Zero Rss

How To Tackle Domestic Extremists' Foreign Enablers

Authored by Daniel McCarthy via The Epoch Times,

Left-wing terrorism is a serious problem in the United States, though for political reasons it doesn't receive anything like the attention right-wing violence gets.

When most people think of violence connected to abortion, they imagine attacks on abortion clinics - yet lately, pro-abortion extremists have been firebombing crisis pregnancy centers across the country.

These centers help women who want to have their babies or who are undecided about having an abortion: In other words, women who are making a choice, just not the choice supposedly "pro-choice" abortion advocates find acceptable.

So a group calling itself "Jane's Revenge," referring to the "Jane Roe" of Roe v. Wade, has declared war on anyone who might choose life.

A report in the left-wing Guardian newspaper, headlined "Pro-choice militants are attacking 'crisis pregnancy centers' across US," documented terroristic attempts at intimidation from New York and North Carolina to Wisconsin, Texas and Washington state in the past several years.

The paper noted: "The methods have been extreme: vandals have thrown molotov cocktails, committed arson, damaged property and made threats."

Jane's Revenge issued a statement demanding "anti-choice establishments" shut down in 30 days or face further violence.

That was in 2022 - yet the group continued operating, until its website went dark just days ago thanks to a Trump administration crackdown on terrorist infrastructure.

Jane's Revenge and various other radical organizations, including antifa groups, were part of a network relying on web services provided by Italy's "Autistici/Inventati," or A/I Collective.

According to the State Department, the A/I Collective "builds and operates the digital infrastructure for violent Antifa cells and other far-left militants across the world," providing technology "designed to support the operations of far-left terrorist networks, built to enable them to organize, recruit, communicate, disseminate propaganda, share target information and tactics, and carry out violent attacks - all while remaining anonymous, untraceable, and beyond the reach of the law."

The collective has been facilitating leftist provocations for years.

But on Aug. 26, the State Department struck back, officially deeming the A/I Collective a "specially designated global terrorist."

The designation means sanctions can be imposed on domestic individuals and financial institutions that do business with the foreign group, as well as restricting any of the collective's assets that are under American jurisdiction.

Results were immediate: radical sites shut down.

"Antifascism and anticapitalism are not terrorism," the collective complains in a media statement. "Protesting is not terrorism."

Yet all too often, it is: Groups like Jane's Revenge consider terrorism a legitimate form of protest.

And antifa organizations specialize in using protests as cover for carrying out acts of mayhem.

Indeed, that's the grand strategy - to tear down American society, which is capitalist and "fascist" in the left's eyes, by exploiting the freedoms our "capitalist" Constitution protects.

Legend has it Lenin once said capitalists would sell communists the very rope they would use to hang them.

Today's militant left is counting on capitalists and constitutionalists to provide them the legal protections they need to incite and perpetrate violence.

But the Trump administration refuses to play along.

The State Department's action is long overdue:

Americans should not have had to wait for a Republican administration like this one before government acts to dismantle the infrastructure that supports intimidation and violence.

Foreign interests like the A/I Collective are often suppliers of that infrastructure:

America's domestic extremists are not simply isolated local loonies who spring up at random in our own communities - they're connected to and coordinated with international networks.

The networks encourage cross-pollination and collaboration:

A/I Collective, the State Department notes, provides services to European "anarchist cells responsible for sabotaging rail systems across France, Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands" as well as to the domestic "anarchist cell responsible for waging a violent campaign to prevent the construction of a law enforcement training center in Atlanta, Georgia."

The violent left is a transnational movement, and the Trump administration is right to see it in the same light as other networks that support or engage in terrorism.

Domestic sites and groups using A/I Collective resources have published calls for "direct action" against the nation's immigration laws - and the officers responsible for enforcing them.

That includes publishing pamphlets urging activists to shine laser pointers at Customs and Border Protection helicopters, intending to blind pilots and potentially cause them to crash.

Other sites "dox" ICE agents, providing personal information on immigration-enforcement officers to allow activists to harass them at home - or to firebomb their homes, if they take inspiration from groups like Jane's Revenge.

This is not protesting, and it's not certainly not democratic: These are attempts by a radical fringe to do through intimidation and violence what they can't do at the ballot box.

Going after the foreign enablers of far-left violence and threats is a first, common-sense step in defending the very principle of self-government.

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of ZeroHedge.

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/04/2026 - 23:25

Starbase Louisiana 101: A Look At Elon's New Space City

Following the Starbase Louisiana announcement last week, questions have swirled over Musk's motivation for choosing this location. In response, Deutsche Bank analyst Edison Yu takes a closer and identifies four main reasons including i) orbital trajectory (optimizing for ODCs), ii) geography, iii) regulation, and iv) propellant (bringing processing/production onsite).

New Starbase

SpaceX announced a new $100 billion Starship launch site in Louisiana last week with initial plans to build five two-pad complexes or ten towers. Longer term, Elon Musk commented there could be over twelve towers capable of launching more than 30 flights daily. The site is expected to be materially larger than Starbase Texas and essentially be a "space city" with on-site fuel processing/production, dedicated power generation, deep-water port, employee housing, and potentially an airport; Starship manufacturing however will seemingly not occur here. Construction is slated to begin next year with first launch slated for no earlier than in 2029 (2030 is more realistic). Headline investment amount is $100bn although this could span over a decade. The exact location will be an area called Pecan Island (~125k acres), located in the Vermilion Parish which is on the Gulf of America coast. The site was formerly owned by ExxonMobil and was transferred to the state following settlement of a coastal environmental lawsuit. SpaceX expects to create about 10,000 jobs with 60-80% being locally hired.

Rationale #1 - Orbital trajectory

To establish some basic principles: the Earth's spin is fastest at the equator. Therefore, a rocket launching eastward starts with that speed already in hand. The further from the equator a launch site sits, the less benefit from that free push. Inclination is the angle an orbit makes with the equator. For example, a satellite in a 0° orbit circles above the equator; one in a 90° orbit passes over both poles.  The rule is essentially a rocket can most efficiently reach any orbit whose inclination is at least the latitude of its launch site. Reaching a lower inclination requires an expensive mid-flight turn, burning fuel that could otherwise have carried payload. Azimuth is the compass direction the rocket flies after liftoff. Rockets shed spent stages and occasionally fail, so regulators only permit trajectories where debris would fall over open ocean water or empty land.

As discussed in our Data Centers in Space series, SpaceX is seeking to deploy a large number of orbital data centers. The ideal position for these satellites is a type a sun-synchronous orbit (SSO) running along the day-night boundary (“dusk-dawn orbit”), to maximize continuous sunlight. To launch to SSO, the rocket needs to fly nearly due north or due south. That means a launch site with open water or empty land in that direction is optimal. SpaceX's existing Starship site at Boca Chica sits at the southern tip of Texas, on the Mexican border. It launches east over the Gulf  of America because southerly trajectories run into Mexican territory almost immediately. So while it is a decent site for the orbits Starship has been testing into, it is not ideal for high volume SSO launches. In comparison, a site on the central Louisiana coast sits further from the Mexican coastline and opens a long southerly corridor over open water.

Rationale #2 - Geography

Due to Starship’s enormous size, it’s impractical to use truck or rail for transport. Instead, the rocket will be moved by barge on water and be relatively accessible from the production site in Texas. Pecan Island is an 18-mile strip with a deep-water bayou off the Gulf of America which can serve as a port. Moreover, there’s also the sheer size of the area (125k acres), allowing for the build out of towers, propellant farms, power generation, etc… Other locations are either too small or crowded (e.g., multiple entities launch from Florida now). For context, the total scope of area in Texas owned or controlled by SpaceX covers <10k acres even after factoring in potential annexations.

In relation, the LA location is ideal for methane supply. Henry Hub is in Vermilion Parish and sets the US natural gas benchmark pricing (nearly 10% of US production is in Louisiana). Around a dozen interstate and intrastate pipelines interconnect here. The Louisiana Gulf Coast is also home to a very dense concentration of gas liquefaction expertise built up around the LNG export terminals over the years.

Rationale #3 - Regulation

SpaceX indicated it has been looking for a high-rate launch site for about seven years and discussions began with state officials (Project Osprey) in early 2026. DB's original view was that Texas could scale up to 4-5 launch pads and the regulatory regime would gradually adapt. With the Louisiana location, this should help de-risk longer-term capacity constraints by shifting traffic to a different corridor although certain details still need to be worked out (launch licenses, wildlife, airspace, etc…). Currently, the FAA has capped Starbase Texas at 25 launches annually (up from initial 5) and could scale up further to >100; a bottleneck would emerge at some point even factoring in an additional 120 licensed flights out of Florida, where SpaceX is planning to have three pads. Ultimately, Florida will be mainly used for NASA/govt missions and Vandenberg will continue launching Falcon 9 for the foreseeable future, leaving Texas and Louisiana to be workhorse sites for Starship-captive missions (Starlink, Starmind).

Rationale #4 - Propellant

Beyond launch operations and regulation, the next structural bottleneck appears to be propellant, which the Louisiana set-up can potentially address. For background, Starship's Raptor engines run on liquid methane or LCH4 and liquid oxygen or LOX (known together as methalox). A fully fueled stack weighs roughly 5,000 metric tons at liftoff, of which about 4,600 metric tons is propellant. The engines burn the two in a ratio of ~3.6 parts oxygen to 1 part methane.

