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Rand Paul Should Make Fauci Answer For Wuhan And BeagleGate Lies

Authored by Anthony Bellotti via American Greatness,

Fauci no longer faces any realistic risk of criminal exposure for perjury or other past federal offenses covered by the pardon.

Next week, Dr. Anthony Fauci is scheduled to testify before Sen. Rand Paul's Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. After years of stonewalling, evasions, carefully parsed denials, and outright lies, this hearing presents a rare opportunity to get answers from America's most notorious mad scientist, who recklessly funded dangerous animal experiments that likely caused COVID-19 and financed beagle torture in labs worldwide.

This time is different.

In one of his final acts in office, in January 2025, President Joe Biden granted Fauci a sweeping pardon that conspicuously covered a decade-long period starting when he first funded the infamous grant that paid the Wuhan lab, which was first exposed by White Coat Waste in early 2020 and cut days later by President Donald Trump.

This means that Fauci no longer faces any realistic risk of criminal exposure for perjury or other past federal offenses covered by the pardon. So, the usual Fifth Amendment justification for refusing to answer questions about potentially self-incriminating conduct is largely off the table.

Paul should press Fauci on three false statements he has repeatedly made to Congress, the press, and the American people about the Wuhan lab and BeagleGate - claims debunked by evidence obtained by White Coat Waste.

First, Fauci needs to finally fess up about funding gain-of-function animal experiments at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

In multiple Senate hearings in 2021, Fauci categorically told Paul and others that "the NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology." He repeated essentially the same claim during a House Oversight Committee hearing in 2024.

But White Coat Waste has receipts. Our Freedom of Information Act investigations uncovered damning internal government emails from 2016 showing that NIH officials told EcoHealth Alliance that its Fauci-funded animal experiments with the Wuhan lab "appear to involve" gain-of-function research that was banned at the time.

Instead of stopping the experiments, NIH worked with disgraced EcoHealth president Peter Daszak to skirt the ban. Daszak gleefully celebrated the decision, writing, "This is terrific! We are very happy to hear that our Gain of Function research funding pause has been lifted."

In May 2024, then-acting NIH Director Lawrence Tabak finally admitted to the House Oversight Committee that NIH did, in fact, fund gain-of-function in Wuhan.

Paul should ask a simple question: Does Fauci still stand by his testimony, or will he finally acknowledge that his previous statements to Congress were false or misleading?

Second, Fauci should answer for his testimony denying that he used his personal email for official NIH business.

During House testimony in 2024, Fauci declared to Chairman James Comer, "To the best of my recollection and knowledge, I have never conducted official business via my private email."

Yet White Coat Waste's FOIA investigations uncovered official NIH emails showing Fauci telling a Washington Post reporter covering the BeagleGate scandal, "I will send you an email via my Gmail account."

Records have also emerged showing that David Morens, Fauci's longtime advisor who was indicted in April for FOIA violations, told Daszak and others in 2021, "I can either send stuff to Tony on his private Gmail or hand it to him at work. . . He is too smart to let colleagues send him stuff that could cause trouble."

Will Fauci come clean?

Finally, Paul should revisit BeagleGate - the viral dog testing scandal first exposed by White Coat Waste that Fauci and his allies spent years falsely dismissing as a conspiracy.

In a 2021 Washington Post cover story written by the same reporter Fauci said he would contact through his personal Gmail account, he called the dog testing claims "ridiculous accusations and outright lies." In his 2024 memoir, Fauci again dismissed the story as "lies," "lunacy," and "off-the-wall accusations" and defended himself by awkwardly saying, "I am a passionate animal lover, especially of dogs."

But government documents obtained by White Coat Waste prove that Fauci funded countless dog labs, including the infamous experiments in Tunisia, where beagles were drugged and had their heads locked in mesh cages full of biting sand flies. After reviewing these records, even the Washington Post, which had aggressively defended Fauci and smeared White Coat Waste, finally acknowledged in 2024 that it published NIH disinformation, acknowledging that "NIH was not fully transparent as it tried to handle a public-relations nightmare."

Paul was one of the lawmakers who led the charge with White Coat Waste to hold Fauci accountable for funding beagle abuse and lying about it.

Americans deserve answers.

Next week's hearing may be Congress's last meaningful opportunity to confront Anthony Fauci directly and finally set the record straight on Wuhan and BeagleGate. Paul should seize it.

* * * [ZH]: Not everyone is convinced Rand can bring the heat. What say you?

Fuck this guy too. He’s a powerless loser who is essentially a blow off valve for the disaffected pic.twitter.com/XJJb4PUnBo

— The_Real_Fly (@The_Real_Fly) July 23, 2026 Tyler Durden Sat, 07/25/2026 - 17:30

Democrats Are Worried The GOP's Cash Advantage Could Hurt Their Chances In The Midterms

The Democratic Party heads into the midterms with generic congressional ballot polling and historical precedent on its side. It is nevertheless worried that the majorities it so desperately wants could still slip away.

Politico reported this week that Democratic strategists increasingly fear their favorable political environment could be overwhelmed by a Republican cash stockpile that dwarfs their own.

Federal Election Commission filings through the end of June show the three main GOP national committees and their affiliated congressional super PACs sitting on a combined $657 million. Their Democratic counterparts held $334 million. Add President Trump's MAGA Inc. super PAC, which reported more than $400 million on hand several weeks earlier, and the Republican reserve runs to more than three times what Democratic Party committees and congressional super PACs can muster between them.

That gap matters more this cycle than it would have in any previous one. On June 30, the Supreme Court ruled in NRSC v. FEC that federal limits on coordinated party spending violate the First Amendment, overturning a 2001 precedent and freeing national party committees to spend without ceiling in direct coordination with their candidates. Committee money that once had to be routed through independent expenditures can now be aimed straight at a race.

Democratic strategist Morgan Jackson, an adviser to former Gov. Roy Cooper's Senate campaign in North Carolina, calls the imbalance the central threat to his party's hopes this cycle.

"What is putting the House majority and the Senate majority, nationally, in danger is the Republicans' massive stockpile of resources that they're putting together to push back," Jackson said.

He warned that the spending gap could erode the advantage Democrats have built everywhere else. "If you get outspent five to six to eight to one, that can alleviate the environmental advantage that Democrats have this cycle," Jackson said.

The committee-level numbers are lopsided almost everywhere. The Republican National Committee reported $128 million in cash against $16 million for the Democratic National Committee, which is also carrying $18 million in debt. The National Republican Senatorial Committee held $55.9 million to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee's $41 million. The National Republican Congressional Committee held $92.7 million to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee's $79 million.

The super PAC gap is wider still. Senate Leadership Fund, the leading Republican Senate super PAC, reported roughly $112 million more on hand than the Democratic-aligned Senate Majority PAC. Congressional Leadership Fund, its House counterpart, held about $51 million more than House Majority PAC.

The national totals obscure a more complicated picture in the marquee Senate races, where the money runs the other way. Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff holds roughly $40 million more on hand than Rep. Mike Collins in Georgia. In Texas, Democrat James Talarico has nearly $20 million more than Attorney General Ken Paxton. In North Carolina, Cooper is about $17 million ahead of former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley. In several of the contests that will decide both chambers, individual Democratic candidates are burying their opponents even as the national party apparatus falls behind.

The picture inside the party gets messier once primary season is factored in. A wave of insurgent challengers aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America has forced sitting Democratic incumbents into costly primary fights this cycle, draining accounts well before anyone gets near a Republican opponent.

Senate Majority PAC spokeswoman Lauren French rejected the idea that the committee gap tells the whole story. "Republicans can crow all they want about getting massive checks from donors and businesses and billionaires, but we're going to win because we have the actual support from people who are voting," French said.

Other Democratic strategists are less confident that grassroots enthusiasm can offset a structural disadvantage. Jesse Ferguson argued that the media environment itself has made the shortfall more expensive than it would have been in past cycles. "Too many people think that fragmentation of media meant more efficiency and spending less. Wrong - it means you have to spend more," Ferguson said. The proliferation of streaming platforms, social media, and other digital outlets has driven up the price of political advertising, strategists say, raising the stakes for whichever side can deploy the deepest reserves of outside money.

What should worry Democrats most is that the Republican advantage has barely been touched. Trump political director James Blair said last month that Republican spending would begin "very soon," without offering a timetable. The fear on the Democratic side is that the bulk of MAGA Inc.'s $400 million war chest is being held back deliberately, to be dumped into competitive House and Senate races in the closing weeks - at the exact moment undecided voters start paying attention and Democratic committees have the least room left to answer.

Tyler Durden Sat, 07/25/2026 - 16:55

Trump Orders Signs Outside Smithsonian Museum To Warn Of Inaccurate Exhibits

Authored by Aldgra Fredly via The Epoch Times,

President Donald Trump issued an executive order on July 24 directing signs to be placed outside one of the Smithsonian Institution’s history museums warning visitors that some exhibits contain inaccurate information.

The order references a July report by the White House Domestic Policy Council, which alleges that the National Museum of American History “cannot be trusted to tell America’s story honestly and in a way that is inspiring, unifying, and worthy of our great republic.”

Trump said in his order that the report shows that “the Smithsonian leadership does not present American history as a shared national inheritance to be taught and celebrated, but instead views American history as a ‘prime tool’ to advance ideas of social justice and the radical transformation of our society.”

The president directed his administration to use “all available authorities” to encourage the Smithsonian Institution to correct the issues identified in the report and ensure compliance with the laws, funding requirements, and contract conditions.

The order instructs the Interior Department to place temporary signage along the sidewalks and walkways that are maintained by the National Park Service and used by the public to access the museum, informing visitors of the report’s findings.

The signage will direct visitors to locations and resources presenting what the president deems accurate information regarding America’s history, according to the order.

The Smithsonian Institution did not return a request for comment by publication time.

The National Museum of American History, located in Washington, was originally named the National Museum of History and Technology when it was opened in January 1964. The museum was renamed in October 1980.

The museum’s collection includes more than 1.7 million objects representing the nation’s heritage in the areas of science, technology, society, and culture, according to its website.

Anthea Hartig, director of the National Museum of American History, defended the museum during a July 21 congressional hearing, saying its work is guided by the Smithsonian’s standards of scholarship and independence.

“The museum does not take sides in America’s political debates,” Hartig said. “We preserve and document the evidence of American life in all of its breadth, so that the public can encounter the past and draw their own conclusions.”

The White House report followed Trump’s March 2025 executive order directing the Interior Department to ensure that public monuments “do not contain descriptions, depictions, or other content that inappropriately disparage Americans past or living.”

The report said the museum has not established any exhibit specifically dedicated to the Founding Fathers, the Second Continental Congress, the Declaration of Independence, the American Revolutionary War, or the nation’s path to independence and the establishment of constitutional rule of law.

“Our central finding is not that the museum has simply added overlooked stories, corrected perceived errors, or broadened its historical scope,” the report stated.

“Rather, it is that museum leadership has explicitly adopted an ideological framework that no longer treats the American story as a shared national inheritance to be taught or celebrated, but as a political instrument to divide, dispirit, and discourage our citizens.”

Tyler Durden Sat, 07/25/2026 - 16:20

Private Forecasters Warn "New Heat Event" Will Target US East Coast

Folks across the Mid-Atlantic are enjoying a welcome stretch of mild weather today, with temperatures in the 70s following several rounds of extreme heat earlier this month that sent temperatures into the 90s and even into the triple digits. Enjoy the comfortable nights in the 60s and low 70s over the next few days, because another heat wave is already on the horizon.

"New heat event potentially targets East Coast Aug 5-7," private forecaster Commodity Wx Group wrote on X.

New heat event potentially targets East Coast Aug 5-7. pic.twitter.com/GTwfR5pVrY

— Commodity Wx Group (@commoditywx) July 24, 2026

Bloomberg forecast data show temperatures beginning to climb by the middle of next week, with highs peaking in the mid-to-upper 90s during the first week of August. The incoming heat wave is not expected to match the intensity of the two earlier this month, when temperatures surged well into the triple digits.

