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Burning Man: Richest Hippies Alive?

Summer is music festival time and while one major event, Coachella, kicks off the U.S. season in April, Burning Man – starting this Sunday in Nevada – closes it out.

The two events might seem like polar opposites in the music festival realm, but have more in common than meets the eye.

Burning Man continues to be an icon of counterculture but attending the festival that relies on visitors to be self-sufficient to a high degree is expensive.

As Statista's Katharina Buchholz reports, the personal income of the average attendee has changed in recent years as the festival has become popular among well-to-do crowds.

You will find more infographics at Statista

A survey carried out under scientific conditions among Burning Man attendees every year shows how the personal incomes of those heading to Black Rock City have evolved.

While in 2015, only close to 24 percent said they made $100,000 or more annually in personal income, this had increased to almost 48 percent by 2025.

For comparison, YouGov states that incomes like these are only brought home by around 18 percent of Americans.

Especially the infamous tech bro has been credited with changing the make-up of the desert festival which features music performances and art installations on its spread-out grounds that work on the basis of community organization instead of cash-based services. 

Marc Zuckerberg's 2012 visit made headlines, but he was hardly a driving force in the burgeoning popularity the festival has experienced among young CEOs and founders. Before the now very obvious shift to luxurious camps and millionaire visitors, the likes of Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page as well as Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos were already partaking in Burning Man in the 1990s.

The survey also shows that the number of first-time attendees has remained stable around 25-30 percent over the years and that a reliable 80 percent of attendees say the event's stated philosophy was important or very important to them.

More than 60 percent of participants are in their 30s and 40s, with peaks around the 35-42 age range.

The event skewing 60 percent male, up to 40 percent Californian and 75 percent white also fits the tech millionaire demographic.

At around 25 percent, cost was however still the most cited barrier to visiting the festival again.

Tyler Durden Sat, 08/29/2026 - 07:35

'Our Military Is Helpless': Migrant Ambush Targeting Military Vehicles In Ceuta Was Pre-Planned, Police Claim

Via Remix News,

The attack targeting a military patrol in the Benzú area of Ceuta last night was a pre-planned ambush rather than a spontaneous clash, according to preliminary findings from the National Police. Now, military sources are speaking of soldiers who are unable to use physical force, have no weapons, and are vulnerable to such attacks in the future.

Regarding the ambush, police investigators at the scene discovered an abnormal accumulation of heavy stones that did not match the natural geology of the terrain. Police believe the projectiles were intentionally stockpiled at the location in advance, setting a trap for a vehicle or convoy passing through the area.

Images of damaged military vehicles have gone viral across social media. Multiple vehicles suffered smashed windshields and other damage in the attack.

🔴 #URGENTE | Los inmigrantes ilegales de Ceuta han atacado esta madrugada los vehículos de los militares españoles.

Este es el estado de algunos de los coches y camiones del Ejército que les ha ayudado a instalarse en polideportivos. pic.twitter.com/KnT9RU35AM

— Vito Quiles 🇪🇸 (@vitoquiles) August 27, 2026

The ambush occurred while troops from the 54th Regular Group of Ceuta were conducting routine patrol duties. Dozens of illegal immigrants ambushed the patrol vehicle with a heavy barrage of rocks. The sudden intensity of the assault severely damaged the vehicle, shattering its windows and trapping the occupants inside.

Surrounded by a high volume of projectiles, the soldiers “feared for their lives,” according to statements later provided to investigators, as reported by Spanish newspaper El Debate. Four soldiers were left injured and officials told the press that sthe all-terrain logistical vehicles were not armored and not equipped to deal with such attacks.

Marco Antonio Gómez, president of the Association of Spanish Troops and Sailors (ATME), stated that the “very serious aggression” shows “our military is helpless.”

“They go without weapons. Our colleagues had to run away to save their own lives.”

Speaking to El Debate, military sources who are directly on the ground in Ceuta say that soldiers have their “hands and feet tied.”

Although the military is working with National Police, the situation remains dangerous.

