Zero Hedge

NYU Prof: Trump's Whole Milk Push Is 'Dog Whistle To Far-Right'

NYU Prof: Trump's Whole Milk Push Is 'Dog Whistle To Far-Right'

Authored by Matt Lamb via The College Fix,

When President Donald Trump signed a law that allowed for the National School Lunch Program to distribute whole milk again, he was actually sending out a signal to neo-Nazis, so says a New York University professor.

In January, President Trump celebrated the bipartisan “Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act of 2025,” which will allow the federally subsidized school lunch program to offer the higher-fat content dairy once against.

President Obama removed the option in 2010 over fears it was contributing to childhood obesity.

The legislation passed by a voice vote in the U.S. House and unanimously in the U.S. Senate, according to Roll Call.

While many would see this as a triumph of partisan gridlock, Professor Arthur Caplan sees something much darker.

“As a student of and writer on the history of science and public health under fascist regimes, I am suspicious,” he said.

“Milk drinking is political. Drinking whole white milk has played a big role in racist and far-right thinking.”

Here we go.

“Fascists have used the beverage as a rallying cry for white supremacy since the days of Il Duce’s (Benito Mussolini’s) public health campaigns in Italy,” Caplan wrote in The American Journal of Bioethics.

“The Nazis were enamored of whole milk as well…In America, drinking whole milk has for years been a part of alt-right, white nationalist messaging in tweets, memes, and videos.”

“Alt-right?” 2018 called, it wants its boogeyman back.

(Also, whenever Caplan accuses someone else of being authoritarian, remember he supported barring individuals from flying on planes and eating in restaurants unless they showed their vaccine papers).

Caplan cited examples, now nearly a decade old, and from the anti-Trump website The Conversation, to justify his argument. Instead of saying “for years,” Caplan should have said, “for a year.”

He concluded:

Racism and eugenics, sadly, may be playing a role in the sudden drive to fetishize drinking whole milk. Drinking whole milk is a dog whistle to far right, white nationalists. The campaign to promote whole milk may have many factors behind it, but at a time when eugenics, racism, and white nationalism fuel too much of our political rhetoric, the whole milk campaign must be swallowed with care.

Caplan’s argument is a shift from some sage advice he offered in 2005, when he warned people against being quick to invoke the “Nazi analogy” in debates.

“Sixty years after the fall of the Third Reich, we owe it to those who suffered and died at the hands of the Nazis to insist that those who invoke the Nazi analogy do so with care,” he warned.

Meanwhile, well-respected bioethicist Wesley Smith called Caplan’s argument “idiotic.”

He wrote in National Review:

One of the honored guests at the Oval Office signing ceremony of the Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act — mentioned in passing by Caplan, which put whole milk back on school menus — was that notorious white supremacist Dr. Ben Carson. One of the early sponsors was Senator John Fetterman, a famous KKK sympathizer.

As Smith said, drinking milk is about health, not “bigotry.”

Tyler Durden Wed, 02/11/2026 - 17:00

Epstein's Island And The Gateway To The Psychology Of Evil

Epstein's Island And The Gateway To The Psychology Of Evil

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

Conspiracy theorists are almost always right. We have been proved right time and time again and we will continue to be right about many things that the corporate media used to call “fringe.” For those out there who are like me; people who have been trying to warn the public about these threats for 20 years or more, I just want to say: We have won a resounding victory. We brought the dark secrets of the elites into the mainstream and there’s nothing that can stop this train now.

However, the fight is far from over and don’t expect anyone to give you any awards or even recognition. It’s the nature of our work, and frankly, the best thing that can happen in the long run is that researchers and analysts like us eventually become obsolete. In the meantime, the infowar to save civilization continues.

One issue I have spearheaded in my career (along with a handful of other liberty writers) is delving into the psychology and ideology of the globalists. I find their existence to be fascinating. Revolting to be sure, but also fascinating.

The theory which I have held for two decades is that the globalists are first and foremost an occult network of organized psychopaths. Meaning, they seek out people with psychopathic traits (latent or otherwise) in order to recruit and grow their numbers. The common assumption in the general public is that psychopaths are supposed to operate in isolation; that they do not work together because they are too self absorbed to organize.

History shows us that this is simply not so.

From the Mafia, to violent drug cartels, to religious cults, to authoritarian governments, we have seen psychopaths congregate together and cooperate in the worst moments of our timeline.

They do it for mutual gain, but I believe there is an agenda that goes well beyond that.

It’s a far reaching conspiracy which the recent release of the Epstein Files seems to support.

To be clear, I think the information presented so far in the files barely scratches the surface of the evil we are dealing with. I also think it’s important to point out that people being “named” in the Epstein Files is meaningless without context.

Some public figures like Donald Trump or Elon Musk are “named” as interacting with Epstein but there is zero evidence that they participated in anything nefarious (Epstein approached ANYONE with power or influence and tried to recruit them). Furthermore, anonymous FBI tips from random weirdos do not make a criminal case. Others are named in the files and the context suggests that they have done some pretty disgusting things.

The files represent enough evidence to justify a massive international investigation, they do not represent proof of crimes that would hold up in a court of law (at least, not so far).

We may actually never see indictments of any Epstein Island regulars. As I noted in my article “Governmental Self-Preservation: Why We’ll Never See The Real Epstein List”, published last year, I do think there are many people in the Trump Administration that want to see the Epstein case lead to arrests. However, I also predicted that the revelations within the files could trigger even darker discoveries that might cause total collapse.

The people handling this info are faced with a conundrum: Pursue the light of truth, dump it all on the internet and risk full blown societal chaos, or, drip feed info to the public and try to keep the system from imploding. Forget about aliens from outer space – The disclosure of concrete proof that a luciferian cult of baby eating bankers, CEOs, politicians and bureaucrats controls the planet is the real Black Swan event.

One cannot have a meaningful discussion about the nature of power in modern civilization (post-industrial revolution) without accepting the cold hard reality that most of the key events in our recent history have been manipulated by a hidden consortium of elites. We also can’t have any legitimate debate about how to solve the problem without accepting the fact that “evil” is an undeniable constant.

It’s the common denominator, the key to the equation.

Evil is a tangible and autonomous entity that the wields influence over human society, often using people with inherent weaknesses of the soul as vessels for achieving its machinations. Yes, that sounds rather biblical, but I would argue that our religious ancestors might have had a much better grasp on the nature of evil than we do today given our futurist propensity to deny anything we can’t immediately explain with science.

The Epstein Files suggests an evil that’s beyond reckoning for many people who have never been exposed to research on globalism, and even those who have been exposed might find themselves shocked by the discoveries.

To summarize, Jeffery Epstein was not the top of the pyramid. He was also not some self serving flim-flam man selling sex and depravity just to gain access to the halls of power. Rather, Epstein was a middle-man, a drug dealer selling dopamine experiences as a reward for members of the cabal (while collecting blackmail materials). But the cabal is far bigger than what we see in the Epstein files and it supersedes any one nation or government.

There are strange mentions of “cloning”, baby farming for black market sales, and the creation of a “superior race” in the files. In other words, the interests of Epstein and his associates went well beyond sexual fetishes.

Some of the Epstein emails openly discuss sexual abuse and torture of victims brought to the island. The victimization of teens is less protected and easier to prove. Then, there’s the creepier elements of the files. Coded language is rampant within the Epstein emails, using food as symbols for clearly illicit contraband.

From the Pizzagate information (the John Podesta emails) released by Wikileaks in 2016, we can see that food code words are common for the globalists and seem to be tied to the abuse of young children. Pizza symbolism has been common within pedophilia networks for many years leading up to the exposure of Pizzagate, and it’s also common within the pages of the Epstein Files (the word “pizza” is used as code at least 900 times in the emails).

The use of “beef jerky” in the Epstein emails (also mentioned hundreds of times) is specifically disconcerting, including talk of keeping the “jerky on ice”, a strange obsession with jerky portion weights, lab testing of “jerky” to prevent sickness, etc. Whatever they are talking about, it’s not beef jerky. You have to ask yourself, what kind of edible product would be so criminal that it has to be hidden behind elaborate code-speak?

The obvious conclusion would be that “jerky” is code for human meat. Some might argue that there’s no benefits to eating human meat so why would the elites do it? These critics are operating from a logical perspective and not an occultist perspective. One cannot separate Epstein Island from occultism and still understand what happened there.

For the elites who link themselves back to the pagan practices of ancient Babylonian times, from the era of Molech worshipers (Bohemian Grove) and beyond, the ritual of cannibalism is integral to their religion. They believe that human sacrifice gives them power and this is a common thread within most pagan systems including satanism.

Luciferianism/satanism is an integral element of globalism. The evidence of its practice within globalist circles is immense and cannot be ignored. Some skeptics would denote a separation between “satanism” and “luciferianism”, but for all intents and purposes they are intertwined belief systems.

Satanists are occupied with the pursuit of pleasure at the expense of morality, while luciferians are occupied with the pursuit of power and godhood at the expense of morality. For adherents of both practices, their motto is “Do What Thou Wilt.”

As I outlined in my article “Luciferianism: A Secular Look At A Destructive Globalist Belief System”, published in 2019, global elitists derive their spiritual ecstasy from the worship of the material and the corruption of the pure. They seek to deconstruct creation and human nature, to prove that all people are as depraved as they are and that morality is an artificial limitation on power and pleasure.

Their system is rife with psychopathic indicators and I assert that luciferienism is a religion designed specifically to affirm the destructive tendencies of psychopaths and narcopaths. But what are these tendencies?

