50 Survival Lessons From The Great Depression: The Horrifying Things Americans Did When Money, Jobs, & Hope Disappeared

Authored by John Walter via John Walter,

We publish this piece in the August of 2026, as the machinery of global commerce groans and sputters, as hollow men in expensive suits speak of "corrections" and "adjustments" while families count pennies in dimly lit kitchens. The photograph you see above - those gaunt men hunched over bowls of thin soup, their eyes fixed on some middle distance between hunger and dignity - was snapped nearly a century ago, yet it could have been taken yesterday in any tent city stretching like a scar across the American landscape. We do not traffic in false nostalgia here, nor in the cheap comfort of historical distance. The Great Depression was not a sepia-toned folktale; it was a meat-grinder that chewed through 25 percent of the working population, that evicted grandmothers into snowbanks, that turned proud men into beggars and children into scavengers. The bones of that era still jut through the soil of our present moment - visible to anyone brave enough to look. What follows is not a curiosity shop of antiquated customs, but a field manual written in blood and hunger, a record of how ordinary human beings refused to break when the world snapped in half. Read it. Memorize it. The wolves are already at the door.

Introduction

October 29, 1929, began as a Tuesday and ended as an autopsy. When the stock market shed its skin that Black Tuesday, it revealed something putrid beneath the gilt and glamour of the Roaring Twenties - the entire economic edifice had been a painted facade, a stage set propped up by speculation and debt. Within months, the iron sinews of American industry seized up. Factories that had belched smoke and churned out automobiles now stood silent as tombstones. Construction cranes froze in place, their skeletal arms reaching toward empty skies. The breadlines formed not from laziness but from the sudden, violent evaporation of work itself - fourteen million pairs of boots kicked dust on Main Street, fourteen million stomachs growled in concert.

The trauma cut marrow-deep. Men who had worn white collars found themselves fighting rats for garbage. Women who had managed households like generals now found themselves bartering wedding rings for sacks of beans. Children learned to sleep through the rumble of empty bellies, to recognize the particular gray color of hunger. This was not merely poverty - poverty implies a falling from somewhere. This was collapse, the sudden plunging of an entire civilization into a pit without handholds. The American Dream, that peculiar national religion promising infinite ascension, revealed itself as a confidence trick played on the desperate.

Yet here is the strange miracle: they did not all perish. They did not all devolve into the savage calculus of dog-eat-dog, though some surely did. Instead, something older and tougher emerged from the wreckage - a kind of stubborn, ornery ingenuity that had lain dormant during the fat years. People remembered how to do things. They recalled skills their grandparents had brought from the old country: how to stretch a dollar until it screamed, how to mend what was torn, how to find nourishment in landscapes others called barren. They discovered that the human animal is infinitely adaptable, capable of surviving on pride and lard and sheer cussedness when the supermarkets close and the ATMs go dark.

We have grown soft in the intervening decades. We have forgotten the taste of true scarcity, the texture of want. Our landfills overflow with the discarded, while our grandparents hoarded string and bacon fat like treasure. We order sustenance through glowing screens, disconnected from the soil and the seasons. But the old knowledge persists, passed down through whispered conversations in kitchens where the radio once played FDR's fireside chats. The fifty fragments of wisdom that follow are not theoretical. They were paid for with calloused hands and sleepless nights. They represent the collective survival manual of a generation that faced the abyss and chose, defiantly, to keep walking.

50 Tips From the Great Depression

1. Move as a clan. When work dried up in Akron or Detroit, families packed their possessions into trucks and rolled toward the horizon like Bedouins. Staying together meant pooling resources, sharing bread, ensuring that when one member stumbled, others could prop them up. The lone wolf starved; the pack endured.

2. Follow the harvest. Migrant farm work was the artery that kept many alive. Cotton in Texas, apples in Washington, wheat in Kansas - each crop had its season, its hunger for hands. A family could stitch together nine or ten months of labor by chasing ripeness across state lines, living in tents that leaked when it rained.

3. Ask not what the job is; ask only if it exists. Pride was a luxury item, quickly pawned. Men who had managed offices took up shovels. Women who had worn silk now scrubbed floors. The work itself mattered less than the doing of it, the exchange of sweat for coins.

4. Put every able body to the grind. Children sold newspapers, gathered bottles, ran errands for pennies. Grandparents watched infants so mothers could scrub laundry. No one sat idle; the family was an economic unit, a small cooperative where survival was the only dividend.

5. Scavenge value from the discarded. Driftwood became fuel. Rusted metal became scrap. Bones became glue. The beachcomber and the junk man were aristocrats in this economy, turning refuse into currency through sheer force of will.

6. Embrace the government's outstretched hand - cautiously. The New Deal programs, for all their bureaucratic weight, taught skills and poured concrete. Men learned masonry while building dams; they learned forestry while planting trees. Take the help, but keep your eyes open.

7. Work until you cannot stand. There was no retirement, no gold watch and pension. Seventy-year-olds swept floors. Eighty-year-olds watched grandchildren. The body worked until it broke, and then it found lighter work.

8. String together fragments. When full-time work vanished, people cobbled three part-time positions into a patchwork income. Dawn at the bakery, noon at the cannery, night at the loading dock. Sleep became a negotiable commodity.

9. Knock on every door. The unemployed did not wait for advertisements; they walked the streets, entering every shop and factory, offering labor by the hour. Persistence was the only resume that mattered.

10. Create your own occupation. Women arose before dawn to cook stews and pies, then sold them outside factory gates during lunch breaks. Men sharpened tools on porches, offering services to neighbors. Necessity was the mother of small enterprise.

11. Cultivate the jack-of-all-trades. The specialist starved. The man who could fix a roof, shoe a horse, and balance books found three times the opportunity. Breadth trumped depth when the market for expertise collapsed.

12. Accept payment in kind. Farmers took on hands they couldn't pay in dollars, offering instead bushels of corn or sides of pork. A chicken was as good as a five-dollar bill in many towns.

13. Crowd under one roof. When the bank took the house, families scattered like seeds - not to the wind, but to the homes of relatives. Three generations in one farmhouse was cramped, but the body heat alone saved on coal.

14. Convert your vehicle to shelter. Those with cars or trucks slept in them, parking behind churches or in empty lots. Public gyms offered showers for pennies; the automobile became a rolling bedroom.

15. Build from scrap. Tents, shacks, lean-tos constructed from packing crates and corrugated tin - these were not dwellings but declarations of continued existence. A roof, however patched, meant dignity.

16. Insulate with desperation. Mud, newspaper, tar paper, old coats - anything that could block the wind was stuffed into walls. The goal was not comfort but survival, keeping the pipes from freezing and the children from turning blue.

17. Wear your coat indoors. Thermostats were turned to near-freezing. Families sat in overcoats and mittens, breath visible in the parlor, saving fuel for cooking rather than warmth.

18. Harness evaporation. Wet sheets hung over doorways created crude air conditioning. As the water dried, it drew heat from the room, offering slight relief when the summer sun turned shacks into ovens.

19. Refinance before the hammer falls. Those who could, renegotiated mortgages to lower payments, buying time if not salvation. It was a dance with the devil, but it kept the sheriff away for another month.

20. Cash the safety net. Life insurance policies, that morbid savings account, became emergency funds. Better to feed the living than to enrich the beneficiaries.

21. Trade without currency. Barter economies sprouted like weeds. A morning's labor might yield a gallon of milk; a repaired fence could earn a bushel of apples. Money was scarce; ingenuity was not.

22. Beg without shame. Outside restaurants, on corners, at church doors - asking for help was not criminal but human. The rich who still ate in warm dining rooms sometimes emerged with leftovers, and the hungry learned to wait with hollow eyes.

23. Distrust the marble halls. When banks began closing their doors, taking lifetimes of savings with them, the wise kept cash in coffee cans and under floorboards. Institutions failed; paper promises burned.

24. Keep the books loose. Storekeepers extended credit to regulars, scratching debts on ledgers they might never collect. It was a gamble on community, on the hope that better days would come.

25. Dig in the dirt. The vegetable plot was the difference between malnutrition and survival. Even city dwellers tore up lawns to plant potatoes. Seeds cost pennies; harvests were priceless.

26. Hunt and hook. Rabbits, squirrels, fish from the creek - these were not sport but sustenance. A shotgun was as vital as a plow, and the woods were a larder for those who knew how to read them.

27. Gather what grows wild. Nuts, berries, dandelion greens, cattail roots - nature provided for those who knew her language. Children became expert foragers, their eyes trained to spot edibles in the ditch.

28. Put up the harvest. Canning was not a hobby but a survival skill. Rows of jars in the cellar - tomatoes, beans, peaches - represented edible insurance against winter's lean months.

29. Eat the inedible. Tumbleweed, once cattle fodder, found its way onto plates. Young shoots of plants previously ignored were boiled and seasoned with desperation.

30. Waste nothing of the beast. Hearts, livers, kidneys, feet, heads - every part served a purpose. Offal was ground, stewed, fried. Even the hooves yielded glue and gelatin.

31. Stretch with smoke. A single strip of bacon could flavor a week's worth of beans. The rind, the fat, the drippings - all were saved in tins, used to fry bread, to add richness to thin soups.

32. Cultivate the commons. Vacant lots became collective gardens. Parks were divided into plots. The soil belonged to whoever worked it, and tomatoes grew where roses once bloomed.

33. Swap the surplus. Neighbors traded cucumbers for eggs, corn for milk. Variety entered the diet through exchange, through the web of relationships spun across fences.

34. Cook from zero. There were no boxes to open, no packets to tear. Flour, water, salt - these were the building blocks. Recipes required time and labor, not just microwave minutes.

35. Shop the dying day. Saturday evenings, before Sunday closures, vendors slashed prices on perishables. The savvy bought bruised fruit and day-old bread, eating better for less.

36. Keep livestock close. A cow meant milk and butter; chickens meant eggs and Sunday dinner. Even a single goat could sustain a family, turning grass into protein.

37. Fill with starch. Meat was for the wealthy. The poor bulked meals with bread, potatoes, noodles - cheap calories that filled the stomach if not the soul. Lard added the illusion of richness.

38. Boil the bones. Soup was the universal meal, adaptable to whatever scraps remained. Water was free; bones were cheap; the pot could simmer endlessly, feeding many from little.

39. Mend the soles. Shoes were repaired until they could not be repaired again. Leather from belts patched holes; rubber from tires became new soles. A cobbler's needle was worth its weight in gold.

40. Sew from sacks. Feed sacks, flour bags - these became dresses, curtains, shirts. Women learned to cut patterns from whatever cloth came to hand, turning agricultural packaging into fashion.

41. Cancel vanity. Fashion was a dead letter. Clothes were worn until threadbare, then turned into patches for other clothes. The goal was coverage, not style; warmth, not trend.

42. Pass it down. Outgrown garments traveled to younger siblings, then to cousins, then to neighbors. A single coat might warm three children over a decade, its history accumulating in every patch.

43. Rip for rags. When fabric could no longer hold stitches, it became cleaning cloths, quilt stuffing, rug yarn. The final death of a garment was a slow unraveling into utility.

44. Abandon entitlement. No one believed the world owed them a living. The able worked; the unable hoped to work again. The safety net was the family, the church, the neighbor - not the distant government.

45. Help the striving. Those who tried and failed found open hands. Those who refused to try found closed doors. Charity was reserved for the willing, not the wanton.

46. Tighten the community weave. Neighbors shared tools, labor, news. They pooled money for the desperate, organized relief for the sick. The atomized individual perished; the networked group survived.

47. Lend with strings. Town welfare loans were not gifts; they were debts of honor, recorded meticulously, expected to be repaid. Dignity was preserved through obligation, not handouts.

48. Value the collective. Independence was a luxury; interdependence was the reality. The man who could not ask for help starved; the man who could not offer help lost his humanity.

49. Expect loss. They learned that possessions were temporary, that security was illusion, that everything could vanish overnight. This knowledge was terrible but liberating.

