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Republican Mayor Celebrates African Refugees As The "New Pioneers"

A Republican mayor in Utah is catching heat for turning the state's traditional Pioneer Day into a celebration of African refugees, dubbing them the modern-day equivalents of the Mormon settlers who founded the Beehive State.

Provo Mayor Marsha Judkins posted an Instagram message this week praising African migrants who have resettled in Utah's fourth-largest city.

Judkins said that Utahns mark Pioneer Day to "recognize those who journeyed west in search of religious freedom and the opportunity to build a better future free from persecution."

Judkins's message then took a woke turn, writing: "We also recognize members of our refugee community who embody that same pioneer spirit, leaving behind familiar homes to begin new lives in a place they had never seen before."

        View this post on Instagram                      

A post shared by Provo City (@provocity)

"We encourage you to watch and learn from the experiences of refugees who now call Provo home and the enduring contributions they make every day, from strengthening local nonprofits to serving in the United States military," the mayor's message added. "Their stories inspire all of us to continue fostering a welcoming community where people of every background and experience can experience the promise of Provo."

Pioneer Day traditionally honors the Mormon pioneers led by Brigham Young who settled Utah in the 1800s. Judkins's post ignited a firestorm online as critics accused her of twisting the state's history to push a progressive immigration message.

Disgraceful conduct by Marsha Judkins and Provo City. Talk about erasing history. This is a total rejection and re-write of what Pioneer Day even is.

— NormieUtah (@NormieUtah) July 25, 2026

Enraging.

— Ava McSweeney (@AvaMcSweeney) July 26, 2026 Tyler Durden Tue, 07/28/2026 - 18:00

RFK Jr. Says HHS Found Fauci Diaries Across 11 Different Servers

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

Health officials located the diaries of Dr. Anthony Fauci across nearly a dozen different servers, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said on July 27.

Health Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington on April 22, 2026. Madalina Kilroy/The Epoch Times

"It took us about eight months to dig these out of 11 separate servers, where they had been sequestered and secreted," Kennedy said during an appearance on Fox News.

After obtaining the private entries of Fauci, who was the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) from 1984 to 2022, officials with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) handed over the documents to Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Ron Johnson (R-Wis.). The senators have been investigating the origins of COVID-19 and the response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Paul, the chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, subsequently released diary entries from December 2019 through December 2022, combined into one document.

"I think the starkest impression that you get from reading these diaries is this massive dichotomy between what he was saying privately and what he was simultaneously saying publicly," Kennedy, whose HHS oversees NIH, said on Fox.

Fauci's institute had provided funding to a Wuhan laboratory to run experiments on coronaviruses, at least one of which added a feature to a virus. A 2018 research proposal outlined work that would insert a feature called a furin cleavage site into a coronavirus, which may have been done at the Wuhan lab.

In a diary entry, Fauci recounted how, during a Feb. 1, 2020, call, 9 of the 11 scientists felt that deliberate insertion of the furin cleavage site into the COVID-19 virus was possible, noting past work done at the Wuhan lab.

Fauci, though, repeatedly promoted the theory in public that the virus, known as SARS-CoV-2, came from nature.

"There was a study recently that we can make available to you, where a group of highly qualified evolutionary virologists looked at the sequences there and the sequences in bats as they evolve," Fauci told a White House briefing in April 2020. "And the mutations that it took to get to the point where it is now is totally consistent with a jump of a species from an animal to a human."

That paper, "The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2," said that "SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus" and that no lab-based scenario was plausible.

Fauci was involved with crafting the paper, emails released by Paul show, and the paper's authors doubted their conclusions both before and after the study's publication, according to messages made public by Paul and others.

The following month, in May 2020, Fauci told National Geographic that there was no scientific evidence that COVID-19 was made in any lab in China.

Fauci also said in his diary that he had convinced the mayor of New York City to close schools.

"I had a similar call with Ann O'Leary, the [chief of staff] of Gov. Gavin Newsom of California," Fauci wrote. "Ann said that based on my TV appearances today and yesterday, the Governor has decided to close the schools in California as well as the bars and restaurants."

Fauci said in a 2022 interview that he had "nothing to do" with schools being closed.

Fauci declined to testify to Paul's committee on a voluntary basis, prompting the senator in June to subpoena Fauci. The doctor is scheduled to testify before the committee on Wednesday.

Fauci, who has not responded to requests for comment, is covered against many possible charges by a preemptive pardon provided by former President Joe Biden.

NIAID director Dr. Anthony Fauci listens to President Joe Biden speak during a visit to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Md., on Feb. 11, 2021. Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images Tyler Durden Tue, 07/28/2026 - 17:40

NYC Councilwoman Sounds Alarm: Mamdani's Property Database Puts Wealthy Homeowners In Crosshairs Of "Luigi-Worshipping Leftist Thugs"

NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani's administration has been staffed with far-left activists who seek nothing less than the destruction of capitalism and America in its current form. They govern like socialist thugs and are only in the early stages of mounting a war against NYC's wealthy. 

This is particularly worrisome for the Ken Griffins of the world because Mamdani's friend, an unofficial spokesperson for the Democratic Socialists of America who has taken questionable trips to communist Cuba and may be linked to a foreign subversion network, told his followers, "Let the streets run red with their capitalist blood."

Hasan Piker calls on his followers to kill capitalists:

“Yeah kill them! KiII those motherfuckers and murder those motherfuckers in the streets. Let the streets soak in their fucking red capitalist blood, dude.”

Democrats are campaigning with him. pic.twitter.com/YiZxGgRkgc

— Eyal Yakoby (@EYakoby) April 9, 2026

Mamdani's Department of Finance published a new list of names and property addresses for residences it classifies as potentially unoccupied, non-primary homes valued above $1 million.

"This is a target list. And it's clearly designed to intimidate homeowners under the very realistic threat of violence from Luigi-worshipping leftist thugs," Queens City Council Member Vickie Paladino wrote on X.

I’m sorry but the city did what?

This is a target list. And it’s clearly designed to intimidate homeowners under the very realistic threat of violence from Luigi-worshipping leftist thugs.

Understand that they want people to die. As Zohran’s buddy Hasan Piker said “let the… https://t.co/Rku52dHL7D

— Hon. Vickie Paladino (@VickieforNYC) July 26, 2026

Property transaction records for NYC are public, but what the far-left controlling City Hall actually did was create a handy list of wealthy individuals and the addresses of their second homes, which "Luigi-worshipping leftist thugs" could use to target in intimidating tactics - common among the radical left. 

Council Minority Leader David Carr called the release "reckless," warning that thousands of properties may have been incorrectly classified.

What readers need to understand is that the Mamdanis of the world and reform socialists are not actually focused on affordability, transgender issues, or Palestine. Those causes function as mobilization pathways toward a broader strategic objective: disrupting the gears of capitalism and creating the conditions for systemic collapse from within.

The DSA states this objective plainly:

What the internet is saying:

The "Curley effect" in action: Intentional policies designed to make the politically undesirable move out, after which it becomes easier to consolidate political power. #NYC

— OG Capitalist Shrugged (@CapitalShrugged) July 25, 2026

You know who else published lists… the Nazis. They published lists of Jewish owned businesses and properties, so the Germans knew whom to throw out and illegally take over those homes and businesses

— AniYehudi - ברוך (@AYehudi1948) July 27, 2026

Why would he publish people’s names and home addresses if not to target them like Ken griffin?

— Megan Martin MD, MPH (@Megmd514) July 25, 2026

Publishing names and addresses creates a glaring security risk: How long before a radical Marxist group targets one of these homes with a firebomb?

The central point is that reformist socialists are not primarily focused on solving affordability, for which they have produced no credible plan.

Their main objective is to delegitimize and ultimately dismantle capitalism. Mamdani's list should alarm wealthy New Yorkers because it lowers the barrier for surveillance, harassment, and potential violence by radical activists tied to the radical left. This doesn't prove an attack is imminent, but it materially expands the threat environment. 

via Karlyn Borysenko ... 

Intimidation and political violence are common tactics among the radical left. The State Department warned about the resurgence of the far left in recent weeks, underscoring that America's political climate is entering a more volatile and dangerous phase reminiscent of the era when the Weather Underground ran amok. 

Tyler Durden Tue, 07/28/2026 - 17:20

Comey Attorneys Seek Dismissal Of Indictment Over '86 47' Instagram Post

Via American Greatness,

Attorneys for former FBI Director James Comey are asking a federal court to toss out the indictment accusing him of threatening President Donald Trump’s life, arguing his Instagram post of seashells spelling “86 47” was nothing more than protected political speech.

Comey was indicted in April over the post, published in May 2025 and later deleted, which prosecutors say amounted to a threat against the president. In a filing Monday, Comey’s legal team called the case an assault on the First Amendment, insisting the numbers referenced a slogan that has circulated at protests and on merchandise nationwide, rather than any call for violence.

“Mr. Comey, an outspoken critic of President Trump, posted a photograph of seashells spelling out ’86 47,’ a well-known political slogan that expresses opposition to the President,” the filing said, adding that thousands of items bearing the phrase have been sold online and that it was a common sight at demonstrations in the months before his post.

The defense accused the Justice Department of singling out Comey “to prosecute one of the President’s most prominent critics for publishing another person’s statement of political opposition,” calling the effort an unconstitutional attempt to suppress speech.

Prosecutors, however, have pointed to the phrase’s widely understood meaning as coded language for killing the president, a reading that helped drive the grand jury’s decision to indict one of Trump’s most vocal law enforcement critics.

Comey has denied any intent to threaten Trump and is expected to plead not guilty at an arraignment scheduled for next month in North Carolina.

His attorneys argue that even a trial ending in acquittal would amount to unconstitutional punishment and could invite future prosecutions of the president’s perceived political opponents, noting that officials have warned they would pursue anyone who tries to “copycat” Comey’s post.