Psychopaths lack any sense of empathy and function only as parasites who feed on the rest of humanity. This is actually one of the reasons I’m fascinated by them. Not because they are particularly interesting as individuals, but because their existence seems to be a dangerous anomaly. They are less than 1% of the total human population but they cause the vast majority of human tragedies.

The average person has the capacity for evil, there’s no doubt.

People can be driven to all kinds of horrors depending on their circumstances.

But, the majority of us have a mechanism called “conscience” which stops us from committing evil most of the time. It also causes us to feel guilt when we know we have acted in a destructive manner.

If the majority of the population did not have a universal experience of conscience and morality, we would have gone extinct as a species thousands of years ago.

Globalists (psychopaths) do not have this mechanism. In fact, they view conscience as a hindrance, a trait of the weak and the easily victimized. They are a predatory class of human. I would even suggest that they are not human at all, but a mutation or a cancerous intrusion.

When psychopaths achieve overt material wealth they then have easy access to the resources they need to satisfy their impulses at will. At this stage in the evolution of a psychopath they have a tendency to become bored. They begin to chase increasing depravity and darkness in search of a greater dopamine fix. The more degenerate and taboo the activity, the more exciting it is.

But these are nothing but individual motivations and personal addictions. What are the ambitions and drives of the organized cabal?

Part of the allure of occultism is the glee some people feel when they believe they are “superior” to their common man. Occult groups sell their members on the notion that they will be set apart as “elite” when they join with the keepers of secrets.

When we read the numerous emails tied to Epstein as well as his island and his ranch in New Mexico, the people who correspond with him seem childish and giddy. They snicker like adolescent brats when they engage in codes and riddles. They’re committing atrocities beyond the comprehension of the average man, and they feel joy because they’re basking in the “cloak and dagger” of it all.

I think this might be a hard thing to reconcile for many people in the conspiracy field, but the cabal is not made up of darkly brilliant minds imposing cold and calculating will. Rather, it is mostly made up of egomaniacal narcissists giggling like retards as they revel in their delusions of grandeur. If you saw how these people behave behind the scenes, you would probably feel embarrassed for them and feel like an idiot for imagining them to be cunning or untouchable masterminds.

Without their money and the collective protection of their coven, they are tiny people without merit living a meaningless existence. That said, make no mistake – It’s the putrid sociopathy of their childishness that makes them exceedingly dangerous. To be infantile while rejoicing in the blood of innocence requires a diabolical and demonic mind.

From my research Epstein’s Island might have been tame in comparison to some of the other meeting places of the elites. His island was not the end destination but a gateway for initiates. I believe the island was a test, a venue where evil is concentrated and people with apprehensions are filtered away.

The worst of the worst likely moved on to even more vile nesting grounds hidden in plain site around the world. The reason the Epstein Files matter is because they open the door to a wider investigation of the globalist networks and their horrific playgrounds.

I suggest that we need to bring back the concept of “witch hunters”; people who are able to think like occultists while using modern investigative methods in order to track down these networks and erase them from the Earth. If government officials refuse to do this, then vigilantism is inevitable.

Unfortunately, it’s no mistake that globalist NGOs have flooded the west with third world migrants and mobilized armies of far left insurgents in the past few years. After the pandemic they know that the public is reaching information saturation and that their agenda is coming to light. They will seek to overthrow conservative movements, exploit useful idiots to destroy their enemies and cause general mayhem in order to sabotage any organized resistance.

If you would like to support the work that Alt-Market does while also receiving content on advanced tactics for defeating the globalist agenda, subscribe to our exclusive newsletter The Wild Bunch Dispatch.  Learn more about it HERE.

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

Tyler Durden Wed, 02/11/2026 - 16:20

Historic Negative Jobs Revisions: 1 Million Fewer Jobs Added In 2025, Only 15,000 Avg Jobs Monthly

Historic Negative Jobs Revisions: 1 Million Fewer Jobs Added In 2025, Only 15,000 Avg Jobs Monthly

Ahead of today's jobs report, we warned that (another) massive negative revision was coming to the US labor market, predicting it would be "1 million plus." We were right.

Recall that alongside today's jobs report, the BLS would release its annual benchmark revision to the establishment survey and a methodological update to the birth-death model (as a reminder, the BLS’s preliminary estimate of the benchmark payrolls revision indicated that cumulative payroll growth between April 2024 and March 2025 would be revised 911k lower).

More importantly, the BLS would also update the net birth-death forecasts in the post-benchmark period (April 2025-December 2025) to incorporate information from the QCEW and the monthly payrolls survey. We said that a sharp downward revision to the post-benchmark period "appears likely", reflecting the continued slowdown in the job growth measured by the QCEW and weak private payroll growth measured by the establishment survey during post-benchmark period, something we had been warning about for years. 

Sure enough, in its report today, the BLS announced that "the establishment survey data released today have been benchmarked to reflect comprehensive counts of payroll jobs for March 2025. These counts are derived principally from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW), which counts jobs covered by the Unemployment Insurance (UI) tax system. The benchmark process results in revisions to not seasonally adjusted data from April 2024 forward. Seasonally adjusted data from January 2021 forward are subject to revision. In addition, data for some series prior to 2021, both seasonally adjusted and unadjusted, incorporate other revisions."

And here is the summary table the BLS published to adjust for the revised Birth-Death model (there is much more data to today's revisions which we summarize below).

With that introduction aside, this is how the revised payrolls numbers looked. 

Starting at the top, total US payrolls were revised dramatically lower starting with the Jan 2021 data and every month since, and net of the cumulative changes December 31, 2025 total nonfarm employment was revised lower by 1.029 million from 159.546 million to 158.497 million.

As expected, the bulk of the negative revisions took place in 2025, with negative revisions to 2024 amounting to -413K, 2023 was just -73K while 2021 and 2021 were revised modestly higher. 

Focusing on 2025, the negative revisions to both the year and previous years, meant that the change in total jobs for 2025 was revised from an already low +584,000 to a shockingly low +181,000. 

Finally, net of the aggressive revisions to 2025 monthly payrolls, what was previously an average increase of 48.7K jobs in 2025, has now been revised to just 15.1K!

Of course, this is not the first time the Dept of Labor confirmed it has massively revised jobs lower due to erroneous adjustment factors and birth-death additions. Recall, it was last September when we first warned the April 2024 - March 2025 period would be revised massively lower (we now know it was). But it followed another huge revision for 2024 which subtracted 818K jobs and also a 306K revision to 2023.

Putting it all together, we now know with certainty that the flawed Birth-Death model (as well as other smaller seasonal adjustments), led to 2.5 million jobs being revised away since 2019, with negative revisions in 6 of the past 7 years (only 2022 saw a modest positive adjustment)

Last but not least, more revisions are coming: while the January jobs report usually incorporates new population estimates from the Census Bureau into the household survey, those figures were delayed by one month due to last year’s record-long government shutdown. Officials from the Trump administration in recent days have tried to reset expectations for upcoming jobs numbers due to deportations and slower population growth. As a result, expect even more negative revisions next month.

Appendix: 

Those curious how the BLS changed its entire birth-death model methodology to incorporate current sample information each month (which follows the same methodology applied to the April through October 2024 forecasts during the 2024 post-benchmark period) should read question 9 in the CES Birth-Death Model Frequently Asked Questions

Additionally, a BLS article that discusses the benchmark and post-benchmark revisions and other technical issues is available here.

Tyler Durden Wed, 02/11/2026 - 16:15

FDA Refuses To Review Moderna's Application For Experimental Flu Shot

FDA Refuses To Review Moderna's Application For Experimental Flu Shot

Authored by Troy Myers via The Epoch Times,

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is refusing to review Moderna’s experimental flu shot, the company announced Tuesday.

Already submitted and accepted for review in the European Union, Canada, and Australia, the experimental shot’s application being denied by the FDA is another sign of President Donald Trump’s administration’s impact on U.S. pharmaceutical companies.

FDA Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER) Director Vinayak Prasad signed the refusal to review letter, objecting to Moderna’s study design and its lack of an “adequate and well-controlled” study.

Moderna’s CEO refuted to Prasad’s assessment.

“It should not be controversial to conduct a comprehensive review of a flu vaccine submission that uses an FDA-approved vaccine as a comparator in a study that was discussed and agreed on with CBER prior to starting,” Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel said in the news release.

According to the pharmaceutical company, the FDA did not identify any specific safety or efficacy concerns with the experimental flu shot, called mRNA-1010.

Health and Human Services (HHS), under Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., announced its plan in August 2025 to begin winding down mRNA vaccine development, including the cancellation and de-scoping of contracts and solicitations. The decision came after a review of mRNA-related investments started during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The data show these vaccines fail to protect effectively against upper respiratory infections like COVID and flu. We’re shifting that funding toward safer, broader vaccine platforms that remain effective even as viruses mutate,” Kennedy said in the news release.

The HHS secretary added that his agency will be investing in better solutions.

In the latest setback with Moderna’s experimental mRNA shot, the company called the move by the FDA “inconsistent” with prior feedback it has received from the agency.

In April 2024, Moderna submitted its phase three study to the FDA’s CBER for review. The agency sent written guidance back, which did not raise any objections about the phase three trial, Moderna said.

Following the completion of the experimental shot’s phase three efficacy trial in August 2025, Moderna held another meeting with the FDA agency for feedback. The Moderna news release said that at no time during the meeting or in written feedback did CBER hint that it would refuse to review the shot’s application.

“This decision by CBER, which did not identify any safety or efficacy concerns with our product, does not further our shared goal of enhancing America’s leadership in developing innovative medicines,” Bancel said.

