Recent claims of the “Closing of the K” are wishful thinking.

I have a longish piece on this that I plan to cut down to a manageable size soon. But before we can intelligently discuss “K” or “C” or “E,” we need to understand the two arms of the K. In particular, what is the source of wealth of the upper arm? 1

There are many great sources, but the Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances, along with the Fed Z1 Flow of Funds, remains the gold standard.

 

1. Start a Business: At the $25 million level – aka the top 0.1% (UHNW) – it is all about founding and selling a business. This is by far the #1 source of wealth in America.

And no, it is not just Silicon Valley technology startups; rather, it is more mundane, everyday businesses. HVAC roll-ups, car dealerships, trash collection companies, beverage distributors, regional construction firms, medical practices scaled into groups, etc. The liquidity event is a sale to a larger national competitor, a strategic buyer, or a private equity purchaser.

Data from Altrata shows 70% of the UHNW individuals are self-made, with business ownership dominating.

2. Equity: (in someone else’s company). Early employees and executives at a company that IPOs, or a Fortune 500 C-suite, can compound RSUs, options, and performance shares over decades.

Since the mid-1980s, this has been one of the best wealth creation machines; it barely existed before the 1990s.

3. Inheritance and family wealth. 25% of UHNW wealth is inherited. Some of this was a small fortune that the next generation turned into a large fortune (massive market gains since 1982 did not hurt either). There is growing skepticism that the $105 trillion “great wealth transfer” will make this category appreciably bigger.

Surprising not to see this higher on the list

4. Real estate. No surprise here, development and ownership of commercial and residential real estate have been huge wealth creators.

I know quite a few multi-generational family real estate operations and developers who accumulated huge portfolios of commercial/multifamily through the modest, intelligent use of leverage. CRE/RRE are uniquely tax-advantaged via 1031 exchange, depreciation, and step-up at death.

My favorite quote from a buddy in the industry: “It’s the perfect business for your not-so-bright progeny.” (!)

5. Finance. Duh. Hedge fund, private equity, and VC principals, investment banking, trading, wealth management, M&A, you name it.2

And it is one of the few businesses with an inherent 10% structural tailwind built in…

6.  Professionals. Medical center ownerships, major accounting, law, and consulting firms. The key difference between just a doctor or lawyer and an operator is owning the enterprise, not just making money via billable hours.

7. Concentrated public-market positions held for decades. The person who bought (or was granted) Apple, Microsoft, Berkshire in the 80s–90s and never sold. Rare as a deliberate strategy, common as an outcome. Often overlaps with #2.

8. Entertainment, media, and sports. Small but culturally visible, it has become a source of wealth from the business built around the fame. Shaq is a major investor/business owner, Michael Jordan gets huge revenues from Nike’s Air Jordan and has a piece of the Hornets; LeBron is a major investor; lots of actors became moguls by owning a production company, in addition to licensing their name and brand to a product.

9. Franchising. Owning a few dozen McDonald’s, Taco Bells, or Planet Fitness locations is definitely unsexy, but it is a systematic, repeatable way to create predictable revenue over time. That compounds into real wealth.

