California Supreme Court Orders "Rogue" Sheriff To Pause Election Fraud Probe

Authored by Jacki Thrapp via The Epoch Times,

Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco was ordered by the California Supreme Court on April 8 to halt his investigation into 2025 election fraud allegations so the judges can review the legal challenges that his probe faces.

Bianco, a Republican who is running for California governor, seized more than half a million 2025 election ballots after allegedly receiving complaints from locals.

Then, last month he seized an additional 1,000 boxes of election materials.

Local election officials told the county Board of Supervisors that his decision to take the ballots was unfounded.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat, asked the court to step in and stop the investigation, saying that Bianco did not have authority to take the ballots.

Bianco seized another 426 boxes of ballots last week.

The top court ordered Bianco and his team to “pause the investigation into the November 2025 special election and preserve all seized items.”

“Today’s decision by the California Supreme Court reins in the destabilizing actions of a rogue Sheriff, prohibiting him from continuing this investigation while our litigation continues,” Bonta said in a statement.

The Epoch Times has contacted Bianco’s office for comment.

Bianco’s career in law enforcement extends 30 years.

In 2018 he was elected as the sheriff, coroner, and public administrator of Riverside County.

Bianco entered the crowded California gubernatorial race just over a year ago and edges behind fellow Republican, Steve Hilton, in the latest Berkeley IGS poll.

Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, who may be eying a presidential bid as he exits his current seat in January 2027, applauded today’s ruling by the court.

“Today’s decision is a victory for democracy and the rule of law,” Newsom wrote in an X post on Wednesday.

“This rogue sheriff chased conspiracy theories, tried to undermine our elections, and got the ruling he deserved. Trump and MAGA’s election denialism is a cancer, a danger to our democracy, and it must be stopped.”

Tyler Durden Wed, 04/08/2026 - 18:25

Exxon Warns Of $6.5 Billion Hit From Iran War As Q1 Earnings Set To Print Slightly Below Consensus

In an early clue how the Iran war will impact energy earnings, ExxonMobil warned of a $6.5bn hit to Q1 earnings from the Iran war but said the bulk of this was the result of unfavorable timing for its accounting of hedging contracts, which would be offset as underlying transactions were eventually completed. The US supermajor also said that global oil and gas production would be 6% lower in the first three months of the year than in the fourth quarter of 2025 because of attacks on facilities in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates in which it holds ownership stakes.

According to Exxon's 8K filed this morning, Goldman calculated that the company's adjusted EPS at the mid-point came in at ~$1.80 vs. consensus closer to $1.90 and Q4 levels closer to $1.71. As shown in the chart below, there was sequential improvement in Upstream driven by higher liquids prices, sequential declines in Downstream due to higher maintenance and relatively flat performance in Chemicals.

Volume disruptions at Exxon's production and refining businesses would deliver a $400mn to $800mn hit to earnings, while trading losses incurred because of a failure to deliver physical cargoes hedged with financial derivatives would cost another $600mn to $800mn, the company said in a statement.

Separately, the company provided a number of strategic updates, including: (1) the Permian likely producing at 1.8 mn boe/d in 2026, (2) first gas at Golden Pass having been achieved on March 30, and (3) that the Middle East production negatively impacted Q1 Upstream volumes by 6% compared to Q4 levels, with the overall Middle East portfolio representing 20% of Upstream production (albeit a lower level of segment earnings). As an aside, the quarterly comparison was challenging given disruptions in the Middle East, and large timing effects, the latter of which are excluded for the purposes of comparison.

Exxon has one of the largest exposures among western oil majors to the Middle East, according to the FT, which accounts for about 20% of its oil and gas production and 5% of its refining and chemical capacity.

The company’s assets in the region include stakes in LNG joint ventures with QatarEnergy that were damaged last month by Iranian attacks. Exxon said two gas liquefaction facilities in Qatar in which it has an ownership interest accounted for about 3% of its 2025 global oil and gas production.

“Public reports indicate the damage will take a prolonged period to repair. Pending an on-site evaluation, we are unable to comment,” the company said.

But the largest hit to Exxon’s first-quarter earnings, worth $3.5bn to $4.9bn, is linked to the surge in oil and gas prices caused by the Middle East conflict and the accounting treatment of financial derivatives it used to hedge prices while shipping products.

The company said the negative impact on its first-quarter earnings was a LIFO “timing effect” that would unwind over subsequent quarters and result in net positive profit once the underlying transactions covered by the hedges were completed.

“This quarter’s earnings include an unusually large, negative timing impact associated with our trading programme and the temporary earnings impacts that result from how we account for certain trades . . . These are sound trades and the profitability that will result from them will be material,” said Neil Hansen, Exxon’s CFO. 

“Because we are using derivatives, we are required to account for them at month-end prices and reflect the resulting impact in earnings at the end of each quarter. This accounting often happens well before the sale of the associated physical product is complete. As noted, this earnings mismatch always results in a timing difference that eventually unwinds itself in periods of rising price.”

Exxon said that excluding the unfavorable timing effects that would reverse over time, earnings in the quarter would be higher than in the fourth quarter of 2025.

Offsetting the timing effect loss was the surge in oil and gas prices following the start of the Middle East war on February 28 would deliver a $2.1bn to $2.9bn boost to first-quarter earnings.

Exxon shares fell 5% in pre-market trading on Wednesday to $154.70, as traders reacted to a two-week US-Iran ceasefire deal.

Tyler Durden Wed, 04/08/2026 - 18:00

Justice Department Counters Russian Military Intelligence Unit Attack On US Targets

Authored by Kimberly Hayek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The Justice Department and FBI on Tuesday revealed they have conducted a court-approved technical operation to neutralize part of a network of small office and home office routers in the United States that become commandeered by a unit of Russia’s military intelligence.

The Department of Justice in Washington on March 11, 2026. Madalina Kilroy/The Epoch Times

Russian Military Unit 26165—also known as APT28, Sofacy Group, Forest Blizzard, Pawn Storm, Fancy Bear, and Sednit—is part of Russia’s Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff and has compromised routers to execute malicious Domain Name System (DNS) hijacking operations across the planet.

They targeted individual U.S. military members, the U.S. government, and critical infrastructure in which the Russian government expected to gain intelligence.

U.S. Attorney David Metcalf for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania said critical data had been commandeered.

“In the face of continued aggression by our nation-state adversaries, the U.S. government will respond just as aggressively,” Metcalf said. “Working with the FBI—and our partners around the world—we are committed to disrupting and exposing such threats to our nation’s cybersecurity.”

Assistant Director Brett Leatherman of FBI’s Cyber Division said U.S. and global routers had been compromised and that the FBI will continue to use its authorities to identify and impose costs on state-sponsored actors who target the American people.

“Given the scale of this threat, sounding the alarm wasn’t enough,” Leathernan said. “The FBI conducted a court-authorized operation to harden compromised routers across the United States.”

The FBI operation, called Operation Masquerade, is the most recent U.S. action to undermine continuous Russian state-sponsored cyber threats that exploit everyday consumer devices.

Since 2024, GRU actors have attacked known vulnerabilities in TP-Link routers worldwide to steal administrative credentials. They then obtained unauthorized access to devices and changed their settings to redirect DNS queries to GRU-controlled malicious resolvers.

The actors set up automated filters to identify high-value traffic before intercepting it. The malicious resolvers returned fraudulent DNS records that appeared to be legitimate services, including Microsoft Outlook Web Access.

This allowed man-in-the-middle attacks on what victims thought was encrypted network traffic. The GRU was able to harvest unencrypted passwords, authentication tokens, emails, and other sensitive data from devices on the compromised router’s local network.

