Zero Rss

Airspace Lockdown Looms: US Warns Americans Get Out Of Mideast As Iran Targets Kuwait Again

There were no Friday night into Saturday morning US attacks on Iran, after President Trump warned he has given an order to hit Iran 'hard' - though didn't disclose a timeline. Friday reports in The Wall Street Journal, CNN, and Axios strongly suggested that large US strikes would commence at some point this weekend, as the region remains on edge.

The only new and recent attacks have been more apparent Iranian drone strikes on Kuwait. Kuwait’s Foreign Ministry on Saturday has confirmed Iran’s "continued aggression" against it after a drone attack earlier targeted "vital installations".

Kuwait City file image

The ministry called out the attacks as a "flagrant violation" of Kuwait’s sovereignty which reveal a "determination to persist in a hostile approach." It said the country reserves the right to “take all necessary measures” to protect its security and resources.

According to some details in The Wall Street Journal:

Iran fired a drone barrage into Kuwait on Saturday, hitting a U.S. ally following President Trump’s vow to intensify military strikes in a rapidly expanding Middle East war.

Kuwait said it shot down the Iranian volley, but the renewed fire added more tension to a region bracing for more conflict. Trump ordered the military to launch a fresh attack on Iran to bring Tehran to the negotiating table, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday.

U.S. embassies in the Middle East told Americans to consider departing the region. Airlines are extending flight cancellations to Arab Gulf states, which have spent decades building themselves up as international airport hubs. The U.S. warned airspaces may soon be closed. 

Ahead of likely reviewed US attacks on Iran, which could possibly involve Israel too, the US Department of State has re-issued an urgent travel warning for the entire Middle East region, saying "Americans in the region should consider departing, or be prepared to depart should there be escalation."

"Americans outside the Middle East should seriously reconsider travel to and through the region," it said on X Saturday, adding that "Iran and groups supportive of Iran may target other US interests overseas or at locations associated with the United States and Americans throughout the world."

President Trump had made clear on Friday while at Camp David his view that the Iranians can't be trusted, are 'dishonorable' - and so he's not pursuing talks.

And then a late Friday CBS report sounded the alarm of more escalation, saying that "The United States and Israel are planning what would be one of the harshest bombing campaigns to date against energy infrastructure targets in Iran, multiple sources told CBS News, with strikes possible throughout the weekend."

The report added, "There was some discussion about trying to conclude by the time financial markets open Monday because of concern about how the bombings will affect the U.S. and global economy, but an end point wasn't locked in."

Earlier this week there were reports of Trump exploding at his own advisors amid ongoing debates about how the crisis should be handled, and finding an exit strategy. Likely the word 'quagmire' can increasingly be heard around Washington. Trump officials have sought to bat down criticisms of getting the US stuck in another forever war in the Middle East.

Middle East: Americans currently in the Middle East should exercise caution and heightened vigilance and should be prepared for flight cancellations, periodic airspace closures, and potential travel disruptions. Some airlines in the region have postponed resumption of earlier… pic.twitter.com/d1ZmzRBBHN

— TravelGov (@TravelGov) August 1, 2026

"Well, they always want to talk, but they break their words so often," Trump said Friday at Camp David of the Iranians, putting his frustration on display later adding: "All they do is make me angry."

Also, key line from a recent WSJ report points to where things are likely headed: "Some U.S. officials believe Iran will continue to drag out negotiations, banking that Trump will abandon his war efforts in the long term in the face of mounting domestic political opposition."

Tyler Durden Sat, 08/01/2026 - 14:35

22 EU Leaders Demand "Immediate Action" As Migrant Invasion Raises Fear Of Hybrid Warfare

Summary:

• 22 EU Leaders Demand "Immediate Action"
• Italy Suspends Schengen Travel Agreement With Spain After Horrifying Ceuta Invasion
• Spain's Border Invasion Is An Optics Disaster For Open-Border Democrats
• Crazy Footage Shows Migrants Rampaging, Breaking Into Homes After Invading Spain

22 EU Leaders Demand "Immediate Action" To Spanish Enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla Invasion 

European leaders criticized Madrid's socialist government as its open-border policies unraveled for the world to see.

The invasion of the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla by 50,000 military-aged men from Morocco exposed the dire consequences of nation-killing mass-migration policies promoted by socialist regimes, which have long eroded national sovereignty across the entire continent. 

For Europe, the latest border breach represents one of the clearest warnings yet that uncontrolled mass migration has evolved from a political dispute into a full-blown national security crisis.

Hours after the invasion, Italy's Interior Ministry suspended Schengen free-movement rules with Spain and ordered the closure of air and maritime borders between the two countries, citing national security concerns.

The list of European leaders criticizing Spanish Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez is growing on Saturday, as 22 EU leaders have now signed on to a demand for an "immediate and coordinated European response" to the invasion into Ceuta and Melilla.

BREAKING:

The prime ministers of 22 out of 27 EU member states have written a joint letter to the EU, demanding an emergency summit over the invasion of illegal migrants in Ceuta.

They are outraged by the recent ruling of the Spanish Supreme Court:

🇮🇹 Italy
🇩🇪 Germany
🇩🇰… pic.twitter.com/cCqEEcY45l

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) August 1, 2026

"We cannot allow uncontrolled mass crossings, the instrumentalization of migration or other hybrid threats to create the perception that illegal entry into the European Union is possible," EU leaders, including Denmark's Mette Frederiksen, Italy's Giorgia Meloni and Germany's Friedrich Merz, wrote in a letter published on X by Denmark's Ministry of State.

PM Frederiksen: "Together with @GiorgiaMeloni and 20 colleagues we demand immediate action from the EU to discuss further initiatives about the alarming situation in Ceuta. Control of our borders is paramount. All measures must be considered to ensure the safety of Europeans.”

— Statsministeriet (@Statsmin) August 1, 2026

Danmark og Italien kræver øjeblikkelig handling i forhold til EU’s ydre grænser pic.twitter.com/XWHC8WQYKd

— Statsministeriet (@Statsmin) August 1, 2026

Sánchez and Spain's socialists are already feeling the impact of a negative information campaign that has spread across the West. The Trump administration is using the crisis as a warning to American voters ahead of the midterms that socialists gaining power would risk reopening the US border crisis. Political pressure on Sánchez will intensify further if illegal crossings resume or illegals reach mainland Europe.

The most likely pathway is, therefore, containment followed by political blowback against socialist parties in Madrid and across the bloc, rather than an immediate collapse of Schengen. Any second mass surge, however, would only suggest the weaponization of migration against Europe; in other words, asymmetric warfare. 

The open-ended question is who, if anyone, on the Moroccan side financed, organized, and facilitated the invasion.

Crazy Footage Shows Migrants Rampaging, Breaking Into Homes After Invading Spain

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity News,

Nearly 50,000 military-aged men stormed the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla from Morocco in a single day. What followed was not "asylum-seeking." It was open looting, home invasions, vehicle burnings, and street chaos while Spanish authorities largely stood aside.

Spain's socialist government under Pedro Sánchez had already rolled out mass regularisation schemes and refused to treat the border as a national emergency.

The result played out in real time across the North African territories that form the European Union's only land borders with Africa.

Estimates from Spain's Interior Ministry and local sources put the number who crossed into Ceuta alone at around 49,000 in 24 hours - roughly equivalent to the U.S. troop presence in the Middle East.

Ceuta's president Juan Jesús Vivas described the situation as "absolutely unsustainable" and a "total humanitarian and social emergency," noting reception centres were already saturated and more than 200 arrivals a day had become routine in the preceding period.

Reports have also suggested that the influx was so severe that at least 19 to 34 migrants died in the waters or in stampedes at the Tarajal breakwater.

???? Spain's ?Interior Ministry estimates ?that about 49,000 illegal migrants crossed ?into Ceuta ?in the last 24 ?hours ?from ?Morocco

The vast majority of them are military-aged men

To put that into context, the U.S has around 50,000 troops deployed to the Middle East, and...

— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) July 31, 2026

Footage from the ground shows columns of young men pouring through streets, scaling fences, and swimming around coastal barriers.

In Melilla the scenes turned violent just as quickly. Migrants set vehicles ablaze after breaching the border fence.

Illegal immigrants set vehicles ablaze after breaching the border fence into Melilla, Spain. pic.twitter.com/gIwwxU1koq

— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) July 31, 2026

?? CAYÓ MELILLA | Luego de la toma de Cauta, los invasores tomaron el control de Melilla y en estos momentos están usurpando casas, robando, apedreando a Españoles e incendiando autos.

Se ruega a la ciudadanía a que no salga de sus propiedades, que estén preparados por posibles... https://t.co/I7Nmf1gCn1 pic.twitter.com/2w6ulBUFTn

— CHAD (@ChadAbrazo) July 30, 2026

There is obviously no processing of these arrivals anywhere for them to go. Further videos captured groups breaking into residential buildings, looting stores, and occupying private property.

? BREAKING: African migrants who just stormed into Spain are now BREAKING INTO HOMES of Spanish residents in Ceuta

It's going to get REALLY bad, and even worse, until the weak leadership brings in mass remigration.

This is what barbarians do. ALWAYS.pic.twitter.com/o3dwEOTWcU

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) July 30, 2026

Some clips show African migrants forcing entry into Spanish homes in Ceuta while residents look on helplessly.

As everyone could have guessed, many of the 50 000 illegal migrants who crossed into Ceuta and Melilla yesterday spent the night by breaking into homes, looting stores and clashing with the Spanish police

?? pic.twitter.com/JlzZrFAtEo

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) July 31, 2026

Sigo informado de lo que está ocurriendo en Ceuta, ciudadanos me pasan vídeos de cómo algunos de los que han pasado la frontera están empezando a romper ventanas y ocupar casas.

No es ningún bulo, lo que está ocurriendo en Ceuta es MUY GRAVE.

Necesitamos el apoyo del pueblo. pic.twitter.com/Op4oBQs5fl

— Salva Ortega (@_SalvaOrtega) July 30, 2026

? OMG. The 3rd world African invaders who stormed into Ceuta, Spain are now RAIDING HOMES as it is 1AM and the city is asleep

Not the barbarians, they're RANSACKING and PILLAGING.

Do not ever let this come to America. Socialists cannot win!pic.twitter.com/RasCLUIz8l

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) July 30, 2026

News footage highlighted crowds ofmilitary-agedd migrant men surrounding a Spanish woman who was visibly distressed as the men laughed and closed in around her - an image that has circulated widely as a symbol of the total collapse of order.

Esta imagen es durísima. Una española llorando mientras esta rodeada de inmigrantes ilegales. Que vergüenza todo. Este país no merece a la basura de gobernantes que tenemos. pic.twitter.com/CnIOcsb1OT

— Alt Right España ? (@AltRightEspan) July 31, 2026

A ver en que andan los médicos marroquíes que llegaron a España pic.twitter.com/LV1xkUJhpy

— Gian del 56% ????? (@Gianferreyra_) July 30, 2026

Se los ve muy amigables a los nuevos españoles, les hace falta casa, comida y mujeres, a prepararse... pic.twitter.com/fSp8beiuiz

— Abogadodijo (@AbogadoDijo) July 31, 2026

Local residents did not simply accept the invasion. In Ceuta, Spanish patriots took to the streets themselves to protect their neighborhoods and homes when official forces proved insufficient.

Groups of men formed ad-hoc patrols, confronting the influx directly.

?? Ceuta residents are now patrolling the streets themselves.

Follow: @europa pic.twitter.com/CzObUJGHzd

— Europa.com (@europa) July 31, 2026

? ?? ALERTE INFO : Des patriotes espagnols à Ceuta ont pris la rue pour PROTÉGER leur VILLE des ENVAHISSEURS et sont prêts à en découdre !

