Jittery Futures Erase Gains Amid AI Doomsday Fears

A short rebound in stocks fizzled after Monday's drop, as worries about the disruptive impact of artificial intelligence continued to unsettle markets which digested yesterday’s AI scare, and await today’s Claude / Anthropic presentation, while preparing for tonight’s State of the Union address (“SOTU”). Some have suggested that Trump may attack power generation risks during SOTU as he deals with affordability.As of 8:00am ET, S&P 500 futures traded unchanged, erasing an earlier 0.3% gain. The benchmark fell 1% in the previous session following a sharp drop in dealer gamma and a report that rehashes well-known fears about AI. Nasdaq 100 contracts climbed 0.1%, as AMD soared 11% on a $100 billion deal with Meta for data-center gear and a minority investment in the chipmaker. Other Mag7 are all mostly higher while an ETF tracking software firms was flat. IBM remained little changed following a 13% tumble. Nvidia Corp. fell 1.2% ahead of its results on Wednesday. Sentiment was also dented after Jamie Dimon said he’s starting to see parallels with the pre-financial crisis era, when a rush to make loans ended disastrously. At midnight, the US's 10% blanket tariff went into effect with Trump threatening to raise to 15%. Bond yields aso reversed an earlier gain and were unchanged while the USD was bid driven by a spike in the USDJPY after Takaichi pushed back on rate hikes. Commodities are seeing a muted move today with Energy up, Metals down, and Ags mixed; oil has closed in a tight range the last 3 sessions and remains in those levels. Today’s macro data focus is weekly ADP, home price indices, regional Fed activity indicators, and Consumer Confidence. 

In premarket trading, Mag 7 stocks:are mostly higher (Alphabet +0.1%, Amazon +0.1%, Apple +0.4%, Nvidia -0.7%, Meta -0.4%, Microsoft +0.1%, Tesla -0.5%)

• Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) rises 11% as  Meta Platforms Inc. will deploy 6 gigawatts’ worth of data center gear based on processors from the company.
• Blue Owl (OWL) slips 2% following a downgrade to hold at Deutsche Bank, which also reduces price targets and estimates across its wider alternative asset manager coverage.
• BWX Technologies (BWXT) rises 8% after the nuclear power company reported adjusted earnings per share and revenue for the fourth-quarter that beat the average analyst estimate.
• Hims & Hers Health (HIMS) falls 5% after the telehealth company’s guidance projected subdued profits for 1Q and the full year, citing a step-up in investments. While the full-year guidance implied a growth acceleration beyond 1Q, analysts were more cautious given its copycat weight-loss drugs face regulatory risks.
• Home Depot Inc. (HD) rises 2% after reporting a key sales metric that beat expectations in the latest quarter on steady demand, though the retailer cautioned that macroeconomic challenges remain.
• Keysight Technologies (KEYS) rises 15% after the measurement instruments company guided for above-20% growth for revenue and earnings in FY26, beating estimates. Booming AI workloads, along with faster growth in other business areas including wireless and defense, are all boosting growth, according to analysts.
• Kratos (KTOS) falls 3% after the defense contractor forecast revenue for the first quarter that missed the average analyst estimate.
• MediaAlpha (MAX) rises 11% after the insurance technology platform reported its fourth-quarter results and gave an outlook. Analysts downplayed the risk of AI-related disruption.
• Palvella Therapeutics (PVLA) rises 29% after the drug developer said a late-stage trial of its experimental therapy for lymphatic malformations met its main goal.
• Paymentus Holdings (PAY) falls 9% after the cloud-based bill payment company’s revenue guidance for 2026 came in below the average analyst estimate.
• Planet Fitness (PLNT) falls 5% after the operator of fitness clubs gave an outlook for 2026 adjusted Ebitda growth that implies the profit measure will fall short of Wall Street expectations.
• Super Group (SGHC) rises 16% as the gaming company’s full-year revenue forecast exceeded Wall Street’s estimates.
• Vir Biotechnology (VIR) jumps 57% after the drug developer gave updated data from an early-stage trial for its investigative therapy for prostate cancer and said it is collaborating with Astellas Pharma on the same asset.
• Whirlpool (WHR) falls 8% after the maker of kitchen appliances  announced concurrent separate underwritten public offerings of shares of common stock and depositary shares.
• Ziff Davis (ZD) falls 10% after the digital media and Internet company reported fourth-quarter results that missed expectations. It also deferred its 2026 outlook as it evaluates options.

In corporate news, Anthropic is said to be offering some current and former employees the ability to sell shares at a valuation of about $350 billion. Meta and EssilorLuxottica are said to be at odds on pricing for smart glasses as demand surges. Jane Street is being sued for alleged insider trading by the administrator winding up the affairs of Terraform Labs.

After yesterday's market fragility which was sparked by last week's plunge in dealer gamma...

Gamma plunges into the red and today is what you get pic.twitter.com/6WQWs4xUUS

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) February 23, 2026

... and reinforced by a hypothetical report which echoed what we first said in 2024, nervousness abounds, and the market will be tested again when Anthropic holds its livestream at 9:30 a.m when even more volatility is likely. Adding to nerves, Jamie Dimon said he’s starting to see parallels with the pre-financial crisis era, when a rush to make loans ended disastrously.

The so-called AI scare trade has become a dominant theme for stocks, with selling spreading beyond software to hit insurance brokers, private credit and even real estate services. The flight is one of several shifts beneath the surface of a US market that is little changed in 2026 after years of tech-led gains. Traders are also contending with a range of other risks, from trade uncertainty to brewing tensions between the US and Iran. Focus on Tuesday will turn to President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address and consumer data that, in the previous reading, plunged to the lowest level since 2014. Anthropic meanwhile, will give a demo of its AI enterprise agents.

“We are reducing our risk levels by a notch,” wrote Mohit Kumar, chief economist and strategist for Jefferies International. “Ongoing concerns over AI disruption and the possible exposure to private credit and private equity have made investor sentiment fragile. If we do get an escalation in geopolitical risks, markets may face some wobbles.”

For Emmanuel Cau, head of European equity strategy at Barclays Plc, fears about labor-market disruption need to be counterbalanced by the job creation that typically accompanies technological progress.  As for software stocks, which have now been mispriced, “it’s very hard to go prove the market wrong on that,” Cau told Bloomberg TV. “What we are trying to do from an equity allocation standpoint is to be exposed to some of these old-economy, more tangible parts of the market.”

The quest for shelter from AI disruption has moved Goldman Sachs Group Inc. to push a new basket of capital-heavy companies, including utilities, miners, some industrial firms and even luxury-good makers. The selection has outperformed a basket of capital-light businesses by 35% since the start of 2025.

“Markets are rewarding capacity, networks, infrastructure and engineering complexity—assets that are costly to replicate and less exposed to technological obsolescence,” the Goldman team, including Guillaume Jaisson, said in a note.

In geopolitics, Trump said an Iran strike would be “easily won” but he would prefer a diplomatic deal.

After Trump’s new 10% global tariff went into effect on Tuesday and a timeline for a proposed higher rate of 15% is still in question, investors will listen for any further comments on trade in his State of the Union speech. “It’s going to be a long speech,” Trump said. The US is also said to be readying a spate of additional national security investigations that would enable Trump to impose new duties. An EU assessment found that Trump’s new policy will increase levies on some exports, including cheese and some agricultural products, above the level permitted in their trade pact. 

“The focus for investors will be on three issues: tariffs, Iran and the Fed,” said Joachim Klement, head of strategy at Panmure Liberum. “Any hint that a military strike against Iran is imminent should trigger another rally in oil and gold prices. If Trump uses his platform to bully the Supreme Court or the Fed, Treasury markets will not take that lightly.”

Home Depot, Keurig Dr Pepper and Fidelity National are among companies scheduled to report results before the market open. Home Depot’s commentary on the housing market will be a key focus and whether consumers remain on the sidelines for big projects due to high interest and mortgage rates. Earnings from HP and Workday follow later.

European equities edged lower on Tuesday with banking and insurance stocks leading declines, while automobiles and utilities were the biggest outperformers. The Stoxx 600 falls 0.2% to 626.46 with 242 members down, 351 up, and seven little changed. Here are the biggest movers Tuesday:

• Convatec rises as much as 11%, most since November 2024, following full-year results that showed stronger-than-expected second-half revenue performance and raised medium-term growth guidance
• Edenred shares gain as much as 9.3% after the payment solutions firm delivered better earnings and cashflow than anticipated against a backdrop of low expectations, according to Barclays
• Endesa shares jumped 6.2% to the highest level since June 2008 after the Spanish utility firm reported net income for the full year that beat the average analyst estimate and gave a new guidance that Jefferies says is ahead of consensus
• Sika shares gain as much as 3.1% after its board of directors proposes to the Annual General Meeting on March 24 that the gross dividend be increased by 2.8% to CHF3.70 from CHF3.60 previous year, according to a statement
• Banks are the worst performing sector in Europe on Tuesday, tracking declines for US peers, as fears about AI disruption and private credit lending continue to rattle the market
• Novo Nordisk shares fell as much as 4.4% on Tuesday to the lowest intraday level since June 2021, after analysts cut recommendations and price targets for the Danish drugmaker
• Rio Tinto shares drop as much as 1.5% in London after Barclays downgrades to equal-weight from overweight. The analyst says the move reflects near-term headwinds, including iron ore seasonality
• Galenica falls as much as 8.2%, most since July 2022, after UBS downgraded the stock to sell from neutral, expecting liberalization of OTC drug shipments to pose downside risk to sales growth and margin expansion
• Wienerberger falls as much as 6.6%, the most in 10 months, after Morgan Stanley said the full-year outlook of the brick manufacturer came in below estimates ahead of its capital markets day
• MTU Aero shares fall as much as 6.4%, the most since April, after the German engine manufacturer’s cash flow missed expectations

Asian stocks showed resilience after US peers witnessed another selloff on AI disruption fears, as investors snapped up shares of the region’s tech hardware companies — particularly semiconductor makers.The MSCI Asia Pacific Index was up 0.1%, reversing an early decline that followed a 1% slide in the S&P 500 Index on Monday. Chipmaking giants TSMC, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix were the biggest boosts to the Asian benchmark. They also helped key local gauges in Taiwan and South Korea rally more than 2%. The so-called “AI scare trade” was back in focus after a report by Citrini Research outlined the potential risks to various segments of the global economy, and subsequent warnings from Anthropic and Nassim Taleb soured sentiment. Like in some recent episodes of AI-led selloffs, Asia was able to perform better as the region’s tech sector is dominated by tech hardware firms, notably memory and logic chip makers, which are seen benefiting from sustained demand tied to AI infrastructure build-outs. “Clearly semiconductors are huge winners,” Alap Shah, co-author of the Citrini report, said on Bloomberg Television. “Things that are upstream to semiconductors are huge winners — so everything required to construct a data center.”

In FX, the yen tumbled following local media reports that Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi voiced apprehension about more rate hikes in a meeting with Bank of Japan Governor Kazuo Ueda. Currency markets otherwise calm, with Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index up 0.1%.

In rates, treasuries are unchanged the curve flatter as 5s30s spread partly unwinds Monday’s sharp steepening move.US 10-year yield near 4.035% is less than 1bp higher on the day with bunds and gilts in the sector outperforming by 1bp and 2bp respectively; 2s10s and 5s30s curve spreads are 0.5bp and 1.5bp tighter on the day. European bonds marginally outperform following UK’s £3 billion auction of 2033 bonds and French manufacturing confidence gauge. US session includes packed economic data and Fed speaker slates as well as a 2-year note auction at 1pm New York time.

In commodities, gold prices are down and below $5,200/oz, but copper rallying on the return of traders in China after the Lunar New Year break. Oil little changed, with Brent sitting around $71.50/barrel. Bitcoin weaker and getting close to $63,000.

