My morning reads:

• What 125 Years of Data Really Tell Us: Behind the Balance Sheet’s deep dive into 125 years of market returns — what the data actually shows vs. what people think it shows. The survivorship bias in historical return data is larger than most investors realize. The most valuable lessons from a great investment database. (Behind the Balance Sheet)

• Big Companies Are Starting to Hire Again, Defying Predictions of AI Wipeout: The AI job apocalypse hasn’t materialized — at least not yet. Major companies are adding headcount, not cutting it. The hiring data contradicts the doom narrative. After a year of holding back on new hires, companies from tech and transportation to defense now say they need more people to work alongside AI (Wall Street Journal) see also What is really happening to jobs? Separating AI hype from reality. AI’s effects on overall employment is likely small, though a tough job market for new graduates may be partly due to AI. AI’s impact on worker productivity is mixed but generally positive. Firm adoption has accelerated but unevenly across the economy. Early evidence is hardly the last word on the future of work in an AI world. Stanford’s policy brief on the actual — not projected, not feared, but measured — impact of AI on employment. The reality is more nuanced and less dramatic than either side claims. (Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research)

• Compass Employees Made Their Own Report That Says Their Private Listings Sell For More: Housing Notes catches Compass producing self-serving research to justify its controversial private listing strategy. The methodology doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. (Housing Notes)

• How Meta Got Everything It Wanted in a Secret Louisiana Data Center Deal: The Times investigates a data center deal that gave Meta enormous tax breaks, cheap power, and minimal oversight — all negotiated behind closed doors. A Times examination details how the Silicon Valley giant used private talks with local officials to start a project big enough to cover nearly six square miles. (New York Times)

• AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decision-Making. I strongly believe there are entire companies right now under heavy AI psychosis and it’s impossible to have rational conversations with them about it. I can’t name any specific people because they include personal friends I deeply respect, but I worry about how this plays out. (Two versions of the same argument — the rush to deploy AI in critical systems is producing worse decisions, not better ones. The hype is outrunning the capability). (Ludicity)

• Inside the growing vigilante movement to knock out Flock surveillance cameras: An underground network of privacy activists is disabling or destroying the ubiquitous surveillance devices sprouting up across the US. (The Guardian)

• The Bone Rush: Dinosaurs have become an asset class for billionaires. And the market is about as orderly and genteel as a starving T. rex. (Bloomberg free)

• Stop Saying Kids Can’t Read: Everyone is talking about the reading crisis. But inside the “Mississippi Miracle,” it’s all about comprehension. (Wired)

• Greenland shark genome reveals clues to 400-year lifespan: In 2026, scientists assembled the Greenland shark’s 5.9-billion-letter genome and examined retinas from animals more than a century old, finding intact vision, expanded DNA-repair pathways and unusual chromatin machinery inside a vertebrate believed capable of surviving for nearly four centuries. (Make Tech Easier)

• The predictable disgrace of the White House Correspondents Dinner: And why I reject every specious argument that encourages the media to keep normalizing Trump. Margaret Sullivan on why the annual celebration of press-power coziness was even worse than usual this year — and what it says about journalism’s inability to adapt to an authoritarian moment.And why I reject every specious argument that encourages the media to keep normalizing Trump (American Crisis)

Video of the day: Best ever, hilarious letters of complaint

Be sure to check out our latest Masters in Business interview with Lori Heinel, Global Chief Investment Officer of State Street Investment Management, the money management arm of investing giant State Street. She oversees over $5.7 trillion in assets (as of year-end 2025), which includes everything from index funds and ETFs to active strategies, multi-asset solutions, and alternatives. She was named to Forbes’ 2025 “50 Over 50” list.

 

The top 1% now hold as much wealth as the entire bottom 90% of Americans combined — about 32% each

Source: @SteveRattner

 

Sign up for our reads-only mailing list here.

 

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

Russia Says Fuel Crisis Is Easing As Refineries Restart

By Charles Kennedy of OilPrice.com

The fuel crisis in Russia has started to ease in recent days as some refineries have restarted operations, Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said on Sunday.

“The situation is gradually stabilizing, a number of oil refineries became operational again. The balance is better now, and the situation at fuel filling stations has considerably improved, including when it comes to supplying agricultural producers,” Russian news agency Interfax quoted the official as saying.

“The situation remains quite tense in some regions, especially in some regions in Siberia. We are effectively resolving issues of fuel supply manually at the federal headquarters with regions and companies,” said Novak, who added that the crisis “situation is temporary.”

Amid peak demand season, Russia has been suffering from gasoline and diesel shortages for more than two months now, as Ukraine’s drone campaign to strike Russian refineries forced many large processing sites offline in the spring and early summer.

Early this month, Russia banned diesel exports to protect its domestic supply, creating a ripple effect on the already tight global diesel market.

Since the spring, Ukraine has been expanding its offensive to cripple supply in Russia by targeting fuel supply routes and vessels, alongside a persistent campaign to hit Russian refineries and force them out of operation.

In recent weeks, Ukrainian attacks turned their focus on targeting Russia-linked vessels in the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea, with more than a hundred vessels hit by drones, per the Ukrainian military.

The Russian oil export terminals on the Black Sea have also gone offline in recent days, following Ukrainian attacks.

Russia's largest Black Sea oil export terminal, Sheskharis terminal at Novorossiysk, effectively went offline last week, just days after drone attacks shut down the neighboring Caspian Pipeline Consortium terminal, tightening another artery that moves crude onto the global market.

The suspension of the CPC terminal loadings led to Kazakhstan cutting oil production, with output at Chevron’s giant Tengiz field reportedly falling by more than half as storage filled and producers were forced to reduce pipeline flows.

Tyler Durden Tue, 07/28/2026 - 05:00

Guess Who? First Foreign Leader Visits Burnham, UK's New Prime Minister

Guess who?... None other than Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has touched down in the UK for his meeting with new UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham.

"Volodymyr, you are the first head of state or government I have congratulated since taking office as Prime Minister. And that is no coincidence. It is intended to send a very clear message: We stand 100% with Ukraine," said Burnham.

The PM only took office last week, and Zelensky marks Burnham's very first international visitor. For Zelensky, Burnham is the fifth British prime minister since the Ukraine war started.

Naturally the first thing Burnham did on the foreign policy front was to pledge his "unwavering support" to Ukraine, "both through the war and beyond."

This is yet more affirmation of Burnham's intent to carry on with and expand on Britain's hawkish policies related to Russia and the Ukraine war which have persisted going back to Boris Johnson at the opening of the February 2022 conflict.

The UK was the earliest out the gate among Western powers to ship heavy weaponry to Kiev, and its support has only grown since.

Burnham while hosting Zelensky announced the UK is sharing the intellectual property of its "Stone Cloak" electronic jammers, which aim to interfere with Russian air defense systems, allowing drones and missiles to better penetrate Russian positions.

"Stone Cloak is the best of homegrown British innovation and proven on the frontline, and it will be vital to protecting our security in both our countries," Burnham said. According to more from the visit:

Burnham said the visit of the Ukrainian president was designed to "send a very clear message" about the UK's continued support.

"To put it simply, Volodymyr, I want you to know that we've got your back, you can count on me and you can count on us. You can count on the UK for as long as it takes," he said at a naval base in Portsmouth on Monday.

Zelensky, meanwhile, said Ukraine's relationship with the UK was "stronger than ever".

Addressing Zelensky, Burnham said: "I am personally with you 100%, Mr President, and I will honour every commitment this country has made to Ukraine in full."

Burnham added that he intended to visit Ukraine "soon" following the "very warm meeting" between the pair.

The prime minister also warned Moscow "should be in no doubt of our resolve" and that the UK would "not backdown until we achieve long lasting and just peace for Ukraine."

Zelensky held his first meeting with Andy Burnham on HMS Queen Elizabeth in Portsmouth. pic.twitter.com/Ojk69Quhtg

— Clash Report (@clashreport) July 27, 2026

Zelensky was hosted for the meeting aboard the aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth docked at Portsmouth on England's south coast. After the Monday events in the UK, Zelensky is headed to Washington to meet with President Trump.

Burnham said the leaders had "talked at length" about Ukraine's need for more interceptors to shoot down inbound Russian missiles, "particularly in terms of Ukraine protecting critical national infrastructure during the winters."

Tyler Durden Tue, 07/28/2026 - 04:15

Erdogan's Ottoman Gambit: Turkey Prepares For New Regional Order

Authored by Chris Macintosh via InternationalMan.com,

Turkey is simultaneously dumping US Treasuries, deepening Russia’s energy embrace, rolling out a tax regime to poach capital fleeing the Gulf… and squaring off against an Israeli political class that now speaks openly of Turkey as an enemy. It’s strategic.

Turkey sold nearly all of its US Treasury holdings in March — cutting them from $16 billion to just $1.8 billion in a single month. The official narrative frames this as emergency reserve management amid a weakening lira and inflation running above 32%. But the mechanics of financial stress don’t explain the direction of travel. Nations don’t systematically dump the debt of their allies.

President Erdogan has been explicit.

In a recent address he cast Turkey as “one of the shining stars of the new era,” invoking the restoration of Ottoman-era influence across the region. Turkey vehemently opposes Israel’s operations in Gaza, and in Ankara’s strategic calculus, Washington and Tel Aviv are increasingly viewed as a single entity. The Treasury sell-off is as much a political signal as a liquidity operation. The Turkish government has smelt blood in the streets and wants to capitalise on the situation.

The energy relationship with Russia tells the same story. Rosatom’s Akkuyu nuclear plant — a build-own-operate project in which Russia retains ownership for decades — just received a further $9 billion in Russian financing, with $4–5 billion deploying in 2026 alone. Turkey has loudly advertised its renewable credentials and a 2053 net-zero target, but Akkuyu sits outside that narrative entirely. When it comes online it will supply roughly 10% of Turkey’s electricity and lock in a structural strategic dependency on Moscow that no solar panel cancels out. Turkey talks diversification; it acts with ruthless pragmatism.

The Iran conflict has handed Erdogan an unexpected opportunity on the capital side.