10. Windfalls and asymmetric bets. Early crypto, lottery-like startup angel checks, litigation settlements, even mineral rights. Very small, and not at all replicable, but it has created some real wealth out there. I hesitated to put this one in because it encourages low-probability (dumb) behaviors, but the numbers back up that this longshot has created actual wealth for a lucky few.

~~~

The bottom-line: nobody gets wealthy on salary and a 401(k) alone.

There is another conversation to be had about what options and opportunities are open to Gen X (and younger). I will come back to that in the future.

 

 

Sources:
Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF)
Federal Reserve Research

Altrata’s World Ultra Wealth Report 2026 Annual Analysis of the Global UHNW Population

Portfolios Across the U.S. Wealth Distribution
By John Bailey Jones and Urvi Neelakantan
Richmond Fed, November 2023, No. 23-39

Trends in the Distribution of Family Wealth, 1989 to 2022
Congressional Budget Office

 

 

 

Previously:
Let’s Talk About Cash… (August 12, 2026)

Wealth Distribution Analysis (July 18, 2019)

Wealth Effect Rumors Have Been Greatly Exaggerated (November 16, 2010)

 

__________

1. Or whatever other ridiculous shorthand for the intricate complexity that is the $32 trillion US economy.

2. The carried interest deduction is arguably the single most efficient wealth-creation mechanism ever devised. And it’s an absolute scam, too.

 

 

The post How Wealth Is Created in America appeared first on The Big Picture.

The post Iran War Sends Housing Starts Tumbling appeared first on CEPR.

Holy Grail In Cancer Treatment? Moderna Erupts After Melanoma Vaccine Late-Stage Trial Success

Moderna's shares soared as much as 83% in premarket trading in New York after its personalized cancer vaccine, developed in collaboration with Merck & Co., reduced the risk of melanoma returning in a large, late-stage trial. The result marks the first positive Phase 3 trial for a personalized cancer vaccine by any company. 

The study met its primary endpoint by showing that the cancer vaccine, called intismeran autogene, combined with Merck's blockbuster immunotherapy Keytruda, improved recurrence-free survival compared with Keytruda alone. The study also met a secondary endpoint by reducing the risk of cancer spreading to other parts of the body.

Professor Georgina Long, the study's principal investigator, medical director of Melanoma Institute Australia, and chair of Melanoma Medical Oncology and Translational Research at the University of Sydney, wrote in a statement:

Today's results represent a landmark moment for adjuvant melanoma treatment. This is the first Phase 3 study to show that intismeran, a treatment designed based on the unique mutational 'fingerprint' of a patient's own tumor, given in combination with pembrolizumab, can reduce the risk of recurrence or death in patients with completely resected stage IIB-IV melanoma compared with KEYTRUDA alone.

Intismeran in combination with pembrolizumab has the potential to establish a new treatment paradigm in the adjuvant melanoma setting, helping patients remain cancer-free for longer.

Moderna and Merck did not disclose exact figures showing how much the therapy improved recurrence-free survival. The trial remains ongoing. Additional details will be presented at an upcoming medical meeting, and the vaccine could receive approval as early as 2027, depending on the regulatory review.

As of 0700 ET, Moderna shares were up 60% and trading around $100 per share. Short interest represents 13.5% of the float, equivalent to 49.8 million shares. Merck shares are up 7% in premarket as well. 

Melanoma is the most serious form of skin cancer. About 112,000 people are diagnosed annually in the US, and about 8,500 die from the disease, according to the American Cancer Society.

"Therapeutic vaccines have been something of a holy grail in cancer. People have been trying to do this for, you know, over 100 years in one way or another," Jane Healy, head of oncology early development at Merck, said in an interview with Bloomberg several weeks ago. She noted that one potential benefit of the personalized shot would be to extend survival without significantly increasing side effects.

Tyler Durden Wed, 08/19/2026 - 07:40

Jeff Currie: Forget $91 Brent, The Real Crisis Is $170 Diesel

Brent at $90.94 looks almost civilized. Jeff Currie thinks that is exactly the problem: everyone is staring at crude while the real energy shock is already showing up in the fuels people actually buy.

As OilPrice reports, "Nobody on the planet earth consumes crude oil,” Currie told CNBC. Refineries do. Everyone else consumes gasoline, diesel and jet fuel, and those markets look considerably uglier.

European diesel was trading around $170 per barrel during the interview, Currie said, almost twice Brent’s current $90.94. WTI was trading at $84.94 Tuesday.

Historically, crude and refined-product prices moved closely enough that crude served as a reasonable shorthand for the broader energy market. Currie says that relationship has broken down.

Part of the disconnect came from roughly 100 million to 120 million barrels of crude trapped inside the Strait of Hormuz following a surge in supplies in late June and early July. China then cut refinery runs, which helped keep crude prices softer but made product supplies tighter.

In other words, China did not solve the shortage. It moved it downstream.

Currie also argues governments have spent decades creating an “illusion of abundance” during supply disruptions by releasing strategic reserves and talking markets down. That strategy has worked before. This disruption, he said, is different because of its scale, duration, and the increasingly tight product market.

The inflation implications are considerably less academic. CNBC noted that gasoline prices are about 30% higher than a year ago, while diesel is up 46%. Diesel feeds directly into trucking, shipping and industrial costs.

Currie expects the crude-product dislocation to eventually correct as refiners chase historically high margins and increase runs.

Until then, $91 Brent may be giving investors a comforting picture of an oil market that consumers stopped living in weeks ago.

Tyler Durden Wed, 08/19/2026 - 06:55

My mid-week morning train WFH reads:

• How Wall Street Sussed Out That Situational Awareness Was on the Ropes: From whispers of Anthropic stake sale to strange options moves, traders sensed trouble and swung into action. The Wall Street Journal’s exclusive on the detection — the prime broker signals, the counterparty chatter, and how the Street smelled the blow-up before the announcement. (Wall Street Journal)

• ‘Buy Now, Pay Later’ Lenders Pitch Loans for Needs Like Electricity and Rent: The New York Times on BNPL’s grim frontier — installment loans for utilities and rent, the clearest signal yet about household financial stress. (New York Times) see also Weak Retail-Sales Number Adds to Softening Economic Data: Retail sales fell 0.6% in July against an expected 0.1% increase; nonstore retailers were down 2.2%. Economists had expected a small increase in retail sales, but July brought surprisingly sour news (Wall Street Journal)

• Go to the mountains, come down from 30,000 feet: Kevin Warsh’s first Jackson Hole speech is a test of the Chair, and of the Fed’s credibility. Stay-At-Home Macro’s Jackson Hole preview — what the symposium can and can’t tell us about the Fed’s reaction function this year. (Stay-At-Home Macro)

• “Vibe Chipping”, Vanishing Moats, & Future Semiconductors: The changes that AI is driving are truly breathtaking:”Cadence says its new AI agents can run hundreds of simulations simultaneously. This reduces a typical five-week verification cycle to less than a day.” (Paul Kedrosky)

• Inside Nvidia’s $500 Billion AI Debt Machine: A Credit Analysis: Who bears the risk in Nvidia’s $500 billion financing platform?  Sascha Steffen’s credit-risk breakdown of the Nvidia-centered financing web — the vendor financing, the circular deals, and the balance-sheet exposure if the capex cycle turns. (Sascha Steffen)

• Tesla’s true believers are starting to question their faith in Elon Musk: As Musk turns his focus to other ventures such as SpaceX, some of his biggest backers are wondering whether his car company has become an afterthought. (Washington Post)

• The death of the stick shift is almost here:  Driving a manual vehicle is a lost art. Hopes of a revival have fallen flat. With the rise of EVs and autonomous vehicles, only a few die-hards are holding on. Todd C. Frankel on Alvaro Puig, who learned the clutch and three pedals in his father’s old manual BMWs in the early ’90s and got hooked on deciding when to shift.  (Washington Post)

• The Enshittification of Big Food: Why the food on your shelf keeps getting worse: Mike Lee traces the 1990 swap of beef tallow for partially hydrogenated vegetable oil in McDonald’s fryers. The trans fats proved more dangerous than the saturated fat they replaced, and by the late 1990s were blamed for roughly 50,000 premature American deaths a year.  (The Future Market)

• Her Brain Was Broken. It Was Fixed With Sound—Not a Scalpel: One woman’s meth addiction was so bad, the only option left might have been brain surgery. Then a single session of noninvasive, focused ultrasound seemed to do what years of treatment could not. Emily Mullin on Erin McNulty, missing for weeks and years into methamphetamine use, and the focused-ultrasound procedure that reached her without surgery. (Wired)

• R.I.P. Columbia House: Here’s How It Improbably Survived This Long It wasn’t music streaming that killed it, because it pivoted. Gizmodo’s obituary for the 12-CDs-for-a-penny empire — the negative-option billing, the bankruptcies, and the zombie afterlife that finally ended. (Gizmodo)

Video of the day: The Ultimate Guide To Absolutely Everything In The Universe

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this past weekend with Dr. Ankur Crawford, EVP and Portfolio Manager at Alger. She heads the firm’s flagship Alger Capital Appreciation strategies. She was an Engineer at Intel, won the Intel Ph.D. Fellowship, and was awarded fellowship Natl Academy of Sciences, Engineering & Medicine, and holds several U.S. patents.  She was recognized as a “Top Women in Asset Management” in 2020 and serves on the board of The Knowledge House, a Bronx-based charity teaching technology skills to underserved communities.

 

Tariff Refunds Are Here—and Turbocharging Earnings

Source: Wall Street Journal

 

Sign up for our reads-only mailing list here.

 

The post 10 Wednesday AM Reads appeared first on The Big Picture.

7 Federal Agencies & Big Pharma Quietly Built A Pandemic-Industrial Complex

Authored by Jon Fleetwood via substack,

Nearly 14 years before COVID-19, HHS created the Public Health Emergency Medical Countermeasures Enterprise (PHEMCE) and centralized federal health, biomedical, regulatory, homeland-security, and military functions around a government-directed countermeasure pipeline.

Creating what this website refers to as the Pandemic-Industrial Complex (PIC).

PHEMCE centralized seven named federal agencies and components (ASPR, CDC, FDA, NIH, DOD, DHS, and VA) across four Cabinet departments: HHS, DOD, DHS, and VA.

Private industry was explicitly inserted into that structure.

HHS named pharmaceutical manufacturers, biotechnology companies, clinical research organizations, and private research organizations.

Then it proposed increasing industry access to HHS agencies, streamlining regulation, lowering obstacles to private investment, and applying liability protections.

The government’s own documents show the same apparatus stretching from threat detection and intelligence assessments through research, product development, regulation, procurement, stockpiling, deployment, and use.

The national-security conflict is obvious.

What happens when the government institutions helping define an alleged biological threat are centralized with the institutions funding research around it, determining what product should be made, regulating that product, buying it, and organizing its deployment?

And what happens if research financed or overseen within the wider biodefense ecosystem contributes to producing the very threat that activates that apparatus?

Congress, the White House, the Department of Energy, the FBI, the CIA, and Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service (BND) all acknowledged that the COVID-19 pandemic was “likely” the result of a laboratory incident involving engineered pathogens.

HHS itself warned in 2006 that laboratory-engineered organisms:

“might even be mistaken as naturally occurring emerging agents.”

That warning makes the conflict much harder to dismiss.

DARPA’s PROPHECY, ADEPT, P3 and PREEMPT programs provide a concrete example of what this PHEMCE architecture looked like inside DOD: military programs moved from predicting alleged viral evolution to sequence-based pharmaceuticals, compressed countermeasure timelines and animal-virus surveillance, while DEFUSE proposed applying that machinery specifically to SARS-related bat coronaviruses.

HHS Creates PHEMCE & Orders Government & Industry to ‘Align & Synchronize’

HHS’s September 8, 2006, draft PHEMCE Strategy states:

“HHS created the Public Health Emergency Medical Countermeasures Enterprise (PHEMCE) in July 2006... The PHEMCE is a coordinated interagency effort led by HHS and charged with the responsibility to: (1) Define and prioritize requirements for public health medical emergency countermeasures; (2) coordinate research, early- and advanced product development and procurement activities to address the requirements; and (3) set deployment and use strategies for medical countermeasures held in the Strategic National Stockpile.”

HHS then defined the reach of the apparatus:

