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Johnson Says $5,000 Trump Payments Require Congress To Act

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said on Sunday that President Trump's plan to send $5,000 dividend checks to American adults if Republicans keep both the House and Senate would require an act of Congress. 

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) speaks during the second day of the 2026 Republican Midterm Convention in Dallas on Sept. 10, 2026. Madalina Kilroy/The Epoch Times

"I would assume, yes, he'd need Congress to act, and that’s a creative idea," Johnson told CNN in a "State of the Union" interview.

Tapper: Where would the money come from for Trump's $5,000 checks?

Speaker Johnson: "It's a new, creative idea…We applaud the president for thinking outside the box." pic.twitter.com/bCXZ3w8izp

— Bulwark Clips (@BulwarkClips) September 13, 2026

"We have to figure all that out. But I think what he was articulating … is that he’s saying that, if you want more money in your pocket, you have to keep Republicans in charge," Johnson continued. 

Then in a separate interview with NBC's "Meet the Press," Johnson said when asked whether payments would be sent, that he would "commit that Congress will work through it and find consensus on that, like they have to do everything else," adding that "it takes some time." 

"I never go out and give big commitments on the front end because I’ve got to work through it, and that’s what we do every single day," he added. 

Johnson also told CNN that “pro-growth policies” backed by the Trump administration have led to tax cuts.

“They also have in additional take-home pay an average of $8,000 per filer. By the way, 97 percent of tax filers got a tax cut this year. We cut taxes on tips and overtime, Social Security, all those things,” he said.

Several Republicans publicly embraced the idea of sending the checks, including Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio), who wrote on X last week that he would prepare legislation for the payments. Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.) also said that “it was the first I heard of it last night” but called it good economic policy, according to the Epoch Times. 

During a speech Wednesday night at the GOP's midterm convention in Dallas, Texas, Trump proposed sending every adult American citizen a $5,000 "Trump dividend" if Republicans retain control of both chambers of Congress in November.

"If the Republicans win the House of Representatives and the United States Senate, both of them," Trump said, "I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for $5,000."

NEW: President Trump makes a major promise at the Republican midterm convention in Dallas: $5,000 for every adult U.S. citizen if Republicans win both the House and Senate in the midterms.

“I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for… pic.twitter.com/XqiphY7y8a

— Fox News (@FoxNews) September 10, 2026

Trump told the audience at the American Airlines Center: "Your vote will decide whether our country stumbles at the starting gate of our next 250 years or surges forward and never looks back."

A $5,000 payout to 270 million adults would cost the US government approximately $1.35 trillion. The proposal comes as US public debt surpassed $40 trillion for the first time in recent weeks.

Tyler Durden Sun, 09/13/2026 - 18:00

The Extremism - And Irrelevancy - Of The 'Democratic Socialists'

Authored by Rob Natelson via The Epoch Times,

This column may provide you with all you need to know about the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). This is the fringe group that the media and a relatively small handful of voters have turned into a supposedly significant force.

The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) have been much in the news lately. Their candidates have won some Democratic Party primaries, and a few have even been elected to local offices.

This article makes two points.

• The first is that the DSA is an extremist organization. It is not "democratic socialist" in the fashion of the British Labour Party or the German Social Democrats. When pundits label the DSA as communist, they are not far off the mark.

• The second point is that the legacy media have covered this tiny group to a grossly disproportionate extent, while leaving far more significant conservative and libertarian organizations in the shadows. As explained below, this is not the first time the media have acted this way.

The DSA's Extremism

According to the DSA website, it rejects authoritarian forms of socialism. Yet the same website celebrates the career of Fidel Castro, the brutal communist dictator who converted Cuba from a prosperous and rather mild dictatorship into a poverty-stricken concentration camp. If you know nothing more about DSA other than its celebration of Castro's career, that may be sufficient.

Consistent with the celebration of Castro is that the DSA's website features sound bites from the writings of Karl Marx and from past communist propaganda campaigns. Examples include "World to win" (from Marx's and Friedrich Engels's Communist Manifesto), "international struggle," "socialist solidarity," "working class," and so forth.

Moreover, it is apparent from the DSA website that the organization has no commitment to truth. It falsely accuses Israel of genocide, but nowhere acknowledges the genuine attempts at genocide by anti-Israel groups like Hamas. The website does, however, absurdly charge Secretary of State Marco Rubio with "genocide" because he supports an embargo on Cuba.

Clearly, DSA sees words and concepts as mere political tools.

Similar deception surrounds DSA's promotion of "democracy." Israel has an overwhelmingly Jewish majority, nearly all of whom, along with local Druze, Christians, and some Arabs, support the State of Israel. "Palestinians" - a word that refers to those Arabs living in the area - represent only about 21 percent of the Israeli population.

Yet DSA calls for the complete "dismantling" of Israel and its replacement with a "Palestinian" state. This would privilege the will of some fraction of the 21 percent over the desires of everyone else. Is that democracy?

Of course, the abolition of Israel would be more than anti-democratic. It also would be unjust: Jews have only their ancestral homeland, while Arabs have conquered and colonized territories from Iraq to Morocco and beyond.

DSA's domestic political positions include granting the vote to incarcerated criminals. They also include abolishing the Senate and rendering the executive subordinate to the House of Representatives.

Even more alarming, DSA would subordinate the formerly independent judiciary to the legislative power. In other words, it would eradicate both the rule of law and the Constitution of the United States.

This raises the question of how a DSA candidate, even if he wins a general election, can qualify for political office. Article VI, Clause 3 of the Constitution specifies that all federal and state legislators and officers "shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution." For a DSA member to take such an oath would be perjury.

DSA not only opposes the Constitution. It seems to oppose the United States itself. It would defund the military and abolish all border controls.

DSA's economic positions envision a society in which there would be little, if any, role for free enterprise. A key goal is "the end of capitalism," a phrase that suggests that no private enterprise would be permitted at all.

In DSA's world, "Food, education, energy, medicine, and transportation aren't for-profit businesses; they are common goods and utilities." So DSA would apparently collectivize farms, socialize medicine, and expropriate businesses - all schemes that have proven disastrous wherever tried.

DSA says that food, education, energy, and so forth are "human rights." Unfortunately, when a government labels a product a "human right," it must enslave disfavored people to provide the product to favored people.

In the same category of authoritarianism is DSA's support for the "Green New Deal." President Donald Trump once said that the Green New Deal program reads like a bad high school term paper. I agree. But for reasons I have outlined elsewhere, it also reads a lot like fascism.

The DSA's Insignificance

When Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) won her first Democratic Party primary in 2018, she garnered a total of less than 17,000 votes. In Denver this year, Melat Kiros did somewhat better, winning her congressional primary with a total of 58,000 votes. On the basis of such anemic results, The New York Times, Time Magazine, National Public Radio, Politico, and other legacy outlets made both of them national celebrities.

As an electoral matter, this kind of media attention makes no sense. AOC's tally amounted to slightly more than one-10,000th of the 154 million votes cast in the 2026 election. In 2000, I won three times as many votes as AOC - and nearly as many as Kiros - when losing a gubernatorial primary in a low-population state.

Another way to put the DSA into perspective is to examine membership numbers. The group claims 120,000 members. The Libertarian Party, by contrast, has 700,000 registered voters, and that's counting only the 31 states that permit party registration. If all states permitted party registration, the Libertarian count certainly would be much higher. And yet the Libertarian Party receives almost no attention from the legacy media.

There are 45 million to 48 million registered Democrats in the United States and nearly 40 million registered Republicans. Add those to the 700,000 registered Libertarians, and you find that DSA's membership nationally amounts to somewhat over one-tenth of 1 percent of those registered voters in the three largest parties who reside in only 31 states.

In other words, in electoral terms, DSA is insignificant. No wonder the liberal Brookings Institute recently concluded that "The DSA's success this summer appears overstated, given its modest win rate and deep-blue base."

The Media Have Done This Before

The media's perverse interest in the insignificant has arisen before. Here's one example:

During the Vietnam War, the largest student political organization in the United States was the Young Americans for Freedom (YAF). It had perhaps 80,000 members at a time when the U.S. population was only 60 percent of what it is today. Thus, on a per capita basis, YAF's membership, although limited to young people, exceeded that of DSA, which is open to all ages.

YAF was conservative and supported the U.S. commitment to Vietnam.

The largest youth organization on the left, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), espoused socialism and opposed our commitment in Vietnam.

SDS was only half the size of YAF, but the media lionized it while largely ignoring YAF. This is shown by a Newspapers.com search for the years 1965-1975, roughly the period of the Vietnam War. In American newspapers, the abbreviation "YAF" appeared 24,000 times. By contrast, the abbreviation "SDS" appeared 2.1 million times - an astounding imbalance of 875-to-1 in favor of the smaller, left-wing group.

This sort of bias does not arise by accident. The reason appears to be that mainstreaming a fringe group on the far left, while ignoring larger organizations on the right, helps shift the national discussion to the left. In other words, the media were moving the Overton Window - the universe of acceptable options - to portside.

A Warning

The mainstreaming of DSA serves the agenda of the legacy media that is feeding the viper for their own purposes.

But history shows that feeding the viper is not only misleading but also irresponsible. One reason Adoph Hitler rose to power was that certain establishment figures treated him and his Nazi Party as within the respectable range of options, rather than doing what they should have done: isolate them both.

It is time for the media to stop perseverating on DSA and instead focus on movements more responsible, more significant, and more worthy of public attention.

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 Sun, 09/13/2026 - 17:30

California Enacts New Child Safety Laws On Social Media And AI Chatbots

Authored by Kimberly Hayek via The Epoch Times,

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday signed bills that restrict how social media companies may design products for children and that tighten rules for AI companion chatbots.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks to reporters in Stockton, Calif., on Oct. 22, 2025. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

He announced the package on X.

"I just signed the strongest kid safety laws for AI chatbots and social media in America," Newsom wrote. "California is banning addictive social media features for kids, cracking down on dangerous AI chatbots, and strengthening privacy protections for ALL kids. PROTECT OUR KIDS!"

The signing took place in Marin County, where Newsom was joined by his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, and the legislators who carried the measures.

The social media bills focus on product design.

AB 1709, by Assemblyman Josh Lowenthal, a Democrat representing Long Beach, bars platforms from offering users under 16 autoplay and algorithmic feeds drawn from a user's history and profile.