50. Keep walking. Above all, they maintained forward motion. Despair was indulged in private, briefly, then packed away. The sun rose; the work continued; the human animal adapted and endured.

Conclusion

The photograph fades, but the hunger remains. We stand now at a similar precipice, staring into a future that promises uncertainty, that whispers of contractions and corrections and collapses yet to come. The machines we have built are complex, interconnected, fragile - subject to the same tremors that brought down the house of cards in 1929. We have forgotten, in our age of abundance, how thin the margin is between comfort and catastrophe, between the full pantry and the empty bowl.

Yet the old knowledge persists, encoded in the DNA of those who survived. It tells us that we are tougher than we believe, more adaptable than we imagine, capable of finding nourishment in landscapes we once called barren. The fifty fragments above are not archaeology; they are prophecy. They remind us that when the trucks stop running and the screens go dark, we still possess hands that can plant, minds that can calculate, hearts that can share.

The men in that black-and-white image are all dead now, dust and memory. But their stubbornness echoes forward. They teach us that dignity is not purchased with dollars but carved out of will, that community is not a buzzword but a lifeline, that survival is not a given but a choice made daily, hourly, breath by breath. The wolves are at the door, yes. They always have been. But we remember now how to bar the gate, how to sharpen the knife, how to look our brothers and sisters in the eye and say: We have less, but we have enough. We will make it through another winter. We will see the spring.

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/28/2026 - 23:25

US Looks To Revive 'Prize Courts' For Iranian Oil Seizures

The US government is exploring an unusual legal route for dealing with Iranian oil and ships captured as part of its blockade: bringing back a wartime maritime system that has barely been used for generations, according to Bloomberg.

The Justice Department, working with the Pentagon, is preparing to use prize law, which historically allowed courts to decide whether vessels and cargo captured during armed conflict could legally become property of the United States. The mechanism was once commonplace in naval warfare but largely disappeared from American practice after the 19th century and has been dormant since World War II.

The appeal for the administration is largely practical. At present, the government generally relies on civil forfeiture to take ownership of vessels accused of sanctions violations or other offenses. Those cases can become complicated and slow, particularly when shipping companies, creditors, terrorism victims or other parties assert competing rights to the ship or its cargo. A prize proceeding could potentially narrow those disputes and allow captured oil to be sold more quickly, with the proceeds going to the US Treasury.

Bloomberg writes that Houston is being considered as a central venue for these cases. The Southern District of Texas has jurisdiction over a major port and sits alongside the country’s largest concentration of petrochemical infrastructure, giving it the capacity to receive and store substantial quantities of crude. US Attorney Aaron Reitz, whose office is working with DOJ officials in Washington, said the department is “now reviving” prize courts, describing the concept as an “ancient body of maritime law.”

The effort comes as Washington looks for additional ways to put economic pressure on Iran. US forces have already intercepted Iranian-owned or Iran-linked vessels since the blockade was imposed in April. Using prize law could turn those captures into a more direct financial tool: ships and oil deemed lawful prizes could be liquidated, potentially generating revenue while depriving Iran of valuable exports.

Supporters also see a strategic purpose beyond the money. Reviving the system would reinforce the message that the US considers the blockade a serious wartime measure rather than simply another sanctions regime. It could also make it more difficult for neutral commercial vessels to continue transporting goods that Washington believes support Iran.

But there is considerable uncertainty over how a centuries-old framework would operate under modern international law. “This really is a historical area of law that is not tested in modern times,” maritime attorney Allison Luzwick said. Courts could be asked to determine whether the current conflict provides sufficient legal grounds for invoking prize authority at all, particularly given questions surrounding congressional authorization for the hostilities.

The practical challenges are significant as well. Federal judges, prosecutors and the Navy have virtually no contemporary experience administering prize cases, meaning procedures would effectively have to be rebuilt for modern shipping and warfare. Shipowners and other parties with financial claims are also expected to contest seizures.

There are broader geopolitical risks. Critics argue that normalizing prize law could create a precedent that Washington may later regret. A rival power such as China, for example, could point to US practice when attempting to seize American or neutral merchant vessels during a future conflict.

The proposal therefore offers Washington a potentially faster way to convert captured Iranian oil into government revenue and tighten economic pressure on Tehran, but it would do so by reopening an area of wartime law that has gone largely untouched for more than a century.

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/28/2026 - 23:00

China Ousts 4 Senior Military Commanders In Widening Purges

Authored by Dorothy Li via The Epoch Times,

China has removed two top generals from its highest military command body and expelled two other senior commanders from a Communist Party-controlled legislature, as turbulence continues within the upper echelon of the country's armed forces.

Gen. Zhang Youxia, vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, speaks at the opening of the Western Pacific Naval Symposium in Qingdao, China, on April 22, 2024. (Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)

Once China's No. 1 general, Zhang Youxia, has been removed from the national Central Military Commission (CMC), according to a brief statement issued by the National People's Congress Standing Committee via state media Xinhua on Aug. 28.

The statement didn't offer any reason for the swift dismissal of Zhang, who had served as vice chair of the national CMC since 2018.

Zhang, also a member of the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP's) ruling Politburo, was abruptly placed under investigation in January, along with another senior commander, Liu Zhenli. Both men were accused of serious violations of discipline and laws, a phrase that generally refers to corruption or disloyalty.

Liu was also stripped of his title as a member of the national CMC, according to Xinhua.

Technically, China has two separate CMCs-one affiliated with the state and the other within the CCP-sharing the same personnel and leadership. In practice, however, the Party's CMC holds the real power. The two commanders haven't been formally, or at least publicly, expelled from the Party's military body.

The latest announcement effectively reduced the CMC from six members to one, plus Chinese leader Xi Jinping at the top.

China's armed forces have been embroiled in an unprecedented purge that has almost vacated the leadership of every branch of the People's Liberation Army (PLA), raising questions about the military's combat readiness.

A February report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies estimated that more than 100 senior military commanders have likely been purged since 2022.

Unlike the military chiefs previously targeted, Zhang and Liu are among the few active-duty generals in the country who have battlefield experience. Zhang served in China's brief war with Vietnam in 1979, while Liu took part in border skirmishes with Vietnam in the 1980s.

Because these officers were members of the legislature, they previously had legal protection against arrest or prosecution. By removing them from those positions, that protection was stripped away, opening them up to criminal prosecution.

According to China insiders who previously spoke to The Epoch Times, Beijing has already decided to charge Zhang, likely with corruption-related allegations, to shift attention away from the power struggle within the Party.

In addition to Zhang and Liu, the NPC on Aug. 28 revoked the membership of Zhong Shaojun, a long-time aide to Xi, according to Xinhua.

Zhong became Xi's secretary in the early 2000s when Xi was transferred to a position in Zhejiang, China's top economic powerhouse on the eastern coast. Since then, Zhong followed Xi into roles in Shanghai and, later, the central leadership in Beijing.

After Xi took power as the Party leader in late 2012, Zhong was appointed to the CMC chairman's office, working directly under Xi, and elevated to the military rank of senior colonel.

Also expelled from the NPC on the same day was Ju Qiansheng, commander of the PLA Strategic Support Force.

Xinhua did not provide reasons for their departure.

The purge in the defense establishment shows no signs of abating. In an Aug. 24 notice, China's military said it's seeking information from the public on potential procurement violations in the Rocket Forces, a secretive PLA unit that commands the country's conventional and nuclear missiles.

This notice echoed a 2023 announcement by the PLA's Equipment Development Department that encouraged citizens to report potential corruption and misconduct related to hardware procurement going back to October 2017. Since then, China has expelled two defense ministers and all four generals who had commanded the Rocket Forces.

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/28/2026 - 22:35

Brazil's Socialist President Sees Lead Disappear As Bolsonaro Heir Turns Presidential Election Into Coin Toss

Brazilian socialist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and right-wing Senator Flávio Bolsonaro are virtually tied as August comes to a close, according to UBS analysts citing new polling data, turning October's presidential election into a potential coin toss. A Bolsonaro victory would accelerate the eradication of left-wing rule across South America as the continent undergoes a once-in-a-generation rightward political realignment. That shift may also offer an early signal of Europe's upcoming 18-month election cycle, in which right-wing parties and candidates are gaining momentum across several major countries.

Alexandre de Ázara, a managing director and chief economist for Brazil at UBS, told clients on Friday that "the gap is closing" in Brazil's presidential race as Bolsonaro pulls within striking distance of President Lula.

Lula (Left); Bolsonaro (Right)

UBS's latest polling aggregator shows Lula taking 44% of valid first-round votes, down one percentage point from Monday's update. Bolsonaro rose one point to 38%, while other candidates remained at 18%.

First round aggregator and polls (% of valid votes for Lula)

First round aggregator and polls (% of valid votes for Flávio)

The runoff numbers are even tighter, according to Ázara. Lula now leads Bolsonaro by just 50.6% to 49.4%, cutting the incumbent's advantage to 1.2 percentage points from 2.8 points at the start of the week.

Ázara uses a mixture of polling data from Datafolha, Veritá, Nexus, Gerp, Indexa and PoderData. He said new polling data from Vox, Nexus, Real Time Big Data, and Atlas are expected over the next few days.

Prediction markets appear considerably more confident in Lula than the polls.

Polymarket gives the president a 62% chance of winning...

...compared with 35% for Bolsonaro. Kalshi places the contest at 61% versus 39%.

Brazilian voters face a stark ideological choice in October between the incumbent socialist Lula and right-wing Bolsonaro. Bolsonaro has portrayed the economy as trapped by high spending, high interest rates, and rising debt.

Barclays estimates that the next administration would need a fiscal adjustment of at least 2.5% of gross domestic product, or about 350 billion reais, to stabilize the debt burden by 2031.

TS Lombard expects Lula to pursue limited spending reforms following the election but projects that debt would still peak at 94.7% of GDP in 2034. Under Bolsonaro, the analysts model a faster adjustment and a proposed debt-linked spending rule, but debt would still reach 90% in 2032.

Comments from Bank of America's Latam Equity Quant:

Brasilia in election mode: investors on standby waiting to see how the elections play out. Uncertainty on the electoral outcome remains high as polls have been showing more convergence in President Lula's and Flavio Bolsonaro's voting intentions.

ING Analysts:

BRL: Presidential polling in play

It has been a positive environment for the carry trade, but what has also been helping the Brazilian real this week has been an opinion poll showing that President Lula's lead over Flavio Bolsonaro has dropped to just one percentage point. Bolsonaro is running on a ticket of fiscal consolidation and hoping to emulate the victory of Colombia's Abelardo de la Espriella this year, which has been greeted warmly by local asset markets.

The first round of the Brazilian presidential election takes place on 4 October. Expect USD/BRL to be bounced around by polling results before then. But with 12% implied yields through the forwards and the chance of a regime change, we suspect the real can continue to comfortably outperform the steep forward curve.

The election may determine whether Brazil moves further left or right politically. Across the continent, the latest country to shift right was Colombia. Many others have followed:

Nomura analyst Andrzej Szczepaniak expects a similar right-wing sweep across Europe in the coming elections.

More broadly, voters in the West are rejecting left-wing regimes, as failed progressive experiments, open borders, and nation-killing socialist policies have been nothing but devastating.

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/28/2026 - 22:10

The War Hawks' Predictions Have Aged Like Milk

Authored by Nolan Denaro via Antiwar.com,

When Donald Trump launched the Iran War on February 28, the usual suspects were in full support. From the moment the conflict ignited, many couldn't help but immediately express admiration for the president, saying that only a brave, noble, and strong leader would've had the courage to do what Trump did here. For weeks, we heard that this war was essential, that we would be better off as a result, and that to be unsupportive was to be siding with the IRGC.

Alex Brandon/AP

As weeks went by, however, it became apparent that the rosy picture that had been painted in the war's infancy was not based in reality. One month turned into two, and then three, and here we are now about six months later, with none of the war's stated objectives having been achieved. Because of the historic nature of this defeat, it is important to reflect on how we got here.