“The PHEMCE Strategy defines the principles and objectives that will guide our Implementation Plan for the entire PHEMCE-surveillance/detection of threats; research, development, acquisition, storage/maintenance, deployment and utilization of medical countermeasures.”

The government justified this concentration by citing alleged CBRN and biological threats, then demanded:

“unprecedented cooperation among all levels of Government, private industry, academia, international partners and the public.”

And under HHS leadership:

“we must align and synchronize efforts on the part of all key stakeholders involved in the PHEMCE.”

HHS also explicitly inserted private industry into the product-development system:

“Private research organizations, pharmaceutical manufacturers, biotechnology companies, and clinical research organizations already have many of the resources and the expertise needed to develop MCM but have been reluctant to make substantial investments in research and development because of market uncertainties.”

Then:

“HHS will work to streamline the regulatory process for medical countermeasures. HHS will facilitate private investment of time, energy and resources in MCM development by removing or lowering obstacles whenever appropriate, including the application of liability protections where appropriate.”

And one passage reveals what HHS itself counted as a “benefit”:

“As with the definition of costs, benefits also go beyond the simple definition of ‘curing disease’ and include concepts such as overall lifecycle of the medical countermeasure including storage, utilization and deployment.”

That is the conflict in plain language.

PHEMCE was not organized solely around whether a product cured disease.

HHS explicitly counted the product’s storage, utilization, and deployment as part of its “benefit.”

The 2007 Plan Turns PHEMCE Into an ‘End-to-End’ Threat-to-Product Pipeline

The April 2007 implementation plan described the centralized structure this way:

“The HHS Public Health Emergency Medical Countermeasures Enterprise (PHEMCE) has taken a holistic, end-to-end approach that considers multiple aspects of the medical countermeasures mission including research, development, acquisition, storage, maintenance, deployment, and guidance for utilization.”

It then names the agencies:

“HHS PHEMCE is a coordinated, intra-agency effort led by the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) and includes three HHS internal agencies: the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Additionally, HHS PHEMCE collaborates with its ex officio members: the Department of Defense (DOD), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and other interagency stakeholders as appropriate.”

The plan then lays out the threat-to-product sequence.

HHS said medical-countermeasure requirements would incorporate:

“subject matter expert evaluations, domestic and international intelligence information”

and immediately moved to:

“Identify and prioritize near-, mid-, and long-term development and acquisition programs”

for products potentially covering:

“the entire U.S. population.”

Government procurement could then be sized to:

“drive industrial development of the medical countermeasure.”

NIH was ordered to align its research with PHEMCE priorities:

“NIH will align research and development efforts with the PHEMCE priority medical countermeasure programs.”

And HHS wanted:

“a sustainable, continuous stream of promising medical countermeasures in the pipeline that are aligned with top priority HHS PHEMCE requirements for future acquisitions”

The same plan sought technologies permitting:

“rapid identification and characterization of novel threat agents”

followed by:

“rapid production of new vaccines.”

That is the architecture.

Threat designation → intelligence → product requirement → research → industrial development → acquisition → deployment.

Bottom Line

The two HHS documents confirm PHEMCE centralized seven named federal agencies and components across four Cabinet departments while explicitly inserting pharmaceutical and biotechnology interests into the same government-directed countermeasure structure.

HHS ordered participants to “align and synchronize,” proposed streamlined regulation, lower barriers and liability protections for private developers, contemplated government financing through clinical trials, and said government purchases could “drive industrial development.”

NIH was ordered to maintain a “sustainable, continuous stream” of products aligned with “future acquisitions.”

And HHS itself acknowledged that laboratory-engineered organisms could be “mistaken as naturally occurring emerging agents.”

In all, the documents reveal the central conflict of the Pandemic-Industrial Complex: the same broader government system can help define an alleged biological threat, finance research around it, determine the product requirements, integrate private industry, influence regulation, create the market through procurement, purchase the resulting products and organize their deployment.

That conflict is no longer merely hypothetical.

A laboratory incident involving coronavirus research is itself a mainstream hypothesis under consideration for the origin of COVID-19.

If COVID-19 resulted from research connected to the same wider U.S.-funded biodefense and pandemic-preparedness ecosystem represented inside this apparatus, the implications would extend far beyond public health: a government-connected research ecosystem could be implicated in causing an international biological catastrophe while interconnected institutions within that wider system possessed roles in assessing its origin, controlling relevant information and intelligence, and directing the resulting countermeasure response.

Who independently investigates the system when the system itself may be implicated?

And if a government-connected research ecosystem can potentially contribute to producing the biological catastrophe, while the wider apparatus can then define the threat, finance the response, create the product requirements, “drive industrial development” and organize deployment, does the resulting emergency expose the system—or give that same system more money, authority, and power?

Tyler Durden Wed, 08/19/2026 - 06:30

Saudis Offer To Sell Oil Near Oman, A Sign They're Sailing Dark Through Hormuz

Saudi Arabia spent weeks finding ways around the Strait of Hormuz. Now it is starting to send tankers straight back through it.

According to OilPrice.com, Saudi Aramco resumed crude loadings from its Ras Tanura and Juaymah terminals inside the strait last week, ending a three-week gap in activity at the ports, according to Kpler and Vortexa data cited by Reuters.

Three VLCCs -- Malaysia Prosperity, Algeria Prosperity and Singapore Prosperity -- each loaded roughly 2 million barrels between August 12 and August 16. Six more VLCCs could load Saudi crude from inside Hormuz later this month, provisional Kpler data showed.

The next round may involve Saudi Arabia’s own ships. According to Bloomberg, Saudi Arabia is offering to sell oil from off the coast of Oman, a sign that the kingdom may be following the United Arab Emirates in shuttling more barrels through the Strait of Hormuz.

Saudi Aramco is offering cargoes on a so-called ship-to-ship basis from locations including Sohar in the Gulf of Oman. The grades being marketed are Arab Medium and Arab Heavy, something that means it’s highly likely the barrels came from inside the Persian Gulf.

For now, the offers are only being made to some Chinese refiners, Bloomberg sources said. Many of the nation’s processors prefer the heavier and relatively sulfur-rich grades produced by Aramco, which are more suited to their complex refineries.

Middle Eastern producers have been pressing ahead with shuttling large volumes of crude out of the Persian Gulf, helping keep a lid on oil prices and assuaging fears of an energy-driven inflation spike. Aramco’s trading arm shuttled some supplies through Hormuz in May, but the kingdom’s ability to divert exports to its Red Sea port of Yanbu made it less reliant on the waterway.

Over the past several weeks, even those diverted Red Sea flows have come under threat after Yemen’s Houthi militants declared a maritime blockade on Saudi Arabia.

There have been recent signs of a pickup in cargo activity from Saudi Arabia’s facilities inside the Persian Gulf. According to satellite imagery, vessels with at least 9 million barrels of transport capacity have loaded at or near the country’s giant Ras Tanura export installations over the past week.

Saudi Arabia has also amassed a large cluster of oil supertankers just outside of the gulf. Seven VLCCs operated by Saudi-based Bahri were sitting off the UAE and Oman on Tuesday, while another two were heading toward Fujairah, according to LSEG shipping data. Traders told Reuters that Aramco could use Saudi-controlled tankers for future Hormuz transits in addition to vessels operated by South Korea’s Sinokor.

That is a notable shift after Aramco halted sales from inside the strait for weeks following attacks on its tanker fleet during last month’s escalation in the U.S.-Iran conflict. 

It does not mean Saudi exports are back to normal.

Aramco is still offering Arab Medium and Arab Heavy crude to Asian refiners through ship-to-ship transfers off Fujairah, allowing buyers to collect Saudi barrels without sending their own vessels through Hormuz.

Its other escape route has problems of its own. Saudi Arabia diverted exports toward Yanbu on the Red Sea earlier in the war, only to face a Houthi blockade there. Aramco has since offered crude from Egypt’s Sidi Kerir terminal, but only about 670,000 barrels per day is expected to load there for Asia this month, versus roughly 4 million bpd previously exported through Yanbu.

Longer voyages and higher freight costs have made that workaround a tough sell.

Tyler Durden Wed, 08/19/2026 - 05:45

Sovereign Debt Crisis: The French Left Wants To Simply Burn The Debt

Submitted by Thomas Kolbe

For economic illiterates, socialists and social-state engineers, the world consists of one fundamental problem: Where does the credit come from that is supposed to turn the visions of central planners into a new reality? Once that question has been answered and the shaky financing is in place, the work can begin.

Ideally, socialists operate in a zero-interest-rate world in which even the most nonsensical projects, from the nuclear phase-out to the construction of wind turbines in forests, debt-financed arms deliveries to the Donbas, or even billion-dollar subsidies for the NGO industry, can be financed.

It is magical: The costs of this artificial credit, this nonsensical government demand, which ultimately has to be paid for through inflation and higher taxes, are concealed behind massive state propaganda and a delayed fiscal response. Cause and effect of government demand are thus separated from one another. Citizens find it difficult to understand why their economy is no longer growing while the state apparatus, meanwhile, is assuming Kafkaesque features.

In an interview with Les Nouveaux Médias, French socialist Jean-Luc Mélenchon revealed his political secret for overcoming the debt crisis. His recipe is socialist, simple and one-dimensional. The French government should simply continue piling up debt, without any controls whatsoever. The European Central Bank could then serve as a kind of bond landfill and purchase surplus securities from the market once saturation has been reached.

This is followed by the unsubtle and predictable trick: The bonds thus neutralized could simply be burned on the balance sheet. They would virtually disappear from the memory of politicians, the public and the bond market. The debt ratio falls as well – the perfect digital money printer, a socialist paradise of unlimited possibilities.

Why has nobody thought of this before? Because the fact is: Which politician has any interest in public controversy and in recognizing that our world does not have unlimited resources, that a genuine problem of distribution exists? The credit pump could solve all problems in this simple world. Nobody would have to give anything up; prosperity would simply be printed into existence. That is how simple it is.

But haven’t we already reached this state long ago? In essence, the European Central Bank has been pursuing precisely such an infantile policy of illusion since the great sovereign debt crisis of a decade and a half ago. And now, once again, the new Transmission Protection Instrument (TPI) stands ready as a vehicle that, if necessary, is supposed to allow bond purchases without a pre-defined quantitative ceiling. Should the bond market give the thumbs-down to the mountain of debt accumulated by Europe’s club of debtors, the deficits will be closed with the credit pump.

Central-bank policy always creates the impression of extreme complexity and absolute control over market events. Bond markets are quantitatively deep, particularly at the so-called long end, the longer maturities of government bonds. It is by no means the case that a central bank could control this market even remotely. Its power unfolds at the short end, which is consequently where market manipulation is concentrated.

Mélenchon then presents his second brilliant idea: common bonds issued by the European Commission and likewise stabilized by the European Central Bank within a specific interest-rate corridor. Germany’s creditworthiness, still the anchor of the EU’s entire debt system, could also have a beneficial effect on interest rates in France, which is over-indebted at around 120 percent.

Mélenchon reveals staggering economic incompetence in an interview. Here is another sample:

Ultimately, according to his conception, this amounts to a triangular transaction: France participates in the Eurosystem through the Banque de France and is therefore indirectly involved in the European Central Bank. If the ECB purchases French government bonds, Mélenchon argues, this amounts to a kind of purchase of its own debt. France would ultimately owe itself credit and could therefore cancel these liabilities itself, provided the bonds were first parked at the ECB.

Only socialists or statists can devise such economic nonsense: borrowing without limits, then simply wiping the mountain of debt out of existence and leaving the people to deal with the inflation created in the process. This is a catastrophic breach of trust and the end of any civilized policy of government.

And consider what kind of policies are being implemented with the state credit pump: from financing the conflict in Ukraine and climate policy to the never-ending mass migration into the welfare state, which, like the pension system, must also be kept liquid with ever-increasing amounts of borrowed money.

Credit as a great political illusion. Credit that relieves the growing pressure for reform from narrow political shoulders in order to stabilize a system that has long since exceeded its economic limits.

Mélenchon is looking at new borrowing of 5.7 percent this year and knows exactly what is happening: The political stalemate in Paris prevents any form of fiscal consolidation.

The political camps are marching hand in hand toward sovereign bankruptcy. And German politics, too, apparently knows what is coming: Eurobonds, a consolidation of debt under the umbrella of the European Commission.

The first major test run: Next Generation EU, the €750 billion common-bond project that Brussels placed on the market during the COVID lockdowns – with German liability and ECB liquidity support, primarily to finance the gigantic deficits of Italy and Spain.

Common debt, known as Eurobonds, will be the inevitable next step in European integration. There can be little doubt about that. The construction of a European military sector alone will consume enormous amounts of resources, just as we have seen with the green command economy. This process is forcing German policymakers to waste seven percent of GDP on subsidies. The state is crowding out the private sector, while its bureaucracy consumes an ever-larger share of the slowly shrinking economic pie year after year: As a result, unemployment rises while private-sector investment is crowded out. The state has no other way to cope than through massive tax increases.

We are watching a financial crash in slow motion. Its final chapter will bring us the usual bailout policies, capital controls and financial repression. Thankfully, Mélenchon has given us some insight into the political mind games – and they are deeply alarming.

* * * 

About the author: Thomas Kolbe, a German graduate economist, has worked for over 25 years, he has worked as a journalist and media producer for clients from various industries and business associations. As a publicist, he focuses on economic processes and observes geopolitical events from the perspective of the capital markets. His publications follow a philosophy that focuses on the individual and their right to self-determination.

Tyler Durden Wed, 08/19/2026 - 05:00

The Super El Niño To Beat All Others?

The World Meteorological Organization predicts the sea surface temperature anomaly in the El Niño/La Niña indicator area in the Pacific Ocean to rise to an average of +2.9° Celsius in the August-September-October period.

As Statista's Katharina Buchholz reports, this would constitute the strongest El Niño since records started in 1950 and could lead to wet and stormy conditions across the entire southern part of the United States starting in the late fall. It could also mean more snowfall in regions that receive precipitation this way. In the Pacific Northwest, the El Niño phenomenon is conversely expected to lead to a dry winter. 

You will find more infographics at Statista

On a global scale, El Niño could cause very dry conditions in the Amazon, which experts fear is reaching a tipping point, droughts in vulnerable regions of Africa and more excess rainfall in parts of South America, Central Asia and the Horn of Africa.

There have been three episodes of very strong average El Niño temperature anomalies of +2° Celsius or more recorded since 1950 – in 1982 at +2.1° C between November and February, in 1997 at +2.4° C from November to January and in 2015 at +2.6° C, also for the November to January period.

This shows that this year's so-called Super El Niño is not only potentially stronger, but also starts earlier.

The WMO additionally said its expects ocean temps to rise further and to peak in November. For La Niña, episodes classified as strong (-1.5° C to -1.9° C) happened in 1973, 1988, 1999, 2000, 2008 and 2010.

During the last Super El Niño in 2015, the United States experienced a record cyclone season in the central Pacific (where Hawaii is located) and a 500-year drought in the Caribbean (including in Puerto Rico), while around the world, 2015 became the hottest year on record at the time and saw a devastating drought in Ethiopia and record-breaking wildfires in Indonesia.

Tyler Durden Wed, 08/19/2026 - 04:15

The Case For Britain Backing Its North Sea Oil & Gas Industry

Authored by David Whitehouse, chief executive of Offshore Energies UK, via City AM,

• Jackdaw and Rosebank could strengthen UK energy security by increasing domestic oil and gas production while demand remains substantial.

• The projects are expected to support billions of pounds of investment, thousands of jobs, and a broad UK offshore supply chain.

• Continued North Sea production could reduce import dependence while preserving engineering skills and industrial capacity needed for offshore wind, hydrogen, and carbon capture.

Britain faces a simple choice. While we still need oil and gas, do we produce more of it here, supporting jobs, investment, energy security and lower production emissions, or do we import more from overseas, which costs more and involves higher emissions? That is the real question facing ministers as they consider Jackdaw and Rosebank.

With extreme weather becoming ever more visible, the need to tackle climate change is beyond doubt. The UK must scale up renewable and low-carbon energy, but people deserve honesty. Even on our path to net zero, Britain will need oil and gas for years to come.

Oil and gas still meet around 75 per cent of current UK energy needs, which is why the decisions facing ministers on Jackdaw and Rosebank are so important.

Jackdaw could provide more than six per cent of UK gas supply by this winter, equivalent to the gas needed to heat around 1.4m homes. Rosebank is another major opportunity to strengthen domestic production while demand remains.

The public consultation on Jackdaw and Rosebank has now closed.

The economic prize is significant. More than £3bn has already been invested in these projects, with total anticipated investment reaching £10.8bn. Over their producing lives, they could contribute £28.7bn to the UK economy and generate £1.4bn in tax revenues before the end of this Parliament.

For readers, this is not an abstract debate. It is about capital allocation, supply chains and whether the UK remains a credible place to invest.

More than 170 UK supply chain companies are already involved. Jackdaw and Rosebank together will support around 3,500 jobs at peak construction, around 880 long-term jobs during production and 125 apprenticeships. Those skills are not yesterday’s economy. They are the same engineering and technical capabilities needed for tomorrow’s energy system.

Industrial strategy

Some argue the fastest route to net zero is to stop new domestic oil and gas production, but if UK production falls faster than demand, Britain will not stop using oil and gas. It will import more. In the process, we hollow out our industrial strength, skilled workforce and supply chains needed to build our energy future.

Production emissions from Jackdaw and Rosebank could be around eight times lower than imported liquefied natural gas. Importing more energy means exporting jobs, investment and emissions accountability.

Approving Jackdaw and Rosebank would not solve every challenge facing the North Sea, but it would send an important signal. There is a £50bn pipeline of potential oil and gas investment that could be unlocked over the coming decade.

That means jobs, tax revenues and energy security. It also means sustaining the supply chain companies Britain will rely on for offshore wind, hydrogen, carbon capture and the wider low-carbon economy.

If the government wants a serious industrial strategy that supports growth, it should back the North Sea during the transition. The alternative is higher import dependence, weaker domestic capability and less influence over the emissions linked to the energy we consume.

The UK should be ambitious about renewables. It should also be practical about the energy system we have today. Backing North Sea oil and gas production while demand remains is not a retreat from net zero. It is a responsible way to get there.

Tyler Durden Wed, 08/19/2026 - 03:30

Germany Opens New Drone Security Center Amid Fears Of Russian Hybrid Warfare

European officials have for years been warning about what they allege is heightened Russian hybrid and sabotage warfare targeting Europe and its airspace in connection with the long-running Ukraine war.

They've been further sounding the alarm in the wake of this month's drone incident near a runway at Leipzig Airport. Reports say a drone carrying explosives was found at this location, which remains one of Europe's largest cargo hubs, and is also used for NATO logistics.

An optical tracking system for drones and small aerial objects, via dpa

A NATO spokesperson later specified with the explosive-laden drone, which was equipped with a detonator, appeared to have been targeting an aircraft belonging to the Ukrainian cargo carrier Antonov Airlines.

This close call incident came in the wake of a series of mystery drone incidents which in some cases paused operations at commercial aviation hubs in northern Europe. While some episodes could have been the result of hobby drones or else local pranks or false alarms, EU officials have still long suspected Russian-linked nefarious actors.

Now Germany in particular is stepping up anti-drone security and monitoring measures, by establishing its first major drone security research center.

The new Drone Security Technology Center is part of the German Aerospace Centre (DLR), and officially opened Tuesday in the town of Cochsted, which is famous for its aviation history. The center will focus on research and technology for detecting hostile or unknown drone activity, protecting critical infrastructure from such incursions.

German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt announced, "Together with the DLR we are creating, with the new technology center, a facility that is unique nationwide, where innovative technologies for drone security are researched, developed and tested in real-life laboratories."

He described the new drone threat facing Germany and Europe more broadly as part of the "shadow war of the 21st century".

Leipzig-Halle airport is a big logistics hub for NATO and Ukraine. An attack with an armed drone on a Ukrainian cargo plane there was less hybrid warfare than warfare, full stop https://t.co/GG98Q1Zbkx

— The Economist (@TheEconomist) August 17, 2026

"Within the growing network of future test-field activities, the National Test Centre plays an integrative role as a trailblazer for future research and development of new UAS technologies within the DLR and for external partners," the center's website states.

The facility will further provide rare opportunity for drones and counter-drone technology to be tested in 'real-world conditions' and in multiple scenarios and settings, officials have described.

Tyler Durden Wed, 08/19/2026 - 02:45

Hellish: Ceuta Mothers Weep In Streets; Rapes Force Women To Flee; Kids' Parks Smeared In Shit

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity News,

Spanish mothers in Ceuta are in tears on live television. Hospitals are overflowing. Beaches and parks that once hosted families are now open-air camps of garbage, feces and makeshift shacks. And the Civil Guard has confirmed at least 15 rapes since the late-July mass migrant invasion - including a 10-year-old girl allegedly assaulted by three migrant brothers.

Women are packing up and leaving the Spanish enclave. Local residents describe a city abandoned by its own government while Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez remains on vacation.

A mother broke down on live TV this week, describing the daily terror for her teenage daughter.

?WATCH: A mother in Ceuta has broken down in tears on Live TV:

"My 16-year-old daughter has to go everywhere with her father or with me because the migrants devour her. I can't take it anymore. I want them all gone."

The left-wing feminists are silent. pic.twitter.com/3dksNYd9IC

— Inevitable West (@Inevitablewest) August 17, 2026

"My 16-year-old daughter has to go everywhere with her father or with me because the migrants devour her. I can't take it anymore. I want them all gone," she stated.

She added, "I'm not racist - my granddaughter is mixed-race, my best friends are Muslim - but they can't invade us. What's stayed here is the worst of it; there are murderers, rapists, thieves."

This is the reality two weeks after an estimated 70,000-plus migrants poured across from Morocco into a city of roughly 84,000 people. Reception centres collapsed. Thousands - largely young men - stayed behind when many others returned. Beaches became the default settlement.

Locals described the rapid transformation of once-pristine stretches such as Trampolín Beach: "We can't take our kids to the beach, we can't go. They are occupied, they are full of shacks, people are eating there, throwing food, it's full of clothes, feces, urine."