The source said “they have done what is necessary and have intervened in situations in which the illegal immigrants bothered the inhabitants of Ceuta.”

🇪🇸🔴 A young Spanish woman is fleeing Ceuta because she no longer feels safe.

"I don't want to feel anxious every time I step outside... It seems awful to me that all this is allowed to happen and nobody can close the border or do anything."

However, she also claims that the… pic.twitter.com/o6KVfhR7p8

— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) August 10, 2026

However, these military sources complain that various legal frameworks have left soldiers without weapons, and these policies also restrict soldiers from carrying out arrests and using any type of force.

Migrants may even be aware of these restrictions, empowering them to conduct ambush strikes against soldiers with near impunity.

🇪🇸🔴 5 migrants tried to gang rape a 12-year-old girl as she screamed for help, said locals in Ceuta who stopped the attack.

"There were five against a 12-year-old girl. She was a little girl, they were taking off her pants. She was screaming, screaming, screaming. She was… pic.twitter.com/g97pj8phUR

— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) August 25, 2026

Since the attack, 12 suspects have been taken into custody at the scene by National Police’s Prevention and Reaction Unit (UPR). Some migrants reportedly tried to evade arrest by jumping into the sea. Reinforcement from the Civil Guard also helped secure the perimeter.

The Union of Military Troops (UMT) issued a statement expressing its “strong rejection and indignation,” stating they had warned about the conditions facing troops already ten days eariler.

The National Police investigation remains active as authorities work to trace all remaining individuals involved in the ambush.

Read more here...

Tyler Durden Sat, 08/29/2026 - 07:00

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

Authored by John Walter via John Walter,

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

Introduction

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

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

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

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

50 Tips From the Great Depression

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

China Ousts 4 Senior Military Commanders In Widening Purges

Authored by Dorothy Li via The Epoch Times,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Xinhua did not provide reasons for their departure.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lula (Left); Bolsonaro (Right)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Comments from Bank of America's Latam Equity Quant:

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

ING Analysts:

BRL: Presidential polling in play

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

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

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

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

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

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

The War Hawks' Predictions Have Aged Like Milk

Authored by Nolan Denaro via Antiwar.com,

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

Alex Brandon/AP

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

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

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

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

Ben Shapiro

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Marc Thiessen

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jesse Watters

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Authored by Stavroula Pabst via Responsible Statecraft,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

First Secondary Sanctions Applied: US Blocks Egyptian Bank From Accessing Dollars Over 'Iran Ties'

The US Treasury Department on Friday unveiled its first 'secondary' Iran sanctions related to Trump's 'Economic D-Day' against Iran, on Friday naming an Egyptian bank in the UAE. 

Ironically both of these latter countries are close American allies, and this comes at a moment the White House has failed to confirm whether the US will actually go after China for the same trade violations.

Via britannica.com

The UAE branches of Egypt's Banque Misr are being newly sanctioned over their business dealings with Iran, cutting off the branches' access to US financial institutions and forbidding transactions in US dollar.

"Treasury promised to sever every economic lifeline Tehran has left and finally end the threat of the Iranian regime," Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement given to FT.

"We also warned that Iran's enablers cannot continue to enjoy access to the US dollar and the global financial system. Banque Misr UAE decided to find out the hard way and, today, we are taking the first step in holding it accountable for its continued, egregious support of the Iranian regime," Bessent added.

In addition, there is an entity which could be characterized as on the 'periphery' of China and its Iran dealings also newly named and targeted.

Treasury separately imposed sanctions on a financial entity in Hong Kong and one person linked to Iran's Bank Melli. This is "a Hong Kong entity that it said helped ​launder money for a sanctioned ​Iranian exchange house," Reuters notes of the statement.

Reuters further explains of the new action:

Egypt's central bank said on Friday that the U.S. ​action only affected Banque Misr's UAE branches and did not extend to any other Egyptian banks. The Central Bank of Egypt said ​in a statement that it and Egypt's Ministry of Foreign Affairs were in contact with the U.S. authorities about the measures.