Notably, temperatures in the Lower 48 have reached their seasonal peak and will begin trending downward.

Peak summer is a welcome relief for customers across the PJM grid, who are facing some of the highest power costs in the nation.

Tyler Durden Sat, 07/25/2026 - 15:45

Do DSA Elites Rank America Worse Than Mao's 70-Million Body Count?

This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s video from Daily Signal senior contributor Victor Davis Hanson.

We’re hearing more and more from the Democratic Socialists of America about all of the sins of America and very little of the good things we’ve done to ourselves and to the world at large on our 250th birthday. 

What is it, the nature of this DSA, Democratic Socialists of America, and the diversity, equity, inclusion criticism that we were racist, sexist, nativist, cruel, ruthless, etc., etc.  

But my question is, compared to what? 

Mao Zedong? He killed 70 million people.

He was the greatest mass murderer in history, and that government is still communist in an unbroken chain from [Chinese leader] Xi [Jinping] all the way back to Mao. Do we ever talk about that or the million people who are in concentration camps in China? 

Compared to historically to the Aztecs? 

We’re told the Aztecs were great people. They had an empire, but they crushed over a million people to create their empire. Some years, they sacrificed up to 10,000, maybe 15,000 a year of conquered tribes of fellow Indigenous people. 

Do we remember Shaka Zulu, the 19th-century creator of the Zulu nation?

He was responsible for a genocide in crushing his enemies that probably cost over a million lives. 

Do we really think that the Native Americans were living in paradise until Europeans came? The story of Native Americans was conquest, enslavement, butchery of rival tribes. 

So, what is going on? 

We have a tradition in the West of self-criticism. That’s what makes us different. Rationalism, self-criticism, improvement. But when that goes to an extreme, it ventures from self-criticism and self-reflection to nihilism, and it’s quite destructive. 

So, let’s just take a look at where the United States is compared to the rest. 

Look at immigration. Why do a million people, or 2 million people, 10,000 a day under Joe Biden, from very poor countries, most of them from what we would call the former Third World that were victims of socialism, why do they risk their lives coming here every year? 

Why do all these critics of the United States … [Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez], why did her parents want to come here? Why did [Rep.] Ilhan Omar’s father want to come here? Why did [Rep.] Rashida Tlaib’s father want to come here? Why did [New York City Mayor] Zohran Mamdani’s parents want to come? Was it so bad? 

Can’t they ever acknowledge that they came here because they had greater security, they had greater freedom, they had greater economic opportunity? And if they had criticisms, it was never enough that they wanted to go back to the places that they praised, but only from a distance and in the abstract. 

The truth is that the poor in the United States are better off than most of the middle classes in every other country. 

We saw that in the World Cup when middle- and upper-middle-class Europeans came over, and unlike … to watch the games, and unlike most tourists, they didn’t just stick on the coasts. They went to places in Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, the South, and the Midwest. 

And they found two things.

One, Americans were amazingly friendly and open, upbeat, not downers and drab, and everything’s terrible, which they expected from their experiences in Europe. 

And more importantly, they were affluent. They had big homes. They had air conditioning. the poor had appurtenances. Everybody has a cell phone. Nobody worries about the cost, apparently. 

There’s also then the hypocrisy of a lot of our critics.

And let me just give you an example of a few of them. 

Hasan Piker is a child of very, very wealthy Turkish immigrants that became U.S. citizens. He grew up for much of his life in Turkey. He gave a talk the other day in a Mao suit to Democratic Socialists of America. Think about that. He put on the uniform, so to speak, of the greatest mass murderer in history, and then he denounced capitalism. 

But he didn’t denounce capitalism in his own life because his parents are multimillionaires. He is a multimillionaire, and he drives a, what? $120,000 Porsche. Isn’t that a luxury of the bourgeoisie? 

And then there’s Zohran Mamdani, of course. His family, as I pointed out numerous times, was the elite of the elite of the elite in Uganda, a community of expatriates, Indians, from India that control 60% of the wealth, and they’re only 1% of the population. 

And he grew up in privilege here. He had a very nice home. He has a family estate on Lake Victoria, of all places. 

Ro Khanna, the congressman from California, he always is pointing out the evils of Republicans, and as he looks at the drift of the Democratic Party, he puts his finger in the wind, and he says socialism is the answer. Ro Khanna does. 

But he’s a multimillionaire. His father-in-law is one of the wealthiest members of the Indian American community, probably worth $500 or $600 million. His own children have been deeded golf courses. His wife drives a $190,000 Range Rover, and he’s lecturing us about our shortfalls? 

And then, of course, we come to [California Gov.] Gavin Newsom. He wants to get in on the socialist craze, so he said the other day, as is his wont, moving his arms around and being very slick and glib, that capitalism fails. It didn’t work. 

It worked for you, Gavin. You have a $9 million home. 

You are the, basically, the quote-unquote, “protégé” of the Gordon Getty oil for- fortune, who backed all of your business opportunities. 

Graham Platner, the now-disgraced madman who thought he was going to be senator with a Nazi tattoo. He criticized capitalism. He said that, you know, he was drifting towards socialism, very critical of America. 

But he really wasn’t a small-business person. He was a construct. His mother and father, who were very wealthy, one owned an upscale restaurant, the other was a well-known, often corporate real estate lawyer. They set him up in business, and they were his only client, and they allowed him to have land to use. 

So, what I’m getting at is most of this criticism of America is not coming from the so-called poor. It’s not coming from the lower middle classes. It’s coming from elites in urban enclaves who have done very well with capitalism, and they feel that by mouthing these socialist and communist platitudes, it’s a way to get power within the Democratic Party first, and then within the United States second. 

And remember one thing, this is not new. Most of the violent socialist communist movements in history, whether we look at the anarchist of the late 19th century, or whether we look at the Bolsheviks of 1905 all the way up to the Russian Revolution of 1917, or we look at the revolutions of 1848 in Europe, especially the Reign of Terror, 1792 and 1793, when a bunch of very wealthy, this should sound familiar, socialists hijacked the French Revolution and turned it into a Stalinist-like murder spree. 

They all had one thing in common. They were very, very wealthy, and they hated the very system that had enriched them, and they wanted to try out a whole series of nihilist projects on whom? On the middle class and the poor, with the proviso that none of their ideology would ever apply to themselves. 

Tyler Durden Sat, 07/25/2026 - 15:10

BLM Is Back And Protesting The Police Shooting Of Another Violent Career Criminal

They are far less active across the US in 2026, but not truly gone.  Is it exasperating, or, is it entertaining?  It depends on how you look at it.  Yes, the Black Lives Matter movement is back, and big surprise, they're angry over the police shooting of another violent minority criminal.  But, is he black?

Not according to his extensive offender detail record, in which his race is listed as "White" and his ethnicity is listed as "Latino".  Yet another in a long line of imprisoned minority perpetrators falsely identified as white on their rap sheet in order to artificially reduce official crime stats.  That said, it's nice to know that BLM is finally admitting that all lives matter. 

Corey Durrell Ruiz, 38, recently released from prison, was approached by police while riding a bicycle after allegedly attempting to enter (break into) random vehicles in Madison, Wisconsin.  He was also suspected of a previous bike theft.  

When officers attempted to detain Ruiz, he ran.  He was tackled off the bike, but produced a fixed blade knife and stabbed one of the officers.  The wounded officer fired three shots, killing the suspect.  

July 22, 2026 – Madison, Wisconsin.

Four officers struggle to arrest a man suspected of stealing bikes and checking cars.

During the fight, he pulls a large fixed-blade knife.

One officer is stabbed. A second officer is also injured.

A female officer yells “Taser, Taser,…

— Louis Montoya (@montoyalouis1) July 24, 2026

Generally speaking, pulling any weapon during an arrest and trying to use it against an LEO is legal justification for the use of deadly force in return.  It is unlikely that the officers involved will face charges in court.  Not to be overlooked, Corey Ruiz has a long criminal history of up to 40 separate misdemeanors and felonies dating back to 2007. 

This includes an extensive history of attacking police officers, and yes, this does matter because it shows a consistent pattern of violence.  A world without Corey Ruiz is, objectively, a better world.

 

The Black Lives Matter movement and the mainstream media have immediately seized on the shooting in an effort to exploit it for political purposes.  The local Democrat run government is already bending the knee to protesters as they hijack press briefings with inane fatiguery.  BLM mobs are stalking Madison looking for chances to create chaos.  Wisconsin's leftist governor is calling for "accountability" in the shooting.

It's fascinating that the family of Corey Ruiz has appeared on camera to demand transparency, given that Ruiz was listed as homeless at the time of the encounter with police.  Multiple reports indicate mental health and substance abuse issues, and apparently no one from Ruiz's family was willing to give him a place to stay.  They are, though, readily available to soak up the media spotlight and feed the activist fervor in the wake of his death. 

News outlets are circulating photos of Ruiz from 2014; a common tactic used by the media to make the suspect look younger and elicit greater empathy from gullible portions of the public.

  

Concert attendees in Madison got a taste of the old BLM mob mentality when protesters stormed the venue and demanded a platform for their grievances.  As much as they would like this to become a "George Floyd moment", however, times have changed and BLM has exhausted much of the public support they had in 2020. 

Mob of angry protesters crashed a concert in Madison, Wisconsin, demanding "justice" for Corey Ruiz, a black man who was shot and killed by police after he allegedly pulled a knife during an arrest.

They essentially held the attendees hostage while hijacking the stage. The event… pic.twitter.com/J2GALWl4ob

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) July 23, 2026

The shooting is a clear case of officer self defense based on eye witness accounts and the available video footage.  Police body cams are liable to give more detailed insight into the incident, but the evidence against Ruiz is already damning.  

Leftist groups and Democrats seem to be angling for more Kenosha-style riots, perhaps as a means to create disruption during an election year.  But the American populace is tired of the theatrics.  If the protests don't fade due to lack of interest and riots do take place, few people are going to shed a tear if the National Guard drops the hammer on them.  

Ultimately, Ruiz is one of many repeat offenders who had no chance of reform; a member of the 1% of people who cause the vast majority of societal grief for the other 99%.  He should have stayed locked up for the safety of the community at large, and if he had been he would still be alive today.  Maybe, though, that's not what the Democrats and BLM really want.  

Tyler Durden Sat, 07/25/2026 - 14:35

Homebuyer Demand Remains Strong In High-Risk Areas: Report

Authored by Mary Prenon via The Epoch Times,

While nearly one in four homes across the United States are located in areas susceptible to severe weather conditions, many homebuyers are still seeking out properties in these high-risk regions, a July Realtor.com report found.

An aerial view shows empty lots and new homes under construction in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles on Jan. 5, 2026. Josh Edelson/AFP via Getty Images

The organization's data show that 23.1 percent of America's homes - with an estimated $11.2 trillion in value - are currently situated in areas prone to natural disasters.

The report indicates that, despite the likelihood of flooding, wildfires, or extreme windstorms in some areas, homebuyer demand remains strong, often driven by lower list prices than in nearby lower-risk areas.

"Price is still the biggest motivator for a lot of home shoppers, even in places where climate risk is well known," Realtor.com economist Jiayi Xu said in the report.

"But that doesn't mean the risk disappears. It shows up later, in insurance premiums, HOA fees, and financing, often after the sale is already done."

Homeowners in these high-risk locations are already paying a premium to protect their properties against possible damage, a median of $192 per month in homeowner association (HOA) fees, which is 53.6 percent more than homeowners in lower-risk areas, according to the report.

Realtor.com found that Delaware, South Carolina, and Oregon lead the nation for the widest gaps between HOA fees in high- and low-risk areas. In Oregon, for example, the median HOA fee in high-risk areas is $423, compared with $114 in lower-risk areas.

