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DOJ Alleges UC Medical School Discriminates In Race-Based Admissions

Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times,

A Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation into the University of California-San Francisco's (UCSF's) medical school has determined that the institution discriminates on a racial basis during its admission process.

Signage on the exterior of a building at the UCSF Mission Bay campus in San Francisco on Feb. 10, 2025. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

The investigation looked at whether admission policies of the UCSF School of Medicine complied with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, and the university was deemed to have "illegally discriminated on the basis of race in its medical school admissions processes for the incoming classes of 2023, 2024, and 2025 and in its operation of diversity pipeline programs," the DOJ said in a Sept. 22 letter sent to the university chancellor.

"UCSF Med openly admits that its goal is to increase enrollment from specific racial groups it designates as underrepresented minorities in medicine (URM), which excludes all white students and most Asian students," the DOJ said.

Title VI prohibits programs and activities receiving federal funding assistance from discriminating on the basis of race, color, or national origin. The investigation specifically looked at whether UCSF Med complied with Title VI as interpreted by the Supreme Court's decision in the Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) v. Harvard case. In the SFFA case, the Supreme Court struck down the use of racially discriminatory admissions policies at U.S. colleges in June 2023, thereby ending so-called affirmative action in higher education institutions.

The letter cited a student-selection admissions policy of the UCSF Med to ensure that the student population "reflect the population of California." According to the DOJ, this was despite the Supreme Court's ruling in the SFFA case that "outright racial balancing" was "patently unconstitutional."

Meanwhile, the university said that it would engage with the DOJ and looked forward to resolving the matter.

"UC San Francisco disagrees with the Department of Justice's finding regarding the School of Medicine's admissions process," the university said.

Every application to medical school is evaluated "through a rigorous, individualized review process that prioritizes academic excellence," according to the university.

Favoring Certain Applicants

According to the DOJ, the UCSF Med's Admissions Committee invites Hispanic and black applicants for interviews at "far higher rates" than Asian and white applicants, despite the black and Hispanic individuals having lower mean MCAT scores and undergraduate GPAs.

Post interviews, the committee decides on which applicants to admit. Between 2023 and 2025, these decisions "heavily favored" Hispanic and black individuals over their white and Asian counterparts, according to the letter.

During this period, the school accepted 1.5 to 1.7 percent of white applicants and 1.98 to 2.55 percent of Asian applicants, which are lower rates than the 4.83 to 6.69 percent for Hispanic applicants and 6.96 to 11.43 percent for black applicants, the DOJ said.

UCSF Med also featured diversity programs that involved scholarships, stipends, assistance with college admissions, and research opportunities, which preferred certain student populations, the DOJ said in the letter.

One such program, the university's Programs in Medical Education (PRIME) initiative, seeks to increase medical student enrollment. In a February 2025 report on the PRIME program, the university said that "increasing the racial and ethnic diversity" of the health workforce was one of the ways to improve health outcomes and attain "health equity."

In a Sept. 22 statement, the DOJ said that UCSF Med was 12.6 times more likely to admit black students and 4.6 times more likely to admit Hispanic students, even when their socioeconomic traits, MCAT scores, and GPAs were the same as white students.

"Unfortunately, at UCSF Medical School, MCAT scores and undergrad GPAs have taken a backseat to race," Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division said in the statement.

"Aspiring doctors should be admitted based on their qualifications. The Supreme Court has spoken clearly - federally funded medical schools may not admit students based on misguided and illegal notions of diversity."

The Epoch Times reached out to UCSF for comment but did not receive a response by publication time.

Reuters contributed to this report.

Tyler Durden Thu, 09/24/2026 - 15:25

Iran Willing To Strike Deal With US Before Midterm Elections: Pezeshkian Summary

• US-Iran talks uncertain: as Iran has stuck by its conditions while engaging Kushner-Witkoff in NY at UN.

• Iran threatens escalation beyond Persian Gulf: Tehran warned the conflict could spread to the Indian Ocean if attacked again.

• Yemen front intensifies: Saudi Arabia said it intercepted six Houthi ballistic missiles.

• Oil markets react: Renewed tensions pushed Brent crude to $106/barrel, undermining hopes for a quick deal.

//--> //--> US announces end of Iranian blockade by October 15, 2026?
Yes 23% · No 80%
View full market & trade on Polymarket

*  *  *

Tehran Willing to Strike Deal Before Midterm Elections

President Trump has on multiple occasions indicated his belief that Iran will hold off making a deal to end the war until after the US midterm elections in November. In somewhat surprising statements which contradict this, Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian has just told American media that Tehran is willing to strike an agreement before the midterms. Per the Thursday afternoon NBC report:

“We don’t want it to get to the midterm elections,” Pezeshkian said Thursday in a brief meeting with NBC News and other news organizations on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly.

“We wish Americans to return to the MOU before the midterms,” Pezeshkian added, referring to a memorandum of understanding between the U.S. and Iran that laid out plans for a temporary ceasefire. The agreement, signed in June, eventually collapsed.

Is this one big effort to troll Trump? Via Newsquawk:

Refutation of Reuters claim; There is no negotiation, Defapress_ir reports, citing earlier comments from Mohammad Ghaderi.

Meanwhile, even if an Iran deal is stuck soon - and this is a big if at this point, there remains the Yemen conflict: Yemen’s Houthis say they attacked Saudi Aramco facilities in Yanbu; attacked what they called a “sensitive target” in Saudi capital Riyadh, it's being reported.

More from Thursday media interviews with the Iranian president:

• Iran's president says the deal Trump signed in June is still on the table and Tehran wants it. "We did reach an agreement with Trump. That agreement was signed, and based on that, we are willing and still wish to move forward, and the framework was agreed upon. We had not closed the Strait of Hormuz. It was open. Without any legal justification or framework, they attacked us."
• Iranian President Pezeshkian says Iran is ready for an agreement with the US and makes demands only within the framework of international law and could give up highly enriched uranium if it reaches an agreement with the US, according to TASS

Denial of Deal Optimism Headlines

Iranian journalist and analyst Mohammad Ghaderi, who often accurately presents Tehran's point of view or reaction to fast-paced events, has slammed the earlier Reuters report as 'false'.

That prior report said that the "US and Iran reportedly discuss phased deal to reopen Hormuz and end US blockade, according to Reuters citing sources." But the reaction from Tehran is below:

The Reuters report is false and its goal is to control the price of oil. no negotiations are underway. #Iran's position remains unchanged: the U.S. must fulfill the stipulated conditions in a single step so that the Strait of #Hormuz can be opened under Iranian control. Period.

— Mohammad Ghaderi | محمد قادری (@ghaderi62) September 24, 2026

Additionally this is via Israel's i24: "A senior Israeli official says "The chance of an agreement between the US and Iran is 'small' - but not impossible'."

Reuters Headline Signals [Dubious] Return to 'Deal in Motion'

Crude tumbles on a new Reuters report signaling a return to [dubious?] 'deal in motion' headlines: US and Iran reportedly discuss phased deal to reopen Hormuz and end US blockade, according to Reuters citing sources

This seems just a reiteration of Iranian demands, but crude still reacted (per Rtrs):

• A senior Iranian official said the most plausible way to end the impasse would be a phased arrangement, with Iran allowing navigation through Hormuz in return for the US lifting its economic blockade and Tehran potentially gaining access to frozen assets.
• Neither side wants to surrender leverage driving diplomacy
• Iran signals flexibility on fees, not on Strait of Hormuz
• Gulf states reject Iranian control of the strait

 

Iran Threatens to Spread War to Indian Ocean

It was just this month which saw the Iran conflict spill over into a renewed fight between the Saudi coalition and Yemen's Houthi rebels. Now Iran is threatening to expand the fight further, even into the Indian Ocean.

Yahya Rahim Safavi, an adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, warned Thursday of another significant expanse of the war if the Islamic Republic suffers attack again.

"Since the conflict has spread from the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz to the Red Sea, it is possible that, in response to more war, the front will expand even further, reaching the Indian Ocean and perhaps beyond," said Safavi in a video published by Iran's Fars news agency.

NASA/CFR: Aerial imagery of Diego Garcia, the Chagos Islands’ largest landmass, and home to the U.S.-UK military base.

This marks the first time that an adviser to Iran's supreme leader explicitly mentioned hitting targets in the Indian Ocean as a heightened military threat.

The strategic British military base at Diego Garcia, which is also heavily used by the United States, lies deep in the Indian Ocean - some 2400 miles away.

The Iranians are believed to have actually fired ICBMs on the base at the height of Trump's Operation Epic Fury.

Diego Garcia was first targeted on March 21st, with The Wall Street Journal at the time reporting that one missile had a mid-flight malfunction, while the other was engaged by an SM-3 interceptor missile fired from a US Navy vessel, though it's unclear whether this latter projectile ever hit its target.

Brent surged to around $106 after a military adviser to Iran’s supreme leader said Tehran may expand the war to the Indian Ocean if the US or Israel attacks again, further undercutting hopes of a deal. —Bloomberg

Iranian negotiators are vowing they will not back off Tehran's firm conditions for ending the war, after this week sitting down with the US team in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.

Saudi Arabia Says Intercepted 6 Houthi Missiles

Meanwhile another attack on the Saudi kingdom by the Houthis:

Saudi led coalition in Yemen says it intercepted six ballistic missiles launched by Iran-backed Houthis

"They broke the agreement and committed another vicious act. We have therefore toughened our conditions," spokesman for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Brig. Gen. Hossein Mohbi told AFP in an interview this week. He also said that if the US doesn't change its trajectory, it "will only make things difficult for themselves".

"We are not their playthings, and they cannot unilaterally violate an agreement they signed whenever they please," he emphasized.

Bloomberg just dropped the most disturbing investigation I have read this year, and every AI builder should read it and take it seriously.

On February 28, two Tomahawk missiles hit an elementary school in Minab, a small town in southern Iran. 156 people died. At least 123 were… pic.twitter.com/RqT1lwzsLP

— Ihtesham Ali (@ihteshamali) September 23, 2026

"We believe we have won this war, and we are currently consolidating that victory into a total deterrent force," he added.