The disruption to Gulf Cooperation Council financial hubs — Dubai chief among them — has put mobile, internationally structured wealth back in play. Investors who relocated to the UAE for zero-tax treatment are now reassessing. Into that gap, Turkey’s parliament on recently passed Erdogan’s flagship fiscal incentive package — nine permanent structural reforms that together represent one of the most aggressive capital attraction plays of the decade:

1. 0% income tax on foreign earnings for 20 years

2. 1% inheritance tax on all wealth

3. Full citizenship from $400,000

4. 2% one-off tax to repatriate overseas assets, no questions asked

5. 9% corporate tax — permanent

6. 0% tax on trading through Turkey

7. Business registration in one day via AI-assisted process

8. Machinery and equipment imports: duty-free, 0% VAT

9. Mortgage overhaul: 10% down payment, terms up to 25 years

The last item deserves particular attention. The mortgage reform isn’t just a financing tweak — it unlocks millions of first-time Turkish buyers who were previously priced out of the market.

That domestic demand surge lands at precisely the moment foreign capital begins flowing in under the new tax regime. Turkey’s residential real estate market was already undersupplied. The combination of newly bankable local buyers and inbound international capital chasing a low-tax domicile points to a meaningful price cycle ahead — at minimum in Istanbul and the coastal cities where foreign demand concentrates.

The architect of Istanbul’s financial hub ambitions goes back to at least 2009, when former Deputy PM Nazim Ekren was championing Atasehir as the anchor of Eurasia’s financial capital. Aran Hawker, who provided trading infrastructure to Istanbul’s exchanges in 2011, expects wealth repositioned not only from the GCC but from North America, Europe, and the UK — from people “not happy with political situations in those respective countries.” Istanbul Finance Centre transit trade income is now fully exempt from corporate tax through 2047.

The Greater Israel Shadow

Beneath the fiscal and energy calculations runs a darker strategic undercurrent — one that Ankara is acutely aware of and Western analysts largely ignore.

The expansion of Israeli strategic ambition across the region, accelerated by the Gaza operation and the broader Zionist maximalist project, now has Turkey explicitly in its crosshairs.

The Bosphorus — the narrow strait connecting the Black Sea to the Mediterranean, through which a significant share of global energy and grain trade passes — is not simply a Turkish asset. It is one of the most strategically significant chokepoints on earth. Control of it, or the ability to influence who controls it, is a prize that serious regional powers do not ignore.

Israeli political figures have begun to speak with unusual candour about Turkey as a threat rather than a competitor. Israeli Minister of Culture and Sports Miki Zohar stated plainly:

“We must begin to treat Turkey as an enemy state.”

Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett went further, framing Turkey in the same breath as Iran:

“A new Turkish threat is emerging. We must act in different ways, but simultaneously against the threat from Tehran and against the hostility from Ankara.”

These are not fringe voices. When a sitting minister and a former head of government use the language of simultaneous threat management for both Iran and Turkey, they are signalling a strategic posture — one that has obvious implications for NATO cohesion, for the future of the Bosphorus as a neutral passage, and for the stability of the broader region.

Erdogan reads this clearly. The deepening of Russian energy ties, the rejection of US debt, the cultivation of Ottoman-sphere influence — these are not reactions to Gaza alone. They are pre-positioning against a regional order that Turkey now judges to be hostile to its existence as a sovereign power.

The Greater Israel project, in its maximalist form, envisions territorial and political influence stretching from the Nile to the Euphrates. Turkey sits at the northern edge of that strategic horizon. Control or destabilisation of the Bosphorus would fundamentally alter the balance of naval power in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea — a prize of the highest order for any power seeking regional hegemony. Whether or not one assigns full credibility to the maximalist reading, the signals from Israeli political leadership are sufficient for Ankara to treat the threat as real and plan accordingly.

A NATO member that sells US debt, builds Russian nuclear plants, courts capital fleeing Western disorder, and now faces explicit identification as an enemy state by Israeli leadership is not drifting. Rather, it’s repositioning on every front simultaneously.

The picture that emerges is coherent and accelerating….

Turkey controls the Bosphorus. It borders the Middle East, maintains NATO’s second-largest military, and imports the energy that geopolitical conflict makes more expensive — hence the inflation, the rate pressure, and the reserve burn. But Erdogan’s response is not to seek Western reassurance. It is to deepen the Russian energy anchor, signal alignment with the Global South’s reading of the Gaza conflict, position Istanbul as the beneficiary of Gulf instability and Western political dysfunction, and quietly fortify against a regional order that now names Turkey an adversary. The Treasury dump is one data point in a larger sequence. The Ottoman ambition is the frame. And the clock is moving faster than most investors realise.

*  *  *

Turkey’s repositioning is part of a much larger shift now reshaping the global economic and political order. In our special report, Clash of the Systems: Thoughts on Investing at a Unique Point in Time, a contrarian money manager explains the forces driving this transition, the risks they pose to your wealth and personal freedom, and how you can position yourself to stay one step ahead. Get instant access to the special report here.

Tyler Durden Tue, 07/28/2026 - 03:30

Kazakhstan Restarts CPC Oil Exports After Week-Long Black Sea Shutdown

Kazakhstan has resumed crude exports through the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) on Monday after the operator reopened its Black Sea marine terminal and resumed accepting crude from producers following a week-long suspension triggered by drone attacks, Kazakhstan’s Astana Times reported. 

Two tankers were loading crude from the Chevron-led Tengizchevroil project at the Novorossiysk terminal, while producers resumed delivering oil into the CPC pipeline system, Kazakhstan’s Energy Ministry said according to OilPrice.com. The ministry added that export operations would continue subject to ongoing security assessments.

The reopening follows last week’s suspension of crude intake and tanker loadings at the terminal after repeated drone attacks on vessels operating at or near the facility. Kazakhstan subsequently ordered producers to curb output to prevent storage facilities from filling after access to the export system was cut off.

Industry data cited by Reuters showed Kazakhstan’s oil and gas condensate production fell to 133,200 metric tons, or about 1 million barrels per day, on Sunday, down from an average 2.16 million bpd in June.

CPC separately confirmed pipeline operations resumed at 12:28 p.m. Moscow time. The ministry did not indicate how quickly production would return to normal levels.

The 1,500-kilometer CPC pipeline transports crude from Kazakhstan’s giant Tengiz oilfield across southern Russia to the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk and carries more than 80% of Kazakhstan’s crude exports. International producers including Chevron and ExxonMobil rely on the route to move Tengiz production to global markets.

The Chevron-chartered Suezmax tanker Asia was also positioned at the terminal on Monday, according to LSEG vessel-tracking data cited by Reuters. Chevron said it continues to monitor the situation at CPC but declined to comment further, the company told Reuters directly. 

The disruption briefly removed more than 1 million bpd of Kazakh production from the market, adding another supply risk as global oil flows remain under pressure from disruptions affecting both the Black Sea and Middle East shipping routes.  

Tyler Durden Tue, 07/28/2026 - 02:45

The 'Southern Front' Of The Ukrainian Conflict Is Heating Up

Authored by Andrew Korybko,

The most recent phase of the Ukrainian Conflict has been characterized by the “war of attrition” that the US has been waging against Russia through Ukraine after Trump decided to “escalate to de-escalate”.

This has thus far taken the form of drone strikes against energy infrastructure, online retailers, and maritime shipping in the Black, Azov, and now even the Caspian Seas.

It’s this last-mentioned aspect that forms the basis of the present analysis following Ukraine’s weekend strikes on targets in the Caspian.

According to Ukrainian sources, their forces struck an offshore oil extraction platform, a cargo ship and cargo vessel that were sanctioned for their alleged role in the Russian-Iranian arms trade, and a missile boat. If confirmed, then this represents the most eastward expansion yet of Ukraine’s campaign against Russia’s maritime shipping after attacking its Black Sea Fleet over the years and recently causing enough chaos to suspend shipping in the Sea of Azov, which is linked to the Caspian by the Volga-Don Canal.

Of relevance, some of the oil that Russia produces there is shipped across that canal en route to Crimea and the global market, so targeting Caspian oil extraction platforms and suspending shipping in the Sea of Azov are part of a larger strategy. The plan appears to be to slash the Kremlin’s revenue, cause domestic fuel shortages with a view towards provoking political unrest, and exacerbate the attempted drone-enforced “blockade” of Crimea. This broad “southern front” is therefore very significant.

Casual observers from the West might thus be under the impression that the Ukrainian Conflict’s overall dynamics have shifted in Kiev’s favor as a result of the above-mentioned developments, but they’d do well to know that Russia has drastically ramped up its strikes against Ukraine’s Black Sea infrastructure.

This recently resulted in Ukraine suspending shipping across that naval corridor for the first time since 2023 in the most important achievement thus far of Russia’s new “systematic strike” campaign.

While Odessa remains out of Moscow’s reach, and there was never any attempt to capture it since the special operation began, the recent attacks against its infrastructure are clearly meant to demilitarize it (at least for now). After all, it’s from Odessa that Ukraine launches its naval drones against Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, and it’s also where Ukraine receives some of its maritime arms imports. It’s therefore arguably long overdue for Russia to take its port out of operation as well as all of Ukraine’s other Black Sea ones.

The radical intensification of the southern front could lead to one of three outcomes:

1. the situation continues to worsen;

2. a partial ceasefire is reached for ending attacks against ships and maritime infrastructure (though it’s unclear whether it would apply to Crimea);

3. or NATO gets involved.

As regards the last-mentioned, it’s the least likely but still can’t be ruled out after Turkiye committed to providing maritime security guarantees for Ukraine, which could hypothetically take the form of “escort missions”.

The larger trend is that US-backed Ukraine’s newfound focus on targeting Russia’s “soft underbelly” in this new “war of attrition” has resulted in its own “soft underbelly” being targeted as well as a form of (arguably long-overdue) reciprocal retaliation that’s making the broader Black Sea region a “no-go zone”.

The heightened stakes associated with this latest phase of the conflict suggest that an even greater escalation might be inevitable, but it’s still possible that this could be delayed, if not outright averted.

Tyler Durden Tue, 07/28/2026 - 02:00

How Total Surveillance Conquered The Last Sanctuary Of Human Privacy

Authored by Milan Adams via Preppgroup,

The following investigation contains verified facts, classified document references, and eyewitness testimony that some readers may find deeply disturbing. We have cross-referenced all statistical claims with official government disclosures, Freedom of Information Act releases, and whistleblower documentation. However, certain programs referenced operate under classifications beyond public scrutiny, and specific capabilities described remain officially denied by the agencies named. The author has chosen to present this material without the sanitizing filter of institutional caution. Reader discretion is advised—not for graphic content, but for the psychological impact of recognizing one’s own position within the architecture described. What follows is not conspiracy theory. It is Tuesday. It is your morning commute. It is the air you breathe.