Respect total à ces gars qui refusent de laisser tomber leur terre. ?? pic.twitter.com/aLKsrcsSSW

— Wolf ? (@PsyGuy007) July 30, 2026

?? Thousands of North African migrants have flooded the streets of Ceuta.

Local residents are taking to the streets to protect their homes. pic.twitter.com/Mqv3fFsJnr

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) July 30, 2026

The Spanish response was a deployment of roughly 100 to 150 military personnel and additional police.

Orders, according to on-the-ground reports, were to hold position rather than aggressively close the border or remove the entrants. Armored vehicles appeared, yet the fence remained open in places, and the flow continued through the night.

One reporter on the scene at 4:30 a.m. described 100 people crossing every minute while the military presence did little to stem it.

?Ya estoy en Ceuta

Cuando son las 04h30 de la mañana, ahora misma están entrando 100 personas cada minuto
¡ESTOY ALUCINANDO!@periodistadigit pic.twitter.com/bAeLTW0F4O

— Bertrand Ndongo (@bertrandmyd) July 31, 2026

Despliegue de 100-150 militares, con órdenes de no agredir, de no hacer daño, de solo mantener la posición en la frontera. Mientras tanto, la valla abierta por ambos lados, y nadie (Ni siquiera el ejercito) tapona dicha puerta ni valla. Libre entrada.pic.twitter.com/0GckUiZ6RP

— BenethorR (@BenethorR) July 30, 2026

? NOW: It's 4:20 am in Ceuta, Spain, and Moroccan streets leading to the border crossing are GRIDLOCKED as THOUSANDS of Africans rush to join the invasion

Socialist Spanish PM Sanchez told the military to STAND DOWN, ensuring the invasion continues.

How much more will... pic.twitter.com/ZrOq7eliro

— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) July 31, 2026

?? Spanish military and police are helping migrants illegally enter Spain

Today Ceuta woke up with thousands of migrants breaking into people's homes and occupying them, while those who failed to become squatters slept on the streets. pic.twitter.com/Q9iKTfWrLt

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) July 31, 2026

? JUST NOW: Spain has ARMORED VEHICLES and the military in Ceuta following the invasion of military-aged African migrants by the thousands

Spain needs MASS REMIGRATION NOW! ??pic.twitter.com/rkt2adi1D2

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) July 30, 2026

BREAKING:

In Ceuta, Spanish military vehicles have been spotted moving toward the border with Morocco.

?? pic.twitter.com/p2kmcYkrrb

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) July 30, 2026

? NOW: Absolute CHAOS in the streets of Ceuta, Spain as police become OVERWHELMED while trying to round up all the African invaders

NO SIGN of ANY real military pushback.

THIS is what happens when you put socialists into power. pic.twitter.com/EPYiHIEIvY

— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) July 30, 2026

The situation at the border between Spain and Morocco is completely out of control. North African Muslim criminals attack civilians and police. Europe is under Islamic attack. pic.twitter.com/2NmRehlpax

— RadioGenoa (@RadioGenoa) July 31, 2026

It's 2am in Melilla and there are screams of ALLAHU AKBAR on the beaches as hundreds of Moroccan men are still coming in from the sea.

They come with no clothes, no water, no food...

This is not going to be pretty. https://t.co/NY4kNVu7nZ pic.twitter.com/nyuhZ6Thhs

— Kiera Diss (@KieraDiss) July 31, 2026

The scale and coordination point beyond spontaneous movement. Moroccan authorities were filmed emptying trucks full of young men near the Ceuta border.

Separate videos show convoys of trucks and buses ferrying thousands toward the frontier from towns an hour away.

Moroccan traffic police keeps directing thousands of illegal migrants toward the Spanish border fence in Ceuta.

This is a state-orchestrated invasion of Spain.

???? pic.twitter.com/PNZyAHEMMn

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) July 31, 2026

Facebook groups with tens of thousands of members openly shared routes, maps, equipment lists, and contact numbers, framing the crossing as a "liberation."

One widely shared clip asks the obvious questions: who feeds them, who sets the date and route, and who benefits?

?? Thousands of migrants are being transported in the backs of trucks straight to the Spanish border.

The video is from Moroccan Ain Lahcen, about an hour's drive from Ceuta. pic.twitter.com/2DHkxsuyA7

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) July 31, 2026

ESTO ES MUY GRAVE. Me llegan estas imágenes de cómo las autoridades marroquíes vacían camiones llenos de jóvenes cerca de la frontera con Ceuta.

Quien no quiera ver que se trata de una operación perfectamente preparada por el régimen, es que es ciego. pic.twitter.com/YpxFAaF7Wb

— Taleb Alisalem (@TalebSahara) July 30, 2026

Miles de marroquíes llegaron en camiones y autobuses a la frontera de Ceuta.

No es una crisis migratoria, es una marcha verde orquestada por Mohamed VI. pic.twitter.com/s0jICYRyHe

— David Santos (@davidsantosvlog) July 31, 2026

???? The CEUTA INVASION is being openly ORGANIZED on FACEBOOK

Groups with tens of thousands of members are sharing routes, maps, equipment tips, and phone numbers to coordinate the mass crossing. They call it a "liberation."

Their plan is clear: reach Ceuta, get to the... pic.twitter.com/ILZLGvhsDS

— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) July 30, 2026

Who feeds the thousands of men on their journey? Who dictates the route? The date?

This is not spontaneous. pic.twitter.com/C0w6hgZQdF

— Alex Armstrong (@Alexarmstrong) July 30, 2026

50,000 Men in one tiny corner of the World don't all just wake up simultaneously & decide to leave their family, home & country forever.

Nope – so the question is:-

Who organised it?
Who funded it?
Who instigated and directed it?
Who's managing it now?

Where are these 50,000...

— Concerned Citizen (@BGatesIsaPyscho) July 31, 2026

Moroccan border guards helping illegal migrants find the best way toward the Spanish border fence in Ceuta.

The Moroccan state is actively helping the invasion of Spanish territory. pic.twitter.com/W2hPX33JfK

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) July 31, 2026

Observers have noted the timing - coming after a Spanish Supreme Court ruling that limited immediate pushbacks for sea arrivals and against the backdrop of long-running territorial disputes over the enclaves.

Some speculate Morocco is testing Spain's resolve or seeking leverage. One analysis framed the surge as a potential path to forcing Spanish evacuation of the territories it has held for centuries.

I suspect Morocco will establish sovereignty over Ceuta and Melilla thru this "invasion".

Spain will be forced to evacuate their citizens from the African coast.

Spain's prime minister Pedro Sanchez will be humiliated to have lost territory Spain has held since the year 1580. https://t.co/orFO5vb1w4

— Wall Street Mav (@WallStreetMav) July 31, 2026

By Friday morning, a curious reverse movement also appeared. Hundreds of the same men began heading back toward Morocco on their own, citing hunger and the fact that the city was largely shut down.

???? Some Moroccan migrants who crossed into Ceuta are already returning home, describing conditions there as "only hunger and humiliation."

Follow: @europa pic.twitter.com/lVhoKoCHvW

— Europa.com (@europa) July 31, 2026

"We are hungry, we are going home," some said on camera.

?"Tenemos hambre, volvemos a casa"
¡Curiosa imagen, la que estamos viendo ahora mismo en Ceuta!

Cientos de inmigrantes están regresando a Marruecos por sus propios pies y sin ser coaccionados por nadie.
Cabe recordar que hoy es viernes y la ciudad está prácticamente cerrada. pic.twitter.com/BV3StU5vuZ

— Bertrand Ndongo (@bertrandmyd) July 31, 2026

The political fallout has already crossed the Mediterranean. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni called the images from Ceuta proof that uncontrolled illegal immigration poses a concrete threat to Europe's borders and said Italy was prepared to take extraordinary measures, including suspension of Schengen with Spain.

Matteo Salvini demanded the same.

In France, Marine Le Pen insisted on immediate reinforcement of border controls and, if she wins power, restriction of free movement to EU nationals only.

Marion Maréchal described the events as a genuine migrant invasion that requires ending the current Schengen framework.

Finland, Sweden and Denmark also announced Support for the move.

???? Finland has officially announced support for Italy's proposal to suspend Spain from the visa-free Schengen Area after the massive migration invasion in the Spanish North African enclave of Ceuta.

Finnish Interior Minister Mari Rantanen backed the move, saying Spain... pic.twitter.com/DCin6AlPOF

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) July 31, 2026

?BREAKING: Denmark's Prime Minister has demanded the EU considers suspending Spain from Schengen over Cueta migrant invasion

All European nations are now turning on Pedro Sánchez's Spain. ???? pic.twitter.com/G1SxRnjcXq

— Inevitable West (@Inevitablewest) July 31, 2026

?BREAKING: Sweden has now joined threats to SUSPEND the Schengen Area agreement with Spain following the illegal migrant invasion of Ceuta

Sánchez's Spain is being boycotted. pic.twitter.com/ABvXFRQrsR

— Inevitable West (@Inevitablewest) July 31, 2026

Some think it's too little too late, however.

All of Europe's "center-right" politicians are suddenly posting about protecting the borders in reaction to Ceuta.

Infuriating. All of you are complicit in this. You never did anything to stop mass migration. You facilitated it.

Don't think you can jump ship now. We know who...

— Eva Vlaardingerbroek (@EvaVlaar) July 31, 2026

Sánchez's government has spoken of "solutions" and "cooperation" while deploying limited forces and rejecting a formal national emergency declaration.

The footage from Ceuta and Melilla shows what that approach produces: overwhelmed police, residents forced to defend their own streets, homes occupied, and a clear message to the next wave that the door remains open.

Europe's external border has been tested in the most public way possible. The question now is whether any government still willing to enforce it remains.

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

Tyler Durden Sat, 08/01/2026 - 14:10

The Real Threat To Young Americans' Jobs Isn't AI. It's The National Debt...

Authored by Ken Buck via The Epoch Times,

The rapid proliferation of artificial intelligence and supercomputing technologies has many Americans worried about the future of their careers. In a survey last month, more than half of U.S. workers expressed concern that AI could take their job or the job of a family member. Another survey in December found that almost 60 percent of young people believe AI poses a threat to their job prospects.

Americans are not naive. They realize that fast-evolving technologies will disrupt how we do business, just like the Industrial Revolution replaced blacksmiths and the horse and buggy. Many young people, particularly, are already pivoting toward “AI-proof” career fields that promise long-term stability.

However, while concerns about AI automation have dominated headlines and sucked the oxygen out of the room, a bigger, more immediate threat to Americans’ job prospects and wages continues to go virtually ignored: That is the crowding-out effect of the rising federal debt on private investment.

Our national debt is not a theoretical boogeyman. It’s a bona fide job-killer that is impeding economic growth and driving up costs on everyday families. And it will only get worse the longer it is ignored.

An analysis by Ernst & Young projects that on the 2025 debt path, which has accelerated in the current fiscal year, the United States will lose over 1 million jobs by 2035, 2.7 million by 2055, and 3.6 million by 2075. These losses will disproportionately impact young people, who are more sensitive to labor market conditions.

At the same time, evidence indicates that the “crowding-out” effect of the national debt—whereby the high cost of servicing the debt pushes investment into Treasury bonds instead of private, job-creating capital—will reduce income growth by 16 percent between now and 2055.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office pegs that number even higher. A 2023 report estimates that the rising debt will cut income growth by a third, or more than $14,000, over the next three decades. It notes that every dollar of federal borrowing causes a 33-cent reduction in private investment.

In other words, our national debt and the interest costs that accompany it are stifling job creation and wage growth, and the situation will only get increasingly worse as our federal debt load continues to balloon.

