden Thu, 07/23/2026 - 19:15

James Carville Calls On Democrats To Cave On Voter ID

The SAVE America Act, which would mandate proof of citizenship along with valid ID for federal elections and tighten mail-in voting rules, remains stalled in Congress due to the Democrats' filibuster in the Senate, even though the underlying idea is among the most popular in American politics.

Gallup found 84 percent of Americans favor requiring photo identification at the polling place, and 83 percent favor proof of citizenship for first-time registrants - including 98 percent of Republicans, 84 percent of independents, and 67 percent of Democrats. Pew Research Center put photo-ID support at 83 percent, with 95 percent of Republicans and 71 percent of Democrats behind it and only 16 percent opposed. Rasmussen found 77 percent of likely voters calling photo ID a reasonable measure to protect election integrity. Thirty-six states already request or require identification for in-person voting.

As CNN's Harry Enten put it: "The bottom line is this: Voter ID is NOT controversial in this country."

A bill with that kind of consensus isn't controversial, yet Senate Democrats keep blocking it. Now longtime Democratic strategist James Carville is looking at those numbers and has decided his own party needs an exit ramp. On his podcast, Politics War Room, he told Democrats to stop fighting voter ID and find a way out of a fight he believes is already lost.

The trigger for the conversation was New Jersey. Carville's co-host Al Hunt opened by noting the right had seized on Gov. Mikie Sherrill's disclosure that roughly 6,600 noncitizens were registered to vote in the state, fewer than 400 of whom cast ballots.

"Voter fraud in the United States is an infinitesimal problem," Carville said. "I don't even... to the extent, I guess you could say it exists, anything could exist, it exists on such a minuscule scale, and it's been proven time and time and time again."

That is where most Democrats stop - the problem is too small to bother with. Carville kept going.

"But I don't know if we're not better off saying, okay, we'll take that alternative ID, bring your gas bill or your light bill or something," he said. "Because for whatever reason, it polls at 75%."

He pointed to his home state of Louisiana, where voters already have to show a driver's license at the polls, and asked why the national party keeps treating that standard as an emergency. A rule allowing alternative documents such as a gas or electric bill still polls at 75 percent - a number that should give pause to a party that has spent a decade calling identification requirements a modern poll tax.

"We are not gonna win the war" on some kind of ID, Carville said. "I never had a problem with it. I'm just saying of all the things... if every poll shows 75 or better, saying we should have some kind of ID to vote... just quit fighting it and go along with it and move to the next thing."

Hunt pushed back, arguing that most states already have ID requirements and criticizing the SAVE America Act directly. Carville was quick to draw the same line. "I'm not talking about the SAVE Act, I'm not talking about the SAVE Act at all," he said. His proposal was narrower: "Whatever the law in Louisiana is, make it the national law."

It is worth being precise about what the New Jersey episode actually was, because it is not quite the case for the policy Carville is conceding. Those 6,600 people had pressed "no" when a Motor Vehicle Commission keypad asked whether they were U.S. citizens, and a software defect registered them anyway. They held valid state identification - that is why they were at the MVC. An ID check at the polling place catches someone voting under another person's name. It does not catch a state agency overriding what an applicant told it.

Which is rather the point of Carville's argument. He is not claiming voter ID would fix anything. He is saying it costs Democrats nothing and they are losing the fight anyway - that a party cannot win by declaring war on a basic expectation shared by nearly every voting bloc, and that the energy would be better spent on arguments it can win.

The concession is notable coming from this particular program. Politics War Room has hosted the Brennan Center's Michael Waldman to argue that widespread voter fraud is a myth and to pick apart the SAVE Act. Carville still believes the first part. He has simply stopped believing it matters.

Tyler Durden Thu, 07/23/2026 - 18:50

Trump Admin Weighing Military Intervention In Mali

Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

The Washington Post reported on Wednesday that the Trump administration is considering conducting military action against an al-Qaeda affiliate in Mali, which, if carried out, would mark the eighth known country bombed by the US since President Trump returned to power last year.

The report said there is disagreement among Trump officials over the potential military intervention, and named Sebastian Gorka, a British-born former radio host who currently serves as senior director for counterterrorism on the National Security Council, as a vocal advocate for military force in the administration.

File image via Brookings

Gorka also pushed for the US to escalate its air war in Somalia, and he got his wish, as the Trump administration has carried out a record-shattering number of airstrikes in the country, attacks that are ignored by US media, but there is little to show for the escalation as al-Shabaab has continued to make advances against the US-backed government.

The al-Qaeda-linked group in Mali, known as Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam, or JNIM, has been waging a major offensive along with Tuareg separatists, formally known as the Azawad Liberation Front, against the Mali government, which took power in a 2021 coup and is backed by Russia.

The US's ally Ukraine has been on the other side of the conflict, as it’s known to have provided drones and intelligence support for Tuareg militants fighting against the Malian military and Russian mercenaries.

When asked by the Post if the administration intends to take military action in Mali, a White House official told the paper that terrorist activity in the Sahel is a “multinational problem” and urged “regional partners and NATO allies to support the Alliance of Sahel States in their war against JNIM and ISIS.”

The Alliance of Sahel States (AES) is a confederation of Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, three West African countries where military juntas ousted governments that had maintained close ties with Western countries and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).

Sebastian Gorka — also a strong advocate for maintaining US ops against Al-Shabaab — is pushing for US military intervention against JNIM

The Trump Admin called for ECOWAS and NATO to “support the Alliance of Sahel States” and blamed the juntas’ military failures on Russia https://t.co/HqO1xW7fuP pic.twitter.com/xGgDTM5uaq

— Josh (@rohmerfan1127) July 22, 2026

The official suggested the administration may attempt to peel Mali and other countries in the region away from Russia, saying that Moscow “has proven to be an ineffective security partner for Mali” and that the US hoped “that other African nations take note of Russia’s terrible performance in combating terrorism.”

Tyler Durden Thu, 07/23/2026 - 18:25

AI Debates Reveal A Deeper Shift In American Values

Authored by Peter Earle via AmericanThinker.com,

A survey finding that 70% of Americans support putting half the stock of major AI companies into a public wealth fund reveals a deeper cultural shift toward viewing wealth as zero-sum and favoring redistribution of innovation rewards, unlike the more market-accepting attitude during the internet era.

Thirty years ago, the commercial internet burst onto the scene amid sweeping predictions. It would transform commerce, eliminate industries, reshape labor markets, and create fortunes on an unprecedented scale. It did all of those things. Yet there was not just remarkably little public appetite for confiscating half the equity of internet companies and redistributing it through a government-run fund: there was none. Americans largely accepted that entrepreneurs, investors, and workers who assumed extraordinary risks would also enjoy extraordinary rewards. Today, by contrast, a new survey finding that roughly seven in ten Americans support transferring half the stock of major AI companies into a public wealth fund suggests that something more profound than anxiety over a new technology is taking place.

Every technological revolution has its Luddites, however, marginal their appearance. What’s new is that today’s Luddites don’t merely want to stop the machines; they want to confiscate their owners’ property.

Certainly, artificial intelligence has generated genuine concerns. Many fear job displacement, misinformation, privacy violation, or the concentration of economic power in a handful of firms. Those concerns deserve discussion. But support for effectively nationalizing half the ownership of successful companies marks a dramatic departure from the country’s traditional understanding of property rights, entrepreneurship, and the relationship between entrepreneurship and reward.

The internet itself offers an illuminating comparison.

Few technologies have been as economically disruptive. Newspapers collapsed, retailers disappeared, travel agencies became obsolete, music stores vanished, classified advertising evaporated, and countless occupations either changed radically or ceased to exist. At the same time, the internet created entirely new industries employing millions of people while dramatically lowering costs, expanding consumer choice, and increasing productivity. Although critics worried about monopolies or privacy, proposals to seize half the ownership of companies such as Microsoft, Amazon, Google, or eBay scarcely emerged, let alone attracting something approaching majority public support.