Who were the voices cheering the administration on as it led us down this dark path?

Why did they have such hatred for those of us who opposed the war?

Most importantly, who can't we trust going forward?

Ben Shapiro

Among the war's top early cheerleaders was Ben Shapiro. From the first moments of the conflict, Shapiro was praising Donald Trump's decision to launch the war.

"President Trump is the most courageous commander-in-chief in modern American history," Shapiro excitedly said. "What he just did is the bravest move by a president of the United States of my lifetime, bar none, without a doubt."

Shapiro also immediately made it his mission to smear the war's critics. Doing his best play on David Frum's 2003 article "Unpatriotic Conservatives," Shapiro began labeling some of the most prominent anti-war voices - including libertarian Dave Smith - "America-haters." In a March 4 episode of "The Ben Shapiro Show," Shapiro makes some very bold - and uninformed - predictions for how the war would play out.

Addressing concerns early on in the war about U.S. munition stockpiles, Shapiro urged his audience to ignore the naysayers, and rest assured that " we do have significant stockpiles." To build on his narrative, he claimed that the Iranian's were "running out of missile launchers." "This is a major problem for them," he emphasized.

"The status is pretty good," Shapiro told his podcast listeners, "things are moving pretty well."

Shapiro's blind faith in the government narrative was not enough to will the U.S. to victory, however. His uncritical rereading of Trump's Truth Social post - in which he claims that we have a "virtually unlimited supply" of munitions - may have convinced his audience to get on board with the war, but this trust in the administration eventually crashed against the rocks of reality.

The U.S. does not have "unlimited" munitions. The Iranian's ability to launch missiles has not been effectively degraded. This war has not gone as the administration intended, and the biggest proof of this is the conflict's length. The war was originally sold as a weeks-long offensive, but it turned out to be a drastically larger undertaking than the White House anticipated, and one that has engulfed the Trump presidency.

Marc Thiessen

Neoconservative Marc Thiessen, a former George W. Bush speechwriter, was among the war's most enthusiastic boosters early on. Once a leading figure within the "Never-Trump" movement, Thiessen has become a vocal supporter of the President. This change of heart is mainly due to Trump abandoning his dovish 2016 rhetoric, and embracing a more hawkish foreign policy.

In an op-ed for the Washington Post on March 3, Thiessen outlined what he viewed as the mastery of Trump's Iran strategy.

"At this moment, the U.S. is striking Iran from the air - eliminating the regime's leadership, its retaliatory capabilities, its nuclear program and its infrastructure of repression." Thiessen explained. "Expect this campaign to last for weeks, not days."

Thiessen also expressed faith that the Iranian population could be organized - as one collective unit - and mobilized in an orderly fashion to achieve America's objectives, saying "there is no need for a U.S. invasion force. The Iranian people are the boots on the ground, and the fate of the country is in their hands."

This uprising of course did not happen, and based on the size of the crowd that attended the funeral for Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, there are signs of a "rally around the flag" effect having taken place in at least some capacity.

In an effort to play to Trump's ego, Thiessen struck a familiar cord, saying "If he succeeds in defeating Islamic radicalism in Iran, Trump will take his place alongside them as one the most consequential presidents in U.S. history."

Surely we should expect a follow-up on these wildly-incorrect predictions, right? This war not only wasn't wrapped up in "weeks" like Thiessen had assured us, but his premature claims of success have also proven false.

To be fair to Thiessen, let's assess the success of this war by his own standards, which he kindly published in his Washington Post op-ed on March 11. His three "levels of success in Iran" are as follows:

"Level One: The United States eliminates the regime's ability to project force beyond its borders."

"Level Two: The Iranian regime collapses and is replaced by a new government answerable to Washington."

"Level Three: The Iranian people rise up and take back their country."

As for the first objective, Iran's ability to effectively close the Strait of Hormuz has showcased an expansion - not a retraction - of Iranian influence in the region. Ships have been struck multiple times in the past month, even as we are told the military fighting is on pause.

The Iranian regime has also not collapsed as Thiessen has hoped, and they are no more answerable to Washington than they were before. In fact, due to the unwillingness of Trump to hold up his end of a potential deal, Iran has become more reluctant to negotiate.

As I previously explained, Thiessen's dreams of a people-powered uprising were not based in reality. If you think about the plan in simple terms, you can quickly see its problems. The idea was that the U.S. was going to bomb Iran, assassinate the country's political and religious leader, kill innocent civilians, threaten to eliminate all of Persian civilization, and then the everyday people would suddenly become motivated to rally to the cause of the foreign nation that is attacking them. This is an illogical proposition, but one that was genuinely believed by neoconservative ideologues like Marc Thiessen.

Jesse Watters

Fox News' primetime hosts were leading the war's propaganda effort, and none were as shameless as Jesse Watters. Watters monologues on his show "Jesse Watters Primetime," as well as his remarks on "The Five" have been shockingly detached from reality, and his statements immediately following Trump's initial strikes have not aged well.

"We're crushing them," Watters told the panel of "The Five" on March 3. "These guys were nuking up, Trump's not going to wait around."

"With Venezuela and Iran, we've basically tipped over two petro-dictatorships," Watters said, just a few days into what has turned into a prolonged conflict. "We now control almost the entire world oil market."

It is genuinely unbelievable how history manages to repeat itself like this. In what is now an infamous moment of presidential embarrassment, George W. Bush spoke on the USS Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003, in front of a banner that read "Mission Accomplished." He gave the speech only a few weeks after the launch of the Iraq War. Despite Bush's proclamation of a completed mission, the war would go on to last for years, resulting in thousands of American troop deaths, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilian deaths, and hundreds of billions of dollars spent. This speech has since served as a reminder of how hubris can blind political leaders from military realities. Much like in 2003, it seems that many were blinded by hubris in Iran. The thought of an American strategic defeat against Iran was unfathomable to the war-hawks. This is because they are in a bubble, where they only hear feedback which reaffirms their pre-existing ideology. If they were to have heeded the warnings of the wise voices who opposed this war (John Mearshiemer, Scott Horton, Jeffrey Sachs, Andrew Napolitano, Ron Paul, Tucker Carlson, etc.), they would've at least understood the incredible risks inherent in this project.

But, of course, their strategy relies on maintaining an unshakable narrative: the war will be a success, without a doubt. The skeptics of foreign interventionism - despite all of the ridiculous smears - have once again been proven right. Perhaps we should listen to them sometime. We would be much better off.

Nolan Denaro is an independent political analyst, writer, and host of "The Quest For Clarity" podcast, which can be found on YouTube and Spotify. His work has been published by Antiwar.com, Responsible Statecraft, the Libertarian Institute, The Daily Caller, and the Ludwig von Mises Institute. He writes on U.S. foreign policy, economics, and current events, with a particular focus on war and imperialism. He writes opinion pieces on his Substack, and you can follow him on X @nolandenaro. Nolan can be reached for correspondence at nolansdenaro@icloud.com.

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/28/2026 - 21:45

Study Finds Gender Ideology Fuels Support For Left-Wing Political Violence

The Department of Health and Human Services commissioned a study that found a measurable link between accepting transgender ideology and supporting left-wing political violence.

Surveillance footage provided in court filings shows Nicholas Roske at a gun shop on May 23, 2022 before attempted murder of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. (Photo: Justice Department)

Researchers at Rutgers University, the Manhattan Institute and the Network Contagion Research Institute produced the report, called "Where the Clinic Meets the Movement: Does Gender Ideology Arm Left-Wing Authoritarian Psychology?" which was obtained by the New York Post ahead of its release.

The team surveyed 1,208 American adults on the importance of affirming gender identity, on perceived threats to transgender people from groups the survey lists as "white supremacists, men, the Supreme Court, etc.," and on support for anti-democratic behaviors.

To gauge a respondent's degree of support for gender ideology, researchers built a metric they call the Clinical Gender Affirmation Scale (CGAS), drawn from what they describe as "consensus positions" of the American Psychological Association, the American Psychiatric Association and the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, chosen because they "represent the official scientific and clinical establishment on care for individuals who identify as transgender."

Researchers then asked respondents about six potential targets of political violence. The report describes them as "killing Charlie Kirk, killing Donald Trump, killing Brian Thompson, arson of ICE buildings, damaging wealthy people's property, and violence against police."

Across preregistered analyses, CGAS and related gender ideological-belief measures were strongly associated with left-wing authoritarianism (LWA), with Spearman correlations ranging from ρ = 0.44 to ρ = 0.59. CGAS also significantly predicted LWA, accounting for 31.5% of its variance. In ordinal regressions predicting CGAS, political identity was the strongest predictor, but LWA remained an independent predictor after controlling for political identity and age. LWA and CGAS were also positively associated with justification of political violence across six targets: killing Charlie Kirk, killing Donald Trump, killing Brian Thompson, arson of ICE buildings, damaging wealthy people's property, and violence against police. Both independently predicted all six violence outcomes after controlling for left-wing political identity.

These findings suggest that gender ideology is associated with LWA and willingness to justify political violence. Experimental research is needed to determine causality.

The report's conclusion reaches past correlation. Gender ideology, the authors write, "may function as an ideological accelerant, telling left-wing authoritarian psychology who the enemy is, why the situation is urgent, and - in those already disposed toward force - that violence is legitimate."

Researchers also examined what they term catastrophizing beliefs. The report assessed "the perceived likelihood that a genocide of individuals that identify as transgender is currently under way," alongside what it calls "associate extremist responses," including support for censoring and punishing people who reject transgender ideology or ignore Supreme Court rulings on gender issues. The authors treat the strength of that connection as unsettled. "We have good reasons to expect that LWA and CGAS will predict support for these sorts of anti-democratic beliefs, but those are empirical questions which will be answered in the analysis that are ongoing," they write.

Study researcher Colin Wright called the results among the most striking he has encountered. "One of our study's most interesting and perhaps shocking findings was that accepting gender ideology appeared to augment authoritarian attitudes on support for political violence," Wright told the Post. He offered one possible mechanism. "We believe this may result from gender ideology defining specific oppressed classes and their oppressors, and the promotion of extreme narratives of harm for those who refuse to affirm transgender identities both socially and medically," Wright said. He stopped short of calling that explanation settled. "That is only speculative at this point, but we are addressing this directly in a follow-up report," Wright said.

The rise of violence linked to transgender perpetrators or allies is hard to dismiss. Last year, Tyler Robinson allegedly shot Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk in the neck while he addressed a crowd at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah. Robinson reportedly had a relationship with a transgender roommate. In 2022, Nicholas Roske, who identifies as a transgender woman, approached Justice Brett Kavanaugh's home armed, with the attempt to assassinate him. 

Individuals who identified as transgender carried out separate school shootings in Minnesota and Tennessee in the years since. None of this proves causation, and the study's authors concede as much themselves, and a follow-up study is in the works.

"A second study is being designed to address some of the limitations of the study described herein," the authors explain in the conclusion. "This second study will take the causal direction issue head on by using an experimental design to test whether exposure to CGAS-consistent content produces the patterns predicted by the present theory. The cross-sectional correlations reported here constitute the discovery sample; the planned pre-registered experiment will constitute the confirmatory causal test."

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/28/2026 - 21:20

A Trillion Dollar Budget But Military Can't 'Afford' To Attack Mold On Bases?

Authored by Stavroula Pabst via Responsible Statecraft,

A new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report finds that the maintenance backlog for military installations has ballooned to more than $285 billion - leaving many facilities in disrepair, while risking readiness and service members' quality of life.

This figure is a jump up from 2022, when the maintenance backlog was about $137 billion. But the backlog continues to grow, because the services only request about 80% of the funds they need for installation repairs and maintenance.

"By requesting less funding for installation maintenance and improvement projects than its models and experts recommend, DOD has chosen to accept some degree of risk that mission or quality of life will be negatively affected," the report, released Friday, found.

Indeed, service members face a range of issues at the facilities where they work and live. Barracks at Naval Station Norfolk, for example, have had suspected mold since 2023. But the installation office declined requests to test the growth observed there "due to the cost of testing and potential remediation."

