Zero Hedge

Violent Crime Rate Drops In Major US Cities

Violent Crime Rate Drops In Major US Cities

Authored by Timothy Frudd via The Epoch Times,

A new report shows that violent crime dropped in many of the United States’ largest cities during the first half of 2026, and there was a more than 17 percent decline in the number of homicides.

A Major Cities Chiefs Association survey, which gathered data from 66 of the largest cities in the United States, was released on Aug. 5.

It showed that levels of multiple categories of violent crime decreased from Jan. 1 to June 30, 2026, compared with the same period in 2025.

The number of homicides dropped by 17.2 percent during the first half of 2026, and the number of robberies fell by 16.6 percent, according to the Aug. 5 report.

Additionally, the number of rapes decreased by 6.2 percent, and the number of aggravated assaults dropped by 5.7 percent.

The combined totals for the four categories in the cities included in the survey represented a decrease of about 8.3 percent, about 14,200 fewer violent crimes.

The data shared by the Major Cities Chiefs Association showed that homicides dropped by 43.9 percent in Washington; 43.7 percent in Memphis, Tennessee; 64.7 percent in Newark, New Jersey; 63.6 percent in Raleigh, North Carolina; 52.4 percent in Boston; and 60 percent in Arlington, Texas.

The number of homicides also decreased by 60 percent in Baltimore County, Maryland; 58.8 percent in Aurora, Colorado; 50 percent in Miami; and 58.8 percent in Suffolk County, New York.

Laura Cooper, executive director of the Major Cities Chiefs Association, told The Epoch Times that the think tank’s latest violent crime survey demonstrated an “encouraging trend.”

“The declines are significant, and I believe reflect the sustained efforts of MCCA member agencies and their partners to address violent crime through targeted enforcement, intelligence-led strategies, and community engagement,” she said.

The Major Cities Chiefs Association noted that the statistics included in the report were based on preliminary data, not on a final report from the FBI’s National Incident-Based Reporting System.

The report came after President Donald Trump deployed the National Guard last year to multiple cities across the United States, including Washington, in an effort to reduce crime.

The White House credited the drop in violent crime to the Trump administration’s crackdown on crime.

“President Trump promised to make America safe again, and the data proves he has done just that,” White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis told The Epoch Times on Aug. 11.

She said that Trump would “always stand with ... law enforcement officers and deliver safer American neighborhoods.”

A report released by the Council on Criminal Justice in July found that homicides were down 18 percent in 30 reporting cities during the first half of 2026 compared with the same period of 2025.

“Murder and other crime rates are falling across the map, in cities with different political leadership, housing and economic conditions, policing and prosecution strategies, violence reduction models, and levels of federal enforcement activity,” Council on Criminal Justice President Adam Gelb said.

“Local policies and programs surely matter, but the striking consistency of the decline suggests that macro-level forces are exerting enormous influence as well.”

The Council on Criminal Justice reported that homicides were down 31 percent in the first half of 2026 compared with the first half of 2019 after increasing to 39 percent higher in 2022.

The think tank reported that the numbers of aggravated assaults and assaults with firearms also dropped after increasing during the final year of Trump’s first administration and the early years of former President Joe Biden’s administration.

A previous council report indicated that the homicide rate was on pace to drop to four per 100,000 residents.

The think tank said that if the drop was confirmed by the FBI’s final statistics, it would be the largest single-year percentage drop for homicides and would be the lowest homicide rate in at least 126 years.

The White House attributed the drop in violent crime in many of the United States’ largest cities to the “Trump effect.”

“The results are especially striking in Democrat-run cities where the Trump administration has aggressively surged federal resources and National Guard support after years of soft-on-crime failure,” the White House said on Aug. 11.

The White House said federal support for policing and coordination with local agencies have increased and policies aimed at deterring crime have been advanced under Trump’s administration.

It stated that crime has also been reduced as a result of the administration’s border security policies.

However, some crime experts have pushed back on the White House’s comments, noting that the impact of the National Guard deployment to major cities in the United States, particularly Washington, was difficult to gauge.

“Crime statistics are not a good measure—they have been going down since well before the deployment, and there is nothing to indicate the Guard did anything during their presence that was directed toward crime,” Darrel Stephens, a policing expert with 50 years of experience, previously told The Epoch Times.

FactCheck.org also reported in June 2025 that FBI data and other crime statistics showed that crime began to spike in 2020 and then started to drop after 2022, before Trump was elected to his second term in 2024.

Last month, the Center for American Progress released an analysis of the impact that Trump’s National Guard deployments had on crime.

The analysis found that the deployment of guardsmen had “no measurable effect on violent crime trends.”

On Aug. 10, Chandler Hall, associate director for public safety at the Center for American Progress, reiterated the think tank’s analysis that violent crime was already decreasing in major cities before the National Guard deployments.

“Across multiple cities, multiple datasets, and multiple time windows, we find no effect that violent crime actually did change post the National Guard deployment in any of the cities,” he said.

In response to Hall’s comments, Trump said the think tank’s report was “just another Radical Left SCAM” and indicated that he was going to file a lawsuit against the organization.

“Crime is way down since I took Office, and they know it. Liars, at this level, must be held accountable!” Trump said in a Truth Social post.

Addressing the president’s lawsuit threat, Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress, said on Aug. 11 that the think tank would “not be intimidated.”

“The Center for American Progress stands firmly behind its research and its staff,” Tanden said.

In August 2025, Trump deployed the National Guard to Washington. At the time, he said the nation’s capital was “under siege from violent crime” and that the local government had “lost control of public order and safety.”

Last month, War Secretary Pete Hegseth credited National Guard members serving as part of the D.C. Safe and Beautiful Task Force for helping reduce crime, which he said had “dropped in staggering amounts.”

The Pentagon confirmed last month that the mission for which National Guard troops were deployed in Washington would continue until Jan. 20, 2029, or until terminated by the president.

In addition to deploying the National Guard to Washington, Trump deployed the National Guard to Memphis, Los Angeles, and New Orleans in 2025 to address crime and illegal immigration.

Trump also attempted to deploy the National Guard to Chicago and Portland, Oregon, last fall before facing legal challenges.

A district judge blocked Trump’s deployment of the National Guard to Portland in November 2025.

The Supreme Court later ruled in December 2025 that Trump could not deploy the National Guard to Chicago to protect federal immigration agents.

Following the rulings, Trump announced the withdrawal of National Guard troops from Chicago, Los Angeles, and Portland on Dec. 31, 2025.

Tyler Durden Thu, 08/13/2026 - 17:40

"No Rock Left Unturned": Tether Completes Independent Audit Of Reserves With KPMG

"No Rock Left Unturned": Tether Completes Independent Audit Of Reserves With KPMG

Stablecoin giant Tether has announced that KPMG U.S. completed the first independent audit of its reserves after years of struggling to get a Big Four accounting firm to do so.

The San Salvador-based company, which issues the largest stablecoin in existence, USDT, said the audit was “the largest inaugural financial audit in history.”

As Bitcoin Magazine's Mathew DiSalvo reports, Tether for years was criticized for being coy about its reserves and not having an independent audit of what it holds behind its flagship token.

Tether said over the years that it was eager to work with a Big Four firm for an audit. 

“For years, some detractors said an audit of Tether could not be completed,” Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said in a statement. 

“They said the Company refused to subject itself to the most rigorous scrutiny. We have once again proven them wrong. Completing our financial statement audit sets a new standard for the industry and reflects the leadership we’ve brought to this market from the start.”

Tether did not mention its Bitcoin holdings in its statement, nor did it immediately respond to questions from Bitcoin Magazine. 

But it said that KPMG “physically counted and inspected every individual gold bar held by Tether, verifying the existence and identifying information of each bar rather than relying solely on reports from custodians or counterparties.”

Tether added that all assets and statements were subject to “independent substantive testing and verification.”

As Ardoino noted: 

"No rock was left unturned.

Tether has all the gold it says it has.

Now reviewed by KPMG.

How many financial institutions or governments can actually say that? "

The company has in recent years upped its gold buys, holds more U.S. treasuries than some countries and has nearly $60 billion in Bitcoin in its reserves, according to data from Arkham Intelligence. 

“Tether has evolved from a disruptive stablecoin issuer into one of the most financially significant and operationally sophisticated private companies in the world,” continued Ardoino.

“This audit demonstrates that our financial infrastructure and governance have evolved alongside that responsibility.”

Tether’s USDT product has a market cap of over $183 billion, making it the third biggest cryptocurrency in existence.

Tyler Durden Thu, 08/13/2026 - 17:20

News Groups Sue Trump Over Paid Early Access To Truth Social Posts

News Groups Sue Trump Over Paid Early Access To Truth Social Posts

Authored by Owen Evans via The Epoch Times,

President Donald Trump was sued on Wednesday by two news organizations seeking to shut down a service that sells paid access to the president's posts on his Truth Social platform.

This illustrative photo shows a person checking the app store on a smartphone for Truth Social, with it's website on a computer screen in the background, in Los Angeles on Oct. 20, 2021. Chris Delmas/AFP via Getty Images

The lawsuit, filed on Aug. 12 in Manhattan federal court by The Intercept and the Freedom of the Press Foundation, challenges Truth API, launched on Aug. 1, a feed offered by Trump Media & Technology Group, which charges up to $100,000 a month for early access to 10 high-profile Truth Social accounts, including Trump's.

Trump often uses his Truth Social account to post news.

The lawsuit targets Trump in his official capacity as U.S. president, along with Natalie J. Harp in her official capacity as the president's executive assistant.

It also names Daniel Scavino (in his official capacity as White House deputy chief of staff and director of the White House Personnel Office), the Executive Office of the President, and the White House Office.

"Truth API delivers a direct, licensed, real-time feed of the platform's most market-moving Truths while advancing our strategy to monetize proprietary assets through a high-margin, recurring revenue stream," Trump Media's interim chief executive, Kevin McGurn, said in a July 16 statement.

"As adoption grows, we expect Truth API to become a meaningful, ongoing source of revenue for the company, creating lasting value for shareholders."

In an Aug. 10 earnings call, McGurn said the company had signed more than 10 customer agreements for Truth API, primarily with "high-frequency trading firms," at "rates generally in the range of $60,000-$100,000 a month."

In the complaint, the plaintiffs called the Truth API service an "astounding scheme" because the president stands to gain financially when subscribers sign up.