Your bedroom has been listening for years. Not metaphorically—quite literally. While you slept, while you loved, while you whispered secrets to partners in the dark, the devices you invited inside for “convenience” were recording, analyzing, transmitting. That smart speaker on your nightstand heard you breathe. Your WiFi router mapped your movements through walls. The phone charging beside your pillow tracked your REM cycles, your midnight tossing, your 3 AM anxieties. All of it flowed through fiber optic veins into climate-controlled bunkers where analysts sift through domestic lives like archaeologists studying extinct species—except you’re very much alive, still walking, still paying monthly subscriptions for the privilege of being monitored.

This is the unvarnished reality of existence in 2026: privacy didn’t merely erode—it was systematically dismantled, commodified, and fed into machine learning systems that predict your behavior before you conceive the thought.

Eight billion souls now exist beneath an invisible dome of perpetual observation, each breath monitored, each heartbeat catalogued, each flicker of dissent intercepted before consciousness fully forms it.

Let’s examine the architecture of this prison with clear eyes:

•  4.9 million CCTV cameras surveil the United Kingdom alone - one mechanical eye for every eleven humans

•  300+ times the average Londoner is captured on camera during a routine commute

•  160 million license plate reads logged annually in the United States, creating travel histories precise enough to reconstruct infidelity, political meetings, religious observance, medical visits

•  0 - the number of ways to effectively opt out

Numbness serves the system.

These figures are designed to anaesthetize, to render horror mundane through sheer scale. So consider instead the texture of living under permanent scrutiny.

Morning breaks pre-monitored. Smart mattresses—marketed innocuously for “sleep optimization”—have already transmitted heart rate variability, respiratory patterns, sexual activity frequency, and parasympathetic nervous system indicators to cloud servers before your feet touch the floor. Bathroom scales identify you by weight distribution patterns as unique as genetic codes. Toothbrushes log duration and technique. Coffee makers timestamp your caffeine consumption. Refrigerators track caloric intake and dietary restrictions. Each data point seems trivial in isolation. Combined, they construct behavioral predictions accurate enough to anticipate your mood, your destination, your risk level before you’ve consciously decided to leave the house.

By 8:47 AM, probability calculations assess your psychological state. Predictive models anticipate where you’ll travel. Risk scores fluctuate based on deviations from your statistical norms—sleeping longer suggesting depression markers, skipping breakfast indicating financial stress, checking news before social media revealing political engagement levels.

Step outside and the grid tightens. Modern vehicles contain fifty to one hundred microprocessors, three hundred-plus sensors, and mandatory cellular connectivity that transforms automobiles into mobile surveillance platforms. Event Data Recorders capture speed, braking force, seatbelt usage, steering angle, and G-forces thirty seconds preceding any “incident”—though incident remains deliberately undefined, and data retrieval requires neither warrant nor notification in most jurisdictions. Drive through a toll booth, pass a traffic camera, park in a monitored lot, and you’ve added coordinates to a permanent travel log reconstructing your movements across years.

Public transit offers no refuge. Facial recognition payment systems in Moscow, Shenzhen, and expanding “democratic” pilot programs process biometric identities faster than card swipes, logging timestamps and travel patterns into permanent archives. London’s Oyster cards create movement histories retrievable by law enforcement without judicial oversight. WiFi tracking in subway stations identifies phones despite WiFi appearing “disabled”—devices emit probe requests every forty to one hundred milliseconds, broadcasting unique MAC addresses that create location trails accurate to meters.

Arrive at work and enter the observation laboratory. Keycard entry logs timestamps and precise locations. Computer systems record keystroke dynamics—typing rhythms as identifying as handwritten signatures. Corporate networks proxy all traffic through monitoring systems capturing URL visits, message content, download activity, duration metrics. Video analytics perform gait analysis, identifying individuals by walking patterns even when faces remain obscured. Elevator weight sensors combined with camera footage determine occupancy and identity.

Lunch breaks generate surveillance gold. Mobile payment apps—Venmo, Cash App, Apple Pay—create financial surveillance networks exceeding any tax authority’s historical capabilities, documenting transactions, social networks, relationship intimacy levels. Location data harvested from apps with “background refresh” capabilities reveals restaurant choices, duration of stays, table companions, subsequent destinations. Pharmacy visits trigger health condition flags. Political rally attendance generates risk score adjustments.

Return home to observation posts you installed voluntarily. Smart doorbells—Ring, Nest, Arlo—record four hundred million video clips monthly, creating neighborhood surveillance networks accessible to 2,014 police departments through “partnership” agreements requiring neither warrant nor homeowner consent. Amazon’s Neighbors app encourages residents to flag “suspicious” individuals—often coded language for racial profiling—feeding machine learning systems training data on human suspicion patterns.

Domestic spaces have transformed into comprehensive sensor networks. Smart speakers record ambient audio during “wake word” activation, with documented cases of accidental activation and human contractor review of private conversations including intimate moments and medical discussions. Smart thermostats track occupancy patterns, energy usage revealing daily schedules. Smart locks record entry and exit patterns shared with “authorized partners” including law enforcement. Smart appliances monitor usage patterns and “anomalous behavior.”

Television watches back. Samsung, LG, and Vizio models collect viewing habits, search queries, voice commands, and in documented cases transmit screenshots of displayed content every second. Streaming services build psychological profiles from consumption patterns—depression indicators from binge-watching metrics, political orientation from documentary selections, cognitive patterns from pause and rewind behaviors.

Even sleep provides no darkness. Trackers monitor REM cycles, apnea episodes, restlessness. Smart home systems adjust temperatures based on detected occupancy. Security systems log movement patterns. And in classified facilities processing daily harvests, quantum computers decrypt yesterday’s “secure” communications, correlate metadata patterns, construct association maps linking you to contacts of contacts, predict behaviors not yet conceived.

The smartphone remains surveillance engineering’s crowning achievement. Sixty-three percent of humanity carries tracking beacons exceeding anything totalitarian regimes of previous centuries imagined. GPS provides location within three meters. Accelerometers reveal physical activity, health status, emotional state through movement patterns. Gyroscopes map spatial orientation. Barometers calculate altitude changes identifying building floors. Microphones activate remotely without indicator lights—Snowden’s disclosures confirmed this capability. Cameras prove similarly accessible. Bluetooth scans identify nearby devices creating social network maps. WiFi mapping enables indoor positioning accurate to one to two meters.

Apps transform these sensors into comprehensive surveillance tools. Weather apps sell location permissions to data brokers. Flashlight apps access cameras and microphones as documented malware vectors. Social media harvests contact lists, message content, photo metadata. Navigation apps log every destination, route, duration, speed. Dating apps reveal intimate preferences, location patterns, communication content. Fitness apps transmit health data to insurance providers and employers. Banking apps create financial surveillance networks. Every “free” service monetizes behavioral prediction.

Encryption offers theater, not protection. PRISM and upstream collection programs—XKEYSCORE, TEMPORA, MUSCULAR—operate at infrastructure levels tapping fiber optic cables, compelling corporate cooperation through National Security Letters (gag-ordered demands preventing disclosure), and storing encrypted communications for future decryption when quantum computing renders current standards obsolete. Utah’s NSA Data Center processes yottabytes—storage capacity so vast it could contain all human communication for millennia.

“Incidental collection”—the euphemism for capturing domestic communications during foreign surveillance—creates permanent records subject to “minimization procedures” requiring neither deletion nor notification. FBI “backdoor searches” of Section 702 collection data numbered 3.4 million queries in 2021 alone—warrantless searches of content collected without warrant.

Stingray devices—cell site simulators deployed by law enforcement nationwide—mimic cellular towers forcing all phones within range to connect and reveal International Mobile Subscriber Identity numbers, location data, communication metadata. Baltimore police admitted using Stingrays 4,300 times without warrants. The FBI requires agencies signing nondisclosure agreements before receiving devices—secrecy prioritized over constitutional protections.

Predictive policing algorithms—PredPol, HunchLab—claim to forecast crime locations. In practice, feedback loops emerge: policing data from over-policed neighborhoods trains algorithms predicting crime in those same neighborhoods, justifying continued over-policing. Risk assessment scores determine bail, sentencing, parole—algorithmic calculations of “dangerousness” based on demographic correlations rather than individual behavior, encoding systemic bias into mathematical objectivity.

Social media operates as voluntary confession on industrial scale. Facebook’s 2012 “emotional contagion” experiment manipulated 689,003 users’ news feeds to study mood alteration. Twitter creates influence maps identifying “disruptors.” Instagram’s image recognition catalogs objects, locations, relationships. TikTok’s data collection—including keystroke patterns and clipboard content—raises national security concerns while demonstrating surveillance capitalism’s global reach.

The “Internet of Things” completes domestic colonization. Smart mattresses, toilets, mirrors, windows—all feeding data streams into centralized processing. DNA testing services—23andMe, AncestryDNA, GEDmatch—have provided law enforcement access to genetic profiles of millions who never consented to law enforcement use. Familial searching creates genetic surveillance networks implicating entire family lines. China’s compulsory DNA collection from Uyghur populations represents ethnic surveillance at the genomic level.

Financial surveillance operates through Suspicious Activity Reports requiring banks to report transactions exceeding $10,000 and increasingly patterns below thresholds. The Bank Secrecy Act and PATRIOT Act created financial tracking infrastructure monitoring every significant transaction. Cryptocurrency exchanges now require identity verification linking blockchain to real identities. The “war on cash” promotes digital payments creating comprehensive spending records.

Biometric databases expand relentlessly. India’s Aadhaar contains 1.3 billion citizens’ fingerprints, iris scans, facial photographs. China’s national biometric database integrates facial recognition, DNA, voiceprints, gait analysis. The FBI’s Next Generation Identification contains 117 million fingerprints, 52 million facial images.

