The WNBA Is At War With Its Biggest Stars

Via The Daily Signal,

This is a lightly edited transcript of an Aug. 6 segment of the Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words podcast...

Jack Fowler: And the whole trans issue is coming up in the WNBA, and various coaches are like, “I don’t know. Should a she - I can’t say who should be playing.” They will not say that a biological woman should be playing in the WNBA. It’s this absurdity.

Victor Davis Hanson: But they know.

I think Clay Travis said he was going to buy a franchise ...and have only trans players. Would they let him do that? No, because they would win every game.

Fowler: Yeah. It was funny what he put up there.

Hanson: And the Minnesota coach who wore a jacket... with advertisements or a message about trans issues.

She was also whining that there are still too many men in women’s coaching and that women don’t get a chance to dominate the field as they should, given that they’re women.

So, obviously, she was walking into a logical inconsistency because she had this jacket on that she would want biological men in women’s sports, where they would dominate, and then she was angry that, in her own coaching aspect, she was being dominated by men.

So, why wouldn’t she have the same concern about women who are players that she does about biological men? Aside from the fact that—I don’t think we’re ever going to—correct me if I’m wrong—but I don’t think in my lifetime, or anyone’s lifetime, we’re ever going to see a woman transition to a man and play in the NBA.

Does anybody believe that? I don’t. I just don’t think that’s going to happen.

I do think you will continue to see trans athletes in women’s sports because they were biological males at birth, and nobody wants it.

The other thing—and I talked a little bit with Sami [Winc] about it—is that I went and looked at about six AI estimates. If you ask them how much money and media attention Caitlin Clark has brought to the Women’s National Basketball Association—which is owned by the men’s league and ran at a deficit until about three years ago—most of them estimate that, through increased attendance, merchandising, advertising packages based on ratings, and the fact that the Indiana Fever and any team she plays sells out, they think she has generated about $1 billion in added revenue, value, and free publicity.

The teams that had been perennially losing money are now starting to break even, if not show a profit. They’re upgrading their travel arrangements, so women are flying privately now. They’re not like a college basketball team on United or American Airlines. They have their own chartered jets. They’ve got upgraded salaries, and they’re getting bonuses.

And what has the reaction been?

The one woman who’s doing all of this—it’s not any white woman; it’s one white woman who is a superb athlete: Caitlin Clark, probably the best natural shooter and passer we’ve seen in women’s basketball in two or three generations. She’s magnificent.

Now she has a sidekick who is also a very good blocker and shooter herself, Sophie Cunningham. She’s beautiful, and like Caitlin, she’s white and heterosexual.

In a league that we didn’t know much about because nobody watched it, the more we watched, the more we were told by various sportscasters—sometimes joking, sometimes bragging, sometimes hinting they didn’t approve—who knows? But they all agree on one thing. The WNBA, like the NBA, “doesn’t look like America,” to quote the Left. It’s not diverse.

It’s about 60–65 percent Black and roughly 30–40 percent gay.

Now you have these two women. When Sophie Cunningham made that [22-second viral point at an opponent], it became a social media phenomenon. Everybody was talking about it. Now her name is everywhere, and she’s making a lot of money.

I saw a clip the other day someone sent me. She’s doing bikini photo shoots. She must be about 6’2″ or something. She’s lean, muscular, beautiful—stunning, actually.

You can see what this is doing for the league.

A logical, rational person would say, “We’ve got to make sure we don’t gratuitously foul these two girls because they’re our meal ticket. They’re bringing us more money than we ever imagined. The crowds are bigger. We’re getting better exposure. We’re getting our own media contracts.”

Or would the reaction be, “I don’t like white people. I don’t like heterosexual people. I’m going to try to injure these people”?

That’s what they’re doing.

Sophie Cunningham got hit really hard in the face, and they called a foul on her.

Fowler: Yeah. She got elbowed in the jaw.

Hanson: Yes, just like what happened to Caitlin Clark.

Then you look at everything else and say, “Well, maybe it’s just the players.”

No, because you see the coach wearing a propaganda jacket. You see a co-owner going over and yelling at two little girls.

You get the impression what? 

The more you see of the WNBA, the more you don’t want anything to do with it. It’s just too toxic.

Everything about it is toxic. It brings together the worst in American society. It is tribal. It is racialist. It has a sexual-orientation chauvinism about it. It’s driven by projection. Everything about it.

The irony is that it would rather destroy itself than benefit if it meant having to allow two white, heterosexual women to continue being stars in the league and the biggest breadwinners for everybody.

They would rather destroy it.

Fowler: Or simply say this is a league for biological women.

There’s something about that, Victor. I could be totally wrong—I have no data on this—but my gut tells me it’s the lesbians in the league, and perhaps lesbians more generally, who seem to favor trans participation in women’s sports more than, say, your wife, my wife, or other heterosexual women.

Hanson: I think they see it as adding numbers. I think about 2 percent of the population is lesbian, and .001 is trans, but they’ll include them because they see them as another victimized tribal group that can join their coalition.

But it’s not going to work.

At some point, Sophie Cunningham, Caitlin Clark, and some smart investors are going to say, “You know what? I want to start a league—or go somewhere else—where race is incidental, we don’t obsess over it, we don’t constantly talk about sexual orientation, and we try to be good leftists and try to represent America.”

Quoting, ”Who are we? We’re America. We’re diverse. We’re proportionally representative.”

Use all of the left-wing boilerplate.

Of course, when you do that you’re ”racist.” When they do that, they’re ”inclusive.”

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/07/2026 - 19:15

Visualizing 75 Years Of America's Electricity Transition

Over the past 75 years, the U.S. electricity system has shifted from one dominated by coal to one in which natural gas and renewables supply nearly two-thirds of generation.

This visualization, via Visual Capitalist's Niccolo Conte, shows annual U.S. electricity generation by source from 1950 to 2025 using data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. It tracks output in billions of kilowatt-hours and each source’s share of the electricity mix over time.

Natural Gas and Renewables Lead U.S. Electricity Generation

Coal supplied 46.4% of U.S. electricity in 1950 and remained the country’s largest power source for decades. By 2025, however, its share had fallen to 16.6%. Natural gas moved in the opposite direction, rising from 13.5% to 40.8% and overtaking coal in 2016.

The table below shows each energy source’s share of total U.S. electricity generation at 15-year intervals from 1950 to 2025.

Energy Source Share of U.S. Electricity Generation 1950 1965 1980 1995 2010 2025 Natural Gas 13.5% 21.0% 15.1% 14.8% 24.0% 40.8% Renewables 30.2% 18.6% 12.4% 11.4% 10.2% 24.0% Nuclear 0.0% 0.4% 11.0% 20.1% 19.6% 17.7% Coal 46.4% 54.0% 50.7% 51.0% 44.8% 16.6% Petroleum and Other 10.2% 6.1% 10.7% 2.8% 1.5% 0.8%

Renewables reached a 24.0% share in 2025 and have remained ahead of coal since 2022. Together, natural gas and renewables supplied 64.8% of U.S. electricity that year.

Coal peaked at 56.9% of the electricity mix in 1988. By 2025, no single source accounted for a majority of U.S. generation.

Coal Declined as U.S. Electricity Generation Surged

Coal generation peaked at 2,016 billion kWh in 2007. By 2025, it had fallen to 737 billion kWh, a decline of 63.4%.

Meanwhile, natural gas generation expanded rapidly with the growth of efficient combined-cycle power plants and abundant shale gas, rising from 45 billion kWh in 1950 to 1,807 billion kWh in 2025.

The table below shows U.S. electricity generation by source at 15-year intervals, measured in billions of kWh:

Energy Source Electricity Generation (Billion kWh) 1950 1965 1980 1995 2010 2025 Natural Gas 45 222 346 496 988 1,807 Renewables 101 197 285 382 422 1,064 Nuclear 0 4 251 673 807 785 Coal 155 571 1,162 1,709 1,847 737 Petroleum and Other 34 65 246 93 61 37 Total Electricity Generation 334 1,058 2,290 3,353 4,125 4,430

Over the same period, total U.S. electricity generation rose from 334 billion kWh to 4,430 billion kWh. Natural gas accounted for about 43% of the overall increase, illustrating how it absorbed much of the system’s long-term growth.

The national shift is also visible at the regional level. A recent Visual Capitalist map of what powers each U.S. state and Canadian province shows natural gas as the leading electricity source across much of the United States.

Renewables Set a New Generation Record in 2025

Renewable generation rose to a record 1,064 billion kWh in 2025, equal to 24.0% of total electricity production. That was 93 billion kWh more than in 2024 and nearly twice the 539 billion kWh generated in 2015.

The complete dataset for U.S. electricity generation by source from 1950 to 2025 is available below:

Year Natural Gas (Billion kWh) Renewables (Billion kWh) Nuclear (Billion kWh) Coal (Billion kWh) Petroleum and Other (Billion kWh) Total Electricity Generation (Billion kWh) 1950 45 101 0 155 34 334 1951 57 105 0 185 29 375 1952 68 110 0 195 30 404 1953 80 110 0 219 38 447 1954 94 112 0 239 32 476 1955 95 117 0 301 37 550 1956 104 125 0 339 36 604 1957 114 134 0 346 40 635 1958 120 144 0 344 40 648 1959 147 141 0 378 47 713 1960 158 150 1 403 48 759 1961 169 156 2 422 49 797 1962 184 172 2 450 49 858 1963 202 169 3 494 52 920 1964 220 181 3 526 57 987 1965 222 197 4 571 65 1058 1966 251 198 6 613 79 1148 1967 265 226 8 630 89 1218 1968 304 227 13 685 104 1333 1969 333 254 14 706 138 1445 1970 373 252 22 704 184 1535 1971 374 270 38 713 220 1616 1972 376 278 54 771 274 1753 1973 341 278 83 848 314 1864 1974 320 307 114 828 301 1870 1975 300 307 173 853 289 1921 1976 295 291 191 944 320 2041 1977 306 228 251 985 358 2127 1978 305 287 276 976 365 2209 1979 329 287 255 1075 304 2251 1980 346 285 251 1162 246 2290 1981 346 270 273 1203 206 2298 1982 305 318 283 1192 147 2244 1983 274 342 294 1259 144 2313 1984 297 333 328 1342 120 2419 1985 292 295 384 1402 100 2473 1986 249 306 414 1386 137 2490 1987 273 265 455 1464 118 2575 1988 253 238 527 1541 149 2707 1989 353 325 529 1584 176 2967 1990 373 354 577 1594 140 3038 1991 382 353 613 1591 136 3074 1992 404 323 619 1621 117 3084 1993 415 353 610 1690 129 3197 1994 460 333 640 1691 123 3248 1995 496 382 673 1709 93 3353 1996 455 420 675 1795 99 3444 1997 479 430 629 1845 110 3492 1998 531 396 674 1874 146 3620 1999 556 393 728 1881 136 3695 2000 601 351 754 1966 130 3802 2001 639 279 769 1904 146 3737 2002 691 335 780 1933 120 3858 2003 650 347 764 1974 149 3883 2004 710 343 789 1978 151 3971 2005 761 351 782 2013 149 4055 2006 816 379 787 1991 91 4065 2007 897 346 806 2016 91 4157 2008 883 375 806 1986 70 4119 2009 921 413 799 1756 61 3950 2010 988 422 807 1847 61 4125 2011 1014 507 790 1733 56 4100 2012 1226 490 769 1514 49 4048 2013 1125 517 789 1581 54 4066 2014 1127 532 797 1582 56 4094 2015 1335 539 797 1352 55 4079 2016 1379 603 806 1239 51 4078 2017 1298 680 805 1206 47 4035 2018 1472 701 807 1149 52 4181 2019 1589 723 809 965 44 4131 2020 1627 778 790 773 42 4010 2021 1579 810 780 898 43 4110 2022 1687 895 772 832 46 4231 2023 1806 889 775 675 38 4183 2024 1870 971 782 652 34 4309 2025 1807 1064 785 737 37 4430

Renewables first edged above coal in 2020, fell back below it in 2021, and moved ahead again in 2022. They remained the larger source through 2025. Renewables also surpassed nuclear in 2021 and have stayed ahead since, while nuclear generation held relatively steady at about 785 billion kWh in 2025.

As U.S. electricity demand records its strongest three-year growth stretch since before the global financial crisis, natural gas and renewables are supplying much of the increase, including demand linked to AI data centers.

If you enjoyed today’s post, check out this map, What Powers Each U.S. State and Canadian Province?, on Voronoi.

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/07/2026 - 18:50

Hawaii's 'Blood Quantum' Rule Deepens The State's Housing Crisis

Authored by Rachel Chiu via the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)

Hawaiian residents are challenging ancestry-based housing restrictions in federal court. A pair of lawsuits filed in June and July takes aim at the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands, a state agency that reserves long-term homestead leases to individuals who meet the state’s “blood quantum” requirement.

To be eligible for a homestead lease—long-term, affordable leases for residential, agricultural, and pastoral purposes—an applicant must prove that he or she has 50 percent Native Hawaiian ancestry. In any other context, this type of requirement would be instantly illegal. No ordinary government agency or housing authority can deny your application or evict you because of your ancestry. Yet, these controversial rules are very common for determining benefits for indigenous populations, and continue to give the state inordinate power to withhold opportunities and take property from citizens according to overtly discriminatory justifications.

The lead plaintiff in the first lawsuit is Eric Ryan, a lifelong Hawaiian resident whose application for a homestead lease was immediately denied because he was not, as the pre-qualification form required, “at least 50 percent Native Hawaiian.” The legal definition of a Native Hawaiian is a “descendant of not less than one-half part of the blood of the races inhabiting the Hawaiian Islands previous to 1778.” With this narrow construction, the state is empowered to reject thousands of applicants. Meanwhile, many others are left on hold. According to the complaint, the waiting list for new leases exceeds 30,000 applicants, and some have been waiting for more than 40 years.

The Department has sought to expand its efforts to meet the high demand. Last year, it purchased an 82-unit private housing complex in Kauai for a state-run rent-to-own program. But, yet again, the program was reserved for residents who were at least 50 percent Native Hawaiian. This meant that applicants like Ryan would be ineligible and, even worse, existing homeowners would be evicted because of their ancestry. In July, two residents initiated a second lawsuit against the Department. Linda Twitchell, who is not Native Hawaiian, will soon be forced to leave the apartment she has lived in for seven years. Another resident, David Kalahiki, who is 25 percent Native Hawaiian, will not be able to continue living in his home since it will go to someone on the waitlist who meets the strict ancestry cutoff. These evicted residents were forced back into a tumultuous housing market where renters struggle to find affordable homes, and a majority must spend more than 30 percent of their monthly income on rent.

The dispossession of residents through these discriminatory rules unnecessarily exacerbates the housing insecurity within the state. This situation stems from an antiquated and controversial policy: the Department is empowered by the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act of 1920, a federal law that mandates the blood quantum requirement. It was enacted during Hawaii’s territorial period between annexation and statehood. According to a 1920 House report, lawmakers were concerned about too much social assimilation and native population decline. However, some scholars and commentators have called the requirement a tool of dispossession that was designed to reduce individual autonomy under the guise of protection.

Still, state officials claim that the Act is beneficial rather than harmful. In a statement, Hawaii Governor Josh Green vowed to defend the statute rigorously, and Hawaii Attorney General Anne Lopez claimed that the program has “provided opportunities, stability, and hope to generations of Native Hawaiian beneficiaries.” But the plaintiffs contend that the ancestral requirement is constitutionally impermissible and violates the guarantee of equal protection under the law.

The Kauai evictions are particularly suspect because they involve the displacement of residents, while Governor Green paradoxically claims that the Act is designed to remedy dispossession. As the complaint alleges: “The Hawaiian Homes Commission Act does not expressly authorize [the Department] to purchase private real property and convert that property into Hawaiian home lands. Rather, the purpose of the Act was to specifically preserve the Hawaiian home lands—real property previously held by the Hawaiian monarchy—for homesteading purposes.” Even if the law has conceptual merit, it is uncertain whether it still accomplishes its intended goals or works against them.

Ultimately, the courts will need to clarify whether these ancestry-based requirements can persist and, separately, whether they justify the ousting of residents from their homes. But as it stands, Hawaii can tell residents that they are insufficiently Native Hawaiian and evict them based on its rigid, government-imposed standard.

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/07/2026 - 18:25

Bessent's 'Yentervention' Does Not Fix Japan's Underlying Structural Issues

Authored by Ed Dowd via 'Beyond The Narrative' substack,

...a delicate meal to cook before Midterms...

My conclusions on the Bessent yen intervention:

• The move is a temporary Band-Aid at best and sharp yen strength can historically trigger carry-trade unwinds and risk-asset volatility, but it does not fix Japan’s structural debt or rate differentials. The Fed, BOJ and Treasury are walking a tightrope.

• Consensus is correct that the primary driver is preventing forced sales of Japan’s $1T+ UST holdings that would spike US yields.

• Expanding the FIMA repo facility is a backdoor start to yield-curve control, letting Japan borrow dollars against Treasuries instead of dumping them.

• Bessent is explicitly worried about contagion in his own words by citing the Asian financial crisis trigger from a weak yen and framing the intervention as “stopping an emergency” before it spreads.

• I believe one of the motivations was to delay any major market or yield disruption until at least the midterms.

• Interventions like this rarely stick without fundamental policy shifts and often unleash unintended consequences down the road.

Background

On Friday last week:

July 31 (Reuters) - The U.S. Treasury has informed a number of ‌banks that it may intervene in the Japanese yen market on Friday and that they should “stand ready for future action,” a source familiar with the matter told Reuters.

The notice to banks, channeled through the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, comes a day after Japanese authorities stepped in to prop up the yen, setting ​the currency up for its biggest weekly rise since February, pulling it off of four-decade lows against the dollar.

News of ​the potential intervention by the U.S. Treasury helped push the yen higher against the dollar on Friday. It last traded at ⁠159.09 to the dollar after trading as low 163.65 on Thursday.

On Sunday August 2nd Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent confirmed intervention on X:

The Trump Administration delivers for America’s trusted partners. Economic security is national security. And the U.S.-Japan alliance is built on both.

Friday’s coordinated foreign exchange actions countered disorderly yen movements.

Treasury remains attentive and in close communication with our counterparts at MOF and BOJ. We will not hesitate to participate in further joint intervention.

The FIMA Repo Facility is an important backstop. We would encourage it to be upsized in the coming months.

We strongly support Japan’s decisive market and monetary steps to correct the substantial undervaluation of the yen.

The Takaichi government is moving into an exciting new phase of Abenomics, as nearly 15 years of powerful stimulus have created durable, robust underlying economic dynamics.

Market commentary on X quickly coalesced around protecting the US Treasury market. Japan is one of the largest foreign holders of USTs. A collapsing yen raises the risk of liquidation to defend the currency, pushing US yields higher at a politically sensitive moment. Many skeptics noted the fix is temporary and that the yen’s weakness is rooted in Japan’s public-debt burden and policy divergences, not purely speculative overshoot. Without follow-through on BOJ rates and Japanese fiscal discipline, official buying merely delays the inevitable.

In a clip aired on Bannon’s War Room on August 4, Bessent laid out the contagion risk directly: “One of the things that triggered the Asian financial crisis was a very weak Japanese yen that caused a tsunami across Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia. Someone asked me, ‘What’s the emergency?’ The emergency is stopping an emergency. We don’t have to wait for the crisis. We can remediate it early.” Bannon’s own brief framing that day was that the effort ultimately keeps Japan financing US deficits so they neither sell nor stop buying Treasuries.

My analysis

I posted this right after the weekend announcement on X:

“Massive, coordinated Yen intervention announced this weekend. Traditionally large delta rapid strengthening of the yen has been associated with risk asset weakness especially global equities. So far this is a 5% down move in USD/JPY (yen strength). Rapid moves can sometimes cause the Yen carry trade to become more expensive and liquidations can occur. In August 2024 a 10% move provided some volatility especially in Japanese equities. The cooks are in the kitchen now and it’s a delicate meal they are preparing.”