What’s more, the interest on our national debt—which costs about $2.8 billion per day and is projected to grow to nearly $6 billion per day by 2036—is driving up borrowing costs for consumers, exacerbating the affordability crisis. A Yale Budget Lab report found that every 1-point increase in the permanent deficit relative to GDP adds between $600 and $1,240 per year in loan costs for the median U.S. home.

Sadly, young people bear the worst of these job losses, wage stagnation and borrowing cost increases. Last August unemployment among 20- to 24-year-olds peaked at over 9 percent, more than double the general rate of 4.3 percent. Since 2023, younger Americans’ job-market optimism has fallen 23 points, similar to the Great Recession—which caused millennials to earn about 20 percent less over their careers, with roughly half the wealth of their parents at the same age.

Coupled with Social Security’s 2032 depletion date, all these factors are squeezing young workers from every angle: disappearing jobs and lower wages today, and a shrinking safety net tomorrow.

Our massive national debt and the significant costs it imposes on ordinary Americans is a problem of Washington’s own making. It will take leaders with political courage to address it—leaders who are willing to say no to reckless spending our country can’t afford, even when it may cost them their job.

Government spending builds dependence on the welfare state and obstructs private-sector growth, consolidating power. A powerful government that “provides” for all, picks winners and losers, and usurps personal liberties.

There’s only one problem: This socialist vision doesn’t work. It never has. That’s because government doesn’t create wealth; private enterprise does. As Winston Churchill famously explained, “The inherent vice of Capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.”

Young people are not wrong to worry about the economic disruptions AI could bring about, but our out-of-control national debt is the bigger, more pressing elephant in the room. And we cannot afford for lawmakers to kick the can down the road.

Tyler Durden Sat, 08/01/2026 - 13:25

Verizon Blames 'Human Error' For Burying A Jack Smith Subpoena From Congress

Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and fifteen colleagues sent a letter to Verizon on Thursday demanding the telecom giant explain how a 2023 grand jury subpoena tied to Jack Smith's "Arctic Frost" investigation vanished from its own paperwork for more than two years - only to resurface after the company chalked the omission up to "human error."

The letter, addressed to Verizon CEO Dan Schulman, is the latest turn in Grassley's monthslong excavation of Arctic Frost - the Biden-era FBI/DOJ probe-turned-Trump-prosecution that has already produced a House criminal referral for Smith himself, revelations that his team accessed the actual text messages of 44 lawmakers, and now a fight over what one of the country's largest phone companies knew and sat on.

What Subpoena?

Back in October 2023, Grassley asked Verizon to search its files for every DOJ or federal law enforcement request touching Senate devices between January 2016 and October 2023, part of his long-running Crossfire Hurricane oversight. Verizon wrote back that it generally keeps legal process on file for four years and had no records predating October 2019.

What it didn't mention: a May 25, 2023 grand jury subpoena issued by Smith's Arctic Frost team for senators' phone toll records, including two numbers belonging to the Senate Sergeant-at-Arms.

Congress didn't learn the subpoena existed until 2025, when Verizon told Grassley's office the 2023 omission came down to "human error." Grassley isn't satisfied with that. His new letter wants to know whether Verizon actually found the subpoena during its 2023 search and stayed quiet, or genuinely missed a live federal legal demand sitting in its own compliance files for two years.

Two of the numbers swept up in that May 2023 subpoena weren't just any senators' lines - they belonged to the Senate Sergeant-at-Arms. Under a contract Verizon signed with the Senate in May 2022, that's supposed to trigger automatic notice to the SAA any time a Senate device or line gets subpoenaed. Grassley's letter effectively asks how a contractually mandated notification simply never happened.

There's also a significant timing gap to explain. The gag orders that typically accompany these subpoenas run about a year. If a standard gag applied here, it would have lifted by mid-2024 - well over a year before Verizon finally volunteered the "human error" explanation in 2025. Once free to speak, nothing stopped Verizon from coming forward. It didn't, until Grassley's office came asking.

What Grassley wants - and by when

The letter, co-signed by Investigations Subcommittee Chairman Ron Johnson (R-WI) and fourteen other senators, demands Verizon:

• Disclose the exact dates Schulman, Hans Vestberg, Craig Silliman, and Vandana Venkatesh were first told about the May 2023 subpoena
• Turn over internal records from May 2023 through October 2025 discussing whether Verizon believed it had a duty to notify Congress or the SAA
• Explain, in more than two words, what "human error" actually means

Verizon has until August 13 to respond. (Schulman only took over as CEO in October 2025, meaning he wasn't at the helm for either the original subpoena or Verizon's flawed 2023 response - which is exactly why senators want to know precisely when he was personally briefed.)

Twelve of the sixteen senators who signed the letter - Grassley included - had their own phone toll records or text messages swept up by Smith's investigators. For most of the people demanding answers here, this isn't abstract oversight.

Other Carriers In The Crosshairs

Verizon isn't the only carrier under scrutiny. Grassley and Johnson's joint oversight has identified more than 400 Republican individuals and organizations swept into the broader Arctic Frost dragnet - including, per Grassley's disclosures, Turning Point USA, founded by the late Charlie Kirk. Separately, the two chairmen have tallied 84 Arctic Frost-related subpoenas sent specifically to Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile, ten of which sought toll records for 20 sitting or former GOP members of Congress.

Notably, Verizon complied with Smith's subpoenas while AT&T pushed back - a contrast Senate Judiciary Republicans have highlighted approvingly. The subpoenas were accompanied by gag orders signed by Judge James Boasberg, an Obama appointee who has repeatedly clashed with the Trump administration on unrelated matters. The House Judiciary Committee, under Chairman Jim Jordan, has opened its own parallel probe into the telecoms.

Smith, for his part, has called the entire controversy overblown, maintaining his office's collection was lawful and noting that special counsel Robert Hur similarly obtained President Biden's toll records, and that DOJ under Trump's first term seized phone records belonging to Reps. Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell.

Last month we reported on DOJ records showing Smith's team bypassed the department's own privilege-screening "filter team" and directly accessed text messages between 44 members of Congress - from both parties - and Trump White House officials including Mark Meadows and Kash Patel, in apparent tension with Smith's own sworn testimony that his office sought "just toll records." Weeks later, House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan escalated matters further, referring Smith to the Justice Department for possible criminal prosecution over the same records dispute.

Verizon's August 13 deadline will determine whether this becomes another entry on Grassley's growing pile of unanswered questions, or the start of the same reckoning AT&T and T-Mobile executives already faced before the Judiciary Subcommittee earlier this year. Either way, sixteen senators - a dozen of whom found their own names in Jack Smith's files - aren't inclined to let it drop.

Tyler Durden Sat, 08/01/2026 - 12:50

Leftists Now Claim US And Israel Behind The Migrant Invasion Of Spain

A clear pattern is emerging:  When the political left or their favorite pet migrants wreak havoc and commit heinous crimes, the immediate canned response from the activist fold is to blame the "right wing" or blame those devious Israelis.  Why do they do this?  Because it works. 

Progressive politicians and third world invaders always seem to dodge accountability while conservative movements in-fight over the source of the problem. 

There a people on both sides of the aisle that maintain a distaste for Israel, sometimes to the point that they attribute almost godlike abilities to the Israeli government.  They seem to be downright omnipresent; everywhere all at once and always ten steps ahead.  It's positively astounding.  

Strategists within leftist and elitist movements understand very well that many conservatives and independents are suspicious of Israeli influence and they use this built-in paranoia as a weapon to divert attention away from their own machinations.  While there are plenty of valid criticisms to be made against Israel, some claims dive deep into the absurd.

For example, the political left is spreading a new narrative across social media asserting that the migrant invasion of Spain's Ceuta enclave is part of a vast US/Israeli conspiracy to destroy the country.  In other words, they believe that tens-of-thousands of Muslim migrants are taking marching orders from a Jewish-run government. 

Truly, this is an unprecedented level of progress in Islamic/Israeli relations.

Spain's Transportation Minister supported the theory on social media while Gabriel Rufián, a spokesperson from the Spanish Congress, asserted that it was the US and Israel flooding Europe with migrants to "blackmail" the country.  Meanwhile, Hollywood actor Javier Barden took to Instagram to claim that the Israelis and the "far right" in the US were "turning migration into a weapon" to harm Spain and to make Muslim migrants look bad. 

Hollywood actor Javier Bardem shares Instagram post blaming ISRAEL for 50,000 Moroccan migrant men storming into Spanish territory.

“Spain has been Europe’s loudest voice against Israeli and US war crimes in Palestine, Lebanon and Iran.”

The actor reposted an Instagram post… pic.twitter.com/BYiYxYOehM

— Oli London (@OliLondonTV) July 31, 2026

It should be noted that the level of projection here is off the charts, but we'll get to that in a moment.

The "evidence" used to support this theory is based on two incidents:  A speech by Benjamin Netenyahu from April in which he accused Spain of waging a “diplomatic war” against Israel. He concluded with words to the effect:

“I am not prepared to tolerate this hypocrisy and this hostility. I do not intend to allow any country to wage a diplomatic war against us without paying an immediate price.” 

The fact that Morocco is a member of the Abraham Accords is also used to play up the theory that Morocco is taking orders from the Israelis.  However, Netanyahu's statements were in direct reference to ambassador recalls and lawsuits waged by Spain.  The "immediate price" was the removal of Spanish representatives from the Civil-Military Coordination Center which is working to secure a ceasefire in Gaza. 

There is zero evidence that the US or Israel is working with Morocco to organize a Muslim invasion of Spain, though such a feat of cooperation with Islamic migrants would be quite impressive.  

Another piece of evidence used to support the idea of an Israeli engineered migration event is a post on Twitter from 2019 by Netenyahu's son (Yair Netanyahu) in which he specifically cites Ceuta as a place Muslims should invade.  Surely, this is damning evidence...

Dear Arabs and Muslims. Want to free occupied Arab Islamic lands? Here’s a good start! pic.twitter.com/Ci5R0dOXN7

— Yair Netanyahu🇮🇱 (@YairNetanyahu) May 25, 2019

Context matters, however, and correlation is not causation.  This post was made as a rhetorical jab in direct response to a debate with Spanish officials over the West Bank and the accusation that Israel is a "colonial power" that should leave the region.  Yair, in a bid to expose Spain's hypocrisy, pointed out that their definition of "colonialism" also applied to their lands held in Northern Africa, including Ceuta. 

In other words, he was arguing that if it's okay to demand that the Israelis give up lands in the West Bank to Muslims, then it's fair to demand that Spain give up their land holdings in Ceuta to Muslims.  One can disagree with the comparison made in the post, but it's not some genius attack plan laid out seven years in advance to destroy Spain.  

🇪🇸 A woman in Ceuta describes being surrounded and harassed by dozens of Moroccan migrants:

“I’m scared, I’m surrounded and trembling. We need help.”

“It’s catastrophic. Today it’s Ceuta, but tomorrow it’ll be the Canary Islands or Tarifa.”

Follow: @europa pic.twitter.com/D8tusyShgG

— Europa.com (@europa) July 31, 2026

It's important to set aside biases in geopolitics if one is to understand why things happen the way they do.  Understanding the truth requires evidence, not feelings and knee-jerk reactions.  

For anyone looking for the real culprits behind the mass third world invasion of Spain, they need look no further than Spain's own political leaders and their socialist policies.  It was the Spanish government that passed two separate amnesty measures that would give citizenship over half-a-million illegal migrants starting in 2026.  When you reward criminality en masse, more and more criminals are going to show up to abuse you.

Third world migrants will now pour into Spain under the assumption that the far-left government will simply pass another amnesty in the near future.

Another problem is a Spanish Supreme Court ruling from June which restricted "hot returns" (forced and immediate deportations) of migrants who arrive by sea.  If you're wondering why so many thousands of migrants were swimming to Ceuta instead of simply crossing the border, this is why.  Spanish courts created a loophole which migrants falsely assumed they could exploit by swimming to Spanish territory. 