A Treasury official also said ‌the ⁠action only applies to Banque Misr's UAE branches, allowing the bank to continue dollar transactions through its head office in Cairo and other foreign branches. These include Paris, Frankfurt, Riyadh, Beirut and Djibouti, according to Banque Misr's website.

...So even the Egypt-related action is very limited in terms of its reach. The Egyptian government has long been under the direct influence of US foreign policy, given that decades ago it made peace with Israel, and is recipient of a regular flow of billions in foreign aid going back decades.

Trump this month basically halted all over military actions against Iran, opting instead for unleashing a "most crushing economic operation" against Tehran.

.@SecScottBessent: "The new sectoral sanctions determinations issued today target five of Iran's most vital lifelines that it exploits in other countries: digital assets, technology, gold, aviation, and shipping." pic.twitter.com/QlTdO8jSnx

— Treasury Department (@USTreasury) August 24, 2026

"ANY country that allows its financial institutions, businesses, airports, or government entities to provide any type of lifeline to Iran will itself face TREMENDOUS Economic Consequences," Trump stated on Truth Social.

But again it is still very up in the air whether Washington will actually directly target Beijing with any punitive actions over its oil trade relationship with the Islamic Republic.

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/28/2026 - 20:30

Republicans Pitch Plan To Protect Investments From 'Inflation Tax': What To Know

Authored by Kevin Stocklin via The Epoch Times,

As inflation ticks upward, Republican lawmakers are pushing for capital gains taxes to be indexed to inflation, which could translate into a significant tax cut for American investors, homeowners, and savers.

However, critics say it could put the government further in the red.

A stack of individual income tax forms at the Des Plaines Public Library in Des Plaines, Ill., on March 23, 2006. Tim Boyle/Getty Images

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) sponsored the Capital Gains Inflation Relief Act of 2025 to index capital gains to inflation. In March, Cruz and Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent urging him to enact inflation indexing without waiting for Congress. House Republicans sent a similar letter days later.

"Homeownership and long-term real estate investment remain central to achieving the American Dream for millions of families," House Republicans wrote. "Yet under current tax treatment, taxpayers are often required to pay capital gains taxes not only on real economic appreciation, but also on nominal gains attributable solely to inflation."

Thus far, Bessent has not stated his position on the issue. Here's what to know about the proposal.

The Cost of Inflation

Currently, Americans are taxed on assets when they sell, based on the difference between the purchase price and the sales price, or nominal gains. For those who hold an asset longer than one year, the capital gains tax rate is between zero and 20 percent, depending on a filer's overall taxable income.

But because assets appreciate over time, inflation also enters into the calculation.

"The tax code treats inflation like it is income, which it isn't," Adam Michel, director of tax policy studies at the Cato Institute, told The Epoch Times. "When you sell an asset, you're taxed on the nominal gain-real growth and inflation lumped together-so you pay tax both on dollars you earned and the phantom income from inflation."

Since 2020, the U.S. dollar has lost about 29 percent of its value to inflation. And at times of high inflation and low growth, the effective capital gains tax rate can top 100 percent, Michel said, which has occurred in at least nine years since 1957.

Inflation indexing would increase the cost basis, or purchase price, of an asset in line with inflation during the period the asset was held.

America's tax code treats long-term capital gains more favorably than other forms of income, with lower tax rates, some exemptions for homeowners, and forgiveness of gains on assets that are passed on at death. Part of the rationale is to encourage investment; part of it is that savings that are used for investment have often already been taxed.

In 2025, capital gains taxes accounted for about 10 percent of total government receipts, according to the Peter G. Peterson Foundation.

Critics say that inflation indexing will largely benefit the rich and reduce revenue for a government that runs annual deficits and is now $40 trillion in debt.

John Whiten, deputy director of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, derided inflation indexing on the ITEP blog as "a massive new tax break for wealthy investors."