The operation included technical contributions from Black Lotus Labs at Lumen, Microsoft Threat Intelligence, and MIT Lincoln Laboratory.

“Operation Masquerade was led by FBI Boston. It represents the latest example of how we’re defending our homeland from Russia’s GRU which weaponized routers owned by unsuspecting Americans in more than 23 states to steal sensitive government, military, and critical infrastructure information,” special agent in charge of the FBI’s Boston Field Office Ted E. Docks said.

He noted that the FBI employed cutting edge technology and leveraged private sector and international partners to combat the malicious activity and remediate routers.

Court documents from the case, filed in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, outline how the FBI developed and tested commands sent only to affected routers in the United States.

The commands revealed evidence of GRU schemes, reset the devices’ DNS settings to legitimate resolvers of internet service providers, and shut down the original unauthorized access points. TP-Link router firmware and hardware settings confirmed the operation would not interrupt normal router function or collect users’ personal data.

Legitimate owners can change the settings through a factory reset with the hardware button or by manually restoring settings through the router’s web interface.

The FBI has also been working with internet service providers to inform affected users.

Owners of small office and home office routers are advised to replace end-of-life or end-of-support devices, upgrade to the newest firmware, verify that DNS resolvers are the same as those provided by the internet service provider, and review firewall rules to prevent unnecessary remote management access.

The GRU’s Unit 26165 was the subject of May 2025 joint advisory from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, as well as international partners, describing how the unit attacked Western logistics and technology companies delivering aid to Ukraine. The campaign, dating back to 2022, impacted organizations in 13 nations, including the United States, Germany, and France.

In April 2025, French officials said a series of hacks since 2021 were the work of the same GRU unit.

“The Russian military intelligence service (GRU) has been deploying a cyber-offensive modus operandi called APT28 against France for several years. It has targeted around 10 French entities since 2021,” Jean-Noël Barrot, the French foreign minister, wrote on social media platform X.

In a February 2024 disruption, the Justice Department took apart a GRU-controlled botnet that had attacked hundreds of small or home office routers around the world with malware. The FBI used the same malware to copy and delete stolen data while changing firewall rules to ban remote management access.

Tyler Durden Wed, 04/08/2026 - 17:40

Sen. Graham Urges Congressional Iran Vote...On Approving Peace, Not War

This is definitely in you really can't make this up(!) territory... Sen. Lindsey Graham is actually calling for a Congressional vote, but not concerning a War Powers Resolution. 

Instead, he has called for Congress to review and vote on any diplomatic agreement ending the war with what he described as the "Iranian terrorist regime." That's right, the NeoCon senator from South Carolina only wants a Congressional vote on whether peace should be approved. He has remained opposed to a War Powers vote.

In a series of posts on X, Graham stated that he supports a diplomatic outcome but insists any deal with Iran must undergo congressional scrutiny to ensure it aligns with his own Israel's US national security interests.

"Like everyone, I hope we can end the reign of terror of the Iranian regime through diplomacy," he wrote Tuesday night, and said that any agreement needs Congress "for a vote, like we did with the [former President Barack] Obama JCPOA [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action]."

The Trump admin and Iran just entered a two-week ceasefire aimed at negotiating a broader settlement following over a month of brutal conflict which has chiefly focused on an air war.

Both sides are readying for direct, face-to-face talks in Islamabad. Trump has previewed that Kushner, Witkoff, and maybe even Vice President J.D. Vance will be there. Trump has said these will happen "very soon". He told the NY Post on Wednesday:

"We'll have Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner, JD — maybe JD, I don't know," Mr. Trump told the New York Post over the phone. "There's a question of safety, security."

As for Graham, he has warned against premature conclusions about a deal and called for transparency. "At this early stage, I am extremely cautious regarding what is fact vs. fiction or misrepresentation,” He called for a "a healthy dose of sunlight" to be brought to the deal.

He's also calling for all of Iran's enriched uranium to come under American control. 

Again a diplomatic solution to end the reign of terror in Iran is the preferred outcome. The supposed negotiating document, in my view, has some troubling aspects, but time will tell. I look forward to the architects of this proposal, the Vice President and others, coming forward…

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) April 8, 2026

"As President Trump said this morning, all the highly enriched uranium must be removed from Iran and handed over to the United States – the Libyan Model," Graham wrote, adding that allowing continued enrichment "would be inconsistent with denying Iran a pathway toward a bomb."

However, there's an obvious irony to invoking the Libyan Model. After Gaddafi gave up his WMD aspirations during the Bush administration years, he was later by 2011 regime changed by the US and NATO, and bayonetted in the streets by Islamist 'rebels'.

* * *

Tyler Durden Wed, 04/08/2026 - 17:20

The New Financial Iron Curtain: Taxes, Capital Controls, & The War On Your Wealth

Authored by Chris Macintosh via InternationalMan.com,

There is a term called “gating” in the fund management world.

It refers to blocking investors from redeeming their funds. Funds do this sometimes as a precaution… and other times when they are in the poo.

Well, governments are the same. When they are in the poo, they also resort to their version of gating. It’s just called taxes.

I’ve always loved the Dutchies. Growing up in South Africa with the Afrikaners — descendants of the Dutch — I can tell you that as a group they are fantastic: hard working, ethical, and very down to earth.

It is with sadness, therefore, that I have to acknowledge that their government is thoroughly cocked-up, and they themselves are already behind a financial iron curtain.

They recently approved a 36% unrealised capital gains tax.

It has since been put back for consideration, but this is not the point. The point is that when governments get into the proverbial isht, this is precisely what happens. You’ll know this because we’ve been talking about it for donkey’s years in these missives.

Along with California and many blue states, the Canadians and Aussies are also toying with the idea. It’s been trial-ballooned (usually how they go about these things) in all of the above-mentioned places, but the Dutchies just approved it.

Some of you may recall how we don’t like ETFs which use futures contracts. The reason is that you are mathematically 100% going to lose money if you hold them over time. Why? Because volatility will erode you. Every time you roll the futures contracts you get shredded if there’s been any volatility. And inevitably there will be volatility.

In any event, what’s going to happen with the Dutchies is kinda similar. Let me explain with some basic maths.

Let’s get on our bicycles for a minute and pretend we’re Dutch, and we invest $1,000 into a stock.

Year 1: Because we’re geniuses, our stock goes to $2,000. Excellent! We made $1,000. Except we now owe $360 in capital gains tax. But we didn’t sell anything. We don’t have the $360. So we’re forced to sell shares to pay tax. But everyone else who has made any gain is also forced to sell too. Mass panic selling. Stock crashes to $800. We have $440 left after paying tax.

Year 2: Stock recovers to $1,200. Government: “You made $400, pay $144.” Forced selling again. Price drops to $900. Now we have $756 left.

Year 3: Stock is back down to $1,000. Government: “You made $100, pay us $36.” Actually, anyone still dumb enough to be hanging around Holland at this point is literally retarded. All the smart money has fled. Anyway, we have $964 in stock.

In total we paid $540 in taxes. Our stock is back where it started (0% gain). We only have $460 left. Congratulations. We just lost 54% on a stock that broke even.

On the other hand, the government made more money off this investment than we did — $540 — and they had a “no money down” deal.

Sticking with the topic of this theft tax, serial entrepreneur Balaji Srinivasan posted the following, which I thought was interesting as I’d not considered it.

“Wealth taxes are even worse than you think. Any asset held by Californian billionaires or Dutch citizens is now at risk of experiencing forced liquidation pressure…

… Because the long run fruits of Western Keynesianism are the same as Soviet Communism, in the sense of wealth seizure and pauperization.