In California, where certain regions have suffered from devastating wildfires over the years, many homebuyers are still not deterred from purchasing in those areas.

According to the report, listings in high-risk Santa Clara County are priced at 78 percent of the per-square-foot price of homes without severe risk. These properties also command 48 percent more views per listing.

Los Angeles County homes in higher-risk areas also offer discounts, with homes there priced at 75 percent of those in lower-risk areas and accounting for 23 percent more views.

"When disaster strikes, shoppers retrench, but the effect is short-lived," the report states. "Following the January 2025 LA wildfires, buyer interest in high-risk homes dropped 10%, yet fully recovered within one month."

However, in other markets such as Anne Arundel County, Maryland, homebuyers are willing to pay 44 percent more per square foot to live in areas deemed at high risk for weather damage because waterfront access often outweighs the risk.

A similar situation in Llano County, Texas, shows homebuyers paying almost double for a home in a higher-risk area so they can live near a river.

The report said other areas of the country that have been continuously hit by flooding include Oklahoma, Idaho, Mississippi, and Alabama.

"Buyers are not seeking risk - but in markets where affordability has long been an issue, price is the dominant signal, and high-risk homes happen to offer the discount that makes ownership possible," the report states.

A May 2026 Pew Research Center report found that 71 percent of U.S. homeowners said their home insurance premiums had increased. Among those homeowners, many cited rising repair and rebuilding costs and more frequent extreme weather events as major reasons for the increases.

In an April report, Insurance.com, an online comparison service and digital agency, stated that Florida's high hurricane risk has made it difficult for residents to obtain home insurance.

It also noted that many carriers in the state had gone out of business, leaving just the state insurance option, Citizens Insurance, which can cost homeowners about $7,000 a year and even more in coastal areas.

Obtaining insurance in California is also difficult, the report noted, due to wildfires. As a result, some major carriers, including State Farm and Allstate, have stopped issuing new policies.

For those who still choose to purchase homes in high-risk weather zones, Insurance.com recommends ensuring they have adequate replacement cost coverage in the event of a natural disaster.

Tyler Durden Sat, 07/25/2026 - 14:00

Trump Pursues Diplomatic Off-Ramp As Omani Delegation Arrives In Tehran: Report

Summary

• Why Trump Reportedly Ordered Military Not To Strike In Overnight
• US Pauses Iran Bombing Campaign As Saudi-Houthi Red Sea Front Erupts

Why Trump Reportedly Ordered Military Not To Strike In Overnight

Axios reports that President Trump called off new U.S. military strikes on Iran Friday night, signaling a potential diplomatic offramp after nearly two weeks of tit-for-tat attacks.

People familiar with the decision told the outlet that the pause coincided with the arrival of Omani officials in Tehran for negotiations aimed at reopening the Strait of Hormuz.

Here's what those sources are saying:

• Trump's order to hold fire was given several hours after an Omani delegation arrived in Tehran Friday for talks on a new arrangement to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
• Two regional sources with knowledge of the negotiations said progress has been made in the talks and that an agreement between Oman and Iran could be reached over the weekend.

More color: 

• Trump's decision reflects both his willingness to provide more space for diplomacy and a recognition that — short of a return to major combat operations — the current level of U.S. strikes has reached the limit of its effectiveness.
• If Trump orders a return to strikes, the U.S. military can mobilize on relatively short notice.
• The U.S. military is still preparing plans for a possible return to major combat operations, but Trump hasn't given orders to move in that direction, the sources said.

Why the Trump administration is likely finding the offramp (again) ... 

•Gas Prices Nearing Levels That Could Push Trump Towards Iran Talks, Says JPM Commodities Expert

JPMorgan's head of Global Commodities Research and Strategy, Natasha Kaneva, told clients: "In the previous round of escalations, negotiations were initiated once US gasoline prices reached $4.20 and became materially more urgent as prices neared $4.50. Oil may be a global commodity, but political tolerance for high energy prices remains overwhelmingly domestic."

US Pauses Iran Bombing Campaign As Saudi-Houthi Red Sea Front Erupts 

Brent crude surged 27% over two weeks to settle at $96.78 a barrel on Friday, briefly breaching $100 this past week as traders priced in a higher war-risk premium into energy markets amid simultaneous chokepoint threats to the Strait of Hormuz and the southern Red Sea.

Meanwhile, the US appeared to pause its 13-day campaign of daily overnight strikes against Iran. While there was no indication that the operational halt would extend into next week, the pause certainly reinforces the diplomatic signals highlighted in our US-Iran wrap on Friday.

However, there was an escalation overnight with Saudi-led strikes on Iran-backed Houthi targets in Hodeida. This comes after the terror group attacked multiple Saudi-linked tankers in the southern Red Sea area.

Houthis escalate with attacks against Saudi Arabia: 

BREAKING: Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree says the group has launched two "sensitive operations" targeting Saudi Arabia, vowing that the principle of a "blockade for a blockade" will continue.

🔴 LIVE updates: https://t.co/gEqGF07kWl pic.twitter.com/IYUFD5qCva

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) July 25, 2026

Saudi Arabian oil refinery reportedly hit by Houthi missile: 

Smoke has been seen coming from a Saudi Arabian oil refinery in Jazan after reports of a Houthi missile attack and air defence activity.

The Iran-backed Houthis said they had launched a series of attacks on the country in retaliation to Friday’s Saudi strikes on Hodeidah. pic.twitter.com/P88heLGtOO

— Al Jazeera Breaking News (@AJENews) July 25, 2026

The confrontation threatens to open a second major front in the Gulf conflict. With traffic through Hormuz largely paralyzed, sustained Houthi attacks on Yanbu or ships entering Bab al-Mandab Strait could disrupt millions of barrels of Saudi exports, raise shipping costs, and further tighten physical markets.

Hormuz Traffic

Bab al-Mandab Strait Traffic

Commodity desks from JPMorgan, RBC, Goldman Sachs and others warned this past week that spreading "strait chaos" across the Gulf and widening disruptions to regional energy flows could drive further upside in crude if the conflict persists. Brent has returned to the $90s after briefly trading above $100 a barrel.

Here's what top commodity desks are saying:

•Goldman Warns Brent Could Top $120 If Gulf Chokepoint Crisis Deepens

•RBC Commodities Chief Warns "War Entering Dangerous Phase" As Chokepoint Chaos Risks Oil Above 2008 Peak

•Gas Prices Nearing Levels That Could Push Trump Towards Iran Talks, Says JPM Commodities Expert

And then there's this:

•Nine Potential Commodity Wildcards As "Once-A-Decade" Shocks Become New Normal

Red Sea disruption already materialized on Friday when a Hong Kong-flagged supertanker decided to turn away before reaching Bab el-Mandeb and to instead transit around the Cape of Good Hope, reinforcing longer freight times, higher rates, and more disruptions:

•Oil Tanker Makes Red Sea U-Turn After Houthi Threats, Reroutes Around Africa In Costly Transit

There is good news because US-allied Gulf countries are either planning or already developing new pipeline and port projects to bypass the Hormuz chokepoint entirely, which in the long run will erode Tehran's leverage on the critical waterway:

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

Here are the latest overnight developments, courtesy of Bloomberg:

US Strikes & Pause

• Iran reported no US strikes overnight on Saturday, marking an apparent break after nearly two weeks of consecutive nightly US attacks.

• US strikes had progressively expanded in scope over two weeks, targeting bridges and infrastructure deeper inside Iran, following a collapsed ceasefire and renewed fighting over the Strait of Hormuz.

• Trump said on Friday he has not yet made a decision on whether to conduct major strikes against Iran, while noting US-Iran talks are continuing through VP Vance, Secretary Rubio, and others.

• Trump had previously told Axios he was considering a "massive attack" on Iran, saying the country "hasn't received enough pain yet" and is not ready to make a deal.

Strait of Hormuz

• Iran's Revolutionary Guards said on Saturday they stopped four ships attempting to transit the Strait of Hormuz over the past 24 hours after firing warning shots.

• The US and UK are planning a high-level international conference in London next week focused on forming a coalition to protect maritime shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, according to two European diplomats and other sources.

• An LPG tanker with 28 Indian crew members was attacked in Iranian territorial waters on Friday; India's embassy confirmed the crew is safe.

Regional Escalation

• Houthis claimed to have struck Saudi Arabia with missiles on Saturday morning, targeting southern Saudi provinces; Saudi authorities issued emergency warnings before lifting them for Jazan.

• Bahrain and Kuwait secretly sent warplanes to strike drone- and missile-storage depots inside Iran earlier this month, according to people familiar with the matter, their first such direct retaliation against Tehran.

Diplomacy & Sanctions

• China urged Iran and the US to return to implementing their ceasefire memorandum, with Foreign Minister Wang Yi expressing deep concern over renewed escalation at an SCO meeting in Kyrgyzstan on Friday.

• Pakistan is exploring a path toward resuming stalled US-Iran talks following a push initiated by China, according to three Pakistani sources cited by Reuters; obstacles to talks remain high.

• The US Treasury imposed new sanctions on Friday on the network of Iranian financier Babak Zanjani, targeting four individuals and nine entities linked to sanctions evasion and digital asset exchanges.

Tyler Durden Sat, 07/25/2026 - 13:35

Meltdown? The Real Reason Why The Media Hates Elon Musk

Some would say that Elon Musk is an enigma; a billionaire entrepreneur with a focus on green tech and environmental impact who used to support Democrat fixtures like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, only to become one of the progressive establishment's biggest opponents.  What happened?

As Musk readily admits, the progressive movement changed and he did not.  One could argue that the progressive movement didn't change, it just pulled the mask off and revealed the monstrous face underneath.  Either way, anyone who saw that ugly face during the despotic insanity of the pandemic era and refused to adapt and embrace it was deemed an "enemy of democracy". 

Musk got a real good look and was clearly repulsed. 

After 2022 when Musk declared his total separation from the Democrats as the "party of division and hate", the leftist media descended like so many flying monkey's from a wicked witch's castle.  The attacks have been relentless.  When Musk made a move to purchase Twitter and fundamentally disrupt the political left's dominance of the social media landscape, they shrieked with rage and spit venom.  It was glorious.  

In a recent interview with The Economist the venom was on full display, but the tactics of media disinformation agents and provocateurs have become tired, repetitious, tedious.  You could see Musk's exasperation with the exercise.  He's heard all these leading questions and biased insinuations a thousand times before. 

Online and Swiss-owned far-left outlet Gizmodo published a hatchet job article covering the interview and described Musk as "melting down" over "normal questions".  This kind of gaslighting from the left is standard, and the projection is palpable.  Gizmodo's reaction is the true meltdown; they simply can't handle the idea of the media being exposed for their dishonesty.   

The most dishonest of people with the most nefarious of intentions often make accusations by disguising them as "questions".  The front page headline for this very Economist interview was:  "Should You Be Afraid Of Elon Musk?"  

Musk has been directly and indirectly accused of promoting racism, fascism, sexism, and even genocide.  Through DOGE and the much needed shutdown of the corrupt USAID institution, he is now accused of "killing millions" by withholding humanitarian funding. 

Liberal White Woman: "Some people loathe you. Do you understand why?"

Elon: "Maybe some people do loathe me. That's probably true. I don't care. I think a lot more people hate you and the media than you realize."

I love this man!!!!!! 🤣 pic.twitter.com/DpsZ4suVC0

— Matt Van Swol (@mattvanswol) July 23, 2026

🚨ABSOLUTE MIC DROP FROM ELON ON DOGE!!!!

Elon Musk: "ZERO died because of DOGE. Zero point zero!"

"When funding is stopped for a fraudulent organization, or for something do you think they're going to say,"Will you please keep funding the fraud!'