Why has the public reaction shifted so dramatically?

One explanation is that Americans have become increasingly accustomed to viewing wealth through a zero-sum lens. For decades, political rhetoric, media coverage, and even educational institutions have increasingly emphasized inequality over wealth creation as an engine of overall prosperity. Rather than asking whether society as a whole becomes richer through innovation, discussion often centers on whether innovators have become “too rich.” When economic success itself is viewed with suspicion, redistribution naturally appears more reasonable than allowing innovators to retain the returns from their investments.

A second explanation is declining confidence in upward mobility. During the internet boom, many Americans believed they could personally participate in the gains, whether by starting businesses, purchasing stocks, or finding new career opportunities. Today, younger generations often face high housing costs, elevated student debt, and persistent pessimism about their future prospects. If people increasingly believe they won’t participate in economic growth through ordinary market participation, government intervention begins to seem like the only remaining avenue to benefit from economic progress.

A third possibility is that artificial intelligence itself feels more immediate and personal than previous technological revolutions. The internet largely complemented human labor before gradually replacing certain businesses and occupations. AI, by contrast, appears capable of performing cognitive tasks once thought uniquely human. White-collar professionals from writers, programmers, accountants, designers, and analysts now perceive direct competition from software. Fear often produces demands for political intervention that would have seemed unnecessary under more optimistic circumstances. (See the New Deal for additional evidence.)

None of this means policymakers should ignore legitimate questions surrounding AI. Governments have an appropriate role in enforcing contracts, protecting property rights, ensuring competition, prosecuting fraud, and addressing clearly demonstrated harms. But confiscating ownership after firms have invested billions of dollars in research and accepted enormous commercial risks would establish a troubling precedent extending well beyond artificial intelligence. Among other effects, inventors, and their backers would understandably ask which successful industry might be next.

The survey therefore reveals something larger than public opinion about AI. It reflects a striking evolution in American attitudes toward markets, technological, advancement, and private property. The internet transformed the economy every bit as profoundly as artificial intelligence promises to do, yet Americans overwhelmingly viewed its rewards as something to be earned rather than redistributed. If American citizens increasingly see extraordinary innovation as justification for extraordinary government force, the most important story may not be artificial intelligence at all. It may be the changing philosophy of the society deciding how to govern it.

If a majority can be persuaded that today’s successful innovators no longer deserve to own what they built, there is little reason to believe AI will be the last industry to find itself in the redistributionist crosshairs.

Tyler Durden Thu, 07/23/2026 - 17:40

Three Levers China Is Pulling To Weather Gulf Energy Shock; How Long Can Beijing Hold Out?

The new troubling development is that maritime chokepoint chaos spread overnight from the Strait of Hormuz to the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, where Iran-backed Houthis targeted two Saudi Arabian tankers. The attacks expose yet another maritime chokepoint and risk further physical market tightening, forcing traders to price a larger war-risk premium into Brent crude futures and pushing the benchmark above $100 a barrel Thursday morning.

Oil headed to Asia generally does not flow through both chokepoints. Persian Gulf exports pass through Hormuz and sail east, while Saudi crude loaded at Yanbu enters the Red Sea and passes south through Bab el-Mandeb.

Asia takes most of Hormuz crude, with China alone absorbing nearly two-fifths. On Saudi Arabia's Red Sea route through Bab el-Mandeb, China recently accounted for more than half of exports.

With both chokepoints disrupted, we want to check back in with China to understand what levers Beijing is pulling to absorb the energy shock - this builds on our three previous notes:

• China's Oil Imports Plummet To Eight-Year Low
• Visualizing China's Role In Stabilizing Oil Markets
• China's Refiners Slash Runs To Lowest Since 2017, As Asia Refiners Slow Purchases Of Mid-East Oil

On Wednesday, Goldman commodities strategist Hongcen Wei outlined three factors that have so far allowed Beijing to contain the economic fallout from the Gulf energy shock:

1. drawing down fuel inventories,
2. switching to coal and renewables,
3. and concentrating production cuts in oil- and gas-intensive industries.

China's real GDP growth slowed to an annualized 3.6% in the second quarter from 5.3% in the first, while total energy demand still rose .4% from a year earlier in April and May. Destocking of coal, oil and NatGas added 5.4 percentage points to energy-demand growth.

Fuel substitution also softened the impact. Lower oil and gas use subtracted 1.7 percentage points, while increased consumption of coal and renewables added 2.2 points. Gasoline demand sank 23%, but EV charging jumped 60%, allowing transportation activity to migrate toward electricity.

The remaining damage was concentrated in industries heavily dependent on oil and NatGas, while industries with greater flexibility shifted toward electricity and alternative fuels.

Wei provided the full rundown on how China is absorbing the energy shock:

Major Fall in Net Imports, but Total Energy Demand Growth Still Positive. Ordinarily the largest importer of energy products shipped through the Strait of Hormuz, China has drastically reduced its net imports of fossil fuels, effectively acting as a shock absorber for global energy prices through reduced demand. Net imports of crude oil cratered in China and the rest of Asia beginning in March, but recovered in the rest of Asia to 2025 levels by June while continuing to fall in China through the first half of July (Exhibit 3).

China's net imports of oil/natural gas/coal fell 24%/7%/24% YoY in April and May reflecting YoY price jumps of 59%/49%/38% (Exhibit 4). These reductions in fossil fuel net imports were the largest source of negative total energy demand growth, representing -3.7pp/-0.3pp/-1.2pp of China's total YoY energy demand growth of +0.4% (Exhibit 5).

Exhibit 3: China Crude Oil Net Imports Continue to Fall While the Rest of Asia Recovers to 2025 Levels

Chinese total energy consumption in April and May increased by an average of 0.4%, or 52 petajoules, year-over-year. To roughly estimate the impact of the supply shock on energy consumption, we estimate counterfactual consumption growth as the average +3.1% annual total energy demand growth rate from 2014-2023.[2] Applying this rate to China's average total monthly consumption in April and May 2025 would imply 375 PJ counterfactual YoY energy demand growth. This would suggest roughly 323 PJ of demand destruction for April and May, or 2.7pp reduction in the potential YoY growth rate. China's Q2 real GDP growth fell to 3.6% after 5.3% Q1 growth quarterly annualized, slightly exceeding our China team's nudged-down June forecast of 3.5% Q2 growth but missing market expectations. Lower GDP growth reflected mostly slower government spending, but also higher energy prices and unfavorable weather conditions.

Below, we highlight three factors that helped mitigate the total demand shock.

#1 Effective Destocking of Coal, Oil and Natural Gas Filled in for Fall in Fossil Fuel Imports and Production

Importing less of its energy needs from abroad, China has turned to its domestic inventories--rather than domestic production growth--to supplement the supply of fossil fuels.

Total domestic fossil fuel production actually fell slightly YoY in April and May, with lower coal production comprising a 0.5 percentage point reduction in total energy supply growth (Exhibit 5). Domestic crude oil production was unchanged compared to April and May of last year, likely constrained by high extraction costs in China's aging brownfields.

The bulk of the rise in total energy consumption has been driven by the effective destocking of fossil fuels.

• Thermal coal inventory levels increased by 1.6%/3.7% during April/May 2026, significantly lower than the 4.7%/5.8% MoM increase of April/May 2025. Though China's coal inventory level rose this April and May, we consider the reduction in MoM additions compared to last year's flows--in other words, how much less China added to its coal inventory this April/May compared to April/May 2025--as effective destocking. Defined this way, coal stock use contributed 3.0 percentage points to total YoY demand growth (Exhibit 5).
• We estimate that oil destocking also accelerated, contributing 2.2pp to total YoY demand growth (Exhibit 5). Moreover, changes in China's visible crude oil stocks also appear directionally consistent with our implied destocking estimates of around 1mb/d in May and June, suggesting a shift from restocking in Q2 2025 to greater inventory use this year (Exhibit 6).
• Effective natural gas destocking accounted for 0.2pp of total YoY energy demand growth (Exhibit 5).

