UK Police Force Invites Non-Muslim Staff To Fast During Ramadan As Act Of Solidarity

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity News,

West Midlands Police force is actively inviting non-Muslim officers and staff to go without food and water during Ramadan as a deliberate "act of solidarity" with Muslim colleagues.

The force presents this as a way for officers to grasp the "significance of Ramadan" for Muslim residents in one of Britain's most diverse regions. Critics see it as yet another example of public institutions bending their culture around one faith while the foundational principle of policing without fear or favour collapses under diversity dogma.

The invitation comes from the West Midlands Association of Muslim Police. Colleagues of all backgrounds are encouraged to fast for a day during the month-long festival, with the money they would normally spend on lunch donated to charity.

'I look forward to Christmas when all the Muslim officers have a tree in their house and join in.'@CressidaWetton reacts as West Midlands Police officers are invited to fast during Ramadan as an act of solidarity and to raise money for charity. pic.twitter.com/rmGxRxTKk8

— GB News (@GBNEWS) August 2, 2026

A force spokesman confirmed the practice has run for a number of years: "The West Midlands Association of Muslim Police has, for a number of years, invited colleagues from all faiths and backgrounds to fast for a day to raise money for charity during Ramadan. It is entirely a matter for officers and staff if they wish to take part."

"This is an initiative which is undertaken at a number of organisations around the country. The West Midlands has a large and diverse population, including many Muslim residents, and it is important for officers and staff to understand the significance of Ramadan to those communities," the spokesman added.

Documents obtained by the Telegraph through freedom of information requests show the force is held up as a model of inclusivity. A New Forest council diversity training memo praises West Midlands Police for supporting fasting colleagues with flexi-working so they can spend time with families.

It notes: "What's more, increasing numbers of non-Muslim staff have taken up fasting each year as an act of solidarity with their Muslim colleagues, adding to the family feel of WMP culture." Councillors were urged to brainstorm their own versions of such inclusivity.

Shadow Justice Secretary Nick Timothy did not share the enthusiasm. He called the encouragement of non-Muslim staff to observe Ramadan "wholly inappropriate."

"The police should be a national force for all of us, observing the same standards regardless of creed," Timothy said, adding "There should be no special measures in place for any faith."

"We should not be changing police culture to comply with the practices of one religion," he continued, adding "Expectations should be uniform, and non-Muslim police being encouraged to fast in Ramadan is wholly inappropriate. We need to abolish the Public Sector Equality Duty, which provides the legal framework for much of this, and ensure there is one rule for all of us - not special treatment for certain groups."

Major Andrew Fox, senior associate fellow at the Henry Jackson Society, went further. He linked the initiative to the force's recent controversies, including the exclusion of Israeli football supporters based on intelligence later shown to be false or exaggerated.

"West Midlands Police's judgment is increasingly open to question," Fox stated, adding "Supporting officers of every faith is entirely appropriate. Encouraging staff to participate in a religious observance is not. The police exist to enforce the law impartially, not to promote or facilitate religious practices."

Concerns have also been raised about operational readiness. Front-line officers abstaining from food and water for extended periods during demanding shifts raises obvious questions about concentration, physical performance and public safety. Yet the force frames the voluntary fast as cultural enrichment rather than a potential operational risk.

This episode does not stand alone. It fits a pattern of ideological capture that a Policy Exchange analysis has shown is systematically undermining British policing. Forces across England and Wales have poured hundreds of millions into DEI measures and the Police Race Action Plan since 2020.

The think-tank's head of crime and justice, David Spencer, warned that police chiefs have "sought to entrench the radical ideology of 'anti-racism' into British policing." In doing so, he argued, "some police chiefs have set policing against its own foundational principle - to act 'without fear or favour'."

Spencer concluded: "It is a modern-day tragedy that many of our Chief Constables simply cannot be trusted to resolve this alone. It's time to restore the principle of 'equality before the law' in policing. Nothing less than the fundamental legitimacy of British policing is at stake."

The human cost of this ideology has already been measured in real lives. In Southampton in December 2025, 18-year-old university student Henry Nowak was stabbed multiple times. His attacker, Vickrum Digwa, claimed he was the victim of a racist assault.

Bodycam footage shows officers treating the bleeding Nowak as the aggressor, handcuffing him while he pleaded that he could not breathe. He lost consciousness shortly after and died. An inquest has been ordered to examine whether the handcuffing and delays in medical treatment contributed to his death under Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Serving and former Hampshire officers later told former Home Secretary Suella Braverman that mandatory DEI sessions had "drummed into us about our white privilege and unconscious bias."

The external trainer was described as "deeply hateful of white people and our culture." Officers reported feeling controlled and pressured to adopt specific views on race. Hampshire's chief constable denied the existence of two-tier policing, but the bodycam evidence and the subsequent admissions tell a different story.

Similar patterns appear elsewhere. Footage from Birmingham earlier this year captured officers intervening in a street attack by shielding three black males who had been punching a white teenager, then arresting and manhandling the bloodied victim while the attackers walked free.

Officers were heard ordering the restrained teenager into a police car with language that left little doubt about the direction of their aggression. West Midlands Police, the same force asked to participate in fasting, asked the public to stop sharing the clips rather than account for the conduct.

The same ideological framework has been institutionalised through training that forces officers to accept the concept of "white privilege." Thames Valley Police has mandated equity sessions focusing on white privilege, micro-aggressions and the shift from non-racist to anti-racist practice.

An independent review found the material could be seen as demonising white officers, creating barriers to learning and generating resentment among white male officers who felt disadvantaged.

Former government adviser and ex-police officer Rory Geoghegan observed that officers "deserve far better from their leaders than to be crudely categorised by skin colour and subjected to reductive, divisive ideologies."

When non-Muslim officers are invited to participate in Islamic religious observance under the banner of solidarity, while the same institutions have spent years instructing white officers on their supposed privilege and have been caught prioritising racial narratives over the immediate medical needs of a dying white teenager, the pattern is clear.

The Public Sector Equality Duty and the DEI apparatus that flows from it have produced a policing culture more interested in managed optics and protected group sensitivities than in equal application of the law.

Nick Timothy's call to abolish that duty is not abstract. It is a recognition that one rule for all has been replaced by a hierarchy of protected identities. West Midlands Police's Ramadan invitation is simply the latest public expression of that hierarchy.

British policing was built on the principle that the uniform represents the same standards for every citizen. That principle is being hollowed out, one diversity initiative at a time. The public is noticing. Trust is eroding. And the consequences are no longer theoretical.

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Tyler Durden Tue, 08/04/2026 - 05:00

Iron Ore Below $100 As UBS Warns "Fundamentals Are Deteriorating"

Iron ore futures in Singapore fell to their lowest intraday level in one year as deteriorating fundamentals continued to weigh on the market.

Steel demand in China remains soft amid an ongoing construction slump and weakening mill margins, while supply continues to increase, reinforcing expectations of a growing surplus.

Bloomberg noted earlier that the latest concerns surrounding major physical trader Radiant World added another layer of uncertainty, but the bigger bearish narrative remains centered on lackluster demand failing to absorb rising supply.

The outlet adds more color:

Vitol Group and Cargill Inc. have stopped doing business with Radiant World, a privately held company, amid concerns over fake invoices, Bloomberg News reported on Friday.

In addition, Intesa Sanpaolo SpA and Jefferies Financial Group Inc.'s Point Bonita fund were reviewing exposures to the company.

Radiant World — which has grown in recent years to become one of the market's main players — said the developments are "categorically untrue".

Separately, Myles Allsop, a London-based mining and metals research analyst at UBS, recently pointed out, "Iron ore fundamentals remain cautious; prices are starting to test the low end of the range."

Allsop questioned whether iron ore will trade above $100/t in 2027. He answered, "Probably not," and added:

Iron ore fundamentals are deteriorating with supply lifting while demand is soft; this has resulted in inventories lifting materially over the last 12 months.

We note cost support levels have lifted with higher diesel/ freight rates but these are set to moderate over the next 12 months if the ceasefire holds & oil/ gas prices normalise.

We expect iron ore prices to average ~$100/t in 2026 and moderate to ~US$95/t in 2027 with the market in a larger surplus and prices stepping down to trade just above the ~90th percentile of the value-in-use curve or ~$90/t (note).

We expect steel scrap to start to displace iron ore demand from 2027 when China's ETS gets tighter (although the scale and pace is opaque and dependent on highly fragmented collection and processing, as well as policy support).

Overnight, Iron ore futures extended their selloff, with benchmark Singapore contracts falling as much as 2.3% to $93.65 a ton, the lowest intraday level since July 2025, while the most-active Dalian contract dropped nearly 3%.

The price action suggests bearish sentiment toward the steelmaking raw material, as weakening Chinese demand, softer steel margins, and increasing supply are pressuring the market.

Tyler Durden Tue, 08/04/2026 - 04:15

The EU & The Iron Law Of Oligarchy

Authored by Stephen Soukup via American Greatness,

Along, long time ago—27 years, to be exact—my boss (the inimitable Mark Melcher) and I predicted that the European Monetary Union would be the death of the EU. The Euro, we wrote for our clients at a now-defunct big brokerage house, would be a disaster and would destroy everything that the post-war Europeans had spent the previous several decades working to build. Specifically, we wrote:

Psst! You wanna know a secret? The Euro, and the mess it represents, is going to be a social, economic and political catastrophe. Indeed, we think it is probable that the adoption of the Euro will be to 21st century Europe, what the killing of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand was to 20th century Europe; i.e., that point in time when history will record that the unraveling began in earnest.

Exaggeration? Hyperbole? Well, maybe. But maybe not. You see, the problem isn’t, as most critics claim, simply that the “policy makers” from the various “regions,” will fight over economic and monetary policy, and that the economic ignoramuses might win. The problem is that economic ignoramuses are likely to be the only ones at the table.  . . .

Starting in about 2010 and running for the next decade or so, every January, in my annual foreign-policy forecast piece, I would lead with a reiteration of that prediction. The collapse of the Euro, I would write, was inevitable. It didn’t matter if it actually happened this year or next year or a decade down the road. It would all eventually crumble, largely because the ignoramuses simply couldn’t help themselves and couldn’t stop doing economically foolish things.

Sometime over the last few years, I quit making that prediction every year for a couple of reasons. First, I quit writing annual forecast pieces as my business model and focus changed. Second, and more to the point, it became unnecessary. The EU had already made itself economically irrelevant. Between its jealously fueled outrage at American tech companies, its obsession with carbon emissions, and its conscious decision to strangle its capital markets through the imposition of overtly political investing mandates, the EU guaranteed that it would become the first modern civilization in history to regress developmentally. It knowingly chose to deindustrialize and to build an economic future that was far bleaker than even its remote economic past. The Euro, I concluded, was pointless.

That’s not to say that I gave up believing that the EU would inevitably collapse. I just gave up wasting my readers’ time by prattling on about it.

