Zero Rss

Social Media Influencers Andrew And Tristan Tate Arrested In Miami

Via Headline USA,

Influencer brothers Andrew and Tristan Tate, whose social media empire promoting wealth, male dominance and misogyny has made them among the world’s most polarizing internet personalities, were arrested Saturday in Miami as British authorities sought their extradition on rape and sex trafficking charges.

The brothers were taken into custody by the U.S. Marshals Service on a sealed warrant, placing the United States at the center of an international legal saga that has stretched from Romania to Britain.

STATEMENT OF JOSEPH D. MCBRIDE, ATTORNEY FOR ANDREW AND TRISTAN TATE

The world knows Andrew and Tristan Tate are innocent. Their enemies know it best of all. That is exactly why they have been attacked.

Last night, the United Kingdom, a corrupt and fallen nation that jails its… pic.twitter.com/XoMVmPxtgA

— Joe McBride (@McBrideLawNYC) July 19, 2026 Britain is seeking their extradition on rape and trafficking charges

British prosecutors announced Saturday that they were seeking the brothers’ extradition on charges alleging they raped and trafficked women between 2010 and 2017.

The dual U.S. and British citizens moved to Romania in 2016.

They were arrested there in 2022, accused of participating in schemes to lure women for sexual exploitation.

They denied those allegations and the Romanian case hasn’t gone forward because of legal and procedural problems.

Last year, they were allowed to leave Romania and flew to Florida on a private jet.

The brothers are expected to appear in Miami’s federal court early next week, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke to on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive law enforcement operations.

The pending charges in the United Kingdom accused the brothers of abusing women in an area north of London, where they grew up. Their lawyers had said they denied the allegations.

Joseph McBride, an attorney representing the Tate brothers, said in a phone interview Saturday evening that he has not been able to speak with his clients but called the new charges out of the U.K. “filth and slander” intended to derail defamation lawsuits filed by the brothers in the U.S.

“They’re pulling out all the stops to make sure these guys never get their day in court,” McBride said.

“We are confident that once a competent judge sees the facts, and once the Department of Justice confronts this egregious abuse of its own authority, Andrew and Tristan Tate will walk free. America does not do Britain’s political dirty work.”

pic.twitter.com/qSAn0cywI2

— Joe McBride (@McBrideLawNYC) July 19, 2026 Tate has been banned from social media platforms for ‘hate speech’

Andrew Tate, 39, first reached a mainstream audience as a contestant on the U.K. reality television show “Big Brother” in 2016. He was removed from the show when a video surfaced that appeared to show Tate assaulting a woman. He and his brother Tristan Tate, 38, are vocal supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump.

Andrew Tate has amassed over 10 million followers on X but has been banned from platforms like YouTube, TikTok and Instagram for violating “hate speech” guidelines.

The Tate brothers have consistently denied allegations of abuse and human trafficking, claiming that violent and misogynistic statements have been taken out of context or were intended as jokes.

In a statement Saturday, the U.K.’s Crown Prosecution Services said that in addition to the charges publicly announced against the brothers in 2025, involving alleged crimes against three women, it was bringing a total of 38 new charges related to “four further victims.”

Both brothers are accused of rape and human trafficking. Andrew Tate faces an additional charge of profiting from prostitution, and 19 charges “for offences relating to indecent images of a child and extreme pornography,” according to U.K. authorities.

Tyler Durden Sun, 07/19/2026 - 10:30

Meet The "New Soros" Whose "Street Cred" Could Rise If Spain Blocks Extradition

The federal government is well underway with a multiagency and multinational effort to combat the alarming rise of far-left revolutionaries. This was most evident on Thursday, when Secretary of State Marco Rubio addressed delegations from 65 countries.

Meanwhile, Jim "Fergie" Chambers, the communist centimillionaire and heir to the Cox media fortune, is apparently "one step closer to extradition" on federal charges linked to "international money laundering... with the intent to provide material support and resources to foreign terrorist organizations."

Chambers is a major funder of America's radical Left and has been described by pro-Palestinian activist Laith Marouf as "the new Soros."

Marouf warned that Chambers could gain significantly more influence and "street cred" if Spain refuses to extradite him to the U.S.

City Journal investigative analyst Stu Smith provided additional color on Marouf's recent conversation, offering readers a clearer view of the major financiers and influence networks operating across the radical Left:

Laith Marouf Warns Fergie Chambers Is "the New Soros" and Could Gain More "Street Cred" if Spain Refuses Extradition

As left-wing activists demand "Freedom for Fergie," Laith Marouf is refusing to join them.

Marouf says he opposes Chambers's extradition to the United States but warns that an unsuccessful prosecution could merely give the multimillionaire more "street cred."

Citing conversations he claims to have had with current and former intelligence agents, including Syrian and Spanish sources, Marouf alleges that Chambers has been positioned as "the new Soros" and is using his fortune to capture radical English-language media around the world.

"He basically bought all the landscape of progressive media and is funding all of them," Marouf said, alleging that Chambers's donations allow him to influence those outlets' political positions.

Marouf also accused Chambers of threatening his life and attempting to destroy his reputation. He said he does not wish imprisonment or death on Chambers, but he will not join those demanding his release.

"I will sit on the side as an observer, watching the game of the American white elite beating each other up."

Marouf argues that Chambers is using inherited "blood money" to purchase credibility within the Palestine movement.

"No, I don't want Palestine in his mouth," he said. "I don't want Palestine to be associated with Fergie Cox."

The broader Left has largely rallied behind Chambers, leaving Marouf as a rare dissenting voice. His definition of "progressive media" is unclear, but his broader warning about Chambers buying influence across the radical English-language media sphere rings true. And if Spain refuses extradition, Marouf may be right that the ordeal will only give Chambers more "street cred."

🚨 Laith Marouf Warns Fergie Chambers Is “the New Soros” and Could Gain More “Street Cred” if Spain Refuses Extradition

As left-wing activists demand “Freedom for Fergie,” Laith Marouf is refusing to join them.

Marouf says he opposes Chambers’s extradition to the United States… pic.twitter.com/sY0tDe7z26

— Stu Smith (@thestustustudio) July 16, 2026

Smith has previously noted, "Chambers is one of the main funders of America's radical Left. His money has flowed to a host of projects in the 'anti-imperialism' organizing space," adding, "Chambers claims that he and Singham are effectively the two primary financiers of the US radical Left." Despite this, the two have apparently been at loggerheads—a conflict that has now gone public."

🚨 Hasan Names Singham, PSL, ANSWER, and Code Pink in One Breath

On stream today, Hasan Piker discussed the reported Treasury scrutiny and said the broader target is “probably Singham” and “his operation,” naming PSL (Party for Socialism and Liberation), ANSWER Coalition, Code… pic.twitter.com/0zpYhJbPV2

— Stu Smith (@thestustustudio) May 25, 2026

Following Rubio's “Ministerial on the Resurgence of Political Terrorism" at the State Department on Thursday, where he addressed delegations from 65 countries on combating far-left extremism, the signal is clear: The Trump administration is positioning for a broader fight against transnational Marxist revolutionary networks, reminiscent of the Western counter-subversion campaigns waged seven decades ago.

Tyler Durden Sun, 07/19/2026 - 09:55

Traders Stunned By Momentum Meltdown As Earnings Quality Problem Simmers Under The Surface

Authored by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

📈Technical Backdrop – Coiling Below The Record

Here is where the quiet-index story gets interesting for traders. The S&P 500 closed the week at 7,457.69, and that put it right on top of its 50-day moving average near 7,464. Call it dead flat against the line. The index still sits about 6.8% above its rising 200-day average near 6,985, so the primary uptrend remains fully intact, and it is roughly 2% below the June 2 record high of 7,620.

Momentum on the index itself is neutral, not broken. The 14-day RSI reads 48.8, smack in the middle of its range and nowhere near oversold. The MACD is the wrinkle. It just rolled below its signal line for the first time since the April low, and the histogram flipped negative. That is a fresh bearish crossover. One crossover is not a sell signal, but it is exactly the kind of longer-term warning we watch for as a correction builds.

The contrast between the index and the factor is the whole point. The Momentum ETF, MTUM, fell about 6% on the week and printed a 14-day RSI of 41, far weaker than the broad market. The average stock barely flinched. The equal-weight S&P lost less than half a percent and actually tagged a fresh record high midweek, and the Russell 2000 held up better than the Nasdaq. When the cap-weighted index falls, but the median stock does not, the damage is narrow by definition.

So how do you trade it? The 50-day is the line in the sand. Therefore, a decisive hold keeps the burden of proof on the bears, and the first real test on a break sits at the mid-July range low near 7,300. I would not chase the semiconductor and high-beta names lower into a knife that is still falling, and I would not short a market whose average stock is making new highs. This is a spot to rebalance risk, not to place a directional bet. Hold 7,464, and the rotation stays healthy. Lose it on volume, and the correction earns a wider berth.

💰 Momentum Meltdown Sends A Warning

Every so often, the market hands you a week where the index and the internals tell opposite stories. This was one of them. The S&P 500 fell about 1.5%, a garden-variety pullback, while the momentum factor suffered its worst drawdown since the depths of the 2009 financial crisis. That gap is the entire story, and understanding it is the difference between panic-selling the wrong thing and using the rotation to your advantage. As I flagged two weeks ago in Mag 7 Stocks: Risk Or Opportunity In The Making?, this rotation was coming.

The scale of this move is genuinely historic, and the qualifier matters. As noted above, the Goldman Sachs high-beta momentum basket fell roughly 24% in the first two weeks of July, the worst such stretch since April 2009. Furthermore, the Morgan Stanley tech momentum index registered a 17-day rate of change of -35%, the worst in its 27-year history. Goldman’s flagship momentum pair is now down about 33% from its highs and has broken below its own 200-day average, a drawdown that matches the late-2022 low. Those are numbers worth repeating for emphasis.

Here is the part that keeps this from being a catastrophe. That same high-beta momentum basket is STILL up about 16% for the year after peaking near +60%. This is a violent give-back of an enormous gain, not a wealth-destroying collapse. The single-stock casualties show where the crowd was hiding: in semiconductors.

It Is A Rotation, Not A Collapse

If money were fleeing the market, you would see it everywhere, but that is not the case. The equal-weight S&P 500 fell less than half a percent on the week and printed a new all-time high midweek, while defensive and cyclical value groups finished green. Energy led following the oil spike, and real estate, staples, and financials all gained. That is not what a market top looks like. That is capital rotating out of the most crowded corner and into everything else.

The leadership under the surface has quietly flipped. Look at what is working against what is breaking, and the rotation is obvious. Security-software names like Palo Alto and CrowdStrike, which benefit from AI adoption without the semiconductor bottleneck risk, are catching the bid alongside energy and the banks. The mega-cap AI generals held up far better than the speculative fringe, with Nvidia down under 4% and both Microsoft and Amazon actually positive on the week. The pain was surgical, not broad.

What Actually Broke The Trade

Four forces hit at once, which is why the move was so violent; the setup was a positioning problem. Momentum had been the undisputed king of 2026, and nearly everyone owned it, leaving no marginal buyer when selling started. The trigger came from leverage. In Asia, single-stock leveraged ETFs on names like SK Hynix had ballooned, and when the underlying prices dipped, those funds were forced to sell to maintain their 2x exposure, which fed a self-reinforcing unwind. Korea moved to halt new listings of these products midweek.

On top of that, China’s Kimi K3 release cracked the assumption that US AI leadership was unassailable, and the oil spike from renewed Iran tensions revived a macro risk the momentum crowd had stopped pricing. The June index-rebalancing that had provided a price-insensitive buyer for winners like SpaceX and Marvell was gone. Take away the buyer, add forced sellers, and you get a washout.

The lesson of every crowded-trade unwind is the same. The factor that leads on the way up leads on the way down, and the exit door is always narrower than the entrance.

Goldman’s own desk offers a hopeful footnote. Once the momentum factor drops more than 20% in a month, forward returns have tended to be positive, with a median gain near 4% over the following week and close to 6% over the following month. The path is rarely smooth, and next week’s reports are the swing factor. Notably, a violent factor unwind is often closer to an opportunity than to the start of a bear market. Yes, that is an optimistic case, but it is a real one to consider given the rash of negative headlines this past week.

The Earnings-Quality Problem Underneath The Rally

There is a deeper issue that the momentum crowd has been willing to ignore, and it goes to the quality of the earnings that are holding up the AI trade. Take Alphabet’s blockbuster first quarter. The headline was a record, but tens of billions of it came from mark-to-market gains on private stakes in Anthropic and SpaceX, not from the operating business. Stripping the paper gain would have caused the estimate to be missed. That is not a one-off quirk. Across the hyperscalers, a wave of AI capital spending is being depreciated over long schedules that assume these chips and data centers will earn their keep for years, thereby inflating near-term margins and quietly deferring the true cost.