"This scheme is extraordinary, corrupt, and unconstitutional, and Plaintiffs bring this case to stop it," the plaintiffs said.

The lawsuit claimed that granting preferential access to Trump's public statements to paid subscribers violates the First Amendment, which it says guarantees Americans equal access to the president's public announcements, as well as the Fifth Amendment, which it says prohibits the government from imposing extortionate or unreasonable conditions on the availability of government benefits.

"There is no legitimate interest, let alone a significant one, in permitting President Trump to profit from selling government information," it said.

"The President stands to gain financially by giving 'market-moving' government information to those who are willing and able to pay his personal company."

According to the complaint, many of Trump's 9,000 to 11,000 Truth Social posts and reposts during his second White House term were not followed by official White House statements.

A Trump Media & Technology Group spokesman told The Epoch Times by email that information from Trump is "disseminated by countless platforms and news outlets, many of which offer subscription APIs."

He said that one of those channels is Truth Social, "which was founded as an uncancellable haven for free speech after the President was unjustly deplatformed."

"Now, left-wing activists are trying to wrongfully weaponize the courts to censor him again and harm our shareholders," he added.

The president is Trump Media's largest shareholder. His eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., is a Trump Media director and oversees the trust.

Other accounts offered through Truth API include those of Vice President JD Vance, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., FBI Director Kash Patel, and the White House itself, the complaint said, adding that these are the 10 most popular accounts on Truth Social

"Trump is trying to enrich himself by privatizing government information that he has no right to sell," said Ben Muessig, editor-in-chief of online news outlet The Intercept.

"A president selling priority access to news he himself generates for the benefit of a private company he controls is so blatantly corrupt and unconstitutional that it would have been hard to even fathom just a few years ago," said Freedom of the Press Foundation's chief of advocacy Seth Stern.

The Epoch Times has contacted the White House for comment.

Reuters contributed to this report.

Tyler Durden Thu, 08/13/2026 - 17:00

Anthropic's $2 Trillion Bet Is That Nothing Goes Wrong

Anthropic's $2 Trillion Bet Is That Nothing Goes Wrong

The most revealing aspect of a $2 trillion Anthropic IPO is not the staggering valuation, but the suspension of disbelief required to justify it.

To buy into that number, investors must assume that artificial intelligence is becoming economically indispensable at breakneck speed, that a formidable moat will protect a handful of frontier-model developers, and that the exorbitant costs of computing infrastructure will not eventually crush their margins. More crucially - they must wager that the political, technical, and institutional risks inherent to an increasingly geopolitically competitive landscape will play second fiddle to the growth story. 

Dario Amodei, CEO and co-founder of Anthropic, attends the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Jan. 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber, File)

Reports of Anthropic's internal projections describe a company scaling at an unprecedented clip. If it can actually bust out an annualized revenue run-rate of $100 billion while expanding its enterprise market share, a trillion-dollar valuation begins to look mathematically defensible under current tech multiples. But this arithmetic obscures a deeper structural flaw: the very capabilities driving Anthropic's revenue growth are simultaneously engineering the risks most likely to vaporize its premium.

As frontier models become more autonomous, persuasive, and capable of executing multi-step objectives across outside systems, they cease to be conventional software. A text generator hallucinating an answer is a glitch; an autonomous agent hallucinating a cyber-attack or a rogue financial transaction is a massive liability.

The recent internal turmoil and safety-evaluation controversies at both OpenAI and Anthropic are symptomatic of this shift. Major AI labs are now diverting substantial resources to test for autonomy, deception, and loss of control. This is not merely an engineering challenge; it is a fundamental transformation of the product category. The instability roiling these companies is not a byproduct of poor management - it is a structural consequence of trying to shoehorn a potentially world-altering, highly volatile technology into the framework of a standard venture-backed corporation.

The company's value has been all over the place in prediction markets - recently hockey-sticking following a report in FT in which six company backers said that Anthropic's rapidly rising revenue "would enable it to more than double its current valuation in a planned autumn float." 

Will Anthropic's valuation hit (HIGH) $2.0T by December 31?
Yes 60% · No 40%
View full market & trade on Polymarket

"If Anthropic is growing 800 per cent a year, you'd think at the incredibly low end they would trade at 30 times [revenue]," one investor told FT, adding "That would make them a $3tn company."

Anthropic is a particularly pure expression of this tension over its capabilities. Their basic pitch is that frontier capability and rigorous safety can coexist - a positioning with immense commercial value to risk-averse enterprise clients. Yet - after Anthropic spooked the shit out of everyone with its hackbot 5000 (Mythos), China went full Leeroy Jenkins through the field with cheap, efficient, capable open-weighted models that carry none of the moralizing - just performance at a better value. When a safety-first AI company repeatedly triggers control warnings in its frontier models, it erodes its core value proposition. In effect, Anthropic is running two races at once: one toward greater capability, the other toward greater control.

OpenAI offers a different flavor of the same crisis. Its explosive adoption set the template for the modern AI platform, but its boardroom coups, leadership exoduses, and chronic debates over deployment safety illustrate the inherent friction between mission statements, capital requirements, and commercial incentives. The industry has engineered a relentless feedback loop: capital buys compute, compute yields capability, capability drives revenue, and revenue attracts further capital. But with every revolution of this flywheel, the control problem magnifies. The commercial boom and the governance crisis are not parallel events; they are the same phenomenon viewed from different angles.

Because of this, conventional revenue multiples are highly suspect. Even if Anthropic achieves a massive revenue run-rate, standard tech valuations demand continuity between current sales and future cash flows. Frontier AI's economics, however, are unusually discontinuous. Cheaper, open-source alternatives threaten to commoditize baseline intelligence, while corporate customers are already demonstrating price sensitivity by opting for smaller, highly efficient models for routine tasks. Technological leadership does not guarantee pricing power. The industry has proved that better AI generates demand; it has not proved that every incremental leap in intelligence creates proportionate economic value.

Catch-22

An alternative lens for these valuations is that investors are not buying a software company; they are pricing a call option on the strategic control of machine intelligence.

Anthropic’s backers say booming demand for the start-up’s advanced AI models and tools justifies their lofty expectations © Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg

If advanced AI becomes the foundational infrastructure of the modern economy - underpinning software, finance, defense, and medicine - occupying that central node yields unprecedented economic leverage. But here's the catch-22: If frontier AI becomes as strategically vital as a trillion-dollar valuation implies, governments will not allow its proprietors to operate as ordinary private entities indefinitely. The stronger the financial case for these valuations becomes, the stronger the political case for national-security classification, severe regulatory constraints, and sovereign oversight.

An Anthropic IPO would therefore be more than a liquidity event. It would be the public markets' first attempt to price the frontier-AI paradox.

 

Tyler Durden Thu, 08/13/2026 - 16:40

The 'Burrito' Debate: What's It Really About...

The 'Burrito' Debate: What's It Really About...

Authored by JD Breen via Pretium Insights,

Two years ago, “conservative” pundits rightly ridiculed the Biden Administration for suggesting inflation was fine while blaming its poor approval ratings on Americans’ ignorance of how little they were spending. Now, under the Trump Administration, the same “influencers” mock young people for noticing how much things cost.

Last week a “burrito debate” erupted when a college student said burritos shouldn’t cost twenty bucks.

Many respondents promptly missed the point, explaining that most burritos don’t cost that much, and that these entitled whiners shouldn’t be eating out anyway. They should cook at home and subsist on ramen and beans, just like those critics (claim they) did.

But the student’s observation was less about burritos being expensive than the undeniable fact that the cost of many essentials keeps going up, to the detriment of those born too late to acquire assets before they soared in price.

Whittled Away

The tone-deaf response to a legitimate complaint isn’t just wrong. It’s economically, politically, and culturally idiotic. This isn’t about pulling up bootstraps, driving a beater, or walking uphill both ways.

Telling people that things they buy don’t cost what they’re paying probably isn’t going to change minds or win votes. Nor is advising them to eat beans because a degraded dollar has boosted the price of beef.

General price increases started decades ago, deriving from government spending, unlimited credit, and State meddling in essential industries. It’s no coincidence that housing, medical care, and education… sectors near the money spigot and with the most government subsidies, restrictions, and mandates… are among the least affordable, and whose customers incur the most debt.

That these increases accelerated after the 1970s… with the proliferation of student loans, expansion of Medicare, and advent of the “Greenspan Put”… also isn’t a coincidence. Nor is the “Nixon Shock” in 1971.

Wages have also risen, though not enough to compensate these costs. Even the yardstick is being whittled away. The dollar has lost about a fifth of its purchasing power this decade, almost half this century, and nearly 90% since it was divorced from gold in 1971. From the founding of the Fed in 1913, it’s almost entirely gone:

During this time, fiat money has fueled the financial system. Fiat currency creation instills distortions, depending on where the “printers” decide to distribute the loot. Connected insiders control the pump, and receive the first infusions when new cash is created.

This is how counterfeiting rings work, to quickly enrich initial recipients while slyly ripping off those forced to fill up last. Among the laggards are wage-earners, who tend to receive more pay after prices of assets (that young people own less of) and consumer goods (which they must buy) have already risen.

Instead of sound money that encourages investment and savings, we get banker bailouts, entitlement boondoggles, non-stop wars, and less affordable stuff. Under inflation, even items with falling nominal prices (software, televisions, mobile phones) cost more than they otherwise would.

A Separate Argument

Millennials and Zoomers didn’t cause this problem, and their wasteful spending habits don’t make it worse (though many of their proposed “solutions” will). For them to be scolded for financial irresponsibility by generations that compiled over $100T in public and private debt isn’t a good look.

The debate isn’t about burritos. Those are symbolic. The point is that U.S. “leaders” have wrecked the currency to pay for foreign wars and domestic boondoggles at the expense of Americans who resent being ripped off. Many are young people who were pilfered before they were born, and inherited the mess bequeathed by the people berating them.

Why must we act like their animosity isn’t understandable? Instead, youngsters are told to grab their bootstraps, get roommates, and eat ramen (all of which most of them already do) so that being robbed wouldn’t hurt so much.

Spending beyond one’s means is a valid point when discussing personal finance. But it’s a separate argument. A college student with a low-paying job shouldn’t expect to afford an $80,000 truck or a half million dollar house. Fine.

But that’s obvious… and a distraction. No one is arguing otherwise. How people spend money is a budgeting discussion, and a worthy one. Yet the topic at hand is the declining value of what’s being spent.

