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Ramaswamy Wins Ohio GOP Gubernatorial Primary In Landslide

Biotech entrepreneur and former 2024 presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy just beat the pants off of political newcomer Casey Putsch (R) by a margin of 82% - 18% (approximately 530,000 votes to 116,000) in the Ohio gubernatorial primary. 

The win positions Ramaswamy to face Democrat Amy Acton, the former Ohio health director who led the state’s COVID-19 response and won her party’s nomination unopposed, in the November general election. Acton’s running mate is former Ohio Democratic Party chair David Pepper.

The Republican primary lacked suspense after Ramaswamy, 40, secured early endorsements from President Trump and the state party. Still, the scale of his victory surprised some observers given his relatively recent entry into Ohio politics.

Ramaswamy announced his candidacy in February 2025 after stepping down from his role in the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the Trump administration initiative he co-led with Elon Musk. He has framed his gubernatorial bid as a natural extension of that work - bringing a “startup mindset” to Columbus to make Ohio a national leader in innovation, economic growth, and government efficiency.

His campaign was exceptionally well-funded. Ramaswamy raised more than $25 million from donors and contributed another $25 million of his own money, ending the primary with over $30 million in cash on hand — resources he used for a $10 million television ad blitz in the final weeks. The spending underscored his determination to lock down the nomination early and build momentum for the fall.

Still, the scale of his victory was notable given lingering divisions within the GOP base over one of his signature policy positions: H-1B visas.

Calling the system 'badly broken,' Ramaswamy has called for replacing it with a pure merit-based system designed to attract the world’s top STEM and technical talent, insisting this is essential for U.S. competitiveness against China - except he shat on Americans in saying so. In a widely discussed December 2024 post, he attributed American companies’ preference for foreign-born engineers partly to cultural factors, writing that the U.S. has “venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long” and that immigrant families often prioritize achievement more rigorously than “normal” American households.

Critics, including some Trump supporters and anti-H-1B voices, accused him of wanting to displace American workers and favoring foreign (particularly Indian) talent. His primary opponent Casey Putsch and online influencers amplified claims that Ramaswamy’s companies had previously used the program (filing for 29 H-1B visas historically) while publicly criticizing it. The backlash intensified after Trump’s endorsement, with some MAGA accounts posting comments like “Better work on your H-1B visa.”

His brief tenure at DOGE ended when he resigned to pursue the Ohio governorship, a move some critics viewed as opportunistic but which supporters praised as prioritizing state-level impact. Trump’s enthusiastic endorsement on the night Ramaswamy launched his campaign gave him instant credibility with the GOP base.

Democratic Side and General Election Outlook

Amy Acton, 60, has positioned her campaign around affordability - targeting inflation, gas prices, and housing costs. The fact that she was a lockdown nazi during COVID, however, remains a potential vulnerability in a state that has trended strongly Republican in recent cycles.

Ohio has not elected a Democratic governor in nearly two decades. Yet early polling has suggested the general election could be closer than the state’s partisan lean might indicate, particularly if national headwinds affect Trump-aligned candidates or if Acton successfully mobilizes suburban and independent voters.

The race is already shaping up to be one of the most expensive gubernatorial contests in Ohio history.

Tyler Durden Tue, 05/05/2026 - 23:53

The Petrogas-Dollar: Symptom Or Strategy?

Authored 'No1' via Gold and Geopolitics substack,

Three people sent me Richard Medhurst’s petrogas-dollar piece this week. I read it. Twice even.

There’s a lot in there that I feel is correct.

The chronology of the Levantine Basin deals.

Cheney’s 2001 National Energy Policy.

The roughly $35 billion of Chevron contracts signed across Israel, Syria, Greece, and Cyprus in the past six months.

None of that is in dispute.

The piece is, on the facts, broadly accurate.

What I think though is that the reading of those facts is faulty.

Some history. 

In 1944 Bretton Woods pegged the dollar to gold and made it the world’s reserve currency. In 1971 Nixon unpegged it. Three years later, Kissinger negotiated the Saudi arrangement that pegged it to something else - oil. The petrodollar was born. Everyone needed oil, oil was priced in dollars, thus everyone needed dollars.

Medhurst’s thesis is that the same trick is being repeated, with gas as the new anchor.

The Petrogas-Dollar. Same architecture, new commodity.

But gas isn’t oil.

Oil is fungible at planetary scale. One global market, one rough price band with quality differentials. Tankers go anywhere where there’s a port and a refinery. Every country needs it. Every industry uses it. Almost every modality of transport runs on it.

But gas is regional. LNG requires specialised liquefaction terminals on the export side, cryogenic tankers in transit, and regasification infrastructure on the import side. Each piece takes years and billions to build. Pipeline gas is captive to the geography of the pipe. Henry Hub, TTF, and JKM regularly trade at multiples of each other for what is nominally the same molecule. In 2022, European gas hit roughly 25x the US price - that’s the market telling you that there is no single global gas market, just regional ones tethered by expensive bottlenecks.

Anchoring a settlement currency to gas isn’t a step up from oil in my opinion.

It’s a step down.

Less universal demand, less liquid market, more infrastructure dependency, narrower counterparty base. If oil was the commodity that justified the petrodollar’s reach, gas cannot replace it without shrinking the regime it’s supposed to anchor.

Then there’s what’s been happening to the dollar itself. The moment Western powers froze $300 billion of Russian central bank reserves in 2022, every neutral reserve manager on earth received an unscheduled lesson in what “safe” actually meant in practice.

That lesson is still being absorbed, and the absorption is showing up in central bank gold buying at multi-decade highs, parallel payment rails being onboarded, sovereign Treasury holdings declining year over year.

None of it is dramatic. But all of it is compounding.

So the actual picture Medhurst is painting: a fading anchor (oil-and-dollar) being half-replaced by a structurally narrower one (gas-and-dollar), sitting on top of a settlement currency that’s slowly losing the trust required to function as one in the first place.

That’s a regression on two axes at the same time. Not a strategic plan.

The successor isn’t oil-and-dollar. It sure as ain’t a gas-and-dollar. By elimination of every other alternative, it will come back to gold.

Let’s start with Russia.

That’s where his documentary opens.

“The most severe logistical disruption in modern Russian history”. 40% of seaborne export capacity disabled. Production cuts of 300,000 to 400,000 barrels per day in April. (Not an interpretation, those numbers come from OPEC’s monthly report).

The Sirius Report, which tracks vessel movements rather than quotas, has Russian seaborne crude exports flat at 3.5 million barrels per day in April. The Pacific terminals that got hit in the spring strikes are fully recovered by now. The Baltic ports? Kept on loading. Whatever the bombing campaign was supposed to accomplish, it has accidentally functioned as a renovation programme.

The 300-400k figure measures voluntary discipline within the OPEC+ quota framework. It is not a damage assessment. Russia produced slightly less in April because the cartel asked them to, not because there’s a NATO destroyer parked outside Murmansk.

What did happen is that Europe outsourced the demand. They sanctioned Russia. For the 20th time now I guess, because the previous 19 were so successful.

But because even Europe still needs oil, they then turned around and bought the exact same molecules via Indian and Chinese refineries. Who bought it from Russia. At a discount. And mostly in local currencies.

Plus, they sold it at a premium. To Europe. That sanctioned that exact same oil. Great job virtue signaling.

Iran tells a similar story. The piece argues the blockade is starving China of its third-largest oil supplier. TankerTrackers reported on April 24 that Iran exported more oil in the first three weeks of April than in the entire month of March. The blockade has tightened since. WSJ documented loadings dropping in the second half of April, and Project Freedom only formally launched at CENTCOM this morning with 15,000 personnel and over 100 aircraft. The screws are turning, real consequences are landing. (🦗 sidenote: I only hear crickets… 🦗 Still waiting for what news will turn up… 🦗)

But Iran went into this war producing 1.1 million barrels per day at $47 a barrel. Through most of it, production has run around 1.5 million at $110.

I think Trump is pissed right now that he did not receive a “thank you” card yet…

Another argument landed on Saturday - which is after Medhurst’s piece landed. But it doesn’t fit the frame of the article, so I doubt it’ll be added.

US Treasury sanctioned Hengli Petrochemical and four Chinese teapot refineries on Friday over Iranian crude purchases.

Hengli isn’t just a teapot. It’s strategic national infrastructure. 280 billion RMB was invested with a 20 million tons annual refining capacity. It’s one of China’s seven major petrochemical bases. Plus the non-sanctioned parent group is the world’s largest shipbuilder.

Now on Saturday, China’s Ministry of Commerce activated the 2021 Blocking Statute. For the first time ever. Chinese firms and individuals are now legally prohibited from recognizing, implementing, or complying with the US sanctions.

Compliance has been removed as a choice.

“Rock, meet hard place” or something like that?

I doubt this will feature in Medhurst’s 25-year plan any time soon.

To me this looks like a reactive escalation against the Treasury announcement.

And THAT is the recurring shape of this whole thing. Every sanction tightens the parallel system. Every escalation removes another counterparty from the dollar rails. This theory isn’t some 5D strategic genius.

It’s an adaptation. Metabolic. Washington swings at whatever part it wants today… And that system adapts.

Bank of Kunlun was sanctioned by the US Treasury in 2012 for its Iran-related dealings, in what must have seemed like a good idea at the time. The sanctioning was the strategic move. The consequence - as it so often is - was unintended. By cutting Kunlun out of the dollar system, Treasury also cut its remaining dollar exposure to zero, making it the perfect institutional vehicle for yuan-denominated Iran trade.

For thirteen years now, Iranian oil has flowed to Chinese teapot refineries through Kunlun, settled in RMB, entirely outside SWIFT. Iran can’t easily spend the accumulated yuan in dollars, so it likely converts the surplus to physical gold via the Shanghai Gold Exchange.

Iranian oil → yuan → gold. The loop has been running since the year Obama was re-elected. It is now formally protected, on the Chinese side, by a Blocking Statute.

The PBOC has bought gold for seventeen consecutive months. Official reserves are over 74 million troy ounces. The unofficial figure is widely assumed to be substantially higher, given that Chinese domestic mine production since 2000 alone (around 8,150 tonnes) exceeds the entire stated US Treasury holding. China’s US Treasury exposure has fallen from a 2013 peak of $1.32 trillion to $693 billion in February 2026.

Spot is around $4,800 an ounce. Shanghai still trades at consistent premiums to London and COMEX. Chinese banks are rationing 600 kilograms of bullion per bank per day, and every allocation evaporates in under a minute.

While we’re on the subject. The US Treasury carries its own gold holdings on the books at $42.2222 per troy ounce, a statutory price last revised in 1973. Spot is $4,800. The mark-to-market gap is roughly $1.25 trillion. Or said differently: about 3% of its national debt. Or even more differently: if they sell everything, they can run the US government for about a week and a half.

Every $100 that gold rises does add ~$25 billion. I have no idea whether anyone in Treasury has noticed, but I’ve heard a lot of chatter over the years about re-valuating this gold hoard.

The mechanism that I envision instead of a “gas-4-a-dolla’” (not an official US Treasury term… yet) is as I said many times (mainly in comments): internally in a country, the currencies stay fiat. We - the plebs - don’t get to transact in gold and spend 0.03 gram of gold on a gallon of petrol or so. Would be nice, but that’s a pipe-dream in my opinion.

Whatever your local denomination is, be it euro, lira, franc, pound, … Whatever local political pressure or tax laws or domestic monetary systems you have. They’re all localised.