The filing also disclosed that after deleting the image, Comey reached out to his local police chief to flag the controversy and later agreed to sit for an interview with Secret Service agents, details his lawyers say undercut any claim that he intended a genuine threat. They argue prosecutors have not met the Supreme Court’s demanding standard for proving a “true threat,” which requires evidence Comey himself meant to incite violence.

Comey’s team also sought to draw a contrast with Trump’s own rhetoric, pointing to the president’s earlier description of lawmakers who urged troops to disobey unlawful orders as committing “treason” that was “punishable by death.” The comparison drew immediate skepticism from Trump allies, who note the president was addressing lawmakers accused of encouraging service members to defy the commander in chief, a markedly different scenario than a former top law enforcement official publicly signaling hostility toward a sitting president he has spent years attacking.

The case marks the latest chapter in the long-running feud between Trump and Comey, whom the president fired as FBI director in 2017 and has repeatedly accused of politicizing the bureau’s Russia investigation into his 2016 campaign.

Tyler Durden Tue, 07/28/2026 - 17:00

New Biden Tapes Reveal Hur's "Well-Meaning Elderly Man" Had An $8 Million Motive To Keep Classified Docs

Joe Biden kept classified material after leaving the vice presidency, knew what it was, and read it aloud to a civilian with no security clearance who was helping him write a book he was paid $8 million for. He said as much on tape, repeatedly, in 2016 and 2017. The Justice Department had those recordings and kept them from the public for two years - the same two years it was prosecuting Donald Trump for mishandling classified documents.

Former President Joe Biden speaks during the National Bar Association's 100th Annual Awards Gala in Chicago on July 31, 2025. Nam Y. Huh/AP Photo

The recordings came out Monday night, released by the Heritage Foundation's Oversight Project after a FOIA fight that began in March 2024 and ran first against the Justice Department and then against Biden's personal attorneys. Roughly three hours of audio and 117 pages of transcripts, drawn from the interviews Special Counsel Robert Hur obtained during his investigation into Biden's handling of classified material. The Oversight Project says the complete set runs to about 70 hours and that further releases are coming.

Start with what is on them.

In an October 2016 session, recorded while he was still the sitting vice president, Biden tells ghostwriter Mark Lewis Zwonitzer: "I have extensive notes over this period of time... They didn't even know I had this."

In February 2017, a month after leaving office and living in a Virginia rental: "So this was - I, early on, in '09 - I just found all of the classified stuff downstairs." He then walks Zwonitzer through his 2009 argument against the Afghanistan troop surge.

Joe Biden: "So this was, I early on, um, in '09 I just found all the classified stuff downstairs." pic.twitter.com/lsFlaSZMhC

— House Judiciary GOP 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 (@JudiciaryGOP) July 27, 2026

On April 14, 2017, he stops to warn the man he's talking to: "Some of this may be classified. So, be careful. I'm not sure. ... It's not marked classified, but -"

Joe Biden: "Some of this may be classified so be careful with it." pic.twitter.com/V6wUOH0z8S

— House Judiciary GOP 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 (@JudiciaryGOP) July 27, 2026

Elsewhere in the same period: "The next thing I have here is, um, this is classified."

Hur's report found that Biden read from classified notebooks to Zwonitzer "nearly verbatim, sometimes for an hour or more at a time" on at least three occasions, and that the evidence showed convincingly he knew those notebooks held classified information. The FBI later recovered marked classified documents on Afghanistan policy, along with the notebooks, from the garages, offices and basement den of Biden's Wilmington home.

The transcripts are shot through with redactions. The Oversight Project's argument is that the blackouts are themselves the evidence: "The silence of the redactions loudly demonstrates that Biden knowingly and willfully disclosed classified information to his ghostwriter." Nine years on, the public still isn't cleared to know what he told a man who wasn't cleared to hear it.

The Justice Department Had The Tapes The Whole Time

In June 2023, the Department of Justice indicted Donald Trump on dozens of counts for retaining classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. Espionage Act charges, a special counsel, a grand jury, federal agents inside a former president's home, and a year of argument over whether a man who kept boxes in a bathroom endangered the country.

Through every month of that, the same Department held audio of the sitting president saying he'd found all the classified stuff downstairs. It had obtained the recordings through Hur's investigation, knew their contents in detail, and declined to release them for the remainder of Biden's term.

When Biden's own interview with Hur finally surfaced in May 2025, the Department didn't relent - Axios obtained the five hours of audio and published it.

The ghostwriter tapes took another fourteen months. Once Biden left office and no longer had a department asserting exemptions on his behalf, his private attorneys sued in May 2026 to keep them sealed, arguing the conversations were personal. A federal judge in Washington ruled against him in June. A three-judge panel of the DC Circuit then rejected his appeal 2-1, finding a substantial public interest in disclosure.

He had two moves left - rehearing before the full circuit, or a petition to the Supreme Court - and took neither. His spokesman announced that Biden "respects the courts and the vital role an independent judiciary plays in a healthy democracy," in the same week he stopped resisting one.

The Ghostwriter Deleted The Recordings Before The FBI Called

The tapes came close to never existing at all. Chapter Seventeen of Hur's report deals with what Zwonitzer did after learning a special counsel had been appointed to investigate Biden. Before the FBI made contact, he deleted the audio files of his Biden interviews from his laptop and from an external hard drive. He described it to investigators plainly: "I simply took the audio files subfolder from both the G drive and my laptop and slid them into the trash. I saved all the transcripts."

Hur's own assessment of what had been destroyed was that the recordings "had significant evidentiary value."

Bureau technicians recovered most of the audio from the external drive, and nothing relevant from the laptop. Three of the recovered files were missing portions. A fourth had been partly overwritten by a different recording. Zwonitzer told investigators he'd been worried about being hacked, and declined to say how much of his motivation was the federal investigation he had just learned about. He wasn't charged - as Hur cited insufficient evidence and found him cooperative and forthright, which he was, after the deletion.

Hur Gave Two Different Answers Five Weeks Apart

In addition to pulling a Comey ('no reasonable prosecutor' vibes), Hur was quite the spin doctor. 

In February 2024, Hur wrote that a jury would likely see Biden as "a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory," and that convicting a former president in his eighties of a felony requiring willfulness would be difficult. It was the only line most people retained from a 345-page report. Biden's own lawyers spent the following week attacking it as gratuitous, and it followed him into every press conference until he left the 2024 race.

Five weeks later, on March 12, 2024, Hur sat before the House Judiciary Committee under oath and was asked why Biden had taken the notebooks in the first place. His answer pointed at money. Biden had "strong motivations to ignore proper procedures for safeguarding his classified" material, Hur testified, and the likely reason he wanted the notebooks was the $8 million three-book deal he'd signed with Flatiron Books in April 2017, reported by Publishers Weekly and covering two books by Biden and one by Jill Biden.

Those two accounts describe different men. One is confused and harmless. The other is a former vice president with a financial motivation to hold onto national security material and a ghostwriter waiting to hear it. 

The financial record sits in public filings. The Bidens reported adjusted gross income of $396,456 in 2016, his last full year as vice president, and $11,031,309 in 2017. Promise Me, Dad sold more than 300,000 copies, and Biden took in roughly $1.8 million from thirty book-tour appearances. When Hur's investigators later asked him about the recordings, his written answers maintained that he'd used the word "classified" only loosely around his ghostwriter.

Bottom line: Hur found evidence of disclosure - spoken aloud, to a civilian without clearance, in service of a book contract that Hur himself identified as the motive. Disclosure is what the Espionage Act was written to reach, and the man who did it was never charged, never tried, and never had to sit in a courtroom while a jury listened to the recording.

In February 2025, Trump revoked Biden's security clearances and daily intelligence briefings, citing the special counsel directly: "The Hur Report revealed that Biden suffers from 'poor memory' and, even in his 'prime,' could not be trusted with sensitive information."

Meanwhile, about 67 hours of audio have yet to be released.

Listen to more below:

Tyler Durden Tue, 07/28/2026 - 16:40

The Socialist Monster Awakens

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness,

Who Caused Unaffordability?

Fear about “affordability” supposedly fueled the new, strident socialism.

Yet annual inflation during Biden’s four years averaged almost 5 percent. It peaked at over 9 percent, while prices for some key staples rose by 30 percent over his tenure—all to silence from the Left. (By contrast, annual inflation during Trump’s first term averaged 1.9 percent. In his second term, it averaged 2.6 percent in 2025—and may rise to 4.5 percent in 2026, given the war with Iran.)

The socialists were not just quiet during Biden’s four years; they were themselves responsible for the rampant Biden inflation. They had implemented an inflationary de facto third Obama term, ramming through the most radical and costly agenda in decades under the veneer of that cognitively challenged waxen effigy, good ol’ Joe Biden from Scranton.

So the current Jacobin takeover of the Democratic Party was not sparked by concerns about “affordability”—or at least not if by “affordability” we mean the middle-class struggle to buy a house, a car, or groceries.

Instead, the socialist moment was merely the logical culmination of years of boutique radicalism within the Democratic aristocracy—the ossified leadership of Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, and Hakeem Jeffries, along with the aging Black Caucus, the incoherent Squad, the DEI crowd, the open-border zealots, and the radical greens.

The grandees of the party also normalized the crazy mobs of BLM and Antifa long ago.

Democrats as Dr. Frankenstein

Almost every weaponized scam and national hysteria in the last two decades was amplified and spread by mainstream Democrats: the farcical claim that the Wuhan-lab-hatched COVID virus came from pangolins or bats; the Duke Lacrosse and Covington Kids hoaxes; the Jussie Smollett scam, the “Hands up, don’t shoot” lie; the deification of George Floyd, often portrayed with wings and a halo; Fauxcahontas Liz Warren, touted as the first Native American Harvard law professor (thanks to her grandfather’s high cheekbones); the radical diminution of in-person voting; the canonization of Trayvon Martin and Karmelo Anthony as blameless model children; and the mythology of a 1619 national founding.