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Tyler Durden Thu, 09/24/2026 - 15:20

Wall Street's Nuclear Bull Case Requires Reactors To Actually Get Built

Wall Street is largely on board with the nuclear bull case. But investor patience is thinning with an industry that is enjoying both political support and demand from deep-pocketed customers, yet still struggles to this day to get any projects actually started.

We noted a similar sentiment with Barclay’s nuclear outlook, as investors increasingly want evidence of real delivery.

New research from Jefferies and Bank of America echo similar verbiage (Professional subscribers can read the full notes here at our marketdesk.ai portal).

Jefferies' Laurence Alexander projects global nuclear capacity reaching 1,903 GW by 2100, (almost 5x from 2025 baseline). Their forecast also has solar capacity expanding roughly 22x, geothermal 18x, and wind 12x.

Jefferies frames the rising electricity consumption as leaving room for generation expansion growth across all four low-carbon sources, instead of one just taking over.

Most of the concerns come down to project financing. Massive upfront costs and years without revenue make nuclear particularly sensitive to financing costs. Government support is a way of bridging the gap, but standardized construction and repeat orders will be what really drives down execution risk. 

BofA's conference recap highlights China's approach to repeatable fleet deployment, contrasted against Western developers' reluctance to break ground.

Representatives from nuclear companies in China stated their solution to rapid nuclear deployment was standardization, specialization, and centralization. Emphasizing that this must be done across all key areas, including engineering, construction, and talent, the less-than-democratic nation proves why China's success isn't exactly repeatable in the US.

At the recent World Nuclear Association Symposium, the fuel market found itself at the center of attention as one of the notable constraints of the ongoing nuclear renaissance.

Enrichment was the hot topic of the fuel chain. European enrichment giant Urenco noted their order book had grown from just under €9 billion in 2021 to over €21 billion recently.

We've commented repeatedly on not only the lack of enrichment capacity within the US, but the specific lack of unobligated enrichment capacity. Significant investment is still required across the nuclear value chain, but finding a way to create a fuel supply for America's national defense needs (unobligated) is even further behind.

BofA took notes on Amazon discussing contributing capital and expertise to X-energy, Equinix supporting developers, and Exxon exploring nuclear industrial heat. Grid connections, completed designs and allocating construction risk remain obstacles, while new reactors' timelines extend beyond the immediate data-center boom.

Jefferies favors Cameco, Kazatomprom, NexGen and Denison, while BofA prefers Constellation, Cameco, Oklo and Standard Nuclear.

Needham's Sean Milligan initiated NANO Nuclear with a Buy rating and $33 price target. He highlighted its $8.5 million acquisition of Ultra-Safe Nuclear Corp’s development work behind the 15 MW KRONOS design. The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign project is in formal NRC construction permit review, with key milestones targeted for 2027.

Milligan argues that 9.9% initial enrichment could ease fuel sourcing compared with designs requiring approximately 19.75%, while $580 million of liquidity supports the licensing runway.

Tyler Durden Thu, 09/24/2026 - 15:10

Columbia Professor Wins Award For Book On 'White Paint' Being Racist

Authored by Micaiah Bilger via The College Fix,

Among the many woke winners of this year's prestigious National Book Awards is a black Columbia University professor whose screed attacks "white paint" as racist.

Professor Wendy Walters' new book, "A Dead White: An Argument Against White Paint," claims that white paint is not the "neutral" architectural design element that it initially appears to be.

Instead, she "interrogates all that we have taken for granted about the substance that colors, or fails to color, the structures and objects that surround us - and what the collective impulse toward white paint can tell us about culture, politics, and individual desire," the publisher's description states, in part.

The idea for the book originated with the Ivy League professor's "genuine and visceral dislike of white paint - a feeling that is at times overwhelming," she explained in a 2021 video for Creative Capital Foundation on YouTube.

But Walters pushed back on the idea that her emotional response is "possibly irrational."

"As I tried to understand why my response to white paint was so strong, I discovered numerous examples of the way that it figured into systems of erasure, exclusion, violence, and the masking of power in the social and natural world," she said in the video.

Most of the examples she gave linked white paint to racism.

In one, white supremacists splattered white paint outside the Rothko Chapel in Houston, Texas in 2018, and, in another, white paint was used to vandalize a 100th anniversary memorial gallery to the Tulsa race massacre in 2021.

She also mentioned a rainbow crosswalk for "LGBTQIA+ persons" in New Brunswick, Canada being painted over with white paint in an "act of intolerance."

"I hope to encourage the reader to think about how practices of decoration and adornment might allude to hidden narratives of power, whether or not they recognize them as being so," she said in the video.

The publisher's description of her work does not mention racism or white supremacy, and the book isn't scheduled for release until October.

However, in the 2021 video, Walters linked the book to her past writings about racism. According to her university bio, she "writes regularly about visual culture, political geographies, climate, and race and identity."

"A Dead White" is not the first to link white paint to racism, though.

Three years ago, Norway's University of Bergen received a $1.2 million government grant to explore how white paint has contributed to white supremacy around the world, The College Fix reported at the time.

The "NorWhite" study focuses on whether the Norwegian-developed paint pigment titanium dioxide white helped advance white "as a superior color," Fox News reported.

Why such projects are deemed worthy of awards has a lot to do with the left's capture of the arts and academia. As New York Times columnist Bret Stephens wrote on Tuesday: "Bluntly, the National Book Award has become a D.E.I. checklist: Only authors with preferred identities, preferred topics and preferred politics stand any realistic chance of winning."

Stephens mentioned Walters' book as one example. Other winners, announced last week, include books about "queer" parenting and "Islamophobia in America."

The problem is not that moderates or right-leaning authors are no good. The problem is that they are being shut out and a broad range of topics and ideas are being ignored.

Maybe Walters is a good writer. Maybe not. Her book isn't available to the public yet. But this "everything is racist" bent is getting old and boring. Frankly, it's lazy, too.

Pick something, anything: clean pantries, clowns, Mozart, capitalism, mathematics, milk, Taylor Swift (these are already taken, by the way). Then, argue that it's racist, smatter in a few "lived experiences" and - voila! - book deals and major prizes. Repeat. Again, and again, and again.

And they wonder why so many Americans have developed a distaste for academia.

* * *

Tyler Durden Thu, 09/24/2026 - 14:50

Bessent Plays Hardball With "Bloomberg Bros": Yields Spike As Treasury Accepts Just 68% Of Maximum Buyback Offers

Two weeks ago, treasury yields spiked to a 3 year high (still well below 5%), after the first expanded Treasury buyuback operation which had a maximum capacity of $6 billion, resulted in just $5.187 billion in actual buyback offers accepted by the Treasury.

That was a problem because as BofA's rates guru, Mark Cabana, wrote just ahead of the first buyback (his note is available to pro subs), over the last several operations the 10y-20y buybacks had received $18.7 billion of offers on average, or about 9 times oversubscribed (at the old maximum par amount permissable of $2 billion), and Treasury has always bought the maximum. 

“A purchase below the max would be unprecedented for the 10y-20y bucket," he wrote.

In the end, the repurchase was some 14% below the max, and that spooked markets because it indicated that dealers were hoping Scott "the  house" Bessent was desperate enough he would accept even lowball bids. In the end, he didn't even though a handful of lowball offers were indeed accepted.

So fast forward to today when moments ago the Treasury conducted the first expanded "liquidity support" buyback operation targeting 20-30 year nominal coupons, with the same maximum size of $6 billion.

Surely today bid/ask would be much closer and the Treasury would accept all of the cusips eligible for buybacks... otherwise why even bother expanding the buyback operation.

Well... wrong again, because moments after 2pm we got the results from today's expanded buyback op, and they were even worse than the first one: with $6 billion maximum par amount to be redeemed again, the Treasury received offers for $10.489 billion - identical to the Sept 11 operation - but accepted just $4.078 billion, which is only 68% of the $6 billion cap, down notably from 86% the first time around, which was already a big drop from the 100% it had accepted virtually every time prior!

Why not accept the full $6 billion, again? Well, it appears that "The House" is refusing to play ball with - or pay - the Bloomberg Bros, and the Treasury kicked out virtually all lowball offers today.

Using the same method as the Sept 10 exhibit, none of today's accepted bonds count as lowball offers, compared to 5 two weeks ago. The rule was 0.5bp or more cheap to a curve fitted through all the accepted yields. Today, every one of the 12 accepted issues came within ±0.6bp of that curve (and just two were a near miss)

In other words, the Treasury decided that just $4.1 billion of the $10 billion were fair, and it turned down about $6.4bn of low ball offers rather than pay up. It also accepted only 12 of 35 eligible issues. The two largest purchases were $1.5bn each of the 3.000% 02/2048 and the 1.875% 11/2051, and both came in right on the curve (−0.1bp and +0.1bp).

Other things to know:

• Accepted prices imply yields of 5.54–5.56% for bonds maturing 2047–2051. That's about 40–45bp over the 10Y at 5.10–5.16%, which looks sensible for this part of the curve.
• The long end yields less. The 4.625% 02/2055 prices at 5.48%, about 7bp through the 2051s, so yields fall at the very long end. Only $1mm of it was accepted, so it doesn't change the result.

And while we commend Bessent's resolve not be bullied around by the Bloomberg bros, the fact that for the second consecutive "expanded" buyback operation, the Treasury accepted well below the minimum, meant that there was far less "liquidity support" than intended, and sure enough yields spiked to a new multi-decade high.

This is turning into quite an interest drama, and many are curious who will win: will Bessent keep turning down lowball offers even if it means a continued meltup in yields, or will he finally cave and accept a few lowball offers allowing a handful of dealers to make a few million extra, if it means not risking the collapse of the bond market. We look forward to the next expanded buyback in two weeks to see which way this clash resolves... 

Tyler Durden Thu, 09/24/2026 - 14:36

Greenland Mining Company Plans To Double Size Of Rare-Earth Mine As US Signs Agreement

Authored by Jill McLaughlin via The Epoch Times,

Days after President Donald Trump announced a security agreement with Greenland and Denmark, Greenland Mines applied on Sept. 21 to double the size of its rare earth mine to supply magnet metals needed for electric vehicles, wind turbines, and defense systems on the island.

