Zero Rss

Netanyahu Boasts Of Years-Long Effort To Convince US To Launch War Against Iran

Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has boasted of his efforts to convince the US to launch a war against Iran, crediting his frequent appearances on US television networks and his "intimate knowledge" of US leaders.

Netanyahu made the comments Sunday night on Israel’s Channel 14, and a clip of his appearance was posted on X by the account Clash Report, which Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi later shared.

via Associated Press

The Israeli leader said that he had been against Iran for "nearly 40 years" and that it took him a long time to get the Israeli security establishment and the US on board.

"It took a long time to bring the US in," he said, according to Channel 14. "I was able to do this because I had close to a thousand hours on American television, influence in the United States, and intimate knowledge of all its leaders – both those who support us and those who do not."

The New York Times reported in April that 17 days before the US and Israel launched the war on February 28, Netanyahu presented President Trump with an intelligence briefing at the White House and made a "hard sell" for the war.

The report said that Netanyahu had been "pressing for months" for the US to agree to a major attack on the Islamic Republic.

Netanyahu:

I’ve been dealing with Iran for close to 40 years.

It took me a long time to get our security establishment to deal with Iran itself.

It also took a long time to bring the United States to this understanding. I was able to do that because I had close to a thousand… pic.twitter.com/IT4KkD7j7B

— Clash Report (@clashreport) August 30, 2026

Sources told the Times that during the briefing, Netanyahu made a series of predictions about the potential war that proved to be wrong, including the idea that Iran was ripe for regime change, that its ballistic missile program could be destroyed within weeks, that it would be too weak to close the Strait of Hormuz, and that Iran’s missile strikes on US interests in regional countries would be minimal.

Responding to Netanyahu’s comments about his influence on the US, Aragchi said that the Israeli leader was openly bragging about how he "suckered" the US into the war.

Greenwald: the US once covertly sold missiles to the Iranians...

It's amazing how quickly they got huge numbers of people to recite the comical view that Iran has been at war with the US for 47 years (and, I guess, every American president forgot to mention this fact, including Trump 1)

In the 1980s, the Reagan WH sold highly sophisticated… https://t.co/PI85t3nOpV

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) August 31, 2026

"In Hebrew, Netanyahu openly crows that he suckered the US Administration into a war on Iran on behalf of Israel."

"Netanyahu explicitly laughs about how he 'influenced' America through 1,000 hours of airtime on US networks," the Iranian diplomat wrote on X. “In English, he praises POTUS’ leadership. Serpent.”

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/01/2026 - 17:40

'Daddy's Savings Account': Two More NYC-DSA Leaders Caught Living The Capitalist Dream

A pair of New York City's leading Democratic Socialists live in Brooklyn apartments that would be pure fantasy for the working-class Americans they claim to champion, according to the New York Post, the latest installment in a running audit of the personal real estate of the organization that put Zohran Mamdani in Gracie Mansion.

The report lands less than two weeks after the Post revealed that NYC-DSA co-chair Gustavo Gordillo, a Yale-trained sculptor who has billed himself as a "union electrician," lives in a $1.5 million Bed-Stuy townhouse bought and renovated by his parents' LLC, a disclosure that has since earned the property a Department of Buildings stop-work order and a $2,500 fine for permitless renovations. That makes it three for three among the group's top brass.

First is Julie Swoope, who chairs the far-left group's steering committee and in 2021 purchased a one-bedroom co-op outright, just blocks from Prospect Park, for $510,000. The listing touted skyline views and "great closet space."

Julie Swoope owns a $500,000 apartment in Brooklyn. canarymission.org

Swoope's family background does little to reinforce a working-class narrative. Her mother, artist Gail Cunningham Swoope, spent three years traveling aboard a live-aboard sailboat and belonged to the New Smyrna Beach Boat and Ski Club, according to an obituary reviewed by the Post.

Next up is Olivia Gonzalez Killingsworth, the group's labor coordinator, elected in 2025, who runs her own bookkeeping business and is also an actor and singer, according to her website. Killingsworth sold an Upper West Side triplex in a brownstone building on September 12, 2022, for $2.4 million. The two-bedroom, three-bathroom unit sits a block from Central Park.

DSA labor coordinator Olivia Killingsworth sold a $2.4 million triplex in 2022. bluesky / olivekilworth

Killingsworth did not buy that property on the open market. Akin to many champagne socialists, she inherited the unit from her aunt Elizabeth, who died in 2018, and sold it alongside relatives.

Just two days later, on September 14, 2022, Killingsworth closed on a one-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn for $521,000, completing a sequence in which an inherited brownstone near Central Park was liquidated for millions and replaced, almost immediately, with another New York apartment.

For context, the DSA's own platform holds that housing policy should involve "a redistribution of land from the landowners to the landless," with property expropriated from capitalists and delivered to the working class.

"Once again we're finding out why DSA actually stands for Daddy's Savings Account. Selling a multimillion-dollar Manhattan Triplex to go play pretend bohemian with your rich comrades in Brooklyn is a luxury working-class New Yorkers will never have," New York City Councilwoman Vickie Paladino (R-Queens) said in a statement to the Post.

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/01/2026 - 17:20

Top US General Says No Plans To Deploy Troops To Polling Sites In November

Authored by Aldgra Fredly via The Epoch Times,

The U.S. military has no plans to send troops or other personnel to polling places during November's midterm elections, the top U.S. general has said.

Gen. Dan Caine, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was responding to Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), who had asked him and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth in an Aug. 18 letter to confirm they won't send troops to polls.

Caine wrote in response that state and local officials retain responsibility for overseeing election administration and security.

"The Joint Force has no plans to send Federal military personnel or Federalized members of the National Guard to polling places during the 2026 elections," Caine wrote.

"Likewise, the Joint Force has no plans to use such personnel to seize ballots, voting machines, or other election-related material."

Caine also said that he had not received, nor did he expect to receive, "any unlawful order" concerning the role of the Joint Force in the November midterm elections.

In 2020, Gen. Mark Milley, then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, responded to a similar letter from Slotkin, then a congresswoman.

"I believe deeply in the principle of an apolitical U.S. military," Milley wrote. "In the event of a dispute over some aspect of the elections, by law U.S. courts and the U.S. Congress are required to resolve any disputes, not the U.S. military."

The United States is set to hold midterm elections in November, which will decide which party controls Congress for the next two years, with all 435 House seats and one-third of Senate seats up for election.

Earlier this year, then-White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said President Donald Trump had not discussed any "formal plans" to deploy Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents at polling places during the midterm elections, but declined to rule out the presence of federal agents near voting sites.

Federal law prohibits the government from deploying troops at locations holding general or special elections "unless such force be necessary to repel armed enemies of the United States," according to 18 U.S. Code § 592, and bars any sort of interference in elections by armed forces. ICE agents are civilian law-enforcement officers and are not covered by the same prohibitions that apply to the armed forces, although other laws still limit intimidation or interference at polling places.

"I can't guarantee that an ICE agent won't be around a polling location in November," Leavitt told reporters on Feb. 5. "But what I can tell you is I haven't heard the president discuss any formal plans to put ICE outside of polling locations. It's a disingenuous question."

Leavitt stepped down from her role in late August, citing the need to focus on her family following the birth of her second child.

Slotkin introduced legislation on June 18 to prevent the deployment of military forces and federal agents at polling places during the midterm elections.

The bill would require the president to provide Congress with "intel, legal justification, and evidence" showing that state or local authorities are not capable of handling a threat on their own at least 48 hours before sending federal forces to polling sites, according to a statement from Slotkin's office.

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/01/2026 - 17:00

Trump Admin Urges SCOTUS To Step In On Military Trans Ban

The Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to uphold its ban on transgender troops serving in the military, appealing a lower court ruling that has, for now, blocked enforcement against service members already in uniform.

