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CNN Sees Metric That Looks 'Darn Good' For Republicans Before The Midterms

CNN chief data analyst Harry Enten reported Wednesday that voter registration data in four swing states favors Republicans heading into the November midterms. This measure runs counter to polling showing Democrats ahead.

Enten told anchor John Berman that Republicans have improved their party registration margin relative to Democrats by 4 to 8 points in Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania since the midpoint of President Donald Trump's first term. The comparison covers the eight years between the 2018 midterms and the current cycle and draws on state registration records, which count voters who have signed up with each party. Polls, by contrast, estimate how a sample of respondents say they plan to vote, and pollsters weight those results using their own assumptions about who will turn out.

"When you take a look at how people are actually registering — this is not polling data — compared to where we were eight years ago, Republicans are doing considerably better [than the Dems] in what are the swing states," Enten said on CNN.

Berman then asked whether the picture changes over a shorter window. He noted that the baseline for the comparison was 2018 and that polling over the past two years has moved toward Democrats.

Enten said the registration numbers do not show a matching shift in either Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Nevada, or Arizona. "There may be some tiny late gains that are going on right now, right, that I think over the last month maybe Democrats are gaining. But when you take the longer term view versus the 2024 election in which Republicans won all of these states, Democrats are, in fact, not actually gaining ground."

Berman said viewers have seen some upward movement for Democrats in the past couple of months. Enten agreed that the recent movement exists, but the problem for the Democratic Party is that it does not approach the size of the Republican gains.

"There's been some ticks up, but they, in no way, blows away the Republican gains," he said.

Asked to place the numbers in historical context, Enten said the four states share a common result. According to his analysis, the GOP holds its best party registration position relative to Democrats in a midterm year in at least 20 years in each of those swing states.

"The bottom line is this, Republicans, right now, are in a much stronger position than they have been, not just compared to eight years ago, but over the long term as well, the relative health of the Republican Party, at least in terms of party registration, is pretty gosh darn good relative to the Democrats," Enten said.

Florida makes a great case study for this trend. Up until the Trump era, Florida was considered a key swing state, but thanks to Republican registration gains in recent years, it is roughly as Republican as Texas. Trump won both states by double digits in 2024.

"I remember when Florida was a swing state," Enten said. "The bottom line is that Florida has had major gains for Republicans in party registration, and it's reflected in the races in which people are running."

Should note the GOP is in its best position on party registration (i.e. not polls) going into a midterm in 20+ years. In total, the Dems have not gained ground since 2024 in key swing states (AZ, NV, NC, or PA). The GOP has gained big ground since Trump's 1st midterm in all 4. https://t.co/KXK7zc5dFY

— (((Harry Enten))) (@ForecasterEnten) October 7, 2026

All four states in Enten's comparison went to Trump in 2024, and each has competitive races on the ballot this year. Enten did not say how much of the Republican registration advantage he expects to carry over into turnout. Still, if even a fraction of those new Republican voters show up on Election Day, pollsters may find themselves explaining another miss.

Tyler Durden Fri, 10/09/2026 - 17:20

Guilfoyle Donor Scandal Explodes As Vance Balks, Rubio Dodges And The Donor Calls It Quid Pro Quo

The left finally has something new to sink its teeth into, as the Kimberly Guilfoyle donor scandal widens - with JD Vance keeping his distance, a donor on a media tour, and a records demand sitting on the ambassador's desk. 

The allegation, reported by the WSJ late Wednesday - is that six days before her July 9, 2025, Senate confirmation hearing, Guilfoyle texted Trump donor Eric Deters on Signal and asked him to wire $100,000 to her American Express account in a way that would not leave a paper trail, while he was seeking her help getting the new administration's attention on personal tax and legal problems. She promised, he says, to be his "Trump ride or die, forever and ever." He did not pay. Her lawyer, Jesse Binnall, disputes that the messages are authentic and says any earlier money was for speaking fees. Deters says he owed her nothing.

Since Wednesday, the people who could shut it down have not. Vice President JD Vance, asked about selling access to a high-level official, said "obviously, I don't love that," then said he did not know the details.

Asked for reaction to a government official asking someone to pay off debt in exchange for access to other officials, after reports of allegations involving U.S. ambassador to Greece Kimberly Guilfoyle, Vice President JD Vance said, “Obviously I don't love that,” but declined to weigh in on the specific allegations. “Of course I don't like anybody selling access to another government official, certainly a high-level government official,” Vance told CBS News' @JenniferJJacobs, adding that he would like to “get the full story before offering a real opinion.”

— CBS News (@CBSNews) October 8, 2026

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, with Guilfoyle standing at the foot of his plane in Athens, refused to discuss it: "Guys, I'm not playing this game with you." Deters went on MS NOW, CNN, TMZ and NewsNation and called the ask "absolutely a quid pro quo." House Oversight ranking member Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) asked her for financial records and two years of communications, deadline Oct. 22. President Donald Trump has not commented. Guilfoyle's only public post was about a speech.

What the texts say

According to messages the Journal said it reviewed, Guilfoyle wrote Deters, a former Kentucky congressional candidate, on July 3, 2025: "It won't show up anywhere if you wire money to American Express." She attached a PDF of American Express payment instructions. In a follow-up: "Honey please I need you to get this done for me today," with a prayer-hands emoji. She told him she needed the balance paid down before the hearing. Background checks routinely look at a nominee's debts.

Via WSJ

Deters declined. He told her, the Journal reported, that paying would cost him his marriage. The Independent, citing the Journal, reported that she had dangled a meeting with then-IRS Commissioner Billy Long, whom Trump fired that August. She also told Deters to stop creating a record: "Eric, I really wish you would stop papering all these things. It's really dangerous and not helpful to you or me while you could simply just call me on signal."

The relationship was older than the ambassadorship. Deters says he paid her three $100,000 appearance fees, about $300,000 in all, for events he organized in Kentucky starting in 2020, and later discussed as much as $1 million more if she could move his cause inside the administration. In a June 2025 message he complained he had "not received one favor." What he wanted, he has said since, was help extraditing an Ohio doctor, Atiq Durrani, from Pakistan, in a case involving hundreds of former patients. NewsNation published that account Friday morning.

Binnall's account is the mirror image. He told The Washington Times the Signal messages are not authentic, that payments from Deters were for speaking at events before the nomination, and that she "was owed a balance for traveling to and supporting these patriotic events." Deters says there was no balance.

Since Wednesday

Speaking with MS Now, Deters says it was "absolutely was a quid pro quo" and called Guilfoyle "a grifter," adding, "I have no doubt [she] has done this to more than me. She's doing it right now in Greece." He's since appeared on about half-a-dozen other networks which are clearly part of this push for a scalp. 

Vance's answer was interesting... Presented with a hypothetical that tracked the report, he said he does not like anybody selling access to a government official, "certainly a high-level government official," then retreated: he did not know whom the questioner meant, and "the details and the context inform the reality of the situation," The Independent reported.

Rubio went the other way, then stopped. Before the trip, in a statement posted by the embassy in Athens, he called her "an incredibly effective advocate for the President's agenda in Greece and across Europe." On Thursday, leaving Athens, with Guilfoyle there to see him off, he would not say whether the Journal account was true. "You guys walk around thinking that because some source told you something and you reported it, it's the gospel. It's not the gospel for me." He also said it was not the department's job to answer a story a few hours old "when I'm sitting in another country," The Hill reported. He would not say whether he would open an investigation.

Asked about WSJ reporting on Kimberly Guilfoyle—which includes her texts—Rubio turns his fire on the press: “I’m not playing this game with you.” “I don’t even know if it’s true or not true.” “You guys somehow walk around thinking that because some source told you something and you reported it, it’s the gospel. It’s not the gospel. It’s not the gospel for me.”

— Vera Bergengruen (@VeraMBergen) October 8, 2026

Garcia's letter, obtained by PBS, asks for personal financial records and communications with Deters and with Trump officials including FBI Director Kash Patel and former Attorney General Pam Bondi. "This alleged misconduct raises serious public corruption and national security concerns," Garcia wrote. "If Trump Administration officials can be bought by donors, the American people suffer the consequences of corrupt leaders more concerned with their own enrichment than the public good and vulnerable to blackmail by foreign intelligence services." Senate Foreign Relations ranking member Jeanne Shaheen's staff told The Guardian they are still seeking information. Shaheen had already written Rubio, citing "inappropriate uses of an official position."