Another highly used facility at that Naval station had evidence of asbestos and significant water damage, GAO found. While all the station's piers require renovation, the Navy was "actively improving" only one - leaving the rest to operate in a "degraded condition."

At one Naval Base Guam facility, GAO observed, rust build-up and algae on an emergency door's lock could "affect the door's functionality during an emergency." The base's facilities have also been prone to HVAC failures and roof leaks, GAO found, leading to suspected mold.

Beyond physical hazards and operational risks, other issues undercut service members' overall quality of life.

About 3,000 soldiers live at Fort Wainwright, for example, yet the army installation's dining facility was only built to serve 800.

"The dining facility is not able to serve soldiers in a timely manner, so many opt to eat less-healthy food in their living spaces at their own expense, especially in the winter when it is too cold to wait in line outside," GAO found. Officials have repeatedly advocated for expanding the dining facility, but the installation has not yet received the funding needed to do so.

The maintenance backlog continues to swell despite the Pentagon's rapidly expanding budget. The White House requested a record $1.5 trillion defense budget for FY 2027.

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/28/2026 - 20:55

Geothermal Power Is Emerging As An AI Energy Source For The Trump Administration

A little-used corner of the clean-energy market is getting a potentially decisive trial in Utah. At a government-backed research site, engineers are testing whether equipment and expertise developed during America’s shale boom can turn deeply buried heat into a dependable source of electricity, according to Bloomberg.

Conventional geothermal power works only where heat, permeable rock and underground water happen to occur together. The newer approach tries to manufacture those conditions. Wells are drilled several miles down, water is sent through cracks in hot rock and the heated fluid is brought back to the surface, where its energy can be converted into electricity.

Bloomberg writes that success would considerably enlarge the industry’s geographic reach. Instead of being restricted to rare geological formations, geothermal projects could spread across parts of the western United States where sufficiently hot rock lies within drilling distance. Supporters envision a low-emission power source capable of operating day and night, regardless of sunlight or wind.

That consistency has become more valuable as data centers increase electricity demand. AI infrastructure requires enormous quantities of uninterrupted power, giving geothermal developers a potential customer base willing to sign long-term supply contracts. Fervo Energy, which is developing a project near the Utah research site, already has a deal connected to Alphabet, although commercial output there is not expected until later this year.

The Utah experiment is intended to answer whether the concept can work continuously outside a controlled demonstration. Researchers will watch how quickly the underground system loses heat, how much injected water disappears and whether repeated pumping produces problematic seismic activity. Even encouraging technical results will still need to be replicated at other locations and translated into commercially viable projects.

Geothermal has retained political support that wind and solar have recently lost. The Utah program began during the Obama years, has attracted $328 million in federal commitments since 2020 and remains supported by the Trump administration. Industry cost estimates suggest new geothermal facilities can already compete with several other forms of electricity generation, although drilling remains expensive and project development carries substantial geological risk.

The experiment could therefore determine whether enhanced geothermal becomes a meaningful national energy source or remains a promising niche. If developers can drill deeper, preserve underground heat and repeat the process at declining cost, technology inherited from the oil industry could help create a new class of always-available clean power plants.

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/28/2026 - 19:40

The Iran War Has Turned VLCCs Into $650,000-A-Day Assets

Authored by Julianne Geiger via OilPrice.com,

More Gulf oil is moving again. Getting it out now costs a fortune.

Earnings on the benchmark Saudi Arabia-to-China supertanker route surged to a record $647,000 per day on Thursday, according to Baltic Exchange data cited by Bloomberg. That is more than ten times the rate a year ago-and nearly 27% above the $510,000 reached just ten days earlier.

The spike comes as Persian Gulf producers increase crude shipments through the Strait of Hormuz despite the continuing Iran war.

That should, in theory, ease the oil supply crunch. Instead, it has created another one: ships.

Few tanker owners are willing to send vessels through Hormuz, leaving exporters competing for the smaller pool that will take the risk. The result is an extraordinary premium for anyone willing to make the trip.

And crossing Hormuz is increasingly only the first leg.

Producers have begun shuttling crude through the strait before transferring cargoes onto other tankers outside the Gulf. That effectively creates two freight bills-one for getting the oil through Hormuz and another for hauling it onward to Asia.

TotalEnergies CEO Patrick Pouyanne said earlier this week that moving a cargo through Hormuz cost about $20 million. Tanker market participants told Bloomberg those costs have risen further since then.

Even outside the strait, rates are climbing. A tanker traveling from Oman to China now commands roughly $220,000 per day, up from $131,000 a month ago.

The squeeze is being amplified by Houthi attacks in the Red Sea, which have forced Saudi Arabia to redirect some barrels through the Mediterranean and around Africa, adding roughly 30 days to voyages bound for Asia.

There are signs that more oil is escaping the Gulf. Traders estimate Hormuz outflows at 6 million to 8 million barrels per day, while Goldman Sachs puts flows at roughly two-thirds of pre-war levels.

By Julianne Geiger for Oilprice.com

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/28/2026 - 19:15

Bessent's War On Left-Wing NGOs May Strip Soros Network, SPLC, And CAIR Of Tax-Exempt Status: Report

A new report from the New York Post maps out a multi-agency Treasury task force that could soon pursue a broad review that could strip tax-exempt status from George Soros' far-left Open Society Foundations, the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

Treasury officials are drafting a framework to audit NGOs suspected of exploiting their 501(c)(3) status for political activity, illegal conduct or support of radical groups, the Post reported, citing three people familiar with the internal deliberations.

One source said Treasury Department officials were "like a dog with a bone" and reckoned that many NGOs and their donor bases could be "on borrowed time."

So Trump and his administration are going after Antifa, Soros, and the Muslim Brotherhood, all at the same time, right as we learn about Antifa being connected to a global terrorist network connected to Islamic terror organizations like Hamas and the IRGC.

It’s happening. https://t.co/6QkdvR1jvK

— Clandestine (@WarClandestine) August 27, 2026

"There's a lot of internal pressure to get it done, but some people are still moving too slowly at the IRS," the source said. "That is expected to change very soon."

Bessent confirmed last October that Treasury had begun compiling a list of nonprofits for review.

The information leaked to the New York Post comes roughly six weeks after Secretary of State Marco Rubio, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent addressed delegations on the alarming rise of far-left terrorism.

"For more than six decades, the Cuban regime has been the leading sponsor of radical leftism and Third Worldism in the United States. The State Department is exposing the full history of Cuban espionage and subversion in our country," Rubio wrote on X, adding, "The American people deserve to know."

This week, the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned three NGOs it accused of supporting far-left terrorism.

"Far-left extremists, their fronts, and their enablers should be on notice: We will bring the full weight of our economic tools to bear," Bessent said in a statement. "Political terrorism has no place in our society, and we will continue to cut the financial lifelines of these groups until they are eliminated."

Taken together, the Trump administration's actions demonstrate a coordinated effort to degrade the financial, legal, and organizational infrastructure supporting far-left activist networks, the very same ones that like to start riots and burn down city blocks.

The target set includes NGOs, billionaire-funded foundations and foreign influence networks linked to Cuba and China, including the nonprofit sphere associated with China-based Marxist billionaire Neville Roy Singham, which U.S. officials have accused of facilitating subversive activity.

Whether the campaign is working should be assessed by examining reduced funding flows, weaker mobilization, and the inability to sustain coordinated unrest. The absence of riots and chaos this summer may suggest that the task force is already working to dismantle these revolutionary networks, which could very well be part of the counterstate against Trump.

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/28/2026 - 18:50

China's Solar Boom Hits A Wall As Industry Losses Mount

Authored by Irina Slav via OilPrice.com,

Three of China's top solar market players reported deepening losses over the first half of the year, reflecting weakening demand for solar in the world's top manufacturer and generator.

Jinko Solar, JA Solar Technology, and Tongwei all reported six-month losses as overcapacity in the sector meets weakening demand, not only at home but also abroad, Bloomberg reported, citing statements made by the companies at their financial results releases.

The report noted new solar power capacity additions in China had shrunk to 72.07 GW over the first half of the year, compared with 212.2 GW a year earlier. Part of the decline was due to the rush to connect projects before China's June 1, 2025 electricity-pricing reform, which caused an extraordinary 2025 base.

"The full impact of policies requires a longer period for transmission and validation," JA Solar said, as quoted by Bloomberg. "In the short term, the actual effects of capacity reduction and consolidation have not yet fully emerged, and the industry as a whole still faces temporary and structural overcapacity issues."

Meanwhile, the U.S. tariff war on major trade partners affected demand for Chinese solar equipment abroad as well, adding to the pain for the industry leaders. Some of that pain was created by the government in Beijing, which canceled an export tax rebate for solar manufacturers in April.

"Trade barriers in overseas markets have been comprehensively upgraded, and traditional export channels are facing a reshaping," Jinko Solar said.

China's solar equipment exports declined by 21.4% last month from a year earlier, according to Chinese customs data, demonstrating the effect of local and foreign legislative changes.

Meanwhile, total solar power capacity in China is set to overtake the country's coal capacity, despite the slowdown in new additions. As of the end of June, solar power capacity stood at 1,274 gigawatts, just below the total coal-fired installed capacity of 1,275 GW.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/28/2026 - 18:25

Milo Yiannopoulos Detained by ICE After Overstaying Visa, Faces Deportation

The Department of Homeland Security announced Friday that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested conservative political pundit Milo Yiannopoulos for overstaying his visa and that the British commentator will soon be deported from the United States back to Britain.

Federal agents took Yiannopoulos, a former Breitbart News editor, into custody Thursday at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport in Kenner, Louisiana. Yiannopoulos legally entered the U.S. on May 14, 2019, then overstayed his visa. A federal immigration judge issued a final deportation order against him on July 22 after he failed to appear at the hearing. The British national remains in ICE custody pending removal to England.

Yiannopoulos was issued a final order of removal by an Immigration Judge on July 22, after failing to show up for his immigration hearing. He will remain in ICE custody pending removal.

— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) August 28, 2026

"Being in detention is a choice. We encourage all illegal aliens to take control of their departure with the CBP [Customs and Border Protection] Home App," a DHS spokesperson said in a statement. "The United States is offering illegal aliens $3,000 and a free flight to self-deport now. We encourage every person here illegally to take advantage of this offer and reserve the chance to come back to the U.S. the right legal way to live the American dream. If not, you will be arrested and deported without a chance to return."

Yiannopoulos spent a decade as one of President Donald Trump's most ardent supporters. The pundit's run at Breitbart News ended in February 2017, when he resigned after livestream comments surfaced in which he appeared to condone sexual relationships between young boys and older men.

Yiannopoulos later interned for then-Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and worked with the superstar rapper Ye, formerly Kanye West, as his personal assistant. Ye is scheduled to perform at the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans on Friday night; it is unclear whether Yiannopoulos was in the state for the show. As recently as 2025, Yiannopoulos posted that California needed ICE checkpoints at supermarkets and "on the spot deportation for anyone who can't prove they are in the US legally."

Laura Loomer, who has feuded with Yiannopoulos for years, applauded the arrest, writing that she "was the first person to report on the fact that Milo was in the US illegally."

BREAKING: Illegal alien Milo Yiannopoulos has been detained by ICE.

I was the first person to report on the fact that Milo was in the US illegally where he incited violence against President Trump and worked for Marjorie Traitor Greene.

Recently, Candace Owens invited this illegal alien into her home. When Milo called for me to be assassinated, I reported him to ICE and the FBI. I told you all that Milo was an illegal alien. He was detained in Louisiana by @ICEgov.

Milo is going to be deported back to the UK where he can live among the Muslims he has recently chosen to embrace. Today is a great day for America.

— Laura Loomer (@LauraLoomer) August 28, 2026

Now the man who built a brand on hardline immigration politics is on the other side of the enforcement machine and facing deportation to the United Kingdom.

