Joby Kicks Off Weeklong Campaign After Successful JFK–Manhattan Test Flights

Authored by Rob Sabo via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Electric air taxi developer Joby Aviation stated on April 27 that it will begin a weeklong testing campaign in New York City, having successfully completed three days of test flights across the city’s heliport network.

ANA Holdings and Joby Aviation show a public demonstration flight of the Joby N5.42JX flying car at the World Expo 2025 Osaka in Osaka, Japan, on Oct. 13, 2025. Buddhika Weerasinghe/Getty Images

Joby’s electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) air taxi launched from John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) and made stops at Downtown Skyport on the southern tip of Manhattan, West 30th St. heliport on the West Side, and E. 34th St. Heliport on Manhattan’s eastern waterfront.

The routes are potential commercial flight patterns for Joby Aviation’s electric air taxis that could quietly and with zero operating emissions traverse Manhattan in less than 10 minutes, the company stated.

According to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, travel times across Manhattan average 32 minutes or less, but rush hour traffic significantly slows travel times. Traveling the roughly 17 miles from JFK in Queens to midtown Manhattan can take travelers up to 90 minutes or longer.

“This week, flying between JFK and Manhattan, we showed what the White House-backed eIPP initiative makes possible and offered New York a look at what’s coming,” said JoeBen Bevirt, Joby founder and CEO.

Joby Aviation was one of eight proposals picked in early March by the Department of Transportation (DOT) to participate in the DOT’s Advanced Air Mobility Program and eVOTL Integration Pilot Program (eIPP). The program, part of President Donald Trump’s Unleashing American Drone Dominance Executive Order announced in June 2025, is aimed at accelerating commercial adoption of electric air taxis and drones for urban transportation, logistics, emergency services, and autonomous flight.

The New York City Economic Development Corp. (NYCEDC), along with heliport operators Vertiports by Atlantic and Skyports Infrastructure, stated that it will begin electrifying the city’s heliport charging infrastructure ahead of potential commercial air taxi service.

“NYCEDC is thrilled to usher in New York City’s transition to electric flight, and these flights mark a real milestone in that journey,” Jeanny Pak, NYCEDC interim president and CEO, said in a statement.

The three days of test flights required close coordination between Joby Aviation, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

“These demonstration flights are one data point in a larger body of work we’re building around next-generation electric aviation, and it reflects our conviction that responsible exploration of these technologies now is how we prepare this region for the future,” said Kathryn Garcia, executive director of the Port Authority.

Joby noted that it will leverage its existing partnerships with Delta Airlines and Uber to create an end-to-end transportation solution from JFK to destinations throughout Manhattan that include air and ground transportation and could reduce travel times from one to two hours to less than seven minutes.

Delta in 2022 made a $60 million equity investment in the electric air-taxi startup, which could eventually ramp up to $200 million if Joby hits certain development milestones. Uber announced in late February that it would begin Joby eVOTL-powered passenger flights in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, later this year.

Joby noted that it is also working through the final stages of obtaining FAA certification so that pilots can begin for-credit testing, a crucial step for commercial flight operations.

Tyler Durden Tue, 04/28/2026 - 18:25

Jim Quinn: Kill Switch Of Freedom

Authored by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform blog,

“The government should be afraid of the people, the people shouldn’t be afraid of the government.” ― Edward Snowden

“The freedom of a country can only be measured by its respect for the rights of its citizens, and it’s my conviction that these rights are in fact limitations of state power that define exactly where and when a government may not infringe into that domain of personal or individual freedoms that during the American Revolution was called “liberty” and during the Internet Revolution is called “privacy.” ― Edward Snowden

None of what is happening is an accident or happenstance. Everything that has happened since 2019 is part of their diabolical plan to impoverish, cull, and enslave you in a technological gulag, sold to the ignorant masses as technological advancement, improvement of our lives, and protection from whatever bogeyman they designate. They want to digitize and electrify your entire existence, so they can control you, milk you like cows, and slaughter you at a time of their choosing.

The financial system began to unravel in September 2019 and the ruling class needed to accelerate their Agenda 2030 Great Reset plan. The Fed balance sheet, which had surged from $1 trillion in 2008 to over $4 trillion after the Wall St./Fed created financial crisis, was being reduced slowly to $3.8 trillion, but that was too much for our decrepit debt dependent system, and the repo market froze up.

The Fed panicked and started printing again. Conveniently, Gates and the WEF tested their fake pandemic plan at Event 201 in October 2019. They worked out the kinks and rolled it out across the globe in January 2020. Maximum fear and the greatest PR campaign in history for the annual flu resulted in a global shutdown, allowing the Fed to increase their balance sheet to $9 trillion, a 140% increase in a matter of months. Meanwhile, the politicians did their part by driving the national debt from $23 million to it’s current level of $39 trillion, a 70% increase.

It now requires more and more new debt to service the old debt ($1.3 trillion per year of interest on the debt), so the Fed was only able to get their balance sheet to just below $7 trillion, before the system started to break again. They have begun increasing it once more. Nothing like an unnecessary war on behalf of Israel to drive the national debt to above $40 trillion and keep the printing presses humming. They know this empire of debt is unsustainable and in imminent danger of collapse, so they are accelerating the AI based technological prison phase of their plan.

Does anyone in their right mind believe the thousands of data centers they want to build are to benefit the average person? Of course not. These data centers will power your enslavement. And if you think one of the political parties will save you, then you aren’t paying attention. The uni-party is designed to screw you and benefit themselves. Electric cars to save the planet was, and still is, a ridiculous idea, unless those controlling the levers of power want an easy way to automatically keep you from traveling. Since the electric car boondoggle has petered out, both parties cooperated to install kill switches in all gas powered new cars starting in 2027. How exactly is that beneficial to the average person. They hate you and do not care what you think or want.

It is the same story with the CBDCs. How do they benefit the average person? They don’t. They will be able to track and tax every transaction you make. They will be able to create a profile based upon your spending. They will then use their AI tools to determine pre-crimes and arrest you in advance. If you make a social media post or comment offensive to the empire, your social credit score will be downgraded and you will be denied travel and grocery privileges. This is the techno-gulag these billionaire psychopaths in suits dream about. And they are accelerating these plans at breakneck speed. When they decide to pull the rug on this teetering financial system, the CBDCs will be the lifeline they offer.

Ed Dowd, former portfolio manager at BlackRock: The COVID vaccines "were designed to take care of a pension problem with the boomers, and then bring in 10 to 15 million younger, mostly male folks as replacement population."

