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Senate Schedules Contempt Vote For Fauci

Zero Rss
2 weeks 3 days ago
Senate Schedules Contempt Vote For Fauci

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

The Senate has scheduled a vote on holding Dr. Anthony Fauci in contempt.

The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs on Aug. 5 will consider a contempt resolution for Fauci. The resolution has not been released as of yet.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, testifies before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs in Washington on July 29, 2026. Madalina Kilroy/The Epoch Times

If the panel approves the resolution, then it will be sent to the Department of Justice with a recommendation to prosecute Fauci, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), chairman of the Senate panel, said during an appearance on CBS on July 30.

Paul has previously requested prosecution of Fauci for allegedly lying to Congress, but federal prosecutors have not brought any charges to date.

Fauci, who led the National Institutes of Health's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases from 1984 to 2022, read an opening statement at a hearing of the committee on July 29, then refused to answer any questions.

Fauci said he was following advice from his lawyers and invoking his right under the Constitution's Fifth Amendment, which protects people against self-incrimination.

Paul noted at the end of the hearing that a preemptive pardon from then-President Joe Biden issued in early 2025 covers Fauci for any crimes he may have committed from Jan. 1, 2014, through Jan. 19, 2025. Paul asked Fauci whether he, at any point during the time period the pardon covers, destroyed any federal record or instructed others to.

Fauci declined to answer, pointing to the Fifth Amendment.

"My question was limited to the period of your pardon only. I find your objection unsupported," Paul said.

Fauci said in his opening statement that Paul is obsessed with calling for his prosecution.

"The only conclusion I can reach is that the sole reason he is calling me before this committee is to get me to say something, anything that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words, 'behind bars,'" Fauci said.

Some senators said the situation called to mind what transpired with Lois Lerner, an IRS official who read an opening statement while appearing before a congressional panel in 2013 before refusing to answer any questions. The House of Representatives voted to hold Lerner in contempt of Congress.

Congress more recently approved contempt resolutions against Peter Navarro and Steve Bannon, onetime advisers to President Donald Trump. The men were convicted of contempt and spent time in prison.

People convicted of contempt of Congress can land a fine of up to $100,000 and a prison term of up to 12 months.

Several legal experts told The Epoch Times that Fauci wrongly invoked the Fifth Amendment in response to some of the questions.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, speaks during a hearing with Dr. Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, in Washington on July 29, 2026. Madalina Kilroy/The Epoch Times Tyler Durden Fri, 07/31/2026 - 09:35
Tyler Durden

A Wolf In New York City Mayor's Clothing

Zero Rss
2 weeks 3 days ago
A Wolf In New York City Mayor's Clothing

Submitted by QTR's Fringe Finance

Zohran Mamdani may be the most effective and dangerous wolf in sheep's clothing American politics has produced in years.

Beneath the polished charm and social-media-friendly persona is a grotesque combination of noxious policy ideas, delivered with snake like charm and layered with what feels like an outright hatred for success, individual liberty, free enterprise, private property, and many of the principles that helped make this country prosperous in the first place.

Mayor BigBrain™ was in the news twice this week. First, he came under fire after “effectively doxxing thousands of wealthy New Yorkers”, according to the New York Post when the city published a database identifying hundreds of thousands of property owners who could potentially be subject to his proposed pied-à-terre tax.

But perhaps taking a cue from the Soviet Union’s infamous “kulak” lists, where relatively prosperous peasants were identified, labeled as class enemies, and ultimately targeted for confiscation, deportation, or worse, the database reportedly included many people who may never owe the tax at all, including primary residents and tax-exempt diplomatic properties.

That raises an obvious question: why did City Hall feel the need to publicly compile and spotlight property owners before determining who would actually be subject to the proposed tax?

Then came Mamdani’s proposal for city-owned grocery stores selling staple goods at roughly 30% below prevailing retail prices. Here’s a widely circulated photo of Mamdani holding bananas with a giant “30% off” sticker plastered on them, which makes about as much sense as the proposal itself.

Three bananas cost about $1 from countless fruit vendors across New York City, whether you’re in a wealthy neighborhood or a working-class one. If bananas are supposed to be the poster child for a government-run discount grocery program, it’s hard to see what problem is actually being solved.

Under the proposal, the city would open five taxpayer-backed grocery stores, one in each borough, selling a fixed basket of staple goods at an average of 30% below prevailing retail prices through public subsidies. City Hall estimates households could save roughly $1,000 a year, but it has yet to explain exactly which products would qualify, how the discounts would be calculated, or what the total cost to taxpayers would be. Also, they are referring the “households” getting the discounts, not the ones ultimately paying for the discount via taxation.