However, cross-border settlement will likely migrate to gold. Not by design. By necessity. By elimination of all worse alternatives.

Every other settlement layer has been politically weaponized over the past six years. The dollar. The euro. SWIFT. CHIPS. Sovereign Treasury holdings. Real estate held in foreign jurisdictions. Central bank reserves. Venezuelan gold seized at the Bank of England in 2019. Russian reserves frozen in 2022. Afghan central bank assets held by the New York Fed since 2021. And Saturday extended the template from sovereign assets to private industrial enterprises.

Gold is the only major asset whose ownership cannot be cancelled by a remote click. It clears bilaterally. It doesn’t care whose face is on the coin. It survives the political weaponisation of every other settlement layer because the weaponisation is the entire reason central banks moved away from it in the first place.

No1 is publishing a roadmap.

There’s no public announcement.

It’s a destination by exclusion - the asset everyone ends up at after the others have been removed.

The petrogas-dollar framing fails on its own terms.

A new monetary regime needs a stable, durable, broadly-accepted anchor. The thesis says the anchor is American gas plus Western Hemisphere oil. The largest LNG producer on earth is already at full export capacity. Henry Hub is at multi-year highs because domestic supply can’t keep up with what’s already been promised. The captured Western Hemisphere reserves require Chevron to actually extract them rather than sign contracts for them. The Levantine Basin gas fields are still in the ground, five months after the deals were inked.

A monetary regime also needs counterparties willing to use it. The petrogas-dollar thesis describes a world where Europe and Asia have no choice but to buy American. In the actual world, the UAE quit OPEC effective May 1 after threatening yuan-denominated oil sales. Saudi Arabia gave 12 million of its citizens access to China’s CIPS payment network the day after that. Iran’s parliament codified yuan and Tether settlement at Hormuz - they’re still deciding on Tether after it got frozen (link). China activated the Blocking Statute on Saturday.

The monetary system is moving.

But it’s not moving to Washington.

The third variable is Trump. The thesis requires you to believe that the same administration that fired its own Navy Secretary three weeks ago for not building ships fast enough is, simultaneously, executing a coherent 25-year plan to reorganize global energy markets and replace fifty years of monetary architecture. Trump and 25-year strategic patience are two phrases that have, to my knowledge, never previously occupied the same sentence before.

Don’t get me wrong. The petrodollar won’t be dying tomorrow.

The US still has the world’s deepest capital markets, the most-traded currency, and the only Treasury market with anywhere near the absorption capacity to hold global savings. Reserve currency status takes decades to erode. The Bank of England held that status for over a century before the dollar took it, and at no point during the slide did anyone in London publish a piece announcing the handover.

Medhurst is right that there’s a transformation under way.

But I strongly believe that he has the direction wrong.

All this chaos ain’t producing a stronger empire.

It’s producing a more fragmented monetary architecture, and gold is starting to fill the gaps the dollar used to fill.

Tyler Durden Tue, 05/05/2026 - 23:25

Meteorologists Sound Alarm Over El Nino Plume Racing Across Pacific Like "Freight Train"

Meteorologists on X are once again warning about a powerful El Niño, pointing to a new plume of warm subsurface water moving across the Pacific "like a freight train." The latest water temperature data suggest that El Niño later this year could rank among the strongest on record, with potentially significant implications for the Lower 48.

"Updated El Niño forecast for this summer/autumn is 'off the charts' EXTREME with 'boiling red' map colors along Equatorial central and eastern Pacific Ocean," meteorologist Ryan Maue wrote on X. He said this is "code red the Earth's climate system going into Summer 2026," which only means "suppressed Atlantic hurricane activity." 

Updated El Niño forecast for this summer/autumn is "off the charts" EXTREME with "boiling red 🔴" map colors along Equatorial central and eastern Pacific Ocean.

This is "Code Red" for the Earth's climate system going into Summer 2026 --> suppressed Atlantic hurricane activity. pic.twitter.com/NSCJPak6Xt

— Ryan Maue (@RyanWeather) May 5, 2026

Meteorologist Ben Noll said, "A brand new El Niño plume from ECMWF reaches +3˚C in most scenarios by November, which would put this event among the strongest on record."

Breaking: Brand new El Niño plume from ECMWF reaches +3˚C in most scenarios by November, which would put this event near the strongest on record. pic.twitter.com/m2OOTeXcx8

— Ben Noll (@BenNollWeather) May 5, 2026

Noll continued, "A freight train of warm water continues to chug across the subsurface Pacific Ocean."

Super El Niño: A freight train of warm water continues to chug across the subsurface Pacific Ocean.

The level of warmth is record-breaking in some areas, peaking around 7˚C (13˚F) above average.

This heat should lead to more intense El Niño projections in May model updates. pic.twitter.com/Y3YKFbgMA7

— Ben Noll (@BenNollWeather) May 4, 2026

If a super El Niño materializes, it could shift weather patterns worldwide, increasing the risk of flooding in some regions, drought and wildfires in others, and further raising global temperatures. An El Niño event typically strengthens the Pacific jet stream and redistributes heat and moisture globally.

Across the U.S., an El Niño influences seasonal rainfall, especially during winter. The stronger, more active jet stream typically shifts southward, bringing wetter-than-average conditions to the southern U.S., including California, the Gulf Coast, and the Mid-South.

The good news is that El Niño reduces Atlantic hurricane activity.

Tyler Durden Tue, 05/05/2026 - 23:00

Industry Leaders Warn Chinese EV Imports Will Undercut Canada's Auto Sector, Bring Major Security Risks

Authored by Paul Rowan Brian via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A number of industry leaders and policy experts are warning that the government’s permission of importing Chinese-made electric vehicles (EVs) into Canada at low tariff rates will undermine Canada’s auto sector and cause a number of substantial national security risks.

Models stand next to a latest EV car from Chinese automaker BYD showcased at the Auto China 2026 in Beijing on April 25, 2026. Andy Wong/AP Photo

The warnings came in testimony before the House Committee on Industry and Technology, where the speakers said that Ottawa’s quota-based access to Chinese EV makers will make Canada vulnerable to unfair trade practices from Beijing, hollow out the country’s already-struggling auto industry, and bring along a host of security risks associated with data collection and surveillance.

“Let’s be clear, this is not the approach Canada wanted,” Michael Kovrig, head of the Global Network for Strategic Effects, said while testifying May 4 before the committee.

EV Deal

The import of Chinese-made EVs comes under the terms of an agreement between Ottawa and Beijing signed in January of this year that allows the import of up to 49,000 Chinese-made EVs in the first year at a tariff rate of 6.1 percent, down from 100 percent.

Ottawa has indicated the quota could rise to approximately 70,000 vehicles per year over the next five years.

As part of the agreement, Beijing moved to cut tariffs on Canadian agricultural exports, slashing tariffs from 84–100 percent on Canadian canola products to 15 percent and relaxing restrictions on other products including seafood and peas.

Ottawa also said it expects China will invest in the Canadian auto sector and possibly set up auto manufacturing inside Canada as part of the wider agreement.

Canada opened permits for Chinese-made EVs on March 1, under which 24,500 will be allowed until August under the 6.1 percent tariff rate. Permits are issued by Global Affairs Canada and last 60 days before expiry. Importers are required to be Canada-based automakers or agents of them, and vehicles must comply with Canadian safety standards.

Ottawa said it plans to review and potentially change how the import system works after the first six months.

‘Trifecta of Risks’

Kovrig said that allowing Chinese-made EVs into Canada causes a “trifecta of risks,” which he described as creating “structural dependence” on China, along with “unfair competition [that] erodes industrial capacity” and imposing a “systemic pressure” on government policy going forward.

“The real question is not, ‘don’t we want cheaper EVs?’” Kovrig said. “It’s whether Canada wants to be a producer in the future auto economy, or merely a consumer market for vehicles produced by China’s industrial system.”

Kovrig’s concerns were echoed by Brian Kingston, president and CEO of the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers’ Association.

“There are no guardrails in this agreement to ensure a level-playing field for manufacturers that have invested in Canada, or to protect Canadians from cybersecurity risks,” Kingston told MPs.

Kingston added that demand for EVs is closely tied to government incentives rather than free-market forces, and that serious harm could be done to the North American auto supply chain.

“Demand for EVs is directly related to rebates, and we saw it when the previous federal government rebate went away, we saw demand for EVs decline quite significantly,” he said, adding that import of Chinese-made EVs “will undermine the auto sector and presents risks to the North American auto supply chain.”

Canada’s auto sector remains a major part of the economy and directly employs roughly 125,000 workers, the majority of whom are employed in Ontario. More than 90 percent of Canadian-made vehicles are exported to the United States.

Kingston also said that keeping access to the U.S. market is crucial for Canada and “there is no industry without U.S. access,” saying that opening up to Chinese imports could undermine North American integration.

In mid-January, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said Canada’s deal with China was “problematic.” This was followed on Jan. 24 by U.S. President Donald Trump threatening to put 100 percent tariffs on Canadian goods in response to the deal.

Controls

Several Liberal MPs on the committee asked questions about the economic and security issues related to importing Chinese-made EVs, stating that it could help Canadian consumers access more affordable vehicles and move Canada closer to climate goals.

For her part, Liberal MP Lisa Hepfner asked whether Canada could put conditions on Chinese firms, such as on domestic labour, security, and standards, in order for them to be allowed to import the vehicles.

Kingston said such an approach won’t work.

“If you say that you have to have a local supply chain and use local unionized labour, the response from a Chinese OEM [Original Equipment Manufacturer] is, ’thanks, but no thanks,'” he said.

“The moment they want more access, they will restrict our exports of canola. They'll come up with other reasons to leverage more access into the market. This is the Chinese trade playbook. You can see it in sector after sector in different countries,” he added.

Kovrig shared this view, saying that Beijing tends to use a quota as a “ratchet” to force more market access.

“What begins as a capped quota becomes a ratchet that only expands. Concentrated sectoral economic dependence also constricts federal policy-making autonomy,” he said.

“The PRC [People’s Republic of China] weaponizes technology, supply chains, and market access to coerce independence to its geopolitical agenda.”

He added that “forced labour” is also part of the Chinese EV supply chain and cited evidence from Sheffield Hallam University linking forced labour of China’s ethnic Uyghur population to key battery and EV production stages.

Kingston added that even if China were to build a factory in Canada, it would likely be a human rights and economic disaster.

“If they build a plant, they bring in labour from China. And as we’ve seen in Hungary, the conditions have been characterized as slave-like conditions,” he said, referring to a Chinese-operated factory in Hungary.

Benefits of EVs

Several industry leaders who testified before the committee said EVs would be a net positive for Canada.

Jeff Turner, director of Mobility at Dunsky Energy and Climate Advisors, said EVs would help Canadians in various ways, including by bringing “almost $2,000 per year in fuel savings per household and reductions of GHG emissions and other emissions that have significant health impacts for Canadians.”

Cherith Sinasac of the Electro-Canada Foundation also emphasized her view of the positive role that EVs could have and said their origin is much less important than infrastructure readiness.

“Canada needs a strong long-term EV charging infrastructure strategy,” she said, adding that there must be a coordinated investment strategy by provinces and economic sectors.

“EVs and their battery storage have the potential to be a national energy asset for our grid,” Sinasac said.

Security Risks

Kingston and Kovrig both said that in addition to economic damage, bringing in Chinese-made EVs could pose security risks, including potential data access concerns and dangers to national security.