Looking back at all of this now, it’s possible I may have been mistaken. No, I wasn’t wrong about the economic stuff. Not only are the ignoramuses in charge, but no one else is even in the discussion. Italy’s Giorgia Meloni is the only Eurozone leader who questions the Union’s climate policies, for example, rightly warning that they will lead to “industrial desertification.” Still, even she officially supports the EU’s position on climate change and carbon emissions more generally, as well as its agreement to the Paris Climate Accords. It’s ignoramuses all the way down.

Nevertheless, it’s probably the case that I was wrong that the economic ignoramuses would be the ones who would precipitate the official end of the EU. Or, more accurately, I suppose, I was wrong that their economically illiterate policies would be the proximate cause of the EU’s collapse. It’s the same ignoramuses, just different policies.

As you likely know, this past week, tens of thousands of “migrants” from Morocco invaded the Spanish city of Ceuta, which is along the coast in North Africa. The images from the enclave were grim: hordes of people, mostly young men, pushing, racing, and fighting to get out of Africa and into Europe (geographical technicalities, be damned). The conditions on the ground were grimmer still: as of yesterday, some 70-plus deaths had been confirmed, while more than a thousand people required medical attention. The whole thing was shocking—or at least it would have been if it hadn’t also been utterly predictable.

For most of the last forty years, Spain has been a hub of primarily North African and Middle Eastern immigration to Europe.

Since the 1980s, Spain has had six major extraordinary regularizations for its migrant populations. Although different in name and details, these “extraordinary regularizations” are essentially broad general amnesties, grants of legal immigration status to those who entered the country illegally. In 2005, under the former Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero (a socialist), Spain granted amnesty to more than half a million illegal immigrants. Earlier this year, under current Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez (also a socialist . . . or worse), the country began the process of yet another regularization, the total size of which is unknown at present but is estimated to be between 500,000 and over 800,000.

Additionally, earlier this summer, the Spanish Supreme Court issued a ruling limiting the ability of the government to return immigrants who arrived in Ceuta and its sister city, Melilla, by sea rather than by land (over a technical “border”).

All things considered, Spain has done everything in its power to encourage as much immigration as possible, and its government has openly conceded this fact, arguing that demographic and workforce realities make mass immigration an absolute necessity. Unsurprisingly, given all of this, the country’s foreign-born population jumped significantly in less than two years, from approximately 18.2% of the total population in 2024 to 20.3% today.

In light of Spain’s immigration policies and in the wake of the Ceuta disaster, over the weekend, several EU nations called for a suspension of Spain’s privileges under the Schengen Agreement, which allows borderless travel within the Schengen region: no passport control, a unified set of regulations, etc. Predictably, Meloni’s Italy was the first to speak up. Deputy PMs Antonio Tajani and Matteo Salvini announced a formal one-month suspension of Italy’s Schengen relations with Spain, closing Italy’s maritime and air entry points to Spain and introducing “targeted and selective” checks on non-EU travelers arriving from that country. France followed suit, reintroducing checks at its land border crossings with Spain. Finland began preparing to reimpose border controls along its own Schengen borders, and its interior minister, Mari Rantanen, offered the sharpest public statement by a government official to date: “Spain’s outer border is also our outer border, and. . . they have failed in their efforts to prevent this incursion, this invasion.” Denmark and Czechia both demanded Spain’s suspension from Schengen, but neither has taken unilateral action on its own.

In response, Pedro Sánchez complained that everyone, everywhere, was overreacting, stating that the rest of Europe was being “selfish, polarising, and unlawful.”

Taken as a whole, this entire episode—starting with Spain’s admitted desire to import as many immigrants as possible and continuing through this weekend’s demands for Spain’s suspension from Schengen—helps clarify some of the broader issues facing the EU.

First, in the age of mass immigration, Schengen shows clearly that the EU itself was a half-baked idea. Interestingly, Schengen did not start as an EU enterprise. It started as a side agreement between a handful of member states: Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. It was only in 1999, via the Amsterdam Treaty’s Schengen Protocol, that the “Schengen acquis” (the whole body of Schengen rules and agreements) was formally absorbed into EU law. In 2004, the EU—as opposed to its member states, a key distinction—tried to push a European constitution on its members, including provisions formally mandating Schengen compliance, making the EU “an area without internal frontiers, in which the free movement of persons is ensured. . . .”  The following year, French and Dutch voters explicitly rejected the constitution via referenda, which should, by all rights, have been the end of it. The EU being the EU, it decided that it wouldn’t take no for an answer and scaled the constitution back marginally and re-presented it as the Lisbon Treaty, which, among many foolish things, formalized and mandated participation in the Schengen migration policies.

Second, the Euro, the immigration mess, and the EU’s unwillingness to accept the will of the people as definitive confirm Robert Michels’ Iron Law of Oligarchy and show that the EU’s pretensions to “democracy” are rather laughable. Michels was a student of Max Weber, the founder of modern sociology, who sought to deepen his appreciation of socialism by studying the German Social Democratic Party (SPD), the most avowedly democratic, mass-participatory political organization in Europe at the time. He presumed that he would find a functional, egalitarian organization that confirmed all his fantastical priors. Instead, what he discovered was the opposite. He concluded, based on his study, that even organizations explicitly founded on democratic principles—universal participation, elected leadership, accountability to the membership—invariably develop into oligarchies, ruled by a small, self-perpetuating leadership class. It is simply the nature of large organizations. This, then, is Michels’ Iron Law of Oligarchy: “It is organisation that gives birth to the domination of the elected over the electors, of the mandataries over the mandators, of the delegates over the delegators. Who says organisation, says oligarchy.”

The EU is an oligarchy in Michelsian terms. It is governed by a small self-perpetuating ruling class that sees “the people” as impediments to its technocratic program and will do whatever is necessary to advance its agenda, regardless of the will of those people.

Finally, the EU will crumble. All Utopian enterprises eventually do. They must. They can’t help but do so. And while it may not be the monetary union that brings it down, something will. Maybe it will be Schengen and immigration. Maybe it will be something else. Who knows? Whatever the case, it will, eventually, collapse. The real, painful part of Michels’ Iron Law is the inability of oligarchies to reform themselves. They are incapable. What this suggests is that the EU’s response to the Ceuta incident and to Spain’s immigration unilateralism more generally will be to add more layers of centralizing regulation to the already oligarchical system, thereby making a bad problem even worse.

The EU won’t reform because it can’t reform. And so, it will collapse instead.

Tyler Durden Tue, 08/04/2026 - 03:30

12 Glaring Realities Of Marxist Socialism

Authored by Christian Milord via The Epoch Times,

In a free society that embraces free markets and the rule of law, young people must be made aware of the glaring realities regarding the alleged “fuzzy and warm” nature of Marxist (collectivism, communism, progressivism, socialism) iterations. 

There are at least twelve aspects of the Marxist ideology that are clear and present dangers to democratic nations as well as undemocratic countries.

First, Marxism was founded on the stark concept of atheism.  Consequently, it attempts to dismantle the Judeo-Christian faith that has been an anchor of civilization for thousands of years and helps people to navigate life’s challenges.  Marxists also oppose the traditional family, which is the building block of any culture and bolsters societal bonds.  On every life category, intact families are far more successful than broken families.

Next, Marxist policies encourage folks to be intellectually and physically lazy as they rely on bureaucratic government for all of their needs.  This reliance generates an unearned entitlement mentality that expects others to supply the needs of those who refuse to accept personal responsibility.  Minimal effort is applied to studying and working, yet the “entitled” expect to earn high salaries regardless of the effort they put forth.

Third, Marxists are quite generous with the money confiscated from job creators, but they are stingy with their own money.  However, most of the money and possessions that are seized by Marxist leaders end up with their cronies and are not redistributed to the lower-income workers they claim to be helping.  The hypocrisy is staggering.

Fourth, Marxist influencers compete with one another to see who the best liar is as they deceive the vulnerable who might believe promises that are too good to be true.  Marxists use deception as a means to control the masses and keep them on their heels.  They talk a good game about socialism as a paradise on earth yet do everything they can to turn that alleged nirvana into a hell on earth.

Fifth, Marxism is an arbitrary system built on a foundation of contradictions.  It can hand out some goodies but just as easily withdraw them.  Marxists believe that they can alter laws whenever they feel the urge, thus using raw power plays to confuse and divide people, and consolidate power in the hands of a few.  Arbitrary laws can hinder people from advancing economically and can also create insecurity.

Sixth, for an ideology that claims it will usher in equality, Marxism certainly is fixated on economic class, color, gender, and race.  Apparently, some are more equal than others.  Instead of equal opportunity, Marxists favor the equity of prearranged outcomes.  Many Marxist spokespersons are often educated academics who pretend victimhood and fear competition in the real world yet believe they are smarter than everyone else.   They’ve learned nothing about good citizenship and wisdom, while displaying a common sense deficit.  Marxists envy folks who keep their noses to the grindstone, and lash out at those who possess discipline, deferred gratification, and a healthy work ethic.

Seventh, Marxists promise freedom and security to those who will join their cause, yet wealth is stolen from others, and security only exists for those at the top of the pyramid.  In other words, everyone is equally miserable under Marxism except for the jackbooted leaders who profit from the spoils acquired from their “legalized” theft.  For proof, just examine the misery index of folks in China PRC, Cuba, Iran, N. Korea, and Russia.

Eighth, it’s puzzling why Marxists who reside in free societies lack the courage to move to the autocratic societies they admire.  Is it because they don’t even believe the mantras they keep repeating, or do they want to have their cake and eat it, too?  They denounce the blessings of free enterprise and liberty at the same time as they partake of them.  Unfortunately, they have taken their blessings for granted.  Do they really want to transform America into a dysfunctional nation that has constant shortages of goods and services?

Ninth, Marxism promotes the darker facets of human nature rather than its nobler strivings.  Marxists turn lies into the truth and truth into lies.  They oppose the arts, constructive creativity, and innovation and constantly push monolithic groupthink instead of critical thinking.  In other words, Marxism is extremely boring and lacks a sense of humor.

Tenth, Marxists never learn from history and thus are doomed to repeat it, even after the carnage that’s been generated by their dystopian policies for over a century.  Someone once noted that doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is the definition of insanity.  That’s the Marxist playbook in a nutshell.

Eleventh, Marxists glorify the vices and demonize traditional virtues even while they carry out plenty of virtue signaling.  They condescendingly lecture us about upholding democracy and liberty at the same time as they attempt to erode economic freedom, educational freedom, and individual freedom.

Finally, Marxism is highly immature.  Marxists rarely learn from the past and thus triple down on failure.  They blame others for their own fascist behavior, which is an example of denial and projection.  They demand to get what other folks have earned, which is childish and immoral.  Marxists side with totalitarian entities and mob rule, while opposing the sole Middle East democracy, Israel.  Most Marxists only embrace law enforcement when it is provided to protect unlawful immigrants and themselves, and when it is used to punish law-abiding folks. 