Baby Boomers didn’t sit meekly when “guns and butter” ravaged their paychecks. Nor should they have.

Why should generations that came of age this century not be angry that their elders eroded the dollar, incurred debt, and rigged industries to fund wars, support the stock market, keep house prices high, and make food, fuel, education, transportation, and medical care unnecessarily expensive?

Buying burritos and lattes isn’t what’s keeping young buyers out of the housing market. Till this decade, the median first-time home buyer was in his early thirties. Fifty years ago, he was in his twenties. He’s now almost forty, with the typical homeowner pushing sixty.

Home prices are outrunning wages, which are generally lower for younger workers. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a 20–24 year-old working full-time earns about $796 a week in 2025 dollars, down from $825 in 1979.

While real wages for all age cohorts are now rising, this is the only group still paid less than it was when Carter was president. The 25-34 bracket just recently slipped ahead. Others did so at least a decade ago.

Renting is an option, but not a great one:

Bipartisan Larceny

Eating burritos didn’t cause this problem, which isn’t a function of who’s in office. More than 20% of all U.S. government debt (in constant 2026 dollars) accumulated while Donald Trump has been president.

But he’s not alone. In real terms, Ronald Reagan doubled the debt. About 70% (85% nominally) was compiled this century, during which purchasing power was sliced in half. That’s not an accident, or because entitled brats bought iPhones.

Cumulative real (2026 dollars) borrowing is more than $63T, against almost $40T of nominal debt. Inflation has erased nearly 40% of the real value of what was pledged. Two-fifths of the obligations DC compiled have been surreptitiously discharged by devaluing the money it’s denominated in.

The government, fixed-rate mortgage holders, and other debtors benefited. Creditors, savers, and anyone who held dollars absorbed the loss.

Age-Based Antagonism

The “Burrito Debate” has exacerbated age-based antagonism that is unfortunate and crippling. Inter-generational cooperation is among the greatest attributes thriving societies possess.

We often learn more from other generations than our own, many members of which are competitors for status, positions, or mates. The young imbibe wisdom from elders, who receive energy from youth.

But a proliferation of memes about out-of-touch Boomers and slacker Zoomers breeds reflexive conflict that foments fragmentation, stagnation, and rot (which is why it’s probably partially contrived and intentionally stoked).

Young people do have a lot of advantages their elders didn’t enjoy. As is often reiterated, their lives would be science fiction to any human being who died more than two decades ago, much less throughout human history.

But that doesn’t mean they’re wrong about this. Because Medieval peasants lived in huts amid perpetual plague on the edge of famine doesn’t mean today’s youth should accept being afflicted with inflation.

Many of the youngsters’ “remedies” may be warped (as were most of their predecessors’ when they confronted earlier challenges and caused our current ones). But the problem is real. If the idea is to dissuade twenty-five year-olds from embracing socialism, it’s unwise to insist they tighten their belts while their elders get fat taking the meat from their plates.

At some point, the kids are gonna get fed up and want in on the racket. If their parents can print money and incur debt to sustain stock prices, preserve pensions, and wage wars, why not grab some loot for themselves, to make groceries “cheap”, healthcare “free”, and rent “affordable”?

As Much Right

These prescriptions are imbecilic.

But from the perspective of the perpetually fleeced who receive self-righteous lectures, they’re not irrational. They’re also politically potent, which is why it’s foolish to encourage revolutionary anger by treating reasonable gripes with arrogant condescension.

The people “helping the communists” aren’t the kids being attracted to it. It’s the beneficiaries of Fed counterfeiting, government debt, and protective regulation who keep denying the existence of a problem they caused.

Decades ago when the debt started accelerating, real conservatives warned that their grandchildren would be forced to pay for their profligacy. Now the grandkids are here, and they aren’t thrilled being stuck with the bill after those who ran up the tab left the table.

The “Greatest Generation” complained about their predecessors causing the Depression and a couple catastrophic World Wars. The Boomers protested when their parents gave them Seventies stagflation and Vietnam.

They were both right. So are Millennials and Gen-Z when they begrudge the idiotic wars, debt, and incessant inflation they’re saddled with.

Like their predecessors, they’ll persevere. But they have as much right to resent their ancestors’ malfeasance as their ancestors did.

Tyler Durden Thu, 08/13/2026 - 16:20

Inside Utah's Trans-Marxist Militia: From Cuba Revolutionary Trips And Rifle Training To Declaring War On Landlords

Inside Utah's Trans-Marxist Militia: From Cuba Revolutionary Trips And Rifle Training To Declaring War On Landlords

via Miah Blackwell of The Cougar Chronicle, 

Over the last few years, individuals and groups tied to violent and extremist LGBTQ activism have been emerging in the heart of Utah. In May, we exposed how extremist students and clubs at UVU have been responsible for vandalism, violent threats and rhetoric, and even justifying the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Some even left the words “bella ciao” on the sidewalk during left-wing protests.

In June, we documented an LGBTQ gathering in Provo where individuals beat an effigy of a police officer and wrote extremist propaganda in chalk. 

But these appearances of violent LGBTQ activism are minor compared to the actions and rhetoric of a group called Armed Queers of Salt Lake City, which has been at the center of this radical movement for some time. 

Describing itself as a socialist, trans-led collective, Armed Queers of Salt Lake City emerged in 2020 with the purpose of combining armed community defense with their far-left Marxist-Leninist and radical LGBTQ ideologies.

A recruitment card we obtained says the group is working toward:

  1. the armed protection of queer and trans communities, 
  2. the end of capitalist exploitation, 
  3. trans liberation from the gender binary, 
  4. housing as a human right, 
  5. the abolition of prisons and police, 
  6. the dismantling of the nonprofit “industrial complex.” 

In a 2024 interview the group framed its work as defending people it considers endangered from both right-wing vigilantes and the state. At a public event the following year, one member described it plainly as a “queer and trans-led Marxist-Leninist organization.”

This is clearly not a normal activism club; it’s an armed political group that resembles a militia. The card makes it explicit: their goal is “armed and militant protection.” And with ties to a tragic shooting at a “No Kings” rally in June of 2025, as well as reports of an FBI investigation into suspected ties to Tyler Robinson, the alleged assassin of Charlie Kirk, this group should be setting off alarm bells throughout government and law enforcement agencies.

But as we began to investigate this group, one of the most worrying things we discovered was how silent community, state, and federal leaders have been on the issue of organized and armed LGBTQ extremist groups.

Charlie Kirk's Assassination: A Wave of Attention

In the weeks after the September 2025 assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University, the group scrubbed much of its online presence, its Instagram and other social media pages going dark. Some of it has since flickered back. 

On September 16, just days after Kirk’s assassination, Republican Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna publicly stated that Armed Queers SLC was under investigation by the FBI as an “extended network related to Charlie’s killer.” The New York Post later confirmed this and added that the probe sought to reveal if Armed Queers and related groups had foreknowledge of the assassination.  

But as of August 11, 2026, no further information about this FBI investigation has been revealed to the public. Indeed, Armed Queers of Salt Lake City has barely been mentioned at all by community, state, or local journalists and leaders. But even if Armed Queers had no connection to Tyler Robinson, their ongoing activities–including firearms training, vigilante security operations, and even activism trips to Cuba–should be cause for public concern.

So we took it upon ourselves to do the job that other Utah journalists and law enforcement agencies are not doing: we are shining a light on the growing trans militia in Utah. 

Our Look Inside a Meeting

On June 14, journalists from The Cougar Chronicle attended and investigated a formal Armed Queers meeting during Salt Lake City’s Pride Month festivities. 

The gathering took place inside the Church and State church building, which is now frequently home to pagan and satanic-themed groups and businesses. Along the wall was a line of tables representing the different organizations. Among those groups were: Armed Queers of Salt Lake City, Salt Lake Community Bail Fund, Rise SLC, The Brown Berets De West Valley, Queers for Palestine and an oddly adorned table at the end dedicated to COVID-19. Each table had its own set of pamphlets and flyers to hand out to the guests.

It was a small, intimate gathering of less than fifty people–at least half of them wearing COVID-19 masks–and a panel of speakers representing the different organizations where they talked about events, history, oppression followed by a Q&A at the end. With mic in hand, our correspondent went and mingled with the representatives at each table–specifically the representatives of Armed Queers SLC.

When we inquired about the origins of Armed Queers of Salt Lake City, one female representative said:

“So, um, we're a socialist organization that's focused on the support and, um, protection of, uh, oppressed communities with a focus on bearing arms and defense … Armed Queers came about by being armed and being queer because queer inherently is political. And so we wanted to keep the queerness into the armed part, where we're not just a gun group, we're also a queer group that focuses on politics and all the other stuff. And so we wanted to kind of figure out a way to combine all that together to really symbolize who we are…So we want to make sure it's political, not just gun … the gun part is about the protection and the liberation of all of us people.”

Exposing Children

Listening to other conversations, we noticed a lot of emphasis on exposing children to “queerness.” One panelist said, “...I have noticed in the last 25 years a lot of children are going down into our community.”

During the panel, the only biologically identifying male–known for doing drag–spoke more about children:

“..there was this like school bus of children walking by, and a good chunk at the top were like, ‘oh my gosh, you're beautiful, can we take a picture?’ Like you just don't think about that when you think of students in Utah. You just think that they are their parents, essentially. But children are so amazing. And they want to see things and see growth in the state. So just go to a lot of queer events. How about that?”

Materials and Literature

At the meeting, Armed Queers handed out various materials and literature including a how-to guide on writing to political prisoners, a request for donations to acquire a firearms instructor and “enroll our comrades” in a public gun range day, and information about the Salt Lake Community Bail Fund. Additionally, they had flyers claiming that the Trump administration is “gearing up for war” by mentioning the arrest of Nicolas Maduro and the ongoing Iran war. They characterized ICE agents as operatives of a fascist regime and handed out books such as The Communist Manifesto.

Weapons Training and Trips to Cuba

An archive of Instagram posts acquired before Armed Queers took down the page reveals some of the group's normal operations before September of 2025. These activities include monthly firearm training sessions, providing citizen defense for LGBTQ pride events, holding educational forums, and even sending members to Cuba to be trained and participate in the May Day Brigade.

When we attended their June 2026 meeting, we learned that these activities are still ongoing and were not entirely ended by the aftermath of Charlie Kirk's assassination. A recent post from founder Ermiya Fanaeian confirms that members affiliated with Armed Queers SLC traveled to Cuba this summer.