With mRNA-1010’s acceptance for review in the European Union, Canada, and Australia, Moderna said it plans to file more submissions in additional countries this year.

Meanwhile, the drug company has requested a meeting with the FDA agency to understand the path forward.

“We look forward to engaging with CBER to understand the path forward as quickly as possible so that America’s seniors, and those with underlying conditions, continue to have access to American-made innovations,” the CEO said.

The refusal to review Moderna’s experimental flu vaccine comes as the Trump administration is making sweeping changes to the U.S. health complex, like inverting the food pyramid, narrowing the childhood vaccine schedule, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention admitting vaccines may cause autism, and more.

RFK Jr. helped launch the Make America Healthy Again movement, which is advocating for healthier diets, safer farming practices, more awareness of store-bought foods laden with chemicals, and trying to identify the root causes of chronic disease.

The FDA refusing to review Moderna’s experimental flu shot becomes the latest setback for big pharmaceutical companies under the Trump administration.

The pharmaceutical company said it does not expect impacts to its 2026 financial guidance and forecasts the earliest approvals for its experimental flu shot to begin late 2026 or early 2027.

Tyler Durden Wed, 02/11/2026 - 15:45

Real Estate Services Stocks Crash In Latest "AI Scare Trade"

Real Estate Services Stocks Crash In Latest "AI Scare Trade"

FIrst it was SaaS (in particular, and Software in general), then Private Credit, then Insurance Brokers, then it was financials/brokers that were hammered yesterday... and today's it's the turn of real estate service stocks to tumble as investors followed the bouncing AI disruption ball and freaked out over the sector’s vulnerability to the newest crop of artificial intelligence applications and tools that can disrupt countless industries.

As the latest daily AI scare - this time focusing on real estate - hit the market, shares of CBRE Group Inc. plunged as much as 15%, Jones Lang LaSalle Inc. slid 13% and Cushman & Wakefield Ltd. fell 15%. For all three firms, the moves mark the biggest drop since March 2020 in the midst of the Covid-driven market selloff.   

“We believe investors are rotating out of high-fee, labor-intensive business models viewed as potentially vulnerable to AI-driven disruption,” Keefe, Bruyette & Woods analyst Jade Rahmani writes in a note on Wednesday adding that the selloff is “due to ‘AI Scare Trade’,” the analyst wrote.

Still, the analyst also noted that "while the threat of technology disintermediation is not new to the industry" the current sell-off "may overstate the immediate risk to complex deal-making, even as the long-term AI impact remains a ‘wait-and-see’." 

According to Goldman trader Christian deGrasse "while rates are up modestly post NFPs, price action in lower rated sensitive sectors (CRE Brokers; Mortgage originators & brokerages) are suggesting a more dramatic shift in positioning here."

The group is the latest to get caught up in what Rahmani calls the “AI scare trade,” after investors rushed to dump shares of software firms, private credit companies, wealth managers and insurance brokers within the span of just over a week. 

The fears emerged last week after AI startup Anthropic released tools aimed at automating work tasks in areas ranging from legal services to financial research to real estate. At the same time, analysts and investors have warned that some of this steep selling reflects a knee-jerk reaction and the market is wildly overestimating the risk inherent in hallucinating chatbots taking away millions of jobs.

Tyler Durden Wed, 02/11/2026 - 15:35

Apple Slides On Report Latest Attempt To Re-Launch Siri Runs Into "Snags"

Apple Slides On Report Latest Attempt To Re-Launch Siri Runs Into "Snags"

Apple is sliding on a Bloomberg report that its long-planned upgrade to the Siri virtual assistant has run into new snags during testing in recent weeks, potentially pushing back the release of several highly anticipated functions.

After planning to include the new capabilities in iOS 26.4, an OS update slated for March, Apple is now working to spread them out over future versions. That would mean postponing at least some features until at least iOS 26.5, due in May, and iOS 27, which comes out in September. It wasn't immediately clear what the snags in question are. 

The latest hitches are part of a long saga for Apple, which first announced plans for the revamped Siri in June 2024. That year, the iPhone maker showed off capabilities that would let the assistant tap into personal data and on-screen content to better fulfill requests. The upgraded Siri also would let users precisely control apps from Apple and third parties via their voice. All the new features were due by early 2025.

In the spring of last year, Apple delayed the rollout, saying the new Siri would instead arrive in 2026. It never announced more specific timing. Internally, though, Apple settled on the March 2026 target - tying it to iOS 26.4 - a goal that remained in place as recently as last month. 

But testing has uncovered fresh problems with the software, prompting the latest postponements, Bloomberg reported citing sources. Siri doesn’t always properly process queries or can take too long to handle requests, they said.

In recent days, Apple instructed engineers to use the upcoming iOS 26.5 in order to test new Siri features, implying that the functionality may have been moved back by at least one release. Internal versions of that update now include a notice describing the addition of some Siri enhancements. 

One feature is especially likely to slip: the expanded ability for Siri to tap into personal data. That technology would let users ask the assistant to, say, search old text messages to locate a podcast shared by a friend and immediately play it.

Other features running behind include the most advanced commands for voice-based control of in-app actions, a system known as app intents. It would let people ask Siri to find an image, edit it and send it to a contact, all in a single command. Apple employees testing iOS 26.5 say early support for these features exists, but they don’t function reliably in all cases.

Another challenge: The new Siri sometimes falls back on its existing integration with OpenAI’s ChatGPT instead of using Apple’s own technology. That can happen even when Siri should be capable of handling the request. 

Apple shares pared their gains on the news Wednesday. The stock was up 1.1% to $276.71 as of 2:52 p.m. in New York after earlier climbing as high as 2.4%.

Tyler Durden Wed, 02/11/2026 - 15:20

Public Trust In US Government Nears Historic Lows

Public Trust In US Government Nears Historic Lows

The United States has fallen to its lowest-ever rank in Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index (CPI), a leading global index that measures perception of corruption in the public sector among independent experts and business people.

In 2025, the U.S. fell down one spot to 29th place (out of 182) with a score of 64/100 on a 0 to 100 scale, where 0 means highly corrupt and 100 completely clean.

This ranking puts the country on the same level as the Bahamas, and below Uruguay (17th place), Bhutan (18th) and the United Arab Emirates (21st). The United States had been on a slow decline in the index since 2017, when the country scored 75/100.

Several factors are blamed for the U.S.' poor score, including measures put in place last year by the Trump administration that have severely hindered the federal government's ability to fight public corruption, such as pausing investigations into corporate foreign bribery, weakening institutions or curtailing enforcement of a foreign agent registration law.

In a statement published yesterday, Transparency International wrote:

"Our data show that democracies, typically stronger on anti-corruption than autocracies or flawed democracies, are experiencing a worrying decline in performance. This trend spans countries such as the United States (64), Canada (75) and New Zealand (81), to various parts of Europe, like the United Kingdom (70), France (66) and Sweden (80). Another concerning pattern is increasing restrictions by many states on freedoms of expression, association and assembly."

On the United States, the anti-curruption coalition added: "Although 2025 developments are not yet fully reflected, actions targeting independent voices and undermining judicial independence raise serious concerns. Beyond the CPI findings, the temporary freeze and weakening of enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act signal tolerance for corrupt business practices, while cuts to US aid for overseas civil society have weakened global anti-corruption efforts. Political leaders elsewhere have taken this as a cue to further restrict NGOs, journalists and other independent voices."

According to recent aggregated data from the Pew Research Center based on series of national polls, trust in the government was nearing historic lows at the end of 2025, with only 17 percent of Americans trusting the government to do what is right just about always or most of the time.

As Statista's Valentine Fourreau shows in the infographic below, trust in the government has been on a slow decline since it peaked at 54 percent in October 2001, during George W. Bush's first term (such a high level of approval hadn't been recorded since the early 1970s, under President Nixon).

 Public Trust in U.S. Government Nears Historic Lows | Statista

You will find more infographics at Statista

The lowest level recorded since 2000 was in October 2011, under President Obama.

Trust in the government hit a low of 15 percent, which coincided with the announcement of the official withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of the year and the expansion of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Tyler Durden Wed, 02/11/2026 - 15:00

'No Privacy' CBDCs Will Come, Warns Billionaire Ray Dalio

'No Privacy' CBDCs Will Come, Warns Billionaire Ray Dalio

Authored by Martin Young via CoinTelegraph.com,

American billionaire and hedge fund manager Ray Dalio has warned that central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) are coming, offering benefits but also potentially allowing governments to exert more control over people’s finances.

“I think it will be done,” said Dalio on CBDCs in a wide-ranging interview on the Tucker Carlson Show on Monday, which also included topics on the US debt crisis, gold prices, and even a potential civil war. 

Ray Dalio is a billionaire hedge fund manager who has been co-chief investment officer of Bridgewater Associates since 1985, after founding the firm in 1975. 

During the interview, Dalio said CBDCs could be appealing due to the ease of transactions, likening them to money market funds in terms of functionality, but he also cautioned about their downsides.

He said there will be a debate, but CBDCs “probably won’t” offer interest, so they will not be “an effective vehicle to hold because you’ll have the depreciation [of the dollar].”

Dalio also cautioned that all CBDC transactions will be known to the government, which is good for controlling illegal activity, but also provides a great deal of control in other areas. 

“There will be no privacy, and it's a very effective controlling mechanism by the government.”

Ray Dalio talks CBDCs with Tucker Carlson. Source: YouTube

Taxation, forex controls and political debanking 

A programmable digital currency will enable the government to tax directly, “they can take your money,” and establish foreign exchange controls, he said. 