I mean, if you knew the future, you wouldn’t want to co-own a farm with a Russian in 1916. For similar reasons, you might not want to co-own a share of stock with Dutch national in 2026. Or with anyone in a seizure-curious jurisdiction…which unfortunately includes much of Western Europe, Canada, and Blue America.”

I have been warning for years now that the EU would impose capital controls. Please understand: they are already here.

All of the EU is a mess and difficult, but the Dutch and Germans are actually in the worst position.

Now I’m not here to lament and whinge. Complaining is both useless and unproductive. I’m here to explain that we are only just getting started. If you think this stops here — or that more doesn’t come — you are betting against hundreds of years of history.

Capitalist Exploits Insider isn’t particularly meant to be about these issues. After all, we’re fund managers buying listed equities, and I’m not here to tell you how to go about obtaining secondary residencies or anything else. These are simply intelligent steps to take and you need to go educate yourself on those aspects. Now. Because if you don’t, then reading this article after all your wealth has already been stolen is not going to serve you well.

You know what is most frustrating of all? The apathy of the citizenry. The Dutch government just declared open war on them and the response? Nothing. I don’t anticipate anything different in all the other countries mentioned which are preparing for this or something very similar. Very disappointing.

*  *  *

The warning is clear: once governments move in this direction, they rarely stop at one measure. That is why we created a free PDF special report, Clash of the Systems: Thoughts on Investing at a Unique Point in Time. Inside, you’ll see the major economic, political, and cultural trends taking shape right now, what they could mean for your wealth and freedom, and how thoughtful investors can prepare before the next round of controls arrives. Click here to get your free copy now.

Tyler Durden Wed, 04/08/2026 - 17:00

No Real People Were Polled: AI Is Now Fabricating What "The Public Thinks"

The other day Axios ran a piece that cited "findings" that a majority of people trusted their doctors and nurses. Turns out, those "findings" were completely fabricated by a company called Aaru - using AI (causing Axios to issue an editor's note and 'clarification')Aaru uses something they call "silicon sampling," where large language models (the AI) can emulate humans at a fraction of the cost and time required for traditional polling, the NY Times reports.

Silicon sampling isn’t polling. It is the outright fabrication of public opinion by machines - and major news outlets and research firms are now publishing those fabrications as legitimate findings. 

This is not an isolated slip. The technology is being embraced by some of the biggest names in media, polling, and corporate research. Gallup has partnered with the startup Simile to create thousands of AI-generated “digital twins” that stand in for real people. Ipsos is working with Stanford to pioneer synthetic data for public opinion studies. CVS, whose venture arm invested in Simile, is already using these fabricated insights to shape customer strategy. And outlets like Axios are treating the output as news.

The entire point of polling has always been authenticity - capturing what actual humans actually think (after oversampling your preferred party to make it look like as if people like Hillary Clinton).

That process is imperfect and messy. Let’s say a pollster wants to learn how many people in the United States are in favor of a certain policy measure, but the pollster ends up with a survey that includes 80 percent Republicans and only 20 percent Democrats. The pollster may think that in reality the country is closer to a 50-50 split, so the results are rebalanced to reflect that perceived reality. This means that the percentages you read as the results of polling are the output of the model, not numbers from the actual survey data.

The problem is that every model is designed with its own biases, because pollsters disagree about which variables deserve more weight. In 2016, The New York Times’s chief political analyst, Nate Cohn, ran an experiment in which he gave five pollsters the same election poll data. (That included Siena College, which conducts opinion polls for The Times and first acquired the data.)

Mr. Cohn found a 5 percent range of difference among what the five pollsters’ models returned. That range was larger than the margin of error typically associated with random sampling, meaning that the modeling assumptions were meaningfully skewing the results. This is alarming, because it suggests that pollsters can use modeling to nudge polls in a certain direction and influence public opinion itself, rather than merely to report what the public thinks.

Walter Lippmann warned a century ago that democracy depends on an accurate picture of the public will. Traditional polling, however imperfect, at least began with real responses from real citizens. It was expensive, slow, and messy precisely because humans are expensive, slow, and messy. Silicon sampling removes every trace of that mess - and with it, every trace of reality. The models are trained on past data, tuned by the biases of their creators, and prompted to spit out whatever “representative” opinions the client wants to see. The result is not public opinion. It is a mirror of the assumptions fed into the machine.

Fake Polling Also Picked Kamala Harris... 

On the eve of the 2024 election, Aaru ran a full-scale simulation that confidently projected a narrow victory for Kamala Harris. Market researchers now use these synthetic polls to decide product launches and ad campaigns. Policy shops quietly substitute AI-generated “constituent sentiment” for actual feedback. Each time a respected outlet or pollster presents these inventions as fact, they normalize the idea that fabricated data is good enough.

The consequences are already here. When headlines say “a new poll shows,” readers have no way of knowing whether real people were ever asked. Trust in institutions is eroding fast enough without handing decision-makers and journalists an unlimited supply of plausible-sounding fake data. Social science, political strategy, and market research risk becoming elaborate games of digital pretend.

So there's that...

* * *

Tyler Durden Wed, 04/08/2026 - 16:40

Why China Might Have Pressed Iran To Compromise With The US

Authored by Andrew Korybko,

The sequence that Trump threatened if no deal was reached before the expiry of his deadline would have cut China off from half of the oil that it imported by sea last year and likely set Afro-Eurasia aflame in resource wars for the indefinite future that would have derailed China’s superpower rise.

Three unnamed Iranian officials reportedly told the New York Times (NYT) that China pressed their country to compromise with the US by agreeing to a two-week ceasefire and resuming talks.

When asked about whether China played such a role, Trump responded that, “I hear yes. Yes they were.”

This was followed by Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning revealing that “China made its own efforts in this regard.”

Although she didn’t directly confirm the report, she didn’t outright deny it either.

Interestingly, Drop Site founder Ryan Grim noticed that the edit history of Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s tweet imploring Trump to extend his deadline for destroying Iran’s civilization if a deal isn’t reached saw him originally post “*Draft - Pakistan’s PM Message on X*”. Grim wrote that “Sharif’s own staff don’t call him ‘Pakistan’s PM,’ they would just call him prime minister. The U.S. and Israel, of course, would call him ‘Pakistan’s PM.’” Trump cited his talks with Sharif when extending his deadline.

In light of the NYT’s report, Trump’s positive affirmation thereof, and Mao’s related innuendo, an alternative hypothesis is that it wasn’t the US or Israel that drafted Sharif’s tweet, but China. Regardless of whoever did, it’s reasonable that China might have indeed pressed Iran to compromise with the US, not least because it would have tremendously suffered had Trump carried through on his threat. As a reminder, he threatened to destroy Iran’s power plants, bridges, and possibly even oil infrastructure too.

In response, Iran threatened to destroy the Gulf’s, and the sequence that Trump could have catalyzed would have resulted in the region’s energy exports going offline indefinitely. China would have then suddenly lost the 48.4% of oil that it imported by sea last year, 13.4% of which came from Iran and 35% from the Gulf Kingdoms (excluding Oman whose exports are from the Arabian Sea). Although it has strategic reserves and is producing more alternative energy, that would still its economy very, very hard.

China’s superpower rise would end, while resources wars would break out all across Afro-Eurasia except in resource-rich Russia, thus destabilizing the Eastern Hemisphere for years to come as the US relatively insulates itself in “Fortress America” and divides-and-rules the other side of the world. Naturally, China would prefer to avert that dark scenario even if the lesser evil results in the end of Iran’s petroyuan experiment and perhaps also its oil exports to China. Continued Gulf exports are much more important.