#2 Fuel Substitution to Coal and Renewables Has Limited the Demand Destruction

To avoid wider demand destruction caused by lower fossil fuel imports and production, China has increased its reliance on coal and renewables in its wider energy mix. Lower oil/natural gas use in China's overall energy demand contributed -1.6/-0.1 percentage points to its total YoY energy demand growth in April and May, while greater reliance on coal/renewables contributed +1.4/+0.8pp (Exhibit 7).

As an example of this fuel switching in practice, we observe China substituting driving with gasoline for driving with electricity. Gasoline consumption fell 23%/23%/21% YoY in April/May/June, but EV charging growth rose to 62%/60%/57% YoY. Despite much lower gasoline consumption, traffic congestion remained relatively stable, falling only 1.2% YoY in April before growing by 0.2% and 2.1% YoY in May and June (Exhibit 8). These findings are consistent with our prior reporting on China's uptick in domestic EV sales since the start of the Iran war (despite seasonally-adjusted total passenger car sales remaining flat) and may reflect substitution both in car purchases (more EVs bought) and especially in choosing which kind of energy to drive on.[3]

#3 Energy-Related Reductions in Output Are Concentrated in Oil- and Natural Gas-Reliant Sectors

Several industries that are highly oil- or natural gas-intensive have slowed production. Physical output of processed crude oil fell by 10.9% YoY in Q2 reflecting lower crude oil inputs (Exhibit 9).[4] Sulfuric acid, produced as a byproduct during oil and natural gas refining, saw 4.6% lower Q2 physical output YoY. Chemical fibers, produced with either oil or natural gas feedstocks like ethane or naphtha as inputs, saw 3.7% lower Q2 physical output YoY.

The production of the industrial chemical ethylene increased in Q2 by 1.2% YoY, rebounding from a 4.1% YoY fall in April to +2.1% and +5.5% YoY growth in May and June. Though conventional ethylene production involves steam cracking of oil feedstocks like ethane or naphtha, the recent rebound in ethylene output growth may reflect China's significant acceleration in modern coal-to-chemicals pathways like Coal-to-Olefins (CTO) where coal is gasified into syngas, synthesized into methanol, and dehydrated to form ethylene. China's use of coal in chemical production rose by 11.5% in April YoY amid the energy supply shock according to DBX Commodities, with coal-to-chemicals facilities residing atop domestic coal reserves well-positioned to facilitate the transition.

Furthermore, energy-intensive products more reliant on power than oil or natural gas feedstocks saw more resilient output growth. The production of caustic soda, a major industrial chemical, is highly electricity-intensive but does not require oil or natural gas as unique inputs. Physical output of caustic soda grew by 2.4% YoY in Q2. EV production, more reliant on power than on materials made with oil and natural gas, also increased 17.0% YoY.

The key question is how long China's energy strategy to bridge Hormuz and Red Sea disruptions can last.

China recently had 1.3 billion to 1.4 billion barrels in crude inventories, including roughly 400 million barrels accumulated during 2025. At the current import shortfall of about 3.5 million barrels a day, that recent stock build is about four months of coverage. Of course, the substitution strategy also has its limits. Coal, renewables, and EVs can replace gas-fired power and some gasoline consumption, but they cannot entirely substitute for oil used in aviation, trucking, petrochemicals, or industrial processes.

The bigger risk comes when China stops drawing on its strategic stockpile and returns aggressively to the global crude market.

Earlier today, Helima Croft, head of global commodity strategy at RBC Capital Markets, warned in a note that "war enters a dangerous phase with the Red Sea and critical infrastructure at risk." Read it here.

Professional Subscribers can access our latest energy-market intelligence, including analysis of Hormuz and other critical maritime chokepoints, through the new Marketdesk.ai.

Tyler Durden Thu, 07/23/2026 - 17:20

California's Civil Rights Mafia

Authored by Christopher F. Rufo and Kenneth Schrupp via City Journal,

In 2018, two women filed a class-action suit against Riot Games, the video-game colossus responsible for League of Legends, Valorant, and other popular titles. They claimed that the company had denied them and other female employees "equal pay," favored men for promotions, and created a "hostile work environment." The women wanted Riot Games to pay out and to "cause social change."

One year later, the parties agreed to a $10 million settlement. It was a massive sum, but not enough for California's Department of Fair Employment and Housing, which intervened to block the agreement and claim that Riot Games could be on the hook for a staggering $400 million. Facing a court battle against a deep-pocketed state agency, Riot Games later agreed to a $100 million settlement, about ten times the original amount.

California's Department of Fair Employment and Housing, now called the Civil Rights Department, has turned the Riot Games strategy into an entire playbook. For years, the state's civil rights apparatus has enabled nonprofits and lawyers to shake down major companies, spinning small-dollar claims into massive, multimillion-dollar settlements.

The system operates like a mafia. Its "don," Governor Gavin Newsom, sits at the top. His capo, CRD director Kevin Kish, runs the shakedown campaigns. And the state advances the interests of the entire Democratic apparatus: the Civil Rights Department secures settlement cash for radical NGOs, labor leaders can use the cases to create pressure for unionization, and left-wing lawyers "cause social change" at scale. For the first time, we are revealing the inner workings of California's civil rights mafia - and exposing the corruption of state government.

California's Civil Rights Department was created in 1980 as the Department of Fair Employment and Housing. The department was initially tasked with enforcing nondiscrimination law, but in the wake of the #MeToo and George Floyd social movements, the state's power structure saw an opportunity to turn the agency into a powerhouse. They rebranded the organization as the Civil Rights Department in 2022, in keeping with the agency's focus on shaking down companies for "civil rights violations."

The shakedown campaigns have been remarkably successful. In the last four years alone, the CRD has coerced corporations like Microsoft ($14 million), Snap Inc. ($15 million), and Riot Games ($100 million) to shell out eight- and nine-figure payments. These settlements have variously included provisions for class members, interest groups, and the CRD itself, which is allowed by state law to recoup fees associated with its prosecutions.

The CRD's enforcement actions often include one or more predictable features. First, the CRD finds a handful of women or minorities who claim that a large corporation has mistreated them. Then the agency initiates or intervenes in an action against that corporation. Finally, to spin small-dollar claims into massive payouts, the CRD generates outrageous liability estimates, which goad the company to the negotiating table.

The point man on this scheme is Kevin Kish, a Yale Law School graduate and the CRD's director. On its website, the agency notes Kish's reputation for taking "a creative approach to advocacy," which involves "collaborations" with nonprofits and "organizing campaigns" - in other words, using the department to advance the interests of unions, nonprofits, and other left-wing groups.

Kish mastered this approach during his time in the progressive legal movement. Before starting in state government, he worked as director of the Employment Rights Project for Bet Tzedek Legal Service, where, in one instance, he helped turn a small-time wage-and-hour case into a multimillion settlement against Walmart and one of its contractors.

Apparently pleased with Kish's efforts, then-Governor Jerry Brown appointed him to lead the Department of Fair Employment and Housing in late 2014. Gay activists celebrated his appointment, with one LGBT group calling Kish a "strong and passionate legal champion."

In his first few years at the DFEH, Kish oversaw several small-time suits: in 2015, he got a Mexican restaurant chain to cough up $130,000; in 2017, he induced a rural welfare nonprofit to shell out $152,000. Then, in 2019, he intervened in the Riot Games case, which later delivered a nine-figure payout and apparently encouraged him to expand his ambitions. For Kish, who has argued that "there is almost no [adult] transgender person who has not experienced . . . some form of discrimination," the role represented an opportunity to enforce his broad understanding of "hate."