Vin Testa waves a LGBTQ pride flag in front of the Supreme Court building on June 26, 2023 in Washington, DC.
Getty Images

The petition targets a June decision by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals finding the ban probably violates the constitutional rights of transgender troops already serving. The decision claimed that the ban "appears to be driven by the bare desire to harm a politically unpopular group: persons who identify as transgender." That ruling barred the Pentagon from enforcing the policy against those specific plaintiffs while their case works through the courts. The administration maintains the policy regulates a medical condition - gender dysphoria - rather than transgender status, and therefore needs only a rational connection to military readiness to survive review.

The June ruling was 2-1 and split the baby: it blocked the Pentagon from discharging the currently serving plaintiffs while leaving the ban on new transgender recruits fully in place. Judges Robert Wilkins (an Obama appointee) and Judith Rogers (a Clinton appointee) formed the majority. Judge Justin Walker, a Trump appointee and the panel's lone Republican nominee, dissented: "because the plaintiffs are service members not civilians, and because we are judges not generals, I respectfully dissent." The Constitution, Walker wrote, assigns that authority to Congress and the Commander in Chief. Notably, a different D.C. Circuit motions panel had ruled the opposite way in December – letting the Pentagon enforce the ban, 2-1 – meaning the same courthouse has now gone both directions depending on which three judges drew the case. Hegseth's response to the June loss was four words: "See you at SCOTUS."

The administration wants the justices to take the case now, before trial – its petition calls the June ruling "gravely erroneous" – rather than let a preliminary injunction, in place in some form since March 2025, run all the way to a two-week trial set for January. That posture has become familiar this year, with the Department of War repeatedly asking the high court to let its personnel decisions stand while litigation over their legality plays out.

The Justice Department's Supreme Court filing describes the Pentagon's authority to decide who serves as a "matter of exceptional importance," language that puts military judgment, not the lower courts' read of the evidence, at the center of the case.

Shannon Minter, legal director of the National Center for LGBTQ Rights, claimed the administration "wants the Supreme Court to rush in and bless the expulsion of proven, decorated soldiers before a single court has issued a final judgment."

The policy traces back to an executive order Trump signed shortly after taking office. It states that "adoption of a gender identity inconsistent with an individual's sex conflicts with a soldier's commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle."

"We will get transgender ideology the hell out of our military. It's going to be gone," Trump told House Republicans the day he signed the executive order during a retreat at his Doral golf resort in Miami.

Pete Hegseth turned that order into policy in February 2025.

Hegseth's memo reasoned that troops who experience symptoms of gender dysphoria "cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for Military Service." He has since folded the ban into a broader push to strip "woke" policy out of the armed forces.

The population at issue is small but not trivial: the Pentagon's own estimate put roughly 4,240 troops with a gender dysphoria diagnosis among a force of about two million, and around 1,000 self-identified for voluntary separation when Hegseth's 2025 deadline hit.

NCLR and GLAD Law filed the underlying case, Talbott v. United States, in January 2025 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, arguing that the Department of War's transgender policy violates the Constitution and discriminates against transgender troops.

The court has scheduled a trial for January 2027, but the Department of War wants the ban enforced against the plaintiffs before then. The justices already weighed in on this policy once before. They allowed the ban to take effect last year in a separate challenge, while that earlier litigation proceeded, a result that suggests a majority already leans toward giving the Pentagon the ability to set its own military readiness standards.

The ruling under appeal covers narrower ground – for now. It protects only the troops who brought this specific suit. But on June 30, District Judge Ana Reyes – whose original injunction called the ban "soaked with animus and dripping with pretext" – certified the case as a class action covering every transgender person serving or seeking to enlist since January 2025, a maneuver designed to route around the Supreme Court's ruling last year curtailing nationwide injunctions. Two months later, the administration was at the high court's door. If the plaintiffs win at the January trial, the remedy no longer stops at 29 names.

"Joe Biden allowed trans insanity to run rampant in our military," White House spokeswoman Olivia Wales said in a statement. "President Trump restored lethality and readiness to our warfighters." She added, "The United States military is the greatest in the world, and President Trump is keeping it that way by focusing on elite readiness standards – not DEI or woke gender ideology."

Whether the Supreme Court agrees to hear the case will determine how long the lower courts' preliminary read of the Constitution can override the Pentagon's own judgment about who meets its strict standards of military readiness.

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/01/2026 - 16:40

How Capitalism Reduces Poverty And Creates Wealth

Authored by James T. Moodey via American Thinker,

The word capitalism was coined in the 1700s. The definition was vague. It generally meant "private property traded freely" or "free markets." However, most non-totalitarian countries had free markets, and these countries in Europe and elsewhere were not particularly wealthy. Their rural people were paupers living off the land, even in England, France, and the U.S. at our founding.

We generally regard capitalism as creating wealth, but free markets are not what created the enormous wealth that occurred in the United States. I knew that and studied our economic history to find out: If it was not free markets, what was it? What specifically were the mechanics of "our capitalism" that created such wealth?

I found the answer. However, I also learned that capitalism cannot be taught without properly defining wealth.

Wealth of a nation is its amount of usable goods. I use the term usable goods to exclude paintings and other speculative items. Poverty is a lack of usable goods, such as clothes or food. A large supply of usable goods brings prices down and reduces poverty. We became wealthy because we produced an enormous amount of usable goods. But how did that happen?

Usable goods are created by factories. It is not the amount we pay factory workers that is important; it is the millions of hammers, shoes, and vehicles they produce that create wealth. Farmers and utility workers can be included with factory workers who produce usable goods for millions of people.

Cyrus McCormick's reaper would supply a large amount of food, but sales were difficult and slow. The reaper would break down on farms far away. McCormick had difficulty traversing the country making repairs and sales. He solved these problems by inventing a unique idea of setting up distributors. He shared significant profit with the distributors. They stocked the product locally, performed repairs, and made sales. Sales grew rapidly, and McCormick Reapers were supplied throughout the country. The United States became an exporter of food.

Here is the key to capitalism's success: When farmers tried to buy direct from McCormick, he refused and made them buy from their respective distributor.

Other manufactures, of home goods, saw McCormick's success and not only set up distributors, but added another discount to include retailers. Again, customers were sent back to the retailers. Retailing became a very profitable business. In the 1850s, general stores appeared in nearly every town.

It was not greed that made capitalism successful; it was nearly the opposite. It was the sharing of profits with all who sold the product.

Prior to this, women made their own soap, household goods, and clothes and tended their own crops. Men planted crops, hand-forged steel tools, and built what they needed. Rather than make their own goods, people began to buy them at a local store. Rural couples were unshackled from the centuries-old life of paupers.

Rural couples had been purchasing limited goods from peddlers who occasionally passed through their valley. Or they bought goods from catalogues. Returns of goods was an enormous problem, and single sales limited mass production at the factories, which kept prices high.

When couples found they could buy any goods they wanted at a general store, demand for home goods exploded. Prices for household goods and farm equipment fell due to the resulting mass production. Farm families soon found buyers for their excess farm produce, and those profits were spent on fast-declining prices of home goods. Men could afford farm equipment, and women bought dresses rather than made them. Rural people and the merchants became wealthy. America soon became known as the "land of opportunity."

Incomes were rising while prices steadily fell for decades, up to and including the Roaring Twenties. Introduction of the income tax reversed the trend. In the 1930s, the lowest income tax bracket was raised to 24 percent and the highest income bracket to 94 percent.

Capitalism is not simply free markets. We are not free to bargain for the price of milk in a store. We are not free to bargain with the factory. The epitome of free markets are barter societies in the Middle East. They are free to bargain with the retailer and the factory. High-volume factories cannot survive in a barter society, and those societies are mired in poverty as a result.

Capitalism is a self-perpetuating economic system designed to increase sales using a structure of profits for all who sell the product, and those profits are protected by the factories. That is what created millions of usable goods, reduced prices, reduced poverty, and created our great wealth.

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/01/2026 - 16:20

Clyburn Calls For Packing The Court With "Baker's Dozen" To Flip Cases

Authored by Jonathan Turley via Jonathan Turley,

On NBC's "Meet the Press," Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) added his voice to expand the Supreme Court to a "baker's dozen," or thirteen members to allow Democrats to add justices who agree with him and Democratic members on how the law must be interpreted.