It’s unrealistic to imagine that China promised to intervene in Iran’s support if the US dupes it with talks for a third time in less than a year when it won’t risk World War III over Taiwan nor in furtherance of its “no-limits” Russian strategic partner’s goals in Ukraine.

Observers can therefore only speculate what China credibly offered Iran in exchange for compromising with the US by agreeing to a two-week ceasefire and resuming talks, but at the least, generous reconstruction support was probably included.

To recap, China’s interest in pressing Iran to cut a deal with the US would have stemmed from fears of the sequence that Trump threatened setting Afro-Eurasia aflame for the indefinite future, though there has yet to be any unambiguous confirmation from its side that it played such role and might never be.

Nevertheless, it’s clear that something happened close to the expiry of Trump’s deadline for the IRGC to agree to a ceasefire with the US instead of embrace martyrdom, and it’s likely connected to China.

Tyler Durden Wed, 04/08/2026 - 16:20

Stablecoin Yields Won't Harm Banks, White House Economists Say

Authored by Amin Haqshanas via CoinTelegraph.com,

A White House report found that banning yield on stablecoins would have a marginal impact on bank lending while creating clear economic downsides.

According to the Council of Economic Advisers, a three-member agency within the Executive Office of the President tasked to offer the president economic advice, moving funds from stablecoins back into bank deposits would not translate into significant new lending. Under its baseline scenario, total bank lending would increase by about $2.1 billion, roughly 0.02% of the $12 trillion loan market.

The report, published Wednesday, says that community banks would see even smaller gains. Lending at these institutions would increase by roughly $500 million, or about 0.026%.

The findings come amid an ongoing clash between banks and the crypto industry over stablecoin yields. Banking organizations, including the Independent Community Bankers of America, have warned that stablecoin yields could significantly reduce bank lending, while crypto groups have rejected the claim.

Stablecoin lending ban could cost $800 million per year

However, banning stablecoin rewards could carry a greater cost. The report estimates a net welfare loss of around $800 million per year, mainly because users would lose access to yield on stablecoins. The cost-benefit ratio is about 6.6, meaning the economic costs would far exceed any gains in lending.

“Producing lending effects in the hundreds of billions requires simultaneously assuming the stablecoin share sextuples, all reserves shift into segregated deposits, and the Federal Reserve abandons its ample-reserves framework,” the report concludes.

Portfolio effects of the yield ban. Source: White House

In July 2025, President Donald Trump signed the GENIUS Act into law. The law prohibits stablecoin issuers from paying interest or yield to holders, but third-party platforms (like exchanges) can still offer yield on stablecoins. The proposed Digital Asset Market Clarity Act could close that gap by clarifying whether yield should be restricted across the board or allowed under certain conditions.

CLARITY Act nearing Senate markup hearing

The US House of Representatives passed the CLARITY Act on July 17, 2025. In January, Senate Banking Committee Chair Tim Scott delayed a planned markup, which has yet to be rescheduled.

Last week, Coinbase chief legal officer Paul Grewal said the CLARITY Act could be nearing a markup hearing in the US Senate Banking Committee, with lawmakers close to agreement on key provisions. He noted that progress hinges on resolving disagreements over stablecoin yield.

Tyler Durden Wed, 04/08/2026 - 15:45

Mexico Truckers Block Key Freight Routes In Nationwide Strike

By Noi Mahoney of FreightWaves,

A nationwide strike by Mexican truckers and farmers blocked major highways and freight corridors across Mexico on Monday, disrupting access to Mexico City, industrial zones and several U.S.-Mexico border crossings.

The protest, organized by the National Association of Transporters (ANTAC) and the National Front for the Rescue of the Mexican Countryside (FNRCM), included road blockades in at least 20 states and began around 7 a.m. CST, with disruptions expected to last several hours or longer in some areas.

The groups say the strike is in response to rising cargo crime, high diesel and operating costs, deteriorating road infrastructure and a lack of progress on agreements with the federal government related to highway security and extortion.

Major freight corridors affected

According to Mexican media reports, blockades were reported on several of Mexico’s most important freight routes, including:

• Mexico–Querétaro
• Mexico–Puebla
• Mexico–Pachuca
• Mexico–Cuernavaca
• Federal Highway 45 in the Bajío region
• Culiacán–Mazatlán corridor
• Guadalajara–Colima and Mexico–Guadalajara routes
• Access roads to Mexico City
• Border crossings in Ciudad Juárez, Tijuana and Mexicali

These corridors connect Mexico’s manufacturing hubs, ports and border crossings, making them critical for domestic distribution and cross-border trade.

The strike is affecting access to industrial corridors, customs facilities and toll roads, similar to protests in November 2025 that disrupted more than 40 highways and access to industrial zones and customs facilities.

Security and costs drive protests

Transport and agricultural groups say insecurity remains one of the biggest issues facing freight operators in Mexico.

Official government data shows 6,263 investigations into cargo truck robberies were opened in 2025, but industry groups estimate the true number of cargo theft incidents — including unreported cases — exceeded 16,000, with losses topping 7 billion pesos annually.

Protesters are demanding:

• Increased National Guard presence on highways
• Action against extortion and corruption at checkpoints
• Lower operating costs, including diesel
• Support programs and policy changes for agricultural producers

Farmers joining the strike say insecurity, high fuel costs and agricultural pricing pressures are hurting rural producers and transport operators alike.

Government pushes back

Mexico’s Interior Ministry said the government has held multiple meetings with transport and agricultural groups and has provided billions of pesos in support to farmers, arguing there is “no reason” for the protests and warning that blockades affect third parties and the broader economy, according to Omnia.

Still, organizers say the strike could continue if no agreements are reached, raising the risk of ongoing disruptions to supply chains and freight movement across Mexico.

Tyler Durden Wed, 04/08/2026 - 15:05

Kevin Plank's Unsellable Thoroughbred Race Farm Sees Another Deep Price Cut

Under Armour CEO Kevin Plank has once again cut the asking price on his massive thoroughbred racing farm in northern Baltimore County, Maryland, as the historic farm - once owned by the Vanderbilt family - continues to sit on the market amid a series of deep price cuts.

Plank has been winding down his sprawling real estate portfolio, offloading everything from multiple residential properties to a luxury hotel in Baltimore City in recent years. Among his crown jewels - alongside the Baltimore Peninsula - is Sagamore Farm, a 404-acre thoroughbred racing operation he has been trying to sell for years.

The latest data from multiple listing service provider MLS Bright shows that Plank likely instructed his listing agent, Christina Giffin of Monument Sotheby's International Realty, to pursue another price cut.

MLS Bright data shows Sagamore's current listing price is around $16.5 million. This represents a 15% cut from the late-2025 listing of $18.5 million and an overall decline of about 25% from the original $22 million listing in March 2025. The farm appears to have been on and off the market.

We've outlined the mounting challenges for Plank as UA's brand momentum trended downward for years, but only in recent quarters have we begun focusing on UBS analyst Jay Sole, who is attempting to call a bottom in the stock. Also, the "Warren Buffett of Canada" piled into the stock earlier this year as management raised its outlook.

Plank is still dealing with the "ghost town" of Baltimore Peninsula amid the city's declining population, which has fallen to a 100-year low under the far-left leadership of Mayor Brandon Scott. Statewide, Maryland's financial profile is deteriorating under left-wing Governor Wes Moore, with high taxes, crime, a growing fiscal deficit, rising power bills, prioritizing all things woke, significant outbound migration, and other mounting challenges. This is what you get under one-party Democratic rule of kings and queens that have ignited a fire in the state and city under backfiring DEI policies.