That will be an “increasing issue,” particularly for international holders of that currency, as the government can seize funds from nationals of sanctioned countries. 

Dalio also said that you could be “shut off” from a CBDC if you were “politically disfavored.” 

An American CBDC is unlikely to be deployed in the near future, as US President Donald Trump has been vocally opposed to them

Soon after taking office in January 2025, Trump signed an executive order prohibiting “the establishment, issuance, circulation, and use” of a US CBDC. 

Only three countries have launched a CBDC 

According to the Atlantic Council’s CBDC tracker, only three countries have officially launched a CBDC: Nigeria, Jamaica, and The Bahamas. 

Another 49 countries are testing CBDCs, including China, Russia, India and Brazil. Twenty nations have a CBDC in development, and 36 are still researching central bank digital currencies.

India’s central bank reportedly proposed an initiative in January linking BRICS CBDCs to facilitate cross-border trade and tourism payments. 

Tyler Durden Wed, 02/11/2026 - 14:40

Elon Musk Vows To Establish A Moon City Within 10 Years

Elon Musk Vows To Establish A Moon City Within 10 Years

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

Elon Musk and SpaceX are charting a bold new course for American space dominance, prioritizing a thriving city on the Moon to shield civilization from earthly perils like natural disasters or geopolitical chaos. 

With frequent launches and rapid iteration cycles, the Moon offers a practical launchpad for multi-planetary life, free from the constraints of overregulated space agencies that have stalled progress for decades. 

SpaceX’s announcement comes amid a renewed push for lunar exploration, where private enterprise is outpacing sluggish international efforts. 

According to reports, the company aims to establish a “self-growing city” on the Moon within a decade, leveraging the proximity for hundreds of test cycles that Mars’ distant orbit simply can’t match. 

Musk elaborated on X, stating, “SpaceX has already shifted focus to building a self-growing city on the Moon, as we can potentially achieve that in less than 10 years, whereas Mars would take 20+ years.” 

He emphasized the logistical edge: launches to the Moon every 10 days with a two-day trip, versus Mars’ 26-month windows and six-month journeys. 

This allows for swift advancements in life support, construction, and energy systems—key to breaking free from Earth’s vulnerabilities.

The shift doesn’t abandon Mars entirely. Musk noted that SpaceX will still pursue a long term plan for a Red Planet city, but the Moon takes precedence as a faster safeguard for civilization. 

“The overriding priority is securing the future of civilization and the Moon is faster,” Musk posted. 

This pragmatic approach exposes the folly of pie-in-the-sky promises that have dominated space policy, often mired in wasteful spending and political gamesmanship.

Musk also teased democratized space travel:

This development echoes broader frustrations with establishment space programs. NASA’s Artemis missions, while ambitious, are bogged down by delays and ballooning costs.

SpaceX, unencumbered by such bureaucracy, is poised to deliver tangible wins, potentially including lunar data centers powered by constant solar energy, boosting U.S. tech supremacy.

By prioritizing the lunar city, SpaceX advances an independent, resilient humanity—free from reliance on fragile international alliances that often prioritize control over innovation.

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

Tyler Durden Wed, 02/11/2026 - 14:00

Democratic Governors Threaten Boycott Of White House Gathering

Democratic Governors Threaten Boycott Of White House Gathering

Authored by Savannah Hulsey Pointer via The Epoch Times,

Democratic governors are threatening to boycott an anticipated meeting at the White House amid news that the administration was not inviting at least some of their party’s governors.

In a Feb. 10 letter, a group of 18 Democratic governors said:

If the reports are true that not all governors are invited to these events, which have historically been productive and bipartisan opportunities for collaboration, we will not be attending the White House dinner this year.

Democratic governors remain united and will never stop fighting to protect and make life better for people in our states,” read the letter, obtained by the Associated Press.

The governors were set to meet at the White House on Feb. 20 as part of an annual gathering, which coincided with the National Governor Association’s Winter Meeting this year. The letter followed a statement from Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, who chairs the association, that the White House intended to limit invitations to only Republican governors.

The association said on Feb. 6  that it would no longer endorse the meeting, citing concerns about limited invitations. It’s unclear exactly how many Democratic governors were uninvited by the White House.

“These are White House events and the President reserves the right to invite whomever he wants,” a White House official said in an email to The Epoch Times.

“Many Democrats were invited to dinner at the White House, and others were not.”

When asked about the association’s decision, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a Feb. 10 press briefing that the president “can invite whomever he wants to dinner and events here at the White House.”

“He welcomes all those who received an invitation to come and if they don’t want to, that’s their loss,” Leavitt said.

Her comments came after Maryland Gov. Wes Moore announced that he had been “uninvited” from the association dinner at the White House.

Moore voiced his frustration in a Feb. 8 statement, but said:

“As Governor of Maryland and Vice Chair of the [National Governors Association], my approach will never change: I’m ready to work with the administration anywhere we can deliver results.”

“Yet, I promised the people of my state I will work with anybody but will bow down to nobody. And I guess the President doesn’t like that,” he said.

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker announced on Feb. 10 that he was standing with Moore and Colorado’s Gov. Jared Polis and would not attend the dinner. He also called on his Republican colleagues to do the same.

Historically a bipartisan event, the yearly meeting has been labeled “an important tradition” by the governor’s association.

“NGA leadership has decided that this will not be an NGA event, and no NGA resources will be used to support this activity,” Brandon Tatum, the CEO of the National Governors Association (NGA).

“We have also learned that the President may not to [sic] invite all Governors to the White House dinner. To disinvite individual Governors to the White House sessions undermines the meaning behind this critical tradition.”

Tyler Durden Wed, 02/11/2026 - 13:25

Dreadful 10Y Auction Sees Biggest Tail Since 2024, Foreign Demand Slides

Dreadful 10Y Auction Sees Biggest Tail Since 2024, Foreign Demand Slides

After yesterday's mediocre 3Y auction (which saw a drop in foreign demand offset by record direct bid), moments ago the Treasury concluded the sale of 10Y benchmark paper, and despite a cheerful preview by the Bloomberg MLIV team (which appears to be wrong every time it tries to handicap the outcome), today's auction was absolutely dreadful.

Starting at the top, the high yield of 4.177% was almost unchanged from last month's 4.173% and the 4.175% the month before. More importantly, it tailed the When Issued 4.163% by 1.4bps, the biggest tail since August 2024.

The bid to cover dropped to 2.388, the lowest since August 2025. It would have been even worse had the Fed's SOMA not tendered for $11.9BN of the issue (up from $11.35BN in January).

The internals were also ugly, as Indirects slumped to just 64.5%, the lowest since August 2025 (and clearly well below the six month average of 70.2%). And with Directs also sliding to 22.1% from 24.5% in January (a far cray from yesterday's record Directs), Dealers were left holding 13.54%, the most since - you guessed it - August 2025.

Overall, this was a very disappointing 10Y auction, easily the worst refunding in over a year, and subjectively the ugliest sale of benchmark paper since 2024. And that explains why despite today's latest slam in momentum which is crushing bitcoin and high beta names, the 10Y has since rebounded and rose 2bps from 4.15% to 4.17% after the ugly auction. 

Tyler Durden Wed, 02/11/2026 - 13:24

Mama's Boy? Sam Bankman-Fried, Represented By His Mother, Files For New Trial In FTX Implosion Case

Mama's Boy? Sam Bankman-Fried, Represented By His Mother, Files For New Trial In FTX Implosion Case

Sam Bankman-Fried has renewed his effort to overturn his FTX fraud conviction, filing a request for a new trial in federal court through a motion submitted by his mother in New York, according to Coindesk and Yahoo News

The former crypto exchange chief, now serving a 25-year prison sentence, argues that recently uncovered evidence and missing testimony from earlier proceedings justify reopening his case. The filing points in part to the absence of former FTX executive Ryan Salame, who later faced his own criminal charges. Salame had previously said he believed his cooperation with prosecutors would protect his wife, Michelle Bond, who was later charged over alleged illegal campaign donations.

The 35-page request was submitted as a “pro se” motion, meaning Bankman-Fried is currently acting as his own attorney.

At the same time, he has launched a renewed public campaign on X, using posts to support his push for a retrial. In those messages, he portrays himself as a victim of politically driven “lawfare,” accusing prosecutors and judges of bias and retaliation against FTX executives. Independent reviews, however, have found that several of his claims conflict with court records.

Among them, Bankman-Fried has suggested that both he and former President Donald Trump were placed under comparable gag orders. Court documents show the situations were different: Trump’s restrictions stemmed from separate cases, while Bankman-Fried’s order followed repeated violations of pretrial conditions.

He has also revived his long-standing argument that FTX “was always solvent” and that customer funds were never stolen. That position was rejected at trial, where jurors concluded that client assets were misused and misrepresented. Federal courts have since ruled that later asset recoveries do not prove the company was solvent at the time of the misconduct.

In another claim, Bankman-Fried said Trump “fired” one of his prosecutors, Danielle Sassoon. Public records indicate she resigned over an unrelated Justice Department dispute and was not dismissed in connection with the FTX case.

Earlier appeals alleging an unfair trial were met with skepticism from judges last November, who said solvency was not the central issue in the verdict.

“Part of the government's theory of the case is that the defendant misrepresented to investors that their money was safe, was not being used in the way that it was the government claims and the jury convicted it was, in fact, used,” said Circuit Judge Maria Araújo Kahn.

