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The casino employee accused of slashing five of his coworkers at a California resort plead not guilty to attempted murder charges.

Parton's nephew and longtime head of security, Bryan Seaver, announced her death Tuesday in an emotional Instagram video on behalf of the Parton and Owens families. She was 80.

Parton's nephew and longtime head of security, Bryan Seaver, announced her death Tuesday in an emotional Instagram video on behalf of the Parton and Owens families. She was 80.

Trump Admin Defends Kennedy Center Name Plan, Warns Of Demolition Risk

Authored by Kimberly Hayek via The Epoch Times,

The Trump administration told a federal judge that the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington could face demolition without major renovations.

Lawyers for the Justice Department made the case in a late Monday filing in defense of a recent board resolution that would add language recognizing President Donald Trump on the building and rename the grounds.

The board of trustees for the center voted Aug. 13 to place the words "Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump" below the center's formal name. It also approved calling the physical site the "President Donald J. Trump Plaza."

Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio), a board member, had asked U.S. District Judge Christopher R. Cooper to block the move. Beatty's emergency motion seeks an injunction against the name recognition resolution.

In response, Justice Department attorney Brantley T. Mayers wrote that the center sits in a "financial and structural death spiral." The filing describes the building as "dangerously dilapidated, outdated, and decrepit."

"Without those efforts, the Center will deteriorate further into an unsafe, decrepit structure that will be required to be taken down, with a determination to follow on what to build on the site," the filing states, pointing toward one long-discussed alternative in the form of a large outdoor amphitheater overlooking the Potomac River.

Mayers argued that blocking recognition of Trump would cause donors to flee, financial contributions to slow, and structural work to stop.

"The crisis is so acute that, without the Trump Administration, its people, and President Trump, the Center cannot survive, either structurally or financially," the filing says.

Cooper ruled in May that an earlier board decision to rename the institution the "Donald J. Trump and the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts" violated federal law. Only Congress can change the name, the judge found. Trump's name was removed from the facade in June.

The new resolution stops short of a complete rename. Administration lawyers contend it stays within the board's authority and does not violate the prior order.

A hearing is set for Thursday. The board has said it will not implement the inscriptions before Sept. 8 at the earliest.

The Kennedy Center opened in 1971 as a living memorial to the slain president. Its board, controlled by Trump appointees, has pushed renovations for months, with Trump describing the building as in poor shape and positioning the project as essential to its future.

The filing urges Cooper to deny Beatty's request, describing the recognition language as a necessary acknowledgment for the administration's role in any renovation and rescue effort.

Tyler Durden Wed, 08/26/2026 - 14:05

Yields Hit Session High After Subpar 5Y Auction Tails For 10th Consecutive Time As Foreign Buyers Shrink

While yesterday's 2 Year auction was absolutely blockbuster, today's sale of 5Y paper left quite a bit to be desired.

Starting at the top, today's sale of $70BN in 2Y paper priced at a high yield of 4.393%, which was modestly below last month's 4.408% if at the high end of all auctions in the past few years. It also tailed the When Issued 4.391% by 0.2bps, which was the 15th consecutive auction without a Stop Through, and the 10th tailing auction in a row.

The bid to cover was 2.37, an improvement to last month's 2.28 and better than the recent average of 2.32. It was also the highest bid to cover going back to November 2025. 

The internals were weaker, with foreign buyers taking down 61.5%, up from 59.2% last month if below the recent average of 65.4%. And with Directs hanging in there, and taking 28.4% of the auction, the most since January, Dealers were left holding 10.0%, the lowest since December. 

Overall, this was a solid, if notably weaker auction than yesterday's phenomenal 2Y sale, and the continued drift higher in the 10Y yield and the entire curve to session highs, confirmed the market's muted reception.

Tyler Durden Wed, 08/26/2026 - 13:49

Famous for the “cleanest restrooms in America,” the mega-sized convenience hub has taken issue with employee ink.

Joey and Jesse Buss are securing their next sports franchise ownership stake.  The Buss brothers, through Buss Sports Capital, have reached a deal to become minority owners of the San Diego Padres. The Athletic reported Wednesday that Joey and Jesse Buss are acquiring an ownership stake of around 5% of the Padres, who have new...

Held on the last Wednesday of August, the festival traces its origins to a food fight in 1945.