Meaning the authorities want to halt the Yen slide but they also don’t want it to strengthen too much and cause the Yen carry trade unwind. The goal is stability. Put another way, we simultaneously don’t want Japanese selling our treasuries out of reserves to defend a weak Yen but we also don’t want to see rapid yen strength cause a cascading global margin call. We saw a milder version of margin call in 2024 when the Yen strengthened 10% very quickly. The market is currently applauding the move. However, a coordinated official bid changes the near-term price action, but it does not erase the underlying positioning or the rate differential that keeps the trade alive.

I agree with the consensus that the core motive is preventing Japanese sales of US Treasuries and that the FIMA expansion is a backdoor beginning of yield-curve control. By letting Japan post Treasuries as collateral for dollar liquidity instead of selling them into the open market, the authorities are effectively capping the upward pressure on US yields. It is a clever, low-visibility way to manage the curve without an explicit Fed QE announcement. Combined with the direct yen purchases, it buys some time. I believe one of the motivations was to delay any major market or yield disruption until at least the midterms. But it is temporary. Japan’s debt dynamics and the need for eventual BOJ normalization remain. History shows these interventions lose effectiveness once markets test the resolve and the size required grows with diminishing returns.

Officials can signal and buy for a while, but without sustained Japanese policy follow-through the yen will eventually drift weaker again, forcing larger and more frequent interventions. Each round raises the risk of the very asset volatility and liquidity events that the cooks are trying to manage. Keep watching the carry-trade heat and the pace of any further coordinated actions…that will tell us whether the meal is cooked well or burnt.

“But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.” Matthew 7:26-27

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/07/2026 - 17:40

Reality Bites: Socialist NYC Mayor Mamdani Turns To Capitalist Bankers For Help

After socialist New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani went after Citadel's Ken Griffin, created a property database of wealthy homeowners that makes the list easily accessible to "Luigi-worshipping leftist thugs," and endlessly bashed America and capitalism, all while his friend, Democratic Socialists of America's unofficial spokesperson Hasan Piker, called on his followers to "kill capitalists in the streets" and other DSA members called for the destruction of America from within, the far-left NYC mayor, who is running into roadblocks, has called on capitalist bankers for help.

Piker in his own words: "KiII those motherf**kers and murder those motherf**kers in the streets. Let the streets soak in their f**king red capitalist blood." 

Hasan Piker calls on his followers to kill capitalists:

“Yeah kill them! KiII those motherfuckers and murder those motherfuckers in the streets. Let the streets soak in their fucking red capitalist blood, dude.”

Democrats are campaigning with him. pic.twitter.com/YiZxGgRkgc

— Eyal Yakoby (@EYakoby) April 9, 2026

Bloomberg reports that Mamdani is seeking top capitalist bankers for a new business advisory council as he attempts to mend relations with Wall Street after spewing dangerous rhetoric against the very people who make the city go 'round.

Those invited include former UBS Americas Chief Executive Officer Robert Wolf, former Lazard investment-banking chief Antonio Weiss, and Bank of America's New York City President Jose Tavarez, according to people familiar with the discussions.

The people said the group would provide advice and feedback from key industries, including real estate, finance, and technology.

"The administration is in the process of reaching out to business executives to form a Business Advisory Council," a spokesperson for the Mayor's Office said in an emailed statement to the outlet.

The spokesperson added, "The purpose of the council is to engage with business leaders for their insights and input as we build an economic development strategy that improves life for all New Yorkers."

Mamdani's outreach to capitalist bankers comes as his team of socialists dismantles a separate corporate advisory board connected to the Mayor's Fund to Advance New York City. The mayor has clashed with business leaders over his push for higher taxes on wealthy residents and large corporations, while redirecting city institutions toward socialist causes.

Bill Cunningham, a political strategist who served under former Governor Hugh Carey and later as former Mayor Michael Bloomberg's communications director at City Hall, told the outlet, "I don't know how the mayor will go about creating a group that he can interact with that can help him manage the city. That should be the goal."

With his socialist agenda encountering institutional, fiscal, and political resistance, Mamdani's decision to tap capitalist bankers is more of an acknowledgment of governing reality: NYC cannot maintain its tax base, finance its ambitions, or remain a global business center while pushing anti-American socialist policies. 

Yet another example of how socialism sounds great on paper but, in reality, is an unmitigated disaster once the resources are depleted.

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/07/2026 - 17:20

Meet The Lab-Leak Proponent Set To Take Fauci's Old Job

Authored by Paul D. Thacker via The DisInformation Chronicle,

Politico reported that physician-scientist Steven Quay is going through final vetting to take over Tony Fauci's job at the NIH, reporting that aligns with rumors I've been hearing from sources inside the administration for several months. Quay sat for an interview with me on the DisInformation Chronicle podcast last June to talk about changes NIH should make to ensure we don't have another pandemic caused by dangerous virus research, and I ran an excerpt of his book "The Code As Witness: How the COVID Genome Reveals Its Lab Origins."

The Politico leak comes as Fauci is in the hot seat with Senators passing a resolution yesterday morning that found him in contempt for failing to answer questions during a hearing last week. Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) has released thousands of pages of internal documents about the pandemic, including Fauci's own diary which was found on government servers.

I'm on vacation and haven't had time to go through all the documents - actually, I don't think anybody has gone through all the new revelations - but I did discover that Fauci wrote in his diary that he didn't like my 2022 interview with former CDC Director Robert Redfield. In a September 2022 entry, Fauci called me a "totally weird person" and complained that Dr. Redfield was a "bizarre personality" for telling me that he thought the pandemic started in a lab.

I also ran across a surprising article in the New Yorker that belittled Big Tony for his self-obsessive diary where he seemed much more interested in fame and ties to celebrities than trying to protect the public from the COVID virus. Here's one passage:

Fauci does not seem to see a relationship between the adulation and the villainization - to understand that he's hated for being beloved, perhaps more than for loving the truth. One day, he is doing a podcast interview with Alec Baldwin ("Without a doubt, from a intellectual and substantive standpoint it was one of the best if not the best interview that I have ever given"). The next, he is confronted with a poll suggesting "that middle to right people want me to retire and are not getting vaccinated because I'm the messenger telling them to get vaccinated." But the emotional charge of his celebrity defies his self-conception as a neutral arbiter. One of the sharpest ironies in the diary is how often the good press that he quotes praises him for his modesty and his lack of ego. The Fauci mythos was incompatible with the actual work of being Fauci.

The New Yorker long ago morphed into a die-hard cheerleader for Democratic Party interests, and finding something so negative about Democrat's COVID demigod is pretty shocking. Has Fauci lost his hypnotic hold over Woke reporters?

Even as the public has been buried in a ton of new Fauci documents, a Senate Committee revealed that they have a copy of Big Tony's cell phone that he used during the pandemic. So this is not going to stop. Big Tony is on the run.

To learn more about Big Tony's replacement, Steven Quay, see my interview with him, and check out his book excerpt where he details the science pointing to a lab accident as the cause of the COVID pandemic.

Enjoy the summer!

ZH: See our previous reporting on Quay here

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/07/2026 - 17:00

"Fire Is... Beautiful": Suspect In Spokane Wildfire Confesses He Planned Arson For Weeks

The suspect charged on Aug. 3 with starting the Old Trails fire in Spokane, Washington, that forced more than 60,000 people to evacuate told police he had planned the attack for weeks.

The suspect, Aaron Farinacci, told police in an interview that “fire is powerful, beautiful, and that things that go through fire experience a kind of rebirth,” according to Spokane County Detective Michael Drapeau in a court filing Wednesday.

Farinacci, 37, was scheduled to be arraigned on Thursday, but is now being held on $2 million bond while Spokane Superior Court Judge Jeremy Schmidt reviews his lawyer’s request for a competency evaluation.

Farinacci was booked into the Spokane County Jail.

According to a press conference by Spokane County Sheriff John Nowels, Farinacci was arrested after a concerned citizen provided a description of Farinacci near the area where the fire started, moments before smoke was seen.

According to an arrest affidavit, Farinacci initially denied setting the fire when questioned by law enforcement.

The arrest warrant was executed around 5 p.m. on Aug. 4, and the suspect was detained about a mile from where the fire started.

Farinacci was in possession of matches and a lighter at the time he was arrested, which is believed to be how the fire was started.

As Savannah Hulsey Pointer reports for The Epoch Times, the Old Trails fire, which has burned at least 700 buildings, is one of three that have been burning in the Spokane area that have consumed more than 10,500 acres in total. Two of the three fires are 13 percent contained, and the third is 5 percent contained.

Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson sent a letter to President Donald Trump the day before Farinacci’s scheduled arraignment, asking to speak on behalf of the people of his state and request emergency assistance.

“Your team has been nothing but helpful and quick to respond during this extremely challenging time,” Ferguson said.

Farinacci was previously convicted of manslaughter and aggravated assault in Arizona for shooting and killing his father.

According to court documents, he was sentenced to 12 years in prison in 2012 for his crime. Nowels said Farinacci also had a preceding arrest in the same case for premeditated murder.

Roughly 1,100 firefighters are battling the fires, which are still not contained. No injuries or fatalities have been reported so far, though authorities say there is a high probability that will change as teams reach previously inaccessible areas, as an unspecified number of people are reported as missing.

More than a dozen wildfires are blazing across the Western United States. In Washington state alone, at least 390 square miles have burned, as federal, state, and local agencies are stretched to their limits.

In Idaho, Oregon, and Utah, crews are using bulldozers, helicopters, and other resources to fight a fire that has burned almost 525 square miles. That area is home to cattle ranches, and authorities say the fire also threatens 600 homes and 800 other structures.

In central Utah, another blaze doubled in size over the weekend. By the morning of Aug. 3, more than 57 square miles were burned, killing more than 100 head of cattle.

Officials called the fire “catastrophic,” with heavy winds pushing the flames over containment lines.

The fire is moving north toward a town of around 2,600 people in Millard County, and mandatory evacuations were ordered on Sunday evening.

The National Weather Service has issued air quality warnings across the northwest, and red flag fire warnings were posted for parts of Utah, Montana, and western Nebraska. Extreme heat warnings were issued for the southern parts of Arizona, California, Nevada, and northern Montana.