Who allowed not just one, two, three, or four million border-jumpers into the country, but over ten million—illegal, unvetted, viewed as an assumed new political constituency, and instantaneously dependent on the welfare state?

Who gave us three, four, five, or even more genders and biological males showering with teenage girls or female prisoners? Who sloganeered about “defund the police” and “no cash bail”?

All this was about as radical as it gets.

The Democratic establishment’s unhinged hatred of Donald Trump mainstreamed radicalism even further and helped birth the socialist-cum-communist Frankensteinian monster that is now devouring its mad-scientist creators.

“By any means necessary” was a Democratic mantra over a decade ago. By 2016, the Democratic leadership and the Clinton campaign were hatching the Steele-dossier farce to warp an election.

In 2020, the Democratic deep state—Antony Blinken, Mike Morell, John Brennan, James Clapper, Leon Panetta, and others—had fabricated the farcical claim that the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation, a hoax that, this time around, likely did alter an election.

The Democratic establishment, working with its appendages in Silicon Valley, had censored news attesting to the authenticity of Hunter’s embarrassing laptop contents. (For an account of what the establishment was doing in 2020, read Molly Ball’s Time essay describing the “conspiracies” and “cabals” that worked behind the scenes to change voting rules and ensure a Biden victory through mail-in, no-ID balloting.)

Then came four unhinged years of lawfare: special counsel Jack Smith’s seizure of the communications of senators and congressmen, the Mar-a-Lago raid on Trump’s home, the effort to de-ballot Trump, and the five civil and criminal circuses that resulted in half a billion dollars in fines.

All those perversions of the legal system were accompanied by a host of mainstream Democrats, retired generals, politicos, and athletes shouting that Trump was a Nazi, a fascist, a Mussolini, a traitor, or a Putin asset. Meanwhile, a host of loudmouth actors, Democratic activists, and celebrities competed with each other about how best to kill him—whether by shooting, stabbing, poisoning, beheading, burning him alive, or blowing him up.

Trump supporters were libeled over the years by establishment Democrats as irredeemables, deplorables, chumps, dregs, and garbage.

Even an establishment figure like Rosa Brooks, a former Obama-appointed Pentagon lawyer, called for a military coup in Foreign Policy just 10 days after Trump first took office in 2017.

Three would-be assassins got close enough to killing Trump to draw return fire from the Secret Service—near-death encounters that elicited both unapologetic applause for the attempts and lamentations that the shooters had failed from the now truly deranged social-media Left. Murderers themselves were normalized as leftist icons, as seen in the canonization of Luigi Mangione and the glee that followed in many Democratic social media circles after the murder of Charlie Kirk.

Yet did the establishment Democratic apparat calm these waters? Or did it set them boiling?

It was Chuck Schumer who threatened conservative Supreme Court justices, screaming in front of a mob outside the court’s doors, “I want to tell you, Gorsuch, I want to tell you, Kavanaugh, you have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.” Schumer sounded more like a pink-haired anti-ICE street protester than a U.S. senator.

No surprise, then, that two years later a left-wing would-be assassin turned up at Kavanaugh’s home, along with crowds of enthusiastic protestors.

Does anyone recall Maxine Waters urging the public to bird-dog Trump administration officials and harass them whenever they were seen in public?

“If you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out, and you create a crowd, and you push back on them, and you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.”

Does anyone also remember Nancy Pelosi, then-Democratic House Minority leader, greenlighting “uprisings” over ICE deportations?

“I just don’t know why there aren’t uprisings all over the country. Maybe there will be.” So spoke the radical owner of two mansions, who entered Congress with little net worth and will leave it worth over $100 million. A Tip O’Neill she wasn’t.

Then there was soon-to-be Vice President Kamala Harris egging on the George Floyd demonstrations, which, weeks earlier, had already turned violent and indeed deadly (despite what the “fact-checkers” asserted):

This is a movement, I’m telling you. They’re not going to stop. And everyone beware, because they’re not going to stop. They’re not going to stop before Election Day in November, and they’re not going to stop after Election Day. And that should be—everyone should take note of that, on both levels, that they’re not going to let up, and they should not, and we should not.

After four months of rioting in 2020—which left 25 people dead and 1,500 law enforcement officers injured, inflicted $2 billion in damage, and saw a police precinct, a federal courthouse, and an iconic church set ablaze—who gave the perpetrators a pass, with 14,000 arrests followed by few convictions and fewer jailings?

What happened during the violence against ICE in 2025–26? Did the Democratic apparat at least pretend to deplore the violence, or did it instead egg it on?

And who, as sore losers in 2016 and 2024, normalized the idea of dismantling the constitutional order—first by calling for the abolition of the Electoral College and later by planning to pack the court, end the filibuster, and admit two new left-wing states?

The Frankenstein Monster Awakens

So the socialists and communists did not really hijack the party. Rather, these youthful radicals were spawned and nurtured by aged Democrats. They became irate over their impotence and loss of influence—and simply upgraded the methods and message of their elders.

The upper-middle-class Mamdanis, Pikers, and AOCs did not storm the party parapets but were invited in by a party that had already radicalized itself—amid its hatred of Donald Trump, its growing estrangement from the majority of the American people, and its fury at becoming increasingly powerless without the White House, Congress, or the Supreme Court.

Socialists did not lower the bar for extremism; establishment Democrats had already destroyed that standard altogether.

Given all that, the Democratic Socialists of America scarcely had to be invented.

After a decade of establishment Democrats destroying norms and traditions, deliberately dividing us by race, seeking to eliminate life-giving fossil fuels, and trying to implement dangerous crackpot ideas like critical race theory, critical legal theory, no cash bail, and defunding the police, the only change is that the now-electrified socialist monsters have awakened. They have mocked their stagnant creators, reenergized the old messages, and simply sought to replace the messengers.

Gone or going soon were the old white people like Pelosi and Schumer—despite their pathetic efforts to appease the Jacobins. In their place arose a cohort of upper-middle-class, degreed but otherwise poorly educated white urbanites, furious that their empty university certificates, student debt, inflated sense of self, and precious titles and jobs—but low salaries—had not delivered the affluent lifestyles enjoyed by lawyers, doctors, stockbrokers, and other professionals in their urban circles who had real jobs.

The downwardly mobile whites who formed 85 percent of the official ranks of the Democratic Socialists of America were joined by first- and second-generation immigrants, many from failed socialist states.

These were ingrates who, once safe and prospering in America, learned that boutique radicalism and identity chauvinism won cultural acceptance and conferred DEI leverage in their blue-state urban circles—and so sought to dismantle the very host nation that had saved them.

For both groups, anger was fed by envy of others with more stuff and by furor at a Middle America that plowed ahead, ignoring both their supposed talents and their hyped plight. And the Democratic Party provided the radical model—which, in their youthful ignorance, the new socialists pledged to enhance and exceed.

No longer, they thought, would hardcore leftists have to hide their agendas for fear of losing elections. In their folly, they attributed Harris’s 2024 implosion not to her clumsy efforts to disown and disguise her radical past (including the most left-wing voting record in the Senate), but to her not being left-wing enough.

In other words, a milquetoast socialist had lost in 2024 not because she was too radical for America, but because she was not socialist—or indeed, communist—enough.

The crazed new socialists bragged that they could win by loudly and brazenly broadcasting the old agendas: open borders, mass amnesties, defunding the police, ending fossil fuels, attacking—and now seeking to destroy—the Senate and Supreme Court, and scapegoating whites and white “privilege.” To this old mainstream Democratic farrago, they added one new element: openly embracing anti-Zionism and indeed antisemitism.

America will soon see how this insanity works out.

Tyler Durden Tue, 07/28/2026 - 16:20

Tate Brothers To Remain In Jail In Miami As They Fight Extradition To UK

Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times,

A federal judge in Florida said Monday that social media influencers Andrew and Tristan Tate will remain in a Miami jail for at least two more weeks as they fight extradition to the United Kingdom, where the brothers are accused of rape and sex trafficking.

On July 27, U.S. Magistrate Judge Lauren Louis set a detention hearing for Aug. 13 to determine whether the Tates should be released during an extradition process that could last for months—or remain behind bars.

The brothers, who have been in custody since making a brief court appearance two days after their July 18 arrest, were not required to appear on Monday and were not present when the judge continued their detention.

Joseph McBride, an attorney for the brothers, has said they will fight extradition and that they maintain their innocence. He described the attempt to extradite the brothers as politically motivated.

McBride told reporters after their initial court appearance on July 20 that the brothers did not do anything wrong.

“They shouldn’t be extradited for crimes they did not commit,” he said.

McBride said Monday that he wants the U.S. government to provide the materials British authorities submitted to secure their arrests.

“They don’t have anything but the accusations,” McBride said after the hearing. “It’s just their word against our word right now.”

Assistant U.S. Attorney Alejandra Lopez said the UK has until mid-September to submit its supporting materials to the State Department.

‘Why Am I Here?’

In remarks to the New York Post on Monday, McBride said he meets with Andrew Tate as many as six times a week and jots down the influencer’s thoughts so they can later be posted on social media.

McBride described the arrangement, which allows Tate to continue reaching his millions of online followers from jail, as the “Pony Express.”

“There’s a way to be like, ‘What would you like said to the world?’” McBride said. “It’s not very hard.”

In one July 27 post, Tate complained about being held in a special housing unit, an isolated section of the jail typically used either to protect inmates or punish misconduct.

“This is punitive housing for people who murder their cellmates,” Tate wrote. “No commissary, no phone calls, no yard time.”

Describing himself as an “innocent until proven guilty extradition detainee,” Tate noted that he is a U.S. citizen wanted by a foreign government and questioned the reason for his detention.

“Why am I here?” he wrote.

In another post, Tate called the case “politically motivated” and described it as punishment for “empowering men” and giving them “the spirit to say enough is enough.”