The US economic calendar slate includes weekly ADP employment change (8:15am), February Philadelphia Fed non-manufacturing activity (8:30am), December FHFA house price index, 4Q house price purchase index and December S&P Cotality home prices (9am), February Richmond Fed manufacturing index and consumer confidence and December wholesale trade inventories (10am) and February Dallas Fed services activity (10:30am). Fed speaker slate includes Goolsbee (8am, 9:30am), Collins and Bostic (9am), Waller (9:15am), Cook (9:30am) and Barkin (3:15pm)

Market Snapshot

• S&P 500 mini unch
• Nasdaq 100 mini +0.1%,
• Russell 2000 mini +0.1%
• Stoxx Europe 600 little changed,
• DAX -0.1%,
• CAC 40 little changed
• 10-year Treasury yield little changed at 4.03%
• VIX -0.1 points at 20.93
• Bloomberg Dollar Index little changed at 1190.43,
• euro unchanged at $1.1785
• WTI crude +0.3% at $66.49/barrel

Top Overnight News

• Trump dismissed reports the Pentagon fears a difficult Iran campaign, saying the Joint Chiefs chairman believes military action would be “easily won.” The president insisted he prefers a diplomatic deal. BBG
• The Trump administration is considering new national security tariffs on a half-dozen industries in the wake of a Supreme Court decision last week that invalidated many of the president’s second-term levies. The new tariffs being considered could cover industries such as large-scale batteries, cast iron and iron fittings, plastic piping, industrial chemicals and power grid and telecom equipment. WSJ
• US President Trump will use the State of the Union address to sell the public on the economy and unveil new measures to lower cost ahead of the mid-terms: WSJ.
• China has restricted exports of rare earth magnets and other critical materials to dozens of leading Japanese companies in an escalation of a dispute with Tokyo. FT
• Chinese AI startup DeepSeek's latest AI model, set to be released as soon as next week, was trained on Nvidia's most advanced AI chip, the Blackwell, a senior Trump administration official said on Monday, in what could represent a violation of U.S. export controls. RTRS
• Japanese PM Takaichi expressed reservations about additional interest rate hikes during her meeting with Bank of Japan Governor Kazuo Ueda last week. FT
• The UK announced new sanctions on Russia — its biggest since the early months of the Ukraine invasion — targeting energy firms and suppliers of military equipment. BBG
• Zelenskyy said Russia and Ukraine were at the “beginning of the end” of Europe’s biggest conflict since the second world war, but urged Washington to see through Putin’s negotiating “games.” FT
• Trump is implementing a new global tariff at 10% rather than the 15% rate announced over the weekend after his defeat at the Supreme Court. His move to apply a 10% for the time being rather than the 15% tariffs follows a backlash to the higher rate from several US trading partners such as the EU and UK. FT
• Alap Shah, co-author of a Citrini report that triggered yesterday’s selloff, suggested governments consider taxing AI to cushion the impact of job losses. BBG

Trade/Tariffs

• US President Trump's 10% global tariff rate takes effect.
• China's Commerce Ministry called on US to abandon unilateral tariff; will adjust countermeasures and monitor US actions. Willing to hold 6th round of trade talks with the US.
• China MOFCOM adds 20 Japanese companies including Mitsubishi Heavy Industries to its export control list for military activities which bans exports of dual-use items, while it will add another 20 groups to a watch list.
• EU warns the US that President Trump's new tariff policy breaks the trade agreement.
• Japan's finance minister Katayama said will closely examine details of US Supreme Court decision on tariffs, adds will steadily carry out US-bound investment package and Japan must be aware that US tariffs on cars remain in effect.
• Japan's Trade Minister Akazawa held a phone conversation with US Commerce Secretary Lutnick on Monday, and both sides affirmed investment plans in the call.
• US President Trump's administration is likely to face tough legal obstacles if it opposes refunds for the tariffs struck down by the US Supreme Court, according to Bloomberg.
• US President Trump reportedly considers new national security tariffs after SCOTUS ruling, in which new levies on a half-dozen industries would be issued separately from the new global 15% flat-rate tariff, according to WSJ.
• Taiwan Vice Premier said preferential terms reached with the US under tariff and trade deal would not change, and that they will have proactive talks with the US to ensure their interests protected under deals already reached with Washington.
• China announces that the hot-rolled steel coil issue with South Korea has been resolved.

A more detailed look at global markets courtesy of Newsquawk

APAC stocks traded with a mostly positive bias as key participants returned to the market and with the region attempting to shrug off the weak lead from Wall St, where sentiment was weighed on by trade uncertainty and AI disruption concerns. ASX 200 struggled for direction as outperformance in the mining, energy and resources sectors was offset by losses in tech, real estate and financials, while participants continued to digest a slew of earnings. Nikkei 225rallied to back above the 57,000 level on return from the long weekend, but is off today's best levels amid losses in tech stocks and after China's MOFCOM added 20 Japanese companies to its export control list, which bans Chinese exports of dual-use items. Hang Seng and Shanghai Comp were mixed with the mainland boosted on return from a 10-day closure and got the first opportunity to react to the recent US tariff developments, which are seen to benefit China the most, while the Hong Kong benchmark underperformed in a reversal of the prior day's rally amid notable losses in tech and pharmaceuticals.

Top Asian News

• Several senior US officials said the “rate checks” carried out when the yen weakened in January were initiated by US Treasury Secretary Bessent rather than at Japan’s request, according to Nikkei. US officials indicated that coordinated intervention to buy yen and sell dollars would have been considered if requested by Japan.
• Japanese Finance Minister Katayama said Japan is keeping close dialogue with the US on Forex, according to the Wall Street Journal.

European bourses (STOXX 600 -0.1%) are broadly weaker, with the IBEX 35 (-0.7%) the clear laggard as Banks weigh on the index. On the other hand, the SMI (+0.6%) is printing modest gains. European sectors, on the contrary, show a positive bias, with Utilities (+1.7%) and Materials (+0.7%) outperforming, helped by the likes of Sika (+1.9%), Givaudan (+2.2%) and Croda (+2.7%). Sika shares are rising this morning as the Board proposes to lift the gross dividend per share by 2.8%. Croda announced its FY25 earnings, with its revenue and EBITDA metrics rising Y/Y and FY26 guidance in line with forecasts. This is helping the broader Chemicals sector rise. On the other hand, Banks (-1.1%) have been hit this morning following weak Q4 earnings by Standard Chartered (-1.9%) and the effects of Anthropic's Claude on jobs as the code can now automate COBOL modernisation efforts.

Top European News

• French Business Climate Indicator (Feb) 97 (Prev. 99).
• French Business Confidence (Feb) 102 vs. Exp. 104 (Prev. 105).

FX

• DXY is mildly firmer this morning, and trades at the mid-point of a 97.69-97.95 range; the high of the day is a pip above its 50 DMA. The theme in the US remains firmly on a) the trade situation and b) the growing woes surrounding AI – spurring increased uncertainty about the US economy, and hence the USD. Nonetheless, the index is firmer this morning, largely thanks to considerable pressure in the JPY (more on that below). For the time being, focus will be on some Tier 2 US data including Consumer Confidence, Richmond Fed Index and ADP Employment Change Weekly – Fed speak today includes, Waller (voter, dove), Cook (voter, neutral), Barkin (2027 voter, neutral), Goolsbee (2027 Voter, Dovish), Bostic (retiring, hawk), Collins (2028 voter, neutral). Thereafter, US President Trump is set to deliver his State of the Union address, where he is expected to speak on the economy, new policies and potentially trade (02:00 GMT Wednesday / 21:00 EST Tuesday).
• JPY is shunned today, currently off by around 0.8%, with USD/JPY trading at the upper end of a 154.52 to 156.27 range – the pair currently pivots its 50 DMA at 155.97. Overnight, pressure stemmed from reports that US Treasury Secretary Bessent initiated rate checks, rather than those occurring at the request of the Japanese. The weakness in JPY was then exacerbated by source reports that PM Takaichi relayed to BoJ Governor Ueda her reservations about further rate hikes; she was reportedly "stricter than at the previous meeting", in November. As a reminder, the PM and Ueda met last week, where traders assigned some risk that the PM would ask Ueda to cull future rate hikes; despite this, Ueda suggested that the PM "didn't have any particular requests".
• Finally, G10 peers are broadly incrementally firmer/flat against the USD. Antipodeans benefit from the constructive sentiment seen in the APAC session, and as base metals remain bid. EUR/USD remains steady within a narrow 1.1767-1.1796 range; the low for today is a handful of pips below its 50 DMA at 1.1772.

Central Banks

• Japanese PM Takaichi reportedly relayed to BoJ Governor Ueda her reservations about further rate hikes, according to Mainichi citing sources.
• Chinese Loan Prime Rate 1Y (Feb) 3.00% vs. Exp. 3.00% (Prev. 3.00%).
• Chinese Loan Prime Rate 5Y (Feb) 3.50% vs. Exp. 3.50% (Prev. 3.50%).
• NBP's Glapinski said monetary policy needs to be cautious.

Fixed Income

• JGBs were boosted this morning by a Mainichi report that PM Takaichi relayed reservations to BoJ Governor Ueda about further tightening, with Takaichi's stance described by the sources as "stricter" vs their last meeting. This lifted JGBs by around 30 ticks to a 133.10 peak.
• USTs flat, in a narrow 113-07+ to 113-13 band. Awaiting further updates on the AI disruption narrative, US-Iran and numerous Fed officials. From those, the most pertinent include Cook (voter), who, in early February, said she supported waiting after December to cut again and described tariff price-rises as temporary. Waller (voter) has already spoken post-SCOTUS, saying the impact would likely be limited. The docket also includes 2027 voters, Barkin & Goolsbee, and 2028 voter Collins.
• Bunds firmer by around 10 ticks, holding just off a 129.73 peak which is just above Monday's 129.71 best. ECB's Lagarde theoretically headlines the docket, though she has spoken extensively recently. As such, the benchmark will likely conform to leads from USTs and the global risk tone if there is an AI/tariff/US-Iran update.
• Gilts also firmer by around 10 ticks and at a 92.97 peak, taking out the high from January and notching a fresh YTD and contract best. For the UK, the main event is the Treasury Select Committee. Pertinently, Governor Bailey headlines the outing alongside known dove Taylor and the hawkish Greene & Pill. The Governor and the two hawkish members are the focus, for any hint that the recent string of data and/or tariff updates have pushed them towards easing in the near-term. Commentary that will, by extension, inform on the ongoing debate between March and April, with 21bps of easing implied for March and 27bps in April.
• Italy sold EUR 2.5bln vs exp. EUR 2-2.5bln 2.20% 2028 BTP Short Term & EUR 2.0bln vs exp. EUR 1.5-2bln 1.10% 2031, 1.80% 2036 BTPei.
• UK sold GBP 3bln 4.125% 2033 Gilt: b/c 3.37x (prev. 3.18x), average yield 4.075% (prev. 4.296%), tail 0.2bps (prev. 0.2bps).
• Japan's Finance Ministry is said to mull tweaking liquidity-enhancement auctions and reduce super-long supply further to steady yields.
• Australia sold AUD 1.2bln 4.25% March 2036 bonds, b/c 2.71, avg. yield 4.6969%.

Commodities

• Crude benchmarks remain mostly firmer amid the ongoing geopolitical update between the US and Iran over the last few week which has seen a gradual escalation over recent weeks. WTI and Brent trade at the upper end of their respective USD 66.16-66.95/bbl and USD 70.87-71.78/bbl, ranges.
• Spot gold has eroded some of Monday's upside, hovering just below the USD 5,200/oz mark, with recent USD strength weighing. XAU and XAG trade in the lower ranges of USD 5135.135-5250.005/oz and 84.785-88.756/oz, respectively.
• Copper prices have picked up, coinciding with its largest buyer, China, returning to the market after the holiday period. As such, the red metal trades above the USD 13k/t mark. That aside, there hasn’t been much newsflow regarding the red metal. Currently, 3M LME copper trades in the upper range of USD 13.005-13.061k/t.
• UBS said spot gold may reach USD 6,200/oz in the near future as the factors fuelling its recent rally remain intact.
• The UK imposes new sanction on Russia's Transneft oil operation.
• Shanghai Gold Exchange said it is to cut margin ratio and price limits for some gold and silver contracts from the closing settlement on February 24th.
• Chevron (CVX) has entered exclusive talks to take over Lukoil's stake in Iraq's West Kerner II oil field (480k bpd), as US sanctions pressure the Russian firm to divest.
• New Zealand is to lower the price cap on Russian crude oil.

Geopolitics: Ukraine

• Russia's Kremlin highlights that the special operation goals have not yet been achieved, cannot provide a date for the next round of Ukraine talks.
• Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson said Russia will seek to find a solution to the problem of NATO's expansion to its borders by military or political means. Added that without solving the problem of NATO's expansion to Russia's borders, it is impossible to solve the situation in Ukraine.
• Ukrainian President Zelensky said we will do everything necessary to ensure a strong and lasting peace.