We walked through that dynamic in Capex Spending On AI Is Masking Economic Weakness, and it is the reason next week’s reports carry so much weight. The moment the market decides to pay for cash flow and earnings quality rather than capex headlines, the most crowded and most expensive names carry the most risk. Momentum had been priced for perfection. Perfection is an expensive thing to own the moment the story starts to wobble.

Why There Could Be More To Go

It helps to separate two ideas. The momentum meltdown is the event, and the violent two-week repricing we just lived through. The momentum shift is the bigger thing, a change in market leadership away from the narrow band of high-beta and semiconductor names that carried 2026 and toward the broad market underneath. The first can end in a week. The second is a process, and history says leadership changes take months to resolve, not days. That distinction applies to patience here, and it is why I think more air can still come out before this is finished.

The math tells you why the shift may not be over. As discussed above, following the worst two weeks since 2009, the high-beta momentum basket is still up about 16% on the year. That is the give-back of a parabola, not a full reset. Positioning has been reduced, but it has not capitulated, and not a single US semiconductor is even oversold yet on a 14-day RSI basis. Washouts of this scale rarely resolve in one clean flush. They tend to arrive in waves, with sharp relief rallies that pull money back in right before the next leg lower.

The healthy read is that the average stock is doing fine while the crowd unwinds. The cautious read is that the unwind still has fuel in the tank. This is because the crowd is sitting on a full year of gains it may yet decide to protect. Both can be true at once. That tension is exactly why the tape has felt so violent under a calm surface.

The Macro Has Turned Against The Trade

Here is where this week’s other headline matters. In Inflation Will Be A Thing Of The Past, we covered Kevin Warsh’s first testimony to Congress. The message was not what a momentum trader wants to hear. Warsh told lawmakers the Fed has “no tolerance for persistently elevated inflation.” He also pointedly refused to offer forward guidance, arguing that published projections only breed confirmation bias. June CPI actually showed prices falling 0.4% on the month, and yet the committee is still split on the odds of a rate hike in September, not a cut.

Now read that against this week’s tape. Oil just jumped roughly 14% on renewed Iran tensions, which threatens to undo the very disinflation that gave Warsh room to sound patient. A hawkish Fed with no rate cut on the horizon and no forward guidance to lean on is the opposite of the backdrop that inflated the momentum trade in the first place. The most expensive, longest-duration growth names need falling rates and easy liquidity to justify their multiples. Right now, they are getting neither, and policy uncertainty alone widens the risk premium the market demands to hold them.

None of this is a forecast of a bear market. It is a reminder that a leadership shift, once it begins, usually runs longer and further than the first move suggests. Here are both sides of the ledger, laid out honestly.

Weigh the calendar, too. We noted previously that the risk of a larger market correction (5-10%) is highest in August through October. That is particularly true given the upcoming mid-term elections. Those three months are historically the weakest stretch of the year anyway. However, the election uncertainty adds to that risk, and this unwind is landing right as we walk into it. That does not mean you sell everything and hide. It means you respect the shift. Therefore, keep tight risk controls on the crowded names, and let the earnings and the tape confirm the next move.

🔑 Key Catalysts Next Week

Next week, the Federal Reserve goes silent. The July 28–29 FOMC meeting puts the committee in its blackout window, so there are no Fed speakers to move the tape. That leaves two things in charge: the economic data and the start of mega-cap earnings, with the second being the main event.

Wednesday after the close is the night that matters. Alphabet, Tesla, and Texas Instruments all report at once, and Intel follows on Thursday evening. This is the first real referendum on the AI-capex story since the momentum trade cracked. Alphabet is the tell. The company has guided to roughly $175 billion of capital spending in 2026, and JPMorgan’s desk pegs 2027 buyside expectations for Google alone near $325 to $350 billion, well above a Street consensus closer to $250 billion. If the hyperscalers signal any hesitation on that spend, the chips that depend on it have further to fall. If they reaffirm it, the washed-out names finally get their catalyst.

The setup is loaded. Alphabet’s blowout first-quarter results were flattered by tens of billions in mark-to-market gains on its Anthropic and SpaceX stakes; stripping those out, the operating number would have missed by a hair. That is exactly the earnings-quality question we have been raising for months. The market will judge this print on margins and cloud growth, not on the headline number.

Ed Yardeni has framed the broader mood as a case of AI Fatigue, with investors starting to ask whether the trillion-dollar buildout will ever pay off. The Friday flash PMIs are the data highlight, since they are the first look at how business activity handled the July volatility and the oil spike. Everything else bends around Wednesday night. A clean capex message from Alphabet steadies the entire complex. Any wobble, and the momentum meltdown gets a second leg.

What Should Investors Do Now

This is a moment for discipline, not heroics. The rotation is healthy but not finished. Next week’s reports will determine whether the momentum names have found a floor. As we laid out last week in The Dollar Narrative Has Turned, the play into late July is to lean toward the washed-out mega-cap leaders rather than the extended names, and to define the exit at the earnings dates themselves. If Alphabet and the others confirm the capex and cash-flow worries when they report, you sell and move on. If estimates hold, the oversold snapback has room to run.

Keep capital preservation first. An index sitting on its 50-day with a neutral RSI is neither a screaming buy nor a screaming sell. It is a market telling you to rebalance, tighten your stops on the crowded names, and let the earnings do the talking. The momentum meltdown was a warning shot about what happens when everyone owns the same thing at the same time. The momentum shift it kicked off is the story that matters now, and it likely has further to run.

The thread to follow into next week is simple.

Money is not leaving the market. It is rotating hard, and the tape will not settle until the crowd finishes repositioning.

Tyler Durden Sun, 07/19/2026 - 09:20

US-Iran Tit-For-Tat Spirals Towards Broader Conflict

The escalation pathway in the renewed tit-for-tat conflict between the US and Iran is becoming increasingly alarming and has been underway for eight days.

US forces reportedly struck Qeshm Island and the southern Iranian cities of Shadegan, Sirik and Hajiabad, while Tehran retaliated with drone and missile attacks targeting US bases and critical infrastructure across Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain, according to Bloomberg, citing Iranian state media.

The latest escalation could open the door for Israel to rejoin the fight. Itamar Ben Gvir, an Israeli security cabinet minister, told listeners on Israeli radio that he hoped President Trump would strike Iran hard.

Iran's latest attacks moved beyond military targets to now civilian infrastructure, which has been troubling.

Kuwaiti Ministry of Electricity warned earlier today that its power and desalination plants have come under attack for the second straight day by Iranian projectiles.

BREAKING: Kuwait says power and water desalination plant attacked for second time in two days

🔴 LIVE updates: https://t.co/jKP76o4RPX pic.twitter.com/5IoegG3wJv

— Al Jazeera Breaking News (@AJENews) July 19, 2026

US Central Command described the latest US strikes as seeking to reduce Tehran's offensive capabilities on the Strait of Hormuz that threaten commercial shipping and "swiftly punish" Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps forces behind the Jordan attack that killed two US soldiers and left another missing in action.

U.S. forces pound Iran for the eighth straight night as CENTCOM releases new footage following Iranian missile and drone attacks on a U.S. base in Jordan that killed two U.S. service members. A third remains missing.

CENTCOM says forces "successfully hit Iranian military coastal… pic.twitter.com/0jc8TZBzdo

— Fox News (@FoxNews) July 19, 2026

By now, the interim ceasefire deal signed by the US and Iran is in flames, as US forces have renewed their blockade of Iranian ports and the Trump team has tightened sanctions on Tehran's oil exports

An overnight report from AFP News stated:

Iran says nuclear plant being built attacked.

Iran's Atomic Energy Organization said the United States attacked an under-construction nuclear power plant in Darkhovin, in the country's southwest.

Previous days US-Iran Wrap:

• State Department Issues "Worldwide Caution" As US-Iran Tit-For-Tat Spirals Into Regional Crisis

Polymarket: Will the US announce withdrawal from MOU negotiations by July 31?

Latest overnight headlines (courtesy of Bloomberg):

US-Iran Military Tit-For-Tat Escalation

• Two US service members were killed and another went missing in action during Iranian ballistic missile and drone attacks in Jordan on Friday; four others were evacuated to Jordanian hospitals.
• The US launched fresh strikes on Iran overnight Saturday, hitting Qeshm Island in the Persian Gulf and southern cities including Shadegan, Sirik and Hajiabad, according to Iranian media.
• Iran suspended its commitments under the interim deal with the US as both sides continued exchanging strikes on infrastructure and military targets.
• Bahrain said it intercepted several Iranian aerial attacks on Sunday.
• Jordan evacuated Aqaba's airport and seaport due to a specific and credible threat, with the US embassy advising Americans to avoid both locations.

Hormuz Chokepoint Tensions

• Iran's Revolutionary Guards said four vessels attempted to transit the Strait of Hormuz via an unauthorized route; two were stopped after accidents and two turned back.
• Iran accused the ships of attempting to disrupt transit through the strait with "support from American terrorists" and said they had turned off their navigation systems.
• Iran rushed out approximately $6 billion of oil during a brief truce with the US in mid-June to mid-July, with around 20 Iranian tankers arriving off Malaysia's east coast, with China as the likely ultimate destination, according to analysts, per the Wall Street Journal.

Regional Impact & Kuwait Strikes Crisis

• Kuwait suffered some of its worst Iranian retaliatory attacks, with strikes on a vital oil facility causing significant damage and injuries, and a second power plant hit in as many days.
• Kuwait airport suspended flights and Kuwait Airways rescheduled the majority of its flights following the attacks.
• Iraq is using a large fleet of trucks to carry fuel through Syria to bypass the Strait of Hormuz, rapidly making Syria the Middle East's top export hub, accounting for more than a quarter of regional volumes.

Oil Market Woes  

• Renewed fighting is raising the risk of an oil price spike as global supply buffers have been worn thin, with emergency stockpile releases and reduced Chinese imports having previously helped avert a crisis when the Strait of Hormuz first closed in March.
• Concerns over re-escalation of the war pushed oil prices sharply higher following Iran's heavy attacks on Kuwait.

Ahead of US futures opening later today, IG's Weekend Oil and US Crude are up about 2%.

The IG oil market is a weekend CFD market that lets traders speculate on where WTI crude will reopen when regular futures trading resumes Sunday evening.

On Friday, Brent crude futures jumped 4% to nearly $88 a barrel, putting the crude oil on track for its biggest weekly gain since April.

A must-read this weekend as Hormuz normalization dramatically slows:

• "We've Burned Through All Buffers": Oil Traders Warn Market Running On Fumes

Bloomberg data show transits in the Strait of Hormuz come to a standstill …

Continued read:

• JPM: The Big Question Is No Longer About Hormuz And Oil, It's All About Refining And Russia

Professional subscribers can tap our new Marketdesk.ai portal to read the latest on energy and Hormuz.

Tyler Durden Sun, 07/19/2026 - 08:45

French Gambling Regulator Orders ISPs To Block Polymarket

Authored by Zoltan Vardai via CoinTelegraph.com,

France’s Autorité nationale des jeux (ANJ), or the National Gambling Authority, has ordered internet service providers to block access to Polymarket.

Prediction websites are considered illegal gambling, the ANJ said in a Friday press release.

The regulator said that Polymarket’s operations are not authorized in France and that advertising unauthorized gambling sites constitutes a criminal offense with fines of up to 100,000 euros ($114,000).

Prediction markets allow users to buy and sell contracts tied to the outcomes of future events, from elections and sporting events to economic data and geopolitical developments. Polymarket has surged in popularity over the past two years, with billions of dollars in trading volume, while drawing scrutiny from regulators over whether its event contracts constitute illegal gambling or unlicensed financial products.

Countries that blocked access to Polymarket include Singapore, Poland, Portugal, Hungary, Ukraine, Brazil and Indonesia. At press time, Polymarket said it was geoblocked in 36 regions.

France’s gambling regulator first shared plans to block the platform in November 2024 for failing to comply with national gambling laws.

French gambling authority cites outcome manipulation concerns

France’s gambling authority said Polymarket boasts “addictive features” that are similar to regulated gambling offerings, but “amplified by the absence of the protective mechanisms found in the legal gambling market.”

It also cited potential outcome manipulation tied to some event contracts on Polymarket, adding:

“Some of the bets offered on this platform appeared to be rigged: for example, bets on the weather revealed that weather sensors may have been hacked.”

The cybercrime unit of the Paris Public Prosecutor’s Office launched an investigation into this matter in May 2026 and found a lack of identity verification, such as Know Your Customer checks.

Prediction markets have also drawn scrutiny from US regulators. On June 17, Kentucky sued five prediction market platforms, including Kalshi and Polymarket, accusing them of operating unlicensed sports betting platforms. At least 17 other states have followed suit.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission sued eight states, arguing they had interfered with the federal regulator’s exclusive authority over federally regulated event contracts. 