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/07/2026 - 16:40

The Democratic Party's Four-Way Squeeze

Authored by James Howard Kunstler,

“. . . it’s subversion and nothing about it is accidental. it’s a well worn playbook to use the democratic institutions of a high trust state to destroy a civilization.” 

- El Gato Malo on Substack

The days might still be long, but this is a dark season in our country’s politics. Everybody’s nervous and many are furious, and yet all that emotion goes nowhere, just eats you up while you watch and wait for signs that help is on the way. What would that help even look like? Maybe a concerted effort to bum-rush a whole lot of bad ideas out of American life and replace them with better ideas that are worth building a life around.

Of the two political parties that used to vie between the interests of property and of labor, there is almost nothing left — nothing coherent, anyway.

Mr. Trump & Co. still stand outside a feckless Republican establishment that can only say “no.” That is bad enough, when it comes to vital matters like election reform and sound fiscal policy. But the President is methodically wearing them down with tactical work-arounds such as this week’s use of State Department visa control to prevent foreign visitors coming here just to drop birthright citizens.

Things will get super-serious when the president has to manage the government’s functional bankruptcy, the bond market crack-up under our impossible debt-burden, and all its knock-ons. It’s coming for sure, and will require a stringent reorganization of American finance, probably even of our money itself. That will be a moment when the nation understands what leadership really means, not just endless deception and fakery.

Speaking of which, you have the other party, the Democrats.

The Dems, unmoored from the interests of labor (whatever is left of it), are now strictly just the party of bad ideas and crime.

One way, or another, we’re gonna find you, we’re gonna gitchya gitchya gitchya. . . .

The party is also, at this juncture of history, caught in a gruesome four-way squeeze that could easily drag it into extinction. Let’s count them.

First, is the basic basket of ideas that comprise the party’s platform, readily identifiable for some years now as the “Woke” catalog. Virtually all of them are ideas that a majority of the public rejects as insane. A wide-open border. We tried that for four years under the fake president “Joe Biden.” Didn’t work out so well. Added many millions to the free everything dole that actual citizens resentfully have to pay for. Took jobs away from said citizens. Got a lot of (mostly) women murdered and raped. Let in Gawd knows how many foreign terrorists.

“Woke” also includes the DEI products of manufactured race animus and gender confusion, especially as applied in school from K all the way to PhD. Apart from the sheer hatred and idiocy these things generated, they also led to the scrapping of merit and excellence as organizing principles for civilization. Americans increasingly reject all of that.

The second squeeze point is the Democratic Party’s criminal portfolio. The Covid-19 operation was basically theirs. It killed and injured millions, wrecked the integrity of medicine, and brought on the deliberate perversion of our election procedure. It gave us fake President “Biden” and the autopen gang that ran him. Along the way, the party weaponized the law and produced one hoax after another: RussiaGate, Impeachment, J-6, the 2024 Trump trials — treason, sedition, deprivation of rights under color of law, obstruction of justice and much more. These crimes are a huge burden for the party and they are in the process of being adjudicated, and a lot of the party’s heroes will end up in prison.

The third squeeze is the party’s widespread and atrocious racketeering operation. The process of uncovering it has been going on since Jan 20, 2025, but still has a long way to go in terms of courtroom action. The Somali Learing Center in Minnesota, fake hospices by the hundreds in California, Medicaid fraud in state after state. It was generally allowed to go on by state officialdom. We await the eventual indictments of Governor Tim Walz, Gavin Newsom, JB Pritzker, Janet Mills and many other Democratic politicians.

The Democratic Party racketeering apparatus also included the money-laundering system that kicked back millions of dollars from a matrix of NGOs that washed taxpayer money into the party coffers. USAID was a major mechanism, and has been mostly shut down, but thousands of NGOs still exist and function as employment centers for young party “activists” who otherwise would have to work the espresso machines. A lot of that activism depends on funding from the likes of George Soros, the Tides Foundation, Bill Gates, Neville Roy Singham, and other criminally-tinged philanthropy outfits. Justice is coming for them now, too.

Which redounds directly to the fourth squeeze: the rise of communism and jihad as the Party’s new rallying cries while the other three squeezes work to put the party’s old guard out of business. Communism is the fad-du-jour among Democratic Party youth because the over-production of elites (i.e., college graduates) are increasingly closed out of cushy jobs in the besieged NGO matrix, threatened further by the advent of artificial intelligence, and have been trained-up by the lefty-left college faculties to fall in love with the utopian nostrums of Karl Marx.

Communism is the Party’s last resort and most of America will not buy it, no matter how heartfelt the youth faction appears these days. Americans believe in property rights. They want to own things. They don’t really enjoy being pushed around by kommissars. They want to keep Thanksgiving and Christmas.

As for jihad, it’s hard to imagine a less likely route to the hearts and minds of America. No matter how pissed off you are about Israel, jihad is not the answer to America’s problems. No, Dorothy, Kansas will not be joining the Ummah. You will not have to don the burka. Sharia will not replace English common-law. This is a hill that somebody’s going to die on, and in America it’s not going to be Americans.

Personally, I don’t see how the Democratic Party as currently configured survives this four-way squeeze. If President Trump can succeed in starting to reindustrialize the country — even considering A-I and robots — there will still be a need for human labor and labor will seek some kind of political representation. Maybe they can find it in the hollowed out husk of the thing that used to be the Democratic Party. Otherwise, fuggeddabowdit. The party is toast.

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/07/2026 - 16:20

Vance: Federal Government Has Identified $230 Billion In Fraud Since March

Authored by Emel Akan via The Epoch Times,

Vice President JD Vance said on Aug. 5 that the Trump administration has identified $230 billion in fraud and prevented $56 billion in fraudulent payments since the president’s Fraud Task Force was established in March.

Vance discussed the task force’s initiatives at a roundtable in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building attended by more than a dozen Republican lawmakers. He said the work by the task force so far is starting to show results.

“We have been able to identify $230 billion of fraud just since the Fraud Task Force was set up, and that’s frankly by conservatively estimating it,” Vance said.

He urged Congress to codify certain anti-fraud actions taken by the administration to ensure that they remain in effect under future administrations.

“This effort will fundamentally always have a limitation unless our colleagues in the House and the Senate are working with us,” Vance said.

“We don’t want the next administration ... to undo all the incredible work that we’ve been doing.”

The vice president said one of the first steps Congress can take is to force data sharing between state and federal governments to crack down on fraud.

He said that if a state gives food stamp benefits to an illegal immigrant or a violent criminal, the federal government often cannot detect who is receiving those benefits.

The vice president also called on Congress to make fraud harder to commit and to ensure that convicted fraudsters receive longer prison sentences that better reflect the seriousness of their crimes.

On March 16, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to establish a task force after large-scale fraud in Minnesota’s Medicaid and federal assistance programs drew national attention late last year. He then appointed Vance to lead the new task force while also creating a fraud-focused division in the Justice Department.

Speaking at the event, Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson, who co-chairs the task force, said that fraudsters target federal assistance programs because they are relatively easy to exploit. He said one reason is that “the punishments associated with much of the fraud are relatively low.”

Hence, the administration wants to work with Congress to significantly increase sentences for all levels of fraud, he said, to deter potential fraudsters from targeting these programs.

On Aug. 4, authorities announced that 19 people have been charged with Medicaid fraud for allegedly submitting more than $4 million in false home care bills. The investigation was a joint effort by several federal and state law enforcement agencies.

The White House on Aug. 6 announced that it has launched a new website to track the administration’s moves to eliminate alleged fraud, waste, and abuse in government agencies.

“Each partner agency reported three figures” to the task force led by Vance, the site states, noting that the “fraud uncovered” section on the site “represents total estimated fraud identified through data analysis” while the “fraud stopped” portion “counts the dollars saved annually through administrative actions such as provider suspensions and rule changes.”

Vance said in a recent interview with Fox News:

“I don’t care where you came from, I don’t care what your name is. If you are committing fraud against the American people, all of us in public leadership should ... try to throw you in prison for enriching yourself off the American taxpayer.”

A similar initiative was established under the now-defunct Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which was associated with Tesla CEO Elon Musk and which was wound down by July 2026. DOGE’s website also included contracts, leases, and other items that were targeted for elimination by the Trump administration.

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/07/2026 - 15:45

Consumer Credit Jumps More Than Expected In June As Credit Card Debt Spikes

One month after the May consumer credit posting a shocking decline - the first since late 2024 - driven by a plunge in revolving credit, things are mostly back to normal, with the Fed reporting in its latest G.19 report that in June, US consumer credit posted a healthy $14.17BN bounce - a full reversal of the May drop of $1.1 billion - and above the $11.9 billion median estimate. 

The rebound was driven by a sizable reversal in last month's drop in revolving credit (i.e., credit card debt), as consumer resumed buying on credit to the tune of $6.7BN...

... bringing the total amount of outstanding credit card debt to $1.351 trillion, just $1 billion away from the all time high set in October 2024.

Meanwhile, non-revolving credit rose by its slow and steady monthly pace of $7.4 billion, lifting the total amount of student and auto loans to a new record high of $3.816 trillion.

What is interesting, is that while auto loans have barely budged since late 2023, staying around 1.6 trillion for nearly three years, and hitting a record $1.571 trillion at the end of June, student loans have resumed their ascent, and after a modest decline in late 2023, student loans are once again at all time highs although in June we saw a tiny decline of $4.5 billion.

Finally for those keeping tabs, after a modest decline in the previous two quarter, the average interest rate on credit card accounts assessed interest rose to 22.15%...

... a level last seen three years ago, when the Fed rates was almost 2% higher, which confirms our long-running observation that credit card rates go up but they never go down.

One final observation: after a period of about 6 years when the average amount financed by auto loans was around $25,000 (from 2008 to 2014), this amount has grown dramatically, and in Q1 2026 it hit a new record high of $42,500, the highest on record. Just in case there was confusion what is behind the relentless increase in car prices...

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/07/2026 - 15:32

Senate Passes The Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia & Iran Act Of 2026

On Friday the Senate finally passed a bill imposing major new sanctions on Russia due to the grinding war which has been going since February 2022.

The bill had bipartisan support, with a vote of 86 to 11, and now it will go to the House - where it is expected to be passed there too. After a year of negotiations and holdups based largely on prior White House pushback, the 'breakthrough' is largely the result of the death of Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

The bill is called literally the The Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026 - which aptly reveals the late senator's hawkish stance on all 'official enemies'.