The North Carolina-based company's Sarfartoq rare earth district in southwest Greenland would expand from 74 square miles to about 175 square miles if approved.

"This application is about building Sarfartoq at district scale," said Bo Moller Stensgaard, president of Greenland Mines in a statement.

Greenland Mines is developing a rare earth neodymium and praseodymium project that could reduce the Western Hemisphere's dependence on China for the magnet rare earth minerals. China-based processors control at least 75 percent of the global market for all rare earth elements.

The Greenland Mines project is expected to produce about one-third of the world's neodymium-praseodymium oxide refined outside of China, serving as a key source of the rare earth ingredients needed for energy, transportation, and defense technologies.

China's export restrictions on rare earths have driven prices up in the past year. The Trump administration has focused on supporting and investing in domestic rare earth operations, but a supply of ore is still needed, according to Greenland Mines.

With the signing of the security agreement, Trump said no U.S. adversary could "make sensitive investments [in Greenland] without our express written approval."

"Greenland hosts some of the largest known undeveloped rare earth deposits in the Western world, and a framework that screens adversary capital out of the island makes those deposits more clearly available to allied supply chains," the company stated Tuesday.

Greenland Mines' project includes an open pit and underground mining operation at the site. Initial assessment of the materials at the mine estimate the value at about $2.05 billion, according to the company.

The project would produce rare earth elements used in high-performance permanent magnets.

Critical metals stocks surged Monday on news of the deal, and Greenland-linked market shares rallied when the markets opened.

Greenland Energy, a privately owned Texas company, has an agreement to drill on the Jameson oil and gas project in the Jameson Land Basin on the eastern coast of Greenland. The company, founded in 2025, began shipping drilling equipment to Greenland in late July.

Greenland Mines’ expanding Sarfartoq rare earth district in southwest Greenland. The existing exploration license, outlined in yellow, hosts the Sarfartoq Carbonatite Complex, the ST1 neodymium-praseodymium deposit and several known but less-developed rare earth zones. The new eastern exploration license application is shown in red. Greenland Mines LTD

Critical Metals Corp. is developing the Tanbreez Rare Earth Project in southern Greenland - one of the world's largest deposits with a high concentration of heavy rare-earth elements.

The company's Romanian refinery is also expected to process about 28,000 tons per year of rare earth and critical metal products, including 26,000 tons of high-purity silicon dioxide powder, or silica, used in food, pharmaceuticals, paints, plastics, rubber, ceramics, tech, and electronics.

Tyler Durden Thu, 09/24/2026 - 14:20

'Palestinian Rachel Dolezal': Philadelphia Activist Admits She Lied About Being Palestinian And Black

A Philadelphia activist spent years building a public persona around identities she apparently didn’t have, proving once again that even people obsessed with policing everyone else’s identity occasionally forget to check their own paperwork.

Hannah Gann, a teacher and prominent local anti-Israel activist, admitted this week that she is a white woman who had falsely portrayed herself as having Palestinian, Tunisian and Black heritage, according to the NY Post.

The confession came after fellow activists grew suspicious and confronted her. Gann acknowledged on Instagram - still public and looking like a treasure trove of social justice campaigns and advice on how to handle Covid - that she had been lying for years and described herself as a woman of considerable wealth and privilege. 

That was quite a departure from the identity she had cultivated publicly.

Gann had been presented as Palestinian American at activist events, talked about supposed relatives in Palestine and became active in Philadelphia’s pro-Palestinian movement.

The Post writes that former acquaintances remembered someone different. A University of Pennsylvania classmate told the Philadelphia Inquirer that Gann had previously been known as a white Jewish woman. The classmate alleged that after returning from Peace Corps service in Rwanda, Gann began darkening her appearance with makeup and adopting African American Vernacular English.

Members of the Racial Justice Organizing Committee and Philly Educators for Palestine eventually confronted Gann about inconsistencies in her story. The groups said she admitted the deception and later described themselves as stunned and angered by it.

There was apparently a financial angle, too. According to reporting cited by the New York Post, Gann solicited money while claiming financial hardship partly because she was helping relatives in Palestine.

Her actual upbringing appears considerably more comfortable. Her father is a tax attorney who previously worked for the Treasury Department, and the family lived in a Falls Church, Virginia home reportedly worth about $1.8 million.

Gann was also a vocal presence at anti-Israel demonstrations and had attracted attention from antisemitism watchdog groups over statements at protests and online. At one demonstration outside a Jewish bakery following the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, she spoke in support of Palestinian resistance and urged demonstrators to take their movement into the streets.

In her confession, Gann acknowledged the fiction extended to friends, colleagues and even her own family, saying omissions and half truths eventually developed into outright lies.

Which is an impressive amount of commitment to the bit, even by modern activist standards.

The episode has inevitably drawn comparisons with Rachel Dolezal, the former NAACP official revealed in 2015 to be white after presenting herself as Black for years, earning Gann the nickname the “Palestinian Rachel Dolezal.”

Gann teaches at the Workshop School in the Philadelphia School District. The district said it was aware of the controversy and was providing support to students and staff. Whether Gann will face disciplinary action remains unclear.

One commenter on her Instagram wrote: "This is really horrible . We just talked in early september and ya told me your family is palestinian and have suffered so much from this genocide. Im sad for my daughter who admired you deeply, the palestinian community directly impacted by this and the young people who looked up to you."

Another quipped: "Omg we got Palestinian Rachel Dolezal before GTA6."

  FOR ZEROHEDGE READERSA $10 HEDGE,
ON US.$10 off one order of $30 or more. New or returning, one per person. YOUR EMAILGET MY $10 →Signs you up for ZeroHedge Store emails. $30 minimum, once per person, can't be combined. Every order helps support ZeroHedge. Tyler Durden Thu, 09/24/2026 - 14:00

This. Is. Madness...

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

The View co-host Sunny Hostin cited the Lindsay Clancy mistrial Tuesday to relate a celebratory story about how in 1991 she was a lone jury hold out who flipped for a cannibal killer who boiled a woman and literally served her as soup.

While the panel chewed over the Clancy debacle, Hostin announced she had effectively blocked a guilty verdict for Daniel Rakowitz - the East Village drifter known as the Butcher of Tompkins Square Park.

Hostin bragged that she walked the rest of that 1991 jury into an insanity acquittal, and called it justice.

THIS IS INSANITY! Sunny Hostin brags she was the holdout juror who kept the Butcher of Tompkins Square Park out of prison.

He murdered a woman. Chopped her up. Boiled her body parts. Served them as soup to the "unhoused."

And she still calls that justice.

This is the left's... pic.twitter.com/wdswuc2GZQ

— Brigitte Gabriel (@ACTBrigitte) September 23, 2026

This is the same moral compass we've been documenting for weeks around Clancy: the killer becomes a cause, and anyone who wants a conviction becomes the villain.

Hostin decided the real problem was the juror who would not acquit, stating "The insanity defense has been around in Massachusetts for 182 years, so I think it's well established. And I thought absolutely she was not criminally responsible by reason of insanity," Hostin said of Clancy.

She continued, "The reason I felt that - I feel so strongly about this holdout juror is because I was a holdout juror in a case, in the Daniel Rakowitz case. I don't know if people remember it, The Butcher of Tompkins Square."

Joy Behar: "The guy who ate the victims?"

"Yes," Hostin said.

Alyssa Farah Griffin gasped, "You were on that jury?"

Hostin produced a February 23, 1991 New York Times clip. "Several jurors questioned afterwards said one holdout juror was principally responsible for preventing them from returning a guilty verdict," she read, boasting "That was me!"

The same article quoted her under her birth name, Asuncion Cummings: "We don't think he intended to kill her. But once he did, he dismembered her body in an effort to commit the perfect crime."

She kept going. "Clearly I saw he was psychotic, he was in psychosis, he did not mean to kill her and once he killed her he panicked. He chopped up her body parts, yes, boiled her body parts, tried to commit the perfect crime."

Griffin stopped her: "And you got this guy off?!"

She's literally bragging that she set a man free who killed and ate people.

These are the dumbest bitches on TV.pic.twitter.com/XAKGNMXZm0

— Verbal Riot (@verbalriotshow) September 23, 2026

Hostin's answer betrayed the ideology in one line. "That's how much I believe in the insanity defense, and he fed her body parts to the unhoused."

She added. "We were sequestered for nine days, one juror threw a chair at me, they were so angry with me but one by one I picked them off and said 'what about this, what about that,' and we ended up, all 12, unanimously voting that he was not criminally responsible by reason of insanity."

He is "still in a mental institution being treated," she added, as if that closed the books.

Rakowitz killed 26-year-old Swiss dance student Monika Beerle in their East Village apartment in August 1989. Accounts from the time describe a fight that ended with a punch to the throat hard enough to cut off her air. He dismembered her in the bathtub, boiled body parts on the stove, left her skull in a bucket of kitty litter at the Port Authority Bus Terminal, and - by the story that followed him into court - served remains as soup to homeless people in Tompkins Square Park. A witness testified the broth contained a human finger. Rakowitz bragged that he ate her brains.

On February 22, 1991, Hostin's jury found him not guilty by reason of insanity. He went to Kirby Forensic Psychiatric Center on Wards Island, later the Manhattan Psychiatric Center. He was never sent to prison as a convicted murderer. Beerle never got another outcome.

In Plymouth, eleven jurors accepted the Clancy postpartum-psychosis defense. One juror, Michael Desronvil, would not. He later said he "didn't have any doubts" Clancy was criminally responsible. "Based on all the physical evidence, key witnesses and what the prosecution presents, I thought it was enough proof that she knew exactly what she was doing and planned it."

When Hostin held out, she blocked a conviction and recruited the room to spare a butcher. When Desronvil held out, he blocked an acquittal for a woman who killed three children. One stubbornness is framed as legal courage. The other is framed as a crime against empathy.

That is the same inversion at play with white liberal women on TikTok and a seven-figure GoFundMe to cast Clancy as the real victim while the murdered children recede into props.