By 2021, Kish had perfected the shakedown model and picked a new target: Activision Blizzard, the video-game giant that owns titles like World of Warcraft and Call of Duty. The CRD sued the company, alleging, among other things, that it had discriminated against female employees and cultivated a "frat boy" culture. According to a criminal referral that we obtained, which was filed by a group tied to former Activision CEO Robert Kotick, the pretext for the department's action was an earlier federal complaint, which concluded that charging Activision would "send a message to the industry as a whole."

The original class-action suit included just ten of Activision's more than 9,000 employees. The complaint claimed, among other things, that "only about 20 percent" of the company's employees were female, that some of its employees riffed "about their sexual encounters," and that a female employee had committed suicide, potentially in connection with an alleged relationship with a supervisor.

Activision initially tried to placate the CRD. Kotick reportedly "pledged to add resources to ensure that Activision Blizzard's hiring practices are more diverse." The company's then-president, J. Allen Brack, said that he "disdain[ed] 'bro culture'" and had spent his "career fighting against it." Activision apparently even offered paid time off to workers who wanted to participate in a staged "walk-out."

It didn't work. In fact, things got worse: later that year, sensing the company's vulnerability, a labor union called the Communication Workers of America (CWA) filed a suit with the National Labor Relations Board. The union accused the company of trying to prevent workers from demanding a "more equitable, sustainable, and diverse workplace."

The CRD and the CWA apparently had shared ambitions - to punish and to unionize Activision - and even hired the same law firm. Kish's CRD hired the same firm (Outten & Golden) that represented the CWA in another suit. The firm's lawyer said that he believed it was the "first time the State of California has retained a private firm to prosecute employment law claims in trial court." (In response to a question about Outten & Golden, CRD pointed us to a ruling in California Attorneys, Administrative Law Judges and Hearing Officers in State Employment v. California State Personnel Board.)

In September, the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission brought its own misconduct suit against Activision. The agency claimed, among other things, that Activision had exposed "female employees to sexual harassment." The two sides agreed to an $18 million settlement, but the CRD wasn't satisfied.

Kish saw an opportunity for a billion-dollar shakedown. Under his direction, the CRD moved to block the eight-figure settlement with the federal government, reportedly arguing that it "was monetarily inadequate and contrary to public policy." Their bid proved unsuccessful: a federal court denied the CRD's requested intervention, and the settlement took effect the following March.

By this point, Activision had already agreed to pay nearly $20 million and declared its intention to change its policies and performance-review system. But Kish apparently wanted to inflict more damage on the company. The Wall Street Journal reported that sometime in 2021, the CRD estimated that Activision was responsible for nearly $1 billion in damages - an outrageous sum.

Despite the federal settlement, the CRD continued its lawsuit, and other elements of the shakedown campaign came to life. In November, then-Journal reporter Kirsten Grind and others alleged that Kotick failed to disclose alleged sexual misconduct committed against female employees. The company's stock price fell 8 percent within a month.

Some Activision executives and other allies suspected that the state colluded with the press. The same legal filing we obtained claimed that Grind is a "CWA-affiliated union member" and had contacted Janette Wipper, the CRD attorney overseeing the Activision case under Kish, in hopes of having an "important" conversation "off the record." Grind and a coauthor gloated that, after her report, "some employees and investors called for Kotick's ouster, and Microsoft saw an opening to make a deal" to buy Activision.

When we asked Grind, now with the New York Times, for comment on this story, she suggested that we reach out to the Wall Street Journal.

Activision executives wanted to fight back. Under pressure from the state, the unions, and the media, the company hired three lobbyists: Greg Campbell, Dana Williamson, and, according to a source familiar with the case, Alexis Podesta.

In early 2022, the tide began to turn. In March, Newsom's office fired Wipper. Notably, she was fired on the same day that a federal court approved the EEOC settlement, which our source interpreted as a sign that the governor's office was feeling pressure and wanted the case to go away.

Less than a month later, Wipper's subordinate, Melanie Proctor, resigned in protest, claiming that Newsom's office had "repeatedly demanded advance notice of litigation strategy and of next steps in the litigation."

Eventually, Kish scaled back his demands. In December 2023, Activision settled for $55 million. In the settlement agreement, the state conceded that "no court or any independent investigation has substantiated" allegations of systemic harassment, but the company likely signed the deal to make the lawsuit go away. The government had not proved its case but still managed to shake down its mark for tens of millions of dollars.

The Civil Rights Department made sure to spread the winnings around. In the settlement, Activision agreed to deliver a handsome reward to the CRD's NGO foot soldiers. The court required the company to send up to about $9 million to the CRD and Outten & Golden, the CWA's former counsel. The rest of the $55 million was supposedly reserved for affected workers, but any leftover funds not claimed by those workers would support future shakedowns - specifically, CRD-selected organizations that "promote employment rights for workers in California and/or . . . advance the interests of women workers in technology industries."

The unions had their victory, too. In October 2023, Microsoft acquired Activision for $75.4 billion after agreeing to a host of labor provisions. The CWA considered the merger a massive success, boasting that it provided "a clear path to collective bargaining for almost 10,000 workers."

With the final settlement agreement, the Activision story appeared to be over. But there another storyline was brewing beneath the surface, raising serious questions about the Newsom administration. That story involves Dana Williamson, the one-time Activision lobbyist, who, in January 2023, while the Activision litigation was ongoing, became Governor Newsom's chief of staff.

During her time in the governor's office, Williamson kept tabs on the Activision case. According to a source with detailed knowledge of the case, the governor sent a text message to Kotick, which we reviewed, one week after the December 2023 settlement, sharing gratitude that the saga was finally over. In January 2024, according to the source and government records obtained by the whistleblower Melanie Proctor, Kotick met with Williamson and former Activision lobbyist Alexis Podesta in the governor's office.

According to the source, Kotick, by then retired as Activision CEO, sat down with Williamson to discuss clearing Activision's name - after all, the state had admitted that it had found no evidence of systematic harassment. The source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, claims that midway through the meeting, Newsom stepped into the room, engaged in conversation, and, unprovoked, said that he would fire Kish.

Newsom's office did not respond to our request for comment about these allegations.

Williamson apparently believed him. In November 2025, Williamson was indicted on a suite of federal corruption charges, including bank and wire fraud. According to court documents, Williamson conspired with Greg Campbell, another former Activision lobbyist, to siphon money from a dormant campaign account to pay a third party. She and Campbell were both later convicted, with Williamson pleading guilty to multiple fraud counts and lying to federal agents.

The alleged corruption was not related to Activision, but the indictment contained a transcript of a conversation between Williamson and Podesta, the former Activision lobbyist and un-indicted co-conspirator, that sheds light on Newsom's potential involvement in the civil rights mafia. In a conversation that occurred "[i]n or about June 2024," prosecutors said Williamson discussed a public records request related to a corporation's "litigation with the state." When Podesta asked Williamson if a state employee connected to that litigation would be fired, she said: "He sure [will]!"

According to multiple outlets and our own review of the evidence, the corporation in question was almost certainly Activision. And we can report, for the first time, that the official in question was likely the head of the Civil Rights Department. In other words, Williamson appears to have told her alleged co-conspirator that, as late as June 2024, Governor Newsom was planning to fire Kevin Kish.

The Kish firing, however, never materialized. Kish remains the director of the Civil Rights Department. And more shakedown campaigns are in the pipeline.

This all raises a question: Why is Newsom enabling this racket?

One theory is that Newsom sympathizes with Kish and wants to punish corporations like Activision, which, in his mind, are stand-ins for his political enemies. Another theory is that Newsom has always allowed bad behavior to fester around him at arm's length. Throughout Newsom's career, people in his orbit have been arrested for corruption, including, most recently, his chief of staff.

Perhaps Newsom tolerates Kish's bull-in-a-china-shop approach because he simply lacks the will to stop it.