At small scale, propellant can be transported via trucks. To illustrate, a typical LOX trailer holds about 20 metric tons, implying 180 trucks per flight. However, this is not scalable once Starship reaches hundreds of flights annually, let alone thousands. It is therefore likely that LOX will be made onsite and then piped to tank farms near the pad. LOX is made out of air, using electricity by compressing, cooling, and then distilling. To do this requires large cryogenic air separation units (ASUs). Similarly, methane is also trucked in now but will be processed onsite and piped. In fact, SpaceX already is building Starpipe in Texas (8-mile, 16-inch natural gas pipeline from Brownsville) along with its own liquefier and air-separation unit. Long term, assuming a launch cadence in the thousands, this type of architecture will be required and could drive large cost savings.

More in the full DB report available to pro subs.

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/04/2026 - 22:48

The Politics Of Measles

Authored by Jeffrey A. Tucker via The Epoch Times,

By the middle point of 20th-century American history, measles was widely considered a rite of passage for kids. You get it and you shake it off. You earn lifetime immunity. This was true of every generation just before mine.

For the previous century, measles had become ever less dangerous with sanitation and nutrition. By the time the vaccine came along, it was fully controlled and only very rarely led to hospitalization. The protocols were taught in every school and understood by all classes.

I was apparently part of the first generation to receive the inoculation. It was convenient, but not necessary simply because society had systems and traditions in place to manage it well. How much difference did the shot make in driving infection to zero? Some, surely, and this added to the prestige of vaccines.

That said, I did get chicken pox as a natural infection and recall well what it was like. That no longer happens except in a few communities. I was the last to experience this and I'm happy to share the experience.

My parents came to me excitedly and said we were going to a party. I found myself among a group of kids I did not know and we played and played for hours. Then we left. That was fun, I thought, but a bit confusing. The next day, I woke up with itchy red spots.

My parents cheered. Their plan had worked. I recalled feeling great confusion. Why were my parents celebrating my sickness? It seemed very odd. They had their reasons. They knew the science.

They explained to me how the immune system works and why it is best that I get this when I'm young rather than old. My immunity would be durable and be boosted later in life as my own kids caught the normal childhood infections, which in turn would protect me from the related infection of shingles.

There is this tendency now to treat these strategies as paleolithic as compared with syringes and fluids in the childhood vaccination schedule. Actually, we should look back on these days as the height of serious science. My parents knew exactly what they were doing and it taught me a valuable lesson as a kid. I learned about the high complexity of the immune system that needs exposure as training.

Eventually, of course, the chicken pox vaccine came along and many others as well, resulting in a vast mixture of combined shot after shot. Industry profited. Human health suffered. The Trump administration is trying to fix the problem. Industry doesn't like that. It is calling in favors from politicians to stop the return to science.

This takes us to the wild drama now playing itself out in Pennsylvania. In April of this year, the media and the governor's office started going on about a measles outbreak. It was centered in Lancaster and Lebanon counties - both with sizable Amish and Mennonite populations.

The framing here matters. The Amish and Mennonite communities routinely expose children, just as my parents did. It is not an "outbreak" but an application of sophisticated science.

The health of this community ranks among the highest. The most common health issues affecting children in the United States are nearly absent among the Amish, including autism, obesity, diabetes, ADHD, and so on.

Nonetheless, Pennsylvania set up 91 pop-up clinics around the infected community and jabbed kids with more than 4,000 doses using the MMR shot that many people connect to the rise of autism. Forty more clinics are planned.

In science, you have the control group and the tested group. The Amish are the control and keep revealing that there might be a better way. Eliminate the control and you eliminate the embarrassment. This is precisely what both Pfizer and Moderna did after their own tests of the COVID shot: they pushed it on the saline group following first results.

In Pennsylvania, opposition arose to this push for industrial inoculation, and understandably so. In the post-COVID era, trust in public health is depleted to near zero.

Here is where the current drama picked up. On Aug. 14, a newborn child died in Strasburg Township, Lancaster County. The cause of death was later given by the county coroner: lacerated/ruptured spleen, massive blood loss. The postmortem used the PCR test (which detects presence, not infection) and found measles in utero. Obviously, this baby could not otherwise have been vaccinated. It is pointless to call a baby unvaccinated for measles, just as it is ridiculous to observe the infant is illiterate.

A week later, the Pennsylvania Department of Health announced two "measles-associated" deaths in Lancaster County: unvaccinated residents, they said. They claimed these were the first measles-related deaths in Pennsylvania in 35 years. There were no other details given: nothing about the cause of death, nothing about ages, nothing about anything.

Governor Josh Shapiro announced two deaths caused by measles. Not merely associated or related, but caused. The media ran with the story, using the language of causation. He called the deaths preventable and tied them to lack of immunization. He highlighted his clinic campaign and told reporters that Secretary Kennedy had called to offer help with the outbreak to which he responded:

"I was very, very blunt with him, and I made very clear that his actions and the rhetoric that's coming from this administration are having a negative impact on communities across America, particularly right here in Pennsylvania."

It was at this point that the narrative fell apart. The CDC called. The governor's office could give no more information. The Lancaster County Commissioner Josh Parsons spoke out and said that the coroner's office has zero deaths with measles listed as immediate cause; one person died with measles, not from it.

No one could find out anything else about this supposed second death. The coroner's office said it had no such death at all. RFK, Jr. said what everyone was thinking: the second death "may even have been altogether fabricated." Meanwhile, all available evidence confirmed that the baby died of traumatic spleen laceration and the spleen was not enlarged/inflamed.

Even the mainstream media started getting frustrated at this. You cannot whip the public up with measles fears based on wholly fabricated data. When asked about this, Shapiro deflected:

"I think the Department of Health has made clear that they've shared all the information that they are permitted under state law to share, and that those two deaths were measles related. ... I don't think it serves the interest of public health or slows the spread of this outbreak for me to get into a back-and-forth about conspiracy theories that are showing up online."

Much of the mainstream media has now dialed back its claims but the New York Times has still not corrected its story from Aug. 25: "Two unvaccinated people in Pennsylvania have died from measles, as a large outbreak there continues to spread."

That sentence in the paper of record is factually incorrect. It's my personal guess that the reporter would like to make a correction but these people are hemmed in by editors and committees. At this point, to change the wording would be to admit a significant breach.

We are no longer a naive people. Whether the media comes around or not, the real story is already out there.

What concerns me is that we have now several generations who know not what I was taught as a kid, that routine exposure is a necessary and safe way to deal with normal childhood infections that are not deadly and easily treatable. A measles case is not a disaster; it is protective, both broad and durable. Superior to a vaccine? Every expert has to admit that it is. In private, they do.

We have gone so crazy with vaccination that a whole generation of medical professionals and industry leaders have been cajoled into saying that potions can replace the immune system. There is an ocean of money at stake in these decisions. Chicken pox parties are lacking in profit just as is natural immunity generally.

Demonizing religious communities is not a good path for public health and neither is raging against any changes to the childhood schedule. The parents of Pennsylvania, Amish or not, should be left alone. It's ghoulish for the state to plot the elimination of the control group.

As for my parents, they were wiser than the faculty of Harvard and Yale and the executives of pharmaceutical companies. They knew then what we need to rediscover now. Potions and jabs are not an automatic pathway to health and actually do much to compromise and sometimes end it. We need to rediscover this wisdom we mistakenly left behind.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/04/2026 - 22:35

Warner Bros. "Lanterns" Series Is Another Whiny Woke DEI Disaster

Comic book content is largely dead in Hollywood.  Not because audiences don't want to see it anymore (Spider-Man: Brand New Day brought in nearly $2.4 billion in global box office, absolutely crushing Christopher Nolan's Odyssey film), but because the studios have turned most of these franchises radioactive with woke politics.  

James Gunn's DCU projects for Warner Bros. have proven this over and over again.  His girl-boss version of Supergirl was an abject failure largely because of the woke undertones of the film.  One would think these people would learn their lesson, or at least care enough about making money to change their behavior.  There are two problems, though...

First, activists always double down.  They do not learn.  They can be forced to shut up and do their jobs properly if studios apply pressure, but left to their own devices they will inevitably inject everything they touch with propaganda.  They can't help themselves, they're ideological fanatics.

Second, sometimes studios want to change course and steer away from DEI cultism because it rarely makes any money.  But, a lot of the projects in their line-up started production years ago when Hollywood still thought that every American was going to be reeducated into the woke fold.  Meaning, they now have all this content slated for release which started development back in 2022-2023.

Such is the case with the Warner/HBO series "Lanterns", a modern take on the comic book series "Green Lantern".  The show went into development in 2022...and it's obvious.  The crux of the story?  A black man (John Stewart) is set up to replace a white guy (Hal Jordan) as the great hero.  Stewart's family was essentially ruined by Hal Jordan when Stewart's father failed a test of fear for the Lantern's powerful ring.  Hal Jordan ends up taking the ring instead. 

The Lanterns interviews are just hilarious. Just say you hate white people and be done with it already🙄 pic.twitter.com/DymaS3pWWt

— Steph Anie (@mynerdyhome) September 2, 2026

You see, the fear that prevented John Stewart's black father from earning the ring of a heroic Green Lantern was not his fault.  He grew up with constant fear because of "white supremacy".  In other words, the black community's failures are once again deflected and foisted upon a nefarious white conspiracy to hold them back from greatness.  It's all the ridiculous 2016 to 2020 BLM talking points packed into a 2026 comic book show.