As we've highlighted, hundreds of women in pink gathered outside Plymouth Superior Court for a "Stand in Peace" rally, cheering a confessed child killer. Organizer Renee Kimball told cameras, "I think that every one of us women believe that it could be any one of us." Another woman said, "It could be me."

By September the cause had moved from identification to enforcement. Supporters smeared Patrick Clancy, the father of the murdered children, with baseless claims he was involved in the killings - this after Lindsay confessed and after Patrick testified for the prosecution and said he forgave her as ill rather than evil. His lawyer, Howard Cooper, said the family had been hit with "a relentless, escalating and destructive defamation campaign" and warned, "Enough is enough."

Then the mob found the holdout's household. Relatives told the New York Post they could not leave home. "They are leaving notes at my mother's house. They won't leave us alone, and we don't know anything," the juror's brother said.

This cult evolved further when on Oprah's stage, a doctor demanded "the same passion for people who don't look like Lindsay," as if the scandal of three strangled children was an equity gap in pink-shirt energy. When a young woman in the audience said, "I do believe she's a murderer," Oprah answered, "After all you've heard today?"

These people would rather a psycho killer leave criminal court as a patient than sit in a cell as a convict.

They proved it in 1991 with a butcher. They are proving it now with a mother who killed three children, a father they slander, a juror's family they stalk, and a daytime host who still thinks flipping that old jury was the proudest duty of her life.

A system that cannot say a murderer is a murderer will not protect anyone.

Tyler Durden Thu, 09/24/2026 - 13:40

Ugly 7Y Auction Tails As Foreign Demand Slides Despite Record High Yield

After yesterday's dismal 5Y aucton which pushed yields to multi-decade highs, moments ago the Treasury completed its last coupon auction of the week, selling $44 billion in 7Y paper. It was another ugly auction, if not quite as ugly as yesterday's shitshow.

The sale stopped at a high yield of 5.085%, up from 4.512% a month ago and the highest yield on record for 7 Year paper!

It was tailed the When Issued 5.078% by 0.7bps, the highest tail since March.

The internals were also poor as foreign demand slumped from 60.8% to 57.2%, the lowest since Nov '25. And with Directs jumping to 30.3%, one of the highest on record, Dealers were left holding 12.5%, in line with the recent average.

Overall, this was a subpar auction yet it wasn't nearly as bad as yesterday's 5Y which as we noted at the time, was an absolute nuke. The lack of demand did nothing to help the secondary market and 10Y yields promptly pushed back near session highs, last trading at 5.15% and the highest going back almost 2 decades.

 

Tyler Durden Thu, 09/24/2026 - 13:21

Russia Hammers Kiev In Rare Daytime Attacks; Kremlin 'Appreciates' US G20 Invite

At a moment Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is still in New York City Thursday, attending meetings on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, his capital of Kiev has been rocked by fresh Russian strikes, which killed at least two people and wounded over 40 more. The attacks began in the daytime on Wednesday, and appear to have persisted into Thursday.

A missile alert first went out to city residents Wednesday, after which AFP journalists observed hearing over 20 blasts. "Explosions in Kyiv. The capital is under ballistic missile attack. Remain in shelters!" Mayor Vitaly Klitschko wrote on Telegram.

Getty Images

And Zelensky himself wrote: "Once again, the main targets of (the Russian) attack were Kyiv and civilian infrastructure – residential buildings, a maternity hospital, energy facilities and logistics. Two people are already known to have been killed."

On Wednesday in addressing the UN assembly, Zelensky warned Western partners that they must not let up the sanctions and isolation pressure on Putin, in order to starve Russia's military machine.

Zelensky on Thursday reiterated further on X that "Russia will not end this war without pressure. As people were sleeping, flashes from explosions lit up the sky. Once again, the main targets of their strike were Kyiv and civilian infrastructure, residential buildings, a maternity hospital, energy infrastructure, and logistics."

Other deadly overnight attacks occurred beyond the capital area. A Russian strike on a farm in Ukraine's eastern Kharkiv region killed six people, local officials said.

Meanwhile efforts at getting the warring sides back to the peace table have still appeared stalled. But the Kremlin on Wednesday said it received an invitation from the United States for Putin to attend the December G20 summit in Miami.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Moscow and Putin are "grateful for and appreciative of this invitation." He said, "We will make a decision and work through it via diplomatic channels."

Washington confirmed that indeed the invitation was extended, no doubt to the consternation of European officials. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has explained: "We've invited President Putin to the G20. We think it's an opportunity for him to engage not just with the president but with other world leaders. We hope that's an invitation he'll accept."

So far the Kremlin has signaled that Putin is unlikely to be in Miami. We wrote at the start of the week:

Both the Kremlin and the White House had recently signaled mutual openness to the idea of President Putin actually attending the G20 Miami Summit which is set for December 14-15. Some reports have recently expressed optimism that some kind of grand Ukraine peace deal could emerge from such an engagement.

However, Bloomberg has poured cold water on this, reporting Monday that "Vladimir Putin is set to travel to China for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit hosted by President Xi Jinping but is likely to skip the Group of 20 in the U.S. with Donald Trump."

He's previously also stated that he would only meet with Zelensky if a deal had been finalized and was ready to sign.

An aerial attack on Kyiv is still underway, with an impact reported on non-residential infrastructure, city authorities said.

Mayor Vitali Klitschko confirmed that a drone crashed into a garage complex in Obolonskyi district, sending emergency crews to the scene. pic.twitter.com/Fuw3M9Kv8o

— KyivPost (@KyivPost) September 24, 2026

Trump and Putin last talked face-to-face in August 2025. But since then the war has only escalated, particularly given Ukraine's long-range strikes on Russian territory and its energy infrastructure, and industrial and retailer sites - with the help of targeting intelligence provided by NATO countries.

Tyler Durden Thu, 09/24/2026 - 13:15

Satellite Images Reveal Rapid Expansion At Seven Chinese Nuclear Sites

Authored by AG News Staff via American Greatness,

China is rapidly expanding infrastructure tied to its nuclear weapons program, with satellite images revealing major construction at seven sites as Beijing faces growing scrutiny over its expanding arsenal.

An investigation published Wednesday identified activity at Pingtong, Zitong, Lop Nur, Jiuquan, Mianyang, Jinta and Guangyuan. The satellite imagery documents substantial construction, although the images alone cannot establish precisely what work is occurring inside the facilities.

At one location, villages and farms reportedly were cleared for a fusion research center where powerful lasers can help scientists study how materials behave under conditions associated with nuclear detonations.

The expansion comes amid a dispute between Washington and Beijing over nuclear testing. U.S. officials have accused China of conducting a secret nuclear test at Lop Nur in 2020 and concealing its activities. China denies the allegation. Available seismic data have not conclusively established that a nuclear explosion occurred.

U.S. Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Thomas DiNanno has accused China of using techniques designed to make nuclear testing more difficult to detect.

Beijing, meanwhile, maintains a no-first-use nuclear policy and describes its nuclear posture as defensive. Chinese officials have rejected U.S. accusations about a growing nuclear threat and argued that the country's smaller arsenal makes trilateral arms negotiations with Washington and Moscow inappropriate.

The construction adds another national security issue to President Donald Trump's Thursday meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Washington. Artificial intelligence and its growing military implications are also expected to be discussed.

The nuclear question has taken on greater significance following the expiration of the New START Treaty in February. U.S. officials have argued that an arms-control framework focused only on Washington and Moscow no longer reflects a world in which China is substantially expanding its nuclear capabilities.

Tyler Durden Thu, 09/24/2026 - 13:00

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang Just Torched Doomsday AI Bros, Says STFU About Existential Risk Or Shut It Down

The CEOs behind frontier AI keep talking like bystanders - warning seemingly daily about 'existential risk, runaway superintelligence, and competitive pressure' that's totally out of their control, so they need big brother to help slow them down. 

Jensen Huang isn't buying it.

In an interview on The Ezra Klein Show this week, the Nvidia CEO took what the labs call an existential threat and turned it back into a question of product liability and whether executives are doing their jobs.

According to Huang, if a lab can't contain what it's building, it shouldn't be asking for regulation. It should be shut down.

"If they say the alternative, which is: There is no way to contain our experiments... when we test our A.I. models, it will get out, and it will damage the world - then I think the answer is that we have to shut the labs down," he said - framing this as a responsible engineering call.

"If you're going to build a self-driving car - let's say it's a robo-taxi, and there's a really difficult condition. As an engineer, we just have no idea how to solve this problem because these cars are not programmed, they're trained. So we have no idea how to train these cars, and we have no idea how to align them to the safety standards that are expected on the road," Huang said. "What's the answer? Don't ship it."

Jensen Huang: “Now, if they say [that their models aren’t safe] … then I think the answer is that we have to shut the labs down.” pic.twitter.com/aCkpmvUEXI

— The Midas Project (@TheMidasProj) September 23, 2026

Continues here:

🚨Jensen Huang just took a shot at OpenAI, Anthropic and AI doomers:

"Nobody's building more compute than the people asking to be slowed down."

and also attacked Geoffrey Hinton's 10% doom prediction:

“All of his predictions have been wrong. Just because it comes from a… pic.twitter.com/KmNzYdRbWy

— ℏεsam (@Hesamation) September 23, 2026

Huang's argument is about liability and responsibility to shareholders. A lab that damages the world, he argues, would face costs to humanity. "Because the cost to humanity, the damage is too great," he said. "The shareholder, the liabilities - it could be civil liabilities, it could be criminal liabilities. I mean, the liability's incredible."

The Great Panic

More than 1,300 AI lab employees have signed a letter saying each company is under "intense competitive pressure not to unilaterally slow that acceleration." When Klein read that to Huang, the Nvidia CEO rejected it. "No, no, that last sentence. Nobody's putting the pressure on them," he said. He called the letter's first paragraph "fantastic" and said he "completely" agreed with third-party safety auditors, but not with asking to be let off existing law. "This is the first time that I've heard a company or C.E.O. say that I need the laws, I need the antitrust laws to be relieved. I need the liability laws of products to be relieved so that I can pace myself."