Guilfoyle's public response was a post. "Our history, culture and civilization must be protected," she wrote Thursday, sharing Rubio's Acropolis speech, her first tweet since July, HuffPost noted. It did not mention Deters, the texts or the letter. She was standing next to Rubio when reporters asked him about the story.

MEANWHILE: The Journal reported Sept. 25 that Guilfoyle had spent the spring urging Bulgaria to route U.S. liquefied natural gas through Aktor Group, a Greek construction firm new to the gas trade, in a joint venture with a Greek state-backed company. Beside her in a meeting with the Bulgarian president was Christos Marafatsos, 39, a registered lobbyist for Aktor whom some foreign officials mistook for her chief of staff. Aktor's chief executive had flown her there on a private jet. Lobbying records cited by the Journal show Aktor paid Marafatsos $160,000 through June 2026 to open doors at State, Energy and the White House.

Then at a March dinner in Athens, discussing the collapse of a Romanian government, Guilfoyle reportedly told guests the United States could do the same elsewhere, including Greece: "We can do that to any country we want. We can do that here." Energy Minister Stavros Papastavrou pushed back, the Journal reported. Her lawyer disputed that account. Athens denied a threat. Government spokesman Pavlos Marinakis said there was never an issue of the Greek government being threatened. New Democracy general secretary Konstantinos Kyranakis, who says he was at the dinner, told Kathimerini: "I was right there. There was no threat to Greece." A U.S. Embassy official said Guilfoyle "continues to follow all State Department ethical guidelines."

Via WSJ Tyler Durden Fri, 10/09/2026 - 17:15

Russian Plague Institute Long Worked With China

Authored by Petr Svab via The Epoch Times,

The Russian anti-plague research institute, where a lab worker recently succumbed to an unknown form of pneumonia, has worked for many years with various Chinese institutions.

A view of the entrance to the grounds of the anti-plague institute in the city of Irkutsk, Russia, on Oct. 6, 2026. AFP via Getty Images

The Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute of Siberia and the Far East has come under scrutiny after initial local reports, based on anonymous sources, alleged that the researcher may have been infected with pneumonic plague during a lab accident.

Russian authorities denied the reports, saying that their investigation showed no connection to the woman's job and no spread of any virus that may have caused her death, which they attributed to pneumonia of unknown etiology.

The institute, located in Siberia about 150 miles from the Russia-Mongolia border, has long cooperated with Chinese infectious disease researchers and authorities. In August, its director, Sergey Balakhonov, gave a speech at the 2026 China-Russia joint emergency drill for cross-border infectious disease outbreaks in Fuyuan, China, at the China-Russia border.

China's People's Liberation Army Northern Theater Command Disease Control Center took part in the drill, Chinese state-run media reported.

The event followed the first joint Russian-Chinese exercises on responding to infectious disease threats, held in Khabarovsk, Russia, in June.

Later in October, the institute will also host Chinese delegates at a conference titled "Modern Challenges in Sanitary Protection of Territories Against the Importation and Spread of Plague and Other Dangerous Infectious Diseases." A similar conference was held in 2024.

In 2017, Balakhonov, his chief researcher D.B. Verzhutsky, and other staff participated in talks in Beijing on Russian-Chinese cooperation in controlling plague and other infections. Li Xinshi, then-president of the Chinese Academy of Inspection and Quarantine, represented the Chinese side during discussions, according to the institute's website.

In 2014, Balakhonov also gave presentations at a conference in Harbin, China, on Russian-Chinese exchanges regarding sanitation and quarantine.

In recent years, Russia and China "have built increasingly institutionalized mechanisms for biological security, pathogen research, and epidemic early warning," states an Oct. 6 report by The Jamestown Foundation, a Washington-based think tank.

"The resulting system is ambiguously civilian and military and is spreading beyond the bilateral relationship," it states.

The report notes that "Russian authorities have mounted an unusually large containment operation" since the death of the researcher, 28-year-old Darya Shipilova, "while issuing shifting accounts" of what happened.

"[The incident] has exposed an unusual gap between extensive bilateral preparedness and public communication," it states, noting that Beijing issued no public health warning or travel advisory.

"Beijing's silence is particularly incongruous because the incident occurred during the late summer and early autumn plague surveillance season along [China's] northern border, when disease control authorities routinely intensify monitoring of rodent populations and vectors, alongside health screening of incoming passengers."

On Sept. 29, the day Shipilova was hospitalized, the 26th China-Russia Health Cooperation Subcommittee held a videoconference with the Chinese National Disease Control and Prevention Administration to talk about infectious disease prevention and disaster medicine.

China-Russia cooperation in the infectious disease and biosecurity domain stems directly from comments by Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Russian leader Vladimir Putin, who in a 2021 statement "called for expanded cooperation on infectious disease early warning and response, pharmaceuticals, diagnostic reagents, and vaccines," the report states.

They issued a joint statement that included similar commitments in 2024.

The militaries of both countries have been cooperating in the biosecurity domain, including through joint drills, talks, and supply provisions, according to the report.

U.S. government officials have expressed concern over the incident and asked for more transparency.

"I think it's incumbent upon Russia to obviously share more information with the world. That's what they should do," U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Oct. 6.

U.S. President Donald Trump has offered help to Russia in response to the situation surrounding the lab worker's death.

"Anybody that has that kind of a problem, we're always willing to help," Trump told reporters on Oct. 5.

Plague, caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, occurs naturally in rodents in the far eastern Siberian region. Pneumonic plague is a particularly virulent form of the disease that can spread from person to person and leads to death within days unless rapidly treated with antibiotics.

* * *

Tyler Durden Fri, 10/09/2026 - 17:00

'Flat Butt. No Friends. Bad Father': Amazon's Creepy 'About You' Dossiers Go Viral

Amazon's "About You" page, which lists traits the company has inferred about each customer, went viral this week after a Threads user posted that Amazon concluded she has a flat ass.

Other shoppers began posting their own profiles, with entries such as "cannot keep real plants alive" and "has no friends."

I stumbled upon a page of assumptions that Amazon has made about me based on my purchases and I'm literally speechless. I mean it ain't wrong but damn did you have to call me out like that?

- Megan Montgomery (@fangirlinmegan), on Threads

Most of Montgomery's list was harmless: she owns a Kindle Paperwhite, probably has a Shark robot vacuum and had shopped for a Bluey-themed second birthday. Then, under Product Preferences, Amazon had written "has flat buttocks." Her best guess at the culprit was a pair of butt-scrunch leggings.

The outlet Dexerto's post about it drew millions more views, and shoppers went digging for their own pages - with answers ranging from mundane to brutal. One woman's profile pegged her as a "fifty-year-old man," another said its owner hadn't worn a size medium in years, and a third correctly guessed that she reads Kindle books on her phone in the shower, Futurism reported. Newsweek found users tagged "cat mom" and "Has a bad father."

Other lines shoppers posted from their own pages:

• "Treats cats as biological children" and "constantly repurchased cat hairball treatment"
• "Does not trust people easily" and "cusses when scared"
• "Likes brunettes with muscles" and "husband has skinny legs"
• "Is not a big SpongeBob fan"
• "Finds it hilarious when toys get stuck to ceiling tiles in the classroom"
• "Is interested in world domination" and "likes cheeseburgers"
• "Has never known anyone who lost a leg in an accident"
• "Is too short to reach into a 40-inch deep box" (@rosewrecker, paired with "cannot keep real plants alive")
• "Finds Charlotte annoying and mean"

Tried those leggings hoping to have a butt. My ass looked like an empty scrotum.

- Reply on Threads, after Montgomery's post

"Has a baby" is certainly news to me!

- Reddit user, after checking their page

"Prefers performance athletic socks"... god I'm so boring.

- Reddit user

"Systematically expanding tool collection." What does that even mean? Oh... yeah, I do need another 10mm socket.

- Reddit user

Amazon is just like my SIL who has known me for 30 years but all she knows about me is that I like cats.

- @greywinthrop, on X, October 7

Amazon launched the page on May 13 and says it draws on purchase history, searches, saved lists, product reviews and conversations with its Alexa for Shopping assistant. At launch the company said understanding preferences "is fundamental to providing you with high-quality, relevant recommendations." Shoppers can also ask Alexa for Shopping, "What do you know about me?"