He also thanked supporters who gathered outside the jail with signs, telling them that although the messages were difficult to read from his cell, he could “feel every word.”

British Charges

British prosecutors have said Andrew Tate, 39, faces more than two dozen counts, including rape, assault, and arranging or facilitating trafficking for sexual exploitation. The allegations also include offenses involving indecent images of a child and “extreme pornography.”

Tristan Tate, 38, faces additional charges that include two counts of rape, three counts of sex trafficking, and one count of sexual assault.

The alleged offenses occurred between 2010 and 2017. Prosecutors said the latest charges involve four additional accusers and were filed after authorities received evidence from police in Bedfordshire, southeastern England.

The brothers were already charged in Britain with rape, bodily harm, human trafficking, and controlling prostitution for gain in connection with three other accusers and alleged conduct between 2012 and 2015.

The UK’s Crown Prosecution Service has requested their extradition while emphasizing that the defendants retain the right to a fair trial.

Andrew and Tristan Tate, who hold dual U.S. and British citizenship, have millions of followers online. Their content focuses heavily on masculinity, wealth, and relationships, while their critics have accused them of promoting misogyny.

The Tates moved to Romania in 2016 and were arrested there in 2022 on allegations that they participated in schemes to lure women for sexual exploitation. They denied wrongdoing, and the case has stalled amid legal and procedural problems, although it has not been closed.

Romanian authorities lifted the brothers’ travel restrictions in February 2025, allowing them to fly to Florida on a private jet.

Defense attorney Jackie Perczek said their conduct since then shows they are not a flight risk, noting that they continued traveling back to Romania while the criminal proceedings there remained unresolved.

“For three years they have not fled,” Perczek said. “They’ve traveled the world, and every month they return to Romania.”

Tyler Durden Tue, 07/28/2026 - 15:40

DOE’s Prometheus Bets $60 Million That AI Can Help Nuclear Get Out Of Its Own Way

The Department of Energy is putting $60 million behind an effort to use AI to accelerate nearly every stage of nuclear deployment, from reactor design and licensing to manufacturing, construction, fuel fabrication, and operations.

The three-year initiative, named Project Prometheus, is the first major Phase II project selected under DOE’s Genesis Mission. Led by Idaho National Laboratory, it brings together four national laboratories, universities, major tech companies, and more than 20 nuclear industry partners.

Participants include NVIDIA, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, Oklo, TerraPower, X-energy, GE Vernova, Westinghouse, Aalo Atomics, Antares, Valar Atomics, and Deployable Energy.

The goal is to create a secure digital thread connecting engineering models, regulatory requirements, manufacturing specifications, construction records, and operating data. DOE wants AI tools to help prepare traceable licensing documents, organize decades of legacy nuclear records, accelerate safety analyses, improve manufacturing workflows, and support reactor monitoring while keeping humans responsible for final decisions.

Prometheus is targeting a 50% reduction in reactor deployment timelines and long-term operating costs. The project has also attracted more than $200 million in industry cost sharing and another $30 million in private capital and technical contributions.

Most attention has focused on using nuclear reactors to power AI, such as NANO Nuclear’s agreement with Supermicro and Riot Platforms’ proposed collaboration with Terrestrial Energy.

Oklo, NVIDIA, and Los Alamos National Laboratory are also working together on AI-enabled nuclear fuel research, plutonium-bearing fuels, and grid studies for nuclear-powered AI facilities. That agreement directly supports the broader Genesis Mission.

We’ve covered the increasingly ridiculous AI financing “circle jerk”, where tech companies invest in AI developers that then turn around and commit to buying chips, cloud capacity, or data center services from those same backers. Amazon, for example, plans to invest billions in Anthropic while Anthropic commits to spending more than $100 billion on Amazon Web Services infrastructure.

It is an impressive growth engine, provided nobody asks where the money is actually coming from…

None of that kills the nuclear case, though. The resurgence of demand for nuclear energy was originally pushed by green energy goals and was further elevated by the increasing demands for national energy security. With neither of these demand signals waning as the AI bubble stands ready to pop at any moment, nuclear will likely continue to see support from governments across the globe in the years ahead.
 

Tyler Durden Tue, 07/28/2026 - 15:20

Bombshell Report Exposes Lefty NGOs Funding A Children's Charity Tied To Terror Network

After years of pro-Hamas protests and riots, including efforts by radical-left revolutionaries to blockade highways, bridges, and other economic chokepoints, as well as unrest across Ivy League campuses, investigators are finally examining the financial infrastructure behind the Marxist movement that increasingly appears less about Palestine and more about toppling the US empire.

At the center of the investigation is a left-wing nonprofit that may have served as a bridge, connecting major progressive foundations and revolutionary-left activist networks to organizations linked to foreign terrorist groups.

This revelation appeared in a bombshell new report by the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) and was first reported publicly by the New York Post.

NCRI claims that millions of dollars raised by the Middle East Children's Alliance (MECA) flowed through opaque funding channels to organizations with documented ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

Notably, the PFLP is a Marxist-Leninist Palestinian militant and political organization founded in 1967 by George Habash. The U.S. has designated it a Foreign Terrorist Organization since 1997 and a Specially Designated Global Terrorist since 2001.

Last summer, a rioter was seen wearing Hamas and PFLP paraphernalia as he stood in front of a burning Waymo in Los Angeles, California.

The US Treasury sanctioned Samidoun in 2024, designating it a Specially Designated Global Terrorist for allegedly serving as an international fundraiser and front organization for the PFLP. 

So why is Zohran Mamdani's intern, France Hamed... 

Zohran Mamdani's intern, France Hamed, has been on our radar every since she heartlessly ripped down posters of Jewish hostages on camera.

That wasn't a one-off. Hunter College-CUNY grad Hamed is a true Israel-hater. Here she is at a rally holding a poster for an actual terror… pic.twitter.com/JqO2IBlqC3

— Canary Mission (@canarymission) September 28, 2025

NCRI identifies MECA as the possible connective node linking revolutionary-left activist groups with major progressive donors. The Berkeley-based children's charity has become one of the most frequently promoted fundraising vehicles across the nonprofit left.

"The Middle East Children's Alliance (MECA) is a Berkeley, California–based 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Since the October 7, 2023 attacks, it has emerged as a critical U.S. charitable fundraising vehicle promoted across the pro-Palestinian activist ecosystem, including organizations within the Neville Roy Singham network, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), and a range of progressive philanthropic institutions. As MECA's public profile and fundraising accelerated, so too did questions regarding the destinations of its foreign grantmaking," NCRI wrote in the report.

MECA reported about $35 million in foreign grants between fiscal 2017 and 2025. NCRI traced $13.5 million in institutional donations, with roughly 67% routed through donor-advised funds and giving platforms that conceal the original donors. The ten largest funding sources accounted for 70% of traced contributions.

"Between FY2017 and FY2025, MECA's tax filings report approximately $35 million in foreign grant disbursements. This report identifies a persistent pattern of funding organizations with documented ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which the United States designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) in 1997. It further documents personnel overlap between MECA and organizations affiliated with the PFLP, as well as longstanding organizational and coalition relationships suggesting these connections are structural rather than incidental. The structure may partially shield the extent of collaboration with the PFLP from activist networks in the United States who both raise money for MECA and ideologically support the PFLP," NCRI said.

Foreign disbursements surged to $10.7 million in fiscal 2024, about 4.5 times the previous year. Meanwhile, more than 70% of foreign-grant entries were labeled only as "community projects," preventing outsiders from identifying the recipients or specific purposes. NCRI said the decline in disclosure began in 2020, years before the Gaza war.

The report identified six longtime MECA partners assessed as having PFLP affiliations. Those organizations gradually disappeared from MECA's public grant descriptions as scrutiny of their alleged ties intensified. Named funders included Open Society Foundations, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Tides-linked entities and organizations associated with Neville Roy Singham.

Path of funding from anonymous donors to MECA.

NCRI: A conceptual model of paths from entities and individuals soliciting funds for MECA to groups affiliated with the PFLP and on to militant and terrorist groups such as Fatah and PFLP.

"The convergence of these findings raises concerns about whether donors in the United States may be unknowingly donating to a group that ultimately benefits a foreign terrorist organization," NCRI stated.

MECA's operations overlap with the PFLP through personnel and civil society groups, according to NCRI. 

The strongest link is the "red-green alliance" between communist and Islamist activist networks.

The ShutItDown4Palestine campaign brought together organizations linked to China-based Marxist Neville Roy Singham with Students for Justice in Palestine, the campus network associated with American Muslims for Palestine.

NCRI's bombshell findings come nearly two weeks after Secretary of State Marco Rubio, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent declared war on the radical left while standing in front of delegations from 65 nations.

The State Department later released a report detailing far-left subversion networks routed through Cuba that have been sowing chaos in America.

The American people are getting a clear picture of what only appears to explain why segments of America's left have become increasingly revolutionary, embracing anti-American rhetoric and an explicitly anti-capitalist agenda, as well as seeking the destruction of America's current form.

Read the report here. 

Tyler Durden Tue, 07/28/2026 - 14:40

FERC Will Impose Reforms If PJM Fails To Adopt Changes By September, Chairman Warns

By Ethan Howland of UtilityDive

The PJM Interconnection has until the end of September to agree to governance and stakeholder reforms or the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission will impose them, the agency’s chairman, Laura Swett, said Thursday.

“PJM is facing a grave legitimacy crisis,” Swett said at a technical conference FERC held on the grid operator’s governance issues. “Some transmission owners are openly discussing leaving the RTO altogether. Put plainly, market participants have lost confidence in PJM’s decision-making abilities.”

With PJM failing to attract significant new generation in its last two capacity auctions, the grid operator is ready for major changes in the way it operates, according to its new President and CEO David Mills, who officially took over the role in May after several months as interim leader.

“We are fully committed to rise to the challenge,” including capacity market reform, Mills said.