Tyler Durden Sun, 07/19/2026 - 08:10

Germany To Join French Nuclear Exercise, Deepening 'Counter-Russia' Deterrence

In the latest development related to what some analysts have called the 'new Cold War' and nuclear saber-rattling between Russia and the West, Germany and France are planning a major nuclear exercise later this year.

The atomic drills were announced Friday, after a joint top-level meeting of the French and German governments near Cologne. "Alongside this work on a shared doctrine, German conventional forces will this year take part in a nuclear exercise of the French military," German Chancellor Friedrich Merz unveiled. 

picture alliance/dpa

He detailed while at a press event alongside French President Emmanuel Macron that a "strategic steering group" established by the leading European allies would continue looking at deterrence in the future, with an eye on Russia.

"This is complementary to our nuclear participation and deterrence within NATO, which we still hold to," he added. He also previewed "a maneuver in the autumn held on the initiative of France" - while speaking of the Ukraine war.

"We will clarify together what form exactly this participation will take," he said.

France is newly positioning itself at the forefront of nuclear deterrence for Europe, a role that the United States has long assumed, and currently still does.

According to some of Macron's statements at the same event: "Patriotism, yes; nationalism, never. At a time when Europe is rearming, to think that each of us separately accumulating capabilities is the way history is going is absurd." More details have been offered in the following:

Mr Macron and Mr Merz began the defence council at Nörvenich air base beside a French Rafale and a German Eurofighter – a symbolic backdrop after the aircraft designed to replace them was scrapped.

Nuclear deterrence offers one field where the strained partnership can still move forward.

German troops would play a conventional supporting role and would not control French weapons. Berlin will also help develop radar and space-based systems for detecting ballistic and hypersonic missiles.

Currently the United States and the UK, which both maintain nuclear arsenals, form the core of NATO's nuclear deterrence strategy. While France also possesses nuclear weapons, it does not yet participate on a leadership level in NATO's nuclear planning group. The US military also contributes F-35, refueling aircraft, and other support planes. 

Germany's Chancellor Merz:

For the first time, I have accepted the offer made by the French President to jointly think about nuclear deterrence.

Historically speaking, General Charles de Gaulle had already offered the Federal Republic of Germany a French nuclear umbrella many… pic.twitter.com/lIug2JjqVB

— Clash Report (@clashreport) July 17, 2026

Russia has not infrequently held its own strategic drills over the course of the last several years of war in Ukraine. It has also become the 'new normal' for Russia and Europe to hold rival conventional war games, amid threats, warnings and ongoing miliary flexing.

Tyler Durden Sun, 07/19/2026 - 07:35

Nearly Half Of Poles Now Want To Stop Arming Ukraine

Authored by Andrew Korybko,

The reason is Poles’ radically shifting views towards Ukraine since the start of their spiraling dispute sparked by Zelensky’s state-level glorification of the Volhynia Genocide’s OUN-UPA culprits.

Leading Polish conservative newspaper Rzeczpospolita published the results of a survey that it commissioned showing that 45.2% of Poles now want to stop arming Ukraine. The majority are from the opposition, which includes conservative and libertarian-nationalist (populist in American political parlance) groups who a separate survey recently showed could form a coalition government after fall 2027’s next Sejm elections, and is almost three times larger than the 18.3% from December 2022.

Krzysztof Bosak, one of the populist Confederation’s co-leaders, is quoted as reaffirming his party’s consistent policy of supporting conditional aid to Ukraine that tangibly advances Polish interests. Its rapid growth in popularity per the second-mentioned survey above is likely due to the public realizing that Confederation was right all along about Ukraine amidst their country’s spiraling dispute with it that was sparked by Zelensky’s state-level glorification of the Volhynia Genocide’s OUN-UPA culprits.

This palpable sentiment is arguably responsible for why the conservative “Law & Justice” (PiS) opposition’s prime ministerial candidate boldly broke with this party’s leadership earlier in the week by calling on the EU to stop funding Ukrainian arms till it “enters the path of pro-human values.” PiS is also separately embroiled in a power struggle between co-founder Jarosław Kaczyński and former Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki over the latter’s refusal to shutter his sub-group within the party.

The combination of these factors could lead to more disgruntled PiS supporters flocking towards Confederation, thus potentially turning the party in the senior partner in any coalition that could be formed after fall 2027’s next Sejm elections, which could lead to serious changes in Polish foreign policy. The second survey that was hyperlinked to in the introduction shows that Confederation and the Confederation of the Polish Crown that earlier split from it have more support combined than PiS.

It’s therefore within the realm of political reality that the populists maintain their role as the country’s most powerful opposition force, especially if support for PiS continues declining while support for Confederation continues growing, with Poles’ radically shifting views towards Ukraine being the reason. Rzeczpospolita’s report cites the Defense Ministry’s recently declassified statistics showing that the former PiS government gave Ukraine around €3.4 billion worth of military equipment from 2022-2023.

The National Security Bureau disclosed in early 2025 that Poland’s aid to Ukraine totaled 4.91% of its GDP by then (most going to refugees and the above statistics showing that the liberal coalition only sent around €350 million by mid-2026) and constituted hundreds of pieces of equipment. Although PiS has since hardened its approach towards Ukraine, just like its opponents did under public pressure, it could have preemptively averted Ukraine’s descent into an anti-Polish state had it attached strings to its aid.

For example, aid could have been sent only if Ukraine first allowed the full exhumation and proper reburial of the Volhynia Genocide’s victims, officially recognized and apologized for this war crime, and banned Banderism. That didn’t happen and now “Poland Finally Realizes The Geostrategic Challenge Posed By Ukraine”, thus further contextualizing why nearly half of Poles no longer want to arm what’s at this point their top regional rival, which also poses a latent security threat if it’s not soon denazified.

Tyler Durden Sun, 07/19/2026 - 07:00

Iran's Reliance On China's Beidou Satellite System Is A Game-Changer In War With US

Authored by former CIA officer Larry Johnson

During the 12-day war in June 2025, Iranian missiles and drones struggled against sophisticated Israeli and American electronic warfare. GPS jamming and spoofing repeatedly disrupted their guidance systems, limiting their effectiveness during the intense 12-day conflict. Fast-forward to early 2026, and the battlefield dynamics had shifted dramatically. Iran’s precision strikes began threading through advanced air defenses, hitting high-value targets across the Gulf with surprising accuracy.

Intelligence analysts pointed to one key factor: Iran had ditched GPS for China’s Beidou satellite navigation system.

The US unwittingly provided the spark that ignited China’s quest for the Beidou. The story begins in 1993 when a single Chinese container ship, the Yinhe, sailing to Iran, the vessel was accused by the CIA of carrying chemicals for weapons production.

Middle Eastern ports, under pressure from the US, refused entry and the ship was stranded in the Indian Ocean. The US not only pressured allies but reportedly disabled the ship's GPS access, forcing it to drop anchor for weeks. Inspections in Saudi Arabia eventually cleared the vessel, but China received no apology or compensation.

This humiliation—losing navigation mid-ocean due to reliance on a foreign-controlled system—became a pivotal lesson for Beijing. It accelerated development of an independent satellite navigation network: Beidou (BDS).

• BDS-1 (2000s) provided initial regional coverage.
• BDS-2 expanded capabilities.
• BDS-3 (completed around 2020) transformed it into a global powerhouse with dozens of satellites, far more ground stations (especially in the Global South), and superior accuracy in many regions compared to GPS.

Today, Beidou outperforms GPS in coverage and precision across roughly 165 countries, offering a resilient alternative that cannot be unilaterally jammed or spoofed by Western powers.

After the 2025 conflict exposed vulnerabilities in GPS-dependent systems, Iran moved decisively. By late 2025 or early 2026, it integrated Beidou into its missile and drone arsenals. Reports from March 2026 already highlighted dramatic improvements: Iranian munitions evaded electronic countermeasures that had worked months earlier.

Key advantages of Beidou for Iran include:

• Resistance to jamming/spoofing — Advanced frequency-hopping and anti-interference tech.
• Higher accuracy — Circular error probable under 5 meters in key regions, enabling precise strikes with fewer munitions.
• Real-time command — Secure messaging allows mid-flight adjustments over long distances.

This upgrade has contributed significantly to Iran’s ability to penetrate US defenses in the Gulf countries and dramatically improved Iran’s ability to strike critical targets, which has undermined confidence in US security guarantees in the Gulf.

The US decision to use GPS as a weapon in 1993 has backfired spectacularly—proof that humiliating China inspired a technological leap that now gives China and its allies a strategic advantage over the US.

Tyler Durden Sat, 07/18/2026 - 23:20

Election Integrity: Is Representative Democracy A Foolish Fantasy?

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us

The US Constitution is perhaps the most significant historical and governmental document in a millennia. It established the modern conception of the western Republic, along with true representative government designed to answer to the people rather than rule over the people.

The Bill of Rights outlined clear restrictions on federal and state powers to legislate away the inherent and God given freedoms of the citizenry; an accomplishment which had been attempted in the past but was never truly realized until the war for independence and the creation of the United States. Until that moment, the idea that common men answer to authority and authority answers to no one was the accepted norm.

It’s a document and an ideal that gave birth to an epoch.

However, our constitutional republic was created based on conditions that, frankly, no longer exist. The American population was 95% Christian. The implementation of “patriarchy” was widespread and embraced as the most solid foundation for society. Meritocracy was absolute. Cultural identity was rooted in western civilization without any deviation or distraction.

Marxism did not exist. Atheism was rare. Degeneracy was shunned or punished. Shame was an effective social tool. Psychopathy was easy to identify and remove from within the smaller population. Women were expected to raise families and care for the home. Men were expected to feed and protect those families; perhaps even die for them.

Voting was for land owners and people with an actual stake in the success or failure of government policies. Women did not vote until a hundred years later in 1920 (many commentators have offered compelling arguments that the country quickly went downhill from there).

In 2026, many Americans still treat the notion of representative democracy as sacrosanct and untouchable, even though they don’t really know why. They just think it’s about freedom, but, they are basing their devout reverence on a system that used to work because it heavily restricted who was allowed to participate.

As John Adams sated in 1802:

“We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other…”

Like many conservatives, I started out as predominantly libertarian. Millions of us of us launched our political lives in the era of the Ron Paul Revolution. That said, whenever I hear libertarians wax romantic about the Constitution and why we must strictly adhere to it today regardless of the circumstances, I have to remind them that if the system today looked like it did when the Founders were in charge, most people would not be voting.

I’m not saying this is a bad thing. In fact, the central question I want to ask is, would that actually be a better way of governing than what we have now? Should we return to the idea of restrictions on civic participation for people who have a habit of causing harm? In our liberal drive to create total democratic inclusivity, did we end up destroying the social structures and expectations that made our country and elections work in the first place?

Hell, in 2026 we are actually fighting for our lives just to get voter ID laws in place to prevent foreigners from influencing election outcomes. Around 80% of the country supports this policy, yet, the Senate refuses to pass it and 20% on the radical left are viciously opposed because they WANT illegal migrants to be able sneak into the vote.

As if it wasn’t already obvious, this proves the fact that Democrats and Neo-Con politicians have no regard for “democracy” – They cry about majority rule all the time but when there’s a clear case of an overwhelming majority in favor of secure elections, they do the opposite.

The top 0.2% and the bottom 20% work in tandem to make life miserable for everyone else.

Is representative democracy even possible when a large portion of the population is actively fighting to burn our republic to the ground by any means necessary? How can our elections and our government maintain integrity when people who want to destroy everything are allowed to vote or take political office?

Maybe that 20% of militant leftists and Neo-Cons should NOT be allowed to vote. Maybe they should be denied participation in government. Maybe they should be kicked out of the country. It’s what the Founding Fathers would have done…

During and after the Revolutionary War, many states required oaths of allegiance to the new American cause. Refusal (often by Loyalists/Tories who supported Britain) led to disenfranchisement, property confiscation, banishment, etc. These rules and restrictions were explicitly ideological – punishing pro-British or “neutral” political views. Pennsylvania, New York, and other states used such tests and the Founders saw this as necessary for security.

The idea that every American citizen should be allowed to have a hand in national matters despite their dubious background or belief system is a foolish fantasy. The Founders were correct to make distinctions.

That said, is the system so broken by corruption and delusion that it cannot be mended? How do we fix this situation? Do we merely sit back and allow the country to deteriorate in the name of liberal hedonism? Because that’s not an act of freedom. Rather, it’s the attitude of anarchy and it’s important to understand the difference.

Anarchy is freedom without accountability; the abandonment of any personal responsibility for the future. It means national suicide.