? CEUTA Residents Furious!

Small Kids Can't Go To The Park Anymore, Families Cannot Go To The Beach No More, There's P*ss And Sh*t Everywhere

This is our beautiful Spanish City in Africa, we have to defend it

Residents gathered in front of Ceuta's town hall in anger today for... pic.twitter.com/IVwZg6X3iz

— Active Patriot (@ActivePatriotUK) August 17, 2026

Children's parks across Ceuta have been left covered in human waste by the invaders, even as progressive voices continue claiming everything is under control and "normality" has returned.

Invasores llena de mierda los parques infantiles de Ceuta.

Pero los progres te dicen que todo está controlado y que impera la normalidad. pic.twitter.com/ut3OPKYV3H

— David Santos (@davidsantosvlog) August 18, 2026

Infectious diseases including scabies, tuberculosis and impetigo have surged. Ceuta University Hospital opened an emergency disaster wing. One doctor warned of a "health catastrophe."

Ceuta's basically turned into a full-on slum at this point.

Thousands of illegal migrants are living right on the beach in these rough shacks thrown together from straw and sticks.

Officials are managing cases of tuberculosis, scabies, impetigo, and gastroenteritis, while... pic.twitter.com/eHuEVKivS6

— I Meme Therefore I Am ?? (@ImMeme0) August 16, 2026

A local doctor attempted to speak with the Spanish migration minister Elma Saiz about the scourge of diseases the migrants are spreading, putting Spaniards in danger.

? LA MINISTRA DE SANIDAD NO QUIERE HABLAR CON ESTA DOCTORA

Y luego va la Mema diciendo que en Ceuta no hay colapso sanitario. pic.twitter.com/GZ12nVKqAJ

— Betania (@BetaniaTv) August 16, 2026

Decían que les importaba mucho la pandemia de la COVID-19 y nos obligaban a vacunarnos y llevar mascarillas hasta en exteriores y ahora van camino de provocar una pandemia con la situación de insalubridad que se vive en Ceuta.

Increíble.pic.twitter.com/BR0EbTggNU

— Javier Negre (@javiernegre10) August 16, 2026

Saiz made a speech literally saying that 'diversity is our greatest strength'.

She stated, "I want to highlight the responsibility, civic commitment, and maturity that the citizens are demonstrating. Ceuta is a true example of coexistence. A city in which different cultures, traditions, and faiths coexist. And which has demonstrated over decades that it is one of its greatest strengths."

Elma Saiz reivindica la "pluralidad" y la "diversidad" de Ceuta: "Quiero poner en valor la responsabilidad, el compromiso cívico y la madurez que está demostrando la ciudadanía. Ceuta es un verdadero ejemplo de convivencia. Una ciudad en la que conviven diferentes culturas,... pic.twitter.com/TZ8Kg5DEqg

— RTVE Noticias (@rtvenoticias) August 17, 2026

Another doctor, nearly in tears on television, described every hospital overrun, medicine running out, and staff afraid of being attacked. She said the streets, parks and football fields are filled with migrants and she is afraid to leave her house. Sexual assaults are rising. The Spanish government, she said, has abandoned its own citizens.

A doctor in Ceuta is almost crying on live television.

Every hospital is completely overrun with migrants. Rooms are full. Medicine is running out. They even opened a dedicated hospital for migrants, and that one is full too.

Doctors are afraid to treat them.
They're scared... pic.twitter.com/rcU2qaxViu

— Yossi BenYakar (@YossiBenYakar) August 16, 2026

The Civil Guard has now confirmed 15 rapes since the invasion. The latest reported case involved three migrant brothers allegedly sexually assaulting a 10-year-old girl on Lisboa Street.

Earlier reports detailed multiple underage Moroccan girls and at least one boy treated for sexual assault at the hospital. Many of these minors have been sleeping on the streets.

Two sisters, Yoli and María José, said they left the city with their daughters out of fear.

"What we are going through is very hard and it is very hard to hear journalists justify this Government, justify everything. We can't take it anymore, we feel humiliated, trampled. I have had to take my daughters out of their house because the Government does nothing, because Mr. Pedro Sánchez is on vacation in La Mareta. Nobody cares about us," Yoli told news organisation Cuatro.

Other women described needing escorts just to walk to their front doors, or waking to find a migrant in underwear in their bed after he climbed a balcony.

One resident reported that a BBVA bank branch had to close because security could no longer guarantee customers could withdraw money after a guard was beaten by a large group of migrants while trying to stop the robbery of an elderly woman.

? "A resident of Ceuta reports that they have had to close the BBVA because the security personnel cannot guarantee that customers can withdraw money.

A BBVA security guard was beaten by 40 engineers yesterday when he tried to stop them from robbing an elderly lady."... https://t.co/gy57oLwQIy

— Nature (@TurquoiseOceanB) August 17, 2026

A pregnant woman described families feeling unsafe amid migrant-related fights and called for stronger action from Spain.

?? Ceuta woman on migration tensions.

In a viral video, a pregnant resident says families feel unsafe due to migrant-related fights and calls for stronger action from Spain. Claims unverified. pic.twitter.com/srkC1L2xUz

— Donald Andy (@today__today) August 16, 2026

Residents Pilar and Elena urged government figures to visit Ceuta and see the situation for themselves, stating "We live here, we don't just come for a weekend," while elitist leftists sitting in TV studios in Madrid scoffed at them.

?? Ceuta residents Pilar and Elena are calling on Marta Sanchís to return to the city and see what they are experiencing firsthand.

"We live here, we don't just come for a weekend," they said.
pic.twitter.com/hkwmevMWaF

— NewsForce (@Newsforce) August 17, 2026

Another local resident spoke with visible distress in a street interview, gesturing emphatically as she described the daily fear and loss of normal life for Ceuta families under the ongoing occupation of public spaces.

She notes that she feels she cannot leave the house without pepper spray as she's afraid for her life, adding that the Spanish politician "motherfuckers" have allowed rapists and convicted criminals to invade and roam free.

pic.twitter.com/HZcOWhZxKE

— Victor VS ???? (@victor_vs) August 17, 2026

Ceuta mothers are now demanding the school year be delayed. "I would not let my daughter come to school alone," one said. Another insisted the schools themselves "should be fumigated before any children are allowed back in."

Las madres de Ceuta piden el retraso del inicio escolar:

"Yo no dejaría que mi hija se viniera sola al colegio"

"Los colegios deberían ser fumigados para que los niños puedan entrar" pic.twitter.com/V3x6MZ46Gy

— Pablo Haro Urquízar (@pabloharour) August 18, 2026

This all follows the past weekend's attempt at a second mass crossing. Hundreds of migrants tried to push from Castillejos. Spanish and Moroccan security forces turned them back with tear gas and a heavy deployment. Calls for a new wave on 15 August had circulated widely online.

Nuevo intento masivo en la frontera de Ceuta.

Cientos de migrantes intentan cruzar desde Castillejos y las fuerzas de seguridad lo frenan. pic.twitter.com/duSviz0USh

— Alerta Global (@AlertaGlobal24H) August 16, 2026

Thousands of those who remained from the first wave are now holding mass protests on the beaches, demanding asylum and transfer to mainland Europe. NGOs are reportedly helping produce the signs. There is talk of a hunger strike.

?? Thousands of illegal migrants in the Spanish enclave of Ceuta are holding mass protests demanding asylum and to be sent to mainland Europe. pic.twitter.com/HoAy8Jlt8N

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) August 17, 2026

VÍDEO: ? Los migrantes siguen manifestándose en la playa del Trampolín: "No comida, asilo", en su segundo día de huelga de hambre reivindicando que no quieren volver a Marruecos pic.twitter.com/wltlumHRHf

— El Pueblo de Ceuta (@ElPueblodeCeuta) August 17, 2026

White liberal women volunteering for the NGOs continue to welcome and assist the new arrivals on the ground in Ceuta, openly supporting the occupation while local mothers flee.

White, liberal, fat, and ugly women welcome Muslim invaders in Ceuta. pic.twitter.com/t6ftTeeE1I

— RadioGenoa (@RadioGenoa) August 18, 2026

? Ceuta Migrant Crisis: These migrants ain't going nowhere, look at the help and handouts they're getting, they're demanding asylum and they will no doubt get it

Only a show of strength by both governments stopped a second wave, but how long will this show of strength last... pic.twitter.com/jUGEStUMVJ

— Active Patriot (@ActivePatriotUK) August 16, 2026

This is Ceuta. Pro-Islam white liberal women are a huge problem. They want to destroy Europe. pic.twitter.com/AgXKJAfcU0

— RadioGenoa (@RadioGenoa) August 18, 2026

What are they claiming asylum from? These are not people fleeing a country shattered by war or natural disaster. Morocco is a stable state that receives millions of tourists every year. The overwhelming majority are economic migrants seeking better opportunities, not refugees.

?? «Las ONG les incitan a la protesta para exigir el asilo. Ellas son las que incluso les están haciendo los carteles. Se habla de posible huelga de hambre si no consiguen el objetivo».

?? «The NGOs are inciting them to protest in order to demand asylum. They're even the ones... pic.twitter.com/CCe1SS1VQs

— Rubén Pulido (@rubnpulido) August 17, 2026

Footage shows new arrivals landing on the sand and immediately chanting "Allahu Akbar."

?Beach day in Ceuta just got a soundtrack no one asked for.

Clandestine arrivals from Morocco land on the sand... and the first words out of their mouths? "Allahu Akbar."

Not "hello."

Not "thank you."

Not "we're seeking safety."

Just the same chant, loud and clear.

If this... pic.twitter.com/KpuZL2MOZt

— The Patriots Voice ??????? ?? (@Proudofthisland) August 17, 2026

Camps of cardboard and plastic continue to expand along the shore, complete with football games and laundry lines on what was Spanish beach.

? Lo que no verás en la tele: así crece el campamento en la playa de Ceuta.
Chabolas de cartón y lonas. Fútbol, baños y espera.
Esto ya no es una crisis humanitaria" de unos días.: es un asentamiento permanente junto a la frontera.
El vídeo muestra otra cosa: un poblado de... pic.twitter.com/k527c5BiNE

— Jesús Vazquez ?????? (@jesusvazquezb) August 16, 2026

? It's only taken 2 weeks for third world immigrants to turn Ceuta into a sh*thole pic.twitter.com/q6N1zwSlL1

— Active Patriot (@ActivePatriotUK) August 16, 2026

Migrants have also set up an improvised mosque on El Trampolín Beach itself.

?? Inmigrantes CREAN una mezquita improvisada en la Playa de El trampolín (Ceuta) pic.twitter.com/VEyvpi0QFI

— Actualidad Noticias (@Actualidad_Pol) August 18, 2026

Throughout the crisis, Spanish government spokesmen and much of the legacy media insisted the migrants had almost all returned to Morocco and that "reasonable normality" had been restored. Left-leaning voices repeated the line.

The reality on the ground - permanent-looking settlements, daily protests for asylum, and residents too afraid to let their daughters outside - shows otherwise.

Ceuta's women are voting with their feet. Families are sending children to the mainland. Parks and beaches that belonged to locals two weeks ago no longer do.

The open-border agenda that turned a Spanish enclave into a third-world camp overnight is being defended by the same voices who claimed the problem had already solved itself.

How many more European cities will be asked to absorb this nightmare before there is meaningful action and change?

Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

Tyler Durden Wed, 08/19/2026 - 02:00

Alexander Vindman Suffers Double-Digit Loss To Socialist Angie Nixon In Florida Senate Primary

Alexander Vindman - a central Russiagate figure who flipped out when Donald Trump asked Ukraine to investigate Biden family corruption - and who was offered the job of Ukraine's Minister of Defense three times two months before the infamous 'perfect' Trump-Zelensky call - was just beaten out of a Florida Senate seat by Democratic Socialist Angie Nixon, 44-56 in Tuesday night's primary.

Vindman and Nixon - a state Rep., were vying to take on incumbent Republican Sen. Ashley Moody (R) in November. Meanwhile, Alexander's twin brother Eugene Vindman is a current US Rep. from Virginia. 

Nixon, a recent convert to the Democratic Socialists of America and a vocal critic of Israel, was expected to lose to Vindman - a Jewish immigrant born in Ukraine, who raised over $16.3 million for his campaign. Nixon brought in $975,000 and achieved a double-digit victory.

Screenshot: NY Times

"We showed the world what organized people can accomplish," Nixon told supporters Tuesday night. "And we showed the world what people of Florida are all about. Medicare for all. Universal child care. Real, affordable housing. Fully funded public education. And an end to senseless wars."

The DSCC also responded to Nixon's victory, with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-NY, and DSCC Chair Kristen Gillibrand, D-NY, saying in a joint statement.: "Angie Nixon has dedicated her career to fighting for Florida. A lifelong native of Jacksonville and a former union organizer, Angie’s dedication to put working families first runs deep - and now, she’s running to take that fight to the Senate."

During the campaign, Nixon slammed Vindman for being a recent Florida resident.

In 2023 she introduced a resolution in the state House calling for "de-escalation and ceasefire in the state of Israel and occupied Palestine," and said last week that she would have supported a congressional resolution in July that would have stripped Israel of $3.3 billion in military aid. 