Potential reforms discussed at the meeting include increased board independence, a formal role for states at PJM, and giving states the right to file proposals at FERC — called “filing rights” — while also expanding PJM’s filing rights.

After taking post-conference comments, FERC intends to hold a dispute resolution forum in September with PJM stakeholders to develop a governance reform package, according to Swett. If an agreement isn’t reached by the end of that month, FERC will impose its own reforms on PJM, she said.

Capacity market exposes governance weaknesses

The technical conference comes about two years after capacity prices spiked in PJM as rising demand from data centers outpaced any increase in power supplies on PJM’s system, which spans 13 Mid-Atlantic and Midwest states and the District of Columbia. That price spike led to rate increases of 20% or more for some utilities and sparked intense interest from governors and policymakers.

PJM’s struggles in responding to the rapid shift in its supply-demand balance intensified governance problems that had been festering for years, Jodi Moskowitz, PSEG’s vice president regulatory — law, deputy general counsel and RTO strategy officer, said at the meeting.

Two problems highlighted at the meeting were the ability of PJM members to effectively fire the grid operator’s board members as well as its stakeholder process, which can be long and end without concrete results.

PJM uses a sector-weighted voting system in its stakeholder process, with a two-thirds majority of a sector-weighted vote required for a measure to pass. Under the system, members are divided into five categories — electric distributor, end-use customer, generation owner, other supplier and transmission owner.

One effect of the voting system is that two sectors can join up to block a measure they don’t like, which has happened repeatedly, especially on contentious issues, the RTO Governance Research Network said in comments filed at FERC.

During the meeting, representatives for American Electric Power and others said stakeholders should have an advisory role, like the one used by the Midcontinent Independent System Operator. Under that process, PJM’s board would get input from stakeholders, but final decisions would rest with the board.

Currently PJM members run the grid operator’s stakeholder process, which can lead to priorities getting offtrack, according to Asim Haque, PJM executive vice president, governmental and member services.

PJM’s failure to use authorities that it has and its failure to engage with states reflects the organization’s culture, according to FERC Commissioner David LaCerte.

“This is a cultural quagmire that they’ve developed by eroding the board in the past and creating this fear of [board members] being terminated to where they’re not using their authorities,” LaCerte said “They’re not engaging with the states because they don’t want to get out of line with what the stakeholders want.”

The solution appears to be making the stakeholder process advisory, LaCerte said.

“I don’t think we can do business as usual,” Haque said.

Tyler Durden Tue, 07/28/2026 - 14:20

DOJ Sues Colorado For Offering In-State Tuition Aid To Illegal Immigrants

Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times,

The Department of Justice (DOJ) sued Colorado on Thursday over state regulations that provide in-state tuition and financial aid to illegal immigrants.

Illegal immigrants from Nicaragua, Ecuador and other nationalities at a door on the border wall waiting to be picked up by the U.S. Border Patrol in El Paso, Texas, on Jan. 4, 2023. Paul Ratje/Reuters

The July 23 lawsuit, filed with the District Court for the District of Colorado, accused Colorado of ignoring Title 8 of the U.S. Code Section 1623, which bans illegal immigrants from being eligible for post-secondary education benefits in a state unless the same benefits are provided to all U.S. citizens, irrespective of their state of residence.

Colorado's Advancing Students for a Stronger Tomorrow Act, initially passed in 2013 and amended in 2019 and 2022, allows illegal immigrant students living in the state to access in-state tuition and financial aid.

In-state tuition benefits are granted to eligible students when applying to Colorado public universities or community colleges, whereas out-of-state U.S. citizens are required to pay higher tuition rates at these institutions.

"These statutes constitute blatant unequal treatment favoring illegal aliens over U.S. citizens. Worse, such preferential treatment is squarely prohibited and preempted by Congress," the lawsuit said.

According to a fact sheet from the Colorado Department of Higher Education, the Act removed several barriers that had prevented thousands of illegal immigrant high school students from qualifying for in-state tuition and financial benefits.

The 2022 revision of the Act reduced the time an illegal immigrant student needed to attend high school to obtain these benefits from at least three years to just one year.

Under the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution, extending eligibility for post-secondary education benefits to illegal immigrants is "unconstitutional," the lawsuit said. Several courts have struck down similar in-state tuition laws as unconstitutional.

For instance, earlier this month, the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in a case filed by the Trump administration that Texas cannot offer in-state college tuition to illegal immigrants under its Dream Act, ruling that federal law overrides state policy.

In the Colorado lawsuit, the DOJ asked the court to enter a judgment declaring that the state's Advancing Students for a Stronger Tomorrow Act violates the U.S. Constitution's Supremacy Clause. It asked the court to issue a permanent injunction prohibiting the defendants from enforcing the Act or any similar statute.

Defendants in the lawsuit include the Colorado Commission on Higher Education, the Colorado Department of Higher Education, and its executive director.

In a July 23 statement, the DOJ said that the lawsuit against Colorado was the 14th case filed by the department challenging in-state tuition policies for illegal immigrants.

"By granting illegal aliens in-state tuition, Colorado is violating federal law and subsidizing education for illegal aliens at the taxpayers' expense," Associate Attorney General Stanley E. Woodward, Jr. said in the statement.

"This Department will not cease until President [Donald] Trump's promise is fulfilled: illegal aliens will not receive benefits denied to our Nation's own citizens."

The Epoch Times reached out to the Colorado governor and the Colorado Department of Higher Education for comments, but did not receive a response by publication time.

In addition to Texas, the Trump administration has succeeded in getting permanent injunctions against in-state tuition benefits for illegal immigrants in Kentucky, Nebraska, and Oklahoma.

Cases filed against California, Virginia, Massachusetts, Maryland, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Kansas, and Minnesota are pending.

Meanwhile, the DOJ announced in a July 24 statement that the District Court for the Southern District of Illinois ruled in favor of the federal government in a lawsuit against Illinois's in-state tuition benefits for illegal immigrants.

The case was filed in September 2025, with the state subsequently filing a motion to dismiss the lawsuit. The DOJ said that Illinois chose to give preferential treatment to illegal immigrants while not extending that treatment to Americans outside Illinois.

"This ruling enforces the statute Congress wrote and stops the State from putting illegal aliens ahead of American citizens," U.S. Attorney Steven D. Weinhoeft said in the statement.

In a July 23 fact sheet update, the National Immigration Law Center stated that adoption of "tuition equity" laws and policies across various states suggests that such actions help both U.S. citizens and immigrants of all statuses by reducing high school dropout rates and increasing the number of students pursuing college degrees.

Tyler Durden Tue, 07/28/2026 - 13:40

Nvidia's Taipei Office Raided As Taiwan's AI Chip-Smuggling Dragnet Results In Arrests

Taiwanese prosecutors have detained an Nvidia employee and searched the chipmaker's Taipei office, the first time the island's criminal investigation into the diversion of restricted AI hardware to China has reached inside the company whose processors sit at the center of it.

The Keelung District Prosecutors Office said Tuesday it had detained a man surnamed Chang on suspicion of falsifying business documents under the Criminal Code, after investigators searched his home and his workplace on July 24. Prosecutors said Chang is "strongly suspected of having committed the offences, and that there is a risk of flight, destruction of evidence, and collusion with accomplices or witnesses." A court granted the detention request.

The statement did not name Nvidia. Bloomberg first reported that Chang works for the company and that the search covered his desk at Nvidia's Taipei office, and Bloomberg's sources said the detention also involves an allegation of breach of trust. Prosecutors have not accused Nvidia of any wrongdoing.

Seven people are now being held in the case, including two from Super Micro Computer and one from Taiwan-listed Albatron Technology. Chang is the first known Nvidia employee to face detention in a chip diversion case anywhere.

The investigation opened in May, when Taiwanese officials said they were examining the shipment of high-end AI servers built by Super Micro and containing restricted Nvidia chips to China, Hong Kong and Macau in violation of US export controls. Those held are accused of forging documents to move roughly 50 Super Micro servers. Some cleared Taiwanese customs and were routed to China through Japan, an official previously told AFP.

Taiwanese media have described Chang as a senior business-development manager and reported that prosecutors are examining end-user and know-your-customer documentation he is alleged to have signed off on - the paperwork layer that export compliance depends on. Prosecutors have released no further detail on his role or the evidence.

Nvidia, whose chips power most of the world's advanced AI systems, said it sells primarily to established partners and original equipment manufacturers that help ensure compliance with US export rules. "Smuggling is a nonstarter," a spokesperson said. "Even relatively small exporters and shipments are subject to thorough review and scrutiny on both sides of the globe, and any diverted products would have no service, support, or updates."

The American Case

Taiwan's investigation runs alongside a far larger US enforcement action. In March, the Justice Department unsealed charges against Super Micro co-founder and board member Yih-Shyan "Wally" Liaw, Taiwan sales manager Ruei-Tsang "Steven" Chang and contractor Ting-Wei "Willy" Sun, alleging a conspiracy to divert roughly $2.5 billion in Super Micro servers carrying restricted Nvidia GPUs - including H200 and B200 parts - to China between 2024 and 2025 without Commerce Department licenses.

Liaw's trial is set for November 2. He faces up to 20 years on the lead conspiracy count. Chang has been described in earlier reporting as a fugitive. Super Micro was not charged, has said it is cooperating, and placed the implicated employees on leave. Taiwanese prosecutors have said it is too early to tell whether their case connects to the American one.

The Gap Prosecutors Are Working Around

Taiwan manufactures the world's most advanced semiconductors and assembles them into the servers at issue. It has no statute that directly criminalizes exporting AI chips to China.

That is why the charges in Keelung are forgery and false business records rather than anything touching the diversion itself. A proposed amendment to Taiwan's Foreign Trade Act, adding what has been described as a mainland China semiconductor clause, would let prosecutors charge the export directly. It has not passed. The Ministry of Economic Affairs has confirmed consultations with Washington on adopting performance-threshold controls modeled on the US framework, without committing to a timeline.