This is why it is imperative to vigorously oppose Marxism by all means necessary.

Tyler Durden Mon, 08/03/2026 - 23:25

"We Use Thicker Steel": Security Firm Fortifies HVAC Units Against Thieves

Copper wiring, light poles, catalytic converters, copper gutters, and even Tesla charging cables have long been targets for thieves.

But in crime-ridden metro areas governed by progressive or reformist socialist city halls that have adopted softer enforcement policies, where lefty prosecutors are perceived as unwilling to pursue property crimes, criminals have become increasingly emboldened.

They have moved beyond stealing industrial metals to taking entire outdoor HVAC units, prompting some homeowners and businesses to install heavy steel security cages around their condensers.

An Atlanta-based company called Ornamental Security published a viral Instagram video titled "Securing Your HVAC System," highlighting what appears to be a growing trend among homeowners: installing metal cages over outdoor condensers to prevent theft.

Ornamental Security's Instagram video was later reposted on X by Everything Georgia, where it went even more viral, drawing 2.6 million views in just one day.

HVAC thefts are geographically widespread, occurring in cities governed by both Democrats (Chicago, Louisville, District Heights/Prince George's County, Maryland) and Republicans (Jacksonville, FL; Midland, TX), as well as in Canada.

Recent reports:

In Maryland, WBFF 45 reported earlier this year:

Based:

We pay taxes to stop crime....Democrats use our tax dollars to support crime.

That is the problem.

— Raging Greek (@RagingGreek2) August 2, 2026

Just wait until tech companies start installing mini data centers in residential backyards. Thieves will move up the value chain, from stealing HVAC units to targeting Nvidia chips.

Tyler Durden Mon, 08/03/2026 - 23:00

Arming Local Police With Drones. Who Pulls The Trigger?

Authored by Burak Oktenli via RealClearDefense,

Last Sunday, the World Cup was played in New Jersey, capping a summer in which American stadiums have hosted the largest sporting event on earth. Federal planners saw the airspace problem coming: the executive order that reorganized America's counter-drone posture names the 2026 World Cup explicitly as an event to protect. What the planning has not yet produced is an answer to the question that will matter most if a drone crosses the stadium fence: whose call is it?

The legal landscape has transformed in thirteen months. Executive Order 14305, signed in June 2025, pushed detection funding to state and local agencies. Then the Safer Skies Act, passed in December's defense authorization, broke a decades-old federal monopoly: for the first time, trained and certified local police and correctional officers may seize, disable, or destroy a drone that poses a credible threat to people, large events, critical infrastructure, or prisons. Implementing rules from Homeland Security, the Justice Department, and the FCC began arriving this month. Industry has done its part too; the interceptors, jammers, and radio-frequency takeover tools exist and are getting better.

Here is what does not yet exist: the authority layer. We have spent our energy deciding who may act and buying the tools to act with, while leaving the harder questions of how the decision gets made to be improvised at the venue gate. Start with the declaration problem. The statute authorizes force against a drone that poses a "credible threat," but a credible threat is a judgment call, and at a packed stadium it is a judgment call made in under a minute by whoever happens to hold the certification. Is the quadcopter over the parking lot a hostile payload, a hobbyist who ignored the flight restriction, or a broadcaster's camera platform that lost its transponder? Three different answers, three different lawful responses, one clock.

Then the handoff problem. A drone approaching a stadium can cross private property, city jurisdiction, county lines, and a federal security perimeter in ninety seconds. Venue security teams have no mitigation authority at all; certified local police have some; federal teams have more. The law creates layers of permission without specifying the moment or mechanism of transfer between them. Weeks of confused drone sightings over New Jersey in late 2024 already demonstrated how fast the question "who is in charge of this airspace" can go publicly unanswered. That was surveillance and speculation. Engagement is less forgiving.

And the evidence problem. Every engagement decision will be litigated, because the law has teeth on both edges: an officer who mitigates without required federal coordination faces civil penalties up to 100,000 dollars per violation, and a wrongful takedown over a crowd invites liability no city attorney wants to discover in real time. If the radio-frequency logs, radar tracks, and decision records of an engagement are not captured to an evidentiary standard, the program will lose in court what it won in Congress. None of this requires new technology. It requires an authority architecture agreed before the whistle, in three parts. Every protected event needs a named decision authority: one accountable official, designated in advance, who owns the hostile-or-not call, with a pre-planned line of succession. Jurisdictions need risk-based engagement windows: decisions, made in daylight and written down, about which responses are authorized at which distances and against which behaviors, so that the officer under the flight path executes a plan rather than invents one. And every engagement needs an evidence chain built in from the first sensor contact, so that what happened can be audited, prosecuted, and defended.

The rules now being written are the moment to set this architecture, and federal guidance is already urging venues and agencies to define roles, responsibilities, and response plans rather than improvising them on the night. The calendar is unkind: after this Sunday comes a Ryder Cup, a Super Bowl, and the 2028 Olympics, each a mass gathering under an expanding drone threat. Retrofitting authority onto deployed hardware after the first bad night is how programs die.

The question at the stadium gate is no longer whether America can stop a drone. We can. The question is whether the officer looking up at one knows, before it arrives, whose decision it is, what response is authorized, and what record will protect that decision afterward. Congress opened the door to local counter-drone defense. Someone still must build the doorway.

Burak Oktenli is an independent researcher on the governance of authority in autonomous and AI-mediated systems and holds an MBA and a Master of Professional Studies in Applied Intelligence from Georgetown University. His writing has appeared at the Modern War Institute at West Point, RUSI, RealClearDefense, and The Space Review.

Tyler Durden Mon, 08/03/2026 - 22:35

The Real Reasons Why Funding For The Democrat Party Is Collapsing

Recent polling suggests that expectations of a "blue wave" in Congress for the 2026 mid-terms are crumbling fast, and as we examined recently, the Democrats are facing one of the biggest financial shortfalls in DNC history.  The organization has around $16 million of cash on hand for campaign operations after debts are counted.  The Republicans have over $129 million cash on hand with zero debt. 

In terms of super-PAC money, the Democrats have $334 million to draw from while Republicans have $1.06 billion.

The funding disparity could not be more obvious, but what is the cause?  What happened to the Democrat's massive cash apparatus - the same system that raised over $1 billion for the Kamala Harris campaign in 2024?  It's almost as if the money simply disappeared.

Some theories suggest that institutions like USAID were funneling cash into the DNC through various political NGOs and subsidies.  There is some validity to these claims.

Groups tied to NGO networks like the former Arabella Advisors (which managed large 501(c) funds handling over a billion dollars for advocacy, ballot measures, and political activity) saw scrutiny and restructuring after Donald Trump took office. These management groups contracted support for Democratic-aligned causes, messaging, voter mobilization, and infrastructure.  

One of the biggest supporters of Arabella Advisors was the Bill Gates Foundation, which cut ties with Arabella last year.  Arabella ceased operations in November of 2025 due to investigations into "Dark Money" funding. Interestingly, Democrat coffers have suffered significant declines after Arabella dissolved and rebranded as "Sunflower Services".  The organization also had numerous overlapping ties to USAID.

It should also be noted that employee contributions from USAID, the Department of Education and other organizations targeted by DOGE cuts were around 95% Democrat.  Huge swaths of the federal bureaucracy have long been run by the far-left.  Presidents come and go, but the bureaucracy is forever.

Beyond the dark money angle, much of the DNC's losses can be attributed to their own ideologically unhinged leadership.  Kamala Harris, for example, had nearly double the number of billionaire donors and corporate sponsors compared to Donald Trump, yet Trump won the election in a landslide and the Harris camp ended up with $22 million in debt.

Major donors including Bob Kerrigan and Reid Hoffman have pulled back from the DNC after the 2024 disaster, citing lack of faith in leadership and questions over the purpose of the Democratic Party.  

Finally, with the rise of fanatical Democrat Socialist candidates in blue city elections across the US, the Democrat Party is being treated as radioactive.  The more the party doubles down on woke, the less people like or trust them (Get Woke, Go Broke). 

It's unclear how well Democrats will perform in the mid-term elections this year given their financial problems, but it is often true that any party that can't get people to vote with their wallets is going to have a hard time getting people to show up at the polls.   

Tyler Durden Mon, 08/03/2026 - 22:10

Israeli Finance Minister Requests Netanyahu Approve Three Jewish Settlements In Gaza 

Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on Sunday repeated his call for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to approve the establishment of three Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip, as senior Israeli ministers continue to speak openly about their plans for permanent Israeli control of the Palestinian territory.

Smotrich made the call in a post on X, in which he referenced the withdrawal of settlements from Gaza and from an area of the northern West Bank, which he calls "northern Samaria," a policy known as the "disengagement." Israel is re-establishing the settlements in the northern West Bank, and he is calling for the same in Gaza.

via Reuters

In the post, Smotrich referenced the upcoming Israeli elections, warning that a "left-wing" government won't expand settlements as aggressively.

"Before us stands the choice, between a right-wing government that will continue the momentum of construction and expand it, and a dangerous left-wing government that openly declares its intention to evacuate settlements and outposts and to promote a 'political agreement,'"7 Smotrich said.

"And from northern Samaria – to Gaza! The Settlement Administration under my leadership is prepared to establish 3 settlements in the northern sector of the Gaza Strip, and I call on the Prime Minister to give the green light to the move. Together we correct the sin of the disengagement," he added.

Smotrich also holds a ministerial position in the Israeli Defense Ministry, where he oversees the Settlement Administration. He first announced in June that the body had drawn up plans for three settlements in Gaza and was just waiting for the green light from Netanyahu.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz, a member of Netanyahu’s Likud party, has also said that Israel will establish three "Nachala outposts" - a type of settlement that starts as a community for IDF soldiers with the goal of establishing a permanent civilian presence.

Katz recently boasted of the destruction of Gaza cities during a visit to the northern part of the Strip. When asked how the view of the destruction made him feel, the Israeli minister said, "I feel good. Thank God. This is all the result of a deliberate policy aimed at removing threats. Instead of the raid method—going in and out—the IDF is inside, the terrorists are outside, and the houses are destroyed."

Tyler Durden Mon, 08/03/2026 - 21:45

SpaceX In "Final Stages" Of Securing New Massive Rocket Launch Site In Louisiana

Several Louisiana media outlets report that Elon Musk's SpaceX is in the "final stages" of securing approximately 130,000 acres on Pecan Island for a massive new spaceport to launch rockets into orbit.

The Times-Picayune reports a source with knowledge about the deal said SpaceX is poised to take control of roughly 130,000 acres at Pecan Island - more specifically, the coastal Vermilion Parish - as part of a settlement resolving long-running coastal lawsuits against ExxonMobil. Gov. Jeff Landry is expected to announce the agreement this month.

The outlet KPEL provided additional details:

Gov. Landry announced a settlement of the coastal lawsuits in June. Under that agreement, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, ExxonMobil is expected to turn over land it has owned in Vermilion Parish since the 1950s, property long leased out for hunting and fishing. The terms have not been made public.

