ZeroHedge News

NY Pride Group Disbands After Drag Queen Founder - A School Board Member - Arrested On Child Sexting Charges

Tyler Durden — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 22:05:00 +0000

NY Pride Group Disbands After Drag Queen Founder - A School Board Member - Arrested On Child Sexting Charges

A New York LGBTQ+ advocacy group has canceled a scheduled pride parade and disbanded after its founder was arrested on child-sexting charges.

Travis J. Longo, 46, of Cazenovia - a drag queen and a member of the Cazenovia School District Board of Education (of course), was arrested on Thursday and charged with four counts of endangering the welfare of a child after allegedly sending sexually explicit communications to a child under the age of 12.

In a now-deleted Facebook post, the group Longo founded, Cazenova Pride Inc., announced that it is "canceling this year's Pride Festival and all associated events, and we are dissolving as an organization."

"This decision follows serious criminal charges against Travis Longo, the founder of Cazenovia Pride Fest and a longtime figure in our organization," the post continues. "Travis Longo has no further affiliation with Cazenovia Pride Inc."

Longo, who reportedly performed as a drag queen under the name "Anita Buffem," was listed as a "hostess" at the first Pride festival in Cazenovia in 2021, which was organized by Pride Cazenovia, The Blaze reports.

Congratulations to Travis Barr-Longo aka Anita Buffem on being elected to the cazenovia School board and being the second drag performer in the US to be elected to public office. This is how we win and how we outrun in rural America. Shoutout to the @DemocratsNy! pic.twitter.com/AcH75ak5Ol
— The Outrun Coalition (@TheOutrunCo) June 19, 2024

"We are deeply sorry for the pain and disappointment this causes our community," the group's statement concludes. "The years of support, love, and solidarity you have shown us have meant everything. Thank you."

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/20/2026 - 18:05

Banning Hospitals' 'Certain Contracts' Could Save Americans $45 Billion, Report Finds

Tyler Durden — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 21:30:00 +0000

Banning Hospitals' 'Certain Contracts' Could Save Americans $45 Billion, Report Finds

Authored by Travis Gillmore via The Epoch Times,

A ban on certain contracts between hospital systems and health insurers could save Americans around $45 billion, according to a report from White House analysts released on June 18.

Lenox Health Greenwich Village Hospital in Manhattan, New York City, on Nov. 2, 2020. Chung I Ho/The Epoch Times

"The Council of Economic Advisers' findings reinforce that the Trump administration is delivering meaningful cost reductions for American patients," White House spokeswoman Allison Schuster told The Epoch Times by email June 19, noting the president's surgical approach to policy development that prioritizes fiscal discipline.

"By harnessing the use of free-market competition, President Trump has found a real solution to lowering costs instead of blindly throwing more taxpayer money at the problem."

Administration officials are exploring how best to manage hospital systems and insurers without relying on price controls or heavy-handed regulations.

At issue are three clauses, known as "anti-steering, anti-tiering, and all-or-nothing" contracts, which critics say shield healthcare providers from competition, thus increasing prices for consumers.

Anti-steering clauses block insurers from incentivizing or guiding clients toward cheaper options or providers, even when their data indicate clear savings potential.

Anti-tiering is used to stop insurers from categorizing hospital systems in less desirable benefit tiers that would reduce profit margins by forcing the providers to cover higher patient costs.

Bundled, also known as all-or-nothing, contracts require insurers to include all hospitals and physicians in a system, eliminating the option to negotiate independently.

Combined, the provisions result in more expensive healthcare, with higher rates, less efficiency, and limited insurance plan innovation due to reduced competition.

In markets where the clauses in question are widespread, a ban would lead to an 18 percent decline in hospital and physician prices, amounting to approximately $4,100 per inpatient admission, according to the report.

Premium prices would decline by about 7 percent, saving the average family about $1,800 annually, the report found, with aggregate reductions totaling about $45 billion and up to $63 billion.

Workers would benefit from higher take-home pay and lower out-of-pocket costs thanks to the reduced insurance costs. Small businesses and employers would also get relief with lower costs.

Analysts arrived at the numbers by calculating several variables, including the increased leverage insurers would gain while bargaining, with an expectation that prices would drop by about 8 percent as a result.

Allowing steering and tiering will improve patient management and shift care toward lower-cost providers, with transparencies helping reduce prices by about 4 percent, according to the report.

Free-market dynamics are expected to drive dynamic competition, with efficient, low-cost competitors helping further drive down costs by about 3 percent.

Proposed policies prioritize healthcare in rural areas, with bans aimed at lowering premiums while boosting independent rural hospitals.

Crackdowns are underway in the form of federal legal proceedings, with eyes on a national framework to codify the proposals.

"Thanks to the Trump administration's crackdown on anti-steering, anti-tiering, and all-or-nothing contracts by hospitals, everyday Americans are directly benefitting from lower premium contributions and higher take-home wages," Schuster said.

Congressional lawmakers are considering a similar course of action with the Healthy Competition for Better Care Act introduced by Rep. Jodey Arrington (R-Texas), which would outlaw the anti-competition clauses.

Some states, including Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Texas, prohibit certain clauses, though coverage and enforcement vary.

The report referenced two recent civil antitrust actions brought by the Department of Justice, one against OhioHealth filed in February and settled June 18, with no admission of wrongdoing and the hospital forbidden from using anticompetitive clauses.

"Providing affordable healthcare to Americans is uncontroversial and this Department of Justice will not tolerate corporate prioritization of revenue in contravention of our antitrust laws," Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward said in a statement.

A case against New York-Presbyterian Hospital, filed in March, is pending. Justice Department filings allege the hospital is insulated from price competition by contractual clauses, thus raising healthcare costs for New Yorkers.

A settlement with Sutter Health of Northern California from 2022 offers a successful precedent, according to the report, with the system agreeing to pay $575 million in fines and stop using the contractual clauses and succeeding in the aftermath of the agreement, later receiving recognition for its rural facilities.

Trump has repeatedly placed healthcare at the front of his second-term agenda, seeking to address the root causes of high medical costs, including with the release of TrumpRX.gov for prescription medicine at reduced prices.

He's taken his message on the road around the country in recent weeks, highlighting his actions and plans to further address Americans' healthcare cost burdens.

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/20/2026 - 17:30

Why CME Is Really Suing The CFTC Over Perps

Tyler Durden — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 20:20:00 +0000

Why CME Is Really Suing The CFTC Over Perps

Authored by David Christopher via Bankless.com,

CME wants Kalshi's Bitcoin perp reclassified as a swap, not banned. That distinction reveals what's actually at stake in the CFTC lawsuit.

Yesterday, CME, the country's dominant derivatives exchange, sued the CFTC over its recent approval of regulated crypto perpetual futures.

The exchange argues Kalshi's Bitcoin perp should be treated as a swap, not a futures contract, a classification shift that would push the product into a more restrictive, institution-facing rulebook. The CFTC called the suit "frivolous" and said it looks forward to dismissing it.

We've known for some time that major exchanges like CME and ICE have grown uneasy about the rise of perpetuals, an unease already visible in their push to have regulators scrutinize Hyperliquid over manipulation, sanctions evasion, anything they can find.

Why? Because regulators have finally opened a compliant path for Americans to trade an entirely new class of derivatives, one whose financial efficiency threatens the effectively monopolistic business model of these incumbents.

CME is scared of perps. No one should be scared of CME. https://t.co/l0ZHyqcpPk
— Jake Chervinsky (@jchervinsky) June 18, 2026

The Label Is the Business Model

CME's legal argument turns on a label.

If Kalshi's Bitcoin perp is a futures contract, it can trade on a regulated futures exchange, where regular U.S. users can access it. If it is a swap, it falls into a heavier rulebook built largely for institutional derivatives, making it harder to launch, harder to distribute, and functionally out of reach for most retail traders.

That distinction sounds technical, and it echoes the same fight playing out over prediction markets, but the effect here is simple: whether perps will be accessible to retail users, or reserved primarily for institutional actors.

CME's filing comes wrapped in safety language, but, as always, the motivation is financial. Perps threaten the part of CME's business built around expiration.

A normal futures contract expires. To hold the same exposure, a trader has to roll into a new contract before it does. CME collects another round of trading and clearing fees on every roll, and that churn feeds the market data business it sells on top.

A perpetual future doesn't expire. A trader holds the same position open indefinitely and settles periodic funding payments instead of rolling.

No roll means no recurring trade, and that breaks a rhythm CME's business is built on. The market already understands the threat. When regulators opened the door to regulated U.S. perps, shares of CME, Cboe, and ICE fell as investors priced in real competition.

Chair Selig has broadcast we are getting Hyperliquid and it will be before the election.

There will be US compliant front ends to access the giant liquidity pool on Hyperliquid.

The CME is as pissed as Nevada is about losing their monopoly to prediction markets.

Welcome to… https://t.co/IYFmfWZPwL
— Mister Todd (@pondermint) June 18, 2026

Why Perps Keep Gaining Ground

None of this makes perps harmless. They can involve leverage, liquidations, and funding costs that quietly eat into a position over time. CME CEO Terry Duffy is right that many retail traders don't fully understand those risks, and the venues offering perps should do the work to make them clear.

But blocking regulated U.S. perps does not make demand disappear. It pushes Americans back offshore, where they get fewer disclosures, weaker oversight, and less protection when something breaks.

That is why the better answer is to regulate the instrument clearly: leverage limits, margin standards, and liquidation transparency.

Crypto is where this starts because the markets are already mature. That makes Bitcoin perps the easiest place for regulators to begin. But given the demand we've seen with HIP-3, it won't be long before the model stretches to stocks, indices, and ETFs.

That is what makes CME's lawsuit so revealing. The exchange is asking for a reclassification, not a ban. You do not do that to a product you think you can kill. If you can kill it, you kill it. If you can't, you relocate it, cut it off to slow the bleed.

This is the history of crypto. A better technology emerges, users are drawn to its merits, incumbents call it dangerous, and the regulatory fight begins. Those fights have rarely decided whether the old model gets protected. They simply decide how long.

The Perpification has already begun, and all incumbents can hope to do is slow it down.

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/20/2026 - 16:20

Agri Markets Hit By "Aggressive Positioning Washout" But Supply Risks Linger

Tyler Durden — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 19:45:00 +0000

Agri Markets Hit By "Aggressive Positioning Washout" But Supply Risks Linger

The Bloomberg Agriculture Spot Index has nearly reversed its US-Iran war gains in recent weeks, as sliding fertilizer and energy prices, along with an interim peace deal between Washington and Tehran, have reopened the Strait of Hormuz and initiated the normalization process.

Daryna Kovalska, a commodity strategist at BofA Global Research, told clients that, with agricultural markets having undergone an aggressive positioning washout, there is reason to believe the selloff in the corn market is overdone.

Kovalska pointed out that while improved US rains, easing geopolitical risks, and lower urea prices have stripped weather and war premiums from the market, her team believes risks have been deferred rather than eliminated. She remains constructive on corn, while trimming its 2026 upside target to $5.50 per bushel from $6.00.

More color here from her note titled "Corn market cools, but risks simmer beneath":

Ag markets hit by sharp spec long liquidation…

Agricultural markets have undergone an aggressive positioning washout, with net spec longs down 88% in three weeks. Corn hasn’t been spared: managed money flipped from decade-high longs to a net short by June 9, sending Dec 26 prices to a low of $4.4/bu.

…but we believe the corn selloff is overdone

Corn sentiment has softened, as geopolitical and weather risks have eased. But risks have not disappeared; rather, they look deferred and could still trigger a supply shock. We remain constructive, though, trimming our 2026 upside to $5.5/bu from $6.0/bu, supported by three key arguments.

1: Weather risk premium has been stripped out too early…

Improved US rains have eased weather risks in the corn market, but threats persist in certain states. Nebraska (12% of US production) remains in severe drought, with crop conditions 20% below average, while South Dakota and Kansas ratings (another 12% of output) are at risk of deteriorating without sustained rainfall.

…especially with an unprecedented El Nino unfolding

The Australian Bureau of Meteorology continues to warn of an historic El Niño event. Brazil’s corn output could be hit hard, declining 10% yoy in 2026/27E. Iowa state also shows a pattern of sharply depleted soil moisture during analogues.

2: Brazil fertilizer supply remains a concern

Urea prices have eased, but despite a potential US-Iran deal to be signed on June 19, the Strait of Hormuz still needs to be de-mined and resume operations, with timing critical as Brazil’s peak dispatch window approaches. Substitution efforts remain insufficient, with nitrogen imports still down 15% yoy, putting first crop corn yields at risk of a 10% decline if Gulf urea shipments do not restart before the end of July. Phosphate constraints are compounding risks to the new crop, which could fall 10 mn t yoy.

3: US-China $17bn deal could upend the market

The White House expects China to buy at least $17bn of US ags annually in 2026 (pro- rated) and 2027-28. Mirroring Phase One, we think US corn exports to China could surge from zero in 2025 to 5.5 mn t in 2026 and 16 mn t thereafter. While purchases have yet to begin, implementation would materially tighten the US corn market.

Kovalska provides her team's view from macro to crude to softs:

Here's her price forecasts across softs:

With the war-risk premium evaporating from agricultural markets, Kovalska believes that lingering risks around weather, fertilizer flows, El Niño, and Chinese demand could still combine to tighten global supply and push prices higher again.

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/20/2026 - 15:45

DOJ Can Provide Biden's Conversations With Ghostwriter To Heritage Foundation, Judge Says

Tyler Durden — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 19:10:00 +0000

DOJ Can Provide Biden's Conversations With Ghostwriter To Heritage Foundation, Judge Says

Authored by Troy Myers via The Epoch Times,

A federal judge on Friday rejected former President Joe Biden's bid to prevent the conservative Heritage Foundation from receiving redacted transcripts and recordings of conversations he had with a ghostwriter for his 2017 memoir.

Former President Joe Biden speaks in Chicago on April 15, 2025. Nam Y. Huh/AP Photo

Although District Judge Dabney Friedrich delayed her own decision by three weeks later on Friday to allow for the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to rule on the matter, she said her order will remain in place because of the recording and transcripts' significant public interest.

"This case involves an unusually strong public interest in the release of law enforcement materials to outweigh the privacy interests protected by [the Freedom of Information Act's] exemptions," the judge said.

The Epoch Times attempted to reach out to Biden for comment but did not receive a response by publication time.