In the meantime, as discussed earlier, court packing is being pushed as the new litmus test for any Democratic candidates. Clyburn's "baker's dozen" is a telling description of an effort to bake in partisan views on a Court expanded to create an instant liberal majority. In defending this hostile takeover of the Court, Clyburn bizarrely insisted that the failure to do so might lead to a return to antebellum conditions when blacks were being given fewer rights than whites.

When asked by host Kristen Welker whether he supports the call of former Vice President Kamala Harris to pack the Court, Clyburn responded:

"Yes, I do. I think that we are in a position now that calls for some significant actions taken by the Congress and we ought to expand. Thirteen is a pretty good number. A baker's dozen would be a good number to have on the court. And I would hope we would get people on the Court who will follow the constitutional underpinnings of this great nation of ours."

Clyburn then made the sensational claim that, without taking over the Court, blacks could be returned to virtual slave conditions. He added:

"The 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments have been interpreted different ways over the years. And we had in the Warren Court an interpretation of those amendments that I thought would be set for the future of the country. We have now a Supreme Court that has decided to reverse course and take this country back, I say, to those rulings of Justice Taney that said that no black man has any rights that a white man must respect."

So, while recognizing that interpretations have evolved, Clyburn now demands a takeover of the Court because he disagrees with the current interpretations. It was fine when interpretations aligned with his views, but opposing viewpoints are intolerable and warrant packing the Court with reliable liberal votes. Other Democrats have demanded packing the Court to reverse immigration rulings.

The unhinged rhetoric reflects the importance of taking over the Court by Democrats who view the institution as a barrier to carrying out a radical agenda, including proposals that are considered unconstitutional. Liberal professors and pundits have identified a court takeover as essential to, as one law professor put it, guaranteeing that the Democrats never lose another national election. As former Attorney General Eric Holder and Democratic strategist James Carville have made clear, it is about power and guaranteeing its retention.

Of course, these figures know that it will take a great deal to get Americans to trash core institutions and values. Polls have long shown that a majority of citizens oppose efforts to pack the Court. FDR's infamous court-packing plan in the 1930s has been widely panned in history, but is now being used as a model by many Democrats to achieve short-term political goals.

In order to overcome this fealty to our constitutional system, citizens must be very angry or very afraid. That is why the rage rhetoric is increasing as we approach the midterm elections. In the last election, the prediction was the imminent end of democracy. Now it is the return to slavery conditions in the United States.

One can disagree with the Court without suggesting that these justices are effective racists or want to return the nation to pre-Civil War slavery conditions. The suggestion that the Court would return this country to the Dred Scott period from before the Civil War is deeply offensive to the conservative justices, including Justice Clarence Thomas, who is African American. It is an absurd suggestion and shows contempt not just for the Court but for Black voters.

Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the best-selling author of "Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution."

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/01/2026 - 15:40

NY Prosecutor Says He Was Told To 'Find Crimes' To Target Trump Allies

A veteran prosecutor in New York Attorney General Letitia James' office says he was ordered to find crimes to pin on people connected to President Donald Trump, and the fallout left him on paid leave within days.

Daniel Wiesenfeld, a former Brooklyn prosecutor who moved into James' Investor Protection Bureau, sent an email to roughly 2,000 colleagues on Friday laying out what he says happened inside the office. The email disappeared from inboxes not long after it went out, but the Times-Union obtained a copy before it was deleted.

Wiesenfeld wrote that Bureau Chief Shamiso Maswoswe directed him to build cases against "Trump himself, Truth Social, Hewlett Packard (DOJ approved merger)... without having a credible reason for targeting this organizations and individuals [sic]."

The Hewlett Packard matter goes back to a $14 billion merger between Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Juniper Networks that the federal government approved. Wiesenfeld says his bureau chief wanted him to dig into a transaction that Washington had cleared. In his account, the office picked the target based on who stood to benefit rather than the merits of any case.

Wiesenfeld drew the comparison James' office would rather nobody draw. He wrote in the email, "If you believe Trump is using the [Department of Justice] attorneys to prosecute his enemies and further his political interests, you should find it equally troubling that Tish [James] is doing exactly the same thing."

He asked his colleagues to reconsider their role, writing, "I ask you that you not serve as Tish's personal attorneys by targeting her political enemies. Instead, I hope you choose to prosecute crimes and find the individuals accountable, rather than targeting individuals and then finding crimes."

Wiesenfeld pointed his colleagues toward work he considers worth the office's time, urging them to focus on "rampant nonprofit homeless shelter fraud and antisemitic crimes in and around synagogues" instead of chasing James' political enemies. He accused her of burning "significant public taxpayer dollars to target convenient public enemies."

The office placed Wiesenfeld on paid administrative leave once the email surfaced. A spokesperson for James dismissed the episode as "a personnel matter" in a statement to the Times-Union.

James' office issued a broader denial too, calling itself "committed to upholding New York's laws and protecting the rights and freedoms of all New Yorkers, regardless of political beliefs," and adding, "We strongly reject any assertion to the contrary."

However, this denial conflicts with James' own actions. In December 2018, a month after she was elected attorney general, she promised to 'prosecute the president for crimes committed in New York State.' After she took office, she certainly carried out that promise. In 2024, her office obtained a $364 million civil fraud judgment against Trump, his sons, and his company, on the grounds that he had inflated the values of his properties and misrepresented his wealth to obtain loans from Deutsche Bank. During the trial, David Williams, Deutsche Bank's own managing director, testified in Trump's defense, undermining James' assertion that Trump had defrauded the bank. The appeals court confirmed the original verdict but canceled the huge financial penalty.

For Republicans in the state, Wiesenfeld's email was confirmation of what they have argued for years.

"Letitia James weaponized the attorney general's office into a political hit squad and then tried to cover up her tracks. She is utterly unfit to serve." New York State Republican Committee Chairman Ed Cox told the New York Post. "New Yorkers deserve an attorney general who prosecutes criminals, preserves public records and enforces the law without fear or favor."

Nicole Kiprilov, spokesperson for Republican attorney general candidate Saritha Komatireddy, said, "When Saritha is attorney general, she will instruct her attorneys to lock up repeat offenders, build residential treatment for the homeless, and root out fraud - not target people because of their politics." She added, "It's good to see that even the rank-and-file in the AG's office agree that this is the right way forward. Let's work together - across partisan lines - and create a safer, more affordable New York."

Komatireddy built her resume for exactly this argument, spending years in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York in Brooklyn as chief of International Narcotics and Money Laundering, deputy chief of Appeals, and deputy chief of General Crimes. She also clerked for then-Circuit Judge Brett Kavanaugh on the U.S. Court of Appeals.

But what's really telling is that even James' fellow Democrats aren't rushing to her defense.

Melissa DeRosa, a former aide to former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, wrote on X that James "has been abusing her office for political gain for years." DeRosa followed with a line that cuts both ways, writing, "Don't criticize Trump's use of DOJ if you're not going to call out hers -/ it's wrong when either side does it."

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/01/2026 - 14:40

Pentagon Launches Grok And ChatGPT For Military Use

Authored by Timothy Frudd via The Epoch Times,

The Department of War announced the launch of two new artificial intelligence (AI) platforms for military use on Aug. 31, expanding the department's platform of AI assistants for military personnel.

Starshield AI's Grok for Government and OpenAI's ChatGPT Mil were both added to the War Department's GenAI.mil generative AI platform on Monday. The Aug. 31 launch came months after the Pentagon announced a partnership with OpenAI to deploy AI models on the Pentagon's classified networks and a partnership with Elon Musk's xAI service to assist personnel with controlled unclassified information.

Announcing the launch of Starshield AI's Grok for Government, the War Department said the AI tool would enable the military to execute missions faster and with more precision in multiple operational contexts. Examples of such contexts include supply chain management for logisticians and market research analysis for acquisition professionals.