In places he couldn't start a war, he would certainly at least advocate for hard-hitting sanctions, which technically is itself an act of war. In many ways Graham continued with the mantle of John McCain - who never saw a conflict he didn't want to rush American forces into.

The newly Senate-passed sanctions act "allows the president to impose tariffs of up to 100% on the top five purchasers of Russian oil or natural gas." There are some crucial caveats:

There are exceptions for countries that import less than 15% of their natural gas from Russia and are taking "significant" steps to reduce the imports. It also includes sanctions on Russian President Vladimir Putin, officials within his government, oligarchs and Russian banks and financial institutions. 

It remains that China and India are the largest buyers of Russian crude oil, but there are also still some EU countries which have remained under pressure to cut their Russian imports significantly.

The sanctions also extend Washington's ongoing economic warfare on Iran's energy and weapons sectors, which was an expected part of the legislation. 

Proud 2 support Sen passage of Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia Act in BIG bipart vote 86-11 This bill holds Putin accountable for largest land war in Europe since WWII+ protects our natl security

It wldnt hv been possible w/o the work of our late colleague Lindsey Graham

— Chuck Grassley (@ChuckGrassley) August 7, 2026

Sen. Graham had actually spent spent years trying to finally advance it across the finish line, but the Trump administration had initially entered the White House loudly pushing diplomacy with Moscow and the idea that a swift end to the over four-year long war could be achieved by Trump's direct mediation and negotiating prowess. The policy reached an apex with the Trump-Putin Alaska summit, but failed to take off from there.

Instead, the world is currently witnessing the war's biggest escalatory phase in years, especially given the nightly major Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian energy sites and infrastructure. Russia's aerial bombardment of Ukrainian cities, including on the capital, has in turn stepped up.

Trump on Lindsey Graham: "I wanted to see the war with Ukraine end very quickly. I think he was more into, you know, keeping it going, frankly."

Trump on Lindsey Graham:

I wanted to see the war with Ukraine end very quickly. I think he was more into, you know, keeping it going, frankly.pic.twitter.com/sjHCNcMsZn

— Clash Report (@clashreport) July 12, 2026

Pro-Ukraine hawks have been salivating and waiting for this moment, and again lawmakers have been bipartisan on this. For example, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, previously announced that passing the bill would serve as a "fitting memorial" to Graham and everything he represented.

"There can be no more fitting memorial to Lindsey, his legacy, or the causes he fought for, than to pass this legislation and realize his long-held dream of an independent and secure Ukraine," she said.

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/07/2026 - 15:00

Uncertainty Rules!

By Elwin de Groot, head of macro strategy at Rabobank

US Treasury yields drifted higher yesterday after the Financial Times reported, citing people close to Fed Chair Kevin Warsh, that he would be prepared to raise rates as early as September if incoming inflation data surprise to the upside and markets themselves begin pricing a more hawkish path. Yet the market reaction was not confined to the front end suggesting investors were not interpreting the story in a straightforwardly hawkish manner.

That ambiguity is understandable. If markets push yields higher on expectations of tighter policy, the Fed may feel less need to deliver that tightening. Note also that Warsh himself was not speaking, and one of his recurring themes has been a dislike of explicit forward guidance. Moreover, September remains some distance away in market time, particularly in an environment where geopolitical developments can overturn macro narratives overnight.

Indeed, whilst oil prices had come down in the early part of this week on the back of renewed signs that the Strait of Hormuz could gradually reopen, those same prices rose again overnight as a convincing agreement remains elusive as it offers no permanent solutions for the key sticking points. Instead, it offers another 60-day window of free transits through Hormuz while further negotiations resume. Reports suggest Iran is looking to restrict US and Israeli ships from the Strait and it’s been ear-deafening silent on the ‘nuclear’ issue, for example. If a deal is agreed, it could be a matter of time until either party expresses frustration with the negotiations again and markets are forced to price in another few weeks of geopolitical tension.

Meanwhile, refined products are feeling the pinch of impending shortages, leading us to revise up sharply our forecasts for diesel, gasoil and marine fuels, as our senior energy analyst Joe DeLaura writes. In Europe, it is the winter-demand pressure that hangs over the market. The underpriced risk is that Europe’s own weather stress raises gas burn through the power sector just as LNG supply risks remain elevated, our senior energy analyst Florence Schmitt writes.

European macro data offered little inspiration yesterday. German factory orders surprised to the upside in June, though largely thanks to volatile big-ticket orders. This morning saw industrial production tick 0.2% m/m higher that month, but this was offset by lower growth in the previous month. Elsewhere, the picture was even less encouraging. Industrial production fell in both Spain and Italy, raising the possibility that the eurozone's preliminary 0.4% q/q GDP growth estimate may yet be revised lower. Eurozone retail sales also disappointed, falling 0.3% m/m in June and largely offsetting May's upwardly revised increase. The broader message is that growth concerns are unlikely to disappear simply because oil prices have eased from their recent highs.

In fact, what increasingly defines the global economy is not any single shock, but the relentless arrival of new ones. Businesses and households are being bombarded (in some regions rather literally) by an overlapping set of disruptions: trade disputes, geopolitical conflict, policy uncertainty, financial market volatility, technological disruption and natural disasters. The first eight months of 2026 have already provided a year's worth of such events.

The obvious example is the Middle East conflict and the disruption of shipping through Hormuz. But it is far from the only one. Investors continue to grapple with uncertainty surrounding the US tariff regime, while questions persist over the sustainability of the AI investment boom and the valuations attached to it. A rising string of hacking reports and AI models behaving unexpectedly has raised concerns over AI’s controllability.

In Europe, concerns are mounting over intensifying Chinese competition and the growing economic costs of climate change. Scorching temperatures, drying rivers and devastating wildfires have already become defining features of this summer. Looking ahead, forecasters are increasingly focused on the emergence of a potential "super El Niño" event, which could amplify weather-related disruptions across a wide range of emerging and developed economies.

Yet uncertainty is more than merely a transmission channel for shocks. It is an economic force in its own right.

Franklin D. Roosevelt famously captured this during the depths of the Great Depression when he declared in his first inaugural address that "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself". Nearly a century later, the insight remains remarkably relevant. Uncertainty can paralyze decision-making, delay investment, encourage precautionary saving and ultimately amplify the effects of whatever shock triggered it in the first place.

An interesting ECB study published in its latest Economic Bulletin broadly confirms the point. Looking at the eurozone, the analysis finds that uncertainty shocks tend to reduce investment, particularly spending on tangible capital, as well as consumer purchases of durable goods. The effects are most visible during the first two to four quarters following the shock. Importantly, however, the impact appears largely transitory. After an initial decline, activity tends to recover and the long-run effect on output is limited.

Part of that result may reflect modelling choices. But there is also an intuitive economic explanation: people learn. Households, businesses and investors gradually adapt to recurring shocks. The unfamiliar becomes familiar. What initially causes panic eventually becomes incorporated into decision-making. That observation brings us back to a theme from our Monthly Outlook, Groundhog Day Economics: markets seem to become more accustomed to geopolitical disruptions, yet every recurring script carries the risk of a very different ending.

Interestingly, the same logic may apply in reverse. As our colleague Stefan Koopman argues here, UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham may seek to replace "securonomics" with a form of "vibonomics": generating a series of positive confidence shocks before embarking on more politically difficult structural reforms. The idea is simple enough. If uncertainty depresses activity, improved confidence can temporarily support it.

The key word, however, is temporarily. The lesson from both the ECB's research and recent market experience is that confidence effects can move demand forward in time, but they do not permanently raise an economy's growth potential. Lower precautionary savings may provide a one-off boost to spending. Positive sentiment may temporarily lift GDP. But neither changes the underlying supply capacity of an economy.

Ultimately, uncertainty may rule the headlines, and confidence may shape the near-term cycle. But lasting prosperity still depends on a far less fashionable ingredient: stronger supply-side growth.

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/07/2026 - 14:40

Exit Narrative Grows: Bessent Says New Deal & Ceasefire Will Open Hormuz 'Today Or Tomorrow' Summary

• Bessent: Hormuz could reopen under a 30-60 day ceasefire as soon as "today or tomorrow."
• Iran asserts that US & Israeli vessels remain barred until sanctions are lifted and compensation is paid.
• Trump says the conflict could "end pretty soon," signaling a possible final US exit.
• Iran remains defiant, pointing out it still has the leverage & can threaten Hormuz.
• However, the deal could reopen oil flows while strengthening Iran's control over the strait.

//--> //--> //--> Strait of Hormuz traffic returns to normal by August 31?
Yes 13% · No 88%
View full market & trade on Polymarket

*  *  *

Bessent: Today or Tomorrow the Strait will be Open; Iran Signals 'Compensation'

Iran has announced that under the 'finalized' Oman-Iran scheme and 'deal' for management of the Hormuz Strait that "enemy countries" (read: US and Israel) may only transit the waterway after lifting sanctions and paying compensation for the war.

While this was not issued by the Foreign Ministry or top leadership per se, it does appear to represent Tehran's overall position, after on Thursday it first declared that US and Israeli-linked ships will not be allowed Hormuz transit under the Oman plan:

Tehran Mayor says Passing through the Strait of Hormuz is subject to the lifting of sanctions and the payment of compensation:

"The countries that have attacked Iran will not have the right to use this strait until compensation is paid. Governments that freeze Iranian assets or continue to impose sanctions and threaten the nation will be deprived of this strategic boon."

While Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has appeared to back the Omani plan to reopen the strait, the US State Department has also newly warned on Friday that more 'decisive action' will be taken to cut off sources of Iran's funding. Bessent has newly stated that...

I think shortly, maybe even today, tomorrow, we are going to see an agreement, a 30- to 60-day ceasefire, and the Strait will be open.

This is somewhat surprising, but as we described below, it seems a final Washington exit is indeed in motion, even if it leaves Iran with greater leverage in the region. Like Trump's latest comments Thursday night, Bessent seems in 'mission accomplished' mode with this newly published interview...

Bessent on Iran:

We have them by the throat, and they've got 150–180% food inflation, not able to pay the troops.