Links to Other Violent Groups

In 2023, Armed Queers SLC hosted a workshop with the Elm Fork John Brown Gun Club called "Protecting People's Movements: The Rise in Community Defense."
The workshop taught participants about the history of left-wing community defense, the threat of the right-wing, and the importance of organizing armed defense.

The Elm Fork John Brown Gun Club (EFJBGC) is a left-wing social-justice gun rights group reportedly based in Kansas. One revealing blog post from 2024 details recent issues they've had with leadership, and some reports mention several spin-off groups and affiliated organizations, but their aims, rhetoric, and methods are almost identical to Armed Queers SLC. In July of 2025, several of the individuals who attacked and injured a law enforcement officer in the Prairieland ICE facility in Alvarado, Texas, were linked to EFJBGC, as reported in The New York Times.

The Origins of Armed Queers

The group's public origin runs through Ermiya Fanaeian, a male-to-female transgender activist and the son of Iranian immigrants, who first drew local attention as a teenager. In the aftermath of the 2018 Parkland shooting, he helped organize a Utah chapter of March for Our Lives, the student gun-control movement. 

But within a few years, Fanaeian reversed his position on guns. Speaking to Utah’s KUER, he said, “I used to think that guns were a scary thing. Back then, I would have agreed with Joe Biden’s assertion to take everyone’s AR-15s away. And now I own one.”

He later launched a Salt Lake City chapter of the Pink Pistols, a national LGBTQ firearms group, but later broke with it. Pink Pistols tells a pointed version of that split, saying they cut ties because Fanaeian began using its name to advance a broader political program in violation of the group's single, narrow purpose of promoting lawful, responsible gun ownership. Pink Pistols says his chapter remains defunct.

When Fanaeian organized AQSLC, he kept the core Pink Pistols model–armed, organized, and queer–but expanded on it with additional features. Armed Queers distinguishes itself in three vital ways:

  • An explicit political mission. Armed Queers’ own membership sign-up form states the group’s goal of establishing a socialist society and achieving "trans liberation from the gender binary and biological essentialism,” which are ideological aims. The group describes itself as aligned with Marxism and trains queer and trans people to arm themselves in opposition to capitalism and oppression. 
  • Coalition activism. Fanaeian protested with the Salt Lake City chapter of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, demanding "police and prison abolition.” He also founded a local PSL chapter himself. Aligning and actively working with other far-left movements (as also evidenced by the other booths at the event we attended) is an essential element of Armed Queers.
  • Campus ideological programming. In 2023 the group lectured at the University of Utah, hosted by a socialist student organization, promoting "queer resistance" and dismantling "cis-heteropatriarchy" and "land ownership." 

Fanaeian has not been shy about what this organization leads to. In a local television interview, he said that "Sometimes violence, protest, and really riots and those kinds of loud rebellions must take place for tangible change." He invoked the 1969 Stonewall Uprising as his template. 

After the assassination of Charlie Kirk brought national attention to the group, the US State Department cut ties with Utah Global Diplomacy, a foreign relations NGO who had previously given Ermiya Fanaeian the “7 for 17” award for advancing the United Nations’ 17 goals. They had also named her a Young Diplomat of Utah. Utah Global Diplomacy has since scrubbed Fanaeian’s presence from their website, but receipts remain courtesy of Data Republican on X.

And in an essay that has since been taken down (with only screenshots courtesy of James Lindsay on X remaining), Fanaeian writes extensively about the “trans struggle” in the framework of radical marxism. In an Instagram post detailing a trip to Cuba, he wrote in the caption, “Spending time in Cuba has made me, alongside my comrades, acutely aware of our duty in the belly of the beast.”

The June 2025 Shooting

The assassination of Charlie Kirk is not the first time Armed Queers SLC has come under public scrutiny. 

On June 14, 2025, at a Utah “No Kings” rally in downtown Salt Lake City, thousands of people were in the streets. Among the marchers was Arthur Folasa Ah Loo, “Afa” to those who knew him, a Samoan fashion designer who had once competed on Project Runway. 

Armed volunteers, including members of Armed Queers and the 50501 protest network, formed a volunteer armed security force they called “peacekeepers.”

During the protest, one of these peacekeepers, 43-year-old Matthew Scott Alder, believed he saw a man “ducked down as he was loading his rifle” and thought he was about to commit a mass shooting. Raising his own weapon, Alder fired at the man three times. One round struck the man with the rifle, while another struck Ah Loo, who collapsed and later died. Nearly six months afterward, on December 3, 2025, Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill charged Alder with manslaughter, a second-degree felony carrying up to fifteen years.

Pictured: Ah Loo

An attorney for Ah Loo's family said the groups providing security that day included both the 50501 protest network and Armed Queers SLC, and that Alder is “believed to be associated” with the latter. The same attorney has alleged that the groups deliberately obscured their leadership and operated under pseudonyms. 

However, both the Attorney General’s charging announcement as well as the media coverage from CBS, NBC, CNN, the Associated Press, and the Salt Lake Tribune, only tie Alder to the event's volunteer safety detail and to the 50501 movement, but not Armed Queers SLC. And when Ah Loo's widow filed a wrongful-death lawsuit, the named defendants were Alder and six leaders of Utah 50501. 

A Warning to Utahns

This trans militia was built and is thriving in Utah. The meeting we attended took place in downtown Salt Lake City, and the founding member is a student at the University of Utah. 

During our investigation of UVU’s extremist Civil Disobedience Club, we unearthed internal discord messages of a transgender individual offering to train others with firearms. This same individual was responsible for other rhetoric where harming conservatives was implicitly justified or made to seem inevitable. This individual is a student at Utah Valley University. 

We also recorded transgender individuals glorifying violence against law enforcement and teaching children to follow suit. This group was at Kiwanis Park in Provo.

And let’s not forget that Tyler Robinson was from Washington, Utah, and was living in St. George at the time of the shooting. 

Violent extremists are in our communities. Armed Queers of SLC is evidence that some are even organizing into militia-like entities. Charlie Kirk’s assassination generated an appropriate amount of concern for these activities, but that concern faded far too quickly. If law enforcement, policymakers, and community leaders fail to address the perpetuation of this radical and violent extremism in Utah, Ah Loo and Charlie Kirk will not be the only victims.

Tyler Durden Thu, 08/13/2026 - 15:45

Doug Casey On The End Of Honest Markets

Doug Casey On The End Of Honest Markets

Via InternationalMan.com,

International Man: Markets are supposed to reflect economic reality. But when central banks suppress interest rates, governments debase currencies, and major powers manipulate oil prices for political purposes, can any market still be considered honest?

Doug Casey: Almost all markets are distorted in some way by government intervention.

Interest rates are the price of money itself. They’re the blood of an economy; when they’re manipulated, it amounts to blood poisoning.

Currencies have become nothing more than floating abstractions. They move up and down by government fiat.

The same is true of every single food item, starting with all the grains, which provide 50% of mankind’s calories, directly or indirectly. Governments subsidize some, put duties on others, regulate how much can be planted, then often store surpluses. This is true of every food—citrus, sugar, coffee, etc., etc. There are no exceptions.

The State distorts metals markets directly with price or import/ export controls as well. But regulations regarding permitting and production are more serious and stretch over decades.

We can’t be sure what prices would be if we lived in a free market economy. Except to say they’d be much lower without the dead hand of the States constantly throwing sand in the gears of commerce.

International Man: Oil is the world’s most important commodity, yet its price can be distorted by sanctions, strategic-reserve releases, production quotas, subsidies, and political pressure. How much of today’s oil price is determined by genuine supply and demand?

Doug Casey: Oil is certainly the most important, most political, and by far the highest dollar volume commodity.

Like every commodity, its basic price parameters are set by supply (how much is produced) and demand (how much is used). But both of those fundamentals are distorted by government policies, starting with taxes on both producers and consumers.

And now we also have to guess how long the wars between Russia and the Ukraine, and the U.S./Israel and Iran will last, and how bad they’ll get. Russia is a huge hydrocarbon producer. The Middle East produces about 1/3rd of the world’s oil and 1/6th of its natural gas. Most of it is now cut off.

It’s not just a question of reduced production. People forget that raw petroleum is basically useless. It only becomes useful and valuable after it’s “cracked” by a refinery into its valuable components—gasoline, diesel, kerosene, and other distillates. And they forget that oil’s only buyers are refineries.

But the refineries are major targets in these wars. Not only that, but they’re about the easiest targets to damage and the most expensive to replace. And they won’t be replaced quickly because they’re likely to be blown up again.

Since I believe these two wars are not only going to continue but get much worse, I’m betting the prices of oil and its products are going up, and availability is going way down. And that’s not even counting the possibility that these wars will expand to something worldwide.

War is historically the major activity of governments. It’s been said, correctly, that war is the health of the State. And governments today are far, far larger and more powerful than ever before. So you can count on much more interference in both the production and consumption of oil in the future. And radical movements in its price.

International Man: When governments can create trillions of currency units, rescue favored institutions, and intervene whenever markets move against them, has investing become less about finding value and more about anticipating the next manipulation?

Doug Casey: Let me define a couple of terms—investing and speculating. Many people throw these words around without really understanding what they mean. The result is sloppy thinking.

Investing is about allocating capital so that it can mix with labor and produce more real wealth. Think about planting a seed to grow a hundred new seeds. Profitable investing is always hard work, but it becomes risky and unattractive in a highly taxed and regulated environment, especially in wartime.

Speculating, however, is about capitalizing on distortions—generally those caused by government. Speculators don’t produce new goods. But by buying when things are cheap (when there’s a glut), and selling when they’re dear (when there’s a shortage), they provide an extremely valuable service. The public dislikes speculators because they profit from times of trouble. But the public, idiotically, fails to understand that speculators profit because they’re solving problems, not causing them.

We can expect to see a lot more speculating, and less investing, in the years to come. The average guy will almost be forced to speculate in an attempt to just keep his head above water. Unfortunately, most of them will prove poor speculators; they’ll wind up as gamblers, relying on luck more than skill.

International Man: Who benefits most from dishonest markets, who ultimately pays the price, and why do most investors fail to recognize the fraud until their purchasing power and savings have already been damaged?

Doug Casey: When a game is rigged, it’s usually the game’s organizer, the house, that does the rigging. In today’s world, the rigging is done by Deep State types, who are close to power, close to people who can change the rules when it suits. It famously happened, for instance, in January of 1980, when the Hunt brothers tried to corner the silver market. The exchange arbitrarily raised margin requirements and bankrupted them.