Historical “conspiracy theories” proved insufficiently paranoid. Documents confirm: MKULTRA’s mind control experiments (1953-1973) involving unwitting subjects. COINTELPRO’s surveillance and disruption of political organizations (1956-1971). Operation CHAOS’s CIA monitoring of domestic anti-war activists. The FBI’s blackmail of Martin Luther King Jr. The NSA’s LOVEINT—analysts using surveillance to stalk romantic interests.

Neuroweapons research explores “remote influencing”—microwave auditory effects (the “Frey effect”), electromagnetic field manipulation, directed energy systems. Whether deployed or merely researched, such capabilities blur boundaries between physical and psychological warfare.

Corporate-state fusion creates totalitarian infrastructure without totalitarian intent. Data brokers—Acxiom, Experian, LexisNexis, Palantir—compile thousands of data points per individual, selling comprehensive profiles to government agencies, employers, insurers, political campaigns.

Opting out proves functionally impossible. Living without identification excludes participation in financial systems, housing, employment, healthcare. “Dumb” phones still connect to cellular networks providing location tracking. Cash transactions face increasing restrictions.

Psychological impacts manifest regardless of awareness. Self-censorship becomes automatic when surveillance is assumed. Creativity requires risk, experimentation, deviation—precisely behaviors flagged by predictive algorithms. Intimacy requires privacy; privacy requires confidence in unobserved space.

Legal protections lag technology by decades. The Third Party Doctrine holds that information conveyed to third parties receives no Fourth Amendment protection. Geofence warrants request location data for all devices in specified areas. Keyword warrants identify users who searched specific terms.

International frameworks offer no protection. The Five Eyes alliance shares intelligence while circumventing domestic restrictions. The 14 Eyes expands this network. Bilateral agreements create global surveillance networks.

Resistance strategies—encryption, anonymity networks, secure systems, Faraday cages, cash, offline communication—provide partial mitigation but fail against comprehensive surveillance. Metadata defeats content encryption. Device compromise defeats endpoint security.

Trajectory points toward total integration: central bank digital currencies enabling complete transaction monitoring; biometric ID requirements for internet access; AI-powered pre-crime prediction; social credit scoring integrating financial, social, political metrics; brain-computer interfaces creating direct neural monitoring.

What remains? Perhaps only recognition that surveillance stalking represents not aberration but essence—the logical culmination of technologies enabling observation, bureaucracies requiring information, power’s eternal expansion. Horror lies not in the watching but in the watched trading privacy for convenience, security, connection, entertainment. The panopticon’s genius was never the tower’s visibility but prisoners’ internalization of surveillance.

Somewhere in data centers humming with cooling fans and quantum processors, your profile grows more detailed, your predictions more precise, your autonomy more illusory. The cage was built while you slept. You woke inside it. You may never leave.

AND NOW… YOU ARE MARKED. PERMANENTLY.

Tyler Durden Mon, 07/27/2026 - 23:25

Awkward: Trump Hails 'Tremendous' Ally Turkey, Knocks Israel Before Hosting Netanyahu

Less than 24 hours before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to meet with the US President at the White House Tuesday, and Trump not-so-subtly put the Israeli leader in his place while fielding questions from reporters aboard Air Force One.

Trump was asked about Netanyahu's very public and long-stated opposition to Washington selling F-35s to Turkey. Trump responded by firmly stating, "Nobody tells me what we should be selling or not. Turkey has been a tremendous ally."

He added in the remarks, "Turkey’s not a big fan of Israel, not a great fan of Bibi. But they’ve been great for me." He also repeatedly praised Turkey as a great ally of the United States.

It comes after Trump strongly hinted while at the annual NATO summit in Ankara earlier this month that he would approve the F-35 sale, though it would likely invite serious Congressional pushback.

This is not going to be a welcome development for Netanyahu, especially given that with the full context of the comments, Trump was highly praising Turkey while seeming to put down Israel:

"And frankly, we're being very nice to a lot of countries that would not survive without us. You know who wouldn't survive without us? Israel...

...Turkey has been a great ally, for me. Nobody tells me what we should be selling. Turkey is not a big fan of Israel, you know that, right? And not a big fan of Bibi."

Interestingly in the same thought he admitted Turkey is a bitter enemy of Israel, but still chose to praise Turkey while quipping that Israel wouldn't be able to stand on its own without support from Washington.

"Prime Minister Netanyahu opposes sending the F-35s to Turkey..."@POTUS: "Nobody tells me what we should be selling or not. Turkey has been a tremendous ally." pic.twitter.com/8gSzavJ6Ce

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) July 27, 2026

Trump did say that the US and Israel align on Iran policy, mostly at least. "We have a little difference but [are] pretty close," Trump told reporters.

On the Iranians, Trump said: "They want to meet, and we’re meeting. There’s a chance we can make a deal. But without what we did, they wouldn’t even be talking to us." Of course, it's long been known that the Israelis are not in favor of talks, given the possibility it could end without the total dismantlement of Iran's nuclear program.

"Bibi is coming here, he'll tell ya..."

Trump:

We have been very nice to a lot of countries that wouldn't survive without us.

You know who wouldn't survive without us? Israel. pic.twitter.com/jN8SVNXjLV

— Clash Report (@clashreport) July 27, 2026

Trump had earlier this month after a July 4th call with Netanyahu said of 'Bibi': "We get along very good. [Netanyahu] knows who the boss is," he told Axios. All the while, Turkey's Erdogan has been locked in a war of words and steadily ratcheting exchange of threats with Israeli officials. That Trump should so openly embrace Turkey and Erdogan has been felt as a slap in the face for Israeli leadership.

Tyler Durden Mon, 07/27/2026 - 23:00

Houthi Threats Force Saudi Crude Tanker Onto Suez Route To Asia

By Tsvetana Paraskova of OilPrice.com

The Houthi threats to shipping in the Red Sea and its chokepoint, the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, have forced at least one oil tanker carrying Saudi crude to Asia to choose the much longer route through the Suez Canal, the Mediterranean, and around Africa.

The supertanker Olympic Luck, partially laden with Saudi crude at Yanbu on the Red Sea, transited the Suez Canal into the Mediterranean late on Sunday, according to shipping data monitored by Bloomberg.

The U-turn from Bab el-Mandeb indicates that some tanker owners aren’t willing to risk crossing southward into the Arabian Sea on the much shorter route to Asia, as the Iran-aligned Houthis have threatened – and struck – Saudi tankers in the Red Sea in recent days.

The Greece-flagged Greece-owned Olympic Luck is signaling an unspecified location in Asia, according to shipping fixtures seen by Bloomberg.

Other tankers continue to transit the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, but in numbers that are the lowest in months, various ship-tracking services showed this weekend.

Traffic through Bab el-Mandeb has materially slowed, and some vessel owners have their tankers move northward in the Red Sea toward the Suez Canal. The Suez-Africa route to Asia makes the journey about a month longer than if tankers travel through Bab el-Mandeb.

Last week, a Denmark-flagged oil and chemical products tanker, the Torm Innovation, turned away from Bab el-Mandeb and moved north toward the Suez Canal. The tanker, which had loaded products at Yanbu, was in the East Mediterranean early on Monday, shipping data on MarineTraffic showed.

Despite the reduced traffic through Bab el-Mandeb, “Saudi crude has not stopped moving. It has bifurcated,” maritime intelligence firm Windward said on Sunday.

“Yanbu port has transitioned to entirely AIS-dark tanker operations at berth as vessels shield against a Houthi hit list,” it added.

Saudi Arabia has established a working alternative export route via the SUMED pipeline in Egypt and around the Cape of Good Hope in Africa, adding cost and voyage time but demonstrating the market’s adaptability, Windward noted.

Chinese-linked cargo continues transiting Bab al-Mandeb under the Houthis’ established carve-out, the firm said.

Tyler Durden Mon, 07/27/2026 - 22:35

Feds Charge Atlanta Man Who Gave Border Agents 'Self-Destruct' Password For Phone

A federal judge in Atlanta is weighing whether to throw out the evidence in what appears to be the first US prosecution of a traveler over a phone's built-in "duress password" - a privacy feature that erases a device when the wrong code is entered.

Samuel Tunick, an Atlanta resident and US citizen, was charged under 18 U.S.C. § 2232(a), which makes it a crime to destroy or damage property to prevent the government from seizing it. The offense carries up to five years. He has pleaded not guilty and is seeking to suppress the government's evidence, arguing the search and seizure that produced it were unlawful. A ruling is not expected before the end of October.

Tunick was returning from vacation on January 24, 2025, when Customs and Border Protection pulled him into secondary inspection at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. According to his motion to suppress, agents demanded access to his phone on the stated suspicion that it contained child exploitation imagery, without offering evidence to support that suspicion. They told him they did not need a warrant because he had not yet crossed into the country - the government's long-standing position that arriving travelers are not on US soil until admitted.

His lawyers say he asked for an attorney repeatedly and was refused, and that he was never advised of his rights.

Tunick provided a passcode. An officer entered it. The screen went dark, flashed repeatedly, and the device restarted with its contents gone. Agents seized the phone anyway and told him he was free to enter the country.

The indictment, returned in the Northern District of Georgia, alleges he knowingly destroyed, damaged, wasted, disposed of or otherwise acted to delete the phone's digital contents in order to impair the government's lawful authority to take the property into its custody. The document contains the typo "Untied States Code."

At a hearing last Monday, a Justice Department attorney and the agents who ran the stop characterized the encounter as an ordinary airport inspection. They were looking for "anything that's prohibited," CBP officer Larry Findley testified.

What Preceded The Stop

Three hours before Tunick's plane landed, a Homeland Security agent circulated an email carrying his name and photograph and stating that he was under investigation for suspected terrorism activities. It went to agents on CBP's tactical terrorism response team and to an officer with the FBI's Atlanta joint terrorism task force, according to The Guardian, which first reported the case.

Tunick's attorneys argue the child-exploitation rationale was a pretext, and that the real interest was his association with Defend the Atlanta Forest, the movement that spent years opposing the police training campus known as Cop City. The state's own sprawling racketeering case against 61 people tied to that movement was dismissed last year by a Fulton County judge, with the Georgia attorney general appealing.

CBP's tactical terrorism response teams were created in 2015 and have operated with almost no public visibility. The ACLU sued the agency in 2019 seeking records on the units, describing them as highly secretive teams that target, detain and interrogate travelers.