Or do you think they're… pic.twitter.com/OAhBLLbYiP

— Matt Van Swol (@mattvanswol) July 23, 2026

The real agenda is embedded in this line of questioning.  The global elites and the far-left present a false narrative of consensus - The notion that they represent the majority and the "majority" is very angry with Elon for his trespasses against the liberal order.  Perhaps more than Twitter, they are specifically sensitive about the closure of USAID. 

Why?  Not because they care about poor little starving children with AIDS in Africa.  It is questionable how many US dollars were actually going into these humanitarian projects versus the amount of dollars going into the hungry pockets of Democrat politicians and leftist NGOs.  The reality that the media doesn't want to address is that USAID was a central funding hub for the spread of woke ideology and propaganda around the globe. 

Without endless cash supplied by USAID fraud, the multicultural and intersectional vision of the far-left is greatly hindered.  Just look at how quickly, for example, Pride and transgender activist movements dissipated once federal funding through organizations like USAID dried up.  

What about mass immigration?  Do Americans really need to be funding shelters and services for migrants traveling through Mexico seeking to enter the US illegally?  Because this is what USAID was doing.    

DOGE dislodged an organization that was a cancer on the entire world, including the US.  This is what the media is truly upset about.  And it should be noted that the US is not responsible for the well-being of the entire world.  If people in third world countries can't survive without US subsidies, maybe they should learn how.

But Musk's most egregious crime was the leave the liberal plantation.  Leftists are radical collectivists and they see each individuals personal success as a platform to serve the interests of the greater movement.  Any individual who walks away from the collective and takes his platform with him is viewed as a traitor, but also a thief. 

Progressives see Musk as their property.  They see everything he builds as their property.  They believe that Musk owes them. 

🔥 Reporter tries LECTURING Elon Musk on being "divisive" and disliked, it BACKFIRES MASSIVELY:

REPORTER: The kinds of things you push make it worse

ELON: "I think you're the problem. The media."

"Speaking of loathing — YOU are loathed FAR more than I am, and you don't even… pic.twitter.com/oOYPpFbp5g

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) July 23, 2026

The assertion by Economist editor Zanny Minton Beddoes that her outlet and her comrades are "traditional liberals" promoting limited government and individual liberty is perhaps the most laughable claim a journalist has uttered in recent memory.  The Economist is a globalist news platform, and was partially owned by the Rothschild family for decades, right up until March of this year when they sold their share. 

The Economist aggressively promoted anti-freedom policies during the Biden Administration including mandatory vaccinations during Covid.  They also supported, in theory, the idea of vaccine passports, which would have resulted in the most oppressive shift away from personal liberty in modern history.  They consistently attacked people who opposed the mandates for "spreading misinformation" and defended the concept of government pressure on the public. 

Of course, none of the mandates enforced by liberal governments proved to make any difference in the spread of covid, and the Infection Fatality Rate remain relatively static at an average of 0.23%.  All that hysteria and tyranny over a virus that 99.8% of the population would easily survive. 

Traditional liberalism in the media is long dead.  It does not exist.  It has been replaced by woke authoritarianism.  

This is why, as Musk notes, no one trusts the media and most people hate them.  In 2025 over 70% of US adults said they have low trust or no trust in the mainstream media.  These companies might have incredible amounts of money behind them, but it's all irrelevant without the public trust.   

Tyler Durden Sat, 07/25/2026 - 13:25

Top NIH Official Wanted To Shut Down Research Into COVID-19 Vaccine Injuries: Emails

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

Top officials with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) expressed misgivings about researchers with the agency studying people with neurological issues after they received COVID-19 vaccines, according to newly released emails.

Principal deputy director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Lawrence Tabak, testifies before the Committee on Oversight and Accountability in Washington on May 16, 2024. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

Dr. Avindra Nath, a senior investigator with the NIH's National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, was studying people with post-vaccination neurological problems in 2020 and 2021.

In an email on April 10, 2021, he sent a draft of a paper to the institute's director, Dr. Walter Koroshetz, that outlined what he had found.

"Early recognition and treatment with corticosteroids can reverse the symptoms," Nath wrote.

The following day, the institute's director sent the manuscript to Dr. Anthony Fauci, who at the time was director of another NIH institute.

"There have been steady slow stream of reports to me of post vaccination neurologic conditions, seem to be mostly peripheral nerve disorders ... maybe an occasional spinal cord issue," Koroshetz told Fauci. "Avi has been collecting a bunch. He has a report sent out to publish. Hard to know not due to chance but are timed to the vaccination."

Another NIH employee sent the manuscript to then-NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins and Dr. Lawrence Tabak, a second top NIH official, and shared that the New England Journal of Medicine rejected the paper.

"What do you make of this?" Collins wrote in response. "The draft letter doesn't explain how these 32 patients were referred - leaving one to wonder whether this is common or rare."

Koroshetz told Collins that many reports had been lodged with the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System and that Nath had been attracting referrals because he had appeared on a podcast to discuss neurological problems following COVID-19 vaccination.

Koroshetz also said that Nath, and another employee at his institute, had suffered tinnitus after receiving COVID-19 vaccines, and that Nath had hearing loss.

Collins said the approach taken by Nath's team was "very troubling," adding, "collecting anecdotes and then trying to build a case isn't scientifically compelling - and will have the main consequence of feeding vaccine hesitancy and social media overreaction."

Tabak wrote privately to Collins, telling him, "I don't understand why Walter does not shut this down."

"While the emails do not prove that Collins, Tabak, or Fauci expressly ordered Nath to abandon the manuscript, they raise serious questions about whether NIH leadership viewed its potential effect on vaccine confidence as a compelling reason to suppress its publication," the Informed Consent Action Network, which released the missives on July 22, said in a statement.

Collins, Fauci, and Nath did not return requests for comment by the time of publication. Tabak could not be reached.

The paper was never published in a journal. It was released as a preprint, or without peer review, in May 2022, more than one year after Nath sent it to Koroshetz.

Dr. Danice Hertz, a retired gastroenterologist who received the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine shortly after it was authorized in 2020 and suffered severe problems, was one of the patients who was examined by Nath's team.

"I have always believed that Fauci must have told Nath to stop talking to us, as we were all abruptly dismissed from Nath's care without explanation. Now I know that my suspicions were true," Hertz told The Epoch Times in an email after reading the newly released missives.

Dr. Anthony Fauci testifies before the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic in Washington on June 3, 2024. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times Tyler Durden Sat, 07/25/2026 - 12:50

'Largest Group Of TDS Sufferers Ever Put Together': Trump Delivers Remarks At Correspondents' Dinner

Authored by Emel Akan via The Epoch Times,

President Donald Trump attended the rescheduled White House Correspondents’ Dinner in Washington on July 24.

The event that was originally held on April 25 was abruptly canceled due to an assassination attempt against him.

“I am delighted to be here,” Trump said as he began his speech, which lasted an hour.

“Amazing people, a lot of people that I like. Some I don’t like at all, but I respect most of them. I must say that you do a great job, amazing job, and it’s an honor. As I said three months ago, the show must go on.”

Trump continued his speech with jokes and said, “This place is really the largest group of Trump derangement syndrome people ever put together.”

The rescheduled gala took place at the Waldorf Astoria.

During his speech, Trump said he is the most transparent president in history and took several jabs at the media, joking that many media organizations would be “broke” once he leaves the White House.

“When I’m gone, you’re all going to be broke. Your business model is going to be finished,” the president said.

He took direct aim at CNN's Kaitlin Collins (and 'Fake Tapper'):

"I want to personally congratulate CNN's Kaitlan Collins... I thought she had really made it big with a major new sponsorship, but then I informed her that it wasn't her on the Bud Light can, it was Dylan Mulvaney."

CNN released a statement during Trump's speech defending its reporters, writing in part:

"Honest, accurate journalism may sometimes irritate politicians, but our right to report and present that reporting without government interference is fully protected by the U.S. Constitution."

He also joked that, in order to save the media, he would announce a fourth presidential run.

“That’s why tonight, to show just how much I care about the press,” Trump said, “I’m pleased to announce my intention - and this is somewhat of a scoop - my intention to run for a fourth term as president of the United States.”

He then put on a “Trump 2028” hat, drawing laughs from the audience.

This was his first time attending the dinner as president, except for the April event, which was canceled after a shooting occurred just outside the main ballroom.

Trump joked about the dinner itself, saying it was “far worse” than he expected.

At the same time, he acknowledged that he and the reporters who attended the April dinner “went through a period of trauma” that created a unique bond between them. He said he would attend next year’s dinner.

Throughout the speech, Trump occasionally praised the media, saying he respected most reporters and liked some of them. However, he also said that much of the coverage of his administration and policies had been unfair.

The president also criticized his opponents, targeting individual journalists before shifting to Democrats and other public figures.

Trump rebutted the longstanding claim that he decided to run for president after former President Barack Obama mocked him at the 2011 White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner.

He said Obama’s remarks were not a factor in his decision to enter the race in 2016.

“I just decided that I wanted to make America great again. This had nothing to do with that dinner,” he said.

After Trump’s remarks, mentalist Oz Pearlman took the stage and performed mind-reading tricks for the audience, concluding the event.

‘We Will Not Be Intimidated’

White House Correspondents’ Association outgoing President Weijia Jiang delivered the opening address at the dinner.

“Whatever may divide us, we stand together against political violence,” she said.

“An assassination attempt on our president is an attack on democracy itself,” she added, drawing applause from the crowd.

“Tonight, our message is this: We are back. We will not be intimidated.”

The dinner at the Washington Hilton hotel on April 25 was interrupted when gunshots were fired outside the ballroom. Cole Tomas Allen, a 31-year-old man from California, allegedly got past security with a shotgun and shot at a Secret Service officer who was wearing a bulletproof vest. Security officers quickly responded and arrested Allen. The officer was not injured, and no one else was hurt.

The Secret Service immediately evacuated Trump, First Lady Melania Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and several Cabinet members from the venue.

Allen is charged with attempting to assassinate Trump at the event. He also faces one count of transporting a firearm across state lines with intent to commit a felony and one count of discharging a firearm during a crime of violence. He has pleaded not guilty.

At the event, the White House Correspondents’ Association presented special awards to Secret Service Police Officer Victor Gonzales and to the staff of the Washington Hilton to honor their exceptional service during the shooting. The association plans to return to Hilton for next year’s dinner.

The White House Correspondents’ Dinner is a black-tie gala attended by media personalities, business leaders, celebrities, lawmakers, and Cabinet officials to celebrate the Fourth Estate and White House reporters.

The association said the logistical challenges in organizing a second dinner led it to scale back the event, resulting in a smaller gathering with a reduced guest list. The Washington Hilton’s ballroom can hold 3,000 people, while the Waldorf Astoria only fits 700.

While most of Trump’s Cabinet attended the rescheduled event, the first lady, Vance, and Rubio were not among the guests due to prior commitments, a White House official told The Epoch Times.

According to the White House, the following Trump administration officials attended the dinner: acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, FBI Director Kash Patel, Education Secretary Linda McMahon, Small Business Administration chief Kelly Loeffler, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, Energy Secretary Chris Wright, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., acting Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz, and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.

As part of the enhanced security measures, each guest was required to present a unique QR code and a government-issued photo ID to get through the ticketing.

The guests then went through layers of security to access the ballroom.

The White House Correspondents’ Association was founded in 1914 to protect press freedom and preserve journalists’ access to the White House. It held its first dinner in 1921, and the first president to attend was Calvin Coolidge in 1924.

Watch the full speech below:

Tyler Durden Sat, 07/25/2026 - 11:40

"Hell Of A Great Day For Starship": SpaceX Tests Megarocket In First Time Since IPO

SpaceX launched Starship on its 13th test flight on Friday evening, the first since the company's massive IPO, successfully deploying 20 next-generation Starlink V3 satellites while demonstrating further progress with its largest rocket.

"Deployment of 20 @Starlink V3 satellites complete. Today's test will provide critical data as we prepare to expand our Starlink constellation," SpaceX announced on X.