The Pentagon said Starshield AI's Grok for Government would provide military personnel with "immediate productivity gains, stronger knowledge continuity, and more secure and efficient collaboration." Capabilities department personnel will have access to include adaptive reasoning modes, customizable workspaces, deep-thinking inference, persistent projects, and reusable "playbooks."

Starshield AI's Grok for Government was accredited for controlled unclassified information at impact level five, a designation given to unclassified information that still requires security safeguards. It was also engineered for "secure, consistent enterprise use," according to the War Department.

With the addition of Starshield AI's Grok for Government to the department's GenAI.mil platform, the Pentagon said military members would have access to another "top-tier generative AI tool." The Pentagon also said the addition of another AI tool would promote a "vibrant" AI ecosystem for the United States and would eliminate its dependence on a single AI provider.

The War Department also announced Monday that it had launched OpenAI's ChatGPT Mil as part of its GenAI.mil platform. Like Starshield AI's Grok for Government, OpenAI's ChatGPT was accredited for controlled unclassified information at impact level five.

"ChatGPT Mil brings a familiar commercial experience into the Department's secure environment, tailored to warfighter needs," the Pentagon said. "The core experience centers on chat, files, projects, and custom GPTs, with additional features sequenced over time."

The department said ChatGPT Mil will support document-heavy unclassified work, including planning, logistics, administration, and policy. Built to support more than 3 million personnel, the AI platform will increase the speed of routine tasks and allow personnel to concentrate on "more critical projects across the Joint Force," the Pentagon said.

"Integrating ChatGPT Mil into GenAI.mil alongside existing frontier AI capabilities establishes a robust, multi-model ecosystem for the warfighter," it added.

The Epoch Times reached out to Starshield AI and OpenAI for comment but did not receive a response before publication time.

The War Department confirmed Monday that more than 1.7 million of its more than 3 million personnel have been onboarded for the department's generative AI platform since GenAI.mil was launched nine months ago.

The launch of the two AI tools for use by War Department personnel comes after the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency warned in June that unauthorized "shadow AI" tools could cause data leaks and lead to other security risks.

"Shadow AI encompasses two distinct threat vectors: the intentional use of external commercial or private [large language models], and the activation of embedded AI features within existing government and sensitive networks that have not yet been fully evaluated for security risks," the agency wrote in an assessment.

"When bypassing traditional security controls, both vectors create a massive, unmonitored attack surface where new risks outpace current technical safeguards and governance."

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/01/2026 - 14:20

As Diesel Crack Explodes Higher, DNB Warns Beijing Has "Little Reason" To Rescue The West

Bloomberg's NYMEX one-month heating-oil/crude spread, tracked on the Terminal as the HOCL1 Index, breached $100 per barrel early Tuesday before surging to nearly $106 by late morning.

The historic blowout is a major warning that refinery outages in Russia (read Goldman's latest diesel warning), restrictions on industrial fuel exports, and continued disruptions through the Strait of Hormuz are deepening a crisis concentrated in finished fuels rather than in crude availability.

Larger time frame:

We first warned:

Diesel crack spread hits record high, just shy of $100 https://t.co/pxNKK1OUeR pic.twitter.com/uAciv62yPk

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 13, 2026

The latest snapshot of the worldwide refined-products squeeze came Tuesday morning from Kelly Chen, a senior economist at DNB Carnegie specializing in China, emerging markets, and energy markets.

Chen noted that China is one of the few countries with enough spare refining capacity to provide meaningful relief to the increasingly strained global market.

However, Chen pointed out that Beijing appears to have little economic or strategic incentive to rescue Western fuel markets.

"Some clients ask us if China can be a potential source of relief for the product markets," the senior economist wrote in the note.

She continued, "As product exports through the Strait of Hormuz remain heavily disrupted and Ukrainian attacks have constrained Russian refining, China is one of the few regions with room to materially raise refinery throughput and exports quickly."

"Beijing did increase its refined product export quotas in July, but they remain well below 2025 levels. The question is whether the authorities have an incentive to raise product exports further," she said.

Chen argued that China is unlikely to rescue global diesel markets, writing, "If US pressure forces China to reduce or halt purchases of Iranian oil, China would have to either compete more aggressively for scarce crude oil barrels or draw further on its own strategic inventories. Either option would weaken China's own energy security to ease a shortage elsewhere. China has already tapped its own buffers to absorb the disruption to crude oil and may not have appetite to do much more. Furthermore, high road-fuel prices could boost global demand for Chinese electric vehicles/energy technologies. Thus, until crude oil supplies become less disrupted, we suspect Chinese authorities have little reason to significantly raise product exports."

Professional subscribers can read the full note here at our new Marketdesk.ai portal. 

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/01/2026 - 14:00

Republican Campaign Arms Ask Supreme Court To Restore Cheapest TV Ad Rates Ahead Of Midterms

Authored by Matthew Vadum via The Epoch Times,

Republican committees have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to allow them access to lowest-rate television ads before the November midterms after a federal appeals court ruled that only candidates are entitled to the special campaign rate required by law.

The Supreme Court in Washington on Aug. 31, 2026. Madalina Kilroy/The Epoch Times

The emergency application by the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) and the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), which was docketed on Aug. 31, has been presented to Chief Justice John Roberts. Roberts may act on it by himself, or he may refer it to the full court.

Roberts has directed the respondents - former Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio); Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.); former North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat; and Rep. Kristen McDonald Rivet (D-Mich.) - to file a response to the application by midday on Sept. 3. Brown, Ossoff, and Cooper are currently running for the Senate; Rivet is seeking reelection to the House.

The NRCC and NRSC view the matter as urgent because Sept. 4 is the first day of the 60-day period before the Nov. 3 midterm elections, when federal law requires broadcasters to sell candidates airtime at their cheapest rate. They are asking the Supreme Court to put the appeals court ruling on hold before that window opens. If the high court does not do so, they say they will have to pay full freight for the rest of the campaign cycle, and that stations have already begun to cancel the cheaper reservations they previously made.

The federal Communications Act provides that in the 45 days before a primary election and 60 days before a general election, broadcasters must charge legally qualified candidates no more than the lowest rate offered to their most favored customers. This is known as the Lowest Unit Rate rule. The rule does not apply to streaming and social media ads.

In March of this year, the staff of the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC's) Media Bureau issued an interpretive guidance reminding both television and radio broadcasters about the rule. The public notice reiterated that favorable rates must be provided to "authorized committees that engage in joint fundraising with legally qualified candidates" and to "advertisements that qualify as coordinated expenditures."

The respondents appealed the notice to the full FCC, and when it failed to rule, they argued that it amounted to constructive denial of the appeal and took the matter to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.

They argued that the Communications Act requires the cheap airtime rate be given to candidates, not political parties. They also said that when a party buys an ad that a candidate approves, it is the party spending its own money - not the candidate, and if the candidate rate still applied, it would constitute an illegal gift to the candidate's campaign.

A panel of the appeals court agreed with the respondents, voting 2-1 to vacate the notice.

The panel held that the lowest unit charge applies only to a legally qualified candidate, not to party-coordinated ads and joint fundraising committee ads with non-candidate members. The panel also determined it had jurisdiction, or authority, to hear the case even though the full FCC had not yet completed reviewing the notice.

A dissenting judge said the court should not have reviewed the guidance while it was pending at the FCC and that barring parties from the discount rate restricted political speech on the eve of an election.

The NRCC and NRSC said in the application that the Fourth Circuit erred and that its decision is hurting the two committees.

"In the midst of election season, a divided Fourth Circuit panel just rewrote longstanding rules about preferential broadcast rates for political ads," at the behest of Democratic candidates "who said those rules favor their electoral opponents," the Republican committees said.

The panel's decision violates two jurisdictional principles and splits with multiple federal courts of appeals, while it "restrict[s] political speech in the sensitive period leading up to an election," they said.

The Fourth Circuit ruling also ignores the Supreme Court's recent instruction that courts should not treat incomplete agency work as final for purposes of filing an appeal, they added.