To drive the point home, Spanish Primer Minister Pedro Sánchez condemned the migration event while at the same time calling for "coexistence" with the invaders.  He enthusiastically supported more open immigration standards only months ago.

    

The reason why Spanish leftists are taking opposition to the Ceuta incident is because it garnered far too much international attention and exposed the greater multiculturalist left as destructive.  Head of the European Union, Ursula von der Leyen, was more concerned about how the event "looked" in the media than the dangers that naturally come with third world immigration.  

Again, the political left happily encourages open borders, they just don't want to take responsibility for what happens after the foreign invaders start pillaging and raping.  Hence, the blame game with the US and Israel.  By extension, no one forced these migrants to act the way they did in Ceuta.  No one made them attack locals, loot stores and homes, or burn down buildings.  They did all that on their own. 

Maybe it's time for socialists and third worlders to start taking the blame for a change.  No more excuses.  No more scapegoats.  

Tyler Durden Sat, 08/01/2026 - 12:15

Leopold Aschenbrenner's Short Seller Fairy Tale

Submitted by QTR's Fringe Finance

Leopold Aschenbrenner’s hedge fund, stuffed like the ass of a Thanksgiving turkey with every trendy AI name you could throw a dart at, reportedly suffered one of the most spectacular drawdowns of recent memory, losing roughly 67% in July after a series of heavily leveraged bets went violently against it.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the losses became severe enough to trigger margin calls, forcing the firm into emergency asset sales. Public positions were reportedly sold to Citadel to raise liquidity, and the fund even negotiated a multibillion-dollar sale of its prized Anthropic stake before apparently changing its mind the following morning.

It is, in every sense of the word, the kind of month that reminds people leverage is not just a way to make returns bigger…it’s a way to make your mistakes arrive all at once.

What’s remarkable isn’t that the fund blew up just weeks after everyone in the media started slobbering over Aschenbrenner as if he was some visionary for figuring out the “strategy” of buying crap featured daily on CNBC using leverage. Markets have been humbling overconfident investors since the Dutch were trading tulips. What’s remarkable is that, according to reports describing the investor letter, Aschenbrenner partially blamed short sellers for accelerating the collapse, likening the experience to a bank run:

Aschenbrenner partially blamed short sellers who targeted the firm’s positions for exacerbating the fund’s losses, the letter said. The letter compared Situational’s experience to a bank run. Aschenbrenner told investors that the firm had removed all leverage from the portfolio.

And that is where this story stops being about investing and starts becoming about accountability. There is perhaps no bigger bitch move in finance than levering yourself to the eyeballs into the most crowded, most euphoric, most narratively beloved sector on Earth, riding the momentum all the way to the top tick of a genuinely pornographic stock bubble, detonating your own portfolio when the inevitable correction arrives, and then looking around the room for someone else to blame.

That’s not what investors pay hedge fund fees for. They don’t wire you billions so you can discover, after the fact, that markets occasionally go down and that other participants are allowed to disagree with your positioning.

Let’s clear something up, because this myth refuses to die every goddamn market cycle: short sellers do not possess mystical powers to force stocks lower simply because they dislike them.

A short sale is not the financial equivalent of Voldemort casting a spell over the tape. A short seller borrows shares, sells them into the market, and eventually has to buy those same shares back. That’s the entire trade. If enough genuine buyers exist who are willing to absorb that selling pressure, the stock doesn’t go down, it goes up and the short seller gets obliterated. Ask me how I know.

We’ve watched this movie countless times. Tesla. GameStop. Nvidia. Countless biotech squeezes. The market has an extensive history of taking arrogant short sellers, introducing them to the concept of unlimited losses, and escorting them directly into bankruptcy.

The reason stocks collapse isn’t because shorts are somehow overpowering reality. Stocks collapse because the marginal buyer disappears. They collapse because valuations become impossible to justify. They collapse because the people who spent months insisting they would “buy every dip” suddenly become strangely unavailable once the dips become serious.

Shorts don’t create that dynamic. They participate in it. If they could simply dictate prices through force of will, every dedicated short seller would be richer than Warren Buffett, and every bubble in history would have ended before it began. Clearly that’s not how markets work.

What’s especially rich about blaming shorts is that leverage itself creates vastly more selling pressure than shorts ever could. Once your lenders start calling, you don’t get the luxury of diamond hands or inspirational letters about long-term conviction. Your positions get sold because they have to be sold. Every forced liquidation pushes prices lower, which triggers more margin calls, which produces more forced liquidations. It’s an ugly feedback loop that has existed for as long as people have borrowed money to speculate. That’s not market manipulation. That’s mathematics meeting risk management.

Or, in this case, mathematics meeting the complete absence of adequate risk management.

This wasn’t some unforeseeable meteor strike. AI stocks had become the most crowded trade in global markets. Valuations had detached from anything remotely resembling traditional fundamentals because everyone wanted exposure to “the future.” That doesn’t necessarily mean the companies are bad businesses. It does mean that expectations become impossibly high and positioning becomes dangerously one-sided. Every competent portfolio manager understands that crowded trades can reverse with astonishing violence precisely because everyone owns the same thing at the same time, often financed with borrowed money.

That’s supposed to be the point of risk management. You’re supposed to ask yourself, “What happens if I’m wrong?” You’re supposed to ask, “What happens if liquidity disappears?” You’re supposed to ask, “What happens if this correction is twice as bad as consensus expects?”

If the honest answer is, “My prime broker starts liquidating me,” then perhaps the position size deserved another look before the market did it for you.

Perhaps the most disappointing aspect of the reported letter is the instinct to externalize responsibility. Every market participant, CEO, investor and analyst deals with short sellers. Every market participant deals with volatility. Every market participant deals with critics, momentum reversals, liquidity squeezes, and crowded positioning. Those aren’t extraordinary circumstances. They’re literally the job description.

Professional portfolio management is not about predicting a future where nobody ever sells your favorite stock. It’s about constructing a portfolio that survives the future where they do.

Blaming shorts after a catastrophic drawdown is a bit like blaming gravity after jumping off a roof. Gravity was never hiding its intentions. It has behaved exactly the same way every single day since the beginning of time. The only surprise is that someone apparently built an investment strategy around the assumption that this time it would be different.

Markets are ruthless teachers because they don’t care how compelling your narrative is, how luxurious your head of hair is, how much CNBC worships you, or how impressive your reputation has become. They don’t care whether you’ve become an AI celebrity, whether Silicon Valley hangs on your every word, or whether investors think you’ve cracked the code. They simply tally the gains and losses. When the leverage becomes excessive, the bill always arrives. Sometimes it arrives all at once.

Welcome to reality, young man.

--

QTR’s Disclaimer: Please read my full legal disclaimer on my About page here. This post represents my opinions only. In addition, please understand I am an idiot and often get things wrong and lose money. I may own or transact in any names mentioned in this piece at any time without warning. Contributor posts and aggregated posts have been hand selected by me, have not been fact checked and are the opinions of their authors. They are either submitted to QTR by their author, reprinted under a Creative Commons license with my best effort to uphold what the license asks, or with the permission of the author. I cannot guarantee the accuracy of all facts and figures included in this article though I made my best effort to get them right. I have been wrong before and will be wrong again, and encourage you to always double check, do your own research and speak to a licensed financial professional.

This is not a recommendation to buy or sell any stocks or securities, just my opinions. I often lose money on positions I trade/invest in. I may add any name mentioned in this article and sell any name mentioned in this piece at any time, without further warning. None of this is a solicitation to buy or sell securities. I may or may not own names I write about and are watching. Sometimes I’m bullish without owning things, sometimes I’m bearish and do own things. Just assume my positions could be exactly the opposite of what you think they are just in case. If I’m long I could quickly be short and vice versa. I won’t update my positions.

As of May 20, 2026 I am attempting to no longer actively trade (read my story here). My investing/saving is mostly done by recurring contributions mostly to sector ETFs and a few select equities, trusted third parties who oversee my accounts, and advisors. Such advisors or funds, through individual equities, options, index funds, mutual funds, ETFs, or other securities, may have positions in, exposure to, or holdings of names mentioned herein that I know nothing about. Basically, via index funds, ETFs and individual equities it is possible I could own, have exposure to, or not own anything at any point. As of the same date, May 20, 2026, in an attempt to lead a healthier lifestyle, I’ve also excluded myself from fantasy sports, sports betting, online and in-person casinos and prediction markets.

And all positions can change immediately as soon as I publish this, with or without notice and at any point I can be long, short or neutral on any position. You are on your own. Do not make decisions based on my blog. I exist on the fringe. If you see numbers and calculations of any sort, assume they are wrong and double check them. I failed Algebra in 8th grade and topped off my high school math accolades by getting a D- in remedial Calculus my senior year, before becoming an English major in college so I could bullshit my way through things easier.

The publisher does not guarantee the accuracy or completeness of the information provided in this page. These are not the opinions of any of my employers, partners, or associates. I did my best to be honest about my disclosures but can’t guarantee I am right; I write these posts after a couple beers sometimes. I edit after my posts are published because I’m impatient and lazy, so if you see a typo, check back in a half hour. Also, I just straight up get shit wrong a lot. I mention it twice because it’s that important.

Tyler Durden Sat, 08/01/2026 - 11:40

"I've Been Doxed": Lefty Podcaster Scott Galloway Rips Mamdani After Landing On Socialist's Rich Target List

Prominent liberal podcaster and NYU professor Scott Galloway, who can only be described as a "useful idiot" for helping legitimize far-left New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, appears to be awakening from his political delusion.

Galloway now says he has been "doxed" after realizing that the socialist movement he helped empower is publicly identifying wealthy property owners (read report), including himself, as political and financial targets.

"I've been doxed," Galloway said on the latest episode of the "Pivot" podcast. "I don't know if you've heard, but Mayor Mamdani has decided to release a list of 950,000 residences, including addresses and names, that might be eligible for his pied-à-terre tax."

"I don't love this," co-host Kara Swisher agreed. "I can't say I love this. It feels a little bit like doxing. Just tax them and get on with it, is my feeling."

Related:

• NYC Councilwoman Sounds Alarm: Mamdani's Property Database Puts Wealthy Homeowners In Crosshairs Of "Luigi-Worshipping Leftist Thugs"

Galloway read out the definition of doxing to Swisher as "publishing private identifying information to expose someone to public pressure or harm without their consent," and pointed out that while he's not the biggest fan of the tax, he is certainly not a fan of how the far left in City Hall essentially created a "wanted poster" for property owners.

"He's taken a legitimate source of tax revenue, and he's turning it into a wanted poster," Galloway continued. "The question I would have is, other than trying to identify and imply these people have done something wrong — and then, 18 months after a healthcare CEO was executed in the street, published the list — what is the upside here? Why is he doing this?"

Spencer Pratt, who has become a leading anti-Marxist voice, commented on the Fox News article detailing Galloway's break with the far-left Mamdani. He said, "The communist refers to this person as the 'useful idiot'—the gullible squish who foolishly supports the revolution, and only begins to understand his folly as he's being lined up against the wall. If you think you're safe from the commies because you vote blue, wake up."

The communist refers to this person as the “useful idiot”. The gullible squish who foolishly supports the revolution, and only begins to understand his folly as he’s being lined up against the wall. If you think you’re safe from the commies cuz you vote blue, wake up: https://t.co/qGNbnBI9yE pic.twitter.com/8U8eY2x6fd

— Spencer Pratt (@spencerpratt) August 1, 2026

Pratt is entirely correct, because somehow Galloway missed the fact that Mamdani and the rest of the Democratic Socialists of America are not progressive at all; in fact, they're formalist socialists whose goal is not affordability, but rather "overthrowing capitalism."