"If I was going to want to take care of a debt problem… pic.twitter.com/NYOGLNm32x

— illuminatibot (@iluminatibot) April 27, 2026

Ed Dowd’s suspicions about the Covid scamdemic are entirely accurate. It was the lynch pin of the depopulation phase of the Great Reset. With the average age of death during Covid of over 80 (from remdesivir and ventilators), they relieved the financial pressure from Social Security and Medicare. The Covid “vaccine” has been the more insidious method of depopulation. Some batches murdered their injectees immediately. Other batches are killing people through myocarditis and turbo cancers. It caused pregnant women to lose their babies. And it has reduced fertility rates across the board.

Replacing native white Americans with low IQ third world dregs is alive and well. Trump is not deporting the tens of millions of illegal invaders, like he promised. Young foreign males commit an inordinate amount of crime and these lowlifes accelerate the destruction and bankruptcy of our welfare system. Both parties cooperated to not pass the SAVE Act, meaning they want illegals to vote in our elections and do the bidding of those pulling the strings.

The billionaire overlords want chaos, economic suffering, and the destruction of the traditional family. And they appear to be winning. If the citizens of this country had a backbone, this KILL SWITCH moment would trigger our current day BOSTON TEA PARTY. But, I’m afraid we are too far gone, too soft, too sedated, too distracted, too cowardly, and too dumbed down to notice. So it goes.

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

Tyler Durden Tue, 04/28/2026 - 17:40

Citadel's Griffin To Meet With NY Gov. Hochul After Mamdani's Socialist Games

Citadel's Ken Griffin told the audience at the Norges Bank 2026 Investment Conference in Oslo earlier on Tuesday that he is planning to meet with left-wing New York Gov. Kathy Hochul on Thursday to discuss the "future direction" of the state after far-left NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani singled out Griffin in a promotional video stunt to push his proposed new tax on luxury second homes.

"Here's the real question: Is New York going to put its fiscal house in order and run itself from a position of a strong government that's pro-business?" Griffin told the audience. "Why do Americans think we can do socialism? We have none of that in our DNA."

Griffin continued, "I think the willingness of a mayor of New York to make this policy debate a personal attack just demonstrated a profound lack of judgment."

In a recent promotional video, Mamdani attempted to turn Griffin's Manhattan penthouse into political ammunition for his tax-the-wealthy, anti-capitalist crusade to fund socialist experiments through a proposed pied-à-terre tax.

Happy Tax Day, New York. We’re taxing the rich. pic.twitter.com/Wky2LFXC9W

— Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@NYCMayor) April 15, 2026

Citadel's CCO, Gerald Beeson, fired back at the far-left mayor in an internal memo to employees, which was conveniently leaked to The Wall Street Journal, in which he warned that Mamdani's political games against Griffin threaten to halt Citadel's $6 billion redevelopment plan in Manhattan, which would create thousands of jobs.

Why Mamdani's team of socialists decided to launch an info-war operation against Griffin and Citadel is a very good question, and it appears not to have been well thought out. This is evident because Mamdani immediately attempted to defuse the situation last week by saying the new tax on pricey second homes isn't "motivated by any one individual."

So why take the political abuse from a bunch of socialist kids running City Hall, Ken?

Remember how easy it was to leave Chicago for Florida?

Tyler Durden Tue, 04/28/2026 - 17:20

Improper US Government Payments Rose To $186 Billion In 2025: Watchdog

Authored by Sylvia Xu via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Federal government agencies reported a total estimate of about $186 billion in improper payments in fiscal year 2025, an increase of $24 billion from 2024.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office building in Washington on May 22, 2025. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

About $153 billion—roughly 82 percent—of this total arose from overpayments.

The Government Accountability Office estimated that cumulative improper payments have reached about $3 trillion since fiscal year 2003. The actual amount may be much higher, the federal watchdog acknowledged in an April 27 report.

These improper payments represent false distributions—such as payments made to the wrong people, paid without proper documentation, or issued in the incorrect amount—from 64 programs reported by 15 federal agencies, and have been a government-wide issue for more than 20 years.

For fiscal year 2025, eight federal programs reported improper payment estimates of $5 billion or more.

Medicaid ($37 billion), Traditional Medicare ($28.8 billion), and Medicare Advantage ($23.7 billion) accounted for more than 50 percent of these erroneous payments.

Medicaid improper payments expanded by $6.3 billion in 2025, compared to the previous year. The Department of Health and Human Services stated that this was due to increased errors in eligibility redeterminations and provider screening as COVID-19 enrollment flexibilities phased out.

The Earned Income Tax Credit ($21 billion), Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program ($10 billion), and the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant program ($10 billion) added up to more than 20 percent of the total improper payments.

Improper payments arising from the Earned Income Tax Credit—a refundable federal tax credit for low-to-moderate-income working individuals and families—increased by $5.2 billion. The Department of the Treasury has not provided reasons for the improper payments.

Improper Payment Rates

Of the programs reporting improper payment estimates, 19 reported improper payment rates of at least 10 percent, including six programs whose rates exceeded 25 percent.

The Small Business Administration reported improper payments in the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant program for the first time in fiscal year 2025.

The grant program aimed to help the live arts and entertainment industry survive the COVID-19 pandemic. In total, Congress provided $16.25 billion to the Small Business Administration, which awarded grants to 13,011 different businesses and organizations.

Nearly 70 percent of these distributions were erroneous payments, according to the federal watchdog.

As of October 2024, the small-business agency identified $544 million in potential improper payments that need to be recovered. However, the agency sent only one demand letter in January 2024 and paused the issuance of additional demand letters, according to a 2025 audit report.

As of March 2025, no cases had been referred to the Treasury Department for debt collection.

The improper payment rate in the Emergency Conservation Program for disasters—providing funding and technical assistance to farmers and ranchers to repair and restore farmland affected by natural disasters—reached 55.5 percent in 2025, up from 45.2 percent in 2024 and 40.4 percent in 2023.

The causes of improper payments can range from unintentional administrative errors to fraud, according to a 2024 federal watchdog report. An error could occur when an agency failed to obtain a required signature in a contract prior to payment. Fraud occurred when a recipient used a fake or stolen identity to apply for and receive benefits.

Agencies also suspected significant improper payments in the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, which spent around $16.5 billion in fiscal year 2025. As of April 2026, Congress had not yet enacted legislation to require states to report the data needed to estimate and report on improper payments for this program.

Lawrence Wilson contributed to the report.