Seven weeks into the case, prosecutors are still building it out of the general Criminal Code.

Washington has restricted sales of Nvidia's most capable accelerators to China since 2022, on the argument that hardware that trains commercial models also trains military and surveillance ones. Blackwell-class parts remain under a presumption of denial, meaning license applications are effectively refused. The H200 was moved to case-by-case review in January.

Chinese demand has not moved with the policy. Older-generation parts command steep premiums on the gray market, and diversion reports have circulated for years. The servers in the Taiwan case are worth a fraction of the American one, which is roughly the point: the hardware is scarce enough that even small volumes are worth forging paperwork over.

Tyler Durden Tue, 07/28/2026 - 13:20

FIRY Wins $719 Million Game Of Solitaire, Torching Shorts Along The Way

Markets rarely hand you a clean morality play. On Monday night, a federal judge entered one, clocking in no less than 78 pages, in the public docket. And for anyone who has played one of America's chart-topping “skill gaming” apps - a group that certainly includes many readers of this site - this may be for you.

A federal trial has now established that at Papaya Gaming, the private Tel Aviv-based publisher of Solitaire Cash and Bingo Cash, the “humans” across the table were actually quite often programmed bots.

The winner in all of this is Firy, Inc. (of the eponymous FIRY ticker), the operator that played the SPAC game to a $3.5 billion valuation in 2020, roundtripping 96% to a $130 million market cap with an estimated 20% of its float sold short.

Needless to say, at a market cap of a paltry $130 million, the market had written the whole thing off, pricing FIRY below the $185 million of cash on its latest, March 31st balance sheet, never mind the platform or anything else left on either side of the ledger.

But all that changes now. FIRY led the lawsuit against Papaya and is the beneficiary of a $719 million award handed down overnight, well over 5 times its market cap. This is the judge’s ruling after a $420 million jury award and Papaya’s failed attempts to get the case tossed out.

What Papaya did, in the court's own words (from Monday’s Opinion)

• “In January 2021, for example, Papaya used bots in about 90% of its cash tournaments” (Op. at 8.)
• From 2021 to 2024, “bots accounted for over 13 million of the participants on Papaya's platform, compared to about 11 million human players.” (Op. at 7.)
• "Papaya only paid customers roughly $2 billion of the $6.7 billion that it advertised had been awarded in prizes.” (Op. at 8.)
• "When a bot ‘won’ one of these tournaments, Papaya kept all entry fees.” (Op. at 28.)

Liquidity bots, tailored bots, and losing before you played Papaya ran two kinds of fakes.

• "Liquidity bots were used to create immediately accessible tournaments of various sizes, including up to 20 or more ‘players’.” “[A] 20-player tournament might have one human player and nineteen bots.” (Op. at 7.) Their job was to make a game exist instantly, at any hour of the night.
• The second kind decided outcomes: “bots were used to give a player a designated win or loss. For instance, a player who had a losing streak could be given a ‘win’ to motivate them to keep playing in more tournaments.” (Id.) These “tailored bots” operated “in over 630 million Papaya tournaments, or in roughly one-quarter of the 2.6 billion tournaments that Papaya hosted during the years 2021 to 2024,” and “[m]ore than 6.1 million of those human beings played in at least one tournament where tailored bots were designed to give them a loss.” (Id.)

Think about that: millions of Americans paid to lose games that were over before they started.

The Fifth Amendment and the apology

Perhaps predictably, Papaya's executives pled the Fifth Amendment during the case and the court did not let them un-
ring that bell at the last minute.

• “Papaya's executives invoked their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination at their depositions. About a year later, on the eve of trial, those same executives sought to withdraw their invocation of the Fifth Amendment privilege.” (Op. at 13.)

Later on, Papaya's own trial lawyers conceded to the jury: “Papaya has taken responsibility for its actions. It stopped
giving those customer complaint responses. It stopped using bots.” (Op. at 11 n.2.) Please clap. 

The $719 Million Blow

On April 23, a unanimous jury found Papaya liable for false advertising and awarded $420 million in damages - what the winning law firm King & Spalding calls the largest false-advertising award in U.S. history.

Yesterday's opinion granted a $719 million disgorgement of Papaya's profits - higher than the $420 million jury verdict - and did not mince words: “Papaya's fraudulent conduct was extraordinary.” (Op. at 37.) Papaya “entered the U.S. market through a massive deception” (Op. at 71) — a “willful, bad faith violation of the law.” (Op. at 76.)

FIRY ends up the big loser and the big winner

FIRY launched the first real-money skill-gaming platform back in 2012 (Op. at 4) and rode the SPAC wave public at a $3.5 billion valuation in December 2020. The court traced what happened next: “Skillz’s revenue had fallen by 60% in just two years, tumbling from $384 million in 2021 to $152 million, while Papaya's revenue skyrocketed from $163 million to $461 million over the same period.” (Op. at 10.) In June the company rebranded itself FIRY... because five years of a tortured stock price will do that to you.

Now What?

The cheater owes $719 million and the honest player collects. Good over evil, with interest.

The 20% of the float that was short into Monday's opinion bet on the wrong hand. On the April jury verdict alone, FIRY closed up 238% amid multiple volatility halts. And that was before the judge denied a new trial and raised the number above what the jury awarded ($420 million to $719 million).

To appeal, Papaya must produce an appeal bond on the order of $800 million in real money — no bots accepted. Will the private credit bubble extend to writing that paper for a private Israeli company whose only product a federal jury and a federal judge have both found was fraudulently marketed? Is there an AI angle here? Asking for a friend in Tel Aviv.

Next Up: Voodoo

Monday was not the first time this has happened. In 2024, FIRY took AviaGames - publisher of Pocket7Games - to a California jury and won $42.9 million for patent infringement, two years before its latest win against Papaya (“Skillz Wins $42.9M IP Trial Against Rival Accused Of Bot Fraud”).

Now in 2026, FIRY takes a win against Papaya.

Then there is the one more case not yet discussed: FIRY’s July 2024 lawsuit against Voodoo, the French owner of Blitz Win Cash, over what it alleges is the same bot playbook. While Voodoo fights these claims and nothing has been decided, one would imagine the Papaya verdict is being analyzed today in Paris.

Tyler Durden Tue, 07/28/2026 - 12:40

PG&E Says It Has 12.7 GW In Data Center Pipeline As It Courts Smaller Loads

By Emma Penrod of UtilityDive,

Pacific Gas and Electric now counts 12.7 GW in its data center pipeline, of which 490 MW of projects have executed interconnection agreements and another 3.9 GW are in final engineering, company officials said Thursday during a second-quarter earnings call.

The company’s data center pipeline has fluctuated over the past year, from 7.3 GW at the end of 2025 to 5.4 GW in the first quarter of 2026 as projects dropped out. The company’s most recent investor presentation Thursday retroactively revised down its queue from last quarter to 5.1 GW, citing changes to its methodology.

Executives attributed the changes to stricter vetting of potential projects and expressed confidence that their efforts to attract the right kind of customer are paying off.

PG&E Corporation CEO Patti Poppe said she expects to serve 1.8 GW of new data center load by 2030.

“As we continue to build our pipeline, we’re focusing not on size, but on quality,” Poppe told analysts on Thursday’s call. “We remain very focused on pricing this load correctly — attractive to data center customers, but still rate-reducing for our other customers. ... Done right, these efforts can help build a high-confidence pipeline that lowers electric bills, drives economic growth and keeps California at the forefront of technology and innovation.”

Although PG&E attracted interest from some larger data center projects this past quarter, Poppe said smaller data centers with electric demand under a gigawatt constitute the bulk of the company’s queue to date.

By the numbers — PG&E Q2’26

• 22.7 GW: Data center pipeline, with 3.9 GW in final engineering
• $1.25B: Amount PG&E expects to receive from the California Wildfire Fund for the 2021 Dixie Fire.
• $16.6B: Revenue requested in the utility’s 2027 General Rate Case, for which evidentiary hearings are underway
• $73B: Five-year capital plan

Meanwhile, the 2026 wildfire season remains relatively quiet, with Poppe noting that 2026 is — so far — the company’s fourth consecutive year without a major fire. She said the company has managed to avert 13 potential ignitions this year thanks to its monitoring and mitigation efforts.

However, the company continues to face significant costs and liabilities related to previous wildfires. Earlier this month, the California Public Utilities Commission proposed a settlement agreement that would impose a $22 million penalty on the utility for the 2022 Mosquito Fire in Placer County.

Pending public comment and approval, the settlement would end the CPUC’s investigation into the utility’s role in the fire. PG&E faces at total of $400 million in liabilities for the Mosquito Fire, plus $2.25 billion related to the 2021 Dixie Fire. It expects to receive $1.25 billion from the state Wildfire Fund for the Dixie Fire and has already received $128 million from the fund for the 2019 Kincade Fire. It does not expect reimbursement from the fund for the Mosquito Fire, according to company filings.

The utility expects California lawmakers to pass reforms to shore up the state Wildfire Fund later this year. Though S&P recently upgraded PG&E’s credit rating, legislative reform remains critical to the company’s strategy for achieving investment-grade ratings, PG&E executive vice president and CFO Carolyn Burke said on Thursday.

“There’s no case for no action,” Poppe later added. “In other words, if the legislature does not act or if they act and don’t actually solve the problem, then we’re going to have to take action.”

Poppe and Burke declined to answer analysts’ questions about the details of that potential action, but indicated that all aspects of the company’s $73 billion financing and capital plan would be on the table.

Under its current plan, the company will spend about $58 billion on transmission and distribution lines and $3 billion on power generation, according to the company’s earnings presentation. A 2027 General Rate Case currently underway seeks more than $16 billion in revenue.

Poppe said the interim rate request — opposed by some intervenors — was intended to reduce rate shock for customers. She said it would have no bearing on the company’s financing plan.