The two committees have budgeted tens of millions of dollars for ad purchases based on the rules that were in effect before the panel ruled, "but because of the Fourth Circuit's decision, broadcast stations are already rescinding those rates," they said.

The circuit court denied a request to pause its order on Aug. 27 and allowed its ruling to take effect the same day.

The NRCC and NRSC asked the Supreme Court justices to act before Sept. 4. The Trump administration weighed in to support the application.

Justice Department Solicitor General D. John Sauer is arguing that the respondents are appealing prematurely, lack standing to challenge the FCC notice, and have mischaracterized it, according to his brief.

The notice "does not grant favored treatment to one side or the other; instead, the notice's interpretation offers the same benefit to all sides, including the challengers themselves," he said.

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/01/2026 - 13:40

'Barbaric': Children Under Five Being Subjected To Forced Marriage In Britain

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity News,

Britain now has children aged five and under on the books of the Forced Marriage Unit. Home Office figures obtained through Freedom of Information requests show at least 27 children five or younger were referred between 2021 and 2025.

They sit inside a wider total of more than 100 children aged 12 or under. A referral is not a completed marriage. It is information about an actual, potential or suspected forced marriage. Campaigners say the real number is far higher because so many cases never reach statutory services.

The legal age of marriage in England and Wales was raised to 18 in 2023. Forcing anyone to marry is already a criminal offence. The practice continues anyway. And it's quite clearly an imported problem.

'This is barbaric, medieval and, crucially, we've imported this problem.'@PatrickChristys reacts to new findings that children under the age of 5 are being forced to marry in Britain, and discusses how far the practice is driven by specific cultures. pic.twitter.com/RbZG2QhvDA

— GB News (@GBNEWS) August 31, 2026

Patrick Christys was blunt. "This is barbaric, medieval and, crucially, we've imported this problem." He noted that Pakistanis account for 41 percent of Forced Marriage Unit cases, Bangladeshis 9 percent and Afghans 7 percent.

A large share of those cases involve children. The idea that people arrive, kiss British soil and instantly absorb British norms does not survive contact with the data.

Shockingly, some cases even have no overseas element at all. In 2022 there were nine referrals of children aged 12 or under where the suspected or actual forced marriage would have taken place entirely on British soil. Separate 2025 figures show cases with no overseas link rising to 58, or 14 percent of the total.

'Still today there are so many people and networks that are terrified of being called racist.'

Political commentator Chloe Dobbs condemns the silence from the mainstream media on issues such as forced child marriage and grooming gangs, and their link to foreign cultures. pic.twitter.com/niCUUCplSl

— GB News (@GBNEWS) August 31, 2026

Dame Jasvinder Sanghera, who fled a forced marriage at 14 and later received a damehood for her work with victims, called the numbers "deeply disturbing."

She said some children are "promised to somebody from birth," with the ceremony years later. She warned that when schools reopen in September there will be missing children. "Is somebody going to ask where they are, or are they simply just going to go off school roll? Or children will come back engaged or even married."

Sanghera also described the tactic used to shut down scrutiny. Perpetrators "will try and put you on the back foot. 'This is our culture. This is our religion. You're being racist' or whatever, to put you on the back foot, to make you look the other way."

She added that professionals still lack confidence to report. "Cultural acceptance does not mean accepting the unacceptable."

Journalist Khadija Khan told GB News the published figures are "likely just the tip of the iceberg, because many cases remain unreported." She said the 27 children under five made the statistics "horrifying."

"One child being robbed of her childhood and forced into marriage is one too many and it is unimaginable how this has been allowed to happen," Khan said, adding Britain can "no longer pretend that we have been sleepwalking through this nightmare." The practice has been happening "under the nose of the authorities."

She named the communities where it is most common: "The Pakistani community, Bangladeshi community and Afghan community, in many cases the practice of forced marriage has been euphemistic for arranged marriage." Families do it for honour, to keep wealth inside the family, or in exchange for money. Some make promises at birth.

'We can no longer pretend that we have been sleepwalking through this nightmare.'

Journalist Khadija Khan says that the figure of 40% of forced marriage cases in the UK involving children is 'likely just the tip of the iceberg'. pic.twitter.com/t1kVDuUvhw

— GB News (@GBNEWS) August 31, 2026

Dr Taj Hargey, founder of the Oxford Institute for British Islam, said forced marriage involving children should be "condemned without fear of upsetting anyone." "This should be totally condemned by the Muslim society up and down the UK."

'This should be totally condemned by the Muslim society up and down the UK.'

Founder of the Oxford Institute for British Islam, DR Taj Hargey says forced marriage involving children in the UK should be 'condemned without fear of upsetting anyone'. pic.twitter.com/h6ONbn9LaW

— GB News (@GBNEWS) August 31, 2026

Reform UK home affairs spokesman Zia Yusuf tied the rise directly to scale. "This sudden rise in forced marriages tracks almost perfectly with the Boriswave, which saw the Tories import four million new people into the UK. The Conservatives will never be forgiven for this complete and utter betrayal."

The same institutional reflex that treated child sexual exploitation as a community-relations problem now treats child marriage the same way.

Mayor Sadiq Khan told the London Assembly in January 2025 there were "no reported cases and also no indication of the grooming gangs" in London. The Metropolitan Police later identified more than 4,000 potential child sexual exploitation cases that may need reopening, drawn from around 12,000 reports dating back to 2010.

Many had been closed with no further action. Conservative assembly member Susan Hall called the scale "utterly disgraceful."

The pattern is familiar. Ethnicity and culture were treated as too sensitive to record properly. Victims were told the men who abused them were "probably not going to catch them." A 2020 Home Office report that claimed most perpetrators were white was built on incomplete data and used to shut down discussion.

Working-class girls paid the price. The same fear of being called racist now sits over teachers, social workers and neighbours who might otherwise report a five-year-old being prepared for marriage.

This is not happening in a vacuum. In the three months to June 2026, 140,122 foreign nationals were granted indefinite leave to remain or citizenship - more than one every minute. Nearly 200,000 received ILR across the full year, a 16-year high.

Citizenship grants hit 245,520. Home Office forecasts suggest 1.3 to 2.2 million more settlements between 2026 and 2030. The asylum system alone cost £4.3 billion in 2025/26 and £25 billion over the last decade.

You cannot import large numbers of people from societies where cousin marriage, honour codes and child betrothal are normal and then act shocked when those practices travel with them.

The Home Office still recites that forced marriage is "not a problem specific to one country, religion or culture." The 2025 country breakdown tells a different story. Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan dominate the caseload.

Britain raised the marriage age and made forced marriage a crime. It then spent years importing the very cultures that treat those laws as optional.

Professionals who notice a child missing after the summer holidays or returning "engaged" are still expected to worry first about whether the report will be labelled racist. That is not multiculturalism. It is the abandonment of the most basic duty a country has to its children.

The numbers are public. The quotes are on the record. The schools open again this week. The question is whether anyone in authority is still allowed to say what is happening.

Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/01/2026 - 13:00

Shein IPO Flops As Fast-Fashion Empire Sees Growth Slowdown

Chinese online fast-fashion retailer Shein made its long-awaited Hong Kong market debut Tuesday, only to fall flat in what can only be viewed as a disappointing IPO plagued by investor concerns about slowing growth, rising costs and an increasingly challenged international business model.

"Shein's many challenges are well known to investors and likely behind the sharp share-price fall on IPO day," Vey-Sern Ling, managing director at Union Bancaire Privée, wrote in a note. "Growth is slowing and losses rising amid stiff competition from both e-commerce and fast-fashion players. More critically, its business model continues to be disrupted by evolving international regulations."

Shen Meng, director at Beijing-based investment bank Chanson & Co., said, "With investors favoring AI and technology-related plays in Hong Kong, Shein's appeal is relatively limited as a traditional e-commerce company that relies heavily on price competition," adding, "Rising costs linked to US-China trade tensions and a less compelling growth story than Alibaba or PDD are likely to keep its valuation at a discount."

