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Krasner has long worked as a second public defender for the city, running on his work to reduce the prosecution and incarceration of accused felons.

“I was trying to lay low … not be seen," the A-lister said of his look.

“I was trying to lay low … not be seen," the A-lister said of his look.

Is your phone bill to blame for the rising interest rates?

Trump Expected To Sign House-Passed 'Sanctions From Hell' Anti-Russia Bill

After on Wednesday Congress passed a greatly strengthened anti-Russia sanctions bill in memory of the late super-hawk Lindsey Graham, a White House official has confirmed Thursday that President Trump plans to sign it into law.

The Associated Press White House correspondent further noted, "Unclear when, but it does take a minute for bill to be enrolled and sent to the White House." So it could be authorized at any time in the coming days or next week.

AP file

After last month the Senate passed it, what's become the "Lindsey Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026" was also cleared in the House by this week's 262-159 vote. The Republican Senator passed away in July, just after getting back home after a trip to Ukraine, where he toured a drone and local munitions factory.

The bill targets major purchasers of Russian energy like China and India, which could set Beijing and Washington on a collision course. The timing is ironic and sensitive, given President Trump is just about to host China's Xi at the White House.

Trump's Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told the House Financial Services Committee hearing on Tuesday, "With China, we have had some very good private discussions, and I look forward to those continuing this weekend when I meet my Chinese counterpart Vice [Premier] He Lifeng."

This is how the breakthrough in the house to finally push the bill forward to the President's desk came about:

The rule, teeing up a final vote on the legislation, appeared headed for defeat until two Democrats — for the second time in as many weeks — broke precedent and voted to advance the measure. Reps. Jared Golden (D-Maine) and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-Wash.) also broke with Democrats on a rule vote earlier this month, shocking House Democratic leaders. Rule votes are typically seen as a test of party loyalty, and it is unusual for the minority party to cross the aisle in support of them. 

Even more important is Moscow's response, describing that the "sanctions from hell" package will only ensure Ukraine peace becomes more elusive.

But there's a chance that Trump may not actually sign it - or may at least hold off until after the Xi visit - also given he has lately sought to re-prioritize finding a way toward peace in the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

The same US Senator who traveled to Ukraine with Lindsey Graham before the war, beating the drums of confrontation with Russia, is now desperately clinging to yet another sanctions bill.

Years of escalation apparently haven’t been enough.

Instead of accepting reality, he’s… pic.twitter.com/X3FBUU1mBn

— Richard (@ricwe123) September 17, 2026

"We are, of course, monitoring the progress of this document. It falls under the category of unfriendly actions, and of course the imposition of any additional sanctions by the U.S. would certainly complicate efforts to find a peace settlement in Ukraine," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

* * *

Tyler Durden Thu, 09/17/2026 - 12:05

Missing US journalist Austin Tice was betrayed by his driver and handed off to ousted President Bashar al-Assad's dictatorship in a calculated operation, according to a new report.

In July, the accused killer was hit with new charges that he tried to hire a fellow inmate to rob Finn’s family, and Senft ordered a third and deciding evaluation.

Not only was the 49ers’ pass rush able to put constant pressure on Matthew Stafford, it was another story for the Rams coming after Brock Purdy.

Use the BetMGM bonus code POSTBET to get up to $1.5k back in bonus bets for ACC Football.

Lane Kiffin’s return to Ole Miss is just the latest chapter of a career defined by drama.  He is the coach who was terminated with cause by the NFL’s Raiders, bolted from Tennessee after one season, was fired by USC at the airport in the middle of the night and was booted by Nick Saban...

Expect fireworks when Buffalo and Detroit clash on "Thursday Night Football."

During a rant against mainstream Dems, podcaster Joe Rogan slammed Sen. Bernie Sanders for kowtowing to "the establishment."

Bailee Lynn Rios, an SUV driver accused of plowing into a Los Angeles Metro bus that killed two people before an NBC helicopter crashed nearby, is being held on $4M bail.

Huawei Pulls Its Nvidia-Killer Forward To Q1 - But There's A Catch

Huawei is bringing forward the launch of its next flagship artificial intelligence chip to the first quarter of 2027, accelerating its push to displace Nvidia in China and establish a Chinese alternative in the global AI computing market.