The Heritage Foundation's lawsuit originated in 2024. The group sought the transcripts and recordings from conversations the former president had with his ghostwriter, Mark Zwonitzer, to produce his memoir, "Promise Me Dad: A Year of Hope, Hardship, and Purpose."

In January 2023, then-Attorney General Merrick Garland launched a probe into Biden's alleged keeping of classified documents at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement at the University of Pennsylvania and at his private residence in Wilmington, Delaware.

Garland appointed former Special Counsel Robert Hur to investigate and potentially prosecute any federal crimes that arose - none did.

In Hur's February 2024 final report, he noted Biden's "diminished faculties and faulty memory" during an interview and in Biden's 2016 and 2017 recordings with Zwonitzer.

The former special counsel declined to prosecute Biden for his retention of classified documents because "the evidence [was] not sufficient to convict" and because "it would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict [Biden] - by then a former president well into his eighties - of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness."

Hur continued in his report, referring to some of Biden's recorded conversations with Zwonitzer as "painfully slow, with Mr. Biden struggling to remember events and straining at times to read and relay his own notebook entries."

The Heritage Foundation filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for all records that Hur relied on for his final report.

Under Biden, the Department of Justice (DOJ) declined to release the records, citing national security, privacy, and other FOIA exemptions.

The Heritage Foundation brought its FOIA lawsuit against the Biden DOJ in March 2024. In the two years since, legal proceedings have developed slowly.

The court stayed proceedings in September 2025 - now with the DOJ under President Donald Trump - after the agency said it would review the documents it was withholding.

In a May 8 filing, the DOJ said it "intends to disclose the written transcript and audio recordings at issue in this matter" to Congress, with redactions, but Biden moved for a preliminary injunction to prevent their release, which the federal judge denied on Friday.

Friedrich found in her decision that "in all, Biden is not likely to succeed" in his claims that his privacy interests outweigh the "significant public interest in the disclosure of the redacted Zwonitzer Materials."

"Biden offers little in the way of specific details about the types of harm he foresees, especially in light of related information already in the public domain," Friedrich wrote.

Friedrich further said that the ghostwriter records must be provided to the Heritage Foundation.

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals could make its decision on this case in the coming weeks while Friedrich's order is paused.

Biden has previously pushed back against claims that his cognitive abilities declined during his presidency.

"They are wrong, there is nothing to sustain that," the former president said during a May 2025 interview with ABC's "The View."

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/20/2026 - 15:10

CIA Official Confirms Agency Flip-Flopped Over COVID-19 Origins Over Five-Day Period

Tyler Durden — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 18:35:00 +0000

CIA Official Confirms Agency Flip-Flopped Over COVID-19 Origins Over Five-Day Period

Over the span of five days in 2021, the CIA abruptly changed its opinion on the origins of COVID-19 from a laboratory to neutral, a newly released document confirms.

The seal of the Central Intelligence Agency at the entrance of the agency headquarters in McLean, Va., on Sept. 24, 2022. Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters

Originally, CIA analysts concluded that COVID-19 likely came from a high-level laboratory in Wuhan, China located near where the first cases were detected in late 2019, senior CIA officer James Erdman III told lawmakers in May. Over the span of five days in 2021, however, Edman says the agency changed its stance to 'neutral.'

Then in September of 2024 during a private briefing between intelligence officials and members of Congress, Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-OH) inquired as to how the agency came to the conclusion that lab-origin vs. natural origin were about equal, according to yesterday's document release by outgoing DNI Tulsi Gabbard.

In response, an unnamed CIA employee told Wenstrup that "he made the call to stop the shift to lab because [redacted] had come in the day before they were ready to publish which made them back off the call," according to a summary of the briefing compiled by an intelligence official.

As the Epoch Times notes further, officials said in a declassified assessment based on information through August 2021 that only one agency - which was not the CIA, based on details since made public - favored a lab origin for COVID-19.

An updated assessment released in mid-2023 states that the CIA was unable to determine the origin of COVID-19 because both the lab and natural origin theories “rely on significant assumptions or face challenges with conflicting reporting.”

The CIA said in 2025 that a lab origin for COVID-19 was “more likely.” The Trump administration maintains that COVID-19 came from the lab in China.

More on Changes

A whistleblower in 2023 told members of Congress that the CIA team tasked with analyzing the origins of COVID-19 favored a lab origin, but that after the team was paid, it changed its position.

The CIA at the time denied paying analysts to reach specific conclusions.

Erdman, the senior CIA official, told a Senate panel in May that he was on a team investigating how intelligence agencies handled the COVID-19 pandemic and that the CIA declined to provide documents the team had requested that may have shed light on the change.

Erdman said that the team found the shift happened after Dr. Anthony Fauci, at the time the head of the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases - which provided funding for the lab in Wuhan - briefed intelligence officials and suggested to officials that they talk to specific scientists, including researchers who wrote a paper with which Fauci and the institute’s head secretly assisted.

The paper, called “Proximal Origin,” purported to rule out a laboratory origin.

Wenstrup also asked intelligence officials in the 2024 briefing about a white paper that National Center for Medical Intelligence analysts compiled as a rebuttal to the “Proximal Origin.” The authors of the white paper felt their conclusions were ignored by intelligence officials, they informed Wenstrup.

A representative for the center was not prepared for the questioning, “which annoyed Wenstrup,” according to the briefing summary.

Fauci Briefed Intelligence Officials

Fauci briefed intelligence officials on June 4, 2021, and promoted the idea that COVID-19 had a natural origin, according to another briefing summary released by Gabbard.

Fauci “recommended that [intelligence officials] take a look at Tulane’s paper on two lineages from two separate markets,” the summary states. “To Dr. Fauci, this paper’s findings were a clear indication of natural origins of COVID-19.”

Fauci also “reminded the group that even for SARS, it took 12 years to make the link to a bat even though it only took 4 months to identify the natural reservoir” and that “we still haven’t identified source/origin of Ebola,” which is believed to have a natural origin, according to the summary.

Fauci, who has not responded to requests for comment, told lawmakers during a hearing in 2024 that he did not talk about viral research related to COVID-19 with intelligence officials.

“After the investigations began about COVID, I was briefed by intelligence agencies about possibilities of there being activities going on in different laboratories,” he said.

In another readout of the 2021 briefing, Fauci was said to have suggested intelligence officials connect with three scientists whose names were redacted.

“All three ... have advocated for features of the virus that they judge to be consistent with a natural origin,” the readout states.

An email disclosed that one of the scientists was Kristian Andersen, a Scripps Research researcher who coauthored the “Proximal Origin.”

Andersen said in private messages with coauthors that COVID-19 may have been engineered before the paper was published. He has said that further analysis of the virus altered his and others’ views.

“Dr. Fauci was the behind-the-scenes adviser who, alongside his hand-picked so-called experts, pushed the intelligence community to endorse a natural animal origin to hide his dangerous gain-of-function research that he funded using taxpayer dollars,” Gabbard said in a video statement posted to X on June 18.

“All of this in a deliberate attempt to cover up the truth and shift the blame and attention away from Fauci’s own actions.”

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/20/2026 - 14:35

Swalwell Ordered By FEC To Return Campaign Contributions

Tyler Durden — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 18:00:00 +0000

Swalwell Ordered By FEC To Return Campaign Contributions

Authored by Jill McLaughlin via The Epoch Times,

Former California congressman Eric Swalwell was ordered by the Federal Election Commission (FEC) June 15 to return all donations received during his bid for governor before dropping out of the race.

Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) during a news conference on the introduction of the Protection from Abusive Passengers Act at the U.S. Capitol Building, in Washington on April 6, 2022. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

The agency charged with enforcing federal campaign finance laws threatened Swalwell with an audit or enforcement action if he fails to give back $30,075 in contributions that 16 donors made to his campaign committee, according to a letter sent to the former candidate.

"Failure to comply with the provisions of the Act may also result in an enforcement action against the committee."

In the letter, FEC Senior Campaign Finance Analyst Mary Seiler also stated Swalwell would not be eligible to request a time extension to give the money back.

According to the letter, the FEC requires candidates to return contributions to the donors if they drop out of a race. Swalwell did return some of the donations, but not all of them, according to the agency.

General election contributions can't be used to pay off primary debts or other obligations, the FEC noted.

All refunds were required to be made by July 20. If not, the commission may take further legal action in the case, the FEC said.

Swalwell and his attorney, Sara Azari, didn't return requests for comment about the FEC's demands.

Swalwell dropped out of the governor's race in April after multiple women stepped forward with sexual assault allegations, which he has denied. He also faced a U.S. House of Representatives ethics investigation over the accusations and a call from his party to resign.

The former congressman and candidate continues to face criminal and ethical investigations over the allegations.

His official state campaign finance disclosure information shows Swalwell collected donations from individuals and organizations until the day he resigned April 13. The last-minute donors included the United Food and Commercial Workers Western States Council Candidate PAC, California Dairies, real estate developer Jeff Worthe, and Greater Anesthesia Service and PAC - each of which gave him $39,200.

The last contribution made to Swalwell's campaign was nearly $460,000 on April 18 in "unitemized contributions," according to the state. The report doesn't specify who gave Swalwell the large donation or where it came from.

The California Secretary of State's office didn't immediately return a request for information about the contribution.

Swalwell's campaign finance report filed with the state shows he used campaign funds in the final weeks to pay his attorney Azari at least $313,000 and the Democratic political media firm KMM Strategies more than $600,000.

Filling Swalwell's Seat

Democratic state Sen. Aisha Wahab, a progressive from Hayward, California, advanced June 16 in a special general election to fill Swalwell's vacant U.S. House seat.

Swalwell resigned from Congress in April, a day after ending his campaign for governor.

Wahab will move on to the Aug. 18 runoff to determine who will fill the remainder of Swalwell's term through January.

Democrat Melissa Hernandez, a transit director and former mayor of Dublin, California, was in second place June 19 but votes were still being counted.

The district includes East Bay cities of Fremont, Hayward, and Livermore, which heavily favors Democrats.

A regular primary was held June 2 to elect a new Congress member for the district to a full term. Wahab and Hernandez were the top two vote-getters.

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/20/2026 - 14:00

Russian Oil Refinery Over 1,200 Miles From Ukraine Attacked In Another War First

Tyler Durden — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 17:25:00 +0000

Russian Oil Refinery Over 1,200 Miles From Ukraine Attacked In Another War First

After this week's devasting Ukrainian drone attacks on a Moscow refinery which sent massive plumes of black smoke across the capital city skyline, it has become obvious that the Zelensky's government believes its last major card to play is escalation of its UAV attacks deep inside Russian territory.

This is once again on display as on Saturday Ukraine launched a drone attack targeting an oil refinery in Russia's Tyumen region for the first time since the the war. Significantly, Tyumen region is located some 2,000 kilometers (or 1,240 miles) from the front line in Ukraine.

Regional Governor Alexander Moor confirmed this first such attack on this region since the war's start. Moor claimed that Russian air defenses successfully defended against the attack on the the Tyumen oil refinery, one of Russia's largest. "An attack by unmanned aerial vehicles on the Tyumen refinery has been repelled. Emergency services specialists are working at the site where debris fell," he stated. "According to preliminary information, the plant was not damaged and employees have been evacuated," Moor announced on Telegram.

However, unverified but widely circulating footage and photographs suggest otherwise...

⚡️Columns of smoke rising from western Siberia after Ukrainian long-range drones targeted the Russian oil refinery "Tyumen" (Antipinsky) more than 2,000 kilometers from the border. pic.twitter.com/9VqVMJQzJl
— War Monitor (@WarMonitors) June 20, 2026

Reuters, reporting on the attack, writes that "The Tyumen refinery, one of the country's most modern and ⁠complex, has a nominal capacity of around 8 million metric tons per year."

"It processes ⁠roughly 6 million tons of crude annually, producing about 0.5 million ⁠tons of gasoline and 2.5 million tons of diesel, according to industry estimates," the report also notes.

Ukrainian media, and some Russian Telegram channels are asserting that the refinery did suffer a hit:

"Thick smoke is visible above the Tyumen Oil Refinery - the former Antipinsky Oil Refinery - in Tyumen," reports the ASTRA Telegram channel, citing its analysis data, adding: "Earlier, the governor reported repelling a UAV attack on this plant and the absence of damage to the enterprise."

The fact that "thick smoke is visible above the Tyumen Oil Refinery in Tyumen," as stated, was established by an ASTRA OSINT analyst from a witness video.

"At the same time, local residents reported hearing at least two explosions in the Antipino microdistrict, where the Tyumen Oil Refinery is located, and also saw at least 10 fire trucks heading towards the plant," ASTRA points out.

This past Thursday saw what many are calling most brazen offensive of the war to date, after 200 Ukrainian suicide drones swarmed Gazprom's Moscow Refinery, inflicting heavy damage.

Oil refinery in Tyumen, file image

But rather than back down in the face of Moscow's new threats of "massive group strikes" on Ukraine, it seems Ukrainian forces are flexing with yet more attacks on Western Siberia.

The Kremlin has long believed that Ukraine can't accomplish such sophisticated long-distance strikes on its own, but that it has had significant targeting help from US and Western allied intelligence.

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/20/2026 - 13:25

Trump Unveils New Air Force One Plane

Tyler Durden — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 16:50:00 +0000

Trump Unveils New Air Force One Plane

Authored by Jacob Burg via The Epoch Times,

President Donald Trump on June 19 unveiled the plane that will serve as the new Air Force One, a $400 million Boeing 747-8 luxury jet that was gifted to the United States by the Qatari government in 2025.

President Donald Trump delivers remarks after touring the newest aircraft in the presidential fleet at Andrews Air Force Base at Joint Base Andrews, Md., on June 19, 2026. Alex Wong/Getty Images

Trump stepped down from the plane inside a new hangar at Joint Base Andrews that was specially built for it. The plane is much larger than the previous jets that served as Air Force One, he said.

"The biggest difference is the difference in size, it's like virtually double the size. And actually, on a runway, it looks even more so," Trump said after shaking hands with Air Force officials.

Trump called the new plane "very unique."

"This is considered the world's most luxurious plane. When it was built, it was built at a level that will probably never be seen again," he said.

The aircraft will soon "commence its initial commissioning flights," which will be the jet's "final exam" before it's ready to transport the president, the Air Force said in a press release on Friday.

"The safety and security of the commander in chief is our highest priority," Air Force Secretary Troy Meink said in a statement.

"From the beginning, we meticulously evaluated every requirement to accelerate delivery while maintaining the high standards expected of the presidential mission."