SpaceX would then take control of the site, with provisions built in for coastal restoration and protection, according to a source with knowledge of the deal.

Landry has confirmed the coastal settlement but declined to discuss the SpaceX deal specifically, and Louisiana Economic Development Secretary Susan Bourgeois has offered no comment either. SpaceX hasn't named Louisiana directly, though the company acknowledged in a social media post that it's scouting new sites to expand Starship launch operations.

KPEL explained why Pecan Island best fits SpaceX's launch requirements:

Pecan Island has a permanent population of about 100 people along Louisiana Highway 82. Aerospace experts point to a handful of reasons that sparse setting appeals to SpaceX: deep-water access along the Intracoastal Waterway for barging in rocket hardware, a location roughly midway between the company's Texas and Florida facilities, and a local supply of natural gas. SpaceX has also told regulators it wants to launch up to a million low-Earth-orbit satellites in the coming years, a plan that will require more launch pads.

Everything Elon Musk blog Elon Chron's S.E. Robinson, Jr. wrote on X:

SPACEX: Louisiana State Senator Bob Hensgens, who represents Vermilion Parish, confirmed yesterday, ongoing talks between "a space exploration company" and Exxon-Mobil for the potential purchase of 136,000 acres south of Hwy La. 14, west of Intracoastal City, north/south of Pecan Island, extending to Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge in Cameron Parish.

The land is owned by Exxon-Mobil with surface rights managed by Vermilion Corporation. Hensgens could not name the space company, but stated he declined to sign a non-disclosure agreement for transparency purposes.

There is also talk about the possible construction of a coastal levee. The area is prone to hurricanes, so this would be a necessity.

More SpaceX news in today's ELON CHRON below!

SPACEX: Louisiana State Senator Bob Hensgens, who represents Vermilion Parish, confirmed yesterday, ongoing talks between "a space exploration company" and Exxon-Mobil for the potential purchase of 136,000 acres south of Hwy La. 14, west of Intracoastal City, north/south of Pecan… https://t.co/nSHbWqikKZ pic.twitter.com/HCwKGbco4G

— S.E. Robinson, Jr. (@SERobinsonJr) May 8, 2026

If SpaceX secures the Pecan Island site, it would establish the company's second major Starship launch complex, alongside Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas, where it already employs 3,400 people. SpaceX is the world's leading launch provider, beating out entire nation states, and continues to rapidly expand its rocket and AI-driven manufacturing capabilities.

A second SpaceX launch site in Louisiana would be transformative for the state. The project is expected to create thousands of construction jobs during the build-out; although only a fraction of the 130,000-acre site would be developed, the remainder would serve as a safety and environmental buffer. Once operational, the launch, manufacturing, engineering, and support workforce could number in the thousands, establishing a major new aerospace hub along the Gulf Coast.

Tyler Durden Mon, 08/03/2026 - 21:20

Capital One Cites Anti-Money Laundering Review Over Trump Organization Debanking Claims

Authored by Owen Evans via The Epoch Times,

Capital One asked a judge to dismiss a lawsuit brought by the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust, part of the Trump Organization, claiming that the bank's 2021 debanking of hundreds of Trump-linked accounts followed an internal anti-money laundering review and not the political discrimination the plaintiffs allege.

President Donald Trump prepares to board Air Force One at Morristown Municipal Airport in Morristown, N.J., on Aug. 2, 2026. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

In a motion to dismiss filed on July 31 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida before Judge Roy Altman, Capital One said the accounts were terminated after a review by anti-money-laundering experts.

The filing said that "documents and Plaintiffs' own allegations make clear that Capital One closed Plaintiffs' accounts for anti-money laundering (AML) reasons."

"The closures were the result of months of analysis and a careful review by Capital One's AML team in accordance with bank policies and regulatory guidance," it added.

Capital One said in the filing that the Trump Organization's allegations of political pretext were "misguided" and "based on cherry-picked quotations unsupported by the full context" of documents submitted to the court.

It did not accuse the Trump Organization of money laundering.

The case, filed in 2025, focuses on Capital One's March 2021 decision to close deposit accounts held by the Trump Organization and related entities.

Capital One informed the Trump Organization in March 2021 that "hundreds" of its bank accounts would be closed by June 7, 2021, according to an original lawsuit filed by The Trump Organization and Eric Trump, the president's son, in Miami-Dade Circuit Court in March 2025.

The plaintiffs said they believed Capital One was harboring "unsubstantiated, woke" beliefs that "it needed to distance itself from President Trump and his conservative political views," which they alleged motivated the bank to abruptly close the organizations' accounts.

At the time, Capital One told The Epoch Times that it "has not and does not close customer accounts for political reasons."

Capital One's recent filing said the rules governing the accounts allow it to "close any account in our sole discretion at any time for any or no reason."

Capital One's first attempt to dismiss the case, filed in May 2025, was withdrawn after the plaintiffs filed an amended complaint the following month.

Its second attempt succeeded in March this year, when a judge dismissed the case but gave the plaintiffs another chance to refile.

Capital One is now asking the court to dismiss the current complaint and said that the latest version "suffers from the same fundamental flaws as their prior two pleadings."

President Donald Trump also filed a lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase in January over alleged debanking.

Alejandro Brito, the president's personal attorney, filed a $5 billion lawsuit on Jan. 22 in Miami's Florida state court on behalf of the president and his hospitality companies.

Following the January 2021 breach of the U.S. Capitol, the largest bank in the United States shuttered the accounts of Trump and his related entities.

JPMorgan told The Epoch Times that the case "has no merit."

Trump signed an executive order in August 2025 to stop banks from denying people financial services because of their political or religious beliefs, a practice known as debanking.

According to a White House fact sheet, the executive order requires federal banking regulators to investigate whether banks have engaged in "politicized or unlawful debanking" and to issue penalties such as "fines or consent decrees."

The order also directs regulators to remove terms such as "reputational risk" from their guidance - language that has allegedly been used to justify debanking.

The Trump Organization and Capital One did not immediately respond to The Epoch Times' requests for comment.

Troy Myers, Andrew Moran, and Emel Akan contributed to this report.

Tyler Durden Mon, 08/03/2026 - 20:55

"Spider-Man: Brand New Day" Crushes Woke Odyssey Film At Box Office

Hollywood pulled out all the stops for "The Odyssey" - They relied heavily on director Christopher Nolan's built-in and generally pretentious audience to drive early box office revenues. 

The hype machine was running non-stop for months before the release.  The distributor's focused heavily on IMAX ticket sales, which cost more than double a normal theater ticket. They attempted to hide the woke content of the film from the public for as long as possible (an ancient Greek epic with no Greeks, featuring black, Asian, Hispanic and trans actors with a story that deconstructs the hero's journey of Odysseus, making him into a broken shell of a man.  Historical inaccuracies and modernization are rampant in the movie.

Critical websites also froze the audience ratings above 95% by rejecting most negative reviews. 

Despite all of this, The Odyssey's early box office was not impressive compared to most blockbuster movies.  It didn't even break the top 60 movies for opening weekend revenues (adjusted for inflation).  The political left rushed onto social media to declare victory, claiming that "Get Woke, Go Broke is over". 

Then, Spider Man: Brand New Day opened and ate The Odyssey's lunch, showing how a real blockbuster is supposed to perform.  

For its opening weekend, Spider Man raked in $927 million worldwide - Compare that to The Odyssey's $264 million global box office for the first weekend. Spider Man crushed The Odyssey without trying.  Spider Man is projected to make around $2.5 billion in the next few weeks while Nolan's movie is struggling to hit $1 billion.  If Nolan had made a non-woke movie, maybe he would have had better numbers.

The Odyssey's theater take sounds like a success, despite being easily surpassed by Spider Man.  However, with all the bluster over the film's "woke triumph", leftists are avoiding an inconvenient truth: The Odyssey has yet to make a single penny in raw profit.  

Nolan's woke translation has brought in $911 million after three weeks, but it needs around $950 million just to break even.  This is accounting for marketing costs, theaters taking their 50% cut, and Nolan taking his own 20% cut of revenues as part of his contract.  Will the Odyssey break even?  Probably, but Universal Studios will be straining to make any meaningful profit from the production.

Nolan will be laughing all the way to the bank, but distributors will not be as fortunate.  Spider Man has already surpassed the break even point and made a profit.

In the end, The Odyssey will represent nothing more than a woke vanity project for a director who is fading in talent. Nolan says he may be taking several years away from the business after Odyssey, which means Hollywood expended all its ammunition on one last stand.   

The Hollywood model has long been to force progressive content on audiences while ignoring public pleas for less propaganda.  In the minds of the elites, the masses must be conditioned over time to accept wokeness.  They believe that if they saturate the market for long enough, movie-goers will eventually capitulate and accept woke as the new normal.  This has not happened. 

Instead, nearly every woke movie and streaming series has failed, losing the industry billions in cumulative production costs.  Studios have been forced in the past couple of years to return to less political messaging and more classic entertainment. 

The Odyssey is a defiant rebellion, specifically designed as a vehicle to revitalize the Hollywood argument in favor of woke content.  Yet, compared to non-woke movies, the profit margin is looking dismal.

The political left never learns, they only double down on failure and convince themselves that their own propaganda is reality.  Even if one considers The Odyssey a "success" for making it's money back, how many woke movies can Christopher Nolan possibly direct?  One every few years?  No other director has a similar simp audience to lean on. 

Meaning, The Odyssey is likely the last gasp, the death rattle of far-left content gaining any momentum in theaters for years to come.  One woke movie breaking even does not make up for hundreds of box office disasters.     

Tyler Durden Mon, 08/03/2026 - 20:30

The Pentagon's Hidden Housing Scandal: Outsourcing Duty Of Care

Authored by Jay Rogers via RealClearDefense,

Sen. Jon Ossoff released a report on July 8 documenting lead exposure in a newborn, mold-related emergency room visits, and a cockroach infestation living inside a family's oven, all in privatized military housing at Fort Benning and Fort Stewart. Read it and you'd think it was written in 2022. It wasn't. That's the scandal: the Pentagon outsourced a duty of care to private landlords and never enforced the contracts meant to keep it intact.

I've spent thirty years in institutional investment management and now serve as an expert witness in fiduciary litigation. The pattern is one I recognize immediately: an institution hands a core obligation to a private operator, collects a fee for oversight it doesn't actually perform, and treats the delegation itself as if it discharged the duty. It didn't. Outsourcing a duty of care doesn't outsource the duty.

Congress created the Military Housing Privatization Initiative in 1996 to fix decrepit on-base housing without loading the capital cost onto the Pentagon's books. Private companies would own, renovate, and maintain the homes under leases running as long as fifty years, with servicemembers' Basic Allowance for Housing flowing straight to the landlord as rent. The Pentagon would keep oversight, backed by incentive fees for good performance and penalties for bad. On paper, a clean alignment of interests. In practice, a guaranteed revenue stream with an oversight function nobody actually staffed.