Deployment of 20 @Starlink V3 satellites complete. Today's test will provide critical data as we prepare to expand our Starlink constellation pic.twitter.com/jWKLwXGlsk

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) July 24, 2026

The Super Heavy booster separated about two minutes after liftoff but suffered engine relight failures before a splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico.

Starship soared on the second flight of the next generation, deploying advanced Starlink satellites for the first time and providing priceless data as it travelled through air, space, and sea → https://t.co/Rp7VwBzpWx pic.twitter.com/vCYYKvGvDK

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) July 25, 2026

Starship's upper stage performed better, completing a soft landing in the Indian Ocean and remaining intact. This gave engineers their first detailed view of an undamaged heat shield after reentry.

"This is the softest splashdown we have ever had with the Starship there in the Indian Ocean," Dan Huot, communications manager at SpaceX, said on a livestream, adding, "I'm a little over the moon right now. Wow. Lucky number 13. Hell of a great day for Starship." 

Splashdown confirmed! Congratulations to the entire SpaceX team on the 13th flight test of Starship! pic.twitter.com/g27YJCQgiN

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) July 24, 2026

In a statement after the test flight, SpaceX said the booster landing "attempted to relight its engines for the landing burn," but only a subset successfully ignited before the "hard splashdown," adding that the upper stage of the rocket made a "soft splashdown" in the Indian Ocean. It noted that Starship came "to rest intact in the Indian Ocean and providing critical views of an intact heatshield for the first time."

Latest coverage:

• SpaceX Reportedly Turns Away Falcon Customers As Starship Gamble Comes Into Focus
• SpaceX Starship Flight 13 Launch Scrubbed At The Last Second

SpaceX stock and bonds:

• SpaceX Rebounds From Near-50% Rout As Starship Launch Catalyst Nears
• SpaceX Shares Fall Below $135 IPO Price, But The Real Story Is Its Bonds

When will SpaceX hit bottom?

The test advances SpaceX's plans to expand Starlink, develop orbital data centers and support NASA missions to the moon.

Tyler Durden Sat, 07/25/2026 - 11:05

US Sanctions UK-Based Senior Muslim Brotherhood Leader Over Alleged Hamas Support

The United States has sanctioned a senior UK-based Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood (MB) official alongside six other individuals and entities that it said provided material support to terrorist group Hamas.

State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott said on July 23 that the action exposes MB affiliates and “Hamas-directed front organizations that use charitable facades and underground networks to disguise and move funds in support of terrorism.”

As Evgenia Filimianova reports via The Epoch Times, the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) identified Mahmoud al-Abyari as one of the sanctioned individuals, describing him as the UK-based secretary general of the Muslim Brotherhood General Secretariat.

OFAC said al-Abyari helped raise funds for two organizations it had previously sanctioned over alleged Hamas ties—Filistin Vakfi and Hayat Yolu—and worked with MB groups to provide financial support to Hamas.

Two charities were also named, including Indonesia-based Tujah Bulah Global and Gaza-based Madad Palestine Charitable Society.

A Turkey-based money exchange rounded out the list. Treasury said El-Kahira for General Trading transferred hundreds of thousands of dollars to Hamas and separately provided underground banking services to organized crime groups in Sweden.

OFAC also designated three men connected to the firm: the owner, Khuldun Khamis Zakaria Alden, and shareholders Zaid Issam Ahmed Al-Jebouri and Abdullah Issam Ahmad Al-Jebouri.

“The Trump Administration will relentlessly pursue terrorists and those who finance them,” said Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

“Whether operating under the guise of charities, businesses, or underground financial networks, those who enable Hamas will be exposed, sanctioned, and held accountable.”

The measures build on designations announced in January and March that targeted Hamas financial facilitators, operatives, and MB-linked charities.

Pigott said on July 23 that Washington is “committed to dismantling the financial infrastructure that sustains Hamas and the MB.”

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent speaks during a press briefing at the White House on May 28, 2026. Madalina Kilroy/The Epoch Times

The sanctions freeze any property and interests in property of the designated individuals and entities that are in the United States or under the control of U.S. persons. The measures also expose foreign financial institutions to potential secondary sanctions if they knowingly facilitate significant transactions on behalf of sanctioned persons.

Different Approach

The latest U.S. action highlights a policy difference between Washington and London.

The Treasury designated the Egyptian, Jordanian, and Lebanese branches of the MB as specially designated global terrorists in January 2026 for providing material support to Hamas.

The MB has been designated a terrorist organization by Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain. Jordan outlawed the movement in 2025.

The UK has not proscribed the organization. The UK produced a review of the MB in 2015, which concluded that membership of, association with, or influence by the MB should be regarded as “a possible indicator of extremism.”

It said, however, that these factors alone were not sufficient to justify legal action. Downing Street also found that parts of the movement had used or supported violence in some countries, but stopped short of recommending a ban.

Former UK Commissioner for Countering Extremism Robin Simcox said the United States has taken a more robust approach than London toward MB networks operating in the UK.

Speaking during a Foundation for Defense of Democracies program on July 17, Simcox said, “This is a UK problem first and foremost, and we are not dealing with it in anything like the seriousness that the United States is, and that’s a major problem.”

Simcox said the British government, police, and security services have not considered the MB a sufficiently high priority compared with other terrorist threats.

He described that approach as “a massive strategic mistake” and said he hopes the latest U.S. measures will encourage the UK to revisit the issue.

The Epoch Times reached out to the UK Home Office for comment but didn’t receive a response by publication time.

Tyler Durden Sat, 07/25/2026 - 09:55

Ukraine's Drone Campaign Against The 'Russian Amazon' Is Driven By Political Motives

Authored by Andrew Korybko,

The goal is to create a growing class of malcontents by inflicting major harm to small business owners who might then shift the electoral odds against the ruling party ahead of September’s next elections and later possibly form the core of a future protest movement that could be exploited from abroad.

Ukraine’s US-assisted long-range drone campaign against Russia has recently begun targeting the country’s online retailer Wildberries, which is essentially the “Russian Amazon”, with recent strikes either totally destroying or greatly damaging several of its logistics centers. The Financial Times cited Russia’s edition of Forbes to report that these attacks might have already destroyed 150-275 billion rubles’ worth of inventory thus far, equivalent to around $2-3.5 billion, or more than Wildberries’ net profit last year.

They also importantly cited Alexander Kolyandr, a director at Eurasia Group, who told them that “The loss of the goods will put thousands of traders out of business, resulting in unpaid taxes, defaulted loans and the like.” Therein lies the political motive behind Ukraine’s drone campaign against the “Russian Amazon”. Zelensky announced a 40-day influence operation against Russia late last month with the objective of coercing it into a ceasefire without any concessions from Ukraine or its Western patrons.

It’ll formally end in early August, so nearly six weeks before the next Duma elections in late September, the first since the special operation began as the last ones were in 2021. His influence operation will likely be extended, however, even if only informally. With this political context in mind as well as the explicitly stated goal that he aims to achieve, it’s clear that Zelensky authorized his forces to do whatever they can to maximally inconvenience average Russians for the purpose of turning them against Putin.

This explains the prior spree of strikes against Russian energy infrastructure, which led to a spike in fuel costs that Ukraine expected would raise prices across the board due to higher transport costs for slashing average Russians’ disposable income, and the Wildberries campaign is the next phase. Harming small businesses more directly affects average Russians, both buyers and of course sellers, and the particular intent appears to be to create a new and growing class of malcontents within the country.

If taken to its extreme, and it’s possible that more logistics centers will be targeted and at least damaged since 18 of the 20 largest in Russia are reportedly within range of Ukrainian drones, this could have long-term socio-political and economic consequences for Russia. The state, which is already under financial strain due to the combination of sanctions, attacks against its energy infrastructure, and the recent large-scale destruction of small business’ taxable inventory, might thus be pressured to bail them out.

Inadequate support for struggling small business owners could shift the electoral odds against the ruling party in what would then be spun as a symbolic setback to Putin, create the earlier mentioned class of malcontents, and thus possibly rekindle long-dormant protest potential that could be exploited from abroad. The consequences could therefore cascade in the worst-case, which admittedly isn’t likely since the state still has time to avert it, so it’s premature to expect this yet it also shouldn’t be ruled out either.

The larger trend is that Ukraine’s spree of strikes against Russia is gradually evolving from showmanship into strategy, assisted as it’s been by the US, which provides targeting intelligence and overall guidance to its proxy. “Trump 2.0’s Escalation Strategy Against Russia Is Starting To Take Shape”, and it’s centered on a “war of attrition” that’s now setting its sights on largely civilian targets like Wildberries, the aim of which is to advance political goals that are in any case unlikely to get Putin to declare a ceasefire.

Tyler Durden Sat, 07/25/2026 - 09:20

The Far-Right 'Terror Plot' That Didn't Exist... Until The UK Government And Media Just Said It Did

Authored by Steven Tucker via dailysceptic.org,

Did you see that huge Muslim gathering held in Suffolk recently, which had to be called off early due to a major far-Right terror plot being hatched against it? You may well have done, as the news was all over the media and referenced in alarmist tones by leading politicians, up to and including the Prime Minister (both the ones we've had this week).

But did you also see that the 'plot' didn't even exist? Quite possibly not, because the subsequent release of everyone concerned (bar one aberrant and misleading exception, who we'll come to later) didn't get anything like as much space in the media, and no mention at all from any of the politicians who had so eagerly jumped the imaginary gun to condemn it.

Empty threats

The disrupted event, called the UK Ijtima, attracted 15,000 members of the Religion of Peace from around the world to gather in the grounds of the country estate of Shrubland Hall in Barham to engage in events of a peacefully peaceful nature. This peace was suddenly shattered, however, when armed counter-terror police descended, warning visitors of a severe threat to their wellbeing in the shape of the nearby presence of some white people, causing the jamboree to be closed down a few hours early on Sunday July 12th. Eight men across the country were detained under the Terrorism Act 2000, whilst a further four individuals were apprehended upon different grounds like conspiracy to commit murder. Counter-terror cops confirmed the arrests were "Right-wing terrorism related".

Then-Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, another recent victim of things having to end early, was quick to express shock at the "credible, serious threat", as was his soon-to-be successor, Andy Burnham.

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood went further, saying the prompt police action "undoubtedly saved lives", making a statement in the Commons, playing up the cancellation as all part of a wider campaign of terror and intimidation being waged against Britain's Muslims by the agents of Anglo-Saxon hatred.

Hannah Spencer, the Green Party MP for Gorton and Gaza, joined in, demanding stronger governmental action against "anti-Muslim hatred" and bemoaning how the "alarming incident" in Barham "has barely been covered in the news", even though it appeared on the BBC, Sky News, ITV and many major newspapers.

The lengthy ITV report is particularly cringeworthy and dhimmified. An interviewee, before any details of the 'plot' were even known, says that, if it had succeeded, it could have been the biggest terror massacre in British history. ITV would not have run an interview just after Axel Rudakubana's arrest in 2024 with someone saying the same thing about his own plan to kill thousands with the bioweapons he was brewing in his bedroom, because Axel was from a minority group himself, and so speculating about his own case was officially discouraged by media and politicians alike, even though his offences, unlike those of the white Barham 'terrorists', were actually real.

Others doing their best to inflate the risk included the Muslim Council of Britain, who used the incident to specifically warn that "the threat facing Muslim communities is real, not imagined". A few days later, of course, it turned out the precise reverse was true as regarded Barham, yet still the MCB's statement remained online and unaltered.

Did it really matter to those bemoaning the 'threat' so loudly here that it ultimately did turn out to be wholly imaginary, though?