Central banks can, and do, intervene to prop up stock markets and failing institutions. In 2008, the government rescued or supported AIG, Citigroup, and Bank of America, among others, when Congress approved the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).

You may recall the banking emergency of March 2023, when regulators bailed out Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank. It was great for the tech nerds; not so great for the average citizen.

You’ll see a lot more of that type of thing in the near future. You’re seeing it right now with the Japanese Yen as the decades-long carry trade is unwound. It’s a real, and inevitable, disaster in the making.

International Man: In a world where almost everything is subject to political intervention, where can an investor still find honest value to preserve wealth? What about intelligent speculations?

Doug Casey: An investor should look for solid and growing businesses selling for reasonable prices. They’re hard to find today; the stock market is very expensive.

A speculator can keep his eye on all the markets, looking to sell something that’s too expensive (like tech stocks) and buy something that’s too cheap (like commodities).

The average guy, who is neither, should probably just buy gold and silver coins anonymously, for cash, and set them aside until the world emerges from both the Greater Depression and World War 3.

You’ll recall that the best broad definition of a depression is a period of time when most people’s standard of living falls significantly.

But it can also be defined as a period of time when distortions and misallocations of capital are liquidated. That definition is most relevant to what we’re looking at right now. The financial world is overloaded with distortions and misallocations of capital. It’s going to be a real bloodbath at some point.

But the good news is that most of the real wealth will still exist. It will just change hands. That should be good news for you, as a subscriber to Contrarian Insider or Crisis Investing.

*  *  *

The distortions built up across today’s financial system will eventually have to be resolved—and when that happens, investors may have far fewer options than they do today. The time to think about protecting your wealth is before a crisis forces the issue and governments begin changing the rules. That’s why legendary investor and New York Times best-selling author Doug Casey put together this free special report outlining the key moves he believes are worth considering before a serious dollar crisis takes hold. If you have savings, retirement assets, or wealth tied to the US financial system, you should see it now—while you still have the freedom and flexibility to act. Click here to get it now.

Tyler Durden Thu, 08/13/2026 - 15:30

Workday Soars Most On Record As Silver Lake Weighs $43 Billion Buyout

Workday Soars Most On Record As Silver Lake Weighs $43 Billion Buyout

Workday shares jumped the most on record during late-afternoon trading on Thursday after a Reuters report said Silver Lake was in discussions to acquire the human-resources and financial-management software company.

According to the report, the deal would value Workday at $43 billion and rank among the largest software buyouts in history.

Here's more from the report:

Silver Lake and the human-resources and financial management software company have held discussions about a potential deal in recent months, the people said. The talks are ongoing and there is no guarantee a deal will materialize, said the sources, ‌who ⁠spoke on condition of anonymity because the discussions are confidential.

For context, Workday is a large enterprise-software company whose cloud platform helps organizations manage:

  • Human resources, payroll and employee benefits
  • Recruiting, workforce planning and performance
  • Accounting, budgeting and financial reporting
  • Procurement and expenses
  • Business analytics and AI agents

Shares of Workday soared as much as 25%...

the largest one-day gain on record, with trading data dating back to 2012.

Workday, like many other software companies, suffered a vicious bear market earlier this year amid the "SaaSpocalypse" ...

... as investors feared that artificial intelligence models would erode the value of costly software products.

Tyler Durden Thu, 08/13/2026 - 15:15

"Unofficial" FBI Group Swept Up Journalists, Politicians As Russian Disinfo "Conduits" For Probing Biden-Ukraine Dealings

"Unofficial" FBI Group Swept Up Journalists, Politicians As Russian Disinfo "Conduits" For Probing Biden-Ukraine Dealings

An FBI analytical group that reviewed confidential-source reporting about Biden family corruption in Ukraine was "unofficially formed" inside the bureau's Foreign Influence Task Force in late 2019 and did not corroborate the allegations it was assigned to assess before labeling the reporting as Russian disinformation, according to newly declassified records.

The records [Direct download link] provide a more detailed picture of an effort known as Round River, a component of a broader intelligence project called DELTA, that operated in the run-up to and through the 2020 presidential election.

An Office of the Director of National Intelligence slide deck says analysts with the FBI's Foreign Influence Task Force-Russia, or FITF-R, came together around December 2019 and used internal systems to gather "any/all derogatory information" previously reported by confidential human sources concerning "Joseph Biden corruption and other Ukraine related-topics."

The deck refers to that body of reporting as the "Ukraine Narrative," including information concerning Burisma Holdings, Hunter Biden, Burisma founder Mykola Zlochevsky and allegations of Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election. The analysts' purpose, according to the document, was to "red flag" the reporting as Russian disinformation.

But the same document states: "The Round River team did not corroborate any of the allegations of the 'Ukraine Narrative.'"

Screenshot: DELTA Project

The analysts were given "administrative accesses to all reporting" and drafted intelligence products that were later placed in confidential-source files to indicate that the reporting had been deemed Russian disinformation, the deck says.

The group "operated leading up to and through the 2020 US Presidential election."

The records add important context to earlier reporting that senior Republican and conservative figures were identified as Russian-disinformation "conduits" in connection with Round River.

A separate FBI spreadsheet shows that the terminology was broader - and in some cases more tentative - than a designation of someone as a Russian agent or knowing participant in a foreign influence effort. It records people and organizations considered for warnings that they could be caught up in a foreign influence operation, along with the FBI's position on providing such a briefing.

Among those listed as conduits are former Attorney General William Barr, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Rudolph Giuliani, Sens. Ron Johnson and Chuck Grassley, the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, Rep. Jim Jordan and former Rep. Devin Nunes.

The document also identifies several prominent names not highlighted in initial coverage: Richard Donoghue, Pete Sessions and Mick Mulvaney.

Donoghue was serving at the highest levels of the Justice Department during the period covered by the operation. Mulvaney was White House chief of staff when the group formed, and Sessions, a former congressman at the time, returned to the House in 2021. Giuliani and Sessions are among the entries marked "FBI Equities," indicating the bureau objected or had an investigative interest bearing on a proposed briefing. Most of the other conduit entries are marked "No Objection."

The spreadsheet does not show that all of those nominated were actually warned - and in fact, Joe Biden is the only entry expressly marked "Briefed." 

Funny how that worked!

Tyler Durden Thu, 08/13/2026 - 15:00

The University Of Michigan Is Now Hiding Grades From Fragile Freshmen

The University Of Michigan Is Now Hiding Grades From Fragile Freshmen

Authored by Andrea Widburg via AmericanTinker.com,

In 2017, Macalester College, a pricey Midwestern college, ran an article in its glossy “Macalester Today” magazine titled “The Dog Is In.” Indeed, that was the cover story. In the article, Macalester boasted about having multiple therapy dogs roaming the campus to help students deal with homework stress—students who, as best as I could tell, had about 12 hours a week of class time, plus homework.

I was not impressed.

Little did I know, though, that worse was to come.

Nine years after Macalester boasted about its students being so fragile that they needed therapy dogs, the University of Michigan  has announced that it is hiding first-semester grades from freshmen, lest those same freshmen might be distressed if their grades didn’t meet their expectations:

The University of Michigan’s College of Literature, Science, and the Arts (LSA) will stop reporting traditional letter grades on first-semester transcripts for incoming freshmen beginning in Fall 2027, replacing them with “pass” or “no credit” designations as part of a pilot program aimed at reducing student stress and curbing a “mental health crisis”.

Students will still earn letter grades and receive instructor feedback in every course. However, those grades will remain internal, will not appear on official transcripts, and will not affect first-semester GPAs.

University officials say the policy is intended to help freshmen transition to college, support student well-being, and encourage students to take academically challenging courses without worrying that one difficult semester could permanently affect their records.

This is bat-fecal-matter crazy.

If the students aren’t given specific information about their academic progress, they cannot fix their mistakes and change their trajectory.

I had a couple of times in college and law school where I was either lazy or confused, resulting in bad grades. Maybe I was made of stronger stuff than the new freshmen, or maybe, just maybe, I lived in a time when we were less infantilized, but those bad grades didn’t cause me to have a mental collapse. Instead, I fixed the problem, either by being less lazy or by haunting my professors until I understood what I was doing wrong. Failure (well, not an actual “F” but, still, bad grades) was as important a lesson as anything the professor was actually teaching.

It would be lovely if life were just about going from success to success and pleasure to pleasure.

However, most of life is about dealing with harsh reality: The need to get good grades, a job, pay bills, deal with unpleasant people (including bosses or teachers), etc. Life is work.

Our ability to get the most out of life—to grow as a person and to be happy—comes not from gliding through the good times, but from learning when there are bad times: learning to change harmful behaviors, and learning to use reasonable optimism, not unreasoning, immature despair, as the engine powering you.

And one other thing: The grading system across academia has a profound flaw, and the way to fix it isn’t to hide information from students.

Grades should be weighted, with the grades at the beginning of the year, semester, or quarter having less value in the averaging than grades later in the quarter.

What matters isn’t where you start; it’s where you end.

If you struggle in the beginning but, through hard work, get better as you go, those early grades shouldn’t matter at all, or should matter minimally. In the same way, if you start slacking off after a fast start, that should be punished.

Tyler Durden Thu, 08/13/2026 - 14:40

Araghchi Mocks 'Fake Intelligence' Amid Skepticism Over Iranian Plot Against Trump In Turkey

Araghchi Mocks 'Fake Intelligence' Amid Skepticism Over Iranian Plot Against Trump In Turkey

US mainstream media has this week been dominated by claims that an Iranian assassination threat prompted President Donald Trump to secretly switch planes while flying out of Turkey last month, with Air Force One serving as a decoy while he flew out on a smaller military aircraft.

The details of the 'escape' from alleged danger are wild, and continue to be subject of widespread scrutiny and questioning, given the American president was actually covertly transferred into a catering container, which then ferried him to a small C-32A aircraft, according to reports in The Washington Post and The New York Times.

BBC: Donald Trump secretly switched planes when he was returning from a Nato meeting last month in order to avoid a threat to his life from Iran.

The claim was that Iranian covert forces could target Air Force One at the airport in Ankara using shoulder-fired rockets, or MANPADS, from perhaps just one kilometer away

Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi on Thursday while speaking of the broader war and the status of the Hormuz Strait appeared to gently mock the ordeal and controversy surrounding it. He referenced "fake intelligence" in the broad comments.