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/28/2026 - 18:00

FDA Approves 3 New COVID-19 Vaccines

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

The Food and Drug Administration on Aug. 27 approved COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer, Moderna, and Sanofi.

A nurse prepares to give a COVID-19 vaccine to a child in Denver, Colo., on Nov. 3, 2021. (Michael Ciaglo/Getty Images)

The new shots from Pfizer and Moderna use the messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) platform and target the XFG strain, a subvariant of the JN.1 variant.

Regulators also cleared a COVID-19 vaccine shot from Sanofi that targets the XFG strain and does not use mRNA technology.

The approval is for people aged 65 and older, as well as people aged 12 to 64 who have one or more underlying conditions such as obesity that officials say puts them at higher risk of severe COVID-19.

Regulators have been approving updated COVID-19 vaccines for several years, in a bid to better match circulating strains. The previous versions of the vaccines were estimated to provide 58 percent protection against hospitalization, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The FDA did not announce the approvals in a press release, as it has done in the past.

The FDA and its parent agency, the Department of Health and Human Services, did not respond to requests for comment by publication time.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been critical of mRNA vaccines against respiratory diseases, saying they don't work well.

Manufacturers are going to run single-arm studies evaluating the shots in humans, according to FDA documents. The companies were going to be made to run placebo-controlled trials, but officials released them from that requirement "because of operational and feasibility challenges," the documents said.

FDA officials in 2025 said that new placebo-controlled trials were imperative to determine how well the COVID-19 vaccines actually performed, given it has been years since such trials were conducted. Pfizer and Moderna committed to running placebo-controlled trials, as did Novavax, which has since licensed its COVID-19 vaccine to Sanofi.

A sign in a pharmacy advertises the COVID-19 vaccine as the nation marks the fifth anniversary of the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City on March 11, 2025. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

The basis of the approvals was largely not detailed in the documents. During an advisory meeting in the spring, the vaccine manufacturers presented data from animal testing, but no data from human testing. The FDA's vaccine advisory committee then recommended the next round of COVID-19 vaccines target XFG.

Uptake of COVID-19 vaccines has plummeted in recent years. Just 17.5 percent of adults and 10 percent of children received a shot in late 2025 or early 2026, according to the CDC.

COVID-19 infections are growing or likely growing in 47 states, the CDC said in modeling estimates released this month.

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/28/2026 - 17:40

US Military Shoots Down 3 Mexican Cartel Drones With Laser

Authored by Chris Summers via The Epoch Times,

A laser system was used to shoot down three drug cartel drones in southern Texas, close to the Mexican border, the U.S. military said on Aug. 27.

A so-called hunter drone in front of a mobile sensor unit for drone detection using optical systems and lasers at the National Test Center for Unmanned Aerial Systems of the German Aerospace Center in Cochstedt, Germany, on Oct. 8, 2025. Jens Schlueter /AFP via Getty Images

The North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command, in a joint statement, said an Army Multipurpose High Energy Laser (AMP-HEL) was used overnight on Aug. 25-26 in the Rio Grande Valley.

The Joint Task Force-Southern Border (JTF-SB) deemed the three drones to be hostile and posing a physical threat to U.S. military personnel and their partners in U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

Maj. Gen. Curtis Taylor, commander of JTF-SB, said the successful operation against the drones was a testament to the readiness, vigilance, and technological edge of his force.

US Will 'Not Tolerate Hostile Surveillance'

"Cartel networks are increasingly employing unmanned aircraft systems to facilitate illicit human-smuggling and actively spy on our personnel and law enforcement partners," Taylor said. "By integrating layered countermeasures alongside advanced directed-energy capabilities like this laser system, we have made it clear that we will not tolerate hostile surveillance."

Ammon Blair, a former U.S.Border Patrol agent and senior fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation's Secure & Sovereign Texas Initiative, told The Epoch Times in March 2025 that he recalled hearing cartel-operated drones overhead while working along the Texas border.

"You'd be running, and you'd have a drone right above your head and tracking every move you made," Blair said at the time.

In February, the airspace around El Paso International Airport was closed for 7 hours for "special security reasons."

The White House told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement at the time that Mexican cartel-operated drones had breached U.S. airspace and that the Department of War took action to disable them.

In other parts of Mexico, cartels have used drones to drop explosives in deadly attacks, but there is no suggestion the drones in the Texas incident were armed.

U.S. soldiers monitor a known border crossing point along the Rio Grande River in Brownsville, Texas, on Feb. 25, 2025. Sgt. 1st Class Andrew Sveen/U.S. Army

In the Ukraine conflict, both Moscow and Kyiv have been using armed drones to target enemy infantry personnel and, allegedly, citizens.

In the statement, the military said 8,000 service personnel were deployed across 1,954 miles as part of JTF-SB.

Taylor said he appreciated the support of the Mexican army and said they were working together to combat the cartels in the border area.

Commander Vows to Disrupt Cartels

"We stand shoulder-to-shoulder with our CBP partners to secure this border, protect our service members, and disrupt these criminal organizations at every turn," Taylor said.

The military did not specify the details of the weapon used, but in August 2025, AeroVironment Inc., a company based in Arlington, Virginia, announced it had delivered two laser weapon systems to the Army as part of the "first increment of the Army Multi-Purpose High Energy Laser (AMP-HEL) prototyping effort."

It said the AMP-HEL prototype systems featured the company's LOCUST laser weapons systems integrated on a General Motors Defense Infantry Squad Vehicle.

U.S. President Donald Trump has taken an aggressive stance toward narcotics cartels since he returned to the White House in January 2025.

On Jan. 20, 2025, Trump signed an executive order designating several groups, including Mexico's Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), as foreign terrorist organizations.

Ioan Grillo, a Mexico-based journalist and author of several books, including "El Narco, The Bloody Rise of Mexican Drug Cartels," told The Epoch Times in February 2025 that the designation would have significant ramifications.

"As for the legal implications, it redefines the battle and could be used in justification of other things such as military actions, as were used against al-Qaeda in Pakistan," he said.

At the time, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth refused to rule out the possibility of carrying out military strikes on cartels inside Mexico.

"All options will be on the table if we're dealing with what are designated to be foreign terrorist organizations who are specifically targeting Americans on our border," Hegseth said.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has previously said any U.S. military action on Mexican soil would be a breach of her country's sovereignty.

Mexican cartels are known to import weapons and may be buying drones from abroad.

Earlier this month, four people allegedly affiliated with CJNG were indicted by the United States after being arrested in the Czech Republic in June, where they are alleged to have traveled to buy machine guns, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, mortar launchers, and accompanying ammunition and ordnance.

Reuters contributed to this report.

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/28/2026 - 17:00

Topless Sydney Sweeney Bakes A Cake In New 'Birday Boobs' Lingerie Ad

With western birthrates circling the drain, Sydney Sweeney and her 'perfect titties' are once again fighting the good fight for humanity - this time appearing in a new ad for her new lingerie brand, Syrn, entitled "Birthday Boobs."

The 28-year-old posted the racy new ad to her Instagram page, in which she can be seen in the kitchen baking a cake - which ends up being the only thing covering her up top at one point.

At one point in the baking process, Sweeney cannot locate a towel to wipe her hands - so she uses the only available thing...

... before pulling her panties down because she made such a mess, and then slipping back into blue lingerie. 

There's a reason Sweeney keeps converting her curves into a P&L of T&A. The global lingerie market is already a roughly $100 billion business - about $99 billion in 2025, by one industry estimate, on course for something like $104 billion this year and $166 billion by 2033 - growing at a mid-to-high single-digit clip.

What used to be a low-involvement undergarment category has been re-priced as lifestyle and identity: high-margin lace and nylon, sold direct, marketed as comfort, empowerment, and desire rather than as something you hide under clothes. Celebrity founders have already shown the capital markets that this works. Kim Kardashian's Skims is a multi-billion-dollar valuation. Rihanna's Savage X Fenty turned intimates into a fashion house. Sweeney's Syrn, launched in January with backing from Coatue - the same shop whose innovation fund took a $1 billion injection from the family offices of Jeff Bezos and Michael Dell - is the latest bid for that spread: 44 bra sizes, most pieces under $100, DTC margins, and a customer-acquisition cost that is basically her Instagram.

You can see the ad on Instagram or below, for science!

Sydney Sweeney for the new collection from her lingerie brand, SYRN. pic.twitter.com/P3MuSZuHP0

— Sweeney NEWS (@sweeneyarchives) August 27, 2026

Early projections put Syrn's first-year revenue around $20 million - though tabloids are already whispering it'll be a bust. We shall see!

Bonus: RIP Dolly

A tradition unlike any other . . .

It's Friday and the NBBD Edition! pic.twitter.com/4sMXTcK9Dg

— Flappr (@flapprdotnet) August 28, 2026

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/28/2026 - 16:40

Welcome To FAFOland

Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Clusterfuck Nation,

". . . the worse they become, the more they blame you for it."

- El Gato Malo on the Lefty-left

As the Democratic Party pulls out all the stops to make itself ridiculous, their proxy warriors in the federal judiciary play chicken with the executive branch on sane, uniform standards for mail-in ballots. The Democrats don't want sane, uniform standards for mail-in ballots because they are insane. They want to "defend Democracy" with mail-in ballot chaos. Democracy is their flabby rubric for any artifice or subterfuge that beats a path to power so they can continue their racketeering operations. Yes, it's that simple.

The president issued executive order (EO) 14399 in March directing the Postmaster General to make rules for federal mail-in / absentee ballots where chaos and cheating have prevailed since the Covid prank was used to vastly expand mail-in voting. These new rules include a standard envelope with a bar code to establish a coherent, trackable chain-of-custody for each ballot. Mail-in ballots have become the preferred vehicle for voter fraud based on motor-voter registration of non-citizens, "harvesting" of untrackable ballots, drop-box stuffing, and vote-counting machine shenanigans.

The EO requires states to submit lists of their voters to whom they intend to send mail-in ballots. The USPS is ordered to transmit mail-in ballots only from qualified voters listed on the state rolls, that is, matching ballots to qualified voters at real mailing addresses. Twenty-four states have sued to block all this. They refuse to submit their state's voter rolls to the USPS. The lawsuit landed magically in the Boston court of Democratic Party activist federal judge Indira Talwani, who has blocked, lifted, and re-blocked the EO - reversing her own decisions. In the course of all that, SCOTUS ruled that Judge Talwani made procedural errors.

The matter remains unresolved. The point of all the legal rigmarole is to delay action so as to invoke the Purcell principle (from SCOTUS, 2006, Purcell v. Gonzalez), which established a judicial protocol (not a statute) that federal courts should avoid changing election rules close to elections. In other words, it's a judicial suggestion. The case involving the twenty-four states could return to SCOTUS, or SCOTUS could decline based on Purcell.

Meanwhile, Congress does not return to full session (with the Senate) until September 14. Chances are slim-to-zero that they will manage to pass the SAVE Act, or that its provisions would be allowed to apply to the midterm election if, somehow, they did pass it. This leaves the president with only one option: to issue a National Security (NatSec) Executive Order to provide for coherent election procedure. That might include the provisions in the SAVE Act - voter ID, proof of citizenship - but could even go further to ban computerized tabulation machines, greatly restrict absentee ballots, and require results within twenty-four hours of one-only election day. Maybe even place ICE agents at polling places . . . the horror!

Such a NatSec EO would be immune from lawsuits in the federal court. On January 6, 2017 outgoing Homeland Security Sec'y Jeh Johnson (Obama admin) declared election infrastructure a critical part of government facilities "vital to our national interests." In September, 2018, President Trump declared a national emergency (EO 13848) over the threat of foreign interference in US elections. Under the National Emergencies Act of 1976 (50 U.S.C. § 1622), a two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress is necessary to overturn such an EO. That September 2018 national emergency declaration was continued officially by "Joe Biden" and remains in-force. Good luck with that, Democrats.

Okay, so what happens then, when Mr. Trump invokes that NatSec EO on emergency election procedure sometime in mid-September after Congress fails?

I will tell you: a constitutional crisis.