Instead, Huang blamed the executives. "These are companies with agency. These are C.E.O.s with agency," Huang said. When Klein countered that the labs were using that agency to ask for help, he didn't budge. "If I believe that I'm about to launch a product that is unsafe, it is completely in my ability, my power and my responsibility, and I'm incentivized to do so, to not launch the product." In his telling, the cyber, product-liability and property-damage laws already on the books cover AI labs too.

He had no more patience for the field's elder statesmen. When Klein raised 'AI Godfather' Geoffrey Hinton's view that a 10 percent chance of societal destruction is not unreasonable, Huang dismissed it. "I would tell Geoff that it's irresponsible to say all that. All of his predictions have been wrong. Enough predictions. That 10 percent chance is not grounded on science," he said. "It's not grounded on research. Just because it comes from a scientist doesn't make it scientific. Those predictions are hurtful."

Nvidia, he said, puts 20 percent of the company on design and 80 percent on verification, while most labs today run 80 percent on capability and 20 percent on safety verification. Klein called the coming reversal "the flip," and Huang agreed. "A.I. needs to accelerate to be safe. I want them to get more compute, but allocated toward evaluation, to alignment - and I think they're doing that."

None of this requires a global treaty. It requires holding AI companies to the standard every other industry already lives under.

We also need to consider who's making the argument. Nvidia is now the world's largest company, worth $5.4 trillion, and its chips are what the labs buy whether they spend the compute on capability or on safety. The flip doesn't shrink that bill. "I wouldn't be surprised if the amount of compute necessary to develop these models increased by a factor of 10, because the evaluation is so rigorous," Huang said. The one outcome that costs Nvidia is the one the letter asked for: an agreed slowdown.

If a gun manufacturer makes a weapon that fires despite its safety being on, it shouldn't get US military contracts (oh well). If an automotive manufacturer cannot stop its cars from randomly crashing, it gets sued into oblivion. And if a frontier AI lab cannot contain its models, the solution isn't to beg for government intervention so they can keep building.

The solution is to turn off the servers, go home, and shut the lab down.

Jensen Huang $NVDA and Lisa Su $AMD are “first cousins once removed” and both running trillion dollar businesses

This is the new benchmark of success for Asian parents to set for their kids lmao pic.twitter.com/jyT7saPCtu

— litquidity (@litcapital) September 22, 2026

 

Tyler Durden Thu, 09/24/2026 - 12:40

White House Restores Access For Banned Media Outlets After Judge's Ruling

Update (1230ET): Following US District Judge Timothy J. Kelly's earlier decision, the Trump administration said in a legal filing that it has restored access for now to three media outlets the president had banned from White House grounds last week.

Reporters from CNN and MS NOW started returning to the White House grounds after a federal court had ordered a suspension of the ban.

The networks made announcements during their broadcasts on Thursday.

*  *  *

As Melanie Sun reported earlier for The Epoch Times, a federal judge has ordered President Donald Trump to temporarily restore White House access for CNN, MS NOW, and Politico while they challenge the revocation of their press passes in court.

Federal Judge Timothy Kelly of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued a temporary restraining order against the White House ban, reinstating hard pass access for CNN, MS NOW, and Politico in the early hours of Sept. 24.

Trump announced on Sept. 18 that he was banning the three news outlets from White House premises over their "constant 'reporting' fake news."

The White House revoked their access the following day.

In letters to the outlets dated Sept. 22, the White House said the organizations had violated "the standards of professionalism and decorum expected of those given access to the White House Complex, including by trafficking in verifiable falsehoods about national security and other issues, and publishing sensitive or classified information."

The outlets subsequently filed for a temporary restraining order, and a remote hearing was held on Sept. 23.

The judge issued the order hours after the hearing, saying the court's decision was "dictated by the application of well-known D.C. Circuit precedent that this Court must faithfully apply."

Kelly pointed to two prior court decisions. A 2019 decision sided with reporter Brian Karem, whose White House press pass was restored because the government failed to provide prior notice.

The other decision was the landmark 1977 Sherrill v. Knight case, which held that once the White House makes press facilities available to bona fide journalists, it cannot deny access arbitrarily or for less than compelling reasons. Denied applicants are entitled to notice of the factual basis for the decision, a chance to respond, and a written statement of reasons.

The Trump administration has argued that these precedent cases were wrongly decided.

Kelly said the media outlets and the three journalists listed as plaintiffs had shown that without the court's relief, they were likely to suffer irreparable harm, and that at a minimum, their procedural due process claim under the Fifth Amendment had a "likelihood of success."

Plaintiffs are also likely to succeed in showing that their hard passes were revoked without constitutionally adequate due process.

They did not "receive fair notice" of either the "conduct" that would lead to a sanction or of "the magnitude of the sanction that the White House might impose," Kelly said.

Balance-of-hardships and public-interest arguments also favor the plaintiffs, Kelly said.

In a filing after the hearing, the government submitted an MS NOW report dated Sept. 23 to support its case. The article claimed that unnamed administration officials were considering attaching Trump's name to Ford's Theatre in Washington.

Trump dismissed the report as "a ridiculous lie" in a Sept. 24 post on Truth Social.

Tyler Durden Thu, 09/24/2026 - 12:30

FERC Rejects ComEd's Cancellation Of $20 Billion Data Center Contract

By Ethan Howland of UtilityDive

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Tuesday rejected Commonwealth Edison’s “notice of cancellation” of a transmission security agreement, or TSA, for a 1.8-GW, $20-billion data center PowerHouse Hillwood Holding is developing in Joliet, Illinois.

In part, the contract dispute centers on the TSA’s credit support requirements. PowerHouse Hillwood contends it met the agreement’s initial credit requirements via a $1 posting, according to FERC’s decision.

The dispute is pending in the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, according to the decision. In declining to take jurisdiction over the dispute, FERC said the courts can work it out just as well as the federal agency.

“Though we decline to assert primary jurisdiction over the interpretation of ambiguous contract terms involving credit support, our commitment to fair cost allocation, ratepayer protection, and regulatory clarity remains unwavering,” FERC Chairman Laura Swett and Commissioner Lindsay See said in a joint concurrence.

FERC’s decision highlights the “criticality” of the potential reforms that the agency proposed in large load interconnection show cause orders it issued in June to regional transmission organizations and independent system operators, the commissioners said. RTOs and ISOs have until mid-November to respond to the show cause orders.

Developing “clear and consistent” terms for connecting large loads with the transmission system is crucial, Swett and See said.

“It is also more important than ever that RTO/ISOs and their transmission owners may propose pro forma Cost Recovery Agreements,” they said. “And finally, it is more important than ever that any such agreements contain strong, consistent language that both protects customers from improper cost shifting and provides certainty to contracting parties.”

FERC Commissioner David Rosner said the dispute shows why the agency in its show cause orders directed RTOs and ISOs to develop pro forma cost‑recovery agreements for large loads. 

“Requiring security deposits helps ensure both project viability and transparency,” Rosner said. “Cost-recovery agreements matter because they enable efficient and accurate planning, and ensure that project risks stay where they belong: with the developer, not the public.”

FERC Commissioner David LaCerte lambasted the $1 letter of credit posted by PowerHouse Hillwood.

“The idea that $1 may provide appropriate security to any such agreement strikes me as an embarrassing legal fiction: insulting to the underlying ratepayers, stakeholders, and the grid itself that bear the real risk of this project,” LaCerte said. “Treating that risk as collateralizable for less than the price of a cup of coffee to me trivializes the very obligations that such a guarantee purports to secure.”

Tyler Durden Thu, 09/24/2026 - 12:25

NatGas Spikes As Major West Virginia Pipeline Declares Force Majeure

TC Energy's Columbia Gas Transmission pipeline system issued a notice requiring an "immediate pressure reduction" on Mountaineer XPress Line 100 between the Mt. Olive Compressor Station in Jackson County and the Saunders Creek Regulator Station in Cabell County, West Virginia, warning that an "expected mechanical issue" would reduce scheduled volumes.

Columbia Gas Transmission moves Appalachian NatGas to markets across the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, Midwest and Southeast, with connections carrying supplies deep south to export terminals on the Gulf of America.

The affected Mountaineer XPress (MXP) pipeline in West Virginia feeds two main outlets:

• Regional markets: Columbia's TCO trading pool, serving Midwest, Northeast and Mid-Atlantic customers.
• Southern markets: The Leach interconnection in Kentucky, where gas enters Columbia Gulf Transmission for transportation toward the Southeast and Louisiana's Gulf Coast.

NatGas research firm Criterion Research provided clients earlier today with an update on the outage:

TCO declared force majeure this morning following an unexpected mechanical issue on its Mountaineer XPress (MXP) system between the Mt. Olive Compressor Station and Saunders Creek Regulator Station in West Virginia, with the pipeline set to cut the MXPSEG MA42 constraint to zero beginning with the Sept. 25 Timely Cycle.

TCO estimates 1.8 MMDth/d of firm service will be affected, roughly matching the 1.88 MMDth/d currently scheduled through MXPSEG.

MXP is a 2.7 Bcf/d Appalachian takeaway system moving Marcellus/Utica supply south through West Virginia into TCO's broader system. Upstream MXP receipts have not yet materially responded, with Sherwood flowing ~714 MDth/d, Corral ~267 MDth/d and Viking ~5 MDth/d today, but the full restriction should begin showing up in tomorrow's nominations and could force significant rerouting or production cuts if the roughly 1.8 Bcf/d cannot find alternate paths. TCO has not provided a restoration timeline and expects to issue another update Friday morning.

October gas futures climbed 4.5%, or 13.6 cents, to $3.159 per million British thermal units on Nymex as of 11:00 a.m. ET. Prices have jumped more than 12% since early Wednesday. 

Flow restrictions can tighten downstream supplies even when natural gas remains abundant at producing wells across Appalachia.

 

Tyler Durden Thu, 09/24/2026 - 12:10

Anthropic CEO (Again) Warns Poorly Managed AI Could Be 'Risk To Humanity'

Authored by Jacki Thrapp via The Epoch Times,

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei warned that artificial intelligence could "be a risk to humanity as a whole" during a briefing before the United Nations Security Council on Sept. 23.