The Air Force said the plane was painted in red, white, and blue and has received its "final government modifications" ahead of its use by the president and his staff.

Despite the jet being a gift from the Qatari government, preparing pilots and crews for the new plane came with a few costs, according to the Air Force.

The Pentagon leased an Atlas Air 747-8 in October 2025 to begin training pilots, before ultimately buying a different 747-8 from Lufthansa as a "full-time training asset for the entire crew complement," the Air Force said.

These efforts were undertaken to "neutralize potential technical hazards on the previously owned aircraft," according to the military.

"Many thought it could not be done, but the United States Air Force was able to execute and provide a secure, reliable airborne command post on an accelerated timeline," Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Ken Wilsbach said in a statement.

The new plane - which will serve as the temporary Air Force One while Boeing completes upgrades on two other jets - will replace a heavily modified Boeing 747-200B, one of three in the current fleet.

Some of the current fleet have been in service for more than 35 years.

Boeing's new fleet has incurred significant delays. Initially slated for a 2024 delivery, the aircraft are now not expected to be flight-ready until 2028.

Jackson Richman contributed to this report.

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/20/2026 - 12:50

Vance 'Skeptical' That Iran Closed Hormuz Strait Again, Pentagon Declares Safe Passage Remains 'Intact Today'

Tyler Durden — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 16:45:00 +0000

Vance 'Skeptical' That Iran Closed Hormuz Strait Again, Pentagon Declares Safe Passage Remains 'Intact Today'

Summary

Vance & CENTCOM push back against reports of Hormuz 'closure' by Iranians.
Iran's Ghalibaf, Araghchi en route to US Talks in Switzerland, IRIB reports. Also Witkoff-headed US delegation still expected.
Iran declares Strait 'closed' again over US failing to reign in Israeli action in Lebanon.
Rising death toll in Lebanon, after over 50 new rockets fired on Israeli positions by Hezbollah.

Strait of Hormuz traffic returns to normal by end of June?
Yes 8% · No 93%
View full market & trade on Polymarket

* * *

Iran Closes Strait Again? Vance & CENTCOM Address the Claims

Vice President JD Vance has newly told Fox News that he's 'skeptical' of the morning reports and claims that the Iranians once again 'closed' the Strait of Hormuz. Watch:

FOX & FRIENDS: The Journal is reporting that the remnants of the Iranian navy are turning ships back in the Strait of Hormuz. Is that a violation of the MOU?

JD VANCE: I'm skeptical of that reporting, or at least of some of the conclusions that could drawn from it. We're not… pic.twitter.com/D4iWxq769p
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 20, 2026

US Central Command is also trying to portray that all is well. It issued this statement after the Iranians announced it closed the vital oil transit waterway:

Commercial ship traffic in the Strait of Hormuz increased June 20 as U.S. forces continued operating in the general area to support freedom of navigation. Safe passage through the international waterway remained intact today as 55 merchant ships transited, moving large amounts of cargo and more than 17 million barrels of oil to global markets.

The Joint Maritime Information Center issued an advisory this week affirming safe passage for all vessels along a designated route that is free of arbitrary requirement claims or impediments.

The Pentagon says it is remaining vigilant with regional forces on high alert. Overall, it seems the White House is keep to at least see its delegation get in the same room with the Iranians in Switzerland. This will certainly be a real start in terms of face-to-face engagement, after the MoU was remotely signed by each side.

Iran says Hormuz Strait Closed Again

As has become the 'norm' after well over 100 days of war - which some pundits have been calling the "third Gulf war" - there are deeply conflicting headlines emerging Saturday. On the one hand, diplomacy based in Switzerland is said to be in motion, with a potential top level Trump delegation (led by Witkoff and to be joined later by Kushner reportedly/allegedly) - but fighting between Israel and Hezbollah in south Lebanon still rages, with the death toll climbing, and also with Hezbollah rockets still landing against IDF positions as well as in northern Israel.

Will the US and Iranian sides actually meet in Europe for the 'technical' side of further talks toward final peace? Saturday has seen reports of Iran having again 'closed' the Strait of Hormuz, citing Israeli aggression in Lebanon, after Tehran has insisted that the tenuous freshly signed MoU included a Lebanon ceasefire and peace. The latest newswires out of Iranian state media:

IRAN SAYS HORMUZ TO CLOSE, CITING CEASEFIRE VIOLATION: TASNIM
IRAN SAYS STRAIT OF HORMUZ HAS BEEN CLOSED: TASNIM
IRAN'S IRGC NAVY SAYS HORMUZ STRAIT CLOSED TO ALL VESSELS: FARS
*VESSELS WARNED TO AVOID STRAIT OF HORMUZ OVER SECURITY: FARS

VP Vance Expected in Switzerland, But He's Ambiguous in FOX Appearance

Vance expected in Switzerland, reports Axios on Saturday:

🇺🇸🇮🇷Trump envoys arrive in Switzerland for Iran talks planned for Sunday. Vice President Vance could travel to Switzerland today or tomorrow. My story on @axios https://t.co/suNH9rkVk9
— Barak Ravid (@BarakRavid) June 20, 2026

And yet, some of the same state sources have been saying that an Iranian delegation will travel to Switzerland where it will seek to hold Washington to its commitments.

“In Switzerland, we intend to press for the fulfilment of the other side’s commitments and clarify how they plan to act on their obligations,” the Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson said, according to Fars, also as cited in Al Jazeera.

Per the same report Saturday mid-morning (US time): "The delegation will leave for Switzerland in a few minutes, Mehr news agency also reported. The spokesperson also said that if the US refuses to implement its commitments, Iran will respond with necessary measures."

Vance non-committal in Saturday FOX interview:

FOX & FRIENDS: Do you have any immediate plans to join Jared and Steve?

JD VANCE: It's always a delicate coordination dance with the diplomatic protocols. I've gotta be honest with you -- I don't really understand these things pic.twitter.com/tFr2QZOjQC
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 20, 2026

So things remain very fluid, and could implode at any moment. The Wall Street Journal adds some fresh details as follows:

Iranian security officials said they had closed the Strait of Hormuz, citing what they said was the U.S. failure to stop the fighting in Lebanon as required under the agreement signed earlier this week by President Trump.

The announcement by Iran’s joint military command came as clashes between Israel and Hezbollah flared again in Lebanon on Saturday, just hours after the two sides agreed to a renewed ceasefire. It undid for now the main achievement of the deal, which was to set the stage for reopening a waterway vital to world energy markets.

Even before Iran’s announcement, however, the recovery of traffic through the strait had been halting. Iran had imposed new procedures, including a demand that ships register to cross two days in advance, and wary shipowners were monitoring the still uncertain environment in the waterway.

Widening Split Between US & Israel

Since the US-Iran Memorandum of Understanding was signed days ago it's increasingly obvious there's been a widening split between Washington and it's closest Middle East ally Israel over the terms of the deal. The political interests between the Trump administration and Israel, which have been typically lock-step, have increasingly diverged on the question of the Iran peace and terms of reopening the Strait of Hormuz. Ground zero for this divergence has remained south Lebanon, where the overnight the death toll from fighting - and especially from Israeli air raids - have risen.

Lebanon's civil defense agency has announced that Israeli attacks on the southern Nabatieh district have killed 16 people and wounded 12 others. The significant death toll comes a mere day after the latest Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire was announced.

Still, Al Jazeera is on Saturday confirming that "the wheels of diplomacy" appear to be "back in motion" after the delay to the technical talks from Friday. "Pakistan and Qatar – mediators – are holding a series of meetings in Switzerland, Iran and Egypt and according to Al Jazeera’s team on the ground," the publication writes. Top American negotiators are reportedly on the way to Europe.

via Reuters

Iran too is optimistic, while calling out certain Israeli hardliner politicians for seeking to sabotage peace. State media is hitting this theme hard, and naturally Tehran is going to seek to drive a deep and permanent wedge between the Trump and Netanyahu administrations.

Iran: 'Ready to Move Forward'

Iran's deputy foreign minister has said the Islamic Republic is "ready to move forward" on diplomacy with Washington, and the big elephant in the room is that "the United States must ensure Israel abides by the terms of the deal to end the war" - according to Al Jazeera.

As a reminder, President Trump appears in the mood to play nice with Iran while bringing the (very rare) pressure on Netanyahu. However, Trump himself is facing immense rising pressure from outraged pro-US hawks at home:

Donald ⁠Trump told NBC News ⁠in a phone ⁠interview that he spoke with Israel ⁠on Friday and asked them to ⁠agree to a ‌ceasefire ‌with Hezbollah.

“‘You just gotta calm down sometimes and use your head,’” Trump ‌was quoted as telling Israel.

Trump declined to specify whether he spoke with ‌Benjamin Netanyahu directly. A senior US official earlier confirmed the ceasefire to Reuters, though Israeli attacks continue across Lebanon.

Israeli Objections & Overnight Carnage in Lebanon

One of the key elements of the MoU the hawks vehemently object to is the creation of a $300 billion reconstruction plan for Iran. But in terms of the main aspect which could derail ongoing negotiations altogether is that the US committed that it and its allies (read: Israel and the Lebanese government) will initiate the "immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon." This is a major concession by the US to the Iranian side.

❗️FOUR IDF soldiers killed after Hezbollah struck IDF tank in southern Lebanon

Including 52nd Battalion Commander who assumed command only days earlier after his predecessor was seriously wounded

Hours later, five more wounded, including SERIOUSLY, in drone strike in same area pic.twitter.com/RQBjyKoxme
— RT (@RT_com) June 19, 2026

But Israel has much more than these things to complain about, as it continues to lose troops in recent Hezbollah attacks:

Israel immediately responded to that agreement by pounding Lebanon, killing at least 47 people on Friday, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health. Four Israeli soldiers were also killed overnight [Friday] by the armed Lebanese group, Hezbollah, prompting Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir to say that “all of Lebanon must burn”.

Vice President JD Vance's own recent remarks putting these Israeli officials in their place has been unprecedented spectacle to behold. The "special relationship" remains tenuous, at least in terms of weighing the current heated rhetoric and atmosphere.

But again, Israel can point to Hezbollah aggression, with Times of Israel (TOI) reporting the latest figures as follows:

The Israeli military says it is striking Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon in response to overnight projectile launches at troops in south Lebanon by the Iran-backed terror group, despite a ceasefire announced a day earlier.

⚡️Consequences of an Israeli airstrike (3 bombs) on a building complex in Southern Lebanon

Multiple casualties. pic.twitter.com/CF4riEgu3E
— War Monitor (@WarMonitors) June 20, 2026

"Overnight, the Hezbollah terrorist organization launched more than 50 projectiles at Israeli forces in southern Lebanon. Following the attacks, the IDF has been striking Hezbollah terrorist targets in southern Lebanon," an Israeli military official said was cited in TOI as saying.

Meanwhile, CNN also confirms that diplomacy is in "motion", writing: "US envoy Steve Witkoff is traveling to Switzerland for technical talks with Iran, a US official said, with President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner also expected to join. Meanwhile, mediator Pakistan’s interior minister has arrived in Iran for talks with senior Iranian officials as part of efforts to encourage them to Switzerland."

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/20/2026 - 12:45

National Guard Stationed At Lincoln Reflecting Pool After Multiple Sabotage Attempts

Tyler Durden — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 16:15:00 +0000

National Guard Stationed At Lincoln Reflecting Pool After Multiple Sabotage Attempts

It's difficult to find a single redeeming quality of liberal movements these days. Maybe it's the abject pettiness, like children throwing a tantrum, that makes them hard to respect. Or, maybe it's their violent emotional tendencies and complete lack of moral integrity. They are willing to do anything to gain power, including lie, cheat, steal and even murder.

At bottom, the unstable psychological drivers of leftists lead them to hate certain things that most normal people love, including the basic maintenance of respected national monuments.

One might think that the Trump Administration's repairs to the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool would be minor news, but the establishment media and progressive activists have turned the site repairs into a political battleground. CNN has spent more time "investigating" the growth of green algae in the pool than they did on the massive Somalian fraud networks in Minneapolis. Apparently, CNN isn't aware that algae grows naturally in standing water in a matter of 48 hours.

Let me get this straight.

CNN has spent more energy investigating algae in the DC Reflecting Pool than they spent on:

- Billions in Minnesota Medicaid fraud
- California's third-world election counts
- Crimes by illegal aliens
- The COVID cover-up
- Federal investigations into… pic.twitter.com/JvhnptBE6r
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) June 18, 2026

Activists tired to make hay out of the green pool, claiming that Trump wasted $14 million on his renovations, even though the same thing happened after Barack Obama's $35 million renovation from 2010 to 2012, and those repairs didn't even solve the leakage problems.

When Trump responded to the algae issue with new "nano bubbler" treatments, leftists actually protested online and at the site against the removal of the green sludge.

Brace yourselves…

“Pro-algae” protest is taking place by the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in DC today.

You can't make this shit up! pic.twitter.com/eEp6F0Tkj5
— I Meme Therefore I Am 🇺🇸 (@ImMeme0) June 19, 2026

In other words, they got mad that the treatments were working and they could no longer use the algae as an example of Trump failure. They then turned to direct sabotage of the site. Pieces of the floor of the reflecting pool have been torn out and the new sealant has been damaged.

Looks like a clean cut… someone is vandalizing the reflecting pool pic.twitter.com/pVNVAO5Xpc
— MJTruthUltra (@MJTruthUltra) June 19, 2026

The numbers "8647" have been found scratched into the floor of the pool (a code for "murder Trump").

Multiple activists have reportedly been arrested, some caught in the process of trying to sabotage the monument. Others have tried to interfere with maintenance workers cleaning the algae. The National Guard and DC police are now stationed at the pool around the clock to prevent further damage.

🚨 JUST IN — EXCLUSIVE: United States Park Police are investigating an “86 47” inscription on the sealant of the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool

We discovered writing just now while walking the edge of the pool.

This BS needs to end.

This comes as mobile SURVEILLANCE TOWERS… pic.twitter.com/z9aB9xf4wT
— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) June 19, 2026

🚨 This just keeps getting worse.

Following the arrest of a man who cut out a big piece of the new American Flag Blue sealant at the Lincoln Reflecting Pool, another man was just arrested for grabbing a hose from female NPS workers clearing algae. pic.twitter.com/9uuAeSu1ka
— Alec Lace (@AlecLace) June 19, 2026

🚨 LAST NIGHT: US Park Police detained a suspicious man carrying a pitchfork and bucket around the Lincoln Memorial reflection pool

It’s unclear what the man was planning on doing with the pitchfork and bucket, but it’s certainly not a regular sight at the pool.