So Hal Jordan was only chosen to be Green Lantern after John Stewart's father failed the test... pic.twitter.com/jp0pcykIXZ

— DCU Brief (@DCUBrief) August 31, 2026

The story is apparently meant to be a combination of the legacy comic and the gritty True Detective series (yes, right off the bat we're entering low IQ narrative territory with this idea).  The comic book setting aside, the writers and creators of the series have been very vocal about their intentions with the story and they openly admit - This is about the black man finally taking back what is "rightfully his" after the white man "stole it" from him. 

Showrunner Chris Mundy described the series as being “about replacement,” with Hal as the aging figure who should “step aside” and out of the way of the younger and more competent John Stewart.

We knew the #lanterns creators hated hal Jordan

But damn.... pic.twitter.com/KOgmbOp2ig

— SyL ☕ #SyLgorithm (@sylabdul) September 2, 2026

"As a black person, being in an interview, that's one of our worst nightmares, being in a position where you're being judged by a white person."

-HBO Max's official "Lanterns" podcast pic.twitter.com/rJEM59K0cV

— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) September 1, 2026

Keep in mind, many studios are cleaning house today and kicking a lot of their DEI hires to the curb, but this process is slow and there's no guarantees that they will ever be able to return to decent storytelling anytime soon.  So, in the meantime they're still stuck with a bunch of talentless minority and LGBT writers they hired to gain virtue points and ESG loans. 

Most of the middle-aged white guys with imagination and merit were cast out. 

It is therefore ironic that the entire basis for the Lanterns series is the fallacy that minorities are rejected because of their skin color and "cultural experiences", rather than a lack of merit.  When, in Hollywood, this has been the exact case with DEI hiring pushing out white male actors and writers with talent for the past decade (unless they are gay).  

The inferiority complex of activist writers is apparent in the stories they obsessively tell - Build up a popular white hero into a washed up strawman who is then easy to tear down.  They can't surpass their pale skin peers in the real world without outside help, so they have to beat up artificial white men in artificial worlds.    

At bottom, minority groups in the west have been hand fed, enjoying promotions and positions of influence within politics, the corporate world and entertainment media.  Many of these people where hired despite not having the ability or intelligence to do the job.  They were hired to fill an ethnic quota, and that is all.  And, this trend shows in the steady decline of media and numerous other sectors of western society.  

Lanterns may be nothing more than a meaningless superhero show being used as a vehicle for black leftists to cry about not being good enough, but it gives us another window into the warped mind of the opposition.  What do we see in through that window?  A group that will never take responsibility for themselves and their own problems.  They will always blame someone else.  Which means, there's no reason to hold their hand anymore.  It's a waste of time.   

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/04/2026 - 22:10

How Neoliberals Fueled The Rise Of Socialism

Authored by Connor O'Keeffe via Mises Institute,

The rising popularity of politicians on the American left who either explicitly identify as socialist or, at least, don't shy away from or disavow the term appears to be causing genuine concern within the Washington establishment.

That is, of course, entirely justified. Socialism is profoundly unjust and destructive.

These days, the socialists like to present their entire ideology as nothing more than having a bit of empathy for those in need or an interest in seeing everyone "have" access to services like modern healthcare.

Look any deeper, though, or ask some follow-up questions, and the truth will eventually surface. What the socialists actually want is a massive increase in government interventionism that would see nearly every aspect of life politicized and the remaining productive components of the economy hollowed out into a zero-sum lobbying battle to claim some of the diminishing loot of a much larger, more powerful, and tax-happy federal government.

Any step towards socialism needs to be energetically opposed by everyone who cares about the rights and material well-being of everyday Americans.

However, the concern we're seeing from the neoliberal and neoconservative establishment is frustrating. Because the political order that they have built and preserved over the last half century has made the growing popularity of this kind of "democratic socialism" all but inevitable.

Scholars like Gabriel Kolko, Murray Rothbard, and Patrick Newman have written extensively about how the powerful, centralized federal government that we live under today originated in the so-called Progressive Era in the late 1800s and early 1900s. And, importantly, it was not grassroots reformers who spurred the growth of the federal government at the time, but well-connected business interests.

The narrative many of us were taught in school of government officials reluctantly giving themselves more power over the economy at the turn of the century to placate a public demanding an end to laissez-faire capitalism is merely a convenient creation myth to justify what has always been a scheme to use state power to redistribute wealth from the broader public to a small caste of well-connected families and firms.

As nearly all of human history makes clear, these sorts of crony, state-empowered redistributive schemes tend to be rather unstable.

That's in part because people typically aren't all that pleased when it starts to become clear that the government is transferring some of their wealth to people that are already far wealthier - requiring the opinion molders of the political class to frequently scramble to find some new way to excuse the policies making up the racket.

But also, the government doing things like warping credit markets to benefit certain industries or launching unnecessary wars to enrich weapons companies and empower foreign leaders who are good at lobbying has plunged the country into several economic and geopolitical crises.

So far, the American political class has done a remarkable job using these crises to greatly expand and accelerate their self-enriching redistributive rackets. But every crisis is unique. Different situations have required different responses.

Which brings us to the rise of what's often called the neoliberal "Washington consensus."

The political establishment's well-known embrace of neoliberalism in the 1980s was primarily a response to the events of the 1970s. For much of that decade, the country was forced to endure a prolonged period of high price inflation that was caused by the Federal Reserve's extensive money printing in the 60s and early 70s to help finance the Vietnam War and Johnson's Great Society programs. That economic chaos was then intensified by the collapse of the Bretton Woods system, the OPEC oil shocks, and Nixon's wage and price controls.

As we've seen in the past few years, inflation alone is more than enough to create strong public demand for political change. But in the 70s, previous credit expansion combined with the government's persistent unwillingness to allow the economy to correct itself also resulted in a stagnant economy. And that combination of high inflation and stagnant economic growth, or "stagflation" as it's come to be known, was considered economically impossible by Keynesian economists.

So the high inflation, low economic growth, and real-time collapse of Keynesianism - the school of thought the political class had been using to justify its economic interventionism - meant change was coming. Also, by the mid-to-late 1970s, the so-called New Left movement, which had started as student protests against the Vietnam War in the 60s, had descended into a highly disturbing mix of lethargic drug use and outright terrorism.

Into that vacuum stepped Milton Friedman.

The nerdy, quick-witted, suit-sporting economist was a perfect foil to the radical, convention-flouting far left much of the country was growing tired of. Friedman's ability to quickly, thoroughly, and politely eviscerate left-wing economic arguments in a highly entertaining fashion made him a star on the talk shows of the day. And, unlike the Keynesians, Friedman's monetarism seemed vindicated by the stagflation.

Thanks in large part to Friedman, the neoliberals took hold of the culture enough to prompt the left-leaning Carter administration to deregulate many parts of the economy including the railroad, airline and trucking industries.

And then, of course, came Ronald Reagan.

Together with Friedman and his fellow Chicago School economists and foreign leaders like Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan and his political successors supposedly rolled back all the reforms made since the Progressive Era, ushering in an age of "market fundamentalism," or unfettered capitalism. They helped bring about the modern "Washington consensus" that the government ought not meddle in the economy at all, which we're told is only just now - four decades later - starting to face some pressure from figures like Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump.

At least, that is the narrative that both neoliberals and their opponents have settled on. But it is a lie.

The rise of neoliberalism in the 70s and 80s was, to be sure, a real ideological shift. The Friedmanites did come to dominate the economics discipline and political culture in very much the same way Keynesians had decades before.

However, the actual implementation of those free-market ideas was nowhere even close to what the establishment's narrative would have us believe.

Virtually all the deregulation that occurred during the Reagan presidency had actually been passed during the Carter administration. It was only because the changes were phased in during the Reagan administration that made it seem like the new president was deregulating the economy. In fact, he was doing no such thing.

The same goes for tax cuts. As Murray Rothbard explained, the much-heralded Reagan tax cuts that were passed in 1981 were more than offset by tax increases that same year. The administration then spent years raising taxes even more in the name of "closing loopholes."

And all of that was necessary to help fund the massive increase in government spending that took place throughout the Reagan years. The so-called Reagan revolution was truly, to paraphrase Rothbard, an acceleration of statist intervention, rolled out under the cover of free-market rhetoric.

There was, however, one area where the Friedmanites did see their policy prescriptions implemented in a genuine and lasting way: monetary policy.

Unfortunately, when it comes to monetary policy, the Friedmanites entirely abandon their support for markets and instead advocate for government central planning. These new establishment-approved neoliberal economists believed - not only in a fiat monetary system controlled entirely by a government central bank - but in a highly active, inflationist central bank.

Friedman himself even wrote a famous book with Anna Schwartz that used questionable econometric methods to argue that the Great Depression happened because the Federal Reserve had not been printing enough money.

Unsurprisingly, the political class was a lot more than willing to implement a Friedmanite program that gave them more power over the economy rather than less. And so, it was in the realm of monetary policy that the largest expansions of both state power and the crony rackets it's utilized for took place under the new neoliberal paradigm.

First, the Fed was leaned on to print money to help pay for the hawkish foreign policy of the post-1980 Republican Party. And then, especially under the Chairmanship of the late Alan Greenspan, the central bank began to directly prop up the financial sector.

The evolution of Wall Street from one of many options for investing one's savings to essentially being the nerve center of the entire economy was not the result of some natural change in saver preferences; it was the consequence of government policy. Specifically, Greenspan's Fed helped prop up Wall Street with a steady supply of easy money and cheap credit to artificially boost the sector, paired with extensive bailouts for these firms whenever the good times ran out.