Tyler Durden Tue, 04/28/2026 - 17:00

The Assassination Wasn't "Staged", Leftists Are Just Evil

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us

Why is it that every time a leftist tries to kill conservatives, it’s immediately called a “false flag”? And why is every single person who dares to question the false flag narrative attacked by a vicious (and suspiciously organized) online mob? The reason should be obvious but some people just don’t seem to see it: It’s a leftist psyop.

In what is now the THIRD failed assassination attempt on Donald Trump, Cole Tomas Allen, a donator to the Kamala Harris campaign, a No Kings protester, a BlueSky leftist and transgender defender, burst into the lobby of the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner with firearms in an attempt to kill Donald Trump or anyone else in the administration that happened to be a convenient target.

His manifesto reads like most leftist manifestos, and his social media is worse. Infested with mainstream media talking points, infecting his brain with delusions of heroism if only he can “take out the fascists”.

There is absolutely no doubt whatsoever which side this guy is on. He is a full bore woke zealot brainwashed by typical Democrat rhetoric. And yes, he’s a part time teacher of high school children (let that sink in before you send your kids off to public school).

The online response from the political left within minutes of the attack was predictable, as if they had all received a script to recite whenever assassination attempts on Trump occur. The same people who call for Trump’s murder daily are now saying the event was “staged”. Furthermore, they claim that a long time woke leftist somehow volunteered to help Trump stage an assassination by risking prison time or death.

I’ve heard of bipartisan cooperation, but this is ridiculous. Lefties are really bending over backwards to help a Republican president with his image. Sadly, there were people in the alternative media that also immediately bought into this lie and repeated it. But why?

Leftists are repeating the false flag theory. The establishment media entertains the false flag theory. Why are some conservatives helping them spread these fallacies?

I think it’s important to take this opportunity to examine how 4th Generation Warfare works; first by understanding the reality that portions of the conservative movement are being targeted with it by the left wing, often effectively. The leftists have figured you out.

4th Gen Warfare is asymmetric and aims to break a movement’s political will. It works by striking at the psychological unity of an enemy group and dividing them; this requires that you identify certain cognitive biases within a portion of that group and exploit those biases to create infighting. The group in question is the “truth” or “conspiracy” element of the wider conservative or MAGA movement.

Has any popular conspiracy theorist today considered the possibility that they are being played? Have they considered the possibility that one of the biggest conspiracies of our era is the agenda to misdirect the public away from punishing the leftist cult for their numerous trespasses?

As a conspiracy “realist” for many years, I think the most important thing to remember is this: Not everything is a conspiracy. If you think everything is a conspiracy, I’m sorry to break it to you, but you are wrong and you are doing far more harm to the truth movement than you are doing good.

One of the most critical changes in the western world that is rarely talked about is that conspiracy movements now have substantial political power and social influence. For generations we were called “fringe”; the crazed and irrational dregs, the deplorables. Today, we have vast reach (online and offline) that stretches across America and into Europe.

Today, everything we say has the potential to affect government policies, elections and even wars (if we remain unified). When a movement grows this strong, its enemies can only seek to destroy it by sabotaging it from within.

By extension, there are numerous think-tanks, NGOs and covert operations designed specifically to find our weaknesses and manipulate our discourse (the SPLC is currently being indicted for such operations). More than anything, the enemy cares about what we think.

And what is our greatest weakness? What do these groups consistently exploit to keep us passive and ineffective? The core weakness of conspiracy theorists is paranoia.

Our willingness to “question everything” can sometimes be used against us to misdirect us into rabbit holes that simply don’t exist. Globalists and the political left have quickly learned that the best way to keep conservatives docile is to make us suspect our own side so much that we never turn our anger against the woke cabal.

Two decades ago when I got my start working in the alternative media, the concept of the “false left/right paradigm” was everywhere. It was the key argument of the truth/liberty movement. The idea that progressives and conservatives are actually much more alike than they know. That we all Americans basically want the same things, and the only obstacle dividing us is the fake “uniparty” at the top.

I’m sorry to break it to the people who have attached their entire political philosophy to this idea, but the false left/right paradigm is dead. It no longer exists.

It died at least a decade ago when Democrats and progressives embraced the woke cult, and in the process they became willing allies of the globalists. Where does almost all the globalist NGO money go? Into Democrat campaigns and woke activist groups What group receives the majority of globalist corporate support? Leftists. Who tries to implement nearly every policy that comes out of globalist conferences like Davos? The political left.

Hell, 90% of Jeffrey Epstein’s campaign donations went to Democrats. It was Epstein that was personally in contact with Democrats, texting them and helping them eith their witch hunt proceedings against Donald Trump. The political left is the machine of the globalists. Everything they promote, from transgenderism to open borders to climate controls is part of the globalist religion. They all a part of the same entity.

And now, they’re trying to kill us wherever they get a chance. They are openly proud of this fact and they represent around 25% of the population. Cole Allen isn’t a radical by today’s standards, he is the common denominator within the Democratic Party.

Meaning, leftist and conservatives are true enemies, from the bottom of the pyramid to the top. We do not want the same things. Not even close. There can be no reconciliation, and this only ends one way.

They know this and they are waging a psychological war against us. Think about it: Every new conspiracy narrative is designed to distract us from the culpability of the political left. When an attack or assassination takes place, the blame is always aimed at someone else.

The mountains of evidence proving that the attackers are militant leftists is ignored in favor of anecdotes, hearsay and outright lies. Here is how the formula works, as far as I can tell. It’s complicated, but hear me out…

1) If an assassination against a conservative fails, then it was “staged” by that conservative.

2) If an assassination against a conservative succeeds, leftists celebrate, and then claim “Israel did it”.

Okay, maybe it’s not so complicated. We witnessed this with the Charlie Kirk assassination. According to the arrest record and court documentation, Tyler Robinson, a far left activist with a trans furry boyfriend, confessed to his parents that he shot Kirk, which is why his parents convinced him to turn himself in.

His boyfriend gave photographic evidence of a hand-written confession to the feds. The note was composed by Robinson in the event that he died during the assassination. This is also on record with the court.

Everything points to Robinson because he is the person who most likely pulled the trigger (which is what he admitted to his parents). There is no grand scheme to frame him. Unless Robinson’s parents AND his boyfriend are in on the plan, there is no debate. The conspiracy theories fall apart.

When it comes to Trump, I have been highly critical in the past, specifically during his first term when he formed a horrific swamp creature cabinet. That said, it’s impossible to deny that his second term has been a 180 degree turnaround. Nearly every campaign promise he made has been carried out or at least attempted despite Democrat (and Neocon) interference.

