Following our earlier coverage of Barclays senior China economist Yingke Zhou's view that Chinese leader Xi Jinping's state visit delivered "more signaling, less substance," attention turns to Taiwan, where Xi pressed President Donald Trump to oppose Taiwan independence.
According to China's official Xinhua News Agency, Xi urged Trump to "adhere to the correct position of opposing Taiwan independence." The conversation took place at Thursday's White House summit.
For years, Washington has held the stance that it "doesn't support" the independence of Taiwan, the island Xi and his Communist Party claim as their own.
"While this may appear a semantic shift, the impact would be meaningful," said Bloomberg Economics' Jennifer Welch, who served as director for China and Taiwan on the National Security Council under the previous Biden and Trump administrations.
Welch pointed out that Beijing would use any switch in language from Trump to undermine Taiwan's confidence in US support. She added, "Opposing Taiwan independence implies an active effort to contain what Beijing sees as pro-independence forces."
This push by Xi to Trump comes as he heads toward an expected fourth term in office next year; he's ramping up diplomatic pressure to isolate the island, home to the world's most advanced semiconductor production, and block future weapons sales by the Trump administration.
For many months, Trump has delayed the $14 billion weapons package for Taiwan, which may come in the weeks or months ahead now that Xi's state dinner at the White House is over. It appears that Taipei is seeing its defense needs becoming leverage in the US-China trade spat.
In a preview of what next year might hold, China deployed a record 244 coast guard, research, and other government vessels around Taiwan this summer in what could only be viewed as a dry run for a blockade.
Beijing has warned that mishandling the Taiwan issue could lead to "clashes" between the superpowers - certainly a flashpoint.
"The key acid test will be what Trump says on Taiwan," said Ryan Hass, director of the China Center at the Brookings Institution, who Bloomberg quoted. "Not just what Xi urges Trump to endorse."
Meanwhile, Reuters cited Taiwan's foreign ministry as saying that Xi's remarks represent "the consistent Chinese approach of distorting facts and unilaterally conveying its position and claims."
"Taiwan's sovereignty belongs to all the people of Taiwan. The Chinese Communist Party has no right to represent the Taiwanese people, and Taiwan's future can only be determined by the Taiwanese people through democratic means," the ministry added.
There were no immediate signals that the Trump administration would agree to Xi's request, a shift in wording that could carry significant implications for Washington's stance on Taiwan.
Jeremy Chan, senior analyst on China for the US-based political risk consultancy Eurasia Group, told Reuters, "It would erode a lot of the...strategic ambiguity of whether the US would come to Taiwan's aid in that context."
Tyler Durden Fri, 09/25/2026 - 08:20Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,
A Naperville police officer turned a statewide camera grid into a personal tracking app, ran a man's plate about 150 times, and then retired like the file never existed.
The story serves as yet another example of how the burgeoning mass surveillance grid is being abused on a regular basis.
Patrick Dowhen was not a suspect. He was the ex. After Officer Oscar Maldonado started a relationship with Dowhen's fiancée, Flock became the shortcut. No warrant. No case number that mattered. Just a badge, a login, and a national lattice of plate readers that can reconstruct where you went, when you went, and how often you go there.
"Anywhere I went in the country, I was being tracked," Dowhen told ABC7 Chicago's I-Team. "It was scary, it was really scary."
Internal records obtained by the I-Team show the pattern started after Maldonado's relationship with Dowhen's then-fiancée began. Investigators found evidence he searched Flock for Dowhen's vehicle approximately 150 times over a three-month stretch last year.
Chicago Tribune reporting, from a separate FOIA haul, put the plate runs between June 18 and Sept. 15, 2025, and said Maldonado tracked plates for non-police reasons hundreds of times.
Dowhen said the surveillance was not abstract. "My ex-fiancée would tell me where I was at, or what I was doing, and he [Maldonado] was feeding her information," he said. "He's an officer, feeding a civilian, you know, inside information." He tore his truck apart looking for a tracker. Then he went to Naperville Police Chief Jason Arres. That complaint opened the internal case last September.
Maldonado's story to interrogators was protection: the woman, himself, his family. Naperville investigators did not buy it. They wrote that the "evidence contradicts Maldonado's explanation that he only used Flock for the safety of himself, his family," and Dowhen's ex-fiancée.
The report also concluded there was "a preponderance of the evidence that shows Maldonado did commit the crime of Official Misconduct," adding that he "admitted to using FLOCK for personal reasons."