The most likely explanation, however, is that Newsom will do whatever is politically expedient. Under this theory, Newsom might have promised to fire Kish to placate Williamson or corporate interests, then reneged on that promise to placate the unions and the activist groups. Throughout his career, Newsom has been willing to reverse his position if he believes that it is in his immediate interest.

Newsom's office did not respond to our request for comment on this story. The Civil Rights Department told us that they "take every complaint we receive seriously and evaluate them individually for further action based on the specific facts and circumstances."

If anything, Kish operated under even less restraint. The CRD has now set its sight on the largest target of all: Tesla CEO Elon Musk. In 2022, the department sued Tesla, alleging racial discrimination and harassment. Kish apparently hopes to go much further than in his campaigns against Riot Games, Snap, and Activision. According to a source familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity, Kish is hoping to shake down Tesla for up to $6 billion.

Unlike those other firms, however, Tesla hasn't settled and is taking its chances in court. If Tesla succeeds in fighting these allegations, its resistance could provide a model for future targets of the state's racket. If it fails, it will show that no company - no matter how powerful - can outrun the coordinated campaigns of California's civil rights mafia.

Christopher F. Rufo is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a contributing editor of City Journal, and the author of America's Cultural Revolution. Kenneth Schrupp is an investigative reporter at City Journal.

Tyler Durden Thu, 07/23/2026 - 17:00

India Blocks Mobile Internet In Central Delhi As Youth Protests Escalate

The Indian government has ordered telecom companies to disable ​mobile data services in central parts ‌of the capital Delhi, in and around the site of youth protests seeking the resignation ​of the education minister, two sources ​told Reuters on Thursday.

The companies have ⁠complied with the order, Reuters sources ​said.

There was ‌no ⁠mobile data connectivity in many parts of central Delhi on Thursday evening, Reuters journalists said.

Vendors, shopkeepers and restaurants ​complained that ​they were ⁠unable to accept digital payments.

India’s youth protesters have called for nationwide demonstrations on Friday even as Prime Minister Narendra ‌Modi’s government urged them to join talks, while shutting metro stations and mobile internet services and curtailing business in central Delhi.

The youth protesters, led by the self-named "Cockroach" Janta Party movement, have been ​camping in central Delhi since ​last ⁠month and are demanding the resignation of the education minister over leaks of medical school entrance test papers that affected some 2 million students in May and have been linked to several student suicides.

The protests have swelled ​into the biggest youth challenge to Modi since he came to power in 2014. Opposition parties have echoed the youth movement's demands and have disrupted the monsoon session ​of parliament that began this week.

It marks the biggest political crisis of Modi's third term, which began in 2024.

The government made ⁠a fresh appeal on Thursday to the protesters to join talks to resolve the crisis but they responded by calling for nationwide peaceful protests on Friday in solidarity ​with students who alleged police brutality during a march on parliament on Monday by tens of thousands of people.

Thousands of people had returned to the Jantar Mantar protest ​site by Thursday afternoon, carrying anti-government posters and chanting slogans amid heavy security deployment.

Protests also spread to other cities, including Ranchi, Pune, Thiruvananthapuram and Kolkata, local media reported.

Authorities in Delhi shut down 16 metro rail stations in and around the central parts of Delhi where the protesters have remained camped, inconveniencing thousands of commuters.

The government also ​ordered telecom firms to block mobile internet services in the area, sources told Reuters, a move that not only affected protesters but also stopped shops and restaurants from receiving ​digital payments by phone.

Separately, all offices and businesses in the Connaught Place area, the bustling central business district, were asked to shut early on Thursday by the New Delhi Traders ‌Association, which ⁠cited an advisory from municipal authorities due to the security situation in the area.

The measures are seen as an attempt by authorities to curb the protests and prevent any fresh outbreak of violence.

More than 10,000 people had gathered on Wednesday night at the Jantar Mantar protest site. Some protesters attacked police with stones and plastic bottles, injuring a few officers, news agency ANI quoted Delhi Police as saying.

In Monday's clashes during the march on parliament, police used tear gas and canes to push back the protesters.

Earlier on Thursday, Modi said that ​special courts would be set up ⁠to prosecute those behind exam paper leaks, his first public response to the crisis.

"Nothing is more important than the welfare and future of our youth!" Modi posted on X.

But CJP rejected the proposal, saying what courts do after paper leaks is just one ​aspect of the problem.

"But Modi-ji, tell us why are paper leaks happening in this country in the first place?" CJP ​spokesperson Ashutosh Ranka said, ⁠using the Hindi honorific.

Tyler Durden Thu, 07/23/2026 - 16:40

From Cash To Trash, Rinse And Repeat

Authored by Frank Giustra,

The Continental dollar, born in 1775, was meant to finance the colonies’ fight against Britain—the American Revolution. What it actually financed was a masterclass in how quickly a currency can evaporate when it has no anchor, no credible backing, and no one willing to stop the printing presses. Hundreds of millions of Continental notes were issued with nothing but the promise of future redemption in gold or silver—which the colonies did not possess in sufficient quantity. 

As wartime expenses mounted and the conflict dragged on, the colonies’ solution was a time-honored tactic. Just dig yourself a deeper financial hole by printing more currency. When confidence in the Continental buck inevitably collapsed, merchants demanded ever-larger stacks of paper for the same goods. 

By 1781, a barrel of flour that once cost a few Continental dollars cost hundreds or thousands. The exchange rate against silver reached the point where it took five hundred to a thousand Continentals to buy a single hard dollar (meaning a silver or metal coin). Some states saw the writing on the wall and simply stopped accepting the notes altogether.

The British, who had plenty of practice in meddling in colonial internal affairs, helped the debasement process along. They knew that counterfeiting Continentals on an industrial scale was cheaper than fighting military battles, and more effective. The result, as intended, was hyperinflation. When the dust settled, the phrase “not worth a Continental” had entered the language as shorthand for worthless. 

The Founders, having lived through the destruction of the Continental dollar, carried a deep suspicion of unbacked paper money into the constitutional debates. That suspicion helped produce a document that at least tried to constrain monetary experimentation. George Washington famously said, “Paper money has had the effect in your state that it will ever have, to ruin commerce, oppress the honest, and open a door to every species of fraud and injustice.”

That was not the only such inflationary episode before the colonies became a republic. During and after the American Revolution, individual states issued their own notes with similarly dismal results—sharp depreciation, hyperinflationary spikes in the 1780s, and the general chaos that made a stronger federal hand on currency seem necessary. 

The War of 1812 brought another suspension of convertibility and the circulation of Treasury notes at discounts. The so-called Free Banking Era that followed (1837–63) is not unlike today’s cryptocurrency industry. It produced thousands of state-chartered banknotes, many of which traded at steep discounts or became worthless when the issuing (“wildcat”) banks, beset by fraud and panics, collapsed.

The Confederate currency of 1861–65 offers perhaps the cleanest parallel to the Continental story. Once again, massive overprinting to finance a war without adequate taxation was followed by hyperinflation so severe that prices rose thousands of percent before the notes became essentially worthless by the end of the Civil War. 

In every case, the pattern resurfaces predictably. Governments (or would-be governments) facing extraordinary expenses turn to the printing press when taxation and borrowing prove inadequate or inconvenient. It’s as if politicians and policy makers either never read a history book or had their memories magically erased. Without a credible anchor in hard assets or ironclad fiscal discipline, public confidence erodes, money velocity rises, and the currency loses purchasing power—sometimes gradually, sometimes in a sudden rush.

The modern version of this story began in earnest with the end of dollar convertibility into gold. Domestically this occurred in 1933, when FDR confiscated privately held gold. Internationally, the break came in 1971, when Nixon closed the gold window. 