This came… https://t.co/yLGvmc2k3X pic.twitter.com/BN3epjPjOV
— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) June 19, 2026

Yes, the trifling behavior is off the charts, but this has become the standard of discourse for the woke mob in 2026. The worst part, though, is that the media has been running interference for the vandals, claiming that the repairs were "substandard" and that the water treatments are causing the sealant to peel. In reality, the damages are being caused by a coordinated monkey wrenching campaign, and the liberal media is silent about it.

The political left views monuments as symbolic targets; a way to attack western culture and demoralize the population without risking substantial jail time. We have seen similar tactics used by climate change protesters across Europe and the US. It's no coincidence that these activists choose iconic western treasures, such as classic artworks or an original copy of the Magna Carta, to vandalize.

Climate change is just the excuse, but the real goal is to incrementally deface anything symbolic of western civilization or national pride. The same mentality applies to the sabotage of the Lincoln reflecting pool. On top of that, the media takes the opportunity to paint Trump as incompetent or ineffective, turning something positive like monument restoration into an ugly propaganda affair.

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/20/2026 - 12:15

Trump Says He No Longer Views Anthropic As A National Security Threat

Tyler Durden — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 15:40:00 +0000

Trump Says He No Longer Views Anthropic As A National Security Threat

Authored by Jacob Burg via The Epoch Times,

President Donald Trump said he no longer views the artificial intelligence (AI) giant Anthropic as a national security threat.

Illustration of Anthropic on June 18, 2026. Riccardo Milani/Hans Lucas via AFP via Getty Images

"We have a situation with Anthropic, and we didn't like what they were doing, and so far I think they behaved very responsibly to our request," Trump told Axios's Marc Caputo in an interview that aired on June 19.

Caputo then asked Trump if he still viewed Anthropic and its CEO, Dario Amodei, as a threat to national security.

"Well, not now, but a week ago, maybe," Trump said, describing a meeting with Amodei at the G7 summit this week that influenced his change of heart.

"[Amodei] responded to us very quickly, because you know it's tremendous liability," Trump said. "You know, you can't play games with it. And he responded very responsibly."

The comments come one week after the Trump administration directed Anthropic to shut down foreign nationals' access to its new Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models, which resulted in the company suspending access to all users entirely.

Issued on June 12, the directive from U.S. officials did not include specific details of potential security threats or concerns, according to Anthropic.

"Our understanding is that the government believes it has become aware of a method of bypassing, or 'jailbreaking' Fable 5," the company said in a statement at the time.

Trump told Axios that one of the company's competitors "turned Anthropic in" and raised alarms over the new models.

"They didn't like what [Anthropic was] doing. They were very concerned," he said.

Anthropic did not respond to a request for comment by publication time.

When Anthropic released Fable 5 to the general public on June 9, it said the model had exceeded the capabilities of "any model we've ever made generally available."

"It is state-of-the-art on nearly all tested benchmarks of AI capability, showing exceptional performance in software engineering, knowledge work, vision, scientific research, and many other areas," Anthropic stated.

As a "Mythos-class" model, Fable 5 is essentially as strong as Mythos, but with key safety features to make it safe for public use.

In the same announcement, Anthropic made Mythos 5 available to a small group of cyberdefenders and infrastructure providers. But after the company's decision to suspend access to all users on June 12, both models are currently unavailable.

Two days before Anthropic pulled access, Amodei wrote on X that he believes frontier models such as Mythos 5 "should face mandatory third-party testing for cyber, bio, and autonomy risks - with the power to block or revoke deployment of models that pose catastrophic risk."

Trump signed an executive order early this month asking AI firms to voluntarily submit their frontier models for government review 30 days before they're available to the general public.

At the time, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) criticized the order for only being "voluntary," saying that mandatory testing and review of frontier models is needed to "protect Americans."

Jacki Thrapp contributed to this report.

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/20/2026 - 11:40

The Consumer Sentiment Disconnect From Economic Reality

Tyler Durden — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 14:30:00 +0000

The Consumer Sentiment Disconnect From Economic Reality

Authored by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

The University of Michigan’s Consumer Sentiment Index just printed 44.8 in May. That’s the worst reading since the survey began in 1952. That print was lower than in 2008 and the 1980 inflation panic. It was also worse than the COVID lockdowns, yet the S&P 500 continues to climb higher, Q1 corporate earnings posted 27% growth, and weekly jobless claims sit near cycle lows. That “disconnect” has sparked many statements on social media, such as:

“GDP is growing at a healthy 2.7% in the US. GDP statistics in the US are clearly completely broken and no longer make any sense whatsoever.” – Philip Pilkington

That statement sums up many of the concerns I have read as of late, and the University of Michigan consumer sentiment disconnect from economic reality demands an honest answer. Which set of data is wrong? I think the honest answer is both, and neither. Over the last three decades, I’ve learned that surveys and behavior often part ways, and the gap usually tells you more about the survey than about the consumer. So let’s walk through what’s actually happening, because the consumer sentiment disconnect isn’t a single story. It’s three stories stacked on top of each other.

Start with the disconnect itself. If you only looked at the Michigan headline, you’d assume the country was in a depression. However, when you look at what people are actually doing, the picture changes completely.

Retail sales rose 0.5% in April and are running 4.9% above year-ago levels. In addition, Q1 earnings season has delivered an 84% beat rate on the S&P 500, well above the 5-year average of 78%, with aggregate earnings beating estimates by 20.7%. That’s the strongest surprise rate since the first quarter of 2021. Furthermore, initial jobless claims came in at 209,000 for the week ending May 16. Unemployment is sitting at 4.3%. Notably, the Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow model is tracking 4.3% annualized growth for Q2 as of May 21.

Notice in the chart above what’s never happened in the 25-year history of this comparison. In every prior cycle, sentiment and growth moved roughly in step. The 2001 mild recession, the Global Financial Crisis, and the COVID lockdowns all show sentiment and GDP cratering and recovering side by side. Since 2022, that relationship has broken in a way it never broke before. GDP has been running between +2% and +3% year over year for three straight years. Consumer sentiment has been running below 70 the entire time, levels that historically only appeared during deep recessions. The gap in the lower-right corner of that chart is the entire argument.

Meanwhile, the headline economic narrative making the rounds on social media insists that GDP statistics are “completely broken” and that real data show a hidden recession. Here’s the problem with that argument. The labor market, spending, earnings, and credit data all line up in the same direction. They don’t agree with the sentiment survey, but they do agree with each other. So when one indicator disagrees with five, the prior should be on the one. That’s the heart of the consumer sentiment disconnect we need to explain. We flagged an earlier version of this same divergence in February, when economic sentiment was already at odds with the strong macro data-based estimates.

Yes, There Really Is a Partisan Problem

So why is the Michigan survey saying something so different? Part of the answer is exactly what many investors suspect, and the data backs it up.

Notice in the chart above what happens at every administration handoff. In January 2021, the navy line shoots up while the red line plunges almost vertically. The two cross within weeks of Biden’s inauguration, and Independents barely budge in the middle. Then it happens again in January 2025, only sharper. Republican sentiment surges from 67 to 93 in two months, while Democrats collapse from 78 to 56 over the same window. The X-pattern at each transition is the partisan gap in action. The survey isn’t measuring the economy. It’s capturing tribal loyalty, and that mechanic is a meaningful slice of the consumer sentiment disconnect we’re trying to explain.

The Richmond Federal Reserve published research in 2024 that found something striking. Specifically, the partisan gap in consumer sentiment is now far larger than the gap by income, age, or education level. Per the Richmond Fed analysis, the gap between Democratic and Republican sentiment expanded from 21 points under George W. Bush to 25 points under Obama, and then to 45 points under Biden. That’s not noise. That’s a structural issue with how the survey is being completed.

Moreover, it gets worse. Researchers at BriefingBook documented what they call “asymmetric amplification.” Republicans swing their sentiment responses roughly 2.5 times as much as Democrats do, depending on who controls the White House. When their party wins, they go euphoric, but when they lose, they go bleak. Democrats do this too, just less violently. Importantly, adjusting only for that asymmetry closes about 30% of the gap between predicted and observed sentiment over the post-2020 period.

Fundstrat’s Tom Lee made waves last week with an even sharper critique. He pointed out that 51% of Democratic respondents are now reporting sentiment readings below the survey’s all-time worst reading of 47.6. He also flagged that around a quarter of Democratic respondents believe inflation is currently running above 100%. Clearly, that isn’t a forecast. That’s a vote.

Now layer on something most readers haven’t heard about. In 2024, the University of Michigan switched from cellular phone surveys conducted via random-digit dialing to an online-only address-based sampling method. The change began in April and was fully completed by July of that year.

U-M’s surveys director, Joanne Hsu, has consistently maintained that the methodology change produced comparable results. However, the independent research disagrees. Cummings and Tedeschi, in a widely cited analysis published in BriefingBook, estimated that the switch from phone to online interviews lowered the sentiment index by about 8.9 points, or more than 11%. They benchmarked their adjustment against Morning Consult’s continuous online sentiment survey, which uses the same five core questions but has been online since 2018. Notably, Morning Consult’s index did not show the same precipitous decline as Michigan’s headline number. That gap alone accounts for a meaningful slice of the consumer sentiment disconnect.

Tom Lee added a further claim that I’ll attribute to him because I haven’t independently verified the underlying response data. He stated that the new online survey is producing a respondent breakdown of roughly 66% Democratic and 33% Republican, which would not be representative of the U.S. adult population. Whether or not that exact ratio holds, the broader point stands. In fact, self-selection bias on online opt-in is a known issue, and the structural break in the series is real.

The Conference Board Tells a Different Story

This brings us to the question I’ve raised previously. If the Michigan number is so distorted, what does the other major survey say? The Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index gives us a useful check.

Notice in the chart above just how different the two stories are. The Michigan survey’s Current Economic Conditions component is 26% below its 2008 financial crisis trough. By contrast, the Conference Board’s index, while soft, sits near its long-term average and remains well above every cyclical low of the modern era. Consider the historical anchors. In 2009, the Conference Board bottomed at 25.3. During the 2020 COVID shock, it hit 85.7. Today’s reading of 92.8 isn’t a crisis print on that scale.

Methodologically, the two surveys measure different things. The Conference Board’s index places greater weight on labor market and current business conditions. The Michigan survey places greater emphasis on household finances and inflation perceptions. When inflation perception is the dominant factor and partisan respondents spontaneously volunteer inflation rates above 100% as a protest vote, you get the Michigan number.

The real question is whether the partisan effect is mitigated in the Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index? The honest answer is partly. The Conference Board doesn’t publish party-affiliation crosstabs the way Michigan does, so we can’t directly measure their internal partisan gap. However, its methodology is less exposed to the specific inflation-expectation channel where the partisan skew is most extreme. And its readings show that.

But This Time, Republicans Are Sour Too

Now here’s where the partisan-bias narrative needs an honest correction. If you stopped reading at “the Michigan survey is just upset Democrats,” you’d miss something important about the May 2026 reading.

According to the University of Michigan’s own release on May 22, sentiment among Independents and Republicans dropped to the lowest readings of the current presidential administration. Democratic sentiment, in contrast, was little changed from April. Republican long-run inflation expectations have more than doubled on a monthly basis since February 2025. The cost-of-living concern is showing up across the political spectrum, not just on one side.

Why? Two reasons. First, gasoline prices surged 12.3% in April thanks to the ongoing conflict with Iran and the supply disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz. Pump prices are at levels not seen since 2022. Gas is the most visible price in the American economy, and it’s hitting every household. Second, tariff-related price pressure is starting to filter through, and roughly 30% of respondents in early May spontaneously mentioned tariffs as a concern. Make no mistake, those aren’t imagined problems.

So the partisan-bias critique is real, but it’s only part of the story. The 2026 Michigan plunge contains a partisan distortion, a methodology distortion, and a genuine bipartisan reaction to higher prices. In short, the consumer sentiment disconnect we’re seeing isn’t just noise. Pulling those threads apart matters if you want to use the data correctly.

“The Michigan survey isn’t broken. It’s measuring something narrower than the headline suggests, and what it’s measuring is real. The question is whether what it’s measuring should drive your portfolio.”

Why The Consumer Sentiment Disconnect Rarely Predicts Spending

The most important question isn’t whether the Michigan number is “correct.” It’s whether the number actually predicts anything useful for investors. Decades of research from the Federal Reserve system suggest the answer is largely “no.“

A February 2026 paper from the Kansas City Federal Reserve titled “Forecasting with Feelings” found that the link between consumer sentiment and growth in real household spending has been modest historically. The authors built two forecasting models: one using only official economic data, and one augmenting that data with consumer sentiment surveys. The sentiment-augmented model didn’t materially improve the forecast over the past 30 years. Fed Chair Jerome Powell echoed that finding in his May 2025 press conference, stating directly that “the link between sentiment data and consumer spending has been weak. It’s not been a strong link at all.”

A 2014 Boston Fed paper reached a similar conclusion. When you control for standard fundamentals such as income, employment, and wealth, the role of consumer sentiment in predicting consumption is marginal at best. People can feel terrible about the economy, yet still spend. We’ve seen that play out for almost three full years now.

The composite chart, which combines the Michigan and Conference Board indices to dampen the noise in each survey, clearly shows the broader pattern. Confidence has weakened from cycle highs, but the market has continued to advance. As we covered in our prior analysis of the confidence dichotomy between consumers and investors, there have been three other periods where stocks rallied while sentiment fell. The dot-com bubble. The mid-cycle expansion of the late 1990s. And the post-COVID period. In each of those cases, the market eventually had to reckon with reality, but the disconnect lasted longer than skeptics expected.

The composite sits at 71 today, a full 47 points below the October 2018 cycle high of 118. Over that same stretch, the S&P 500 has more than doubled, and that’s the consumer sentiment disconnect we’ve been pointing at for the better part of three years.

What Investors Should Actually Watch

If sentiment surveys aren’t reliable inputs for portfolio decisions, what is? My answer is the same one I’ve given for 20 years. Behavior beats feelings every time. So watch what consumers and businesses are doing with their money, not what they say in a survey. That single shift in focus turns the consumer sentiment disconnect from a confusing headline into a useful contrarian signal.

The takeaway from that table is simple. Five of the six categories show behavior diverging from sentiment in the same direction. People are saying one thing and doing another. When that happens at this scale, you don’t trade off the talk. You trade off the action.