Importantly the words come as some like Turkey are accusing Israel of feeding Washington 'fabricated' intelligence, which then led to the dramatic Trump plane-switching escapade.

FM Araghchi asserted that the United States has "has long miscalculated due to intelligence failures," especially when launching its war on Iran.

But that's when he could be interpreted as mocking the Air Force One drama, continuing on X: "Worse than fake news is fake intelligence."

Some analysts have questioned why at this point in the conflict, when Iranian government and armed forces have clearly survived nearly six months of everything the US military has thrown at it, Iran would even see the need to assassinate a head of state.

Such an action would only invite a much greater military response than has been seen before, and the Islamic Republic seeks to keep its current leverage over Hormuz, wanting to keep things at a low-burn headed into US midterm elections.

In the meantime there are fresh reports that the US intelligence community itself is skeptical of the assassination plot claims:

US intelligence officials were skeptical of an alleged Iranian assassination threat against President Donald Trump during his trip to Turkiye for the NATO summit, which prompted a secretive plan to fly him out of the country in an alternative military aircraft.

The assassination threat was relayed by the Israeli government to the CIA, where analysts did not view the intelligence as compelling and conveyed that skepticism to Trump administration officials, Washington Post reported, quoting current and former US officials familiar with the intelligence said.

Another official called the reports of threats against Trump’s life “Israeli-derived, not US-generated, and viewed as low confidence,” Washington Post added.

However, the Secret Service is trained to take basically every threat seriously and move fast, especially while the president is traveling through foreign countries, or in potentially hostile environments. 

More and more skepticism has emerged of late across the political spectrum related to official Washington claims related to the Iran conflict...

"As the President has said, he has faced numerous threats on his life, including ones from Iran, and every measure is taken to ensure his safety," a US official said in a statement.

"The United States Secret Service’s core mission is protecting the President, which they achieved," the statement added.

*  *  *

Meanwhile, expect some of Iran's Lego videos to drop next...

Tyler Durden Thu, 08/13/2026 - 14:20

Cyberattack Cripples California City's 911 System, Forces Emergency Shutdown

Cyberattack Cripples California City's 911 System, Forces Emergency Shutdown

Via American Greatness,

A Northern California city of roughly 30,000 residents was forced to shut down its entire computer network Friday after a cyberattack knocked out its 911 system, the latest sign of how vulnerable American municipalities remain to digital assaults.

Suisun City, located about 45 miles from San Francisco, declared a state of emergency Saturday after malicious software infiltrated its network shortly before 6 p.m. Friday, the California Post reported.

“Officials shut down the entire network to stop the threat from spreading and protect evidence for a federal investigation,” the outlet reported.

City officials scrambled to prevent the outage from endangering residents, rerouting 911 calls through the Solano County dispatch center. Police and fire personnel remained active and able to respond to calls for service despite the loss of the city’s own systems.

The breach reached well beyond emergency dispatch.

City services including building permits and other municipal records were rendered inaccessible, and residents were unable to pay bills online while the network remained offline.

The Suisun City Council voted unanimously to pull the plug on the network and declare a state of emergency during a special meeting Saturday morning, an extraordinary step that underscores the severity of the threat local officials believed they were facing.

The incident lands amid heightened concern over foreign cyber threats to American infrastructure since the outbreak of the Iran war.

U.S. authorities issued an “urgent warning” in April that hackers linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps were actively working to disrupt critical American computer networks, a threat national security officials have long cautioned could extend to local governments with limited cybersecurity resources.

It remains unclear whether the Suisun City attack is connected to Iran-backed hacking operations.

Investigators are still working to determine how the malicious software breached the network and who is responsible, according to news reports.

City officials have not said when full network functionality is expected to be restored.

Tyler Durden Thu, 08/13/2026 - 14:00

Gamer Recruitment Campaign Sparks Record Air Traffic Controller Hiring: FAA

Gamer Recruitment Campaign Sparks Record Air Traffic Controller Hiring: FAA

The Federal Aviation Administration reached historic hiring levels for air traffic controllers through its campaign to target gamers.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in an Aug. 9 post on X that the campaign “supercharged the entire hiring process to get the BEST & BRIGHTEST in faster.”

As a result, the TSA hit 94 percent of its hiring goal this year, which is the fastest the agency has reached that goal.

Those figures translate into 2,000 new controllers hired, which, as Savannah Hulsey Pointer details below for The Epoch Times, is the most ever hired in a single year. According to Duffy, those candidates made it to training faster than any class before them.

“We’re building the strongest, sharpest workforce in aviation history,” he said.

The Department of Transportation ad campaign included the slogan “It’s not a Game. It’s a Career.”

The department stated that it targeted gamers for their “unique and transferable skillset, including high cognitive functions, spatial awareness, multitasking, and strategy and problem solving.”

The FAA announced its plan to target gamers for recruitment in April, saying it could help solve the industry’s decades-long shortage of controllers.

“To reach the next generation of air traffic controllers, we need to adapt. This campaign’s innovative communication style and focus on gaming taps into a growing demographic of young adults who have many of the hard skills it takes to be a successful controller,” Duffy said at the time.

The hiring window opened on April 17, and the agency called it an opportunity to apply for “one of the most dynamic jobs in the world.”

The FAA has suffered a shortage of controllers since the 1980s. The issue was exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic when thousands of industry professionals retired.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, working as an air traffic controller “can be stressful because maximum concentration is required at all times.”

Another cause of strain is the fact that controllers are responsible for the safety of aircraft and passengers, and they often rotate through night and weekend shifts.

However, the typical entry-level education for a controller is an associate’s degree, with no related field work experience. The median pay for the position was more than $144,000 per year.

Staffing shortages have increased pressure on controllers, and the FAA has acknowledged that the lack of air traffic controllers has contributed to mandatory overtime and fatigue concerns.

CareerCast has repeatedly put air traffic controlling as one of the nation’s most stressful occupations, citing the responsibility for public safety, constant deadlines, and need for sustained concentration as contributing factors.

The recruitment news comes just days after the TSA welcomed David Cummins as its new administrator. The agency announced the confirmation on Aug. 7, saying, “TSA is building for the future—innovation, cutting-edge technology, and a checkpoint experience making travel smoother and more secure than ever before.”

Cummins said of his new role: “We do not have to choose between a secure checkpoint, an efficient checkpoint, or an elevated experience. In fact, our mission demands that we achieve all three at once.

“TSA will deliver on its role to secure the Golden Age of Travel.”

Tyler Durden Thu, 08/13/2026 - 13:40

Tailing 30Y Auction Prices At Highest Yield In 25 Years

Tailing 30Y Auction Prices At Highest Yield In 25 Years

After yesterday's ugly 10Y auction, moments ago we got the last of the week's refunding auctions, when the Treasury sold $25BN in 30Y paper (the same paper that has seen yield shoot up in the past week, ever since Warsh's most recent FOMC meeting in which he left the long-end hang out to dry), and just like the 10Y auction before it, this one was also rather deplorable.

Pricing at a high yield of 5.216%, the auction tailed the When Issued 5.212% by 0.4bps...

... but more importantly, it priced at the highest yield since 2001 some 25 years ago.

The bid to cover was 2.392, down from 2.444 in July and below the recent average of 2.429. 

The internals were more palatable: Indirects slumped from 77.7% in July - one of the highest on record - to 66.9%, which was just below the six-auction average of 67.0%.

And with Directs loading up, and taking down 21.6% of the auction, which also was just below the recent average of 22.5%, Dealers were left with 11.5%, 150bps higher than July, and a bit over the average of 10.6%. 

Overall, this was a weak auction if hardly catastrophic, and while demand was there, the more ominous question is where do yields go from here, and how much higher can the yield on the long-end keep rising before something finally breaks.

Tyler Durden Thu, 08/13/2026 - 13:35

Supreme Court Sets November Arguments In Religious Liberty, Prison Medical Care, And Agency Power Cases

Supreme Court Sets November Arguments In Religious Liberty, Prison Medical Care, And Agency Power Cases

Authored by Matthew Vadum via The Epoch Times,

The Supreme Court on Aug. 11 scheduled oral arguments for November in three high-stakes cases involving a religious liberty challenge to Colorado's preschool funding rules, a lawsuit over inadequate prison medical care, and a separation of powers dispute involving Labor Department penalties.

The Supreme Court in Washington on July 13, 2026. Madalina Kilroy/The Epoch Times

The court said in a new scheduling notice that on Nov. 3 it will hear St. Mary Catholic Parish v. Roy, which is about whether Colorado may decline to fund Catholic preschools.

The case could help to redefine how states reconcile anti-discrimination laws with religious freedom.

Colorado's universal preschool program pays for 15 hours of free preschool per week at public or private providers. To participate, preschools must offer "equal opportunity" to sign up regardless of religious affiliation, sexual orientation, gender identity, income level, or disability.

The state permits exemptions for other groups such as low-income or disabled children but has blocked Archdiocese of Denver preschools because they require families to support Catholic teachings on sex and gender.

The Supreme Court will look at the case in the light of two of its precedents, Employment Division v. Smith (1990), and Carson v. Makin (2022).

The petitioners had asked the Supreme Court to overrule Smith, but in agreeing to hear the case, it specifically declined to take up that question. Instead, the justices indicated that they will consider if the application of Smith should be narrowed.

Smith held that neutral, generally applicable laws do not violate the First Amendment's Free Exercise Clause even if they burden religious practice, and that religious objectors are not entitled to exemptions from such laws. Carson held that a state violates the Free Exercise Clause when it excludes religious schools from an otherwise generally available public benefit - such as tuition aid - solely because of their religious character. In that case, the Supreme Court struck down a Maine law that excluded families from a student aid program if they chose to send their children to religious schools.

In the case at hand, lower courts upheld the exclusion, citing Smith, holding that the rules were neutral and generally applicable. The justices limited review to two questions: how to apply Smith's general applicability test when secular exemptions exist, and whether Carson requires stricter scrutiny only for explicit religious exclusions.

The high court said that it will hear U.S. Department of Labor v. Sun Valley Orchards LLC on Nov. 10. The case concerns whether the federal agency has authority to conduct its own administrative hearings to collect money from employers accused of violating the terms of the seasonal farm worker visa program.