Ever since, the dollar has functioned as a pure fiat currency. The cumulative effect on purchasing power has been substantial. What $1 bought in 1971 is what about 15 cents buys today. In other words, you need $6.50 to $7 to purchase what a single dollar bought in 1971. That’s a loss of roughly 85 percent of purchasing power over half a century—an outcome entirely consistent with the long-run behavior of unbacked paper currencies. It’s not hyperinflation in the dramatic sense we saw in 1920s Weimar Germany, or in 2000s Zimbabwe, but it’s a steady, grinding, quasi-invisible debasement that compounds across generations.

The usual excuses, “This time is different”, assume that American institutions are uniquely resilient or exceptional, that the dollar’s reserve status grants permanent immunity, and that the U.S. can abuse its currency without serious consequences.

These sound like the rationalizations heard at the late stages of any long monetary experiment. 

The historical record is not kind to such beliefs. Empires from the Spanish to the British to the French have discovered that the ability to print unlimited currency eventually encourages the very behaviors that undermine the currency. Countless wars have been financed by debt and debasement. Political fragmentation prevents corrective action, confidence bleeds away, and alternative stores of value gain traction. De-dollarization today, whether measured in central-bank gold purchases or shifting trade-settlement patterns, reflects a repeat of that loss of confidence.

The Founders understood something that today’s generation, lacking direct experience of currency collapse, finds easy to overlook. Paper money untethered from hard assets removes the shackles that keep politicians from doing what politicians would always rather do—abandon fiscal responsibility. 

The Founders had seen the Continental experiment up close. They knew that once the printing press becomes the path of least resistance, the incentive structure for politicians and central bankers alike encourages more spending, more debt, and more monetary accommodation. The result, over time, is the gradual erosion of purchasing power we’ve seen since 1971, punctuated by sharper episodes when political or geopolitical pressures intensify.

None of this is to predict imminent hyperinflation or the sudden disappearance of the dollar as a medium of exchange. Fiat currencies can limp along for decades, sustained by network effects, institutional inertia, and the absence of a clearly superior alternative. But the long-run arithmetic is unforgiving and requires only elementary school math to foresee. Every historical example of sustained, unbacked issuance ends the same way. The currency loses most of its value, new arrangements eventually emerge, and those who held real assets, particularly gold, preserve wealth while others do not.

The lesson is not complicated, just inconvenient. When a great power abandons any credible link to hard money, the currency loses purchasing power over time, and the temptation to finance geopolitical ambitions through debt and debasement grows ever stronger. 

The phrase “not worth a Continental” was once popular in the U.S. It wasn’t part of a Cadillac marketing campaign. It came about after the Continental Congress decided that printing its way out of a war was preferable to the messy and difficult business of collecting taxes.

As we’ve seen, the United States has lived through several episodes of this series. The only novelty today is the scale at which the experiment is being run and the amnesia with which it’s being conducted. Those who imagine the outcome will be any different this time around might usefully recall that the Continental Congress also believed its circumstances were unique—until the notes stopped buying anything at all. 

Is it too far-fetched to imagine that our descendants will one day adopt the expression “Not worth a US dollar”? 

Tyler Durden Thu, 07/23/2026 - 16:20

Intel Saves The Tech Day, Sees 15-Year High For Sales Growth, "Unprecedented Demand"

After a dismal day that saw tech stocks wrecked on the shores of hyperscalers' CapEx and inferred from Alphabet's earnings, tonight sees Intel's Lip-Bu Tan ride to the rescue with better-than-expected second-quarter results on Thursday, notching its fastest revenue growth rate for any quarter since 2011 and issuing guidance that topped expectations. 

Beat on the top- and bottom-line:

• Earnings per share: 42 cents, adjusted, versus 21 cents expected

• Revenue: $16.1 billion, versus $14.42 billion expected

Upped Guidance: For the current quarter, Intel said it expects adjusted earnings per share of 38 cents on revenue between $15.8 billion and $16.8 billion.

Analysts were expecting revenue of $15.1 billion and EPS of 27 cents, according to consensus.

"AI is driving unprecedented demand for compute," CEO Lip-Bu Tan said in the statement.

"As we continue to execute, Intel is well-positioned to capture sustainable growth across our CPU franchise."

Additionally, Intel said it's boosting its capital expenditures, targeting a "meaningful increase" next year, as it aggressively tries to morph into a manufacturer of chips for other companies.

CFO David Zinsner told CNBC's Kristina Partsinevelos that the company's latest manufacturing process, called 14A, is ahead of where older technologies were at the same point in the cycle.

INTC is up around 10% from the close...

And that narrative-confirmer is pulling all of tech higher (Nasdaq futs)...

Finally, however, Intel did not reveal a major customer for its foundry, as investors and potential customers keep waiting. 

Tyler Durden Thu, 07/23/2026 - 16:15

Four House Republicans Break Ranks To Help Democrats Pass Iran War Powers Resolution

The House on Thursday approved a Democratic-led war powers resolution aimed at restricting President Trump's military operations in Iran, with four Republicans providing the decisive votes.

The measure, sponsored by Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and forced to the floor with Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.), passed 214-208. Joining every Democrat were Reps. Tom Barrett (R-Mich.), Warren Davidson (R-Ohio), Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) - the same quartet that crossed the aisle on a similar resolution last month.

It will not end the war, or slow it. The measure is a concurrent resolution, meaning it never reaches the president's desk for signature or veto and carries no force of law. Both chambers passed comparable measures in June. The war continued. This one is a message, delivered twice.

The vote comes as the death toll among U.S. service members climbs. Eighteen troops have been killed since the United States and Israel launched joint strikes on Iran in February - four of them since July 17. U.S. forces have sustained nearly 500 injuries, roughly 100 in the past two weeks, according to the Pentagon. On Wednesday, Trump participated in a dignified transfer ceremony for three service members killed in Jordan and Iraq.

Jayapal framed the resolution as a reassertion of congressional authority. "This is a vote of conscience," she said on the House floor Wednesday. "This war must end." Afterward she added: "Congress has not been consulted. And hostilities have been driven over and over again by a president who won his election by promising to end forever wars."

Republicans who opposed the measure defended the campaign as necessary given Iran's record of attacks on Americans in the region. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Brian Mast (R-Fla.) held up photographs of U.S. service members killed in the war during floor debate. "To belittle this mission is to belittle and demean the very service these members gave their life for," Mast said. "This operation is bringing reckoning for the hundreds of times Iran has attacked and killed people of the United States of America."

The four who broke ranks did so for different reasons. Massie and Davidson are longstanding critics of foreign intervention; Fitzpatrick and Barrett are moderates facing competitive re-election bids. Massie suggested the number could grow.

"I think you will see more Republicans come on board to war powers resolutions if we bring them up again, and I'd be happy to vote on one every day, but I don't think we need to," he told CNN on Wednesday evening. "We've already passed a concurrent resolution in the House and in the Senate."

The Senate did not follow. Hours after the House vote, Senate Democrats moved to advance a war powers resolution of their own and fell short, 47-49. In June, GOP Sens. Rand Paul (Ky.), Susan Collins (Maine), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Bill Cassidy (La.) had joined Democrats on the earlier measure.

One Bridge Per Ship

The congressional rebuke arrived a day after Trump escalated in the other direction. In a Wednesday Truth Social post, he committed the United States to destroying a piece of Iranian infrastructure for every vessel Iran attacks.

"From this point forward, any time the Islamic Republic of Iran shoots at a ship in the Strait of Hormuz, whether it be by Missile, Rocket, Drone, or any other device or weapon, the United States will bomb and destroy ONE BRIDGE OR POWER PLANT, including those located next to, or in, the Capital City of Tehran," Trump wrote.

Tehran answered within hours. An Iranian military source told the semi-official Tasnim News Agency that if the United States targets a bridge or power plant in Iran, Iran will "strike infrastructure and bridges in the region, including energy facilities where the United States has interests." The source restated Tehran's position that ships may transit the strait safely only if coordinated with Iran and conducted under Iranian arrangements.