This week, the Trump Administration released classified information which they argue is proof of election manipulation in 2020. In response, the legacy media has refused to air Trump’s speech addressing the issue. Many outlets “fact checked” Trump’s arguments online as false without having time to read the reports and classified documents he offered.

I’m not saying that 2020 was unequivocally rigged, but, I’m willing to look at the evidence and clearly the political left and the media are not. This tells us all we need to know about them.

Everyone remembers the “hockey stick” graph and the impossible voting numbers for Joe Biden in the early morning hours of November 4th. Even the skeptics found it hard to come up with a believable rationale. To this day, Democrats are unable to explain how Biden got 81 million votes, the highest raw vote count for any presidential candidate in US history, in the middle of a pandemic.

In 2024, Kamala Harris fell short of Biden’s totals by over 6 million votes. It shouldn’t be possible, but it happened. The recent rigging revelations, if accurate, help us to understand why the Democrats (and some Neo-Cons) absolutely refuse to pass voter ID laws and limits on mail-in ballots despite the vast majority of Americans in favor.

But ballot rigging and illegal migrant voting are only two threats among many to our country’s elections. Let’s not forget:

1) The mentally ill still get a vote. Over 23% of all US adults report having at least one mental illness. Meaning 1 in 4 US voters many not have the mental stability required to make reasonable or logical decisions. Nearly 20% of US adults are on some form of prescription medication for mental health issues. The number of women on medication is double the number of men on medication.

2) Low IQ people get to vote. Around 10% of the population has an IQ under 80, which is 20 points below the average. An IQ of 80 or less is associated with poor impulse control, extreme aggression and an inability to maintain normal day-to-day responsibilities. Should such people be allowed to vote?

3) Psychopaths and sociopaths get to vote. Around 4% of the population has these dangerous psychological traits. Yet, they can vote, run for office, and get jobs within the bureaucratic system. There is certainly some nuance to consider here (for example, some sociopaths are highly functional and are not a threat when operating ion positions of authority), but I would argue that all candidates should be tested openly for these issues before they’re allowed to enter government office.

4) Finally, how do we bring transparency to a government that is built around a bureaucracy that has no term limits and few checks and balances? To Trump’s credit, he has been attempting to dismantle this “deep state” edifice and has had a few successes, including the shutdown of the nefarious USAID. But it would take multiple presidencies to accomplish any long-lasting changes to this entrenched secondary government.

The efforts of DOGE showed us that the bureaucracy has always been the true base of power – protected by an array of corrupt politicians, judges, journalists and NGOs. It doesn’t matter who ends up in office because the people managing the bureaucracy usually keep their jobs for life, and when a confrontational administration leaves, they simply change everything back to the way things were.

Should we ignore constitutional protocols and remove the vast majority of these people from their jobs? The courts are doing everything in their power to prevent these people from being fired. What if we ignored the courts and kicked them out anyway? What alternatives do we have?

None of the answers to these problems can be found within the Constitution and the current legal environment. Again, we can’t even get Congress and the Senate to pass commonsense voter ID laws. Which means, we would have to go outside the Constitution to save the Constitution.

Ah yes, the slippery slope reveals itself. But the constitution is designed to limit the actions of the federal government, not the people. This leaves us with the age-old conundrum of rebellion and reformation. Maybe this is the only way that things will ever really change.

What I know is this: We cannot continue on the path we have been following for so many decades. We cannot rely on the system to police itself. And, we cannot allow certain subsections of the population to continue to have influence over our society.

Something has to change, dramatically and for the long term. We could do it through partisan government while breaking a number of constitutional laws, or, we could do it through popular revolution and hope that the country survives the aftermath of total domestic war. In the end, sitting back and doing nothing is not an option.

Tyler Durden Sat, 07/18/2026 - 22:10

Welcome To Trillionistan; Don't Get Comfortable...

Authored by Peter C. Earle via The Daily Economy,

Not long ago, the notion of trillions belonged either to the furthest cosmic reaches of the universe or the submicroscopic world of atoms. These numbers describe galaxies in the observable universe, roughly two trillion, or, at the opposite extreme, the picosecond - one trillionth of a second - is used to measure molecular motion and chemical reactions. Until recently, magnitudes denominated in trillions were almost entirely confined to the theoretical hinterlands of astronomy, physics, and schoolyard exaggeration.

Today, trillion-dollar quantities have become commonplace in economic and financial life. At least 12 American companies boast trillion-dollar market capitalizations, with Apple approaching $5 trillion. BlackRock now manages more than $15 trillion in assets. The largest technology firms, cumulatively, measure their investments in the trillions as they build data centers, semiconductor capacity, and power systems on an unprecedented scale. SpaceX's 2026 initial public offering valued the company at more than $1.7 trillion, and its subsequent surge briefly pushed Elon Musk's paper wealth above $1 trillion.

Billionistan opened its gates in 1901, when JP Morgan assembled US Steel into the world's first billion-dollar corporation. Perhaps it surrendered statehood on January 13, 2016, the day Powerball offered the first billion-dollar lottery jackpot. After ten more, Billionistan moved from a numerical destination to a waypoint. We now inhabit Trillionistan.

Governments, unsurprisingly, were early movers; they frequently are. Trillion-dollar economic figures first appeared during the great hyperinflations of the twentieth century. In the United States, the national debt crossed $1 trillion in October 1981, inaugurating an era in which ever-larger fiscal quantities gradually lost their capacity to shock. Annual deficits now exceed the entire national debt of 45 years ago, while America's current indebtedness - as measured by the fiscal gap - extends into the hundreds of trillions.

Public finance is only one province of Trillionistan. The larger phenomenon is the steady upward drift of nominal magnitudes - and our tendency to mistake financial scale for real, truly productive achievement. Prices rise, credit and money supplies balloon, economies grow, markets deepen, and expected future earnings are capitalized across ever-longer horizons. Each process quietly extends the number of zeroes layered onto economic life.

Inflation is plainly part of the explanation. A dollar simply buys far less than it once did. Even if nothing real changed - if no new factories were built, no technologies discovered, and no improvement in living standards achieved - the same collection of assets would be priced higher over time as each dollar lost purchasing power. Nominal dollar records are easier to achieve than real value-driven ones.

But inflation alone cannot explain Trillionistan. The economy has also become larger, richer, more technologically sophisticated, and more global. Companies now serve billions of customers, software scales almost without cost, and intellectual property can generate extraordinary returns worldwide. Genuine wealth creation and monetary depreciation are operating simultaneously, both enlarging the nominal quantities around us. But it's difficult for most observers to distinguish between a trillion dollars of productive assets, a trillion dollars of debt, a trillion-dollar market cap, a trillion-dollar spending bill, and a trillion dollars of future pension liabilities.

Sound economics cautions against confusing abstract money prices with the goods, services, productive capacities, and human satisfactions to which those prices refer. Additional wealth is not created merely because accountants add zeros to balance sheets, central banks expand the money supply, or financial assets are quoted at higher prices. Yet neither are such price changes meaningless. Money is a messenger: prices may reflect changes in scarcity, expected earnings, risk, preferences, credit conditions, monetary supply, or some combination of them. Wealth is created when entrepreneurs discover more valuable ways to arrange scarce resources, including capital and labor, to satisfy human wants. Market prices signal judgments about those uses, but they are not themselves the value being created.

Viewed through that lens, a trillion-dollar company is less alarming, and perhaps more inspiring. A trillion-dollar market capitalization is not a warehouse containing a trillion dollars; it is the market's continuously revised estimate of future earning power (see the price trend in SpaceX since the IPO for confirmation of that phenomenon). Stock prices condense millions of judgments about technology, competition, consumer demand, production costs, and risk into a single signal of likely value. That estimate - whether it proves accurate or wildly optimistic - is a wager, a priced forecast of the future, rather than an inventory of existing riches.

Like the trillions now being committed to AI infrastructure, some investments will transform productivity; others will become expensive monuments to extrapolation. Entrepreneurship has always involved speculation. The more important question is whether monetary policy choices have the effect of systematically warping entrepreneurial judgment and promoting malinvestment. Persistently easy credit and artificially suppressed interest rates do more than raise prices generally. They encourage longer-duration projects, inflate the present value of distant earnings, and allow financial valuations to outrun the economy's underlying productive capacity.

Certainly not every trillion dollar valuation is a bubble. Monetary distortion and genuine innovation frequently coexist. Railroads truly transformed nineteenth-century Millionistan - the impressive Mohawk and Hudson Railroad was built for just $600,000 - though many fortunes disappeared in speculative railroad manias. The internet continued to power our economy well after the collapse of the dot-com bubble. Artificial intelligence may likewise reshape civilization while simultaneously destroying vast quantities of invested capital. Entrepreneurial ventures, especially at the cutting edge of technology, are entrepreneurial wagers. Profit and loss exist precisely because no one knows the outcome beforehand.

Life in Trillionistan has rewired our perceptions. Large numbers anesthetize. A million dollars once represented unimaginable wealth; a billion eventually replaced it; today even the billion is becoming commonplace. As each numerical frontier becomes familiar, it commands less wonder and less scrutiny. We experience reflexive suspicion of individuals who command great fortunes, but slip into complacency toward inflation, debt, and public liabilities. In both cases, the magnitude obscures the institution that produced it.

Not all trillions are created equal. A trillion accumulated through entrepreneurial discovery differs fundamentally from a trillion generated through monetary expansion, leverage, or habitual political can-kicking. Most modern trillions contain elements of both: genuine productive achievement expressed through a steadily depreciating unit of account. The trillion has migrated from cosmology and quantum mechanics into ordinary economic discourse because the economy has genuinely grown, but also because the monetary unit has contracted precipitously.

The important question, then, is not whether another company, fortune, industry, or balance sheet will cross the trillion-dollar threshold. Many will. The more interesting and relevant question is what kind of trillion it will be: one representing genuine wealth creation, one reflecting the capitalization of future possibilities, one inflated by monetary expansion, or some unstable mixture of all three. In Trillionistan, the zeros hint at the scale, but they do not tell us the actual story. And even as we acclimate ourselves to the trillion, the foundations of Quadrillionistan are quietly being laid.

Peter C. Earle, Ph.D., is Senior Director of Research at the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER), which he joined in 2018. An economist and financial market practitioner with over 30 years of experience in financial markets, macroeconomics, and economic analysis, Dr. Earle holds a Ph.D. in Economics from l'Universite d'Angers, an MA in Applied Economics from American University, an MBA in Finance, and a BS in Engineering from the United States Military Academy at West Point.

Tyler Durden Sat, 07/18/2026 - 21:00

Flock Safety Defends Cameras After AI System Triggers Wrongful Police Stops Of Two Journalists

Plymouth, Minnesota - Automotive journalist Joel Feder and his wife were detained by multiple police officers in a coordinated stop while driving a Jaguar Land Rover press vehicle, after Flock Safety's automated license plate recognition (ALPR) cameras flagged the car based on a flawed database entry.

Screenshot Plymouth Police Department via The Drive

According to Feder's detailed account in The Drive, officers boxed in the $155,000 Range Rover in a Kohl's parking lot after the vehicle triggered alerts via Flock's network. Police had been tracking it for days, believing the New Jersey manufacturer plate (34 10 DTM) was stolen. Officers approached with hands on their weapons, ordered the couple out of the vehicle, and conducted pat-downs before verifying the car's legitimacy through Jaguar Land Rover. Feder subsequently obtained and published the body camera footage of the encounter.

The incident stemmed from an incomplete report of a similar plate (34 03 DTM) lost during a photo shoot in California, which was entered into the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) database simply as "34 DTM." Flock's AI system matched Feder's plate - ignoring the smaller middle digits - and generated alerts. Local officers did not fully verify the complete plate visible in Flock's own images.

The problem was not confined to one vehicle. Last Wednesday, fellow auto journalist Tim Esterdahl, publisher of Pickup Truck + SUV Talk, was pulled over by two officers in Scotts Bluff, Nebraska, while driving his 14-year-old child in a $105,000 Range Rover Sport loaned to him by Jaguar Land Rover for review. Its plate: New Jersey 34 08 DTM. Jaguar Land Rover has been working to correct the underlying reports.

Flock Safety maintains that its cameras performed as designed, matching partial plates per law enforcement preferences for hotlist alerts. Chief Communications Officer Joshua Thomas told The Drive the system was asked whether those characters were present and correctly answered that they were - it simply was not built to flag that additional characters existed. He conceded that for alerts originating from NCIC rather than an individual agency's custom list, the system arguably should test for an exact match rather than mere presence, and called that fair feedback to take back to his team.

Thomas said Flock is working to get the original police report corrected and is meeting with the FBI officials who curate NCIC to develop a way for incomplete data to be flagged as such for officers seeing automated alerts in the field. He emphasized that a camera alert "does not equal probable cause," comparing it to an alarm going off, and stressed that the system depends on both valid inputs and humans verifying outputs.