“China’s 2017 National Intelligence law compels any Chinese firm, including from overseas operations, to share data with Beijing on demand,” Kovrig said. “There’s no judicial review and no challenge mechanism.”

Kovrig described Chinese-made EVs as “a rolling computer with cameras” that are “state-linked data platforms.”

This echoed similar concerns from Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, who stated his opposition to allowing Chinese-made EVs into Canada this past January, writing on X that such vehicles “function like roving surveillance systems on our streets [and] should not be allowed in Canada - collecting data, tracking Canadians and exposing us to a foreign regime.”

Tyler Durden Tue, 05/05/2026 - 22:35

Figure CEO Says Humanoid Robots Could Soon Enter Homes For $600 A Month

Figure's CEO told Sourcery's Molly O'Shea that the humanoid robotics company is preparing for a "near-term" push to bring humanoid robots into homes, where they would perform basic household tasks under a consumer subscription model that could cost "hundreds per month," similar to a car lease.

Molly O'Shea asked Figure CEO Brett Adcock:

"In the near term, what do you see as the first commercial application for these robots? Like, is it gonna be in the home? Is it gonna be in the factory?"

Adcock responded:

"In the near term, we're gonna be selling these into the home. So you can lease a Figure 03 for something like $600 a month."

He continued:

"Yeah. You can plug it into a wall outlet, and it'll go to its dock and charge. I want it to do the laundry every day, dishes every day, and tidy the house multiple times a day. That's what I want."

.@adcock_brett says in the "near term" @Figure_robot will sell humanoid robots for the home for ~$600/month:

"You can plug it in a wall outlet, it'll go to its dock and charge."

"I want it to do the laundry every day, dishes every day, and tidy the house multiple times a day." https://t.co/z1GlCILVW9 pic.twitter.com/n8lFocjUy1

— sourcery (@sourceryy) May 5, 2026

Adcock posted a chart on Threads showing, he said, "Humanoid robots manufactured at Figure by month," revealing a clear production ramp.

However, the chart lacked a Y-axis, leaving the actual shipment numbers unclear.

Forbes pointed out that shipments may have climbed from roughly 60 units in February to 120 in March and 240 in April. However, those shipment numbers remain far below China's Agibot, which reportedly shipped 5,000 humanoids over three months.

Our latest note on the humanoid robot space, including UBS's delivery estimates, is available here.  

Tyler Durden Tue, 05/05/2026 - 22:10

The Golden State Has Fallen: Welcome To The Islamic Republic Of California

Authored by Rabbi Michael Barclay via American Greatness,

On April 8, the California Assembly Committee on Public Employment and Retirement voted 19–0 to adopt AB2017, followed on April 22 by the California Assembly Committee on Appropriations, which voted 7–0 to adopt the bill. And with those votes, all that is left for this to become California law is the passing of it by the State Assembly and Senate and approval by the governor.

And with it, the state of California will no longer exist as we know it, but will become the Islamic Republic of California.

Introduced by California Assemblyman Matt Haney (D-San Francisco 17th District) at the behest of CAIR, the bill seeks to officially recognize the Islamic holidays of Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha as California state holidays.

There are no holidays from other religions that are recognized as state holidays in California.

Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Ash Wednesday, Good Friday, and Epiphany are all extremely important holidays in Judaism and Christianity.

But none of them are recognized as California state holidays.

But according to Haney and the California legislature, apparently, Islamic holidays are much more important to the state than either Judaism or Christianity.

This bill is clearly unconstitutional, as it is in direct contradiction to the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . .”

By placing two Islamic holidays as official state holidays, they are respecting the establishment of a specific religion. But the problem is greater than just their violation of the Constitution in attempting to pass this bill.

The holidays themselves, Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha, are expressions and manifestations of the very worst aspects of Islam.

Eid al-Fitr marks the end of the Islamic month of Ramadan and is the penultimate celebration of the month and its meanings. Ramadan is the month-long holiday commemorating Mohammed’s first vision in 610 CE, in which he supposedly was visited by the angel Gabriel (named Jibril in Arabic) in a cave near Mecca and given a revelation that ultimately became the Quran. It is a month of fasting and a national holiday in countries such as Iran, Turkey, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and other Muslim theocracies.

It is also traditionally the month of war in Islam. Although war is forbidden in the Quran during four other months (the 1st, 7th, 11th, and 12th), it is not only allowed during Ramadan; it has historically been encouraged to be a month of initiating war against “infidels.” The Yom Kippur War against Israel in 1973 was started by the Arabs during Ramadan. Three years ago, Ismail Haniyeh, who was considered the political leader of Hamas (and who lived in Qatar until killed in July of 2024 and had a net worth of over two billion dollars), called for all Arabs to attack Israel during Ramadan and to siege and blockade the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem and have continual mass riots there. Ramadan, going back to Mohammed himself, is the time to start wars on non-Muslims and is a source of Islamic pride as the time to forcefully convert the world to Islam. The Nusra Front, al-Qaeda’s official arm in Syria, has even described Ramadan as “a month of conquests.”

Some historical examples of the Islamic intention during Ramadan include the Battle of Badr, a victory led by Mohammed himself in the second Ramadan; the conquest of Mecca, 6 years after Badr; the war for Andalusia in 711 CE; the Battle of Ain Jalut against the Mongols; and the Battle of Hattin during the Crusades.

And that’s just in the first 200 years of Islamic history.

But Matt Haney and the California Legislature want to make this holiday, which is about military victory over non-Muslims, into an official state holiday!

And then there is the second Islamic holiday that they want to make an official state holiday: Eid al-Adha, the “Feast of the Sacrifice.” This is a holiday about being willing to violently sacrifice and kill if it is commanded by Allah. It includes throwing stones at a wall to symbolize the willingness to fight for the “will of God” by stoning Satan and exemplifies the observant Islamic belief in stoning when “required.” Animals are also sacrificed as part of this holiday’s celebration. And this is not a small sacrifice of one chicken for an entire community, but rather, the expectation is that each Muslim will perform animal sacrifices.

In Bangladesh, 13 million animals are sacrificed each year; in Pakistan, more than nine million; and globally, it is estimated that approximately 50 million animals are sacrificed each year for this Islamic holiday.

Each year, this holiday causes the death of 50 million animals and encourages the practice of stoning anything that is contradictory to the Quran, Hadith, and Islamic theology. And this is the holiday that Haney and his Democratic colleagues in the California State Legislature want to make into an official state holiday.

War, stoning, and animal sacrifice—these are the values that have been unanimously approved by the committee, and are on track to becoming approved by the California government.

Yom Kippur is a Jewish holiday about the value of being self-reflective and atoning for our personal sins. Epiphany is a Christian holiday celebrating the baptism of Jesus; Good Friday deepens the Christian faith as it honors the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross for all of humanity; and Ash Wednesday reminds Christians of the journey of Jesus during Lent that leads to the Resurrection on Easter. Atonement, spiritual awareness, faith in God: these are values that the State of California rejects as holidays while honoring the Islamic values of war and death.

With the passing of this bill, which is not certain but is highly likely, California will officially have gone off the cliff, rejecting Western civilization in favor of officially adopting Islamic practices and values.

Rest in peace, California. We will miss you.

Tyler Durden Tue, 05/05/2026 - 21:45

Tech Bros Aim To Sidestep Local Resistance By Installing Mini Data Centers In Homes

California-based startup Span has developed XFRA, a distributed AI-compute network that turns unused electrical capacity in residential homes and small businesses into miniature data centers.  

It may be one of the more ingenious workarounds yet from tech bros, as traditional data-center buildouts are increasingly delayed or canceled, not only because of permitting bottlenecks and grid constraints, but also because of rising local opposition.

Across parts of the country, ordinary folks are watching power bills surge, while AI hyperscalers are set to splurge $700 billion on data center buildouts this year alone. XFRA appears to be a convenient sidestep of local opposition by tech bros, transforming homes into miniature data center nodes. 

“Comprising a distributed network of compute nodes located in residential and small commercial spaces, XFRA enables both the immediate and future compute needs of hyperscalers, neoscalers and AI cloud providers,” Span revealed earlier this month.

SPAN says XFRA is already running revenue-generating test units and plans a 100-unit test later this year, with broad U.S. deployment planned for 2027. This deployment next year could scale to more than 1 gigawatt of AI inference compute capacity.

According to a LinkedIn video, Span CEO Arch Rao says each node contains Dell PowerEdge servers with 16 Nvidia RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell GPUs, 4 AMD EPYC CPUs, and 3 TB of RAM, connected to a 24-port gigabit switch.

In the XFRA White Paper, Rao outlined how XFRA would install an “energy and compute system, including SPAN panel, whole-home battery backup system, along with the XFRA compute Node, at no cost to homeowners.”

The white paper then describes how homeowners benefit from a backyard data center: “XFRA pays the homeowner a monthly rental to subsidize their energy and high-speed broadband bills such that they are a fraction of what they would normally be. This offers homeowners a sizable discount, and predictability in their monthly billing.”

"your mortgage basically pays for itself" 1,2

1) mortgage may be 20%-40% higher
2) homeowner's job will migrate to collocated data center https://t.co/vBJv3cZAVm

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) May 5, 2026

News of the backyard data center concept first circulated earlier this month. The topic resurfaced on Tuesday when CNBC reported that Nvidia and homebuilder PulteGroup are helping SPAN install mini data centers in homes.

X users had a lot to say about the backyard data-center concept: 

putting compute on residential meters is how they bypass every local zoning fight

— StockStorm (@StockStormX) May 5, 2026

2027 home invasion:

“Leave the jewelry. Where are the Blackwells?”

— Maximilian Ruess (@MaximilianRu29) May 5, 2026

people are stealing copper wire and they want us to put ~$300k worth of electronics on the outside of our homes?

— DAM (@damcurious) May 5, 2026

Running at 8 hours a day off peak would only cost about 17k just in electrical- no mention on how to cool it, or what external connectivity options are. Californias load can't even sustain the EV's currently on grid and people think we should be putting half rack AI clusters in…

— Business Tactical (@Bacon_Is_King) May 5, 2026

Only a matter of time before politicians try to ban backyard data centers... 

Tyler Durden Tue, 05/05/2026 - 21:20

Texas Doctor Found Guilty For Illegally Distributing Millions Of Opioid Pills

Authored by Kimberly Hayek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A federal jury in Texas found a physician guilty of unlawfully distributing over a million pills of opioids and other controlled substances from a Houston-area clinic that operated as a pill mill, the Justice Department announced Monday.

Tablets of opioid painkiller Oxycodone delivered on medical prescription in Washington on Sept. 18, 2019. Eric Baradat/AFP via Getty Images

Dr. Barbara Marino, 65, of Tomball, was the sole prescribing physician at Angels Clinica, where she prescribed oxycodone, hydrocodone, and the muscle relaxer carisoprodol despite no legitimate medical purpose. The clinic accepted only cash and charged based on the prescriptions.

“Medical physicians who exploit their prescribing authority for profit over patient care break an inherent trust with their patients and we will hold them accountable,” Assistant Attorney General Colin M. McDonald of the Justice Department’s National Fraud Enforcement Division said in a statement. “The Department of Justice remains committed to protecting the public from dangerous and unlawful distribution of controlled substances, especially when the drug dealer is a doctor.”

DEA Assistant Administrator Cheri Oz said patients put their trust and lives into the hands of medical and health care professionals.

“The highly addictive, dangerous misused drugs in this case—oxycodone and hydrocodone—are meant to treat pain, not cause it,” Oz said. “DEA remains relentless in our pursuit of those who poison our communities and exploit our health care system, all to line their own pockets with the profit from other’s pain.”