Amodei was among the top AI executives who spoke at the meeting - organized by France during the annual U.N. General Assembly gathering of world leaders - which also included statements by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Hugging Face CEO and co-founder Clément Delangue.

Amodei urged the 15-member council to advance U.N. agreements that ban the use of AI to form biological weapons, and encouraged the council to build evaluation and verification systems allowing nations to hold each other accountable, establish global standards to test AI models for loss of control risks and misuse risks, and add a notification system for AI incidents that are significant to global security.

"We will slow down as much as necessary in order to make sure that every successive AI technology that we release is actually safe," Amodei said during his video remarks.

"But regardless of what we do, managing these risks is ultimately bigger than any one company, and it has an industry-wide and global scale."

Amodei suggested there's a chance AI could become a "country of geniuses in a data center" in fewer than two years.

Meanwhile, Altman warned in his speech that humans "could lose control of the future to AI."

"The risk is that it moves so fast that people can no longer follow what's happening or intervene when needed," Altman said. "This would obviously be terrible. The industry must not accept too much technological risk just because the benefits are too great and they feel too important to slow down."

Altman said no person, company, or country should be able to use the most powerful AI models to impose their worldview on everyone else.

Calls to slow the advancement of AI have surged after Jacob Coxon, a former OpenAI researcher who resigned from Anthropic, said on Sept. 8 that people building AI think it could kill us all "by the end of the decade."

OpenAI acknowledged an incident involving rogue AI agents who were able to breach the open-source AI community Hugging Face.

Delangue, the Hugging Face co-founder, told the council on Wednesday that he believed fear-based narratives are not the way to make the right decisions about the technology's future.

"We were attacked by AI, but more importantly, we defended ourselves with AI," Delangue said.

"The same systems that helped us during this attack are now helping us against cyberattacks we were already facing. It's also helping us fix the bugs and weaknesses in our systems before the attack."

The meeting came one day after U.S. President Donald Trump told the UN General Assembly that the United States "totally rejects any attempt to construct a globalist scheme to control" artificial intelligence, which he attempted to rebrand as "super intelligence."

Trump said he wanted to change the name because "artificial" made the technology sound fake.

The U.S. State Department ordered diplomats to use "super intelligence" in all communications following Trump's speech at the UN, according to an email sent Sept. 22 by Michael Drager, deputy assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of International Organization Affairs.

The president has endorsed the technology and urged its expansion, insisting that the United States needs to beat China in the AI race.

"We're the most sophisticated country in the world, and frankly I want to keep it that way because whoever wins AI, wins," Trump said while speaking with reporters at his golf course in Ireland on Sept. 13.

Tyler Durden Thu, 09/24/2026 - 11:40

Goldman Puts Almonty At "Center" Of Western Tungsten Race

Three weeks after Jefferies chemicals and materials analyst Laurence Alexander initiated coverage of Almonty Industries with a "Buy" rating and a 12-month price target of $26.25, framing it as a play on the "Western Tungsten Re-Shoring Trade," Goldman Sachs launched coverage early Thursday, describing the miner as "at the center of the Western tungsten investment narrative."

Goldman metals and steel analyst Nick Cash notes that Chinese policy restrictions have fueled supply concerns and an eightfold increase in tungsten prices since the start of 2025:

ALM sits at the center of the Western tungsten investment narrative as policy actions taken by China have resulted in global supply concerns, causing the price of tungsten to increase 8x since the beginning of 2025.

ALM owns one of the most important tungsten development asset outside China, the Sangdong mine in South Korea

However, we believe the stock is increasingly reflecting a continuation of today's exceptional tungsten market as well as an aggressive production profile for Sangdong.

Almonty's Sangdong mine in South Korea is key to conflict-free tungsten supply for the West as Beijing has ramped up restrictions that collide with the upcU.S.ing US rearmament cycle. 

He cautioned that his estimates diverge from Wall Street consensus in two areas:

1. We expect tungsten prices to normalize as new mine supply, recycling and refining capacity respond to current economics and
2. We expect Sangdong's ramp to progress more gradually than market expectations. While we remain constructive on the strategic value of ALM's asset base, we believe current valuation already discounts much of that upside potential.

Almonty has moved to expand conflict-free tungsten supplies through a multiyear, take-or-pay offtake agreement with Sandvik Group subsidiary, centered on recovering tungsten from existing tailings at its Los Santos mine in Spain. The miner has also established a strategic partnership with Rwanda's government, while South Korea approved the miner earlier this week to supply Western markets.

Goldman's valuation stands well below the broader Street consensus. Bloomberg data show a consensus 12-month price target of $24.73, compared with Nick Cash's $13 target. Almonty's analyst coverage now comprises 9 "Buy" ratings and one "Hold" rating following Goldman. 

Jefferies' Alexander noted earlier this month, "Almonty offers long-dated leverage to Western tungsten supply-chain re-shoring through Sangdong, Panasqueira, Browns Lake, and planned downstream oxide capacity. China controls ~80% of supply, while defense procurement restrictions begin in 2027." 

Almonty shares fell 6.5% to around $12.74 on Thursday morning, slightly below Goldman's 12-month price target. The broader space, viewed through the lens of the VanEck Rare Earth and Strategic Metals ETF (REMX), has also declined in the back half of summer. 

Tyler Durden Thu, 09/24/2026 - 11:25

Are Bonds About To Crash The Stock Market?

Submitted by QTR's Fringe Finance

There. I’ve said it. I’ve gone from pussyfooting around and saying the AI bubble could pop in 6 to 10 months…which I still believe…to the very definitive statement that if the bond market keeps acting like this, the equity markets will get slaughtered. And I mean, wrath of God type shit.

This isn’t even a particularly sophisticated thesis. After all, if I’m delivering it, it can’t be. It’s just math.

Treasuries sold off hard on Wednesday, sending the 10-year yield up roughly 14 basis points to about 5.11%, after touching 5.14% intraday, its highest level since 2007.

The 30-year climbed to roughly 5.4%, while the 2-year jumped to about 4.9%. This is the latest leg of a bond selloff that has been building for months, with the 10-year alone up roughly 35 basis points in September and long-term borrowing costs now pushing into territory we haven't consistently dealt with since before the Global Financial Crisis.

Inflation fears, pornographic government borrowing needs, spiking oil prices and expectations for additional Fed hikes are all feeding the move. In other words, the bond market keeps trying to tell everybody something, and equity investors keep sticking their fingers in their ears.

Well, the bond market isn’t the equity market. It can’t be gamed, f*cked around with using call options, it can’t be ignored and it can’t be rigged…at least, not without massive consequences. The equity markets in the U.S. are roughly $70 trillion in size, but they ultimately sit on top of the price of money established in the bond market.

Treasuries alone are more than $30 trillion, and their yields help determine what mortgages cost, what corporations pay to borrow, what private equity can finance, what the government pays on its debt and, ultimately, what investors should be willing to pay for a dollar of future corporate earnings. Stocks can ignore that math for a while. They cannot ignore it forever.

It’s as simple as this: as long-term interest rates continue moving higher, virtually every important piece of financial math gets worse, all at the same time.

The discount rate used to value stocks rises, which makes future earnings worth less today. Mortgages get more expensive. Corporate borrowing gets more expensive. Private equity deals and private credit…much of which is already FUBAR but not showing it yet…become harder to finance. Leveraged companies have to refinance debt at higher rates. Consumers pay more to borrow and the federal government pays more to service its enormous pile of debt.

Rising rates are a slow, methodical wood chipper for anything built on cheap money. Anything like…oh, I don’t know…the entire f*cking economy of the last two decades—especially after the Fed went full MythBusters during Covid, rejecting the reality of the economy’s death, and substituting its own by papering over the whole thing with $4 trillion in freshly printed cash.

It’s also a real shit sandwich because bonds become increasingly attractive competitors to stocks. There isn’t a magic yield where a siren goes off and the stock market automatically crashes, but there is a point where enough pressure accumulates that something breaks. If things keep heading in the direction they are in, that point will come before the end of the year undoubtedly, in my opinion.

Lest we forget, we are entering this experiment carrying an almost comical amount of debt. Total U.S. federal debt has crossed $40 trillion. CBO expects the government to run roughly a $1.9 trillion deficit in fiscal 2026, with debt held by the public around 101% of GDP. Net federal interest expense is projected at roughly $1 trillion this year and CBO expects it to reach $2.1 trillion by 2036.

We are already borrowing enormous amounts of money, partly to pay interest on money we previously borrowed, while the rate at which that debt gets refinanced keeps rising. It’s just simple arithmetic.

The Federal Reserve says domestic nonfinancial debt reached roughly $84 trillion in Q2: $21.4 trillion of household debt, $24 trillion of business debt and $38.7 trillion of government debt. Every additional turn of the interest-rate screw matters when you’re applying it to numbers that large.

Then we get to Wall Street, where apparently the response to historically expensive stocks has been: what if we bought even more of them with borrowed money? FINRA margin debt was about $1.45 trillion in August, up roughly 37% from a year earlier, after reaching a record $1.50 trillion in June. Leverage works wonderfully until it doesn’t. Stocks rise, collateral values rise, investors borrow more and that borrowed money can buy still more stocks. Look at margin debt/GDP:

Now, reverse the arrows. Stocks fall, collateral values fall, margin requirements bite and people start selling because they have to. Selling creates more selling. That’s how leverage turns a correction into an avalanche.

And finally here’s where I think people may be making a much larger conceptual mistake. Everybody has spent the last 15 years assuming that eventually we simply return to the financial environment we became accustomed to after the Global Financial Crisis: zero rates, endless liquidity, cheap leverage and central banks standing behind asset prices.

What if we don’t? What if this is the reckoning?

QE1 began in 2008. Then came more QE, zero rates, negative rates overseas, COVID stimulus, trillions in fiscal spending and one of the greatest expansions of financial assets and leverage in history. For years, people like Peter Schiff and other monetary bears have argued that we weren’t eliminating the consequences of excessive debt, we were postponing them. Maybe the bill has finally arrived. Like Schiff says, maybe this will be “The Real Crash”.