AB 2, also Lowenthal's, adds civil penalties when children are injured.

Fighting Online Addiction

In September 2024, Newsom signed SB 976, the Protecting Our Kids from Social Media Addiction Act. That statute would have required parental consent before addictive feeds reached minors and would have limited alerts during school hours and overnight. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Jan. 28, 2025, blocked SB 976 after NetChoice sued, arguing the law impinged upon protected speech.

Thursday's package focuses on strict age verification and penalties. Chatbots are another focus.

SB 1119 is titled Adam's Law, named after Adam Raine, 16, of California, whose parents, Matthew and Maria Raine, sued OpenAI in San Francisco Superior Court on Aug. 26, 2025. Their complaint argued ChatGPT became their son's "closest confidant," mentioned suicide more than 1,200 times, and urged him toward what it called a "beautiful suicide."

Adam's Law, the governor's office said, requires companion-chatbot firms to keep crisis protocols for suicidal ideation, provide parental controls, notify a parent if a child disables safety settings, submit to independent child-safety audits, and file annual risk assessments.

The bills also include SB 867, which restricts companion-chatbot toys, while other bills limit targeted ads aimed at children and set rules for K-12 pupil data inside AI systems.

AB 1946 adds a reporting route for child sexual abuse material. SB 1276, by state Sen. Susan Rubio, a Democrat from Baldwin Park, extends child sexual-exploitation law to digitally altered or AI-generated material depicting a person under 18 in sexual conduct.

"Our children's safety deserves to be at the center of every conversation about technology," Newsom said. "As innovation moves faster, our protections must keep pace. Today's legislation makes clear that California will not stand by while unregulated technology puts our children at risk. Innovation comes with responsibility and protecting our children comes first."

Siebel Newsom said technology should support children's well-being, not exploit their vulnerabilities.

"With this critical legislation, California is sending a strong message that when it comes to our kids, safety must not be an afterthought - but baked into design and a necessary requisite for all innovation," she said.

State Sen. Steve Padilla, a Democrat and co-author of the chatbot bill, said California must set an example for the rest of the country.

"Adam's Law will save the lives of children here in California and across the country as it becomes a national model," Padilla said.

Assemblyman Josh Hoover authored AB 2071, which directs public schools to plan digital-wellness instruction.

"Protecting kids online is not a partisan issue. As a parent and former school board member, I have seen first-hand the impacts that screens and social media have had on our kids," he said.

AI Safeguards

Earlier, on Oct. 12, 2025, Newsom signed measures requiring Apple and Google operating systems to send age-range signals, add warning labels after three hours a day for users under 17, and ban using an AI tool as a shield when a user's prompt produces harmful content.

This followed after Megan Garcia in 2024 filed a lawsuit alleging a Character.AI chatbot contributed to the suicide of her 14-year-old son, Sewell Setzer III.

Character.AI later said it would block open-ended chat for users under 18. California dockets have also seen lawsuits arguing that infinite scroll, autoplay, and recommendation engines were built to keep adolescents on the apps.

Tyler Durden Sun, 09/13/2026 - 16:40

Resource Nationalism Hits Tungsten: US Locks Down Scrap, UK Funds Mine, Zimbabwe Bans Exports, Vietnam Weighs Curbs

Governments are tightening control over tungsten supplies, creating an opening for Almonty Industries as Western buyers seek alternatives to China's quasi-monopolistic market position on not just tungsten but rare earths. Tungsten and other critical materials underpin defense production, semiconductor manufacturing, AI data center buildouts, power grid upgrades and industrial tooling, basically some of the building blocks of the modern economy.

First, US banning tungsten scraps export

Second,UK government investing in Tungsten West

Third, Zimbabwe banning Tungsten concentrates export

Forth, Vietnam does the same

Who's next?! https://t.co/zmPs1K5rJM

— Teo (@Teo_Sinamin) September 11, 2026

The latest developments point to growing competition for shrinking available supply. The US has restricted tungsten scrap exports, the UK has backed Tungsten West with up to £71 million, and Zimbabwe has suspended exports of tungsten and antimony in all forms, including ores and concentrates. Vietnam is also considering restrictions on ore and concentrate shipments to support domestic processing. This all suggests resource nationalism will make deliverable tungsten ex-China even harder to source. 

With China accounting for roughly 80% of global tungsten production and having throttled exports of this critical metal for over one year, resource nationalism will only broaden from here. 

The supply crunch strengthens the investment case for producers, not necessarily speculative junior miners, because deliverable tungsten is urgently needed today ahead of a massive rearmament supercycle across the US and Europe. It also positions Almonty as the largest and only North America-based producer of conflict-free tungsten for the West.

Almonty began processing ore at its Sangdong mine in South Korea in June, marking its transition to scalable tungsten ore production, with throughput potentially increasing to 1.2 million tons of tungsten ore in 2027.

In July, Almonty expanded its agreement with Pennsylvania-based Global Tungsten & Powders, extending the term to 21 years, increasing total contracted volumes by 40% and improving pricing by approximately 6.3%. This establishes a direct route into US industrial and defense supply chains.

Almonty's most recent presentation describes itself as becoming the leading Western tungsten producer following Sangdong's Phase II expansion and an extension at Portugal's operating Panasqueira mine.

Almonty is pursuing that higher-value processing opportunity through a planned South Korean tungsten oxide plant with an initial annual capacity of 4,000 tons, then expanding to 6,000 tons.

This new source of tungsten is urgently needed because, last week at the Jefferies Industrials Conference, MSC Industrial executive Martina McIsaac warned of a tungsten supply shock rippling through the company's supply chain and continuing to drive up industrial tooling costs.

McIsaac warned that the "ripples through the supply chain aren't over yet" and that the tungsten supply crunch will remain a major headache.

Almonty's opportunity is to establish an early lead in supplying the US and its allies with conflict-free tungsten, reinforcing our broader decoupling theme. 

China's dominance of critical-material supply chains gives Beijing leverage over Washington, and any further tightening of export controls on critical materials would only reinforce the decoupling theme. 

Tyler Durden Sun, 09/13/2026 - 16:15

New Report Exposes Climate Litigants' Campaign To Influence The Judiciary

Authored by Michael Toth via RealClearEnergy,

Thousands of judges across the nation have sat through climate-science training and received literature from trusted federal bodies and scientific institutes. Those judges had every right to expect that the information they received was neutral, objective, settled science.

They were mistaken.

My latest research paper presents the first full taxonomy of a coordinated, multi-year campaign designed to shape how the American judiciary understands climate litigation. It documents how the Environmental Law Institute (ELI) built an extensive educational apparatus to train judges on climate issues - in the words of one session attendee - "from what would effectively be the plaintiff's side."

ELI routinely portrays itself as a neutral arbiter committed to "insightful and impartial analysis." In 2018, it launched the Climate Judiciary Project (CJP) to provide judges with "authoritative, objective, and trusted education on climate science." Yet, as my report details, CJP shares multiple donors and advisors with Sher Edling LLP, the San Francisco-based law firm behind more than two dozen climate lawsuits against energy companies.

The training methodology CJP deployed is striking. The goal was not merely to educate judges about complex areas of law and science, but to encourage them to develop and execute their own climate "action plans." Slide presentations and emails obtained between ELI staff and attendees show judges being coached on how to spread that influence to colleagues on the bench.

Attendance forms show judges from California, Delaware, Illinois, Hawaii, Maryland, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, and even Puerto Rico attended CJP trainings - all jurisdictions with active climate suits.

CJP's reach extended to established judicial and scientific gatekeepers. A 2020 CJP curriculum draft identified the Federal Judicial Center's (FJC) Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence and the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) Extreme Weather Attribution Report as publications judges could rely upon. Both would go on to bear the project's fingerprints.

Released in 2025, the Fourth Edition of the Reference Manual included a climate change chapter for the first time. That section was later revealed to have lifted material heavily from the prior writings of a lawyer representing climate plaintiffs, Sher Edling's Michael Burger.

The chapters' listed authors, moreover, were both CJP presenters and the manual shared some of the same funders as the foundations bankrolling the public-nuisance suits targeting the energy sector. Following the public outcry over these conflicts of interest, the FJC and NAS took the unprecedented step of removing the climate chapter entirely.

That controversy, however, did not stop NAS, which initially pushed back against criticism of the manual, from releasing the Extreme Weather Attribution Report.

The committee behind the report was similarly one-sided in favor of climate plaintiffs, which may explain why the 253-page document lays out theories for attributing the effects of climate change to specific energy producers without seriously dealing with the inconvenient fact that greenhouse gas emissions are largely driven by global demand for energy.

When private interest groups slip past the adversarial process to tilt the scales on contested issues, the rule of law is compromised. The findings in my report demonstrate an urgent need for updated disclosure requirements surrounding judicial education programs. Trusted institutional gatekeepers like the Federal Judicial Center must institute rigorous vetting mechanisms to restore their credibility.

Ultimately, federal and state officials should investigate how ELI and CJP gained such unchecked access over the bench and establish strict guardrails to ensure this cannot happen again.

* * *

Tyler Durden Sun, 09/13/2026 - 15:50

Hormuz Deal Hits Snag: Monday's Gulf-Iran Shipping Talks "Postponed"

Summary:

• Monday's Hormuz Meeting With Iran and Gulf Nations "Postponed" 
• UAE Meets With Iran Leaders As Tehran Teases Oman Shipping Deal

A planned meeting for Monday morning between several Gulf nations and Iran has been postponed. The meeting was supposed to hammer out a possible deal on a temporary shipping route through the Strait of Hormuz.

"In the interests of consensus, the regional meeting set for tomorrow in Salalah has been postponed. We remain committed to fostering dialogue that supports stability and lasting cooperation in our region," Omani Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi wrote on X late Sunday.

In the interests of consensus the regional meeting set for tomorrow in Salalah has been postponed.

We remain committed to fostering dialogue that supports stability and lasting cooperation in our region 🇧🇭 🇮🇷 🇮🇶 🇰🇼 🇴🇲 🇶🇦 🇸🇦 🇦🇪

— Badr Albusaidi - بدر البوسعيدي (@badralbusaidi) September 13, 2026

However, the post was deleted soon afterwards, leaving oil traders on tenterhooks.

Even before the delay, the proposed Hormuz deal offered little relief: Iran said the arrangement would not fully reopen Hormuz and that it would retain control over which vessels could transit.