Prosecutors noted that many patients were delivered by street-level “crew leaders” or “runners” who then filled the prescriptions and peddled the pills. Marino received over $400,000 in less than a year for writing the scripts, while ignoring red flags outlined in Texas pharmacy board guidance, prescribing the strongest short-acting versions of the drugs to nearly every patient.

In the trial, jurors heard of a pregnant woman in her third trimester who received the opioid-muscle relaxer combination, and a patient diagnosed with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. The jury found Marino guilty of one count of conspiracy to distribute a controlled substance and four counts of distributing a controlled substance. She could be sentenced up to 20 years in prison per count.

At Marino’s trial, an OB/GYN testified to the dangers to the pregnant patient and her unborn child. The prosecutor argued in closing arguments that the woman “didn’t go to her doctor, she went to her drug dealer.”

The DEA investigated the case, and the Justice Department’s Criminal Division Fraud Section trial attorneys prosecuted the case, along with the Texas Attorney General’s Office Medicaid Fraud Control Unit. Sentencing for Marino has not yet been scheduled.

Tyler Durden Tue, 05/05/2026 - 20:55

USAF Says Former Qatari 747 Boeing Ready For USA Paint Scheme

The U.S. Air Force reports that the Boeing 747 donated by Qatar, now designated the VC-25B Bridge, has completed modification and flight testing and is entering the paint phase ahead of deployment as an interim Air Force One jet. 

The bridge aircraft is a former Qatar head-of-state Boeing 747-8i that will serve as an interim presidential aircraft until Boeing's delayed VC-25B replacements are ready, now expected in 2028. 

"This program epitomizes what is possible when clear accountability is placed on one individual, and the entire enterprise of stakeholders aligns behind a single mission outcome … deliver a bridge capability as soon as possible to relieve pressure on the aging VC-25A fleet," Gen. Dale White, Department of War direct reporting portfolio manager for Critical Major Weapon Systems, wrote in a press release.

The VC-25B Bridge underwent flight testing in Texas and is now in a hangar being painted in a "new red, white and blue" livery, according to the U.S. Air Force. The service said the aircraft will be ready for use by summer, likely ahead of the nation's 250th anniversary celebrations on July 4.

Rendering of the new paint scheme:

Military blog TWZ noted there are still a lot of "questions swirling about the legality and ethics of receiving the gifted plane." Last May, the Pentagon took delivery of the aircraft and said it would rapidly undertake the required modifications.

USAF did not disclose the new capabilities added to the former Qatari jet nor disclose the cost of the modifications. Lawmakers suggested last year that those modifications could exceed $1 billion.

 

Tyler Durden Tue, 05/05/2026 - 20:30

Trump DOJ Probes 36 Illinois School Districts For Secretly Transitioning Kids Behind Parents' Backs

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

The Trump administration is cracking down hard on radical gender policies in public schools. The Department of Justice has launched full investigations into 36 Illinois school districts accused of helping children “change genders” without telling their parents and pushing sexual orientation and gender ideology without proper opt-out notifications.

While blue-state bureaucrats treat families as obstacles, the DOJ is stepping in to enforce basic accountability and Supreme Court precedent. 

The review is also looking at whether the district’s violated parents right to opt their child out of lessons on gender and s*xuality.”

🚨 BREAKING: The Trump administration launches investigations into DOZENS of Illinois school districts for carrying out TRANSGENDER transitions on kids behind the parents' backs

WTF?! This is DEMENTED. Pull all funding!

"Prosecutors say they helped children CHANGE GENDERS… pic.twitter.com/teYRZvH1NT

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) May 4, 2026

Senior correspondent Mike Tobin reported: “The DOJ has launched an investigation into some 36 schools in Illinois. The investigation is going to probe whether the schools are pushing woke agenda on the students, particularly if they’re pushing s*xual orientation and gender ideology.”

Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon made the administration’s position crystal clear: “This Department of Justice is determined to put an end to local school authorities keeping parents in the dark about how sexuality and gender ideology are being pushed in classrooms.”

“Supreme Court precedent leaves no doubt: parents have the fundamental right and primary authority to direct the care, upbringing, and education of their children,” Dhillon added.

Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker dismissed the probe as “a sham aimed at punishing states President Trump does not like.”

The official DOJ announcement confirms the scope: the investigations examine whether districts included sexual orientation and gender ideology (SOGI) content in any pre-K-12 class and whether parents received opt-out notices. They will also assess compliance with biological-sex rules for bathrooms, locker rooms, and girls’ sports. 

This isn’t isolated. It directly builds on a pattern of leftist gender ideology assault that the Trump administration is systematically dismantling.

A year ago, the White House stated outright that “changing a minor’s gender is child abuse and medical malpractice.”

Democrats, meanwhile, have pushed to classify “misgendering and deadnaming” as child abuse:

Earlier this year, California parents were informed that they risk losing custody of their kids for simply refusing to affirm a child’s trans identity: https://modernity.news/2026/02/28/california-parents-risk-losing-custod…

These examples show the coordinated push: hide the truth from parents, punish dissent, and medicalize confusion at the expense of children’s long-term health. 

Illinois districts now face the same scrutiny California tried to ram through before the Supreme Court stepped in to protect families.

The investigations come after recent Supreme Court victories affirming parental rights over secret social transitions and ideological curriculum. Parents are no longer sidelined while schools play doctor and activist behind closed doors.

This DOJ action sends a loud message: federal funding and civil rights enforcement will no longer subsidize secrecy and experimentation on minors. 

The Trump administration will seek to defund the districts that refuse to comply and restore parents as the ultimate authority over their children’s upbringing. 

Without such action, The US risks going down the same path as the UK, where new trans guidance for schools suggests that kids as young as four can “change gender”: 

Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

Tyler Durden Tue, 05/05/2026 - 20:05

US Intelligence Only Sees Limited Additional Damage To Iran Nuclear Program Since Last June

A widely circulating fresh report in Reuters has raised eyebrows and serious questions related to the effectiveness of the 38-day aerial campaign which saw US-Israel bombs unleashed in the many thousands (combined: some 20,000+ munitions expended) on the Islamic Republic.

"US intelligence assessments indicate that the time Iran would need to build a nuclear weapon has not changed since last summer, when analysts estimated that a US-Israeli attack had pushed back the timeline to up to a year, according to three sources familiar with the matter," the report lays out.

"The assessments of Tehran's nuclear program remain broadly unchanged even after two months of a war that US President Donald Trump launched in part to stop the Islamic Republic from developing a nuclear bomb," it continues.

via Fox

The Israelis are believed to have done most of the direct targeting of Iranian nuclear facilities in the late February through April air campaign. This after already since last June, the White House insisted Iran's nuclear program was 'obliterated'.

Again, one wonders what nearly 40 days of record-levels of bombardment of Iranian cities and military sites actually accomplished in terms of degrading Iran's nuclear enrichment capability - which has emerged as the primary US goal (stalled negotiations have centered on the demand that Tehran given up its nuclear material). It seems the needle may have hardly moved in terms of degrading Iranian nuke sites since last June?

The Reuters report gives the following additional conclusion: "The unchanged timeline suggests that significantly impeding Tehran’s nuclear program may require destroying or removing Iran’s remaining stockpile of highly enriched uranium, or HEU."

And that of course brings the situation back to the square one dilemma of whether to launch ground operations to recover what Trump calls the 'nuclear dust' - which further raises the prospect of utter disaster and endless quagmire (and there are signs of quagmire already, even without ground forces).

In shifting from 'Epic Fury' to 'Project Freedom' - the US administration seems to want to find a way out of this without a protracted ground war, which would mean serious losses in blood and treasure. The below is the official latest White House position:

While Operation ⁠Midnight Hammer obliterated Iran’s nuclear facilities, Operation Epic Fury built on this success by decimating Iran’s defense industrial base that they ‌once leveraged as a protective shield around their pursuit of a nuclear weapon,” said White House spokeswoman Olivia Wales, referring ‌to the June operation and the latest war that began in February.

"President Trump has long been clear that Iran can never have a nuclear weapon – and he does not bluff."

But Iran has countered that it considers its enriched uranium stockpile a matter of national sovereignty, and will 'never' allow it to be transferred outside the country.

Next round of US-Israeli bombing being planned?

An Israeli official told CNN:

The coordination between Israel and the United States includes preparations for a round of strikes on Iranian energy infrastructure and senior officials.

“The intention is to carry out a short operation aimed at pressuring Iran to make further…

— Amit Segal (@AmitSegal) May 5, 2026

Iran's foreign ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei two weeks ago denied reports at the time which said Tehran had agreed to transfer its highly enriched uranium abroad, saying "enriched uranium is sacred to us, as is Iranian soil." The Iranians have since repeatedly made clear that the issue is a non-starter, and wants to focus talks on opening Hormuz and ending the war.

Tyler Durden Tue, 05/05/2026 - 19:40

DOJ Sues Minnesota To Block Climate Lawsuit Targeting Energy Companies

Authored by Bill Pan via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is suing Minnesota over the state’s own climate lawsuit against major energy companies.

Pumpjacks operate near the site of a new oil and gas well being drilled in Midland, Texas, on April 8, 2022. Eli Hartman/Odessa American via AP

The complaint, filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota, accuses state officials of trying to impose their own climate policies on domestic energy producers in a way the DOJ says burdens national energy development and intrudes on federal authority.

The underlying lawsuit was filed in 2020 by Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison against Exxon Mobil, the American Petroleum Institute, Koch Industries, and Koch subsidiary Flint Hills Resources. Minnesota brought the case under state consumer-protection laws, alleging that the companies engaged in fraud and deceptive business practices by misleading the public about “climate change and the role of fossil-fuel products in climate change.”

That lawsuit remains pending after years of procedural fights over whether it belongs in state or federal court. Minnesota succeeded in keeping the case in state court in 2024, after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review a lower-court ruling allowing the lawsuit to proceed there.

In its new complaint, the DOJ argues that authority over national energy policy and major questions involving greenhouse gas emissions rests with the federal government, not individual states. The department is asking the court to block Minnesota from pursuing the 2020 lawsuit and prevent the state from bringing similar litigation in the future.

“Climate change lawsuits, like Minnesota’s, artfully plead around federal law while transparently seeking to change national energy policy related to global greenhouse gas emissions and to regulate conduct beyond local borders,” the complaint states.

The federal government’s move to counter climate litigation with its own lawsuit follows an executive order issued last year by President Donald Trump, who directed the DOJ to “take all appropriate action to stop” state lawsuits seeking to “dictate national energy policy.”

“President Trump promised to unleash American energy dominance, and Minnesota officials cannot undermine his directive by mandating that their woke climate preferences become the uniform policy of our Nation,” Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward said in a statement.

Ellison, who is named as a defendant in the DOJ lawsuit, pledged to seek dismissal of what his office called a “frivolous and meritless” case.

“In 2020, I sued Big Oil for lying to Minnesotans about the true causes of climate change, then sticking us with the bill for the harms it is causing,” Ellison said in a statement. “Six years later, we are still waiting to go to trial because Big Oil has pulled every procedural trick in the book to delay facing the consequences of their unlawful actions.”

Minnesota is among a number of states and local governments that have turned to consumer-protection, public-nuisance, and similar laws to sue major oil and gas companies over the climate impact of their products. Those lawsuits generally accuse the companies of misleading the public about climate risks while seeking to hold them financially responsible for infrastructure costs, natural disaster- or health care-related costs, and other damages.