Anti-communist analyst Karlyn Borysenko recently published a five-tiered "rainbow cake" view of the American left, ranging from establishment Democrats who favor incremental reform within capitalism to revolutionary socialists seeking to abolish and destroy the nation from within.

DSA is very open about their stated goals:

Returning to Galloway, he warned that Mamdani is "making it harder for all progressives." He's not wrong. The Trump administration has already built the infrastructure and task forces needed to confront the radical left, while publicly declaring that fight before delegations from 65 nations in recent weeks. At the center of that effort is an anti-communist information campaign that is already underway.

Full Conversation: 

Perhaps Democrats should never have invited socialists, Marxists and, especially, the emerging "red-green alliance" into their DEI political kingdom.

Now the DSA and its Marxist allies, whose anti-American rhetoric increasingly reflects an effort to destroy the country from within, are becoming a liability for the entire Democratic Party. Some elements of this far-left movement may also intersect with foreign influence or subversion networks.

Tyler Durden Sat, 08/01/2026 - 11:05

Closed Borders Killing Western Union, Earnings Call Transcripts Reveal

Western Union CFO Matt Cagwin quietly acknowledged in yesterday’s earnings call that fewer border crossings under the Trump admin are chipping away at the remittance behemoth’s profits:

“New migration is the lifeline of our retail business. With borders closed, it is difficult to offset natural attrition… as consumers return home to their native countries,” Cagwin said.

WU has long been the dominant vampire skimming absurd fees off international remittances while providing no technological convenience that Venmo hasn’t already surpassed. It’s instead maintained its now-dwindling market share through lobbying, which is why it can charge a 40% for a South Africa-to-Botswana cash transfer:

Western Union charges as high as 40,11% for a ~$84 USD remittance from South Africa to Botswana. Data from the World Bank, Q2 2021.

The firm’s decline is continuing a trend since President Trump took office for his second term, during which he’s been markedly more hawkish on immigration, with the United States seeing net negative migration last year for the first time in over half a century.

For 2025, it was reported that remittances from the U.S. to Mexico declined almost 5% for the year. Last year’s trend appears to be accelerating.

On yesterday’s earnings call, Western Union CEO Devin McGranahan said that remittances from “U.S. to Mexico declined a little over 3% on a transaction basis in the quarter [Q2, 2026].” 

WU’s stock was down 15% on the day, following the news. CEO McGranahan also acknowledged that immigration policy was the core driver behind the revenue loss: 

“As you know, remittances in the Americas have faced meaningful pressure that began in late 2024, driven by the changes in immigration policy… It just means it will be difficult to get the business back to true growth without a meaningful change in immigration policy…”

Tyler Durden Sat, 08/01/2026 - 09:55

Germany Builds AI 'Racist Uncle' Robot To Indoctrinate Kids In Schools

Authored by an 'anonymous German teacher' via dailysceptic.org,

Täteropferumkehr is the German term for “victim blaming” – often hyphenated as Täter-Opfer-Umkehr to make it look slightly less clunky. In recent times, our political and media establishment have turned it into a sharp tool, employed with reference to both foreign and domestic politics.

Unsurprisingly, Germany’s woke Left – always eager to champion the alleged plight of the “oppressed” – views Israel, the only functioning democracy in the Middle East, as the ultimate perpetrator, while framing bloodthirsty Arab aggressors as the true victims. In 2025, five Berlin-based “activists” (four of whom openly identify as “they/them”) ransacked an Elbit Systems facility in Ulm, causing over a million euros in damage. Now standing trial in Stuttgart, they naturally view themselves as the victims.

One wonders what would happen if “roller-skating” Daniel, “music-making” Crow, “poetry-writing” Leandra, “community-organising” Vi, and “nature-loving” Zo were dropped onto the shores of Gaza. Would “they/them” receive a warm welcome from Hamas? The non-binary inmates might have gleaned an inkling of what radical Islamists have in store for them following the Islamist attack on the Berlin Pride parade last Saturday.

On the domestic front, we see an equally Orwellian exercise in doublethink. The one political party that has been systematically cut off from public funding, denied committee chairs, pilloried behind a political Brandmauer (“firewall”), and whose members suffer the lion’s share of physical assaults is routinely portrayed as the sole perpetrator.

The Alternative for Germany (AfD) is ceaselessly accused of peddling racism, revisionism and Russophilia – to name just a few of the slurs slung its way by the goody-two-shoes gatekeepers of the moral high ground.

The siren song of establishment polity, legacy media and state-funded NGOs has increasingly been amplified in secondary schools.

In North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany’s most populous state, one in five schools belongs to the taxpayer-funded “School Without Racism” network, backed by a leftist teachers’ union. Where these funds actually go is often opaque, but the encouraged “activism” almost always targets “Right-wing extremism” – which, in modern German parlance, simply means campaigning against the AfD.

Currently, state and federal authorities are in a panic over the prospect of the AfD winning an outright majority in upcoming state elections. Polls show support for the maligned party hovering above 40% in Saxony-Anhalt, which could easily translate into a parliamentary majority. Reiner Haseloff, a former Minister-President of the state, even resorted to scaremongering, hinting that secondary school diplomas from Saxony-Anhalt might no longer be recognised in other parts of Germany if the “wrong” party wins.

Often, the anti-AfD machinery operates more subtly. Before the last local elections, municipal authorities displayed posters and information for all mayoral candidates in my school’s foyer – well, almost all. The AfD candidate was conspicuously missing. When I asked the election official about this glaring omission, I was told the local AfD had failed to respond to the municipality’s request for information. When a colleague followed up with the local AfD branch, they confirmed they had never been contacted in the first place.

But the most ludicrous example of state-sponsored indoctrination in my area is an AI robot named “Navel”.

Developed by a PhD student at the local university in cahoots with the largely taxpayer-funded “Active Museum South-Westphalia”, the robot was programmed to impersonate a “racist uncle” at a family reunion, spouting anti-immigrant talking points.

Secondary school students were encouraged to “spar” with the divisive Dalek to hone their skills in rebutting Right-wing thought. To make the exercise even more absurd, the robot is built to look like a toddler and wears a woolly cap to “humanise” it.

Yet, despite the vast sums of money, resources and personnel poured into this apparatus by governments and their ‘civil society’ allies, the desired outcome remains elusive.

Marcel Fratzscher, a favourite economist of the establishment Left, recently lamented in Die Zeit that young men in particular are turning to the populist right because they “feel like losers of modernisation”.

His grim conclusion: “There is little remedy.”

So what does it mean when the concerted effort of the righteous left cannot turn the tide of sustained AfD support? Perhaps the commentariat, the wokerati and the creator of the unwittingly ironically named AI uncle “Navel” should engage less in navel-gazing and doublethink and more in recognising reality. Israel – not Hamas – is our ally; the AfD is a party like all others, entitled to the same privileges; and children in school must not be indoctrinated.

Perhaps we should send “Navel” to the “they/them” lot in jail for some instructive lessons. But they might refuse to engage with him so long as he declines to share his pronouns.

Tyler Durden Sat, 08/01/2026 - 09:20

Crude Inventories Have Fallen To "Precariously Low" Levels

U.S. crude inventories fell sharply last week as refineries ramped up production to capitalize on higher fuel prices following renewed conflict with Iran, according to Financial Times.

Commercial crude stockpiles declined by 7.2 million barrels, while the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) dropped another 3.8 million barrels. Refineries operated at 97% of capacity nationwide, with some Midwest facilities running at full capacity as exports to Asia and Europe increased.

FT writes that the drawdown comes as renewed fighting between the U.S. and Iran continues to disrupt oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz, forcing the U.S. to help offset reduced Middle Eastern supplies. Analysts warn that America is increasingly carrying the burden of stabilizing global oil markets.

"US crude inventories, both commercial and the SPR, have drawn down by nearly 20 per cent since early April. The US accounts for about 70 per cent of global onshore crude inventory draws over the past four months," said Matt Smith of Kpler.

"It has carried the burden of trying to keep oil prices in check over this period via SPR releases and higher exports, but stockpiles are rapidly depleting and this pace of draws cannot persist ad infinitum."

The SPR has now fallen to 307.7 million barrels, its lowest level in more than 40 years. While still above its estimated operational minimum of 180 million to 200 million barrels, analysts warn that continued depletion leaves the U.S. increasingly exposed to future supply shocks.

Commodity Context founder Rory Johnston described current crude and gasoline inventories as "precariously low."

Tyler Durden Sat, 08/01/2026 - 08:45

Britain's Problems Didn't Begin With Brexit

Authored by Jason Sorens via  The Daily Economy,

Ten years ago, Britons voted to leave the European Union, launching three and a half years of tumultuous negotiations and domestic political ructions, only subsiding after the UK’s official withdrawal in January 2020.

It’s tempting to see Brexit as a watershed moment in Britain’s political economy. Britons themselves now tend to regret the choice rather than affirm it, with narrow majorities affirming that Brexit has been “more of a failure” and supporting restoring free movement with the EU in exchange for single-market access.

Contrary to some forecasts, Brexit has been closer to an economic blip than a disaster. Figure 1 shows net disposable household income per capita in the UK and comparable countries. While Ireland has rocketed ahead of this whole group, it’s difficult to see any worse economic performance in the UK compared to France and Germany since 2020.

Figure 1: Disposable Income Over Time in the UK and Comparable Countries.

But this low bar—no worse than France or Germany—reflects the deeper ailment in British politics. Brexit was merely one episode in a long series of abdications of responsibility by British leaders.

Free-market Brexiteers like Daniel Hannan assured us that Brexit would allow the UK to deregulate and improve competitiveness:

“It’s 24 June 2025 …. The years that followed the 2016 referendum didn’t just reinvigorate our economy, our democracy and our liberty. They improved relations with our neighbours,” he forecast on June 21, 2016. He went on:

“The United Kingdom is now the region’s foremost knowledge-based economy. We lead the world in biotech, law, education, the audio-visual sector, financial services and software. New industries, from 3D printing to driverless cars, have sprung up around the country. Older industries, too, have revived as energy prices have fallen back to global levels: steel, cement, paper, plastics and ceramics producers have become competitive again.”

None of that happened. The UK never undertook deregulation commensurate with the new barriers that Brexit imposed, such as new customs paperwork and inspections for goods traveling between the UK and the Continent, and strict limits on Britons and Europeans moving to each other’s countries for work. According to a research briefing from the House of Commons Library, “most regulations made under the [UK law authorizing repeal of EU regulations] have not led to substantive policy changes.”

So much for Brexit’s oversold transformative potential. The real story Britons must grapple with is a nearly 20-year narrative of decline.

Britain had once outperformed its closest Continental peers on the back of a market-friendly economic model created by Thatcher, preserved by Major, and adapted by Blair. Since the disastrous premiership of Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Britain has sickened itself with the same maladies that have since left most of Western Europe stagnating.

Brown’s premiership, spanning 2007 to 2010, saw the government debt-to-GDP ratio increase 76 percent in just three years. All of that increase came from government spending, not tax cuts (taxes were raised at the high end and on some middle-income households). While the Great Recession caused government spending and debt to rise everywhere, Britain’s increase was much larger than that of France and Germany (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Government Debt to GDP Ratios in the UK, France, and Germany.

Another long-term legacy of Brown’s premiership has been the Equality Act, which introduced the language of “rights” to economic contracts. It mandates detailed fair employment protections across a broad range of protected categories, including a Marxist-inspired concept of equal pay for equal “demands” or “effort.” It is the legal basis under which some courts are now ruling that it is unlawful to pay men and women different wages in a single company even if they do different jobs.