GrapheneOS

Tunick's attorneys have confirmed his Google Pixel was running GrapheneOS, a hardened Android replacement stripped of Google's tracking components. Among its options is a duress PIN - a second code, indistinguishable from the real one, that triggers an irreversible wipe. No warning, no confirmation prompt, nothing to give it away. Whoever types it cannot know what it is doing until it is finished.

GrapheneOS documents the feature as intended for people who may be forced to unlock a device, naming journalists, activists and travelers facing border searches - and warns in the same documentation that a triggered wipe could be treated in some jurisdictions as destruction of evidence. 

Matthew Dodge, an assistant federal public defender on Tunick's team, called the use of the statute in this context incredibly rare. Runa Sandvik, who runs the security consultancy Granitt, said she had never seen a case built on a duress password, though she has spent years walking journalists and activists through the scenario. Christophe Boutry, a French cybersecurity and surveillance specialist, said the prosecution mirrors what is already unfolding in France and Spain, where authorities have run into GrapheneOS on the phones of journalists, lawyers and political opponents. His argument is one of ownership: the device belongs to the user, and the state does not get to dictate how it is configured.

Unfriendly Venue?

The Eleventh Circuit may be the government's biggest advantage in the case. In United States v. Touset (2018) it held that border agents need no suspicion of any kind to search a device, forensic or manual, reasoning that if none is required to open a suitcase, none should be required for a phone. In the Fourth or Ninth Circuits the pretext argument would carry real weight - both require reasonable suspicion for forensic searches, and the Ninth confines border phone searches to digital contraband rather than general evidence of domestic crime. In Atlanta, the defense has to attack the scope of the search rather than the absence of grounds for it.

The statute, meanwhile, is also narrower than it looks. Section 2232(a) requires impairing the government's lawful authority to seize such property. Lawfulness is an element of the offense, not merely a suppression question, so an unlawful seizure could put the conduct outside the statute altogether. 

A Fourth Amendment win may not end the case regardless. The alleged offense occurred in the agents' presence, in response to the demand the defense says was unlawful, and courts generally hold that a new crime committed in reaction to an illegal search is not suppressible.

The Fifth Amendment may be the more promising route, because the act constituting the offense is speaking a passcode. If that was compelled in custody without warnings or counsel, the utterance itself may be suppressible. There is a wrinkle in Tunick's favor: the same circuit that is least protective on border searches is among the more protective on compelled decryption, having held in 2012 that forced decryption can be testimonial. Prosecutors will argue that secondary inspection is not custody and that "unlock it or we keep it" is not legal compulsion.

Then there is intent. Officers typed the code, not Tunick, so the government must prove purpose rather than infer it from a physical act - and the defense has pointedly declined to concede he meant to wipe anything. The evidence that a duress code was configured at all lived on the device that now holds no data.

We'll be keeping an eye on this one...

Tyler Durden Mon, 07/27/2026 - 22:10

Utility Profits In The Crosshairs Amid Affordability Concerns

By Herman Trabish of UtilityDive,Last month, protesters angry over high electricity costs disrupted a Las Vegas conference of executives for the nation’s biggest investor-owned utilities — a vivid example of growing public outrage that has forced the industry to again defend their legally guaranteed profit margins. 

As affordability concerns increase political pressure, several states have taken steps to lower utilities’ return on equity, either through regulatory or legislative action. Consumer advocates say these measures are long overdue, while utilities say suppressing their ROE could impact their credit rating, which would carry over into higher customer costs. 

It is possible the combination of how vital electricity has become in the 21st century and its rising cost in the 2020s could lead to a turning point at this moment in the acceptable level of utility profits, experts told Utility Dive.

In a potentially pivotal and soon-to-be-decided Maryland rate case, utility executives said the matter should be left to state regulators, while consumer advocates said regulators should lower the utility’s profits closer to its costs for serving its customers. 

Utilities in the hot seat

Affordability has become a more pressing issue as national average electricity prices have outpaced inflation, and many people blame utilities. A March Pew Research poll found 85% of respondents saw utilities “wanting to make more money” as a reason for increased home energy prices. 

The impact of profits is not only a matter of public perception. According to a series of reports from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, prices charged by investor-owned utilities, which represent about 70% of national electricity sales, are higher and have risen faster compared to public utilities without strong profit motives.

The reports also found that IOU revenue requests are higher than they have been in decades – totaling $18 billion last year – and that over the past five years, regulators have approved, on average, 64% of the dollar value of these increases, compared to an average of 52% over the previous two decades. 

Energy affordability concerns have also merged with popular backlash to data centers and their huge resource demands. The resentment has stirred up a large, receptive audience for consumer advocates questioning the regulated utility profit model.

Utility profit margins are set by regulators around the country and averaged 9.7% in 2025, while fluctuating from 9% to 10.5%, according to Synapse Energy Economics. Unregulated economic sectors have ROEs within, far above, and far below that range, but do not have the obligation to serve and are not required to seek approval for their profits like regulated utilities, according to the Regulatory Assistance Project’s 2016 Guide. 

ROEs are a matter for state utility regulators, said Dani Marx, spokesperson for the Edison Electric Institute, the trade group for U.S. investor-owned utilities and utility holding groups.

“Independent state regulators work through open and transparent proceedings to evaluate infrastructure needs,” Marx said. 

Utility infrastructure often includes “an equity component, including a return on equity, to attract sufficient investment to fund these projects,” she added.

In December, California regulators lowered the ROE for its three largest investor-owned utilities by 0.3 percentage points each. Several states, including Pennsylvania, are weighing legislation to tie utility ROE to 10-year Treasury bonds, among other reforms.

ROEs get political

Some states, like Maryland, have begun chipping away at utility returns by passing laws requiring power companies to join regional transmission organizations in order to do away with so-called adder – additional ROE the company earns on transmission for being a voluntary member. 

Meanwhile, state leaders in Virginia, New Jersey and Pennsylvania have asked regulators to consider rate requests carefully, signaling they may take more direct action in rate cases. 

The issue has also gained momentum in Congress. Rep. Greg Casar, D-Texas, has gathered more than 20 cosponsors for the Lowering Utility Bills Act (H.R. 8568). The bill would require a utility to “calculate the return on equity at the lowest return on equity in an established range of reasonableness” determined by its regulators.

Reducing utility profits “saves all electricity users money on their bills,” said Mark Ellis, a former chief of strategy and economics with Sempra who now works as an independent consultant. 

In his opinion, today’s utility profits are “an unjust enrichment of utility investors at the expense of customers,” he added.

Utilities argue their profit margins must be set high enough to attract capital at low interest rates, which saves their ratepayers money in the long run while allowing utilities to maintain grid reliability.

If a utility’s authorized returns “are below those of comparable utilities, its ability to attract capital is at risk,” said Robert Leming, vice president of regulatory policy and strategy for Pepco Holdings, which is now engaged in a regulatory debate over profits at the Public Service Commission of Maryland.

Utilities need that capital “to provide safe and reliable service for customers,” he told Utility Dive in an interview.

An ROE case study

Some say the AI boom has introduced bottlenecks that are forcing utilities to consider alternatives to building, but others worry that the opposite is happening, and the hype cycle is fueling ill-conceived spending that will be on ratepayer bills for decades.

The current Pepco rate case offers an illustrative example of the state of the debate. The utility has proposed an ROE of 10.5%, an increase from its current 9.5% allowed ROE. The Maryland Office of People’s Counsel has proposed 7.7%.

The head of the OPC, David Lapp, told Utility Dive that many of the utility’s recent infrastructure investments could have been deferred. 

“Pepco is investing too much too fast and not in things that are cost effective and needed going forward,” Lapp said.

Pepco Holdings’ Leming disagreed. “Maryland’s ambitious climate and electrification goals require investment to modernize and upgrade the system,” he said.

Ellis, Lapp and others see high utility ROEs as a perverse incentive because it biases utilities toward expensive investments that add to a utility’s base of financed costs that earn ROEs and increase rates.

In addition, Lapp argues Pepco’s ROE is “inflated” by a financial strategy called ”double leveraging,” involving Exelon Utilities, Pepco’s parent corporation and only investor.

OPC contends that Exelon’s lower cost debt is being used by Pepco as higher cost equity, allowing it to borrow more lower cost debt.

Double leveraging “is not illegal if regulators approve it,” Lapp said. But if Pepco counts Exelon’s debt as equity in its capital structure, it raises the total ROE and, as a result, customer rates, he added.

“Exelon’s role does not change Pepco’s ROE needs,” Pepco consultant Adrien McKenzie told Maryland commissioners. Equity to support Pepco operations “must be raised in the capital markets,” based on returns competitive with “risk-comparable alternatives,” he added.

If Exelon debt to be paid back in 10 years is invested by Pepco in 50-year assets, Exelon would not be reimbursed soon enough to meet its debt, Pepco’s Leming added.

To justify the proposed 10.5% ROE, McKenzie presented multiple quantitative analyses and “a proxy group of risk-comparable electric utilities.” Credit ratings for Pepco of Baa1 from Moody’s and A- from S&P were central to his conclusion, McKenzie testified.

“Rating agencies and potential debt investors tend to place significant emphasis on maintaining strong financial metrics,” McKenzie told the commission. And this emphasis on financial metrics and credit ratings is shared by equity investors, he added.

Pepco’s Leming told Utility Dive he is focused on utility operations.

“Affordability is one of Pepco’s top priorities right now,” he said. Recent rising rates are linked to investments that have made Pepco highly ranked for customer satisfaction, he added.

But Pepco must be adequately funded to meet today’s “unprecedented” demand with new infrastructure, Leming continued. “That underscores the importance of having a competitive ROE to attract capital,” he said.

Lapp said his focus is customers.

“Everyone agrees investors in utilities should have the opportunity to earn the same return as an entity with a comparable level of risk,” he said. “But Pepco’s proposed 10.5% ROE is unfair to customers because its cost of equity is not just a little bit less, but significantly less.”

A ruling on Pepco’s ROE is expected in August.

Finding solutions

Reducing ROE can in fact impact a utility’s credit quality. Several Connecticut utilities, including Eversource and Avangrid, saw their credit ratings downgraded by credit agencies citing an inconsistent and unsupportive regulatory environment.