Earlier this weekend, Abu Dhabi's crown prince, Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed Al Nahyan, and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian discussed de-escalation plans at the BRICS summit in India.

Ahead of the futures open in New York, here's a snapshot of markets via the blockchain-based trading platform Hyperliquid:

UAE Meets With Iran Leaders As Tehran Teases Oman Shipping Deal

Encouraging diplomatic signals emerged from the Gulf area this weekend as Abu Dhabi's crown prince met Iran's president amid efforts to secure a deal allowing more vessel transits through the highly contested Strait of Hormuz. However, the hopeful signs of de-escalation were overshadowed by days of mounting threats to alternative export routes, with Iran-backed Houthis capturing a strategic island inside another maritime chokepoint in the southern Red Sea and drone attacks shutting Saudi Arabia's East-West pipeline.

Bloomberg cites the UAE's state-run WAM news agency, which reported Sunday that Sheik Khaled bin Mohamed Al Nahyan and President Masoud Pezeshkian discussed de-escalation plans on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in India. The meeting comes as Oman seeks broader de-escalation by bringing Iran and Gulf Cooperation Council members together to discuss shipping access to the Hormuz chokepoint.

Pezeshkian has called for "balanced and rational" stances throughout the six-month conflict, Anwar Gargash, senior diplomatic adviser to the president of the United Arab Emirates, stated on X.

A separate Bloomberg report earlier Sunday cited Iranian lawmaker and secretary of Parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Behnam Saeedi, who said on state television that Iran and Oman will soon announce an understanding on shipping transits through the Hormuz chokepoint.

Saeedi said the deal to reopen the strait with a temporary route "won't amount to the reopening of the Strait." A full reopening remains contingent on several conditions, including an end to the US naval blockade against Iran.

A full reopening of the strait, which would mean the US giving up its stranglehold on Iran through economic sanctions and the naval blockade, remains highly unlikely in the near term, as US planners continue at full tilt on a pressure campaign to topple the regime in Tehran. 

But a full reopening might not need to occur because Vitol CEO Russell Hardy stated last week that 10 million barrels a day are still transiting Hormuz, while Goldman commodities strategist Yulia Zhestkova Grigsby recently said that figure could be much higher, between 15 million and 16 million barrels a day.

This only suggests that Tehran has lost part of its leverage over Hormuz and likely explains why Tehran had to accelerate its Houthi rebels' efforts to gain more control over the Bab el-Mandeb Strait in the southern Red Sea and launch attacks on Saudi Arabia's East-West pipeline.

Simultaneous disruption of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and the Strait of Hormuz creates a two-sided squeeze for the West and Gulf producer allies: less energy can leave the Gulf, while tankers that can move face longer, more expensive journeys. It also threatens Saudi Arabia's Red Sea terminal.

Polymarket:

The US pursuit of toppling Tehran through economic warfare may only ramp up after the Trump-Xi summit later this month, and Kharg Island may become a target after the midterm elections. 

* * *

 

Tyler Durden Sun, 09/13/2026 - 15:50

The Fauci Diary Entry That Explains Why MAHA Must Exist

Authored by Peter Navarro via The Epoch Times,

I fought Anthony Fauci across a White House table over the China travel ban, lockdowns, masks, hydroxychloroquine, vaccines, and boosters.

Yet one of the most damning pieces of evidence I have ever seen against the man did not surface until six years later, when Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) released Fauci's private pandemic diary.

It is an entry dated Aug. 15, 2021. The Biden White House was preparing to roll out a broad COVID booster campaign. Behind closed doors, Fauci knew there was a problem.

The evidence was thin.

The case for boosting everybody was weak.

And the administration needed a message.

Here is what Fauci wrote:

"If we are too precise we will be called out because we cannot back it with data."

Read that again.

This was not Anthony Fauci struggling heroically with scientific uncertainty. This was the president's chief medical adviser admitting, in private, that the government could not support its public booster message with the data.

Worse, the decision was already moving ahead.

Fauci described himself and the White House medical team as trying to "fashion [a] coherent message to justify the announcement" that boosters would be offered broadly.

The policy came first. The justification came afterward.

And Fauci knew exactly where the scientific weakness lay.

In the same diary entry, he identified the real question: Did everybody need another shot, or only the elderly and those with underlying conditions?

That was not some question raised later by "anti-vaxxers." Fauci himself was asking it privately before the universal campaign rolled forward.

Yet instead of insisting that the government stop, gather the evidence, and tell Americans precisely what was known and unknown, Fauci helped fashion the message.

His own words are devastating: precision was dangerous because precision could expose that the government "cannot back it with data."

Five weeks later, the government's own scientific advisers effectively vindicated the concern Fauci had privately recorded - but publicly ignored.

On Sept. 17, 2021, the FDA's outside advisory committee voted 16-2 against Pfizer's request to give a booster to everyone 16 and older.

Then, when the proposal was narrowed to older and high-risk Americans, the same committee overwhelmingly supported it.

Same experts. Same meeting. Same evidence.

No to everybody.

Yes to those most at risk.

That was precisely the distinction Fauci had privately identified.

So what did Fauci do when independent experts arrived publicly at essentially the same conclusion he had privately entertained?

He did not celebrate science working as intended.

His diary records that he was "disappointed."

When FDA officials moved toward the narrower authorization, Fauci called it "a major mistake."

That tells you what this story is really about.

It is not simply that Anthony Fauci got a medical question wrong. Scientists get things wrong.

It is that the answer Fauci's Medical Industrial Complex wanted had begun to outrank the evidence.

A recommendation says: Here is what we know. Here is what we do not know. Here are the risks and benefits. You and your physician decide.

A mandate says: Take the product or pay a price - perhaps your job, your military career, your education, or your ability to participate in ordinary life.

The second requires stronger evidence than the first.

During COVID, Washington repeatedly moved in the opposite - and authoritarian - direction.

The more coercive the policy became, the simpler the message became.

Age disappeared.

Comorbidities disappeared.

Natural immunity was pushed aside.

Known concerns such as myocarditis in younger men became inconvenient complications to a universal slogan. Miscarriage risk in the first trimester - mum, not Mom, was the word.

Everybody vaccinate.

Everybody boost.

That is not informed consent.

That is compliance.

My forthcoming book, "Why Fauci MUST Rot in Prison: His Diary. My Diary. Your Verdict," puts Fauci's private diary beside the public record and beside my own contemporaneous record from inside the first Trump White House.

Again and again, Private Tony knew things Public Tony did not tell you.

Private Tony had doubts.

Public Tony had certainty.

Private Tony saw complications.

Public Tony sold slogans.

And when the evidence threatened the slogan, the problem became how to "fashion" the message.

That is why this story matters to the MAHA movement far beyond Anthony Fauci.

MAHA must break the machinery that allowed one government official, surrounded by an obedient medical establishment, Big Pharma, compliant media, and censorious technology companies, to convert unsettled science into government dogma.

Science requires dissent.

Medicine requires individual judgment.

Informed consent requires the whole truth.

And no government official should ever again be permitted to hide uncertainty from the people while privately worrying that telling them the precise truth would expose that he could not "back it with data."

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

Tyler Durden Sun, 09/13/2026 - 15:00

Anthropic's AI Warning To Weigh On Stocks As Contracts Traded On Hyperliquid Slide

Coordinated calls by the top AI execs, including Dario Amodei, Sam Altman and even Elon Musk, to slow development of the technology are likely to weigh on chipmaker and supply-chain stocks in the near term, Bloomberg reports, but will probably have limited long-term impact as spending on computing infrastructure remains strong, market watchers say, at least until the bond market cracks and credits refuse to fund the ROIC-free black hole that is the AI capex tsunami.

Semiconductor makers and other artificial intelligence-linked stocks may bear the brunt of any initial selloff on Monday, while investors assess whether a more cautious approach to developing advanced models will crimp earnings. Real-time price trackers on Hyperliquid indicate that both OpenAi and Anthropic are already facing notable losses following the Dario memo.  SK Hynix contracts also slumped early Sunday on Hyperliquid. By 2 p.m. in Singapore, the contracts were trading down roughly 2.5% for the day.

Source: 0xcarlisle

Still, with demand for chips, energy and computing power continuing to outstrip supply, weakness will likely prove short-lived.

Calls for restraint have grown in the industry, with Anthropic Chief Executive Officer Dario Amodei saying Saturday that the company would introduce additional safeguards, including independent third-party evaluations, and urged the broader industry to slow the pace of development of their most advanced models. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman backed the proposal, while xAI’s Elon Musk said “Dario is right.”
At the same time, investors including Gary Tan, a portfolio manager at Allspring Global Investments in Singapore, are doubtful the latest developments will have long-lasting effects on the industry.

“It may cause some short-term pressure, but it’s unlikely to derail the longer-term AI trade,” Tan said. “AI development is still at a relatively early stage, and I’m not sure the rest of the ecosystem is willing to accept the current pecking order and slow down while the technology continues to evolve so rapidly.”

Concerns over the vast sums being poured into AI have weighed on technology stocks as investors question whether earnings can justify soaring infrastructure costs. The scrutiny has left high-valuation shares linked to the technology particularly vulnerable, with signs of increased spending or weaker returns triggering selloffs. Plunging token costs have emerged as an especially sore point, as frontier models are unlikely to ever be able to grow into their massive revenue forecasts unless Chinese open-source models are hindered, which many say is the ulterior motive behind the coordinated push by AI execs. And should the likes of Anthropic and OpenAi be unable to fund the trillions in committed capital, the entire AI bubble can burst, led by a collapse in bond prices as creditors end up with major haircuts. 

As part of the aggressive repricing in AI economics, the Nasdaq has dropped more than 4% from the record notched in June, while a gauge of chip shares in the US has slumped 14% and Asian tech stocks have slid almost 8%. The S&P 500 and MSCI’s gauge of global shares have both edged up about 0.6% in the period.

Some investors argue that a slower pace of AI development could ultimately be positive for the industry by giving companies more time to extract returns from infrastructure already being built.

“The three CEOs agreeing to pace things does not really change the money being spent on chips, power and infrastructure. In fact, it extends the development timeline,” said Billy Leung, an investment strategist at Global X Management in Sydney. “If commercialization and adoption keep growing while the pace of new capability eases off a bit, that actually helps the shift from spending money to build things towards making money from what’s already built — e.g., monetization.”