PCS gone mad

The PCS, our main civil service union, momentarily confused itself with the CPS, and put out an eerily similar statement to the MCB on the 'plot', also presenting it as part of a wider pattern:

There is no doubt there was a serious risk to life. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood described a "credible threat" and said that police action had "undoubtedly saved lives". Britain's Counter Terrorism Policing (CTP) confirmed that the investigation was "Right-wing terrorism related". This is not an isolated incident. There is increasing evidence of growing Islamophobia and alarming Islamophobic attacks. On Friday June 19th PCS condemned violent attacks targeting Edinburgh's Muslim community. This followed serious violence earlier the same month over several days in Belfast, Northern Ireland. In Manchester and Stockport, mosques have been attacked during evening prayers.

The other attacks upon Muslims referred to by the PCS here were real, physically extant events. The pseudo-events in Barham later turned out not to be. Fran Heathcote, the PCS General Secretary, reassured her union's Muslims that the difference didn't matter, though. Look at the sentence I've highlighted in bold:

Firstly I am thankful that this potentially catastrophic attack was prevented on this occasion without injury. However, I recognise that the threat facing Muslim and other religious communities is very real. Once again, we send our solidarity to those affected who may be feeling frightened and insecure at this time. PCS is ready to support any of our members affected by such events whether threatened or real. This kind of violence has no place in any society. We stand firmly against racism and religious intolerance in all its forms.

A union which explicitly promises to protect its members from imaginary threats? Would that include handing them out free cloves of garlic to ward off vampires, and silver bullets to see off werewolves? I wrote on the Daily Sceptic recently about a bizarre new far-Left faux-academic philosophy called 'eventism', or the unjustifiable social prejudice against false claims of things which never actually happened at all. This philosophy, which allows minority groups like Muslims to demonise majority groups like whites as being collectively 'guilty' of crimes like rape, murder or slavery even if they have never personally committed them, seems also here to apply to non-existent acts of 'terror' like the one which never occurred at Barham.

Bodies like the Muslim Council of Britain expressly want to use such purely imagined 'events' as a basis for implementing concrete polices. As the MCB said in its post-Barham statement, "The MCB calls on ministers to match the language of condemnation with actual action and policy, not another round of statements that change nothing." If you want "actual action", rather than mere abstract words, isn't that a kind of eventism in itself?

Droning on

What actually happened at Barham during the Ijtima, then? It is quite hard to ascertain for certain, due to the mainstream media, police and previously mouthy politicians, all of whom must now know, failing completely to tell us. So, we have to guess.

The best explanation (officially unconfirmed) I have seen appears in a TikTok video from Shayne Wiskin, a Right-wing campaigner who says an anti-immigration patriot group, as it would style itself, had gone to the Ijtima bearing drones. The Ijtima gathering is banned in several Islamic nations around the globe, with the parent sect which organises it, Tablighi Jamaat, sometimes accused of being extremists. Fearing such rumours may be true, the patriots, from something called the British Security Project (BSP), decided to go to a nearby field and pilot some drones equipped with cameras overhead just to check the festival-goers weren't secretly building a nuclear warhead.

If this narrative is true, then the supposed 'Nazi terrorists' were nothing of the kind, just the modern-day equivalent of Uncle Jimmy and his Fairly Secret Army from the 1970s Reginald Perrin sitcoms, attempting to protect the nation from fifth-columnists armed with little more than broomsticks and bravado. The BSP aspires to place over 120,000 members in schools and on trains nationwide, just in case a jihadi or a paedo happens to wander into one someday. This might be difficult as yet, as it would seem lucky to have 120 members. It sounds more like well-meaning fantasists than genuinely dangerous men. To be fair to the police, though, if the below alleged photographs supposedly showing BSP drone-operatives at work are real, they did look somewhat suspicious, and it was hardly unreasonable to investigate what they were doing, albeit the ultimate decision to go in so hard with nationwide arrests of alleged 'accomplices' appears to have been rather over the top.

It isn't so much that the police approached these people that is the problem here - if those were masked Muslims flying drones over a Christian gathering, I'd certainly want them taken in for questioning - it was the political and media reaction to the arrests that was more worthy of critique.

Event management

Having expended so much political capital upon condemning this "credible, serious threat" to the Muslim population, politicians, activists, unions and media could hardly just come out and openly admit they had got it all horribly wrong. This, for example, is how ITV News obediently and uncritically reported the Muslim Council of Britain's initial comments about the affair on its website:

I would have loved to have seen a follow-up headline saying 'Far-right danger MCB described as 'real, not imagined', turns out to be imagined, not real', but I suspect that would have been far too humiliating for ITV to own up to. Also, once again, to do so would have been 'eventist', and so just another unacceptable form of systemic white racism.

The main Establishment face-saving tactic rolled out has been simply to stay silent. Mahmood, Burnham and Starmer don't seem to have issued any corrections or apologies, nor do the MCB or PCS union. As for the media, several outlets have dutifully printed follow-up stories explaining how everyone arrested was later released facing no specific terror charges. However, these seem less prominently reported than the initial news of the arrests, and one particular report, from the BBC, was framed in such a way as to make it all sound like the direct opposite of what really happened:

If you only read the headline there, which many users will, it sounds like there was a real terror threat in Barham after all. But if you examine the whole story, it turns out one of the men arrested, during a search of his home and vehicle, was found to possess two extendable batons and a stun-gun. He had made no attempt to take them to the UK Ijtima, had no intent to use them there and wasn't even present in Barham during the gathering, being apprehended in distant Basildon. For this, the man has already been charged, tried and sentenced to six months in prison on a suspended sentence: the wheels of justice really can spin quite quickly on the odd occasion the state actually wants them to. Elsewhere, the BBC reported the other men's release in more honest terms, but the headline reproduced above looks like a clear exercise in damage limitation.

Speculation nation

There's something about all this that does not add up. I would guess it's more an exercise in quietly obscuring yet another DEI-created policing cock-up rather than a case of initial intentional elite conspiracy, but Reform UK's Deputy Leader Richard Tice thinks otherwise. Tice questions whether the whole thing was some government false-flag psy-op to counteract the widespread belief that the murderer of his fellow Reform member Ann Widdecombe may have been a far-Left extremist, by spuriously dragging alleged far-Right extremists back into the headlines instead. (Some have even tried to link the British Security Project to Ann's killer.) In other words, 'White woman killed for real, make the headlines about poor brown men feeling threatened by made-up non-threats': anti-eventism activism in action.

This is pure speculation on Tice's behalf, of the kind you would normally expect politicians like Mahmood, Starmer or Burnham to immediately condemn - but on this occasion, neither their lips nor their Twitter-fingers, moved. Why? Perhaps because, if they had done, Tice could legitimately have shot back that they were guilty of doing precisely the same thing themselves first.

'Don't speculate about motives,' our leaders command us whenever a Muslim attacks people shouting 'Allahu Akbar!' In this case, some white persons do basically nothing, and our leaders themselves can't stop speculating right from the start, because, when possessed by the dogma of 'eventism', fictional 'events' (inverted commas) which tell the right story become somehow automatically much truer than factual events (no inverted commas) which do not.

We were always brought up to believe that actions have consequences. Today, it seems children are more likely to be taught that complete non-actions have consequences too. Being arrested by counter-terror police for doing absolutely nothing wrong, for example.

Tyler Durden Sat, 07/25/2026 - 08:10

Finland & Spain Have The Highest Unemployment Rates, Japan The Lowest

Unemployment across the OECD averaged 4.9% in May 2026, but labor market conditions continued to vary significantly from one country to another as economic growth slowed across parts of the developed world.

This visualization ranks seasonally adjusted unemployment rates for people aged 15 and older across OECD member countries in May 2026, using data from the OECD.

Finland Tops the Ranking

Finland recorded the highest unemployment rate among OECD countries at 10.8%, narrowly ahead of Spain at 10.3%.

The country’s labor market challenges have been especially pronounced among younger workers, with unemployment reaching 23% among Finns under the age of 25.

Several European Economies Face Labor Market Pressure

Europe dominates the upper end of the ranking, with Sweden, France, Türkiye, Greece, Lithuania, Denmark, Luxembourg, and the Baltic states all posting unemployment rates above the OECD average of 4.9%.

Spain has consistently recorded one of the highest unemployment rates in the OECD for decades, reflecting long-standing structural challenges in its labor market.

Meanwhile, countries such as France and Sweden have also experienced softer labor demand amid weaker economic growth across Europe.

Japan and South Korea Remain Among the Lowest

At the opposite end of the ranking, Japan posted the lowest unemployment rate at just 2.5%, followed by Mexico (2.7%), South Korea (2.8%), Israel (2.8%), and Czechia (2.9%).

These countries continue to benefit from relatively tight labor markets, supported by demographic trends, steady employment demand, or structural labor shortages.

The United States also remained below the OECD average, with an unemployment rate of 4.2%, while Canada stood at 6.6%, reflecting somewhat weaker labor market conditions than its southern neighbor.

Overall, the OECD average unemployment rate of 4.9% suggests that labor markets remain relatively healthy despite slowing global growth and ongoing economic uncertainty.

If you enjoyed today’s post, check out this graphic on the world’s richest countries by GDP per capita.

Tyler Durden Sat, 07/25/2026 - 07:35

"Why I'm Writing This Anonymously And What That Says About Free Speech In Britain"

Authored by 'regular bloke' via dailysceptic.org,

I have wanted to write for the Daily Sceptic for a long time. It should be a straightforward ambition to fulfil. I have opinions, I support free speech and scepticism, and here is a publication built for exactly that. Instead, my first contribution arrives unsigned. I think the reason why is, in itself, the article.

Ann Widdecombe’s murder has reopened a question that surfaces from time to time: should politicians with ‘unfashionable’ views get extra protection? The investigation continues, so I won’t comment on that, but the fact that the question is even being asked in response to a 78 year-old woman being killed in her own home tells you something regardless of how the investigation concludes. We have been here before. Jo Cox in 2016. David Amess in 2021. A pattern is forming, whatever the final facts of this particular case turn out to be.

The debate this triggers is usually framed narrowly: what security do MPs need? I want to push it wider: what if politicians are not actually the group most exposed? They have protection officers, party machinery and a public profile that makes an attack on them a national story. I have none of that. Neither does anyone else who simply has an opinion and a job to protect.

I recently listened to Professor David Betz of King’s College London’s Department of War Studies, who argued that Britain may be entering a period of increasing internal conflict in which political violence becomes more likely.

Whether or not one accepts his analysis, it’s difficult to ignore the growing sense that our public discourse has become more hostile and less forgiving.

If expressing political disagreement increasingly carries the risk of intimidation or worse, the answer cannot simply be to provide more security for an ever-expanding list of public figures.

That treats the symptom rather than the disease.

The view from nowhere and a nobody in particular

I consider myself an ordinary person.

Thirty-plus years ago I would have considered myself slightly Left-leaning. I liked to think of myself as one of the good guys.

But somewhere in the last three decades the Overton window slid sideways, and views I’ve quietly held throughout – that mass immigration, legal and illegal, hasn’t obviously benefited the culture I grew up in, that free speech should mean everyone’s speech, including the people I disagree with – are now filed under ‘Right-wing’.

I don’t think I’m unusual. Look at the Brexit vote, which for many people was as much about sovereignty and control over immigration as it was about Brussels. Look at any poll on migration levels. There is a large, ordinary, non-extreme constituency that holds views broadly like mine. And a good number of them, I suspect, keep quiet for the same reason I’m staying anonymous here: weighing up whether speaking out is worth the risk. Silence can easily be mistaken for consensus, and I suspect that’s exactly what’s happening here.

Which raises a question I’ve had to sit with while writing this: am I a coward? Publishing anonymously, after all, is a way of having the argument without paying for it. But I don’t think cowardice is really what’s on display here. A coward stays silent. What I’m doing is closer to something else entirely: deciding that saying this at all matters more than saying it under my own name, while still not being willing to bet my livelihood on it. If that’s cowardice, then I suspect it’s shared by a very large, very quiet number of people who hold perfectly mainstream opinions and have simply done the same calculations that I have. That, in itself, might be the more troubling finding than anything else in this piece.