The British actor died Tuesday night after suffering serious health issues for over ten years.

The British actor died Tuesday night after suffering serious health issues for over ten years.

The Unsustainable $40 Trillion National Debt

Authored by Jeffrey A. Tucker via The Epoch Times,

The national debt has now passed $40 trillion. It stands at 120 percent of GDP. That should alarm us and probably does but let's just be honest: no one can conceive of such figures. They are just floating zeros and no one has any sense of whether and to what extent this portends economic doom for us. Maybe it does or maybe it doesn't.

An electronic display shows the national debt in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 19, 2026. Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

You can perhaps conceptualize this better by considering household finance. The extent of the debt burden a household can handle depends on the ratio of financial inflows to outflows in the form of debt service. This is the debt-to-income ratio. Another consideration looks at assets that would need to be liquidated should bankruptcy arrive. That's the debt-to-assets ratio.

The usual financial advice for a household is to keep the debt-to-income ratio in the range of 30 percent. As for debt-to-assets, anything beyond 50 percent is overly vulnerable to shocks that could turn everything south and quickly, leading to tragedy with even small changes in interest rates, stock valuations, business fortunates, or real-estate hiccups.

And yet here we are with a 120 percent ratio of debt to GDP. This is higher than the brief blowout of the Second World War, a time when the nation was stuffed with real savings and U.S. creditworthiness was unquestioned. After the war, the nation got its fiscal house in order and it stayed that way for decades.

The turning point toward this scary debt cycle was the end of the gold standard and the Bretton Woods system that forced some degree of fiscal responsibility. Gold outflows were always going to be a consequence of extension. When the spending extravaganza of the Great Society plus the Vietnam War (guns and butter) tested the limits and nations around the world started demanding payment in specie, the United States panicked and closed the gold window for good. That was 1971 and by 1973, we had a new system: a world of floating fiat currency.

The crucial point here is that Congress no longer faced any real cost for authorizing endless spending of whatever sort. The Treasury creates the debt and sells it to bond dealers who dish it out to all takers. The buyer of last resort is of course the Federal Reserve. This is the creator of this moral hazard. It's why there is no real default premium on U.S. debt and no serious work to rate the quality of debt with any realistic measurement. It's because the Fed is there always and ever to be the buyer of last resort.

Let's put this in simpler terms. Why is it that states within the United States don't run these kinds of debts? If they do run deficits, their default risk goes up and the quality rating goes down. Most states do very well on this score with a AAA rating, whereas Illinois, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Kentucky have lower ratings. In states, there are consequences for fiscal mismanagement.

I've wondered how common the knowledge is to explain this puzzle. So I asked a conventional AI engine what it believed to be the explanation. To my amazement, the answer came back quickly and precisely: states in the union have no power to create money. Boom! That's it. That's the whole thing.

This is why every scheme for balancing the budget at the federal level has failed. There is no balanced budget amendment but it likely would not matter much anyway. We could have a quantity rule for the Federal Reserve but it would be completely unenforceable.

The only way to stop the debt madness at the federal level would be to legally prohibit the Fed's open market operations (OMOs) and related large-scale asset purchases. This would largely prevent the Federal Reserve from expanding the monetary base in its primary and most powerful way. This and this alone would bring fiscal accountability to the federal level that states face all day every year.

Absent that solution, the federal government faces the same problem that a household with too much debt faces. Eventually all its income flows will be eaten up by debt service. Right now, 19 percent of federal revenue feeds the debt machine but matters are getting worse. The latest estimates from the Congressional Budget Office forecast a coming fiscal trainwreck.

The new estimates are that if net interest averages 250 basis points (2.5 percentage points) higher than CBO's baseline assumptions, 100 percent of all revenue going to the federal government will go to paying interest on the debt by 2055. That's just not that far away. That moment spells disaster.

And this is one reason why there is such a push by both parties and all stakeholders to hold down rates as much as possible. Letting them float according to free market pressures would bankrupt the country in a period of years. But therein lies another problem. Artificially low interest rates feed inflation and distort production structures.

This is why I'm not optimistic that our problems with inflation are going away anytime soon. If the Fed were really to crack down on quantitative easing, the fiscal burden of debt would explode in ways that would limit the power of politicians and utterly blow up the bond market. It appears to me that U.S. elites have decided that a persistent 3-4 percent inflation rate is a necessary tradeoff to avoid a fiscal calamity.