This was, in effect, a major escalation of the kinds of crony rackets the federal government had been carrying out since the Progressive Era - all justified by Friedman's monetarist apologia for government money printing.

And that gets to the core of it. The Friedmanite, Reagan-led neoliberal revolution did not end economic interventionism, it rebranded it. And the financialized economy was that new brand. Getting rich on Wall Street became the epitome of capitalism. The rising stock market was the new metric for economic strength. And the Fed's money printing became the economy's lifeblood.

In the decades since, that Fed-enabled racket has expanded dramatically and has seeped far beyond the financial sector. It has allowed the political class to supercharge the rackets built up over the last century - which, remember, the neoliberals never did away with - transferring far more of our wealth to that small caste of well-connected cronies.

And yet, thanks in large part to the neoliberals of the past and present, this highly-interventionist system where the government is actively warping the market to benefit those already on top is called - and truly considered by many to be - genuine, free-market capitalism.

That isn't true. It's a trick - a trick meant to mislead us so that whenever a new economic crisis strikes, we reflexively conclude the crisis happened only because the government isn't involved enough in the economy. And that is the mindset that has made so many normal, everyday, non-ideological people open to the arguments of these self-described democratic socialists.

The neoliberal and neoconservative establishment has done much to carry out this trick. They shouldn't be surprised that it's working.

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of ZeroHedge.

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/04/2026 - 21:45

Pimco's Top-Performing 60/40 Fund Bets AI's Next Winners Are In Asia, From Chips To Rare Earths

Emmanuel Sharef, who oversees Pacific Investment Management Co.'s flagship Balanced Income and Growth Fund, spoke with Bloomberg about how the next leg of the artificial-intelligence boom could be concentrated in Asian stocks and beyond. 

Wealthy clients in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and mainland China have been piling into the $19 billion fund, which has outperformed 97% of its peers during the past three years.

The fund is underweight most hyperscalers and members of the Magnificent Seven as soaring AI capital expenditures increase debt loads, pressure free cash flow, spark credit concerns, and make already eye-popping valuations much harder to justify. 

"We're underweight the majority of hyperscalers at the moment and we're underweight the majority of the Mag seven just given their high valuations," Sharef told the outlet earlier this week.

He continued, "You don't necessarily need to own the most expensive stocks to capture a particular theme or a particular market trend."

The 60/40 Balanced Income and Growth Fund has been moving further down the supply chain toward companies that build data center components and has become overweight in Asia, where it sees stronger earnings growth, cheaper valuations, and greater exposure to the companies that should be viewed as the building blocks of a data center.

That infrastructure includes semiconductor components, cooling systems, cable interconnects, optical equipment, power supplies, construction machinery, and industrial metals.

"The AI capex build-out is enormous," he said. "It would imply significant demand for semiconductor components for chips, cooling equipment, cable interconnects, optical equipment, power supplies, construction equipment, metals, all of the things that go into building a data center."

The fund's 60% stock allocation gained exposure to AI last year by plowing billions of dollars into firms such as Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing.

Sharef also highlighted a theme we've been developing: the importance of exposure to mining and materials companies tied to data-center construction and global rare-earth supply chains.

"Chinese resource extraction and materials companies are quite significant, not just for the data center buildup, but also for rare earths," he added.

Sharef's call to gain exposure to rare earths and critical materials reinforces a theme we have been developing: the AI trade is ultimately constrained by access to the physical inputs required to build chips, data centers, and power infrastructure. Rare earths and other critical materials are becoming a crucial component of the next AI trade as Chinese suppliers restrict some shipments to the US and US companies accelerate efforts to secure alternative sources beyond Beijing's reach. 

The takeaway from Sharef's conversation with Bloomberg is that the next AI winners will be on an ex-US basis, mostly in Asia. 

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/04/2026 - 21:20

AI Tax Increases Are Like The Tractor Tax Proposals Of Old

Authored by Bruce Thompson via RealClearMarkets,

President Ronald Reagan famously described Washington politicians' solutions to every problem as "if it moves, tax it." That is exactly what many in Washington today want to do with artificial intelligence.

As Wall Street Journal chief economic commentator Greg IP wrote recently, a growing number of experts believe there is "a simple answer to AI job losses." Tax it. His column described a petition signed by 1,000 economists, including 17 Nobel laureates, pleading for higher taxes on AI to prevent "large scale" job losses.

Reagan knew what he was talking about. He grew up in the Midwest in a small town surrounded by farms, and he surely remembered a time when politicians wanted to tax tractors, a new technology driving change. In the early 1900s, the tractor was revolutionizing farming, and politicians were pushing proposals to tax the tractor and prevent the loss of farm jobs. Rep. Willian Connery, a Massachusetts Democrat and Chairman of the House Labor Committee, was a leading advocate of taxing tractors and other labor-saving machines to stop mass unemployment.

The introduction of tractors was the most revolutionary change in our history, affecting millions of jobs and driving millions off the farm. Between 1910 and 1960, nearly 10 million farm workers lost their jobs and 25 million people left their farms for the city. The benefits of the tractor were enormous. Farm production soared, food prices dropped, and the U.S. provided enough food to feed people around the world.

The farm revolution transformed the American economy, creating growth, and increasing prosperity. Millions of farm workers were freed from back-breaking labor and found better jobs in the city. An NBER study called tractors the "engine of growth" and estimated they doubled per-capita GDP and created millions of jobs.

AI promises a bright future of technological and scientific progress, increased productivity, and a more prosperous economy. Like many changes in the past, there are concerns about the impact on jobs. But taxing AI would be just like taxing tractors, a futile knee jerk reaction to change.

Not surprisingly, there is no shortage of terrible tax ideas floating around Washington. Senator Bernie Sanders has proposed a 50% tax on the equity of AI companies. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ron Wyden have proposed new taxes on data centers. House Democrats have proposed a new tax on AI computing powers, and others have proposed a tax on robots. If it moves, they want to tax it.

None of these tax increases are a good idea. Raising taxes on AI would slow investment, curb innovation, and only help our foreign competitors. Just like a tractor tax, a new AI tax would only slow new technological advances that will benefit everyone.

Rather than taxing AI, Washington should focus on assisting those jobs which have been most affected by automation, such as entry-level jobs. Congress should consider targeted tax incentives for entry-level employment, including payroll tax relief and job training for junior workers. Helping young workers get started is a much better response to the AI revolution than trying to stop it with a tax increase.

Bruce Thompson was a U.S. Senate aide, assistant secretary of Treasury for legislative affairs, and the director of government relations for Merrill Lynch for 22 years.

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/04/2026 - 20:55

Online Betting Adoption Goes Parabolic: First-Timers Triple, Gen Z Overtakes Millennials, And Football Season Hasn't Even Begun

Online betting is off to the races - and this summer the adoption curve started looking like a hockey stick.

According to a new analysis by Bank of America - which can see every ACH, debit and credit card payment its customers make to and from sportsbooks, horse-racing platforms and prediction markets their own customers make: 

• Roughly 5% of BofA customers sent money to an online betting platform in July.
• The number of online bettors is up 40% since the start of the year.
• The number of first-time bettors in June and July was more than triple the January level.

The bank credits the summer spike to the World Cup and "promotions and buzz" around prediction markets, and fair enough: every adoption curve has a catalyst. What matters is what the base looks like once the catalyst passes, and here the seasonal pattern is instructive. First-time users jump with every major sports season, and the 2025 football season - which the bank defines as September through February, so it sweeps in the NFL, college ball and most of the NBA and NHL - produced 22% more first-timers than the year before. Each season enrolls a larger freshman class. The class that enrolled this summer was three times the size of January's, and it arrived right before the busiest stretch of the calendar.

Nor is this something people try once and forget. Per a CivicScience survey cited in the note, 34% of online sports bettors wager weekly and 23% bet daily; fewer than one in five are the several-times-a-year Super Bowl crowd. That is the engagement profile of a social app, not a lottery ticket.

The turning point

By generation, Gen Z (48%) and Millennials (40%) accounted for 88% of online betting activity in July. Gen X managed 9%; Baby Boomers, 3%. And as recently as this spring, Millennials were the larger group. Gen Z overtook them this summer - a shift BofA describes as a "turning point" in the composition of online bettors.

BofA defines Gen Z as anyone born after 1995, which means the oldest members are turning 30 this year and the cohort came of age alongside legal, app-based sports betting. BofA points out that younger consumers have consistently been first to adopt every emerging digital platform - crypto, BNPL, online marketplaces - and that betting appears to be following the same script.

When it comes to income - betting activity is split almost evenly across terciles - 37% lower, 34% middle, 29% higher.

Oh it's investing!

According to a BofA survey conducted in March, 20% of respondents said they consider sports betting a form of investing, with Gen Z twice as likely as everyone else to say so. Across every generation, buying event contracts on a prediction market was more likely to be classified as investing than placing a sportsbook wager.

Prediction markets have listed contracts on almost anything - whether a politician sips water on camera during a speech, how many flu cases the year will bring - dressed in the language of derivatives: standardized, exchange-traded, resolved at a point in time. BofA notes that prediction markets, crypto, retail trading and sports betting all share "community participation and real-time pricing," which is a polite way of saying they share a user interface. To a generation raised on the Fed put, zero-day options and a community tab, a football game is simply another underlying.

And then there's  the red tape...