The Conservatives took power, in coalition with the Liberal Democrats, from Brown’s Labour, but to soothe voters worried about a return of Thatcherism, successive Tory Prime Ministers maintained the high-tax, high-spending, high-regulation equilibrium.

Brown’s tax hikes had increased tax revenues to GDP from 32 to 33 percent. Despite a small top marginal rate cut, Conservative-led governments raised VAT and eventually, under Rishi Sunak, reversed cuts to corporate income taxes. By 2022, tax revenues to GDP stood at 35 percent.

One of the UK’s main economic policy advantages over the Continent has been a flexible labor market, but that is now under threat. The Blair government introduced a largely symbolic minimum wage, but the Tories hiked it to new heights, from £5.52 in 2007 to £11.44 in 2024 when Labour won back power, with inflation-adjusted rates rising inexorably since 2015. The UK minimum wage is now two-thirds of the median wage; that ratio is one of the highest in the OECD.

An example of Britons’ growing obsession with getting free stuff from the government is the explosion of the Motability scheme, which is supposed to give mobility-impaired disabled people the right to allocate some of their disability benefits toward leasing new cars. Eligibility for and participation in the program have exploded, to the point that a fifth of all new cars in the UK—and reportedly a full half of those in Northern Ireland—are leased through Motability. Motability itself is an ostensibly private nonprofit, but its monopoly on managing this welfare scheme has enriched it to the point of dispensing multimillion-pound bonuses to its executives.

The overall disability caseload in the UK has grown by 57 percent since 2005, rising from 7.4 percent of the population in May 2005 to 10.8 percent in May 2025. Most of that growth has been in just the last five years.

Benefits for pensioners have also exploded. In coalition with the Lib Dems, the Tories enacted the “triple lock,” growing social security benefits at the highest of earnings growth, CPI inflation, or 2 percent.

But it is seen as not nice in mainstream British discourse to question the expansion of welfare and especially cornerstones of politically correct regulation like the Equality Act.

British governments have failed to level with the British people. The punchbowl is gone. The money is simply not there. The debt vigilantes are at the door, with the British benchmark 10-year rate among the highest in the developed world (Figure 3).

Figure 3: 10-Year Bond Yields, Selected Countries, June 22, 2026.

Is the United States faring any better? Not much. At least the U.S. has had some real deregulation, but the fantasy of debt-fueled free lunches still reigns supreme in the minds of politicians and many voters.

Still, Britain stands out as a country where politicians have waved away tradeoffs and legislated feel-good rules that grab a few days of good press at the expense of long-term economic pain. Brexit was fantasy politics, to be sure, but that is something it shares with the politically correct Regime of Nice that has ruled the country for the past 20 years.

Tyler Durden Sat, 08/01/2026 - 08:10

Xi Tells PLA TO Build 'Intelligent Military System' As Beijing Leans Into Drones And AI

China's Xi Jinping told the People's Liberation Army this week to intensify the military application of artificial intelligence and unmanned systems, telling a Politburo study session that the force should build toward what the official readout called an "intelligent military system." The directive landed days before the PLA's ninety-ninth anniversary and squarely on the modernization targets Beijing has set for its centenary in 2027.

President Xi Jinping reviews troops during a massive military parade that showcased the PLA’s latest arsenal, in Beijing on September 3, 2025. Photo: Xinhua

According to the state news agency Xinhua, as noted by Bloomberg, Xi told the session that the PLA should strengthen the military application of unmanned intelligent technologies, deepen the development of networked information systems, and gradually build an intelligent military. The report singles out autonomous and AI-enabled capability as the direction of travel and ties it to the "intelligentization" doctrine that has guided PLA planning for years. Xi paired the technology push with a renewed anti-corruption drive inside the military and the familiar insistence that the armed forces answer, always, to the Party.

The Race With Washington

Obviously this is about geopolitical dominance. Beijing's public posture increasingly treats AI and unmanned platforms as the technologies that will reshape modern warfare, and Xi's remarks land while the United States pours its own money into military AI and autonomous systems. Analysts who track the PLA describe intelligentization as a whole-of-nation effort, mobilizing not just the armed forces but the country's scientific and industrial base, with the most ambitious version of the goal being to match or exceed US military capabilities by mid-century.

Meanwhile, reviews of Chinese research surfaced PLA-linked work using Western AI models, obtained through distillation, to train domestic defense tools, a reminder that the "intelligent military" Xi is describing is being assembled in part from the same frontier-model capabilities the West is trying to fence off through export controls.

It's no secret that unmanned and AI-enabled systems are a key priority for Chinese military modernization, and it it comes as Washington's own hawks are warning that permitting delays and data-center backlash could hand Beijing the edge in exactly this contest...

In short:

Tyler Durden Sat, 08/01/2026 - 07:35

Chaos Agent: Anthony Fauci Represents A System That Needs To Be Cleansed

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us

I think nothing enrages Americans more than a lack of accountability from government officials. Yes, it happens often, and the public hasn’t taken up torches and pitchforks (yet), but I would point out that these incidents are cumulative and they light a growing fire within the collective memory. Eventually, people are going to snap if they don’t see action taken to rectify past wrongs.

This week, Dr. Anthony Fauci faced a flurry of questions from the Senate Homeland Security Committee over his handling of the covid response as well as his involvement in the gain of function research which likely led to the creation of the viral variant that spread around the world and nearly triggered a permanent Orwellian police state.

Fauci pleaded the Fifth over 100 times.  It’s not a sign of confidence in his own innocence.

He knows he’s untouchable legally, but I think what the man fears most is public judgment, and he’s not going to offer any confirmation that conservatives and the alternative media were right about him all along.  Unfortunately, even with substantial evidence, there is very little that any congressional committee or even the Trump Administration can do about him.

Fauci is well protected, and not just by the sweeping pardon “signed” by Joe Biden which covers the Doctor back to 2014. No, Fauci is also protected by the system – The bureaucracy and the globalist network of which he is a member.  Fauci is a chaos agent and he served his purpose well. They’re not going to let him face punishment.  If they did, then they might find it harder to procure the cooperation and loyalty of other bureaucrats in future schemes.

There are a lot of commentators out there right now who are agitated by the idea that Fauci might escape penalties for his crimes, but I have to ask, what did they expect? Did they think that Biden’s pardon would simply be ignored?

It’s fascinating to me that so many folks in the alternative media and conservative movements tend to attack Trump every time he takes any action that might remotely bend constitutional rules. They warn with suspicion that he’s “becoming a dictator.” Then, those same people will froth cynically and blackpill when Trump doesn’t act like a dictator when it comes to their pet issues.

It’s rather hypocritical. It would be smarter to admit that Trump’s powers are limited, largely by the same bureaucracy that’s protecting Anthony Fauci. It’s the bureaucracy which constantly interferes with migrant deportations. The same bureaucracy that’s preventing the SAVE Act from being passed. The same system that censored us for years because we dared to share the truth.

Fauci is a prime example of the perversions of that system and why it needs to be cleansed, but he’s also just a symptom of a greater disease. Making an example out of him would be a step in the right direction, but it doesn’t solve the greater problem.  People need to stop waiting around for Trump to unilaterally “take down the deep state.”  He’s not in a position to do so.

For those who might have forgotten what really happened, at the start of 2020 the world was on the verge of a massive globalist coup, facilitated by hysteria surrounding the pandemic. By early 2020 I had written several articles covering the potential for a pandemic event being used by the establishment as a rationale for wider lockdowns of the population.

At this time, it was not clear if the coronavirus in Wuhan, China involved a microbe that was truly deadly, or if the threat was overblown. It didn’t really matter, the end game was the same. The goal, in my view, was to create enough fear and chaos to trigger an economic crisis and expedite a medical dictatorship. Once Joe Biden entered the White House, they nearly succeeded.

At the end of January 2020 I published an article titled ‘How Viral Pandemic Benefits The Globalist Agenda’. In that piece I noted:

“First, the notion that it [covid] was caused by Chinese citizens ‘eating bats’ or being exposed to a live animal market is rather ridiculous. We’ve seen NO hard evidence whatsoever that this is true, and I believe the narrative is a cover for the fact that the city of Wuhan where the virus outbreak began is the home of not one but TWO level 4 biohazard labs.

I have a hard time ignoring the strange ‘coincidence’ of the high level biohazard labs in Wuhan in favor of the idea that the virus was launched by chance due to the odd diets of central Chinese people. Given the evidence it appears that the coronavirus was gestated in a lab, not in someone’s bat and snake soup. In 2017, scientists outside of China warned that these labs were not secure and that a virus might escape one of the facilities.”

I argued that the outbreak might be a controlled incident or a false flag. I noted the strange coincidence of “Event 201” disaster simulation held by the Gates Foundation and the World Economic Forum only a couple months before the covid pandemic officially began. The simulation involved the international outbreak of a deadly coronavirus.

A few other media outlets came to the same conclusions I did in those early days, including Zero Hedge and the Washington Times. Zero Hedge was ultimately banned from social media (including Twitter), for the position. The Washington Times was pressured to backtrack on portions of their investigation. My website was essentially shadow-banned from search engines like Google.

The media attacked us relentlessly as a “threat to national safety”. They called the idea of a lab leak “baseless conspiracy theory” while citing Dr. Fauci as one of “the most trusted officials in America” when it came to pandemic information (apparently, he was absolutely giddy over his deification by mainstream news platforms).

Six years later we have all been vindicated in our analysis of the pandemic and the abuse of power that it enabled. This week, we have been treated to the release of 1141 pages of Dr. Anthony Fauci’s professional “diaries”, which cover a period from December of 2019 to December of 2022. These diaries confirm everything we suspected at the beginning of the event.

Fauci was deeply embedded in the government’s policy apparatus; he was the go-to adviser for the White House and a primary media representative. He had direct influence over government decisions to enact lockdowns, mandates and vaccine campaigns.  He was also tied to the lab experimentation that (allegedly) led to the creation of the virus in question. In other words, Fauci acted as a primary gatekeeper for the chaos, from inception to solution. From end to end.

I continue to believe (according to the behavior and white papers of globalist organizations) that covid was intended to kill far more people than it ended up killing. The initial estimations by groups like the World Health Organization put the death rate at around 3% and a number of news outlets repeated this data point. I think this was the death rate they expected, but not the death rate they eventually got.

The real Infection Fatality Rate ended up being closer to 0.23% on average. Meaning, the world was shut down over a virus that 99.8% of people would easily survive. This fact was greatly suppressed by the media, by politicians and by bureaucrats like Fauci.  As far as I can tell, Fauci never addressed this data publicly; it was too inconvenient to the fear narrative.

Any mention of the virus being engineered was eventually silenced. Fauci knew of this censorship and often encouraged it in the name of “fighting misinformation”. According to his diaries, he steered the science away from the lab leak theory even though a majority of virologists broached the idea as likely.  Fauci helped organize and participated in discussions that led to the influential “The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2” paper (published in Nature Medicine in March 2020). That paper concluded that a laboratory-based scenario was not plausible and strongly favored natural spillover.

After considerable push-back, Fauci would later claim that he was open to wider investigations into covid origins.  But, at the height of the pandemic fervor it was Fauci who consistently labeled these avenues of research as “conspiracy theory”. It was Fauci who poisoned the well.  But why was he so obsessed with eliminating the lab leak theory from discussion?

The NIH funded an EcoHealth Alliance grant, providing an award of roughly $600,000 to the Wuhan lab for bat coronavirus research. Some of that work involved creating chimeric viruses and testing them in humanized mice or human cells. A GOA review of federal funding to Chinese agencies from 2014-2021 found at least $1.4 million had been transferred to the Wuhan Lab during that time.

In 2024 congressional testimony, Acting NIH Director Lawrence Tabak acknowledged that the NIH funded this research at Wuhan through EcoHealth. He also admitted that the research met a “generic” definition of gain-of-function. This was a complete contradiction of Fauci’s ongoing denials.