Critics argue the plan would unfairly force neighborhood bodegas, fruit stands, and independent grocers, many of which already sell inexpensive staples like bananas, to compete against government-subsidized stores operating below market prices.

Just like many of his taxation-based ideas, the proposal could end up hurting many of the very New Yorkers it claims to help. Across the city, countless neighborhood bodegas, family-owned grocery stores, and fruit vendors (many operated by immigrants who have spent years building small businesses) already compete on razor-thin margins while providing affordable food in their communities.

If the government begins subsidizing its own stores to sell staple goods below market prices, those independent businesses would be forced to compete against an entity backed by taxpayer dollars rather than normal market forces. Instead of strengthening neighborhood commerce and expanding opportunity, the policy risks pushing hardworking entrepreneurs out of business while replacing private enterprise with a government-run alternative.

Questions that have not been answered clearly include: Which products qualify? How much selection will there actually be? How much will taxpayers ultimately spend to keep the stores afloat? And perhaps most importantly, why should privately owned grocery stores have to compete against an opponent with an unlimited line of credit backed by New York taxpayers?

Viewed individually, each proposal can be defended by its supporters. Viewed together, they paint a much more revealing picture. Neither proposal is really about groceries or luxury apartments. They’re about expanding government’s reach into virtually every corner of economic life.

The grocery plan begins with the assumption that high prices aren’t primarily the result of supply constraints, regulation, taxes, labor costs or New York’s notoriously difficult business environment. Instead, the solution is for City Hall to become a supermarket operator. Rather than making it easier for private businesses to compete, government simply decides to compete against them. With your money.

This is the sort of idea that sounds terrific in a campaign speech but becomes considerably less inspiring once someone has to explain where the subsidies come from, how losses are covered and what happens when politically connected interests begin deciding which neighborhoods, products and suppliers deserve preferential treatment.

Markets certainly fail. Governments, however, have assembled a Hall of Fame career in doing exactly the same thing, except with other people’s money. A privately owned grocery store that continually loses money eventually closes its doors. A government grocery store simply requests another appropriation. Failure doesn’t disappear. It just gets moved onto the taxpayer’s balance sheet.

The same governing instinct appears in the handling of the pied-à-terre database. Governments necessarily collect enormous amounts of information. That’s unavoidable. Publicly compiling and spotlighting property owners before determining whether they actually owe a proposed tax is something entirely different.

Just because government can publish information doesn’t mean it should. Property rights and privacy deserve more respect than becoming collateral damage in a political messaging campaign aimed at people wealthy enough to own expensive real estate.

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Some have even speculated that Mamdani's decision to publish this information amounts to creating an "enemies list" of wealthy property owners. I don't go that far…at least not yet…but his hostility toward wealth creation and private success has been impossible to miss, and it wouldn't surprise me if his politics eventually drifted in that direction.

Taken together, these proposals reveal a governing philosophy that increasingly views government not as a referee but as a player, a competitor, a retailer, a landlord, a tax collector and an economic planner all rolled into one. Supporters call that activist government. Critics might call it communism with better public relations.

New York unquestionably faces serious affordability problems. Housing costs are staggering. Food prices remain elevated. Young families are struggling. Those are real issues deserving real solutions. But expanding government into yet another industry while handing taxpayers the bill is hardly an original idea. Versions of it have been tried repeatedly across history, usually with the same predictable outcome: larger bureaucracies, higher costs, less competition and a growing dependence on government to solve problems government often helped create in the first place.

These aren’t isolated proposals. They’re pieces of the same ideological puzzle. One expands government’s role as retailer. The other expands its role as tax collector and public scorekeeper.

Taken together, they point in one direction: a city where government occupies an ever larger share of economic life while asking taxpayers to believe this time, unlike every other time in history, bureaucrats will somehow allocate resources more efficiently than markets. That isn’t a debate about groceries.

It’s a debate about whether New York intends to become a laboratory for communism in America or a city that still believes private enterprise deserves the benefit of the doubt.

--

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

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

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

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Tyler Durden Fri, 07/31/2026 - 08:40
Tyler Durden

Trump Hails 'Historic Agreement' To Disarm Hamas, But Israel 'Skeptical'

Zero Rss
2 weeks 3 days ago
Trump Hails 'Historic Agreement' To Disarm Hamas, But Israel 'Skeptical'

"Today, the Board of Peace reached a HISTORIC agreement for the COMPLETE DISARMAMENT of Hamas and all other armed groups in Gaza," Trump declared Thursday evening on Truth Social.