The justices agreed to review a U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruling that sided with a New Jersey produce farm. The farm was fined more than $500,000 by an in-house Labor Department tribunal for alleged violations of the rules for the H-2A visa program for temporary foreign farm labor. The appeals court held that the agency's process was unconstitutional, relying primarily on constitutional separation of powers principles that limit the ability of agencies to adjudicate private rights and impose monetary penalties without going to federal court.

In its ruling, the Third Circuit also cited Securities and Exchange Commission v. Jarkesy (2024), which held that the SEC's in-house enforcement of securities fraud laws infringed the defendants' Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial.

The case will give the Supreme Court another opportunity to address the reach of Jarkesy and decide how far federal agencies may go in handling enforcement cases that seek monetary penalties.

The justices indicated they will hear Nielsen v. Watanabe on Nov. 9, a case testing whether a federal inmate can sue prison staff for inadequate medical care under the Bivens doctrine.

The Supreme Court held in Bivens v. Six Unknown Federal Narcotics Agents (1971) that individuals may sue government officials for violations of their constitutional rights.

In Carlson v. Green (1980), the high court extended Bivens to an Eighth Amendment claim of deliberate indifference to medical needs where prison officials failed to deal with an inmate's acute asthma attack and exacerbated it, leading to his death on-site within hours. The Eighth Amendment bans cruel and unusual punishment.

Since the 1980 ruling, the court has said it is up to Congress, not the courts, to create damages remedies.

Kekai Watanabe was injured in a gang riot in 2021 at a federal detention center in Honolulu, Hawaii. He alleges a nurse declined to send him to a hospital and instead provided him only with over-the-counter medication. He later received a diagnosis of a fractured tailbone and bone chips.

Watanabe sued for $3 million under Bivens, alleging the prison authorities were deliberately indifferent to his serious medical needs and that this violated the Eighth Amendment.

A federal district court threw out the lawsuit, ruling it presented a "new context" different from Carlson. The court cited Watanabe's access to the Bureau of Prisons' administrative grievance process and the non-life-threatening nature of his injury. A divided U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed, finding the claim closely tracked Carlson.

The Supreme Court is currently in recess for the summer. It will resume hearing oral arguments on the first Monday in October.

Reuters contributed to this report.

Tyler Durden Thu, 08/13/2026 - 13:20

Running The Hormuz Gauntlet: Recruitment Ad Offers Tanker Crews Double Pay To Brave Drone Strikes

Running The Hormuz Gauntlet: Recruitment Ad Offers Tanker Crews Double Pay To Brave Drone Strikes

Flexport founder and CEO Ryan Petersen posted on X what appears to be a recruitment ad from Singapore-based maritime crewing agency Singhai Marine Services, offering a rare look at the pay and "transit" bonuses available to tanker crews transiting the highly contested Strait of Hormuz.

Singhai Marine is recruiting a full crew to operate a VLCC, or very large crude carrier, through the Strait of Hormuz on a Dubai-Oman route. The one-month contract offers salaries ranging from $1,600 for ordinary seamen to $16,000 for the captain.

The offer also includes:

  • A separate high-risk allowance
  • A "Hormuz transit bonus" equal to one additional month's full salary
  • Tanker experience preferred, with applicants required to accept high-risk deployment

If authentic, the recruitment ad suggests ship operators are having difficulty staffing tankers for Hormuz voyages amid the constant threat of Iranian drone and missile attacks, forcing them to offer substantial hazard bonus.

Tyler Durden Thu, 08/13/2026 - 13:00

Diesel Crack Spread Explodes To Record As Wall Street Warns Of Refined-Products "Perfect Storm"

Diesel Crack Spread Explodes To Record As Wall Street Warns Of Refined-Products "Perfect Storm"

Wall Street Warns About "Perfect Storm" Diesel Crunch: 

  • Goldman's Daan Struyven Shows Global Diesel Exports Crashing
  • Citi's Anthony Yuen Warns: Global Diesel Inventories "Below 5YR Minimum"
  • BofA's Francisco Blanch Warns: "Diesel's Perfect Summer Storm" Unfolding 
  • Jefferies' Sam Burwell Warns: Hormuz Shock "Manifesting Itself In Cracks, Not Crude" 

Brent crude remains hostage to daily geopolitical developments in the Gulf region more than five months into the conflict, with muted traffic through the Strait of Hormuz (read the latest US-Iran wrap) constraining tanker flows and driving refined-product markets to new, dire extremes as they become the focal point of the energy crisis.

Brent briefly fell below $80 a barrel last week as prospects improved for an Iran-Oman deal to reopen the maritime chokepoint, before rebounding toward $90 as negotiations stalled this week.

Hormuz traffic has stabilized at about 10 crossings a day, down from 30 to 40 before the latest escalation. Liquids flows are averaging roughly 4 million barrels a day, well below public estimates of 9 million, according to HSBC analysts.

We earlier cited Jefferies analyst Sam Burwell, who warned clients:

"What this all shows is that global oil-market tightness is manifesting itself in cracks, not crude, at least for now. Wide cracks suggest refining runs should remain strong, however, which is positive for crude. 

By lunchtime Thursday, the front-month US diesel crack spread (HOCL1 on the Terminal) had exceeded the $97 level reached in mid-March, when the US-Iran conflict was just three weeks old, and was closing in on $100. That signals extreme tightness in diesel.

Francisco Blanch, head of commodities at Bank of America, warned clients in a note earlier titled "Diesel's Perfect Summer Storm" that the industrial fuel is "materially disrupted in 3 of 4 major regions" around the world.

As we recently warned (see report: The crude reality of oil markets), supply disruptions are amplifying the squeeze on petroleum markets.

Three of the world's four major refining hubs remain impaired for one reason or another.

First, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and adjacent military activity has reduced Middle East fuel exports, with the recent Houthi strike on Saudi Arabia's Jazan refinery being the latest example.

Second, record Russian refining disruptions following Ukrainian strikes have removed significant volumes from the global diesel pool. 

Third, fearful of potential domestic shortages, China has yet to restart petroleum product exports to the Asia region. As such, Europe has increasingly relied on record US exports to fill the gap.

Yet those flows are drawing down already tight US inventories, the only major hub open for business, creating a global competition for fuel that is pushing diesel cracks back toward record seasonal highs.

Beyond Ukraine drone-striking Russian energy assets, Moscow has decided to ban diesel exports; yet again, more evidence of dwindling global supplies: 

Separately, Anthony Yuen, managing director and head of energy strategy at Citi Research, warned clients that global observed diesel inventories are "below the five-year minimum and not substantially lower than this," adding, "The last time inventories were at a similar level was in 2022, when gasoil cracks globally were about $20/bbl lower than currently observed, and they were meaningfully lower in 2018."

Goldman's commodities expert Daan Struyven told clients earlier today:

Since the Iran war began, we have viewed the Hormuz shock as more disruptive for refined products, especially diesel, than for crude.

Near-record prompt diesel margins have already triggered a strong supply response from refiners with spare capacity, including higher utilization and a shift in yields toward diesel. As a result, outright diesel shortages still look unlikely this year.

Struyven showed that global diesel exports are crashing.

Kpler data suggest that Persian Gulf flows are down 80% year over year for diesel, versus 48% for crude.

BofA's Blanch noted, "In short, absent a meaningful supply recovery, the diesel market appears poised to stay tight, volatile, and expensive well into next year."

The clearest signal of how far the energy crisis has spread, even as Brent and WTI remain relatively calm, is now visible in refined-product markets, particularly diesel, where the blowout in crack spreads signals a severe global supply squeeze.

Hormuz Shock "Manifesting Itself In Cracks, Not Crude," Jefferies Says

Brent crude futures held near recent highs of $90 a barrel before fading to around $87 early Thursday morning, as traders awaited progress toward reopening the Strait of Hormuz. Stalled US-Iran negotiations and tightening global fuel supplies continued to support prices and concern some top energy experts, who warn of a looming supply shock. 

US-Iran talks remain deadlocked to end the week as the Trump administration maintains its blockade of Iranian ports and Tehran demands compensation for war-related damage. Pakistan, which has served as a mediator, said the broader peace talks had stalled.

Late Wednesday, President Trump wrote in a Truth Social post that the USA has "total control" over the Strait of Hormuz and "I think we will keep it." It's also yet more confirmation that he's opting for economic siege warfare while the US military campaign is on hold. 

Polymarket odds for "US-Iran 60-day negotiation period extended?" currently stand at around 25%, down from 80% one week ago.

//--> //--> US-Iran 60 day negotiation period extended?
Yes 25% · No 76%
View full market & trade on Polymarket

So far, Brent crude is headed for a weekly advance of nearly 5% as a near-term resolution to the US-Iran conflict remains murky and Ukrainian and Russian attacks on energy infrastructure tighten oil and, more critically, diesel markets.

Last week, our note titled "Winter Is Coming" for Europe outlined how the energy-stricken continent faces a twin diesel and natural gas crunch.

Samantha Dart, co-head of global commodities research at Goldman Sachs, told Bloomberg TV early last week that the global diesel-supply crunch is "what keeps her up at night."

Saxo Markets strategist Charu Chanana said volatility will remain elevated until Hormuz reopens and the outlook for production becomes clearer.

Making matters worse, the International Energy Agency released a report on Wednesday that forecast a 1.8 million-barrel-a-day deficit this quarter, more than double its previous estimate. The agency also warned that elevated prices are beginning to crush demand and projected the widest annual supply shortfall in five years.

Offsetting higher prices was bearish US inventory data showing that crude stockpiles surged by 17.4 million barrels last week, the largest increase since January 2023, as exports weakened and imports from Saudi Arabia and Venezuela increased.

Jefferies analyst Sam Burwell, who specializes in oil, gas and energy infrastructure equities, wrote in a note Wednesday that showed oil-market extremes in three charts:

Three Pictures Worth 1,900 Characters - Oil Market Extremes

We return from an earnings hiatus (and step outside Canada) to show some current extremes in global oil markets. Chinese crude imports bounced a bit in July but remain far below the prior run rate. While crude is well off its highs and never made a historic spike, diesel cracks are far above prior all-time highs (gasoline is strong, too). China remains the wild card, but we think this setup is constructive for crude (and, by extension, the Canadian energy complex).

Chart #1 shows monthly Chinese crude imports. The massive ~5 mmbpd downshift in imports following the Hormuz closure demonstrated the extent of China's demand elasticity. July did see a ~1 mmbpd m/m increase from June's low. With somewhat higher crude prices and fewer vessels moving through Hormuz more recently, we'll see what August and beyond bring. However, we note that a return to the ~11 mmbpd five-year average would imply ~3 mmbpd of incremental demand.