Fear arrives before the crackdown

This is the part I think gets missed in the security debate. We talk about authoritarianism as something that happens to you: a knock on the door, a lost job, a police caution for a tweet. But before any of that, there’s the version that happens inside your own head. You draft the post and delete it. You bite your tongue at the dinner table. You calculate what a client, a neighbour, or a local WhatsApp group might do with an honest opinion, and you decide it isn’t worth finding out.

That calculation isn’t paranoid. The variables feeding it are laid out in article after article in the Daily Sceptic. Prevent’s own material cites “cultural nationalism”, defined as the belief that Western culture is under threat from mass migration and a lack of integration by specific ethnic and cultural groups, as a sub-category of extreme Right-wing ideology. Two-tier policing is underpinned by the College of Policing and National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) Anti-Racism Commitment, which states that policing should not be “colour blind”, a principle many officers and members of the public have read as licence to treat people differently according to race. It is perhaps no coincidence that public trust in these institutions has been falling sharply. Gallup found that Britons’ confidence in the courts dropped 12 points in a single year to 57%, while confidence in local police fell 11 points to 64%, the largest year-on-year declines on record for either measure. When the referee looks like it’s picking sides, people stop trusting the game.

Campaigners have logged tens of thousands of ‘non-crime hate incidents’ a year, the great majority of them originating from something someone posted online. And after events like the Southport riots, an entire category of people were branded ‘far-Right thugs’ as a matter of editorial habit. None of this needs to end in a prosecution for it to work. Its function is to make you flinch before you speak, not after. And it’s working: a YouGov poll found that 57% of Britons admit to sometimes holding back their views for fear of a negative reaction, and research published earlier this year found the same pattern setting in even among teenagers, with around one in five saying they hide their political opinions at school to avoid being ‘cancelled’. Self-censorship of this kind isn’t a fringe habit. It’s now closer to a majority experience.

Nothing dramatic has happened to me. Nobody has knocked on my door. I have not been arrested, cautioned or sacked. I have simply chosen, before any of that could happen, to leave my name off this piece. That is precisely the point. Fear doesn’t need to become reality to change behaviour. The anticipation of it is enough.

That’s the self-censorship no one puts a number on, and I think it’s doing more to shrink public debate than any single policy or piece of legislation. Its success isn’t measured by how many people it punishes, but by how many quietly change their behaviour hoping never to be punished at all.

What the Free Speech Union can’t do

I say this as a member and supporter, not a critic: the Free Speech Union does something genuinely valuable. It represents people who get victimised for exercising their right to free speech, such as those facing job losses, disciplinary action or no-platforming for holding a lawful opinion. It lobbies against bad policy before it’s enacted or written into law. Both of those are real, useful functions.

But none of it reaches the moment someone decides to act with their fists rather than a complaint form. If an opinion gets you followed home, or attacked in the street, the Free Speech Union cannot stand between you and that. Nothing currently can, if you’re not a high profile figure with a protection detail. I don’t say that to be alarmist. I say it because it’s the honest answer to ‘What happens if this goes further?’, and I don’t think we’ve collectively worked out what we do about it.

It’s worth adding: this isn’t only a problem for people like me. Journalists and broadcasters who’ve been pushed out of mainstream outlets over their views have, in plenty of cases, faced worse, genuine, sustained threats, and some have built independent platforms only because staying inside the mainstream tent stopped being an option. I don’t want to suggest their situation is easy. But for many at least, it is a chosen fight, with an audience and often an income attached to it. Mine isn’t. I have a job, clients and neighbours, and none of them signed up for my opinions to become their problem.

So, anonymously

Which brings me back to where I started. I am not a public figure. I have no security detail, no platform to defend and no appetite for becoming a story.

What I have is an opinion that used to be unremarkable and now apparently isn’t, and a reasonable fear that saying so under my own name could cost me clients, friction with neighbours or worse.

So I’m saying it without my name attached, in a publication built specifically to defend my right to say it with my name attached.

If that strikes you as a contradiction, it should.

I think it’s the clearest evidence I can offer that something in this country’s relationship with free expression isn’t working: not a theory about it, but a person quietly acting on the fear of it, in real time, in this very article.

Tyler Durden Sat, 07/25/2026 - 07:00

Forget Beef. This Protein Is Way Cheaper

Building on Bank of America's latest note, which cited Oklahoma State University agricultural economist Derrell Peel's warning that the US cattle cycle is unlikely to improve anytime soon, beef prices are poised to remain elevated through at least next year. But two competitively priced proteins that consumers can switch to today remain largely overlooked.

That overlooked protein is ground pork, with an average of $4.81 a pound in mid-June, compared with $7.95 for ground beef, while pork chops cost roughly one-third as much as beef steak, according to Bloomberg, citing NielsenIQ data.

Still, beef consumption is forecast at a 15-year high, underscoring how stubborn consumers are and how unwilling they are to trade down for their meats.

Processors including Smithfield Foods are responding with precut, marinated and ground-pork products designed to improve convenience and compete with beef and chicken.

Industry insiders see ground pork as the category's biggest opportunity, though ground beef's $17 billion in annual sales suggests any shift will be gradual.

"People don't want to risk something not tasting great when it comes down to it," said Reba Hatcher, chief commercial officer at meat subscription company ButcherBox, who the outlet cited. "Even if it's cheaper when you go to the checkout, it's not cheaper if you end up throwing it away or people end up hating it at the dinner table."

For readers wondering just how long beef prices will remain elevated, the BofA note provides a timeline for when the cattle cycle could turn upward. Spoiler alert: not anytime soon. Read report.

With beef prices unlikely to meaningfully ease anytime soon, the Beck Ranch Carnivore Trio in ZeroHedge Store lets readers stock the freezer with more affordable and premium chicken and pork while still keeping premium ground beef in the mix. 

Get yours here.

Tyler Durden Sat, 07/25/2026 - 06:00

The 'Projects' That Could Ignite The Next World War

Authored by Madge Waggy,

The Military, Industrial and Strategic Programs Reshaping the World in 2026

The most dangerous geopolitical developments of 2026 are not necessarily the weapons that have already been fired, but the systems being constructed in anticipation of the next crisis. Across Europe, the Indo-Pacific and the Middle East, governments are committing extraordinary resources to military production, strategic infrastructure, weapons procurement and long-term defence planning, creating a global security environment in which preparation for war has itself become one of the defining features of international politics. The official justification is almost always deterrence: stronger armies are supposed to prevent aggression, larger stockpiles are supposed to make adversaries think twice and new military infrastructure is supposed to close the gaps that might otherwise invite attack. Yet deterrence has an inherent paradox. Every military capability built by one state is examined by another as a potential threat, and every response can then be used to justify another round of preparation. What emerges is not necessarily an organized march toward a single global conflict, but something more unstable: a collection of increasingly sophisticated military projects operating simultaneously across several regions, each designed to prevent war while potentially making the consequences of miscalculation far more severe.

The scale of this transformation is no longer a matter of speculation. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, global military expenditure reached approximately $2.887 trillion in 2025, marking the eleventh consecutive year of growth. European military spending increased by 14% to approximately $864 billion, while military expenditure in Asia and Oceania rose by 8.1% to around $681 billion. The United States remained the world's largest military spender at approximately $954 billion, followed by China at $336 billion and Russia at $190 billion. Together, those three countries accounted for roughly 51% of global military expenditure. SIPRI also reported that European NATO members increased spending sharply, while China's military expenditure continued a decades-long upward trajectory and Taiwan increased its own military spending by approximately 14% in 2025. These figures do not prove that a world war is approaching, but they reveal an international system in which the largest military powers are simultaneously expanding or restructuring their strategic capabilities.

THE GLOBAL REARMAMENT MAP

 

The "Editorial risk assessment" is an analytical classification based on escalation potential, proximity of military forces, strategic importance and likelihood of involvement by major powers. It is not an official probability forecast. Data on military expenditure: SIPRI. Current developments in Taiwan Strait and the Middle East: Reuters and AP.

The most important feature of this table is not any individual number, but the simultaneous concentration of military pressure across several theatres. Europe is rebuilding defence capacity at a pace unseen in decades, China is continuing its military modernization while applying pressure around Taiwan, Russia remains heavily committed to wartime spending, and the United States is attempting to maintain strategic commitments across Europe, the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific. This creates a geopolitical environment in which a crisis in one region could consume resources, attention and military capacity that are simultaneously required elsewhere. The risk is therefore not simply that one country decides to start a global war; it is that several regional crises could interact with one another at precisely the moment when governments have fewer diplomatic and military resources available to contain them.

EUROPE'S REARMAMENT PROJECT

Europe's rearmament is perhaps the clearest example of a strategic project that is simultaneously defensive in intention and potentially destabilizing in perception. The transformation began with the recognition that the continent had allowed its conventional military capabilities to decline after the Cold War, but the war in Ukraine fundamentally altered that calculation. Governments that had spent years treating defence as a secondary budgetary priority are now rebuilding ammunition reserves, expanding weapons production, ordering new aircraft and missile systems, strengthening military logistics and investing in the infrastructure required to move large numbers of troops and equipment across the continent. NATO has committed its members to a long-term target of spending 5% of GDP annually on defence and defence-related security requirements by 2035, while the alliance reported in July 2026 that European allies and Canada had already increased core defence expenditure by nearly 20% in 2025 compared with 2024. NATO is also explicitly working with industry to expand production capacity, including ammunition stockpiles and other military capabilities.

The economic dimension of this transformation is significant because military production cannot be expanded overnight. A government can announce a larger defence budget in a single parliamentary session, but factories, skilled labour, supply chains and production lines require years to develop. Once those systems are established, they create their own momentum. Defence companies receive long-term contracts, governments become dependent on domestic production capacity and military planners begin designing strategies around weapons that may remain in service for decades. The result is a structural transformation rather than a temporary response to a single crisis. Europe is not simply buying more weapons; it is rebuilding an industrial ecosystem capable of producing them at scale.

From Moscow's perspective, the same transformation can be interpreted very differently. European governments describe their military expansion as a response to Russian aggression and a means of preventing future conflict. Russia, however, is likely to view the growth of European military capabilities, expanded NATO production and increased strategic infrastructure as evidence that the continent is preparing for a prolonged confrontation. This is the classic security dilemma, and it is one of the most persistent mechanisms behind arms races throughout modern history. The fundamental problem is that two governments can simultaneously believe they are acting defensively while interpreting the other's defensive actions as preparation for aggression.

The danger becomes greater when military infrastructure acquires permanence. A temporary deployment can be withdrawn relatively quickly; a factory built to produce ammunition for decades, a new logistics corridor or a permanent military installation creates a different strategic reality. These projects establish capabilities that remain available long after the political circumstances that originally justified them have changed. The result is a continent increasingly structured around the possibility of prolonged confrontation, with defence spending becoming not merely a reaction to war but an enduring component of economic and industrial policy. That does not make a European war inevitable, but it does mean that the physical and industrial capacity required for one is expanding substantially.

THE TAIWAN STRAIT: THE MOST DANGEROUS CONVERGENCE OF MILITARY POWER AND GLOBAL ECONOMICS

The Taiwan Strait represents a different kind of danger because it combines territorial sovereignty, national identity, military competition and the technological foundations of the global economy. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory, while Taiwan maintains its own democratic government and rejects Beijing's sovereignty claims. The United States remains deeply involved in the island's security through arms sales and strategic commitments, making any serious military confrontation potentially capable of drawing the world's two largest military powers into direct conflict.

The latest developments demonstrate how quickly the military environment can change. On July 23, 2026, China began two days of live-fire drills in sections of the Taiwan Strait near the coast of Fujian province, following high-level discussions between U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in which Taiwan was a major issue. The exercises followed earlier large-scale Chinese military drills and came amid continuing concerns over the expansion of military activity surrounding Taiwan.