"This is a monumental step toward lasting PEACE and SECURITY," he added, following months of delicate negotiations involving mediators Qatar, Egypt, Turkey. Implementation is as soon as in the coming weeks, a US official told Axios, after Hamas was widely reported to agree and sign on to the deal.

AFP via Getty Images

"This agreement is a critical step towards Gaza finally being governed by a new Palestinian government that will work closely with the Board of Peace to help the Palestinian people,” Trump wrote. "At the same time, Israel will have the security it deserves, with Gaza no longer used as a base for terror attacks."

However, there's still some angst and reports of incompleteness to the agreed-upon deal. And in the West Bank, Jewish settler attacks on Palestinian villages and towns are on the significant uptick - which militants in Gaza have historically kept a close eye on and reacted to.

But so far, under the terms of the agreement Hamas would fully step down from governing Gaza, yielding control to the newly proposed National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG) - a body designed to replace both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. According to a senior US official, this new administrative council "will work for the people of Gaza."

As has been demonstrated in the region many times over, reality may prove far more complex. While Hamas official Ghazi Hamad confirmed to Al Jazeera that "difficult" negotiations had indeed yielded an agreement, his remarks cast immediate doubt on how it would actually be enforced.

Hamad declared, "We will not take any steps regarding disarmament before Israel withdraws from the Gaza Strip," while adding that the NCAG itself would oversee disarmament without any Israeli participation.

This condition directly conflicts with Trump's vision of a "carefully structured" and phased transition, which conditions the withdrawal of Israeli forces on the progressive completion of the disarmament process.

For Israel's part, its forces would not withdraw its military behind the "yellow line" a demarcation in place Gaza since a peace framework was announced in October, until disarmament is complete, per the US plan.

The Hill details that the disarmament process alone could be quite complex:

U.S. and Board of Peace officials said the first step in the roadmap is establishing a “complete monopoly of weapons,” so that Hamas cannot disrupt the peace process moving forward. 

The first tranche of weapons would be police firearms, followed by heavy weapons, weapons depots and tunnels, they said. “That will obviously be a very technical process in which we will rely heavily on the expertise and support of the International Stabilization Force, which has studied this situation for months now and looked at how this can be done,” said one official. 

The final challenge would be collecting “personal weapons,” which would be achieved through enforcing existing Palestinian legislation.

“Of course, there’s the issue of the militias and the clans that exist in Gaza that they will also have to demilitarize and decommission their weapons as part of this process,” the official said. 

The full Trump post:

So while the US and regional leaders are busy celebrating and hailing the plan, the proverbial devil will be in the details and in the process - and needless to say a lot could go wrong.

This is why one US official has described the Israelis as skeptical that this will actually come together and end in the disarming of Hamas and other groups. "They’re very skeptical that Hamas will disarm. But again, they’re not really being asked to do much in the process because this isn’t really a trust deal. This is really, you know, it’s a conditions-based deal. And as things happen, that everyone has to follow the obligations they’ve taken," the official said. 

Tyler Durden Fri, 07/31/2026 - 08:20
Tyler Durden

Situational Unawareness

Zero Rss
2 weeks 3 days ago
Situational Unawareness

Via Rabobank,

Markets have a habit of explaining every move with the most obvious narrative available. This week, that narrative was earnings. Investors spent days dissecting cloud growth, AI capex, free cash flows, and also Fed messaging, while some of the most dramatic price action of this summer was being driven by something else entirely. 

That "something else" was Situational Awareness, the AI-focused hedge fund run by a 24-year-old whizz-kid, which reportedly had to offload most of its public equity book to Citadel following the recent tech rout. It turns out that loading up on leverage and high-beta names works both ways, also if you're exceptionally smart. In a market where everyone is a momentum investor until they become a forced seller, those unwinds are never pretty. You take the escalator up, but the elevator down. 

The timing was certainly interesting. Earlier in the week, Citadel raised eyebrows by calling for a July Fed rate hike, adding to an already nervous backdrop. Days later, it emerged as the buyer of a large block of stock from a distressed seller. Readers can draw their own conclusions. Either way, once the position clearing became public, the sell-off looked less like a systemic event and more like a straightforward deleveraging episode. That was enough to help put a floor under markets, at least for now. 

This morning, chip stocks are ripping higher alongside a broader rebound in Asian tech. South Korea is once again leading the charge, with the KOSPI up 18%, capping an extraordinary week in one of the world's most volatile equity markets. 

Japan also joined the action. USD/JPY was hammered lower from 163 to 159 on Thursday following FX intervention, with Warsh's hold and relatively dovish press conference arguably providing the window the Japanese Ministry of Finance had been waiting for. The dollar had already begun to soften on its own, making intervention easier to execute. 