According to Yale University's Budget Lab, the impact on federal budgets depends on whether it applies to all current assets or only purchases when a change is implemented. Indexing all assets to inflation would reduce tax revenue by nearly $1 trillion over 10 years; if the change were limited to new asset purchases, it would reduce federal revenue by about $170 billion.

Who Benefits From Inflation Indexing?

The greatest gains would go to stock market investors, but homeowners would benefit as well.

A 2022 analysis by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) estimated that about two-thirds of total capital gains tax revenue came from corporate stock holdings. Real estate and business property together comprised about 30 percent.

In addition, the CRS states that capital gains are "largely concentrated in higher incomes" and that "the top 1% of tax units accounts for 16.7% of total income but 75.4% of capital gains."

However, looking at the number of people who would benefit from inflation indexing versus absolute dollars paints a different picture. A 2020 report by the IRS stated that 68 percent of Americans who were taxed on their capital gains earned less than $200,000.

America's federal tax code is already structured to favor homeownership. In addition to mortgage interest being deductible, capital gains tax on homes includes exemptions. For single filers, the first $250,000 in price appreciation from selling their primary residence is exempt from taxes; for joint filers, the exemption is $500,000.

Retirees who saved through 401(k) programs would generally not benefit, because those funds are not subject to tax until withdrawal, and withdrawals are taxed as current income rather than capital gains.

Experts say it is legally untested whether or not the Trump administration could implement tax indexing without congressional action. However, a similar plan was considered under the administration of President George H.W. Bush, and a CRS analysis opined in 1992 that the executive branch did not have the authority to implement inflation indexing on its own.

"Changing tax laws is Congress's job, and that's for a good reason," Michel said. "Doing this without Congress opens the rule up to both legal uncertainty and future administrations rolling it back, both of which undermine the goal of ending the inflation tax."

In addition to federal taxes, tax treatment for capital gains varies significantly at the state level, according to Kiplinger, a personal finance analytics group.

Residents of Alaska, Florida, Missouri, Nevada, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Wyoming, and New Hampshire do not pay state tax on capital gains. By contrast, states such as California charge up to 13.3 percent in state capital gains taxes, with New York and New Jersey, along with the District of Columbia, all charging more than 10 percent.

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/28/2026 - 20:05

Trump Strikes "Biggest Oil Deal In History": US To Take Majority Stake In Over 65BN Barrels Of Venezuela Reserves

Summary:

• Trump announced "biggest oil deal in history"
• Caracas Mulls OPEC Exit 
• U.S. is Nears Deal For 17 Venezuelan Oil Fields under 100-year Leases Operated by U.S. oil companies
• Trump Close To 'Massive' Deal For Seizing Stake In Venezuela's Vast Oil Fields

Trump announces deal with Venezuela: 65+ billion barrels of oil reserves

President Trump has made it official with a late in the day Friday Truth Social Post, announcing a deal has been struck with Venezuela for a US majority stake in more than 65 billion barrels of oil reserves, after six months of administration scrambling to control the Strait of Hormuz crisis.

On Truth Social he called it the biggest oil deal in world history which comes "at no cost to" U.S. taxpayers and which more than doubles the US oil reserve.

"This Transaction will greatly strengthen the already growing relationship between Venezuela and the United States," Trump wrote in the post. Also...

Trump said the Venezuela deal should bring down prices at the pump. The average price of a gallon of gas in the U.S. reached around $4.09 on Friday, a 27% increase year over year, according to AAA.

Over a dozen productive oil fields are said be central to deal, following US officials having long hyped Trump's "Donroe Doctrine" and what it can do to bolster American energy independence and security. Of course, instead of 'talks' or 'negotiations'... in reality this is more simply about demands be dictated to the 'new' post-Maduro US client state in South America.

Caracas Mulls OPEC Exit

Focus on the Strait of Hormuz is shifting to South America late in the week as the Trump administration moves to secure new long-term crude supplies in Venezuela. The U.S. is nearing an agreement that could place 17 Venezuelan oil fields under 100-year leases operated by U.S. oil companies.