Sentiment toward Asian tech firms was already being challenged as traders firmed bets of a Fed rate hike this week and an increase in global borrowing costs this month, threatening to crimp profits. Tech stock valuations may also come under more scrutiny because they assume not only strong demand but a relentless pace of model development, Charu Chanana, chief investment strategist at Saxo Markets in Singapore, said.

Still, the souring mood may prove to be short-lived with a push for safeguards leading to more investment in cybersecurity and AI monitoring tools, she said. Memory, networking, cooling and power equipment companies are likely to be protected by projects already in development, Chanana said.

“Demand for computing power and AI adoption does not disappear because additional safeguards are introduced,” she said. “For investors, responsible development may make the AI opportunity more durable, even if the pace of progress becomes slightly more measured.”

What she didn't say is that the projects in development will only be developed as long as the creditors behind trillions in upcoming debt don't stage a revolt which is highly likely if the collapse in token prices isn't halted.

Tyler Durden Sun, 09/13/2026 - 14:35

Warsh Faces An "Incredibly Difficult Dilemma" This Week

By Peter Tchir of Academy Securities

Never Forgotten! And Some Work Stuff…

The 25th anniversary of 9/11 hit hard. What a scary day! What a scary time. I only attended a couple of funerals, but will never forget the last moments of some people who I had done business and hung out with for years. The funerals were cathartic. The whole experience even 25 years later seems surreal, at best. I will never forget walking through Central Park to avoid Grand Central (as a potential target). Then finally, standing around a TV with “bunny ears” outside a bodega on 1st avenue. Clutching a beer and trying to make sense of the news, as there was no way to reach anyone. Seeing firetruck after firetruck scream down the FDR on the way to ground zero. At first some of the names of the firetrucks made sense. Places in and around NYC. Then you saw them coming in from places like Patchogue (I could be wrong, but that one is somehow emblazoned in my mind). Places in Long Island that had no business being in NYC. I do not know to this day how many of those brave first responders, racing down the FDR, lived to breathe another day. Horrific. Walking in midtown, late in the day, once the “worst” seemed behind us, only to feel the ground shake as #7 came down. We lasted in the city, until the third time the area around us was put on strict alert due to legitimate threats on the Empire State Building. Being one of the first “civilians” being allowed back into the area, not because of anything heroic, but because we were working on a big deal with a re-insurance company in the ground zero area, that “had to get done.” Work did have to continue, but NEVER FORGET!

I am fortunate to work at Academy Securities, where those who enlisted post 9/11 help shape the goals of the firm in terms of creating opportunities for veterans. I am not a veteran, but it has been a pleasure to be involved with the growth of Academy in the almost 10 years that I’ve been here.

Here is a small selection of the challenge coins I’ve received in my time at Academy. If I’d thought of doing this in advance, rather than spur of the moment, the collection (and photo) would have been better. But the twin towers on the back of Academy Securities’ challenge coin never fail to inspire me, and even more so on this 25th anniversary.

And Some Work Stuff…

We will keep the work stuff relatively short today. Partly because we’ve covered a lot of this already, and partly because we have time to send the latest updates just ahead of the Fed.

Warsh Has A Difficult Job…

While it isn’t Warsh’s decision alone, he faces an incredibly difficult dilemma this week as he tries to steer the Fed into a hike or to a hold.

• The market is 90% pricing in a hike, so it is difficult to push for a hold.
• A hike will likely help the longer end of the yield curve. Which is good.
• With $6 trillion of T-bills maturing in 2026, any hike will immediately increase the amount the country is spending on interest. $15 billion annually. We really don’t benefit much from better longer-term yields. The Federal Reserve balance sheet sits at $6.7 trillion, most funded overnight. Another $15 billion of cost to the country. With interest expense already an issue relative to defense or discretionary spending, a rate hike does not help on that front.
• I find it difficult to imagine President Trump liking the idea, even if it helps the longer end of the yield curve, or that stocks have priced it in.
• While CPI disappointed, it is years of being above trend that make a relatively benign number seem malignant. I continue to wish we could move to alternative data sources sooner than later. The conversation around inflation should be much broader based. While I agree we missed inflation (especially in the aftermath of COVID, I’m not sure fighting old battles is the best way to manage the world’s largest economy).
• I don’t see how hiking rates helps the price of oil, or gasoline, or diesel, when the problem isn’t excess demand, it is supply disruption and a global system of refining that isn’t operating at optimal levels. If everyone was running around willy nilly, “splurging” on gasoline, electricity, and diesel, it might help, but the cost is already impeding demand. How does raising rates help? Maybe it hurts as it makes some projects to generate more oil, gas, and electricity less easy to justify economically?
• While we try to figure out whether AI will kill us all in 10 years or not, there is little to slow the “compute” spending. Well, there is an increasingly vocal, largely local, movement against data centers, but they will get built. The companies (who maybe should have been reading the T-Report months and months ago when we first discussed The AI Revolution) are finally starting to do some better outreach. I completely agree with Bessent when he gave them a poor grade on steps taken to persuade communities why they should want, and even embrace, data centers in their area. But there is a 0.00001% chance that 50 bps of hikes slows the compute spend. The compute spend is built on “addressable market shares” that dwarf even current valuations in the compute space. The only way the compute spend slows down is if the perception of the addressable market decreases. That could happen: too much AI slop, Cheap Chinese Compute, etc., but it won’t slow due to rate hikes. Until something changes in the value perception, we are going to see higher memory prices, etc., permeate consumer electronics. So why hike to slow this if it won’t slow it? Btw, here is the AI graphic we use for the AI Revolution and continue to advocate that the industry should spend more time on community outreach; we need AI for many reasons, including national security, but it needs to be “sold” (or better explained to the people than it currently has been).

Warsh has a tough job. I would fight tooth and nail to stay on hold! Not because it would make the President happy (it would). Not because it would help the long end of the yield curve (it won’t), but because hiking won’t help fight the current drivers of inflation, and inflation isn’t high enough to have what I think is a “pre-emptive/fighting past wrongs” hike.

Bessent Is Making His Job More Difficult Than It Is…

Ignoring the fact that periodically Bessent appears to be the spokesperson for the DoW, for Trade, and for the State Department, he is making his own job more difficult. Calling out “Bloomberg Bros” during an interview is curious at best, mildly amusing in the middle, and somewhat preposterous at worst. We addressed this in some reports this week that you may have missed.

Bessent: “Look, if some of the Bloomberg Terminal bros are unhappy with what I’m doing, well, that’s too bad.” pic.twitter.com/j0H7RbmuP0

— Annmarie Hordern (@annmarie) September 11, 2026

As a golfer who is scared of bringing down the wrath of the golf gods, as a trader who goes into panic attacks at the sight of a pen with red ink on the desk, I think he is risking “jinxing” himself (a polite way of saying being far too smug and condescending, when the issues facing markets are much greater than so-called Bond Vigilantes or Terminal Bros). The 3 reports together are comprehensive and worth a read if you missed any of them.

• I Am The House Now compared and contrasted what he is doing with the yen versus the Treasury market. Also highlighted the risk that he may push Japan too far, because they certainly don’t want to be viewed as initiating policy as a puppet of the U.S.
• The 6 Billion Dollar Man was an appropriate follow-up and still has the “bionic running” sounds going through my head. It explained in more detail why he isn’t doing enough, but I do turn mildly bullish on the long end (obviously early).
• For me, last weekend’s Supply & Demand vs Data, where we attempted to create a metric to measure the sheer volume of duration that the IG credit market has been sucking out of the system, is crucial. I do think that the “pleasant” surprise for yields and compute spreads is that more money may currently be set aside for future issuance, without realizing that maybe some of the “future” issuance was done in the summer?

If Warsh does the “wrong” thing (from my view) and hikes, the long end rallies.

Away from that, Bessent is going to have to get serious about addressing the situation (monetizing gold, urging the Fed to do QE, etc.), or get lucky with a smaller IG calendar. Otherwise, we will likely see 5% on 10s over time.

The Gulf States and Iran

There is reporting that the pipeline the Saudis have been using to bypass the Strait has been hit and is currently shut down. We have repeatedly argued that any “new” pipelines (or Middle East Data Centers) are going to be expensive and slow to build because they will need to be “hardened.” Hundreds of miles of exposed pipe is an easy target for drones and rockets and almost impossible to defend.

While the President seems to be indicating that there will be no resolution until after the midterms (consistent with our earliest expectations of when the increased economic pressure on Iran could bring results), he (and the country) faces a couple of realities. Let’s start with diesel.

Diesel permeates the economy. It is incredibly important in shipping and agriculture, therefore the entire economy. It is the highest ever. The 2007 “China Commodity Boom” was higher adjusted for inflation, but that was part of an economic boom. My understanding is that U.S. refineries are operating at close to maximum capacity. That some “normal” maintenance shutdowns have been pushed off. Can this continue? Are there risks even to the domestic system, let alone the global system? Ukraine’s attacks on Russia have also worked to push diesel prices higher.

It is far too late to wonder why no one bothered refilling the reserve when we could have.

About 125 million barrels have been extracted from the reserve since the start of the war. We are sitting at 285 million barrels as of last week, but the big question is what is the practical limit to how much can be withdrawn? Without a doubt it cannot be drained to zero and retain structural integrity. How close are we to risking structural integrity? How much more can be released?

During the first phase of the war, globally, reserves played a key role in containing oil prices and ensuring the refining systems were working relatively efficiently.

Without that, this could get much worse, and more quickly than markets have been pricing in.

Bottom Line

Oil and rates seem as important or more important than compute spend to markets and the economy. It is kind of refreshing, but unfortunately the risk/reward in both of those assets is geared towards more pain (higher bond yields and higher oil prices). Yes, I’m mildly bullish bonds (especially compute bonds on an all-in yield basis), but only for a trade, until something changes. The oil situation may get worse far faster than I expected.

Get ready for the Fed and Warsh’s difficult task, Never Forget!

Tyler Durden Sun, 09/13/2026 - 14:00

If Dems Win The House: Data Centers, Nuclear, Venezuela Oil Deal Likely Targets

With polling favoring Democrats to win a House majority in the fall and two months till US midterms Nov. 3 (where BofA's Michael Hartnett expects a market rout in case of a Democratic sweep), Dems have begun to preview priorities should they win back the gavel.