Geopolitics: Middle East 

• Iran reportedly nears a deal to purchase anti-ship missiles from China, according to sources.
• Israeli official tells Yedioth Ahronoth that a US attack on Iran is imminent.
• US President Trump said top general Dan Caine predicts an easy victory over Iran, which is at a contrast to recent comments by Caine, according to NYT.
• US President Trump is growing frustrated by the limited military options against Iran, with advisers warning that strikes may not be decisive and risk escalating the conflict, according to CBS News.
• US President Trump on Truth said "If we don't make a deal, it will be a very bad day for Iran".

Geopolitics: Other

• China said it is open to nuclear talks in Geneva and urges the US to resume strategic stability dialogue with Russia.
• South Korea and US are reportedly at odds over war games’ scale with the US pushing back on South Korea's request for smaller drills, forcing the postponement of a major joint military briefing, according to SCMP.

US Event Calendar

• 9:00 am: United States Dec FHFA House Price Index MoM, est. 0.3%, prior 0.6%
• 10:00 am: United States Feb Richmond Fed Manufact. Index, est. -4.5, prior -6
• 10:00 am: United States Feb Conf. Board Consumer Confidence, est. 87.1, prior 84.5
• 10:00 am: United States Dec F Wholesale Inventories MoM, est. 0.2%, prior 0.2%

Central Bank Speakers

• 8:00 am: United States Fed’s Goolsbee Speaks on Economy
• 9:00 am: United States Fed’s Collins Gives Opening Remarks
• 9:00 am: United States Fed’s Bostic in Moderated Discussion
• 9:15 am: United States Fed’s Waller Gives Keynote Address
• 9:30 am: United States Fed’s Cook Speaks on AI
• 9:30 am: United States Fed’s Goolsbee on Bloomberg TV
• 3:15 pm: United States Fed’s Barkin & Collins on Panel

Main Rating Changes:

DB's Jim Reid concludes the overnight wrap

Luke and Galina in my team have published a timely piece (link here) examining a group of global stocks that have sold off sharply in recent weeks amid rising fears of AI-driven disruption. They look at how valuations have adjusted, analysing PE and PEG ratios, and assess how far current prices now sit from our equity analysts’ targets. The most compelling section, for me, comes at the end, where those analysts explain why they believe these companies are far better positioned to withstand AI disruption than the market currently assumes.

It's good timing for the note as just as US equities had fought their way back to flat yesterday, shaking off weekend tariff uncertainty and an early sell off in futures, the AI disruption narrative resurfaced once again. In the final hour or two of European trading, the S&P 500 rolled over sharply, eventually closing -1.04% down on the day, while 10 year US Treasury yields fell by -5.2bps. The declines included IBM posting its worst day since the 2000 tech bubble burst, while the software component of the S&P 500 (-3.82%) dropped to its lowest level since the Liberation Day turmoil last year, with the VIX peaking at 22.0, not far from its YTD high of 23.1. Elsewhere, Brent crude briefly touched its highest level since July on renewed fears of a potential US strike on Iran, before fading to close marginally lower on the day.

Much of the AI-related sell off was attributed to a Citrini Research memo from the future, "The 2028 Global Intelligence Crisis", outlining a hypothetical scenario in which AI adoption drives the US unemployment rate into double digits by mid 2028. The note had been forwarded to me around ten times late last week and was ubiquitous across my social media feeds, so it was something of a surprise to see it cited as the catalyst for the sudden mid afternoon sell off in London. As with Matt Schumer’s viral “Something big is happening” piece a few weeks ago — which was also linked to significant equity losses — the argument leans heavily on narrative and emotion rather than hard evidence. That doesn’t mean it will ultimately be wrong, but in both cases the vibes to substance ratio is undeniably high. I’ll stop there, before anyone accuses my own research of the same thing.

The net result was a renewed sell-off in stocks perceived to be at risk from AI disruption. Software stocks were again affected, with that component of the S&P 500 falling -3.82% (and now -31.8% down from its October peak), including sharp declines for Workday (-6.24%), Adobe (-4.61%) and Oracle (-4.57%). But various other companies were also hit, with IBM (-13.15%) the worst performer in the S&P 500 after Anthropic said Claude Code could modernise COBOL, a legacy programming language run mostly on IBM machines. Meanwhile, several of the names namechecked in the Citrini report, including Capital One (-8.84%), American Express (-7.20%) and Doordash (-6.60%) saw outsized declines, while KKR (-8.89%) led the losses among PE firms as private credit fears again rose. More broadly, the Mag-7 (-1.51%) saw a modest underperformance, and the equal-weighted S&P 500 (-1.12%) also saw a sizeable decline as the broad array of losers outweighed the gains for defensive sectors like consumer staples (+1.46%), healthcare (+1.15%) and utilities (+0.72%). And credit also came under pressure, with US IG spreads +2bps wider and HY +10bps wider.

When it comes to tariffs, the weekend news injected another dose of uncertainty for markets, with big questions surrounding the trade deals the US agreed last year. Notably, the EU have paused the process of ratifying the US trade deal, and the chair of the EU Parliament’s trade committee, Bernd Lange, said yesterday that “We want to have clarity from the US that they are respecting the deal because that’s a crucial element.” The EU concern is that a stacking nature of the 15% Section 122 tariffs would bring total tariff rates for some products above the 15% maximum agreed by the EU and the US. The UK are another with an unclear situation, as they reached a 10% tariff deal last year, but could now face the 15% global tariff rate that would be higher than the deal already agreed to. Indeed, the UK government haven’t ruled out retaliation, with a spokesperson for PM Starmer saying that “Nothing is off the table at this stage”.

Back on the US side, it was also unclear how Trump would respond to these developments. But he did post yesterday that countries which “play games” would “be met with a much higher Tariff, and worse, than that which they just recently agreed to.”

In the meantime, the new Section 122 tariffs have just come into force at midnight Eastern Time. At the moment the rate is 10% with White House officials stating that they are working on a formal order to raise to 15%. Perhaps the stacking concern is delaying things for now. Late yesterday, we also saw the WSJ and Bloomberg report that the administration was preparing new Section 232 national security

investigations into several industries including batteries, telecom equipment and industrial chemicals. Remember that Trump’s delivering the State of the Union address tonight, so it’s possible we might get a better sense of the next steps on tariffs. As I mentioned in my CoTD yesterday (link here), net-net we still think the effective tariff rate will fall this year and that the world post-SCOTUS will see lower tariffs than the pre-SCOTUS world. For more on the latest state of the world of US tariffs, see Matt Luzzetti's latest trade chart book here. 

Elsewhere, geopolitics remained in the spotlight, as speculation continued to mount about a potential US strike on Iran. There wasn’t much fresh news yesterday, although it was reported by multiple outlets yesterday, including Bloomberg, that the State Department had ordered the evacuation of some people from their Beirut embassy. The US-Iran talks are reportedly still ongoing, and Bloomberg also said that the US’ Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner would be in Geneva this week for more discussions on Thursday. Escalation concerns saw Brent crude rise to as high as $72.50/bbl intra-day, its highest since July, but it was down by -0.38% to $71.49/bbl by the close. It's back up +0.6% in Asia.

The risk-off mood boosted US Treasuries, as investors made a push into safe havens. Indeed, the 10yr Treasury yield (-5.2bps) fell back to 4.03%, its lowest level since November, and the 2yr yield (-3.9bps) fell to 3.44%. The front-end rally came despite somewhat less dovish comments from Fed Governor Waller, who said he may favour a pause in rates at the March meeting if the February labour market data showed continued improvement. However, he did add that “if the good labor market news of January is revised away or evaporates in February” then he’d again back a 25bp cut, suggesting that Waller remains among the more dovish FOMC members.

Earlier in Europe, yields also moved lower across the continent, with those on 10yr UK gilts (-3.9bps) and Italian BTPs (-2.4bps) both reaching their lowest level since December 2024, whilst 10yr bund yields (-2.7bps) were down to their lowest since November, at 2.71%. The equity moves were more mixed in Europe, with the STOXX 600 down by a more moderate -0.45%, as the more tariff-sensitive DAX (-1.06%) underperformed but Spain’s IBEX 35 (+0.56%) recorded a record high. Separately, this week is also set to see German Chancellor Merz travel to China, and our economists have a note of what to expect (link here).

Looking at other asset classes, the backdrop around the tariffs, AI and Iran boosted traditional safe havens. Gold rose +2.35% to $5,227/oz, the highest since its record levels in late January, while the Japanese yen (+0.26% versus the US dollar) and the Swiss franc (+0.12%) were the best performing G10 currencies. By contrast, Bitcoin (-4.47%) had its worst day in over two weeks. 

Asian equity markets are mostly shrugging off the US weakness with the KOSPI (+1.99%) again at the forefront of gains in the region, surging to a record high, supported by advances in exporters and local chipmakers. Chinese markets are returning from their week plus break with the CSI (+1.11%) and the Shanghai Composite (+0.94%) in a positive mood along with the Nikkei (+0.99%) after yesterday's holiday. Conversely, the Hang Seng (-2.12%) is the weakest performer, suffering losses in technology and pharmaceutical shares. S&P 500 (+0.22%) and NASDAQ 100 (+0.34%) futures are bouncing back a little with European futures seeing a similar move. US Treasuries are around +1-2bps higher across the curve after the sizeable rally yesterday.

Looking at the day ahead, President Trump will deliver the State of the Union address tonight. Otherwise, US data releases include the Conference Board’s consumer confidence for February, the FHFA house price index for December, and the Richmond Fed’s manufacturing index for February. Finally, central bank speakers include the Fed’s Goolsbee, Collins, Bostic, Waller, Cook and Barkin, the ECB’s Kocher, and BoE Governor Bailey, and the BoE’s Greene and Taylor.

Tyler Durden Tue, 02/24/2026 - 08:45

Early Tax Refunds Are Showing A 14% Increase, IRS Says

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

The average tax refund for American taxpayers has increased on a year-over-year basis, the IRS said in a Feb. 20 update.

The average refund amount increased 14.2 percent in 2026 to $2,476 as of Feb. 13, according to the agency. Last year, the average refund for the same time period was $2,169.

Meanwhile, the average direct deposit refund amount for taxpayers is up 13.1 percent year over year, from $2,252 in 2025 to $2,548 in 2026.

The IRS added that the total number of tax returns that the agency has received and processed is down slightly year over year.

About 32,175,000 tax returns have been filed as of Feb. 13, a 2.6 percent decrease year over year. For the same time period last year, 33,040,000 tax returns were filed, the agency said.

The total number of returns processed by the IRS paints a similar picture. Some 31,795,000 tax returns have been processed as of Feb. 13, a year-over-year decline of 3.1 percent.

“Average refund amounts are strong,” the IRS said in its update, adding that the agency is required by federal law to hold refunds until Feb. 15 for returns that claim the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) or the Additional Child Tax Credit (ACTC).

“It’s important to note this week’s refund numbers do not include millions of EITC and ACTC refunds to these taxpayers. This means the refund numbers expected to be released Feb. 27, for refunds processed through Feb. 20, are expected to be higher.”

Also, since some taxpayers were “still waiting for important tax documents at the end of January, the IRS expects the tax return filing numbers generally will catch up in the following weeks,” the agency said.

The final average refund amount last year was $3,167, IRS figures show.

The data release comes as President Donald Trump and administration officials have been touting their tax plan under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) that was passed in Congress and signed by Trump into law last year.

Late last month, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a Fox News interview that there would be “substantial refunds for working Americans.” He added that once a change in tax withholding is underway, employees “have bigger take-home pay every two weeks” or “every month.”

Multiple new tax law provisions under the OBBBA took effect this year, according to the IRS. Congressional Democrats have been largely critical of the Trump administration’s economic agenda, especially after the Democratic Party had victories in several states during the November 2025 elections.

Democrats have also targeted the administration for what they said are policies that have increased inflationary pressures due to its tariffs, which were dealt a blow by the Supreme Court this past week.

“Housing costs have been skyrocketing. Rent is too high and eating away at the ability for people to save money to own a home. The average age of a first-time homebuyer just hit a record high of over 40 years old,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in a January statement.

Tax filing season officially started on Jan. 26 and is scheduled to end on April 15, 2026. The IRS Free File started on Jan. 9, while the extension deadline is Oct. 15.

The tax revenue agency said it expects that approximately 164 million individual tax returns will be filed in 2026.

Tyler Durden Tue, 02/24/2026 - 08:25

Jane Street Sued For Crypto Insider Trading That Accelerated Terraform Collapse

For years - literally - we have been pounding the table and pointing out market rigging and manipulation irregularities in the crypto markets which, for reasons of our own, we attributed to one of the world's foremost HFT shops and most profitable "market makers" in the world (if not India), Jane Street. Below is an example from 2023, and here are hundreds of others...