I think shortly, maybe even today, tomorrow, we are going to see an agreement, a 30- to 60-day ceasefire, and the Strait will be open.

Energy prices should come… pic.twitter.com/C1vGuQUIRM

— Clash Report (@clashreport) August 7, 2026

This really does sound like 'it's finally over' talk...

Bessent on the Strait of Hormuz:

The strait is never going back to the way it was because the Iranians have used, or tried to use it, as a choke point.

What we are going to see over the next two years, the strait is going to become irrelevant.

It is going to become just… pic.twitter.com/LP8evMbeJP

— Clash Report (@clashreport) August 7, 2026

White House Largely Quiet on Iran-Oman Deal to Manage the Strait

President Trump's latest Iran comments came Thursday night, after a prior day wherein Iran and Oman unveiled their 'finalized' Hormuz management scheme, which most notably includes a ban on all US and Israeli vessels in the energy transit waterway. 

As we reviewed earlier, the White House has appeared to genuinely be searching for an exit strategy, but this stipulation alone may be too hard a pill for Trump to swallow, if accurate - given that it obviously leaves Iran in de facto control of the strait. Many pundits have pointed out it even leaves Iran with more leverage and power in the region than before the launch of Operation Epic Fury.

But this is why Trump's comments to reporters in the Oval Office Thursday evening are surprising, given that instead of reacting angrily and outright condemning the Iran-Oman plan, his reaction was somewhat muted and meager. Doves who see this war as disastrous and hope for quick exit will welcome the development.

via Reuters Trump: Going to End Pretty Soon

"I think it's going to end pretty soon. I don’t think they can go much longer," the president said, while leaving his meaning ambiguous. Asserting once again that the US is involved in negotiations with Tehran (something the Iranians have been vehemently denying all along), Trump added that "I think we’re doing fine."

The only thing Trump truly got angry about Thursday was related to the domestic side of the conflict, after US major media published several reports saying the Pentagon is perilously low on missiles and interceptors, which have been drained after nearly six months of war. He blasted 'treasonous' 'fake reporting' and even threatened to jail 'leakers' over the reports (the inherent contradiction says a lot here).

But again, Trump's penchant for raging against 'dishonest' and 'evil' Iranian leaders has been curiously absent over the last several days as the US bombs have fallen silent - after he called off planned 'harder' strikes over the weekend (or the last big TACO moment, among many prior).

This relative quiet at the White House comes even after Iran's parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf openly mocked the United States and Trump's theatrics and constant changes of course on X. He wrote Thursday:

"Massive attack coming… wait, never mind, they want to negotiate." That’s theater diplomacy on loop. Using bullying + broken promises + fake news as leverage is a failed strategy. Acknowledge the facts and fulfill your commitments. We don’t need more theater.

All of this change in Washington tone and posture suggests this could finally be the moment for a true offramp, as the US faces a 'go big or get out' realization, and as the prospect of slogging through months more of a developing quagmire becomes too politically and economically costly. This is potentially the declare 'victory' and get out moment. As former Congressman Ron Paul has put it: Just Walk Away!

Trump: I think the war with Iran will end pretty soon. I don’t think they can go much longer.

Q: Have you reached a deal to reopen the strait of Hormuz?

Trump: It’s sort of open right now. pic.twitter.com/J3lcPyuVwM

— Acyn (@Acyn) August 6, 2026

This is further evidenced in Trump's sudden realism, expressed late Thursday in the same Oval Office presser. When asked about the status of the Strait of Hormuz, he admitted that "it's easy for them to send a drone or two, drop a mine, or deliver a close range missile somewhere along, or in, this Waterway, no matter how badly defeated they are."

He further acknowledged: 

"People don’t want" to risk ships worth billions of dollars and expose them to the possibility of accidentally hitting a mine in the Strait of Hormuz, he conceded. Trump also claimed Thursday that Hormuz is "sort of open right now," although fewer than 10 ships per day transited from Sunday through Tuesday, according to Kpler data.

Of course, the US and Iran have been involved in several of these 'pauses' and cooling off periods before, which were later revealed to be the 'calm before the storm'. Tehran has since wised up and pointed out that the Pentagon used these interim periods of no fighting to just rearm, reposition, and ramp up military supply flights to the region.

Joe Kent: 'Good First Step' Toward an Exit

Joe Kent, a top national security official who resigned in protest of the Iran war upon the very start of the operation, is welcoming these signs that Trump is finally seeking to extricate the US from the conflict at all costs:

Trump is messaging that he won the war— this is a good first step in extricating us from what would otherwise be a catastrophic mistake. The reality is, the best “deal” we can make with Iran at this point that works in our favor is to just leave—it’s the only case in which POTUS then holds the cards.

He needs to “close the deal” now, before the Iranians force him back into a shooting war. We simply can’t assume that Iran will wait idly for us to make the next move. Alarmingly, it seems we are failing to account for just how aggressively killing the Ayatollah & bombing the girls’ school has radicalized Iranian leadership & its people—it’s very likely that Iran will feel compelled to drag us back into the war in order to force the U.S. to retreat, bloodied, both for the sake of its national honor & for deterrence.

Trump can end this by pulling our troops & ships out of the region now—deprive Iran of targets to hit and the leverage they need to escalate. Trump says we’ve won, therefore we can bring them home.

So either Trump is indeed preparing to go bigger, or this is - belatedly - the final 'cut and run' moment that probably the majority of the American public has been hoping for.

Another sign, via his Truth Social latest, that Trump could finally be willing to say 'mission accomplished' and get out, while letting the regional and oil transit 'chips fall':

Iran Hasn't Blinked

The deadly alternative to simply declaring an exit is an eventual introduction of ground troops and full-on regime change. Thankfully, Trump officials have continued to by and large condemn this as a legitimate scenario - given it would surely once again put US forces in a new 'forever war' that would last years or even decades.

Read our: Visualizing Iran's Vast Size & Why Any Ground Invasion Means Years-Long Quagmire

But in the meantime, the Iranians do smell weakness and blood in the water. Just before US markets closed Thursday, Tehran announced its forces attacked and struck 'hostile targets' at Qeshm island, near the entrance to the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran is remaining defiant, and even sees itself in the driver's seat with its ability to wage asymmetric warfare against a much larger US foe which is confused on what to do next. This was also on display with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian having asserted this week in an interview, "Our enemies expected the country to collapse due to the pressures they have exerted." He added that these pressures have "reached their maximum".

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/07/2026 - 14:30

Trump Threatens To Jail Arms Shortage 'Leakers'

Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

President Trump on Thursday threatened "leakers" with jail time over reports about dwindling US military stockpiles as a result of the Iran war, and claimed the US had plenty of munitions available.

"The US has massive amounts of ‘munitions,’ especially of certain types. Additionally, large amounts are being manufactured and shipped to the US as needed," Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Official White House Photo

"Defense companies are building the largest number of plants and factories in our country’s history. The 'leakers' of these treasonous statements are being hunted down," the president added.

Some of the most significant reports about the shortage of advanced munitions didn’t come from media reports but from analysis published by the think tank the Center for International Studies (CSIS), which used publicly available data to produce its estimates.

CSIS found that the US has used about 60% of its advanced Patriot air defense missiles and about half of its interceptors for the THAAD missile defense system, though sources told CNN that the US had actually used about 80% of its THAADs during the war.

While Trump says that US arms makers are working to produce more munitions, the current rate of weapons use far exceeds the rate at which they can be produced, and it will take years to significantly increase production.

Media reports have also said that the US has used up nearly all of its ATACMS missiles and Precision-Strike Missiles, which were both used extensively in strikes on Iran.

Trump also responded to a report from The Washington Post that said he lashed out at US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth over the munitions shortages, which one source told the outlet was part of the reason why Trump held off on his threats to dramatically escalate the war.

Sources told the Post that on the sidelines of a recent cabinet meeting at Camp David, Trump vented his frustration at Hegseth over the munitions shortages. The report said that Hegseth then blamed his deputy, Stephen Feinberg, for both the shortages and for failing to ensure Trump was informed about the issue.

Asked about dwindling US weapons stockpiles, President Trump on Thursday said there's a "virtual unlimited supply" of certain munitions and "we have others where it’s a little bit tighter" https://t.co/UFMSGvXiWa pic.twitter.com/lZtfbSuKgB

— Bloomberg (@business) August 6, 2026

"The Fake News, as usual, is spreading false and completely unfounded rumors. I am extremely happy with the job that Pete Hegseth is doing," Trump wrote on Truth Social. He said that the Post published the report "despite our telling them their story is completely FALSE" and added that he believed their "fake ‘reporting’ is treasonous."

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/07/2026 - 14:00

Saudi Arabia's $5 Oil Detour Is Expensive... But Worth It

Authored by Leon Stille via OilPrice.com,

• Rerouting Saudi crude to Asia via Yanbu, Egypt’s SUMED pipeline and the Cape of Good Hope may add around $5 per barrel and up to four weeks to a voyage.

• That premium is small compared with the economic damage caused by losing access to Hormuz or Bab el-Mandeb altogether.

• Saudi Arabia’s alternative export infrastructure is not a temporary workaround but a strategic asset—although it cannot replace the kingdom’s wider need to diversify beyond oil.

The latest Saudi oil route looks absurd on a map.

Crude moves west across Saudi Arabia to Yanbu, north through the Red Sea to Egypt, across the SUMED pipeline from Ain Sokhna to Sidi Kerir, then west through the Mediterranean before tankers sail around the Cape of Good Hope to reach customers in Asia.

Oil that started relatively close to Asia first travels thousands of kilometres in the opposite direction.

The detour reportedly adds around $5 per barrel once extra freight, fuel, insurance and pipeline charges are included. For a two-million-barrel cargo, that approaches $10 million. Aramco is therefore considering a separate pricing mechanism for crude loaded from Egypt’s Mediterranean port of Sidi Kerir, because its normal Asian official selling price no longer reflects the logistics.

The immediate conclusion is that avoiding Hormuz has made Saudi oil structurally more expensive.

That is true. But it misses the more important point.

Five dollars per barrel is not only the cost of disruption. It is the price of having another option when two of the world’s most vulnerable shipping chokepoints can no longer be treated as permanently available.