That said, two items in the table do deserve real attention. Gas prices are a tax on consumers and on margins. If the Iran conflict drags into the summer driving season, demand destruction becomes a real risk for cyclical names. And tariff pass-through is the slow leak that markets keep underpricing. Importantly, those are concrete data series we can monitor, not abstract sentiment vibes. Pump prices, container shipping rates, retailer margin guidance, and consumer credit delinquencies are on the watchlist.

The Conference Board’s index, the Atlanta Fed’s GDP nowcast, the earnings beat rate, the retail sales print, and the jobless claims data all point to an economy that is slowing in some places, accelerating in others, and not remotely close to the Depression-era reading on the Michigan headline. What does this mean for investors? Stay disciplined. Watch the behavioral data. Maintain risk-management protocols. Be ready to lean in when the noise creates a real dislocation, and be ready to lean out when the data, not the surveys, actually rolls over.

Consumers are gloomy. Some of that gloom is justified, particularly around gas and inflation. But gloom is not a portfolio strategy.

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/20/2026 - 10:30

Trump Mocks Italy's Meloni Over Disputed G7 Photo: 'She Wants To Be Friends Again, No Thanks!'

Tyler Durden — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 13:55:00 +0000

Trump Mocks Italy's Meloni Over Disputed G7 Photo: 'She Wants To Be Friends Again, No Thanks!'

President Trump has once again lashed out at Italy, as Washington and this 'wayward' NATO ally continue to clash on a range of issues from Iran to Israel to Ukraine..

It follows on the heels of the cancellation of the planned diplomatic visit by Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani. President Trump on Saturday has newly taken to Truth Social to reiterate that PM Meloni "asked, over and over, for a picture with me during the G-7 meeting in France."

He continued: “She is doing poorly in Italy with her level of popularity, possibly because she turned down the United States of America, a Country that truly loves and protects Italy, when it came to denying Iran from obtaining or developing a Nuclear Weapon (But so did NATO, for that matter!).”

According to more background:

Trump’s comments were aired Friday on the La7 network. A correspondent had asked the president about Ukraine, but Trump raised Meloni and made the claim about the photo. Trump said he was not obliged to take the picture with her but that he felt sorry for her and agreed, La7 said. The broadcaster put a dubbed version of the conversation online, but not the original English audio.

Meloni has very publicly rejected Trump's version of events at the G7:

Clearly irked at President Donald Trump’s suggestion that she had had “begged” him for a photo at the Group of Seven summit earlier this week, the Italian prime minister said this was “totally fabricated.”

Bilateral defense agreements and NATO's base sharing framework allows US access to key strategic hubs for US operations in the Mediterranean - however, Italian law and a historic treaty requires parliamentary approval for anything outside that scope.

It was in late March that for the first time Italy's defense ministry confirmed that "some US bombers" were denied landing at Sigonella – one of seven US navy bases in Italy.

Among the scenes at a G7 working lunch in France on June 16 was this...

Pool image via AP

Italy tried to frame the issue as merely bureaucratic and an issue of paperwork. Initial complaints were that the US didn't follow required permission protocol, and requested landing only while in the air and already en route to Sicily.

Meloni's office has all the while maintained it is "acting in full compliance with existing international agreements" - while underscoring that each flight request must be "carefully examined on a case-by-case basis, as has always been the case in the past."

More of Meloni's response to Trump's latest Truth Social:

Italy's Meloni responds to Trump:

President Trump, these constant, unprovoked attacks are senseless. As for my popularity, being your friend certainly has not helped it, nor does it depend on my relationship with you.

My popularity depends on my ability to defend Italy’s… pic.twitter.com/myot615UVl
— Clash Report (@clashreport) June 20, 2026

But the truth also is that American hegemonic action in the Middle East, and the Iran conflict in particular, is deeply unpopular among the Italian population, which has long had a strongly anti-war bent especially among the youth. Meloni has tried to assure here electorate that she's never "begged" for anything from Trump.

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/20/2026 - 09:55

FBI Warns That Fake FIFA Website Being Used to Steal Personal Information

Tyler Durden — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 13:20:00 +0000

FBI Warns That Fake FIFA Website Being Used to Steal Personal Information

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

The FBI on June 16 advised people to be wary of fraudulent websites that try to mimic World Cup or FIFA sites, as the agency warned that such websites have been used to steal personal information and sell counterfeit tickets.

In a public service announcement, the FBI stated that scammers and fraudsters have launched spoofing attempts designed to mimic FIFA’s official website as the World Cup games hosted in North America continue.

“Threat actors often create spoofed websites by slightly altering characteristics of legitimate website domains, with the purpose of gathering personally identifiable information entered by a user into the site, including name, home address, phone number, email address, and banking information,” the FBI statement reads.

The individuals behind such websites may be attempting to trick people into entering sensitive information that could be used to “create new accounts in a victim’s name and ultimately defraud the victim,” the FBI stated.

The federal law enforcement bureau noted that it has identified individuals who had attempted to collect personal information, sell counterfeit World Cup tickets or “hospitality products,” or engaged in other forms of malicious activity in connection with the scams.

The fraudulent website domains could include alternate spellings of words or use a different top-level domain, or TLD, referring to the final segment of the web address, such as .com, .gov, .org, and more, according to the notice.

Scammers may also create a deceptive version of a legitimate website, such as fifa.com, that tricks people into thinking they are going to the official website, it stated. Some include website domains that use alternate domain extensions such as “.blue,” “.beer,” “.city,” and more. Dozens of fraudulent domains were identified by the FBI that have been linked to the scheme, including fake domains related to FIFA jobs, merchandise, or tickets.

FBI officials advised people to first verify website URLs before they enter potentially sensitive or personally identifying information and to go to FIFA’s official website by typing the URL into their browser rather than relying on results produced by search engines, while also verifying that it reads fifa.com.

An Epoch Times review found that many of the websites listed by the FBI in the alert appeared to be down. However, the FBI stated that the “public should be aware that new websites will continue to appear.”

“Exercise caution when clicking on advertisements. Before clicking on an advertisement, check the URL to make sure the site is authentic,” the notice reads. “Malicious advertisements may redirect users to a different website than indicated.”

The June 16 public service announcement did not say whether anyone was victimized by a FIFA website-related scam. But victims who believe that they were targeted in a scam should file a complaint with the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center at ic3.gov, it states

Aside from combating fake websites, the FBI has also acted to keep drones away from World Cup games. Earlier this week, an illegal immigrant with a prior criminal history, including a cocaine-trafficking conviction, was arrested for flying a drone near a World Cup event in Atlanta, the FBI announced.

The World Cup lasts from June 11 until July 19, with matches being played across the United States, Mexico, and Canada.

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/20/2026 - 09:20

The World Cup's Uneven Playing Field

Tyler Durden — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 11:35:00 +0000

The World Cup's Uneven Playing Field

Due to its truly global footprint, the FIFA World Cup has always been a celebration of diversity, both on and off the pitch.

It brings together different cultures, different playing styles and different levels of skill, professionalism and financial muscle.

However, with the tournament now over a week old, it is clear that they are playing 'football' on an uneven playing field.

As Statista's Felix Richter reports, while nations like France, Spain and England have assembled squads full of international superstars, other participants will field teams that are largely unknown to fans outside of the respective country.

According to estimates from Transfermarkt.com, there is a huge gulf in squad value between the nations traditionally challenging for the title and those happy to be part of the show.

You will find more infographics at Statista

France’s star-studded squad is worth more than 70 times as the teams assembled by Qatar, Jordan and Iraq, the least valuable squads in the tournament.

This is a reflection of the balance of power in global football, which is concentrated in Europe’s top leagues.... and correlates very well with likelihood of success.

It is partly for this reason that surprises have become increasingly rare in the world’s biggest football competition, where it’s hard to imagine a fairy tale run of a smaller nation to the tournament’s final stages.

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/20/2026 - 07:35

The Brits Should Declare Their Independence, Too

Tyler Durden — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 11:00:00 +0000

The Brits Should Declare Their Independence, Too

Authored by J.B. Shurk via American Thinker,

British tyranny is globalism, and globalism must be destroyed.

British tyranny is so repulsive that the British people owe it to themselves to overthrow their government masters. It has been two-hundred-fifty years since America’s Declaration of Independence recognized the Crown system as a threat to Americans’ lives and liberties. English-speaking peoples still suffering under the British yoke should follow suit.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced a near-total ban on social media for children under sixteen years old. Ten of the most popular social media platforms are now age-restricted, with the toxic-leftist Bluesky platform a notable exception. The government claims to be “protecting children” from online harm. That’s a lie. If the British government cared about protecting British children, government ministers and police forces would not have covered up Islamic rape gangs targeting children for three-plus decades. The British government would not censor online reporting of foreigners murdering young Brits. The British government has systematically chosen to sacrifice the United Kingdom’s children.

This online “safety” measure must be understood, then, as a ruse meant to expand the government’s control over online information. Australia, New Zealand, and Canada have similar surveillance systems in place — all ostensibly erected to “protect the children” but designed, in reality, to control the speech of citizens. In these countries, the only way to communicate with other citizens on social media platforms is to prove your age by proving your identity. Mandatory digital identification systems are disguised as child welfare checks. The Brits and their Commonwealth vassals have built a surveillance system to monitor citizens’ thoughts, censor unapproved speech, and promote official propaganda.

Tyrant Starmer is pushing this online surveillance infrastructure while citizens in the U.K. are protesting and rioting against the British government’s murderous mass immigration policies — which have invited foreign rapists and killers to overrun the kingdom and slaughter citizens.

Third-world barbarism is exploding across Europe. Official Eurostat numbers show that sexual violence offenses in the European Union have doubled over the last decade. Rapes skyrocketed 150%. Knife crimes and murders are off the charts. Foreign nationals who have immigrated into Europe are responsible for roughly fifty percent of violent crime.

Just as the unelected European Commission ruling the continent continues to cover up immigrant crimes and censor citizens’ online discussion of these ongoing threats, the British government is more concerned about punishing native Brits for noticing that they are under attack than repelling violent invaders from Britain’s shores. (If Keir Starmer had been in Winston Churchill’s shoes during the Nazi Blitz, the British government would have surely helped the Germans cover up the bombings while blaming all the destruction on British citizens!)

Starmer’s government spies run a propaganda outfit that controls all public “narratives” regarding immigrant crime against native Brits. The group of spies write and release misleading statements, presented as coming from the families of victims, that are designed to downplay rapes, murders, and other violent incidents. While these spies use propaganda and censorship to cover up serious crimes committed by immigrants, they simultaneously engage in information warfare against British citizens by branding legitimate public concerns over safety as “disinformation,” “far-right racism,” “violence,” and “hate speech.” This spy group in charge of monitoring and shaping the public’s thoughts has flagged “reading Shakespeare, Chaucer or Milton, or books documenting grooming gang scandals as potential indicators of far-Right susceptibility.” The British spies — a veritable Gestapo fabricating public “truth” — plant media stories, steer online discussions, and deploy operatives to disrupt or direct public protests.

The British government claims the power to block “false information” that is “legal but harmful.” On its website, the British government defines “extreme right-wing terrorist ideology” to include the belief that “‘Western culture’ is under threat from mass migration and a lack of integration by certain ethnic and cultural groups.” British Technology Secretary Liz Kendall claims that it is “illegal” to promote “disorder” on social media. Meanwhile, Starmer’s government tyrants are instructing journalists how to report immigrant attacks on British citizens. These are the actions of dictators who do not care about “protecting the children.”

Surveying the daily violent crime by immigrants and the British government’s ongoing cover-ups, former Prime Minister Liz Truss says there is a government campaign to “undermine the family” and the “nation state.” She says that forced diversity has corrupted the institutions and that government ministers suppress information and attack citizens while protecting barbarians. She concludes that mass migration and government control over information are being used as weapons to destroy Western civilization.

For years, we Americans have watched the evils of globalism expand both at home and abroad in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and most of continental Europe. Branded by its international supporters as some kind of final, utopian stage of human governance, globalism is just another Frankensteinian beast — created from all the worst parts of Marxist-communism, Leninism, Maoism, fascism, Nazism, authoritarianism, oligarchy, corporatism, elitism, and central bank hegemony. Globalism is totalitarianism. Its god is government, although it has created special liturgical rituals regarding an imaginary “climate change” apocalypse meant to scare the world’s peasants into accepting the supremacy of government authority and bureaucrats’ (globalism’s “priests”) centralized power over all economic transactions.

Globalist governments seek total control over the people, and every policy that globalist governments shove down our throats is meant to advance this goal of total control. COVID was not a health emergency. It was a government excuse to roll out digital identifications, mandatory pharmaceutical injections, “vaccine” passports capable of monitoring real-time citizen movements, and online censorship. It was a government program meant to condition citizens to accept that government bureaucrats should be empowered with limitless authorities — including the discretion to regulate church services, close and bankrupt businesses, lockdown citizens in their homes, separate family members from dying loved ones, and quarantine citizens for non-compliance. The “global warming/cooling/climate change/extreme weather” hobgoblin is a government-designed scare tactic identical to the COVID “emergency.” The only difference is that the “global warming” fearmongers have been telling us that we have twelve years left to live for the last century, while the COVID fearmongers told us that we had twelve days to live unless we complied. Manufacturing compliance was and remains globalist governments’ only strategic objective.

Globalism’s ruling elites lust for wealth, power, and total control over the public. Their lust will never be sated. They wish for a small collection of government and economic masters to subjugate as much of the planet’s population as possible as serfs. Globalism is a conquering empire. Its oligarchy of central bank popes, chosen political governors, corporate monarchs, and techno-fascist-brownshirt-bureaucrats are modern-day slavers and colonizers. Instead of putting us in chains and whipping us when we “misbehave,” they put us in a lifetime of debt and prosecute us for expressing opinions contrary to official government orthodoxy.

Do you believe that marriage is an institution recognizing the sacred union between one man and one woman? Do you believe that men and women are biologically different? Do you believe that mass immigration is a threat to national security? Do you believe “multiculturalism” and forced “diversity” destroy excellence, discount merit, and weaken the naturally salubrious bonds of common cultural heritage? Do you believe that every human has a God-given right to self-defense? Do you believe that Christians should remain faithful to their beliefs in both their public and private lives? If so, globalist governments see you as an “extremist,” “right-winger,” “religious fanatic,” “terrorist,” and “enemy of the State.” Your thoughts will be condemned. Your speech will be censored. You will be fined and prosecuted. You will go to prison for your beliefs.