China's military modernization is central to this strategic equation. SIPRI estimates that Chinese military expenditure reached approximately $336 billion in 2025, representing a 7.4% increase and the thirty-first consecutive year of annual growth. Taiwan, meanwhile, increased its own military expenditure by approximately 14% to $18.2 billion, while Japan's spending rose by 9.7% to $62.2 billion. The pattern is unmistakable: China is expanding its military capabilities, while countries that fear the consequences of Chinese regional dominance are simultaneously strengthening their own. The result is an increasingly dense military environment in which naval vessels, aircraft, missiles, intelligence systems and surveillance platforms operate in close proximity to one another.

This is where the Taiwan problem becomes larger than the island itself. Any major conflict would immediately threaten one of the world's most important technological and commercial regions, with consequences extending into semiconductor manufacturing, maritime trade, financial markets and global supply chains. A military crisis in the Taiwan Strait could therefore produce economic consequences before the conflict had even developed into a full-scale war. The strategic importance of the region means that the international community has a strong incentive to prevent escalation, but it also means that the number of actors with something to lose is exceptionally large.

The most dangerous scenario may not necessarily be a carefully planned invasion. A crisis could emerge from an accident, an unexpected military incident or a political decision made under extreme pressure. As military exercises become more frequent and forces operate closer together, the distinction between signalling and provocation becomes increasingly difficult to maintain. The immediate challenge is therefore not simply to determine whether Beijing intends to use force against Taiwan, but whether the military systems being constructed by China, Taiwan, the United States and their regional partners leave enough room for diplomacy when something goes wrong.

THE MIDDLE EAST AND THE STRAIT OF HORMUZ

If Taiwan represents the possibility of a future great-power confrontation, the Middle East demonstrates what happens when escalation is already underway. The ongoing U.S.-Iran conflict has entered a dangerous phase in which military operations, attacks on infrastructure and disruption of maritime trade are becoming interconnected. According to AP reporting on July 23, U.S. forces carried out another night of airstrikes against Iran amid continuing tensions surrounding the Strait of Hormuz, while Iran and allied forces threatened or attacked shipping and regional infrastructure. Reuters reported that the conflict had already cost the United States approximately $37.5 billion, with 18 American service members killed and more than 430 wounded, while the disruption to shipping through key regional chokepoints has created broader economic consequences.

The Strait of Hormuz is particularly dangerous because it transforms a regional military confrontation into a global economic problem. The waterway is a critical route for energy shipments, meaning that any prolonged disruption affects not only the countries fighting the war but also governments, industries and consumers thousands of kilometres away. Reuters reported on July 22 that the conflict had significantly worsened the outlook for the global oil market in 2026, with analysts projecting a global oil deficit of approximately 1.5 million barrels per day as disruptions continued to affect exports from the Gulf. The same report noted that Brent crude had risen sharply during the renewed escalation.

This is the point at which military escalation begins to acquire a life of its own. Once energy infrastructure, shipping lanes and civilian economic systems become part of a conflict, every military action produces consequences far beyond the battlefield. A strike against a port can affect insurance markets. An attack on a tanker can alter shipping routes. A threat against energy infrastructure can change oil prices before a single barrel is physically removed from the market. The conflict becomes a feedback loop in which military decisions generate economic pressure, economic pressure generates political pressure and political pressure encourages governments to adopt even more aggressive positions.

The latest developments in the Red Sea demonstrate the danger of geographic expansion. On July 23, AP reported that Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi movement claimed responsibility for attacks on two Saudi oil tankers in the Red Sea, while U.S. forces continued strikes against Iranian targets. The involvement of additional maritime routes creates the possibility that the conflict could gradually spread across multiple strategic chokepoints, linking the Strait of Hormuz with the Bab el-Mandeb and the broader Red Sea shipping system.

THE MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL PROJECT THAT CONNECTS THEM ALL

The most consequential project underway may therefore be the expansion of military-industrial capacity itself. Europe is increasing production, NATO is seeking greater industrial output, China is continuing military modernization and countries across Asia are responding by increasing their own defence budgets. SIPRI's data show that global military expenditure reached its highest recorded level in 2025, while the sharpest increases were concentrated in regions already experiencing significant geopolitical tension. This does not establish a direct causal relationship between military spending and war, but it demonstrates that the international system is investing heavily in the capacity to sustain conflict at precisely the moment when diplomatic trust between major powers is weakening.

There is an important distinction between preparing for war and wanting war. Governments may rationally conclude that the best way to prevent aggression is to possess overwhelming military capabilities, maintain large reserves and demonstrate the ability to respond immediately. From this perspective, rearmament is a tool of peace. The difficulty is that deterrence depends on interpretation. A military project that appears defensive to the country building it may appear offensive to the country observing it. This problem becomes especially severe when multiple states are rearming simultaneously, because each government can use the actions of others as evidence that its own expansion is justified.

The statistical trend is therefore less important as a prediction of war than as an indicator of strategic psychology. The world is spending more because governments increasingly believe that the future will be more dangerous. That belief itself influences policy, and policy then changes the environment that created the belief in the first place. The result is a self-reinforcing cycle in which insecurity generates military investment, military investment generates suspicion and suspicion generates further insecurity.

This is why the most important projects of 2026 are not necessarily individual weapons systems. They are the long-term structures being built around them: defence industries, military logistics, strategic alliances, naval infrastructure, ammunition stockpiles, surveillance networks and procurement programs designed to remain operational for decades. These systems are being constructed under the assumption that strategic competition will not disappear quickly. Once established, they will shape the calculations of governments long after today's political leaders have left office.

THE GEOPOLITICAL RISK MATRIX

Analytical assessment based on current military activity, strategic importance, involvement of major powers, economic interdependence and escalation pathways. This is an editorial framework, not an official forecast or probability model.

The matrix illustrates why the danger of 2026 cannot be reduced to identifying one country or one conflict as the source of the next major war. Europe presents a high-intensity military confrontation involving Russia and NATO. Taiwan represents the possibility of a direct clash between the United States and China. The Middle East has already demonstrated the ability of regional conflict to disrupt global energy markets and maritime trade. These theatres are geographically separate, but they are strategically connected through the allocation of military resources, energy markets, alliance commitments and global economic dependencies.

The most troubling scenario is therefore not necessarily a coordinated decision by several governments to launch a global war. It is the possibility that one crisis could destabilize another. A prolonged conflict in the Middle East could absorb American military resources while tensions rise in the Indo-Pacific. A European crisis could force governments to redirect weapons and ammunition away from other theatres. A major confrontation around Taiwan could disrupt global trade at precisely the moment when energy markets were already under pressure. In such circumstances, strategic calculations would become more complicated, not less, because every government would be forced to consider not only the immediate enemy in front of it but also the possibility that another adversary might exploit the distraction.

The modern international system is therefore becoming increasingly vulnerable to strategic overload. The United States, China, Russia and their respective partners are building military capabilities designed to operate in an environment of prolonged competition, while regional conflicts are becoming increasingly interconnected through energy, technology and trade. The danger is not that every military project inevitably leads to war; the danger is that the sheer number of simultaneous projects and crises increases the number of pathways through which an accident, miscalculation or deliberate escalation could become much larger than originally intended.

The world is consequently entering a period in which deterrence and escalation are becoming increasingly difficult to separate. Europe is building the industrial capacity to defend itself, NATO is expanding its long-term military commitments, China is strengthening its ability to project power around Taiwan, Taiwan is increasing its own defences, and the Middle East is demonstrating how rapidly military conflict can spread from battlefields to shipping routes and global energy markets. Each of these developments has a rational strategic explanation when examined individually. The deeper danger emerges when they are viewed together.

What is being constructed in 2026 is not a single machine designed to start a world war. It is a network of military and industrial systems designed to ensure that governments are never again caught unprepared by one. Yet the more extensively those systems are built, the more the international order becomes dependent on accurate intelligence, disciplined decision-making and the ability of political leaders to distinguish between preparation and provocation. That dependency is fragile. The statistics show an extraordinary expansion in global military expenditure, the geopolitical map shows multiple simultaneous flashpoints and the latest events in Taiwan and the Middle East demonstrate how quickly military pressure can intensify.

The central risk of the present era is therefore not that war has become inevitable, but that the world is accumulating more weapons, more strategic infrastructure and more potential points of confrontation than it has diplomatic mechanisms capable of reliably controlling.

Tyler Durden Fri, 07/24/2026 - 23:25

These Are The World's Biggest Beer Brewers

Beer is the world’s most widely consumed alcoholic beverage, but much of it comes from a relatively small group of companies.

This visualization, via Visual Capitalist's Melissa Garside, ranks the world’s 40 largest beer brewers by production volume using data from the BarthHaas Report 2024/25.

Together, these brewers produced 42.7 billion U.S. gallons of beer in 2024, equal to 86.3% of global production.

AB InBev Leads by a Wide Margin

AB InBev dominated the global beer industry in 2024, producing 13.1 billion U.S. gallons, or 26.4% of all beer brewed worldwide.

Its output exceeded the combined production of Heineken, China Resources Snow Breweries, and Carlsberg, underscoring the company’s unmatched global scale.

The Belgian company’s scale is especially clear when compared with Heineken, the world’s second-largest brewer. The Dutch company produced 6.4 billion U.S. gallons, or 12.8% of global output, roughly half of AB InBev’s total.

AB InBev is best known for Budweiser, while Heineken’s flagship beer shares the company name. Although both companies are headquartered in Europe, their brands have become household names worldwide.

European Brewers Dominate the Ranking

Europe had more companies in the top 40 than any other region. Its 21 brewers produced a combined 29.6 billion U.S. gallons, equal to nearly 60% of global beer production.

Germany placed six brewers on the list, more than any other country, yet none ranked in the top 20. Its more than 1,500 breweries are mostly family-owned and regional, while brewers from smaller countries such as Belgium, the Netherlands, and Denmark have expanded more extensively abroad.

Asia followed with 11 brewers, led by China Resources Snow Breweries, Tsingtao, and Asahi Group. Asian companies in the ranking produced 10.3 billion U.S. gallons, equal to 20.8% of global production.

Despite being the world’s second-largest beer producer and recording annual beer consumption of 22 gallons per person in 2023, the United States had just two brewers on the list: Molson Coors, a Canadian-American company, and Constellation Brands.

Molson Coors is associated with Coors Light, while Constellation Brands holds the U.S. rights to Mexican beer brands Modelo and Corona. Modelo has been the country’s best-selling beer since 2023.

China’s Brewers Rank Among the World’s Largest

As the world’s largest beer-producing country, China is home to four brewers in the global top 40.

The highest-ranked was China Resources Snow Breweries, which placed third with 2.9 billion U.S. gallons, equal to 5.8% of global production.

Tsingtao Brewery Group also placed in the top 10, producing 2.0 billion U.S. gallons in 2024. Yanjing and Pearl River added another 1.1 billion and 380 million gallons, respectively.

Together, the four Chinese brewers produced 6.3 billion U.S. gallons of beer, nearly matching Heineken’s global output and highlighting the size of China’s domestic market.

Familiar Brands Behind the Biggest Brewers

Many of the world’s largest brewers are tied to widely recognized flagship beers. The top seven are associated with Budweiser, Heineken, Snow, Carlsberg, Coors Light, Tsingtao, and Asahi Super Dry.

Further down the ranking, regional champions play an important role. Guinness supports Diageo’s beer output, while San Miguel Pale Pilsen, Singha, Chang, Saigon Beer, and Sapporo anchor major brewers across Asia.

A handful of multinational giants dominate global beer production, but strong regional brands continue to shape individual markets. The result is an industry that is highly concentrated at the top while remaining diverse across countries and brands.

If you enjoyed today’s post, check out The Rising Beer Prices of Popular Brands on Voronoi, the new app from Visual Capitalist.

Tyler Durden Fri, 07/24/2026 - 23:00