The DOJ has taken aim at several such efforts. Last year, it filed preemptive lawsuits against Hawaii and Michigan, though both were dismissed by federal judges. Separate DOJ challenges to New York and Vermont’s laws, which seek to impose penalties tied to past greenhouse gas emissions to fund disaster relief and climate-related projects, remain pending.

Allowing individual states to use courts to advance climate goals, the Trump administration argued, would create a patchwork of conflicting regulations and interfere with the executive branch’s authority over national energy security and interstate commerce.

“When states target or discriminate against out-of-state energy producers by imposing significant barriers to interstate and international trade, American energy suffers,” Trump’s executive order stated.

Tyler Durden Tue, 05/05/2026 - 19:15

Mexico's Claudia Sheinbaum Is Caught Between A Rock And A Hard Place

Authored by Nick Corbishley via NakedCapitalism.com,

The rock is the rising threat of US military intervention in Mexico; the hard place is Sheinbaum’s own party’s narco-politicians.

Late last week, as Mexico was still reeling from revelations that CIA agents are operating in Chihuahua, in direct violation of Mexico’s constitution and sovereignty, the Sheinbaum government received an extradition request from Washington for 10 Sinaloa-based individuals. They included the state’s governor, Rubén Rocha, and its senator, Enrique Inzunza Cázares.

The indictments pose the biggest threat yet to Sheinbaum’s presidency. If she bows to US pressure and agrees to indict Rocha, a senior member of Sheinbaum’s Morena party, and the other nine serving and former politicians and security chiefs, she risks opening the floodgates to more US extradition requests. If she doesn’t, she risks the wrath of an increasingly unhinged Trump administration.

“Without Precedent”

The veteran Mexican journalist Denise Marker described the development as “extremely worrying” and “without precedent”. As one twitter commenter remarked tartly, it is indeed “without precedent”: drug cartels have operated in Sinaloa with total impunity and government protection for nigh on 80 years and not a single PRI or PAN governor has ever been extradited.

Speaking to Al Jazeera, Vanda Felbab-Brown, an expert on non-state armed groups at the Brookings Institution think tank in Washington, DC, said that indicting elected politicians in Mexican had “long been considered a very big step, almost a ‘nuclear option’”. And more indictments are likely to come, she added.

Rumours are already flying of an approaching second wave of extradition requests — including for three more governors, two legislators and the son of an ex-president, presumably Andrés Manuel López Obrador. For the moment, this is pure conjecture, but it would be in keeping with the Trump administration’s slash-and-burn approach to international relations.

🔴 En unas semanas vendrá la segunda OLA; Llegaran órdenes de detención para al menos tres gobernadores más , dos legisladores y un hijo de un “expresidente” y un secretario de estado ,

— Mario Di Costanzo (@mario_dico50) May 4, 2026

Perhaps that’s why the Sheinbaum government has declined the extradition request — for now. Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office (FGR) on Friday ruled out provisionally detaining the suspects indicated. The head of the Specialized Prosecutor’s Office for Competition Control of the FGR, Raúl Jiménez Vázquez, said there was not enough evidence to justify taking such an action.

Until now, Sheinbaum has generally bent to the US’s will despite her constant reaffirmations of Mexican sovereignty and independence, reports Ioan Grillo:

“We are not a protectorate of the United States. We are not a colony of the United States,” Sheinbaum, the 63-year old former scientist, said Monday.

However, in actions, Sheinbaum has delivered to President Donald Trump on several key demands since he returned to office last year. Her government helped halt the flow of undocumented migrants though Mexico to the U.S. border, slashing Border Patrol encounters to the lowest in decades (this is also due to Trump largely killing asylum at the border). She has whacked fentanyl trafficking, so U.S. border seizures of the venomous drug were down 72 percent last month compared to when she took office in October 2024.

But the demands continue to grow in size and number. As the Wall Street Journal notes, each time Sheinbaum gives President Trump an inch, he demands a mile:

More than a year after both leaders took office, the give and take is forcing Mexico’s president into a corner. In that way, she may be following other world leaders who have tried to forge a working partnership with Trump—from Italy’s Giorgia Meloni to French President Emmanuel Macron—only to face a falling-out.

It was a by-now-familiar pattern in the relationship between the two neighbors.
It began with decisions that cost Sheinbaum very little political capital, such as sending National Guard troops to the border to stop U.S.-bound drug smuggling and closing Mexico’s doors to migrants from Venezuela and other countries.

But lately Trump has pushed Sheinbaum into moves that risk angering her political base.

Just over a week ago, it was revealed that four CIA agents had participated in an anti-narcotics operation with the state police force of Chihuahua without informing Mexico’s federal authorities. This was a complete violation of Mexico’s constitution and sovereignty. The only reason why the public — and apparently, the federal government — learned of the operation was that two of the CIA agents died in an alleged car accident as it unfolded.

The resulting scandal severely damaged relations between Mexico and the US while sparking a fierce showdown between the federal government and the Chihuahuan governor, Maru Campos Galván, who has thrown her state’s doors wide open to US government agencies including the CIA, the DEA and the FBI. In doing so, Campos Galván not only violated the constitution, she committed the most serious of crimes: high treason.

Amid the resulting fallout, the Trump administration, represented in Mexico by Ron Johnson, a former CIA agent and Green Beret with decades of experience of destabilising foreign countries, including by training death squads, tightened the screw further by unsealing the indictment of Rocha. In a rare departure from custom, the indictment included 34 pages of allegations that have already been made public.

The goal, it seems, is two-fold: first, to distract the US and Mexican publics from the Chihuahua debacle (and whatever other scandals du jour the Trump administration need cover from, including, of course, Epstein); and second, to paint Sheinbaum into a corner. If she complies with the extradition request, she opens the door to the US gradually picking off more and more of Morena’s elected representatives, with the resulting damage this could do to Morena’s base.

Rocha is fully aware of this fact. In what can be easily read as a veiled threat to Morena’s leadership, he tweeted a couple of days ago (emphasis my own):

“This attack is not just aimed at my person but the whole Fourth Transformation movement, its emblematic leaders and the Mexicans who represent the cause”.

According to unnamed sources cited by the Mexican corporate law firm León Barrena Rodríguez & Partners LLP (LBR), “the Governor’s defiance carries an implicit, scorched-earth ultimatum directed straight at the National Palace”:

The subtext is clear: if Sheinbaum attempts to sacrifice him to appease Washington, he will take the entire structure down with him. A sitting governor with his level of access doesn’t just go to a U.S. interrogation room to face a life sentence; he goes there to trade. The leverage is absolute. The threat (“if you hand me over, I disclose everything regarding AMLO, the presidency, and Morena’s tactical alliances with the cartels”) is the only thing keeping him from being extradited tonight. Sheinbaum is now effectively a hostage to her own party’s regional power brokers.

On the other hand, if Sheinbaum declines the extradition request, as she has done so far, she risks being painted by the US government, Mexican opposition parties and pliant media outlets in Mexico and abroad as a “narco president” who is more interested in protecting the country’s drug lords than helping the US Department of Justice put them behind bars.

Refusal to cooperate also increases the risk of US military intervention in Mexico. After all, if US forces can abduct a sitting president in Venezuela, what’s to stop them from snatching a regional governor in Mexico (apart from Mexico’s US-trained and equipped armed forces)? According to LBR’s sources, this option has been on the table “for months”:

[T]he use of US special operations forces to apprehend Governor Rocha, Senator Inzunza, and other indicted officials has been a live option on the tables of the DOJ, DOW, and DEA for months…

Sheinbaum and AMLO have decided that a total diplomatic rupture with the U.S. is a smaller price to pay than the existential threat of Governor Rocha “spitting” in a New York courtroom. They are gambling on the assumption that Washington lacks the will for forceful extraction. This is a fatal error.

The former DEA agent Mike Vigil, who lives in Mexico, believes than an extraction is unlikely, warning in an interview with the Chilean outlet Entrevistas Meganoticias that any attempt to abduct Rochoa would be a disaster, not only for Mexico but also Latin America as a whole (translation my own):

They did it in Venezuela with Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores. But Venezuela is not Mexico. So, to go that way, which for me was an act of war, to remove politicians in Mexico would be a disaster. This would cause instability throughout Latin America.

It would also be a disaster for the US government, Vigil says without elucidating as to why. One thing is clear: this is all happening at the most delicate of times for US-Mexico relations, with the USMCA trade deal up for mandatory joint review in June. One might think that the last thing the US needs right now, as the global economy teeters on the edge of a global crisis of Trump’s choice, is to risk upending its biggest trade partnership.

It’s possible, of course, that Trump is using the extradition requests as leverage in the trade  negotiations. However, the threat of US military intervention against the cartels has been on the cards since at least early 2023, when neo-con Republicans like Lindsey Graham, Marco Rubio and former Attorney General William Barr began talking of the need to designate the cartels as “terrorist organisations.”

Which was one of the first things Trump did on his return to office. Sheinbaum and her government are now feeling the inevitable fallout from that.

Between a Rock and a Hard Place

“She’s caught between a rock and a hard place because she obviously understands what’s at stake for her government and the US and the critically important USMCA review,” said Arturo Sarukhán, a former Mexican ambassador to the US.

Sheinbaum has so far prioritised loyalty to Morena. On Friday, she declared that the ten Mexican officials charged with drug trafficking and weapons offences will be tried in Mexico, not the US — if credible evidence emerges against them.

As for Rocha, he allegedly travelled with Sheinbaum to meet with AMLO at his “La Chingada” ranch in Palenque, Tabasco, at the weekend. Immediately afterwards, the Sinaloan governor took temporary leave, which removes all the legal protections against prosecution he enjoyed as a sitting governor.

But is he guilty of colluding with the Sinaloan cartel? Most probably yes.

The word that keeps popping up to describe Rocha, including in some pro-government media outlets, is “undefendable”. He clearly has ties to the Sinaloan cartel (who doesn’t in the higher reaches of Sinaloa’s government?) and allegedly received campaign funding from prominent cartel members. He has almost certainly been fingered (no, not that way) by members of the Chapitos branch of the Sinaloan cartel, who’ve turned witness in return for lighter sentences.

All that being said, Rocha is still a relatively small pawn in a much larger game being played by Washington. That game extends to the entire American continent, and its ultimate goal is to remove all obstacles to the US’ dominion over the strategic resources of that region — including, crucially, its oil and gas. Or as RevKev put it recently, to turn all of Latin America into one giant quarry for Western corps, as we are already seeing in post-Maduro Venezuela.

Secretary Chris Wright admits they overthrew the Venezuelan government so American corporations could stampede in.

They are actively exploiting a sovereign nation to extract its wealth.

Washington is running a violent imperialist looting operation for corporate greed. pic.twitter.com/0YZZH2Mwb5

— Furkan Gözükara (@FurkanGozukara) May 4, 2026

To achieve that goal, Washington must remove all governments in the region that are not entirely subordinated to its interests and wish to maintain some degree of national sovereignty. And its main instrument for doing that, as we saw with Venezuela, is the so-called war on the drug cartels.

Since the recent rash of elections that have returned far-right governments in Chile, Bolivia and Honduras (with prodding from Trump, of course) and the US’ half-baked coup in Venezuela, the number of non-US aligned countries is in rapid decline. Chief among them are Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, which together account for over 60% of the region’s population and GDP, as well as Nicaragua and Cuba, whose shattered economy is now subject to blanket US sanctions.