U.S. Central Command says Iran has attacked more than 30 commercial vessels in the strait over the past three months, and the U.S. had completed 11 consecutive nights of strikes on Iranian military infrastructure as of Wednesday. Several of those Iranian attacks came after Washington and Tehran signed a June memorandum of understanding calling for a ceasefire - an agreement the administration says Iran has violated. Qatari mediators are still working toward a deal that would stop the fighting and reopen the waterway.

The House action underscores persistent bipartisan unease with the trajectory of the conflict, even as the White House signals a willingness to escalate. Two chambers have now told the president to stop, twice, in language he is free to ignore.

Tyler Durden Thu, 07/23/2026 - 15:50

"A Bridge Too Far": Middle East Set For A Massive Escalation

By Michael Every of Rabobank

Unless things change dramatically, the Middle East seems set for massive escalation.

President Trump yesterday warned every missile, rocket, or drone Iran fires at ships in Hormuz will be met with the destruction of an Iranian bridge or power plant.

This morning, the IRGC says a tanker is on fire after an explosion in the strait and Kuwait is under drone attack. Moreover, the Houthis claimed attacks on two Saudi tankers in the Red Sea, raising the risks of a new global energy chokepoint besides Hormuz.

Reports say the US is surging military forces to the region, heavy bombers are being prepared, and Mossad is coordinating with the CIA. Equally, Iran’s Ghalibaf has stated there will be no safety if Iran’s security is not guaranteed, read as more or less a declaration of war against the entire region’s infrastructure and energy should its own be hit.

Worse, Iranian strikes on CIA Middle-East facilities are prompting US questions about Russian involvement, which would conflate the war more deeply with Russia-Ukraine, where epic damage to Russian energy, shipping, and logistics infrastructure continues to mount. On that note, after Kazakhstan was forced to stop piping oil via the Black Sea due Ukraine’s drone attacks, the EU is launching a mission to board Russian shadow fleet ships in the Indian Ocean; however, Russian LNG is to remain exempt from EU sanctions - realpolitik or real weakness?

In the Middle East, the UK is evacuating its remaining diplomatic personnel from Iran, just as it did the day before the Iran war started in February, but Bulgaria is aiding US military operations from its territory. That could potentially make it a target for Iranian reprisals – and it’s a NATO and EU member, each with collective defense clauses.

If we see military escalation, it’s likely to drive energy prices even higher than the $95.5 level Brent was at this morning with benchmark crack spreads at $68. However, it’s unlikely to last long. Neither the US nor Israel, nor Iran, nor the GCC can sustain a no-holds-barred war for long – and the world economy obviously can’t either. As such, we may be close to the beginning of the end of this crisis - it’s just unclear if it will prove a bridge too far for the US or Iran.

Meanwhile, the White House is considering military options in Mali, where the Al-Qaeda-linked JNIM are advancing on the capital. That risks further US overstretch. Then again, after the former imperial power France and arrivistes Russia both got a bloody nose in the country, it doesn’t look like anyone else is going to act against these jihadis – certainly not Europe, though Mali uses the West African CFA franc that is pegged to the Euro. Of course, Mali is also rich in resources.

As climactic in geoeconomics --but likely to last much longer than events in the Middle East-- yesterday saw Financial Times editor Martin Wolf ask, “Who will win the war of neo-mercantilists?”, making clear, “We are living in a mercantilist era.” We aren’t, because we don’t all want to hoard gold (yet) so it’s a neo-mercantilism that wants national-security trade surpluses – but he’s close enough. Likewise, Stephen Roach today asks in the same paper, “How long can China defy history and logic with its imbalances?” and argues, “The country is demanding far too much of a world fixated on cheap consumer goods.”

This looks a Damascene conversion for a media source that long rejected that a now undeniable reality we’ve been arguing for since 2015, along with every Western policy step that could have prevented its emergence, while instead cheering everything that accelerated its arrival.

Yet will the Establishment financial press now offer analysis that adapts to a new old world?

It seems unlikely looking at the Bloomberg response to Trump’s planned 100% generic drug tariffs with a two-year delay: “But prices will go up!” Really? Such drugs have a low labor input; shipping them in from abroad costs a lot; and this overlooks the national-security argument – a Great Power cannot be reliant on others for key medicines, among other things. (Plus, the EU says its generic exports to the US are protected by last year’s EU-US trade deal.)

In short, even the FT is now implying that if you use the terms “economic statecraft” or “neo-mercantilism,” yet default to “But prices will go up!” when they are in action, then you don’t understand either - nor that those making decisions in the US, China, and elsewhere do.

The looming implications of this are potentially explosive, and already evident:

• The US Congress is again exploring tariffs and/or sanctions to counter China’s shipbuilding dominance; the USTR says the US isn’t getting the critical minerals from China it had been promised; Boeing has asked the US to intervene over a record EU loan to Airbus; and Mercedes risks a US sales ban under Senate China bill that penalises Chinese ownership and tech, which the German car-marker had happily embraced even with that threat overhanging it.
• EU tariffs on China have accelerated Korean tire makers' exit from the country: imagine what broader EU tariffs might achieve (beyond “But prices will go up!”) “Voila! l'art de gouverner par l'économie!” – indeed, many of the early neo-mercantilists were Europeans. That said, a report calls the bloc’s 2040 target to double its electrification an “unattainable dreamland.”
• Nvidia's CEO unsurprisingly defended Chinese AIs that might use lots of his chips; Axios reports that an OpenAI AI models “went rogue during testing.”; and AI-driven soaring memory chips costs are forcing others, such as Asian carmakers, to consider price hikes.
• In markets, where this all ultimately ends up, the White House is still looking at the Fed. Bloomberg reports Barr may be ousted over her conduct during the SVB bailout. That could open the door for another pro-Trump voice on the FOMC, as a legal sword still hangs over Cook’s tenure and a recent Supreme Court ruling has opened the door to even more sweeping changes.

More mundane, today saw Aussie jobs data at 76.3K, which is the equivalent of a US payrolls print of 1,000K. That’s after news that the limp economy is seeing the worst per capita income trend since WW1. What, beyond bad data, could allow that staggering divergence? Expect more questions about political economy to erupt – and more resistance from the usual crowd.

To conclude, are Hormuz and the Red Sea a bridge too far for the US or Iran? Is the emergence of neo-mercantilism a bridge too far for traditional macro-commentary (or macro-ideology)? Is the Fed a bridge too far for the White House? All three are linked: we have to wait for the outcomes.

Tyler Durden Thu, 07/23/2026 - 15:30

Secret Service Agent On JD Vance's Detail Under Investigation For Leaking

Authored by Ken Silva via Headline USA,

CNN reported Thursday that a Secret Service agent on Vice President JD Vance’s security detail has been put on administrative leave and is suspected of leaking information about his travel to a news site.

According to CNN, the agent is suspected of leaking to MS NOW about how agents on Vance’s security detail are overworked by his busy schedule. MS NOW’s source complained about Vance planning to fly with his son on a Marine Corps helicopter to a golf lesson — even though that plan was canceled.

“The story caught the attention of Secret Service, FBI and White House officials, who fumed over operational details being described in the press,” CNN reported Thursday.

Secret Service Chief of Communications Anthony Guglielmi confirmed to CNN that an agent is indeed under investigation.

“A member of the Vice Presidential Protective Division is the subject of an administrative investigation, and potential criminal inquiry, involving allegations of compromising operational and information security,” Guglielmi reportedly said in the statement.

“While we will not comment on the specifics of this matter, one principle is unequivocal: any conduct that undermines the trust and confidence between a protectee and their protective detail is fundamentally incompatible with our mission and will not be tolerated.”

🇺🇸 A Secret Service agent on Vance's detail is suspected of leaking to the press that agents were fed up with his travel demands.