But the scale is what makes the error rate consequential. Thomas said the system is roughly 99 percent accurate while performing approximately 20 billion reads per month - arithmetic that leaves on the order of 200 million misreads every month. How many of those escalate into armed stops is unknown.

Plymouth police acknowledged shortcomings in verification but pointed to the challenges of varying license plate formats nationwide. According to the department's Flock transparency portal, the city operates 18 cameras that read more than 580,000 license plates in a recent 30-day period, generating over 14,800 hotlist hits - one of which was Feder.

Broader Concerns Over Flock's Expanding Network

This case adds to a growing list of incidents underscoring the privacy implications of Flock Safety's widespread ALPR deployment. As we have previously reported on ZeroHedge, these camera networks - now operating in thousands of communities across dozens of states - create detailed movement logs of vehicles with minimal oversight, raising serious questions about unwarranted surveillance of law-abiding citizens.

Critics, including privacy advocates, have long warned that reliance on partial matches, inter-agency data sharing, and integration with other surveillance tools can lead to false positives, chilling effects on daily movement, and potential misuse. While proponents highlight their value in recovering stolen vehicles and aiding investigations, the aggregation of location data over time effectively enables broad tracking without individualized suspicion.

Joel Feder via The Drive Tyler Durden Sat, 07/18/2026 - 20:25

White DSA Member Inadvertently Exposes Socialist Playbook: "Secret Nazis" Are Fine If They Advance Agenda

Far-left podcaster and Democratic Socialists of America member Emma Vigeland appeared to inadvertently expose the far-left movement's ends-justify-the-means political calculus: Even a "secret Nazi" would be acceptable if the candidate advanced a national socialist agenda.

Vigeland, a former field reporter, producer, and commentator for The Young Turks and identified as a DSA member, also co-hosts The Majority Report with Sam Seder. She explained on a separate Vox podcast that she doesn't care if a progressive or socialist candidate has "Nazi" skeletons in their closet.

"I am wary of over-focusing on an individual's personal character over their platform. You know, I've said this before. I don't really care if say like Bernie Sanders or AOC go home and they're a secret Nazi, but they go out and they vote for the right things. Like we're talking about politician," the DSA member said earlier this month.

Vox host Astead Herndon was astonished by Vigeland's remarks, and asked: "You don't care?"

DSA's Emma Vigeland says she “doesn’t care” if the candidates she supports are "secret Nazis" as long as they vote for their extremist agenda. pic.twitter.com/ukjBuKvGgW

— Canary Mission (@canarymission) July 16, 2026

Why is anyone surprised anymore? This comes after the political collapse of DSA's Graham Platner, who had a large "Totenkopf" tattoo- a symbol associated with the Nazi SS.

🚨 Graham Platner, a far-left Democrat candidate running for U.S. Senate in Maine, has a NAZI tattoo on his chest

The skull and bones on his chest is called "Totenkopf" and it was used by Hitler's SS pic.twitter.com/IpZaO0Fdi4

— Ryan Saavedra (@RyanSaavedra) October 21, 2025

What the internet had to say:

I'm confused. Who are the nazis? Is it the MAGA? or is it the DSA? The nazis were "National Socialists" that was the name. So the DSA are the nazis, right?

— Igg-norancesbliss (@IgnatzDeZoobnar) July 16, 2026

Is there really any difference between Democratic Socialists and National Socialists?

— Ariel (@Ariel72331325) July 16, 2026

The indoctrinated millennials getting into politics are the expected result of the “Marxist Academics in Charge”.

Good luck to all in rooting out this mental cancer.

— Frank Lynn (@franklynn059) July 18, 2026

Its because they are the REAL NAZI'S.

— MagicSword 23 (@MagicSword23) July 18, 2026

DSA is telling us the playbook.
It doesn’t matter if someone is “a secret Nazi” as long as the rhetoric sounds good and pure!

Sell poison but make it taste like candy. pic.twitter.com/9fyv5UbRtH

— Booker G. Washington (@BookerGWash) July 16, 2026

DSA's End Goal: 

DSA's nation-killing agenda to collapse America:

The DSA is such a liability for the Democratic Party that a prominent Bill Clinton insider took the time to write up a Wall Street Journal op-ed that said: "Lawmakers, law-enforcement agencies and journalists should investigate the DSA to see if it is being funded by foreign governments and interests."

Tyler Durden Sat, 07/18/2026 - 20:00

The View's Sunny Hostin Hates 'Privilege'... Except For Her Own

Authored by Andrea Widberg via AmericanThinker.com,

No one hates “privilege” more than Sunny Hostin.

The slightly black co-host of The View, who earns $2 million annually and lives with her orthopedic surgeon husband in a 12,000-square-foot New York City apartment, repeatedly castigates those—usually white—who exercise their “privilege.”

However, when it came to throwing her weight around with the cops to protect her son from allegedly illegal conduct, the whole idea of “privilege” vanished from Hostin’s mind.

Hostin, a former federal prosecutor with a pretty face, landed herself a gig on The View, a show that is aggressively woke. In that context, Hostin often complains about privilege—all kinds of privilege that imply that talent and hard work are meaningless. Here are some notable examples:

In April 2019, when he was running for the Democrat nomination, Pete Buttigieg made obeisance to the race and sex hustlers by reflecting on his “white privilege or male privilege.” Hostin was thrilled that Buttigieg had this empathetic insight into his privilege.

In May 2024, while the shrews...er, hostesses were discussing Caitlin Clark, Hostin stated, “I do think that there is a thing called pretty privilege. There is a thing called White privilege. There is a thing called tall privilege, and we have to acknowledge that.

Most tellingly, though, for purposes of this essay, in September 2019, when actress Felicity Huffman was trying to get a more lenient sentence for her role in a college admissions scandal, Hostin was outraged that someone prominent, wealthy, and generally in a better (presumably whiter) situation than other people, would dare ask for leniency: “She had wealth, privilege and a platform, and she didn’t use it appropriately.”

I couldn’t help thinking of these (and other) attacks on privilege when I read about Hostin throwing around her privileged weight as co-host of The View when she tried to stop police from arresting her son who had allegedly been caught walking along the railroad tracks in chi-chi Westchester County last month:

“The View” co-host Sunny Hostin tried to talk cops out of issuing her Ivy League-educated son a trespassing citation — telling them he “has no criminal record” and repeatedly citing her legal background, according to newly released police bodycam footage.

The TV personality and former federal prosecutor was on the phone with her 24-year-old son, Gabriel Hostin, when he was stopped by police along Metro-North Railroad tracks in Westchester County last month.

“My name is Sunny Hostin and I’m one of the co-hosts of ‘The View’ and I’m a former federal prosecutor,” the 57-year-old mom can be heard saying to the responding officers in the bodycam footage obtained Friday by The Post.

You and I both know that she talked about her role on The View as a subtle threat to the police: I’m powerful, I know people, and I can use my show to destroy you is the privileged subtext of that statement.

And then more privilege: “That’s my son. He’s a Harvard graduate, he doesn’t have a criminal record.” In other words, Harvard grads, among the most privileged people in America, shouldn’t be arrested. That was such an important point to Hostin that, when she raced down to meet the cops personally, she reiterated his privilege: “He’s a Harvard grad...” And then, to assure the arresting cop that her blackish, Puerto-Rican-ish, white-ish son was a good person, she added that he “teaches 4th grade geometry to South Bronx kids.”

Thankfully, the cops were unmoved by the claimed privilege and the virtue signaling. They noted that Gabriel Hostin could not have missed clearly posted “no trespassing” signs, and that they had no option but to detain him. As it was, they limited themselves to issuing a trespass violation, rather than arresting him.

Here’s the full bodycam video:

🚨 EXCLUSIVE: Sunny Hostin and son seen on police body cam in trespassing incident. https://t.co/JAMUKRJD7p pic.twitter.com/m25cxe3B1E

— TMZ (@TMZ) July 17, 2026

Those were very nice cops. If they hadn’t been so polite, they could have told Sunny and Gabriel that being a Harvard graduate doesn’t mean you’re not too dumb to live if you think running on a railroad track is a good idea. But apparently being a mixed-race Harvard grad who’s the son of a famous mother makes you think your privilege leaves you immune to the laws of physics. Those immutable laws say that, when a train hits a human, the human loses.

I fully understand Hostin’s impulse to go full Mama Bear when she felt her son was under attack. That’s a very human emotion. But her approach—which basically boiled down to a politely expressed version of “do you know who I am and do you know who my son is?”—is still a stinking bit of leftist hypocrisy when you consider Hostin’s long history of identifying and attacking any type of so-called “privilege,” especially those attached to wealth and prestige.

Tyler Durden Sat, 07/18/2026 - 19:50

DC Circuit Gives Trump A Huge Election Integrity Victory On Mail-In Ballots

On Friday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit issued a temporary order allowing the Postal Service to move forward with a proposed rule requiring states to verify voter registration data before mailing federal election ballots. A three-judge panel, ruling per curiam, granted USPS's request to stay a district court injunction that had blocked the rule earlier this month in a lawsuit brought by the NAACP.

🚨 The D.C. Circuit has temporarily allowed the U.S. Postal Service to move forward with its proposed election-mail rule requiring states to submit voter lists and serialized ballot barcodes before USPS will mail federal ballots, staying a district judge's order. pic.twitter.com/MRfGcBWa8S

— SCOTUS Wire (@scotus_wire) July 17, 2026

The panel decided the challenge was premature since the rule remains in proposed form, and it found the measure unlikely to violate the 2021 agreement obligating USPS to prioritize timely delivery of election mail through 2028.

The D.C. Circuit granted a stay pending appeal, ruling that the appellants had met the "stringent requirements" required to pause the lower court's order while the case proceeds. In its order, the court wrote that the appellants "have made a strong showing that they will likely succeed on two of their arguments."

The rule traces back to Executive Order 14399, signed March 31, 2026, which directed federal agencies to compile and share state-by-state "citizenship lists" of eligible U.S. citizens using federal databases, to help states verify that only citizens vote in federal elections. It instructs the U.S. Postal Service to tighten rules and tracking for mail-in and absentee ballots, including rejecting ballots from people who are not on these federal-state eligibility lists or otherwise properly enrolled for mail voting. It also directs the Department of Justice to prioritize enforcement of federal election laws against officials who provide ballots to ineligible voters and to use the threat of withholding federal election funds to pressure states to comply with these new verification measures.

U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan blocked the Postal Service from implementing the rule on July 1, siding with the NAACP's argument that it conflicted with the 2021 settlement. That is the order the D.C. Circuit paused on Friday. A separate injunction, issued in June by a federal judge in Massachusetts in a suit brought by 23 states, continues to block the executive order in those jurisdictions and is unaffected by Friday's ruling.

The judges first found that the proposed rule was "likely neither constitutionally nor prudentially ripe for review." The court also concluded that, even if the proposed rule were ultimately adopted, it likely would not violate the terms of the parties' settlement agreement. The appeals court also found that the appellants had demonstrated they would suffer irreparable harm if the stay were denied. Without a stay, the court said, the lower court's injunction "will render [them] unable" to "issue and implement a final rule in advance of the November 2026 general election." The court also emphasized the timing concerns surrounding the election, stating, "there can be no do over once the election occurs."

Finally, the panel determined that any potential harm to the opposing party or the public interest did not outweigh the factors supporting a stay. "On this record, any countervailing harm to appellee and the public does not outweigh appellants' success on the two 'most critical' stay factors," the court concluded. The order does not resolve the underlying case or decide whether the rule is ultimately lawful.

Bill Essayli, first assistant U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, celebrated the ruling as a win for election integrity with implications for states that decline to hand over their voter rolls.

This ruling is a win for election integrity and would have significant implications for states like California that refuse to submit their voter rolls to verify compliance with federal election laws.

— Bill Essayli (@USAttyEssayli) July 17, 2026

Nearly every voter in California casts a ballot by mail, and while state officials have repeatedly insisted the system is safe and secure, the sheer volume it processes and its repeated inability to count votes promptly have raised doubts. The Los Angeles mayoral election on June 2 took nearly a month to finish counting ballots. State law accounts for much of that lag - California counts mailed ballots postmarked by Election Day for a full week afterward, and counties have 30 days to certify - but critics argue the drawn-out timelines corrode public confidence in the results. State election officials have directly pushed back against Trump's claims of fraud, framing the volume and complexity of California's system as a feature rather than a vulnerability.

 

Tyler Durden Sat, 07/18/2026 - 19:15

Academia Embarrasses Itself... Again

Authored by J.B. Shurk via American Thinker,

Over at Twitchy, a publication that curates the news in funny yet insightful ways, a headline reads, “Head of Medical School Tells Congresswoman the Vast Majority of Pregnancies Occur in Women.”  Sure enough, Twitchy is telling the truth.