The experiments to enhance viruses for human spread were pursued under a little-known loophole in the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC). As long as the research was meant to develop “solutions or treatments” for the potential spread of manipulated viruses, gain of function experimentation was technically legal.  Fauci’s behavior suggests he was covering his tracks on gain of function and the chance that the NIH program was ground zero.

Currently, US national intelligence agencies, the FBI, the CIA, the Department of Energy and multiple foreign intel agencies say they believe the Wuhan lab leak theory is probable (i.e. NOT conspiracy theory).

Fauci might have set the powder keg in place. He might have even lit the fuse. However, the ultimate institutional surge to exploit the crisis required a level of organization much bigger than Fauci. I would look to the Gates Foundation, the WEF, the WHO, as well as influential figures at the Imperial College London, etc. for the top of the pyramid when it comes to the medical tyranny side of things.

In the meantime, the good doctor deserves a lifetime in prison (or execution) for his participation in the coup. Will he get it? Not at the hands of any government, I suspect. Like I said, the bureaucracy is the government BEHIND the government. It is a faceless leviathan that defies transparency. It’s the fail-safe in the event that political leadership grows a conscience. The public can vote out politicians, but we can’t vote out the bureaucracy.

If Trump or the Senate or anyone else attempts to prosecute Fauci, the legal infrastructure overrun by activist judges will protect him. This is a fact. This is how the elites maintain a certain level of control and prevent any real reformation or reckoning.

There are plenty of political leaders in the US that fought back against the mandates (nearly half of all states blocked the restrictions). They helped us win the battle and it’s important to give credit where credit is due. That said, these people can only do so much. They are bound by the rules of the system and the system is designed to safeguard the corrupt.

Tyler Durden Fri, 07/31/2026 - 23:25

Wichita Man Sues City To Rip Out Its 200-Camera Flock Dragnet

A Wichita machinist, Mason Grimmett, sued his own city this week, arguing that the roughly 200 Flock license-plate readers the police department has bolted around town amount to warrantless dragnet surveillance forbidden by the Kansas Constitution. The complaint, filed in Sedgwick County District Court by the Kansas Justice Institute, does not ask for money - rather, it asks a judge to declare the program unconstitutional and shut it down.

The cameras are made by Flock Safety, one of the largest plate-reader vendors in the country, and Wichita started installing them in 2020. The institute now describes the city as saturated with them - close to 200 AI-powered cameras photographing every passing vehicle and logging its make, model, color, plate, and identifying marks into a searchable database. Grimmett, a lifelong Wichita resident who testified against the program at a public meeting in June, argues that the system violates Section 15 of the state constitution, which guards against unreasonable searches and seizures, and that the city is, in the complaint's language, tracking and databasing law-abiding Kansans "without a warrant, without probable cause, without reasonable suspicion" and without any judicial oversight at all.

The Cops Who Already Abused It

Grimmett points to several local cases in which Kansas police used Flock cameras to stalk people, including abuse by former Kechi Police Lt. Victor Heiar, who was sentenced to eighteen months of probation for using Flock cameras to track a woman. According to local reports, a former detective was also accused of using plate-reader technology to stalk his wife, and a Sedgwick-area police chief reportedly ran an ex-girlfriend through the cameras 164 times. The institute is not disputing that the cameras help solve crimes. Its point is that they photograph everyone, all the time, and that the same access which cracks a burglary case also lets a jealous cop follow whoever he pleases.

"This is America, and we don't tolerate warrantless surveillance," said Sam MacRoberts, the institute's litigation director, who says that if the government wants to monitor a citizen it ought to go to a judge and explain why. Grimmett says he cannot drive to work, the gym, a doctor's appointment, a polling place, or a meeting of the local Sunflower Privacy Alliance without being catalogued by the department and by Flock.

Part Of A Widening Front

Lawsuits over Flock cameras are starting to stack up. In April, three San Jose residents filed a class action over that city's nearly 500 cameras. In February, a separate class action in San Francisco accused Flock of sharing plate-reader data with ICE, CBP, the FBI, and ATF in violation of California's ALPR Privacy Act, the sort of out-of-jurisdiction access that keeps surfacing in audits elsewhere and that has already pushed at least one California city to suspend its cameras pending review. The pushback has reached Congress, too, where a cluster of Republican bills - Rep. Thomas Massie's move to withhold federal funds from any city running the cameras, and Rep. Tim Burchett's Protection Against Mass Surveillance Act, which names Flock explicitly - now takes aim at the government-contract model the company runs on. Wichita's department has previously described its own program as self-auditing, and the city had not filed a response to Grimmett's suit as of Friday.

None of this will surprise regular readers who have watched the license-plate-reader map fill in city by city while the contracts governing who can query the data stayed conveniently vague. Grimmett, meanwhile, is betting that a state constitution's search-and-seizure clause is the faster route to pulling the cameras down, and a ruling in his favor would hand every other saturated Flock city a template...

Tyler Durden Fri, 07/31/2026 - 23:00

'Genetically Altered' Nuclear Monster Sharks Could Be Eating Whales

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

A mysterious predator has been tearing into whales, seals, and giant tuna off the New York coast, leaving bite marks the size of dinner plates and sparking theories of a radioactive "Sharkzilla" spawned by decades of government nuclear waste dumping.

Because nothing says summer 2026 like the possibility that Cold War bureaucrats cooked up a genetically enhanced killing machine in the Atlantic.

Montauk is once again ground zero for monster shark drama. A humpback whale turned up with a 24-inch bite wound. A gray seal took a 22-inch chomp. A 400-pound tuna was found shredded.

Monster 'Sharkzilla' leaves trail of carnage off New York coast as scientists probe nuclear mutant theory https://t.co/K4Mw7yunqb

— Daily Mail (@DailyMail) July 31, 2026

Local shark scientist Craig O'Connell, the Montauk-based marine biologist who's appeared in more than 40 Shark Week programs, launched an investigation in September 2025 and pointed the finger at the Hudson Canyon, a vast underwater gorge about 100 miles offshore that drops from 900 feet to 4,000 feet.

The canyon has a dirty little history. In the late 1960s, the U.S. government dumped 15,000 barrels of nuclear waste into those depths. Ten years later the barrels were found leaking. O'Connell floated the idea that radiation could have triggered genetic mutations in the local predators.

"Radioactive leaks could be impacting wildlife, even top predators," he said. "If animals are subjected to nuclear waste, this could cause genetic mutations and abnormal growth. If this predator is genetically altered, it could be faster, stronger and deadlier than any predator on Earth. We are calling it Sharkzilla."

O'Connell and his team had just 30 hours before a storm to lure, tag, and sample the beast. They dropped baited cameras into the twilight zone more than 600 feet down.

A massive great white lunged at the lens. Then makos appeared - fast, solitary hunters capable of more than 40 mph. Two of them showed up together, then vanished, as if something larger had spooked them. An enormous shadow cruised past and disappeared.

The crew deployed a decoy dolphin named Hudson stuffed with tuna and a homemade "blubber blaster" designed to mimic a rupturing whale carcass. As the light faded, a nearly 12-foot female mako charged the boat.

"This is Sharkzilla," O'Connell shouted.

He swam outside the cage, tagged her on the second attempt, and collected a tissue sample. Tracker signals showed her heading in the same direction as the earlier attacks. Lab tests later found zero evidence of radioactive contamination.

What they actually found was a pregnant mako using the waters as a breeding ground, hunting hard to feed her developing pups. The big females had returned to an area once famous for monster sharks until overfishing wiped them out.

"In the past, this is the place you came to catch monster sharks," O'Connell said.

He added, "There are so many records right here off the shores of Montauk. All these monster sharks were completely fished out. They're gone. But all the evidence we are seeing is telling me that all these big sharks might be back. I know those big sharks are out there, and we are going to find them."

The episode, Sharkzilla Takes New York, airs tonight on Discovery Channel as part of Shark Week 2026. O'Connell later called the encounters "mind-blowing" and noted the mako "exhibited the most threatening posture... All you'd see were teeth."

He also admitted the nuclear idea was speculative: "Could it have created giant sharks? People will have to watch and find out. But it's possible."

So likely no glowing, multi-eyed, radiation-spawned abomination is currently snacking on Long Island's marine megafauna. Just a very large, very hungry, very pregnant mako doing what apex predators do.

The real story is the government once thought it was fine to sink thousands of barrels of nuclear waste into a canyon that feeds the East Coast food chain, then left the mess to leak. Nature, as usual, is more resilient than the bureaucrats who polluted it.

America's waters are still full of surprises. Some of them have very big teeth. And some of the biggest problems were dumped there by the same people who now lecture everyone else about the environment.

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

Tyler Durden Fri, 07/31/2026 - 22:35

Unitree IPO Finally Puts A Real Price On Profitable Humanoid Robots

Chinese robotics maker Unitree formally launched its IPO on Shanghai's STAR Market on Thursday, opening the books on a deal that aims to raise about 4.2 billion yuan (roughly $618 million) at an implied valuation near 42 billion yuan ($5.9 billion). Once the shares start trading, the listing will put a real, daily market price on a profitable humanoid-robot maker operating at scale - the first the sector has had.

Until now, humanoid robotics companies have been raising capital based on numbers nobody could really challenge since nobody has had to actually clear a market. So far we have Figure AI sitting on a $39 billion private valuation, and a clutch of Chinese rivals each pushing past $3 billion in the primary market. A public listing swaps the euphoria of those private rounds for the discipline of a secondary one. Regulators approved the registration in early July after a review that took roughly 104 days from acceptance, one of the fastest STAR Market clearances on record. Observers have linked the speed directly to Beijing's push to channel capital toward strategic robotics and AI champions. That said, Unitree has been designated a Chinese military company in the US, and Washington is weighing action against subsidized Chinese robotics imports even as the machines turn up for sale on Amazon.

A Rare Profitable Name in a Sea of Losses

Unitree makes an unusually clean test case because unlike most of its peers, it actually turns a profit. The company reported 2025 revenue of about 1.7 billion yuan and adjusted profit around 591 million yuan - a net margin north of 35 percent that, in a field defined by cash burn, is close to an anomaly. It shipped more than 5,500 humanoid robots last year, more than any other company globally, alongside cumulative quadruped sales above 33,000 units. Overseas revenue has consistently run past 40 percent of the total. Founder and chief executive Wang Xingxing controls roughly a third of the business. The prospectus earmarks the proceeds for robot "brains" and model research, robot bodies, new products, and a manufacturing base.

The rest of the field looks nothing like it. UBTech, which is pursuing its own A-share listing, has put its Walker S humanoid through more than 50,000 hours of training on BYD production lines but keeps running losses. It just launched a consumer-grade bionic robot priced as high as 990,000 yuan (about $146,000) in a bid to crack the home market. Overseas, Tesla's Optimus is slated to reach mass production this year. Every player in the space has a demo reel and a private valuation nobody has to defend. Unitree is about to have a share price that trades every day and settles the argument in public.

Whatever Unitree prints when it debuts becomes the benchmark for the entire "embodied intelligence" trade.

Tyler Durden Fri, 07/31/2026 - 22:10

Trump Defends Anti-Weaponization Fund But Admits It's Effectively 'Dead'

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

President Donald Trump on Friday said that he still wants compensation for people he said were victimized by a weaponized federal government while acknowledging that a planned $1.776 billion anti-weaponization fund is “dead” after the Department of Justice walked it back amid congressional opposition and court rulings.

“It is dead,” Trump said at a Cabinet meeting on Friday.

“But I wish it weren’t, to be honest with you. I think people were horribly treated, horribly abused … and I’d like to see them compensated for their pain.