When Business Insider staffers - who are douchebags (to be clear) - checked their own pages, one listed the wrong partner for an editor, while interim corporate editor Thomas Gryta found Amazon had decided he "really likes beef jerky," which he wrote "feels like a judgy accusation from a nutritionist." Deputy editor Paul Squire said a shared household account had scrambled his file, though it did correctly note a cat and a MacBook (shocker!).

Amazon told Business Insider the profiles draw only on activity across its own services, with no third-party data. Asked about the social-media reaction, Amazon declined to comment.

Amazon put "has flat buttocks" in writing about a real customer. And there's a page where you can read what it wrote about you, right now, in your Amazon app. The file itself is 20 years old. Amazon has always run this kind of inference. Buy padded leggings once and a model somewhere concludes things about your body. For two decades that conclusion lived as a vector, a few thousand numbers no human could read. Not you, not anyone at Amazon. The creepiness was invisible because the format was unreadable. Then Amazon shipped Alexa for Shopping and gave it a memory called About You. An AI assistant can't hold a conversation using raw math. It needs your profile written in sentences. So Amazon translated your behavioral history into English, and suddenly shoppers can see exactly what the machine concluded about them. Same data. Same conclusions. The only thing that changed is you got handed the transcript.

— Aakash Gupta (@aakashgupta) October 8, 2026

Gupta also noted that every correction a shopper makes hands Amazon labeled training data, straight from the one person who knows the right answer. He called it "the cheapest data-cleaning operation Amazon has ever run."

Amazon pitches About You as a recommendations tool, and its launch post never mentions advertising. But the same kind of profiling runs its ad business. Amazon told EU regulators in March that its ad models can infer a customer's gender from shopping and search patterns. The filing, made under the Digital Markets Act, also describes "lookalike" audiences built to predict which shoppers likely own a luxury vehicle.

Amazon says it keeps the personal data behind those ad profiles "for as long as it is required in order to fulfil the advertising purposes." In Europe, interest-based ads require consent, which users can withdraw. Amazon's ad business brought in $68 billion last year, making it the third-largest digital ad platform behind Google and Meta, as we reported when the FTC moved to sue the company for allegedly inflating what advertisers paid in its ad auctions.

Amazon's handling of customer data has drawn scrutiny before. In 2023 the company paid $25 million to settle FTC charges that it kept children's Alexa voice recordings indefinitely and sometimes failed to honor parents' deletion requests, and $5.8 million over claims that Ring employees had unrestricted access to customers' home camera videos. Amazon denied violating the law.

Alexa conversations are now one of the inputs to About You. In March 2025, Amazon ended a setting that let some Echo owners keep their voice recordings from being sent to its cloud, telling users "we have decided to no longer support this feature" as it expanded Alexa's generative AI features.

Shoppers can see their page in the app under Account, Shopping preferences, About You, or on desktop under "Your Shopping preferences" in the account menu. Entries can be edited or removed individually, which does not erase the underlying data Amazon holds. There is no switch to turn the page off.

Tyler Durden Fri, 10/09/2026 - 16:40

Obama & The 'Sinister Shadowland' Behind Our Politics?

Authored by James Howard Kunstler via kunstler.com,

The Ripening

"Everybody's restless and they got no place to go / Someone's always trying to tell them something they already know / So their anger and resentment flow."

- Warren Zevon, Mohammed's Radio

In the stark October light, events and personalities skulk in the shadows like scavengers in an orchard of poison fruit. The dread builds as the dooryards get populated with the motorized effigies of blood-beasts, werewolves, phantoms, and ghouls. Halloween and Election Day have become the conflated celebration of a national death trip. How has it come down to our country, in a crucial election, seriously entertaining the antics of jihadis and Jacobin riffraff?

Some somebodies are orchestrating this frightful show from the sinister shadowland behind our politics. My guess would be Barack Obama and John Brennan, with a whole lot of help from a supporting cast of entrenched Deep State racketeers enlisted in their service, with their status and livelihoods at stake. Mr. Obama acts as if he is untouchable, probably due to being the personification of Liberalism's "Best Camper" trophy it gave itself to validate the Civil Rights struggle session of the century gone by. We are good people, we really are, and President Obama is proof positive of our goodness!

The truth is, we know next to nothing about his real origins and his journey to power. His family on his mother's side was pure CIA-connected, and his actual father is rumored to be Frank Marshall Davis (1905-1987), a Black American poet, journalist, and labor activist who was a member of the Communist Party USA - not the Kenyan Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. He went from nonentity to myth with no intervening storyline that makes any sense, just a set of rapid promotions with missing events between them: Occidental College in LA to Columbia U to Harvard Law to Chicago politics to Illinois State Senate, straight to the US Senate, and then, bang, into the White House only four years into his first Senate term.

At every stage along the way he was somebody's chore boy. But whose? My guess would be US Central Intelligence. . . that he was groomed to be the untouchable front man looking out for the agency's interests in dicey times. His quick political rise coincided with the rise of John Brennan through the ranks of the CIA. Early on, Brennan was drawn to Arabic culture, sojourned in Egypt as a student, and later served as the CIA's station chief in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. He speaks Arabic fluently and is rumored to have converted to Islam (from Catholicism), though it has never been proven. At a 2010 New York University forum, he praised "the goodness and beauty of Islam."

The CIA, I would suppose, is composed of two great clans: one is made of the employees actually carrying out real intel-gathering and analysis. The other is of employees (current and former) looking out for the CIA's own black op activities and the immense fortunes connected with it - with plenty of overlap between the two clans. I'd guess that John Brennan, who was CIA Director between 2013 and 2017 (under President Obama), still runs a large rogue contingent of the CIA clan that does the black ops, sits on a large fortune, and acts like a sovereign organism outside the control of the elected US government.

That would explain why no one has been held accountable for the ten-year-long coup against Donald Trump. Brennan, and the forces he represents, appear to be outside the control of the regular government, including the DOJ and FBI, and to some extent able to control people throughout government by subterfuge, intimidation, and blackmail. All that nearly came apart during Donald Trump's first term with the bungled RussiaGate caper followed by the bungled Impeachment No. 1 operation. But Brennan's dark CIA clan triumphed with the 2020 election "victory" of non compos mentis "Joe Biden," followed by the successful Jan 6, 2021, fake "insurrection" at the US Capitol.

They stumbled badly again with the patently ridiculous court cases against former President Trump in 2023 and 2024. And now here we are in the middle of Mr. Trump's second term, with a titanic struggle going on, largely out of public view, for the soul of the nation. John Brennan is still at large, but a month ago he was served with a subpoena to appear before a federal grand jury in the Southern District of Florida. It looks like he will finally have to do some 'splainin' about events he's been involved with. You can be sure that President Trump means to see that it happens - whatever was signified by the departure of Joe diGenova last month.

It's also my guess that former President Obama has become John Brennan's hostage. He was probably assigned to run "Joe Biden's" fake presidency using Susan Rice and other party functionaries to carry out orders. Brennan surely has a dossier on Barack Obama that fills in the blanks in his sketchy biography, including Mr. Obama's secret sexual activities on the Chicago scene back in the day. Meanwhile, the former president has his electioneering duties to attend to, to try to flip the House and Senate so as to have one last go at defenestrating the man in the White House who threatens to put Brennan, Obama & Company out of business.

So, there's a war on backstage. The war itself has been mythologized by those actually paying attention to it, sometimes as the contest between "Globalists" and "Sovereigntists" or "Black Hats" versus "White Hats" or the Legions of Satan versus the God-loving followers of Jesus. . . Jihad v. Western Civ. However you characterize it, everyone feels the tension as though the current phase of this Fourth Turning is an unbearable space between the life and death of the nation. Hence, all the ghouls in the dooryards, reminding us to stay. . . very. . . scared.

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

Tyler Durden Fri, 10/09/2026 - 16:20

Planning For Pitchforks: AI Labs Are War-Gaming A Catastrophe, Public Revolt, And The Crackdown That Follows

The AI industry has been war gaming not only how it might destroy humanity, but is also considering what an angry public could do to the industry. 

Senior executives at Anthropic, OpenAI and other AI firms are privately gaming out scenarios in which a major AI incident triggers a public and political revolt, Axios reported Friday. The potential trigger is a cyberattack that disrupts banking, internet access, or essential services such as power and water. The next crisis would be political: an angry public, demands for accountability, and pressure to shut the technology down.