The best way for Americans to fight encroaching globalism over here is to support British patriots in their fight against globalism over there. As Benjamin Franklin persuasively argued, “We must all hang together, or we shall all hang separately.”

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/20/2026 - 07:00

America's Military Readiness Depends On Deployable Nuclear Power

Tyler Durden — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 03:00:00 +0000

America's Military Readiness Depends On Deployable Nuclear Power

Authored by James Durso via RealClearDefense.,com,

For decades, energy policy in Washington was debated on the basis of economics, climate change, and domestic politics. That era is over. The United States is entering a period where energy security must be recognized as a core pillar of national security and military readiness.

The global competition underway with China is not just about trade or tariffs. It is about industrial capacity, technological dominance, artificial intelligence (AI), semiconductor manufacturing, and defense production – all of which depend on a foundational requirement: abundant and reliable electric power.

America’s future military superiority will rely in part by whether the nation can generate enough resilient, secure baseload electricity to support its defense industrial base and rapidly expanding digital infrastructure.

That is why deployment of Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) must be a top national priority.

The United States faces a convergence of unprecedented energy demand and an electric grid that is at capacity and is vulnerable to cyberattacks, physical sabotage, transmission bottlenecks, and extreme weather events.

Intermittent energy sources alone will not meet the scale or reliability requirements necessary to sustain America’s strategic position. The nation requires dependable, 24/7 baseload power capable of supporting critical infrastructure under all conditions – including during natural disasters, geopolitical crises, or military conflicts.

Advanced nuclear energy, delivered by SMRs, is rapidly emerging as one of the few realistic solutions capable of meeting those demands on a shorter timeline than legacy power systems.

Unlike traditional large-scale nuclear plants, SMRs are designed to be smaller, factory manufactured, and more flexible in deployment. They can be built to support specific industrial facilities, defense installations, AI infrastructure, and in remote or constrained environments where grid reliability is a concern.

The national security implications are significant.

Modern military operations are increasingly energy intensive. Defense installations, logistics hubs, shipyards, semiconductor fabrication plants, weapons production facilities, and command and control infrastructure all depend on uninterrupted electricity. Yet many of these facilities remain dependent on centralized transmission systems vulnerable to disruption.

One of the most strategically important developments in the SMR sector is the growing focus on “behind-the-meter” deployment capability — the ability to place reactors adjacent to mission-critical facilities rather than relying exclusively on long-distance transmission infrastructure.

This approach could fundamentally reshape military and industrial resilience in the United States.

Distributed advanced nuclear generation could provide secure dedicated power to defense installations, industrial corridors, AI campuses, and manufacturing hubs while reducing dependence on vulnerable grid infrastructure without competing for electric power with civilian communities. It could also improve survivability during cyberattacks, physical sabotage, or grid instability scenarios.

Equally important is the question of fuel security.

One of the least discussed but most consequential challenges facing the advanced nuclear industry is fuel availability. Several next-generation reactor concepts depend on High-Assay Low-Enriched Uranium (HALEU), a fuel source that lacks large-scale commercial availability in North America and is tied in part to Russian-controlled enrichment capacity.

That presents a strategic vulnerability the United States cannot afford to ignore.

Energy independence cannot exist if critical fuel supply chains remain dependent on geopolitical competitors or unstable foreign markets. Any serious national nuclear strategy must prioritize technologies capable of operating with commercially available fuel supported by secure supply chains.

This is where deployment readiness becomes critically important.

For years, much of the advanced nuclear conversation has focused on future concepts, demonstration projects, and theoretical deployment timelines. But America’s strategic competitors are not waiting. China is rapidly expanding its nuclear footprint domestically and internationally as part of a broader geopolitical strategy tied to industrial influence and infrastructure dominance. The U.S. Department of Energy reports that from 2014 to 2023 China increased installed net nuclear capacity almost three times, and that domestic experience is the basis for Beijing’s push to export 30 nuclear reactors by 2030 to countries participating in the Belt and Road Initiative.

The United States must move with urgency, and the technology exists to do it now.

Today, NuScale Power is the only SMR developer with full U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission standard design approval under the modern Part 52 licensing framework and the only company currently positioned with a commercially deployable, regulator-approved SMR technology transitioning to manufacturing.

That distinction matters because licensing is the hurdle that will determine which technologies are deployed in the next decade.

Most competing SMR and Generation IV reactor companies, to include Westinghouse, Oklo, TerraPower, and X-Energy are years away from NRC approval, rely on unproven fuel supply chains, or continue operating within demonstration programs without commercially deployable designs. Many experts acknowledge that several competing technologies may not achieve meaningful commercial deployment for another decade or longer.

NuScale’s position does not simply reflect a business milestone but the reality that the United States currently has NRC-approved SMR technology with a near-term pathway toward commercial deployment at scale.

The recent collaboration involving the Tennessee Valley Authority, ENTRA1 Energy, and NuScale is important not simply because of the companies involved, but because it signals a broader shift from discussion to deployment.

The proposed initiative, potentially involving up to six gigawatts of SMR capacity, reflects growing recognition that advanced nuclear energy may soon become indispensable to supporting America’s industrial expansion, digital economy, and national security infrastructure.

This is an exciting development that underscores a reality policymakers must confront: deployment timelines matter.

The United States does not have the luxury of waiting another decade for energy technologies trapped in prolonged licensing processes, uncertain fuel pathways, or unresolved manufacturing challenges. Strategic competition is accelerating now.

This is not an argument for abandoning other energy sources. It is an argument for recognizing that advanced nuclear power is increasingly becoming an essential component of America’s long-term energy resilience strategy alongside fossil fuels and renewables.

The debate over SMRs should not be framed as solely an energy issue.

It is fundamentally about whether the United States can maintain military readiness, secure critical infrastructure, support advanced manufacturing, power the AI revolution, and preserve geopolitical leadership in an increasingly unstable world.

Energy dominance is no longer simply economic policy. It is national defense policy. Small Modular Reactors allow America to maintain its strategic advantage.

Tyler Durden Fri, 06/19/2026 - 23:00

8 Frightening Forecasts For The Future Of Fraud

Tyler Durden — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 02:15:00 +0000

8 Frightening Forecasts For The Future Of Fraud

Fraud is entering a new era. Businesses across North America expect fraud trends like biometric fraud, deepfake scams, and synthetic identities to become more common in 2026 as criminals adopt faster and more sophisticated tools.

This visualization, created by Visual Capitalist's Julia Wendling, in partnership with Inigo for the Fraud in Data campaign’s sixth post, uses data from the Sumsub Fraud Report 2025 to explore the fraud trends businesses believe will shape the future of digital risk.

Biometric Fraud Could Become the Biggest Threat

Surveyed businesses expect biometric fraud to rise the most, with 67% predicting an increase. As companies rely more on facial recognition, voice authentication, and remote onboarding, fraudsters are finding new ways to exploit those systems.

Deepfake technology is already making identity verification harder. In the future, AI-generated videos, cloned voices, and stolen biometric data could make fraud attempts more convincing and more scalable than ever before.

Businesses also expect synthetic identity fraud to grow, with 56% anticipating a rise. Criminals are increasingly combining real and fake information to create identities that can bypass traditional fraud checks.

AI and Deepfakes Are Changing Fraud Trends

Businesses expect fraud attacks to become more automated in 2026. Around 44% predict increases in advanced AI-driven attacks, deepfake scams, and forged identity documents.

Another 33% expect AI-generated fake profiles to rise as fraudsters use generative AI tools to impersonate real users online. These scams could become faster to produce and harder to detect across financial services, ecommerce, and digital platforms.

As fraud tactics evolve, businesses may need to shift from reactive fraud prevention toward real-time risk monitoring powered by machine learning and behavioral analysis.

Data Breaches Will Continue to Fuel Identity Fraud

Data breaches are expected to remain a major source of fraud risk. About 33% of businesses anticipate more identity theft linked to stolen personal data.

Organized fraud networks are also expanding, according to 22% of respondents. As cybercriminal groups become more coordinated, fraud operations could become increasingly global and industrialized.

The Future of Fraud Trends

Companies that invest in adaptive verification systems, stronger cybersecurity, and understand the data around fraud prevention may be better positioned to respond to the next generation of threats.

Tyler Durden Fri, 06/19/2026 - 22:15

How The Trump Admin Achieved Record Drug Seizures

Tyler Durden — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 01:30:00 +0000

How The Trump Admin Achieved Record Drug Seizures

Authored by Troy Myers via The Epoch Times,

SAN DIEGO - As the flood of illegal immigrants at the southern border slowed to a trickle, agents shifted gears. Now, they're focused on seizing drugs - in record amounts - as the border is more secure than ever, officials told The Epoch Times.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) took The Epoch Times behind the scenes at the border between San Diego and Mexico - home to the San Ysidro Port of Entry, the busiest land border crossing in the Western Hemisphere.

The San Diego sector, patrolled by thousands of federal officers, encompasses more than 56,000 square miles. That includes 60 linear miles of international boundary between the United States and Mexico, and an additional 931 miles of coastal border stretching from the California-Mexico line north to Oregon.

Officers said the success they're experiencing - not just in drug seizures, but also in fewer illegal immigrants entering the country - stems from the Trump administration's tough border policies.

"Without having four or five hundred people in detention making an asylum claim, I'm going to take those officers and say, 'I don't need you to process asylum claims, I need you out there looking for dope, looking for people smuggling, looking for those agriculture violations,'" Mariza Marin, port director at the San Ysidro Port of Entry, told The Epoch Times.

Marin said she was able to move about 180 officers from handling administrative work processing illegal immigrants to enforcement and inspection.

"That's huge; 180 individuals is huge," said Sidney Aki, San Diego director of field operations.

The Evidence

Under the Biden administration, total drug seizure amounts for fiscal years 2024 and 2023 were 573,000 and 549,000, respectively.

In 2025, the first year of the Trump administration, drug seizures were slightly more, at 583,000.

But border agents seized 516,000 pounds of drugs from October 2025 through April 2026 alone. That's the first seven months of the current fiscal year for CBP, meaning five months remain for the agency to extend those numbers. And historically, summer months tend to yield higher seizure amounts, according to Department of Homeland Security data.

In April, agents seized 185,000 pounds of illegal narcotics, the biggest monthly seizure since officials began to track totals.

U.S Customs and Border Protection agents monitor border traffic outside of San Diego on May 26, 2026. Agents who had previously been tied up processing a flood of illegal immigrants under the Biden administration are seizing significant amounts of illegal narcotics compared to years prior. John Fredricks/The Epoch Times

Last month, CBP announced its office of field operations had seized a historic amount of fentanyl: about 100 million lethal doses from October 2025 through May this year. According to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, a lethal dose of fentanyl is about two milligrams.

"When you look at the point of where we are now compared to the course we were on previously, we are increasing our numbers and seizures," Aki said.

Methamphetamine and cocaine seizures are also surpassing previous numbers.

This fiscal year, CBP officers have seized more than 152,000 pounds of methamphetamine, eclipsing seizures for all of fiscal year 2025. They've seized more than 28,000 pounds of cocaine, surpassing fiscal year 2025 to date by about 6,000 pounds.

Federal Backing

While policy changes on immigration and the border have led to the refocusing of personnel, a top-to-bottom support system from the Trump administration has also created high morale and motivation for federal officers, they said.

Border enforcement and security, which is "emphasized significantly with this administration," continues to increase, Aki said.

Since Trump returned to the White House, he has signed executive actions designating cartels as terrorist organizations and fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction.

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed nearly a year ago, allocated $170 billion for border security and immigration enforcement initiatives.

On June 10, Trump signed a roughly $70 billion bill to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol. The Secure America Act ended a 116-day dispute over immigration funding.

The measure will fund ICE and Border Patrol through Sept. 30, 2029, going beyond the end of Trump's term.

Enforcement At An Entry Point

The Epoch Times witnessed how agents at a port of entry carry out their tasks.

The massive San Ysidro Port of Entry has a total of 34 lanes, which are funneled into seven upon entry, and two separate pedestrian walkways that allow travelers to cross the international boundary by foot.

About 42,000 to 47,000 vehicles cross per day, Marin said.

Taking into account the number of passengers in each vehicle, commercial trucks, and pedestrians, the total number of individuals entering the United States through the crossing each day likely eclipses 100,000.

The vetting process to ensure each of these travelers is abiding by U.S. law starts with what federal agents call the "primary" or "technology zone," immediately adjacent to the international boundary.

But, with the help of Mexican authorities, intelligence gathering and enforcement can extend beyond that.

Coordination with Mexico is the best it's ever been, the officials said. Sometimes, their Mexican law enforcement counterparts intercept bad actors before they even reach the U.S. border, said Justin De La Torre, chief patrol agent for the San Diego Sector.

However, with so many thousands of vehicles and individuals seeking to enter the United States each day, things can slip by Mexican authorities.

That's when the primary or technology zone comes into play. The zone is where an intelligence package begins to be built on travelers.

Border patrol agents take pictures of each car, its driver, and any passengers. Radiation portal monitors scan vehicles to ensure there are no radiological threats. This technology, Marin said, has a very low alarm threshold - for good reason.

By the time a traveler reaches a primary officer for what the agents call an "interview" before entering the country, they already know who the traveler is, their crossing history, potential criminal history, vehicles they've driven across the border, people they've crossed with, and more.

"It could be a driver that nine times we saw him in a Versa, and then we see him in a Fiat," Marin said. "'Where'd you get this car?' So the officers are trying to build that picture, and that's part of the interview."

An officer's instinct plays a major role during the interview process in catching violators.

What might appear to be innocent questions or small talk, Aki said, is actually agents trying "to poke holes" into your story. "Why did you go to Mexico? Why are you coming to the United States? Whose car is this? Why are you bringing that?'"

Meanwhile, officers are looking for physical signs that could point to nefarious activity: indicators of nervousness such as fidgeting, white knuckling, and avoiding eye contact.

Intelligence packages are also used for commercial trucks entering the United States.

Intelligence plays a massive role in intercepting large drug smuggling attempts and preventing further ones, Aki said. It can point to previous loads a truck has carried, where it came from, who loaded it, who has operated it, and whether it has ever had any compliance violations.

Marin and Aki credited intelligence with a massive methamphetamine seizure from three separate trucks over the span of a week.