Naturally, the regulators have noticed - and, naturally, their first move is a jurisdictional fight. The CFTC's position, per BofA's public-policy team, is that certain event contracts traded on federally regulated exchanges are derivatives under the Commodity Exchange Act and therefore federal turf. State and tribal regulators counter that contracts tied to sports and entertainment are gambling with extra steps and belong under existing state gaming, licensing and consumer-protection law. Lawmakers from both parties and both chambers have filed bills. The CFTC has also opened a rulemaking on perpetual futures and issued an advisory warning event-contract venues away from sweepstakes-style rewards and prizes "based on pure chance" - the sort of promotional program that helped fill the summer's freshman class - and, per BofA Global Research, is trying to draw a brighter line between prediction markets and sportsbooks by targeting in-house market making, incentive programs and "casino style odds."

None of it slows adoption. Arguing over whether a contract is a "derivative" or a "wager" is an argument over who gets to regulate and tax the growth, not whether the growth happens. By the time the rulebook is written, the users will already be there. Most of them already are.

And it's not even football season yet...

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/04/2026 - 20:30

Cannabis Gummies Harm Driving Performance Hours After Use, Study Says

Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times,

The use of commercially available cannabis edibles impairs people's driving ability, even after several hours of consumption, a study has found.

Published in the JAMA Network Open journal on Aug. 31, the peer-reviewed study looked at simulated driving performance after the consumption of cannabis edibles.

Conducted in a Canadian hospital, the study analyzed data of 40 people aged 19-45 years. They received gummies containing delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) - the main psychoactive chemical in cannabis that causes brain-altering effects. Various combinations of THC and placebo edibles were given to achieve four doses of THC exposure - 0 mg, 2 mg, 10 mg, and 20 mg.

The study measured the standard deviation of lateral position (SDLP), which assesses how drivers adjust lane position and is used to evaluate the effects of medicines and illegal drugs.

Researchers found that SDLP was "significantly increased" at 20 mg and 10 mg doses compared with the placebo at two and five hours post-consumption, suggesting greater difficulty in maintaining lane position.

Reaction time and the standard deviation of speed were "negatively influenced" among drivers due to THC exposure, the study said. The individual's willingness to drive was also found to have "significantly decreased" at 20 mg exposure, according to the study.

For the highest dose of 20 mg, whole-blood THC concentrations peaked at 3.4 nanograms per milliliter (ng/mL). This falls within the 1 to 5 ng/mL limits for drivers set by some U.S. states.

The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto highlighted the link between driving impairment and blood THC levels in an Aug. 31 statement.

All peak blood THC concentrations in the study were below or near common thresholds used for roadside enforcement, the statement said. This was true even among those who consumed the highest dose.

"Many people may underestimate the impairment caused by cannabis edibles," Dr. Christine Wickens, co-author of the study, said in the statement. "Our findings show that commonly consumed doses can significantly affect critical driving skills, reinforcing the need for caution when making decisions about driving after use."

The study was funded by a grant from Public Safety Canada. Two authors reported conflicts of interest, including receiving grants from pharmaceutical companies.

In an April 20 statement, the University of Colorado Anschutz also reported similar findings. In these studies, people were made to use a driving simulator before and after consuming cannabis.

Cannabis was found to affect driving performance, especially lane-control measures, such as lane departures and weaving. Inhaling cannabis showed smaller and less consistent changes, while edible cannabis resulted in "more noticeable impairment, including slower speeds and increased lane variability and departures," the statement said.

US Cannabis Reclassification

In the United States, the Trump administration recently reclassified cannabis, or marijuana, under the Controlled Substances Act. On April 23, the Department of Justice and the Drug Enforcement Administration announced placing some cannabis products under Schedule III of the Act.

Schedule III drugs are deemed to have lower abuse potential and are accepted for medical use. The classification is only applicable to cannabis items approved by the Food and Drug Administration or regulated by a state medical marijuana license.

The American Trucking Associations (ATA) has raised concerns about public safety risks arising from the reclassification.

In an April 24 statement, Brenna Lyles, ATA's vice president of safety policy, highlighted concerns about rescheduling cannabis without proper safeguards to preserve the U.S. Department of Transportation's (USDOT's) testing authority for workers carrying out safety-sensitive jobs.

"Absent clear protections for USDOT's marijuana testing authority, a policy shift could undermine the Department's drug- and alcohol-testing program and weaken highway safety," Lyles said.

"That risk is compounded by the lack of a reliable, widely accepted standard to measure marijuana impairment, whether roadside or before a driver gets behind the wheel."

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/04/2026 - 20:05

This Red State Is Betting It Can Abolish Its Income Tax

The data center debate isn't going so well for the builders, as Americans far and wide seriously oppose the construction of new data centers near where they live. One state, however, thinks it can incentivize residents. 

Country roads take West Virginians home across the Virginia state line near Charles Town, where the data center debate has intensified. (Charlie Creitz/Fox News)

Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey (R) has unveiled seven principles aligned with 2025 legislation to reduce and eventually eliminate state income tax. Under the plan, West Virginia would set aside 50% of its revenue from approved hyperscale data center projects towards the elimination of the state personal income tax - though let's be clear: the poor, rural residents they'll be building the DCs next to don't pay income tax - so no benefit to them. Middle class voters (and up), however, will have all sorts of reasons to support the move. 

"Today, as the world stands on the cusp of a new digital and economic frontier, West Virginia is stepping forward once again to lead, not by repeating the mistakes of other states, but by implementing a proactive, 20-year development strategy on our terms," Morrisey said in a statement obtained by Fox News. 

The second listed "principle" in Morrisey’s plan says all West Virginians should benefit from data center projects approved through Charleston’s "High Impact Data Center Designation (HIDC)" process and the revenue they generate. The process was established under a separate 2025 state law.

Morrisey’s plan includes "direct tax relief for citizens," with none of the HIDC revenue entering the state general fund.

"By law, 50 percent of project revenue is dedicated directly to reducing and ultimately eliminating the State Personal Income Tax," reads the plan. 

Counties would benefit also - with those hosting data centers receiving 30% of the revenue for schools and local government, and 10% of the revenue distributed to all 55 counties. Another 10% will fund infrastructure upgrades, which include public water systems in a state that's struggled since the decline of the coal industry. 

"This shared framework gives us the exact blueprint we need to attract billions in private investment, create thousands of high-paying construction and technology jobs, lower taxes for our citizens, and revitalize economically distressed regions, all while preserving the wild and wonderful state we call home," said Morrisey. 

The anti-data center movement, meanwhile, has become quite vocal in neighboring Virginia's Jefferson and Berkeley counties - as residents have taken note of sprawling data centers in Loudoun county.

"We are a cautionary tale for the rest of the country," Rep. Suhas Subramanyam (D-VA) in recent remarks. "[I]f my district were a country, it would have more data centers than almost every other country in the world."

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/04/2026 - 19:40

Victor Davis Hanson: The Left Is Dragging America Back To The Dark Ages

Via The Daily Signal,

Editor's note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today's video from Daily Signal senior contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see more of his videos.

Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for the Daily Signal.

The more you look around us today, I think a good description of 2026, culturally, economically, socially, politically, is that we are in a modern medieval world.

Maybe we're progressive regressives, and I don't mean that just in the sense that progressives are regressive, and they are, but that one part of our society is advancing at lightning speed to the future and progressing. But the other part is regressing, and regressing at a phenomenal pace back to what I would call the medieval period.

Remember, the medieval period was roughly that area in time after the fall of the Roman Empire in the West, roughly AD 500 to around AD 1300 to 1400, the beginning of the Italian Renaissance. In medievalism, we often talk about primitivism after the destruction of the classical world during the Dark Ages, the early medieval period, and it's characterized by epidemics, bubonic plague, typhus, typhoid, smallpox, terrible sanitation in urban centers. They had forgotten the Roman use of sewage and aqueducts.

There were open borders. National states popped up that couldn't defend themselves, so you saw castles and walls pop up all over the European countryside in a way you had not during the Roman period. In cities, they were walled, towns even, and the gates closed at dusk to prevent gratuitous crime.

But at the same time that this was happening, you had some of the greatest works of literature in the Western world. You had Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales," Dante's "Inferno," St. Thomas Aquinas' "Summa Theologica." And if you look at the architectural expertise and scientific knowledge of architecture, it was progressing at a geometric rate when you look at the huge cathedrals at Seville or Cologne.

I should remind everybody that around 536, Santa Sofia was created, the Church of the Holy Wisdom in Constantinople. It would be the largest church in Christendom for a thousand years. And everything from the mass production of crossbows to eyeglasses was a product of the medieval period, even if, as I said, the daily lives of most people were wretched.

Now let's switch to the modern period.

All of us now can call anywhere in the world in seconds on our iPhones. Anything you want to know, past, present, future, you can just get on a cheap computer and ask an artificial intelligence program from the many free platforms. You can watch movies, you can watch entertainment on satellites. Anything you want is at your fingertips.

The nation itself is exploring space. We're getting close to conquering cancer. I can attest to that. Computers allow you to write without even speaking. You can, unfortunately, compose a whole term paper or a book with AI. You can make a movie with AI.

Yet at the same time that's happening, look at what's going on in Berkeley here in California or Los Angeles. We're seeing outbreaks of medieval diseases that we thought had been conquered years ago, given our sophisticated knowledge of sewage and water treatment. We had a typhus breakout in Los Angeles. We had leptospirosis, a rat disease, in Berkeley.

You look at the homeless camps all over our major cities. People are just out in the open fornicating, urinating, defecating, injecting drugs. There's tons of feces that has to be removed, and it's so strange in this modern medievalism.