But that impact can be offset, Ellis said. “Increasing the equity portion of the debt-equity ratio and lowering the ROE produces ratepayer savings” without significantly altering the utility’s credit ratings, he added.

Ellis is a proponent of “competitive direct equity” as the “structural and political solution,” he said. “It would replace administratively set ROEs with a supply and demand-determined cost of equity through a competitive auction that would fundamentally change the utility incentive structure,” he explained.

In today’s rate cases, ROE determination “is a charade that is not calculated consistently or accurately,” Ellis continued. “The utility says it should be 11% and the consumer advocate says it should be 9% and the regulators compromise at 10% and move to the next proceeding.”

Utilities are accustomed to obtaining satisfactory ROEs through rate cases adjudicated by their state regulators and have no widely proposed alternative political solution. They warn regulators that reducing working capital puts reliability at risk.

But utilities’ rate case filings, like Pepco’s, typically include complex formulas for calculating ROE that overwhelm regulators and conclude that the utility needs an ROE increase, said Karl Rabago, a former Texas utilities commissioner and a frequent rate case intervenor on behalf of consumers.

“The original focus on balancing cost-of-service and earnings anticipated regulators would substitute for the forces of competition, and that has been lost,” Rabago said.

Tyler Durden Mon, 07/27/2026 - 21:45

Inside America's Left: Mapping The Five Factions Battling For Power

Many transformations are unfolding within America's political left, and its shifting factions can be difficult to track.

The Democratic establishment is fighting to preserve its grip on power as progressives and reformist socialists gain ground in local elections, with some openly promoting the dismantling of capitalism and adopting increasingly hostile rhetoric toward America.

Fox News has begun publishing explainers to educate its audience about the emerging far left, while Trump administration officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, have declared war on the radical left and foreign subversion networks linked to Cuba, China and elsewhere (read report).

Related:

• "Fatal Cancer On Civilization": Trump's War On Marxism Enters Action Phase As Rubio, Miller And Bessent Address 65 Nations

Understanding the left requires recognizing that it is not a monolith. To help map its many layers, Karlyn Borysenko, who describes herself as an anti-communist analyst, published an easy-to-understand infographic on X titled "Mapping the Modern Left," noting that "not all leftists are created equal."

The graphic is a five-tiered "rainbow cake" view of the American left, ranging from establishment Democrats who favor incremental reform within capitalism to revolutionary socialists seeking to abolish and destroy the nation from within.

I have updated my Mapping The Modern Left Framework to make the language more precise regarding which groups are on the far left and what they believe.

Specifically, we are now delineating between reformist and revolutionary socialists.

Learn more. Link in reply. pic.twitter.com/m8sfUxtCAP

— Karlyn Borysenko, anti-communist cult leader (@DrKarlynB) July 25, 2026

Her infographic divides the left into two main camps. The "neoliberal left" includes Democrats, liberals, and progressives, while the "far left" comprises reformist and revolutionary socialists. The graphic claims that progressives may favor policies associated with socialism, such as Medicare for All and the Green New Deal, without seeking to eliminate capitalism. Reformist socialists, by contrast, pursue a post-capitalist system... 

Borysenko also uses symbols to indicate which tiers she believes have adopted elements of queer ideology.

Borysenko's infographic provides an easy-to-view understanding of the  intensifying power struggle within the Democratic Party as the party establishment attempts to fend off a takeover by far-left socialists:

• Bill Clinton Insider Warns Of Socialist Takeover, Calls For Probe Into Possible DSA Foreign Ties
• "I'm A Lifelong Democrat": Another Clinton Insider Sounds Alarm Over DSA's Far-Left Hijack Of Party

With fewer than 100 days until the midterm elections, the left's internal power struggle is already emerging as one of the campaign cycle's most intriguing spectacles of the summer. 

Tyler Durden Mon, 07/27/2026 - 21:20

Washington Gets A Win After Post-Maduro Venezuela Withdraws From ICC

Via Middle East Eye

The US has welcomed a decision by the new Venezuelan government to withdraw the country from the International Criminal Court (ICC).

In a post on X, the US State Department hailed the move as marking a "partnership on American-led efforts to dismantle the corrupt and worthless ICC."

It pointed to an investigation by the court into former Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro, who was abducted from the South American country during a US military assault in January 2026, saying it had produced "no result".

"The ICC has instead wasted its resources on investigating and charging persons from countries that have competent, independent judicial systems and which never submitted to the jurisdiction of the court," the statement read.

"This is blatant overreach, political bias and selective enforcement," it said, adding that the court is "neither credible, independent, nor legitimate".

"It is time to dismantle the ICC," it said, calling for all its members to "withdraw from the Rome Statute".

via AFP

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had spoken with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who he said reaffirmed Washington's intention to act "forcefully" against the ICC.

In a statement, Netanyahu said the court "endangers justice around the world" and "threatens the right of democratic, sovereign states to exercise their sovereignty," adding that it sought to subject their security "to the decisions of a corrupt clique in The Hague."

The development comes after ICC member states voted on Friday to remove chief prosecutor Karim Khan over misconduct claims.

On Friday, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Felix Plasencia announced that the government had informed the UN of its "irrevocable" decision to quit the court, citing the body's "geographical bias" against countries in the global south.

The move signals a greater alignment by Venezuela with US policies, a week after US Secretary of State Marco Rubio vowed “a whole-of-government response to systematically disable” the tribunal.

The Trump administration has repeatedly sought to undermine the international court, levelling sanctions against prosecutors involved in investigating the actions of US and Israeli militaries.

In an executive order signed last year, Trump wrote that the ICC "has engaged in illegitimate and baseless actions targeting America and our close ally Israel", citing the arrest warrants issued in November for Netanyahu and his then defense minister, Yoav Gallant.

Tyler Durden Mon, 07/27/2026 - 20:55

YouTube, Instagram, And The Future Of Ministry

Authored by Van Mylar via RealClearReligion,

Meta is testing Instagram on television. Pinterest has acquired a connected-TV ad-buying platform. Social media content is becoming one of the most-watched video types on American television. And YouTube is leading the way, with tens of millions of Americans now watching YouTube on the biggest screen in the house.

YouTube's move into creator-led, 24/7 "Stations" points to something larger: digital and social platforms are no longer simply competing with television. They are becoming television.

For nonprofits and ministries, this is not a passing media trend. It is a strategic signal.

The migration of social behavior back to the living room represents a fundraising, awareness and discipleship opportunity too large to ignore. It is also a warning to organizations still treating television, streaming, social, direct mail, radio and email as disconnected channels.

That means the old channel-by-channel mindset is no longer enough. Direct mail, television, radio, email, YouTube, social media and connected television must work together as one integrated donor journey.

A short clip may create discovery. A long-form video may build trust. A host-read appeal may deepen credibility. A direct mail package may provide a tangible response moment. A TV placement may bring the mission back into the shared household space.

The living room has always carried emotional weight. It is where families hear breaking news, watch stories that move them and encounter moments that shape belief, identity, generosity and action. But the new living room is different. It blends broadcast, streaming, social video, creator content, streaming channels and algorithmic discovery into one environment.

And every generation brings a different expectation to that screen.

Gen Z views television as an extension of the feed. They are not easily moved by polished institutional messaging. They want authenticity, immediacy and evidence. They want to see who is being helped, who is telling the story and whether the mission feels credible. Creator brands are becoming television brands, and the trust younger audiences place in a familiar face is proving just as valuable as a traditional network name.

Millennials are the bridge generation. They move fluidly between television, streaming apps, YouTube, podcasts, social feeds and mobile giving. They respond to content that is useful, transparent, emotionally honest and easy to act on. They do not want friction. If the story moves them, the next step must be immediate and clear.

Gen X may be the most overlooked audience in this shift. They are skeptical, independent and media-savvy. They still understand the authority of the television screen, but they verify before giving or getting involved. For them, the formula is trust plus proof. They want to know where the money goes, whether the organization is effective, and whether the appeal is grounded in reality rather than hype.

Boomers still have a deep relationship with the living room screen, but they are not passive viewers anymore. Many stream church services, watch YouTube on their Smart TVs, and respond to familiar hosts, strong storytelling and appeals tied to faith, family and legacy.

The Silent Generation, though smaller, remains significant for legacy giving. They respond best to clarity, consistency, trusted messengers, and a sense that their giving will outlive them.

That is why the question for ministries shouldn't simply be how to buy more advertising space, but rather who they are trying to reach.

What shaped them? What do they trust? What do they question? What kind of story moves them? What makes them believe an organization is worthy of their generosity?

There is also a deeper reason platforms are chasing the living room: mobile is running out of room to grow. Social media platforms need new attention, new inventory and new environments. Television is where much of that remaining attention lives.

That should reframe how ministries and nonprofits think about television. Connected TV (like Smart TVs or TVs with an Amazon Fire Stick) is not simply an experimental add-on to a digital media plan. It is where engaged attention is moving next.

It is also where discovery and trust can converge.

Many viewers now begin watching full programs because of a short clip they first saw on social media. For a ministry or nonprofit, that matters. A short, honest clip may be the first step in a person's journey that ends in a gift, a prayer request, a church visit, a volunteer application or a deeper relationship with the mission.

Connected television is not just another media-buying channel. It is where generational habits, creator trust, algorithmic discovery and shared household viewing collide.

The ministries and nonprofits that thrive will build integrated ecosystems: short-form content for discovery, long-form content for trust, authentic storytelling for credibility and simple response paths for action.

The ministries and nonprofits that win will be the ones that understand who is sitting on the couch - the teenager scrolling and streaming, the Millennial parent multitasking, the Gen X skeptic verifying, the Boomer watching with a giving history and the older donor thinking about legacy.

For ministries and nonprofits, the calling is simple: Do not just reach the living room. Earn a place in it.

This article was originally published by RealClearReligion and made available via RealClearWire.

Tyler Durden Mon, 07/27/2026 - 18:25

Putin Admits Escalation: Enemies Unable To Defeat Russia On Battlefield, Resort To 'Open Terrorism'

This month has witnessed a string of major Wildberries warehouses and logistics hubs go up in flames due to wave after wave of Ukrainian drones strikes. The Russian online retailer, which is by far the largest and widely deemed the 'Russian Amazon' - is bracing for likely more attacks to come.