During witness testimony before a congressional committee examining the impact of forced “diversity,” preferential (non-merit-based) admissions, and “woke” ideology upon the quality of medical schools, the chancellor of UC San Francisco testified under oath that not all pregnancies come from women.  That chancellor, Samuel Hawgood, is not some administrative bureaucrat with a made-up bachelor’s degree in the discriminatory effects of man-made “climate change” upon “transgender” Pakistanis (and an obligatory master’s in why American taxpayers must foot the bill for all “sex change” surgeries around the world).  No, Hawgood is an actual pediatrician who previously served as UCSF’s dean of the School of Medicine.  A man who did his residency at the Royal Women’s and Children’s Hospital in Brisbane cannot tell us how babies are made.

It is astounding to watch just how far down the propaganda rabbit hole so-called “institutions of higher learning” have dragged society.  Until very recently, this kind of public display of sophistry would have embarrassed an intellectual of the lowest order.  For a medical doctor and university chancellor to pretend that men can get pregnant is a flashing neon sign warning just how corrupt and dishonest all of academia has become.  These days, university leaders sound indistinguishable from North Korean spokespeople assuring starving citizens that they are better off than anyone else in the world.

How did we get to this point in time when professors tell rank lies to the American people, while hiding behind their titles as false evidence that those lies are somehow “truths”?  Well, social media favorite “Oilfield Rando” points to part of the problem.  In an X post responding to the doctor’s pseudoscientific testimony, Rando includes an itemization of Chancellor Hawgood’s university pay and accompanying benefits.  The man in charge of one of the country’s top educational institutions takes home well over a million dollars each year.  Unless Chancellor Hawgood is a moron who genuinely believes men can get pregnant, it is likely that he is willing to sell his intellectual reputation and personal honor for a seven-figure salary.

What does that say about the current state of our society?  The modern university arose from Christian monasteries dedicated to God’s truth.  This is why divinity degrees are generally accorded highest honor during processions accompanying graduation ceremonies.  As monasteries developed into secular institutions of higher learning, they remained places dedicated to the pursuit of truth.  Harvard’s motto, veritas, simply means “truth.”

For hundreds of years, faculty members did not take positions on college campuses because they sought fame or fortune.  They became scholars and professors because they were dedicated to the rigors of their calling.  Just as a Christian monk lived in poverty because the pursuit of truth provided spiritual nourishment and personal fulfillment, a scholar embraced a penurious life within academia in exchange for the privilege of seeking authentic truth.  The reward — unvarnished enlightenment — was understood to be more valuable than money.

I have spent enough time on university campuses to understand that they are no longer sanctuaries for truth.  There was a time not so many decades ago when campuses were “safe spaces” for all ideas.  Unlike the real world, where an employee might be fired for taking unorthodox positions in the workplace, colleges once encouraged professors and students to advance eccentric, heretical, and dissenting points of view on any subject.  Intellectual debate was more important than “hurt feelings” or “political correctness.”

Now, the opposite is true.  Universities are so concerned about “hurt feelings” and “political correctness” that they proudly designate most of their campus a “safe space” free from the “dangers” of debate, disagreement, or dissent.  Of course, the kicker is that in the process of creating “safe spaces,” colleges must first decide what points of view to defend as part of their unquestionable curricula.  They stake out positions just as a cleric might do with tenets of a religious faith.  In this way, the university has come full circle.  It has once again become a medieval monastery filled with members of a religious order.  It’s just that these twenty-first-century “monks” despise God, truth, and Christianity.

In 2026, a pediatrician and chancellor of a major university is incapable of stating the truths that biological sex is real and that only women can become pregnant.  As much as we might be inclined to laugh, this should make us feel sad.  There has never been a time in human history when people struggled with the distinctions between men and women.

We are presently in an era when the people with the most prestigious titles and credentials are either dumber or more dishonest than the least educated members of any human society that ever existed.  In exchange for their dumbness and dishonesty, they are paid extremely high salaries.  The corporate news media command us to treat these people with respect because they have been recognized as official “experts.”  And these highly paid, credentialed, respected experts from prestigious institutions of higher learning are too cowardly to tell the truth.  The noble pursuit and defense of veritas have been replaced with ignominy and indoctrination.

University cowardice, of course, does not stop with the idiotic fad of “transgenderism.”  There are all kinds of bizarre, fanciful, and unscientific commandments within the “woke” faith.  Believing in hard work, skill, intellect, and merit is now cast as unacceptable “white supremacy.”  Instead, we are told, people should be admitted to universities and receive degrees based on the color of their skin, their recognized victimhood, and/or their sexual proclivities.  Entire generations of intellectual lightweights are now certified “experts” because they claimed to have Native American blood or wrote college admissions essays about having sexual relations with broccoli.  They can’t do math.  They can’t write without the help of AI.  But since they call themselves “doctors” or were handed Ivy League degrees, they expect the rest of society to respect them and believe what they say.

It is such an odd time to be alive.  In the halls of government and academia, nonsensical beliefs masquerading as “truth” run rampant.  Within these wonderlands of delirium, two ideas are so sacrosanct that they cannot be questioned:

(1) using any kind of energy other than those available during the Middle Ages causes catastrophic “climate change”; and

(2) mass immigration and “multiculturalism” strengthen a society. 

Consequently, university professors and government ministers expect us to believe two preposterous things. 

 First, unless we pay carbon taxes and allow bureaucrats to centrally manage the economy, we will all die.  

Second, unless we replace Western civilization with other civilizations, we are all bigots.

In other words, our “educated elites” treat as indisputable “truths” the canards that bad weather and insufficient “diversity” are the two biggest problems of our time.  Their solutions?  Central bankers, multinational corporations, and government bureaucrats should strictly regulate how productive people build things and prosper.  Ideally, incompetent people rewarded for their perceived “victimhood” and “diversity” should be put in charge of future production.  This is not a plan for success.  This is an idiotic operation that guarantees civilizational self-destruction.

Should we survive this age of stupidity, our descendants will look back and wonder why clear-thinking scholars from our august institutions of higher learning didn’t do more to halt the suicidal impulses now gripping Western civilization.  

How could the very universities that trace their lineages back to Western monasteries’ pursuit of God’s truth become cesspools of falsehood, paganism, and superstition?

Western civilization’s survivors will not have to look hard for their answer: University chancellors were given millions of dollars to “educate” the public about men having babies. 

College campuses are catnip for crazies.

Tyler Durden Sat, 07/18/2026 - 18:40

"We've Burned Through All Buffers": Oil Traders Warn Market Running On Fumes

Brent crude futures jumped a little more than 4% to nearly $88 a barrel, putting the crude oil benchmark on track for its biggest weekly gain since April. That move followed an Axios report that said the Trump administration had notified Israel it was deploying additional aerial assets to the region, signaling the US military could expand strikes on Iran as soon as this weekend.

Financial Times spoke with energy traders at the end of the week who warned that slowing tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz could trigger a more severe supply crunch than the first round of the US-Iran war because emergency reserves and stockpiles around the world that cushioned the earlier disruption have been mostly depleted.

"We've burned through all of the buffers we had. Everything," said one trader. "All of that's now gone.

Related:

• Cushing Remains At 'Tank Bottoms'

Bloomberg noted:

Fuel markets strengthened again, with the ICE gasoil crack closing at the highest on record and the Nymex heating oil crack the strongest since March. More narrow Brent put spreads around the low $70s traded in sizable numbers.

Earlier today, the International Energy Agency revealed that member countries released three-quarters of the planned 400 million-barrel emergency reserves announced in March.  

Amrita Sen, founder of Energy Aspects, pointed out that heading into the US-Iran war, the global oil market had around 400 million barrels of excess inventories, not including strategic reserves controlled by governments.

"Now we have close to nothing ... and market complacency around Hormuz flows is being severely tested," Sen warned.

Strait crossings hit three week low

Strait of Hormuz traffic continued to weaken on 16 July, with confirmed crossings falling to eight, the lowest level in three weeks. Seven of the eight transits used the Iranian route, highlighting a growing concentration of movements through… pic.twitter.com/YEA63ZGkVJ

— Kpler (@Kpler) July 17, 2026

UBS analyst Henri Patricot wrote in the daily "Hormuz tracker" note that further Hormuz escalation has occurred, Gulf tanker crossings remain limited, and there is a sharp pullback in Gulf loadings:

Further escalation

The conflict in the Middle East is escalating further as Iran reportedly targeted power plants and desalinisation plants in Kuwait. Previous strikes had focused on US military targets. These followed US strikes on bridges and an airport in Iran.

Limited Gulf tanker crossings

Increased attacks continue to weigh heavily on flows via Hormuz. The latest UBS Evidence Lab data (> Access Dataset) show that oil and gas tanker crossings fell to one, with only one product tanker entering the Gulf (Figure 1).

July-to-date crossings have averaged 10, down from the mid-to-high teens recorded in late June and early July, and remain well below the c.50 level seen in February. Oil on water in the Gulf is ticking up again, up ~5Mb in recent days (Figure 10).

The absence of outbound oil and gas flows takes the July average down to 5.4Mboe/d, compared with 3.7Mboe/d in June and 1.3Mboe/d in May (Figure 4).

Capacity entering the Gulf fell to 0.7Mboe/d and has averaged 5.2Mboe/d month to date (Figure 5).

Meanwhile, flows via the Bab al Mandeb Strait have not been disrupted so far and increased further to 9.7Mb/d yesterday, above the July-to-date average of 6.7Mb/d.

A sharp pullback in Gulf loading

Gulf crude loadings ex-Iran fell sharply to 1.0Mb/d yesterday from 6.0Mb/d on Wednesday, with the past-week average at 3.2Mb/d vs 5.1Mb/d in July and 3.4Mb/d in June. Iranian loadings rose to 5.0Mb/d yesterday, lifting the July average to 1.5Mb/d, still below the typical 1.7-1.8Mb/d range, but above June's 0.8Mb/d (Figure 9).

Crude loadings at ports outside the Strait (Yanbu in Saudi Arabia and Fujairah in the UAE) eased following a sharp rebound, falling to 3.6Mb/d yesterday below the July-to-date average of 5.9Mb/d and June's 6.9Mb/d. Yanbu declined to 2.7Mb/d, below the month-to-date level of 4.2Mb/d and June's 4.8Mb/d. Product loadings inside the Gulf remain close to May-June levels (Figure 15).

The normalization pathway of tanker flows appears to have been disrupted as the US and Iran become locked in an escalation spiral, with neither side willing to back down. Any sustained reopening of the Strait of Hormuz has now been postponed.

With or without Tehran's cooperation, US-allied Gulf countries are in the beginning innings of what we've described as a "great energy rewiring" to bypass the Hormuz chokepoint.

Latest:

• Great Rewiring: US Supports Iraq-Syria Oil Pipeline To Erode Tehran's Hormuz Leverage
• Dubai's New East Coast Port Signals The Beginning Of End For Iran's Hormuz Leverage
• "Zero Hormuz Dependency": UAE Races To Rewire Energy Flows, Bypassing Chokepoint Chaos
• Hormuz Bypasses Maxed Out: Saudi East-West Pipeline Hits Record 7 MMb/d, As UAE Fujairah Crude Loadings Reach Capacity

"Ultimately, the market was pricing an optimistic flow trajectory that now is clearly not on the table, at least . . . not until we get another round of diplomacy," Natixis Bank analyst Joel Hancock wrote in a note.

Tyler Durden Sat, 07/18/2026 - 18:05

State Department Issues "Worldwide Caution" As US-Iran Tit-For-Tat Spirals Into Regional Crisis Summary

• CENTCOM Says US Forces Launch New Strike On Iran
• State Dept. Issues Worldwide Warning 
• CENTCOM says two US troops killed in Iranian attack on Jordan base.
• Iran formally suspends MoU with the US, declaring agreement is over & commitments will no longer be fulfilled.
• Fighting escalates into seventh straight day of heavy bombings.
• Iran reportedly struck a US base in Saudi Arabia for the first time in four months.
• US strikes disrupt southern Iran's telecom network, knocking out 116 communication towers amid new infrastructure war.
• Iran pounds Kuwait's energy infrastructure, damaging power & desalination facilities.

//--> //--> Will the US announce withdrawal from MOU negotiations by July 31?
Yes 14% · No 86%
View full market & trade on Polymarket

*  *  *

CENTCOM Says US Forces Launch New Strike On Iran 

CENTCOM said US forces struck Iranian missile and radar systems stationed along the Strait of Hormuz, further dismantling Tehran's surveillance and strike capabilities while eroding its ability to control the maritime chokepoint.

"Today at 6 p.m. ET, U.S. forces began launching new airstrikes against Iran at the Commander in Chief's direction," CENTCOM wrote on X. 

CENTCOM added, "The strikes are designed to further degrade Iran's ability to threaten commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and swiftly punish Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps forces who launched attacks against American service members in Jordan last night." 