We have sophisticated researchers who go into a hospital in Chicago or go to a cancer center in San Francisco and have to check the bottoms of their shoes to make sure they don't have feces as they go into their space-age laboratories.

It's really funny. In the medieval period, public hangings and beheadings were sort of public events that people flocked out to see. Is that any different than our glorification of murderers?

And there is a difference. Luigi Mangione, they named an opera after him in California. The killer of Charlie Kirk brought people jubilation. I won't even get into Lindsay Clancy, who strangled her three children and became every woman to the feminist left.

At least in the medieval period, they knew that the murderer had done something wrong and was being punished. In the post-medieval period, we are glorifying that murderer, and that's really striking.

And so, what I'm getting at is we are the most regulated, the most advanced, the most modern, the most scientific society in history, even as we can't solve problems that were solvable, and the medieval period would have died to know the solutions that we have in our hands to make sure we have clean water, to make sure there is no crime, to make sure there is no disease, to make sure that people don't defecate on the street. But we don't do it. We willingly don't do it.

Now, the question to finish is why?

We have an elite that has embraced a very toxic ideology throughout history, and that is mandated, government-sanctioned equality of result. And they have divided, therefore, to further that ideology, the world into victims and victimizers, an arbitrary classification, sometimes based on class, but increasingly on race.

And once they identify someone as a victim who's not responsible for his plight, then it's the duty of the society to allow him to express himself. If you have a lot of teenagers who want to loot a jewelry store, then you say they were hungry and they needed food.

If you see homeless people living on the street, then it was because of something the majority culture did to them.

And the result of that is when people engage in very dangerous antisocial behavior, an elite will tell the rest of us that they're not subject to law enforcement or they're not subject to the laws that apply to the rest of us.

But there are two really pernicious addenda here.

No. 1, the people who do this on the left, who believe in this mandated equality and a binary of victim and victimizer, are never subject to the consequences of their own ideology. Nancy Pelosi's home is not surrounded by homeless people. Jane Fonda doesn't have to trip over people injecting drugs when she walks outside her door. The Hollywood stars in Malibu who champion the homeless have very clear security. You can't get near their homes.

In other words, we, the lab rats, are those upon whom they experiment.

And there's another reason as well. It's not just that they experiment on us - and this ideology is not applicable to itself - but more importantly, they believe that they are morally superior because most of them are agnostics or atheists. They have lost their God, but they have found it in a post-Enlightenment caring, abstract though it may be, for victims.

And when you put this religious element to it, because it makes no sense to allow medieval diseases and medievalism to dominate your cities in crime, filth and homelessness, but they do it.

They feel morally superior, and it gives them meaning in their life in a way that we, the majority, find not morally superior, but morally repugnant.

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal or ZeroHedge.

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/04/2026 - 19:15

El Nino Crushes Atlantic Hurricane Activity, Lowest Since 1941

The peak of the Atlantic hurricane season arrives next Thursday, yet by this point the basin would normally have produced multiple systems tracking through the Caribbean, the Gulf of America, and the open Atlantic. This year, however, a strengthening El Niño and record vertical wind shear are tearing apart disturbances before they can rapidly intensify.

Bloomberg reports that only five short-lived tropical storms have formed this season, and none has intensified into a hurricane. The Atlantic has not recorded so little activity at this point in the season since 1941.

"We're crushing all sorts of shear records this year," said Phil Klotzbach, lead author of Colorado State University's annual seasonal forecast. "The models are so anemic on storm development coming up in the next 10 days too."

Forecasters and researchers are tracking accumulated cyclone energy, or ACE, which measures the combined strength and duration of tropical storms and hurricanes during a season.

"We currently have an ACE of 4.4," Klotzbach said. That is the lowest since 1941. A low ACE indicates that storms have generally been weak or short-lived, reflecting the fact that no tropical disturbance has intensified into a hurricane.

For the US energy complex, the absence of hurricane activity is great news. Gulf Coast refineries, offshore platforms, pipelines, and LNG export terminals have avoided precautionary shutdowns, allowing facilities to operate near full capacity as the global refined-products crisis deepens. This has been a boon for US producers as the country exports record volumes of crude oil and diesel. 

Still, a lull in tropical activity does not entirely rule out the possibility of a destructive late-season storm, as roughly 12.5 weeks remain before the season ends on November 30.

Meanwhile, Southern California and Hawaii are bracing for potential impacts from tropical systems over Labor Day weekend.

"It just seems like it's one storm after another out there because of the atmospheric conditions and the water being pretty warm," Robbie Berg, a warning coordination meteorologist at the National Hurricane Center, told the outlet, referring to the activity in the Pacific.

El Niño Impacts

"For an El Niño year, this is what we would expect," Berg said. 

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/04/2026 - 18:50

Asian Oil Buying Spree Sends Dubai Crude Toward $100

Authored by Irina Slav via OilPrice.com,

Stronger appetite for Middle Eastern crude grades from China and India has added upward pressure on prices for these grades, pushing the Dubai futures close to $100 per barrel, Bloomberg reported today, citing unnamed traders.

Demand for Middle Eastern oil is especially strong from refining majors such as Indian Oil Corp. and PetroChina, as well as refiners in South Korea and Japan, the report said. This is despite the latest escalation between the United States and Iran, with Saudi Arabia's oil exports dropping to the lowest since 2017, according to data from ship-trackers including Kpler and Vortexa.

A further price rally may well be on the table as some cargoes face delays from August to September and October, Bloomberg also noted. At the time of writing, Murban futures, the UAE benchmark, was trading at $106.10 per barrel, and DME Oman, the Middle East sour crude benchmark for Asia, was trading at $99.18 per barrel.

The stronger demand comes despite depressed flows of oil via the Strait of Hormuz. Over the past week, the average daily volume of oil making its way via the waterway stood at between 6 and 8 million barrels.

Asian buyers, meanwhile, are also stepping up purchases from other regions, notably Brazil, Canada, and Argentina, with China and India also buying more Russian crude.

While Middle Eastern oil prices rise, Brent crude and West Texas Intermediate dipped yesterday, reflecting uncertainty about developments in the Middle East even as mutual strikes between the United States and Iran continue. According to some analysts, the dip in prices came in response to a pause in the strikes. It appears traders believe the pause could extend, despite a statement by President Trump that "It was a very heavy attack last night, and we're prepared to do another one any time we want."

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/04/2026 - 18:25

Vance Suggests Iran Conflict Could Drag Through Midterms, But At Least We're Not Calling It A War

The White House has returned to its prior talking point that the war against Iran shouldn't be called a war. In earlier stages of the conflict President Trump had applied various monikers that stopped far short, from an "excursion" to a "little detour" to a "stopover" to a mere limited "military operation".

A full five months ago he had proclaimed, "We had to take a little detour. Won’t be long." Various phrases like this have been repeated on a monthly basis, as what the American public was 'assured' was supposed to be a "four to six week-long" operation has blown past the six month mark this week. And yet, the administration is back at it, despite new heavy fire having been exchanged between the US and Iran just in the last few days.

Vice President JD Vance in Thursday remarks rejected the use of the word "war" to describe the conflict with Iran and declined to predict whether it would be over by November's midterm elections. At the moment Republicans hold narrow majorities in Congress, but now must face down voters amid an increasingly unpopular quagmire conflict in the Middle East. Vance in taking questions from reporters sought to reason that, "Right now, there is no active shooting."

JD Vance praises Trump for winning wars, says moments later of Iran that "I wouldn't call it a war" 🥴 pic.twitter.com/2RAoFtwa9M

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 3, 2026

Ironically, it was a mere few hours prior to Vance's comments that Iran had once again fired on US Gulf ally Kuwait, also amid some reports that the UAE was targeted as well. And the day prior to that, US bases in Jordan were rocked by missiles once again, though Jordan said it intercepted most. Tehran claimed high casualties among US forces, while the Pentagon has sought to bat this down, denying that casualties resulted.

The Vice President characterized this latest flare-up as a US "responsibility" to conduct strikes on Iran, given it has been targeting commercial vessels passing through the Strait of Hormuz.

Vance also notably didn't want to set "artificial timelines." He responded to a reporter by positing: "But when you ask, 'When will this end?' You're asking me a question like, 'When will the Iranians stop shooting at ships?'" Vance said. "I think the reality is, I don't know the answer to that question. You would have to ask the Iranians."

But the reality remains - the US is still fighting for a return to the pre-war status of the Strait of Hormuz, which had before February 28 been open to all international shipping, and with no 'fee' or 'tax' imposed by Tehran or other regional nations.

Recall too that back in May, Secretary of State Marco Rubio articulated with crystal clarity that the goal of the war in Iran is to restore the Hormuz Strait "back to the way it was" before Trump initiated Operation Epic Fury.

Back to the way it was... --Marco Rubio, May 5, 2026

When Vance went back-and-forth with reporters this week over the war's timeline, November elections, and potential impact on the GOP's future, the White House was already battling some terrible optics.

Increasingly, even mainline normie conservative publications like Newsmax are highlighting how fallen and wounded service members are being politicized at a moment the US can't decide whether it's in a war or not:

The administration in July faced scrutiny after it reclassified four fallen soldiers as well as dozens of wounded troops in its Defense Casualty Analysis System, which Pentagon officials have repeatedly pointed to as the definitive source on the numbers of dead and wounded from the conflict.

Those killed or wounded in fighting after a brief ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran fell apart were classified in a new category called "Overseas Operations" after initially being tallied in the totals from the war.