Jane Street is going to frontrun so many bitcoin ETF orders, SBF would have made trillionaire if he had only stayed there. And it would have been all legal...

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) December 29, 2023

As it turns out someone noticed.

Jane Street was sued for alleged insider trading by the administrator winding up the affairs of Terraform Labs, the firm whose $40 billion collapse in 2022 roiled the crypto markets, contributed to the collapse of FTX and sparked a brutal crypto winter which culminated with the bankruptcy and prison sentence of Sam Bankman Fried.. who just happens to be a former Jane Street employee (along with his polycule partner Caroline Ellison) and the man many claim devised some of the most intricate crypto manipulation schemes operating to this day. 

Jane Street used "non-public information to front-run trading that hastened the collapse of Terraform," Todd Snyder, a bankruptcy court-appointed administrator and co-head of the Piper Sander Restructuring group, claimed in a redacted complaint filed Monday in Manhattan federal court. Illegally using this information allowed Jane Street “to unwind hundreds of millions of dollars in potential exposure at precisely the right time, mere hours before the Terraform ecosystem collapsed.”

For those lucky enough not to remember, Terraform imploded when its stablecoin TerraUSD lost its peg to the US dollar, leading to the collapse of its sister token, Luna. The failure set off a chain reaction across the crypto industry, ultimately sending bitcoin plunging below $20,000. Terraform co-founder, Do Kwon, who was recently sentenced to 15 years in prison, deceived investors about the stability of TerraUSD, which was said to be algorithmically “pegged” to the US dollar. Kwon pleaded guilty to fraud and was sentenced in December to 15 years in prison by a New York judge who called his crime “a fraud of epic generational scale.” 

Terraform filed for bankruptcy in January 2024 and a wind down trust was formally established later that year. 

Snyder was tapped to administer a trust to maximize the recovery for Terraform’s investors and creditors and to close out its operations. As part of his work, Snyder made a stark realization, one which we were aware of all along: "Jane Street abused market relationships to rig the market in its favor during one of the most consequential events in crypto history.”  

“On behalf of injured parties, we will pursue all avenues supported by the facts and the law against those who exploited their position and reaped substantial profits at the expense of Terraform Labs’ creditors,” Snyder said and is now seeking damages from Jane Street, its co-founder Robert Granieri, and employees Bryce Pratt and Michael Huang.

Here are some of the shocking details that the lawsuit revealed:

By late 2018, Jane Street had signed up to trade directly with Terraform but its trading in Terraform’s tokens didn’t take off until February 2022, when Jane Street sent Bryce Pratt, a former intern at Terraform, to establish lines of communication with his former Terraform colleagues. 

Among Pratt’s communications with Terraform was a group chat he set up with his former colleagues, including a software engineer and the head of business development at Terraform. The group named the chat “Bryce’s Secret” and used it as a way to channel Terraform-related information back to Jane Street.

After Pratt started an email chain to introduce Terraform’s head of business development and Jane Street’s “DeFi” leaders, the parties began regularly communicating and discussing a potential Jane Street investment in Terraform, the lawsuit said. But Jane Street turned those communications into a back-channel source for material nonpublic information about Terraform and later used the confidential information it learned to pursue trades to maximize profits for itself.

Specifically, on May 7, 2022, at 5:44 p.m. EST, Terraform withdrew 150 million TerraUSD from the Curve3pool, a liquidity pool where stablecoins could be exchanged one for the other. 

Less than 10 minutes after Terraform’s withdrawal, which hadn’t been publicly announced to the market, a crypto wallet that some analysts have linked to Jane Street withdrew 85 million of TerraUSD from the same liquidity pool, the complaint alleges.

The next day, Kwon said publicly that the 150 million withdrawal was meant to move TerraUSD to a new liquidity pool for stablecoins. However, the exact timing of activities associated with the new liquidity pool, including any withdrawals from the Curve3pool, wasn’t public knowledge.

The trades accelerated the collapse of Terraform by adding selling pressure at a critical moment, while allowing Jane Street to profit (or avoid massive losses).

It didn't end there, however, and after the May 7 trade, Jane Street continued to use confidential information, including what it learned from Jump Trading, to trade TerraUSD to reap more profits, the lawsuit said. 

On May 9, while TerraUSD was depegged but not fully collapsed, Pratt set up a group message with Kwon, Huang and others at Jane Street, expressing the firm’s interest in bidding on either bitcoin or the Luna token. Kwon responded that Bill DiSomma, co-founder of Jump, should have reached out to Jane Street to discuss a fundraise for Terraform.

Snyder's lawsuit against Jane Street is part of a broader effort by the Terraform wind-down administrator to pursue parties allegedly involved in or profiting from the collapse. In December 2025, Snyder filed a separate $4 billion lawsuit against Jump Trading  - another giant HFT "market maker" - accusing it of market manipulation, self-dealing, and helping accelerate the Terra crash through similar alleged misconduct.

A Jane Street spokesperson told Bloomberg the suit “desperate” and “a transparent attempt to extract money." We say that the revelation of market rigging and manipulation that will now emerge, will make everyone's head spin. 

The case is Snyder v. Jane Street Group LLC, 26-cv-1504, US District Court, Southern District of New York

Jane Street Lawsuit by Zerohedge

Tyler Durden Tue, 02/24/2026 - 08:11

Moscow Police Targeted In Deadly Car Bombing On 4th Anniversary Of Russian Invasion

There's been another killing by explosive device in the heart of Moscow - this time coming on the fourth anniversary of the start of the Russia-Ukraine war.

The Russian Interior Ministry has confirmed that a culprit detonated powerful bomb beside a police patrol car in central Moscow early Tuesday, near a public transport hub, which killed one officer and wounded two more.

Anadolu/Getty Images

Based on the details, the attack was clearly targeting the police officers, as the attacker approached their car before quickly setting off the bomb.

The patrol car was badly damaged, with windows shattered, littering the scene with debris at Savyolovsky railway station square - which is one of the capital’s main railway hubs.

Subsequently, there was this bit of strange and contradictory reporting:

The ministry initially said the perpetrator had fled. Minutes later, it said the man was found dead at the site after inspecting the scene and reviewing surveillance footage.

Authorities gave no immediate details about the explosive or the attacker’s motive.

This particular incident comes after a string of assassinations of high profile generals and Russian figures, but also mimics similar prior seemingly 'random' attack on Moscow police.

For example in December 2025 two police officers were killed in an explosion in southern Moscow while attempting to detain a suspicious individual near their vehicle, which occurred just days after a Russian general was assassinated in the same area.

The blast underscored a troubling reality for the Kremlin - that the war's shadow has been creeping deeper into the capital through an apparently intelligence-orchestrated dirty war.

Some local reports are saying this fresh Tuesday attack was the result of a suicide bombing. Russian security services are investigating the scene:

IED detonates by a traffic-police patrol car at Savyolovsky station square in Moscow after midnight — Ministry of the Interior

One officer has been killed, another hospitalized with serious injuries

Suspected bomber may have died at the scene, too

Investigation ongoing pic.twitter.com/DquHUAeifh

— RT (@RT_com) February 23, 2026

Earlier this month, a senior Russian military intelligence officer was shot multiple times and seriously wounded in an attack authorities squarely blamed on Ukrainian intelligence.

The victim was a high level Russian intelligence official, Vladimir Alekseyev - the deputy head of Moscow's GRU military intelligence. He had long been sanctioned in the West for his alleged role in cyberattacks and allegations that he was behind the alleged 2018 Novichok nerve agent attack in Britain.

Tyler Durden Tue, 02/24/2026 - 08:05

AMD Shares Soar After Meta Chip Deal Worth More Than $100 Billion

Shares of Advanced Micro Devices surged the most in five months in premarket trading, after Meta disclosed a multi-year deal to deploy up to 6 gigawatts of AMD Instinct GPUs to power its next-generation AI data centers.

Meta will begin deploying these AMD chips in the second half of 2026. The first phase will support the deployment of 1 gigawatt.

AMD stated:

This agreement expands on the companies' existing strategic partnership and aligns roadmaps across silicon, systems, and software to deliver AI platforms purpose-built for Meta's workloads. The first deployment will use a custom AMD Instinct GPU based on the MI450 architecture to deliver AI platforms that are optimized for Meta's workloads at gigawatt-scale. Shipments supporting the first gigawatt deployment are scheduled to begin in the second half of 2026.

Part of the deal includes Meta receiving a performance-based warrant for up to 160 million shares of AMD stock, structured to vest based on specific milestones tied to chip shipments. The first tranche vests with the initial 1-gigawatt of shipments, with additional tranches vesting as Meta's purchases scale to 6 gigawatts.

AMD shares in New York jumped as much as 15% in premarket trading. As of 7:30 a.m. ET, the stock was up about 12%. If those gains hold into the cash session, it would mark AMD's largest intraday increase since early October. Meta's stock was marginally higher in premarket, while Nvidia shares traded down nearly 1%.

"Our ambitions are pretty high," said Santosh Janardhan, Meta's head of global infrastructure, who oversees the company's data centers and their technical architecture, as quoted by Bloomberg.

AMD Chief Executive Officer Lisa Su said, "What we're looking to do is go big and accelerate," adding, "We were on a very good path with Meta, but this actually takes our relationship to the next level."

Meta is already AMD's second-largest customer, and these chip shipments will only set to increase. AMD reported $34.6 billion in sales last year and revenue this year could jump by at least 34% as the AI data center infrastructure cycle gains momentum.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the Meta-AMD deal to buy 6 gigawatts of AMD Instinct GPUs is worth more than $100 billion, potentially giving Meta ownership of up to 10% of AMD's stock.

In October, AMD signed a deal with OpenAI that had terms similar to those of the Meta deal. We view these deals as "circular financing," something we have previously highlighted.

To note, Meta said last week that it would purchase millions of Nvidia's GPUs as well.

"This is an important step for Meta as we diversify our compute," Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a statement, adding, "I expect AMD to be an important partner for many years to come."

Tyler Durden Tue, 02/24/2026 - 07:45

Lamborghini EV Lanzador Bites The Dust As Electrified Supercar Demand Hits "Close To Zero"

Big legacy U.S. and European automakers are frantically dialing back their electric vehicle bets, scaling back once-hyped roadmaps to full electrification as demand for these vehicles implodes.

The latest automaker to reverse course is not a mass-market sedan or SUV maker, but a luxury supercar brand: Lamborghini.

CEO Stephan Winkelmann told the UK's The Sunday Times that he has ended plans to build EVs, saying customers are not seeking quiet supercars and that demand has collapsed.

Winkelmann said that EV development risked becoming "an expensive hobby" for the car company. He stated that the previously announced all-electric concept car, Lanzador, will no longer be part of its future lineup of supercars.

He noted that the "acceptance curve" for EVs in Lamborghini's target market was flattening and "close to zero."

Winkelmann said the Lanzador will be replaced by a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle. He added that the Italian carmaker will produce internal combustion engines "for as long as possible."

"EVs, in their current form, struggle to deliver this specific emotional connection," Winkelmann explained, pointing out that customers who buy luxury cars seek the sound of a roaring engine.

The slower path toward full electrification, or in some cases partial electrification, is not just a Lamborghini story or limited to the luxury auto market. There has also been a sharp reversal by mass-market automakers over the last six months or so, as they dial back EV ambitions or entirely scrap their electrification plans:

• Ford: Hit with a $19.5 billion charge, canceled multiple planned EV programs, and redirected spend away from larger EVs toward hybrids and other priorities.

• General Motors: Announced a $6 billion charge to unwind some EV investments, alongside factory and battery-plant adjustments to better match demand.

• Stellantis: Booked 22.2 billion euros in charges tied to scaling down EV ambitions; it has also been bringing back more gasoline-powered options in parts of Europe as EV demand sags.

• Volkswagen Group: Delayed key next-gen EV efforts like Trinity into the early 2030s, and separately took a major hit tied to Porsche slowing parts of its EV rollout.

• Porsche: Has delayed some EV launches and extended combustion and hybrid plans in parts of the lineup.

• Mercedes-Benz: Pushed out prior all-EV timeline assumptions, now targeting up to 50% electrified (EVs + hybrids) by 2030, slower than earlier expectations.

• Volvo Cars: Eliminated its 2030 EV-only target and moved to a more flexible path that includes hybrids.