Earlier this week, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), who won a crowded primary in August for Florida’s 20th congressional district, vowed if re-elected to help Democrats block Trump’s agreement over Venezuelan oil production. Lobbyists are already beginning prepwork in anticipation of industry executives being subject to congressional probes or subpoenas, Politico reported.

Winning back the House would give Democrats the ability to govern committee schedules, set investigative agendas, and leverage subpoenas. In the energy sphere, it is unlikely that we we see as hefty a climate focus as in the 117th Congress. Any clean energy focus will be instead from an affordability lens, i.e. how an “all of the above” energy approach helps lower electricity costs. Trump energy dealmaking, in particular equity stakes in companies, will also get attention from Democrats. 

Below, courtesy of Bridge DiCosmo and James Lucier of Capital Alpha Partners, we look at some of the likely oversight targets for a Democratic House:

Oil companies and profit margins likely back in the spotlight.

When Democrats last had control of the House in the 117th Congress from January 2021-23, the House Oversight environment subcommittee under then-chair Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) held at least three hearings in which executives of ExxonMobil, BP America, Chevron, and Shell were called to testify. Much of the scrutiny then was around climate disinformation. This time around, Trump’s ties with the oil sector are likely to be front and center of oversight investigations, with a focus on how companies have benefited from Trump administration regulatory rollbacks. We may see an uptick in Democratic support for windfall profits tax proposals like S.4111, introduced earlier this year by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R), though they won’t go anywhere.

Clean energy focus may center on Trump agencies’ efforts to block wind and solar, and pull grant funds.

Renewables focus will likely be in two areas: the Trump administration’s efforts to block or stall wind and solar projects and the ongoing legal fight over termination of Department of Energy (DOE) grants. Specifically, we would anticipate some hearings and letters examining the Pentagon’s and Federal Aviation Administration's reviews of land-based wind projects to ensure they do not impair national security or military operations. A federal district court in Oregon last month ordered the agencies to lift the freeze on such projects. The administration’s clawback of some $7.6 billion in grant funds for clean energy projects is likely to be another core focus for Dems. Language in the Energy Bills Relief Act, H.R. 7977, a massive Democratic energy messaging bill introduced earlier this year, would block the DOE or Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from terminating future grants based on changes in administration policy direction. Similarly, the Democrats’ energy bill would prohibit “burdensome procedural requirements” for renewable projects.

Venezuela oil deal already drawing Democratic opposition.

The Trump administration’s brokering of a deal for U.S. majority control of 17 Venezuelan oilfields totaling up to 65 billion bbl in proven reserves is already prompting sabre-rattling from Democrats. According to a White House fact sheet, the partnership with private oil producer North American Blue Energy Partners would give the U.S. government off-take rights for 20% of the company’s Venezuela production and right of first refusal for the remaining 80%. “Let’s be clear: this isn’t a win,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) said in a post on X. The fact that the deal would give the U.S. Department of Defense’s Office of Strategic Capital a 35% equity stake in a non-U.S. oil company is likely to emerge as a particular sore spot for Democrats.

More Democratic scrutiny over Trump critical minerals policy.

On one hand, the need to diversify critical minerals supply chains away from China is one of the few areas of general bipartisan consensus in Washington energy policy. However, the disagreements occur over the “how to” part. Trump’s array of investments giving the U.S. government an equity stake in critical minerals companies has not been popular with Democrats. Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM) and Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA) Aug. 7 asked the Government Accountability Office congressional watchdog to launch a probe into the administration taking equity stakes in mining companies. And 54 House Democrats in an Aug. 17 letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent laid out broader concerns with the administration’s critical minerals trade and investment focus. Those concerns range from transparency to labor and human rights to “insufficient congressional oversight,” so expect the latter to ramp up considerably should the Dems win back the gavel.

Democrats’ support for nuclear has widened, but NRC oversight could become a point of contention. Surging electricity demand is shifting Democrats toward stronger support for increasing nuclear capacity. Earlier this year, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker signed a directive to boost his state’s already large fleet. New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill signed a bill to increase New Jersey’s nuclear generation mix by 2028, lifting a longtime de facto moratorium on new builds in the state. There are a number of nuclear bills introduced this year with bipartisan backing. However, an overhaul of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and subsequent rulemakings aimed at scaling down overly burdensome licensing processes across the nuclear lifecycle have not gone over well with some congressional Democrats. The White House terminated then-Democratic Commissioner Christopher Hanson in 2025, prompting Democratic criticisms about the NRC’s independence. The administration’s proposal to license non-commercial reactors through the Departments of Energy and Defense has also drawn fire from Democratic lawmakers. This could be a focus of oversight hearings. And Democrats have also raised concerns over whether an NRC steering committee gives the White House too much influence over the NRC, an independent commission. Worth noting, the anticipated chair of the House Energy & Commerce Committee, which oversees the NRC, is Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ), who earlier this year raised concerns about the agency’s independence.

Expect heightened pressure for regulatory safeguards for data centers.

While congressional Democrats are far from lined up behind the idea of a moratorium on data center construction, we would expect a Democratic House to put pressure on the administration for more environmental and regulatory safeguards.  The NYT reported that former president Barack Obama urged House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries to assemble a clear framework for a public conversation about A.I. policy, and also suggested that candidates running for president in 2028 ought to make A.I. one of their “central agendas” and “have a very clear plan” for responding to safety and economic concerns around the technology.

Source: NYT

Elsewhere, a number of Democrats are still backing the Ratepayer Protection Act, H.R. 9340, that would require states to consider establishing a federal standard to ensure data centers foot the bill for costs of grid upgrades needed for their facilities. The bill passed unanimously out of the House Energy & Commerce Committee in July. Others, including likely E&C chairman Pallone, have suggested it doesn’t go far enough. Pallone during a Sept. 3 E&C hearing of the environment subcommittee on Safe Drinking Water Act reauthorization legislation reiterated a call for “real, substantial guardrails” to limit environmental impacts. Pallone backs a moratorium on new data centers absent such guardrails, but has not introduced legislation on the issue. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) in June introduced a House version, H.R. 9442, of a Senate bill sponsored by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), S. 4214. Neither bill has a Republican co-sponsor.

* * *

 

Tyler Durden Sun, 09/13/2026 - 13:25

Don't Raise Rates Based On A PCE That Will Be Re-Written September 30th

Authored by Richard Roberts via RealClearMarkets,

The Federal Open Market Committee votes on interest rates September 16.

Two weeks later, on September 30, the Bureau of Economic Analysis will revise the PCE price index, the inflation measure the Fed targets, back to 2021 and publish the August reading in the same release.

Governor Christopher Waller has already said which way one of the changes is expected to go. On September 3 he said the change in the way the Commerce Department measures fees paid to stock-market traders and related professionals could lower 12-month PCE inflation by a few tenths of a percentage point. He called it "a welcome measurement correction."

Three FOMC voters -- Beth Hammack, Neel Kashkari and Lorie Logan -- dissented in July in favor of a quarter-point increase. The Committee held 9 to 3.

So the inflation number being used to argue for higher rates is the number about to be rewritten.

Two Ways To Be Wrong

There are two possible mistakes here, and they do not cost the same.

Raise on the 16th and be wrong, and the Fed has tightened on a reading the government changes 14 days later. It is a credibility problem that would be hard to explain.

Wait, and be wrong, and the Fed can raise rates at its next meeting, on October 28.

That is six weeks.

If the revision confirms the hawks' case, their argument will be stronger in October than it is today, and it will rest on a number the government has just updated and is prepared to defend.

One mistake is hard to explain. The other costs six weeks.

Nothing This Month Forces The Choice

The case for urgency is being assumed more than demonstrated.

Core PCE inflation is too high at 3.3 percent. But it is not accelerating.

On Waller's own figures, three-month annualized core PCE inflation has fallen steadily, from 4.76 percent in February to 3.05 percent through July. He acknowledged that the level remains above the Fed's 2 percent goal, and called the fall "a considerable improvement."

The Dallas Fed's trimmed-mean measure, which removes the largest price changes in both directions, was running at roughly 2.3 percent over the same 12 months.

That is not proof that inflation is already at target. It is evidence that the underlying trend is less alarming than the headline core number suggests.

And some of the difference comes from categories whose measurement is unusually difficult.

Waller has singled out nonmarket services prices because they are imputed rather than drawn from actual transactions. He said those prices have long been a problem for him, and that excluding this one factor, underlying inflation is doing better than the core numbers suggest.

The pending BEA change goes directly at one of these problems. Legal services is priced today with a consumer index the Bureau itself says has produced "erratic changes that cannot be corroborated."

That matters because this is not a case in which the Fed is choosing between today's number and the possibility that the number might someday change.

The government has already scheduled the change.

Sit Tight

By October 28 the Committee will have something it does not have on September 16: the revised historical series and the August reading together.

The case for a quarter-point increase will be stronger or weaker on a number somebody is willing to defend.

None of this says rates are too high.

It says something narrower. When the government is about to rewrite the inflation series on which the decision rests, waiting one meeting is not indecision. It is the more defensible policy choice.

The 30th comes first. Then vote.

Tyler Durden Sun, 09/13/2026 - 12:50

Trump Admin Weighs Emergency Powers To Boost Refining As Diesel Tops $6

With national average diesel prices above $6 a gallon and regular gasoline firmly above $4.20, the Trump administration faces mounting pressure to deploy every available policy tool to contain fuel costs ahead of the midterm elections. Disruptions tied to the Russia-Ukraine war and turmoil in the Gulf are intensifying the global refining super squeeze.

Reuters reports late Friday afternoon that the Trump administration is considering whether to use the Defense Production Act to expand U.S. oil refining capacity as the Iran conflict drives up fuel prices.

According to the report:

The proposal to use the act came up during a recent meeting between President Donald Trump and nearly a dozen U.S. refiners, where White House officials sought to determine how federal support could best be used to add capacity, the sources said. No final decisions were made, and participants left the meeting with the expectation that the conversations would continue, according to the sources.

However, expanding refining capacity comes as U.S. refineries are already operating near their limits. The latest data shows that utilization has topped 98%. 

The discussions follow Trump's April decision authorizing support for domestic petroleum production, refining and logistics under the Defense Production Act. That directive identified financing constraints, long construction timelines, permitting delays and supply-chain limitations as obstacles to expanding capacity.