"I would have voted in support of that, because we cannot continue to send money to countries that are violating international law, that are violating human rights, that are actively destroying," she told WMNF radio in Tampa. "Throughout my adult career, I have fought for the safety and the well-being and the humanity of all people. And me stating this does not make me antisemitic at all."

Tyler Durden Wed, 08/19/2026 - 01:27

We're All On Borrowed Time...

Authored by Brad Todd via The What For Substack,

We bought our house in the same year I discovered Piemonte, and that was fortuitous. The house came with a walk-in wine cellar and the family-owned vineyards strewn across the rolling Italian hills from LaMorra to Serralunga D'Alba provided a learnable collection of producers to fill it up. It is a good thing I have enjoyed the chore of curating this wine because I will not get to enjoy drinking it.

This afternoon, maybe even as you read this, I will be in a long surgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital to remove a nasty high-grade malignant tumor from my ethmoid sinus. It is a distant cousin of the cancer blob I had cut out in 2020, after an unnecessary Covid test speared loose a hunk of tumor I did not know was there. The pandemic saved my life once, and it put me in contact with the crackerjack medical team at the world's best otolaryngology unit that will save it again.

Sinus tumors are rare - though I prefer the term "exceptional" as only hundreds of people a year battle these bastards. After what will be a rough post-surgery recovery, I will get radiation and maybe a lagniappe of chemotherapy. But I will not be savoring my amazing Italian wine collection. After my 2020 surgery, I lost my sense of smell for about six months, and my taste overall for a little less than that. My olfactory receptors were removed from my left nostril, but I started with a bloodhound's nose so half of that was plenty to keep. Wine was still complex and wonderful as soon as I recovered from that surgery's trauma. But not this time, not with this surgical plan.

The question I am asking, and also suggesting for you, is what other wine did I store and not drink?

What other wine can I drink when this is all done?

Before I knew cancer was back, I had a conversation last month with someone about getting over it the first time. I told her, as I have often said, "you cannot un-hear that your body is trying to kill you." She immediately asked me: "what did you change?"

I gave two answers, one applied to work and one to home.

First, I said cancer made me adopt a professional policy of only giving the same good advice twice. The younger version of me would lay awake at night grinding on how I might get clients over the hump on a strategic decision they were resisting. Cancer in 2020 made me a more disciplined advisor. Sen. Dave McCormick, whose winning campaign I helped guide in 2024, often says he is glad he "got the post-cancer Brad." As a former CEO and Army officer who has made a career of perfecting leadership, he could see that I had developed perspective on how to sit on a running horse, in jockey terms, and dig in my heels only, and exactly, when it was critical.

On the personal side, I told my friend that enduring cancer in 2020 made me put my kids' big moments at the top of my priority list. The first time I left the house after surgery, too early of course, was to coach my daughter's rec softball team. It was excruciating and exhilarating at the same time. Then, over her four years in high school, I missed exactly one re-scheduled, rained-out prep game to my knowledge, and I have yet to miss my son playing football - though this Friday night's scrimmage is in doubt. There was one freshman baseball game, with one at-bat, up Interstate 270 at rush-hour that I could not reach. I made it to the recitals, the voice contests, the awards ceremonies, the parent chapels and school plays. I made them all, save one where she had just four lines. I skipped work meetings that were billed as essential. I rebooked CNN hits. I even ducked out on TV commercial shoots when I could not schedule them around the ball games and plays. I kept the main thing the main thing, and still do. Thank goodness cancer found me right before my kids hit the high school phase of important activities instead of finding me afterward, because I could have easily screwed this up based on my prior professional trajectory.

But I did still store up the wine.

My collection is mostly Barolo, the King of Italian wine, though there are some Barbaresco bottles, some California strays, and a handful of cheap but complicated Sagrantino vintages from Umbria that few Americans have discovered yet. I got hooked on single-cru wines, meaning they are made with grapes grown on the same small patch of ground, with the same sunlight. Over time I have listed toward the steeper crus that surround the village of Serralunga D'Alba, deciding that the Prapo cru is the best, though the higher-elevation Monvigliero cru is also a charm and Lazzarito a treat.

Art Credit: brunolo.nl

I have long-ish Barolo verticals by G.D. Vajra, my favorite producer, in the delicate Bricco Delle Viole and the easy-drinking Ravera crus, bottles of which I bought my surgeon and his assistant the week after my 2020 tumor resection, with a promise we would all drink them simultaneously when I hit the five-year-all-clear mark that cancer patients universally point toward.

That celebration happened last fall, and statistically speaking, I should not be fighting the same tumor in Year Six. But tumors do not keep calendars. Now I must undergo a medical path that will certainly obliterate my ability to savor Italian wine but save my life in the process. It is a fair trade that I am willing to make.

The imminent loss of my ability to appreciate this stored asset is making me contemplate what else I under-savored over the last six years.

One thing is vacations. Our family did not take one this year; we just did not carve out the time. My wife and I also punted our 25th Anniversary trip for the third year in a row. We now intend to take it in December after radiation, paired up with a speech I am giving. But I am a little ticked off we have not done it three times, instead of skipping it three times. Early in our marriage we took a great anniversary weekend every year and they are life highlights for me; we are highly compatible in travel habits and those trips bring out our beautiful integration. We fly by the seat of our pants, having the same high tolerance for uncertainty. We once went to Europe with exactly nothing planned for the last half of our itinerary until after we were on the continent. The resulting spontaneous side trip to Chamonix, hiking and then sitting poolside staring up at Mont Blanc with no agenda, was the unexpected dead-stop recharge we needed.

After this current crap is over, she and I will take more trips. Spending time with her, doing whatever she wants, has to be elevated as an aspiration on my post-cancer agenda. We have spent 19 years doing a darn good job of child-rearing together and I think the post-parenting phase of "us" also will rock.

I also intend to read more books. Substack has been a great addition to my life because it took over some of my X doom scrolling, but it also has been a parasite sucking away time I formerly devoted to literature. That needs to be rectified, as I am only halfway through Cormac McCarthy's library and that is unacceptable progress for a 56-year-old East Tennessean. Reading books overall has cratered in our society, so I am not alone in that, but I can do my part.

I volunteered more after cancer for charity and church initiatives I care about - but some of that may be attributable to aging as much as surviving. All of us should inventory our give-back quotient as we hit our peak executive years when we can do the most good. Stacking cans at the food bank is great but coming up with a plan to get weekly milk deliveries is more impactful.

Showing up has always been a good trait of mine - friends' funerals, moving days, performances have always hit my calendar - but I will probably up my percentage closer to 100 after this. Church services in general have been a bigger deal in my life since 2020 - my faith did not need an accelerant, but my worship discipline did. I recommend it. Cancer probably made me a little bolder in publicly professing my own faith - or a little less self-conscious about acknowledging it, even if it was live on CNN. I recommend that, too, and I predict I will be even more uninhibited now.

Live music is something I probably did not expect to elevate based on a medical diagnosis, but it will happen this time. Some of the highlights of my middle age have been great concerts. A show on a New York City rooftop this summer with my wife and kids and the Turnpike Troubadours, my favorite band, was the single best two hours of 2026 for me. The next Turnpike show in Richmond in October should coincide with commencement of my radiation and I hope to make that happen. Since my musical daughter loves shows too, and my son and I share a genre taste, I will pro-actively put big shows in concrete on the calendar, even if we must travel to get there.

The next few days will be a rough ride after at least seven hours of surgery - followed by a couple miserable weeks on the couch with my face full of surgical packing as I taper pain meds. I will binge shows on all the streaming platforms and grumble that college football is not yet here while staring down my fat but snuggly dog. Together, he and I will make a longer mental list of things I intend to do with the next, hopefully long, tranche of borrowed time God has given me.

You can make that kind of list, too, without the anesthesia and face-packing I will get, as all of us are on borrowed tranches of God-given time whether we learn that from a radiologist or not.

Drink the wine.

Make the game.

See the show.

Tell the people you love that you love them, out loud.

Pray a little more - and throw in a prayer for your favorite columnist.

Tyler Durden Tue, 08/18/2026 - 23:25

Why Are So Many Democrats Being Arrested On Fraud Charges?

An obvious pattern is emerging.  Multiple Democrat officials have been arrested and charged with fraud or related federal crimes over the past two years and the trend seems to be growing.  Democrat politicians and DNC members are over-represented when it comes to fraud and it's starting to look like the entire party has been pilfering the cookie jar for quite some time.

In the latest incident, Lawrence, MA Mayor Brian DePeña faces federal charges for allegedly using Covid-19 relief money meant for his tire business to fund his political campaign and pay personal debts, according to court documents.  His charges include: Wire fraud; aiding and abetting, and unlawful monetary transactions; aiding and abetting.

Records indicate that an arrest warrant was issued Thursday. City Council President Jeovanny Rodriguez confirmed DePeña was arrested Friday.  Neighbors described FBI agents shouting through a bullhorn outside the mayor's home early in the morning and using a battering ram to force open his door. 

This incident has developed right as another official, Former New Mexico Democrat House leader Sheryl Williams Stapleton, has just been convicted of 31 felony charges for diverting millions of dollars of school funds to her friend’s company while receiving kickbacks.

After the exposure of migrant fraud in Wisconsin and California linked to Democrat and left-wing NGO operations, it surprises no one that politics is one big criminal enterprise, for Democrats in particular.  Republican officials are not free from such charges; a handful of mostly low profile cases have occurred since 2024.  That said, when Democrats go for fraud, they go big, and many of these cases involve the misappropriation of covid relief funds.

In other words, the pandemic was a money-making bonanza for Dems, and a lot of this money was used to pay for campaign operations.

U.S. Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (Democrat, Florida) was arrested in November of last year and charged with 15 federal counts, including theft of government funds related to allegedly stealing approximately $5 million in FEMA disaster relief for the Covid crisis. 

Prosecutors say the money had been overpaid to her family’s health-care company (Trinity Healthcare Services), which held a contract to register people for Covid-19 vaccinations. Within two months of receiving the funds, more than $100,000 was allegedly spent on personal items, including a diamond ring for the congresswoman.  She also allegedly pumped millions into her own campaign operations.

It's not unfair to suggest that Democrats may have believed they were going to retain political power for years to come (many Americans view the covid event as an engineered coup).  Unfortunately for them, the Biden regime did not stay in office or destroy conservative opposition, so now they are under a microscope.  And, under the light of scrutiny, the ugly deeds of 2021-2024 are being exposed.

Tyler Durden Tue, 08/18/2026 - 23:00

Where Have All The Conservatives Gone?

Authored by Nikolai G. Wenzel via The Daily Economy,

Fusionism, a new book by Stephanie Slade, a Senior Editor at Reason, attempts to make sense of the seemingly incoherent New Right. Although Slade proposes a renewal of fusionism as a remedy to conservatism's drift and the challenges facing a divided Republic, the book's greatest strength lies in its analysis of the trends to date.