Today at 6 p.m. ET, U.S. forces began launching new airstrikes against Iran at the Commander in Chief’s direction. The strikes are designed to further degrade Iran’s ability to threaten commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and swiftly punish Islamic Revolutionary Guard…

— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) July 18, 2026 State Department Issues "Worldwide Caution" 

Iranian ballistic missile strikes on Jordan's Muwaffaq Salti Air Base, which killed two U.S. service members and injured others, are likely to trigger a major U.S. retaliation.

🚨Alert: Iranian ballistic missiles strike US bases in Jordan as attacks continue. Iran has vowed to strike US bases across the region in response to US attacks on Iran. pic.twitter.com/nrYmGv1Ucu

— US Homeland Security News (@defense_civil25) July 18, 2026

Israel's Channel 14 reported late Saturday that President Trump instructed CENTCOM to "open the gates of hell" on Iran.

Trump has told CENTCOM to “open the gates of hell” on Iran.

📷Final Call pic.twitter.com/1CFcnsnMPf

— C14 News | EN (@c14english) July 18, 2026

The U.S. State Department issued a worldwide caution, warning: "Due to heightened tensions in the Middle East, the security environment remains complex, with the potential for unforeseen escalation."

Worldwide Caution: Due to heightened tensions in the Middle East, the security environment remains complex with the potential for unforeseen escalation. We remind Americans in the region of the continued need for caution and encourage them to monitor the news for breaking… pic.twitter.com/A3LKEQSRiO

— TravelGov (@TravelGov) July 18, 2026

Will tensions ease before the NY futures open on Sunday evening?  

Americans Killed by Iranian Missiles on Jordan

Footage has been widely circulating over the past half-day showing massive Iranian ballistic missile strikes on Jordan. Iran said it targeted a US base there, and took out various aerial and radar assets, and caused casualties among American troops.

But the Pentagon has been radio silent on the extent of potential damage, until now: US officials are reporting that two American service members were killed in the overnight Iranian attack. According to emerging details in Axios:

Two U.S. service members were killed and more wounded in an Iranian ballistic missile attack on an airbase in Jordan on Saturday, military officials said.

This is the first time U.S. troops have been killed since the fighting resumed two weeks ago. The incident raises the number of U.S. service members killed in the war to 16.

On Saturday at least two Iranian ballistic missiles hit the Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan, which hosts U.S. troops and fighter jets.

CENTCOM posted to X, officially confirming the news: "On July 17, two U.S. service members in Jordan were killed in action as U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) and partner forces defended against Iranian ballistic missile and drone attacks. Additionally, one service member is currently missing in action."

Two Iranian medium-range ballistic missile impacts were reported at Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan earlier tonight. pic.twitter.com/NLgLeghrs7

— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) July 18, 2026

The statement has noted additional injuries: "Four American service members were medically evacuated to Jordanian hospitals. They have since been discharged. Other personnel who were evaluated for minor injuries have returned to duty," CENTCOM said.

Iran Formally Suspends MoU

It is now "official": the Iranians have declared that the signed Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the United States is dead. Tasnim is reporting Saturday that Iran will no longer fulfill its MoU obligations amid alleged repeat US violations. The past weeks have seen each side hurl warnings and threats to pull out, while attaching conditions that must be fulfilled.

But after what is now a full week of renewed fighting, it has been effectively torn up, with negotiations no longer happening. Al Jazeera is citing a top Iran official's precise statement on suspending the MoU in the following:

Previously, we have seen again and again Iranian officials accusing the US of violating the MoU and also putting some conditions if the aggression continues.

What we’re seeing is Kazem Gharibabadi, Iran’s deputy foreign minister, who is also head of the Iranian technical negotiating team, saying that in practice, the US has violated all the commitments and suspended the MoU entirely.

“We also likewise have suspended all of our commitments as a result; we are no longer implementing those commitments,” he added.

So, officially, this is the first time the Iranians are saying the MoU is over and they’re not going to implement any clause.

Given President Trump has apparently just ordered dozens more aerial refueling planes to the region, the conflict looks to continue going up the escalation ladder for at least the next week or longer. Each side will seek to impose more economic and military pain, while waiting for the other to blink. Battle of narratives over damage and retaliation:

🇮🇷🇯🇴⚡️– Insane footage of Iranian ballistic missiles striking Jordanian air bases despite a large number of interceptors in the air.

Despite clear footage of impacts they still deny it and lie that all of them were intercepted. pic.twitter.com/Es8hw7TCXJ

— MonitorX (@MonitorX99800) July 18, 2026 Saudi Base Attacked for First Time in 4 Months

Saudi Arabia has come under attack by Iranian missiles in the last 24 hours, the kingdom is confirming on Saturday, in a major escalation given that this is a first since near the start of the war several months ago. According to Reuters:

The Saudi civil defense early on Saturday issued two early warnings for Al-Kharj city and Yanbu to be alert to “potential danger,” but it later says the danger has passed in both areas, without providing details on the danger that triggered the warnings.

A US official tells the Axios news site that Iran targeted an American military base in Saudi Arabia with a ballistic missile, the first time that the Islamic Republic has directly attacked the kingdom in four months.

Locations in Jordan and even Syria have also been hit in recent salvos, but the US military has downplayed these attacks - and there's a battle of narratives over just how destructive these have been amid the fog of war.

Kuwait also reeling from stepped-up attacks...

⚡️ 🎦Unprecedented crowd at Kuwait Airport for departure from the country pic.twitter.com/Db5IeZsmDg

— Middle East Observer (@ME_Observer_) July 18, 2026 116 Telecoms Towers In Southern Iran Taken Out

As we featured earlier, Iranian communications and even the supply of drinking water have been severely impacted in some places of southern Iran, amid continuing US airstrikes on civic and national infrastructure, amid the seventh consecutive day of war. "Hormozgan's chief of communications and information technology says the US's overnight attacks disrupted telecommunications in Bandar Abbas and Hajiabad, in the northern part of the province," Al Jazeera reports

Authorities there have tallied at least 116 telecommunication towers which were taken out of service due to the US onslaught. This has resulted in outages and disruptions of fixed-line, mobile, and internet services, per Tasnim news agency.

This suggests the US is returning to a strategy which seeks to create destabilization within, targeting the ability of the public to communicate and access information, returning the situation to the early weeks of the war, which saw Tehran authorities themselves curb internet and some telecoms access for the citizenry.

Kuwait Power & Desalination Plant Hit

Kuwait was bombarded overnight in one of the fiercest Iranian retaliatory strikes since the US-Iran conflict erupted in late February, with missiles and one-way drones targeting power infrastructure and other critical energy assets.

Local outlet Kuwait News Agency reports an unspecified site of the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation suffered "significant material losses" as the week-long flare-up in Gulf tensions has derailed any near-term normalization of tanker flows through the Strait of Hormuz.

There was a report that the Al-Subiya power station was struck. This marks the second attack on Kuwaiti power infrastructure in just days, after a transformer at the Zour South electricity and desalination complex was hit on Friday.

Authorities disconnected several power-generating units as a precaution and urged residents to conserve electricity. A Kuwaiti army base was also struck during the latest escalation, injuring several personnel.

Second Iranian strike in two days hit a Kuwaiti power/desalination plant, sparking a fire.

A similar plant was hit yesterday.

Strikes are part of Iran's ongoing campaign against US military sites in Kuwait (Ali Al Salem base and others).

Kuwait relies on desalination for ~90%… pic.twitter.com/EyTPOwTIsM

— Clash Report (@clashreport) July 18, 2026 Infrastructure War in Full Swing

On March 2, we warned: 

• Airports, Data Centers, Skyscrapers, & Power Plants: Are Desalination Plants Next Targets In U.S.-Iran War

Bahrain and Jordan intercepted Iranian missiles and drones. The overnight barrage followed a seventh consecutive night of US strikes targeting Iranian surveillance sites, weapons storage, logistics infrastructure and maritime offensive capabilities as the Department of War seeks to erode Tehran's leverage on the Hormuz waterway.

As of late Friday, the previous US-Iran wrap stated:

• Surge in more large US refueling planes headed to Mideast, signaling likely expansion of strikes on Iran.
• US attacks hit Iranian energy and transport infrastructure.
• Iran threatens stronger retaliation and claims strike on US base in Qatar - and deepens attacks to include US outposts in Jordan, Syria.
• Iran urges power conservation; Hormuz shipping traffic declines further.
• Oil prices rise to session highs on fears of broader regional conflict.

Brent chart

The latest Hormuz tanker transit data via Bloomberg shows that activity at the maritime chokepoint has all but ceased. This data is based on ships activating their transponders and doesn't account for ships that 'go dark'...

Overnight headlines

...courtesy of Bloomberg:

US-Iran Escalation

• The US launched its seventh consecutive night of strikes against Iran on Friday at 3 p.m. ET, aimed at degrading Iran's military capabilities, including hitting bridges, energy infrastructure, and a port facility in southern Iran, according to Iranian state media.
• The conflict has intensified beyond military targets, with the US striking six road bridges and reports of attacks near Bushehr's nuclear power plant and the province of Lorestan, raising fears of a return to full-scale war.
• The hostilities were triggered by an Iranian drone strike on a cargo ship in the Strait of Hormuz on June 25, just days after the US and Iran signed a preliminary ceasefire deal, setting off a chain of escalating attacks.
• Iran has threatened a "full-scale offensive" in response to US strikes, with the Strait of Hormuz remaining virtually closed as of Saturday.

Iran Attacks Kuwait

• Iran launched a heavy barrage on Kuwait on Saturday morning, striking a vital oil facility and causing significant material losses and injuries, according to Kuwait Petroleum Corporation via state news agency KUNA.
• Kuwait airport suspended flights following the Saturday attacks, which triggered multiple rounds of sirens from around dawn.
• Iran also struck a power and desalination plant and a transformer at the Zour South facility, causing a fire and marking Tehran's first targeting of power infrastructure during the current escalation.
• Kuwait's foreign ministry accused Iran of systematically targeting civilian sites and vital infrastructure, saying it "endangers the lives and safety of civilians."

Iran's Counterstrikes

• Iran has been targeting US bases in Kuwait, Jordan, and Bahrain in retaliation for US strikes. The IRGC claimed its 20th wave of "Nasr 2" operations destroyed several American aircraft at a US airbase in Jordan.
• US-sanctioned Iranian tankers are U-turning and zig-zagging in the Gulf of Oman as the US enforces an aggressive blockade of Iranian shipping, having redirected three merchant ships, boarded one vessel, and disabled a non-compliant tanker.

Energy Market Impact

• Crude oil prices surged sharply, posting their biggest rise since April, as fears of renewed escalation grew and shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz slumped significantly.
• The Strait of Hormuz shutdown is expected to spark massive investments aimed at permanently reducing reliance on the chokepoint, restructuring global energy infrastructure and trade flows, according to Bloomberg Intelligence.

Tyler Durden Sat, 07/18/2026 - 17:55

"Start Spreadin' The News": New York Losing Billions As Millionaires Flee Big Apple

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

Below is my column in the New York Post on the sharp decline in millionaires in New York, costing the state billions as many flee. The exodus has been building for years but may now be accelerating. As Mayor Mamdani holds another press conference promising to end the “violence of evictions,” businesses are reading the writing on the wall. Rather than work to make the state more attractive to wealthy residents and businesses, Democrats are seeking to diminish the appeal of two-tax states. They want to tap into a long-barred area of taxation: the wealth rather than just the income of citizens. By passing a national wealth tax, Democrats will reduce the benefit of fleeing high-tax states like California and New York.

“Start spreadin’ the news, I’m leavin’ today” — that’s how the famous song “New York, New York”  captures the Big Apple’s draw.

Today, the line is becoming more ironic than iconic: Many people are indeed leaving … from New York, New York.

Worse yet, those “vagabond shoes” that “are longing to stray” are on the feet of the wealthiest New Yorkers.

And as they flee, according to a new study, they’re taking away billions in badly needed tax revenue.

As Mayor Zohran Mamdani and others pledge massive social programs and free services by taxing the wealthy, the wealthy are just melting away.

The reason is simple: if “you can make it there, you can make it anywhere.”

In today’s economy, it’s no longer necessary or even particularly beneficial to be in New York to make money in financial and other areas.

When any business meeting is a screen and a click away, you can go to a low-tax state like Florida or Texas and do as well as you can in the Big Apple.

Not surprisingly, many are choosing the money over the mystique and the madness.

This week the Citizens Budget Commission reported that New York’s share of millionaires fell from 12.7% in 2010 to 8.7% in 2022 — the largest drop of any state.

The exodus of wealthy citizens left New York short $10.7 billion in tax revenue.

By denouncing the remaining wealthy as effectively freeloaders who are “not paying their fair share,” Mamdani is only spurring them on.