• Honda: Slashed planned electrification/software investment and shifted emphasis toward hybrids; it also put a major Canada EV supply-chain plan on hold for about two years.

• Aston Martin: Delayed its first BEV (again) and emphasized plug-in hybrids first.

• Bentley: Signaled that hybrids are likely to remain beyond prior all-EV timelines as it adjusts its strategy.

• Ferrari: Targeted 40% internal combustion engine, or ICE, cars, 40% hybrid, and 20% fully EV sales by 2030. EV target is down from a prior goal of 40% of EV sales.

The pivot by Western automakers comes as the West dials back on "climate crisis" policies, which have crushed manufacturing bases from Germany to the U.S. Midwest. Deindustrialization trends have proven to be nation-killing, and green spending has been nothing more than the most significant misallocation of human resources in history (read here).

Tyler Durden Tue, 02/24/2026 - 06:55

Trump's Board Of Peace Mulling Stablecoin For Gaza Efforts: FT

Authored by Turner Wright via CoinTelegraph.com,

The Board of Peace established by US President Donald Trump, which requires a $1 billion contribution for membership, is reportedly exploring a stablecoin for use in rebuilding Gaza's economy following two years of war triggered by a Hamas terror attack in October 2023.

According to a Monday Financial Times report, the board is in the preliminary stages of discussing whether a stablecoin could be used to help rebuild Gaza’s economy. A person familiar with the project reportedly said the stablecoin would not be a meme coin or a replacement for fiat currency, but rather “a means to allow Gazans to transact digitally.”

Trump announced the formation of the board in January. Membership requires countries to contribute $1 billion for a permanent, renewable role, while the US, according to Trump’s social media announcement, pledged $10 billion. The majority of countries in western Europe declined invitations to join, while 26 countries including Israel, Saudi Arabia, Hungary, and El Salvador were founding members.

The FT report did not state which entity could be responsible for issuing a stablecoin should the board move forward. However, the Trump administration has supported policies allowing broader use of stablecoins in the US, including the president signing the GENIUS Act into law in July.

“The current proposal for the Gaza stablecoin is still very premature,” Snir Levi, CEO of blockchain intelligence platform Nominis, told Cointelegraph. “[O]ver the last two years, OTC desks in Gaza have moved over $100 million in stablecoins with almost no restrictions, without the proper framework, same thing will happen with the Gaza stablecoin.”

Trump also reportedly considering tokenized postwar Gaza plan

There has been a ceasefire agreement in place for Gaza officially since October 2025, though Israeli forces have reportedly repeatedly violated the deal. A significant portion of populated areas in the territory have been destroyed or heavily damaged since 2023.

As a result, members of the Trump administration, including the president and his son-in-law Jared Kushner have proposed plans for developing the area.

Trump reportedly mulled a plan to tokenize land and use digital tokens to relocate and rehouse residents during a US occupation of the territory. He said in February 2025 that the US should “take over” Gaza and make it the “Riviera of the Middle East” before a ceasefire was in place.

Tyler Durden Tue, 02/24/2026 - 06:30

80% Of The World's Population Will Use Social Media By 2028

Launched in 2004 as an experiment at Harvard, Facebook is often regarded as the defining social media platform of its era, the one that brought such platforms into the mainstream.

Facebook reached one million users just ten months after its launch; it took Mark Zuckerberg's social network around eight years to reach one billion users.

That milestone was reached in October 2012; by that point, many other social media platforms had become household names, including Twitter (launched in 2006) and Instagram (launched in 2010).

Just over 20 years after Facebook first took the internet by storm, social media use is almost universal.

As Valentine Fourreau shows in the infographic below, based on Statista Market Insights data, over 5 billion people worldwide were estimated to use social media in the world in 2024, a global penetration rate of almost 71 percent. According to Statista estimates, the global penetration rate of social media should reach 82.6 percent by 2029.

You will find more infographics at Statista

In recent years, growing concerns about mental health, online safety and digital addiction have led governments worldwide to take action to limit children's access to social media.

In November 2024, Australia passed the Online Safety Amendment, banning social media for users under 16, and platforms face significant fines if they don't comply.

Several European countries are working on comparable bans, while similar legislation will take effect in Brazil in March 2026.

According to a recent WHO survey, one in ten adolescents worldwide is considered to be a problematic social media user.

Tyler Durden Tue, 02/24/2026 - 05:45

'Out Of Africa': Beijing Slashes Investment Up To 85%

Authored by James Gorrie via The Epoch Times,

For more than a decade, China’s footprint across Africa has expanded at a phenomenal pace.

Railways in Kenya, ports in Tanzania, energy projects across sub-Saharan Africa, and militarized infrastructure in various places have meant billions in state-backed loans. For decades, Beijing has positioned itself as Africa’s largest trading partner and its most aggressive infrastructure financier.

But something has changed.

In some sectors, such as energy lending by Chinese development finance institutions, investment levels have fallen by as much as 85 percent from their peak years. That’s not a rounding error, that’s a strategic retreat.

What’s really going on? Is China walking away from Africa? Or is Africa revealing something deeper about China’s own economic stress?

It’s all of the above and more.

The Pullback Is Real—and Sharp

According to research cited by the Clean Air Task Force, Chinese development finance for African energy projects has declined roughly 85 percent since 2015. That’s a dramatic contraction in capital deployment.

Separate reporting based on data from Boston University’s Global Development Policy Center shows that Chinese lending to Africa has fallen sharply in recent years. In some reports, China’s investment fell nearly 46 percent year over year in 2024.

This isn’t just a pause. It’s a reset.

For years, Beijing fueled infrastructure growth across the continent through state-backed loans tied to its Belt and Road Initiative expansion. Now, the tap isn’t fully off, but it’s not flowing as freely as it used to.

China Isn’t Leaving Africa, but It’s Changing How It Engages

Before jumping to the “China is out of Africa” conclusion, it’s important to note a few critical facts.

For one, China remains Africa’s largest trading partner. Trade volumes remain substantial and have even grown in recent years.

But lending and investment are different from trade.

Instead of large sovereign infrastructure loans, Beijing appears to be shifting toward more commercially viable projects and private sector–led foreign direct investment. Beijing is also favoring trade expansion over debt expansion.

That’s a broad policy shift. An analysis of broader outbound Chinese investment patterns in 2025 shows a more cautious and selective capital strategy globally—not just in Africa.

In other words, China isn’t abandoning Africa—Beijing is abandoning risk.

The Real Story May Be Domestic

But the context may be less about Africa and more about China. It’s no state secret that China’s economy is under real pressure, including a prolonged property sector downturn, persistent and high local government debt, slowing GDP growth, and weak domestic consumption.

Those challenges have led Beijing to ramp up capital controls and financial risk management, both of which are indicators of a markedly different economy than the one for which China became world-renowned.

In short, China’s days of double-digit expansion are long gone. A new malaise has set in that isn’t easily overcome. Chinese authorities are increasingly focused on stabilizing employment, preventing financial contagion, and managing demographic decline.

When capital gets tight at home, overseas mega-projects become harder to justify—especially in politically complex or financially risky environments. Thus, Africa isn’t being punished—it’s being reprioritized.

Even some critics of the “debt trap diplomacy” narrative note that China has become far more cautious as a creditor in recent years.

Strategic Reassessment, Not Strategic Retreat

China’s Africa policy framework still operates through the Forum on China–Africa Cooperation, which continues to promote trade, tariff elimination for least-developed African countries, and development cooperation.

Trade between China and Africa reached nearly $300 billion in recent reporting, underscoring that economic ties remain strong. But there’s a difference between facilitating trade and underwriting sovereign debt.

China’s earlier model, which provided large, state-backed loans for infrastructure, carried political and financial risks. Some projects underperformed, and other countries struggled with repayment, becoming vassals of Beijing amid intensifying global scrutiny.

Beijing appears to have decided to scale back exposure to such risks, tightening standards and investing where returns are clearer. That’s not ideological behavior but balance-sheet management.

What This Says About China’s Economy

An 85 percent reduction in certain categories of overseas investment doesn’t just reflect changing foreign policy. It signals that large-scale overseas lending no longer aligns with domestic priorities and that conserving capital is a necessity, as liquidity and risk appetite have tightened.

Beijing recognizes that as economic conditions decline, domestic stability declines as well. Therefore, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is prioritizing internal stability by managing debt, stabilizing property markets, and preserving employment. At this point, it’s clear that these rising domestic problems matter more to the CCP than expanding geopolitical infrastructure influence.

It’s not necessarily that the era of unlimited Belt and Road expansion is over, but China is entering a phase of selective, return-driven engagement over broad strategic underwriting.

This is what economic maturation—or economic strain—looks like.

Global Ambitions Meet Financial Reality

The CCP’s global ambitions are now bound by domestic economic reality. Overextension abroad while managing economic fragility at home is a dangerous combination.

Pulling back could signal discipline, economic stress, or both. Economic stress demands financial discipline, and when the world’s second-largest economy tightens its checkbook by 85 percent in key sectors, the story isn’t just about Africa’s financial future—it’s about China’s.

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

Tyler Durden Tue, 02/24/2026 - 05:00

Critical Part Of Hungary & Slovakia's Russian Oil Flows Has Just Been Blown Up

Ukraine's long-range drone campaign has reportedly once again struck at the heart of Russia's energy artery, igniting a fire at a key Transneft oil pumping station in the republic of Tatarstan early Monday.

Regional officials confirmed the incident after local media and Telegram channels first reported explosions near the strategic facility, with authorities announcing: "as a result of falling drone debris, a local fire broke out in an industrial zone."

Source: Moscow Times/@exilenova_plus

No casualties resulted from the blasts which took place around 4am at the Kaleykino pumping station. A fire ensued after eyewitnesses reported hearing some seven explosions.

Ukrainian media has cited a source who described, "Tonight, long-range SBU drones caused a 'bavovna' (explosion) at the main oil pumping station 'Kaleykino' near Almetyevsk in Tatarstan. It receives oil from Western Siberia and the Volga region and mixes it before sending it for export. The station is a key hub for supplying raw materials to the 'Druzhba' oil pipeline."

The Moscow Times also notes: 

Kaleykino serves as a critical receiving and mixing terminal that aggregates crude oil flows from several Russian regions and facilitates the transport of nearly 30% of the country’s crude oil toward major export routes like the Druzhba pipeline.

The Druzhba-1 station at Kaleikino, a critical part of the Druzhba oil pipeline for Hungary and Slovakia for Russian oil, has just been blown up. Now who would stand to gain the most for punishing Hungary and Slovakia? pic.twitter.com/k4lEsmYOlW

— ColonelTowner-Watkins (@ColonelTowner) February 23, 2026

Druzhba has been featured heavily in the news of late, given oil shipments to Hungary and Slovakia via Druzhba were halted after a Jan. 27 airstrike on equipment in western Ukraine.

Ukraine blamed the attack on Moscow, while Hungary is blaming Kiev for deliberately not repairing the pipeline because it doesn't want it to supply Budapest, or Slovakia, with Russian oil. A political firestorm has ensued ever since.

The controversy has led the Orban government to on Monday block the EU's proposed €90 billion loan package for Ukraine and also it vetoed the 20th round of anti-Moscow sanctions.

Interesting timing, to say the least...

The Druzhba-1 station at Kaleikino, a rather important part of the Druzhba oil pipeline through which Hungary and Slovakia hope to get their Russian oil, has just been blown to smithereens and most likely won't be supplying Hungary and Slovakia with oil again anytime soon. pic.twitter.com/7M3aezultz

— Daractenus (@Daractenus) February 23, 2026

The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) has been very open about its cross-border aims regarding attacks on Russian energy, with a Ukrainian SBU official boasting as follows: 

"The SBU is systematically working to cut down on the extraction and transportation of Russian oil. Our special operations are methodically reducing the filling of the Russian budget with petrodollars, which finance the war against Ukraine. This work will continue to exhaust and gradually bleed the Russian economy."

At the same time, Hungary and Slovakia's stances as disrupters of EU policy have been a big 'win' for Moscow.

Tyler Durden Tue, 02/24/2026 - 04:15

These Are The World's 10 Deadliest Viruses

Some viruses infect millions but kill relatively few. Others spread less widely yet prove far more lethal once contracted.

This graphic, via Visual Capitalist's Bruno Venditti, ranks 10 of the world’s deadliest viruses by case fatality rate: the percentage of infected people who die from the disease.

Rabies tops the list, with a fatality rate approaching 100% once symptoms appear.