Fort Stewart's housing has been run by Balfour Beatty Communities since the base was privatized. In December 2021, Balfour Beatty pleaded guilty to one count of major fraud against the United States, agreeing to pay more than $65 million in criminal fines, restitution, and a related civil settlement. The company's employees falsified maintenance records and destroyed resident comment cards between 2013 and 2019 to fraudulently collect incentive fees they hadn't earned. Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said the fraud was "a consequence of BBC's broken corporate culture" that put profit ahead of servicemembers' welfare.

Four months later, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations found the conduct hadn't stopped. Its bipartisan staff report on the mistreatment of military families in privatized housing documented that Balfour's post-2019 behavior mirrored the misconduct behind its guilty plea; in the same period the company was under active federal investigation. A company can plead guilty to defrauding the government over housing conditions and keep collecting Basic Allowance for Housing checks from the families living in the homes it failed.

Fast-forward to this month. Fort Stewart is still Balfour Beatty's. Fort Benning's housing is run by a different company, the Michaels Organization's Villages of Benning. Ossoff's report found nearly identical failures at both: mold, lead, cover-ups, families told their complaints were handled when they weren't. That detail should stop anyone from treating this as one bad company. Two operators, two installations, the same pattern. The failure sits in the oversight structure, not the logo on the leasing office.

The government's own auditors have said as much. In an April 2023 report, the Government Accountability Office made 19 recommendations to improve DOD's oversight of privatized housing, including a priority recommendation that the Pentagon set clear, consistent, department-wide home inspection standards, after finding that comparable maintenance problems were getting graded differently depending on who held the clipboard. As of GAO's most recent public status update, that priority recommendation was still open, with DOD not expecting signed guidance until mid-2025 at the earliest. Congress had to legislate the fix GAO had already recommended.

This is the same structural failure I've written about previously in public pension governance, wearing a uniform instead of a suit. A pension trustee who delegates asset management to an outside manager doesn't delegate away fiduciary responsibility for the outcome; the law is explicit that the duty stays with the trustee. The Pentagon's relationship with its housing contractors works the same way as a matter of principle, even though the enforcement mechanism is a lease rather than ERISA. Both share the same defect: an incentive-fee structure that pays out on paperwork instead of results, and an oversight office too thin to catch the difference until a senator's staff does the job for it.

That fix is now in the books. The Fiscal Year 2026 National Defense Authorization Act, signed in December, directs the Secretary of War to establish a standard inspection and audit program for privatized and government-owned housing using independent, qualified inspectors, and separately tightens the rules on when a housing company may close a maintenance work order. Falsified paperwork closed BBC's work orders and inflated its bonuses for six years before anyone with subpoena power looked at the underlying data; an inspector who doesn't answer to the landlord closes that loophole.

Whether the law works depends on what determines whether any oversight regime works: whether a breach costs the party responsible for it. Balfour Beatty's $65 million penalty amounted to roughly one percent of the $6 billion in military housing assets the company reported managing at the time of its plea. A one-percent toll on a six-year fraud scheme is a minor cost of doing business, not a deterrent. If the penalty barely registers against the portfolio, the next audit will look exactly like the last one. Congress wrote the inspection program. It still has to write the consequence.

Jay Rogers is a financial professional with more than 30 years of experience in private equity, private credit, hedge funds, and wealth management. He has a BS from Northeastern University and has completed postgraduate studies at UCLA, UPENN, and Harvard. He writes about issues in finance, constitutional law, national security, human nature, and public policy.

Tyler Durden Mon, 08/03/2026 - 20:05

The Kospi Made South Korean President Lee Jae Myung; It May Yet Unmake Him...

There is a particular cruelty in the timing. When the Kospi began its final, cratering descent in late July, President Lee Jae Myung was roughly 11,000 miles away, midway through an 11-day diplomatic tour of South America, watching from hotel suites as the index he had made the totem of his presidency collapsed. His finance minister apologized to lawmakers. The heads of both financial regulators cancelled their holidays as retail investors laid funeral wreaths at the gates of the National Assembly in Yeouido.

Near the main gate of the National Assembly in Yeouido, Seoul, there are condolence flowers installed calling for the delisting of single-stock leveraged ETFs. (Photo: Yonhap News)

From its record close of 9,114.55 on June 22, the benchmark fell into the 5,600s by July 30 - a peak-to-trough drawdown of roughly 39 percent on a closing basis, erasing more than $2 trillion in market value in under six weeks. Trading was halted four times during the month, a record run of circuit-breaker suspensions for a tool that was barely used before this year.

Then, on Friday, after an emergency late-night meeting of the country's top financial authorities produced a package of curbs on leveraged products, the index ripped 17.91 percent higher to close at 6,595.45 - the largest single-day gain in its history. SK Hynix hit its 30 percent daily limit. Samsung gained 27 percent. On Monday it gave back 5.12 percent, closing at 6,257.45.

Some retail traders have vowed not to step back in.

Samsung fell 8.76 percent, SK Hynix 8.79 percent. Foreign and institutional investors sold a net 2.84 trillion won and 1.95 trillion won of shares respectively. Retail investors bought a net 4.65 trillion won - stepping in front of the same train, four days after the government had promised to protect them from it.

Also on Monday, Realmeter published a weekly tracker putting Lee's approval at 45.9 percent, the lowest of his presidency, with disapproval at 50.5 percent - crossing the majority threshold for the first time. The fieldwork matters here: 2,508 respondents surveyed from July 27 to 31, with a margin of error of two points. The poll closed on the day of the record rally and captured none of Monday's reversal. Realmeter attributed the third consecutive weekly decline to the market rout and to a parallel controversy over whether a constitutional amendment might let a sitting president seek reelection.

The same pollster had Lee at 59.7 percent in May, against 35.7 percent disapproving. A net positive margin of twenty-four points has become a net negative of nearly five - a swing of some twenty-eight points in under three months. Realmeter runs lower than its peers; Gallup had him at 51 percent in late June, the National Barometer Survey at 53 percent on July 30. But all three recorded lows for his presidency, and all three were falling.

The problem of ownership

Presidents survive bad markets all the time, but this debacle is Lee's to own - after running in 2025 on a campaign drive the Kospi past 5,000 - an unusual promise for a head of state, and one he blew past in January. He is a former day trader, a fact his opponents recite with relish. He urged Koreans to move their savings out of Seoul property and into equities. In June, with the index sagging below 8,000, he told reporters the retreat was temporary and Korean shares remained undervalued. His policy chief, Kim Yong-beom, predicted Korea would become a top-three equity market by capitalization within three years.

And then there are the ETFs.

The sixteen single-stock leveraged and inverse funds tracking Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix launched on May 27, roughly a week before the June local elections - instruments that use derivatives and debt to double a stock's daily move, sold to professionals almost everywhere else in the world. Retail investors poured about 78 trillion won ($54.2 billion) into Kospi shares across May and June. As we noted, three SK Hynix vehicles alone held over $23 billion at the peak - more than 2.5 times average daily turnover in the underlying shares. Assets across the complex went from under $10 billion at the start of 2026 to more than $50 billion in June, then down to roughly $16 billion by late July.

The combined weight of the two chipmakers in the Kospi rose from 51.06 percent on May 26, the day before listing, to 55.17 percent by July 10. Their share of total market trading value went from roughly 30 percent to 44 percent. A market that was already a two-stock bet became a two-stock bet with a gamma engine bolted on.

The opposition's charge is not that Lee failed to prevent a crash. It is that his office built the machine that produced one. "It was pushed through at an extraordinary pace," said Park Soo-young, a People Power Party member of the National Assembly's Strategy and Finance Committee, arguing that such speed was inconceivable without direction from the presidential office. The PPP is now demanding Kim Yong-beom's dismissal and a full parliamentary investigation. Finance Minister Koo Yun-cheol, pressed by lawmakers on whether he would resign, said it would be irresponsible to speculate while markets were still unstable.

That is the language of a government buying time with subordinates. It usually works. It works less well when the paper trail leads upward.

The arithmetic says he is safe

South Korean impeachment requires 200 votes in a 300-seat National Assembly, followed by Constitutional Court confirmation. Lee's Democratic Party holds 179 seats. Removing him would require his own party to supply twenty-one executioners - and the DP has no incentive to hand the presidency back to a PPP that lost the June local elections nationwide, capturing only Seoul's mayoralty as consolation. There is no national election until April 2028. Lee's term runs to 2030. He is fourteen months in.

The market case for calm is similarly strong. Even at Monday's close the Kospi sits at roughly double its 52-week low, and Bloomberg had it up more than 50 percent on the year as of Friday's close, the best performance among the world's biggest economies. The fundamentals underneath are not the problem: SK Hynix posted record second-quarter revenue of 79.3 trillion won, up 257 percent year on year, at a 76 percent operating margin. Samsung's preliminary operating profit for the period rose nineteenfold to about 89.4 trillion won. Korean semiconductor exports in June came in at $44.8 billion, up 199.5 percent. Morgan Stanley upgraded Korea to overweight on the back of the leverage unwind. Lale Akoner of eToro, who called the episode a textbook collision of a crowded trade and leverage, was careful to add that it should not be read as a collapse of the AI investment case.

Both chipmakers fell hard anyway, on the days they reported those numbers. That is the tell: this is a positioning event, not an earnings event. Positioning events resolve.

On the numbers, Lee is in no danger whatsoever.

THAT SAID...

South Korea has impeached two presidents in the last decade. Park Geun-hye in 2016. Yoon Suk Yeol in December 2024, which is the only reason Lee holds the office at all. Whatever the threshold once meant as a norm, it now means considerably less. What changed in both cases was not the seat count on day one - it was ruling-party lawmakers deciding the president had become a heavier liability than the opposition.

Three things could shift that calculation.

The first is the scale of household damage, which is no longer hypothetical. By July 13, more than 1.2 million leveraged retail accounts had triggered margin calls, with an estimated 320,000 to 360,000 fully liquidated by brokers - some left owing money. Korea Investment & Securities reported that nearly half of its 880,000 clients holding Samsung were underwater, and nearly 70 percent of its 408,000 SK Hynix investors. The KODEX SK Hynix leveraged product is down more than 80 percent from its June peak. This is not a story about speculators. In a country of 52 million, it is a story about a constituency.

The second is the Democratic Party's own convention - though here the case has to be made against the present data rather than with it. In a companion Realmeter survey, DP support rose 3.8 points last week to 45.1 percent, while the PPP fell 2.9 points to 37.7 percent. The party is gaining as its president falls, and that is precisely the configuration under which lawmakers stay loyal. What changes it is the calendar. Song Young-gil, competing for the leadership, has already said the presidential office's policy line needs thorough re-examination. Whoever wins runs the party into the 2028 general election - the contest that determines whether the DP ever reaches the two-thirds majority it has coveted. A party polling ahead of the opposition has no reason to move against its own president. A party leader who concludes that Lee's name on the ballot costs seats is the beginning of a lame-duck presidency, and Korean presidents are traditionally devoured by their own side, not by the opposition.