I'm very sorry to be the bearer of this bad news. We've gone though heck and back over the last 5 years of inflation but the problem is not going away soon. Let's further assume that the Reality Index is correct that the real inflation rate is one-third higher than official reports. At this rate, the dollar might have lost a clean 50 percent across the board of its 2019 purchasing power in one decade. This means that the fight to achieve the American dream is ongoing.

Consider too that the unfunded liabilities assumed over a 75-year horizon is closer to $80 trillion-$90 trillion, numbers that are beyond comprehension. The answer to the debt problem, then, is to bring back fiscal discipline through serious monetary reform. Let rates rise to their market level, allow that increase to feed the fullness of the yield curve, close open market operations, and expect Congress to stop its wild behavior once and for all. There are pathways out of this mess but it will require genuine political courage to pursue them.

Tyler Durden Wed, 08/26/2026 - 13:25

Chinese state-sponsored hackers infiltrated US government computer networks ranging from NASA to the US Senate.

Trump Sends Saudi Nuclear Accord To Congress, With Israel Normalization Still Attached

It's official - a proposed agreement with Saudi Arabia on civil nuclear energy has been submitted by the White House to Congress. 

The landmark nuclear accord would mean that uranium enrichment would eventually take place on Saudi territory. However, President Trump has included a major bombshell condition: he has not backed off requiring Saudi normalization with Israel.

Saudi state media sources

"The president's position has not changed that the agreement will only move ‌forward if Saudi Arabia joins the Abraham Accords," an admin official has made clear.

The Wall Street Journal reports that "The agreement, which ‌was reached in July and would allow U.S. companies to ​export civilian nuclear technology to the kingdom, was sent to Congress on Monday, according to the U.S. official, who ⁠declined to be identified."

But officials admit expected fierce debate in Congress, as WSJ also notes: "It was not clear how Trump expects ⁠sending the nuclear deal to Congress, which has 90 session days to consider it, will advance his objectives."

"The 30-year nuclear deal calls for the construction of AP1000 reactors, a project worth tens of billions ​of dollars that would benefit Westinghouse, jointly owned by Canada-based Cameco and Brookfield Asset Management," the same report details.

The Saudis cooled on the potential for normalization with Israel in the wake of the Gaza war. Riyadh has long been demanding nothing less than full recognition of a Palestinian state before it can join the Abraham Accords.

Given at this point that this seems an impossibility from Israel's perspective, which has effectively demolished the Gaza Strip and continues squeezing the West Bank, the Saudi nuclear deal is unlikely to happen anytime soon - and could yet be many years down the line, if at all.

Meanwhile, Tehran will seize on the hypocrisy of the West allowing uranium enrichment in Saudi Arabia - and thus potential nukes - while making war on Iran and sanctioning the country for its nuclear energy program.

Any future Saudi nuclear weapon might also assure an atomic arms race in the region, and certainly the Iranians would then have greater incentive to finally build one. And it could be that they already are in secret, following the US-Israeli unprovoked attacks during Operation Epic Fury.

Why a Saudi nuclear program is not worth ending Us proliferation

Spot on article by @StrickerNonpro analysing the proliferation risks if this deal. And i would add; these proliferation risks have only increased after the Mecca agreement. https://t.co/HlG3yCUJaV

— Brian McDonald B (@iamBrianBJ) August 26, 2026

Iran sees itself as in a war for its very existence, and so would naturally respond accordingly. It also looks at nations like North Korea, who gain automatic 'respect' from Trump and others on the mere basis of possessing a nuclear arsenal.

Tyler Durden Wed, 08/26/2026 - 13:05

This staff reduction is being presented as a way to secure the flailing league's future after the PIF ended its financial backing.

California Forever’s billionaire backers shelved their Bay Area megacity to fast-track a massive shipyard — but Solano County officials dealt the plan a major blow Tuesday night.

Get up to $1,500 back in bonus bets with the BetMGM bonus code POSTBET.

The AAC will look plenty different in 2026.

In the style of The Smiths: "Reacher in a trash chute, I know, I know, it's (not) serious."

Lost in the Red Sox's magical run is their top prospect, who hasn't forgotten the doubters.

The "Gossip Girl" actress initially sought $7,495,526.87 in attorneys’ fees and $539,514.01 in litigation costs and expenses from the director.