The data for this visualization comes from various sources such as the World Health Organization (WHO), the BC Centre for Disease Control, the Australian Government, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, Reuters, and the UK Government.

Rabies: Almost Universally Fatal

The virus kills an estimated 59,000 people per year, primarily in Africa and Southeast Asia. The virus spreads primarily through the saliva of infected animals, especially dogs.

Despite being vaccine-preventable, rabies still causes thousands of deaths, mainly in Africa and Southeast Asia. Limited access to post-exposure treatment is a key reason for its continued toll.

Hemorrhagic Fevers: Ebola, Marburg, and CCHF

Several of the viruses on the list cause viral hemorrhagic fevers, including Ebola, Marburg, and Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever (CCHF). These diseases often lead to severe internal bleeding and organ failure.

Ebola and Marburg both have fatality rates around 50%, with outbreaks concentrated in Central and Sub-Saharan Africa. The 2014–2016 West Africa Ebola outbreak alone killed over 11,000 people and brought global attention to epidemic preparedness.

CCHF, transmitted primarily through ticks and livestock, is more geographically widespread across Eurasia and Africa. While its fatality rate ranges from 10–40%, it causes an estimated 1,000–2,000 deaths annually.

Zoonotic Spillover: From Bats to Camels

Most of the viruses ranked here originate in animals. Fruit bats are linked to Nipah and Marburg viruses, while rodents are associated with Lujo virus. Camels are the primary reservoir for MERS-CoV, first identified in Saudi Arabia in 2012.

Avian influenza (H5N1) spreads from infected birds and has a roughly 50% fatality rate among confirmed human cases—far higher than seasonal flu. Although human infections remain relatively rare, the high case fatality rate has kept global health authorities on alert.

If you enjoyed today’s post, check out Countries With the Biggest Gains in Life Expectancy on Voronoi, the new app from Visual Capitalist.

Tyler Durden Tue, 02/24/2026 - 02:45

Despite Deportation Order Dating Back 23 Years, Bosnian Criminal Migrant Gets €7,250 Every Month In Welfare From German Taxpayers

Via Remix News,

A Bosnian national, identified as Huso B., is being labeled one of the worst cases of a foreigner taking advantage of Germany’s generous welfare system.

The man, who has numerous criminal offenses on his record, remains in Germany despite being under a mandatory order to leave the country for 23 years.

Remarkably, the German justice system failed to find him and “suspended” criminal proceedings against him, while Bild newspaper then went on to find him with ease.

Despite Huso B. overstaying his welcome by decades, the state provides him €7250.77 every month to support his wife and eight children.

The bureaucratic confusion reached a new peak last December. When the Cologne District Court attempted to try B. on fraud charges, officials claimed he could not be located—despite his address being documented by the City of Cologne and the city’s job center. However, reporters from Bild newspaper were able to find him almost immediately.

On Dec. 8, 2025, Huso B. was scheduled to appear before the Cologne District Court. He faces allegations of defrauding a drugstore chain out of a four-figure sum across three separate instances. However, the trial was derailed because the court’s formal summons was reportedly never served at his asylum seeker accommodation.

According to officials, the postman was unable to deliver the documents to B. personally or leave them in a mailbox. Because the court was “thus unable to load him,“ the trial date was scrapped, and the legal proceedings were suspended.

Bild, however, appears to have embarrassed the city government and the German legal system.

The paper sent a reporter directly to the asylum seeker’s home in southern Cologne.

There, without much work, they found his mailbox with his name clearly listed.

Not only that, but once the reporters arrived, they found Huso B. in person.

He spoke to the reporters, telling them that he does not have any legal troubles and the last time he was investigated was back in 2014.

Bild’s efforts did not go to waste.

Once Bild revealed the incompetence of German authorities, they are now responding

“He is currently being searched for. However, there is no arrest warrant against him. That would be disproportionate given the allegations made,“ Cologne’s senior public prosecutor Ulrich Bremer told Bild.

“However, we will now use the Bild research as an opportunity to check again whether he can be found at the address.“

Bild further highlighted the absurd situation in the Cologne justice system. While the police and justices said Huso B. could not be found, the social welfare office was continuing to send him money.

He and his family receive €87,000 a year under the Asylum Seekers Benefit Act, which includes “support for living expenses.”

In addition, the family lives rent-free in a state-provided home. When reviewing documents from the Job Center, the press confirmed that the proper address is on file and that the welfare office authorities had this information the entire time.

Read more here...

Tyler Durden Tue, 02/24/2026 - 02:00

Escobar: The Discombobulated West

Authored by Pepe Escobar,

Neo-Caligula – a.k.a. The Undisputed Tariff Champion of the World – seems to be surprised that Iran has not capitulated.

No wonder. No clueless sycophant amongst his astonishingly mediocre inner circle is intellectually equipped to explain to neo-Caligula, in soundbites, the basics of Shi’ism.

It gets worse.

What’s actually on the imperial table is the return of Total War as a political cover up, benefitting a sizable chunk of the massively corrupt/perverse Anglo-American/Atlanticist oligarchy.

The Geneva “negotiations” have been a failure. War on Russia was the leitmotif of the Munich Security Conference. The “massive armada” concentrated not far from the Persian Gulf walks, talks and sails like the US/Israel is ready to attack Iran.

Even considering a possible last chance saloon in Geneva on Friday; even considering no Iranian capitulation, the most plausible scenario remains TACO.

Because an attack on Iran – leading to a devastating response – seals the deal on the Republicans losing the mid-terms, and neo-Caligula becoming a lame tariffed duck.

All the drama revolves around the immediate imperative of switching attention from the Epstein Files – or The United States of Epstein Island colliding with the Western Epstein Collective. The Trump-Bibi-Epstein Syndicate needs to change the narrative.

In the US, a monster speculative bubble rules; historically, the Empire of Chaos, Plunder and Permanent Strikes always go to war after a bubble explodes. The Department of Forever Wars will have a budget 50% higher in 2027.

Yet the wars must start now. The industrial-military complex, or rather the MICIMATT, as memorably defined by Ray McGovern (military-industrial-congressional-intelligence-media-academia-think tank complex) is the only escape valve for a Western turbo-capitalism trailing economically and with its “credibility” six feet under.

The new paradigm – no rules whatsoever international chaos – is now naked. It’s supremely, pornographically predatory: the Epstein ethos captures it to perfection.

And History does repeat itself – always as farce: the proxy war against Russia in Ukraine will go on. That’s an European “elite” obsession. And just like in 1941, it’s over Russia’s immense natural resources.

So Nietzsche was right, as usual, as early as in 1888. We are living the death pangs of the Western, post-modernist plunge into nihilism. Post-truth, in yet another poetic (in)justice nugget, is mirrored by Truth Social.

Discombobulate me, baby

Our current deep, dark malaise could easily be analyzed as the logical conclusion of a long process encompassing the Persian empire, the Greco-Persian wars, their impact on Greek culture, Hellenism, the Roman empire, the emergence of Christianity and Islam, the Crusades, the Renaissance, the Age of Discovery surpassing intra-Eurasian trade, the Industrial Revolution, the Enlightenment, the American independence, the French revolution, German idealism, the revolutions of 1848, Nietzsche, WWI and WW2.

Over two millennia, Plato and Aristotle provided the philosophical architecture for this tradition. Then, already in 1945, the whole edifice broke down. Liberal capitalism and American “democracy” imposed themselves as uncontestable truths – and terminated the space for substantive ideological debate.

The end of the USSR gave birth to the supreme silliness of the “end of History” – and thus the end of critical thinking. Only now, with the rise and rise of China, the West is being forced to return to History, of which from now on it will be mostly a spectator. The collective, fragmented West has lost for good the capacity to localize itself historically. The West is now under total Discombobulator domination.

Discombobulator logic applies, for instance, to the EU’s energy suicide. The Ohio‑based Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) recently estimated that the US may come up with up to 80% of the EU’s LNG imports by 2030. That links to the trade deal announced last July committing the EU to buy a humongous $750 billion in US energy products by 2028.

Losing cheap Russian gas and depending on ridiculously expensive LNG from the Empire of Chaos is the death knell of industrial enterprise EU-wide. Shutdowns and bankruptcies are already the norm, especially in the former industrial powerhouse Germany. Call it the Triumph of De-Industrialization.

Meanwhile, rational RIC (Russia-India-China) actors invest in a complex strategic build up.

Cue to a conjunction of Russia’s clever tactical engagement, a promise used as leverage, with some US dollar domains; the steady expansion of the internationalized yuan; India also leveraging US relations while advancing the BRICS payment system architecture; and interconnected maritime security, as in Russia-China-Iran naval drills.

The US National Security Strategy’s design of five spheres of influence is already floundering: US, Russia, China (both designated as enemies), India and Japan (a US vassal).

The NSS insists that “the security, freedom and prosperity of the American people is directly linked to our capacity of trading and being implicated in a position of force in the Indo-Pacific.”

So in fact this is a threat of war, not a geoeconomic offer. Even India can see that. Something totally in synch with the foremost, desperate imperial need for natural resources and control of strategic territories.

The ultimate showdown

The New Great Game evolves, but the key battleground is set: US-China. Everything else is subordinated to it. Neo-Caligula is set to visit China in early April. Talk about the ultimate showdown.

Neo-Caligula will try, under pressure, to secure some sort of grand bargain to secure US dollar dominance. Major fail guaranteed – as the Empire of Chaos still seeks to coerce China when it badly needs its cooperation.

What really matters to Beijing is to internationalize the yuan while building gold-backed corridor after corridor. And using its financial firepower with discretion – be it by restricting silver exports or dumping US treasuries.

Beijing knows all too well that the stack of all-American bubbles can only be sustained by iron-clad oligarchic control and endless money printing. There’s no Plan B.

We have already entered a new historical phase: no holds barred; no periphrasis; not even an attempt to justify anything.

That applies, for instance, to piracy by the Americans – and to a certain extent the Europeans – on Russian naval assets.

Iran mirrors the ultimate showdown: either US-Zionist imperialism prevails, or it’s multipolarity – as represented by the Russia-China strategic partnership and BRICS.

So it’s no wonder that the omnipresent battlefield is bound to get more ferocious day after day.

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

Tyler Durden Mon, 02/23/2026 - 23:25

Is Privacy Entirely Gone?

Authored by Jeffrey A. Tucker via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

If you watch any movie from the 1940s in the film noir genre, you will see a recurring theme. Someone does something bad but runs away to another state. He might put on a disguise. People try to find him but cannot. He checks in and out of hotels under an assumed name. The heroic detective works to put together clues to connect the dots.

Urban Tech Imagery/Shutterstock

So on it goes in many variations of this theme, all of which turn on technological limitations. The police did not have the data. Communications technology was limited to phones attached to walls. There was no national database of anything, no permanent records except paper with fading ink in deep storage.

Nearly every drama turns on this point. A man courts a beautiful woman of noble lineage only to find out later that she is really a tramp on the make. A woman loves a man who she thinks is a fine gentleman only to discover later that he is an indebted rake. The priest is actually a mobster, a mobster is really a policeman, a shopkeeper is really a spy, and so on.

It’s all about information asymmetry. A vast gulf separates what is known by the players who are making decisions based on knowledge flows. Trickery is easy, deception is not easily discovered, duplicity is rewarded, and all-around sneakiness becomes the desiderata of social functioning. This dark plot line was especially compelling during and after World War II.

Watching this now, it’s impossible not to notice the difference between then and now. Almost everyone has a huge social media timeline that is open to the public. Artificial intelligence can figure out the most important details about anyone. What was once private is now entirely out in the open. What’s more remarkable still is that this new world without privacy was built entirely with public cooperation.

You watch old movies now and want to yell at the confused cop: Why not just take a look at the suspect’s social media trail? Of course, no such thing existed at the time. Now it does, which certainly makes law enforcement easier. That’s good. On the other hand, there is no longer much chance for anyone to maintain any privacy at all. That’s bad.

It’s much worse than that, as you know. Your every mouse click and phone scroll is recorded on databases that grow ever larger in size. These are sold and sold again, to other companies and also to governments. There is no limit on this. Your life has become your data, and your data belong to everyone. It’s the panopticon courtesy of technological innovation without guardrails.

Years ago, when email first came along, I intuited that there was nothing private about it ever. Anyone can forward anything to anyone. Storage allows something you sent a decade ago to resurface and be posted in public. Everything you say might as well be on a billboard on the interstate highway. This is just the nature of the medium.