Tyler Durden Tue, 07/28/2026 - 12:20

The Fair Share Myth And Other Socialist Fables

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

New York City socialist mayor Zohran Mamdani is back in his element. After admitting that he cannot fulfill his campaign pledge to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Mamdani returned to his class warfare narrative. This week, he taunted the city’s highest-earning taxpayers with a letter informing them of another special tax awaiting them in the Big Apple.

As wealthy citizens flee the city, Mamdani strongly suggests that those who remain are going to get burned by his promised “warmth of collectivism.” In doing so, he repeated a socialist myth about how the wealthiest taxpayers are not paying “their fair share.”

Mamdani went on X to tell those with second homes in New York City worth more than $5 million that “you’ve got mail” and a “new pied-a-terre tax.” He gleefully declared, “The best city in the world deserves the best parks, libraries, and schools in the world. That’s only possible when we all pay our fair share.”

The fair share myth is a virtual mantra among socialist and Democratic leaders, from Mamdani to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.). In my book, “Rage and the Republic,” I address the false claim that the wealthy are not “paying their fair share.”

In fact, the top 10 percent already pay more taxes than the bottom 90 percent combined.

In 2023, the top 1 percent paid an estimated 38.4 percent of all federal individual income taxes. One can certainly raise the need for additional taxes to support public works, but it is simple demagoguery to claim that the wealthy do not pay their fair share when the top 10 percent pay an estimated 75 percent of federal income taxes. The U.S. income tax system is already the most progressive in the developed world, even before additional New York state and city taxes are added in.

The demonization of the wealthy is one of the oldest tactics of politicians seeking to empower themselves by harnessing mob rage.

Combined with pledges of free stuff under socialism, it creates a dangerous delusion among disgruntled citizens.

Another common fable has been repeated by socialists such as Darializa Avila Chevalier, the prison abolitionist who won a recent primary for Congress in New York. This radical, who once boasted how she wiped her hands on the American flag in lieu of a napkin, was pressed on whether there has ever been a “successful model of socialism anywhere in the world outside the U.S., in terms of both human rights and widespread economic justice.”

She responded by citing Sweden and Norway, as other figures such as Sanders have done before her. Indeed, the claim of successful Scandinavian socialist systems is a sort of Marxist bedtime fairytale, told to children about a workers’ paradise in quaint Nordic fishing villages.

But Sweden’s experience only shows the limits of socialism even in a relatively small nation. Decades ago, after disastrous results to its economy, Sweden turned away from the very kind of socialist theories increasingly fashionable in the U.S. today.

Norway has large public welfare systems, it is true. But there is a very specific reason for that: It has enormous direct oil revenues supporting a very small population. The Norwegian state produces about 120 barrels of oil for every man, woman and child living in the country. If the U.S. could produce that much oil per person through a state-controlled entity, it would be more oil than the entire world produces today and worth enough money to replace all federal individual and corporate income tax revenue.

In truth, countries like Denmark and Sweden strongly embrace capitalist principles today. They are listed among the most capitalist nations on Earth — in some rankings ahead of the U.S.

Indeed, many of their leaders have expressed disbelief or amusement at longstanding claims by American leftists about their being socialist nations. In 2015, Danish Prime Minister Lars Rasmussen observed, “I know that some people in the U.S. associate the Nordic model with some sort of socialism. Therefore, I would like to make one thing clear. Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy. Denmark is a market economy.”

Likewise, the former Swedish Social Democratic Minister of Finance Kjell‐Olof Feldt said, “That whole thing with democratic socialism was absolutely impossible. It just didn’t work.”

But to candidates eager to prove their revolutionary bona fides, none of that matters.

Even mainstream hopefuls such as California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) are now making the bizarre claim that capitalism is no longer working. It also does not matter that, in supporting Mamdani’s new tax, Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) heralded how it could raise $500 million, despite reports showing a loss of billions in annual revenue as wealthy taxpayers flee the state.

Amid a rash of capital flight, many ask why Mamdani would want to continue taunting the wealthy and portraying them as freeloaders. The fact is, wherever it gets a foothold, socialism becomes self-perpetuating.

Wherever ruinous policies destroy an economy, demand increases for government services and welfare. Citizens become more dependent on government as wealth is diminished.

The most vivid example of the new socialist fabulism came this week from the new British prime minister, Andy Burnham. He declared that he wants to restore the policies of 40 years ago, before the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher.

In his own version of promising the “warmth of collectivism,” Burnham declared, “The country surrendered control of the essentials — housing, water, energy, transport — and left people exposed to higher costs.”

Burnham’s account leaves out that the supposed golden age under Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan, which he was referencing, led in 1977 to the so-called “winter of discontent.”

Those policies destroyed the British economy, and the nation was faced with the humiliation of being rescued by the International Monetary Fund as if it were some banana republic.

With a record like that, it is little surprise Mamdani and his allies prefer to focus on socialist mythologies rather than realities.

Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the New York Times best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.“

Tyler Durden Tue, 07/28/2026 - 11:40

Secret Service Probes Iran-Linked Video Calling for Melania Trump's Assassination

Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times,

A video calling for the assassination of First Lady Melania Trump has been published by a media outlet linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), with the U.S. Secret Service saying it is aware of the material and investigating anything perceived as a threat.

Tasnim, an IRGC-affiliated news outlet, released the video on its Telegram channel on July 28. The video offered specific suggestions for carrying out an attack against the first lady.

The video, titled “Where to Kill Melania?!,” claims to have information about how her security detail operates and points to possible vulnerabilities and locations where she might be found by would-be assassins. The Epoch Times has reviewed the video but is not reproducing it or detailing its instructions.

Besides encouraging lethal “operations by global freedom fighters” targeting the first lady, the video contains a direct threat against President Donald Trump’s youngest son.

“This is just the beginning,” a voice says near the end of the video. “Barron Trump, wait for us.”

Secret Service Responds

The Secret Service told The Epoch Times that it is aware of the video and reviews material that could pose a threat.

“The Secret Service is aware of the video and investigates anything that can be perceived as a threat toward our protectees,” Nate Herring, a lead public affairs specialist with the agency’s Communications and Media Relations office, said in an emailed statement.

“Out of concern for operational security, we do not discuss matters of protective intelligence.”

While Herring confirmed that the video was being examined, he did not indicate whether the agency had identified a specific or credible threat.

Calls for Trump’s Death

The video is the latest Iran-linked material to target the president and his family as military tensions between Washington and Tehran continue.

Billboards have appeared in the Iranian capital in recent weeks calling for Trump’s death.

During the funeral procession for slain leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei earlier this month, mourners also carried banners calling for the president’s assassination.

As crowds jostled in Mashhad awaiting Khamenei’s funeral cortege, mourners chanted slogans demanding revenge.

“I swear by the blood of the supreme leader, Trump, we will kill you!” they shouted, while some women held placards reading “Kill Trump.”

Trump has said he has long been at the top of Iran’s target list.

“I’ve been on their list for a long time. That’s what we’re dealing with,” Trump told The New York Post on July 10. “The only thing is, I’ve left instructions—if anything happens, to just literally bomb them at levels that they’ve never seen before.”

A day later, Trump said 1,000 U.S. missiles were “locked and loaded” and aimed at Iran, with thousands more ready to follow if the regime assassinated him.

“Orders have already been given, and the U.S. Military is ready, willing, and able,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.

History of Iranian Plots

Threats against Trump from Iran predate the latest conflict.

Iranian officials have repeatedly vowed to avenge the January 2020 killing of IRGC commander Qasem Soleimani, who died in a Trump-ordered U.S. drone strike in Baghdad.

Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qasem Soleimani (C) attends a meeting in Tehran on Sept. 18, 2016. Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP

In November 2024, federal prosecutors charged Iranian national Farhad Shakeri over what they described as an IRGC-directed murder-for-hire network targeting people in the United States.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Shakeri told investigators that an IRGC official had instructed him to submit a plan to surveil and kill Trump.

Shakeri, who immigrated to the United States as a child and was deported around 2008 after serving 14 years in prison for a robbery conviction, was also accused of using criminal associates to support Iranian surveillance and assassination operations.

Tyler Durden Tue, 07/28/2026 - 11:00

Nearly 400 Drones Target Moscow Overnight, With Zelensky In Washington Seeking To Sway Trump

Ukraine's long-range drone attacks on Russian territory have long become a nightly thing (as have Russian drones and missiles on Ukraine territory), but it has become clear that these attack waves have grown in volume and effectiveness.

On Tuesday Russian officials are newly acknowledging another massive attack wave on the Moscow region, describing that nearly 400 drones were inbound on the capital overnight. 

Source: General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine

Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin indicated that 390 drones had been tracked by anti-air defense systems across the wider Moscow region since Monday night, but said that "most" of them were intercepted - with no forthcoming reports of casualties. 

One regional report cited some damage in residential and business areas, however:

In the village of Vaulovo, a private house caught fire in the “Dubrava” dacha community, and a dacha house was damaged in the “Romashkino” community in the village of Dubna. No one was injured.

A warehouse belonging to the logistics company 3PL caught fire in the village of Koledino in Podolsk, outside Moscow, following the attack, the independent Telegram channel Astra reported, citing photos and video from witnesses. A nearby Wildberries warehouse is operating “as normal,” the company reported.

Drones impacted other regions of Moscow, however, and left at least 19 people in the Belgorod region injured. The high rate of injuries was due to an intercity bus being struck.

Ukraine has continued targeting Wildberries warehouses and logistics hubs (the major Russian online retailer which is comparable to Amazon) - an escalating trend since July 18. So far nearly a dozen facilities have been hit across Moscow and the surrounding region, St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region, Voronezh, Tambov, Krasnodar, Stavropol Krai, and Crimea..

Crimea meanwhile continues to struggle to keep the lights on and gas supplies available for the population. Regional reports say power was knocked out for the city of Feodosia overnight, after an electric substation was struck.