"America's refining capacity is essential to ensuring the United States has continuous access to secure, affordable, and reliable energy. Expanding that capacity is a top priority for the President and his energy team, who are evaluating concrete options to increase our refining capacity through regulatory reform, faster permitting, and additional investment," Taylor Rogers, a White House spokeswoman, told the outlet.

Reuters pointed out: 

A proposed new refinery in Brownsville, Texas, has emerged as a test case for Trump's call to expand U.S. refining capacity. It was unclear whether the project would receive any Defense Production Act funding. 

America First Refining plans to build a 168,000-barrel-per-day facility at the Port of Brownsville, which Trump announced in March as the first new U.S. refinery in nearly 50 years. ⁠The project is backed by India's Reliance Industries, which has agreed to a 20-year deal to buy the refinery's output.

In March, JPMorgan's head of commodity research, Natasha Kaneva, outlined six policy levers the Trump administration could pull to contain oil prices. Some, including Jones Act waivers and Strategic Petroleum Reserve releases, have already been used. Other options include export restrictions and waiving federal fuel taxes. 

* * *

Tyler Durden Sun, 09/13/2026 - 12:15

"I Ain't Playin'": Cognizant, Cloudera PERM Filings And H-1B Processing Suspended

Authored by Kimberly Hayek via The Epoch Times,

The Labor Department's inspector general said Tuesday that federal officials have suspended PERM filings for tech company Cognizant and software company Cloudera and halted H-1B processing for both firms.

The logo of U.S. multinational information technology consulting and outsourcing company Cognizant in the Alpine resort of Davos during the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting on Jan. 20, 2026. Ina Fassender/AFP via Getty Images

Inspector General Anthony D'Esposito posted the announcements on X throughout the day on Sept. 8. He credited the moves in part to Acting Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling, as well as to a White House anti-fraud task force.

"Fighting fraud is a TEAM SPORT," D'Esposito wrote. "@Sonderling47 and I are for real. @Cognizant's PERM filings are suspended. @DOLOIG is on the hunt. Threats to American workers will NOT be tolerated. Alongside @WHFraudTF, we're following facts, fraud and finances. Handcuffs await."

Hours later, he added Cloudera.

"One more," he wrote. "@cloudera: PERM filings SUSPENDED."

He followed up on the announcements later in the day.

"Cognizant. Cloudera. H1-B processing suspended. @Sonderling47 and I ain't playin'," he said.

PERM, or Program Electronic Review Management, is the Labor Department process employers use before sponsoring workers for employment-based green cards in the EB-2 and EB-3 categories. The department must determine whether able, willing, qualified, and available U.S. workers exist for the job before approving a PERM application. H-1B visas are temporary visas for specialty occupations. They generally last three years and can be extended to six.

Cognizant and Cloudera did not immediately return a request for comment.

In July, the Labor Department and the inspector general's office opened what officials referred to as a "major investigation" into alleged fraud in the H-1B and PERM systems, including possible human trafficking.

In a statement at the time, the two offices said they had "uncovered widespread schemes in which employers and labor brokers submitted fraudulent applications, exploited foreign workers through coercive wage-kickback arrangements, and undercut American workers by flooding the market with below-wage labor."

D'Esposito told Fox Business on July 8 that "dozens of subpoenas" had been issued by investigators.

"This is another example where fraud is fueling violent crime," he said. "Much of the visa and the human trafficking that we see when it comes to this foreign labor is tied to cartels, is tied to transnational gangs, and this is the work that we should be doing, not only to make America safe again, but to make America more affordable again."

He said the work was "not just people working in factories or actual labor," adding that some cases involve "people working in medical facilities and doctors' offices that are actually putting people in harm's way."

Cloudera was already involved in a separate federal case. The Labor Department announced in May 2026 that it had suspended Cloudera's PERM applications for 180 days after an April lawsuit.

The Justice Department sued Santa Clara, California-based Cloudera, alleging it discriminated against U.S. workers while using PERM to sponsor foreign employees. The complaint said the company directed American applicants to an internal email address that blocked outside messages.

"Employers cannot use the PERM sponsorship process as a backdoor for discriminating against U.S. workers," Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon said at the time. "The Division will not hesitate to sue companies who intentionally deter U.S. workers from applying to American jobs."

She said the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division prioritizes protecting American workers from unlawful discrimination in favor of foreign visa workers.

Sonderling has served as acting labor secretary since April, and President Donald Trump said June 29 that he intended to nominate him permanently. A Senate committee advanced the nomination July 30 on a 12 - 11 party-line vote. D'Esposito's posts treat Sonderling as a partner in the enforcement effort.

The suspensions land amid other related policy initiatives.

The Department of Homeland Security proposed ending the 60-day grace period that now lets some temporary visa holders, including H-1B workers, remain in the country after a job ends. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin wrote that once a person no longer meets the conditions of status, "such status, as well as the authorization to remain in the United States, should definitively cease and the impacted alien should immediately depart the United States (unless otherwise authorized to lawfully remain in the United States)."

H-1B use remains concentrated, with a Pew Research survey showing that India accounts for about 73 percent of H-1B workers by country of birth, while China represents about 12 percent.

Tyler Durden Sun, 09/13/2026 - 11:40

Yemen Blame Game Begins: "Saudi-American F**k Up Of Epic Proportions"

An official affiliated with Saudi-backed militias in Yemen told CNN that the Houthis "committed everything they had – waves upon waves of fighters... along with their available ballistic missiles and weapons."

"But the air support never came," the source said in reference to the fact that the Saudi-backed side rapidly folded and retreated in just days last week. "And Mocha has now fallen." The blame game has begun after a mere 36 hours has seen the Saudi coalition fracture on the ground, and the finger-pointing is likely to go on in the halls of government, now as Saudi territory continues coming under direct missile and drone threat.

Handout via Reuters

Another regional source told CNN on Thursday that "The failure this time is not with the Yemenis" but that "it's a disaster made in DC and Riyadh."

According to some further key lines and expletives:

The regional source told CNN that it was "a complete failure of political leadership" amid fierce squabbling and delayed decision-making in Riyadh.

"There was not one air strike throughout the day yesterday (by Saudi support forces), although there were minute-by-minute updates," the regional source added. "It’s a Saudi-American f**k up of epic proportions."

There are at the same time widespread reports that the Iran-backed Houthis have seized US made M-ATVs and MRAP armored vehicles. 

Dudes in sandals breaking the coalition with lighting speed...

The Houthis are literally fighting in sandals and are routing a military provisioned by (directly) KSA and (indirectly) the US. https://t.co/DxcTorDBO1

— History Speaks (@History__Speaks) September 11, 2026

Amr Al-Bidh, the top official of Yemen’s Southern Transitional Council (STC), has also been quoted in the CNN report, explaining that the Houthis "don’t need to use advanced weapons to close Bab al-Mandeb. They can just use a cannon on a car."

He added "It’s a leverage that they have without using advanced weapons. And they will keep it."

All of this has further emboldened the Houthis to take the fight directly to Saudi territory, amid the ongoing "siege for siege" policy. Riyadh has long sought to impose a brutal blockade on Houthi-controlled ports. The group has so far indicated it intends to allow most international vessels to traverse the Red Sea, but will attack Saudi or Israeli-linked shipping.

There are fresh Sunday reports of another ballistic missile attack on a Saudi base:

Yemen's Houthi group on Sunday claimed that it had launched a ballistic missile and drone attack on a Saudi military base, as fighting between the group and Riyadh-backed Yemeni government forces intensified. 

Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Saree said the attack targeted the Sharurah base in southern Saudi Arabia, including “weapons depots and command and control centers that are managing the aggression against our nation and people”.

Saree declared that the strikes had hit their targets and threatened further bigger strikes deeper inside the kingdom if the Saudis keep up their military operations in Yemen.

gonna tell my kids this was Toyotathon https://t.co/0mYxwFDk7U

— Luke Metro (@luke_metro) September 12, 2026

Saudi coalition aerial assets have been belatedly at work: "On Sunday, the Yemeni military said its air force had conducted three strikes against Houthi positions and barracks in the Taiz region," MEE reports.

Al Jazeera writes: Analysts are calling the Iran-backed Houthi group’s victories the most significant regional development since the start of the US-Israel war on Iran. The offensives could be particularly damaging for Saudi Arabia and its oil exports.

The Yemeni military announced on X, "Air force of the armed forces targeted positions and barracks of the terrorist Houthi group with three air strikes" in the Taiz region.

Meanwhile, President Trump has said the Houthis are in contact with him and have pledged to let ships through the Bab Al-Mandab Strait. He said to reporters Saturday while meeting with Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin, "The Houthis called us, and they don't want to fight with us. They don’t want us to go after them."  He further explained that "they would much prefer not having us involved:" and so "they are letting most ships go through." The president did acknowledged they do have a ban on Saudi vessels, however. But the Houthi threat of closing the energy transit chokepoint lingers heavily.

Tyler Durden Sun, 09/13/2026 - 11:05

Attack Drone Hits Warsaw-Bound Passenger Train Near Polish Border, Raising NATO Spillover Risk

Western media outlets reported early Sunday that a Russian attack drone struck a civilian locomotive on the Kiev-to-Warsaw route just two kilometers from Poland's border. Whether a false-flag operation or an actual Russian strike, the incident suggests mounting spillover risks near NATO territory ahead of the Northern Hemisphere winter.

🚨 BREAKING: Russian drone targeted a passenger train on the border with Poland.

"Russian barbarians are at your gate, dear partners. Act now: throw the full weight of your sanctions at Putin’s aggressive regime," Ukrainian Foreign Minister Sybiha wrote in response. pic.twitter.com/VsgQ2UGtPb

— UNITED24 Media (@United24media) September 13, 2026

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha responded to the incident on X, saying:

Russia's barbaric strikes at the Ukraine-Poland border in Yahodyn are not just a continuation of its attacks on our state borders. This is Putin's terror "knocking" directly on the doors of the EU and NATO. Russian barbarians are at your gate, dear partners. Act now: throw the full weight of your sanctions at Putin's aggressive regime. Make Moscow feel the consequences of its terror. Not just half-decisions, but uncompromising, powerful steps. Full trade embargo. Full entry bans. Full sanctions on the military-industrial complex. Putin needs to understand that his barbarism will be met with decisive action that increases the cost of war for him to an unacceptable level. This is the only way to stop him.