Then on May 1, 2026, Maldonado retired. Department spokesman Rick Krakow said the internal case was complete but not closed because discipline had not been imposed. "However, the officer resigned before his disciplinary meeting with the chief, which essentially closed the case."
No arrest. No plate charges. A referral to the Illinois Law Enforcement Training and Standards Board. Will County prosecutors would not confirm or deny a criminal review. Dowhen later obtained a stalking no-contact order that noted Maldonado "was tracking my plate since 06/2025." That order was dropped after both men agreed to a two-year mutual no-contact deal.
"He could very well get a job as a police officer again and have, you know, all these same electronic things available to him at any time and stalk anybody you want," Dowhen said, "because at this point he has no criminal record."
ABC7 chief legal analyst Gil Soffer laid out the gap that let a 150-search campaign end in a retirement party. "It's not enough to say that a police officer violated internal laws, you'd have to show that a police officer knowingly violated a law, a statute, a constitutional provision," he said.
He added, "An official misconduct statute in Illinois won't necessarily cover the simple situation where a police officer accesses license plate information for an improper purpose."
Maldonado's own lawyer, Jeff Tomczak, made the same point from the other side of the table. "I'm a defense attorney. It should be a crime. It should absolutely be a crime. The legislature should act, create the crime of misuse of Flock. Don't require the state's attorneys to be creative."
A private company sold cities a warrantless movement database. Departments wrote policy memos. The statute book never caught up. When an officer treated the grid like a jealous-ex app, the fallback was an employee manual and a quiet exit.
The I-Team says this is not one suburban rogue. It identified 14 Chicago-area cases of officers accused of misusing Flock, with at least five sent to prosecutors. Berwyn's mayor, Robert Lovero, issued an executive order this week suspending the city's cameras.
On Capitol Hill the same day, Sen. Josh Hawley noted who did not show up: "You know who you won't hear from? Flock CEO." Sen. Dick Durbin added, "I think they're afraid to be on camera."
Nationally, a Washington Post investigation found at least 50 documented cases of officers charged with or accused of misusing automated plate-reader systems. In 26 of those cases, officers used the technology to spy on wives, girlfriends, former partners, or their exes' new partners.
Flock's system appeared in 46 of the 50. Chicago privacy researcher Matt Chapman, of Lucy Parsons Lab, put the constitutional problem in one line: "It seems that these tools are used as a means of circumventing Fourth Amendment rights."
This is the same architecture that already wrecked an innocent Florida woman's life.
Lindsey Brooke Isaacs, 23, spent 13 days in a Volusia County jail facing life after Florida troopers treated a Flock ping like a confession. Her black Dodge Durango had no collision damage. A 911 caller described a maroon SUV and a partial plate that was not hers. The camera still became the case.
"They just picked up my car off a camera and called it the end of the day. We got her," she said. Prosecutors later dropped every charge and arrested another driver whose maroon Durango and plate matched the original call.
Flock's line was corporate and tidy: "Flock cameras provide investigative leads; they do not identify perpetrators, determine guilt, or make arrest decisions."
Florida's governor had already seen enough of the dragnet. At DeSantis's direction, FDOT revoked every permit for Flock units and other automated plate readers in state highway right-of-way and put agencies on a 30-day clock. Miss it, and state crews pull the poles.
"I think these cameras, the license plate readers, I think it's out of control," DeSantis said. "I'm all about having law enforcement have tools to be able to hold criminals accountable... But I don't want to have this become a surveillance state."
He used the most Florida example available: a drive to Buc-ee's. "It's really none of the government's damn business if you're doing that, right?" He also named the stalking pattern now repeating in Naperville: "When I see, like, a police officer using this to track, like, an ex-girlfriend, I'm like, you know, what the hell's going on with this?"
Knox County, Tennessee, Mayor Glenn Jacobs - the former WWE star Kane - cut the same cord after he realized the product was not a passive hot-list ping. It is an active system that photographs every car, then builds what Flock calls a "vehicular fingerprint": make, model, color, roof racks, bumper stickers.
"The lack of transparency surrounding Flock's rollout is one of the most troubling aspects about all this," Jacobs wrote. "It's sure seems like there was a sprint towards a fait accompli before the public took notice."
The company has since shortened default retention, promised mandatory audits, and told cities they can wall off some outside searches. Semafor reported this week that Flock is now weighing a sale, with preliminary talks involving outside advisers. A spokesperson declined to comment.
Software patches after the poles are already in the ground do not rewrite the architecture: a searchable history of lawful travel, available to whoever has a login, with "audit" as the after-the-fact alibi.