Two chokepoints turned one contingency route into another

Saudi Arabia’s first line of defence against disruption in the Strait of Hormuz is its East-West Pipeline. It carries crude from the kingdom’s producing region in the east to Yanbu on the Red Sea, avoiding Hormuz completely.

That system has proved its value. Aramco says it ramped the pipeline up to its maximum capacity of 7 million barrels per day during the first quarter of 2026. Around 2 million barrels per day feed western refineries, leaving roughly 5 million barrels per day of export capacity.

However, moving oil to Yanbu solves only the first geographical problem. Asian buyers would normally take those cargoes south through the Red Sea and exit via Bab el-Mandeb. Houthi threats and attacks have made that route unreliable as well.

The newer workaround therefore does not avoid the Red Sea entirely, as some viral descriptions claim. It uses the northern Red Sea between Yanbu and Ain Sokhna, but avoids the Houthi-exposed Bab el-Mandeb passage by moving through Egypt and into the Mediterranean.

From there, the ship still faces a remarkable journey. It must leave the Mediterranean through Gibraltar, sail around Africa and cross the Indian Ocean back towards Asia.

Reuters calculated that the journey to Asia can increase from about 19 days to 48 days. Fuel costs for a tanker can rise from approximately $1.26 million to $2.87 million, before adding around $1 million in Suez Canal fees. Fully laden very large crude carriers may also need to discharge part of their cargo into the SUMED pipeline before transiting the canal and reload it at Sidi Kerir.

None of this is cheap or efficient.

But the relevant alternative is not the old route operating normally. It is a delayed cargo versus no cargo.

The $5 premium is smaller than the risk it insures

Oil markets are accustomed to treating infrastructure efficiency as a question of cents per barrel. Under stable conditions, that makes sense. Producers compete on transport costs, crude quality and refinery margins, while buyers optimise routes aggressively.

Geopolitical resilience follows different economics.

An extra $5 on an $85 barrel is a material cost increase, but it is small compared with the price spikes, refinery shortages and lost export revenues caused by a major supply interruption. Saudi exports were down by around 2.4 million barrels per day year-on-year during the recent disruption, while Gulf exports fell to only 36% of pre-war levels.

Even more importantly, the risks do not disappear the moment both straits formally reopen.

Iran does not need to close Hormuz permanently to influence shipping. Mines, drone attacks, seizures or even credible threats can raise insurance premiums and persuade shipowners to wait. The Houthis have demonstrated a similar ability to disrupt Red Sea traffic with relatively inexpensive weapons.

A reopened chokepoint is therefore not the same thing as a dependable chokepoint.

That changes how the detour should be valued. The additional route is comparable to spare generation capacity in an electricity system or a second supplier in an industrial supply chain. It may look expensive when everything works. Its value becomes obvious only when the primary route fails.

Saudi Arabia has maintained this kind of optionality better than many producers. Despite the severe regional disruption, Aramco reported 98.4% supply reliability in the second quarter, supported by the East-West Pipeline, storage, alternative terminals and its international logistics network.

The $5 premium is part of the cost of preserving that record.

Redundancy is becoming part of the barrel

The important shift is that Aramco may now need different pricing formulas for the same crude depending on where it is loaded and how it reaches the buyer.

Official selling prices, or OSPs, are the monthly differentials that producers apply relative to regional crude benchmarks. They normally reflect grade quality, market conditions and destination. A separate Sidi Kerir formula would make logistics resilience an explicit component of the barrel’s price.

That is not necessarily permanent for every cargo. If Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb become reliably navigable again, the longest route will lose its commercial appeal. Asian refiners will not voluntarily pay millions more for an unnecessary voyage.

But the infrastructure should not be viewed as stranded the moment normal shipping resumes. Saudi Arabia is already considering expanding its east-west pipeline capacity by as much as 2 million barrels per day. Yanbu is being repositioned from a secondary outlet into a strategic export hub. SUMED, Suez, Mediterranean storage and flexible tanker arrangements add further options.

The lesson of 2026 is that relying on a single efficient route can be more expensive than maintaining several imperfect ones.

This will influence investment decisions well beyond Saudi Arabia. Pipelines, terminals and storage assets previously judged as underutilised may acquire a resilience premium. Buyers may accept higher costs for supply contracts with genuine routing flexibility. Insurers and lenders will increasingly distinguish between producers that have contingency infrastructure and those whose exports depend on one exposed waterway.

The result is a higher structural logistics cost for some barrels, even if benchmark oil prices fall.

Better oil logistics do not solve Saudi Arabia’s larger problem

There is, however, a danger in celebrating resilience too much.

Saudi Arabia can spend billions making oil exports harder to interrupt, but it cannot make global oil demand permanent. Electric vehicles, efficiency, alternative fuels and climate policy will gradually erode demand growth. The kingdom ultimately needs business models that do not depend on exporting ever-larger volumes of crude.

Riyadh understands this. According to its Vision 2030 annual report, non-oil activities accounted for 55% of real GDP in 2025, while non-oil government revenue had risen substantially since 2016. Investment in tourism, logistics, mining, manufacturing, technology and renewable energy is intended to reduce the economy’s exposure to oil.

Those figures should not be confused with completed diversification. Oil remains central to exports, fiscal capacity and the financing of many non-oil investments. Some flagship projects are expensive, and turning state-led spending into self-sustaining private activity remains difficult.

Yet this is not an either-or choice.

Saudi Arabia needs to protect the oil revenues it still earns while using those revenues to build an economy that will eventually need them less. More flexible export infrastructure supports the first task. Vision 2030 is supposed to deliver the second.

The Cape route may add $5 per barrel. That is the visible cost.

The invisible value is that Saudi Arabia can still sell the barrel when the shortest routes become unusable.

In an oil market shaped increasingly by drones, missiles and maritime chokepoints, redundancy is no longer wasted infrastructure.

It is part of the product.

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/07/2026 - 13:20

5th Small Modular Reactor Validated Since June, Poised For Mass Production

Another small nuclear reactor has achieved “criticality,” marking the fifth new reactor type to be certified as operationally viable in the United States since June, after none were certified for more than a half-century, as the nation’s “nuclear renaissance” quickly advances to commercial mass-production.

Santa Clara, California-based Oklo’s Groves Isotope Test Reactor reached criticality on Aug. 5 at the company’s plant in Lockhart, Texas, and will produce isotopes for medicine, advanced manufacturing, scientific research, space exploration, and national security needs.

Unlike massive cement-siloed, utility-scale reactors such as the Westinghouse AP1000, the Groves reactor is a circular 22.5-foot-diameter nuclear generator that can be shipped by truck or rail and planted in a 35-foot-deep reinforced concrete cavity, making it a distinct entry in an expanding range of small, portable reactors on the cusp of being retail ready.

As John Haughey details for The Epoch Times, Oklo is one of 10 companies selected by the Department of Energy (DOE) in August 2025 to develop 11 “first mover” innovations under a reactor pilot program authorized by President Donald Trump in four May 2025 “Nuclear Renaissance” executive orders that call for licensing 10 new reactors by 2030 and quadrupling the nation’s nuclear energy capacity by 2050.

The president’s executive orders included incentives for three prototypes to reach “criticality” by July 4 to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding. That goal was eclipsed when Aalo Atomics’ Aalo-X became the fourth small reactor to attain criticality on July 4 after Antares Nuclear’s Mark-0 on June 4 became the first new reactor type in the United States to achieve the status since 1973.

With Oklo’s Groves reactor becoming the fifth to reach criticality in the last two months, Trump’s five-year goal for 10 small reactor types to be validated is already halfway accomplished. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said as many as seven would achieve criticality by year’s end.

The Groves reactor is one of two Oklo reactor developments that qualified for the pilot program. The company is also building a 75 megawatt reactor to anchor its Aurora Powerhouse Project at Idaho National Laboratory’s Materials and Fuels Complex, a prototype the company anticipates will be ready for “commercial operations” by 2028.

The Groves reactor is also one of two that attained viability in a privately owned plant rather than on the 890-square-mile Idaho National Lab near Idaho Falls.

“Thanks to President Trump’s precedent-setting directive to create the Reactor Pilot Program, Oklo’s Groves Isotope Test Reactor is part of the revival of America’s nuclear energy industry,” Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy Ted Garrish said in a statement. “We applaud the work of the Oklo, DOE, and Idaho National Laboratory staff who helped achieve this milestone.”

United States Energy Secretary Chris Wright speaks with Kiewit Construction Site Manager Marvin Robb (L) and Atlas Engineering Project Manager Hillary Hack during a June 25 tour of Oklo’s Aurora Powerhouse Project at Idaho National Laboratory. John Haughey/The Epoch Times

Built in a Year

During a tour of Idaho National Laboratory in late June, Oklo Co-Founder and CEO Jacob DeWitte said the company’s Groves reactor in Texas would soon reach criticality despite being built from scratch in less than a year.

The company began building the open, water-cooled reactor designed to supply domestic radioisotopes for medical imaging, cancer treatments, and national defense in September 2025, he said, and received DOE’s “substantial completion” certification in April, clearing it for criticality.

“It’s dang impressive that we hit substantial completion in 227 days, and that we'll be able to turn that reactor on in critical in less than a year,” he said. “We’re just waiting on the green light to take fuel, load it, and turn it on.”

That green light came late on Aug. 5.

“Reaching criticality in less than a year is an incredible milestone for our team,” DeWitte said in an Aug. 6 statement. “Oklo developed Groves from a greenfield site on private land, completed full-scale civil excavation and construction, manufactured or commercially procured all components, including fuel, and developed its operating programs in-house.

“Taken together,” he added, “we believe these accomplishments establish a new benchmark for the Reactor Pilot Program and set the stage for the future of advanced nuclear deployment at scale.”

The nation—the world—is poised to see “advanced nuclear deployment at scale” with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission expected this fall to adopt Part 57, a micro-reactor regulatory framework that trims license reviews from often more than a decade to between six and 12 months.

Under Part 57, when the commission issues a license for a prototype reactor, the developer doesn’t need further approvals to mass produce it. Public comment on the rule closed July 15. Commissioners are expected to debate and adopt a final rule no later than early 2027.