Initial speculation was that the move would be followed by a Bank of Japan rate hike, but that failed to materialise this morning. Only one of the nine board members, Hajime Takata, voted for a consecutive hike, which would have been the first such move in decades. Even so, Governor Ueda struck a sufficiently hawkish tone to help make the intervention stick, with investors seemingly content to take the BoJ at its word, unlike after this week's FOMC press conference. The yen currently trades around 160.4. 

China was the weak spot. The official PMI data disappointed, with both manufacturing and non-manufacturing activity slipping back into contraction territory. Domestic demand remains soft, and the Politburo meeting offered little comfort for those hoping for a fresh round of stimulus. Instead, policymakers focused on speeding up the implementation of measures already in place. 

The broader challenge is that China still relies heavily on exports to support growth, as the cracks in the domestic economy are wide. Weak consumer demand, falling foreign direct investment, subdued business investment and persistent overcapacity in parts of the industrial sector continue to weigh on activity. Record trade surpluses may flatter headline growth, but they do not provide a sustainable foundation for the economy, let alone its relationship with other countries.

In this report, we argue that China is likely to be pushed, at least gradually, towards a more consumption-driven growth model. That transition will not be painless. The adjustment could prove costly and disruptive, particularly if trade tensions with the rest of the world continue to intensify in the meantime. Our base case is that China's growth trend will continue to drift lower over the coming years and settle below the authorities' preferred 4.5%-5.0% range. We still expect growth of around 4.5% this year, but see it slowing to roughly 4.2% in 2027. 

As Chinese firms currently look abroad to absorb their excess production, Europe finds itself at the sharp end of the adjustment. Partly in response, the EU has rolled out a broad set of policies aimed at strengthening domestic production, reducing vulnerabilities in key supply chains and limiting exposure to external economic pressure. This report provides a non-exhaustive overview of those initiatives. Whilst there is clearly a more coherent framework emerging from Brussels, its is also fair to say that progress in implementation remains slow and uneven. 

US GDP grew by 1.5% q/q annualized in Q2, which, if you forget about silly things as decimal points, is bang in line with President Trump’s growth target of 15%. Consumer spending once again did the heavy lifting, rising 3.2% and accounting for most of the headline growth. Investment and exports also contributed positively, although government spending and imports acted as a drag. Business investment rose a strong 8.4%, largely thanks to continued spending on AI-related infrastructure and capacity expansion. Finally, real final sales to private domestic purchasers, often seen as ‘core GDP’ because it strips out trade, inventories and government spending, grew by a robust 3.9% in Q2, suggesting the private sector remains in good shape. 

In the UK, the Bank of England left Bank Rate unchanged at 3.75%, exactly as both markets and economists had expected. At first glance, the 6-3 vote split looked hawkish, with Catherine Mann joining Huw Pill and Megan Greene in voting for a 25bp hike. But the dissents do not tell a single coherent story. More importantly, the other six members appear comfortable tolerating inflation around 3% for the time being, provided second-round effects remain contained and the economy continues to soften. Bailey effectively confirmed as much in the press conference, making it clear that the Bank is not edging towards a rate hike. Oil prices remain the obvious wildcard, but the hurdle for a September hike still looks high. We expect no rate hikes this year.

Day ahead

The data deluge continues today. The French HICP print for July came in at 2.4% y/y while a much more modest 2.0% was expected, with energy prices being the main culprit. The euro area HICP print follows at 11:00 CET. Headline inflation is expected to tick up to 2.9% from 2.8%, while core inflation is seen holding steady at 2.4%. The expected rise in headline inflation mainly reflects rising oil and crack spreads, feeding through to fuel prices even more quickly than usual, while governments have started to roll back measures that had shielded households from higher energy costs, most notably Germany. 

Even if inflation rises to 2.9%, that would still leave it well below the ECB’s June projection of 3.4% for Q3 2026. That said, higher oil prices and mounting second-round risks reinforce the ECB’s concerns about underlying inflation pressures and keep it on track to raise rates again in September. 

In the US, the Employment Cost Index is expected to have risen by 0.8% q/q in Q2. That would leave wage growth at a pace the Fed could comfortably live with, broadly in line with 2% underlying inflation, assuming it still reacts to the data in a predictable way. Markets will also get a second look at the University of Michigan survey for July. The message probably remains familiar: households remain most concerned about fuel prices and, more broadly, the rising cost of living. 

Tyler Durden Fri, 07/31/2026 - 08:05
Tyler Durden

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