The Democratic-led blue states will refuse to participate in the election. Yeah, they'll go that far - because they are insane.

The president will respond forcefully, invoking the federal Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution (Article VI, Clause 2), which states that federal law avails over the states. States can't nullify or contradict it. The president might have to arrest some Democratic governors and hasten them into special military courts on insurrection charges. Henceforth, this will be known as the FAFO protocol.

Will there be riots?

Probably, though just now Treasury Secretary Bessent is apparently considering the termination of tax exemptions - loss of 501(c)(3) status - for George Soros's Open Society Foundations, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), and the Southern Poverty Law Center, and others who finance street actions by the Lefty-left. No money for snack shacks, water bottles, and Froggie costumes.

Will the country survive the trauma?

I think so. The election will be held one way or another, even if it's a month late. If anything, the midterm election might be the tombstone of the Democratic Party. The way things are tending, they've got nothing left but insurrection, and that's probably not a winning move. Mr. Trump apparently loves renaming things geographical. Maybe he can change the USA to FAFOland.

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

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/28/2026 - 16:20

Arizona Border Wall Construction Begins, Targets Smuggling Corridor

Authored by Owen Evans via The Epoch Times,

The Trump administration has begun work on a project to build a stretch of border wall in southern Arizona.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said on Aug. 25 that the wall project is located along "one of the most dangerous smuggling and trafficking corridors on the Southwest border."

The wall segment is part of a $46.6 billion effort by the Trump administration to fill the border with 30-foot steel bollard walls, vehicle barriers, and technology designed to stop illegal immigration.

A federal judge permitted the government to move forward with construction earlier this month.

Authorities said the desert spanning the Tohono O'odham Nation is a hotspot for drug smuggling.

"The project will close one of the most dangerous smuggling and trafficking corridors on the Southwest border: remote desert that has facilitated decades of drug loads, migrant deaths, and cartel activity," CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott said in an Aug. 25 statement.

SLSCO, the Texas-based construction company building the section in Arizona, has secured over $390 million in funding from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to build the border wall since 2023.

The construction company is building 22 miles of primary border wall system and approximately 13 miles of detection technology. These contracts were awarded using funds from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

The project ran into opposition from the Native American tribe, the Tohono O'odham Nation, who said the project would inflict lasting damage on its land, culture, and religious practices.

The Tohono O'odham Nation filed a motion in June to block construction of the border wall. However, a federal judge on Aug. 14 declined to do so.

In an Aug. 24 statement, the Tohono O'odham Nation said that at 4 a.m on Tuesday, border wall contractors and approximately 20 masked, armed CBP agents from the Tucson Sector entered the Tohono O'odham Nation and began "engaging in pre-construction activities."

It said that CBP, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), and the Border Patrol Tactical Unit SWAT Team were deployed to the Nation to protect the contractors, and that federal authorities are using a tethered balloon for enhanced monitoring.

It added that DHS coordinated with Mexican police to have them deploy personnel to protect the area from the southern side while border wall contractors were working.

Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) said in an Aug. 26 statement that dozens of armed agents on the Nation's land had been sent "without so much as a heads up or warning."

A CBP spokesperson previously told The Epoch Times that the agency's priority is to implement President Donald Trump's executive order 14165, "Securing Our Borders," and proclamation 10142, "Declaring a National Emergency at the Southern Border of the United States."

"We are building border infrastructure faster and smarter than ever before to ensure there are no gaps and no easy pathways for illegal entry," he said.

Shadow Wolves

The Tohono O'odham Nation covers 2.8 million acres, including a 76-mile stretch of land shared with Mexico.

Between 2010 and 2020, interdiction and investigative efforts that trained DHS officers, known as Shadow Wolves, have led or participated in have resulted in 437 drug and immigration arrests, along with the seizure of over 117,264 pounds of drugs, 45 weapons, 251 vehicles, and $847,928 in U.S. currency.

The Shadow Wolves are the DHS's only Native American tracking unit assigned in Sells, Arizona, located on the Tohono O'odham Nation that runs along the Mexico - United States border

Shadow Wolves use modern technology and a traditional Native American tracking technique called "cutting for sign," which means they locate and interpret any physical evidence left by smugglers and decode its meaning. Examples of physical evidence include footprints, tire tracks, thread, and clothing.

According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the name "Shadow Wolves" refers to the unit's hunting style, similar to that of a wolf pack.

The team specializes in the "interdiction of human and drug smugglers who conduct their illegal operations through the rugged terrain of the Sonoran Desert."

ICE said that all of the Shadows Wolves must have at least one-fourth Native American ancestry.

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/28/2026 - 15:45

FBI Director Blasts CBC's Editorial Choice Not To Call 9/11 A Terrorist Attack

Authored by Jennifer Cowan via The Epoch Times,

The director of the FBI is criticizing a CBC News directive for its journalists to avoid using the term "terrorist attacks" during 25th anniversary coverage of the 9/11 terror plot that killed nearly 3,000 people in the United States.

The memorandum directed to CBC News personnel instructed staff to stay away from terms like "terrorist" or "terrorism" and to instead use descriptions like "hijackings" to describe the attacks executed by Islamic terrorist organization al-Qaeda on Sept. 11, 2001.

"Do not refer to the Sept. 11 attacks as terrorist attacks," reads the memo penned by CBC News senior director of journalistic standards and public trust Basem Boshra. "The hijackings led to passenger jet crashes in Washington, D.C., Pennsylvania and Manhattan. The World Trade Center (WTC in second reference) was destroyed."

FBI Director Kash Patel took to social media to comment on CBC's policy.

"Any agency in Canada that doesn't publicly reject this bastardization of history, and an insult to the souls lost during our largest terrorist attack in US history will no longer have [a] friend in this FBI... Not to mention our heroes that responded in the aftermath," Patel wrote.

U.S. Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra shared Patel's comment on social media and noted that the FBI has been "directly responsible" for thwarting terrorist and criminal operations in Canada.

"Failure to recognize and confront radical and terrorist ideologies significantly endangers our efforts to establish and harmonize a shared national and economic security partnership," he said.

The CBC says the memo, which was shared on social media by Toronto Sun columnist Warren Kinsella, was reiterating a long-standing policy to maintain journalistic neutrality.

"It is the practice of the CBC to exercise extreme caution before using the words terrorist and terrorism," CBC Public Affairs Director Kerry Kelly said in a statement to The Epoch Times. "The memo was a reminder of the longstanding practice that favours the use of these terms with attribution in our reporting, a practice shared by many of the world's top journalistic organizations."

Kelly said the CBC's job is to accurately report the facts, to quote the people affected, and to convey the views of officials and experts when atrocities occur.

"We bear witness," she added. "But CBC News does not itself designate specific groups as terrorists, or specific acts as terrorism, regardless of the region or the events, because these words are so loaded with meaning, politics and emotion that they can end up being impediments to our journalism."

The Conservatives are also criticizing the CBC directive. Tory MPM Rachel Thomas, whose shadow minister portfolio of Canadian Identity and Culture includes scrutiny over the public broadcaster, said the directive is "shameful."

She noted that 24 Canadians were among the thousands killed by al-Qaeda during the series of attacks that caused two planes to strike the World Trade Centre, one to hit the Pentagon in Virginia, and another to crash in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

She also accused the CBC News in a separate post of redefining terrorism "in a way that downplays the atrocity of 9/11."

"Refusing to call it an act of terrorism dishonours the victims, their families, the survivors, and the first responders who witnessed the horrors of that day," said Thomas. "Trying to sanitize or rewrite that history is deeply offensive and does a disservice to everyone who was affected by the attacks."

Thomas is demanding CBC " issue a clear apology" and said the person responsible for the memo should be fired.

Fellow Tory MP Andrew Lawton commented on the issue as well, calling the broadcaster's policy "truly disgusting."

"CBC journalists have been directed not to refer to what happened on 9/11 as terrorist attacks," he wrote. "Taxpayers give CBC $1.4 billion every year to be gaslit."

CBC is expected to receive $1.38-billion in federal government funding for fiscal 2026-2027, down from the $1.58-billion designated for the public broadcaster in the previous fiscal year.

Prime Minister Mark Carney has frequently described the public broadcaster as "the most important of Canadian institutions."

He included CBC as a pillar in his election campaign last spring, saying a well-funded public broadcaster is crucial for preserving Canadian culture and national identity while serving as a reliable forum to counter foreign misinformation.

Ongoing Policy

The publicly funded broadcaster has also come under scrutiny by the Opposition for telling its journalists not to use the word "terrorist" when referring to Hamas in the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israeli civilians.

The public broadcaster, in a leaked email from CBC Director of Journalistic Standards George Achi, advised journalists against saying Gaza has not been occupied by Israel since 2005, and instructed them not to refer to "militants, soldiers, or anyone else" as "terrorists."

The instructions came after Hamas launched rocket attacks on Israel, killing 1,200 civilians and also took hostages, including children, to Gaza.

The Conservatives and some members of the public demanded an investigation into the matter. An inquiry by the broadcaster's ombudsman later found that CBC had not breached its own journalistic standards by avoiding the use of the word "terrorist."

"CBC's practice of referring to Hamas as terrorists only with attribution adheres to the corporation's journalistic standards," CBC Ombudsman Jack Nagler said in his decision.

Kelly told The Epoch Times that CBC News editor in chief and general manager Brodie Fenlon addressed the matter in an October 2023 blog post, noting that the broadcaster's policy hasn't changed and also applies to content about 9/11.

The 9/11 terror plot was the most lethal series of terrorist attacks in U.S. history. The al-Qaeda -orchestrated attacks killed 2,976 people and injured thousands more.

Al-Qaeda has been designated as a terrorist organization by the United States since 1999. Public Safety Canada listed the organization as a terror group in 2002.

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/28/2026 - 15:05

Rate-Hike Odds Spike As Chair Warsh Tilts Hawkish, Questions AI Productivity Timing, Prefers "Quieter" Fed

Update (1000ET): The speech was hawkish in substance (see full remarks below) - Warsh framed inflation as the clear priority, said financial conditions are not restrictive, and set a high bar (“confident that underlying inflation is moving to our objective, clearly and at sufficient speed”) - while refusing to pre-commit to a September hike.

Rate-hike odds are rising rapidly...

Polymarket odds of a September hike are surging...

But the market remains confused... or just cherry-picking what it wants to hear...

Gold down on Warsh hawkish comments
Bonds, bitcoin flat on Warsh neutral comments
Stocks jump to HOD on Warsh dovish comments

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 28, 2026

But one thing they are sure about is the yield curve which is flattening dramatically, erasing all of the post-FOMC steepening...

With Warsh tilting hawkish at the short-end, and Bessent with his thumb on the long-end scale, it's no real surprise.

Key points AI and the longer-term outlook

• Warsh called AI a “hinge point” with potential for substantially higher growth, citing exploding token sales and a “hyper-Moore’s law.”

Fed Chair Kevin Warsh said during his speech in Jackson Hole today that we've come to a hinge point in history thanks to AI.

I think he is right. The economic setup has changed in a material way. AI progress is running ahead of even the optimistic case from two years ago, and… pic.twitter.com/yZo7QoYg1o

— Patrick F. Feeley (@PFFeeley) August 28, 2026

• He posed open questions on productivity timing, whether AI complements or substitutes for labor, capital intensity, and how surplus will be distributed.

• A productivity-and-jobs task force is working on this; its findings will not affect current policy decisions.

Forward guidance and markets

• He restated his opposition to regular forward guidance, calling it a crisis-era tool that has “overstayed its welcome.”

• He warned of a “hall-of-mirrors” problem in which the Fed and markets feed off each other and miss turning points.

• He rejected publishing an explicit reaction function or mechanical rule, arguing the economy is too uncertain and that 2021-style guidance delayed the response to inflation.

• Markets should form their own views from real data; the Fed should not be the primary source of the next trade.