Bankman-Fried has also claimed he was targeted for his political views, crypto lobbying, and donations to Republicans. Courts have found no evidence supporting that argument, noting that the case relied on documents, internal messages, and witness testimony. Records also show he personally donated to Joe Biden’s campaign.

Meanwhile, President Donald Trump has said he would not consider clemency for Bankman-Fried. Despite this, the former executive continues to argue online that his conviction was politically motivated as he presses for another chance in court.

Tyler Durden Wed, 02/11/2026 - 13:05

The Trump Admin Just Won The Mask Decision... Now It Should Appeal

The Trump Admin Just Won The Mask Decision... Now It Should Appeal

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has become increasingly Orwellian in his declarations of success.

Last week, Newsom was proclaiming the great success of his high-speed train to nowhere – a project delayed by decades, reduced to a fraction of the original plan, and set to cost tens of billions over budget.

This week, he is proclaiming victory after a court struck down his signature law requiring federal agents to unmask.  The preliminary injunction issued Monday by Senior status Judge Christine Snyder against California’s No Secret Police Act was a victory for the Trump Administration.

However, it should still appeal Judge Snyder’s flawed decision. In other words, the Administration won for the wrong reason.

Snyder, an Obama appointee, faced two laws passed in September 2025 with great fanfare in California: the Secret Police Act and the No Vigilante Act. As their titles indicate, they are not serious efforts at legislating but unconstitutional acts designed to pander to the politics of the moment.

In the oral argument, some of us were concerned over the curious position staked out by Judge Synder.

DOJ counsel Tiberius Davis tried to explain how such state laws usurp federal authority and violate the Supremacy Clause.

He drove that point home by asking “Why couldn’t California say every immigration officer needs to wear pink, so it’s super obvious who they are? The idea that all 50 states can regulate the conduct and uniforms of officers … flips the Constitution on its head.”

That would seem an unassailable point, but not to Judge Synder. 

She asked, “Why can’t they perform their duties without a mask? They did that until 2025, did they not? How in the world do those who don’t mask manage to operate?”

I remarked at the time that the court seemed to miss the central point.

The question is not whether the federal government can continue to function under limitations imposed by various states, but whether those states have the authority to impose such conditions.

I do not believe that they do.

Nevertheless, Judge Synder came to the right conclusion for the wrong reason.

She enjoined the mask requirement, but did so on the basis that California exempted its own officers.

“Even though the United States has failed to demonstrate that the facial covering prohibition of the No Secret Police Act unduly interferes with federal functions, the court acknowledges that it is nonetheless an incidental regulation on law enforcement officers. The intergovernmental immunity doctrine prohibits imposing such a regulatory burden, albeit minimal and incidental to operations, in a discriminatory manner against the federal government.”

By adopting this narrow basis, the court was able to enjoin the No Secret Police Act while rejecting an injunction against the No Vigilantes Act and certain other provisions of the No Secret Police Act.

I think the court is wrong and should be reversed.

Snyder rejected the rationale of the federal government that these masks are being used to protect ICE agents from “doxing,” even though various agents have been targeted and threatened. Synder waved off the concern and said that the government had not shown by such masking is essential to carrying out such functions. Her opinion relies on broad, unsupported assumptions. Because officers are facing these security concerns, she concludes that they will continue regardless: “Security concerns exist for federal law enforcement officers with or without masks. If anything, the court finds that the presence of masked and unidentifiable individuals, including law enforcement, is more likely to heighten the sense of insecurity for all.”

It is a bizarre rationalization. The court is simply imposing its judgment on what will make officers safer, rather than emphasizing whether these agencies have the discretion to make such judgments in the execution of federal law. Yet the court still enjoins the law because it discriminates between federal and state officers. (Not surprisingly, Democratic state Sen. Scott Wiener, the author of the mask ban, immediately declared that they would amend the law to add  state law enforcement).

The Court then upheld a state requirement that federal officers cannot conceal their identities in a discussion more befitting a legislative committee than a court:

“The Court finds that these Acts serve the public interest by promoting transparency, which is essential for accountability and public trust. Moreover, the Court finds no cognizable justification for law enforcement officers to conceal their identities during their performance of routine, non-exempted law enforcement functions and interactions with the general public.”

In my view, Judge Snyder twists the analysis into knots to try to preserve as much of these laws as possible while giving the Administration the minimum level of deference.

Under the intergovernmental immunity doctrine, the Supreme Court has mandated in cases such as McCulloch v. Maryland, 17 U.S. 316, 317 (1819), that “the states have no power, by taxation or otherwise, to retard, impede, burden, or in any manner control, the operations of the constitutional law enacted by congress to carrying into execution the powers vested in the general government.” A state cannot intrude into this authority absent a “clear and unambiguous” authorization from Congress, Goodyear Atomic Corp. v. Miller, 486, U.S. 174, 180 (1988).

Snyder finds that the California laws discriminate but do not constitute direct regulation of the federal government. She does so through a “functionalist” approach that avoids bright lines of supremacy. She simply dismisses the objections, saying the federal government has not shown that wearing masks is “essential” to carrying out these functions. Consider that approach for a second. A wide range of state regulations on federal officers could be deemed permissible, since federal officers can still functionally carry out arrests. States could dictate everything from uniform requirements, such as masks, to vehicle conditions to verbal commands or warnings.

The opinion is spotty in its analysis and sweeping in its implications. It is, in my view, ripe for reversal either before the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit or the Supreme Court.

Here is the opinion: a 30-page decision: United States v. California

Tyler Durden Wed, 02/11/2026 - 12:45

Russia Will Stick To Nuclear Arms Limits If US Does The Same

Russia Will Stick To Nuclear Arms Limits If US Does The Same

One of the globe's biggest developing stories this month, but which has been largely underreported in mainstream TV networks and other press, is the collapse of New START - the last major nuclear arms control treaty between Russia and the United States.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Wednesday that Moscow will in good faith stick to the nuclear limits outlined in the now-expired arms control treaty, provided Washington does the same.

via Kremlin/Brookings

It expired earlier this month after Washington declined to respond to President Vladimir Putin’s proposal for a one-year extension capping both sides' nuclear arsenals.

The Trump admin has long wanted a more comprehensive agreement which brings China's arsenal into the scope; however, there's been no formal process on this front with Beijing or Moscow.

Lavrov said Russia has no intention of rapidly expanding or deploying additional weapons, clarifying remarks from his ministry last week that suggested Moscow no longer considered itself bound by the treaty.

"We proceed from the fact that this moratorium, which was announced by our president, remains in effect, but only while the United States does not exceed the outlined limits," Lavrov told Russia's parliament.

Some key aspects to the treaty have gone unobserved for some time, especially the regimen of mutual nuclear site inspections.

President Trump has in the recent past called New START "badly negotiated" and said it "is being grossly violated. He has in mind Russia having blocked inspections of its nuclear facilities under the treaty framework in 2023, as tensions with Washington escalated over the proxy war in Ukraine.

Moscow has in turn complained that Washington is the chief violator, and that it now refuses to respond to Putin's overture to extend it by one year, while a more comprehensive and extended deal is negotiated.

Last week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio gave insight into why the White House has let New START expire: "Obviously, the president's been clear in the past that in order to have true arms control in the 21st century, it's impossible to do something that doesn't include China because of their vast and rapidly growing stockpile," he explained.

Tyler Durden Wed, 02/11/2026 - 12:25

Data Centers Are A Repeat Of History In PA's Coal Region

Data Centers Are A Repeat Of History In PA's Coal Region

Authored by Jake Wynn via RealClearPennsylvania,

By the 1920s, Pennsylvania’s anthracite coal region was already living with the consequences of decisions made far from its towns and patch villages. The industry that had built the coal towns and cities of eastern Pennsylvania was no longer organized around mineworkers or the communities they lived in, but around efficiency, scale, and centralized control. Mechanization, electrification, and consolidation were already reshaping daily life above and below ground.

Coal companies framed these changes as modern necessities. In 1929, the president of the Philadelphia & Reading Coal & Iron Company (P&RC&I) explained declining production not as a crisis of employment, but as a problem of outdated infrastructure. The solution, Andrew J. Maloney argued, lay in “more flexibility in our producing units,” achieved through “the construction of two modern centralized breakers to electrify the mines tributary thereto.”

The new Locust Summit and St. Nicholas district breakers, authorized just before the stock market crash of 1929, embodied that logic. Electricity would streamline production, while centralization would reduce costs. Smaller collieries – especially those farther from rail lines or markets – would simply disappear under this scheme.

They did. As mammoth central breakers came online, operations of the P&RC&I in places like Tower City, at the western edge of Schuylkill County, and other outlying communities were shuttered. Instead of work migrating slowly and evenly toward the centralized facilities, jobs vanished completely in many communities.

According to historians Thomas L. Dublin and Walter Licht in their 2005 book, Face of Decline, about this topic, Mahanoy City saw six of seven collieries closed. In Shamokin, four of five mines stood idle.

They also noted that in Lykens, the town’s lone mine, the Short Mountain Colliery, was shut down entirely. The promise of “efficiency” translated into widespread unemployment across the anthracite coal counties. The coming of the Great Depression worsened the matter, as companies like the P&RC&I had overleveraged themselves constructing the massive centralized breakers, forcing more closures to cut costs to meet payments on their debt.

Strip mining deepened the rupture. It required fewer workers and moved relentlessly across landscapes that had once supported deep mines and densely packed communities. Combined with centralization, it ensured that even when coal was extracted, it no longer sustained local labor at the scale needed for deep mining operations. By the early years of the Great Depression, the anthracite economy had collapsed into something unrecognizable just a decade earlier.