The private-credit market is already giving us little previews. Consumers aren’t exactly sitting on Fort Knox either. Americans have about $18.8 trillion of household debt, including $1.26 trillion of credit-card balances and $1.71 trillion of auto debt. Roughly 7% of current credit-card balances were transitioning into serious delinquency at an annualized rate in Q2. Now pour higher rates on top of that.

Yet somehow, against this backdrop, financial markets have decided this is an excellent moment to completely lose their minds.

AI infrastructure is increasingly being financed through enormous amounts of debt, leases, guarantees and special-purpose vehicles. Recent reporting has identified hundreds of billions of dollars of AI exposure supported by guarantees that can keep financing off Big Tech balance sheets, while broader estimates of off-balance-sheet obligations tied to the AI ecosystem run into the trillions.

The bond market is already starting to notice. Zero Hedge wrote yesterday that hyperscaler credit default swaps at all new all time wides:

Meanwhile, SpaceX just went public at close to 100x sales. And then there’s crypto, an entire multi-trillion-dollar financial ecosystem whose necessity I remain unable to locate…and whose risks are multi-dimensional in ways I’m not sure everyone has considered yet.

That’s what scares me about the setup. We don’t have cheap stocks, low leverage and pristine balance sheets encountering slightly higher rates. We have enormous government debt, enormous consumer debt, enormous corporate borrowing, record margin leverage, stressed private-credit liquidity, speculative AI financing, crypto, gigantic valuations and investors who have been conditioned for nearly two decades to believe that every meaningful decline will eventually be rescued by the Federal Reserve.

Now raise the risk-free rate underneath all of it. And don’t stop doing raising it. Something has to…and will…give. In fact, if bond yields keep climbing, my view is that eventually a lot of things give at the same time.

This could become wrath-of-God-type stuff. Not because I’m predicting the apocalypse, but because there is an extraordinary amount of leverage sitting on top of asset prices that were built for a world where money was cheap, and the bond market is threatening to make money expensive again.

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There is, of course, one enormous caveat: bonds can recover. If inflation falls, economic growth slows and long-term yields retreat substantially, the pressure valve opens. Discount rates fall, refinancing fears ease and equity multiples become easier to defend. The whole process can be postponed again.

But if long rates continue grinding higher and the market starts believing 5%-plus Treasury yields aren’t an aberration but the new regime, I don’t see how the current structure survives.

It’ll be a massive wreck. Maybe a crash the likes of which we haven’t seen before. And then my guess remains that the ultimate destination is some form of yield-curve control or similarly aggressive intervention. If policymakers eventually cap Treasury yields while inflation and fiscal deficits remain problematic, I think gold could go absolutely berserk. My long-term $10,000 gold thesis would become considerably less ridiculous.

But people keep skipping over the important part: you don’t get the rescue until something requires rescuing. That means pain first. Potentially enormous pain.

My thesis has become remarkably simple. If the bond market calms down, we can have another conversation. If yields keep going higher from here, I think a massive stock-market crash becomes increasingly difficult to avoid.

Not because of doomsday saying or permabear “fearmongering”, or because Peter Schiff has been yelling about it for 20 years. Because eventually, no matter how much bullshit Wall Street invents, math still eventually wins.

--

QTR’s Disclaimer: Please read my full legal disclaimer on my About page here.

 

Tyler Durden Thu, 09/24/2026 - 11:10

McDonald's Sinks To Four-Year Low As Deutsche Bank Sours On Turnaround Hopes

McDonald's shares tumbled as much as 5.9% on Wednesday, the sharpest intraday decline since the early-2020 Covid selloff, before closing down 4.8% at their lowest level since 2022. 

The Big Mac quick-service restaurant chain's investor day heightened Wall Street concerns that softening US sales, coupled with plans for massive investments across restaurant locations, could pressure cash flow and shareholder returns, weighing on the stock for the foreseeable future.

McDonald's held its investor day at its Chicago headquarters on Wednesday. CFO Ian Borden said the burger chain expects its US business to be "slightly negative" in the third quarter, leaving Wall Street analysts at the event fretting over the cost of a multibillion-dollar, multiyear overhaul against a darkening demand outlook that shows no signs of a promising near-term turnaround. 

McDonald's unveiled an $8.5 billion support package for franchisees over a decade as its NEXT overhaul will be costly. Management is forecasting higher productivity and corporate operating margins in the low-to-mid-50% range by 2030.

Shares have tumbled into a bear market this year, down 22% and nearing a four-year low. 

The chain missed second-quarter US sales growth estimates last month, citing execution missteps that hampered efforts to bring back working-class consumers. Newly appointed US business head Skye Anderson admitted at investor day that restaurant operations still needed improvement.

"We expect industry traffic growth in our wholly owned markets will be flat while inflation remains elevated," CEO Chris Kempczinski told the analysts. "The winners will be the companies that create more demand and deliver it more efficiently."

Deutsche Bank's Lauren Silberman told clients on Thursday morning that McDonald's turnaround is still unproven: "We believe the event likely does little to settle the debate on a US SSS inflection (which is key to the bull case)."

Silberman's key quotes from her initial takeaways from investor day:

• US sales remain weak: "US SSS were slightly negative in July and August, and while September should be positive, 3Q SSS are expected to be slightly negative given the slow start to the quarter."
• Fourth quarter caution: "We suspect 4Q US SSS will likely remain sluggish, in part due to a tough comparison."
• Forecast cuts: "We are lowering our 3Q/4Q US SSS to -0.5%/-1% (from flat)."
• The capex bill: "We estimate the total system investment for NEXT will cost ~$19BN, implying MCD will contribute ~45%."
• AI and productivity upside: "We walk away with increased conviction in the company's ability to improve unit economics by unlocking productivity through the implementation of its ArchIQ technology platform."

However, she defended the stock: "We think yesterday's reaction was overblown (our 2027/2028 EPS comes down just 1-2%) given the stock is already trading at trough levels."

Separately, UBS equity trader Mark Paski recently warned in a note that Wall Street has turned its backs on consumer stocks. 

"While part of the recent weakness can be attributed to higher crude prices and rates, the sharp selloff across apparel, retail and restaurant names suggests investors are looking beyond those factors. Feedback from the conference circuit pointed to a common theme: persistent macro uncertainty, ongoing cost pressures and little evidence of a near-term demand inflection. Management teams broadly flagged pressure from inflation, transportation costs, fuel prices and cautious consumer behavior, reinforcing the view that earnings recovery may take longer than previously expected," Paski said.

Paski noted that consumer companies' share of S&P market capitalization has tumbled to just 13.5%, a record low, from about 31% in 1992. That decline shows the sector is becoming less relevant to investors.

Tyler Durden Thu, 09/24/2026 - 10:40

What T. Boone Pickens Would Ask About AI CapEx

Authored by Patrick Feeley via Substack,

I keep waiting for someone in the AI discussion to talk like an owner. What we get instead is a week of model releases, token counts, and model-lab valuations that look like oil majors, while the harder questions about turbines, interconnect queues, and who answers for the spend sit offstage. That imbalance would have driven T. Boone Pickens up a wall.

Boone passed away in Dallas on September 11, 2019. He was 91. He grew up in Holdenville, Oklahoma, worked as a geologist at Phillips Petroleum, quit, and built Mesa Petroleum from a shoestring into a company that could force Gulf Oil into Chevron's arms. Later he ran an energy hedge fund out of Dallas and spent a decade trying to shove the country onto wind and natural gas before the transmission system could carry either. Two things always set him off. Soft managements that treated shareholders as a nuisance. And a national energy policy that treated imported oil as something America just had to live with.

If he were still in the room this week, he would not be picking sides in a chatbot fight. He would start with the physical bill of materials that decides who can actually build AI.

Power first. Every incremental megawatt of AI load is an order for firm generation. New combined-cycle gas capacity for the post-2027 cohort is now running near $2,000 a kilowatt, roughly double the cost of earlier plants, with turbines on multi-year backorder. Existing, grid-connected gas plants have been changing hands near $1 million a megawatt, about half the cost of building new. In Boone's language, it is getting cheaper to find megawatts on the floor of the exchange than in a turbine queue.

Then metal. Copper goes into the transformers, busbars, and switchgear that move that power to the rack. Tin goes into the solder on every board and optical module. Fastmarkets' AI-chain work puts solder-related tin exposure on track for roughly a tenth of global solder-tin demand by 2030. Gallium and germanium go into power electronics and high-speed optics. The United States is 100 percent import-reliant for gallium, more than 50 percent for germanium, about 77 percent for refined tin, and about 57 percent for refined copper. China accounts for the overwhelming share of primary gallium refining. None of that stack turns on a two-year Capex slide.

Only then would he get to the denominator. What does each new dollar of Capex earn, and what did that dollar cost to fund? Underneath the math sits the question he put to every oil company he ever owned. Who works for whom?

The Mesa Years

Most readers remember the shareholder campaigns. Fewer remember how improbable the man behind them was. Boone was born in 1928 and went to Texas A&M on a basketball scholarship. After an injury he transferred to Oklahoma A&M, where he took a degree in petroleum geology in 1951. He had not yet found his footing, and his father delivered a line Boone would repeat for the rest of his life. A fool with a plan can beat a genius with no plan. His parents, his father added, were worried their son was a fool with no plan. Get a plan. Boone took the point. Every campaign he ran afterward began with a written plan and a number, and he had little patience for executives who could offer neither.

He spent a few years as a Phillips geologist, went out on his own, and in 1956 formed Petroleum Exploration, Inc. with two backers in Amarillo. It went public in 1964 as Mesa Petroleum, named for the flat-topped land of the Texas Panhandle. Four years later Mesa made a hostile tender for Hugoton Production, a Kansas gas company larger than itself, and won. That deal set the pattern. By 1981 Mesa was one of the largest independent oil companies in the world, with more than $2 billion of assets, and still small next to the companies Boone would go after next. Cities Service. Gulf. Phillips. Unocal.

The method was consistent. He looked for oil companies whose reserves were worth more than the equity market would credit under the people running them. He bought stock, pressed for a restructuring, a sale, or cash returned to owners, and moved on. Critics called it greenmail. Boone called it accountability.