"It was basically in flower pots, cement, as well as flat-screen televisions," Aki said. The seizure was based on intelligence gathering that suggested a nefarious connection and prompted further inspection. Ultimately, officers intercepted nearly 9,000 pounds of methamphetamine, Aki said.

In an example at the Texas border, officers discovered 307 hidden packages in a tractor-trailer hauling lettuce from Mexico.

Sidney Aki, director of field operations for U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s San Diego Field Office, monitors border crossings at the San Ysidro Port of Entry on May 26, 2026. Aki and other officials told The Epoch Times the border is more secure now than at any point in their careers, and in U.S. history. John Fredricks/The Epoch Times

Tyler Durden Fri, 06/19/2026 - 21:30

"Only The Beginning": How To Profit From The Asymmetric Warfare Boom

Tyler Durden — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 00:45:00 +0000

"Only The Beginning": How To Profit From The Asymmetric Warfare Boom

Low-cost kamikaze drones are fundamentally reshaping the modern battlefield and forcing militaries to rethink procurement strategies built around expensive, high-end weapons systems.

In the Middle East, US Special Forces learned the hard way that cheap Iranian Shahed-style drones can eliminate multi-million-dollar (if not billion-dollar) communications, radar, and command-and-control nodes.

The result of this Iranian offensive with cheap drones, which exposed a missing air-defense layer over high-value U.S. military communications systems across the Gulf region, will trigger a defense procurement reset. The U.S. military is now racing to source, order, and stockpile low-cost one-way attack drones, interceptors, and counter-UAS systems before the next conflict erupts - or US-Iran ceasefire blows up.

Piper Sandler analyst Clarke Jeffries is now arriving at the same conclusion we have been highlighting:

We anticipate one of the biggest lessons of the 2020s will be how affordable drone technology fundamentally reshaped the modern combat environment and set the stage for a reevaluation of the procurement, organization and strategy of ~$3T in annual global military expenditures.

While drones have existed in the modern military apparatus for decades at this point, it was the Ukraine war (as one of the first near-peer conflicts in recent memory) which provided demonstrable evidence of how specifically lightweight and affordable systems could change the paradigm of combat.

Jeffries provided clients with a detailed overview of the nine public and nineteen private companies powering America's emerging drone industry. His takeaway: this is still the early chapters of a market set for massive growth, as the U.S. military and allied nations push the procurement cycle into higher gear next year and through the end of the decade.

He sees the first wave of the market centered on inexpensive UAS production, domestic supply chains, and rapid procurement, while the second wave will be driven by autonomy, swarming, mothership configurations, and deeper integration into command-and-control networks.

He pointed out that AI software will be as important as hardware, with platforms such as Palantir's Maven Smart System poised to turn massive drone sensor feeds into highly usable battlefield intelligence.

"With most nations averse to endure undue cost to the already punishing economics of pursuing a war, we see proliferation of Group 1-3 UAS as an inevitability and the next major technology inflection point for the aerospace and defense industry," the analyst said.

He continued:

Democratizing asymmetric warfare; sUAS has redefined the rules of engagement. Much of modern military history has been the story of haves and have-nots, with 10 countries accounting for 72% of global military spend and dominating production of the most capable and exquisite systems. Drone technology however (and specifically small unmanned aircraft systems: sUAS) has vastly increased the accessibility and affordability of highly capable military equipment and subverted the advantage of using exquisite systems into a costly strategy. In Ukraine and Iran, drones of all sizes have become de facto standard for air campaigns launched as low-cost attritable munitions. These drones are regularly countered by more expensive defense methods: missiles, interceptors, rockets creating a challenging cost-exchange issue. Every drone launched is net dollar advantage to the belligerent firing them. With most nations averse to endure undue cost to the already punishing economics of pursuing a war, we see proliferation of Group 1-3 UAS as an inevitability and the next major technology inflection point for the aerospace and defense industry.

Jeffries lays out three key conclusions about the rapidly changing defense landscape:

Public companies flagged by Jeffries as benefiting include AeroVironment, Ondas, Red Cat, AEVEX, Redwire, Insitu and Teledyne FLIR, while private names include Anduril, Skydio, Shield AI, Quantum Systems, Performance Drone Works, DZYNE, Firestorm Labs and Neros.

An example of this technology. Meet DZYNE's BlitzBox system ...

The American company Dzyne has introduced the BlitzBox system, a container for covertly launching a swarm of attack drones. On the outside, it looks like an ordinary cargo box, but inside, it can hold up to 100 Blitz drones, ready to launch in minutes.#DroneWars #UAS #UAV pic.twitter.com/w9aRaZYrCZ
— Drone Wars (@Drone_Wars_) May 27, 2026

He noted, "Today, most militaries are still in the earliest innings of their sUAS efforts: building defensible supply chains, refining specific designs, aligning the organizational and budgetary structure to successfully field these systems."

Follow the money...

Lessons from the Ukraine & Iranian Conflicts

Notable Drone Programs

Notable UAS Contracts

The UAS Blue List

Past, Present and Future of the Drone Operator

Swarming

Rise of Mothership Drones

In a separate note, Needham analyst Austin Bohlig noted that increasing congressional support for drones and counter-drone technologies has been reflected in the FY27 National Defense Authorization Act and related appropriations bills.

The safe conclusion is that the public and private drone companies mentioned above are positioned to reap major rewards as military procurement cycles shift toward these low-cost systems and annual global military spending surges in the coming years.

Professional subscribers can find more war tech notes at our new Marketdesk.ai portal.

Tyler Durden Fri, 06/19/2026 - 20:45

Elon Musk Vs The Democrats: Outcomes Vs Process

Tyler Durden — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Elon Musk Vs The Democrats: Outcomes Vs Process

Authored by Stephen Soukup via American Greatness,

Years ago, when my oldest son was a Boy Scout, he was asked to write a report/make a presentation on a modern American “hero.” He chose Elon Musk, and I, of course, rolled my eyes so hard they nearly popped out of my head.

I knew Musk was a successful businessman, but I also knew that he was both an advocate for and a seasoned manipulator of Big Government. Tesla, for example, received a $465 million Department of Energy loan in 2010 under the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing program, a Big Government scheme to encourage private companies to advance Big Government priorities (namely, fighting Climate Change by reducing carbon emissions). Likewise, Tesla was, at least at the time, commercially viable only because of the more than $1 billion ($7,500/vehicle) in federal EV tax credits claimed by its buyers. Without government greasing the proverbial wheels a bit, Tesla would have struggled to get the literal wheels rolling out the sales floor doors.

Moreover, Musk publicly acknowledged that he voted for Obama and presented himself as part of the “green” business revolution, men and women who could and would “do well by doing good.”

My, how things change.

Just a short decade later, Elon Musk is, indeed, regarded as a genuine hero by most on the American political Right—and by anyone who favors free enterprise—while he is loathed and actively derided by his former friends and allies on the Left. Especially this past week, after the SpaceX IPO made him the world’s first trillionaire, the Democrats and other leftists who once loved him, partnered with him, and sang his praises loudly have shown nothing but contempt for him and hatred for his inarguable business success. As the controversial Democratic Senate nominee from Maine, Graham Platner, ominously put it, “Elon Musk just became the world’s first trillionaire. Let’s make sure he’s also the last.”

How, exactly, did we get here?

The biggest part of the story is Musk’s own political evolution, which proceeded slowly, in stages, but was accelerated at a handful of inflection points.

Of these inflection points, two stand out among the others.

The first of these took place during President Biden’s first year in office.

Biden and his administration were knee-deep in pushing a new, far more aggressive climate agenda. On his first day in office, Biden issued 17 executive orders, several of which addressed climate change and other environmental matters. Most notably, he signed an order to reinstate the nation’s participation in the Paris Accords, thereby placing a policy-making emphasis on electrification and decarbonization. A big part of that effort—as would be evinced in the “Inflation Reduction Act” passed the following year—was pushing the purchase of electric vehicles. To that end, on August 4, 2021, Biden hosted an EV “summit” at the White House. He invited three EV makers—General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis—to watch him sign another executive order, this one mandating that half of all new vehicles sold in the United States by 2030 be EVs. Of the three, GM had the largest percentage of its sales derived from fully electric vehicles—1.5 percent. Ford sat at 1.3 percent, and Stellantis didn’t even have an electric vehicle for sale in the American market. Meanwhile, Tesla was the nation’s largest EV auto seller at the time, and 100 percent of its vehicles were fully electric. Yet Musk and his company were left off the Biden team’s guest list.

What GM, Ford, and Stellantis did have, of course, was the support of the United Auto Workers Union. In fact, the three also just happened to be the largest UAW employers. Tesla, by contrast, had long fought the unionization of its factories and had been embroiled in a rather ugly dispute with the UAW. In response to the snub, Musk vented a bit, tweeting:

Biden held this EV summit. Didn’t invite Tesla.

Invited GM, Ford, Chrysler, and UAW. EV summit at the White House, didn’t mention Tesla once and praised GM and Ford for leading the EV revolution.

Doesn’t it sound a little bias? It’s not the friendliest of administrations.

Seems to be controlled by the unions.

Just under a year later, Musk reached the second inflection point, which also turned out to be his breaking point.

In May 2022, the S&P 500 ESG Index conducted its annual rebalancing. And when it did, it removed Tesla.

ESG stands for “environmental, social, and governance” investing, a strategy that purports to push corporations to address issues beyond traditional profits and losses, focusing on the broader societal impacts of their operations. I wrote a whole book about ESG (The Dictatorship of Woke Capital) in which I made the case that its flaws are numerous and disqualifying. One of the most significant of these is that ESG has no set definition. It means whatever its practitioners decide it means in the moment, based on little more than preference and convenience. And this is precisely where the S&P’s index ran into problems with Tesla.

By any objective measure, Tesla should have been a mainstay of any investment strategy focused on environmental benefits. It was and is a pioneer in carbon reduction strategies in the personal transportation market. What could be more environmentally friendly than that? The S&P, however, objected to Tesla’s procedural strategies, or lack thereof. It argued that Tesla didn’t have a published “low-carbon strategy,” or verifiable “codes of conduct.” It noted that the automaker had been accused of racial discrimination and didn’t do a great job of handling a National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) investigation. In short, the ESG index tossed the innovator in “E” technology off its list of acceptable companies because it valued the process of the ESG strategy more than it did the outcomes.

Needless to say, this incensed Musk. On May 18, he (once again) tweeted his frustration:

Exxon is rated top ten best in world for environment, social & governance (ESG) by S&P 500, while Tesla didn’t make the list! ESG is a scam. It has been weaponized by phony social justice warriors.

Not coincidentally, two and a half hours later, Musk returned to Twitter to make an announcement about his partisan political future:

In the past I voted Democrat, because they were (mostly) the kindness party. But they have become the party of division & hate, so I can no longer support them and will vote Republican. Now, watch their dirty tricks campaign against me unfold . . .

It is worth noting here that Musk didn’t just switch parties. He radicalized. His change in partisan affiliation and political involvement was night and day.

He went from a quiet, nominally aligned center-leftist to a full-blown, aggressive libertarian-conservative. Instead of giving $1,000 here and $1,000 there to Democratic candidates, he started throwing money into politics as if he’d never miss it (in part because he never would). He backed Donald Trump with millions of dollars and then joined his administration (for free) as the leader and organizer of DOGE. The combination of the union-driven and the ESG-driven snubs sent him over the edge. Not only would he no longer support Democrats, but he would support their opponents loudly and generously.

Although it would be easy (and not entirely wrong) to say that Elon Musk’s political evolution was a self-inflicted wound by the Democrats, who enthusiastically chased him out of their party, it’s more accurate to say that the break between the two was a structural inevitability. That inevitability was inarguably exacerbated and hastened by Democratic overconfidence and miscalculation, but that’s the difference between Musk simply leaving the party and becoming radicalized for the other side. Musk’s shift away from Democratic politics was likely always going to happen and is emblematic of the long-standing tension between so-called “progressives” and actual progress. The ideology that once sought explicitly to “better” the nation and its people has become little more than a machine for creating rules, often at the expense of that improvement. Musk’s fervent embrace of the Democrats’ opponents was driven by personalities—theirs, his, and probably Trump’s.

Think about it this way...

The Progressive coalition traditionally has very much resembled the S&P ESG index noted above. It has always been carefully managed, regulated, labor-friendly, bureaucratic, and procedure-driven. It has always been more about process than outcome. Musk, for his part, is the opposite. He is disruptive, as capitalist entrepreneurs tend to be. He favors that which moves fast, eschews established rubrics, and achieves results. He is outcome-driven and cares very little (sometimes, maybe, too little) about process. The idea that he and today’s Democrats could have remained strongly aligned is, in retrospect, incongruous.

That’s not to say that he and the GOP are perfectly aligned, but certainly his ethos fits better there, at least for the moment.

The bottom line here is that while process values have their place, they can be self-defeating, particularly when they are allowed to serve as a substitute for experience and reality.

The Democrats don’t hate Elon Musk because he’s a trillionaire. They hate him because he became a trillionaire by breaking all their dearly held and largely outmoded rules.

There’s a profound lesson in that, if anyone is willing to learn it.

Tyler Durden Fri, 06/19/2026 - 20:00

Here's How 45 Countries View America

Tyler Durden — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 23:15:00 +0000

Here's How 45 Countries View America

America remains one of the world’s most influential countries, but public opinion of the U.S. varies widely across the globe.

Some of its strongest support now comes from emerging economies such as Vietnam, India, and the Philippines, while favorability has weakened across several longtime Western allies.

This graphic, via Visual Capitalist's Dorothy Neufeld, ranks how people in 45 countries view the U.S. using January 2026 survey data from Morning Consult’s America Reputation Tracker.

Where Positive Views Are the Highest

Israel and Nigeria rank first in the survey, with 83% of respondents holding favorable views of America.

Morocco, Vietnam, and Peru round out the top five, highlighting how some of the strongest support for the U.S. now comes from outside its traditional circle of Western allies.

India has the highest favorability rating of any major economy at 62%, ranking ahead of countries such as Canada, Germany, and France.

Argentina also places in the top 10, underscoring how perceptions of America are often strongest in countries that view the U.S. as an important economic, security, or strategic partner.

The Countries Souring on America

Trade disputes and rising political tensions have weighed heavily on America’s image among many of its traditional allies.

Tariffs on Canada and Europe, criticism of NATO, suggestions that Canada could become the 51st state, and President Trump’s interest in acquiring Greenland have all strained relations across the Western alliance. As a result, nine of the 10 lowest favorability ratings in the survey come from Western countries, including Canada, France, Germany, and Sweden.