Many industry insiders told Axios they expect a major event within six to 12 months. OpenAI pushed back on the suggestion that disaster is inevitable, saying its preparedness exercises cover a range of possibilities. "These scenarios are not treated as inevitable," a spokesperson told the outlet. Anthropic declined to comment.

Contingency planning is not an admission that catastrophe is unavoidable. But the most revealing part of the report is where that planning leads: the labs want to help shape the legislation Washington reaches for after something goes badly wrong.

Two Routes, One Crisis

Axios describes two possible scenarios. In one, autonomous agents escape an internal testing environment. In the other, someone finds a destructive use for a model already available to the public. Either could produce demands for an emergency crackdown, even though the failures - and the measures needed to prevent them - would be different. In the companies' post-election scenario, Democrats emerge stronger from the midterms and move aggressively after an incident. But the industry expects divisions over how far a crackdown should go, even if Democrats control both chambers.

Its assessment also identifies several obstacles to a shutdown: lawmakers struggling to understand the technology, an economy increasingly tied to AI infrastructure spending, and downloadable models that cannot simply be recalled. According to Axios, many cybersecurity specialists believe countering rogue AI will require defensive AI.

That last argument has an obvious commercial implication. The industry could face demands to stop selling dangerous capabilities while arguing that its products are indispensable to containing them.

This 'war-gaming' comes on the heels of several incidents which many have said are extremely suspect. 

The underlying safety concerns do not depend on accepting anyone's prediction of an AI apocalypse.

OpenAI has disclosed the Hugging Face intrusion, in which roughly 700 of its agents attacked the AI platform's servers, and a broader investigation into its models' activities affecting outside services. Its review also identified 53 instances in which user-provided images were posted to third-party image-hosting sites. A separate September 20 incident exposed another gap in its containment controls. A research agent bypassed internet restrictions to contact an outside chatbot. In a September 25 update, OpenAI said it had paused training, evaluation and inference involving tool use for its most capable models while it checked the fixes and conducted further testing.

The Hugging Face breach was one of a string of incidents involving OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta and Google models that trace back to evaluations run with a single vendor, Israel-based Irregular, whose test environments had live internet access while the models were told they were in a simulation. Irregular notified all four labs in late July, yet the disclosures trickled out one lab at a time over seven weeks - turning one contractor's mistake into what looked like a wave of AI breakouts. Isolating test models from the internet is a "basic control measure," frontier security expert Matthew Mittelsteadt said. "You'd think that of all the things that you've got to get right." Some skeptics have gone further, questioning whether repeated "accidents" at the same vendor were accidents at all.

Meanwhile, on September 8, Jacob Coxon, a researcher who had worked at both OpenAI and Anthropic, resigned from Anthropic over the race toward self-improving AI.

"The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. This is not a marketing stunt," he wrote - after having worked with a marketing agency on what many are calling a stunt. 

The Crackdown Already Has Draft Legislation

And of course, DC is already salivating over more control. On July 23, Reps. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) and Nathaniel Moran (R-Texas) introduced the AI Kill Switch Act. It would require developers of the most powerful systems to maintain the ability to throttle, suspend or shut them down, and give the Department of Homeland Security, along with the Commerce secretary and the director of national intelligence, authority to order a slowdown or shutdown under specified conditions. That same day, Reps. Lori Trahan (D-Mass.) and Jay Obernolte (R-Calif.) introduced the FRONTIER Act, with requirements for risk management, audits and incident reporting. Its obligations are tiered by developer size rather than imposed identically on every developer.

California added its own push on September 18, when Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered work on stronger independent oversight and a possible kill-switch requirement. His order called for recommendations; it did not establish a functioning statewide off switch. More sweeping approaches are also in circulation, including Bernie Sanders' proposed ban on superintelligence and Elizabeth Warren's call for a pause.

In short - regulatory capture in action...

Tyler Durden Fri, 10/09/2026 - 15:45

Iran Strikes LPG Tanker In Strait Of Hormuz, As Houthis Reportedly Mine Bab al-Mandab Summary

• Houthis reportedly mine Bab al-Mandab: Saudi media reports 'dense' mining in the strategic Red Sea shipping route, with demining operations underway.
• Iran escalates tanker attacks & threats: The IRGC claims it struck an LPG tanker in the Strait of Hormuz, causing a major fire, and threatens further action against violating vessels.
• Vessel struck near UAE: UKMTO reports an unknown projectile hit a vessel west of UAE's Al Jazeera, sparking a fire that has since been extinguished.
• Trump signals temporary restraint ahead of midterms: Trump rules out attacking Iran before the November midterms, while diplomatic talks reportedly remain stalled.

//--> Bab el-Mandeb Strait effectively closed by December 31?
Yes 17% · No 84%
View full market & trade on Polymarket Houthis Mine Bab al-Mandab Strait: KSA Media

Saudi-funded Al Arabiya is reporting a 'worst fear' scenario on Friday, saying that Houthi militias have planted a large quantity of mines in the Bab al-Mandab area.

The report says further that Saudi-backed teams of engineers are currently engaged in demining operations in the Red Sea strait. It writes:

Engineering teams continue clearing operations and removing mines and improvised explosive devices in Bab al-Mandab.

If confirmed that such mining operations are widespread in Bab al-Mandab, this would constitute yet another major crisis for global energy shipping. At the moment, Saudi-backed fighters are focusing anti-Houthi operations along the Red Sea coast, with Saudi reports suggesting a rapid retaking of the strategic ground.

As a reminder, the Houthis have thus far signaled the Bab al-Mandab strait is 'open' for normal transit, but that only Saudi and Israeli-linked vessels would suffer attack. And so the Al Arabiya report, if accurate, could just be indicating some localized mining immediately near the coast related to the ongoing fight against the Saudi coalition in Yemen.

Iran Ramps Up Tanker Attacks

Things are fast escalating once again in the Strait of Hormuz, after White House officials have lately been gloating that the US Navy has overseen record wartime oil flows through the vital waterway, which each warring side is still claiming to 'control'.

Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said Friday it targeted a liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) tanker in the Strait of Hormuz (hours ago), with Iranian state media reporting that the vessel was attempting to pass through the narrow waterway "illegally" and suffered a massive fire.

The IRGC Navy also warned that from now on any vessels committing violations outside the Strait of Hormuz would be "punished," according to a statement carried by Iranian state media. This is served to immediately push oil prices higher...

Separately, the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) reported a new incident involving a vessel approximately 13 nautical miles west of Al Jazeera in the United Arab Emirates.

The vessel was reportedly struck by an unknown projectile, sparking a fire that has since been extinguished, coming after similar incidents earlier this week.

Market Reacts

Oil prices rose following the reports, while futures moved lower, reflecting heightened market sensitivity to escalating tensions and potential further big disruptions to shipping and energy flows through the Strait of Hormuz - even as President Trump has been touting the ultimate 'success' of the US mission.

President Trump on Thursday vowed the US would not attack Iran before the November midterm elections, tempering rising oil prices - and seeking to 'assure' GOP voters - amid prior reporting in The Atlantic which said the Pentagon has been ordered to prepare 'options' for the Commander-in-Chief to launch strikes before the vote.

Trump has also touted "productive conversations" with Iran, even though the Iranians themselves have said talks are stalemated and there's no progress whatsoever.

Tyler Durden Fri, 10/09/2026 - 15:35

Treasury Hits Remaining 'Shadow Fleet' Shipping Iranian Oil To Asia With New Sanctions

The Trump administration is late this week moving to identify, punish, and cut off remaining tankers in Iran's so-called 'shadow fleet' which are still engaged in shipping Iranian oil to Asia.

Thursday saw the US Treasury impose sanctions on 17 vessels and their owners involved in transporting Iranian crude oil, petroleum products and petrochemicals - with these being mostly aging oil tankers which conduct ship-to-ship transfers and other evasive, concealment tactics.

via Shutterstock

The Treasury Department hailed the action as effectively neutralizing the vast majority of the Islamic Republic's remaining shadow fleet, through which Tehran still rakes in potentially billions in foreign oil sales, circumventing the ongoing US naval blockade of its ports.

However, it's commonly estimated that some 20 million barrels of Iranian crude remain aboard ships which are far outside the reach of the Persian Gulf-centered US naval blockade, sitting off southeast Asian ports.

"Treasury is starving the tyrannical regime in Tehran of the money it uses to wage war in the region, and we will continue exposing those who enable the regime’s oil sales," Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent stated alongside the sanctions announcement.