“Ordering one [reactor] is cool, but ordering 10 is a lot better,” DeWitte said in Idaho. “There’s a future for that, for sure.”

Oklo is engaged in multiple nuclear energy projects in addition to its Groves reactor and Aurora Powerhouse, including a fuel fabrication plant prototype to recycle fuels from Idaho National Lab’s Experimental Breeder Reactor-II, idle since 1994; a co-partnership with Nvidia in a fuel project at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico; and its September 2025 contract with hyperscaler Meta to power a 200-acre data center campus in Pike County, Ohio, with a small reactor by the early 2030s.

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/07/2026 - 13:00

Meet The Investors In SpaceX Who Say Their Shares "Disappeared"

Some investors who thought they had secured one of Wall Street's hottest trades, owning SpaceX before its blockbuster IPO, say the shares they expected to cash in on simply disappeared, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The controversy centers on special purpose vehicles (SPVs), investment funds that promise accredited investors exposure to private companies before they go public. After SpaceX's June IPO, several investors who bought into SPVs managed by Late Stage Management say they were stunned to learn the underlying SpaceX shares had allegedly been sold years earlier, leaving them without the windfall they believed they still owned.

The Journal writes that one of those investors, Virginia data engineer Ram Rupireddy, invested $17,250 in a Late Stage fund in 2020 after being told it offered exposure to SpaceX. Based on statements in his investor portal and 2025 tax documents, he believed he still owned the equivalent of 2,500 SpaceX shares when the company debuted publicly. At the IPO price, he estimated the position would have been worth more than $300,000. Instead, the firm later informed him the underlying shares had been sold in 2024, leaving him with roughly $45,450.

"The plan was to fund college education for both of my kids," Rupireddy said after filing a complaint with the Securities and Exchange Commission. He says he never received notice that his investment had been sold, and only discovered the change after temporarily losing access to Late Stage's investor portal, which later showed the position had been liquidated.

Another investor, who asked not to be identified, told The Wall Street Journal he experienced the same surprise. He said he believed he still owned pre IPO SpaceX exposure until after the company's public debut, when he was informed the underlying shares had already been sold years earlier. Like Rupireddy, he has since joined other investors seeking legal remedies, and told the newspaper an SEC attorney and an FBI special agent contacted him to discuss his experience.

According to The Wall Street Journal, at least four investors reported similar experiences, while roughly 150 Late Stage investors have joined a group chat to discuss potential legal action. One investor told the newspaper that an SEC attorney and an FBI agent contacted him about his experience. The SEC declined to comment on whether it is investigating the matter, and the FBI also declined comment.

Late Stage Management did not respond to repeated requests for comment. The firm is already facing separate legal scrutiny after three former sales executives pleaded guilty earlier this year to fraud charges involving hidden markups and fees, though prosecutors said those cases were unrelated to the disputed SpaceX shares.

The episode is also drawing fresh attention to the risks of SPVs, which often provide indirect "exposure" to private companies through multiple layers of investment vehicles rather than direct ownership of shares. As Davis Polk partner Jared Fine told the Journal, "Ultimately if you're investing, you want to make sure you own what you think you own."

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/07/2026 - 12:20

US Senate Pushes CLARITY Act Vote To September

Authored by Ezra Reguerra via CoinTelegraph.com,

Senate Republican leaders are expected to leave for their August recess without voting on crypto market structure legislation, delaying consideration of the bill until at least September, according to a report from Politico. 

Senate Majority Leader John Thune confirmed that the chamber would not vote on the legislation before the recess, citing Democratic opposition and saying it would be prioritized when senators return next month. 

“The Dems are insistent on no Clarity vote,” Thune said, according to comments his office provided to Cointelegraph. “I worked with sponsors of the bill. Senator Lummis was great, and we’re getting that queued up first thing when we come back.”

The postponement leaves one of the crypto industry’s top legislative priorities unresolved and compresses the Senate’s timetable for advancing the bill. Without sufficient Democratic support, Republicans may struggle to secure the 60 votes generally needed to overcome a filibuster.

Crypto Council for Innovation CEO Ji Hun Kim called the postponement “disappointing” but said the direction of the legislation had not changed.

“Every day without such a framework pushes American users and builders offshore and leaves consumers at risk,” Kim said in comments provided to Cointelegraph.

September delay narrows path for CLARITY Act

Thune’s remarks come after comments from Senate Banking Committee Chair Tim Scott, who said on Thursday the chamber should hold its first vote on the CLARITY Act before the recess “without any question.” 

Scott said Thune still had time to schedule the procedural vote and that Republicans were gaining support for it. 

The CLARITY Act would establish a federal framework for digital asset markets and clarify how oversight is divided between the US Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Citing three people with knowledge of the matter, Politico reported that the CLARITY Act lacks Democratic support. Negotiations remained underway.

Thune may still file cloture before the recess. This procedural step could position the bill for a vote when senators return in mid-September, but it would not constitute a vote on the legislation, according to two people cited by Politico.

Cointelegraph also asked Thune’s office to confirm whether he intended to file cloture before the Senate leaves for recess, but has not received a response to the question by time of publication. 

The sources said Democrats have declined to approve a time agreement that would expedite the Senate’s remaining pre-recess business and allow the crypto bill to reach the floor. 

According to the report, Republican leaders would need unanimous consent from all 100 senators to complete the outstanding items without extending the session deep into next week.

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/07/2026 - 12:00

Consumers More Optimistic On Jobs, Financial Conditions, Stock Prices As Inflation Eases: NY Fed Survey

Unlike recent extremely volatile months, consumers expectations for inflation in July barely budged as disclosed today by the latest NY Fed Survey, which showed that inflation expectations in one year fell slightly to 3.6% from 3.7% prior. Estimates for price increases in three and five years remained at 3.3% and 3%, respectively, although the 3Y inflation forecast did dip notably, if not enough to move it by a significant digit. 

Gas price growth expectations rebounded partially after their sharp decline in June, increasing by 1.4% to 2.9%. 

Away from inflation, labor market expectations were mixed, with the mean probability of higher US unemployment rate increasing by 1.1 ppt to 42.8%...

... and the mean probability of losing one’s job in the next twelve months increasing by 0.1 ppt to 14.2 percent; however, this was offset by the mean perceived probability of finding a job if one’s current job was lost, which increased by 1.3% to 46.2% the highest this year.  That increase was most pronounced among those who have a high school degree or less and those living in a household where income is under $ 50,000 per year. 

Earlier on Friday, the government employment report showed employers cut jobs in July and the labor-force participation continued to slide. The jobless rate declined to 4.1%. 

Recent data pointed to a strengthening of the American consumer. Spending rose more than expected in the three months through June, and the University of Michigan’s gauge of sentiment increased to a five-month high in July.

In the New York Fed report, more households said their current financial situation was better than last year, and more said their finances will stay about the same in 2027.

Still, the average perceived probability of missing a minimum debt payment in the next three months increased, especially among in households where annual income is below $ 50,000.

Consumers were also more optimistic about the stock market, with the probability that stock prices will be higher a year from now reaching the highest level of the series since April 2021.

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/07/2026 - 11:45

Hours After Murkowski Predictably Sides With Dems, Cassidy Unblocks Blanche AG Nomination

Sen. Bill Cassidy announced Friday he will support Todd Blanche's nomination for attorney general, clearing the decisive path for confirmation after two other Republican senators opposed the pick.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche appears before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, July 15, 2026. 

Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican who had remained undecided amid weeks of scrutiny, made the announcement in remarks on the Senate floor. "Mr. Blanche is not perfect, and he will tell you this, but the choice is not between perfection and Mr. Blanche," he said. "It is between Mr. Blanche and another acting attorney general who may not run the department effectively under President Trump and who indeed may not be as good as Mr. Blanche." He added: "All considered, I will vote for Mr. Blanche. I'll be criticized for this vote. What's new?"

The decision came hours after RINO Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) declared she would not support Blanche. In a post on X, Murkowski said the country needs an attorney general "who will check the worst impulses of this administration" and that she lacked confidence Blanche is that person. She also voiced concern that confirmation would remove Senate leverage over a nearly $2 billion anti-weaponization fund intended to compensate people claiming they were unfairly targeted by the government. "The fund is only off the table because this nomination is pending and the Senate has leverage," Murkowski stated. "Once we vote, that will end, and there is no telling what the future holds."

Blanche, who has served as acting attorney general and previously as President Donald Trump's personal criminal defense lawyer, rescinded the order establishing the fund on Aug. 2. The move formed part of an agreement with Sens. Thom Tillis (R-NC) and John Cornyn (R-TX) that allowed the Senate Judiciary Committee to advance the nomination to the full Senate. Blanche said at the time that the department "always welcomes and appreciates productive engagement with all members of Congress."

Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), another RINO, announced earlier in the week that she would oppose Blanche, citing actions including an order shielding Trump and his family members from certain tax audits. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) remains absent while 'recovering from a fall at home', with no clear timeline for his return.

Republicans hold a 53-47 Senate majority. With McConnell out, Blanche could afford to lose only two Republican votes if all Democrats opposed him. Collins and Murkowski provided those two "no" votes. Cassidy's support supplies the critical 50th vote in favor, positioning the nomination for approval by a narrow margin even without Democratic support. All 47 Democrats are expected to vote against Blanche.

Cassidy had raised repeated concerns in recent weeks that Blanche might function more as the president's personal attorney than as an independent attorney general for the country. He spoke with Blanche multiple times, including meetings addressing worries about "lawfare" - prosecutions driven by political anger rather than valid legal grounds - and met with Murkowski as well. Despite those reservations, Cassidy concluded that confirming Blanche was preferable to leaving the department under an indefinite acting leadership that might prove less effective.

Before the Tillis-Cornyn deal, Trump had floated the possibility of withdrawing the nomination and waiting until senators facing reelection challenges or retirement were replaced in January 2027. Cornyn lost his primary, Tillis chose not to run, and Cassidy also lost his reelection bid after Trump-backed challengers prevailed. Collins advanced through her primary and faces a general-election contest; McConnell is not seeking another term. Murkowski's term continues until early 2029.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) on Capitol Hill in Washington on March 18, 2021. Susan Walsh/Getty Images Tyler Durden Fri, 08/07/2026 - 11:30