If you are angry about the war in Iran, that’s fine, but Trump has been talking about removing the Islamic regime in Iran since the 1980s. Any Trump voter who is surprised by this did not do their homework. Entertaining baseless false flag assassination theories is not going to help end the war faster.

For the political left, jumping to conclusions and promoting disinformation is designed to control the narrative and sow division before all the facts can be examined. To plant theories in people’s heads and inoculate them to reasonable discourse.

For truth movement people buying into the disinformation, just know that you are being programmed. It doesn’t matter if you like Trump or hate Trump; like his policies or hate his policies. The facts don’t care about your emotion-based theories. If you’re going to attack him, at least make sure your reasons are legit.

The purpose of the “staged” narrative, as I mentioned, is to sow confusion, doubt and division within patriot circles. Globalists and leftists don’t want conservatives to fight back. They don’t want us organized or unified. They want us apathetic and aimlessly fighting with each other. The gas-lighting must end.

Tyler Durden Tue, 04/28/2026 - 16:20

Trump Belatedly Blasts Merz Over Pointed Iran War 'Humiliation' Remarks 

President Trump on Tuesday belatedly hit back at Chancellor Friedrich Merz after on Monday the German leader told students in a talk that the United States is being “humiliated” by Iranian leaders, amid struggling on-and-off negotiations, and as a crisis in the Strait of Hormuz shows no signs of de-escalating.

Merz had said he didn’t see "what strategic exit the Americans are now choosing" while simultaneously describing that Tehran’s negotiators are proceeding "very skillfully - or indeed very skillfully not negotiating."

The result, Merz had said, is that an "entire nation is being humiliated by the Iranian leadership, particularly by these so-called Revolutionary Guards." The unusually blunt and direct anti-Trump commentary by the German Chancellor was given before a group of students at a secondary school in western Germany on Monday.

Throughout Monday, the media expected Trump to quickly lash back out, but that didn't come quickly. It's possible that he hadn't seen the Merz remarks, however. But by Tuesday afternoon, Trump complained on Truth Social that Merz apparently "thinks i's OK for Iran to have a nuclear weapon" and that he "doesn't know what he's talking about!"

He continued with the following jab, echoing a broader critique of other European allies as well: "No wonder Germany is doing so poorly, both Economically, and otherwise!" 

Merz in his original attack on Trump's Iran war decision had claimed, "If I had known that it would continue like this for five or six weeks and get progressively worse, I would have told ​him even more emphatically." ​And yet the criticisms from EU leaders in the opening days were somewhat muted, meager, and weak.

Responsible Statecraft's Trita Parsi is also a deep Iran war critic, but agrees that the hypocrisy of EU leaders needs to be called out. Parsi writes:

Merz isn't wrong in saying he's "disillusioned" with the US & Israel over Iran because they "claimed at the beginning that they could solve this problem within days. Now I must recognize: It is not solved." But he is in no position to complain. He applauded the war and as a result, owns the outcome. This is typical of some EU leaders who support and help facilitate the US's worst instincts, and then pretend they are innocent when the foreign policy adventure predictably goes wrong.

The comments underscore several European leaders’ reassessment of their relations with Trump. A tendency to smooth ties by currying favor has given way to a more sober perspective of a U.S. president who has repeatedly called into question NATO, bolstered European far-right forces and threatened to seize Greenland, a territory of Denmark.

Regardless, the fresh critique by a leading EU head of state is certainly going to add fuel to the fire of Trump's ratcheting anti-EU and anti-NATO rhetoric, given their absence in helping the US get the Strait of Hormuz back open and the return to normal functioning of global energy transit once again.

via Associated Press

But Trump's own words have been confusing for allies to say the least - on the one hand lambasting them for not joining a US-led coalition, but then sometimes in the same breath declaring that Washington does not 'need their help'. Naturally this enables uncertain fence-sitting allies to shrug and say simply, this is "not our war" - as the lead European powers are doing.

Tyler Durden Tue, 04/28/2026 - 15:40

US Farmers Are Facing Two Historic Catastrophes At The Same Time In 2026

Authored by Michael Snyder via End Of The American Dream,

This is the worst of times for U.S. farmers. Coming into 2026, we were already in the midst of the worst farming crisis in at least 50 years. Now the war in the Middle East has caused fertilizer prices to go absolutely haywire, and a historic drought has created nightmare conditions for farmers from coast to coast. What we are witnessing is truly unprecedented. One recent survey discovered that 70 percent of U.S. farmers won’t be able to afford all of the fertilizer that they need this year. When have we ever seen that happen before? And some farmers are telling us that they may not plant anything at all this year due to extreme drought. If the information in this article shocks you, that is good, because we all need a major league wake up call right now.

The Strait of Hormuz is the most important chokepoint on the entire planet, and as I write this article there are hundreds of commercial vessels on both sides of the Strait that are unable to travel through it…

Hundreds of commercial tankers are stranded on both sides of the Strait of Hormuz after Iran shut the critical chokepoint on April 18, halting traffic and leaving crews trapped amid reports of gunfire and “traumatic experiences” on board.

The Strait of Hormuz is considered an international waterway under international law, through which ships have the right of transit passage, according to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

Approximately one-third of all globally-traded nitrogen fertilizer normally travels through the Strait of Hormuz, and nations all over the globe use natural gas that is exported through the Strait of Hormuz to make their own nitrogen fertilizer.

So the fact that the Strait of Hormuz is closed is a really big deal, because without sufficient quantities of nitrogen fertilizer we do not have any hope of feeding the entire planet…

The connection is simple, agricultural fact, not speculation: reduced fertilizer application directly translates to plummeting crop yields. Modern industrial agriculture is utterly dependent on synthetic nitrogen, a product of the Haber-Bosch process which itself requires immense amounts of natural gas [3]. With the Strait of Hormuz closed and LNG infrastructure attacked, the feedstock for this process is becoming scarce and prohibitively expensive. As one analysis starkly put it, half the world’s nitrogen supply is now compromised, threatening global agriculture [4]. This isn’t a theory; it’s chemistry and logistics.

The coming scarcity will not manifest as a gradual, manageable price increase. It will be a sudden, severe shortage hitting supermarket shelves. The system has no slack. As farmers face soaring costs for diesel and natural gas, many are reducing planting or cutting back on fertilizer application, which threatens global grain yields [5]. The recent failure of a critical Australian ammonia plant, exacerbating the global crisis, is just one more domino falling [6]. We are witnessing a cascading failure.