The Republican Party, for all its faults, was supposed to understand (instinctively, if not always intellectually) limited government, rule of law, and the basics of economics. From its elected leaders, though, we have gotten tariffs, increased public debt, dodgy respect for habeas corpus in immigration enforcement, and the Saturday Night Live tragicomedy of DOGE (a virtue-signaling, clumsy, and cruel flash in the pan destined to die on the vine when it removed entitlements from the chopping block). The coalition that constitutes the New Right has abandoned conservatism, and instead sells its own form of populist interventionism.

Slade starts by painting a rather glum sketch of the contemporary scene. Within the convoluted and heterogeneous mess she labels "the Dissident Right," she identifies three major strains:

1. the predominant national conservatives, who are eager to use the coercive power of the modern administrative state to advance (allegedly) conservative causes and push for national primacy;
2. the theocons, who dream of "immanentizing the eschaton" by creating a state theocracy to impose (their understanding of) a transcendent moral order;
3. the neoreactionaries, the Pajama-Boy Nitzscheans who have been given legitimacy to spew their blend of vitriol and conspiracy.

The NatCons have turned their back on the basics of markets and skepticism about administrative power (how sad in this 250th anniversary year of The Wealth of Nations!). The theocons would repoliticize salvation after three centuries of religious tolerance within Christendom. And, beneath all that, the country's baser instincts toward power and suppression are flourishing within the neoreactionary right. On the other side, the interventionist excesses of American socialism, with DEI, cancel culture, and continued growth of the administrative-welfare state, are equally horrifying. To paraphrase Richard Nixon, we are all interventionists now.

The titular Fusionism is shorthand for the collaboration of old-school conservatives and libertarians that held in America from 1945 to 1989, or thereabouts. Members of that alliance disagreed on details, but shared a horror for the rise of collectivism, the welfare-administrative state, and the existential threat of communism.

Slade's personal history of the movement is a rich and readable complement to some of the deeper treatments of the ideas (notably George Carey's magisterial compendium, Freedom and Virtue: The Conservative/Libertarian Debate, and my own work with Nathan Schlueter of Hillsdale College, Selfish Libertarians and Socialist Conservatives? The Foundations of the Libertarian-Conservative Debate). Slade's arguments are clean and incisive, and the prose is a pleasure to read, even if Slade occasionally indulges in the journalist's déformation professionnelle of descriptive wordiness.

Slade points to several explanations for the rise of the Dissident Right: the failed gamble of China's accession to the WTO without subsequent human rights improvements, the post-2007 bank bailouts, the costly debacle of attempted nation-building in Iraq and Afghanistan, immigration, those left behind by globalization, and the authoritarianism of DEI.

These are all plausible. But I suspect that Slade is a bit too kind: the American administrative-welfare state is the real villain in this story. First, because it caused most of the problems that have energized the Dissident Right (crowding out of civil society, a culture of dependence, and erosion of the family). Second, because income inequality in the US is associated with cronyism replacing genuine economic activity - a problem exacerbated by the gutting of K-12 and college education standards by educrats, along with the rise of regressive regulation, including job licensing. Third, because the Dissident Right doesn't see the irony: its proposed use of the state is exactly what generated the outcomes it decries.

In just half a century, the US shifted from teaching Latin and calculus in high school to teaching basic English and algebra in college. It took a mere generation for discourse to collapse from Ronald Reagan's gentlemanly and beautiful oratory to Donald Trump's boorish grade-school-level word salad. What happened, in discourse and substance, between 1989 and 2016? Slade points to the populist conservative Pat Buchanan, but we could also mention Dick Cheney; the vice president was more refined, but also a lot more effective at pushing the power of the unitary executive and expanding the administrative state. There have always been "proto-Dissident Right" voices in America, Slade argues, but they were once kept in check by a loose coalition of libertarians, decent folk, fusionist conservatives, and the communist threat. The pre-1968 Dixiecrat segregationists, the Evangelical Christian Right under Reagan, Pat Buchanan, Dick Cheney and the more radical neocons under George W. Bush were always there. But there was always accountability, restraint, and public decency.

President Trump is tapping into real ills and soul sicknesses in American society and the American economy; but he is doing so in an ugly way that appeals to the lowest common denominator. Even FDR, Huey Long, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama, for all their interventionist instincts and actions and their loose interpretations of the Constitution, operated under a veneer of respectability, and showed some shame when they got caught with their pants down.

Slade proposes a renaissance of fusionism as an antidote to the Dissident Right, in a bid to save both the Republic and the Spirit of '76. She reminds us that political analysis will require new language. In a similar spirit, I have long argued that the left-right taxonomy once made sense - in post-1789 France, where the left represented the Jacobin radicals like Robespierre, the centrists were today's classical liberals, and the right favored a return of the monarchy. But the Dissident Right is a misnomer. This modern movement Slade names does not align with the American conservative tradition, and is thus not clearly of "the Right." Even if it seeks nativist or religious or other allegedly conservative goals, it does so by promoting an increasingly intrusive and muscular central government.

How little we have progressed since 1944, when F.A. Hayek dedicated The Road to Serfdom to "the socialists of all parties."

Today's classical liberals are, indeed, alone in a two-front war. The paternalistic Left and the Dissident Right both aggressively push for social and economic control. Liberty, limited government, and free markets have few defenders. Fusionism is an appealing alliance, as Slade proposes it. But who will be the fusionist warriors for individual liberty? Where are the moderates to defend private property? Where have all the pro-business, small-government, free-trade conservatives gone? We can hope that there is a Nockian Remnant out there, biding its time while the dissident storm passes. In the meantime, the libertarian wing of fusionism stands alone, as core agreements have largely been abandoned by those who still call themselves conservatives, but now need hyphenations to distinguish conservatism from their preferred flavor of interventionism.

Nikolai G. Wenzel is Professor of Economics at Universidad de las Hespérides and Associate Research Faculty Member of the American Institute for Economic Research. He is a research fellow of the Institut Economique Molinari (Paris, France) and a member of the Mont Pelerin Society.

Tyler Durden Tue, 08/18/2026 - 22:35

Illegal Immigrant Killer Found Not Guilty By Insanity, Flees US During Hospital Leave

An illegal immigrant found not guilty by reason of insanity in a 2019 killing managed to flee the United States on a one-way flight to his native Tajikistan while on an approved 48-hour pass from a state mental health facility.

Now a Soros-backed prosecutor is under fire for his pattern of pursuing insanity pleas for violent offenders who are illegal immigrants.

Steve Descano, commonwealth's attorney for Fairfax County, Va., speaks at an event at the Center for American Progress about Virginia’s newly elected progressive prosecutors. (Getty Images)

In 2022, a court committed Abdulloi Toshpulodzoda after finding him not guilty by reason of insanity in the 2019 killing of his landlord, Mohammad Hemmatian, in Vienna, Virginia. Officers who reached the scene found him covered in Hemmatian's blood. He told them, "I am guilty.” Investigators believed Islam-inspired attitudes drove the violence.

Toshpulodzoda left the Northern Virginia Mental Health Institute (NVMHI) in Falls Church on July 6 under an unaccompanied 48-hour pass, a privilege allowed under Virginia law for certain committed patients. Instead of returning, boarded a Turkish Airlines flight at Washington’s Dulles International Airport to Istanbul, and continued to Dushanbe, Tajikistan, according to airline records attached to court filings.

The escape came mere days after a Fairfax County judge ruled that Toshpulodzoda still needed hospitalization. "On June 29, 2026, this Court found that the Acquittee remained mentally ill and in need of inpatient hospitalization," court documents state. 

This was not the first time authorities let Toshpulodzoda move outside a locked ward without an escort. He traveled to Washington, D.C., in 2024 to obtain a passport, and the Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office, led by Steve Descano, supported the trip. 

NVMHI placed Toshpulodzoda on escape status once he missed the deadline, revoked his pass, and issued a facility warrant. Virginia State Police, federal authorities, and U.S. Customs and Border Protection all received notice of the case, and CBP issued an alert in case he tries to reenter the country. 

"Abdulloi Toshpulodzoda was found by clinicians to be insane at the time he killed Mohammad Hemmatian – a legal finding that means the Commonwealth would be unable to secure a conviction at trial,” the Fairfax County Commonwealth's Attorney's office said in a statement. The office said prosecutors have opposed his release at every annual review hearing, including in June, and that a bench warrant went out the moment they learned he had escaped custody, adding that he "will be arrested and brought to Virginia" if he reenters the country. The Fairfax County Commonwealth's Attorney's office, NVMHI, and Turkish Airlines did not respond to requests for comment.

Descano has been in office since 2020. His campaign received funding from left-wing megadonor George Soros. His office has pursued insanity agreements for 13 accused murderers claiming they were unfit for trial, and Descano himself has managed to survive two recall efforts over his criminal justice record.

 Toshpulodzoda's case fits a pattern the group has flagged for years: violent defendants, including illegal immigrants, funneled toward insanity findings that keep them off the felony docket and, evidently, sometimes off the continent entirely. The group posted on social media Monday, "Across Virginia, ONLY 50 killers got insanity pleas nowhere else gave more than two." Virginians for Safe Communities said of Descano, "They aren't crazy, he's just lazy."

A spokesperson for Descano's office told the Washington Examiner that independent evaluators declared Toshpulodzoda mentally ill and left prosecutors no legal path to a conviction, an explanation the office has given in prior cases. "To be found legally insane, both a defense expert and a separate, independent expert for the prosecution evaluate the defendant," the spokesperson said. "If the Commonwealth's expert finds the defendant to be legally insane, there is functionally no way to get a conviction at trial." The spokesperson said a prosecutor's role narrows to annual review hearings once such a finding is entered, and noted that, in Toshpulodzoda’s case specifically, prosecutors repeatedly asked that he remain confined due to community safety concerns, including as recently as June.

Toshpulodzoda's disappearance is not an outlier for Descano's office. Seven months earlier, a Fairfax County court declared another accused killer, Joshua Danehower, legally insane under an agreement with Descano's team. Danehower fatally shot a charity CEO in his own home in 2022 after he grew obsessed with the CEO's wife and drafted written plans to break into the house, according to police. 

Descano's poor prosecutorial discretion record has attracted the attention of the Justice Department, which announced an investigation in May into whether Descano gives "preferential treatment" to illegal immigrants in prosecutorial decisions.

Tyler Durden Tue, 08/18/2026 - 22:10

Minority Leader Jeffries Drops The Mask, Signals Democrats Are Coming For The Court

Hakeem Jeffries has developed a habit of saying out loud what his party once preferred to keep vague.

Hakeem Jeffries (photo: Anna Moneymaker, Getty)

Speaking at the National Association of Black Journalists convention in Atlanta, the House minority leader told the audience that Democrats see "[a] variety of different options that are on the table, and I think we can't foreclose on any single one of them" when it comes to the Supreme Court. The options under discussion include adding justices and imposing 18-year term limits on the ones already seated. The man floating them runs the House Democratic caucus and stands one election away from the speaker's gavel.

Jeffries also described the Court, in the same appearance, as "a subsidiary of the MAGA Republican Party."

For years, Democrats have been more cautious about openly discussing expanding the Supreme Court, but now they're not even hiding their intentions. Speaking at the National Urban League Conference in Nashville earlier this month, former Vice President Kamala Harris endorsed expanding the court to thirteen justices.

"We need to revisit the point of expanding the court to 13 justices like we have 13 District Courts," she said.

There are 94 federal district courts. There are 13 circuit courts. If the number of justices is supposed to match the number of lower courts, Harris picked the wrong number - or the wrong argument.