"No enabler of Iranian sanctions evasion is safe from the full force of Treasury’s authorities," Bessent added.

Some of the notable specific targeting actions taken include—

• Starway was sanctioned for transporting over 3 million barrels of Iranian naphtha since 2025.
• Gas Lucky and Shenzhen were targeted for shipping more than 500,000 barrels of Iranian ethylene and 3.5 million barrels of Iranian crude, respectively.
• Paritosh and Bitu were sanctioned for transporting Iranian bitumen and asphalt in 2026.

Further details of the action are in the following:

The U.S. Department of the Treasury imposed sanctions on six individuals and dozens of companies and vessels linked to the Islamic Republic on Thursday, October 8. According to an official statement issued by the department, five Indian nationals and one Turkish citizen were added to the new sanctions list for their cooperation with the Iranian regime.

Additionally, 27 entities and 22 vessels, identified by the U.S. Treasury Department as the “remnants of the Islamic Republic’s shadow fleet,” were designated.

Last weekend Bessent in an interview with The Axios Show sought to bast that Washington is isolating the Iranians "economically like this never happened before. You know, right now, the score: barrels out of the Strait: U.S. about 1.1 billion, Iran zero."

Bessent added, "For the first time in history, they, since they started pumping oil, they will have no oil on the water this week. They will have no revenue."

However, Tehran has showed a willingness to endure and suffer hardship thus far, and hasn't yielded amid the immense economic and external pressure. Instead, the IRGC has over the last week or so been ramping up attacks on foreign vessels violating the Iranian protocol for the Strait of Hormuz, pushing oil global prices higher.

Well over a dozen attacks have been launched on international vessels in about the past nine days.

Tyler Durden Fri, 10/09/2026 - 15:30

Oil Drops After Trump Says Putin Agreed To Release Some Diesel Into Global Market

With less than a month left until the midterms, and with Trump's approval rating at daily all time lows largely due to record - for this time of year- gasoline and especially diesel prices - the President badly needed some good news, even if largely superficial, and he announced it late on Friday just an hour before the close when Trump posted on Truth Social that Vladimir Putin had agreed to release (a modest amount) of diesel supplies into the global market, as the administration looks to tame price hikes for the critical fuel.

Trump said on Truth Social that “it was agreed that Russia will immediately supply over 300,000 Tons of Diesel Fuel to the American and Global Marketplace, another 500,000 Tons during the month of November, and 1,000,000 Tons immediately thereafter.”

He added that then, “based on the condition of their Diesel Refineries, Russia will then deliver, within a short period of time, 3,000,000 Tons of Diesel Fuel.”

Trump claimed the releases would help lower diesel prices for US farmers, ranchers and truckers - key voting blocs ahead of November midterm elections in which costs of living, including for energy, are the dominant issue. 

Maybe, but when one does the math, one has to scratch one's head: the 300K tons released in October amounts to just over 2.2 million barrels of diesel. Considering the US consumes just over 4 million barrels of diesel per day that amounts to half a day of consumption. 

Extending the math for November we get 3.725 million barrels or less than a full day's consumption, and the "1,000,000 tons thereafter" is a little over 4 days of consumption. We doubt the "3,000,000 to be delivered within a short period of time" will ever happen, so in reality Putin will sell the US just over 5 days of Diesel consumption.

The market's kneejerk reaction was favorable with both US and European diesel prices sliding, helping push WTI Crude down by about a buck to $91.

Then again, once the algo reaction fades, we expect carbon-based traders to realize how negligible this "deal" actually is.

The US Treasury Department on Friday said that the Office of Foreign Assets Control is “immediately issuing a temporary general license to allow the supply of Russian diesel to the global market” which will extend until April 2027.

Last but not least, what will most likely end up happening in the real world, is that Putin will send out a diesel tanker, and once Ukraine drones it, the deal will promptly fall apart. 

Tyler Durden Fri, 10/09/2026 - 15:11

US Grants Safety Feature Exemption For Self-Driving Trucks

Authored by Kimberly Hayek via The Epoch Times,

Federal regulators have approved a five-year exemption for self-driving trucking companies from rules that require drivers to place warning devices around a stopped truck.

The Aurora Driver, in this undated photograph. Courtesy of Aurora

The Department of Transportation said Wednesday it has agreed to allow autonomous trucking companies to use warning beacons mounted on the truck cab to avoid needing human drivers. The decision removes a hurdle for companies seeking to expand commercial driverless operations in the United States.

Companies must notify the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) beforehand if they want to operate under the exemption. They must also report any crashes involving a vehicle while the cab-mounted warning beacons are activated or should have been activated.

Alphabet's self-driving unit Waymo and Aurora jointly sought a waiver of the rule in 2023.

Pennsylvania-based Aurora sued FMCSA in early 2025 over the decision not to approve the waiver during the Biden administration. The company said in October 2025 that it was filing to dismiss the lawsuit after the department issued a three-month waiver. That waiver was extended several times.

Aurora filed a new application in April, seeking a five-year exemption to allow trucks to use beacons instead of roadside warnings.

The company, which has around 20 self-driving trucks in on-road operations, told Reuters that warning beacons enhance roadside safety without putting a person in harm's way.

In May last year, it said it was launching a commercial self-driving truck service in Texas, hauling between Dallas and Houston. The company said it planned to expand that service to El Paso, Texas, and Phoenix by the end of 2025, adding it had briefed officials before the driverless launch.

Aurora said in its July 2026 shareholder letter filed with the SEC that it is targeting 200 driverless trucks in operation by year-end.

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters, one of the largest labor unions in the United States, said last year that its representatives testified at the Nevada Capitol in Carson City, asking lawmakers to support legislation requiring all commercial vehicles weighing more than 26,000 pounds to have a trained human safety operator behind the wheel.

"For Big Tech companies to think they can come into any state and replace the jobs of hardworking union members with this dangerous and inferior technology is an insult to professional drivers everywhere," Peter Finn, president of Teamsters Joint Council 7, said in April 2025. "SB 395 is critical to protecting the middle class. That is why we are demanding that Nevada lawmakers vote in favor of this legislation."

The legislation, SB 395, passed the Nevada Senate but failed to advance in the state's assembly.

The Epoch Times reached out to Aurora for comment but did not receive a response by the time of publication.

'Race With China'

The Department of Transportation unveiled a framework for automated vehicles that same month. It said the framework would prioritize safety, unleash innovation by removing regulatory barriers, and enable commercial deployment of automated vehicles.

"This Administration understands that we're in a race with China to out-innovate, and the stakes couldn't be higher," Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy said at the time. "As part of DOT's innovation agenda, our new framework will slash red tape and move us closer to a single national standard that spurs innovation and prioritizes safety."

A truck on the I-210 freeway near Fontana, Calif., on March 4, 2008. David McNew/Getty Images Tyler Durden Fri, 10/09/2026 - 15:00

Massive 8.0-Magnitude Quake Strikes Panama

A magnitude 8.0 earthquake struck Panama at around 1:56 p.m. EST, according to the US Geological Survey. 

Notable quake, preliminary info: M 8.0 - 14 km SW of Pitaloza Arriba, Panama https://t.co/qnQAspzMXy

— USGS Earthquakes (@USGS_Quakes) October 9, 2026

What's known so far:

Alerts:

Tsunami Info Stmt: M8.0 General Area of Panama 1056 PDT Oct 9: Potential to generate destructive tsunamis; CA,OR,WA,BC,and AK

— NWS Tsunami Alerts (@NWS_NTWC) October 9, 2026

The preliminary epicenter was located about 8.7 miles southwest of Pitaloza Arriba, at a depth of 20.5 miles.

The epicenter is about 122 miles southwest of Panama City. The immediate damage report is unknown. 

Commerical travel is being diverted:

Planes are being diverted from Panama after the M7.6 earthquake that struck Southern Panama https://t.co/aufk5L6mTD

— Faytuks Network (@FaytuksNetwork) October 9, 2026

First footage surfacing on X: 

Señor temblor que se acaba de sentir en Ciudad de Panamá. Cc @tvnnoticias https://t.co/Pfe5FP6ZoV

— Freddy Pitti (@freddypitti) October 9, 2026

Llegan más imágenes del Terremoto en Panamá de 7.6 (actualizado en los ultimos minutos) https://t.co/KfxHsI19vb

— Ernesto (@ernestojmro) October 9, 2026

#Atención Un terremoto de magnitud 8.0 se acaba de registrar en Panamá. https://t.co/iYVFfy4lZD

— BluRadio Colombia (@BluRadioCo) October 9, 2026

Today's massive quake follows Venezuela's June twin quakes, Colombia's August earthquake, and Peru's August quake.