This crisis exposes the fatal fragility of our centralized, just-in-time food system, built for corporate efficiency but not for human resilience. It is a house of cards. As noted in studies of agricultural systems, when trade collapses and scarcity of inputs occurs, yields fall drastically [7]. Our entire civilization is balanced on this vulnerable, centralized point of failure. The system is designed to move commodities for profit, not to ensure communities are fed. When the just-in-time model fails, it fails completely, leaving nothing in the pipeline.

Since the war with Iran began, fertilizer prices have been going parabolic.

I shared a chart that proves this last week, and I am going to share it again today…

Needless to say, rising fertilizer costs are going to get passed along to consumers.

That means that all of us are going to be paying significantly higher prices at the grocery store in the months ahead…

Americans worried about grocery prices may soon feel the consequences of an unexpected problem on U.S. farms caused by the war in Iran – rising fertilizer prices are creating a potential ripple effect that could reach grocery stores.

Why? The American Farm Bureau Federation cited the virtual closing of the Strait of Hormuz as the main reason fertilizer prices are increasing . Roughly one-third of global seaborne fertilizer trade passes through the strait, according to the United Nations.

At least 70% of farmers say they can’t afford all the fertilizer they need because of higher costs tied to the Iran war − a challenge that could lower crop yields, which, if widespread enough, could push food prices upward.

Unfortunately, U.S. farmers are facing another enormous crisis in addition to absurdly high fertilizer prices.

I have written quite a bit about the horrendous drought that is currently plaguing much of the nation.

If you can believe it, over 61 percent of the U.S. is currently experiencing at least some level of drought…

With drought stretching from coast to coast, water restrictions are already in effect in many states even before the thirsty summer season begins. Indeed, more than 61% of the nation is now in a drought, the highest percentage in nearly four years, according to the most recent U.S. Drought Monitor.

In all, 45 of 50 states are enduring drought, with only Alaska, North Dakota, Michigan, Connecticut and Rhode Island completely drought-free.

We are only in late April.

So what will conditions be like once we reach July and August?

In Colorado, the entire state is currently experiencing at least some level of drought, and this is “pummeling Colorado farmers”…

This year’s record-warm, dry spring is pummeling Colorado farmers amid multiple threats, disrupting the state’s $9 billion agricultural sector and jeopardizing even signature crops such as Pueblo green chiles, Olathe sweet corn and Palisade peaches.

Water scarcity, due to exceptionally low mountain snow and soil-drying heat, looms foremost.

To say that farmers in Colorado desperately need rain would be a massive understatement.

One farmer that was recently interviewed by a local news outlet openly admitted that if it doesn’t start raining soon he isn’t going to plant anything at all this year…

“If we don’t get moisture, I’m not going to plant,” said chile grower Praxie Vigil, who runs Vigil Farms along the Bessemer Ditch, a 43-mile irrigation canal that once nourished crops across 20,000 acres east of Pueblo. He was planning to decide this weekend.

“It’s not looking good for any of us. Usually, I just plant and hope for the best. But this year, I’m not going to. This is bad. I can barely water 20 acres,” said Vigil, who works a side job as a pipe-welder to make ends meet.

Farmers all over America are facing some very difficult choices in 2026.

Of course the same thing could be said about farmers all over the world.

Global weather patterns have been going absolutely nuts, and now the worst fertilizer crisis in history is upon us.

At this moment we are still eating food that was grown last year.

But six to nine months from now, a global food shock is going to hit us like a freight train.

We should certainly hope for the best, but it would also be wise to prepare for the worst.

Tyler Durden Tue, 04/28/2026 - 15:00

Comey Indicted As Trump DOJ Takes Second Bite At The Apple

The U.S. Department of Justice has secured a new federal indictment against former FBI Director James Comey, marking the second criminal case brought against him by the Trump administration in under a year. The charges center on a controversial May 2025 Instagram post in which Comey shared a photograph of seashells arranged on a beach to form the numbers "86 47."

According to CNN, citing multiple sources familiar with the matter (who ran to CNN to leak the news), the indictment was returned by a grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia. It comes after the Justice Department’s first case against Comey-filed in September 2025 and charging him with making false statements and obstructing a congressional proceeding related to his 2020 Senate testimony-was dismissed late last year. A federal judge ruled that the interim U.S. Attorney who brought those charges had been improperly appointed without Senate confirmation.

So - the guy acts as Obama and Hillary Clinton's hatchet man to frame Trump and they're going after the seashell thing... right. 

The Seashell Post at the Center of the New Case

The new indictment revives scrutiny of a social media post that ignited intense backlash last spring. On May 15, 2025, Comey posted a photo on Instagram showing seashells lined up to spell "86 47," captioned simply: "Cool shell formation on my beach walk."

The numbers quickly drew sharp criticism from Trump allies. "86" is longstanding slang-commonly used in restaurants to mean "get rid of," "remove," or "toss out"-while "47" is widely understood as shorthand for President Donald Trump, the 47th president. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem at the time called the post a call for Trump’s assassination and announced a Secret Service investigation. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard publicly suggested Comey should be "put behind bars."

Comey deleted the post the same day and issued an apology on social media, writing that he had assumed the shells represented "a political message" but "didn’t realize some folks associate those numbers with violence." He added: "It never occurred to me but I oppose violence of any kind so I took the post down." He later told interviewers that he and his wife had simply noticed the formation during a beach walk in North Carolina and saw it as a quirky, possibly restaurant-themed joke.

The Secret Service interviewed Comey for several hours in Washington, D.C.-an uncommon step for what many legal observers described as a non-specific social media image.

Political and Legal Context

The indictment represents a renewed push by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and the Trump Justice Department to pursue cases against high-profile political opponents. Comey has been a frequent target of President Trump since his firing in May 2017 amid the Russia investigation. Trump has repeatedly accused Comey of helping to "weaponize" the justice system against him and has publicly called for his prosecution.

Legal experts have long expressed skepticism that charges tied to the seashell post would survive constitutional scrutiny. First Amendment protections for political speech are broad, and courts have set a high bar for prosecuting ambiguous or hyperbolic statements as true threats or incitement (see Brandenburg v. Ohio and subsequent true-threat cases). Many analysts viewed the original May 2025 controversy as protected edgy commentary rather than a direct call to violence-especially given Comey’s immediate deletion and clarification.

The first indictment’s dismissal on procedural grounds had already drawn accusations of sloppy or overly aggressive prosecution from critics. Today’s development suggests the administration is undeterred and willing to test the legal waters again with a different set of charges.