Seven principles

1. Use contemporaneous, accurate data and trends - not stale or isolated prints.

2. Supply/demand balance can only be inferred, not observed directly.

3. The 2% PCE target is firm and fixed; inflation is not automatically mean-reverting.

4. The dual mandate is not a trade-off; high inflation itself damages employment and prosperity.

5. The policy rate is the main tool; unconventional tools belong only in genuine crises.

6. “Money matters” - watch the monetary base and bank-created money.

7. A quieter, more purposeful Fed is more accountable.

Current economy

Output and labor are solid: capex strong (much of it AI-related), profits up ~20%, credit spreads tight, lending standards easy, PDFP running near 3%, unemployment 4.1% and claims very low. He described this as consistent with full employment and said broad financial conditions are not restrictive.

Inflation is the problem: 12-month PCE at 3.7%, 6-month at 4.1%. Roughly half of PCE components are still rising more than 3%. Summer readings were better than expected but “do not tell me that underlying trends have meaningfully improved.”

Medium-term inflation expectations remain well-anchored, which he credited to the institution—but he warned they can look durable “until they don’t.”

He took institutional ownership: “The responsibility for 65 months of sustained, elevated inflation sits squarely with the central bank.”

His standard for action: policymakers must be confident inflation is heading to 2% clearly and fast enough. Otherwise “we have work to do.”

Bottom Line

He closed by saying he is “committed to a discipline, not to a decision.”

That is consistent with his no-forward-guidance stance, but the economic diagnosis (strong demand, easy financial conditions, sticky and still-broad inflation) tilts toward keeping the option of a hike firmly on the table.

Finally, in case you were wondering, Warsh - who prefers a quieter Fed - spoke the most amount of words in his speech since Yellen in 2017...

Perhaps he just wanted to get all the words out now and then go silent? So the average word count over his tenure is lower?

*  *  *

Nothingburger or market upheaval?

Fed Chair Kevin Warsh will deliver his first keynote address at the Kansas City Fed’s Jackson Hole Economic Policy Symposium this morning.

As we highlighted in our extensive preview, Warsh noted at the July FOMC meeting that his remarks could go in one of two directions: a “big-picture speech” or a “more traditional set up for all the action we’re going to have between September and December.”

How much will Kevin Warsh say in Jackson Hole today? That's the question on investors' minds.

Goldman Sachs economists expect Warsh to reiterate his commitment to the 2% inflation target, expand on the rationale behind his approach to Fed communication, and offer thoughts on some bigger picture topics such as productivity growth or shocks to the global economy that he alluded to at his last press conference (full note here).

He is likely to acknowledge the better recent inflation news but is unlikely to provide policy guidance.

Markets are looking for Warsh to clarify what combination of inflation, labor and financial conditions would cause him to recommend a change to policy, and whether the policy rate is his primary tool.

A notable lack of guidance at July’s FOMC press conference, after a more hawkish tone in June and during congressional testimonies, caught markets off guard and was ultimately a credibility-negative signal.

Goldman's Rich Privorotsky calls the setup: “awkward when you committed to not giving forward guidance.”

His modal view is “nothing done.”

But warns the market of the possibility that Warsh waivers and tries: “a left tail of a more tough on inflation message that helps bring credibility back.”

That left tail only flattens the curve, he adds, if it arrives with Treasury increasing buybacks.

Goldman's George Cole is less polite about the politics. Warsh, Cole says, seemed to endorse the July story that higher long-end yields meant the market was “finally standing on its own feet” after years of central-bank repression. Then Scott Bessent told that same market it had the price wrong. Cole’s line: “Philosophically, you can't claim to want an unpolluted read of market pricing while bullying that same market.”

So he would be “surprised if he re-runs the July script and celebrates the move higher in long-end yields.”

What traders and Fed-watchers want instead is “vol-reducing: marginally hawkish near term, but fundamentally calming.”

Warsh’s Jackson Hole speech provides a timely opportunity for the Fed’s new leader to clarify his vision for the central bank, either through a “big picture” talk focused on the task forces or through a policy-relevant discourse that cleans up some missteps in recent communications and presents scenarios for the outlook. Given his overall inclination to provide limited information about the policy outlook, his comments will most likely skew to the former, though markets will be attentive to any additional signals on the latter.

Translation: say the funds rate is the tool, say the data looks fine, sound a little more like June on 2%. Do not celebrate the selloff. Also do not rule out that Warsh “may just deliver a speech on international payments and financial innovation and say nothing on policy at all.”

Reminder, there is no Q&A after the speech.

Watch Warsh live here (due to start at 10amET):

Full Prepared Remarks...

Thank you. It's great to be here again and to see so many familiar faces. I've been looking forward to this weekend—what better place to mark my 100th day as Chairman?

For the fine hospitality, everyone here is in debt to President Jeff Schmid and his colleagues at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. Jeff, our thanks to you all.

Jeff and the other planners have some recreation options lined up for later today. And I'd advise you to be very careful with your choices.

As I learned years ago, you can take two different kinds of hikes on the trails around Jackson Hole. I can sum up my hikes with former Vice Chairman Don Kohn in two words: I survived. These steely marathon death marches revealed a side of Don I wasn't ready for.

There's another kind of hike—one I associate with Chairman Ben Bernanke, my old colleague. With Ben, it's a much more leisurely pace, an easy stroll along the wandering trails at the Rockefeller Preserve.

So before setting out, do a wellness check and ask yourself: "Is this a Kohn day or a Bernanke day?"

The best thing about this gathering is that it helps us all clear our minds and think straight about our world and our time. For me, it feels like the right place, and the right audience, for a real engagement with the ideas that matter most.

Innovation is the conference theme, and I believe that the public and the markets—in their collective wisdom—understand that innovations in the conduct of policy at the Fed will help deliver price stability alongside full employment.

Here is a quick overview of what I'll cover in my remarks this morning. You can call it an outline . . . you can call it a trail map . . . just don't call it forward guidance.

• First, I'll touch on a few of the longer-term questions we're asking at the Fed about the latest general-purpose technology, artificial intelligence (AI), and where it might take the economy.

• Then I'll reflect a bit on the practice of forward guidance and the interaction between the central bank and financial markets.

• Next, I'll present some of the key principles that I believe should guide the conduct of monetary policy.

• And, finally, I'll give you my assessment of the economy.

Preparing for Future Policy Conjunctures

With the unchanging picture of the Tetons as our backdrop, we are here to survey an economic landscape that is anything but static.

It wasn't so long ago—in the run-up to the crisis of 2008 and over the decade that followed—when economists and policymakers were speaking of secular stagnation and a global saving glut. It was a widely held view that an excess of capital would sit on the sidelines for a long, long time, because there just wouldn't be enough compelling investment opportunities. All the good stuff had been invented. So growth would be low and slow.

Well, times sure have changed. We've come to a hinge point in history.

To cite the clearest example, progress in artificial intelligence—the 80-year-old name for the newest technology—has been faster even than its evangelists predicted a couple of years ago.

The potential for substantially higher growth is on the rise. Ever-expanding pools of capital are pouring into AI-related infrastructure of all sorts. A kind of hyper–Moore's law seems to be playing out. Scaling laws, too, are changing both the method and speed of innovation.

Capital and labor have combined to create the large language models at the heart of AI. Users buy tokens to gain access to the models. Reports put annualized token sales for the two leading labs alone at more than $100 billion—an increase of 500-plus percent from a year ago.

The Fed watches all of this attentively. We recognize that AI is a new variable—potentially a new factor of production—that will have consequences for both the economy and the conduct of monetary policy. It opens some major lines of inquiry:

Will the application of AI cause a significant, sustained rise in productivity across the economy? And if so, when?

Will token usage be complementary or competitive to labor? Will the next generation of AI models demand even greater capital intensity, or will the models themselves help devise a capital-light solution?

Among the other yet unknowns is the resulting market structure. It's not obvious where the returns on capital will land or on what timescale. Early on, how much of the surplus goes to owners of scarce assets—AI labs, chipmakers, energy producers, and cloud providers? Over time, how much of that value accrues to businesses and consumers? What are the broad implications for workers and for the employment side of the Fed's mandate?

Likewise, we don't yet know the equilibrium price of the tokens. Might there be a heterogeneity of tokens, such that growing sums will be paid for access to the best models at the frontier? Will token prices for older models fall to the level of their marginal cost?

We will be thinking through these matters with the help of a task force on productivity and jobs. My early check-ins with the leaders of that task force, and the four others, have been encouraging.

To be clear, though, their recommendations will come later and have no bearing on decisions we make in the current policy conjuncture. But I believe that for future policy challenges, this intellectual investment today will leave us far better prepared.

Forward Guidance and Its Stand-ins

As our task forces go about their work, I am not waiting to introduce innovations at the Fed to make us fit for purpose. To highlight one example, I have set out to change the form and function of the Fed Chairman's so-called forward guidance. You might know about my long-time discomfort with early pronouncements of future policy decisions. I much prefer another path . . . and will make the case for it.

Transparency in communications about future policy decisions is not a virtue unto itself. Communications must be in service to the Fed's paramount responsibility: getting monetary policy right.

Forward guidance as a regular practice was adopted by my colleagues and me during the Global Financial Crisis.6 It was essential at the time, and we introduced it with much fanfare. But, as with other legacies of crises past, I believe that the practice has overstayed its welcome.

In normal times, the role of forward guidance should be limited and circumscribed. Otherwise it risks creating ambiguity in the name of clarity. Oversharing policy deliberations and overcommitting to future decisions can lead markets, businesses, and households astray.7 And I believe when policymakers make quasi-commitments on interest rates through the cycle, we inhibit our own freedom to make the right calls when it's time to decide.

To get policy right, we also need to get the relationship right between financial markets and the central bank. The Fed needs clear market signals, as unfiltered as possible . . . from market internals . . . the level and change in asset prices across sectors . . . the prices and trading volumes of Treasury securities. . . the foreign exchange value of the dollar . . . the cost and availability of credit . . . and the price of a broad set of commodities.

These and other indicators should inform the Fed's near-term outlook on economic activity and inflation throughout the business cycle. They should also reveal the state of broader financial conditions . . . and the risks and uncertainties in the financial cycle.

At the same time, market participants themselves should be tracking real information across the economy. They should draw their own conclusions; form their own expectations of output, employment, and inflation; and stay sharply attuned to risks.

The Fed should be humble and never naïve. The Fed plays an essential role in the economy and the markets. And our tools are powerful. We determine the path of short-term interest rates. And market participants will always try to anticipate what we will do next. But we should not indulge a regime in which market participants are looking primarily to the Fed for their next trade.

The economic literature has long described the distorting effects: a hall-of-mirrors problem.8 If markets rely materially on the Fed's guidance and the Fed relies on market prices, we are all more likely to be blinded to new developments . . . more likely to be caught unprepared for a turn of events . . . and more likely to commit errors in policymaking.9

Perversely, market participants are unlikely to bear the biggest costs of the hall-of-mirrors problem. The most serious harm is likely to befall those without financial assets. If the Fed gets inflation wrong and judges the economy wrong, who gets the worst of it? Not the financial high-fliers. Hard-working Americans are the ones left to deal with inflation that is too high or jobs that suddenly appear less secure.

So, if forward guidance is ill-suited to normal times, then how about the new Fed chief commits—at the very least—to an explicit reaction function? Surely, he should tell us his interest rate path—if, say, the data were to come in hot or cold.

I wish our understanding of the economy were so precise as to provide a mechanical, tried-and-true answer—that some simple function like a Taylor rule could be rigorously relied upon. But our knowledge just doesn't extend that far—at least not yet—and the factors most relevant to the proper conduct of monetary policy change over time.

Providing forecasts to illustrate the Fed's reaction function works better in theory than in practice, better in the lab than in the field. I'm not alone in noticing that forward guidance in 2021, to cite one example, might well have slowed the policy response to high inflation.10

In my term as Chairman, my colleagues and I will endeavor to construct more reliable models and more robust rules to guide policy decisions. We'll do this knowing that accuracy in economic forecasting is still just an aspiration. With so much changing so fast in geopolitics, global supply chains, and technology, it's wise to be modest about what we can and cannot know.