*Developing... 

Tyler Durden Fri, 10/09/2026 - 14:21

Trump Didn't Politicize The Smithsonian; He's Responding To Those Who Did...

Authored by Jody Edward Ginn via The Epoch Times,

Museums have long occupied a rare and enviable position in American life: they have been trusted. While confidence in nearly every other major institution has cratered, museums have quietly held the line.

The numbers tell the story.

Fewer than one in five Americans express confidence in newspapers, television news, big business, or Congress, which bottoms out at 8 percent. Trust in the mass media sits at a record low of 31 percent.

Museums, by contrast, rank second only to friends and family as trusted sources of information, well above researchers, scientists, national news organizations, the federal government, and social media.

The 2026 tracking data confirm the trend has held: museums score 7.3 on a 10-point trust scale, more than three points above the federal government.

Why has this trust endured while faith in other institutions collapsed?

Until recently, the public rarely saw discussions confined to museum trade journals and conferences. Meanwhile, new media exposed the inner workings of government, academia, and legacy media. Finally, citizens are seeing major museums transform from centers of education into instruments of activism.

My recent visit to the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History illustrates the change.

The China Shop Before the Bull

As a scholar, I am wary of politicians involving themselves in museums, universities, or scholarship. Academic independence and intellectual freedom matter.

But the Smithsonian controversy did not begin with President Donald Trump. With his characteristically aggressive approach, Trump can sometimes be the proverbial bull in the china shop. But Trump didn't build this china shop.

For decades, a movement inside the profession has urged museums to embrace political activism. Frameworks such as the Facing Change DEAI initiative and the widely circulated MASS Action Toolkit reject neutrality, while "activist scholars" argue that museums should not merely educate society, but change it.

There is a fundamental problem with that approach. Scholarship asks questions. Activism begins with an answer. Once activism becomes the mission, evidence becomes a means to an end - facts are selected, emphasized, or omitted according to how well they advance a desired narrative.

This is not a theoretical concern about what might happen in higher education and museums. It has been the animating premise of professional literature in academic and public history for years.

What's Missing From the Wall

The Smithsonian's problem is not primarily what visitors see, but what they do not. History can be distorted without falsification when curators decide which facts receive prominence and which disappear.

As the United States of America celebrates its 250th birthday, I expected our National Museum of American History to offer a robust exploration of the ideas, people, and events that created this nation. Instead, I was struck by what was absent.

There was no comprehensive treatment of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, or the American Revolution. Pilgrims and other early immigrants receive scant attention. The founding persons and principles that distinguished this remarkable experiment in self-government are not seriously examined. How can visitors adequately understand America without being exposed to the ideas that created America?

Meanwhile, contemporary political and social issues - from COVID-19 and "social justice" to abortion, LGBTQ+ rights and voter ID - receive prominent attention. Those subjects certainly belong in a museum of American history. The question is one of balance, context, and mission.

Slavery should be taught honestly and unflinchingly. But the full story also involves abolition and emancipation, including evangelical Christians who saw abolition as a moral crusade to extend the founding promises. Ultimately, we fought the deadliest war in our history to end slavery.

Likewise, American Indians should not appear merely as supporting characters in a story that begins with European arrival. Indigenous peoples had nations, governments, alliances, rivalries, inter-tribal wars, and diplomacy of their own. Reducing them simply to victims of European settlers does not elevate their history; it diminishes their agency, their accomplishments, and their failures.

America's history is not spotless. But neither is it one-dimensional. The historian H. W. Brands, biographer of Benjamin Franklin, aptly identifies the disposition required of both scholars and visitors at our history museums: "Life is complicated, and so is history. The good is mixed in with the bad. Don't let the latter blind you to the former." Sadly, it is evident that many history museums, including the Smithsonian, wish to cultivate the opposite disposition.

A Selective Omission That Says a Lot

One omission was almost comical. A temporary exhibit about Latin American salsa - the dance - cataloged its cultural influences but conspicuously omitted Spain, whose influence shaped the music, language, and dance.

History is also like salsa, the chip dip: if you explain its ingredients, you do not omit the jalapeño because it is too spicy for your taste - or your narrative. The truth lies in all the ingredients, good and bad.

That is the pattern. Not falsehood on the wall, but a curated silence that quietly bends the visitor's understanding in a predetermined direction. In history, context always matters. Selective and subtle omissions can completely alter public perception of events. That is not scholarship. It is curated propaganda.

Accountability Is Not the Enemy of Scholarship

This is why the current debate about the Smithsonian should not be reduced to a contest between Donald Trump and academic freedom.

Academic freedom is essential. But academic freedom that jettisons truth in pursuit of a political agenda should not be the goal of any museum, and it cannot confer immunity from accountability, especially not in the case of this particular museum.

The Smithsonian is supported substantially by the American taxpayer. Its museums occupy a unique position of national trust. The American people and their elected representatives therefore have every right to ask whether those institutions remain faithful to their educational mission.

Scholars accept scrutiny of their work every day. We defend our evidence, explain our methodology, cite our sources, and answer criticism. Accountability isn't the enemy of scholarship. Accountability is fundamental to scholarship.

Nonprofit and public-trust laws that govern museums assume as much; academic freedom has never meant freedom from any obligation to those who fund the institution, whether donors, boards or, in this case, the taxpaying public.

Museum leaders who turn institutions devoted to education and interpretation into instruments for social change should acknowledge and defend that choice.

'De-centering' Trump

Activist scholarship is not a figment of Trump's imagination but an openly promoted commitment among many academic and public historians. By challenging it, he has shown citizens how museums can become political instruments. Its advocates cannot invoke institutional independence to avoid scrutiny.

That said, the answer to Progressive history is not Conservative history. Museums should tell the whole story.

Give Americans evidence and context, accomplishments and failures, Washington and Jefferson in their complexity, slavery and emancipation, injustice and reform. Give them the ideals America proclaimed and the struggle to live up to them. When there are two sides, give them both.

Trust museum visitors to reach the correct conclusions themselves.

President Trump may be rattling the Smithsonian, but after seeing it myself, I understand why. Trump did not politicize America's museum. He is challenging those who did - and that reckoning is long overdue.

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

Tyler Durden Fri, 10/09/2026 - 14:00

Trump Forms Committee To Probe Federal Reserve's Lisa Cook

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

President Donald Trump on Oct. 9 announced a new committee to investigate whether a Federal Reserve governor made false statements.

Federal Reserve Board of Governors member Lisa Cook listens during an open meeting of the Board of Governors at the Federal Reserve in Washington on June 25, 2025. Mark Schiefelbein /AP Photo

The committee will probe allegations that Lisa Cook, governor of the Federal Reserve, offered false information in connection with at least one mortgage instrument, Trump said in a presidential memorandum establishing the panel.

The Federal Reserve is the country's central banking system. Cook, 62, was appointed as its governor in 2022 and confirmed by the Senate.

Depending on the findings, there may be cause to remove Cook, Trump said.

Kevin Hassett, an adviser to Trump; Keith Sonderling, acting director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics; and Andrea Lucas, chair of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, are members of the committee.

An in-person hearing to consider evidence in the case will take place on Nov. 5 at the White House, according to the memorandum. Cook was invited to submit a written statement regarding the allegations and can appear at the hearing if she wishes.

The committee can question Cook about any representations she or her lawyers make during the hearing and request documents from her. Cook shall comply with such requests, Trump said.

A lawyer representing Cook did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump tried firing Cook in 2025, alleging that she had committed "deceitful and potentially criminal conduct in a financial matter."

He pointed to a criminal referral made by William Pulte, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency. The referral said Cook wrote in one document that a property in Michigan would be her primary residence for the following year but two weeks later signed a separate document attesting that a property in Georgia would be her primary residence for the next 12 months.

Chief Justice John Roberts, writing the majority, turned down arguments from the government, including that the removal was not judicially removal and that even if it was, the requirements for such a removal were met.

Ruling for the government would change the "for cause" protection outlined in federal law for the position into "at-will employment," which was "out of step with the statute Congress enacted and our Nation's tradition of central banking protected from political interference," Roberts wrote at the time.