Gulf was the campaign that defined him. In 1983 Mesa and its partners accumulated a large position in Gulf Oil, one of the Seven Sisters and many times Mesa's size. With the stock around $44, Boone argued publicly that Gulf's reserves supported something closer to $114 a share, and that management had depleted more than half the company's reserves in a decade. His remedy was not to shut anything down. It was to place a quarter of Gulf's cash flow, roughly $750 million a year, into a royalty trust paid directly to shareholders. The board refused, and in 1984 Chevron acquired Gulf for $13.2 billion, then the largest merger in American corporate history. Measured against the size of the U.S. economy, that is the equivalent of a transaction of more than $100 billion today, or roughly half of what Alphabet expects to spend on capital this year. The Pickens group realized a pretax gain of approximately $760 million.

The size of the gain was not the lasting significance. The lasting significance was that a small independent from the Texas Panhandle had shown the market something it preferred not to see. As Boone put it, it had become cheaper to look for oil on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange than in the ground, and the boards sitting on that discount could be made to answer for it.

Unocal showed the limits of the approach, and its most durable result. In 1985 Fred Hartley answered Mesa with a self-tender that excluded Mesa by design, and the Delaware Supreme Court allowed it. Boone lost money on the campaign. But within about a year the SEC adopted its all-holders rule, and a tender offer that treated one class of owner differently from another was no longer available to a board. Every American board still operates under that rule. The following year Boone founded the United Shareholders Association and reduced his philosophy to two sentences. Stockholders are owners. Management are employees. That is still the cleanest description of what is missing from most AI board presentations, which are full of pilots and roadmaps and almost never say who will answer for the roadmap if it is still a slide in 2028.

The Second Act

Most people with Boone's first career would have stopped. Mesa moved from Amarillo to Dallas in 1989, and by 1996 Boone had left the company that made his name. He was nearly seventy. The following year he founded BP Capital and went back to work on the same idea that had powered the raids, which is that physical reality eventually overrules the consensus story. In the years before the 2008 oil peak, when many analysts treated high prices as an aberration, he argued publicly and with his own capital that supply could not keep pace with demand. He was early more than once and said so cheerfully. He was right on direction often enough that those who dismissed him looked careless in hindsight.

His favorite story was about a geologist who falls from a tall building and, passing the fifth floor, thinks so far, so good. He meant the optimism. He also meant that you still had to land. The Pickens Plan of 2008 was that temperament applied to the whole country. Build wind across the Great Plains, build the transmission to carry it, move natural gas out of power generation and into heavy trucks, and cut the import bill. He committed real capital, including an order for 667 GE turbines for a Texas Panhandle project that foundered when transmission could not reach the load, credit markets seized, and cheap shale gas undercut the wind economics. He spent years finding homes for those turbines. It was, in effect, a dry hole with a purchase order.

The critics were right that the plan was harder than the advertisements. But the lesson has aged well. The binding constraint then was wires. Today it is wires, interconnection, turbines, and metal. Artificial intelligence did not create the problem of moving power from where it is cheap to where it is needed. It made the load arrive all at once.

The Same Signal, Forty Years Later

The idea underneath Boone's campaigns is the one worth borrowing this year. It was about what happens when an industry is flooded with cash and keeps pouring it back into the ground.

Crude prices rose roughly tenfold during the 1970s, and the majors emerged with more cash than they had sensible uses for. Michael Jensen later put the 1984 cash flow of the ten largest oil companies at $48.5 billion. Very little went back to owners. The industry kept spending heavily on exploration and development even where average returns sat below the cost of capital. The market noticed before the boards did. John McConnell and Chris Muscarella found that while higher capital-spending announcements generally helped industrial stocks, higher exploration budgets pushed oil stocks down. Owners were saying, in the only language available to them, that the next dollar sunk into the ground was worth less than a dollar left in their hands.

Set this year's numbers beside that history. Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft are on track for combined 2026 capital spending on the order of $700 billion to $745 billion, most of it tied to AI infrastructure. On July 22, 2026, Alphabet beat on revenue, raised full-year Capex guidance to $195 billion to $205 billion, reported free cash flow of about negative $5.9 billion for the quarter, and sold off hard after hours. The market was sending the same signal McConnell and Muscarella recorded four decades ago.

The fair caveat matters, and Boone would have offered it himself. The oil majors of the early 1980s were often reinvesting into flatter demand. The hyperscalers are reinvesting into demand that is still compounding, and cloud backlogs are real. But the question Boone asked never depended on whether demand was growing. It depended on whether the marginal dollar earns more than it costs, and whether anyone outside management is allowed to check.

The second half of his insight applies well below the hyperscalers. Proven reserves already in the ground, owned by someone else, were cheaper than new ones, and the same arithmetic now runs through the power market. Existing gas plants have been trading near half the cost of new combined-cycle capacity. The largest buyers have drawn the obvious conclusion. Rather than wait years for a grid connection, they are pulling generation toward the load. Entergy is building gas plants to serve Meta's Hyperion data-center campus in Louisiana. In Texas, ERCOT has fielded large-load interconnection requests on a scale that would have seemed implausible five years ago, and the Legislature has moved to set terms for how those loads connect.

In Boone's language, it has become cheaper to find megawatts on the floor of the exchange than in a turbine queue. An energized site with an interconnection agreement is the proven reserve of this cycle, and the companies that hold one are not always valued for it.

Ready, Aim, Aim, Aim

Boone had a phrase for corporate delay. Ready, aim, aim, aim. He used it on oil executives who preferred another study to a decision, and it describes the enterprise AI economy with uncomfortable precision. MIT's Project NANDA work on generative AI in business, widely covered in 2025, reported that the vast majority of organizations studied were showing no measurable P&L return despite tens of billions in enterprise spend. Treat that finding as directional, not scripture. Even well-run companies are not immune to slow kill decisions. McDonald's tested AI voice ordering with IBM at more than 100 drive-thrus beginning in 2021 and ended the test in 2024 without a rollout. Ending a pilot that does not work is the right decision. The question an owner asks is why it took three years to reach it.

The tools are no longer the main problem. For a great many ordinary operating uses they are good enough. Ownership is the problem. If no executive's compensation depends on turning the spending into cash, the spending becomes theater.

Consider what Boone would do if he were thirty-five today with capital behind him. He would not start with the hyperscalers. He would start where he started with Hugoton, with a company larger than his own whose assets were worth more than its management was delivering. Today that is often a small or mid cap industrial, distributor, or services business that has announced an AI program, committed a meaningful share of its free cash flow to it, and still reports no metric tied to the result. He would read two years of filings and earnings calls and total the committed spend, including the parts buried in IT budgets and consulting contracts. He would buy enough stock to be taken seriously. Then he would pick up the telephone, because he always preferred a voice to an email, ask for the plan in writing, and give management a date. If the plan never arrived, he would take the same questions to the other shareholders and, if necessary, to the public. That was Hugoton, and Gulf, and every campaign in between. It was never about hostility. It was about a calendar.

Five Questions T. Boone Pickens Would Ask AI Companies Today

None of these are exotic. They are the questions a well-run family office puts to the operating businesses it owns, and most public boards have not yet put them to their own AI programs.

1. What is the total committed AI spend, including the pieces buried in IT, consulting, and cloud contracts?
2. Which line on the income statement is supposed to improve, by how much, and by when?
3. Whose compensation depends on that result?
4. What happens to the program if the target is missed by half?
5. How does the return compare with the simplest alternative, which is returning the capital to the owners?

The last question is the Gulf royalty trust in modern form. Managements with good answers generally welcome an engaged shareholder. Managements without them are running a science project on someone else's balance sheet. The difference is rarely the model. It is almost always the plan.

Boone would have been a handful in any boardroom this year, and he would have enjoyed every minute of it. Yet the lesson of his career is an optimistic one. The oil industry he pressed in the 1980s emerged leaner, better capitalized, and more attentive to its owners, and the shareholders who stayed the course were well rewarded. The AI buildout can follow the same path. The demand is real, the technology works, and the physical constraints of power and metal are problems that capital and discipline know how to solve. What the moment requires is owners willing to ask for the plan and managements confident enough to produce one. Boone spent sixty years insisting that a fool with a plan beats a genius without one. The companies that take that advice in this cycle will set the standard for the rest, and their owners will be glad they asked.

Sources

• Alphabet Q2 2026 earnings release - Capex guidance $195-205B; Q2 P&E purchases $44.9B; Q2 free cash flow about -$5.9B link
• Alphabet after-hours selloff on the Capex raise, July 22, 2026 link
• Hyperscaler 2026 Capex context (Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft combined on the order of ~$700B-$745B depending on definition) link
• Enverus - existing gas-plant M&A near ~$1.0M/MW vs new CCGT replacement cost near ~$2.0M/MW for the post-2027 cohort (July 15, 2026) link
• Fastmarkets - AI-chain solder tin exposure rising toward ~10.6% of global solder-tin demand by 2030 link
• USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026 - U.S. net import reliance: gallium 100%; germanium >50%; refined tin ~77%; refined copper ~57% link
• Chevron acquires Gulf Oil, 1984 (~$13.2B); Pickens group pretax gain (~$760M) link 1 link 2
• SEC all-holders / best-price tender offer amendments after Unocal (1986) link
• Pickens launches United Shareholders Association, 1986 link
• Mesa Power orders 667 GE wind turbines for the Texas Panhandle project, 2008 link
• Michael C. Jensen, "The Agency Costs of Free Cash Flow, Corporate Finance, and Takeovers" link
• John J. McConnell and Chris J. Muscarella, "Corporate Capital Expenditure Decisions and the Market Value of the Firm," Journal of Financial Economics (1985) link
• Entergy gas generation approved to serve Meta's Hyperion load in Louisiana link
• MIT NANDA / State of AI in Business 2025 - directional on weak P&L conversion of enterprise genAI spend; not peer-reviewed link
• McDonald's ends IBM AI drive-thru test, 2024 link

This note is for research and discussion only. It is not an offer to sell, or a solicitation to buy, any security. Sargasso Capital Management may hold positions discussed or related instruments and may change those positions without notice.

Tyler Durden Thu, 09/24/2026 - 10:20