This situation started a pattern that saw the sudden collapse of the economy in communities all over the coal region. In the decades that followed, attempts at revitalization and to find new investment largely failed to replace what coal had done to build these communities. People began to leave the region. Some found new purpose: Mauch Chunk for example re-invented itself as Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania in the 1950s and leaned into tourism to replace the industries that once built the town.

But for most communities, that struggle for purpose and a stable economy went on into the late 20th and early 21st centuries. New investment did come from companies and corporations seeking cheap land and ready access to interstate highway corridors with easy access to metropolitan areas like Philadelphia and New York. Since the early 2000s, warehouses and fulfillment centers have become essential to the coal region’s economy.

Yet now, a century after the beginning of the end of the namesake industry in the coal region, there are some unsettling parallels to the past.

The warehouses and fulfillment centers sitting on reclaimed mine land are often the largest employers in many coal region communities. Once again, outside capital has arrived with promises of stability and modernity. As happened 100 years ago, efficiency is the guiding principle. Automation and artificial intelligence already threaten to reduce these jobs, just as electrified mines, strip mining, and centralized breakers once did. Proposed data centers – vast, energy-intensive, and labor-light – signal another shift toward consolidation without community security.

History offers no easy answers nor perfect comparison, but it can offer some past examples in strange new times.

When jobs disappear suddenly and at scale, the consequences echo for generations. The collapse of large-scale mining in the 1920s and 1930s reshaped the coal region for the next hundred years. The choices made today – about automation, land use, and whose interests are prioritized – will shape the next century just as profoundly.

Tyler Durden Wed, 02/11/2026 - 12:05

Duffy: FAA And Military "Acted Swiftly" To Combat "Cartel Drone Incursion" On US Border

Duffy: FAA And Military "Acted Swiftly" To Combat "Cartel Drone Incursion" On US Border

Update (0950ET):

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy confirmed on X that the Federal Aviation Administration and the Department of War "acted swiftly to address a cartel drone incursion" at or near the border town of El Paso.

"The threat has been neutralized, and there is no danger to commercial travel in the region. The restrictions have been lifted, and normal flights are resuming," Duffy said.

Our assessment this year is that next-gen counter-drone security will be an emerging theme for guarding high-value assets such as stadiums, government buildings, data centers, and, increasingly, parts of the border (see the report).

*   *   * 

Update (0925ET):

The Federal Aviation Administration announced moments ago that the Notice to Airmen (NOTAM) across the border town of El Paso and a large area of southern New Mexico west of Santa Teresa has been lifted.

The NOTAM that halted all commercial, cargo, and general aviation flights across the region was issued overnight.

CNN reporter Pete Muntean cited an FAA source who "tells me the El Paso flight ban was driven by military operations from Biggs Army Air Field at Fort Bliss. The FAA acted after the Defense Department could not assure civilian flight safety."

Another reporter, this one with Reuters, said, "Airline sources told Reuters the grounding of flights in El Paso was believed to be tied to the Pentagon's use of counterdrone technology to address Mexican drug cartels' use of drones on the U.S.-Mexico border."

At this point, what exactly happened in the border town or nearby remains unclear.

What has our attention is the alleged use of counter-drone technology along the border, reportedly aimed at disrupting Mexican drug cartels' growing reliance on drones.

*   *   * 

The Federal Aviation Administration issued a Notice to Airmen (NOTAM) late Tuesday, closing the airspace above the U.S. border town of El Paso and a large area of southern New Mexico west of Santa Teresa for 10 days. The notice suspends all commercial, cargo, and general aviation flights in the affected area.

The reason for the NOTAM is listed on the FAA website as "Special Security Reasons." No further explanation was provided, but given that El Paso sits on the U.S. border with Mexico and the Trump administration is targeting drug cartels across the Western Hemisphere, the closure could be tied to a new perceived threat - or impending US military operation

The NOTAM took effect at 11:30 p.m. Mountain Time Tuesday, and expires at 11:30 p.m. Feb. 20, or next Friday.

The El Paso city government issued an advisory earlier that read, "The FAA, on short notice, issued a temporary flight restriction halting all flights to and from El Paso and our neighboring community, Santa Teresa, NM. The restriction prohibits all aircraft operations (including commercial, cargo and general aviation) and is effective from February 10 at 11:30 PM (MST) to February 20 at 11:30 PM (MST)."

Local newspaper El Paso Matters points out:

Closing off airspace over a major U.S. city is a rare action, and officials with the Federal Aviation Administration didn't immediately respond to questions from El Paso Matters on the reasons for the action.

A person familiar with the notices, who asked not to be identified because they weren't authorized to speak publicly, said the action to close airspace over a major U.S. city for security reasons over an extended period hasn't happened since immediately after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Our assessment is that this unusually broad NOTAM over the border town reflects a time-bound, high-issue security concern rather than routine airspace management. It comes as the Trump administration repostures the military to secure the Western Hemisphere, including the early January capture of Nicolas Maduro and ongoing kinetic strikes against suspected narco trafficking vessels.

One of the consequences of the Trump administration blowing up narco boats and dismantling cartel command-and-control nodes is an increased risk of retaliatory threats against the U.S. 

Tyler Durden Wed, 02/11/2026 - 12:00

Somali Fraud: Three Key Takeaways From Tuesday's Senate Hearing

Somali Fraud: Three Key Takeaways From Tuesday's Senate Hearing

Authored by Janice Hisle via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The magnitude of Minnesota’s Somali welfare-fraud problem has only begun to surface - and it is tied to other fraud in ways that many Americans do not realize, according to statements made during a Feb. 10 Senate hearing in Washington.

Sen. John Cornyn speaks on Capitol Hill on Oct. 14, 2020. Susan Walsh-Pool/Getty Images

A subcommittee focused on immigration and border security held a two-hour hearing titled, “Somali Fraud in Minnesota—The Tip of the Iceberg.” Both houses of Congress are exploring the problem and its possible remedies.

Two witnesses who testified are former State Department employees who worked abroad as foreign service officers. Both men reported seeing weaknesses in America’s systems for verifying backgrounds and identities of foreigners who apply for U.S. immigration benefits.

Committee chair Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), announced he is preparing legislation to stop fraudsters from sending stolen U.S. taxpayer dollars overseas with no meaningful scrutiny.

The committee’s ranking member, Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) said, “No one is here to defend fraud.” But he accused Senate Republicans of “choosing to point to a few isolated incidents and using them to cast suspicion on entire communities.”

1. The ‘Tip of the Iceberg’

Prosecutors estimated that fraudsters bilked $9 billion or more from 14 of the state’s Medicaid programs since 2018—and “credible reports” indicate some Minnesota officials knew about fraud dating to 2011 yet allowed it to persist, Cornyn said.

The Justice Department has charged 98 defendants, 85 of whom are of Somali descent, in Minnesota fraud cases; 64 have been convicted. Prosecutors have issued more than 1,750 subpoenas, executed more than 130 search warrants and conducted more than 1,000 witness interviews, he said.

Despite those large numbers, Cornyn said, “This recent episode, unfortunately, appears to be just the tip of the iceberg.”

The depth of Minnesota fraud is still being uncovered—and more schemes are now coming to light in states such as California.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) said she has previously asked for more resources for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Minnesota, which has brought the federal fraud charges.

Recently, 14 assistant U.S. attorneys left that office, Klobuchar said, citing news accounts indicating those prosecutors resigned over a controversy related to investigating the death of 37-year-old Renee Good, who was fatally shot by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent on Jan. 7.

If we’re going to go after fraud, losing that talent is a huge problem,” she said.

Nationally, the Government Accountability Office estimates that between $233 billion and $521 billion are lost each year to “fraud and improper payments of federal benefits and other public funds,” Cornyn noted, repeating the numbers twice for emphasis.

Besides inflicting financial damage, fraud “directly affects the safety and security of Americans,” Cornyn said, adding that “much of the fraud is committed by aliens—many of them criminal aliens—and we don’t know what they’re doing with those stolen funds.”

Across America, illegal immigrants reap $8 billion in Medicaid fraud and $3 billion in earned-income tax credits per year, according to 2023 estimates from the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), Cornyn said.

2. Illegal Immigration Tied to Less-Obvious Fraud

Matt O’Brien, a former immigration judge who serves as FAIR’s deputy executive director, testified that many Americans do not realize that “immigration-related fraud represents a large and largely unacknowledged share” of the nation’s fraud losses.

That type of fraud includes “crimes committed to maintain life in the United States when someone lacks lawful status,” he said. Examples include identity theft, false U.S. citizenship claims, Social Security fraud, and tax fraud.

Migrants, facing pressure to succeed, “recognize opportunities created by weak oversight,” O’Brien said.

They also “may rationalize fraudulent conduct based on ideological narratives common in their home countries.”

The result is widespread, repeated fraud that touches nearly every part of our government systems,” he said.

Yet data about immigration-related fraud is “remarkably scarce,” O’Brien said, noting the best figures are probably two decades old.

In addition, there is no “coordinated federal strategy” for detecting and prosecuting immigration fraud. Those responsibilities are “scattered across” state agencies and at least seven federal agencies.

Simon Hankinson, a senior research fellow who focuses on immigration issues for The Heritage Foundation, testified that in his former work as a foreign service officer, he was “lied to many times a day about every aspect of applicants’ cases.”

A U.S. consulate officer who interviews applicants serves as “the first line of vetting;” the next step involves checking U.S. databases for records about the person. But, he said, if the applicant comes from a nation that lacks accurate records or is unwilling to share the data, the records check is useless.