The third is the constitutional amendment, and this is where Lee has already, almost certainly, lost something irretrievable. Placing a two-term, four-year presidency at the top of a 123-item agenda was the signature legacy project. Article 128(2) bars the sitting president from benefiting, so this was never about his own reelection; it was about being the president who rewrote the 1987 constitution. Amendment requires 200 votes and a national referendum, meaning PPP cooperation. Speaker Cho Jeong-sik has floated 2027 as the window - and his suggestion that voters should decide whether an incumbent may seek another term is, on Realmeter's own reading, one of the two forces currently dragging Lee's numbers down. The legacy project has become a liability before it has become a bill. A president polling below 50 percent, with two trillion dollars of household wealth destroyed on his ledger and a parliamentary investigation pending, has no leverage to extract twenty-one opposition votes for anything.

What losing the job actually looks like South Korean President Lee Jae Myung attends an agreement-signing event at Villa Doria Pamphili in Rome, Italy, June 12, 2026. REUTERS/Remo Casilli/File Photo Tyler Durden Mon, 08/03/2026 - 19:40

"I No Longer Trust Anyone..."

Authored by Todd Hayen via Off-Guardian.org,

Sad, but true. Since the Covid fiasco, I’ve seen the true nature of people - or at least the nature they were willing to show once the fear got turned up and the herd started moving.

Most of them are still firmly under the sheep banner, content to graze wherever they’re told.

A small handful stand under the “critical thinker” banner. Those are the ones I still trust.

The sheepies? I don’t trust them anymore. Did I ever, really? I thought I did, back when I was younger and still believed most people were basically decent when the chips were down. Turns out that was optimistic.

Lately this loss of trust has had me thinking about the American Wild West. Not the Hollywood version—the real one.

Back then, almost every man who wanted to stay alive carried a revolver on his hip. It wasn’t for show. You never knew when some mean-eyed bastard might decide your horse, your money, or your life was worth more to him than it was to you.

The sensible ones stayed ready. They watched people. They didn’t assume good intentions just because someone smiled and said howdy. Trust was something you earned slowly, usually after a man had proven he wouldn’t sell you out the first time it became convenient.

So, did folks in that dusty, hard country go around trusting their neighbours? Hell no. You bet your boots they didn’t. And the ones who did—the tenderfoots who rode into town believing everybody was basically good underneath—usually got fleeced, shot, or both. The sheep of that era didn’t last long.

I keep coming back to that because it feels uncomfortably close to where we are now. The difference is the wolves don’t need to hide behind a bandana anymore. They wear white coats, or sit in glass offices, or smile at you from a television screen while they tell you what you need to do for your own good.

And the sheep-types? They didn’t just follow along during Covid. A lot of them became enthusiastic enforcers.

They reported neighbours for having too many people over for dinner. They cut off family members who wouldn’t take the shot. They posted smug little memes about how the unvaccinated were selfish and stupid while their own kids were losing years of school and their elderly parents were dying alone in nursing homes. They did it with a clear conscience, because the authorities had given them permission to be cruel.

That’s the part that still sticks in my throat. Not the government lying—governments always lie when it suits them. Not even Big Pharma doing what Big Pharma does—make scads of money and not giving a crap who suffers for it. It was the ordinary people, the ones I used to think were mostly harmless, who turned out to be so willing to turn on anyone who stepped out of line.

The masked Karens. The vaccine passport enthusiasts. The ones who genuinely seemed to enjoy punishing others for non-compliance. I saw longtime friends and even family members do things I would have sworn they were incapable of. And they did it without a second thought. That’s what really got to me—not the betrayal itself, but how easily it came to them. How little it seemed to cost them.

The rest of us were the ones who kept their powder dry. We asked questions when the story kept changing. We noticed the bodies didn’t match the narrative. We refused to pretend that “following the science” meant following whatever the people who owned the science told us to do.

For that, we got called dangerous, selfish, and—my personal favourite—grandma killers. The irony was almost funny if you had a dark enough sense of humour. The real danger was coming from the people screaming the loudest about keeping everyone safe.

I don’t know if this loss of trust is permanent. Maybe it softens over time. But right now, it feels pretty solid. I still have my circle. Those are the people I can still talk to without wondering whether the conversation is going to end up on some government list or get repeated at the next family gathering as evidence of how crazy I’ve become. With them I can lower my guard a little. We’ve got each other’s backs. That counts for something in a world where most people will throw you under the bus the moment the authorities give them a good enough reason.

Everyone else?

I’ll be polite. I’ll make small talk. I’ll even hold the damn door. But I’m not handing over trust again just because someone seems nice or shares my politics or went to the same school. That ship sailed somewhere around 2021, and I don’t see it coming back into port anytime soon. Once you’ve watched people you cared about turn into informants and punishers, it changes how you move through the world. You don’t go back to the old way of seeing things. You can’t.

Maybe that’s the real lesson buried in all this mess. The Wild West never actually ended. The outlaws just got better costumes and much better PR. And the sheep-types learned to police each other instead of waiting for the sheriff. The thinkers are still here, though—eyes open, hands near the metaphorical holster, not particularly interested in pretending everything is fine just to make other people comfortable.

All this has seemed to calm down a bit. But don’t kid yourself. It is still there. That’s the hard part now; you can’t tell who from who. But you know it is there. There are still occasional masks, a tell-tale sign the murmuring sheep-mind is still bubbling underneath. We don’t have to be mean to strangers; we can still love our fellow human beings no matter how lost they may be, but we must be wary, and not automatically expect a helping hand if needed.

So yeah. I no longer trust anyone the way I used to. And I’m not sure that’s entirely a bad thing. It’s clarifying, at least.

You find out who’s really with you when the pressure is on. And you find out who was only ever along for the ride until it got inconvenient. The ones who stayed? Those are my people now. The rest can go graze somewhere else.

Tyler Durden Mon, 08/03/2026 - 19:15

Children's Hospitals To Begin Offering Restorative Care For Detransitioners

Authored by Darlene McCormick Sanchez via The Epoch Times,

When Texas Children's Hospital's "detransition clinic" opens in Houston, it will become the first facility of its kind, giving patients who regret life-altering procedures a chance at restorative care.

Illustration by The Epoch Times, Zereshk/CC BY-SA 3.0

The facility, which has yet to announce an opening date, is part of an agreement with state and federal authorities to halt "gender-affirming care" at children's hospitals while offering help to those who transitioned medically.

A 10-page settlement term sheet, recently obtained by The Epoch Times through an open records request to the Texas attorney general's office, showed that services at the clinic will focus on multidisciplinary care.

Services are to include endocrinology, surgery, fertility counseling, psychiatry, psychotherapy, and speech pathology, among others.

In May and June, the Department of Justice (DOJ), along with the attorneys general of Texas and Ohio, secured settlements with large hospitals over allegations of fraudulent insurance billing practices related to "gender-affirming care" for children.

The hospitals denied wrongdoing in their billing practices or standards of care.

These agreements require the hospitals not only to cease transitioning procedures, but also to offer discounted or free restorative medical care to detransitioners.

Attorneys representing detransitioners and their clients praised the efforts of the DOJ and the states to assist those suffering from the consequences of life-altering medical changes.

Detransitioners are those who stopped or reversed a medical gender transition they started earlier in life.

'They Deserve Specialized Care'

Mark Trammell, CEO of the Center for American Liberty, which represents several detransitioners, including Chloe Cole, told The Epoch Times that restorative care for detransitioners was an important step.

"The creation of these clinics is a recognition that detransitioners are real, their experiences matter, and they deserve specialized care," Trammell said in a text message.

Cole, who drew national attention after speaking out against subjecting children to gender-reassignment procedures such as hormones and surgeries, told The Epoch Times that healthcare for detransitioners was a long-needed win.

"The opening of Texas's detransition clinic and the funding being put into care for those of us who need it most will transform a sorely neglected area of healthcare," Cole said.

Cole, who was 15 when she received hormones and a double mastectomy that changed her life forever, said via text that it took five years to find medical professionals to help her.

When she decided to seek help, medical providers referred her back to the gender clinic that refused to address her needs, she said.

In Texas, attorney Josh Payne, founding partner of Campbell Miller Payne, which represents detransitioners, including Soren Aldaco, agreed that establishing a restorative care clinic was needed.

"Many detransitioners need specialized care for the rest of their lives to cope with the damage of lost body parts and the ability to function normally," Payne told The Epoch Times in an email.

"Some detransitioners may not want to return to health centers that harmed them in the first place. Hospitals like Texas Children's should establish a fund for victims to defray the costs of lifelong care and compensate them directly for their injuries."

Aldaco, a detransitioner whose fight to continue her medical malpractice lawsuit put her in the spotlight, won her appeal before the Texas Supreme Court on June 26.

By a unanimous decision, the Texas court reversed the dismissal of her lawsuit, ruling that the statute of limitations had not expired, meaning her medical malpractice case against her former therapist could proceed.

The statute of limitations for medical malpractice suits is two years in many cases, which is a major hurdle for many detransitioners.

Aldaco was 19 when she had her breasts removed.

"If you're a 13-year-old on puberty blockers, you might not realize you're infertile until you're 26 and you just got married, and you're trying to have kids," she told The Epoch Times in a February interview.

Aldaco's story is like those of many others who spent years "transitioning" as teenagers, only to change their minds later in life.

First-of-its-Kind Clinic

Under an agreement reached on May 15, Texas Children's Hospital, the largest pediatric hospital in the country, is set to create the nation's first detransition clinic.

In an email to The Epoch Times, the hospital declined to confirm an opening date or comment about the facility's future operation.

The Houston-based hospital will establish the detransition clinic to provide medical care to patients who received gender transitioning procedures through age 21, and obstetric-gynecology care for those over age 21, according to documents.

Additionally, the hospital will provide clinic services at no cost to patients for a period of five years.

Texas Children's will create and maintain an easily accessible landing page on its website describing the available services. The facility will be listed on the hospital's donation website, and the funds will support free detransitioning services beyond the initial five years of operation.

Also, the hospital will amend its bylaws to ensure swift dismissal for any physician who violates the state's prohibition on medical interventions aimed at transitioning minors.

The hospital will pay more than $10 million in damages and civil penalties to Texas and the federal government to resolve a three-year federal and state investigation into the hospital's alleged improper billing practices to the state's Medicaid program to transition children, according to a press release by the Texas attorney general from May.

Texas Children's agreed to permanently fire and revoke privileges for five "woke" doctors who performed harmful medical procedures on Texans, according to the release.

The hospital said in a May press release that it had agreed to a settlement "to protect [its] resources from endless and costly litigation."

"This settlement will allow us to redirect those precious resources to focus on the life-saving care and groundbreaking discoveries of our exceptional clinicians and scientists," the release said.