It’s a demonstrably false claim that I discuss in my book Rage and the Republic — and part of a growing class-warfare theme the left is deliberately using to fuel political rage.

Yet it’s easy to form a mob —  and far more difficult to control it.

That is particularly the case when your economic policies destroy your economy, and your ability to pay for all the free services that you’ve promised.

There’s a good-faith debate to be had over optimal tax levels, but the fact is that the top 10% of Americans pay more in taxes than the other 90% of the country. The top 1% pays roughly 40% of federal taxes.

As rational actors flee the state, Mamdani and New York Democrats are forced to cull the shrinking herd of high-end taxpayers who remain, layering on special fees like a pied-à-terre tax to be imposed on NYC’s luxury property owners.

And rather than change course to make New York a more attractive place to do business and live, national Democrats are moving to make other states no better — by nationalizing wealth taxes and by taxing fleeing citizens as if they still lived in the state.

Many are following Sen. Bernie Sanders’ and Rep. Ro Khanna’s call to impose a federal wealth tax they’ve dubbed the Billionaire Tax.

The idea is to stem the exodus from California and New York by giving the highest earners no place to go . . . except out of the country.

That’s the option many took when similar wealth taxes were attempted in countries like France, only to be rescinded after doing massive economic damage.

Fleecing the wealthy is a revenue loser.

New York is losing billions, and California has reportedly lost trillions due to top taxpayers’ departure.

Unwilling to adopt greater fiscal restraints and truly compete for businesses and residents, Democrats are looking for pockets of new areas to tax.

The wealth tax is a virtual bonanza of untapped revenue — if it can make it through the courts.

Our Constitution was amended in 1913 to allow for an income tax, not a wealth tax.

Once you pay taxes on what you earn, you’re supposed to be able to use your hard-earned money to buy whatever you wish, from bikes to boats.

Democrats now want to tax those possessions: “your Rembrandts, your stock portfolio, your diamonds and your yachts,” as Sen. Elizabeth Warren once dramatically warned.

And Khanna recently confirmed what some of us have been saying for years: The Billionaire Tax isn’t only for billionaires.

“The tax should not stop at billionaires,” he said in a pitch to his party’s rising socialist movement; “it must reach centimillionaires. The tax has to reach all fortunes $50 million and up.”

Khanna and others hope that, once taken nationally, a wealth tax would destroy the benefit of moving to low-tax states — and open up literally trillions in new potential revenue.

In the meantime, New York will continue to burn billions as it taps its dwindling number of millionaires.

As their wealthy neighbors depart, those remaining will have to make up for their loss.

Being among the last to leave New York will be a costly distinction.

They will indeed “wake up” — and find that they’re “king of the hill, top of the list” for wealth redistribution.

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

Tyler Durden Sat, 07/18/2026 - 17:30

FCC Head Carr Moves To Reshape TV Ownership Rules, Save Local Broadcasting From Being 'Mouthpieces'

The Federal Communications Commission is preparing to scrap longstanding national limits on television station ownership - a regulatory overhaul that Chairman Brendan Carr says will give local outlets critical breathing room to compete and invest in community journalism - instead of being 'Hollywood mouthpieces.'

The agency is scheduled to vote on August 6 to eliminate the ownership caps in favor of a flexible, case-by-case approach for reviewing deals. Carr detailed the plan in a Breitbart News op-ed, arguing the change will help local broadcasters counter the growing influence of national programmers.

"Repealing the national cap will provide essential relief for local broadcasters by restoring a healthy counterbalance to the growing leverage of national programmers. Increased scale will enable broadcasters to attract the capital and advertising revenue needed to sustain and produce trusted and community-focused news and programming," Carr wrote.

Carr warned that inaction would risk repeating mistakes seen in another corner of local media.

"If the FCC does not act, we do not need to imagine the bleak media future ahead. Just look at local newspapers. Much like the national cap, the FCC maintained an outdated rule for more than 40 years that limited investment in local newspapers," the Trump administration official continued.

"The FCC kept that rule in place until 2017, long after the economics of local journalism had shifted. Meanwhile, local newspapers shut down by the dozen, and many Americans are now left to choose from a small number of national papers. We can't let local broadcast TV follow the same path," he added.

Carr also highlighted the growing challenges for local stations competing against national media conglomerates.

"Many local broadcast TV stations are getting hollowed out as a result and turning into little more than mouthpieces for programming produced in New York and Hollywood. That is not what Congress or the FCC intended," Carr wrote.

Carr framed the stakes as a straightforward choice about the character of American news, arguing the country would be better served by "a little less Hollywood and a little more local reporting."

Tyler Durden Sat, 07/18/2026 - 16:55

Is Home Affordability Actually Better Than Headlines Suggest

Authored by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

The doom feed says home affordability locked a generation out. The math on the payment you actually write says something the headlines won’t.

Here are the “facts” that the media tells you about home affordability.

Let’s start with a recent survey. Two out of three Americans now say it’s a bad time to buy a house, the most negative reading Gallup has ever recorded. Another study showed that a record 25.2 million adults under 35 are living with their parents. Scroll any feed, and you’ll hear that home affordability has priced an entire generation out for good. Those are the “facts” according to the media.

However, here’s the problem with that story. When you measure home affordability today against the metric that actually governs the check you write each month, the picture flips. By that measure, buying a home may be easier now than it was for the Boomers and Gen Xers who get blamed for everything.

Let me be clear about what’s real, because I won’t build an argument on a false floor. Since 2019, the median listing price has jumped about 34% to roughly $430,000. The payment on a median home went from near $1,700 in early 2020 to about $3,100 by late 2025. Rates tripled off the 2021 lows. That shock was real, and it landed in five short years.

So the frustration makes sense. What doesn’t hold up is taking a recent, regional price spike and turning it into a permanent law of physics that applies to every zip code and every buyer. The honest version of home affordability today is narrower, more local, and far more fixable than the headline suggests.

But let’s start with the narrative that the Boomer generation had it easy. As one individual posted on X:

“You boomers had it easy, you could buy a home for the price of bread and a gallon of milk.”

Boomers Did Not Have It Easy

Here’s the part the narrative skips. The Boomer who bought in 1980 financed at a 30-year fixed rate of 13.74%, watched it climb past 18% by October 1981, and had no way to know rates would ever come back down, which made every payment feel like a life sentence. Think about that. For a median home price of $64,600 with 20% down, that household sent roughly 39% of its income to the mortgage before property taxes.6 Add the taxes, and the typical 1980 family spent close to 47% of their income on housing.

Today’s buyer, financing about $417,000 near 6.5%, spends closer to 32% on the mortgage and about 43% all in. Two independent analyses ran this exact math and landed in the same place. On the payment that matters, 1980 was as hard as, or harder than, 2026. So home affordability today is mostly a payment story, and the payment math favors the present. Notice what the work did. It isn’t the price of the home, it’s the rate.

The Crisis Is Regional, Not National

Now look at where the “home affordability” pain actually sits. A typical home in Iowa costs about 3.7 years of household income, near where the national buyer stood in 2000. Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Kansas still sell near or below $300,000. Among large metros, Chicago, Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, and Philadelphia rank among the most affordable in the country. Home affordability today is a function of your zip code first, your generation second.

The expensive markets are real, but they’re specific. And here’s the twist most coverage misses. The old escape hatch of moving somewhere cheap is closing, because Montana now costs 8.7 years of income, worse than California or New York. The same regional pattern shows up in who’s living at home. In New Jersey it’s 44% of young adults. In South Dakota, 18%.8 The map of “kids who can’t move out” is mostly a map of expensive states.

That “one in three” figure above also deserves a second look. It counts everyone ages 18 to 34, which includes college kids, 22-year-olds in their first job, and people who’ve always lived at home for a stretch. If you narrow that gap to a more realistic home ownership range, ages 25 to 34, the share drops to about 18%. And roughly 70% of those 25-to-34-year-olds at home are employed.2 So this “home affordability” story isn’t about a lazy generation or a broken job market. It’s a story about down payments, rent, and a marriage age that has drifted six years later since 1980.

Where The Skeptics Are Right

I won’t pretend that nothing has changed. Two things genuinely got harder, and waving them away would insult the reader. First, the down payment. In 1980, 20% down ran about two-thirds of a year’s income. Today it runs a full year or more, which is why the median first-time buyer now puts down just 9% to get in the door, and why the first-time buyer’s median age has climbed from 29 to roughly 40. That capital wall is a real barrier.

Second, insurance. Premiums jumped 24% from 2021 to 2024 to an average of $3,303, twice the rate of inflation, rising in 95% of zip codes. In Utah, insurance premiums rose 59%. That cost isn’t your fault, and it won’t be fixed by skipping lattes, but notice what both problems have in common. They’re specific and addressable, not a sentence handed down to an entire generation. The home affordability debate today has two honest exceptions, and naming them is what separates analysis from a comment-section rant.

Where They Aren’t

Here’s the irony buried in the down payment story. The 1980 buyer didn’t just face a 20% norm; they put down even more, averaging about 28%. To skip mortgage insurance on a conventional loan, you needed the full 20% in cash, no exceptions. There were no mainstream 3% conventional programs, no piggyback structures in wide use, no stack of state assistance grants to pull from. You saved the lump sum, or you stayed a renter.

Today, the menu is wide open. A first-time buyer can go conventional with as little as 3% down, FHA with 3.5% down, or zero down with a VA or USDA loan if eligible, and can cover even that with gift funds, a 401 (k) withdrawal, or a state assistance grant. The 20% rule is dead. The median first-time buyer actually put down 10% last year, not 20. Less down means PMI and a bigger payment, of course. But the belief that you need 20% in cash just to walk in the door is the single most expensive myth keeping renters stuck, and it hasn’t been true for decades.

The Playbook: Home Affordability Today Is on You

So what’s the move? Stop reading a national headline as a verdict on your situation. The buyer who treats “homeownership is dead” as gospel, while sitting in a market where a solid house costs three or four times income, talks himself out of a purchase he could actually make. Bob Farrell’s ninth rule fits here. When every expert and forecast agrees, something else usually happens. Sentiment just hit a record low. That’s historically when the patient buyer gets paid.

But mindset only gets you to the starting line. Here’s the part nobody wants to hear.

Working isn’t enough. Roughly 70% of the young adults living at home already have jobs, so a paycheck alone clearly doesn’t get you out of the basement. What gets you out is a set of decisions most people dodge because they sting. So let’s say them plainly.

• Run the number, then automate it. A 3.5% down payment on a $250,000 home is $8,750, about $730 a month for a year. If you can’t find $730, that’s a spending problem or an income problem, and both are yours. But here’s the part the pushback misses. The inability to save that money isn’t just a down payment problem. It’s a signal you can’t afford to own yet. The mortgage is only the floor. Property taxes, insurance that now averages $3,303 a year, the roughly 1% of a home’s value it consumes in annual upkeep, and HOA dues, if you have them, all add up to the monthly payment. Can’t bank $730 a month as a renter? You’ll drown in those carrying costs as an owner. The savings test isn’t the barrier. It’s the readiness check.

• Cut the big rocks, not the pebbles. The daily coffee isn’t what’s keeping you in your childhood bedroom, but the $650 truck payment, the $1,900 rent in a city you picked for the nightlife, and the lifestyle you finance to look successful on a phone screen absolutely are. Sell the financed truck. Get a roommate. Buy smaller, because the median new home is 38% larger than it was in 1980, making a 1,500-square-foot starter a choice rather than a hardship. Live below your means on purpose. Nobody is coming to subsidize your standard of living.

• Then move to the money. The good jobs and the cheap houses rarely sit in the same expensive zip code you grew up in. They sit in Columbus, Des Moines, Indianapolis, and Greenville, where a median income still buys a median home. Remote work made that move easier than it has ever been. If you won’t relocate for opportunity, fine, but then you’ve made unaffordability a choice, not a fate.

• Raise your income and your credit score at the same time. A side income of $1,000 a month is a full down payment in under a year. A credit jump from 580 to 620 can move you off a 3.5% FHA loan and onto a 3% conventional, saving you thousands up front and more over the life of the loan. And every year you stall has a price tag. The National Association of Realtors estimates that delaying a purchase from age 30 to 40 costs the typical buyer around $150,000 in lost equity.

The market isn’t fair. It was never fair. The only question that matters is what you’re going to do about it.

The bottom line is this. Housing isn’t unaffordable everywhere, for everyone, forever. It’s expensive in specific places, for specific reasons, and most of all since 2020. The rest is geography, a savings problem, and a story people keep repeating until they believe it. After three decades of watching cycles, I’ve learned the worst financial decisions get made when people accept a narrative instead of running the numbers.

Home affordability today is better than the Fed admits. Run your own numbers and see.

Tyler Durden Sat, 07/18/2026 - 16:20