Tyler Durden Tue, 04/28/2026 - 14:40

First Loaded Crude Supertanker Clears Hormuz Without Using Larak Channel

Summary: 

• Idemitsu Maru did not use Larak Channel

• Loaded Idemitsu Maru crude supertanker exited Hormuz this afternoon, marking the first such crude transit since the conflict began.

• Loaded Mubaraz LNG tanker exited Hormuz earlier this month, also marking the first such LNG transit since the conflict began.

Polymarket  First Crude Supertanker Exits Hormuz

Following the Mubaraz LNG tanker's exit from the Hormuz chokepoint in recent weeks, the first such transit since the conflict began, new ship-tracking data from Bloomberg late Tuesday afternoon show that the first crude supertanker, Idemitsu Maru, is also exiting the critical waterway.

Idemitsu Maru, operated by the tanker unit of Japan's Idemitsu Kosan, marks yet another positive signal for Gulf energy flows, but activity in the waterway remains deeply depressed.

Two key things we must point out: first, the tanker is through; second, the tanker did not transit the Larak Channel, the northern passage through the critical waterway near Iran's Larak Island, close to Qeshm Island.

First Loaded LNG Tanker Clears Hormuz; First Crude Supertanker Attempts Exit

While all the attention has been focused on President Trump's national security team reviewing an Iranian peace deal that would end the two-month war and reopen the Hormuz chokepoint, while deferring nuclear negotiations to a later date, new vessel-tracking data show that the first loaded LNG tanker has exited the critical waterway since the conflict began, while the first loaded crude supertanker is also attempting to exit.

"The first LNG shipment since the war in Iran began two months ago appears to have slipped through Hormuz," Bloomberg's Stephen Stapczynski wrote in an overnight post on X.

Stapczynski also noted that the Mubaraz LNG tanker was loaded at ADNOC's Das Island facility in Abu Dhabi in early March and turned off its transponder around March 31, only reappearing west of India on Monday.

The latest ship-tracking data from Bloomberg shows that Mubaraz is approaching the southern tip of Sri Lanka, with the vessel signaling China as its port of call.

A separate report from Bloomberg's Weilun Soon identified yet another tanker, this time a Japan-linked supertanker loaded with crude, attempting to become the first crude-laden vessel to exit Hormuz since the war began.

The Idemitsu Maru, operated by the tanker unit of Japan's Idemitsu Kosan, left its holding position near Abu Dhabi late Monday and appears to be exiting the Hormuz chokepoint early Tuesday, according to Bloomberg ship-tracking data.

Both transits are significant. Taken together, they may indicate that a U.S.-Iran framework to end the war and reopen the critical waterway is nearing execution, or that countries such as China and Japan are beginning to see a pathway toward de-escalation.

The latest Polymarket odds of Hormuz traffic returning to normal by May 15 stand at around 15%.

//--> //--> Strait of Hormuz traffic returns to normal by May 15?
Yes 14% · No 86%
View full market & trade on Polymarket

Latest Hormuz flows via UBS:

Oil & gas tankers passing through Hormuz

Oil & gas tankers exiting Hormuz

All great news. 

Tyler Durden Tue, 04/28/2026 - 14:35

Four Nuclear Companies Selected For High-Speed Project Development

After the wild success experienced by multiple companies under the Department of Energy's Reactor Pilot Program (RPP) and Fuel Line Pilot Program (FLPP), four new fuel chain and reactor development companies have been selected under the Nuclear Energy Launch Pad (NELP).

JUST IN: @Energy’s @GovNuclear & @NRICnuclear announced the first developers selected for the newly established Nuclear Energy Launch Pad.⚛️

The initiative helps private #nuclear developers move their technologies from concept to commercial deployment. https://t.co/j3rQ0ngPSj

— Idaho National Lab (@INL) April 27, 2026

The NELP is the combined successor program to the RPP and the FLPP. The program provides “streamlined pathways for developers wanting to demonstrate advanced nuclear energy technologies and accelerate commercial deployment”. 

Some of the reactor developers under the RPP have gone from chalkboard to fully constructed microreactors preparing for going critical in just over a few months, leading to multiple other companies begging for ways to also harness the DOE’s lightning track. 

Four companies were selected under the initial round of NELP participants: General Matter, Radiant Nuclear, Deployable Energy, and NuCube Energy. NuCube is entering the program in partnership with Idaho State University. 

General Matter is the only non-reactor developer in the program. They are working to build out new uranium enrichment capacity in the country, amid the United States's current reliance on imports from countries like Russia and domestic production controlled by European nations. 

Radiant Nuclear is currently progressing a project under the RPP with this new effort under the NELP likely building on the project. After Radiant’s testing is done at the INL DOME, they will likely transition to a different location, either at INL or another DOE-controlled area, to deploy the next iteration of their Kaleidos reactor or work on a yet-to-be-announced design. 

Deployable Energy and NuCube Energy are some of the newer entries into the reactor development startup space. Both companies are working on microreactor designs for remote applications, military applications, and potential use for critical loads, including data centers. 

Deployable’s design is the Unity Nuclear Battery, a 1 MW high-temperature gas-cooled reactor. NuCube has yet to provide a lot of details as to what their "Deccacell" project is, but a previous filing with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission indicates it may be a heat pipe design similar to designs from Antares Nuclear and Westinghouse.
 

Tyler Durden Tue, 04/28/2026 - 14:00

Iran To Send Revised Proposal To US In 'Days' As 'Tank Tops' Loom, Trump Claims Iran "Informed Us They Are In State Of Collapse" Summary

• Trump TS claim: Tehran has informed Washington they are in a "state of collapse" and that the Iranians want the US to "open the Hormuz Strait" - as 'tank tops' loom.

• Trump doesn't appear open to Iran's proposal which hinges on US naval blockade ending & nuclear issue being pushed to future negotiations (CNN). Tehran working on revised plan to be sent in 'few days'.

• First crude-laden Japanese tanker from Saudi port exits Hormuz Strait successfully without Iranian interference.

• Iranian analyst describes that Tehran believes it can outlast Trump & the standoff with US in Hormuz, citing "munitions, markets, and the midterms."