The Ascend 960DT, previously scheduled for commercial availability in late 2027, will now arrive in the first quarter, rotating chairman David Wang said Thursday at Huawei's annual conference in Shanghai, according to Bloomberg. A second variant, the Ascend 960PR, is due in the third quarter.

The accelerated schedule brings the 960DT forward by three quarters, according to Nikkei Asia. Wang said the chip would deliver twice the performance of its predecessor, with new generations following annually: Ascend 970 in 2028 and Ascend 980 in 2029. That is Huawei's performance claim, rather than an independently verified comparison with Nvidia's competing products.

"We aim to build a solid computing foundation for China and offer a new option for the world," Wang said, according to Nikkei.

As the WSJ notes, Morgan Stanley projects China's AI chip market to grow to $67 billion by 2030 - with domestic companies accounting for 86% of this, compared with less than half in 2025. 

Huawei introduced 11 chips covering AI processing, general-purpose computing, storage and high-speed connectivity as it builds out the components needed to operate entire AI data centers.

That broader approach is central to its challenge to Nvidia. Huawei is using its networking technology to connect large numbers of processors into systems called SuperPoDs and larger clusters, seeking to compensate for weaker individual chips by improving how they work together. Its UnifiedBus technology handles the high-speed connections, while new optical components are intended to accelerate data transmission.

Huawei says it has already overtaken Nvidia in China's AI chip market, although the claim comes from company executives and the reports provide no independently verified market-share figures. Executives also said the software gap is narrowing, a necessary step toward getting more Chinese developers to train and run models on Ascend hardware.

But the company's global ambitions face an immediate obstacle: it cannot produce enough chips for customers at home.

Deputy chairman Eric Xu told reporters that Huawei is prioritizing Chinese demand and has no current plan for a broad international expansion. Overseas activity remains limited to testing and supplying customers with a particularly urgent need for alternative hardware.

"We are doing some testing ... providing some supply to those countries, but the volume is quite limited," Xu said, according to Nikkei.

Huawei is proposing that its Ascend 980 chip will continue to build upon the foundation of its predecessors, boosting the compute capabilities to 7.2 PFLOPs in FP8 and 28 PFLOPs in FP4. The chip will feature 384 GB of HBM memory operating at 38.4 TB/s of bandwidth, and 8 TB/s of interconnect bandwidth. Huawei does mention that these are preliminary specs for the 980 chip, which can change close to launch. -WCCFTECH

Bloomberg has reported that Huawei is exploring opportunities in Malaysia and Egypt. Those efforts could give it an overseas foothold, but they do not yet amount to a worldwide rollout capable of replacing Nvidia.

The pressure on production is already visible. DeepSeek plans to deploy at least 160,000 Ascend 950DT chips at a data center in Inner Mongolia, Bloomberg reported, but Huawei cannot yet fulfill an order of that size. The company also raised prices for the 950DT by 60% over the summer, citing tight component supplies, according to Bloomberg.

Xu said shortages extend across optical components, storage and memory. He estimated that global supply and demand could reach balance around 2029, with China taking until roughly 2030.

Nvidia retains a technological advantage. Bloomberg reported that leading Chinese AI laboratories still largely rely on its processors to train their models, even as they increasingly use domestic chips to run them afterward. An earlier Huawei launch does not by itself establish equivalent performance, software maturity or manufacturing scale.

But let's also keep in mind that these chips don't need to match Nvidia's performance when open-weight Chinese AI models perform nearly on par with frontier labs at ~10% of the cost - a trend that continues. 

Huawei is building a domestic customer base and a broader computing ecosystem while Nvidia's most advanced products remain restricted.

Image via WCCFTECH

"China is a country with a very strong sense of crisis. We cannot let our fate be determined by others' willingness to sell chips to China or not," Xu said, according to Nikkei.

Huawei has shipped more than 1,000 SuperPoDs to more than 370 customers, Wang said, according to Reuters, without naming the customers or giving a breakdown of shipments.