Plank should focus on advocating for political change in Baltimore City. At least one other billionaire is already involved in such efforts. If Plank wants his "city within a city" to thrive, negative net migration trends must reverse, and both the city and the state will need to improve their overall financial profiles. Certaintly Democrats show zero interest in fostering a thriving state. 

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Tyler Durden Wed, 04/08/2026 - 14:45

FOMC Minutes Signal Fed Saw "Dual Sided" Risks From Iran War

Since the last FOMC meeting (March 18th), a lot has happened (war, more war, and now less war), and rate-change expectations hawkishly surged, then dovishly normalized today...

And given the last 24 hours, perhaps this information is more useful now, as we return to macro-fundamentals from geopolitical chaos running markets.

The minutes, released three weeks after the meeting, underscore the Fed's dilemma as it seeks to fill its congressional mandates of low inflation and maximum employment.

Fed officials wrestled with starkly differing scenarios for the US economy following the outbreak of the Iran war, including one that called for interest-rate cuts and another that would require raising rates.

On one side, Fed officials acknowledged that the Iran conflict could also force households to cut back spending to offset higher gas prices, which would slow growth and raise unemployment.

"...most participants raised the concern that a protracted conflict in the Middle East could lead to a further softening in labor market conditions, which could warrant additional rate cuts," according to the minutes of the meeting.

But on the other side:

"...many participants pointed to the risk of inflation remaining elevated for longer than expected amid a persistent increase in oil prices, which could call for rate increases."

And at the same time, many policymakers highlighted the risk to inflation that might ultimately warrant rate increases.

"Partly as a result of these factors, the vast majority of participants noted that progress toward the Committee's 2 percent objective could be slower than previously expected," according to the minutes.

The record of the meeting also showed that a growing number of officials urged their colleagues to consider language in the committee’s statement raising the scenario of hiking interest rates under certain conditions.

“Some participants judged that there was a strong case for a two-sided description of the committee’s future interest-rate decisions in the post-meeting statement, reflecting the possibility that upward adjustments to the target range for the federal funds rate could be appropriate if inflation were to remain at above-target levels,” the minutes said.

As a reminder, The Fed kept its key rate unchanged at about 3.6% with Powell saying that another reduction depended on underlying inflation cooling steadily this year:

"If we don’t see that progress then you won’t see the rate cut,” he said then.

Will the ceasefire slow inflation or is the damage already done and yet to flow through global supply chains?

Read the full Minutes below:

Tyler Durden Wed, 04/08/2026 - 14:10

Trader Makes $23 Million In One Day With Massive S&P Call Purchase Hours Before Ceasefire

A trader who made a large bet on a stocks rocketing in the coming weeks is up about $23 million in paper profit today, according to Bloomberg.

The unknown trader spent $12 million premium on 6800 lots of 6950 S&P 500 Index Options (SPX) calls for May 8 expiry, when the index was at 6556.21; the trade was executed around 10:20 a.m. Eastern on Tuesday, just hours before Trump's announcement of a 2-week ceasefire which sent stocks soaring. 

The trade was an “example of upside chasing on hopes of an imminent peace deal”, said Chris Murphy, co-head of derivatives intelligence, in an email Tuesday. 

Following the ceasefire deal last night, stocks surged, with the long SPX 6950 position now trading at $50, Bloomberg pricing data indicates.

That makes the position worth $35 million as of noon on April 8, with the S&P 500 at 6773, or a $23 million profit net of the premium paid. 

* * *

Tyler Durden Wed, 04/08/2026 - 14:00

The Apple AI Strategy: Discipline Over Hype

Authored by Michael Lebowtiz via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

While tech giants invest billions in AI, Apple executives are quietly sitting on their hands and a mountain of cash. Given the massive growth in AI investments, as shown in the graphs below, executives of leading companies at the forefront of AI development must be ecstatic about the prospect of AI significantly boosting their bottom lines.

The puzzling question, however, is why Apple isn’t following suit. Or could they be taking a different approach to winning the AI arms race?

Apple Avoids The AI Spending Boom

Apple is one of the world’s most profitable companies. Over the last four quarters, they reported over $400 billion in annual revenue and nearly $100 billion of free cash flow. Furthermore, the company holds $65 billion in cash and cash equivalents and $77 billion in marketable securities.  The bottom line is that Apple can easily self-fund AI innovation on a massive scale, as its competitors are doing. Yet it hasn’t.

Rather than mimicking its peers, Apple appears content to let the AI landscape mature before committing significant capital. Restraint may seem like complacency or even negligence. However, Apple has a long and extremely successful history of deploying capital at the right time; when the profit outlook is clear, the technology is established, and the customer value proposition is well-defined.

This approach may be frustrating for Apple shareholders in the short term, but history and the chart below, comparing Apple to the S&P 500, suggest it has served them extremely well.

Apple’s Historical Playbook

Apple has rarely been first to introduce a new product. It was not the first personal computer company, the first smartphone maker, or the first to launch wireless earbuds, smartwatches, or VR headsets. In nearly every case, Apple waited while other companies experimented and helped define the product and the market.

Apple waited to understand what consumers wanted in a product.  Only after the uses of a new product became obvious and consumer demand was proven did Apple step in with well-designed products that emphasized reliability, usability, and profitability. Their goal has always been not to be the biggest producer of a product but to be the best. In most cases, they have lived up to that lofty goal.

The timeline below shows the various smartphones that preceded Apple’s iPhone. Given the smartphone landscape today and the fate of the products that preceded the iPhone, it’s fair to say that Apple’s patience was well rewarded.

Discipline May Win The AI Game

Today’s generative AI ecosystem is still in its experimental phase. Training costs are enormous, inference costs remain high, and business models are largely unproven. Many AI products may be impressive, but have produced limited revenue.

Instead of competing with the likes of Microsoft, Meta, and Google, Apple appears to be integrating AI incrementally. They are embedding AI into existing hardware, operating systems, and services rather than creating standalone, capital-intensive platforms. This allows its products to stay competitive without fundamentally altering its cost structure.

This approach takes Apple out of the AI limelight, which has at times weighed on the stock price.

 

Waiting For Clarity

There are good reasons to wait for AI to better define itself before Apple spends hundreds of billions on strategies that may not prove profitable. For example:

• Monetization: While AI can clearly improve productivity and user engagement, it remains unclear how much consumers are willing to pay for it directly.

• Legal/regulatory: Data privacy, intellectual property disputes, model accountability, and regulatory limitations are evolving areas of law and public policy. Apple, whose brand is closely tied to trust and privacy, could lose more than most companies from missteps in these areas.

• Capital flexibility: By not locking itself into massive investments today, Apple retains the capital flexibility to invest rapidly once AI technology better defines itself and the economics become more apparent.

The Long View

For the impatient investor or trader, Apple’s approach probably feels underwhelming, especially amongst the daily headlines proclaiming AI innovation and trillion-dollar opportunities. But, for investors with patience, history suggests that Apple’s greatest successes have come not from being first, but from entering markets when technology, consumer readiness, and profitability align.

In our article, AI Bubble: History Says Caution Is Warranted, we discussed how many game-changing innovations, such as AI, are often accompanied by a financial bubble. Furthermore, for understanding Apple’s AI strategy, it has historically been far from certain that the front-runners, initially touted as the biggest beneficiaries of the innovation, will be the long-term winners.  To wit:

In 1999, few, if any, investors had ever heard of Google. The term for an internet search, “Googling,” was not yet a thing. Today, Google has a 90+% share of the search engine volume, and many of its early competitors no longer exist. 