Ukraine's long-range drones strikes have very clearly moved beyond just oil and defense industrial sites, and have even included an attack on a holiday camp in Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia over the weekend, which killed at least twelve civilians. The Kremlin called it a terror attack, given it was a direct assault on a resort area.

Fresh Monday comments from President Vladimir Putin have highlighted this shift in Ukraine's strategy. Putin says that its forces are unable to advance the battlefield, and so are increasingly moving to outright terrorism tactics.

Image via Sputnik 

"[Enemies] are unable to defeat Russia on the battlefield so they are betting on using openly terrorist methods against our people," Putin said at a Kremlin meeting with members of the outgoing Eighth State Duma (lower house of parliament).

"However, no one has ever succeeded in breaking the Russian people. It has never happened and it will never happen," he stressed. He further highlighted a broader Western effort to 'rattle' and 'break' Russia which the populace has successfully endured for years at this point. 

"Seeking to rattle the Russian state and provoke social division in our country, [Western countries] have attempted to strangle our economy, financial system, and banking sector, and sought to undermine the potential of science, industry, and education," Putin said.

But he admitted some serious challenges as a result of the 'special military operation' in Ukraine. "In response to historic trials and aggressive external pressure, our multi-ethnic people have responded with internal solidarity. That has always been the case, and that is precisely what we see today," he said.

"The past five years - the period of your tenure as deputies - have been challenging and immensely responsible for our country," Putin told the legislators. 

"We have long been confronted with unlawful restrictions, with attempts at containment and pressure - both after the 'Russian Spring' of 2014 and even before that. But since 2022, the West has put the Russophobic machine into full swing," he recalled.

Ukrainian drones strikes on a Wildberries facility in the vicinity of St. Petersburg last week:

Compilation of most Ukrainian drones strikes on a Wildberries facility in the vicinity of St. Petersburg, Russia this morning. https://t.co/8E7IJ7ZNI6 pic.twitter.com/fY7zmDyKDn

— Woofers (@NotWoofers) July 24, 2026

Some analysts have observed that over the last several months the war has moved toward escalation - and a more 'total war' environment which puts civilians on either side at greater risk.

Russian ballistic missile attacks directly on the Ukrainian capital have been more devastating of late, and so have Ukraine's long-range drones sent deep into Russia. With Russian missiles and drones increasingly falling on residential neighborhoods in and around Kiev, the Zelensky government is also hurling the terrorism charge right back at Moscow.

Tyler Durden Mon, 07/27/2026 - 18:00

Renewables 'Can't Keep Up' With Data Center Pace. As Usual, The Left Wants Government To Step In...

Authored by Gary Abernathy via The Empowerment Alliance,

The political left is worried that the rapid expansion of data centers across the U.S. - a controversial but necessary development considering our competition with China - is increasingly accompanied by the corresponding construction of stand-alone natural gas plants to provide the power demands of the centers.

In Ohio, 10 gas-fired power plants are in the works to fuel new data centers. In West Virginia, a startup business building AI compute campuses plans to utilize hundreds of gas generators by 2028. Newly minted trillionaire Elon Musk has purchased a gas turbine company specifically to power the Tennessee-based data centers fueling Grok.

Across the nation, similar stories are playing out region by region, with dedicated gas plants often backed by tech giants who once swore off fossil fuels before reality set in.

Natural gas plants can be stood up relatively quickly and deliver the massive power required to keep the U.S. ahead of its adversaries in the AI/data center race. While data centers have resulted in controversies in some local communities - an unsurprising NIMBY reaction - other places have welcomed the developments.

As stated here before, artificial intelligence is here, like it or not. The only question is who will make the rules, the U.S. or China?

Soldiers in the anti-fossil fuel brigade are once again coming face-to-face with their biggest enemy: reality. And as usual, rather than seeking to engage fairly in the free market, backers of renewables are demanding that government write regulations requiring their use.

The Associated Press recently reported that "tech giants are demanding power at such speed and scale - some data centers consume more energy than a mid-size city - that the construction of wind and solar simply can't keep up," giving natural gas a substantial advantage. Most people call that the free market playing out as it naturally will. The climate change fearmongers call it foul play.

To level the field, the same old playbook is once again being deployed. For instance, in Michigan, Oregon and Minnesota, laws have been enacted in the last 18 months "designed to protect their pre-existing requirements that electric utilities use only emissions-free energy sources by 2040," AP reported, adding that similar bills are emerging in California, Illinois, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

New York, not surprisingly, leads the way when it comes to the heavy hand of government mandates. There, legislation would force data centers over a certain size "to meet renewable energy benchmarks starting in 2030 and, by 2040, get at least 90% of their energy from renewable energies."

The arrogance of those demanding that alternatives be given special consideration was once more on display courtesy of a New York state lawmaker who wrote the bill in question. "We are literally talking about the wealthiest companies in the world that are looking to build in New York state," said state Sen. Kristen Gonzalez (D), adding, "and if they have the resources to put billions of dollars into data center development, then they certainly should have the resources to build out renewable energy sources to power them."

So there!

Insisting what other people can and should do with their money - and writing legislation forcing them to do it - is a familiar page from the playbook of the left. Such attitudes will only be magnified by the new crop of socialists who are winning Democratic Party primaries across the country.

Of course, to back up the demand that renewables be governmentally propped up to power data centers, the left will trot out friendly new studies to bolster its arguments. So, right on cue, here comes the Environmental Integrity Project with another study condemning the big, bad gas plants.

"Dozens of planned gas plants to directly power data centers in the United States could emit as much greenhouse gas annually as Australia or France," according to a Reuters story on the findings of the study.

"An industry of the future should not be chained to dirty fuels of the past and the air pollution from fossil fuels that cause real harm to communities," said Jen Duggan, executive director of the EIP.

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin countered, "I think that a lot of Americans would agree that we should win this race against China to be the AI capital of the world." Amen.

The climate change movement flourished under the Obama and Biden administrations, costing taxpayers billions of dollars and funneling industries and consumers into a no-choice scenario of less reliable, less effective alternative power options. Thankfully, the Trump administration has unleashed all American energy resources - including inviting alternatives to compete in the free marketplace.

For now, the left acknowledges that the federal government is not friendly turf. So, when it comes to emerging data centers, the subsidies-and-mandates game is playing out at the state level, because without such help, as AP reported, "the construction of wind and solar simply can't keep up."

In the free marketplace, things that can't keep up eventually fall by the wayside. But in the fantasyland of far-left (and socialist) idealism, government regulations keep them afloat or even put them in preferred positions - at least until their deficiencies become too obvious and too dangerous to pretend anymore. (For example, see the massive 2025 power outage in Spain, Portugal and parts of France, where alternatives failed and natural gas came to the rescue to restore power.)

The U.S. will likely win the AI race, but only because it got under way in earnest during the Trump administration. If it had happened under the Biden regime, our government would be mandating artificial benchmarks for renewables while China focused on controlling artificial intelligence for the world.

This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.

Tyler Durden Mon, 07/27/2026 - 17:40

Court Rules Illinois' In-State Tuition Benefits For Illegals 'Unconstitutional And Invalid'

Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times,

A federal court ruled in favor of the Trump administration in a lawsuit challenging Illinois’ laws that offered education benefits to illegal immigrants while denying the same for out-of-state Americans.

In a July 24 order, the District Court for the Southern District of Illinois declared that in-state tuition provisions under the state’s Acevedo Bill (which became law in May 2023), its 2024 amendment, the DREAM Act, and the Retention of Illinois Students and Equity (RISE) Act, as applied to illegal immigrants, violated the U.S. Constitution’s Supremacy Clause and are “unconstitutional and invalid.”

The Trump administration argued that these three laws, which provide postsecondary education benefits to illegal immigrants, were in violation of Title 8 of the U.S. Code Section 1623.

Section 1623 bans illegal immigrants from being eligible for post-secondary education benefits in a state unless the same benefits are provided to all U.S. citizens, regardless of their state of residence.

In its complaint filed last September, the Trump administration highlighted that the Acevedo Bill allows illegal immigrants to pay a lower tuition rate in the state’s public colleges and universities than a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident from other states.

The Illinois DREAM Act, signed into law in 2011, created a scholarship program funded by private donations.

This benefit was later limited to illegal immigrants students in the state.

The RISE Act, which came into effect in 2020, extended state financial assistance to illegal immigrants.

In a motion to dismiss filed in November 2025, Illinois challenged the validity of Section 1623. The state argued that Section 1623 violates the anticommandeering doctrine outlined in the U.S. Constitution’s 10th Amendment, which recognizes that Congress has no power to issue direct orders to a state.

Section 1623 “runs afoul of the anticommandeering doctrine because it regulates states rather than private actors,” Illinois said. Because Section 1623 violates the anticommandeering doctrine, “all the federal government’s claims against all defendants must be dismissed.”

However, in the July 24 order, the court disagreed with this argument, affirming that restrictions under Section 1623 do not constitute “commandeering” under the 10th Amendment.

The doctrine bans the federal government from dictating what state legislatures can or cannot do. It also prohibits Washington from compelling states to enact or enforce federal regulatory programs. Section 1623 “does none of these things,” the court observed.

Instead, Section 1623 “functions as a limit on the eligibility of noncitizens rather than a command that states legislate or administer any particular program.”

The court permanently enjoined Illinois and other defendants in the case, including state entities, from enforcing the three laws disputed by the Trump administration.

The case was brought by the Department of Justice’s Civil Division and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Illinois, according to a July 24 statement from the department.

“Illinois sought to incentivize illegal immigration on the taxpayer’s dime by treating illegal aliens better than U.S. citizens living in other states, in clear violation of federal law,” U.S. Attorney Steven D Weinhoeft said in the statement.

“This ruling enforces the statute Congress wrote and stops the State from putting illegal aliens ahead of American citizens.”

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

The case is one of several in which the Trump administration is targeting state educational benefits being provided to illegal immigrants over U.S. citizens.

On July 23, the Justice Department announced that it had filed a case against Colorado over this issue. Similar lawsuits have been filed against California, Virginia, Massachusetts, Maryland, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Kansas, and Minnesota, all of which are pending.

In Texas, Kentucky, Nebraska, and Oklahoma, the Trump administration has succeeded in getting permanent injunctions against in-state tuition benefits for illegal immigrants.