Typically, the more corrupt and poor a country is, the more visa fraud,” he said, adding, “Somalia is as poor and corrupt as countries get.

His former duties included supervising consular operations in Somalia. There, he routinely saw fraudulent marriage claims and unauthorized letters of support from the Somali government, among other falsifications.

Crime and corruption “seem to follow immigrant populations into host countries, at least in the first generation,” Hankinson said.

3. Low-Tech and High-Tech Solutions

Another former foreign service officer, Phillip Linderman, a board member of the Center for Immigration Studies, said it is a “supreme challenge” for consular officers to properly vet documents. And, he said, “there were always powerful voices in Washington constantly insisting that all visas be issued—and fast.”

A simple policy change could be effective, he said. “U.S. policy should curtail visa services in those countries that tolerate or are complicit in high levels of fraud,” Linderman said.

The State Department already tracks which countries have high visa fraud rates. But officials in that agency keep those records to themselves and “do almost nothing with them,” he said. “This is a big mistake.’

He urged the State Department to use that information in diplomatic relations with those countries.

Linderman also encouraged agencies to “apply the growing power of artificial intelligence and to look at fraud patterns in all immigration benefits—from visas all the way through to naturalization.”

In general, immigration benefits should be denied for people “whose identities we cannot verify and whose documents are unreliable and whose criminal records cannot be checked adequately,” he said.

Cornyn suggested both high-tech and low-tech measures.

We can invest in fraud prevention and detection mechanisms ... [and] require agencies to require biometric identification,” Cornyn said, before any applicant receives government money or benefits.

“Furthermore, we can require automated and recurrent identity verification, random audits and in-person identity verification” for programs that receive public funds, he said.

As a low-tech measure, Cornyn said he will propose the “Stop Somali Cash Fraud Act,” which addresses a problem that Homeland Security highlighted recently.

During the past two years, $700 million in cash—packed in suitcases—“has been flown out of the Minneapolis airport,” Cornyn said, noting many of those funds were “tied to Somali couriers.” Homeland Security officials said that practice has occurred for nearly a decade, Cornyn said.

That money “could be used to fund Somali terrorist organizations like al-Shabaab,” Cornyn said. The Treasury Department began investigating that possibility in December.

Under Cornyn’s proposal, noncitizens would be required to  disclose the source of large sums of cash they intend to transport overseas. They also would need to give additional background details 72 hours prior to scheduled air travel, which would give officials time to investigate.

David Bier, director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute and a former policy adviser for a Republican congressman, agreed with Democrats who said Somalis and other immigrants were being unfairly characterized.

After leaving “terrible conditions,” many immigrants start businesses and otherwise contribute to society, he said.

Bier proposed a sweeping change: “Congress should end the broken welfare systems—namely the oversight-free aid to states that led to all the fraud in Minnesota.”

Tyler Durden Wed, 02/11/2026 - 11:30

Trump Holds Off On Option To Seize Iranian Tankers, Fearing Sharp Oil Rise

Trump Holds Off On Option To Seize Iranian Tankers, Fearing Sharp Oil Rise

Another big piece of leverage that Washington is holding over Tehran is the potential seizure of Iranian oil tankers. The US intercepting and boarding tankers on the high seas has been a trend related to Venezuela of late, as well as Russia's so-called dark fleet, ratcheting tensions with Moscow.

But President Trump is said to be holding off for now when it comes to the Iranians, as the process of indirect negotiations based in Oman plays out, also as Israel's Netanyahu is received at the White House on Wednesday.

Fresh reporting in The Wall Street Journal indicates "Trump administration officials have discussed whether to seize additional tankers involved in transporting Iranian oil but have held off, concerned about Tehran’s near-certain retaliation and the impact on global oil markets, U.S. officials said."

File image via Strauss Center

But there have been US naval interdictions involving Iranian energy related to the Venezuela blockade: "The U.S. has seized several ships that have carried Iranian oil as part of its two-month-old blockade of sanctioned tankers serving Venezuela," continues WSJ. "The tankers, which make up the so-called shadow fleet, help transport illicit oil from numerous sanctioned countries to China and other buyers."

The report notes that "A move by the U.S. to block other sanctioned ships from loading oil in Iran would squeeze Tehran's main source of revenue, expanding the aggressive strategy the White House put in place in December in the Caribbean."

So there remains this big card to play, but Trump is so far hesitant on concerns of rapidly driving up the price of oil.

Sanctions have been slapped on Iranian tankers, but action has yet to follow, as WSJ explains further:

But the option of stopping tankers, one of several the White House has been debating to coerce Tehran to reach a deal restricting its nuclear program, faces many obstacles, some of the officials said.

Iran is likely to respond to a stepped-up U.S. crackdown by seizing tankers carrying oil from U.S. allies in the region or even by mining the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow exit from the Persian Gulf through which as much as 25% of the world’s petroleum supply passes. Either move is likely to drive up oil prices sharply, risking a political firestorm for the White House.

More than 20 ships that transport Iranian oil have been sanctioned by the Treasury Department this year, making them possible seizure targets, officials say.

This would likely be a next big step of escalation Washington has in its pocket, before any potential US military (or Israeli) action targeting Tehran.

Despite the recent weeks of alarming Iran-related headlines, oil prices have by and large not reacted dramatically, given reports that Trump favors negotiated settlement to Iran's nuclear program.

Vice President JD Vance has also clarified the ball is in Iran's court, and that talks are still ongoing:

Iran meanwhile has made clear that its missile program is not up for negotiation, despite Washington's insistence that this be on the table.

Ali Shamkhani, an adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, reiterated Wednesday that missile capabilities are "non-negotiable" but that Tehran is open to nuclear limits in exchange for sanctions relief.

Tyler Durden Wed, 02/11/2026 - 11:00

US Unexpectedly Adds 130K Jobs In January, Most Since 2024, Amid Massive Negative Revisions

US Unexpectedly Adds 130K Jobs In January, Most Since 2024, Amid Massive Negative Revisions

Ahead of today's jobs report, the Trump admin unleashed a full court press to warn markets about what was expected to be a very weak numbers, with Peter Navarro saying "we have to revise our expectations down significantly for what a monthly job number should look like" and Kevin Hassett told CNBC on Monday to "expect slightly smaller job numbers" and that "one shouldn't panic" if the labor data comes in weak. That's also why the whisper number ahead of today's jobs print was well below the consensus, at 35K vs 65K median consensus. 

And so with markets and traders fully expecting a ugly print - with Bloomberg's chief economist looking for a 0 January print - the BLS decided to shock everyone, and reported than in January the US added 130K jobs, double the 65K median estimate and up from a downward revised December print of 48K (vs 50K previously). This was also the highest monthly jobs increase since December 2024.

While today's number was double the median consensus, here is some additional color: at 130K, the forecast was higher than 79 out of 80 forecasts, with just Citigroup's 135K forecast higher.

That said, expect today's number to be revised sharply lower last month: that's because the November report was revised down by 15,000, from +56,000 to +41,000, and the change for December was revised down by 2,000, from +50,000 to +48,000. With these revisions,  employment in November and December combined is 17,000 lower than previously reported. It gets worse though, with 25 of the past 26 jobs reports revised lower. 

There is another reason why today's report will be revised away: while the seasonally adjusted change was a stronger than expected 130K, the unadjusted was a negative 2.649 million. That means that the entire delta in today's "surprise beat" was due to seasonal  adjustments. 

The positive surprise in the payrolls number also translated into improvement in the unemployment rate, which unexpectedly dropped to 4.3%, down from 4.4% in December where it was expected to stay. Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rate for teenagers declined to 13.6 percent in January. The jobless rates for adult men (3.8 percent), adult women (4.0 percent), and people who are White (3.7 percent), Black (7.2 percent), Asian (4.1 percent), or Hispanic (4.7 percent) all posted modest improvements in recent months. 

Tied to this, the labor force participation rate rose to 62.5%, up from 62.4% and fractionally better than the expected unchanged print. 

There was more positive surprises: in January, hourly earnings rose 0.4% MoM, up from a downward revised (of course) 0.1% in January and above the 0.3% estimate. On a YoY basis, this translated to a 3.7% increase in average hourly earnings, in line with estimates and unchanged from the previous month.

Some more details from the report:

  • The number of people employed part time for economic reasons decreased by 453,000 to 4.9 million in January but is up by 410,000 over the year. These individuals would have preferred full-time employment but were working part time because their hours had been reduced or they were unable to find full-time jobs. 
  • In January, the number of people not in the labor force who currently want a job decreased by 399,000 to 5.8 million. These individuals were not counted as unemployed because they were not actively looking for work during the 4 weeks preceding the survey or were unavailable to take a job. 
  • Among those not in the labor force who wanted a job, the number of people marginally attached to the labor force changed little at 1.7 million in January. These individuals wanted and were available for work and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months but had not looked for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey. The number of discouraged workers, a subset of the marginally attached who believed that no jobs were available for them, also changed little at 475,000 in January. 

Taking a closer look at the Establishment survey, we find that job gains occurred in health care, social assistance, and construction, while federal government and financial activities lost jobs. Payroll employment changed little in 2025 (+15,000 per month on average).Here is the breakdown:

  • Health care added 82,000 jobs in January, with gains in ambulatory health care services (+50,000), hospitals (+18,000), and nursing and residential care facilities (+13,000). Job growth in health care averaged 33,000 per month in 2025. 
  • Employment in social assistance increased by 42,000 in January, primarily in individual and family services (+38,000).
  • Construction added 33,000 jobs in January, reflecting an employment gain in nonresidential specialty trade contractors (+25,000). Employment in construction was essentially flat in 2025.
  • In January, federal government employment continued to decline (-34,000) as some federal employees who accepted a deferred resignation offer in 2025 came off federal payrolls. Since reaching a peak in October 2024, federal government employment is down by 327,000, or 10.9
  • percent.
  • Financial activities employment declined by 22,000 in January and is down by 49,000 since reaching a recent peak in May 2025. Within the industry, insurance carriers and related activities lost 11,000 jobs over the month.