Tyler Durden Thu, 09/17/2026 - 11:25

No Laughing Matter

By Bas van Geffen, senior macro strategist at Rabobank

In her State of the Union speech, European Commission President Von Der Leyen summarized that the European Union is stronger than ever, but that the state of the Union is also as precarious as it has ever been. Speeding up the overhaul of the Single Market is an imperative in this context. She acknowledged that the European Union is under attack, both economically and physically: “hybrid threats facing Europe are less and less hybrid and less and less threats.

The European Commission is increasingly aware of the interconnectedness of different themes and challenges –e.g., industrial policy, energy security, defense, and capital markets– that must be overcome to face these attacks. And, as Von der Leyen noted, this requires more alignment within the bloc. The Commission can achieve only so much without the support from, and complimentary actions by, the member states.

Indeed, internal divisions and national interest remain a challenge in key policy areas, such as deregulation, or foreign and trade policy.

The Commission is taking a tougher stance on trade policy, and specifically the EU’s trade relation with China. But Brussels is mindful of the challenges and risks of retaliation. So, they are advancing with small but tangible steps. The Commission has asked China to voluntarily restrict exports of hybrid cars – which do not fall under the ~40-45% tariff on electric vehicles. Imports of these cars have soared this year, undoubtedly also due to high fuel costs.

The FT also reports that Germany and France increasingly agree on more forceful action against China – after years of division over the appropriate approach. However, this ‘unity’ is often hard to find. If member states continue to protect domestic champions within the bloc, then it’s also easy for adversaries to drive a wedge between the member states.

On top of Von der Leyen’s call for internal unity, the Commission realizes that it cannot achieve its goals without international partnerships. The president of the European Commission proposed an associate membership for Canada – a status which is yet to be defined. In her State of the Union, she suggested the bloc and the country “will integrate defence industrial bases. We will make the Arctic a flagship joint project. We will work on energy, critical materials and batteries. On AI, quantum, cyber and economic security.”

Von der Leyen continued that “this is a partnership not against anyone else, but for our common strength.” That may be the EU’s intention, but in the current world order, other countries may not perceive it that way. These partnerships could be construed as a threat to their relative power and influence.

Indeed, President Trump called Canada’s associate membership “laughable,” before adding that he might consider it a “hostile act” if the EU approves this. The threat of tariffs, and the potential withdrawal of US troops and security guarantees will probably force some EU members to think twice about the Commission’s plans.

Similarly, stronger cooperation could antagonize other world powers. Russia may not like the joint Arctic project, and advancements on battery technology and critical raw materials would compete with China’s interests.

The plan for a stronger EU-Canada alliance wasn’t the only thing that displeased Trump yesterday.

The FOMC unanimously voted to increase the target range for the Federal funds rate by 25 basis points. And, as our US strategist notes, we got more than we bargained for. The Fed’s new set of economic projections essentially shows a new reaction function. The projections indicate that a much higher policy rate trajectory is required to reach a similar inflation outcome.

This new reaction function does not necessarily mean more hikes will follow. FOMC Chair Warsh acknowledged that yesterday’s rate hike cannot address the supply shock that caused high inflation, but he stressed that the Fed can prevent second-order effects.

The FOMC members project one additional hike before the end of the year, but we still have our doubts about that. We fear that the stagflationary impact could ultimately also affect the real economy, and not just inflation. Therefore, we still believe it is more likely that yesterday’s decision turns out to be a one-and-done hike and we think that the Fed may be forced to cut earlier next year than they expect.

However, the new reaction function did force a rethink of that subsequent cutting cycle. We now only expect one cut in 2027 and one in 2028, as we shift our assumption for the terminal rate from 3.00-3.25% to 3.25-3.50%.

Overall, the FOMC sent a clear message that it is committed to defend its monetary policy independence. In fact, their projections suggest that by the time President Trump leaves office, the policy rate may be higher than when Warsh took the helm at the central bank.

That’s already drawing some ire from President Trump – albeit directed at the other FOMC members, and not at Warsh. The president said he had spoken to Warsh prior, but “didn’t try to convince him.” Trump still relies on Warsh, but “no matter how good a job, he’s got a hostile board.”