Trump and Marco Rubio are so obsessed with making Cubans suffer that they have announced even more sanctions on the ridiculous pretext that Cuba is a threat to US national security. This order threatens to sanction any company, anywhere, doing business with Cuba. It is barbaric.…

— Medea Benjamin (@medeabenjamin) May 3, 2026

The latest revelations of the Hondurasgate scandal suggest that Argentina’s Milei is now conspiring with the recently pardoned Honduran narco-president Juan Orlando Hernández, whom the US and Israel apparently want to return to power, to spread propaganda online to “eliminate the left” in Latin America, targeting Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, and the left-wing opposition in Honduras — all apparently paid for with US and Israeli funds…

Bombshell: Leaked audio recordings prove Argentina's libertarian President Javier Milei is conspiring with the drug lord Juan Orlando Hernández -- the drug-trafficking former dictator of Honduras, whom Trump freed from prison.

In a recording between Milei and the drug lord,… pic.twitter.com/fJPrqaO8jT

— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) May 4, 2026

In Mexico, the goal is presumably to erode Morena’s support base with a view to the mid-term elections in 2027. That’s assuming the US doesn’t try to remove Sheinbaum by force, á la Maduro, before then. For now that is hard to imagine, given she is democratically elected and still enjoys high levels of public support. According to the latest El Financiero poll, her approval rating is 68%, which is just six points above Donald Trump’s latest disapproval rating (62%).

In order to destroy Morena, Washington must first destroy the reputation of its co-founder and first national president, López Obrador, who ended his six-year term with an approval rating of close to 80%. During his presidency, AMLO did the unthinkable: he sought to distance himself from the disastrous war on the drug cartels initiated by President Felipe Calderón in 2006.

In 2020, the AMLO government passed a national security reform aimed at reaffirming Mexico’s national sovereignty in matters of security vis-à-vis the United States. In the bill, the Senate of the Republic established provisions and added articles to the chapter on International Cooperation that substantially limit the actions of foreign agencies on Mexican soil — the same provisions and articles that have been violated by the CIA and Chihuahua’s state government.

All of this made AMLO some powerful enemies in Washington. William Barr called AMLO the cartel’s “chief enabler” for refusing to wage war against the cartels with quite the same zeal as his predecessors:

“In reality, AMLO is unwilling to take action that would seriously challenge the cartels. He shields them by consistently invoking Mexico’s sovereignty to block the U.S. from taking effective action.”

Of course, Barr is hardly one to talk given his prominent role in the cover-up of Iran-Contra, which obviously included drug running by the CIA (h/t Carloninian), as well as other crimes and misdemeanors.

As readers may recall, the DEA finally struck back against AMLO by launching a series of accusations against him in his final months in office. However, the widely published allegations did not present conclusive proof showing AMLO’s complicity; nor did they dent Morena’s electoral prospects in the 2024 presidential elections. Sheinbaum ended up winning by a historic landslide.

Since then, however, the US appears to have set its sights on bringing down AMLO, as we reported in February 2025:

In recent months rumours have also been circulating in certain corners of social media that the US government will soon set its sights on Mexico’s former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, aka AMLO, for his alleged ties to Mexico’s drug cartels. Just under a month ago, the journalist Salvador García Soto published an article in El Universal titled “They Are Building a Case Against AMLO in Washington”:

Headed by the imminent Secretary of State of the United States, Marco Rubio, and based on the statements that have already been made to the Department of Justice, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada and the two sons of Chapo Guzmán, Ovidio Guzmán López and his brother Joaquín Guzmán López, the legal offensive against the former Mexican president would also have the collaboration of Mexican politicians who are collaborating with Rubio’s office, including a former PAN governor, a former foreign minister of the Republic and a former Mexican ambassador to the United States, who are bringing “information and witnesses” to the U.S. authorities.

One thing that is undeniable about Mexico today is that its drug cartels have compromised or even taken over large sections of its political structures at the local and state level in key strategic regions. All of the political parties, not just Moreana, are implicated. As Denise Maerker wrote in Milenio, criminal groups have all but supplanted local authorities in some parts of the country:

No Mexican needs to hear it from anyone else, it is obvious and clear as day: there are entire regions in which a criminal group controls and governs the territory.

That does not mean that criminal groups govern the entire country or that Mexico is a “narco state”, as some politicians and pundits in the US are wont to claim. Also, conspicuously absent from the public debate in Mexico is an acknowledgment that the US itself is a criminal state that is simultaneously waging a war of aggression against Iran, facilitating genocides in Gaza and Lebanon, and conducting extrajudicial killings in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific.

It is also clear that expanding and escalating the US’ war on the drug cartels will do nothing to improve the situation on the ground in Mexico, especially if nothing is done on the demand side or to srem the “iron rivers” of guns flowing from the US. On the contrary, it will bring yet more violence, suffering and immiseration while doing little to reduce the flow of drugs.

Even the New York Times ran an op-ed in 2022 declaring the US-War on Drugs as a “staggering failure” — from a counter-narcotics perspective. As Roberto Saviano, the Italian anti-mafia author known for Gomorra and ZeroZeroZero, has long argued, the only effective way to dismantle the economic power of organised crime is to legalise drugs.

“Legalising cocaine would mean cutting off access to the oil wells of criminal organisations, legalisation would transform the world economy,” Saviano told journalists during the launch of ZeroZeroZero in 2019.

But that is the last thing Washington wants. At their root, both the international drugs trade and the Global War on Drugs, like the Global War on Terror, are tools for imperial hegemony and resource plunder.

If the Trump administration’s plan for hemispheric hegemony comes off, which is still a big “IF” given how over-extended the US empire has become as well as the compounding economic risks it faces from Trump’s war of choice against Iran, the future of Latin America is likely to look a lot like Daniel Noboa’s Ecuador — in other words, bleak. Once the region’s second safest country, Ecuador is now the most violent.

Neoliberal Ecuador: Violent crime is so high the govt just declared a military curfew on a majority of its cities, including the capital. You can't be outside after 11pm for the next month.

10 years ago 🇪🇨 ranked as 2nd safest country in region under leftist President Correa. pic.twitter.com/CVYlH9dZmp

— Ollie Vargas (@Ollie_Vargas_) May 4, 2026

After signing up to a US-led military crackdown in early 2024, that violence has done nothing but spiral to unprecedented levels — in 2025, the national homicide rate was 50.9 per 100,000, more than triple the rate in Mexico — while Ecuador’s weight in the global narcotics trade has done nothing but grow. Oh, and lest we forget, the Noboa family’s banana business has been repeatedly implicated in the smuggling of cocaine to Europe.

Tyler Durden Tue, 05/05/2026 - 18:25

How A Musk Victory Vs. Altman Would Reset America's AI Roadmap

A courtroom victory for Elon Musk in his high-stakes federal trial against Sam Altman and OpenAI would deliver one of the most disruptive blows to the artificial intelligence sector in its brief but explosive history - potentially forcing the $850-billion-plus company to unwind its for-profit empire, ousting its top leaders, and handing Musk a symbolic and financial hammer to reshape the global race for AGI while weakening one of its fiercest competitors.

The case is now being argued in a federal courtroom in Oakland, before Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers. The trial opened on April 28 and entered its second week on Monday, when OpenAI president Greg Brockman took the stand and confirmed his personal stake in the company is worth roughly $30 billion. Musk's counsel returned to the figure more than a dozen times in two hours of questioning.

The Case

Musk co-founded OpenAI in late 2015 as a nonprofit and contributed roughly $38 million in its early years. He left the board in 2018. The following year, OpenAI created a capped-profit subsidiary to attract the capital that frontier AI now requires; Microsoft has since invested more than $13 billion. ChatGPT launched in November 2022. By 2025, OpenAI was preparing for what would have been one of the largest initial public offerings in history.

Musk sued in 2024. The original complaint contained twenty-six claims; only two survive - breach of charitable trust and unjust enrichment - while the fraud claims were dismissed before trial. Microsoft is named as a co-defendant for allegedly aiding and abetting the breach, a detail often elided in summary coverage.

The remedies sought are unusually sweeping. Musk wants OpenAI's for-profit structure unwound and its assets returned to the nonprofit foundation. He wants Sam Altman and Brockman removed from leadership. And he is seeking up to $150 billion in damages from OpenAI and Microsoft combined, with any award flowing directly to OpenAI's charitable arm rather than to Musk personally.

Structure of the Trial

Judge Gonzalez Rogers has bifurcated the proceedings into a liability phase, expected to conclude around May 21, and a separate remedies phase that would follow only if the defendants are found at fault. A nine-person jury sits during liability alone, and its verdict is advisory. Structural remedies - including any order to dissolve the for-profit subsidiary - fall solely to the judge.

This procedural detail matters more than it may appear. Coverage that casts the jury as the decisive actor misreads the case. The jury can shape narrative momentum and offer a finding the judge may weigh, but it cannot order OpenAI to unwind anything. Whatever the verdict, Gonzalez Rogers writes the remedy.

What a Musk Win Would Actually Mean

Setting aside the $150 billion headline - which is a ceiling, not a floor, and is divided across defendants - three concrete consequences would follow a substantive ruling against OpenAI.

The first is restructuring. A finding that the 2019 capped-profit conversion and its 2025 successor breached a charitable trust would, at minimum, force a reorganization placing the nonprofit foundation back in unambiguous control. The IPO would be delayed indefinitely, if not foreclosed. Investor returns would be capped or rewritten. Microsoft's roughly $13 billion stake, and the larger commitments that followed from Amazon, SoftBank, and Nvidia, would all face revaluation.

The second is leadership. Musk's complaint seeks the removal of Altman and Brockman. Whether the court orders that remedy in full is uncertain; partial governance reform is the likelier outcome. Either way, the result would be destabilizing for an organization whose competitive position rests substantially on the people at the top of it.

The third is precedent, and it may prove the most durable. A ruling for Musk would establish that nonprofit-to-commercial transitions in American technology can be reversed years after the fact, once the entity has grown large enough to be worth reversing. Founders, donors, and investors in mission-driven labs would have to reckon with a previously hypothetical risk: that the structure they signed up for is the structure they will be held to, indefinitely.

The Defense

OpenAI's response, articulated by lead counsel William Savitt, is that Musk himself supported a for-profit restructuring as early as 2017 - as long as he was placed in charge of it. When the other founders declined, he left, predicted the company's failure, and later launched a competitor. The obvious angle here is that the lawsuit is a delayed instrument of competitive harm rather than a vindication of charitable principle.

The defense will lean on contemporaneous evidence: Musk's own emails proposing for-profit structures; his instruction to associates to register a for-profit corporation in OpenAI's name; and Brockman's private journal, which Musk's team has used to suggest financial motive but which also records the founders' resistance to handing OpenAI to Musk.

What Remains

Several witnesses are still to come. Altman has not yet testified. Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella is expected. Stuart Russell, the Berkeley computer scientist, will appear as Musk's expert on AI risk; the judge has already declined a request from Musk's counsel that Russell be permitted to range beyond his written report into extinction scenarios.

Two days before the trial began, Musk texted Brockman to gauge interest in settlement. When Brockman proposed mutual dismissal, Musk replied that he and Altman would be the most hated men in America by week's end. The judge declined to admit the exchange. No settlement has materialized.

The trial is expected to run another two to three weeks. The remedies phase, if it comes, will follow.