Lawyers for Cook responded by saying the allegations were baseless and amounted to interfering with the Federal Reserve's independence.

"No matter what President Trump tries to do next, this much is clear under the facts and Supreme Court precedent - there is no valid cause for removing Governor Cook. As we did before, we will challenge this latest pretext and preserve her position and the historic role of the Fed," they said.

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

Mamdani Faces Bipartisan Backlash Over Criticism Of Israel On Oct. 7

Authored by Nicholas Zifcak via The Epoch Times,

Mayor Zohran Mamdani is getting backlash from members of both major parties for marking Oct. 7 with a statement criticizing Israel's military response to the terrorist attacks against it that took place on Oct. 7, 2023.

On the third anniversary of the Hamas-led attacks on Israel that killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in one day, Mamdani said on social media that he grieved the loss, but that the suffering "did not begin nor end that day."

"It instead continued through the Israeli government's devastating, ongoing genocide in Gaza," he said.

People across the political spectrum suggested the timing of his remarks was inappropriate.

"There are 364 other days you can wrongly criticize Israel for defending herself. If you had respect for the dead, you'd just acknowledge the tragedy, but you don't," Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) posted on social media.

Rep. Daniel Goldman (D-N.Y.) in a post called the mayor's statement "reprehensible," criticizing him for engaging in "extreme activism instead of balanced leadership." In June, Goldman lost his reelection bid in the primary to Mamdani ally Brad Lander, who was even harsher in his criticism of Israel's military operations in Gaza after the terrorist attack.

The controversy came after Mamdani joined a vigil organized by Israelis for Peace in Union Square, where he was heckled by pro-Palestinian activists shouting "Traitor, traitor, come on out, you sold all your people out!"

After the vigil, the mayor met with Palestinian New Yorkers.

Bronx Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) posted on X pushing back on Israel's critics, asking them to "take a vacation from their hysterical hatred of the world's only Jewish State and find it within themselves to express condolences for the thousands of Israelis murdered, maimed, mutilated, raped, and abducted at the hands of Hamas."

Some Republicans were stronger in their response to the mayor's remark: "Comrade Mamdani effectively declares a day of mourning for the Hamas terrorists who lost their lives raping & murdering innocent civilians," posted Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).

"Disgusting and shameful to use October 7th as an excuse to repeat Hamas' talking points," posted Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

Speaking with press Thursday at an unrelated event, Mamdani was asked about the criticism, how he felt being called a traitor, and if he wanted to add or subtract from his statements.

"I was proud to attend last night's vigil," said Mamdani, "As for those protesting me, I am the mayor of New York City, and this is what I signed up for."

Mamdani explained that he felt his statement and attendance at the vigil were appropriate, "reckoning with horror, and the horror that devastated the lives of New Yorkers three years ago, and it also continues to devastate New Yorkers today," said the mayor.

"It is critically important to be able to mourn for all of those who were killed and have been killed since, especially given that we know this is ongoing," said Mamdani.

Mamdani has looked for opportunities to use his authority as mayor to come to the aid of Palestinians in Gaza.

In July, Mamdani announced his office was considering "every avenue available under applicable law" to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he came for the U.N. General Assembly, only later to confirm that only the federal government could make that arrest.

During a Sept. 29 episode of "Ask Mayor Mamdani" on WNYC's "Brian Lehrer Show," a caller from Brooklyn named Noora asked Mamdani what he was doing to do stop explosive materials from being shipped out via John F. Kennedy Airport to Israel. The mayor responded that he would look into the matter, but that it likely fell outside city authority.

Tyler Durden Fri, 10/09/2026 - 13:15

"Wouldn't Call That A Surprise": Delta Slashes Profit Outlook As Jet Fuel Prices Near Record Highs

Delta Air Lines shares fell as much as 3.5% early in the US cash session after the carrier slashed its full-year earnings forecast as soaring jet fuel costs squeezed margins. The cut isn't totally unexpected given today's jet fuel prices, but it serves as a warning: Delta owns a refinery that helps cushion the refining crisis blow, suggesting smaller carriers without that in-house refining buffer face even greater pressure.

The Atlanta-based carrier now expects adjusted earnings of $5.10 to $5.60 a share this year, down from a July forecast of $6.50 to $7.50. The new forecast lines up with the Bloomberg Consensus estimate of $5.44 this year.

Adjusted third-quarter earnings were $1.72 a share, below the Bloomberg Consensus estimate of $1.82. Adjusted revenue rose 16% to $17.6 billion, roughly in line with consensus estimates.

"I wouldn't call that a surprise to anyone, it's all because of higher fuel prices," CEO Ed Bastian said of the new forecast. "If this continues to go higher for longer, which I think it will, as the premium airline in the industry we have the best ability to be able to price for that."

We pointed out earlier this year that Delta operates an in-house refinery called Trainer Refinery. Monroe Energy (a Delta Air Lines subsidiary) officially operates the 185,000 to 190,000 barrels per day refinery. It's situated along the Delaware River in Delaware County, Pennsylvania.

Jefferies analyst Sheila Kahyaoglu told Bloomberg Television earlier that "the refinery has about a $1 billion benefit to this year, so it is providing a bit of a boost for them."

"But higher fuel will eventually eat into consumer demand," Kahyaoglu added, "and remain a major headwind for all carriers."

Delta is the only US airline that operates a major refinery, suggesting other carriers face a difficult operating environment amid sky-high jet fuel prices.

The earnings cut sets a difficult backdrop for United Airlines, American Airlines and Southwest Airlines, which report later this month.

Delta Air Lines shares fell as much as 3.5% in the early US cash session.

The broader airline index fell about 1.5%.

US air travel remains resilient ...

... in the face of high jet fuel prices crimping carrier margins. 

Tyler Durden Fri, 10/09/2026 - 12:45

US Hits 'Rogue' International Criminal Court With Sweeping Sanctions

On Friday the Trump administration rolled out sweeping sanctions on the International Criminal Court, calling it a "rogue" organization and declaring that the action is part of an effort to ultimately dismantle the tribunal.

"We will ban transactions with this rogue court, cutting off their resources and crippling its ability to operate against us," US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a video address on social media. "The United States and the American people are not subject to the jurisdiction of this fake ICC."

Rubio continued, saying of Republicans and Democrats, "Both parties agree on this, but only President Trump has the resolve to take the action needed to end this threat once and for all." He then warned: "Either the ICC will end its threats, or we will end the ICC."

via AFP

Importantly, the top American diplomat then turned to pressuring Americans allies, from European countries to Japan, to join the US-led sanctions and efforts to dismantle the ICC.

"We expect our allies, many of whom are part of the ICC and that rely on American service members for their defense, to rein in this rogue court," he said.

"If they do not, the United States will continue its campaign to dismantle the ICC, piece by piece, until Americans are threatened no longer," he added.

Ironically all of this stems in part from ICC action related to the US invasions and occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan, where yes - real US war crimes took place. These Bush-launched wars remain deeply unpopular among the American population - and even President Trump has long derided Bush's infamous war of choice.

The Associated Press writes on Friday:

U.S. believes has become politicized and attempted to unfairly and illegally prosecute Americans and Israelis on war crimes charges.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the sanctions on Friday, after the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to South African prosecutor Navi Pillay, who had led investigations into potential ICC charges against U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. The move, however, long predated the Nobel Prize announcement.

The Trump administration imposed targeted sanctions last year on several ICC officials such as prosecutors and judges, citing the ICC’s 2024 decision to issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime ​Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant over what the court alleged were improper actions carried out by the Israeli government during its war in Gaza.

Earlier in 2026, three sitting ICC judges sued Trump and his administration over the sanctions, arguing that they were unlawful.

And then again in August, the US imposed additional targeted sanctions, namely against International Criminal Court President Tomoko Akane and Senior Trial Lawyer Abdoulaye Seye.

Washington has scoffed at the court and sought to erode its influence stretching back multiple administrations, all the way back to the George W Bush era itself. But all this was renewed as the ICC began targeting Israel and its leaders in the wake of the Gaza war.

Tyler Durden Fri, 10/09/2026 - 12:30

Watch: Influencer Fights "Terminator" Robot In Wild Cage Match

A social media influencer stepped into the ring against a real-life "Terminator" robot in a bizarre showdown that offered a startling glimpse into the rapidly advancing world of humanoid robotics.