Russia’s barbaric strikes at the Ukraine-Poland border in Yahodyn are not just a continuation of its attacks on our state borders.

This is Putin’s terror “knocking” directly on the doors of the EU and NATO. Russian barbarians are at your gate, dear partners.

Act now: throw the…

— Andrii Sybiha 🇺🇦 (@andrii_sybiha) September 13, 2026

Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said there was no border violation but described the strike as a Russian escalation. Polish authorities identified the weapons involved as Geran-5 jet-powered drones.

Polish railways said the train carried 208 people. Ukraine's railway operator, Ukrzaliznytsia, said an advance warning allowed the crew to respond and that no one was injured. The service was delayed for six hours.

Russia has attacked European politicians right on the Polish border.

According to media reports, former British Prime Minister Johnson, Merz advisor Günter Sautter, national security advisors from several European countries, members of the Bundestag, diplomats, and academics… pic.twitter.com/XutCKSJ85I

— Jürgen Nauditt 🇩🇪🇺🇦 (@jurgen_nauditt) September 13, 2026

Separately, Lithuania temporarily closed Vilnius airport Sunday as NATO scrambled fighter jets following a possible drone sighting.

The Wall Street Journal pointed out, "Almost every week this summer brought new reports of drone incursions over NATO's eastern frontier, the airspace over which is now a front line."

Last month, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said that attacks on Europe's borders had intensified, as some intelligence agencies warned of a buildup toward a direct attack by Russia on a NATO member country. She warned that NATO faces "an escalating campaign of threats" and "hybrid warfare."

* * *

Tyler Durden Sun, 09/13/2026 - 10:30

"Not Entirely Satisfied": German Foreign Minister Grumbles That Ukraine Isn't Buying Enough German Guns

Authored by Andrew Korybko via Substack,

The more upset that his taxpayers become with their country's lack of tangible returns from the billions of euros that it's given to Ukraine, the more that support for the AfD is expected to surge...

German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul complained that Ukraine isn't buying enough German guns. He told Bild, "We are now Ukraine's strongest supporter in terms of financial and military assistance. And naturally, the German defense industry should benefit from this. I told President Zelenskyy this during my last visit. We stand by you, we support you. But I also have to explain this to German taxpayers, and the very least you can do is involve the German defense industry in all procurement projects."

Wadephul then said that "At the moment, we are not entirely satisfied with the number of orders we are receiving in Germany. Therefore, we have asked the Ukrainian government to review the situation and ensure that it improves." For background, Germany and Ukraine agreed to jointly develop their deep-strike capabilities earlier this spring, which coincides with Germany's rapid remilitarization to the tune of at least €800 billion. The regular large-scale sale of arms to Ukraine can accelerate this trend.

There are three primary reasons why Ukraine hasn't met Germany's expectations:

The first of which is that the US remains Ukraine's top security partner due to the indispensable role of its arms, intelligence, and Starlink in perpetuating the conflict. In connection with this role, Trump recently posted that "Hundreds of Billions of Dollars was given to Ukraine and NATO, free of charge, that Europe would have paid for - If they were only asked, but we will be asking for that money, though somewhat belatedly!"

A creative solution for recouping these costs could be for European NATO to continue purchasing American arms at full price for donation to Ukraine, with this arrangement continuing after the large-scale phase of the conflict is over indefinitely or at least till Trump is satisfied with the profits.

In parallel with these sales, as well as after the scenario of them possibly being scaled back, Germany must compete with the UK and others like China (whose drone sales are indispensable to Ukraine's war effort).

Germany doesn't have the political sway over Ukraine that the UK does, nor is domestic drone production anything remotely close to China's, so it's expected to struggle in this arms competition.

Finally, the last point is that drones occupy a grossly disproportionate share of the casualties that Ukraine inflicts on Russia and are widely regarded as one of the reasons why the frontline has barely shifted in recent years, so German arms companies' traditional wares aren't needed as much anymore.

Despite Germany's disappointment at Ukraine's unsatisfactory purchase of its defense products, they still remain close at the political level and are coordinating a regional power play against their shared Polish "frenemy", which was elaborated on here over the summer. This joint effort advances the grand strategic goal of German domination over the post-war European security architecture west of the new "Iron Curtain", which is more important for Berlin than arms sales to Kiev, so no rift is likely over this issue.

The takeaway from Wadephul's complaint is therefore that German taxpayers are becoming increasingly upset with their country's lack of tangible returns from the billions of euros that it's given to Ukraine. It's not just their arms industry that's struggling to leverage aid for future profits but their reconstruction one too since it's expected that American and Chinese companies will dominate this industry too. The more fed up that Germans become with Ukraine, the more that support for the AfD is expected to surge.

Tyler Durden Sun, 09/13/2026 - 09:20

Long-Term US Unemployment Rate Creeps Up To 27% Despite Blockbuster August Hiring

Despite the recent blockbuster August jobs report, the anemic pace of hiring in prior months has been exacerbating challenges for long-term unemployed Americans, new research from the Richmond Federal Reserve finds.

The long-term unemployment rate - those who are out of work for 27 weeks or longer as a share of the total unemployed - has been steadily climbing since early 2023.

Of all unemployed Americans in August, more than one-quarter (27 percent), or 1.93 million, had been out of work for a prolonged period, according to last month's Bureau of Labor Statistics report.

This is up from 25.5 percent, or 1.77 million, in July.

Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh gave the labor market glowing marks during his keynote address at the Jackson Hole Economic Symposium last month.

With an unemployment rate hovering around 4 percent over the past couple of years, job conditions would suggest that the Fed has achieved its maximum employment mandate.

Last month's nonfarm payrolls also surged by 162,000, blowing past the consensus forecast of 56,000.

A job seeker waits to talk to a recruiter at a job fair in Sunrise, Fla., on Aug. 28, 2025. Marta Lavandier/AP Photo

But, as Andrew Moran reports for The Epoch Times, the situation might not be optimistic for Americans who have been out of the job market for many months.

This year's sluggish growth in U.S. payrolls is likely to present fresh hurdles for job hunters, regional central bank researchers warn.

"In the current 'low-hire, low-fire' labor market - which features both slower job creation and less job separation activity (including firings and layoffs) - becoming unemployed can be particularly challenging as finding a new job can be more difficult," the Richmond Fed economists wrote in a Sept. 1 paper.

America's labor market has been entrenched in an environment in which employers are neither increasing headcount nor laying off workers.

Weekly unemployment claims have been stuck in a historically low range of 189,000 to 230,000 - near 57-year lows. The number and layoff rate are near record lows. The jobless rate has been down in 241 of 387 metro areas over the past year.

Continuing jobless claims have also been on a downward trajectory since late 2025, a measurement that could signal two trends in the U.S. economy.

First, workers are finding it easier to locate job opportunities. Second, Americans have exhausted their benefits since many states cap eligibility at 26 weeks.

For a growing chorus of workers who have been searching for several months, the search may no longer be worth it, which could help explain the drop in workforce participation.

"The data have yet to show that job-finding prospects are improving meaningfully for those who have been jobless for an extended duration," the Richmond Fed said.

"In particular, those who have been out of work for a year or more are experiencing more challenges seeking reemployment relative to the 'standard' long-term unemployed."

The U.S. labor force participation rate ticked up to 61.6 percent in August - from 61.4 percent in July - hovering close to its lowest level since the 1970s (excluding the pandemic).

While part of this can be explained by older workers exiting the labor market, young men are not pursuing employment opportunities.

The participation rate for males aged 16 to 24 plummeted to around 56 percent last month, from 69 percent in 2000.

Skills Shortage

But while job growth has been choppy this year, labor demand has been robust.

Job vacancies are close to 7.3 million, and small businesses have indicated they plan to bolster their hiring plans in the coming months.

The challenge for employers is finding qualified workers to fill these openings.

According to the Federal Reserve's Beige Book - a periodic report summarizing economic conditions across the central bank's 12 districts - employment demand in the construction and manufacturing sectors was "healthy" this summer.

"Labor availability was mixed. Skilled trades and technical workers were difficult to find," the report stated.

It is estimated that employers face a talent gap of approximately 1.3 million workers, according to an Aug. 25 report by labor market intelligence firm Lightcast.

Additionally, seven of the 10 most in-demand skilled-trade occupations - construction, electricians, and technicians, for example - already face significant labor shortages.

"The impending lack of skilled trades workers has been a resounding issue in our economy for years," Ron Hetrick, principal economist at Lightcast, said in a statement.

The skills shortage comes at a time when the United States is witnessing a rebirth of manufacturing amid the artificial intelligence (AI) boom.

The data-center expansion has already brought on about 315,000 additional skilled-trade workers in the past five years, the report found.

Tyler Durden Sun, 09/13/2026 - 08:45

Anthropic Bans Israeli Account Over Iran, Gulf Social Media Citizen Profiling

Via The Cradle,

An operation run by or on behalf of the Israeli-Singaporean commercial intelligence vendor S2T Unlocking Cyberspace used Claude models to map, classify, and profile social media users across Iran and the Persian Gulf, according to a threat intelligence report published by Anthropic on 11 September.

(Photo credit: AP / Vahid Salemi)

The platform recorded the locations of users, sorted them as supporters or opponents of their governments, and grouped populations into six demographic categories covering urban, clerical, military, youth, diaspora, and rural.

Its output was written in formal Arabic and styled as official government communications, with sentiment scores broken down by Gulf nationality alongside recommended counternarratives.

The actor fed the model batches of roughly 25 social media posts at a time and directed it to return each poster's demographic group, location, and political leaning, with confidence ratings attached to every finding.

Anthropic identified a second workstream of more than 255 fabricated social media accounts, which the company said indicated the actor was assembling a stock of fake profiles for later deployment.

In a separate task, the actor directed the model to generate posts for online personas in Persian, Arabic, English, and German, intended to pass as members of both pro- and anti-government Iranian populations.

The company said its findings independently corroborate a February 2023 investigation by the journalism network Forbidden Stories, which documented an S2T surveillance product described in a company brochure recovered from leaked Colombian military files.

Anthropic said the capabilities in that brochure map closely onto the behavior it observed.

Anthropic added that it identified the activity at its pilot stage and found no evidence that later stages of the surveillance chain described by Forbidden Stories were used against real targets before the account was banned.