Tyler Durden Tue, 05/05/2026 - 18:00

ISO New England Trims 10-Year Forecast Based On Electrification Outlook

By Robert Walton of UtilityDive

Electricity consumption in New England will grow about 9% over the next decade, driven by electrification of buildings and vehicles, the region’s independent system operator said in an annual report published Friday. While significant, the rise in consumption is lower than its forecast in the two previous reports, reflecting changes in “government policy,” ISO New England said.

The “2026-2035 Forecast Report of Capacity, Energy, Loads, and Transmission,” or CELT report, estimates annual consumption will rise from 116,679 GWh this year to 127,660 GWh in 2035, an increase of about 0.9% annually.

In 2024, the ISO said it anticipated a 17% rise in annual energy use by 2033. In 2025, it reduced its 10-year outlook to an 11% rise by 2034.

The energy forecast “reflects more conservative assumptions around future adoption of electric vehicles and heat pumps in light of government policy changes,” the ISO said in a blog post.

New England’s net annual energy use has trended downward since 2005, “mainly due to more efficient heating and cooling systems, appliances, and lighting,” as well as growth in behind-the-meter solar, the grid operator said. Now, it predicts “that trend will reverse over the next decade.”

“Steady growth in net annual energy use is expected as state policy goals for carbon emissions reductions continue to incentivize electrification of heating systems and transportation in the region,” the ISO said.

Notably, the ISO said sustained load growth means it will soon be a dual-peaking system.

While New England has typically seen electricity demand peak during the hot summer months, the addition of electric heating load means that by 2035, the ISO expects winter and summer peaks to be roughly the same, around 26.5 GW. ISO New England’s all-time peak of 28.1 GW was set in summer 2006.

The grid operator anticipates peak demand of 25.2 GW this summer and 20.5 GW this upcoming winter season.

Heating electrification is projected to contribute 5,533 MW to the winter peak in 2035/2036, ISO said, while transportation electrification is forecast to contribute 1,509 MW. In the ISO’s previous CELT report, it estimated electric vehicles would account for 1,764 MW of the winter peak in 2034/2035, while heating electrification was is expected to account for 4,765 MW that season.

The ISO said it revised its EV adoption forecast down to account for the removal of federal incentives and revisions to state policies and expectations for each vehicle class. Its heat pump forecast was similarly adjusted to account for expiring federal tax credits.

Behind-the-meter solar is forecast to have a growing impact on winter peak demand, reducing it by an expected 316 MW in 2035/2036, the ISO said in its latest report.

Tyler Durden Tue, 05/05/2026 - 17:40

"No Quick Fixes": Supply-Chain Deep Dive Shows Beef Prices To Remain High

We are all familiar with the surge in beef prices, driven by a U.S. cattle herd at more than a half-century low amid severe drought, elevated feed costs, higher financing expenses, and other inflationary factors, such as soaring diesel prices, squeezing ranchers.

$175 for beef?!🥩

$20.65 per pound … for one cut.

Herds are at generational lows after years of drought, rising feed costs, and pressure on ranchers.

Supply gets squeezed → prices explode → families get hit.

This was the Democrat push!

What are you paying for beef where… pic.twitter.com/c5HdnidaKA

— Sherri Unfiltered™ (@FFT1776) May 4, 2026

USDA data show average retail beef prices have been on a parabolic rise since the early days of the pandemic, with consumers facing sticker shock as soon as they step into any supermarket's meat department.

A new Bloomberg report helps explain why beef prices are likely to remain sticky: the US cattle herd has fallen to its lowest level in 75 years. This supply shock has taken years to develop, and rebuilding will take years as well.

The Trump administration promised to tame beef prices, even considering a deal with Argentina to import cattle and alleviate the shortage. However, it appears the administration has shifted from potential supply maneuvers to asking the Justice Department to investigate possible antitrust violations among processors.

On Monday, Tyson Foods, the nation's largest meat processor, reported another quarterly loss in its beef unit, highlighting that beef margins remain deeply negative even at the processing level. Tyson and other major meatpackers are being forced to pay premiums for scarce cattle, crushing margins that are being passed on to consumers.

"The reality behind expensive beef is complicated. There's no quick fix for tight supplies, as the sticker shock in the grocery aisles didn't happen overnight," Bloomberg agricultural reporter Ilena Peng wrote in a note, adding, "It's not just that the animals take a long time to grow. The complicated economics of cattle ranching also create pain points at key stages of production."

Peng walked readers through a hypothetical example of one animal's journey through the cattle supply chain, showing that the profit pool is heavily skewed toward the front end.

Cow-calf ranchers are currently seeing solid profits, but margins deteriorate further downstream - from stockers to feedyards and meatpackers - where operators remain under pressure. Grocers, meanwhile, have been able to pass higher costs on to consumers, particularly as beef demand remains robust.

Source: Bloomberg

Peng warned readers, "All this means there are few quick fixes for near-record beef prices."

Source: Bloomberg

Monthly US Imports of Beef and Beef Products

Source: Bloomberg

January Cattle and Calves Count

Source: Bloomberg

"Pressures at every stage of the 18-month supply chain are expected to keep prices high at least through year-end," Peng continued.

This means beef prices may have to rise even higher into summer and enter demand-destroying territory. This is bad news for consumers ahead of cookout season.

Tyler Durden Tue, 05/05/2026 - 17:20

From DEI To Equal Protection: A New Direction In Civil Rights Policy

Authored by Kenin M. Spivak via RealClearPolitics,

The Trump administration is restoring the core value of equal opportunity to civil rights enforcement. It is eviscerating the race-baiting, intersectional policies of the Biden and Obama administrations, and giving substance to the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision in Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services (2025) that whites, men, and heterosexuals are not held to a higher standard in discrimination cases.

This is a time for rejoicing, tempered by concern that the administration will not have time to complete its work, and that its reliance on executive orders, rather than legislation and consent decrees, will allow the next Democratic president to rip asunder President Trump’s laudable accomplishments.

Despite more than a century of Supreme Court decisions forbidding discrimination on the basis of race, Democrats generally, and progressives specifically, have inverted President John F. Kennedy’s executive order establishing affirmative action. Intended to bring an end to discrimination because of race, creed, color, and national origin, progressives instead transformed affirmative action into a system of preferences based on melanin content, and absorbed this once hopeful construct into radical philosophies used to justify bias, including Critical Race Theory (CRT), intersectionality, disparate impact theory, and ultimately DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion).

They oppose Trump’s effort to dismantle their race-addled policies with every lever available to them. Ivy League universities have to be bludgeoned into enforcing equal rights. Blue city mayors continue their fight to sideline white males. Hollywood artists and programmers refuse to work for studios and tech companies that recognize political and legal realties. Liberal Supreme Court justices bemoan the majority’s refusal to rule based on the intersectional hierarchy of so-called “marginalized” minorities, and Obama- and Biden-appointed federal judges enjoin proper exercises of executive power.

CRT originated in the 1970s as a tortured rationale advocating that colorblind laws inevitably serve the interests of white people.

Intersectionality has become a cornerstone of CRT. Developed principally by Columbia Law Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw, it utilizes a hierarchy of social oppression to allocate benefits and burdens, providing the doctrinal basis for DEI policies, transgender activism, and antisemitism. The latter shows the bankruptcy of the dogma: Despite hundreds of years of oppression, pogroms and the Holocaust, as a result of educational and business achievements, Jews are seen as powerful oppressors, while Palestinians and other Muslims are seen as marginalized minorities.

Disparate impact is a central tenet of progressive litigation strategy. Its premise that marginalized communities must receive their proportionate share of opportunities is the progenitor of the “equity” prong of DEI. Liability is established if there is a shortfall, regardless of whether that shortfall is caused by discrimination.

DEI is the fusion of these philosophies, a malevolent form of affirmative action that allocates benefits based on race, sex, and gender identity. To ensure pre-determined outcomes, progressive decisionmakers and courts have tampered with and eliminated entry exams, waived criminal background checks, and watered down academic, disciplinary, admissions, graduation, employment, and promotion standards.

In 2024, the Biden administration took a bow for more than 650 actions that required federal, state, and local government agencies and contractors to award and allocate burdens, opportunities, and benefits based on race, sex, and gender identification.

Progressives defended these manifestly unconstitutional and unlawful actions by claiming that while the words of the 14th Amendment, federal civil rights statutes, and President Johnson’s executive order on equal employment opportunity prohibit the use of race in government actions, their true meaning was the opposite – that race and other innate characteristics must be used to achieve outcomes based on these characteristics.

The Biden administration also targeted people of faith, with abuses ranging from FBI infiltration of Catholic churches to weaponizing the FACE Act against pro-life Americans. And it adopted rules requiring that universities treat biological males who identify as women as actual women, and ended due process for any grievances filed for allegedly violating their rights, or in sexual harassment cases. Respondents were denied notice, the right to examine the complainant, or a right of appeal. The university investigator was permitted to serve as the hearing officer.

Progressives justified the administration’s attack on religion, female athletes, and due process as necessary to protect the rights of marginalized minorities.

Underscoring the left’s situational ethics, as the Biden administration embarked on a whole-of-government censorship enterprise to silence its critics, the ACLU abandoned its 100-year commitment to free speech, declaring that speech that denigrates marginalized groups can “inflict serious harms and is intended to and often will impede progress toward equality.”

Upon taking office for his second term, President Trump revoked Biden’s executive orders impacting race, sex, and gender. He issued orders prohibiting DEI, other race-based programs, and disparate impact in federal government hiring, promotion, and contracting; terminated federal employees hired for the Biden administration’s massive DEI apparatus; and ordered “appropriate action” to pressure K-12 schools into abandoning race-based disciplinary policies. He rescinded an executive order that required federal contractors to utilize affirmative action in their hiring practices.

Rejecting intersectionality, Trump issued orders tying federal funding to elimination of extreme gender ideology, proclaiming, “It is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female. These sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality,” and protecting children from chemical and surgical mutilation – positions belatedly adopted by leading medical organizations. He also ordered the Department of Education to take all appropriate action to keep biological men out of women’s sports.

Trump directed federal agencies to improve security vetting for international students and to prioritize civil rights protections for Jewish students. He eliminated collection and publication of data used in a misguided effort to claim that environmental harms targeted minorities because manufacturing facilities are concentrated in lower-income neighborhoods, and he issued an order to pressure the Smithsonian Institution to restore balance to its depiction of American history.

The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division under Harmeet Dhillon and Education Department under Linda McMahon launched enforcement actions against Ivy league universities to protect Jewish students and restore viewpoint diversity. The Justice Department also commenced investigations, filed and intervened in lawsuits, and reached settlements with public and private institutions to protect Americans of all backgrounds and faiths – just last week forcing Colorado to abandon a law that favors AI algorithms that promote “diversity.” It investigated the Biden administration’s weaponization of the FACE Act, issued an 882-page report exposing the abuses, and eliminated them. The Education Department ordered universities to bring back due process in university grievance procedures.

The left is vigorously fighting back. Universities have slyly rebranded DEI offices, legal challenges have been filed against Trump’s executive orders and related regulations, Democrat-appointed judges have issued injunctions, and Democratic Party officials have doubled down on racial and gender politics. For the most part, the administration has prevailed in lower courts or secured stays of adverse rulings pending appeals.

Some progressives support intersectionality, disparate impact, and DEI to harm straight white Americans. Many are so caught up in innate characteristics that they believe individual opportunity and fairness is determined at a group level, while other progressives delude themselves into believing they can choose winners without creating losers. The administration must hold firm against the left’s vitriolic counterattacks. As Donald Trump restores the American dream of equal opportunity, his challenge with just eight months until the probable loss of the Republican legislative majority is to create enduring change, rather than an interregnum in progressive rule.