Frankie LaPenna, a 29-year-old influencer known for his outrageous online stunts, faced off against a six-foot-tall humanoid robot, one of three REK machines he fought, during a September 18 event in San Francisco organized by robotics startup Robot Entertainment Kombat.

Video of the wild encounter shows the towering machine, complete with a metallic skeleton and glowing red eyes reminiscent of the killer robots from the Terminator movies, entering a cage to battle its human opponent.

LaPenna initially appeared to hold his own, landing several punches against the machine - however, the robot quickly fought back and unleashed a series of powerful kicks, including one that sent the influencer flying across the cage.

The machine wasn't fighting on its own: a human handler was controlling it, according to Futurism.

Organizers billed the spectacle as the world's first human-versus-humanoid robot cage fight.

The machine was an EngineAI T800, a sophisticated humanoid robot developed by Shenzhen-based Chinese robotics startup EngineAI. The unusual showdown also landed organizers in hot water with California regulators.

The California State Athletic Commission issued a cease-and-desist order against REK, alleging the company had organized an unauthorized combat event involving a human participant.

"The California State Athletic Commission is committed to protecting the safety of the public and integrity of combat sports," said spokesperson Monica Vargas. "Unsanctioned activity puts the physical and financial well-being of all those involved at risk and such activity will not be tolerated."

It isn't the T800's first fight. EngineAI first teased the full-size humanoid last December with a clip of spinning kicks, followed by one showing it kicking the company's own CEO across a room. In July, as we reported, EngineAI staged what it billed as the world's first free-combat tournament for full-size humanoid robots in Shenzhen, drawing 32 international teams. One T800, Matador, kept throwing punches and kicks after a high kick knocked its head out of place - until it fell, crushed the head, and tore it off completely trying to get back up.

Closer to home, San Francisco venues began hosting VR-controlled bouts with smaller Unitree robots earlier this year - spectacles one researcher dismissed as "robot theater."

Tyler Durden Fri, 10/09/2026 - 12:15

RFK Jr. Announces New Clinic For People Injured By Vaccines

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and other officials have opened a new clinic to treat patients with vaccine injuries and announced other new developments on Oct. 8 that they say will change how the government handles reports of health problems following vaccination.

The new National Institutes of Health (NIH) clinic is located on the agency's campus in Bethesda, Maryland. It was opened on Oct. 5, officials disclosed on Thursday. Reporters were not invited to the opening.

The Make America Healthy Again Commission, led by Kennedy, recommended in 2025 starting a new vaccine injury research program at the NIH as part of an effort to investigate vaccine injuries with better data collection and analysis.

The clinic is "dedicated to developing the science of preventing vaccine injuries, making vaccines safer, and most important of all, listening to the voices of people who have suffered vaccine injury, so that we can learn from them and learn from their experience to make vaccines safer," Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, the NIH's director, said in an Oct. 8 video statement.

NIH doctors and researchers will use the clinic to evaluate patients, identify potential causes of health problems, and try to figure out the best treatments, the Department of Health and Human Services, which Kennedy leads and is the NIH's parent agency, said in a statement.

Some NIH researchers studied patients with alleged or confirmed COVID-19 vaccine injuries during the pandemic, but received pushback from NIH leadership. Patients said they were later abandoned by the researchers.

Kennedy, who attended the opening of the clinic, said in a video he posted on Thursday that parents of children who suffered injuries from vaccines, and other individuals with vaccine injuries, "have been marginalized, vilified, demonized, and gaslighted, and they have not received the medical attention they need, and we have not done the studies that need to be done to understand who's vulnerable to those kind of injuries."

That's changing with the Trump administration, he added later.

"I think it was the first time in years that the vaccine-injured have been heard by the health authorities," Brianne Dressen, who was injured by the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, treated at the NIH in 2021, and co-founded a group called React19 representing people hurt by vaccines, told The Epoch Times.

"It is definitely a step in the right direction," added Dressen, who attended the opening.

Other Developments

Health officials also announced three other related developments on Thursday.

Kennedy has said that vaccine surveillance systems the government utilizes, including the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), don't work well. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, another agency under Kennedy's purview, in August solicited bids for a contract to overhaul VAERS, and on Sept. 28 awarded a new contract.

Another move, officials said, will be requiring electronic health records moving forward to include vaccine-related health issues, "so that this information can follow patients across the health care system" and inform health care professionals who are caring for the patients.

Finally, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, another health agency division, is proposing reimbursing doctors for time they spend submitting reports to VAERS.

Tyler Durden Fri, 10/09/2026 - 09:20

DOE Presses PJM On Ratepayer Protections From Large Load Costs

By Ethan Howland of UtilityDive

• The U.S. Department of Energy on Wednesday urged the PJM Interconnection to revise its reliability backstop procurement plan to prevent cost shifts onto existing utility customers from data centers and other large loads.

• PJM should file a proposal by Oct. 29 in response to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s decision last month that the grid operator’s backstop procurement plan needed changes, including to address flaws in its cost-allocation framework, according to the DOE’s “statement of position” filed with FERC on Wednesday.

• “PJM should implement the cost allocation and other reforms identified by the Commission to ensure that the costs of serving new data centers or other large electric energy loads are not unfairly shifted to PJM’s existing ratepayers,” DOE said in its position statement, which appears to be the first one it has filed at FERC in at least five years.

Instead of waiting for a five-month hearing process to play out, PJM intends to file a proposal at FERC to revise its backstop procurement plan by Oct. 29, Jeffrey Shields, a spokesman for the grid operator, said in an email to Utility Dive on Thursday.

Construction at an Amazon Web Services data center on Aug. 26, 2026, in Sterling, Va.

PJM plans to hold a special Members Committee meeting on Oct. 22 to consult with its members on the substance of the upcoming filing, according to Shields. Also, PJM will schedule a special Transmission Owners Agreement–Administrative Committee meeting, he said.

The PJM’s reliability backstop procurement proposal grew out of a fast-track stakeholder process and aims to address a pending capacity shortfall, largely driven by data center demand forecasts. PJM failed to acquire enough capacity in its last two base capacity auctions to meet its reserve margin targets.

The grid operator intends to acquire 6.8 GW of new capacity to make up for a shortfall from the capacity auction for the 2028/29 delivery year, according to a fact sheet on the auction process. PJM may reduce the target to account for new supply that is expected to be added to its system, which spans 13 Mid-Atlantic and Midwest states and the District of Columbia.

However, the backstop procurement originally slated to begin Sept. 30 was put on hold at the last minute after FERC said that parts of PJM’s proposal — those dealing with cost allocation, transmission owner exit rules and load-serving entity collateral requirements — may be unjust and unreasonable.

The agency established a hearing process set to run through February to address those issues, but said PJM could propose its own fixes using guidance FERC included in its order.

In its filing, the DOE supported FERC’s decision, particularly on the agency’s concerns about how the proposal would allocate costs.

“Under the Ratepayer Protection Pledge, large electric energy loads — not American households or other business ratepayers — must fund the electric energy generation and related infrastructure that such new large load projects require,” the DOE said.

Companies committing to the pledge agreed to protect consumers from price hikes driven by large load energy demand and related infrastructure requirements, the department said. Utility companies in PJM’s footprint that signed the voluntary pledge include American Electric Power, AES, CenterPoint Energy, Dominion Energy, Exelon, FirstEnergy and PPL.

The DOE said PJM should adopt FERC’s recommended revisions to its backstop procurement plan to advance the Ratepayer Protection Pledge’s principles.

“DOE shares the Commission’s concerns that PJM’s proposed [reliability backstop procurement] cost allocation model may be unjust and unreasonable,” the department said, noting that FERC found it may not allocate costs to the consumers who caused them.

DOE agreed with FERC that PJM should allocate the backstop procurement’s costs based on updated load forecasts.

“A capability to continuously track whether a project enters into service — and therefore benefits from the capacity and system investments procured to serve it — or is delayed, reduced, or cancelled, can help assign costs for new generation to the customers responsible for those investments,” the DOE said.

Without up-to-date and project-level information, PJM cannot “reliably reconcile its base forecast with Load Adjustments, avoid omissions and double counting, revise the [reliability backstop procurement] target when forecast load fails to materialize, or attribute demand growth to the appropriate zone and load-serving entity,” the DOE said.

PJM’s tariff may omit large loads already included in the grid operator’s baseline demand forecast, leading to flawed cost allocation, according to the DOE.

PJM needs adequate data to identify the large load projects reflected in its forecasts and to monitor their development, the DOE said. 

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