“Their families have been ruined. Many, many suicides—they’ve committed suicide,” he also said in the meeting, which was held at Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland.

“People that were very successful, that wanted to go to a rally or an event and ended up spending the rest of their lives in horror.

“And this fund, this fund was not for me,” he said.

“This fund was for those people.”

Earlier this year, the Justice Department announced the fund as part of a settlement agreement in a lawsuit where Trump had sued the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to provide money for individuals who claimed to have been targeted by “weaponization and lawfare” under the previous administration. Trump’s lawsuit with the IRS was over a leak of his tax returns.

The fund, however, was met with legal setbacks as a federal judge blocked it from going into effect. That block was extended in mid-June.

Plaintiffs who sued to block the payouts argue that the government can’t legally divert taxpayer money into what they alleged was a slush fund for compensating Trump’s allies.

Also in June, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told Congress that the government is scrapping its plans for the fund in the face of a bipartisan backlash, and government attorneys have argued that lawsuits challenging the fund are now moot.

During a House hearing on June 2, Blanche said, “We are not moving forward with the fund, period.”

“Not moving forward ever?” asked Rep. Grace Meng (D-N.Y.).

“Correct,” Blanche answered.

Earlier on Friday, Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that the fund was meant to defend “the great American Patriots who were hunted down like dogs and whose lives were unfairly and illegally destroyed” by the Biden administration.

The president added that regarding the alleged victims, “perhaps there has never been a group of people treated so badly in our Nation’s history.”

“They are suffering still, many ruined, and I felt that they should be given compensation for what has been done to them,” he said, adding that Blanche should also be approved as attorney general by the Republican-controlled Senate.

Friday’s meeting is the first televised Cabinet session ever conducted at Camp David. The Trump administration previously attempted to hold the meeting in May, but it was scrapped due to bad weather.

During his first term in office, Trump held a Cabinet meeting at the presidential retreat that was closed to the press.

Tyler Durden Fri, 07/31/2026 - 21:45

The Strange Reason Scientists Still Need Pre-1945 Steel

The world's most sensitive radiation detectors sometimes rely on low background steel produced before the first atomic bomb test in July 1945, according to a new report from SpaceDaily.

Steel manufactured before the nuclear age lacks the tiny traces of radioactive fallout that atmospheric weapons testing later introduced into the environment, making it valuable for experiments searching for extraordinarily rare particles and faint radiation signals.

The report says that this gave rise to the popular story that scientists depend on steel salvaged from pre war shipwrecks resting on the ocean floor. While there is some truth to that, the claim has been greatly exaggerated. Some laboratories have indeed used steel from old warships for shielding, but it is not true that nearly every sensitive detector depends on sunken ships or that science faces a crisis as this supply disappears.

The reason low background steel matters is that, in cutting edge physics experiments, even the detector's own walls can generate enough background radiation to interfere with measurements. Facilities searching for dark matter, rare nuclear decays, or other elusive phenomena go to extraordinary lengths to eliminate every possible source of interference, often operating deep underground and surrounding detectors with multiple layers of carefully selected shielding materials.

Today, researchers no longer rely exclusively on pre 1945 steel. Advances in metallurgy allow laboratories to manufacture and rigorously screen modern stainless steel, titanium, copper, and other materials with extremely low levels of radioactivity. In many cases, these newly produced metals perform just as well as their pre war counterparts, making the finite supply of old ship steel far less important than popular accounts suggest.

The enduring lesson is not that modern science depends on scavenging sunken fleets, but that the atomic age permanently changed the way physicists design their experiments.

When scientists are trying to detect just a handful of events over the course of an entire year, even the manufacturing history of the steel surrounding an experiment can make the difference between finding a signal and measuring nothing but noise.

Tyler Durden Fri, 07/31/2026 - 21:20

Trust In Higher Education Hits Another Low As The Public Rejects Institutional Bias

Authored by Jonathan Turley via JonathanTurley.org,

According to the latest Gallup poll, only 38% of U.S. adults have a "great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in higher education. One of the Gallup experts told Fox News that one of the key reasons for the continued slide in public trust is "the perception that there's a political agenda being taught." That perception is well documented after most departments purged their ranks of any republican, conservative, or libertarian faculty members. At the same time, many faculty oppose the long-standing principle of institutional neutrality for universities, the subject of a recent debate that I had with the President of the American Association of University Professors.

Gallup's expert added that there is also a view that we are "not teaching people the right kinds of things they need to succeed in the job once they finish."

As I have previously written, this generation of administrators and faculty has destroyed not just public trust in our institutions but their financial viability. Colleges are closing at an alarming rate as both tuition and revenue fall. Yet, faculty members would prefer to lose their jobs than their bias in hiring and teaching.

According to Gallup, roughly a third of polled individuals cited partisan bias or indoctrination on college campuses. Bias was the leading reason for given for the lack of trust, ahead of tuition costs. That is a large chunk of potential applicants and their families. Worse yet, they are not wrong.

Our campuses have been ideological echo chambers where collective orthodoxy is more prominent than academic inquiry. This group think has created an overtly hostile environment for more than half of this country that consider themselves conservatives or libertarians. As schools struggle to maintain financial stability, they are literally cutting away half of their potential applicant pool.

Currently, only 37% of Americans report having "some" confidence in the institution. In any other industry or area, that record of alienation and mistrust would prompt massive changes in management. In higher education, however, colleges and universities remain captive to administrators and faculty members who replicate their views and values to the exclusion of many others.

The result is evident in multiple surveys which reveal widespread self-censorship among students, particularly conservative students. When I confronted a Harvard Law professor in a debate at Harvard Law School with those surveys, he responded by calling these students "conservative snowflakes."

It did not matter that only a third of Harvard students felt comfortable expressing their views in classes or on campus. Since Harvard has also shown the same bias in admissions, only roughly nine percent of the students identify as conservative. Thus, the vast majority of the students who are saying that they self-censor are liberals. This is the environment that the current generation of administrators and faculty have created.

As I have previously written, parents and students who value free speech must increasingly look to public universities where faculty are subject to constitutional guarantees. Public universities may be the final line of defense for free-speech advocates.

We now largely have two systems of higher education for those seeking education with a diversity of opinions and viewpoints. Except for outliers like the University of Chicago and other private universities holding the line on free speech, the orthodoxy found at private universities remains a barrier to many conservative and independent thinkers.

If we are to protect these bastions of free speech, legislatures will need to play a more active role in addressing the exclusion of both faculty candidates and speakers on public campuses. Too many faculty members continue to take the view that citizens are a captive audience expected to continue funding their departments, while excluding conservative or dissenting views held by many, if not most, citizens in a given state.

If faculty members want to continue maintaining echo chambers for their own viewpoints, they should have to seek private donors to sustain such intolerance and orthodoxy.

Legislatures can demand evidence that schools are maintaining intellectually diverse faculties in determining the level of continued support from citizens.

When some of us have argued for such campaigns, academics hypocritically claim that we are calling for political litmus tests or hiring based on political parties. It is an absurd argument that I have previously addressed, including in my book "The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage."

The call is for donors and legislators to withhold funding until they see real reforms, including greater diversity on faculties. They are not directing the hiring but looking at the results. The faculty members objecting to such calls have watched passively (or actively supported) the purging of conservative or libertarian faculty from universities and colleges.

When confronted by their own obvious ideological litmus tests, they shrug. Some acknowledge that their departments are overwhelmingly liberal, but insist that they just cannot find "competent" or "intellectually promising" conservatives. A few will admit that they do not believe that conservative views have a place in their departments.

It is impossible to deny the purging of faculties to create an academic echo chamber. If a large corporation effectively eliminated women or minorities while claiming no conscious discrimination, they would be trounced in court.

For years, I have raised concerns about the intolerance in higher education and surveys showing that many departments no longer have a single Republican as faculty members replicate their own views and values. There is no evidence that any faculty members (including those acknowledging the loss of virtually all faculty from the right of center) are honestly willing to reform their schools.

That ideological echo chamber is hardly an enticement for many facing rising tuition costs and relatively little hope of being taught by faculty with opposing views.

A Georgetown study recently found that only nine percent of law school professors identify as conservative at the top 50 law schools - almost identical to the percentage of Trump voters found in the new poll.

We are watching the demise of American higher education by its own hand. It will be up to legislators and donors to save these institutions from themselves.

Tyler Durden Fri, 07/31/2026 - 20:55

US Withdraws Troops, Patriot Batteries From Northern Iraq Amid Iranian Attacks

There are new reports Friday of more US troop pullback initiatives in the wake of the last couple weeks of US-Iran fighting, and Iranian ballistic missile and drone strikes which have targeted American bases with increased regularity, especially in Jordan and Kuwait.

One regional media publication freshly reports, "The United States military has started to draw down its last remaining forces from Iraq stationed in the vicinity of Erbil's airport in the Iraqi Kurdistan Region, well-placed sources with close knowledge of the process confirmed to Al-Monitor."

via AP

Significant US anti-air defenses are also being pulled back, given they and their radar systems have increasingly been targeted.

"Patriot mobile air-to-surface air-defense systems that detect and shoot down incoming missiles, drones and other airborne enemy equipment have already been removed from the military compound, the sources said, without providing further details," Al Monitor continues.

The pullback from the Iraqi Kurdistan region reportedly began last week and is still in progress, given all the heavy equipment has to be pulled out.

The missile batteries are expected to be 'redeployed' - but this could be further away from within the vicinity of Iran and the Persian Gulf, such as in Israel. Al Monitor notes:

Regional officials described the pullout as routine and in line with the US commitment to withdraw all its forces from Iraq by a Sept. 30 deadline that was agreed with Baghdad.

However, coming amid sustained attacks by Iran and its Shiite proxy militias, and on the Kurdistan Region of Iraq in particular, the withdrawal has left the Kurds feeling badly exposed.

It's not just Iran which has targeted US personnel and assets in Iraq, but Iraqi Shia paramilitary units have at times targeted Erbil facilities going back years:

While the Patriot systems were deployed to protect US forces, the Kurds have benefited immensely from the security umbrella as well. Erbil's airport has come under constant attack from Iran and Iran-backed militias since the start of the Iran conflict in February, including this week. US interceptors successfully deterred at least 95% of those attacks, the sources said.

The bulk of Iranian and militia attacks have targeted armed Iranian Kurdish opposition groups based in the Kurdistan Region. However, the Erbil compound has also been targeted multiple times. The Patriots have an operational range of between 60 to 100 miles (100-160 kilometers).

Iran's strategy seems to focused on permanently pushing US forces back in the region, while expanding the scope of the war, in what some analysts have called 'horizontal escalation'.

Iran expels America from yet another MENA base. https://t.co/BcZjvVR0W1

— Mark Ames (@MarkAmesExiled) July 31, 2026

One writer calls this a process of 'debasification':

In contrast to the previous hot phase of the war, in which Iran targeted bases across the entire theater simultaneously, this wave started with the targets close to Iranian shores, and has progressed steadily to the Israeli border. After destroying much of the radar network protecting regional US Axis bases in the previous hot phase of the war, Iranian planners have prioritized targeting fuel storage, drone hangers, refueling tankers, and barracks. The American response has been to pull assets back ever further from Iran, to bases in Israel and Jordan. We’ll call this process debasification. Iran’s debasification strategy takes advantage of the inherent asymmetry between the vastly different force structure and capabilities of Iranian rocket forces and US Axis air forces.

Iraq's north has long been a place where US forces can feal more at ease with 'friendly' Kurdish groups, rather than the dwindling presence in the rest of the country. But the Kurds have also come under immense pressure within the Iraq war, especially given headlines alleging they were ready to support an Iranian Kurdish uprising inside the Islamic Republic.

Tyler Durden Fri, 07/31/2026 - 20:30