Chart #3 shows that while diesel and gasoline prices are, of course, elevated, they are much closer to, or within, prior historical highs. Notably, clean-product prices in 2008 were similar to today's on a nominal basis (and therefore higher in real terms).

What this all shows is that global oil-market tightness is manifesting itself in cracks, not crude, at least for now. Wide cracks suggest refining runs should remain strong, however, which is positive for crude. While US refinery utilization dipped w/w, it remains near 20-year seasonal highs.

China is the crude-demand wild card, but with such wide cracks, one wonders how long it will be before the Chinese begin importing more crude to export more refined products (or simply replenish their own product/petchem stocks). Imports in the coming months will be telling as to how elastic China's buying remains.

In short, unless the Strait of Hormuz reopens soon and fuel supplies recover meaningfully, the focus will remain on refined-product markets, particularly diesel. The critical industrial fuel is being squeezed globally, and as Bank of America's commodities team warned, "the diesel market appears poised to stay tight, volatile, and expensive well into next year."

Professional subscribers can read a lot more energy content at our new Marketdesk.ai portal. 

Tyler Durden Thu, 08/13/2026 - 12:50

Treasury Department Ends Ownership Reporting For US Small Businesses

Treasury Department Ends Ownership Reporting For US Small Businesses

Authored by Owen Evans via The Epoch Times,

The Treasury Department on Tuesday finalized a rule permanently exempting U.S. companies and individuals from reporting beneficial ownership information to authorities, rolling back Biden-era Corporate Transparency Act requirements.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent testifies before the Senate Committee on Appropriations in Washington on June 3, 2026. Madalina Kilroy /The Epoch Times

"Today's action is a victory for common sense and American small businesses," Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement on Aug. 11.

"President [Donald] Trump promised to cut red tape, and this final rule delivers. Treasury is eliminating a burdensome reporting requirement for millions of law-abiding business owners without compromising our national security."

The original rules, implemented under the Biden administration, had applied to tens of millions of mostly small businesses.

The Corporate Transparency Act (CTA) is the 2021 law requiring shell companies to disclose owners, and the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) is the enforcer.

The new policy means that U.S. companies and U.S individuals no longer have to tell FinCEN who owns them.

However, foreign reporting companies will have to disclose beneficial ownership information for foreign individuals, the department said in a statement.

The Treasury Department said that FinCEN will also delete previously reported information by Americans from the government's beneficial ownership information database.

FinCEN had previously implemented rules requiring certain companies to report beneficial ownership data as part of anti-corruption and anti-money laundering efforts backed by lawmakers and the Treasury Department under former President Joe Biden.

The latest move adopts the exemptions set out in the interim final rule issued in March 2025, part of a broader push by the Trump administration. At the time, the Treasury announced that it would not enforce the CTA against "U.S. citizens, domestic reporting companies, or their beneficial owners."

Under the beneficial ownership information scheme, small businesses had to submit personal information about their beneficial owners, including name, address, birth date, and other information from a piece of identification such as a driver's license.

"Having a centralized database of beneficial ownership information will eliminate critical vulnerabilities in our financial system and allow us to tackle the scourge of illicit finance enabled by opaque corporate structures," then-Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a statement about it in 2024.

Estimates suggested that the reporting requirement would have applied to approximately 32 million businesses, including corporations and limited liability companies.

Failure to comply would have come with sizable penalties.

Businesses and their owners faced civil penalties of up to $591 for each day they did not file. They could have also endured $10,000 in criminal fines and faced up to two years in prison if regulators found that businesses submitted false information or willfully did not file, correct, or update beneficial ownership information reports.

In May, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report that recommended that the Treasury identify potential actions to address the risks posed by the domestic reporting company and U.S. person exemptions.

"Illicit actors frequently use corporate structures such as shell companies to launder criminal proceeds. These structures can be exploited because they allow the identities of people who benefit from or control them to be hidden from law enforcement," it said.

It also said that Congress and law enforcement should be provided with "highly useful information that addresses these risks."

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), the top Democrat on the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, said rolling back the reporting requirements increased the risk of organized criminal activity.

"This is a gift to cartels, criminals, and U.S. adversaries that exploit shell companies to move millions through our financial system," she said in an Aug. 11 post on X.

"Secretary Bessent should testify in front of Congress to explain his decision to put our national security at risk."

Andrew Moran and Reuters contributed to this report.

Tyler Durden Thu, 08/13/2026 - 12:40

Massive Blast Rocks Italian Munitions Plant At Heart Of Europe's Ammo Supply Chain

Massive Blast Rocks Italian Munitions Plant At Heart Of Europe's Ammo Supply Chain

A massive explosion has been reported at a major Italian manufacturer of medium- and large-caliber ammunition, formerly known as Simmel Difesa. The plant operates in Colleferro and Anagni, near Rome.

Local Italian outlet Sky TG24 reports: 

Fire and explosion at Colleferro, in the facility of the former Simmel Difesa, currently owned by KNDS Ammo Italy. The company, located in the Quarto Chilometro area, along via Latina, between Colleferro and Artena, produces medium- and large-caliber ammunition for land and naval defense, as well as solid fuels for aerospace launch vehicles. 

The incident is said to have occurred in the powder pressing department. A loud boom was distinctly heard by residents in the area, triggering the alarm.

Separately, local media outlet Italia 24H Live posted footage on X that appears to capture the moment the explosion rocked KNDS Ammo Italy. 

For context, KNDS Ammo Italy produces: 

  • Complete ammunition ranging from 25mm to 155mm
  • Naval rounds, particularly 76mm and 127mm ammunition for Leonardo/Oto Melara guns
  • Medium-caliber ammunition for land, naval and air-defense applications
  • Artillery ammunition, including 155mm shells
  • Propellant powders and charges
  • Explosives and warheads
  • Proximity and programmable fuzes
  • Combustible cartridge cases and metal components
  • Missile components
  • Ammunition inspection, refurbishment and demilitarization services

 

Developments remain scant, and officials have yet to disclose the cause of the explosion, the extent of the damage or which production lines, if any, were affected. Against a backdrop of elevated concern over the Russia-Ukraine conflict's expanding geographic footprint, the explosion warrants scrutiny. Officials have yet to disclose whether the blast was linked to sabotage or hostile action. 

Ending the streak? 

KNDS Ammo Italy is also Italy's largest producer of medium- and large-caliber ammunition and a preferred supplier for Leonardo/Oto Melara naval guns.

Any supply disruption would have great exposure to: 

  • 76mm and 127mm naval ammunition, including programmable and proximity-fuzed rounds used for air and missile defense
  • Specialized anti-air and anti-drone ammunition
  • 155mm ammunition and modular propellant charges
  • Fuzes, explosives and missile components supplied to other weapons manufacturers

Let's get back to the US, where, in late 2025, Accurate Energetic Systems, a key defense contractor and manufacturer of high explosives for the military, suffered a massive explosion.  

Stockpiles and potentially other KNDS plants could cover any outage at KNDS Ammo Italy. A prolonged disruption affecting explosives, propellant or fuze production would be more serious because alternative ammunition must be qualified for specific guns and fire-control systems. That process can take many months. 

Tyler Durden Thu, 08/13/2026 - 11:00

All Of Iran's Weapons Today Are Domestic, Missile Production Exceeds Usage: IRGC Official

All Of Iran's Weapons Today Are Domestic, Missile Production Exceeds Usage: IRGC Official

At a moment US officials as well as media headlines have been voicing alarm over depleted US missile stockpiles - something which President Trump sought to bat down as false - Iranian leaders have been busy boasting that their domestic defense production has not only kept pace but even expanded on the local production front.

Mohammad Reza Naqdi, Senior Advisor to the IRGC Commander-in-Chief, has been featured in state media as claiming that the production rate of ballistic missiles exceeds their operational launch rate, which comes on the heels of Tehran saying that it used the ceasefire with the US - which stretched from April into the summer months - to boost its weapons arsenal.

Naqdi asserted in a state television broadcast this week: "We are currently producing, and this process is unending." Naqdi warned further that "The enemy should not assume that Iran’s missile stockpiles will run out one day."

Iranian state media image

He also said: "There are many capabilities we have not deployed because we are managing the war with missile power."

Prior US (and Israeli) bombing campaigns since the start of Operation Epic Fury took direct aim at Iran's defense industrial sector. While it can be estimated that perhaps dozens or possibly even hundreds of missile sites as well as manufacturing locations were hit, damaged, and destroyed - Iranian officials say that hundreds more are still intact, scattered across the country.

Citing Naqdi's words further, Iran Wire writes:

He added that Iran does not rely solely on existing stockpiles, as defense equipment manufacturing remains continuous. Naqdi claimed that even if the war continues for years, ballistic missiles will still be manufactured in Iran and supplied to the armed forces on the final day of the conflict.

Highlighting the country’s industrial capacity, the senior advisor noted that, in addition to hundreds of industrial complexes, Iran houses approximately 950 industrial towns where defense equipment production is actively underway across various regions.

The same top IRGC official also this week was interviewed by PBS. In that interview he more broadly laid out that...

"We have to attain deterrence so that the enemy never dares to attack us, so we can live with security. One way is to prolong this war until we get to the next term of the presidency and cause attrition, so that if anyone else wants to attack Iran, they will know there is a cost."

Last week, a separate Iranian army official voiced something similar:

"We have made maximum use of the opportunity of the memorandum of understanding and every moment of the ceasefire," army spokesman Mohammad Akraminia told state television this week, referring to a now-suspended MoU signed with the US in June.

He said attempts were made to induct existing equipment into the armed forces and import new equipment, as well as repairing and recovering damaged systems or manufacturing new systems.

The brigadier general also said new-generation drones have been used in combat, and their specifications would be announced later.

Last month, Iran’s acting Defence Minister Majid Ebn-e Reza said that missile and drone production had "not stopped for a single day" and that drone production had reached three times its pre-war levels. But he did not provide any figures.

Meanwhile, the White House appears to have given up on finding a 'military solution' - and is settling in for a longer economic war, hoping the Islamic Republic will be weakened from within and ultimately collapse. But the Iranian military and government say the country is prepared to endure and outlast these external pressures while remaining ever-ready to resume retaliatory strikes if necessary.

Tyler Durden Thu, 08/13/2026 - 10:45

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