Shein raised $1.7 billion in the offering, giving the  Singapore-based retailer a market capitalization of around $26 billion. That represents a stunning $74 billion collapse from Shein's nearly $100 billion valuation during the COVID boom of 2022.

The IPO valued the company at more than 15 times estimated forward earnings, according to Bloomberg data. That is roughly double PDD Holdings' 7.4 multiple and above the Hang Seng Index's 10.7 multiple.

Shein shares initially plunged 10% during their debut earlier Tuesday before recovering most of those losses and ending the session flat.

In recent weeks, a Chinese robotics firm debuted in Shanghai with a blockbuster IPO, only to slide in subsequent sessions.

The stock is now down about 38% from its post-IPO peak.

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/01/2026 - 12:40

Trump Admin Asks Appeals Court To Halt Block On USPS Mail-In Ballot Rule

Authored by Aldgra Fredly via The Epoch Times,

The Trump administration filed an emergency motion on Aug. 31 seeking a stay of a judge's ruling that blocked the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) from enforcing its requirements to tighten rules around mail-in voting.

The motion was filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit shortly after U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani on Aug. 31 declined to pause her temporary restraining order. That order was issued on Aug. 28 in response to lawsuits from some states and voting rights groups challenging USPS's final rule on mail-in ballots.

At the time, Talwani said the rule was likely unlawful and violated the U.S. Constitution, which gives states the authority to administer elections.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) disputed the finding in its motion, noting that the final rule is "ultimately a regulation of the U.S. mail, and a modest one at that - not a federal takeover of election administration by the Postal Service."

"The rule's improvements and modernizations of USPS's infrastructure for supporting this particularly sensitive category of mail are fully consistent with USPS's statutory and constitutional authority," the DOJ stated.

The DOJ also said that keeping the temporary restraining order in place would cause the administration irreparable harm because some states are set to begin sending ballots during the two weeks the order is in effect.

"Because federal defendants face imminent irreparable harm as soon as states begin to mail ballots - as early as September 4 - the government also requests an administrative stay while this court considers this motion," the department said.

Talwani on Aug. 31 rejected the DOJ's request to lift the restraining order, saying the "late timing" of the changes to state election practices is contrary to the public's need for "clear and settled" rules ahead of the Nov. 3 midterm elections, which are now just two months away.

The temporary restraining order, effective for 14 days, prevents the enforcement of certain sections of USPS's final rule for elections before or on Nov. 3.

The Postal Service issued the final rule on Aug. 21 to implement an executive order President Donald Trump signed in March. In the order, Trump wrote that the federal government has a duty to maintain public confidence in election outcomes and that additional measures are needed to enhance election integrity through U.S. mail.

Under the agency's rule, states must supply the agency with lists of mail ballot recipients, and all outbound and return ballot envelopes must bear unique barcodes.

The Postal Service, under the rule, may refuse to deliver ballots that do not comply with the new standards or are associated with voters who do not appear on the lists.

Naveen Athrappully contributed to this report.

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/01/2026 - 12:20

Times Square Stabbing Victim Was Bank of America VP

One of the two victims of a Midtown Manhattan stabbing yesterday has been identified as a vice president in Bank of America's global corporate and investment bank division, the WSJ reports. 

Erin Piacenti, 32, of New Jersey was in Times Square when an unhinged woman armed with knives attacked both Piacenti and a man shortly after 4:20 p.m.

"We are shocked and deeply saddened by the tragic loss of our colleague. She was a valued teammate who will be greatly missed," a BofA spokesman said. "Our hearts go out to her family and all of her loved ones."

The 68-year-old man who was also stabbed was in stable condition at Bellevue hospital. 

The attacker was identified as Pamela Cisneros, 49. She was shot while walking towards the police brandishing two larger knives, taken to Bellevue, and died. 

* * *

Unhinged middle-aged women are hitting the news feeds hard this month.  NYC police were forced to shoot a woman dead this week after she pulled two knives from a shopping bag in the middle of Times Square and went on a random stabbing spree. 

At least one 68-year-old man was severely injured and another 32-year-old female victim was killed after being stabbed in the abdomen. 

The shooting happened just before 4:30 p.m. next to a New York Police Department substation, just outside One Times Square, the building that hosts the city’s annual New Year’s Eve ball drop celebration. It is one of the most heavily trafficked and policed spots in all of New York. 

Today in Times Square when tasers don't work pic.twitter.com/aALVDZgYD0

— The E Man🇺🇸Street PHD (@DETECTIVE4LIFE) August 31, 2026

Police first deployed tasers, but they were ineffective.  The women, who remains unnamed by city authorities, charged at officers while swinging the knives wildly.  No possible motive for the attack has been given, though, these days, it's often the case that there is no coherent motive. 

Here's the exact moment a lady charged at NYPD officers with two knives.

Minutes before this took place the lady allegedly stabbed multiple people.

What happened to good citizens these days ? Why didn't someone walk up behind her and hit her over the head with something ?…

— Viral News NYC (@ViralNewsNYC) August 31, 2026

The attacker's name has not been officially released, though some sources identify her as Pamela Cisneros.  Such info could be withheld for 48 hours or more if authorities have trouble finding and informing family members.  Confirmation of identity could also be delayed due to the woman's immigration status.

Police did not say if the stabbing victims were tourists or residents.  Videos posted on social media show a group of at least 10 officers gathered around the woman. Officers tried to convince her to drop the knives for several minutes before using a Taser.

The woman told them: “I’m not dropping anything, I would rather kill both of you..."

A similar incident occurred in July in the Upper West Side when Raul Morales, 51, was charged with randomly stabbing two men.  Witnesses said he yelled “Allahu Akbar” during the attack. Mental health was cited and the event was swept under the rug by the media.  

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/01/2026 - 12:18

"Worse Under The Hood": Goldman Warns Consumer Stocks Cracking As Hedge Fund Exposure Tanks

With the US national average for gasoline above the politically sensitive $4-per-gallon level and the University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index signaling waning household confidence as summer enters its final innings, pressure is building across the consumer complex.

Goldman Sachs' Scott Feiler warned Tuesday that consumer stocks have suffered several difficult weeks of underperformance, while investor exposure to the sector has collapsed to multi-year lows.

Feiler explained:

Worse Under the Hood: Consumer stocks have had a tough run the last few weeks. The Retail group was -6.5% in August and underperformed the market by over 5%. It has felt a bit worse than that under the surface, given many of the historically owned/quality/growth names have seen sell-offs of 10% to 50%. A list of 10 of these stocks and a few tactical thoughts on each are below...

More importantly, Feiler cited Goldman's prime brokerage data, which show that gross exposure to retail stocks has plunged to a multi-year low, signaling that hedge funds have reduced their exposure this year. The reduction in exposure likely stems from higher gasoline and diesel prices at the pump, combined with elevated inflation, dampening household confidence.

The 10 pullbacks from peak summer prices highlighted by Feiler include:

• Dick's Sporting Goods: -45%
• Burlington Stores: -32%
• On Holding: -30%
• Tapestry: -26%
• Walmart: -23%
• Viking Holdings: -22%
• TJX Companies: -21%
• Ralph Lauren: -19%
• Hilton Worldwide: -14%
• Ross Stores: -13%

Goldman consumer stocks versus AAA retail gasoline

For more on Feiler's tactical views on the 10 names above, Professional subscribers can read the full note here at our new Marketdesk.ai portal.

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/01/2026 - 12:00

OpenAI Stops Providing AI Models To Cursor Amid Feud With Elon Musk

Authored by Dylan Morgan via The Epoch Times,

OpenAI said Friday that it plans to stop providing AI models to Cursor, the coding startup now owned by Elon Musk's SpaceX.

This continues a years-long public feud between OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Elon Musk, who was a cofounder and board member of OpenAI but left in 2018. SpaceX purchased Cursor for $60 billion in June.

"We are making this choice because we cannot be confident that SpaceX will use our technology within our terms of service, based on our experience with Elon Musk's companies violating contracts," OpenAI said.