In response to growing uncertainty around U.S. policy, Canada has expanded economic cooperation with Europe and sought closer engagement with China.

One of the survey’s most surprising findings is that China ranks ahead of several longstanding U.S. allies. Despite ongoing geopolitical rivalry between Washington and Beijing, America’s favorability rating in China exceeds that of countries including Canada, Belgium, and Sweden.

In other words, countries that have been America’s closest partners for decades now view it less favorably than its chief geopolitical rival.

To learn more about this topic, check out this graphic on how much U.S. states rely on imports from Canada, Mexico, and China.

Tyler Durden Fri, 06/19/2026 - 19:15

STRC Is Junk Credit In A Bitcoin Costume, And Retail Is Holding $8.8 Billion Of It

Tyler Durden — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 22:30:00 +0000

STRC Is Junk Credit In A Bitcoin Costume, And Retail Is Holding $8.8 Billion Of It

Authored by Glenn Cameron via BitcoinMagazine.com,

There is now $15 billion sitting in three securities being marketed to bitcoin holders as the safer, smarter way to access bitcoin exposure: Strategy’s preferred stack, STRC, and SATA.

The pitch is identical across all three.

Tax-favored. 11.5% income. Backed by bitcoin. Money-market risk. 82.7% of the buyer base is retail.

Every word of that pitch is wrong, and the security those buyers actually own is built to fail in exactly the bitcoin environment it claims to harness.

The Pitch Is a Story. The Capital Structure Is the Truth

STRC is an unsecured, subordinated, perpetual preferred equity. No maturity date. No lien on a single satoshi of Strategy’s bitcoin treasury. The dividend is discretionary, which means the board can cut it at any monthly meeting with no notice, no remedy, and no vote. S&P rates the issuer B-, four notches into junk territory. None of that information appears in the marketing.

Stack those features against the words in the pitch. “Backed by bitcoin” describes a security with no claim on a single coin. “Money-market-like” describes an instrument rated four notches below investment grade with no maturity and a discretionary coupon. “Safe income” describes a payment the board controls and the funding source for which is the security itself. Each phrase in the marketing is contradicted by the indenture.

That is not a money market fund. It is speculative-grade credit-like product dressed in safe-income marketing, and 82.7% of it sits on retail balance sheets. Of the $10.7 billion notional outstanding for STRC, roughly $8.8 billion belongs to retail bitcoin holders concentrated in a single junk credit. There is no polite phrase for that exposure. It is a bag, and retail is holding it.

The Funding Mechanism Eats Itself

The structural risk in STRC is not that the dividend is high. It is that the dividend cannot be funded out of the business. Strategy’s underlying software business produces roughly $477 million in annual revenue. Total preferred dividend obligations now exceed $1.2 billion, a ratio of 3.5 to 1. The gap is not closed by earnings. It is closed by issuing new STRC shares at or above par, or diluting common shareholders of MSTR, with the proceeds recycled to pay the existing holders.

That is a reflexive funding loop. It works when STRC trades above par and breaks the moment it doesn’t. Anything that pressures the price, a credit downgrade, a missed dividend, a bitcoin drawdown, a capital markets shutdown, removes the very mechanism the dividend depends on. There is no plan B in the indenture. There is no lien on bitcoin to seize. There is no operating cash flow to redirect. There is only the next share issuance, and the next, until either bitcoin compounds the company out of the problem or the structure jams.

Then there is the dividend ratchet. The coupon has moved monthly from 9% to 11.5%, embedding $268 million in permanent annual obligations into the structure. The rate has only ever moved in one direction. Each monthly increase makes the funding gap wider, the share issuance more dilutive, and the price floor harder to hold. The mechanism designed to keep STRC attractive to new buyers is the same mechanism that compounds the burden on the issuer and accelerates the run on the funding loop when stress arrives.

The Mythical Institutional Buyer and the Math That Buries Him

The standard defense of the Digital Credit category goes like this: surely informed institutional capital is on the other side. Insurance companies need yield. Pension funds need duration. Fixed-income desks need product. Digital Credit is the institutional bridge to bitcoin.

That defense collapses on its own logic. Any institution that allocates to an unsecured, subordinated, perpetual preferred layered on a bitcoin treasury must first underwrite the underlying asset. Any institution that does the work to underwrite bitcoin allocates directly to spot bitcoin, where the credit risk vanishes and the path-dependent fragility goes with it. The institutional buyer who is both informed and rational does not exist in this product. The buyer who does exist, at 82.7% concentration, is retail.

The path-dependency math finishes the argument. Across 5,000 simulated bitcoin paths at a 10% compounding rate, the credit model produces a 12.3% probability of formal default, a 21.9% probability of dividend deferral, and a 50.7% probability of at least one forced bitcoin sale by the issuer during the eight-year cycle. At a 15% compounding rate, STRC has a 44.6% probability of ending below $85 even on paths where bitcoin recovers to new highs.

A bitcoin holder’s terminal wealth depends only on where bitcoin ends. An STRC holder’s outcome depends on every drawdown in between, because the same mechanisms that pretend to protect the dividend in calm conditions become the mechanisms that consume the holder’s principal in stress. The product is most fragile in exactly the bitcoin scenarios the underlying asset absorbs without consequence.

Bitcoin Was Built to Kill This Exact Trade

Bitcoin’s entire reason for existing is the removal of counterparty risk, custody risk, and opacity from monetary holdings. STRC, Strategy’s preferred stack, and similar instruments reintroduce all three under a marketing layer the underlying instrument cannot support. The alternative does not require any of that machinery: bitcoin in self-custody alongside a U.S. Treasury income ladder produces the same cash profile, with more terminal wealth and no corporate issuer in between.

The market will eventually clear the difference between the security retail thinks it bought and the security it actually owns. Anyone reading the cap table and allocating anyway is willingly underwriting Saylor’s funding plan with capital that thinks it bought a money market fund.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ZeroHedge.

Tyler Durden Fri, 06/19/2026 - 18:30

Is The Fed Finally Done Rescuing Markets?

Tyler Durden — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 21:00:00 +0000

Is The Fed Finally Done Rescuing Markets?

Submitted by QTR's Fringe Finance

GLJ Research’s Gordon Johnson is one of my favorite analysts on the street to read and gets a rare endorsement from me (I hate basically everyone selling sell-side style research) because, like my friend Mark Spiegel, he is one of the last few analysts out there that seems committed to the truth….no matter how ridiculous it makes him look in the short term while he’s waiting for his theses to play out.

Johnson came away from this week’s Fed meeting with a conclusion that would have sounded almost absurd just a few months ago: the Fed may finally be breaking with the post-2008 playbook. And the timing couldn’t be better for the Fed to do this to make a total fool out of me. After all, I literally just predicted a month ago there’s no way they would ever stop the neverending cycle of QE they started two decades ago. Days ago, I satirically wrote that the only bear case left for markets is total human extinction.

Enter Kevin Warsh’s first press conference as Fed Chair with inflation running completely out of control. My friend GoJo makes the…err…bold claim that the Fed is not tweaking it’s post-2008 playbook…not adjusting it around the margins…breaking with it.

Johnson’s central argument is that Kevin Warsh’s first meeting as Fed Chair represented a repudiation of the Bernanke-Powell era and a return to a much older conception of central banking…one where the Fed’s primary job is delivering price stability, not reassuring investors, supporting asset prices, or providing a detailed roadmap for every future policy move.

The actual rate decision this past week was almost beside the point. The Fed held rates steady at 3.50%-3.75% for a fourth consecutive meeting. What mattered was everything around it. Warsh stripped forward guidance from the statement, calling it ill-suited to the current environment. He refused to submit his own dot-plot projection. The statement itself was shortened and reduced largely to facts. Nine of twelve participants now expect at least one hike by year-end.

Meanwhile, Warsh launched multiple task forces to reevaluate the Fed’s framework and openly emphasized the institution’s obligation to restore credibility on inflation.

Markets did not exactly celebrate at first (before, of course, turning higher on Thursday). On Wednesday, stocks sold off, gold weakened, two-year Treasury yields surged, and September hike odds nearly doubled. Investors who showed up hoping to hear some variation of “cuts are coming” instead got a lecture on inflation credibility and a reminder that the Fed’s mandate is not maximizing the S&P 500.

To Johnson, this wasn’t simply a hawkish meeting. It was the opening shot of a regime change. His view is that the modern Fed became two things after 2008. First, it became obsessed with transparency. Every possible future policy path was telegraphed through dots, forecasts, projections, speeches, press conferences, and carefully managed expectations.

Second, and more importantly what I argue all the time, is that it it became a de facto backstop for risk assets. Investors learned that serious market weakness would eventually trigger accommodation. Bad economic news became good market news because it increased the probability of Fed support.

Johnson believes Warsh is deliberately dismantling that framework. No dot. Less guidance. Fewer promises. More uncertainty. More emphasis on inflation. More willingness to surprise markets. In Gordon’s telling, the “Fed put” is not merely being questioned; it is being retired. That is a massive claim. It’s also why Johnson reaches for perhaps the biggest comparison available: Paul Volcker.

In a note out to clients this week, Johnson argues that Warsh’s intellectual instincts are fundamentally different from Bernanke’s. Bernanke’s worldview was shaped by the Great Depression and the dangers of deflation. Warsh’s appears much more shaped by the inflationary experience of the 1970s.

Johnson points to Warsh’s long-running criticism of quantitative easing, his concerns about balance-sheet expansion, and his warnings about inflation risk dating back more than a decade. He also highlights Warsh’s role during the QE2 debates, when Warsh publicly expressed skepticism about the very policies his institution was pursuing and eventually left the Board before his term expired.

In Johnson’s interpretation, today’s Warsh is the same man who spent years warning that emergency monetary policy was becoming permanent monetary policy. That’s why he sees continuity rather than reinvention. To Gordon, this isn’t a politician adopting hawkish language because it’s fashionable. It’s someone who has been making versions of the same argument for fifteen years and now finally has the votes.

This all sounds great. I hope Gordon is right. I have a sneaking suspicion that he isn’t. And before we start engraving “Volcker 2.0” onto commemorative plaques, it’s worth remembering a few things.

The first is that the easiest thing in the world for a central banker to do is talk tough. The hardest thing in the world for a central banker to do is stay tough.

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Volcker’s legacy wasn’t built on speeches, communications strategy, or symbolic changes to Fed procedures. It was built on tightening until inflation broke despite overwhelming political pressure, market turmoil, and public outrage. The real Volcker test begins when unemployment rises. The real Volcker test begins when stocks are down 25%. The real Volcker test begins when Congress starts screaming and the White House decides inflation is suddenly less important than growth.

And that has been the time where the chickenshit cowards who advocate for today’s monetary policy go into full panic mode and capitulate, sometimes on national television.

If we’re being honest, the Fed’s institutional history doesn’t exactly inspire confidence. Every cycle begins with stern declarations about price stability. Every cycle begins with promises that inflation will be defeated and that credibility is paramount. Then something breaks…a bank, a market, a major employer, a politically important sector, or the broader economy itself, and suddenly the framework gets rewritten, CNBC anchors shit themselves and act like 2 year olds throwing temper tantrums, and the Fed and Treasury come to the rescue. Then, the Fed chair at the time is praised for having “courage” and wins the Nobel Prize.

The emergency becomes permanent. The temporary facility becomes structural. The exception becomes the rule. The Fed’s modern history is not one of relentless discipline. More often than not, it’s a story of capitulation followed by a very sophisticated explanation for why capitulation was actually prudent policy all along. As Peter Schiff often says, “there’s nothing more permanent than a temporary government program”.

And that’s the part of Gordon’s thesis I’m not yet willing to underwrite.

To be clear, I’m not dismissing it. In fact, I think Johnson is right to focus on the reaction function rather than the rate decision itself. A central bank’s communication framework often tells you more than a 25-basis-point move ever could. If Warsh is truly trying to reintroduce uncertainty into markets, force investors to price risk without a guaranteed backstop, and reorient the institution around inflation rather than asset prices, that would represent a profound shift.

The problem is that every Fed chair looks tough before something important breaks.

Personally, I’m not ready to declare that Warsh is picking up where Volcker left off. I am willing to wait and see. If he continues prioritizing inflation over asset prices, if he accepts market pain as a necessary consequence of restoring credibility, and if he proves willing to keep tightening in the face of inevitable pressure, then perhaps Gordon’s thesis will prove correct.

What I do think Gordon gets right is the underlying inflation question.

As I have written repeatedly, if inflation is genuinely persistent, rate hikes are ultimately necessary. There is no magic workaround. There is no AI-powered escape hatch. There is no press-conference solution. Inflation is not defeated through clever narratives or optimistic forecasts. It is defeated through tighter monetary conditions that reduce demand, re-anchor expectations, and restore confidence in the currency.

History is fairly clear on that point, which is why so many people celebrate Volcker today while simultaneously advocating policies that would make a genuine Volcker-style campaign impossible. Everyone loves inflation fighters in retrospect. Very few people are willing to tolerate the economic pain required to actually defeat inflation in real time.

That’s why I remain skeptical. Because the Fed has spent the better part of two decades teaching markets that pain will eventually be relieved. Breaking inflation is hard. Breaking expectations and psychology that has become laden with hubris and euphoria is harder, as I wrote back in early 2025. Breaking the institution’s own reflex to intervene may be hardest of all.

So yes, Gordon may be right that the Fed put is dying. He may even be right that Warsh intends to kill it. But intentions are cheap. Every Fed chair sounds independent until the pressure arrives. Every Fed chair talks about credibility until credibility becomes expensive. As Mike Tyson said famously, “everybody’s got a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”

I love reading Gordon’s take and will continue to do so. But I’ll only believe the Fed put is dead when the next crisis arrives and the Fed refuses to revive it.

I’d love to hear your take on what you think Warsh’s tenure will look like in our ongoing discussion here. Who’s stance do you agree with more?

QTR’s Disclaimer: Please read my full legal disclaimer on my About page here. This post represents my opinions only. In addition, please understand I am an idiot and often get things wrong and lose money. I may own or transact in any names mentioned in this piece at any time without warning. Contributor posts and aggregated posts have been hand selected by me, have not been fact checked and are the opinions of their authors. They are either submitted to QTR by their author, reprinted under a Creative Commons license with my best effort to uphold what the license asks, or with the permission of the author.

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Tyler Durden Fri, 06/19/2026 - 17:00