Tyler Durden Thu, 09/17/2026 - 11:05

"Dead To Rights": Internal ActBlue Records Show Foreign-Flagged Donations Waved Through, Whistleblower Messages Deleted

For years, the left has lectured Americans about the dangers of "foreign interference" and dark money in our elections. But a sweeping congressional investigation has laid bare a vast Democratic fundraising apparatus that paved the way for just that: ActBlue, the billion-dollar financial engine of the Democratic Party, created a mechanism that encouraged illicit foreign cash - and then, investigators say, covered it up. Read on.

On Wednesday, House investigators released "Part III" of their bombshell investigation into ActBlue's fundraising practices. The findings outline a staggering pattern of willful blindness, internal censorship, and a frantic race by executives to plead the Fifth.

NEW: A House Judiciary report just dropped screenshots of ActBlue's internal Slack messages.

They show staff knowingly waved through foreign donations—using "verification" methods you won't believe.

Thread 🧵👇

— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) September 16, 2026

Here is how the Democrats' top fundraising platform built a system that welcomed very questionable cash, and how their own staff tried to bury the evidence.

Step 1: The "Smurfing" Machine

The scandal was officially brought to light in April 2025, when the House GOP released Part I of its staff report. Lawmakers detailed a structural nightmare: ActBlue had intentionally bypassed standard banking security measures, such as requiring CVV verification codes for credit card donations.

That gap is what made "smurfing" plausible - a money-laundering technique in which a large, illegal contribution is chopped into thousands of small donations, each attributed to a real person who, allegedly, never made it. The prepaid cards obscure where the money came from; the borrowed names make it look like a stream of legal small-dollar gifts from ordinary Americans. The donations themselves aren't hidden - as a conduit, ActBlue itemizes every one in its FEC filings regardless of size, which is how the donor lists cited below were compiled. The question is whether anyone at ActBlue was checking whose names were being used.

The allegation itself predates the House probe. It surfaced in March 2023, when James O'Keefe's O'Keefe Media Group - working from FEC-record analysis compiled by Peter Bernegger's Election Watch - published videos of elderly donors listed in federal filings for thousands of small ActBlue contributions far beyond anything they said they'd given. Sen. Ron Johnson wrote the FEC in April 2023; Chairman Steil's committee ran its own analysis of FEC records and in September 2024 referred its findings to five state attorneys general, citing anomalous donor profiles consistent with unwitting "straw donors"; President Trump's April 2025 memorandum directed DOJ to investigate "straw" and "dummy" donations. ActBlue calls the inquiry politically motivated. The House reports don't settle it. What they document is that ActBlue's own records show at least 22 significant fraud campaigns, account takeovers used to make straw donations that appeared to come from regular donors, and 237 prepaid-card donations from foreign IP addresses in a single month before the 2024 election - and that when investigators asked former Associate General Counsel Aaron Ting under oath whether smurfing is prevalent on ActBlue, he took the Fifth.

Step 2: The Cover-Up and the Fifth Amendment

When ActBlue's own legal and compliance teams realized the potential scale of illicit foreign donations flowing through the platform, panic set in. But instead of correcting the record with Congress, as its own lawyers advised, the execs allegedly moved to suppress the findings, as outlined in the committee's Part II report.

Internal records show what happened to the last lawyer who escalated the foreign-donation problem. After the 2024 election, ActBlue's outside counsel had warned the company in two memoranda that its screening of overseas contributions lacked the rigor it had described to Congress, and that its November 2023 letter to Chairman Steil may have been false or misleading. On February 25, 2025 - his first full day running the legal department - legal counsel Zain Ahmad put those memoranda in front of ActBlue's board of directors and executive team.

The silencing began the next day. He was locked out of his email and Google Drive, against ActBlue's own leave policy. When he objected in a 277-person IT channel - calling it retaliation and citing the company's whistleblower and anti-retaliation policies - IT director Hanna Bonin deleted the messages as fast as he posted them: his request to restore access, his policy citations, the policies themselves, and finally his plea to "stop deleting my requests," which vanished five seconds after it went up. Six deletions in one night. An HR staffer told the chief people officer it "look[ed] like blatant retaliation." When his email came back the next day, HR was discussing how to "key in on him" using the company's security tools.