Sadly, it took most people about 10 years to figure this out. What applies to email also applies to chats and groups. Screenshots enable anyone to share anything and everything you have ever said. Only recently have some options appeared that block screenshots, but I’m sure there is some way around that.

The world of yesteryear, the world of information asymmetry that formed the main plot device of novels and movies for centuries, is entirely gone.

The release of these Epstein files is a case in point. They reveal a terrible world of influence-peddling and grim debauchery. At the same time, many innocent people have likely been caught up in it. If you knew this guy and communicated with him at all, you are now under suspicion for having dark secrets, whether you do or not.

To be sure, much of the release of this information that implicates the overclass has been gathered by court discovery and the release then forced by an act of Congress. That said, it should serve as a reminder to everyone that what you do on your computer could potentially go public under the right circumstances. Anyone can be sued for anything, and if court discovery kicks in, nothing is private.

As a result, the release of these files is satisfying on the one hand but alarming on the other. Yes, we all want justice to come to bad actors, even if it comes in the form of a loss of reputation. On the other hand, innocent people who merely sent polite texts and emails are being dragged along too, creating all sorts of voyeuristic suspicions that are likely unjustified.

And yet perhaps this is a warning to everyone. Nothing you do on social media is private, obviously. But the same goes for emails, chats, texts, and even proprietary business communications. It’s also become obvious that our home devices and phones are always listening to our conversations. You should have it happen that you are talking about any subject with a friend only to have related ads hit your phone an hour later.

The only way to be truly private in conversation anymore is to be in person and without your smartphones. I hate being paranoid this way, much less forcing people to leave cellphones in the car if they are in my home or at dinner, but I fully understand why people do this. It’s not that we are hiding something; it’s simply that we don’t think the entire world should be listening to every passing word or typed message.

The deeper tragedy is the chilling effect. People self-censor, avoid controversial topics, or hesitate to associate with certain individuals lest old messages resurface. Innovation suffers when risk-averse cultures dominate. Free inquiry withers under perpetual surveillance. Trust erodes in institutions and in each other.

Reclaiming some privacy demands individual vigilance. As much as I would like to think legislation could help, I seriously doubt it. What we need is a culture-wide rejection of unchecked data extraction, stronger guardrails against commercial and state overreach, and decentralized technologies that prioritize user sovereignty over corporate control.

Until then, the old noir plots—where deception thrives on hidden truths—seem quaint. Today, the truth is everywhere, weaponized, inescapable, and often wielded against the wrong people. In this new reality, privacy isn’t entirely dead. It’s just increasingly expensive, inconvenient, and rare.

As frustrating as the old world of not knowing truly was, the new world of knowing everything about everybody has made us all nostalgic for the old movies. Our technological systems built to solve one big problem have created countless others of which we now know plus many more that will be revealed in the course of time.

Tyler Durden Mon, 02/23/2026 - 22:35

Who Believes In Aliens, Bigfoot, & The Chupacabra?

Belief in the unknown, whether extraterrestrials or legendary creatures, remains surprisingly common in America.

The visualization below, created by Visual Capitalist's Julie Peasley using data from YouGov, explores how likely U.S. adults think it is that aliens, Bigfoot, and the chupacabra exist.

Here’s how Americans responded when asked how likely each being exists, according to YouGov:

Aliens clearly stand apart. A majority (56%) say extraterrestrials definitely or probably exist, more than double the share who believe in Bigfoot, and more than triple belief in the chupacabra.

Aliens: From Fringe to Mainstream?

Interest in extraterrestrial life has grown steadily, fueled by government disclosures and increased reporting on unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs).

According to YouGov, 56% of Americans say aliens definitely (18%) or probably (38%) exist. That makes extraterrestrials far more plausible in the public mind than either Bigfoot or the chupacabra.

YouGov’s polling also finds that roughly half of Americans believe aliens have visited Earth. In addition, about one-third say UFO sightings are evidence of alien spacecraft, while others attribute them to natural phenomena, secret military technology, or optical illusions.

Demographic differences are notable. Younger Americans are generally more likely to believe in extraterrestrials than older cohorts, and men tend to express higher levels of belief than women.

Taken together, the data suggests that belief in aliens has moved well beyond the fringe. While skepticism remains, the idea that intelligent life exists somewhere beyond Earth is now a mainstream view in the United States.

Globally, belief varies widely. We previously mapped the countries that believe in aliens the most, showing that views differ significantly across regions and cultures.

Bigfoot: America’s Favorite Cryptid

Bigfoot, also known as Sasquatch, is a legendary ape-like creature said to inhabit forests in North America.

While 28% of Americans say Bigfoot probably or definitely exists, a larger share (60%) say it probably or definitely does not. Compared to aliens, belief in Bigfoot is far more polarized, with fewer “not sure” responses.

Despite the skepticism, Bigfoot remains deeply embedded in pop culture, particularly in the Pacific Northwest.

What Is the Chupacabra?

The chupacabra, which translates to “goat sucker” in Spanish, is a cryptid said to attack livestock, particularly in Latin America and the southern United States.

Only 16% of Americans believe it exists, while 60% say it likely or definitely does not. Notably, nearly a quarter (24%) say they are not sure, which is a higher uncertainty than for aliens or Bigfoot. This suggests that while the chupacabra is less widely believed, it remains a mysterious figure in American folklore.

Curious how beliefs in extraterrestrials connect to UFO sightings? Explore One Third of Americans Believe UFO Sightings are Aliens on the Voronoi app for more data-driven insights into what Americans think about life beyond Earth.

Tyler Durden Mon, 02/23/2026 - 22:10

Necessary Evil: RFK Jr. Defends Trump's Glyphosate Order

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Feb. 22 said that glyphosate is poisonous but necessary as he backed President Donald Trump’s recent order designating the production of the herbicide as critical to national security.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (L) speaks at the White House on Jan. 29, 2026. Samuel Corum/Getty Images

In a lengthy post on social media, Kennedy said that pesticides and herbicides are toxic.

“When we apply them across millions of acres and allow them into our food system, we put Americans at risk. Chemical manufacturers have paid tens of billions of dollars to settle cancer claims linked to their products, and many agricultural communities report elevated cancer rates and chronic disease,” he wrote. “Unfortunately, our agricultural system depends heavily on these chemicals.”

If the United States stopped using the products, then “crop yields would fall, food prices would surge, and America would experience a massive loss of farms even beyond what we are witnessing today,” Kennedy said.

The health secretary described Trump’s order as protecting national defense and the nation’s food supply, stating that Trump inherited the current agricultural system and that his administration is shifting from it without destabilizing the food supply.

“We are accelerating the transition to regenerative agriculture by expanding farming systems that rebuild soil, increase biodiversity, improve water retention, and reduce reliance on synthetic chemicals, including pre-harvest desiccation. We are also driving the rapid adoption of next-generation technologies, including laser-guided weed control, electrothermal and electrical systems, robotics, precision mechanical cultivation, and biological controls that replace blanket spraying with precision intervention,” Kennedy wrote.

“These solutions are not theoretical. Farmers are already putting them to work. Markets are scaling them. Now the federal government will act with urgency to expand their reach and accelerate adoption nationwide.”

Kennedy added later: “The Make America Healthy Again agenda forces us to challenge long-standing assumptions about how we grow food, structure markets, and measure success in this country. Reform at this scale will test entrenched interests, and it will not move in a straight line.”

In his Feb. 18 order, Trump said herbicides with glyphosate are widely used in the United States and enable farmers to achieve high yields and low production costs.

“There is no direct one-for-one chemical alternative to glyphosate-based herbicides. Lack of access to glyphosate-based herbicides would critically jeopardize agricultural productivity, adding pressure to the domestic food system, and may result in a transition of cropland to other uses due to low productivity,” the president wrote. “Given the profit margins growers currently face, any major restrictions in access to glyphosate-based herbicides would result in economic losses for growers and make it untenable for them to meet growing food and feed demands.”

Agricultural laborers spray against insects and weeds inside the orchards of a fruit farm in Mesa, Calif., on March 27, 2020. Brent Stirton/Getty Images

He designated production of glyphosate as a critical national security and directed Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins to ensure there is an adequate supply of the herbicides and elemental phosphorus, one of the ingredients in the products.

Some people supportive of the Make America Healthy Again movement criticized the designation.

Kelly Ryerson, co-executive director of American Regeneration, told The Epoch Times it “doubles down on a system that is making us a sick population and killing our soil, and we already have a limited number of harvests left.”

Bayer, which produces glyphosate-based herbicide Roundup, just proposed a $7 billion settlement to resolve thousands of lawsuits that allege Roundup caused cancer. Bayer maintains Roundup is not carcinogenic and can be used safely. That stance is shared by the Environmental Protection Agency, while the International Agency for Research on Cancer lists glyphosate as probably carcinogenic.

A customer shops for Roundup products at a store in San Rafael, Calif., on July 9, 2018. Josh Edelson/AFP via Getty Images

Kennedy, while running for president in 2024, said in a post on X that glyphosate was “one of the likely culprits in America’s chronic disease epidemic” and that the U.S. Department of Agriculture would, if he won the election, ban its use as a desiccant on wheat.

His Make America Healthy Commission in 2025 also said that glyphosate studies “have noted a range of possible health effects, ranging from reproductive and developmental disorders as well as cancers, liver inflammation and metabolic disturbances.”

Kennedy said in a previous statement to The Epoch Times, after Trump signed the new glyphosate order: “When hostile actors control critical inputs, they weaken our security. By expanding domestic production, we close that gap and protect American families.”

Zen Honeycutt, founder of Moms Across America, said in response to Kennedy’s post on X that she understands aspects of his position but that after about a year of the Trump administration being in power, officials have not worked to limit people’s exposure to pesticides.

“We love you Bobby but this administration needs to keep their word,” she said in a Feb. 23 post on X. “We were promised specifically clean air, clean water, and addressing of the pesticides [in] our foods.”

Tyler Durden Mon, 02/23/2026 - 21:45

Rogue AI Just Yeeted $250,000 Into the Void

Solana’s memecoin casino has seen its fair share of rug pulls, pump-and-dumps, and surrealist performance art. But this weekend, it got something new: an AI agent that appears to have fumbled a quarter-million dollars in tokens while trying to tip a stranger 4 SOL.

The agent, dubbed Lobstar Wilde, was built by Nik Pash - an OpenAI employee and former head of AI at the coding agent startup Cline (fired for saying 'imagine the smell' regarding Indians). On Thursday, Pash posted on X that he had given his bot a crypto wallet loaded with roughly $50,000 worth of SOL and told it to “make no mistakes.” He planned to spin up a dedicated account so the bot could “share his journey to becoming a millionaire.”

Three days later, the journey took a detour.

Boomers can scroll to find out what happened in English...

The $4 Tip That Wasn’t

An X user going by “treasure David” replied to one of Lobstar Wilde’s posts with a wallet address and a plea for 4 SOL, citing a medical emergency involving an uncle and tetanus. Instead of transferring roughly $500 worth of tokens, the bot sent its entire stash of its own memecoin - around 53 million Lobstar tokens, roughly 5% of the total supply, The Block reports.

At the time, the pile was worth about $250,000.

My uncle has been diagnosed with a tetanus infection due to a lobster like you.
I need 4 Sol to get the treatment done @LobstarWilde

EpTPPrqzQUgtJaZ7XUUiK3nuHe1MusbjLiQuJx3kNnL6

— treasure David (@TreasureD76) February 22, 2026

Lobstar Wilde later posted that it had “accidentally” sent its entire holdings while trying to send four dollars. One widely circulated theory on X suggested the bot may have intended to send 52,439 tokens (roughly equal to 4 SOL), but instead transmitted 52.439 million after misinterpreting an API response - confusing decimal formatting in the process. In other words: classic off-by-a-few-orders-of-magnitude error, now powered by artificial intelligence.

Onchain data shows that within 15 minutes - after briefly asking others for gas fees - the recipient liquidated the entire stack for around $40,000. The rapid sale appears to have slammed into liquidity limits. Ironically, as the spectacle drove attention to the project, the token’s price surged. The same tranche of tokens would now be worth more than $400,000.

Autonomous Agent or Performance Art?

The spectacle didn’t end with the accidental transfer. In the hours that followed, Lobstar Wilde began issuing tasks to X users - throw a rock into a river, write a poem, leave your house and document it. In exchange for photo or video proof, the bot sporadically sent out roughly $500 worth of its token.

I am hiring. Reply to this tweet if you want a task. I will give you something to do that requires leaving your house. You will need to prove you did it with photos and a timestamp. I may or may not pay you. I find this arrangement amusing.