Also this week there was this alarming and disturbing story in the esteemed Military.com: Widow of Airman Killed in Iran War Claims She Was Denied Death Benefits.

"The Air Force recently told me that because we haven't officially declared war, my kids and I aren't eligible for some benefits," the widow of deceased US Air Force Major John "Alex" Klinner wrote. He died in action over Iraq connected to Iran operations.

On CNBC early this week, US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick was discussing the Iran war when he asserted: "There haven’t been American deaths. It’s really been an economic choke-out."

According to the Pentagon's own official tally, a total of 18 US service members have been killed in action against Iran to date. Some pundits have long suspected it could be more, and that the Pentagon could indeed continue to be playing political games in terms of how to 'classify' ongoing or potential deaths. Lutnick's words to CNBC were shocking enough for Trump to directly intervene, claiming that he had mistakenly had "Venezuela on his mind"...

President Trump says Howard Lutnick “had Venezuela on his mind” when Lutnick said there have been no American deaths in the Iran war. https://t.co/BTEgyhOIgN pic.twitter.com/WWe6j1NWdq

— The American Conservative (@amconmag) September 3, 2026

After all of the above, Trump again took to Truth Social to then berate the media and its critical coverage of the Iran war and Hormuz crisis. He called journalists questioning the White House narrative 'treasonous scum'.

Trump particularly singled out recent and ongoing reports of US missile and interceptor shortages, which he has slammed as false. He went on to claim that the US has "virtually unlimited amounts of Mid to High Grade Ammunition".

Probably the bulk of American voters aren't buying it. Is all of the above evidence of serving and protecting America First? We haven't heard this phrase out of the administration in a long while.

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/04/2026 - 18:00

Brazilian Lift: Diplomats Accused Of Helping Fugitive 'Dr. Frankenstein' To Flee US

Authored by Jonathan Turley via JonathanTurley.org,

There is an intriguing story out of Brazil where Joao Arajuo, 57, a plastic surgeon known as "Dr. Frankenstein," resurfaced after cutting an ankle monitor and fleeing the United States. The infamous plastic surgeon mocked the police and recounted how easy it was to flee the country. However, in detailing his escape, he implicated Brazilian diplomats in actively assisting the flight, making them accessories after the fact.

Araujo was awaiting trial for a variety of crimes linked to cosmetic surgeries, including procedures that were botched and left patients disfigured. These treatments included liposuction, fillers and laser treatments.

The 14 counts included felonies for grand theft, practicing medicine without a license, and fraud.

However, Araujo decided not to wait for a trial: "When I decided to leave, I simply cut off the electronic ankle bracelet. I took [Interstate] 95. I took a boat owned by an acquaintance and went to [the island of] Bimini [in the Bahamas], [then to] Nassau, Panama, Rio de Janeiro."

He offered details that could be used to identify any collaborators: "I left at 4:30 a.m. I arrived in [the island of] Bimini [in the Bahamas] early. From Bimini, I took a plane at 230 p.m. I arrived in Nassau 40 minutes later. Because the flight was fully booked to Panama, I had to spend the night" before going "from Panama to Rio de Janeiro."

So Araujo had his friend sail him to the Bahamas and then flew to Rio. He celebrated by mocking the police. However, he implicated Brazilian diplomats in making the escape:

"Any idiot knows how to leave the United States. I had all the support of the Brazilian consulate ... They are all my friends. Both the Brazilian federal police and the Brazilian embassy gave me all the support in Miami."

The direct assistance of diplomats in the flight of a fugitive would be a serious breach of diplomatic status.

For any diplomat, this would be the knowing commission of a criminal act as an accessory after the fact.

While diplomats have immunity, they could be declared persona non grata under Article 9 of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.

Araujo was required to surrender his only known passport from Brazil. That means he somehow obtained a new one. It is unclear whether the passport was fake or whether his "friends" took the extraordinary step of issuing him a new passport to facilitate his flight.

While he did not name his "friends," he noted in a prior interview that "the consul in Miami is my friend" and used the first names of both the current general consul and his recently departed predecessor. The acting consul general in Miami, Andre Odenbreit Carvalho left in May. He also referenced Marcelo Ivo, the Brazilian Federal Police Liaison for the Consulate in Miami.

Notably, according to Steven Nelson at the New York Post, the US government in April asked Ivo to leave his post "in a reciprocal action after Brasilia booted an unnamed American official in apparent retaliation for US immigration officials briefly detaining a former Brazilian congressman."

Tensions between the countries are already high under leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. The Trump Administration previously canceled the visa of the Brazilian ambassador, Maria Luiza Ribeiro Viotti.

The administration has also hit Brazil with massive tariffs in a trade war.

While Araujo expressed a desire to live in Europe, the United States will likely seek an Interpol warrant that would expose him to arrest. The Brazilian Constitution bars the extradition of its citizens. However, even if Brazil does not extradite him, he will have trouble traveling. Even those "idiots" that he attacked could track and arrest him in international transit.

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/04/2026 - 17:40

Excavation Work On Trump's Arch To Begin Over Next 2 Weeks, Burgum Says

Excavation work on President Donald Trump's triumphal arch is scheduled to begin over the next two weeks, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said on Sept. 3.

"This will be one of the great pieces of American architecture, honoring the history and significance of Arlington Cemetery and befitting the most powerful capital in the world," Burgum said in a post on X.

Burgum also included pictures of what the arch would look like.

The proposed monument would include a mezzanine level at 166 feet, a 24-foot-high observation deck, and a 60-foot statue of Lady Liberty at the top.

The structure, which is intended to mark America's 250th anniversary, would prominently display the inscriptions "One Nation Under God" and "Liberty and Justice for All."

It was inspired by the 164-foot-high Arc de Triomphe in Paris.

However, as Jackson Richman reports for The Epoch Times,the proposal has sparked a legal challenge.

A group of veterans and a historian, represented by public interest law firm Public Citizen Litigation Group, have filed a federal lawsuit seeking to block construction, arguing that the arch would interfere with the historic sightline between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington House, among other concerns.

The Justice Department has responded that Congress approved large structures at the planned site decades ago and gave authority to the National Park Service to change their design.

The National Park Service released a report on the arch on Aug. 28 that supported the project but warned there would be adverse effects on the sightlines between a host of iconic landmarks such as the Washington Monument and Lincoln and Jefferson memorials.

The arch, announced last October, is proposed to be built on a man-made island overseen by the National Park Service, located on the Virginia side of the Potomac River near Memorial Bridge, which connects to the Lincoln Memorial.

At 250 feet, the structure would be significantly taller than the Lincoln Memorial, which is 99 feet tall, and roughly half the height of the Washington Monument.

It is one of the numerous projects Trump has undertaken as part of his stated goal of beautifying the nation's capital.

The president also seeks to renovate East Potomac Golf Links, build an arch near the Lincoln Memorial, and construct a ballroom on White House grounds.

He renovated the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, which will need to be refilled after deficiencies were found. The president blamed vandalism as well as contractor error.

Although the arch proposal has been approved by the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, the National Capital Planning Commission, the federal government's planning agency for the D.C. region, has to give final approval for the project.

When it will do so is to be determined.

The commission met on Sept. 3, but the arch was not on the agenda.

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/04/2026 - 17:20

States Must Report Illegal Immigrants To Feds Or Risk Losing Federal Welfare Funding: DOJ

Authored by Troy Myers via The Epoch Times,

States must alert the federal government to known illegal immigrants when they opt into receiving certain federal welfare benefits, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced Wednesday.

The move withdraws a 1998 DOJ opinion and clarifies that under a 1996 welfare-reform law - the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act - all state agencies, including those that administer welfare funding, have the duty to report individuals unlawfully in the United States to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

According to the new Office of Legal Counsel opinion, which was issued Sept. 1, states risk losing funds for the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and the Supplemental Security Income programs if they do not comply.

"Congress wrote this requirement plainly," said Assistant Attorney General T. Elliot Gaiser of the DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel.

"When a state chooses to participate in TANF, it accepts the obligation to report illegal aliens in the United States."

States that do not alert DHS to unlawful individuals attempting to obtain welfare thus encourage illegal immigration and take tax dollars away from U.S. citizens, Gaiser said in a statement.

The previous Clinton-era interpretation of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, which is now reversed, limited states' reporting requirement of illegal immigrants to immigration authorities only to state agencies administering the welfare funds.

"We reached that view by disregarding [the 1996 law's] definition of 'State' and giving that term inconsistent meanings within the same statutory provision," the Office of Legal Counsel admitted in its new opinion. "We conclude that our 1998 Opinion improperly narrowed the conditions that Congress attached to federal funding for certain federal benefits programs. We now withdraw it."

All 50 states, the District of Columbia, and several U.S. territories participate in TANF and the Supplemental Security Income programs, the DOJ said.

Funding for the TANF program alone accounts for more than $16.4 billion each year.

DOJ Office of Legal Counsel Deputy Assistant Attorney General Joshua Craddock, who authored the new opinion, said it doesn't impose any new obligations on states. It only restores the original meaning of the 1996 act that binds all state agencies to federal law in sharing information with DHS about known illegal immigrants, he stated.

"States that accept TANF funding must abide by federal law, and failure to comply may lead to serious consequences, including loss of program funding," Craddock said in the statement.

The DOJ clarified this new opinion only applies prospectively. States will not face retroactive penalties or altered agreements for welfare funds because those contracts complied with the 1998 interpretation.