Tyler Durden Mon, 07/27/2026 - 17:00

Cracker Barrel Dumps CEO After Woke Logo Fiasco

Shares of Cracker Barrel Old Country Store have yet to fully recover from outgoing CEO Julie Masino's brief "woke" rebranding effort last year. The family-dining chain quickly restored its iconic "Old Country Store" logo and nostalgic aesthetic. Still, the failed overhaul now appears to have cost Masino her job after exposing a serious failure of brand stewardship.

The Cracker Barrel controversy began on Aug. 18, 2025, when the company published a simplified logo that removed the "Old Timer" and barrel, sparking an immediate online backlash that intensified over the following week.

President Trump called for the oldlogo'ss restoration on Aug. 26, and Cracker Barrel reversed the redesign later that day.

Shares plunged by more than half in the months following the disastrous rebranding attempt and remain about 14% below where they traded before the controversy started.

Bloomberg reports that restaurant industry veteran David Deno will replace Masino.

Deno, who led Outback Steakhouse parent companyBloomin'’ Brands from 2019 to 2024, will take over on Aug. 10. Masino, CEO since late 2023, will remain as an adviser until early October.

Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Michael Halen and Amir Islam said Deno inherits favorable comparisons against last year's logo-driven sales drop, though his long-term success will depend on rebuilding traffic and recruiting experienced executives.

Rebuilding customer traffic starts with Deno understanding the brand's core audience and recognizing where America's Overton window now sits. It has shifted away from the left and far-left fringes toward the political center, as "woke" branding has largely vanished despite efforts by revolutionary socialist activists to revive it.

Tyler Durden Mon, 07/27/2026 - 16:40

Will The "Fat Lady" Finally Sing For Fauci?

Authored by James Howard Kunstler,

"The Fauci diary is amazing. He monologues like a Scooby Doo villain."

- El Gato Malo on "X"

Remember Covid-19? Seems like long ago in a world that time forgot. Well, you get to revisit the whole sketchy business on Wednesday, July, 29, when Dr. Anthony Fauci is called to testify about it to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee chaired by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY).

Though half the USA is still psychotic and unable to process reality, the other half of the country understands that Dr. Fauci has some ‘splainin’ to do.

Dr. Fauci was initially invited but declined to appear (didn’t feel like it), so the committee issued a subpoena compelling him (under penalty of up to a year in jail for failure to show).

Because Dr. Fauci was given a peremptory pardon by “Joe Biden,” he cannot legally invoke the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination.

He will have to answer the questions.

Of course, Dr. Fauci has demonstrated in previous appearances that he is a world champeen of failing-to-recall stuff and, at age 85, one might expect him to work that angle to the max.

One big question hanging over the whole proceeding is whether Covid-19 was concocted in the Wuhan Institute of Virology or “jumped from animals to humans” as Dr. Fauci posited around the 2:14 mark (near the end) of this video from a White House press conference, April, 13, 2020:

The Intel Community now kind of leans toward the lab leak theory.

Anyway, that all leads to another question as to whether Dr. Fauci directed his agency, the NIAID, to arrange funding for gain-of-function research at Wuhan on coronaviruses found in Asian bats.

In other words... did they make the chimeric virus on-purpose?

In past testimony, Dr. Fauci has equivocated and dissembled about that, played word games that led to raised voices between himself and Sen. Paul.

As it happened, then-Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard recently unearthed the paper trail of emails and memoranda between Dr. Fauci and his colleagues / partners in other corners of the epidemiological world that show how, at the time, they were all scrambling to cover their collective asses in the Covid-19 business.

One partner in particular, Peter Daszak of the New York based EcoHealth Alliance, which had channeled many grants to Wuhan since 2014, was especially active in fabricating alibis and ruses — including a major paper in the UK’s leading medical journal, The Lancet (the article was later nullified).

Behind that smokescreen of confabulation lies the wreckage of American society by the evil Covid-19 business.

It was even evident at the time (spring 2020) that President Trump suspected he was being played by the committee of “experts” that had been set up to make Covid-19 policy. His body language suggested as much in news conferences where he shifted uncomfortably from side to side, watching while others spoke at the podium, as if rehearsing his later YMCA dance.

At one point, April 23, 2020, (Fauci wrote in an email) President Trump called advisor Deborah Birx (“Scarf Lady”) into the Oval Office and yelled at her:

“You and Fauci have destroyed the country and the economy. I should never have listened to you. You have completely destroyed us.”

(Thanks to @JeffreyTucker on “X” for citation.)

And that was only the beginning of an event that led to a more momentous string of operations against the welfare of the American people, including the mass shutdown and ruin of small businesses, the orchestrated George Floyd riots, the year-plus of no school, and the mass mail-in ballot policy that enabled widespread voting fraud, ushering-in the election of Deep State tool “Joe Biden,” with the epic fuckery his handlers later laid on the body politic — including the open border, universal DEI, transsexuals celebrated on the White House lawn, the Ukraine money-laundry, weaponization of law and intel, build-out of the USAID-NGO grift matrix to fund Democratic Party operations, and much more.

Note, too, the concurrent disgrace of the medical establishment that went along with Covid policy. The doctors of America ganged up against the patients of America and broke the Hippocratic oath that says first, do no harm. The doctors went along with the fake mRNA vaccines long after it was evident that the shots didn’t work to prevent the disease and, in fact, induced widespread serious injuries, often fatal. The doctors, who followed the jive treatment protocol of ventilators along with remdesivir, the drug that destroyed patients’ kidneys in a matter of days and killed them. The doctors, whose hospitals collected as much as $35,000 per patient documented as dying from Covid (which was often a lie). The doctors who played dumb about the efficacy of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine. The doctors who still won’t admit that the vaccines are producing increased rates of cancer deaths and immune system failure. Sane Americans today now regard their primary care doctors as no better than 18th century quacks operating out of barbershops. Nice going, docs!

(Apart from the colossal racketeering operation that you have enabled medicine to become.)

One abiding mystery in the bigger picture is why Donald Trump never really addressed the evil trip that was laid on him about Covid-19 by Fauci and many others. . . why he has not denounced the whole wicked business. . . why he has not already allowed HHS-Sec’y Robert Kennedy, Jr., to withdraw the Covid vaccine from approval. . . why one David Morens, a Fauci “advisor” is so far the sole official indicted for attempting to cover-up the funding chain for bat coronavirus research?

Perhaps after Dr. Fauci does his ‘splainin’ this Wednesday, President Trump will feel free to come clean about what happened in March and April of 2020 and do some ‘splainin’ of his own.

If he does, prepare for possible widespread head explosions.

Tyler Durden Mon, 07/27/2026 - 16:20

BMO Says Return Of Mexican Cattle Is "Clear Positive" For Two Beaten-Down Meatpackers

Following the USDA's announcement that it will begin lifting the year-long ban on Mexican live cattle imports on Aug. 24, BMO Capital Markets senior equity research analyst Andrew Strelzik called the decision a "key positive" for publicly traded meatpackers Tyson Foods and JBS.

The restrictions were imposed to combat the New World screwworm, a flesh-eating parasite that threatens livestock. Restoring Mexican cattle flows should gradually ease tight U.S. supplies, improve slaughterhouse utilization, and support beef-processing margins.

"A combination of recent beef plant closures and the recovery of Mexican cattle imports should create a path to U.S. beef packer margin improvement," Strelzik wrote in a Monday morning note, identifying a potential new tailwind for Tyson Foods and JBS.

Strelzik outlined more color:  

Combination of recent beef plant closures and recovery of Mexico cattle imports should create a path to U.S. beef packer margin improvement.

Specifically, TSN's/ JBS's previously announced beef plant closures remove ~6% of industry slaughter capacity, while a full Mexico border re-opening would add an incremental ~5% of cattle supply. The 10%-11% improvement in cattle supply/slaughter-capacity balance would raise industry plant utilization closer to normal historical levels, though Mexican imports will take time to flow through the supply chain to slaughter, especially given the USDA's phased reopening strategy.

Notably, we estimate Douglas, AZ typically accounts for ~15% of Mexican cattle imports to the U.S. (note the closest active screwworm case is over 300 miles from the port).

There are uncertainties that will impact the pace and magnitude of beef margin recovery, including the rate at which cattle imports ramp and the type of cattle imported (e.g., fat cattle, feeder cattle). That said, the pace of imported Mexican cattle could materially accelerate with the reopening of New Mexico port of entries. In fact, we estimate the two New Mexico ports of entry combined account for just over half of all cattle imports from Mexico to the U.S. While timing is unconfirmed and hurdles will need to be cleared, we would not be surprised if New Mexico ports of entry were to re-open by early fall if the Arizona reopening is successful. Re-opening can be paused if the USDA identifies increased risk via post-opening audits or other observations/ information.

Border re-opening is a clear positive for Outperform-rated TSN and JBS, as meaningful inflection in U.S. beef margins could finally be on the horizon. Every $100mm change in TSN's beef performance has an ~$0.20 EPS impact (~5% of our FY27 EPS estimate), while every $100mm change in JBS's beef EBITDA is equivalent to ~2% of our 2027 EBITDA estimate. While heifer retention has been slow, the combination of plant closures and Mexico re-opening can create a bridge to underlying herd rebuilding. We note that heifers as a percent of slaughter decreased to 36% in June (from 40% previously), falling below the historical average.

Shares of both meatpackers have been pressured in recent months as New World screwworm detections in Texas and elsewhere have intensified concerns about already tight cattle supplies.

Mexican cattle represented about two-thirds of U.S. live cattle imports between 2020 and 2024, but most are lightweight feeder animals that require additional feeding before slaughter. The Aug. 24 reopening will begin at only one Arizona border crossing, meaning additional supply will enter gradually.

The immediate benefit should be lower cattle procurement pressure and improved margins for the meatpackers.

Related:

• Forget Beef. This Protein Is Way Cheaper

Yet beef prices are likely to stay elevated rather than enter a bear market. The U.S. herd remains near multidecade lows, and Bank of America's recent interview with a cattle expert suggested that elevated retail prices could persist for several years. Read the report.

We suspect the Trump administration's decision to restore live cattle imports from Mexico is part of a broader effort to ease food inflation and improve affordability ahead of the midterm elections.

Tyler Durden Mon, 07/27/2026 - 15:45