And visually:

Of these, the most notable is was the ongoing sharp decline in government workers, which tumbled by 42K, and are down 5 of the past 6 months.

Last but not least, extending last month's move, in January the bulk of job creation was full time jobs which increased by 582K, while part-time jobs rose by only 31K.

And while the January numbers was stellar (at least until it is revised much lower in coming months), the much uglier part to today's jobs report was the dramatic negative benchmark revisions which we highlighted yesterday. 

As we noted, the establishment survey data released today was re-benchmarked to reflect comprehensive counts of payroll jobs for March 2025. These counts are derived principally from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW), which counts jobs covered by the Unemployment Insurance (UI) tax system. The benchmark process results in revisions to not seasonally adjusted data from April 2024 forward. Seasonally adjusted data from January 2021 forward are subject to revision. In addition, data for some series prior to 2021, both seasonally adjusted and unadjusted, incorporate other revisions.

The seasonally adjusted total nonfarm employment level for March 2025 was revised downward by 898,000. On a not seasonally adjusted basis, the total nonfarm employment level for March 2025 was revised downward by 862,000, or -0.5 percent. 

AS a result, the change in total nonfarm employment for 2025 was revised from +584,000 to +181,000 (seasonally adjusted), which means that the US barely generated any jobs in 2025, and that instead of creating 49K average jobs per month, the US only added 15K jobs. 

We will have more to say on the historic negative revisions shortly, but for now suffice to say, the picture is one of a much weaker jobs market, and the January bounce notwithstanding - and it won't stand once it is revised lower - the Fed will have no choice but to slash rates aggressively to prevent the already precarious labor market from rolling over into contraction. 

Tyler Durden Wed, 02/11/2026 - 11:00

CBO Director Warns US Fiscal Path Is 'Not Sustainable' ; Projects Additional $1.4T Deficit Swell Under Trump Agenda

CBO Director Warns US Fiscal Path Is 'Not Sustainable' ; Projects Additional $1.4T Deficit Swell Under Trump Agenda

The Congressional Budget Office raised its 10-year deficit estimate by $1.4 trillion, citing Trump's 2025 reconciliation act, higher tariffs and lower immigration.

  • Annual deficits are projected to remain historically large, totaling $23.1 trillion from 2026 to 2035 and reaching 6.7% of GDP by 2036.

  • The 2025 tax law is the single largest driver, adding $4.7 trillion to deficits over the decade, partially offset by roughly $3 trillion in tariff revenue.

  • Federal debt held by the public is projected to rise to 120% of GDP by 2036, surpassing the post-World War II record by 2030.

  • Interest costs are expected to double over the next decade, climbing from $1 trillion in 2026 to $2.1 trillion in 2036 as debt and rates rise.

  • Economic growth is projected to strengthen in 2026 but slow to 1.8% thereafter, falling short of the administration’s 3% growth target despite productivity gains from artificial intelligence.

The federal government is barreling toward a decade of historically large budget deficits, according to a new report from the (arguably partisan) Congressional Budget Office (CBO), which said on Wednesday in a new report that recent tax and immigration policies have sharply worsened the long-term outlook

The CBO increased its estimate of cumulative deficits for the 2026-35 period by $1.4 trillion, citing President Donald Trump’s 2025 tax law and the cost of stepped-up immigration enforcement. The agency now projects total deficits of $23.1 trillion over the decade, underscoring what it called an “unsustainable fiscal path.”

At the center of the revision is last summer’s tax package, which extended the 2017 tax cuts and added new breaks. The CBO estimates the law will increase deficits by $4.7 trillion over 10 years. Immigration enforcement actions are expected to add another $500 billion. Those costs, the agency said, will more than offset revenue gains from higher tariffs, even as import duties rise to levels not seen since the mid-20th century. The CBO estimates tariff revenue will reduce deficits by about $3 trillion over the period.

Since its last long-term outlook in January 2025, the agency said three developments have materially altered its baseline projections: enactment of the 2025 reconciliation act, a sharp rise in tariffs, and lower immigration. Together, those changes have pushed projected deficits for the coming decade $1.4 trillion higher, to a cumulative $23.1 trillion from 2026 through 2035.

The budget projections continue to indicate that the fiscal trajectory is not sustainable,” CBO Director Phillip Swagel said in prepared remarks accompanying the report.

For fiscal 2026, the deficit is projected at $1.9 trillion, or 5.8% of gross domestic product, roughly unchanged as a share of the economy from 2025. By 2036, the annual deficit is expected to widen to $3.1 trillion, or 6.7% of GDP - levels the agency described as “historically unusual,” particularly with unemployment projected to remain below 5%.

The latest outlook reflects the effects of President Donald Trump’s 2025 tax law, which extended the 2017 tax cuts and added new provisions. The CBO estimates the reconciliation act will raise deficits by $4.7 trillion over the 2026–35 period, once higher debt-service costs and macroeconomic effects are included. Higher tariffs are projected to reduce deficits by about $3 trillion, while lower immigration adds roughly $500 billion.

Revenues are projected to remain broadly stable as a share of the economy, rising modestly from 17.5% of GDP in 2026 to 17.8% in 2036. Outlays, however, are expected to climb from 23.3% to 24.4% of GDP as spending on Social Security, Medicare and interest costs grows faster than economic output.

Debt held by the public is projected to rise from 99% of GDP at the end of 2025 to 120% by 2036. Under current law, the CBO expects debt to surpass the previous postwar record of 106% of GDP—set in 1946—by 2030. Over a 30-year horizon, debt climbs to an estimated 175% of GDP. The Social Security Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund is now projected to be exhausted in 2032, a year earlier than previously forecast.

Rising debt feeds directly into higher interest costs. Net interest outlays are projected to double over the next decade, increasing from $1 trillion in 2026 to $2.1 trillion in 2036 and rising from 3.3% to 4.6% of GDP.

Those projections undercut the administration’s stated goal of reducing the deficit toward 3% of GDP by the end of Mr. Trump’s term, a target repeatedly cited by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. The CBO now expects deficits of 5.8% of GDP in 2026 and about 6% in 2028.

On the economic front, the agency projects stronger real GDP growth in 2026, as the pro-growth elements of the tax law outweigh the drag from tariffs and reduced immigration. Growth is then expected to slow to 1.8% from 2027 onward, reflecting offsetting forces: stronger incentives to work and invest on one hand, and larger deficits and slower labor-force growth on the other.

The outlook also incorporates a modest boost from generative artificial intelligence, which the CBO estimates will add roughly 10 basis points a year to productivity growth, raising nonfarm business output by about 1% by 2036.

Even so, the growth dividend is not enough to materially improve the fiscal picture. While stronger growth lifts revenues, it also pushes up interest rates, and the latter effect dominates. “That result highlights how the nation’s large stock of debt influences the way that changes in the economy stemming from legislation affect the federal budget,” Mr. Swagel said.

The forecast also assumes the Federal Reserve cuts its benchmark rate by 25 basis points in 2026, with the yield on 10-year Treasury bonds rising gradually to about 4.3% by late 2027 and then stabilizing. Upward pressure from growing federal debt is expected to be offset by slower labor-force growth.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has echoed the CBO’s warning in recent remarks, saying that while today’s debt level is manageable, the long-term path is not. “We’re running a very large deficit at essentially full employment,” Mr. Powell said last month. “The fiscal picture needs to be addressed - and it’s not really being addressed.

On the other hand...

Perhaps CBO is just talking shit because they're #resistance?

According to some economists, CBO might be understating the deficit-reducing potential of tariffs by assuming sharper declines in import volumes than recent experience suggests. Economist Andrew Rechenberg and analyses by the Coalition for a Prosperous America point to tariff revenues collected since 2018 that remained resilient even as trade patterns shifted. In many cases, imports were rerouted through alternative supply chains rather than eliminated, while demand proved more inelastic than expected in categories such as intermediate goods and energy inputs. Under those conditions, sustained tariff enforcement - particularly with limited exemptions - could generate revenues above baseline projections.

Other analysts contend that the CBO’s long-term outlook may be overly cautious in its assessment of how tax certainty and trade policy interact with domestic investment. Permanent tax provisions and trade barriers that favor domestic production, they argue, can reinforce incentives for reshoring and capital formation in ways that are difficult to fully capture in baseline projections. Former CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf has previously acknowledged that long-run investment and productivity responses to permanent policy changes are inherently uncertain and may unfold gradually, suggesting that modest but persistent gains in domestic output could meaningfully improve fiscal outcomes over time.

Meanwhile, some economists question whether higher projected deficits will translate as directly into rising interest costs as the CBO assumes. They point to continued global demand for U.S. Treasurys, demographic forces that suppress real interest rates, and the dollar’s role as the world’s primary reserve currency as factors that weaken the link between debt levels and borrowing costs. From this perspective, fiscal sustainability is less about historical deficit benchmarks and more about market tolerance - specifically whether rising debt triggers inflation expectations or capital flight - conditions that, thus far, have not materialized.

Tyler Durden Wed, 02/11/2026 - 10:45

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