NBC's Kristen Welker put the question to Jeffries on Meet the Press on Sunday, noting Harris's comments on the issue. Jeffries declined to say yes, and he declined to say no. "What I support is dramatic reform, and what that looks like, to begin with, is making sure that the Supreme Court actually has an ethical code of conduct so that they're not able to simply conduct themselves in ways that are inconsistent with the notion in this country that no one is above the law," he said.

Then he named names. "We've seen right-wing justices like Thomas and Alito engage in behavior that is ethically questionable at best," Jeffries said. "That has to change, because the American people should have confidence in the highest court in the land." The ethics talk served as the on-ramp. He went on to describe reforms needed to deliver a court "functioning like a separate and coequal branch of government," and pointed to the Callais decision, where, according to Jeffries, "the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in ways that do the bidding of extreme MAGA Republicans who turned around in the deep south and unleashed these Jim Crow-like tactics, yes, I have a problem with that. It's inconsistent with the law and with the Constitution."

The same Court has ruled against Trump on birthright citizenship and on his tariff agenda, and he has won a lopsided share of the cases he has brought before it. Jeffries has not explained how a subsidiary rules against its parent.

What will those "reforms" look like? Jeffries wouldn't say, but told Welker, "Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, and other Judiciary Committee Dems are going to take the lead on what dramatic reform of the Supreme Court looks like," Jeffries said. A caucus assigns committee leads for legislation it intends to write, and such legislation exists to change who wins cases.

A group of Senate Democrats introduced a bill last month establishing 18-year terms and creating a Supreme Court appointment every two years.

The math, of course, is a problem for this. Any such bill needs 60 votes in the Senate, and, as president, Trump can still veto anything the Democrats might pass. Democrats understand both facts, which makes the quieter half of Jeffries' message worth a closer read. He endorsed major changes to Senate rules so a bare majority can pass legislation, and he invoked the last attempt, when Democrats held Congress and the White House under Joe Biden, and tried to nuke the filibuster for their election reform bills. The only thing that stopped that from happening was Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.), who refused to go along with the scheme, but neither is in the Senate anymore, and the party is much more unified today.

This is why Trump, who has seen the same math, has been warned that a Democratic majority will kill the filibuster to remake the court as a left-wing institution, and has urged Republicans to beat them to the punch, nuke the filibuster and help accelerate his agenda while they can. Trump has separately demanded that Jeffries apologize for calling the Court illegitimate.

Jeffries' comments make clear that Democrats have no qualms about gutting longstanding institutions to make them work more for their party and its agenda, which means what's at stake in the upcoming midterms and the 2028 election is bigger than just who controls Congress or the White House, it might very well change how our government works.

Tyler Durden Tue, 08/18/2026 - 21:20

Forbes Editor Fired Over $6m Payoff Had Threatened Companies Who Dared Hire Outgoing Trump Admin Officials In 2021

Authored by Monica Showalter via American Thinker,

Remember how vindictive the political scenario after Joe Biden first took office? It wasn't just the draconian prosecutions of Jan. 6 protestors, most of whom were non-violent and unarmed, many of them little old ladies. One guy got sent to jail who wasn't even at the scene of the Capitol crowd control incident.

Randall Lane at the ‘Forbes’ 50 Over 50 Luncheon on Dec. 8, 2022. Credit :
Cindy Ord/Getty

There also were the blacklisters. They vowed to hunt down and punish one in one way or another any former official who spent time in the Trump administration, putting them on public lists to ensure that none would be able to find future employment. It was vicious stuff and there were former Trump small fry who were unable to get jobs after leaving the White House for no other reason but this..

The scandal-plagued Lincoln Project drew the most publicity for this blacklisting project, but there was also another skeevy group called the Transition Integrity Project, and together with the Lincoln Project Stasi-wannabes shared big-dollar donors. Both kicked off their blacklisting plans around the same time in the early part of 2021, seemingly coordinating their talking points. I wrote about that here.

There was a third advocate for blacklisting, too - this guy, Randall Lane, the chief content officer at Forbes magazine.

He wrote this:

Whoa. @Forbes chief content officer warns against hiring @kayleighmcenany or other prominent Trump flacks: "Hire any of Trump's fellow fabulists above, and Forbes will assume that everything your company or firm talks about is a lie." https://t.co/KeXF2gVXVV

— Andrew Feinberg (@AndrewFeinberg) January 9, 2021

According to NPR:

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

Communications officials from the Trump administration might have a hard time finding work after January 20. That's at least what the chief content officer of Forbes is hoping. Citing numerous lies by various press secretaries throughout the Trump administration, Randall Lane wrote a column, warning businesses this way - if you hire any of Trump's communications officials, Forbes will assume that everything your company or firm talks about is a lie. To talk more about this is Randall Lane. He joins us now.

Welcome to the program.

RANDALL LANE: Thanks, Audie.

CORNISH: So was this inspired by the violent sacking of the Capitol last week, or is this something you've been thinking about for a while?

LANE: A little of both. First, to clarify, we were just talking about the four press secretaries, plus Kellyanne Conway - the people who are paid by the American people to talk to the American people, to inform the American people. And looking at Wednesday night, there was no way to look at that and not recognize that that entire day was built on a foundation of lies. The people who were in the Capitol believed what they'd been told about rigged election. And again, that was based on lies. There needs to be a reset, and we need to hold ourselves to an accountability standard where truth and facts matter because that's the path forward for a healthy democracy.

CORNISH: I'm going to reveal some bias here and ask - you know, part of the job of political communications, as I have experienced it, is to spin - that it's rarely straight facts.

LANE: Yes.

CORNISH: What was different about this experience to you?

LANE: Yes. The job of press secretaries sometimes is a lie of omission or it's a spin. But never have we had, in modern history, an administration where up was down, right - you know, blue is yellow. Sean Spicer set the tone from Day 1 when he asked Americans to not believe their eyes when he's saying, this was the largest inauguration in history. And again, that's a trivial fact. But that's also what made it so bad because it established from minute one that there was no standard for what the truth is. And that's what's different.

As a matter of fact, no, it's not different. All you have do do is look at the statements of Jen Psaki or Joe Lockhart to recognize the real lies. Somehow, those press secretaries didn't bother him.

This was just naked Trump hate, or some kind of talking points obedience as it came at the same time as the other two organizations beating that drum. Very disgusting to see in an editor who clearly was consumed by his own political hatreds, which only made themselves known at that moment. Weird, really.

Turns out this guy was on the take, though, and got fired from his job because of it, failing to disclose a $6 million payment from R.J. Shook, a content partner, in a transation explicitly forbidden by Forbes rules and its handbook. He, uh, forgot.

Really?

It's a rule everyone would have known about and would have been carefully enforced and I know this because I used to work there 20 years ago. I cannot imagine any of the great editors of Forbes I worked with - Bill Baldwin, Tim Ferguson, Laurie Minard, Nigel Holloway, or Luisa Kroll, to take a few examples, ever doing such a thing, it wouldn't happen, they were always very careful to avoid any conflicts of interest or violations of the rules, and they always kept politics out of their writing. They were extremely conscientious editors. They had integrity.

He didn't. So the question raised now is whether someone paid him off for that vindictive call for blacklists of former Trump officials. I have found no evidence it was R.J. Shook or Shook Research, they only revealed that Lane was buyable for the right price. The fact that Lane took big dollars, from Shook Research, which had an interest in rankings of money managers, probably indicated some kind of quid pro quo. So was there another payoff from somewhere else for the loud calls to blacklist? We know the donors were donating. That might be worth looking into given the egregious nature of what he did.

Tyler Durden Tue, 08/18/2026 - 20:55

Derek Chauvin Seeks To Dismiss Charges In Death Of George Floyd

Derek Chauvin's legal team filed a new court petition Tuesday morning seeking to dismiss the charges against the former Minneapolis police officer and vacate his convictions, arguing that the case that sent him to prison for the death of George Floyd rested on a foundation that never had legal standing to begin with.

Attorney Greg Joseph submitted the 31-page filing in Hennepin County, alleging that Gov. Tim Walz, Attorney General Keith Ellison and the Hennepin County Attorney's Office engaged in unlawful and fraudulent conduct when they brought the case against Chauvin. The central claim is procedural: a grand jury never reviewed the state’s evidence, and, under Minnesota law, Joseph argues that this omission means the state never lawfully brought the charges in the first place.

“Hennepin County District Court Judge Peter Cahill presided over a year-long due process violation by failing to convene a grand jury to consider the State’s evidence at any point between the moment he was assigned to the case, and the verdict,” the filing reads. “He lacked jurisdiction over the charges, as this Court does, because they were never lawfully brought.”

Joseph told Alpha News reporter Liz Collin the conduct amounted to a serious breach.

"What was done here is shocking," Joseph said. "It's inexcusable."

The petition places much of the blame on the trial court itself. It states that Hennepin County District Court Judge Peter Cahill presided over what it calls a year-long due process violation "by failing to convene a grand jury to consider the State's evidence at any point between the moment he was assigned to the case, and the verdict." The filing goes further, arguing Cahill "lacked jurisdiction over the charges, as this Court does, because they were never lawfully brought."

That argument extends up the chain of command. Joseph contends Walz's decision to hand the prosecution to Ellison was itself an unlawful appointment, and that Ellison used authority he never had to add a second-degree murder charge to the complaint against Chauvin. Hennepin County prosecutor Amy Sweasy withdrew from the case against the officers involved and, according to court documents cited in the filing, disagreed with the decision to pile on additional charges. 

Part of the reason for this is that the case unfolded amid extraordinary political pressure. Minneapolis erupted into riots for days after video of Floyd's detainment and death went viral. Elected officials rushed to condemn Chauvin, and activists made clear that anything short of a murder conviction would be treated as a miscarriage of justice. 

Joseph's petition suggests that pressure extended into the charging decision itself, with Walz and Ellison escalating the case to a murder charge that Hennepin County's own prosecutor did not support. 

According to the petition, “Because Hennepin County's unlawful charges against Mr. Chauvin were not severe enough for the mob, Walz referred the case to Keith Ellison, who signed and e-filed a second unfounded complaint against Derek Chauvin that included the murder charge it wanted."

Chauvin is serving two concurrent sentences, 22.5 years on the state second-degree murder conviction and 21 years on federal civil rights charges tied to Floyd's death. Joseph's petition argues the entire proceeding is unreviewable on its own terms. "It is impossible to assess the trial errors in State v. Chauvin because the entire trial was a fraud; it was based on unfounded charges that were never properly before the Court."

Joseph acknowledged the due process argument is a late addition to years of post-conviction efforts. "In a very short period of time there were very fundamental and basic violations of due process," he told Collin. "And those aren't necessarily things that defense attorneys normally look for."

The filing arrives alongside a separate, ongoing push for clemency that has run through conservative media and social platforms for more than a year. Elon Musk shared a video on X last year calling on President Trump to pardon Chauvin. While Trump holds the power to pardon Chauvin's federal civil rights convictions, the state sentence, the longer of the two, sits outside his authority.

Tyler Durden Tue, 08/18/2026 - 20:30