According to the Texas attorney general, Texas Children's billed Texas Medicaid for "unallowable and illegal 'gender-transition' interventions, including by using false diagnosis codes."

Nonetheless, the DOJ commended the hospital for its cooperation during the investigation and its commitment to providing care for detransitioners.

Prestigious Clinic Agreement

On June 5, the DOJ announced that the Cleveland Clinic, a renowned medical institution in Ohio, had reached a similar settlement with the federal government and the state.

The agreement requires the clinic to provide restorative care to detransitioners and prohibits the use of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and transgender surgeries for minors for the next 20 years.

Like in Texas, the clinic was under investigation for allegedly falsifying billing to cover transgender procedures for minors. The Cleveland Clinic denied any wrongdoing, according to the government agreement.

As part of the settlement, the clinic will pay $308,000 in penalties and provide $2 million in restorative care for detransitioners who face financial barriers to such services.

The Department of Justice in Washington on Feb. 21, 2026. ​In May and June, the Justice Department, along with the attorneys general of Texas and Ohio, secured settlements with large hospitals over allegations of fraudulent insurance billing practices related to “gender-affirming care” for children. Madalina Kilroy/The Epoch Times Tyler Durden Mon, 08/03/2026 - 18:25

China's AI Knife Fight: DeepSeek's New Model Runs 100x Cheaper Than Anthropic's Flagship

The price of artificial intelligence just printed a new low. DeepSeek's V4-Flash, officially released Friday, costs roughly three cents to run through a standard battery of benchmark tests, according to San Francisco research firm Artificial Analysis. Moonshot AI's Kimi K3 costs 86 cents; OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol, $1.86; and Anthropic's Claude Fable 5, the industry's top-scoring model, $3.15. In realized terms, the Chinese model is more than 100 times cheaper to run than the American flagship, according to Reuters.

Sarah Rogers / MITTR | Photo Getty

V4-Flash is the cheapest well-known model in the world, and by a wide margin. The figure is even more striking because of a detail buried in the firm's write-up: V4-Flash is unusually verbose. It consumes tokens heavily and still lands at three cents. The per-token price is doing all the work.

The same firm supplies the caveat. V4-Flash scores 50 out of 100 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, a composite of nine benchmarks spanning coding, reasoning, and workplace tasks. That ties Google's Gemini 3.6 Flash and puts it one point behind Meta's Muse Spark 1.1 and Zhipu's GLM-5.2. Moonshot's Kimi K3 scores 57, while Anthropic's Claude Opus 5 and Fable 5, along with OpenAI's GPT-5.6, score at least nine points higher.

That said - V4-Flash kicks massive ass at routine tasks, but the frontier models still own the heavy lifting. In difficult, multi-step agentic work, small reliability gaps at each step compound into enormous end-to-end differences. Essentially that's the current state of play for frontier pricing. But for the routine volume that makes up most production traffic - summarization, boilerplate code, and back-office automation - V4-Flash is where it's at.

Chinese Knife Fight

V4-Flash's 3-cent print is the fourth shot in an 18-day barrage: China's AI labs are cutting each other for domestic share, and the fallout is repricing the model market everywhere else. On July 16, Moonshot shipped Kimi K3, a 2.8-trillion-parameter model that promptly took the number-one slot on Arena's Frontend Code leaderboard from Fable 5 and GPT-5.6 Sol. On July 19, Alibaba rushed a preview of Qwen3.8-Max onto the stage at the World AI Conference in Shanghai. There was no pricing, no model card, and its claim of ranking "second only to Fable 5" rested on Alibaba's internal evaluations.

On July 27, Moonshot answered by open-sourcing K3's full weights, the largest open-weight release in history. DeepSeek shipped V4-Flash on July 31. Then on August 3 - Monday, the same morning the Reuters story ran - Alibaba took Qwen3.8-Max to general availability: 2.4 trillion total parameters, 95 billion active parameters, a one-million-token context window, and flat pricing of $2 per million input tokens and $6 per million output tokens, with no long-context surcharge.

Qwen's release promptly landed at No. 4 on the Frontend Code Arena with 1,668 points - one point behind Claude Opus 5 at high effort, eight behind Kimi K3, and ahead of both Fable 5 at 1,630 and GPT-5.6 Sol at 1,620. Of the five models Arena identifies on the cost-performance Pareto frontier, four are Chinese: Kimi K3, Qwen3.8-Max, GLM-5.2, and V4-Flash. The lone American entry, Opus 5, occupies the expensive tip, defended by 37 Elo points.

Qwen3.8-Max by @Alibaba_Qwen has reshaped the cost-performance Pareto frontier in Frontend Code Arena, with pricing of $2 per input MToken and $6 per output MToken.

Top models on the Pareto frontier:
- Claude-Opus-5
- Kimi-K3
- Qwen3.8-Max
- GLM-5.2
- DeepSeek-V4-Flash

Congrats… https://t.co/3S4tW1KmlI pic.twitter.com/CiWU7Hh4BD

— Arena.ai (@arena) August 3, 2026

Alibaba's own benchmark table is more candid. Qwen3.8-Max edges Fable 5 and Opus 4.8 on Terminal-Bench, 86.6 to 84.6, while trailing badly on hard repository engineering: it scores 67.7 on SWE-bench Pro against Fable 5's 80.0. The preference-judged coding moat is gone. The deep-engineering moat remains intact - for now.

All of this raises a more basic question: who is paying for three-cent inference?

Until this spring, DeepSeek had never taken outside money. Founder Liang Wenfeng bankrolled the company through his quant fund, High-Flyer. In late May, DeepSeek closed its first external round - more than 50 billion yuan, or roughly $7.4 billion, at a valuation above $50 billion - as first reported by The Information.

The round's structure is unusual. Commercial investors, reportedly led by Tencent and CATL, bought into a limited partnership controlled by Liang, with no voting rights and a five-year lockup. Exactly one party received direct equity and a vote: China's state-backed National AI Industry Investment Fund. Within weeks, DeepSeek was in talks for a follow-on round at roughly $71 billion, with proceeds earmarked for data centers and chips.

Add the 75% API discount the company made permanent earlier this year, and the arrangement begins to resemble industrial policy conducted through an API: state-privileged capital underwriting below-cost tokens to capture global share. It is working: in June, DeepSeek accounted for nearly 23% of the tens of trillions of tokens flowing through Vercel's enterprise AI gateway, compared with Anthropic's 32%.

Meanwhile...

As we (and now Wall Street) have been noting, the Token Expenditure Index - a usage-weighted average of what the market pays per million tokens, blended across frontier APIs and open-weight platforms - peaked above 2.0 in May after nearly doubling from its December launch, and is now slip sliding lower. 

Strategist Andreas Steno Larsen called it the one everyone should be watching, warning that sustained weakness in token pricing would end the memory, hardware, and data-center trades for this cycle. The index last printed 1.3394, roughly a third below its May high. Bloomberg flagged the rollover in early July as evidence that AI vendors were losing pricing power with increasingly cost-sensitive customers; Silicon Data's own commentary interpreted it as usage drifting back toward open-weight models.

Also relevant - the pushback to data centers amid a capex boom running north of $700 billion. As we reported last month, from the nationwide July 18 protests organized by Tea Party veteran Amy Kremer's Humans First to the widening fracture inside the Republican coalition over land, water, and power - domestic politics has entered the chat, something Beijing doesn't have to deal with - so now they've got a three-cent benchmark financed on terms no Western lab can match. Through open-weight releases, it is also portable onto American silicon, where US inference providers will happily serve Chinese models at commodity margins. Export controls cannot contain a set of weights on the torrent.

The model to watch is V4-Pro, the heavier system DeepSeek has confirmed without naming a release date. Flash at three cents pressures the budget tiers at OpenAI and Google. If Pro lands anywhere near frontier scores at DeepSeek prices, the last 37 Elo points - and the frontier premium that OpenAI and Anthropic both charge to underwrite the buildout - will be directly in play.

Tyler Durden Mon, 08/03/2026 - 18:20

'They Are United': California Democrats Move Forward With 5% Billionaire Tax

In a development that will stun absolutely no one, the California Democratic Party's roughly 380-member executive board gathered at a waterside Sheraton in San Diego this weekend and voted to endorse Proposition 40 - a "one-time" 5% levy on the net worth of the state's roughly 200 billionaires - clearing the 60% supermajority required for the party's official blessing, three months before voters render judgment on November 3.

A large banner is seen at a campaign event for a proposed "billionaire tax" in Los Angeles on Feb. 18, 2026. | Jae C. Hong/AP

If it passes - California residents on January 1, 2026 whose net worth is $1 billion or more on December 31, 2026, will owe Sacramento a nickel on every dollar. Directly held real estate is largely excluded - which means the drafters carved out the one asset class that cannot board a Gulfstream. The measure originated with a major healthcare union, the Service Employees International Union United Healthcare Workers West (SEIU-UHW), which claims it would raise $100 billion to offset what it calls deep healthcare funding cuts under the Trump administration. Progressive lawmakers, including Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Ro Khanna, have cheered it on. SEIU says it will raise about $100 billion, mostly to backfill federal healthcare cuts, with some crumbs earmarked for education and food assistance.

The arithmetic: $100 billion at a 5% rate assumes roughly $2 trillion in billionaire net worth sitting obediently in Atherton and Bel Air through year-end, marked to market and liquid enough to cut nine- and ten-figure checks to the Franchise Tax Board.

“I strongly support the grassroots effort in California to impose a 5% wealth tax on 200 billionaires worth $2 trillion,” Sanders said of the tax. “This is a model that should be emulated around the country, which is why I will soon be introducing a national wealth tax on billionaires.”

Yes: We need a wealth tax on billionaires. pic.twitter.com/2OUwSos5De

— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) December 30, 2025

The weekend itself was democracy at its most catered. The union threw a hospitality suite and handed out hats and T-shirts celebrating the confiscation of other people's balance sheets, while the "No on Prop 40" campaign - whose ranks include the California Medical Association (yes, the doctors oppose the measure written to fund them, calling a one-shot levy a flawed answer to a recurring hole), though its real bankroll is one Google co-founder, of whom more below - reportedly picked up around $7,000 in hotel rooms and travel for select board members via a hired consulting shop. Both sides whipped votes like the leveraged proxy fight it effectively was.

Afterward, the union's president declared that the endorsement settles the question of Democratic unity on the measure. Sure - minus the sitting Democratic governor, the party's own candidate to replace him, the California Teachers Association, and the state's firefighters. When even the teachers' union calls a tax too much, that tells you something.

Gavin Newsom - a man who never met a revenue stream he didn't like until it threatened his 2028 ambitions - has suddenly discovered the Laffer curve, warning that the state's largest taxpayers might simply leave.