Which, according to reports, included flying his son to a golf lesson on a Marine Corps helicopter...

The agent was put on administrative leave… pic.twitter.com/L341faQsnO

— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) July 23, 2026

Thursday’s report isn’t the first instance of an agent leaking information about Vance’s travel schedule. In January, journalist James O’Keefe published a report about how another Secret Service agent assigned to Vance’s security detail leaked details about his travels to one of O’Keefe’s undercover reporters. O’Keefe is famous for having attractive females—and sometimes males—seduce government officials to get them to leak info.

Along with leaking agents, another Secret Service guard on Vance’s detail was recently arrested for a drug deal with an undercover cop.

RealClearPolitics reporter Susan Crabtree reported the arrest last month, saying that she’s withholding the agent’s name “until more details emerge about the alleged drug-related arrest.”

The incidents on Vance’s detail represent just a few of the many scandals plaguing the Secret Service.

In May, a Secret Service officer was reportedly arrested for public masturbation at a DoubleTree hotel near the Miami airport.

In April, a married Secret Service agent was revealed to have been having an affair with an OnlyFans star and making pornographic videos with her.

Around the same time, ABC News revealed that a Secret Service trainee was arrested for spying on his roommate, also an agent-in-training, with a hidden camera.

Before that, a Secret Service agent protecting former First Lady Jill Biden shot himself in the buttocks last month at the Philadelphia International Airport.

And earlier in the month, Crabtree reported that agent Myosoty Perez, who is a lesbian, has been suspended and is under investigation for marrying a foreign national—possibly an illegal immigrant—without declaring it. Perez was one of the agents responsible for nearly getting President Donald Trump killed at his July 13, 2024, campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

Additionally, in January a Secret Service recruit shot and killed a 16-year-old in Tamarac, Florida. The 16-year-old victim was identified as Orlando Wedderburn. A woman was also grazed. The Secret Service recruit, for his part, is claiming self-defense.

According to Crabtree, Secret Service Director Sean Curran is receiving internal criticism for not doing enough to eliminate the agency’s diversity, equity and inclusion policies, which were implemented starting in the Obama era.

Meanwhile, the agency is looking to hire 4,000 new employees by 2028.

Tyler Durden Thu, 07/23/2026 - 15:10

NHTSA Begins Work On New Car Door-Handle Rules After Bloomberg's Tesla Report

Auto-safety regulators at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration will begin considering new federal requirements for vehicle door handles and emergency-release systems following a series of deadly incidents in which occupants became trapped after electrically operated doors lost power.

NHTSA said an inaccessible or difficult-to-locate mechanical release could prevent occupants from escaping after a crash or fire, potentially resulting in serious injury or death. The agency granted a petition seeking "a robust and obvious door egress system in all motor vehicles" and will begin rulemaking proceedings.

The filing states in the "Action" section that NHTSA has denied a petition to open a defect investigation, offering a near-term reprieve for Tesla and other EV automakers that use similar flush-mounted electronic door handles. However, what comes next from the agency will be an industrywide rulemaking process covering emergency door-egress systems.

"A decision as to the issuance of a rule will be made on the basis of all available information developed in the course of the rulemaking proceeding, in accordance with statutory criteria," the filing said.

The action follows what Bloomberg says has been 15 deaths in a dozen or so accidents in which occupants or rescuers were reportedly unable to open the doors of crashed and burning Teslas. In several cases, occupants survived the initial impact but died or suffered serious injuries after becoming trapped.

Meanwhile on Reddit...

We reported as early as October 2019 on the "futuristic" door handle blamed for the death of a 48-year-old man driving a Tesla Model S in South Florida.

NHTSA declined to open a Tesla-specific defect investigation, citing only one complaint among 179,031 vehicles and concluding that the issue would be better addressed through industrywide regulation. The agency noted that the Model 3 has mechanical releases for its front doors but not its rear doors.

NHTSA noted, "The owner's manual for the 2022 MY Tesla Model 3 includes a section labeled "In Case of Emergency" that details how to open doors from the interior when the vehicle has no electrical power." 

The rulemaking process could take years and may face industry opposition over additional costs. The decision adds to mounting regulatory pressure, including a congressional proposal requiring manual releases and first-responder access, as well as a NHTSA investigation into complaints of children becoming trapped inside certain Tesla Model Y vehicles.

One has to wonder what Bloomberg hoped its reporting would trigger: a sweeping Tesla defect finding or recall.

That is not what NHTSA delivered. The agency denied the defect petition and shifted the broader issue into a lengthy, industrywide rulemaking process.

Perhaps the outcome would have looked different under a Kamala Harris administration.

Tyler Durden Thu, 07/23/2026 - 14:50

US Lays Groundwork For Approving Offshore Nuclear Power Projects

Authored by Melanie Sun via The Epoch Times,

The U.S. federal government has outlined a preliminary framework to oversee the approval of offshore nuclear power projects, advancing President Donald Trump's agenda to safely unleash domestic energy production and reestablish the United States as the global leader in nuclear energy.

Birds fly along the Pacific Ocean near the dry fuel storage of canisters containing spent nuclear fuel at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) along the Pacific Ocean south of San Clemente in San Diego County, Calif.., on June 9, 2023. Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images

"While no commercial deployment on the Outer Continental Shelf is planned or approved at this time, it could greatly strengthen America's energy security in the future," Matt Giacona, acting director of the Interior Department's Marine Minerals Administration, said in announcing the initiative on July 22.

The Marine Minerals Administration and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) released an agreement on Wednesday that lays the groundwork for a more "detailed cooperative framework" outlining jurisdictional oversight for development of offshore nuclear power projects in "a safe and environmentally responsible way."

The memorandum of understanding between the Marine Minerals Administration (MMA), which oversees energy projects in federal waters of the outer continental shelf, and the federal government's independent civilian nuclear regulator will "foster cooperation" and "allow shared technical expertise to ensure reviews are efficient and transparent," the NRC said in a statement.

Director of the NRC's Office of Advanced Reactors Jeremy Bowen said the agreement "creates a clear framework for how our agencies will work together and ensures our processes remain efficient, transparent, and technically robust."

"The agreement will also allow MMA and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to responsibly respond to industry requests, supporting novel offshore energy production," the MMA added.

The MMA also oversees offshore development such as seabed mining and space launch infrastructure.

Restoring Energy Abundance

The announcement is the latest step taken by the federal government as the president pushes forward with his agenda to quadruple U.S. nuclear power capacity by 2050 and restore American energy abundance.

The president declared a national energy emergency upon returning to office and has since signed numerous executive orders to achieve this goal, including licensing 10 new reactors by 2030.

Leaders in the energy sector have warned that significant investments are needed to address the increasing shortfalls in domestic power supply, as experienced during the recent summer heat waves, when grid operators were forced to issue warnings of potential outages due to inadequate resources to meet peak energy demand.

In March, major U.S. tech companies agreed to build their own electricity generation infrastructure to power their data center operations. They also pledged to help triple global nuclear capacity by 2050.

New Reactor Designs

The Trump administration's effort to speed the safe deployment of advanced nuclear technologies reached an early milestone in July, when three reactor designs achieved criticality.

According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, many countries are working to develop small modular reactors, including concepts suited for marine or floating applications. Russia is the only country currently operating a floating nuclear power plant, the Akademik Lomonosov. Located in the country's far east, it has been in operation since 2020.

Regarding the offshore use of nuclear technologies, Giacona said the military has safely relied on submerged reactor systems in ships and submarines for decades, calling them a "reliable source of energy in demanding marine environments."

A technician monitors Natura Resources’ MSR-1 molten salt research reactor in Lockhart, Texas, in 2024. The reactor is the first liquid-fueled advanced reactor ever licensed and the first university research reactor approved in more than 30 years. Courtesy of Natura Resources Tyler Durden Thu, 07/23/2026 - 14:30