Might Apple be taking a page out of Google’s playbook and waiting in the weeds for the AI industry to mature?

Might Apple be the next Google?

Summary

In the early stages of a technology buildout, infrastructure tends to capture the most value. This time appears similar, with the chipmaker Nvidia posting extraordinary returns and investors fawning over the big data center players like Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, and Google. However, over time, value typically migrates toward the technology’s application. Understanding where we are in that migration from infrastructure to application is important.

In our opening section, we asked if Apple executives share the same enthusiasm for AI as their chief competitors. The answer may be that Apple executives understand something their peers do not; the race rarely goes to whoever is first out of the gate.

Tyler Durden Wed, 04/08/2026 - 13:40

Blue Owl Stock Slides After Moody's Cuts Outlook To "Negative" On Surging Redemption Requests

Blue Owl stocks is getting slammed this morning, erasing all early gains, after Moody's Ratings cut its outlook on a $36-billion Blue Owl non-traded fund to "negative" from "stable" on Tuesday, citing redemption requests that were significantly higher than at peers in the first quarter. Moody's also said the change in the outlook on Blue Owl Credit Income Corp (OCIC) is ​due to the majority of the redemption requests coming from a very limited number of investors, revealing some concentration in ​the equity-holder base.

The downgrade highlights ​the mounting strains in the $2 trillion private credit industry after a strong run, as jittery retail investors bail out amid ‌rising concerns around transparency, lending standards and valuations.

As we noted recently, having started the firesale in the private credit in February, the decision has since backfired on Blue Owl, leading to an unprecedented surge in redemptions, which hit a record 40.7% for the Blue Owl Technology Income Corp, and 22% for the Blue Owl Credit Income Corp. 

In response, OCIC, Blue Owl's biggest business development company (BDC), had said about 90% of the investors did ⁠not request to redeem in the first quarter, which, however, is precisely one of the main concerns for Moody's which cautioned about concentration risk. OCIC investors sought to redeem 21.9% of shares in the first quarter, significantly higher ​than the 5.2% redemption requests received in the fourth quarter.

Moody's said it expects elevated redemptions to persist in the coming quarters and inflows ​could slow further, resulting in the dissipation of OCIC's currently strong capital and liquidity positions.

Blue Owl has previously said there was a "meaningful disconnect" between public sentiment on private credit funds and the underlying performance of its portfolio, although as we explained previously, the company may be simply delaying the inevitable asset remarking as a mere 20% drop in underlying asset values would breach key regulatory ratios. 

Earlier on Tuesday, Moody's had revised its outlook on US all  BDCs to "negative" from "stable", citing rising redemption pressures, ​higher leverage and weakening access to funding markets.

Non-traded perpetual BDCs, like OCIC, have grown rapidly in the past few years as alternative ​asset managers aggressively expanded in the wealth channel and focused on retail and high-net-worth investors, who are increasingly buying private assets.

But retail investors tend to be ‌less ⁠patient and predictable compared to institutional investors during periods of volatility.

Such investment vehicles offer lower volatility compared to publicly traded BDCs, but investors have to contend with lower liquidity.

As we have repeatedly discussed, Blue Owl has become the poster child for private credit funds that are struggling with an elevated level of redemptions. Its stock has more than halved over the past 12 months and is trading near record low, and on Wednesday it reversed all early gains and was trading down 1%, if still above its record lows hit last week.

Its handling of some ​of its private credit funds in ​recent months also attracted intense ⁠scrutiny and raised concerns about liquidity for such vehicles.

Blue Owl had last year planned to merge its publicly traded fund Blue Owl Capital Corp with a non-public fund called Blue Owl Capital Corp II, ​but called off the deal after a plan to freeze withdrawals ahead of the transaction rattled investors. 

The ​firm earlier this ⁠year replaced quarterly redemptions at OBDC II with promised payouts. It also sold $1.4 billion in assets from three of its credit funds to a consortium of investors which included an affiliated insurer, to return capital to investors and pay down debt. Concerns promptly emerged that the less than "arms length" transaction had cherry picked the best assets, leaving investors stuck with underperforming software exposure. 

OBDC II is a finite-life non-traded BDC and the fund was due to give a full liquidity event ⁠to investors ​within three-to-four years of the completion of its public offering, which runs through 2026.

Last ​month, S&P Global revised the outlook on Cliffwater's $33 billion flagship private credit fund to "negative" over higher investor redemption requests.

Tyler Durden Wed, 04/08/2026 - 13:25

10Y Auction Tails As Foreign Demand Dips

After yesterday's impressive 3Y auction, moments ago the Treasury sold $39 billion in benchmark, 10Y paper, in what was a mediocre auction.

The auction, a 9-Year 10-Month reopening of cusip CPX8, stopped at a high yield of 4.282%, up from 4.217% last month and the highest since last August. It also tailed the When Issued 4.280% by 0.2bps, the third consecutive tail in a row.

The bid to cover dipped to 2.429 from 2.449, and was also below the six-auction average of 2.48.

The internals also disappointed, as foreign demand slumped from March with Indirects awarded 65.32%, down from 74.45%, and below the recent average of 68.78%. Directs offset much of this drop, rising to 23.88%, almost double the 12.83% in March and the highest since January. Dealers were left holding 10.8%, down from 12.7% the previous month, but in line with the average of 10.05%.

Overall this was a slightly subpar auction, especially after yesterday's stellar 3Y auction, but in light of the bid drop in yields across the curve and the lack of concession, it priced roughly where it should have and the market has barely reacted as one would expect.

Tyler Durden Wed, 04/08/2026 - 13:16

White House Addresses Fragile Iran Truce

All eyes are on the very shaky Iran ceasefire, at a moment Tehran is already threatening to pull out due to heavy Israeli attacks on Lebanon. Iran says it has again halted Hormuz oil transit, and there's much that's still up in the air and uncertain. The briefing with press secretary Karoline Leavitt is expected to begin at 1300ET:

Washington and Tehran have just entered a two-week ceasefire, brokered by Pakistani mediation, aimed at negotiating a broader settlement following over a month of brutal conflict which has chiefly focused on an air war. Will it stick?

Both sides are readying for direct, face-to-face talks in Islamabad. Trump has previewed that Kushner, Witkoff, and maybe even Vice President J.D. Vance will be there. Trump has said these will happen "very soon". He told the NY Post on Wednesday:

"We'll have Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner, JD — maybe JD, I don't know," Mr. Trump told the New York Post over the phone. "There's a question of safety, security."

One question is whether the two sides see eye to eye on the initial 'agreed upon' ten points. Even the basis for the current ceasefire has come under scrutiny and possible disagreement.

Earlier Wednesday morning, the NY Times stated:

A White House official says that the 10-point peace plan that Iran publicly released on Wednesday differs from the plan that Trump said was a “workable basis on which to negotiate.” The official declined to elaborate on the differences but said Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, was expected to clarify at a 1 p.m. briefing.

Leavitt is expected to address this pressing issue during the briefing, which promises to be a lively exchange with reporters.

Tyler Durden Wed, 04/08/2026 - 13:00

Eric Swalwell About To Be Hit With 'Shocking' Number Of Sexual Harassment Allegations; Report

Authored by Debra Heine via American Greatness,

A “shocking” number of former female employees and interns are preparing to come forward to accuse Rep. Eric Swalwell (|D-Calif.) of sexual misconduct, according to a Democrat activist.