In the same spirit, we should receive the full range of ideas on matters that may inform the Fed's monetary policy decisions. If the aim is optimal decisionmaking, we should not crowd out views on the economy.

How, then, to chart a better path to policy? In the balance of my remarks, I will share some key principles that guide my thinking on the appropriate conduct of monetary policy . . . then offer my promised assessment of the economy.

Key Principles

Turning to principles . . .

First, I've noticed that, in this line of work, yesterday's news has a way of getting mistaken for what is happening right now. The challenge is to know the difference. In other words, we must interrogate reality to make sure we are not setting forward-looking policy based on stale or inaccurate data. Nor should we rely on isolated data points. Trends matter most. The Fed is a decisionmaking agency. We make choices amid uncertainty, and the data upon which we draw must be as relevant, contemporaneous, accurate, and actionable as possible.11

Second, the Federal Reserve's actions are intended to ensure that the aggregate demand side of the economy is broadly consistent with aggregate supply. However, all we observe directly is activity. We never see, and can only infer, what's really happening on the supply side. Hence, evaluating the current and expected balance between aggregate supply and demand is imprecise.12

Third, there should be no misunderstanding: The Fed's price-stability objective of 2 percent, as measured by the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index, is a firm, fixed target. Let's be equally clear about another aspect of the objective: Price stability is not self-executing, nor is inflation necessarily mean-reverting. It is the Fed's job to deliver stable prices.

Fourth, the Fed also bears responsibility for maximum employment. Achieving both sides of our mandate over the medium term is not an either/or proposition. I do not believe that the Fed's dual mandate works at cross-purposes. After all, high inflation itself is very harmful to economic prosperity.

Fifth, short-term interest rates are the predominant tool to achieve the dual mandate. Unconventional policies to spur economic activity may suit genuine crises but should otherwise be used sparingly, if at all.

Sixth, money matters. It's not fashionable these days, but my view is that money has something important to do with monetary policy.13 We should pay attention to money created by the central bank and money that comes from the banking and financial systems.14 It's true that financial innovations and other factors alter the mechanics that link the monetary base, the velocity of money, and the broader economy. But that is scarcely a reason to ignore the ultimate effects of money on financial conditions and prices.

Finally, a quieter Fed, more purposeful in its communications, is better able to meet its objectives. And we can be held accountable for delivering on our remit—the only true test of our credibility. To borrow a line from General Chuck Yeager, "At the moment of truth, there are either reasons or results."15

The Economy Today

Now, given these principles, how do I read the economy today? What's really going on outside the window?16

You may have read in the July minutes the unanimous view of the FOMC:17 Labor markets were stable, and output was solid. But inflation remained too high. A good majority of my colleagues and I thought the wiser course was to await new information in the intermeeting period—especially given possible developments in supply chains, investment flows, and geopolitics—before deciding whether a change in interest rate policy was advisable. And we expressed our joint readiness to act as circumstances might require.

For my part, today I am impressed by the overall performance of the economy, which appears to have strengthened. One indicator of strength is how well an economy holds up to shocks. On that score, both Main Street and Wall Street have been remarkably resilient.

Several observations:

Business capital expenditures—the seed corn of future economic growth—are rising rapidly. The four-quarter change in investment in equipment and intangibles has been around 9 percent, its highest growth rate since 2021. More than half of the cap-ex growth this year can likely be ascribed to the buildout related to AI.

For firms in the S&P 500, profits have grown by more than 20 percent over the past year. Profit margins are quite elevated, relative to history. Overall equity market volatility is low. We're staying keenly focused on market internals, watching performance across sectors.

Expectations for growth in both cap-ex and corporate earnings are running quite high. I will continue to watch the change in their growth rates, the second derivative. The follow-on effects on asset prices, business confidence, consumer income, and spending are equally important to gauge.

Credit spreads on corporate bonds and leveraged loans are near the low ends of their historical ranges, and issuance volumes in these markets have been quite strong this year. Looking beyond fixed-income markets to the banking business, in the July Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey on Bank Lending Practices, banks tell us that standards for commercial and industrial loans are on the easier end of their historical range. That helps explain the growth we've seen this year in those loans. Credit and loan markets are showing few signs of policy restraint.

Certain sectors—like housing and agriculture—are showing strains. But, on balance, I would be hard pressed to describe broad financial conditions as restrictive.

Real consumer spending has been healthy despite the shocks, increasing more than 2 percent over the past four quarters. Combining consumption with the brisk investment we've observed, private domestic final purchases (PDFP) has also risen. PDFP has increased at a pace of nearly 3 percent so far this calendar year. That's a measure that typically carries more signal than gross domestic product, and the trend here too is positive.

On the employment side of the Fed's dual mandate, our country is doing well. Labor markets are quite stable. The jobless rate, at 4.1 percent, remains low by historical standards and has not changed much for a couple of years. Unemployment claims, on a four-week average—an empirically robust real-time indicator—are near their lowest level in decades.

In my view, the relatively low turnover in today's labor market is partly a result of the significant rematching between employers and employees that happened at scale in the post-pandemic environment.

When labor supply is barely growing, monthly job gains are naturally going to run low. There are always areas of concern in the labor market—for example, among recent graduates. In general, though, people who want to work, by and large, are holding or finding jobs. They may well be concerned about possible future labor disruptions, but as of now, I believe the labor markets are consistent with full employment.

But on the price-stability side of our mandate, the numbers are more concerning. The Fed's preferred measure of inflation, the 12-month change in the PCE price index, stands at 3.7 percent, while the six-month change is 4.1 percent. The comparable measures from the consumer price index (CPI) are also elevated, as are the core measures of both PCE and CPI inflation. None of these measures are perfect, but they all tell a similar story: Inflation is running above our 2 percent target. So the Fed's predominant focus right now should be on prices.

The job for policymakers is to capture underlying trend inflation—that is, the generalized change in prices in the economy, unaffected by idiosyncratic factors. We want to gauge whether underlying inflation is rising, falling, or stuck in place. We also want to understand not just the direction of travel, but also the speed. Each of these broad inflation measures has fallen significantly from their 2022 heights. But progress over the past two years has been modest.

And while this summer's PCE and CPI readings were better than expected, they do not tell me that underlying trends have meaningfully improved.

The data also show moderate wage growth. But in tracking underlying inflation, wage growth has not proven a reliable indicator of future inflation for a very long time.18

To try to gauge underlying inflation, I find it instructive to disaggregate the 199 individual components of the PCE price measure. Over the past 12 months, 54 percent of goods and services in the PCE basket showed price increases above 3 percent. This is well below the post-pandemic highs of about 77 percent, but it remains well above the level of 32 percent in the two decades that preceded the pandemic.

Looking over just the past six months, the conclusion is similar: Of goods and services in the PCE basket, 49 percent showed annualized price increases above 3 percent. Again, this is well below the post-pandemic highs but still quite elevated.

The recent rise in overall commodity prices also bears watching. What we need to judge is whether trends indicate upside inflation risks.

It matters, too, whether the inflation readings of the past five-plus years have seeped into expectations. The good news is that measures of inflation expectations in the medium term, by and large, look stable. And inflation compensation measures from the swaps market send a strong and similar message.

Especially in light of recent developments, it is a credit to the Fed as an institution—and consistent with the best of the Fed's traditions—that market prices show confidence that we will deliver price stability. And I can assure you . . . they're right.

The thing about market measures of inflation expectations in economic history is that they tend to look strong and durable until they don't. Those expectations are not pushed around easily, and right now they are well anchored. But they must be closely minded. It's the Fed's job to make sure that inflation expectations do not get unanchored.

There is one signal nobody can miss: The responsibility for 65 months of sustained, elevated inflation sits squarely with the central bank. And that is where it belongs.

Here is my standard: We must be confident that underlying inflation is moving to our objective, clearly and at sufficient speed. Otherwise, we have work to do. That's our job . . . our mandate . . . and our charge to keep.

Conclusion

I stand here today committed to a discipline, not to a decision.

My Fed colleagues and I are hardly the first to hold these positions in a time of great consequence. We are determined to redeem the time by doing our very best work.

We take our responsibility seriously, with humility and with resolve. So much depends on choices we make. Sound monetary policy helps households and businesses to prosper. When carried out effectively, it broadens and deepens the momentum of our economy . . . and helps to secure America's leadership in the world. And I know that our country needs us to think carefully and act wisely.

It is a tremendous honor to serve once again at the Federal Reserve. I am truly grateful for the encouragement and good counsel I've received from my colleagues . . . and from so many of you in this room. For that, and for your kind attention this morning, I thank you.

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/28/2026 - 15:00

Wall Street Warns "Pervert Glasses" Backlash Threatens AI-Wearables Boom

Bernstein analysts are out with a note on how Meta Platforms and EssilorLuxottica's once-hot smart glasses business is running out of steam because of an emerging public backlash over privacy and surveillance, raising questions about whether the smart glasses industry as a whole is hitting a brick wall.

Luca Solca, Bernstein's senior equity analyst and global luxury-goods sector head, covers companies including EssilorLuxottica, LVMH, Hermès and Richemont. He said Ray-Ban Meta glasses were initially a "commercial success," but public opinion has since shifted against the glasses has drastically shifted, with folks online labeling them "pervert glasses" amid mounting privacy concerns.

EssilorLuxottica sold more than 7 million Meta AI glasses in 2025, compared with 2 million during 2023 and 2024 combined, Solca said. However, he warned that users are abandoning the glasses under social pressure. 

Unlike smartphones, the cameras are embedded inside ordinary-looking frames, and the blinking warning light can be covered with tape despite Meta's efforts to prevent tampering. That has not stopped influencers and bad actors from using the glasses in ways that have angered the public.

"The court of public opinion has dubbed the Ray-Ban Metas' pervert glasses,'" the analyst said, adding, "Public figures such as Jimmy Kimmel and singer Lorde have publicly spoken up against them over the past months, with distressing guerrilla ads by US and British advocacy groups being plastered over NYC and London to raise awareness and encourage boycotts."

Solca continued:

Paradoxically, the characteristic that made Meta's Ray-Bans so popular in the first place may be their downfall. 

The camera and technology blend seamlessly with the original design, making the Ray-Ban Metas a rather fashionable gadget.

However, this means that most people are unaware they are being filmed and unable to consent. 

Users can record hands-free, making it less obvious than when using a smartphone to do so. The blinking light that should alert them to this fact can be easily covered, despite Meta's product updates to prevent this. 

There are countless videos online instructing users precisely how to bypass this feature. German nonprofit group HateAid calls for ensuring 'safety by design,' pointing to the fact that Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses are 'indistinguishable' from ordinary glasses. They are requesting that authorities make sure the glasses are 'clearly identifiable.'

Solca then makes the case that the mounting social backlash makes it more positive on EssilorLuxottica. Slower smart-glasses adoption reduces the risk that technology companies will cannibalize the traditional eyewear market, dilute industry margins and turn glasses into another low-margin consumer-electronics category

Solca explained: 

All of the above makes us, ironically, more positive on EssilorLuxottica. 

We wrote before about the impact of smart glasses on the group's LT economics (EssilorLuxottica: Gauging Optionality) and estimated the right valuation in the current context at ~24x PE (EssilorLuxottica: The "right" valuation).

The public outcry against smart glasses makes the bearish scenario of a cannibalistic, disruptive and margin dilutive impact on the category less likely. 

However, given the optics of the problem, we wonder how much reputational damage has been done to the Ray-Ban brand. Will the Wayfarers be remembered as the 'pervert glasses' in the same way the Aviators are associated with Tom Cruise in Top Gun?

Solca maintained a Market-Perform rating and a 200 euro 12-month price target. Shares are currently trading around 156 euros and have more than halved since peaking around 319 euros in late 2025.

Our reporting over the past year has documented the mounting public backlash against smart glasses (see here), including the emergence of an app designed to alert users when the devices are nearby. 

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/28/2026 - 14:45