In a public statement, the ChatGPT-maker said it notified SpaceX that it is winding down its contract and proposed a shutoff date of Nov. 12 - the latest date allowed by contract, according to OpenAI.

The company said that after Musk acquired Twitter in 2022 and renamed it X - which has since been merged into SpaceX - the company broke the terms of OpenAI's contract, but didn't specify in what ways.

The Epoch Times reached out to OpenAI and SpaceX and is awaiting a response.

Cursor cofounder Michael Truell said on X on Aug. 28 that OpenAI models serve about 5 percent of Cursor traffic and that the company is speaking with the OpenAI team to resolve this issue.

In response, Anthropic cofounder and Chief Compute Officer Tom Brown said on X the same day that the company, which already partners with SpaceX, will increase compute to support Claude models in Cursor.

Musk replied to OpenAI's statement on X later that day, saying, "I couldn't care less." He added that Altman and OpenAI President Greg Brockman are "untrustworthy" and repeated his previous accusation that the pair "stole" an open source nonprofit.

The former cofounders' bitter feud has taken the form of social media comments, accusations of betrayal, and a high-stakes court case.

In 2024, Musk filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and its cofounders, including Altman and Brockman, alleging that they betrayed the company's founding agreement of advancing it for the good of humanity as an open source charity that would counter the existential risks of profit-driven AI.

Musk also accused the pair of defrauding him out of $38 million in donations, as well as allowing Microsoft to step in in 2023 - after the firing and subsequent rehiring of Altman as CEO - and push for the resignation of board members who tried to oust him.

"With the reinstatement of Mr. Altman and the restructuring of the board, OpenAI's corporate structure that had been designed as a system of checks and balances between the nonprofit arm, for-profit arm, the board, and the CEO to ensure the nonprofit mission [that] was being carried out, collapsed overnight," he wrote in the suit.

The case landed before a federal court in Oakland, California, last spring, where Altman said he remains committed to OpenAI's original mission of ensuring AI benefits humanity.

Altman went on to accuse Musk of abandoning OpenAI when he left and started his own for-profit competitor, xAI, when his bid to take full control of OpenAI was rejected.

The trial ended May 18 when a jury found Musk's challenge fell outside the statute of limitations.

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/01/2026 - 11:45

Tropical Storm Edouard Takes Aim At America's Largest Refinery Hub

The National Hurricane Center has issued a hurricane watch for parts of the Texas and Louisiana coasts as Tropical Storm Edouard strengthens in the Gulf of America and tracks directly toward one of America's most critical refining and LNG corridors.

Edouard was approximately 90 miles southeast of Port Arthur, Texas, early Tuesday, with maximum sustained winds of 40 mph, according to the latest NHC update. The storm is expected to make landfall near the Texas-Louisiana border later Tuesday and could approach hurricane strength before reaching the coast.

"Tropical Storm Edouard Advisory 4A (7 AM CDT, Tue Sep 1): Air Force Hurricane Hunters Investigating Edouard. Significant Strengthening is Forecast Before Edouard Reaches the Northwestern Gulf Coast Later Today," the NHC wrote on X.

Tropical Storm #Edouard Advisory 4A (7 AM CDT, Tue Sep 1): Air Force Hurricane Hunters Investigating Edouard. Significant Strengthening is Forecast Before Edouard Reaches the Northwestern Gulf Coast Later Today. https://t.co/GrztW6mQJV

— National Hurricane Center (@NHC_Atlantic) September 1, 2026

Edouard's cone of uncertainty extends over Port Arthur, a major center for US oil refining, natural gas processing and energy exports. The region is home to Motiva Enterprises' Port Arthur complex, the largest refinery in the US, as well as facilities operated by Valero Energy, TotalEnergies and BASF.

Edouard is the fifth named storm of the Atlantic season following an unusually quiet opening linked to El Niño conditions in the Pacific, which have increased wind shear across the Atlantic Basin and disrupted tropical development.

The threat Edouard poses to the heart of the US Gulf Coast refining and LNG complex is particularly troubling given the worldwide refining crisis, with US diesel crack spreads topping $103 per barrel.

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/01/2026 - 11:15

Ugly JOLTs Report Hints At Another Negative Payrolls Print On Friday

After five straight months of JOLTS beats, including two blowout prints for April and May and zero misses since 2025, last month's JOLTS report was a surprising miss (despite the previously discussed surge in government job openings). Fast forward to today when the latest JOLTS report made it two misses for two, with the BLS announcing moments ago that in July, the US had 7.271 million job openings, up from a downward revised 7.182 million...

... and missing the consensus estimate of 7.313 for the second month in a row.

What is more notable, however, is the revision: the June number was smashed, and revised lower by almost 200K, from 7.359MM, to 7.182MM, the biggest negative revision since 2025.

This is what the BLS said about the massive negative revisions: "The number of job openings for June was revised down by 177,000 to 7.2 million, the number of hires was revised down by 16,000 to 5.3 million, and the number of total separations was revised down by 14,000 to 5.3 million. Within separations, the number of quits was revised down by 19,000 to 3.2 million, and the number of layoffs and discharges was revised up by 19,000 to 1.8 million." 

Going back to this month's report (which will surely be revised lower too in the coming months), where did the openings come from? According to the BLS the number and rate of job openings were little changed at 7.3 million and 4.4 percent, respectively, in July. The jump in job openings was most pronounced in durable goods manufacturing (+76,000). Taking a closer look shows declines in job openings in Trade and Transportation, Professional Services, Leisure and Hospitality, offset by an increase in job openings in Information, Private Education...

... but just like a month ago, the biggest increase continues to be in government, where the number of job openings surged again, from 762K to 810K and back to the highest level in the past year.

The July rise in job openings was juxtaposed with an overall drop in July employment, which meant that after 9 months of labor surplus which ended in March, we now have a fourth consecutive month of more job openings than unemployed workers, and in June the surplus was 355K, the biggest surplus since the 566K in Jan 2025, and a concerning development for the broader labor market which according to most other measures continues to fire on all cylinders.

The latest JOLTS data also means that after falling back to 0.9x in March, in April the ratio of job openings rose over 1.1x for the first time since January 2025.

While the job openings number was weaker than expected for the second time this year, in July we also saw continued weakness in both hires and quits, In July the number of Quits - or the "take his job and shove it" indicator - dropped by 157K to 3.056MM from 3.213MM indicating a drop in confidence that better jobs await elsewhere; at the same time hires also dropped by 278K, from 5.332MM to 5.054MM, the lowest since February.

It goes without saying that disappointing job openings (which only rose due to a massive downward revision to historical data) while hires and quits slump at a time when payrolls may have posted their second negative print in a row (as we will find out on Friday), leads one to scratch their head how weak the labor market truly is. 

In any case, since this hires number feeds directly into the payrolls calculations (after netting out separations) this explains why the July payrolls report dropped by 23K. And since the JOLTS implied number is far weaker than that, having printed negative for a third month in a row, we fully expect the August payrolls report this Friday to be a catch up, and may very well print negative once again.

Overall, this was a weak JOLTS report, with weakness in openings offset by revisions (and a continued growth in job openings), yet both hires and quits tumbled, and shows that after some significant strength in the early part of of 2026, US labor market is now hitting an air pocket and this could translate into another notable miss in this Friday jobs report.

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/01/2026 - 10:58

G20 Plans "Death By A Thousand Cuts" For China's Economy

By Benjamin Picton, senior market strategist at Rabobank

The Natural Equilibrium

G20 finance ministers, central bank governors and a handful of high-profile CEOs gathered in Asheville, North Carolina, yesterday. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent held court, telling allies that the only way out of heavy debt loads is growth, and that they needed to do more to confront China on its structural trade imbalances.

The latter point is particularly salient as Bessent prosecutes new restrictions against trade with Iran under Operation Economic Outcast. China has been Iran’s most important trading partner and the major market for cut-price Iranian oil that had given Chinese industry a cost advantage over buyers observing existing sanctions. Bessent is now telling allies that they will need to examine their terms of trade with China. The “or else” post-script to that message is left unsaid for now, but just ask a Canadian trade negotiator whether the US is developing sharper elbows on this point in recent times.