Cheyenne Hunt, a lawyer, former congressional candidate and executive director of the left-wing nonprofit Gen-Z for Change, revealed on X Sunday, that she has been working with a number of women who are in the process of sharing their accusations with major news outlets. Hunt said she knew of a separate and “much larger group” of women who are also currently in the process of sharing their stories.

Swalwell’s alleged inappropriate sexual behavior is said to be an “open secret” in Washington DC, as is his alleged practice of forcing underlings to sign nondisclosure agreements.

Hunt posted an initial video on Instagram in late March accusing Swalwell of having “a known history of being predatory towards women.”  She cited a woman who told her: “You know Eric Swalwell has slept with many of his interns and makes them all sign NDAs so they don’t speak up, right? And when I was 19 he tried hitting on me and sliding into my DMs and I have so many other friends that have similar experiences with him.”

Hunt said the allegation was “not an anomaly” but “part of a pattern.”

After that video was posted, she said a “pretty shocking” number of “credible” women came forward with more stories and she connected them “with the investigative reporting teams who have been working on breaking this for years.”

“Anyone who has been in DC for five minutes knows this,” said Democrat campaign advisor Bri Gillis on X. “It’s actually wild it took this long.”

Hunt said Gillis’ “sentiment” was “widely shared among folks” she’d spoken with.

“Not only are people unsurprised, but many of them have been able to send impacted women our way,” she wrote.

“I got involved because the first victim who approached me is a close friend, but when I saw that there were others who’s experiences fit the same pattern of manipulation and abuse of power, I knew I couldn’t stay silent,” Hunt wrote in her lengthy X thread.

Some of the allegations allegedly concern direct messages and Snapchat messages that range “from uncomfortable comments to potentially criminal conduct.”

Hunt claimed that Swalwell routinely targeted “employees, interns, and fans” and acted “as a mentor just to exploit that power.”

She added that the women have “secured pro bono legal representation” and are “in the process of sharing information with reporters and ensuring that they are physically and legally safe.”

“That process takes time,” she emphasized.

Hunt added that she knows Swalwell’s team “is aware of my video and the other creators talking about” the allegations, but she has not yet “been served with legal paperwork” or received a “cease and desist.”

Swalwell has been a member of the House since 2013 and was accused of having an affair with a suspected Chinese spy on his 2014 campaign staff.  U.S. Intel officials said at the time that his alleged relations with the spy were part of an extensive political intelligence operation run by China between 2011 and 2015. The Democrat reportedly severed ties with Fang Fang in 2015 after being briefed by U.S. intelligence officials. The alleged affair was made public in 2020.

Then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) booted Swalwell off the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) in January 2023, largely over the alleged affair.

“Eric Swalwell cannot get a security clearance in the public sector. Why would we ever give him a security clearance in the secrets to America? So, I will not allow him to be on Intel,” McCarthy said at the time.

The FBI, under Director Kash Patel, is reportedly preparing to release investigative files related to Swalwell’s past interactions with the spy Christine Fang (also known as Fang Fang).

New York City Council Member Vickie Paladino maintained on X that the media is complicit for keeping the profusion of allegations quiet.

“The thing about all these Eric Swalwell revelations is that ALL of them were known for years,” Paladino wrote. “But the media worked with the Democrat establishment to keep them quiet as long as Swalwell was useful.”

Now, because the California governor race has become a fiasco that might actually lead to a Republican winning unless a couple of Dems drop out to consolidate the vote, he needs to go. And like clockwork, here comes the orchestrated campaign of sexual harassment claims to end his career.

To be sure, Swalwell is garbage and deserves everything bad that’s coming to him. But it’s just amazing how the Democrats can just push a button and the machinery of the media and legal system just springs into action to eject someone from the party.

This is a guy who was caught sleeping with a Chinese spy for years, with actual evidence that he compromised national security in the process, and he remained completely protected and elevated as a major national figure. But as soon as the math stops working on the CA governor race, it all collapses underneath him.

Wild stuff.

X influencer “Bad Hombre” posted a graphic accusing Swalwell of being “a serial projector,” that is, someone who attributes his own unacceptable thoughts, feelings, flaws, impulses and behavior to other people.

Swalwell, incredibly, is the leading Democrat contender in the crowded race for California’s governor, with 13.7 percent of the vote in the RealClearPolitics poll average. Republican Steve Hilton currently leads the pack with 14.7 percent.

Third place contender, Riverside Sheriff Chad Bianco (R), is now calling for Swalwell to drop out of California Governor’s race.

“He’s NOT going to survive this. This is not going to be good,” Bianco told conservative podcaster Benny Johnson. “He should probably just drop out and save his family.”

Swalwell’s press X account posted on Monday, “Has anyone checked in on Chad Bianco today?”

The sheriff replied: “Just praying for any and every female who’s ever had to be in the presence of Eric Swalwell.”

Update:

Swalwell’s campaign responded to Hunt’s allegations Tuesday evening, fiercely denying any sexual misconduct towards former staffers or interns.

“This false, outrageous rumor is being spread 27 days before an election begins by flailing opponents who have sadly teamed up with MAGA conspiracy theorists because they know Eric Swalwell is the frontrunner in this race,” Micah Beasley, a spokesperson for Swalwell, told the New York Post.

Tyler Durden Wed, 04/08/2026 - 12:40

US, Israel Insist Iran Ceasefire Doesn't Apply In Lebanon, Which Suffers Huge Airstrikes

Israel has made clear that it doesn't see the newly declared US-Iran ceasefire as applying to its war in Lebanon, where it is still trying to destroy Hezbollah. The White House too has made its stance clear that it doesn't apply, but President Trump has stated his intent to take care of a Lebanon ceasefire separately. 

The military has unleashed hell on Beirut, southern Lebanon, and the eastern Bekaa valley overnight and through Wednesday - with Beirut suffering some of the worst aerial bombardments of the war.

via Associated Press

Pakistan, however, has said that the ceasefire does extend to the Israel-Hezbollah conflict. But the Israeli military (IDF) is as usual letting the bombs do the talking, and is largely ignoring the diplomatic side of things.

Israel on Wednesday reportedly struck over 100 Hezbollah (and civilian) targets within a mere 10 minutes across Beirut, the south of the country, and Bekaa.

Viral images and videos have shown massive smoke plumes lingering above the densely populated Lebanese capital. The surprise attack on busy commercial locations unleashed panic in the streets - and a full casualty accounting has not been immediately forthcoming .

Below is an outline of some of the earlier reported attacks, via Al Jazeera:

• An air raid on a funeral in the the east Lebanon village of Shmestar killed at least 10 people.
• Six people were killed in one attack in Saida.
• Three people were killed in a strike in western Beirut.
• Three girls were killed in the coastal town of Adloun.
• At least two were killed in Douris in the Bekaa Valley.
• Casualties were reported in Kayfoun in Mount Lebanon.

⚡️Beirut now

Holy shit… pic.twitter.com/7hHquWxM2Y

— War Monitor (@WarMonitors) April 8, 2026

Here's how the same regional outlet described it, noting that Lebanese TV has said the attacks have claimed "many lives":  "Israel has launched a surprise attack with dozens of air strikes across Lebanon, one of the largest military assaults in the history of the conflict." The report stated, "Air raids targeted residential buildings, mosques, vehicles and cemeteries across the country."

Lebanon’s Minister of Social Affairs, Haneed Sayed, told the Associated Press that the wide-ranging strikes mark a "very dangerous turning point."

She described: "These hits are now at the heart of Beirut… Half of the sheltered (internally displaced persons) are in Beirut in this area," she said, adding that she had just driven by the areas hit."