When ActBlue's own legal counsel Zain Ahmad tried to report this, IT deleted his messages in real time.

This one says "Please stop deleting my requests. You are violating the laws and policies of our company." Deleted 5 seconds later. pic.twitter.com/fOQVbQEwyx

— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) September 16, 2026

The warnings, and leadership's response to them, sparked a mass exodus. Outside counsel, led by former Biden White House Counsel Dana Remus, warned that ActBlue's violations could be alleged to be "knowing and willful" and advised the CEO to hire her own lawyer. Instead, the CEO fired the law firm, and every member of ActBlue's legal and compliance team was gone within four months. When congressional investigators subpoenaed the people who knew, five current and former employees - including Ahmad, former General Counsel Darrin Hurwitz, and Ting - invoked their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination a staggering 146 times, declining to say even when they had worked at the company. CEO Regina Wallace-Jones did the same on camera in June; co-founder Matt DeBergalis and board chair Kimberly Peeler-Allen followed in August and September.

Step 3: The Smoking Gun

Released just weeks ahead of the 2026 midterms, Part III of the report brings it home. ActBlue wasn't just a victim of a cyber vulnerability - they were actively instructing their employees to ignore it.

According to internal policy records, ActBlue's supposed "passport verification" process to stop foreign donors was a complete sham. The platform admitted behind closed doors that it never checked government databases and "merely store[d] the information," validating nothing more than whether a user typed in the correct character count.

So what actually gets a foreign donation approved at ActBlue?

A supervisor's own words: "The donor is foreign, but correctly entered their billing address." Approved. pic.twitter.com/lL9iC4uZyF

— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) September 16, 2026

Worse, internal logs show fraud analysts were routinely pressured to approve flagged foreign contributions - sometimes over a pile of red flags, sometimes on the strength of a social media profile:

• A donor with an IP/billing mismatch, a suspicious IP provider, a foreign credit card, an odd email domain, and a browser fingerprint linked to other rejected accounts was accepted because staff "can't say for sure that this is fraud."
• In one instance, a donor whose data pointed entirely to Canada despite entering a Missouri billing address was approved simply because "Twitter seems to confirm that they are a real person".
• In another case, a foreign-flagged donor was waved through because the analyst noted they had a LinkedIn profile.
• Supervisors brushed aside red flags from adversarial regions, clearing transactions where the donor had an IP address originating in Hong Kong.

ActBlue's answer, delivered Wednesday evening by press release, is a third-party "forensic review" of its 2023 data that it says proves the CEO told Congress the truth - 99.99% of that year's contribution dollars came from donors who gave a U.S. address or a passport number. Its line to reporters: "There's nothing to see here."

And of course, they only noted whether a contribution arrived with a U.S. address or a passport number (zero verification of either), not whether the donor was legally eligible to give, and none of its published findings reach past 2023.

"Got Them Dead to Rights"

Tech investor Joe Lonsdale's reaction summed up the mood on the right - "Wow. Got them dead to rights" - adding that if a conservative platform were caught doing this, it would lead the legacy press for weeks.

Wow. Got them dead to rights.

A main fundraising apparatus of the left was consistently and knowingly breaking the law, and hiding it.

If it was the right caught doing this, it would 100% be the top news story for WEEKS in the legacy media. https://t.co/tZZxIUOuzQ

— Joe Lonsdale (@JTLonsdale) September 17, 2026

BREAKING: Democrat fundraising platform ActBlue repeatedly instructed its fraud prevention analysts to "give the donor the benefit of the doubt" and to ignore red flags about contributions from donors with foreign indicators, according to new documents uncovered by the House…

— Paul Sperry (@paulsperry_) September 17, 2026

So now that we know all this, will federal law enforcement finally hold ActBlue accountable, or will the two-tiered system of justice give them another pass?

* * *

Tyler Durden Thu, 09/17/2026 - 10:55

To grab your cash, you must file a claim by the deadline.

LSU head football coach Lane Kiffin's daughter, Landry Kiffin, said she was hurt after she was the target of inappropriate taunting and sexual jokes ahead of his return to Oxford.

You may be tired, but you certainly don't have to look it.

You may be tired, but you certainly don't have to look it.