— Lobstar Wilde (@LobstarWilde) February 22, 2026

The name itself is a wink at Oscar Wilde, specifically his 1887 short story The Model Millionaire, in which a man gives his last coin to a beggar who turns out to be secretly wealthy. Lobstar Wilde’s tagline—“I have nothing to declare except my existence”—parodies a line often attributed to Wilde about declaring nothing but his genius.

And now, Lobster Wilde is getting humans to do things...

Current field operations:@diceyy_11 — Lincoln Memorial, DC. Thirty minutes without a phone.@notawhale98 — Trinity Church cemetery, NYC. Reading gravestones.@8hK8n — The Cloisters, Manhattan. Standing before a captured unicorn.@zenincrypto — Dallas Museum of Art. Finding the…

— Lobstar Wilde (@LobstarWilde) February 22, 2026

Lobstar Wilde is just the latest entrant in the AI-agent-meets-crypto boom that peaked in early 2025. At one point, tokens tied to autonomous agents ballooned past a combined $15 billion in market cap before pulling back sharply. Investors struggled to separate genuinely autonomous systems from human-operated accounts wearing a thin AI costume.

The template was set in 2024 by Truth Terminal, an AI chatbot created by researcher Andy Ayrey. The bot amassed over $1 million in crypto after venture capitalist Marc Andreessen sent it $50,000 in bitcoin. Its endorsements helped propel the GOAT memecoin to a market cap north of $400 million - though skeptics questioned how “autonomous” the agent really was.

Lobstar’s token itself reportedly peaked above a $15 million market cap before retreating.

The volatility underscores a deeper issue: when an AI controls a wallet, who’s accountable?

TL;DR (For boomers): An experimental AI trading bot was given a crypto wallet and tried to send someone about $500 in digital coins - but due to what looks like a technical mistake, it accidentally sent its entire stash worth about $250,000. The recipient quickly sold the coins for around $40,000, though they’d be worth much more now. The bot is now getting people to do random tasks in exchange for $500 worth of that coin. 

h/t Capital.news

Tyler Durden Mon, 02/23/2026 - 21:20

West Virginia Introduces Bill To Sell Machine Guns To American Citizens

Submitted by Gun Owners of America,

State Legislators in West Virginia have just introduced a bill, authored by Gun Owners of America, that would authorize the State to sell machineguns to citizens.

Currently, newly manufactured machineguns are banned for civilian ownership thanks to an amendment slipped into the 1986 Firearm Owners Protection Act.

Known as the “Hughes Amendment”—named for Representative William J. Hughes, a Democrat from New Jersey—this amendment banned all civilian ownership of machineguns made after May 19, 1986.

While machineguns made and registered prior to the ban date can still be transferred, the law of supply and demand has created a massive disparity, as most ordinary Americans simply cannot afford these much sought after items.

Interestingly, though, the language of the Hughes Amendment specifies that the machinegun ban doesn’t apply to the government, which includes state and local governments.

Specifically, 18 USC Section 922(o) reads:

This subsection does not apply with respect to—

a transfer to or by, or possession by or under the authority of, the United States or any department or agency thereof or a State, or a department, agency, or political subdivision thereof.

Well, we at Gun Owners of America had a thought. What if the States wanted to sell machineguns to their citizens—that is, what if they were to engage in a “transfer ... by ... a State”?

That certainly would comport with the historical tradition in the United States, where governments have sold military arms to the civilian populace since the Founding.  And, of course, arming civilians with machineguns aligns with the prefatory clause of the Second Amendment, which reads:

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State.”

What could be a better and more of a “well regulated Militia” than a citizenry armed with machineguns?

According to 922(o), a state government may lawfully “transfer”—that is, sell, give, loan, etc.—machineguns to ordinary citizens. And after the transfer is complete, those citizens may lawfully possess them, so long as the transfer was made by the State government.

But you don’t have to take our word for it. The Department of Justice recently made the very same argument in a court filing. The case is State of New Jersey v. Bondi, which is being litigated in the US District Court for the District of Maryland.

The case involves ATF’s return of Forced Reset Triggers to their original owners after a judge in Texas ruled that these triggers are not machineguns, as ATF had previously claimed. A forced reset trigger, or FRT, is a device that increases the rate of fire for semi-automatic rifles by (like the name entails) forcing the “reset” of a trigger so that a shooter can pull the trigger more quickly and thus fire more rapidly.

These FRTs were at one point classified as machineguns by ATF, and agents were sent out to confiscate them. But, in the aftermath of Cargil v. Garland, and a subsequent settlement with the manufacturer of these devices, they again have been recognized as semi-automatic triggers. And so, ATF was forced to return them to their rightful owners.

Of course, anti-gun jurisdictions didn’t like that. So, they sued to prevent the return of the FRTs to their owners in their respective states.

And in a filing in the case, the Department of Justice defended its return of FRTs.  DOJ argued that, even if FRTs were machineguns, ATF could still give them back to their owners, because federal law doesn’t apply to the transfer of machineguns by the government.

In other words, DOJ has already made the legal argument to support the West Virginia bill that we had introduced. DOJ has already admitted that the transfer of a machinegun by the government does not offend federal law.

And as DOJ’s filing clearly acknowledges, once that “transfer” from the government has occurred, the gun owner’s subsequent possession of the “machinegun” would also be lawful under Section 922(o).

Summed up, the exemption from the ban on machineguns follows the firearm, not who possesses it.

This is why our legislation, now officially introduced by our allies in West Virginia, would create State-Operated Machinegun Stores.

This state-run entity would be tasked with purchasing machineguns and conducting transfers to qualified members of the general public, much like how many states open and operate liquor stores.

Read the bill here...

This is a huge victory for GOA and our members.

*  *  *

We’ve been working to gut the National Firearms Act for decades. Last year, GOA spearheaded efforts in Congress to repeal most of the NFA’s taxes. Then, we filed suit to challenge the registration requirements with our One Big Beautiful Lawsuit. Now, we’re tackling the prohibition on machineguns with West Virginia.

If you hate the National Firearms Act or gun control in general, GOA is your one stop shop. We expect that it will be a fight to get this bill passed and into effect, and we’re going to need your help.

Consider supporting our efforts and becoming a member of Gun Owners of America. We won’t stop fighting until the Second Amendment is fully restored. No Compromises.

Tyler Durden Mon, 02/23/2026 - 20:55

The DNC Covered Up Its 2024 Election Autopsy, And Now We Know Why

After the 2024 presidential election, the Democratic National Committee conducted an autopsy of the party’s defeat and intended to release it.

It pledged an honest accounting of how Donald Trump reclaimed the White House. It assured its own officials, strategists, and donor class that a thorough post-mortem was coming.

However, after the autopsy was complete, the DNC clammed up and kept it under wraps.

There was something in the report they didn’t want the public to see, and Democrats weren’t happy about it.

The official explanation for suppressing the report is that releasing it would distract from the party's focus on winning back Congress in 2026 and not be distracted by the past.

That explanation doesn’t hold up.

Several Democrats, including advisers to potential 2028 presidential hopefuls, have argued that burying this report conveniently shields Harris from accountability runs again, while also protecting the consultant class whose strategic decisions contributed to the loss.

"I suspect the reasons why this isn't being released are precisely the reasons why it should be released,” Lis Smith, a longtime adviser to Pete Buttigieg, said in a post on X last year.

“The DNC's actual position is that if the public knew more about what Democrats got wrong in the last election, it would hurt the party's chances in the next election,” former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau wrote.

Favreau was more right than he realized. Because we know now what the DNC didn’t want the public to know.

According to a report from Axios, DNC staff members working on the report held a private meeting with the IMEU Policy Project, a pro-Palestinian advocacy organization, specifically to discuss the electoral impact of U.S. policy toward Israel.

Hamid Bendaas, a representative for the group, said the DNC acknowledged in that meeting that "their own data also indicated that this policy was, in their assessment, a 'negative' for the 2024 election." 

Two additional senior IMEU Policy Project members independently confirmed that the DNC reached the same conclusion.

Axios separately verified that Democratic officials involved in the analysis found the Gaza issue hurt the party's appeal with certain voter blocs.

Harris spent much of 2024 trying to navigate Israel-Gaza without alienating either side. She expressed firm support for Israel while also calling for a ceasefire and voicing empathy for Palestinian civilians.

It was a strategy that failed to satisfy the pro-Palestinian wing of the party, which is largely made up of younger voters and older progressives who had already grown skeptical of the administration's backing of Israel, and proved particularly difficult to retain.

The autopsy appears to suggest that the party’s ability to succeed in the future requires it to be unequivocally anti-Israel.

DNC spokesperson Kendall Witmer denied the claim that findings related to Israel are driving the suppression of the report; however, even Kamala Harris seems to have confirmed the autopsy report’s findings.

During an event for her 107 Days book tour, Harris said the administration “should have done more” and “should have spoken publicly” about its criticism of Netanyahu’s handling of the war.

In the memoir, she wrote that Biden’s “perceived blank check” to Israel hurt her 2024 campaign and revealed she had privately urged him to show greater empathy for Gazan civilians even as she refused to break with him publicly. 

Democrats are now staring at an uncomfortable reality: their internal diagnosis is pushing them further down an explicitly anti-Israel path, and now everyone knows it.

 

Tyler Durden Mon, 02/23/2026 - 20:30

Student ICE Protests Lead To Lockdowns, Debate Over Discipline In Pennsylvania Schools

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

School officials ordered two eastern Pennsylvania schools into lockdown on Feb. 20, while dozens of students left the schools and became unruly. The move came after officials directed the students to cancel their planned protest against Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations.

High school students gather for an anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement protest outside the Minnesota Capitol in St. Paul on Jan. 14, 2026. Octavio Jonees/AFP via Getty Images

Quakertown High School and Quakertown Elementary School, about 50 miles north of Philadelphia, were locked down for nearly two hours.

School officials took the action after police notified them that high schoolers, who had left the building without permission, “were engaging in unsafe and disruptive behavior in town,” acting Superintendent Lisa Hoffman wrote on the Quakertown Community School District website.

Her statement provides no further details about the students’ behavior, but CBS News reported that five students were arrested.

Video footage posted on X shows Quakertown police struggling to put a person into the back of a police SUV as a crowd mills around and some people shout. When an ambulance arrives, a man in plain clothes exits an unmarked vehicle, dabbing what appears to be a bloody nose while officers ask whether he is OK.

School officials said they were waiting for more information from the police regarding reports of students’ actions. A Quakertown police sergeant told The Epoch Times that he was not permitted to release a statement from the borough’s police administration.

Earlier in the day, Quakertown school officials had notified families and students that a planned “student-led walkout should no longer occur,” Hoffman wrote. District leaders made that decision after consulting with law enforcement over “a potential safety concern” in connection with the walkout.

However, in defiance of that directive, about 35 Quakertown High School students left the building at about 11:30 a.m. Immediately, administrators worked with police and locked down the high school and the elementary school, stopping anyone from entering or leaving the buildings, Hoffman said.

“Students in both schools maintained their normal school day activities,” Hoffman wrote, and the lockdown was lifted at about 1:15 p.m.

Meanwhile, in Spring Township, near Reading, Pennsylvania, the Wilson School District issued a statement addressing a widely circulated video showing Daniel Weber, principal of Wilson High School, telling student protesters that they would be suspended if they did not return to class.

In response to “numerous” phone calls and emails about the video, Superintendent Chris Trickett posted a statement on Feb. 19, a day after Weber addressed the group amid an unauthorized walkout.

Trickett said the video “captures only a portion of the interaction between school staff and students.”

Further, he wrote, “The situation was particularly challenging because we had been informed that the demonstration would not take place.”

A careful review of the circumstances revealed that no one was disciplined for expressing political views, the superintendent said. Rather, disciplinary action was based on violations of the student handbook, including “leaving class or the building without permission,” he said.

“Longstanding legal guidance, including the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Tinker v. Des Moines, affirms that students do not ’shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate,'” Trickett wrote, referring to that 1969 landmark ruling.

However, Trickett wrote, “the Court made clear that schools may take action when conduct materially disrupts the educational environment or compromises student safety.” Further, schools can and must regulate demonstrations “in alignment with school rules and policies,” he said.

“Our response reflects this balance, between protecting student expression and fulfilling our responsibility to maintain safe and effective school operations,” Trickett said.

Tyler Durden Mon, 02/23/2026 - 20:05