//--> //--> //--> Will Donald Trump announce that the United States blockade of the Strait of Hormuz has been lifted by May 31, 2026?
Yes 66% · No 34%
View full market & trade on Polymarket

*  *  *

Revised Plan Coming in 'Next Few Days'

So at least there is some back-and-forth. Trump is said to have rejected an initial proposal from Iran, which centered on the US opening up the strait, but pushes the nuclear issue to future talks - and only after an end to the war. Tehran is reportedly revising, and is expected to submit a revised draft deal in the coming days. CNN has the latest in the following:

Mediators in Pakistan expect to receive a revised proposal from Iran in the next few days to end the war, after US President Donald Trump indicated that he would not accept an earlier version, sources close to the mediation process told CNN. The sources say Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Aragchi was due back in Tehran today after a visit to Russia, adding that he is expected to consult with regime leaders. That process is slow, the sources say, because of the difficulty in communicating with Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, whose location is being kept secret.

Currently there's much speculation and armchair quarterbacking regarding 'hardliners' vs 'moderates' in Iran and who is actually in charge, amid reports the IRGC doesn't want engagement with untrustworthy Washington at all. Meanwhile there's no question Iran is using the extended ceasefire interim to rearm and regroup militarily.

Trump claims Iranians in 'State of Collapse'

Literally one minute before market-open, and President Trump issues the following big claim: he says that Tehran has informed Washington they are in a "state of collapse" and that the Iranians want the US to "open the Hormuz Strait". Of course, even if it were true, why would the Iranians admit such a thing to their enemy during a state of war?

There have been some signs of political fracture - especially tensions between IRGC and civilian leadership - but so far the evidence has been anecdotal at best. Currently the internal Iranian government debate seems to be on whether to talk to the US or not - but again, amid the fog of war... all Western MSM can do is speculate, aside from the rare Iranian 'anonymous' source that might whisper in a reporter's ear.

Oil Rises to 3-week High as Trump Doesn't Appear Open To Iran Proposal

Reporting from Monday evening and overnight says President Trump doesn't appear open to Iran's latest proposal to end the war, which hinges on the US naval blockade being lifted but pushes the nuclear issue off to later negotiations. As a result, oil prices have continued to rise, climbing above $110 a barrel Tuesday morning - a first in three weeks, amid concerns of a prolonged strait closure. As for the latest tankers to actually make it through, CBS describes:

Four civilian ships appeared to leave the Persian Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday without Iranian interference, including a Japanese oil tanker carrying some two million barrels of crude from Saudi Arabia. 

The Panama-flagged crude oil tanker Idemitsu Maru called at Saudi Arabia's Juamyah industrial port in early March, according to open source data from the MarineTraffic ship tracking website. For the past week it had remained anchored off the coast of Abu Dhabi in the Persian Gulf, until late Monday, when it sailed toward Iran's Larak island in the Strait of Hormuz. 

On Tuesday morning, tracking data showed the vessel passing south of Iran's Larak island, which analysts say the regime had used as a "toll booth" to collect fees from some ships before military authorities declared the strait entirely closed again last week.  

The White House has insisted that there would be no scheme for Iran collecting tolls as part of any future deal, but the Iranians appear to be forcing the issue, and have said the funds will help with the country's reconstruction after the devastation wrought by US-Israeli bombing raids.

via Reuters Three M's

Independent news organization Drop Site says that Iran is now setting its own terms for ending the war as President Trump's narrative on negotiations flails. One Iranian analyst has said that Tehran believes it has the three M's on its side: "munitions, markets, and the midterms."

The report cites Hassan Ahmadian, a well-known Iranian analyst and associate professor at the University of Tehran, who explains: "The Iranians are saying time is working in our favor for the three Ms: munitions, markets, and the midterms. These three Ms help Iran in its position and weaken US positions."

"Obviously in the U.S., they want something to say, 'We squeezed Iran and we got this.' My perception is that the Iranians are keen to deny the United States that - they wouldn't give what Trump wants as a victory," he added.

A separate Iranian official, privy to negotiations and so remaining anonymous, stated: "We’re currently moving forward with our own design, and we feel continuing negotiations doesn’t make sense until the U.S. government lifts the maritime blockade."

"The scope of the conflict has expanded, and naturally the issue is no longer purely nuclear," the official added. Indeed, the latest proposal for ceasefire out of Tehran focuses on the US Navy ending its blockade, and leaves the nuclear issue for future consideration, given it has proven an impasse in the prior Islamabad talks.

But Washington as been asserting its own leverage:

New reporting from Bloomberg shows Iran has 22 more days of available storage.

“The Islamic Republic has enough unused storage capacity to last another 12 to 22 days, Kpler analysts wrote in a report Monday.”

But even more importantly, they highlighted the time horizon until…

— Brett Erickson (@BrettErickson28) April 28, 2026

'Tank Tops' Loom

President Trump explained - in his own inimitable manner - what we described last week: time is running out for Tehran... as oil blockade stalls the flow state of Iran's economy permanently... 

Trump told Fox News on Sunday that the US blockade on traffic to and from Iranian ports is putting major pressure on the country's export infrastructure: 

“When you have, you know, lines of vast amounts of oil pouring through your system, if for any reason that line is closed because you can’t continue to put it into containers or ships, which has happened to them — they have no ships because of the blockade — what happens is that line explodes from within, both mechanically and in the earth."

“It’s something that happens where it just explodes. And they say they only have about three days left before that happens. And when it explodes, you can never, regardless, you can never rebuild it the way it was.”

As Hugh Hendry noted, time is running out for Iran:

"Iran’s oil system is not built to pause. It’s built to flow. It’s a flow system.

Oil cannot simply sit in the ground while strategists argue over maps and how much uranium dust to give over. It has to move. Iran and its system has to move continuously from the rock underground to the tanker in the harbor to the Chinese buyer in Asia.

Pause long enough, and the whole machine breaks.

Interrupt that flow. And the problem isn’t just lost revenues of like forty, fifty, sixty billion dollars. It’s the least of your concerns. The problem is physical and is irreversible.

Because when you suddenly shut the well, remember there’s no physical storage. They pump, they load, they ship.

If they can’t load, if they can’t ship, they can’t pump. And when you suddenly shut the wells, the pressure underground drops fucking fast. 

Do you know what happens?

The heavy, sticky crap in the oil, it gums up, gums up in the tiny holes within the rocks and becomes like glue. It traps the oil. It makes it really fucking hard to extract. And once that damage is done, it’s permanent. You lose a big chunk of the oil. 

The more Iran is actively either through theater or through bluff, the more that it sits in a standoff, the more it is actively destroying the one thing that it actually depends upon. 

That’s the trap. And you’re not reading in in the press, but you’re damn well reading it on your screens.

Because this is where the gap between the narrative of the media and the price stops being subtle and irrelevant, and it’s why stock markets have priced something entirely differently.