After the measure qualified in June, he and his allies leaned on the union to pull it. The union's counteroffers tell you everything about the shelf life of "one-time": days before the June 25 withdrawal deadline, it publicly offered to swap the 5% levy for a 2% version Newsom would push through the Legislature - he passed - and, per the LA Times, union chief Dave Regan separately offered in private negotiations to pull the measure outright in exchange for help securing union contracts at several medical facilities - a demand he denies making. The temporary tax was, from birth, a down payment. Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders and Ro Khanna cheer from the sidelines - neither of whom, we note, will be writing a check. Newsom, for his part, now stumps for a federal wealth tax - one billionaires can't dodge by moving - which concedes the entire case against this one.

In May, one of the co-authors of California’s controversial tax appeared to suggest that the levy could extend beyond a single imposition. Marxist economics professor Emmanuel Saez, who hails from France, made the comment during a heated debate against economist Arthur Laffer at the University of California, Berkeley

“I don’t think it’s going to be a one-time tax. Because you can’t surprise billionaires more than once,” Saez said. "Even then, maybe some of them were expecting something like this. So, it’s going to be a debate about this time, you know, a permanent wealth tax at a low rate that’s going to last for a number of years.”

How These Taxes Usually End

Do these people ever learn? Recall New Jersey circa 2016, when a single hedge fund manager's change of address to Florida had Trenton's budget officials publicly sweating over the state's revenue forecast - one guy, one moving truck, one fiscal panic. Recall Illinois' richest resident, Ken Griffin, packing his entire firm off from Chicago to Miami in 2022, taking what was reportedly the state's largest individual tax bill with him. Recall the Pacific Northwest's most famous ex-resident developing a sudden fondness for South Florida in 2023, mere months after Washington's shiny new capital gains tax survived its court challenge - and then unloading billions in stock from the comfort of a state that taxes none of it. Recall the world's richest man decamping California for Texas in 2020, with his companies trailing behind like ducklings.

And it's not just an American genre. Norway hiked its wealth tax in 2022 and promptly watched a procession of its wealthiest citizens establish residency in Switzerland. France ran the grand experiment for decades, bleeding tens of thousands of millionaires across its borders, until Macron finally euthanized the ISF - preserving, in the ultimate irony, a wealth tax on real estate alone, the one thing that couldn't flee. Prop 40's drafters studied that lesson and inverted it: exempt the immovable, tax the mobile.

California, of course, has been talking itself into this outcome for years - the 2023 wealth-tax bill with its infamous reach-back provisions for former residents died in committee, but the memo was received loud and clear in Austin, Miami, and Incline Village. The state lost a congressional seat after the 2020 census for the first time in its history, net domestic outmigration has been running for years, and the top 1% already supply north of 40% of state income tax collections. The geese aren't just laying the golden eggs; they're carrying the farm.

About that Incline Village entry: Sergey Brin decamped to the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe last year - safely ahead of the January 1 snapshot - and has since pumped roughly $82 million into the No side's war chest, a committee called Building a Better California that has raised north of $118 million from fewer than a dozen donors, with Peter Thiel dropping a separate $3 million on the California Business Roundtable, the lobby anchoring the institutional opposition. Nor did Brin leave alone: at least six billionaires got out before the residency date locked, clipping an estimated $27 billion off the projected haul before a single ballot was printed. Every anecdote in the genre now has a live, hometown edition - the man whose fortune was minted in Mountain View is bankrolling the fight against a California tax he has already arranged not to owe.

The trap already snapped shut: because residency was fixed on January 1, 2026, leaving now won't dodge this levy if it passes - that trap closed eight months ago. What leaving now does is guarantee you're not around for the sequel. So expect a December blizzard of trust restructurings, charitable pledges, and valuation disputes over illiquid private stakes, followed by a constitutional bar brawl that keeps white-shoe litigators billing well into the 2030s. Collecting 5% of a private company position from a founder newly domiciled in Texas will be a spectacle.

Polling shows a strong majority of California Democrats on board and a narrower majority of the overall electorate - which is to say, this thing can absolutely pass. The No campaign calls the measure "bad for our budget, bad for our economy and bad for our future." 

Tyler Durden Mon, 08/03/2026 - 18:00

Louisiana AG Announces Investigation Into Fauci

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

Officials in three states are investigating or plan to investigate Dr. Anthony Fauci following the release of his diary and his refusal to answer questions during a Senate hearing.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, testifies before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs in Washington on July 29, 2026. Madalina Kilroy/The Epoch Times

"Fauci lied," Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill wrote on X on Aug. 1. "Louisiana and Missouri deposed Dr. Fauci. At the time, he claimed to not recall many key details of his own actions and now we are discovering contemporaneous records he kept."

Murrill said the investigation would look at whether Fauci committed any crimes for which state prosecutors could charge him.

Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), who is running to be Alabama's next governor, said during a recent appearance on Newsmax that his state would be probing Fauci.

"Hopefully in the next six months, I'll be the governor of the state of Alabama," Tuberville said. "And I promise you one thing, we will find out if there's a possibility that we can bring him to Alabama, to put him in front of a court and a jury, to see if we can put this guy in prison."

Florida's attorney general said on July 29, also after Fauci's appearance before the Senate, that his office was opening an investigation into Fauci.

"It's past time we get the truth of what happened during COVID," Attorney General James Uthmeier said in a post on X.

He wrote in another post, "If he lied, and it resulted in physical and economic harm to countless Americans, billions of taxpayer dollars in 'medical expenses,' and learning-loss for our next generation, there should be accountability."

Fauci and his lawyer did not respond to requests for comment by the time of publication.

Fauci, 85, was director of the National Institutes of Health's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases from 1984 to 2022. He was also the chief medical adviser to the president during the Biden administration.

Fauci received a preemptive pardon from President Joe Biden in early 2025. That covers any federal crimes Fauci may have committed from Jan. 1, 2014, through Jan. 19, 2025.

Attorneys general from 17 states, including Alabama, Florida, and Louisiana, later in 2025 said they were conducting a joint investigation into Fauci for allegedly making misleading statements and suppressing scientific debate.

"The American people also have a right to transparency and accountability from the public officials whose decisions affected millions of lives. We will continue pursuing the truth because the American people deserve nothing less," South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson, leader of the coalition, said in a July 29 post on X.

Ohio legal analyst Mike Allen, a current defense lawyer and former prosecutor, told The Epoch Times in an email that the statute of limitations for many offenses prosecutors may target Fauci over has likely expired.

Tyler Durden Mon, 08/03/2026 - 17:40

ID To Buy Gov't Bread & Milk, But Not To Vote: This Is Mamdani's Socialist NYC Utopia

So far, in Zohran Mamdani's socialist utopia in New York City, it can take multiple forms of identification to shovel snow and, if his proposal is implemented, potentially to shop at government-run grocery stores.

Yet New Yorkers still do not have to present voter identification during elections, and the hypocrisy is just off the charts, as this only highlights an inconsistency in the state's approach to identification requirements:

• ID Required: Shovel snow
• ID Required: Buy milk and bread at a gov't-run grocery store
• No ID Required: Voting in elections 

"We are looking to make sure that we target New Yorkers … sort of a library card-esque thing," one of Mamdani's socialist officials said.

Mamdani wants to protect tax payer funded grocery store from non-NYC residents… they’ll need an ID card to enter.

You can make this up. pic.twitter.com/lXs2SKdjBt

— Nick Plumb (@PlumbNick) August 2, 2026

Elon Musk, who has repeatedly backed the SAVE Act, a federal election proposal that would require documentary proof of U.S. citizenship to register for federal elections, weighed in on NYC's proposed identification requirements for government-run grocery stores with a pointed response: "Oh, the irony is too much …"

Oh, the irony is too much … pic.twitter.com/k0NgRxMoLT

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 3, 2026

"THIS IS JIM CROW 2.0! How dare Mamdani expect black people to have IDs? Am I doing this right or are IDs only racist when you have to show them to be able to vote in elections?" conservative activist Robby Starbuck wrote on X.

The problem with Democrats, socialists, and the far left, who are weaponizing their imported illegal alien army to vote in elections in places where no ID is required, is that the narrative that requiring ID is "racist" no longer works. There is a growing push for election security as socialists seek to exploit the system to seize as much power as possible at the local level and, in their own words, begin the collapse of the nation. Socialists are not after affordability. DSA flat-out says what they want: "The most important thing we can do is take that (American) empire down from within."

Tyler Durden Mon, 08/03/2026 - 17:20

Study Finds Daily Marijuana Use Surpasses Daily Alcohol Consumption Among US Adults

Authored by Bryan Hyde via American Greatness,

Daily or near-daily marijuana use has surpassed daily alcohol consumption in the United States, reaching 20.9 million to 21.4 million daily users compared to roughly 17.2 million daily or frequent alcohol drinkers.

Fox News reports that new data from the 2025 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), reveals that daily marijuana users outnumber the the 19.9 million people who smoke cigarettes and the 17.2 million who consume alcohol.

While tobacco and alcohol use has been plummeting, down 28 percent and 24 percent since 2021, daily pot use — including smoking and edibles — surged 21 percent.

Marijuana has officially surpassed both alcohol and cigarettes as the most-used daily substance among U.S. adults.

21.4 million use marijuana daily or almost daily, compared to 19.9 million daily cigarette users and 17.2 million daily alcohol users.https://t.co/yE6yjKgqgC pic.twitter.com/4d01T0rFQK

— Theo Holmes (@theo_69_holmes) August 3, 2026

According to SAMSHA, the biggest jump occurred between 2021 and 2022 with an increase of roughly 2.8 million users.

Between 2021 and 2025, the number of adults 18 and older using marijuana daily or almost daily increased about 22%, from 17.2 million to 20.9 million.

A Modern Health survey of 1,000 full-time employees in April 2026 found that 63% of the workforce engages in at least one form of self-medication after the workday, while 52 percent have self-medicated during the workday.

According to Fox News, Gen Z is the only generation of workers where THC use exceeded alcohol use after work – 59 percent report using marijuana products compared to 50 percent who drink alcohol.

Among 18-to 25-year-olds, roughly 10-12 percent reported daily or near-daily marijuana use, while only 3-5 percent drank and 9.6 percent smoked cigarettes daily or near-daily.

The study found daily cannabis use has accelerated rapidly among adults aged 26 and over with millions of Americans in their 30s, 40s, and 50s  now using cannabis daily or near-daily.

General past-month cannabis use rose to 15.1 percent, driven by state-level legalization, while frequent drinking and cigarette smoking continue to decline, according to Yahoo.

Fox News senior medical analyst Dr. Marc Siegel said the SAMHSA data shows a “very disturbing trend” and told Fox News Digital: “Too little attention has been paid to the growing THC content in all cannabis products, which makes it far more dangerous in terms of mental performance, judgement, memory and all forms of impairment.”

Seigel added, “So I firmly believe that the rising use – coupled with decreasing alcohol and cigarettes – is directly due to lack of awareness of all the dangers of marijuana versus an increased awareness of all the dangers of cigarettes and alcohol.”

Tyler Durden Mon, 08/03/2026 - 17:00