According to Bloomberg, sources told the outlet that Caracas has discussed a possible exit from OPEC with U.S. officials. The sources said no final decision has been made, but the discussions come as the U.S. negotiates 100-year leases on several Venezuelan oil fields that require billions of dollars in investment.

Such an exit from OPEC would be symbolic, given that the South American country was one of the organization's five founding members in 1960 and played a key role in establishing the expanded OPEC+ alliance with Russia in 2016.

More recently, the United Arab Emirates became another producer to announce its departure from OPEC. Venezuela is only considering withdrawal, while Iraq has expressed frustration but has yet to announce a formal exit.

A Venezuelan exit would not result in an immediate surge in crude production because of years of underinvestment, which is why the U.S. is seeking to take a large stake in the nation's oil fields.

Venezuela currently produces about 1.16 million barrels per day, according to a Bloomberg survey, and is not subject to an active OPEC quota.

For President Trump, a U.S.-Venezuela energy alliance could prove very valuable by weakening OPEC, increasing non-Middle Eastern crude supplies, pressuring oil prices and locking down a massive reserve base in America's backyard.

Trump Close To 'Massive' Deal For Seizing Stake In Venezuela's Vast Oil Fields

Amid ongoing global oil supply disruptions due to the Iran war and Hormuz Strait crisis, and also as Ukraine's war on Russian oil refineries and export terminals heats up, the Trump administration has been scrambling to tap new reliable and long-term energy sources.

Now, nearly eight months since the US miliary raid on Caracas which removed from power and captured socialist President Nicolás Maduro, and the Trump administration is said to be on the brink of a massive deal to gain ownership stake in the countries vast oil resources.

Axios is newly reporting Thursday of 'negotiations' (sure) in the works: "The historic deal would more than double U.S. oil reserves by drawing from a country that has the world's largest proven reserves."

Back in February: Venezuelan acting President Delcy Rodriguez greets US Energy Secretary Chris Wright at Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas, via AP

The report cites one official as saying that "Calling this deal huge would be an understatement" as is is "massive."

The wars in Iran and Ukraine, and especially the race to reopen Hormuz to international crude transit, have added heightened urgency to the talks - and given the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve has reached a 40-year low.

Over a dozen productive oil fields are said be central to the "talks", with Trump officials hoping for a quick breakthrough after long hyping Trump's "Donroe Doctrine" and what it can do to bolster American energy independence and security. Of course, instead of 'talks' or 'negotiations'... in reality this is more simply about hammering out details on what orders will be dictated to the 'new' post-Maduro US client state in South America.

Axios details further of what's at stake in the deliberations with Caracas:

• The fields in question, which has 90 billion barrels of proven reserves, used to be controlled by former Venezuelan insiders — including some who've been indicted — as well as interests once controlled by China, the official said.
• In return for giving the U.S. an ownership stake, Venezuela's government would benefit from private companies, including American firms, developing the fields and returning more oil revenue to that country.

But this latter note remains the big question and risk, in terms of a potentially long timeline before the new potential Venezuelan oil flows make a noticeable difference.

Though sitting atop the world's biggest proven oil reserves, Venezuela has long been known for its derelict and largely defunct infrastructure for getting crude out of the ground and refining. There's also the question of security, which has been a source of discussion between the US admin and American oil companies being courted.

The oil majors must be convinced that they can operate in enough safety to be successful, not just for the coming months, but for years down the line. But if a broad and major 'deal' is struck with Caracas, these issues will probably look minor. 

There are also lingering transparency and accountability questions concerning the Venezuelan oil exports that Washington already took over since Maduro's ouster. This summer, the Council on Foreign Relations asked 'where has all the money gone?'...

In the first four months of the United States exerting control over Venezuela’s oil exports, almost one hundred million barrels of oil worth an estimated $8 billion have flowed through a process marked by no transparency and minimal oversight. While the Trump administration has repeatedly framed this control as benefiting both countries, it has not publicly disclosed how much Venezuelan oil it has sold, how much revenue it has collected, or how it has used those funds since seizing control of the country’s oil exports following the January 3 military intervention that deposed Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro.