Americans were sold stolen-car alerts and Amber Alerts. What got bolted to the intersection is a movement dossier with no judge on the front end and, in Illinois, no reliable felony on the back end.
Maldonado searched a man who was not charged with anything, roughly 150 times, then left with his record clean enough to wear a badge somewhere else. That is not a glitch in the camera. That is the product working as designed - until voters and governors start ripping the poles down.
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Tyler Durden Fri, 09/25/2026 - 08:05South Korea's Hyundai Motor Group is on track to surpass 123-year-old Ford Motor in third-quarter US deliveries (a first ever) as consumers shift toward smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles. The shift comes as Ford is plagued by the fallout from its costly EV strategy and production constraints affecting its light- or medium-duty truck unit.
Henry Ford must be turning in his grave.
Cox Automotive's third-quarter sales forecast, released earlier this morning, expects Hyundai's US deliveries to rise 4.4% quarter over quarter to 511,421 vehicles, while Ford's fall 7.7% to 504,172. The estimates, detailed on slide 27, put Hyundai on track to outsell Ford in the US for the first time.
Toyota, Hyundai and Kia are benefiting from US consumers seeking competitively priced hybrid lineups. Toyota, Hyundai and Kia are benefiting from competitively priced hybrid lineups. A record one in six new vehicles sold in the US in the second quarter was a hybrid, according to the report.
"This is a moment where consumers are trying to find options that offer more fuel efficiency," Stephanie Valdez Streaty, director of industry insights at Cox, told Bloomberg. "Hyundai and Kia are starting to have those options available and you can see they're gaining share because of that."
Bloomberg noted that Ford faced mounting headwinds. Fires at a key supplier plant last year constrained components to its top-selling F-Series trucks, while the phaseout of the Escape compact SUV has reduced volume.
The report showed the auto market is stable, with higher-income buyers supporting overall volumes, while cash-strapped households are rewarding automakers that offer hybrids.
Cox Chief Economist Jeremy Robb highlighted the vehicle segments driving sales this year:
Vehicle supplies:
New-vehicle pricing at record highs:
With the national average price of regular gas at $4.48 per gallon and diesel at $6.51 late in the summer, and fuel prices elevated since early March, new EV sales have remained muted. However, used EV sales have trended higher.
Stock Performance: Ford v. Hyundai
Ford should've focused on hybrids instead of making an idiotic mad dash into EVs. And just imagine what happens when China's BYD floods North America with cheap EVs and hybrids...
Tyler Durden Fri, 09/25/2026 - 07:45Authored by Jonathan Turley via JonathanTurley.org,
It appears that nothing says "saving Democracy" like a good old-fashioned military coup. A new survey from the Center for Strategic Politics found that 59 percent of Democrats would favor a military coup to remove President Donald Trump from office. All it took was four years out of power for these Democratic voters to embrace a coup d'état to negate the results of the last election. What is particularly chilling is that many of these voters still portray themselves as defending democracy by calling for a military takeover.
It is akin to supporting drive-by shootings to combat gun violence.
That is not the only shocker in this survey.
According to the Center, roughly six in 10 (59%) Democrats polled said they would feel "very positive" or "somewhat positive" if the US military removed Trump and seized control of the American government.
The vast majority, of course, would be happy if Trump were impeached and removed from office (87%) or ousted by his cabinet via the 25th Amendment (84%).
The survey also shows the same overwhelming support for socialism in the new Democratic Party. What is surprising is the support for public ownership of industries. That includes almost half (46%) supporting public ownership and operation of grocery stores. Almost 40 percent support public ownership and operation of restaurants. (39%).
I have previously said that I do not recognize the current Democratic Party as someone raised in a politically active and liberal Democratic family. I first became estranged from the party over the radical shift from a pro-free speech party to one that supported censorship and speech curtailment.
Despite many who claim that the Democratic Socialists represent a small fraction of the party, these polls show a consistent and growing majority in support of socialism.
The addition of support for a military coup shows the manifestation of a rage addiction in America. Democratic leaders are now calling for trashing core constitutional institutions or values. When some of us criticized moves to pack the Supreme Court, leaders like Kamala Harris and Gavin Newsom accused us of engaging in mere "nostalgia."
It is the same "nostalgia" that leaves many of us shocked at the support for a military coup.
On our 250th anniversary, we face yet again Benjamin Franklin's warning that this is a Republic if we can keep it.
Jonathan Turley is a law professor who teaches a class on the Constitution and the Supreme Court and is the best-selling author of "Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution."
Tyler Durden Fri, 09/25/2026 - 07:20