Kenin M. Spivak is founder and chairman of SMI Group LLC, an international consulting firm and investment bank. He is the author of fiction and non-fiction books and a frequent speaker and contributor to media, including RealClearPolitics, The American Mind, National Review, television, radio, and podcasts.

Tyler Durden Tue, 05/05/2026 - 17:00

Alberta Separatists Say They Have Enough Signatures To Force Referendum On Leaving Canada

A group pushing for Alberta to break free from Canada announced Monday that it has submitted nearly double the number of signatures required to force a referendum -- which could come as early as October. While Alberta Premier Danielle Smith opposes independence, she has assured Albertans that she will not try to thwart a referendum if the signature hurdle were cleared.  

A signature in support of an independence referendum is collected atop a mountain in Alberta (via Stay Free Alberta)

Triggering a referendum requires 178,000 signatures, but the separatist organization Stay Free Alberta says it amassed more than 301,000. As in the United States, referendum organizers usually aim to far overshoot the required number so as to survive challenges on the validity of individual signatures.

On Monday, the group's leader, Mitch Sylvestre descended on Alberta's election offices in Edmonton with the petitions, aboard a convoy seven trucks strong. Celebrating the accomplishment, he likened it to Canada's favorite sport. “This day is historic in Alberta history,” he said. “It’s the first step to the next step — we’ve gotten by Round 3 and now we’re in the Stanley Cup final.”

Despite Sylvestre's triumphalism, the independence drive could hit a snag this week, as a judge may rule on a challenge of the referendum filed by a First Nations group. That term is used to describe indigenous people who are not Inuit or Métis. Their legal challenge centers on the claim that Albertan independence would deny them privileges afforded them by treaties. The verification of referendum-support signatures has been stayed pending the decision. However, Stay Free Alberta attorney Jeff Rath said these are mere speed bumps. "As far as we're concerned, whatever the court does or whatever Elections Alberta does at this point is meaningless,” he told CBC, given the premier can't ignore more than 300,000 signatures.  

Alberta has been on the wrong end of a Canadian policy called "Equalization" -- a more palatable term than what it should be called: "Wealth Redistribution." According to the Canadian government's official description, Equalization "address[es] fiscal disparities among provinces." It does so by distributing the fiscal fruits of federal taxation to provinces in such a way that poorer provinces get more money than more-prosperous ones. Alberta is easily Canada's best-off province on a per-capita basis. 

Alberta (AB) is easily Canada's wealthiest province, and sees its wealth redistributed throughout the country under the "Equalization" scheme (via Canadian government)

A victory for the "yes" side of the referendum won't guarantee independence, as more legal challenges will certainly sprout up, to say nothing of the thorny negotiations with the Canadian government that would be required -- negotiations that could be slow-walked by Albertan leaders who aren't enthused about breaking away.  

For those and other reasons, some who support independence are wary of how the referendum will play out. For example, even if the pro-independence side prevails, the waters could be muddied by the results of concurrent referendum questions. Writing at the Brownstone Institute earlier this year, Bruce Pardy painted a picture: 

If voters support independence but also other constitutional changes, what do they mean? Which should be pursued first? Which is the last resort? What if voters support independence but also support Alberta having the right to opt out of federal programs while retaining federal funding? Both of those things cannot happen. One requires that Alberta be a province, and the other requires that it not be. Any referendum result that requires interpretation is not clear.

A pro-unity group called Forever Canadian has been active too, racking up more than 400,000 signatures on a petition that asked, "Do you agree that Alberta should remain within Canada?” Meanwhile, polls show an uphill climb for the separatists, with huge differences between United Conservative Party and New Democratic Party voters: 

Tyler Durden Tue, 05/05/2026 - 16:40

AMD Dumps & Pumps (To New Record High) After Beat-And-Raise

Just wow...

AMD shares initially puked after results dropped showing top- and bottom-line beats:

• EPS: $1.37 vs. $1.29 adjusted expected

• Revenue: $10.25 billion vs. $9.89 billion expected

But now they are exploding higher after the second-largest AI chipmaker raised estimates:

• For the second quarter, AMD said it expects about $11.2 billion in revenue, versus expectations of $10.52 billion, according to LSEG

That is a new record high...

Revenue jumped 38% from $7.44 billion a year ago, the company said in a release on Tuesday, beating in every segment...

• Data center revenue $5.78 billion, +57% y/y, estimate $5.61 billion

• Gaming revenue $720 million, +11% y/y, estimate $668.6 million

• Client revenue $2.89 billion, +26% y/y, estimate $2.73 billion

• Embedded revenue $873 million, +6.1% y/y, estimate $868.4 million

“Looking ahead, we expect server growth to accelerate meaningfully as we scale supply to meet demand,” Chief Executive Officer Lisa Su said in the statement.

“We delivered an outstanding first quarter, driven by accelerating demand for AI infrastructure, with data center now the primary driver of our revenue and earnings growth.”

Oh and in case you didn't see enough beats...

• Capital expenditure $389 million, +83% y/y, estimate $215.2 million

• Adjusted operating income $2.54 billion, +43% y/y, estimate $2.41 billion

• Adjusted operating margin 25% vs. 24% y/y, estimate 24.3%

• Free cash flow $2.57 billion vs. $727 million y/y, estimate $2.35 billion

• R&D expenses $2.40 billion, +39% y/y, estimate $2.26 billion

Tonight's gains come AFTER AMD's stock has more than tripled over the past year, including a 66% jump so far in 2026.

Tyler Durden Tue, 05/05/2026 - 16:29

NIH Virologist Vincent Munster Caught Smuggling Deadly Viruses Into U.S., FBI Investigating

Authored by Paul D. Thacker via The DisInformation Chronicle,

Since the COVID pandemic landed on American shores in early 2020, virologists and allied science writers have engaged in a vociferous propaganda campaign to deny the dangers of virus experiments. When Nature Magazine published a 2021 article minimizing a Wuhan lab accident as the pandemic’s cause, science writer Amy Maxmen quoted Vincent Munster, a virologist at the Rocky Mountain Laboratories, a division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), in Montana.

Munster told Nature’s Maxmen that there was nothing suspicious about a novel coronavirus popping up in the same city as the Wuhan Institute of Virology which was studying coronaviruses. Labs tend to specialize in the specific viruses found around them, Munster explained, and the Wuhan Institute of Virology focuses on coronaviruses because many circulate in China and neighboring countries.

“Nine out of ten times, when there’s a new outbreak, you’ll find a lab that will be working on these kinds of viruses nearby,” Munster told Nature.

Well, kind of. Sort of. But really not.

In fact, virologists regularly collect viruses from far away countries and bring them back to their own cities to study. And according to emails I have seen that are now circulating inside the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), one of those virologists is the NIH’s Vincent Munster.

“We are unable to comment as this is under investigation,” wrote HHS spokesperson, Andrew Nixon in an email. “So we will refer you to the FBI.”

When contacted about their investigation into Munster and his NIH researcher, the FBI press office replied by email, “We decline to comment.”

While on a trip back from the Democratic Republic of Congo earlier this year, Munster and a scientist in his NIH lab were pulled aside for an airport security inspection. Inside their luggage, one of the two had a hard-shelled protective case used to transport sensitive property such as electronics and firearms. When the protective case was opened, it was found to contain pathogen samples collected from patients.

However, the human pathogens, which included monkeypox virus, may have been inactivated by reagents and rendered no longer infectious.

Munster and his NIH research fellow Claude Kwe Yinda published a February study in a Lancet journal that cited monkeypox as a global threat. Without any hint of irony, they warned about “multiple travel-associated cases reported since 2024, including seven in the USA.” The Democratic Republic of Congo has been considered the global epicenter of monkeypox virus, with over 100,000 cases as of October last year.

HHS regulates monkeypox as a “select agent”—microorganisms and toxins that pose a severe threat to public safety. Federal programs control their possession and use, while Department of Transportation regulations manage their shipment and transport.

Munster and his lab scientist did not have paperwork required by law to transport deadly pathogens from Africa to his NIH lab in Montana. Both NIH scientists were placed on leave. Contact information for both Vincent Munster and Claude Kwe Yinda have been removed from the HHS employment directory.

Last year, the Department of Justice charged two Chinese nationals with criminal conspiracy for smuggling a dangerous plant fungus through a Detroit airport so they could study it in a lab at the University of Michigan.

Munster did not return repeated requests for comment sent to his NIH email asking him to explain if the monkeypox and potentially other viruses he was transporting had been inactivated or were still infectious. According to his bio at NIH’s Rocky Mountain Labs in Montana, Munster has field study sites in the Republic of the Congo to study Ebola virus with collaborators at the Wildlife Conservation Society and the Laboratoire National de Santé Publique in Brazzaville.

Rocky Mountain Labs is an integral part of the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), the institute once led by Tony Fauci. The Montana facility has a BSL-4 lab where virologists study the world’s most deadly viruses including Ebola, Marburg, and Lassa Fever.

Andrea Marzi, the Acting Chief of Virology at Rocky Mountain Labs, did not return emails asking if the monkeypox and other possible viruses Munster was transporting had been inactivated or were still infectious. Nor did she reply to requests asking if Munster’s lab had been secured.

Senator Rand Paul sent the NIAID director a letter two years ago regarding Munster, who was listed as a partner for a project called DEFUSE that was submitted in 2018 to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). As part of DEFUSE proposal to DARPA, virologists planned to engineer novel viruses by taking the backbone of a bat virus and inserting a spike protein with a furin cleavage site. A furin cleavage site allows viruses to infect the cells of human lungs.

DARPA denied funding for DEFUSE, but the following year, a novel bat virus with a furin cleavage site began infecting humans in Wuhan. No other virus closely related to the COVID virus has this furin cleavage site.

Shortly after the COVID virus began infecting Americans, Columbia University virologist Vincent Racaniello sent Munster an alarming February 2020 email, saying he had heard that the new COVID virus had a furin cleavage site “that might have been engineered.”

“If true this is very bad for all of virology research,” Racaniell wrote to Munster.

“And the fun begins,” replied Munster.

The news about Munster hits during an especially hard media cycle for virologists. I reported last week for RealClearInvestigations that the federal government had quietly removed University of North Carolina virologist Ralph Baric from all his NIH grants; UNC also placed Baric on leave. A senior HHS official, who reviewed the government’s classified material, told me that UNC is terrified the public will learn that they were complicit in starting the COVID pandemic.

“Baric designed the gun,” he said. “But the Chinese built it, and then they pulled the trigger.”

That same day, the Department of Justice indicted Tony Fauci’s senior advisor, David Morens, for concealing federal records concerning funding for virus research during the COVID pandemic. The indictment listed Peter Daszak of EcoHealth Alliance as “CO-CONSPIRATOR 1” and Boston University virologist Gerald Keusch as “CO-CONSPIRATOR 2.”

Last month, I reported on newly unearthed emails that show Morens, Daszak, and Keusch plotted against me for writing a 2021 investigation for the BMJ that concluded virologists had conspired in a misinformation campaign to cover up a possible Wuhan lab accident as the COVID pandemic’s cause.

In emails discussing me and my 2021 article, Keusch asked Morens and Daszak if they knew how to get in contact with former BMJ editor Peter Smith to complain. Daszak emailed back that contacting the BMJ about me was “a really good move” as my reporting was “pretty offensive stuff.”

Tyler Durden Tue, 05/05/2026 - 16:20