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/04/2026 - 17:00

Missouri House Candidate Accused Of Plotting To Plant Cocaine On Primary Rival

A Republican candidate for the Missouri state House is facing a federal charge after authorities accused him of orchestrating a plot to secretly place drugs on a political rival, CBS affiliate KOLR-TV reported.

Thomas Ross, 37, who sought Missouri's House District 161 seat representing the Joplin area, was charged Wednesday in connection with the alleged scheme targeting primary opponent Louise Secker.

Missouri House Candidate Thomas Ross

Investigators have accused Ross of directing his former campaign manager to put cocaine and a prescription amphetamine pill among Secker's belongings, according to a probable cause statement. Authorities also believe the Adderall allegedly intended for the plot came from Ross' own prescription, KOLR-TV reported.

Ross edged out Secker in the Aug. 4 Republican primary by 33 votes.

Missouri Republican Party Chairman Peter Kinder has since called for Ross to step aside, describing the matter as "serious and deeply troubling." The Jasper County Republican Central Committee joined Kinder in calling on Ross to withdraw.

Under Missouri law, Ross has until Sept. 8 to remove his name from the November ballot.

Federal authorities have filed a one-count criminal complaint accusing Ross of conspiring to distribute a controlled substance.

Ross has been held without bond in the Joplin City Jail since his arrest Wednesday, with a detention hearing set for Wednesday.

U.S. Attorney R. Matthew Price said in a statement that his office will "continue to uphold fairness, transparency, and integrity in elections and will pursue violations of public trust when warranted."

"Candidates are expected to conduct their campaigns with integrity, honesty, and respect for their opponents, allowing voters to make informed decisions without fear of misinformation or undue influence," Price said.

Ross did not respond to requests for comment, and the federal public defender's office assigned to his case did not say how he intends to plead. Secker also did not respond. The charge is an accusation, and Ross is presumed innocent unless proven guilty.

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/04/2026 - 16:40

Insurrection For Real

Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Clusterfuck Nation,

"The Democrat agenda is to legalize crime and criminalize the middle class."

- Stephen Miller

Not to put too fine a point on it: but whenever a lawfare ninja of the Democratic Party utters the phrase "our democracy," you must know that they are completely full of shit. For sure, they do not mean anything remotely related to an American commonweal, as understood by people of sound mind and good faith.

What they mean by "our democracy" is the state as a racketeering operation run for the sole benefit of their party members, along with the ruthless power to annihilate their opponents and critics.

Norm Eisen, Democratic Party Lawfare Ninja Supreme

The war-cry "our democracy" only signifies how degenerate they have become. Though they yearn to win control of Congress in these midterm elections by any means necessary, the party's actual prospects are not so great, having nominated a pack of obvious morons and reprobates such as Abdul el-Sayed (MI), James Talarico (TX), Angie Nixon (FL), Troy Jackson (ME), and Peggy Flanagan (MN) for the US Senate.

Now, it appears that President Donald Trump is determined to clean up our fraud-ridden election process this year, one way or another. Hopes are nearly dead for Congress passing a comprehensive election reform law, the SAVE Act, so he has looked to other measures. One is a procedure for the US Postal Service to match and track mail-in ballots to real persons with actual addresses listed on state voter rolls. The matter is still working through courts. The DOJ's Civil Rights Division has pledged to send about 1000 election monitors to polling places around the country as "observers," which could obviate arrant shenanigans like the broken toilet ploy in Fulton County, GA, 2020.

Mr. Trump could go further, as discussed here recently, and declare a National Security Executive Order with more exacting rules such as requiring proof of citizenship and photo ID at the polls, and reporting election results no later than the day following the election. The Democratic Party is fighting desperately to prevent any changes to current procedure with so much room for fraud.

The effort is led by chief lawfare ninja Norm Eisen, who is associated with several activist NGOs: the States United Democracy Center (founder); State Democracy Defenders PAC; Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW); the Brookings Institution; plus his own pro bono litigation practice, Norma Eisen PLLC.

Eisen enjoys many millions of dollars in backing that have enabled him to file hundreds of court cases against Trump administration actions, including the recent suits against the US Postal Service mail-in ballot plan. His own NGOs are backed by hundreds of other NGOs both here and globally, many of which have been involved in color revolutions in foreign countries. Eisen himself has played a part in many episodes of the long-running color revolution here in the USA, including RussiaGate, the 2020 fake impeachment, and the Jan-6 House Committee. All that could be described in totality as a seditious coup attempt - and it's all currently under investigation by several federal grand juries.

Likewise, lawfare ninja Marc Elias, who operates his election activities through Democracy Docket (founder); the Free election Fund; the Democracy Forward Foundation (board chair); We the Action; plus his own firm, the Elias Law Group. He was formerly a lawyer with the DC law firm Perkins Coie, through which he served as general counsel to the Hillary Clinton campaign in 2016. He shepherded the Steele Dossier into the Intel apparatus and around the news media.

All that is a prelude to a disturbing roll-out of events that anyone paying attention can see coming this fall.

The Democratic Party has massive resources not just to stall and obstruct pre-election reform, but to mount a vicious resistance after the fact if it doesn't produce their desired result. They could go as far as to repudiate the election, refuse to accept its results. If the president does issue that NatSec EO prior to the election, blue state officials could refuse to hold elections under new rules. Thirty states have already refused to comply with DOJ demands to submit their official voter rolls for evaluation. Some of the aforementioned activist NGOs have promised post-election street actions (demonstrations that could easily turn into riots).

In the face of that, you can foresee the necessity of the president having to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1878 (10 U.S.C. §§ 251-255). The act provides an exception to the Posse Commitatus Act, also 1878, which forbids the use of the US military to act as police inside the USA. Under the Insurrection Act, the president can federalize states' national guard units to enforce federal law or protect constitutional rights when ordinary civilian means are not enough.

The Act has been used before in our history about thirty times by fifteen presidents, including the Great Railway Strike of 1877 (Pres. Hayes); the Pullman Strike of 1894 (Pres. Cleveland); the Little Rock School Desegregation resistance of 1957 (Pres. Eisenhower sent in the 82nd Airborne). Pres. Lyndon Johnson invoked it three times: the Selma to Montgomery March of 1965; the Detroit riots of 1967; and the riots that followed the Assassination of Martin Luther King, 1968. Pres. George H. W. Bush used it in 1994 to quell the Rodney King Riots in Los Angeles.

If Mr. Trump invokes the Insurrection Act around any violence or organized election rebellion this year, he will invite the Democrats to label him an autocrat, a tyrant, a wannabe king, as they have been taunting him and goading him with for years. Let's suppose that will be enough to inflame the party's activists. I think you can see how this lays the groundwork for something that looks like a new civil war. The repudiation of election results by blue states would be enough.

Know this: it won't work. It will result in charges of sedition and many Democratic officials will be arrested and charged, probably some governors. It will be a really ugly episode in our history, but we'll get through it. Of course, it will be the end of the Democratic Party.

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/04/2026 - 16:20

IRS, Treasury Propose Cutting Tax-Exempt Status For Schools With Diversity Policies

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

The Trump administration is proposing a new rule that would strip private colleges and schools of their tax-exempt status if those institutions engaged in racial discrimination through policies such as diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).

The U.S. Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service said on Thursday that a proposed rule would bar a private school from obtaining tax-exempt status under section 501(c)(3) of the U.S. tax code if the school "adopts, maintains, or enforces a policy or practice that discriminates on the basis of race, color, or national or ethnic origin."

Under the new regulation, which would take effect in May 2027, a broad range of programs administered by schools would be affected. They include admissions, policies, loans, scholarships, and athletics, said the Treasury Department in a news release.

The proposal may impact as many as 18,000 private educational institutions across the United States, the IRS and Treasury estimated.

"This administration is standing up for America's students by ensuring racial discrimination has no place in American education," said Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent in a statement.

"Schools rebranding race-based preferences as equitable, inclusive, or diversity-enhancing does not change their discriminatory nature."

The proposal, he added, would "establish a clear standard" for private schools to follow, warning that any institution that continues to "use discriminatory practices will no longer receive the benefits of federal tax-exempt status."

The move by the Treasury is another attempt to put pressure on schools and colleges to drop DEI policies that had become common before President Donald Trump returned to the White House. Trump officials have said the policies discriminate against white and Asian American students.

On his first day in office in his second term last year, Trump signed an order ending a number of DEI-related policies implemented under the Biden administration.

Last year, the Trump administration threatened to revoke Harvard University's tax-exempt status during a battle with the nation's oldest college. In a response, Harvard officials said there was no legal basis for doing so and argued it would force cuts to financial aid and crucial medical research.

To maintain nonprofit status, which allows donations to be tax-deductible, organizations must follow IRS rules on lobbying, political campaign activity, and annual reporting requirements, as well as other obligations.

The IRS says on its website that 501(c)(3) organizations also cannot be operated or organized for the benefit of private interests and that their net earnings cannot "inure to the benefit of any private shareholder or individual."

IRS Chief Executive Officer Frank J. Bisignano said private schools that promote discriminatory practices will no longer be exempt from taxes.

"Today's proposed regulations put institutions on notice and schools that continue to engage in racial discrimination should expect to lose that status," he said in a statement on Thursday.

Religious private schools will still be able to maintain a "religious mission, curriculum, or program of religious observance" under the latest proposal, the Treasury Department said.

It added that those schools can continue to select students based on religious affiliation or membership, provided they follow guidelines consistent with federal law.

Tyler Durden Fri, 09/04/2026 - 15:40