Even without US pressure, the realization seems to be dawning that Ricardian comparative advantage isn’t actually a utility-maximising strategy when not everyone plays by the rules. Ursula von der Leyen recently said that if trade negotiations do not materially reduce the EU’s record trade deficit with China, the former will need to solve the problem via regulatory tools, including its famed ‘trade bazooka’ anti-coercion instrument. There are no free traders in a foxhole.

There are other signs of deathbed conversions among hitherto free trade evangelists. Australia just imposed new tariffs on Chinese-manufactured train wheels to protect local industry, while an alliance of aluminum extruders in New Zealand are furiously lobbying the government to restrict imports of Chinese aluminum products that they say are being dumped into the local market at prices well below cost of production ever since other markets (the USA, EU and Australia) placed tariffs on those goods to protect their own industry.

Combined with the US’s systematic shutting down of China’s low-cost energy flows from Iran and Venezuela, the promulgation of barriers to entry for Chinese goods is starting to look like death by a thousand cuts for China’s economy. Bessent yesterday pointed to China’s trade surplus equivalent to 1% of global GDP, saying that China is trying to export its way out of a problem of weak domestic demand. Official PMI figures released yesterday showed a slight improvement in China’s manufacturing sector but further deterioration in non-manufacturing, and both sectors remained below the threshold between contraction and expansion.

Unofficial figures released today showed manufacturing expanding and at a faster rate than anticipated by surveyed economists. If that is a true reflection of what is going on, China’s problem with weak domestic demand and a large exportable surplus that needs to be soaked up by demand elsewhere is only exacerbated. If it is not a true reflection, even the export engine is seeing the walls closing in and the official growth target is in serious question.

While recent trade restrictions imposed by other developed nations looks like a meeting of minds, it would be a mistake to interpret this as G20 countries all being on the same page. As much was clear when a number of European finance ministers claimed that they were blindsided by the attendance of Russian finance minister Siluanov and threatened to boycott the ‘family photo’ unless the Russian was excluded. Very clearly, points of divergence remain in the perceived interests of Western nations, which was perhaps highlighted further by a vote in Iceland rejecting a proposal to restart talks on joining the EU even as Canada attempts to deepen EU ties and rebuffed a recent US trade deal to leave itself the option of preferential trade with China.

Another possible point of friction emerged when Bessent seemingly urged the Bank of Japan to get busy raising interest rates even as the Japanese government has been keen to discourage haste. The Treasury Secretary said that he wasn’t going to tell the BOJ what to do, but then indicated that he thought the reflationary policies of Abenomics have run their course and that coordinated intervention in FX markets could only go so far. “I can’t affect the natural equilibrium. What I can do is send a signal and, as I’ve said, I have information that the market doesn’t have.”

Meanwhile, 10-year borrowing costs in Australia just hit their highest levels since 2011 only a day after 10-year yields in France hit their highest level since 2008. 10-year Treasury yields are making new multi-decade highs and the yield on the 30-year is once again threatening the level that it reached before Bessent jawboned it lower by indicating that the Treasury would at least double the size of long end purchases, presumably funded by higher short-end issuance that will require Kevin Warsh and the Fed to provide an assist to keep US borrowing costs relatively low.

In a de-globalising world the West is facing a security-driven imperative to re-industrialize with national debts already at wartime levels and commodity supply chains are increasingly subject to statecraft power plays. These interventions mean that commodity supplies can either be very constrained (as is currently the case for oil and refined fuels) or in a glut, or sometimes both simultaneously in difference parts of the world with new trade barriers preventing goods from flowing and markets from clearing. Glut conditions are currently the case for China-backed nickel processing in Indonesia, and may be the case for US energy in the future if the recent deal to secure control over Venezuelan oil supplies delivers on its promise.

In this environment of market dislocation finding a “natural equilibrium” is going to be harder to do, and it will be impossible for anyone who leans exclusively on models assuming free trade while forgetting to factor in power politics.

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/01/2026 - 10:40

Russia Turns Up The Heat On Ukraine's Odesa As Port Strikes Intensify

Throughout most of the more than four-year long Russia-Ukraine war, Russian forces have largely held off from any sustained and large-scale attack against the key southern port city of Odesa, but this restraint has clearly changed.

Odesa since Monday has been getting pounded, with Ukrainian officials describing that Ukrainian port infrastructure and a border crossing with Romania was targeted overnight. This vital economic, food, grain, and trade lifeline to the outside world is under threat - and is the result of leaders in Kiev deciding to recently escalate long-range drone attacks against Russian territory.

Destruction from Monday Russian drone strike on Nova Poshta’s terminal in Odesa region, via State Emergency Service of Ukraine

President Zelensky also said the strikes "deliberately damaged a border crossing point on the border with Romania, as ​well as export infrastructure."

One person was confirmed injured in the attack, which also resulted in a fire at a residential building as well as energy infrastructure coming under fresh attack.

Specifically, the strikes damaged a checkpoint for ferry services at ​Orlivka on the ​border with Romania. "Processing ⁠of citizens and vehicles through this checkpoint has been temporarily suspended," Ukraine's border service announced in a statement.

The tempo of strikes on Odesa has most definitely escalated this month, as Reuters details, "The ​Odesa region faced more than 300 air-raid alerts ​in August, ⁠lasting a combined 238 hours, according to a monitoring service."

Ukrainian-bound cargo ships also continue to be attacked off the coast in the Black Sea. Some new weapons systems are reportedly being demonstrated with deadly effect there.

"Behind the strikes is Russia’s new Banderol cruise missile, which has turned Ukraine’s Black Sea coast into a deadly no-go zone for cargo ships and hammered its ports since it entered serial production at the end of last month," writes The Telegraph.

"Cheap, fast and carrying a 114kg high-explosive fragmentation warhead, Banderols are launched from Russian-occupied Crimea, often by Mi-28 attack helicopters," the report describes. According to more of its specs:

Translated as “small parcel” in English, it can reach speeds of up to 400mph and can hit targets more than 300 miles away. They are stored at Dzhankoi district, Kirovske airfield, and Simferopol airfield in Crimea.

Another result of the overnight attack on Odesa was more widespread power outages in the region, amid a broader increasingly national infrastructure strain headed toward winter.

Odesa is under a Russian combined attack involving Banderol cruise missiles and Geran-2/4 loitering munitions, causing power outages and disruptions in parts of the city. pic.twitter.com/Snz5pxRksX

— OSINTWarfare (@OSINTWarfare) August 31, 2026

More broadly across Ukraine and especially the capital region, Russian drone and missile strikes have been sustained for at least five consecutive days, leading to significant casualties nationwide:

At least 16 people were killed and 54 others injured in Russian attacks across Ukraine over the past day, according to local authorities.

The heaviest toll was reported in Kyiv and the surrounding oblast, where Russia’s fifth consecutive day of attacks killed at least 12 people and injured 21 others.

Six of those killed were Ukrainian Railways employees, who died when a ballistic missile struck railway facilities, the company said.

So clearly Russia is continuing to hammer away at Ukraine's national energy, power, and logistics/transport infrastructure.

Footage showing the impact of two Russian S8000 Banderol cruise missiles at the Odesa Thermal Power Plant last night.

Power outages occurred in multiple districts of the city following the strikes.

Impact coordinates: 46.50325, 30.71415 pic.twitter.com/UgvdwA2IW0

— AMK Mapping 🇳🇿 (@AMK_Mapping_) September 1, 2026

While this tactic is nothing new, there does seem to be a ramped-up ferocity, which the Kremlin sees as retaliation for the Ukrainians escalating in the same way - likely with the help of Western intelligence. Zelensky has recently boasted that he is in effect 'taking the war to Russia' and its population, hoping to pressure Putin to make deep compromise at future negotiations.

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/01/2026 - 10:20