Ukraine's President Zelensky has been highlighting the 'success' of the country's drone capabilities to Western backers, and is expected to carry the same message to Washington this week.

Israel shared "intelligence" with Trump to encourage war on Iran, and now Zelensky is attempting the same move with "intelligence" that promotes more belligerence against Russia.

Biden's Ukraine proxy war and Trump's Iran regime change war are increasingly converging. https://t.co/fV3vbQBcSJ

— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) July 27, 2026

He also urgently wants more missiles, both offensive and defensive, after President Trump vowed to allow Ukraine licensing to produce its own Patriot systems - which in reality would likely be a years-long process to just get off the ground.

Zelensky has touched down in Washington, where he is attending Sen. Lindsey Graham's - and he will also be hosted at the Oval Office for a Trump meeting. He says he has new intelligence and a compelling case for Washington to increase its involvement on Kiev's side.

Tyler Durden Tue, 07/28/2026 - 10:40

Massie Joins Democrats In Bid To Sue White House Over Iran War

Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) is joining a group of Democrats who are attempting to sue the White House over its refusal to follow a War Powers Resolution that was passed by Congress and directed President Trump to end the war with Iran, Fox News Digital reported Monday.

The War Powers Resolution was passed by both the House and Senate in June, marking the first time Congress approved a concurrent resolution under the 1973 War Powers Act directing the termination of an unauthorized war.

via Fox News

Section 5(c) of the 1973 War Powers Act states that "at any time that United States Armed Forces are engaged in hostilities outside the territory of the United States, its possessions and territories without a declaration of war or specific statutory authorization, such forces shall be removed by the President if the Congress so directs by concurrent resolution."

Massie told Fox that Trump and US War Secretary Pete Hegseth are "in blatant violation of two sections of the War Powers Resolution of 1973."

"For the first time since the law was enacted, a concurrent resolution has passed in accordance with 5(c) of the law, but the White House has ignored it. It seems they’ve assumed the law is unconstitutional, but no court has ever found that to be the case, so the law remains on the books while the White House flouts it. In the 1983 case INS v. Chadha, the Supreme Court did not opine on the 1973 War Powers Resolution. It's time for the courts to settle this, and that’s what our legislation directs," Massie said.

"They’ve also violated section 5(b) of the law, but rather than ignore the law, they’ve perpetuated a ruse that the 60-day limit on Presidential military activity does not apply with respect to the Iran war, because each time they effect a temporary ceasefire, the statutory clock restarts. We believe no court would agree with this absurdity, and this should be litigated as well," he added.

The legislation to enforce the War Powers Resolution was introduced by Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY), the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and has five co-sponsors, four Democrats plus Massie. The bill would require House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) to take legal action against the administration to enforce the concurrent War Powers Resolution.

"The power to declare war rests unequivocally with Congress, yet Speaker Johnson and the vast majority of Republicans have allowed President Trump to trample over the Constitution and wage a war that has not been authorized by Congress," Meeks said in a statement on the bill.

"Nevertheless, Democrats, together with the few Republicans who upheld their oath, successfully passed my Iran War Powers Resolution that requires the president to end his hostilities in Iran last month," he added.

"Despite what the administration might say, I believe my War Powers Resolution is binding, and it is time to settle that question in the courts. As the Speaker of the House, Johnson must bring this suit forward. If the Speaker won't defend congressional prerogatives, we must compel him to do so, which is why I’ve introduced this legislation to force his hand," he added.

Tyler Durden Tue, 07/28/2026 - 10:20

Conference Board Survey Signals Ugly Job Market, Weakest 'Present Situation' In Over 5 Years

The Conference Board's measure of Americans' Consumer Confidence fell more than expected in July, from an upwardly revised 92.2 to 90.8 (well below the 92.4 expectation)...

The Present Situation index fell to 114.9 (below 117.5 exp) -  its weakest since Feb 2021 while Expectations were unchanged at 74.7 (very slightly better than the 74.4 exp).

“Consumer confidence moderated slightly in July, continuing a general downward sloping trajectory since late 2021,” said Dana M Peterson, Chief Economist, The Conference Board.

“The Present Situation Index was less positive for a third consecutive month while the Expectations Index remained in negative territory. Consumer appraisals of current business conditions and, to a lesser extent, perceptions of the current labor market both softened.

Looking ahead, consumers anticipate little improvement in business conditions over the next six months, but expectations for the labor market were slightly less negative. Expectations for household incomes moderated but remained optimistic overall.”

On a six-month moving average basis, by age, confidence for consumers under 35 remained the highest, while confidence among those aged 35-54 showed the greatest improvement.

By income, confidence was mixed, but generally higher-income groups were more optimistic.

By generation, confidence for Gen Z and Millennials remained the highest, while confidence fell the most for the Silent Generation on a six-month moving average basis.

By political affiliation, confidence among Independents and Democrats softened while Republicans were somewhat more positive.

And while jobless claims dropped to their lowest level since 1969 last week, perceptions of current employment conditions declined, with the labor market differential - the share of consumers saying jobs are “plentiful” minus the share saying jobs are “hard to get” - dipping by 0.7 ppts to +3.1%. This downshift was driven by fewer consumers reporting that jobs are “plentiful”, while the those saying jobs are “hard to get” dipped slightly over the month.

Consumers’ average and median 12-month inflation expectations were less elevated in July. Most consumers—61.3%, unchanged from June—still expected higher interest rates over the next 12 months. Notwithstanding recent volatility in the equity markets, consumers still expected higher stock prices a year from now. 

Consumers’ write-in responses on factors affecting the economy continued to be mostly pessimistic in July.

References to prices and oil and gas eased in frequency but remain elevated. Comments about food and grocery prices increased.

Mentions of war, geopolitics, and conflict eased during the sample period. However, as the fighting has reaccelerated quite recently there could be an increase in these mentions in the revised data for July.

Tyler Durden Tue, 07/28/2026 - 10:10

J&J's Proposed $5.5 Billion Talc Settlement May "Lift Remaining Overhang" On Shares, Says Guggenheim

Johnson & Johnson announced late Monday that it had reached an agreement to commit $5.5 billion to resolve most lawsuits alleging its talc products caused ovarian cancer. The settlement could end 15 years of litigation and "lift the remaining overhang" on J&J shares, according to one institutional trading desk.

The "comprehensive resolution," as described by J&J, requires participation from law firms representing at least 95% of pending state and federal claims. The company faces roughly 76,000 lawsuits, though some Wall Street analysts expect that number could soon top 90,000.

J&J maintains that its talc products are safe and never contained asbestos. It stopped selling talc-based baby powder in the US in 2020 and globally in 2023 after repeated attempts to resolve the claims through bankruptcy court failed.

"Studies show talc is safe, does not contain asbestos, and does not cause cancer," J&J wrote in the press release.

"After decades of litigation and full vetting of the science in an extensive hearing, plaintiffs effectively conceded their inability to prove specific causation by withdrawing their experts on the topic in two bellwether cases," said Erik Haas, Worldwide Vice President of Litigation, Johnson & Johnson.

Haas continued, "In a watershed moment, the Court thereafter ordered plaintiffs to show why the remaining claims should not be dismissed, confirming what we have maintained for years: that these claims lack scientific merit and were sustained only by unreliable expert opinions that could not survive rigorous judicial review."

Guggenheim Securities senior biopharmaceutical equity research analyst Vamil Divan wrote in a note that a "Potential Talc Settlement Could Lift Remaining Overhang on JNJ Shares," adding, "It's Not Over' Til It's Over, but This Time It May Actually Be Over."

Divan added more color:

JNJ has announced an update on their ongoing talc litigation, with the company reaching a proposed settlement that would lead to them paying a minimum of $5.5Bn to resolve the outstanding claims related to the product potentially causing ovarian cancer.

We have lost count on the number of times the company has seemingly come close to resolving this issue but not being successful, but this time appears potentially different with law firms representing the MDL and state leadership supporting the resolution and apparently poised to recommend it to their clients, per the company.

JNJ also clarified to us that the minimum $5.5Bn commitment would be paid out on a claim-by-claim basis based on a grid that assigns a value to each claim based on numerous criteria, starting with $3Bn next year.

We would note that our investor discussions on talc have declined markedly over the past year as the company has delivered significant positive progress both commercially and with their pipeline, particularly in Innovative Medicine.

As a result, it is not clear to us how much of an overhang this talc litigation actually is on JNJ shares anymore. However, we believe expectations were still in the ~$10Bn range for what JNJ may need to pay to settle all of the outstanding ovarian cancer claims, so if this can be resolved for ~$5.5Bn then we think that should be received positively by the Street.

Analysts from Citi offered their take on the J&J development:

Another Proposed Resolution for Ovarian Talc, Hopefully the Last

Management has proposed another resolution of its ovarian talc litigation, potentially tying off 15 years of litigation. The resolution follows a July 22 court ordering that plaintiffs exhibit why the remaining talc claims should not be dismissed for inability to prove specific causation – “The order followed plaintiffs’ withdrawal of their specific causation experts in two bellwether cases, after a hearing that demonstrated their opinions were not based upon reliable scientific methodologies.” The resolution requires participation of at least 95% of the remaining claimants, with total payments of $5.5B including the first payment of no more than $3B in 2027, and no additional payments before 2028. While management has been at this threshold previously, with the inability of the plaintiffs to provide specific causation in these pivotal cases, it appears that this proposed resolution will be the final, successful one. We rate JNJ Buy.

J&J shares rose about 2% in premarket trading. The stock had gained nearly 29% for the year through Monday's close.

Wall Street remains firmly bullish. Among analysts tracked by Bloomberg, 71.4% rate J&J a "Buy," while the remaining 28.6% recommend "Hold." None carries a "Sell" rating.

The average 12-month price target stands at $276.24.

Tyler Durden Tue, 07/28/2026 - 09:40