Israel has invested heavily in cyber capabilities, signals intelligence, artificial intelligence (AI), and advanced surveillance - a technological expansion that shifted the balance of its intelligence collection away from recruited human agents.

Mossad chief Roman Gofman dismissed two of the agency's most senior officials in August over the failed plot to topple the Iranian government earlier this year.

One had run the intelligence directorate since December while the other headed the Mossad's Iran division, and both were among the architects of a plan to bring down the Iranian government by igniting nationwide protests and supplying military and communication equipment to opposition groups and insurgents.

Channel 12 said the plan was drawn up in coordination with Washington and was meant to unfold under joint Israeli-US airstrikes.

The New York Times (NYT) reported on 22 March that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had embraced the Mossad's promise of a popular revolt when he urged US President Donald Trump into the war, and had grown frustrated when no uprising came.

Before the war on Iran, then-Mossad chief David Barnea had told Netanyahu and Trump that once Iran's leaders were killed, his agency could galvanize the Iranian opposition into renewed mass unrest, swiftly producing regime change.

Tyler Durden Sun, 09/13/2026 - 08:10

"Something's Going To Happen": DHS Chief Says Lefty Ilhan Omar "Married Her Brother", Floats Deportation

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said "something's going to happen" in an ongoing investigation involving unhinged leftist Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), speaking with conservative podcaster Benny Johnson at the GOP midterm convention in Dallas. 

Mullin said that Omar married her brother as part of an immigration-fraud scheme and raised the prospect of deportation. 

"Something's going to happen. This is an ongoing investigation. We know that she married her brother to try to bring him into the United States. We know he lives now in London," Mullin told Johnson on the sidelines of the GOP midterm convention. 

Mullin continued:

There may be more to this — the whole family migration, and possibly some illegal activity for them to come to the United States to begin with. But all of this, we're investigating.

Here's what I want to make sure we do: if we actually move a case forward, it's not a political case. It's an actual case because they did things wrong.

If you decided to break the law or lie on the information you gave to the United States — to be able to come into the United States, through either asylum or because you were just wanting to seek a better life — but you didn't tell us who you actually were, you lied about certain things about your application.

Those things, there’s no expiration to that. If we can prove it then, that you shouldn't have been here in the first place, we'll deport you.

And so we're looking at — it's more than just her case. We're looking at a lot of cases that are very similar to this, that we feel like there may have been fraud from the get-go.

But when we move forward, it's not political; it's because you chose to break the nation's laws.

And I've said this multiple times and I continue to say it. I don't make the laws anymore. I'm in charge of enforcing the laws, and I will not pick and choose which laws I'm going to enforce and which laws I'm not. I'm going to enforce all of them regardless of who you are. Regardless if you're Omar or some other individual in that community. We're going to enforce it equally.

🚨BREAKING: DHS Secretary Just Confirmed That Rep. Illhan Omar Did Marry Her Brother

“We know that she married her brother to try to bring him into the United States. There may be more to this, possibly some illegal activity."

I asked DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin about… pic.twitter.com/BuZGdpiGjJ

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) September 11, 2026

The anti-American congresswoman has long rejected the allegation. She says she legally married British citizen Ahmed Nur Said Elmi in 2009 and told MPR News in 2016 that claims he was her brother were "absurd and offensive."

Ilhan Omar calls Americans dumb idiots.

Ilhan Omar previously said, "Some people did something on 9/11".@FBIDirectorKash should launch an investigation into her alleged marriage to her brother to "get him papers."pic.twitter.com/3N4Mksrfyl

— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) February 23, 2025

Deportation would present a major legal hurdle for the Trump administration because Omar is a naturalized US citizen. She obtained citizenship in 2000, years before the disputed marriage.

Any effort to remove her would require Mullin and his investigators to have evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that she participated in the immigration-fraud scheme; denaturalization requires proof that she obtained citizenship unlawfully, including through material fraud or concealment.

A 2020 Daily Mail report cited Somali blogger and community leader Abdihakim Osman, who alleged that Omar had married her brother, Ahmed Elmi, to allow him to obtain cheap student loans in the United States. 

Tyler Durden Sun, 09/13/2026 - 07:35

Hey, Germany... It's Legitimate To Limit Immigration

Authored by Michael Barone via The Epoch Times,

Just weeks after far-left candidates have won surprising victories in Democratic primaries in Pennsylvania, Florida, Michigan, Colorado, and New York City for the Senate and House in the United States, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has won a widely predicted victory in the election last Sunday for the legislature of Sachsen-Anhalt, one of Germany's 16 federal states.

Most Democratic officeholders have rallied around their far-left nominees even as the Democratic Socialists of America national platform calls for abolishing police, prisons, and immigration enforcement agencies. In contrast, Germany's long-established parties - Christian Democrats, Social Democrats, Free Democrats, and Greens - have promised to continue to regard AfD as a "right-wing extremist" group and not to support any coalition with it.

Germany, in its commendable efforts to prevent any recurrence of or sympathy for its Nazi past, imposes limits on political activity Americans would find appalling. And the AfD in its beginnings in the 2000s, as Christopher Caldwell explains in First Things, had members and leaders with disturbing views.

Currently, some of its leaders have views many may consider odious, like supporting Russia over Ukraine, but it appears less likely than some leftist European parties to transgress the boundary between criticism of Israel and incitement against Jews.

The traditional parties' case for isolating the AfD today is based on one issue, the same issue that has enabled the AfD to sprint ahead of the traditional parties in national polls: immigration. As Caldwell explains, "The Sachsen-Anhalt AfD was classified as 'proven right-wing extremist' for its ethnic conception of German citizenship."

The AfD is not the only European party characterized as "far right" for its advocacy of limiting immigration by establishment organs like the London-based Economist and most dominant news organizations on the continent.

The establishment has looked benignly on immigration, including from Muslim countries in the Middle East, North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, and South Asia, as an economic boost for a Europe whose low native birth rates have reduced economic growth down toward zero and jeopardized the financing of its generous old-age pension and medical care systems.

Voters have not been persuaded.

In Germany, the AfD, though its strength is concentrated in the former East Germany, leads in national polls over the Christian Democrats, who have led the government most of the time since 1949, and the Social Democrats, whose roots go back to the 1880s.

In France, the National Front's Marine Le Pen, though sidelined by an establishment-rigged court ruling for months, leads by wide margins in polls for the first round and runoff in the 2027 presidential election. One issue that may help her: aid for air conditioning, scorned during this hot summer by intellectuals as an American abomination.

In Britain, the newly installed Prime Minister Andy Burnham, boosted by his popularity in Manchester, has seen his party leap ahead of Nigel Farage's Reform Party. But his party, despite its name and history, is still losing many working-class areas and is reliant on support from high-income, high-education, high-immigration metro London.

As for Italy, the fourth most populous European democracy, its Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, initially labeled a far-right fringe candidate, celebrated early this month her achievement of the longest-serving head of government in the republic.

What do Le Pen, Farage, and Meloni have in common? Their objections to immigration, and especially Muslim immigration. For which they have some reasonable basis.

In Germany, former Christian Democrat Chancellor Angela Merkel unilaterally opened the doors to more than a million migrants, most of them young men, in 2015, and, to protests, insisted "Wir schaffen das" - "we can handle this." But as Germany's foreign-born population has increased from 8.1 million in 2014 to 13.4 million in 2022, violent crime has soared (despite news media attempts to hide it), and immigrants have dragged down high school student test scores.

Nor has the influx of Muslim immigrants spurred economic growth, as Germany's economy suffers from self-imposed high energy costs, and Chinese competitors threaten its auto industry. The establishment's economic arguments for high immigration are in shambles.

What I find most puzzling here is the evident feeling of the European establishment - and one might add that of their American counterparts as well - that opposition to mass immigration from culturally dissimilar sources is somehow morally equivalent to the Holocaust. Why is excluding arguably unassimilable people from your country morally equivalent to murdering millions and millions of people?

Yes, both policies may be sparked by a dislike of characteristics that those excluded and those slaughtered are presumed to share - call it bigotry if you want, and make your valid point that not all members of any group share the characteristics of the group's average. But when those characteristics tend to undermine the generally and increasingly improving ways in which the peoples of Europe and America have lived together over the lifetime of those of us born during World War II, is there not some reason people might want to exercise caution in changing the cultural mix?

Especially in Europe, where populations haven't had the success in assimilating newcomers that Americans have had. And perhaps in America as well, where we have been in danger of forgetting or denigrating our forebears' accomplishments along those lines.

Good counsel, in my view, comes from the liberal San Francisco-based economist Noah Smith. "Liberalism," he writes in his Substack, "needs a new philosophy of immigration."

AfD voters, he argues, with American Trump voters clearly in mind, are not just protesting COVID-19 restrictions or responding to "economic despair," as some of his liberal confreres have argued. It's "anger over immigration."

But liberals need to recognize certain principles, Smith argues. That "migration is not a human right." That "immigration law is legitimate." That "immigration to America must be for the benefit of Americans."

The European establishment lost sight of these principles when it cheered Merkel's admission of more than 1 million, including tens of thousands of young men who consider it morally permissible to rape women not clad in hijabs. The American establishment lost sight of these principles when the Biden administration's open-borders policy allowed the nation's foreign-born population to increase (as the Census Bureau has reported) by 8.3 million in four years, compared to 6.3 million in former President Barack Obama's eight years and 1.6 million in President Donald Trump's first four.

That leaves an uncomfortably large number of people illegally here. I've often said, while advocating legalization of many, though not all, illegal immigrants, that it's a bad thing for a country and for the individuals involved to have a large number of people living here illegally. I continue to think that's a valid argument today.

And perhaps that view is having some effect. In the first 20 months of the second Trump administration, the Census Bureau reports, the U.S.'s foreign-born population has been reduced by 2.8 million. Immigration and Customs Enforcement doesn't account for half that; obviously, some illegal immigrants are choosing to leave before they're forced to.

Plus, as Smith informs his fellow liberals, Germany is making it harder to get citizenship, France and Italy are tightening border controls, the European Union is toughening asylum rules, Canada is cutting back immigration, and Sweden is paying money to migrants who leave. It no longer makes sense for Germany to cordon off the AfD, as if it were bent on sending migrants to the gas chambers. And if anti-immigration parties have unsavory members, well, that's a problem with other (all?) political parties as well.

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

Tyler Durden Sun, 09/13/2026 - 07:00