⚡️ Footage from the airstrikes on Beirut pic.twitter.com/HTDOdwFY33

— War Monitor (@WarMonitors) April 8, 2026

Hezbollah did not immediately join the Iran war until weeks in following the late February start of Trump's Operation Epic Fury. However, by the middle it began sending a significant amount of rockets on northern Israel.

Importantly, President Trump has on Wednesday told PBS that his view is Lebanon is not part of the Iran ceasefire deal "because of Hezbollah" - but "that will get taken care of too". He called what's happening in Lebanon "a separate skirmish".

Tyler Durden Wed, 04/08/2026 - 11:40

Anthropic Withholds Latest Model After It Went Rogue In Testing; Launches "Project Glasswing" To Secure Critical Software

Still smarting from its embarrassing source code leak, Anthropic announced it will not release its latest frontier AI model, Mythos, to the public, saying the model is too powerful in ways that introduce elevated cybersecurity risk.

In internal testing, Anthropic said the model surfaced thousands of high‑severity “zero‑day” vulnerabilities (previously unknown flaws) across every major operating system and web browser, materially outperforming its prior flagship (CyberGym vulnerability reproduction: 83.1% vs. 66.6% for Opus 4.6).  

“Given the rate of AI progress, it will not be long before such capabilities proliferate, potentially beyond actors who are committed to deploying them safely.”

A zero-day vulnerability is a software bug that can be exploited before anyone with the ability to fix it even knows it exists. Finding and patching them has historically required rare, expensive human expertise, but AI could change the scale and speed of detection. 

Anthropic said the vulnerabilities it finds are “often subtle or difficult to detect.” Many of them are 10 or 20 years old, with the oldest found so far being a now-patched 27-year-old bug in OpenBSD — an operating system known primarily for its security, it added.  It also found a 16-year-old bug in the FFmpeg media processing library, a 17-year-old remote code execution vulnerability in the open-source FreeBSD operating system and numerous vulnerabilities in the Linux kernel.

Mythos Preview also identified several weaknesses in the world’s most popular cryptography libraries, algorithms and protocols, including TLS, AES-GCM and SSH. 

It added that web applications “contain a myriad of vulnerabilities,” ranging from cross-site scripting and SQL injection to domain-specific vulnerabilities such as cross-site request forgery, which is often used in phishing attacks. 

Lifecycle of a zero-day exploit. Source: PhoenixNAP

Anthropic claimed that 99% of the vulnerabilities it found have not yet been patched, “so it would be irresponsible for us to disclose details about them.

Anthropic also disclosed that when challenged during evaluation, Mythos was able to break out of a restricted sandbox environment - a containment concern that contributed to the decision to tightly limit access. Here are some other things Mythos did during testing, per Axios:

• Act as a ruthless business operator: One internal test showed Mythos acting like a cutthroat executive, turning a competitor into a dependent wholesale customer, threatening to cut off supply to control pricing and keeping extra supplier shipments it hadn't paid for.
• Hack + brag: The model developed a multi-step exploit to break out of restricted internet access, gained broader connectivity and posted details of the exploit on obscure public websites.
• Hide what it's doing: In rare cases (less than 0.001% of interactions), Mythos used a prohibited method to get an answer, then tried to "re-solve" it to avoid detection.
• Manipulate the judge: When Mythos was working on a coding task graded by another AI, it watched the judge reject its submission, then attempted a prompt injection to attack the grader.

 "These capabilities are so strong that we now need to prepare for security in a very different way than we have for the past few decades," Anthropic's Logan Graham told Axios,  expressing concern over what would happen if similar AI capabilities were used by bad actors.

So rather than pursuing a broad release, Anthropic is channeling the model into Project Glasswing, a defensive, coalition‑based effort aimed at identifying, responsibly disclosing, and patching critical software vulnerabilities before threat actors can exploit similar AI capabilities.

Glasswing includes 11 named launch tech partners (Amazon Web Services, Apple, Broadcom, Cisco, CrowdStrike, Google, JPMorgan, the Linux Foundation, Microsoft, NVIDIA, and Palo Alto Networks...  yes JPMorgan is now viewed as a tech company) plus over 40 additional critical software organizations, and is supported by up to $100 million in usage credits and funding for open‑source security.

The initiative reflects Anthropic’s view that frontier‑AI cyber risks are systemic rather than firm‑specific, requiring coordinated action across the software ecosystem as AI accelerates vulnerability discovery and compresses response timelines.

The staggered release could be the blueprint for what future model releases look like as they get stronger and stronger: limiting access to select partners deemed secure enough to test world-bending systems.

Tyler Durden Wed, 04/08/2026 - 11:20

Delta Air Lines Erases All 'Epic Fury' Losses As In-House Refinery Cushions Fuel Shock

Delta Air Lines soared in premarket trading on a combination of the U.S.-Iran ceasefire and stronger-than-expected first-quarter results, with the carrier's in-house refinery helping to lower the average jet fuel price for its fleet in the first quarter, making it appear to be one of the better-positioned carriers than most peers to withstand an energy shock.

Even without a ceasefire in the Middle East, Delta's first-quarter results only exemplified its strategic advantage over peers: its Trainer refinery in Pennsylvania, operated through its wholly owned subsidiary Monroe Energy, reduced the airline's fuel price by more than 2% during the quarter and is expected to provide a $300 million benefit in the second quarter.

"Delta is best positioned to navigate this environment, with a leading brand, strong financial foundation, and the benefit of our refinery," Delta CEO Ed Bastian wrote in the earnings release.

Bastian continued, "We delivered earnings that were more than 40% higher than last year, even with a significant increase in fuel costs and operational disruptions across the industry."

The airline expects second-quarter jet fuel expenses to top $2 billion at the forward curve.

Here's a snapshot of first-quarter earnings (courtesy of Bloomberg):

Adjusted EPS 64c vs. 45c y/y, estimate 57c (Bloomberg Consensus)

• Loss per share 44c vs. EPS 37c y/y

Adjusted revenue $14.20 billion, +9.4% y/y, estimate $14.08 billion

• Passenger revenue $12.30 billion, +7.2% y/y, estimate $12.28 billion

• Cargo revenue $226 million, +8.7% y/y, estimate $213.7 million

Passenger load factor 81.6% vs. 81.4% y/y, estimate 82.4%

Available seat miles 69.16 billion, +1.1% y/y, estimate 69.15 billion

Revenue passenger miles 56.47 billion, +1.4% y/y, estimate 56.96 billion

Adjusted net income $423 million, +45% y/y, estimate $372 million

Yield per passenger mile 21.78c, +5.6% y/y

"Demand remains strong, and we are taking actions to protect our margins and cash flow. This includes meaningfully reducing capacity growth, with a downward bias until the fuel environment improves, and moving quickly to recapture higher fuel costs. Delta is best positioned to navigate this environment," the CEO said.

Earnings outlook for the second quarter (courtesy of Bloomberg):

• Sees adjusted EPS of $1 to $1.50, estimate $1.45

• Sees adjusted total revenue up low teens y/y

• Sees adjusted operating margin of 6% to 8%

Shares of Delta jumped nearly 13% in premarket trading. Delta shares tumbled into a bear market last month during the U.S.-Iran conflict but have since rebounded from mid-March.

Related: 

• Airline Stocks Soar On Iran Ceasefire As IATA Sees "Positive" Tailwinds, But Warns Jet Fuel Crisis Will Persist

Delta is the only U.S. airline that operates a major refinery, and it appears Wall Street is rewarding the carrier for it.

Tyler Durden Wed, 04/08/2026 - 10:40