The CFR also wrote:

The Trump administration has shared some details with Congress. Secretary of State Marco Rubio testified in January that $300 million had flowed through a “short-term” account in Qatar and been disbursed to Venezuela, while another $200 million was “still sitting” in the account. He indicated the administration would conduct a retroactive audit on the funds that moved through the Qatar account. The following month, Secretary of Energy Chris Wright said during a press interview that the full $500 million had been transferred to Venezuela and that the administration would use U.S. Treasury accounts going forward.

But the administration has yet to provide a public accounting of the Qatar account, including how the funds were spent or what safeguards were in place to prevent corruption and money laundering. In April, a State Department witness told Congress that the department had authorized the disbursement of about $3 billion to Venezuela, but the witness did not know how much money remained in the U.S. Treasury accounts. It is not clear if the balance in either the Qatar or U.S. Treasury accounts has been shared with Congress.

The last public update was shared by President Trump to reporters in late July. He indicated the US has collected more than $13 billion from the sale of Venezuelan crude.

″$13 billion from Venezuela? I think even more than that,” the president previously told reporters, and boasted that "We’ve paid for that war many times over."

With both the Venezuelan oil export control scheme and this new plan for US companies to move in based on a grand deal, the White House is touting that this is all about securing America's energy future.

But as for the Venezuelan people's future...

🇻🇪 Washington Is Making Venezuela Pay for Its Own Occupation — 32% of Oil Revenue

The U.S. invasion has turned Venezuela’s oil industry into a revenue stream for Washington. Economist Francisco Rodríguez says the Trump administration has charged Venezuela $4.7 billion, or 32%… pic.twitter.com/3jwxLHLWZe

— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) August 14, 2026

"President Trump is close to securing America's energy future for generations to come, not just in the U.S. but in the hemisphere," an official said to Axios.

As a reminder Venezuela's interim president Delcy Rodríguez was previously Maduro's Vice President, and so the chavista socialism system is still actually in place, even if the new ruling regime is in reality now a puppet of Washington interests.

While President Trump initially declared that Washington would effectively "run" Venezuela, he later had openly endorsed Rodríguez as a temporary caretaker during the transition, despite her being as hardcore a Leftist pro-Maduro figure as anyone.

Among the first US actions with a compliant Rodríguez at the helm in Caracas was to cut off Venezuela's oil supply to nearby ally Cuba. So ultimately, an eventual grand deal for American companies to take over Venezuelan oil fields should come as no surprise to anyone paying attention to what Washington's real long-running regime changes aims in Venezuela were all about. In the meantime Western MSM outlets like Axios still pretend in their framing of these developments that the US is at the helm of some kind of "rules-based order".

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/28/2026 - 19:43

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Authored by Julianne Geiger via OilPrice.com,

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

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

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

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

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

And crossing Hormuz is increasingly only the first leg.

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

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

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

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

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

By Julianne Geiger for Oilprice.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

— Clandestine (@WarClandestine) August 27, 2026

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Authored by Irina Slav via OilPrice.com,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

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

Milo Yiannopoulos Detained by ICE After Overstaying Visa, Faces Deportation

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

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

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

— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) August 28, 2026

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

— Laura Loomer (@LauraLoomer) August 28, 2026

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

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

FDA Approves 3 New COVID-19 Vaccines

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

US Military Shoots Down 3 Mexican Cartel Drones With Laser

Authored by Chris Summers via The Epoch Times,

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

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

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

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

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

US Will 'Not Tolerate Hostile Surveillance'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Commander Vows to Disrupt Cartels

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reuters contributed to this report.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

— Sweeney NEWS (@sweeneyarchives) August 27, 2026

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

Bonus: RIP Dolly

A tradition unlike any other . . .

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

— Flappr (@flapprdotnet) August 28, 2026 Tyler Durden Fri, 08/28/2026 - 16:40