The Iranian system, the adversary, cannot afford to stay disrupted without hurting itself. That's what's in the equity market's price."

We covered the timeline for 'tank tops' here in detail - less than 15 days before shut-ins begin.

Tehran Won't Talk Without JD Vance Present

The failed second round of Pakistan talks, which fell apart before they even began, was supposed to see Vice President JD Vance heading up the US side. This was reportedly something the Iranian side desired to see, and is likely still what its negotiating team would rather be dealing with. On the other hand, per Drop Site, "Iran has total disdain for Trump’s Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and views him as both oblivious of diplomatic processes and totally ignorant of technical issues."

This is because "Kushner is viewed by Iran as Israel’s man at the table." This has led to the following view and alleged conclusion: "Iran, the senior official said, does not see any reason to deal with these two without a figure like Vice President JD Vance present."

Bombs have grown quiet across the Gulf amid the extended ceasefire, with the exception that fighting in southern Lebanon still rages, despite the US-mediated 'Lebanon ceasefire':

⚡️Hezbollah publishes footage of them striking 2 Merkava tanks belonging to the Israeli army in southern Lebanon with FPV drones pic.twitter.com/daqtTEqA4q

— War Monitor (@WarMonitors) April 27, 2026

Last week as an avalanche of headlines said that a second round of talks were imminent, and after the Iranian foreign minister had already landed in Islamabad for bilateral discussions with Pakistani mediators, there were premature reports that Vance was en route to Islamabad. The mainstream media claimed that it was Iran essentially begging Washington for negotiations. "But Vance, it turned out, was not on a plane, and Iran continued to deny it had any intention of meeting with U.S. officials in Pakistan," Drop Site underscores.

Tyler Durden Tue, 04/28/2026 - 13:25

Tailing 7Y Auction Sees Lukewarm Foreign Demand, Jump In Direct Buyers

The week's final coupon auction per the truncated pre-FOMC schedule has come and gone, and like yesterday's 2Y and 5Y, was also mediocre at best.

The sale of $44BN in 7Y paper stopped at a high yield of 4.175%, down from 4.255% in March; and like the week's previous auctions, the 7Y also tailed the 4.170% When Issued by 0.5bps, which makes it 4 auctions that have not stopped through in a row.

The bid to cover was better, rising to 2.513 from 2.432; this was the highest bid to cover since last June, and obviously well above the 2.46 six auction average.

The internals, on the other hand, were softer, with Indirects awarded 58.35%, down from 62.35% and below the 61.28% recent average. And with Directs taking a surprisingly high 30.0%, up from 25.0% and the highest since December, Dealers were left with 11.6%, right on top of the recent average.

Overall, this was another medicore auction which in light of the recent move higher in rates could have been worse. 

As with the week's previous auctions there was no notable reaction to today's sale with markets far more focused on the price of oil and developments in Iran.

Tyler Durden Tue, 04/28/2026 - 13:20

Appeals Court Temporarily Allows Pentagon To Require Escorts For Reporters

Authored by Aldgra Fredly via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A U.S. appeals court on April 27 temporarily allowed the Department of War to require reporters entering Pentagon grounds to be escorted while the government appeals a lower court ruling.

The Pentagon is seen from a flight taking off from Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Arlington, Va., on Nov. 29, 2022. Alex Wong/Getty Images/TNS

In a 2–1 decision, a three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit stayed an April 9 order issued by U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman, which found the department’s revised press access policy violated his previous order by mandating escorts for reporters entering the Pentagon.

The panel said the department has shown that it is likely to succeed on the merits of its case. According to the ruling, the department argued that allowing journalists to enter the Pentagon unescorted could increase the risk of sensitive information being disseminated.

“The Department has thus supported its claim that this aspect of its policy furthers important national security interests,” the ruling stated.

Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell welcomed the appeals court’s decision and emphasized that journalists continue to hold valid press credentials and access to Pentagon briefings, press conferences, and interviews.

“Despite what many in the media have told you, the Department’s policy has never been about limiting journalism—it is about safeguarding classified information that protects American lives,” Parnell said on X.

The New York Times challenged the Pentagon’s rules in December 2025, arguing that its press access policy violated the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment by restricting journalists’ ability to “ask questions of government employees and gather information to report stories that take the public beyond official pronouncements.” Friedman subsequently blocked the rules and ordered the Pentagon to reinstate the credentials of New York Times reporters.

This story is developing and will be updated.

Tyler Durden Tue, 04/28/2026 - 13:00

Vegas Casino Stocks Hit A Cold Streak As Visitor Growth Muted

Las Vegas casino stocks have been largely mixed year to date on New York exchanges, as soaring costs for alcohol, parking, food, hotel rooms, bottled water, and other basic items have deterred cash-strapped visitors from the Strip.

Visitor volumes have been under pressure for more than a year, with Canadian travel down sharply in 2025. Major operators such as MGM and Caesars have reported revenue declines in Sin City, according to Bloomberg.

The latest data from the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority show that visitor volumes increased marginally by 2.1% in February, but this was from a depressed level, as foot traffic remains below late-2024 levels.

Foot-traffic data from Placer.ai indicate that quarterly visits across the top casino operators remain soft, with Las Vegas-exclusive Red Rock Resorts being the only one showing growth.

Vegas foot traffic is expected to remain muted this year: "I wouldn't expect a major upswing," Bloomberg Intelligence gaming and lodging senior analyst Brian Egger said.

Citizens analyst Jordan Bender noted that Vegas is more like a "vacation," with visitors going there "not necessarily to gamble more."

If "you just want a fun weekend for two days, it's not a bad place to go," Suter told clients.

We have detailed for years how unaffordable Vegas has become. Even MGM CEO William Hornbuckle acknowledged this reality on an October earnings call: "Whether it's the infamous bottle of water or Starbucks coffee at Excalibur that costs $12, shame on us."

Vegas must become affordable again - or risk yet another year of muted traffic, which would impact the local economy because the leisure and hospitality industry made up about a quarter of all jobs in the metro area.

 

Tyler Durden Tue, 04/28/2026 - 12:40

More Than 1,000 TSA Officers Have Quit Amid Shutdown

Authored by Troy Myers via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said Monday that more than 1,000 Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officers have left the agency since the partial shutdown began on Feb. 14.

An employee with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) checks the documents of a traveler at Reagan National Airport in Washington, Jan. 6, 2019. Joshua Roberts/Reuters

Amid the record-breaking lapse in funding, DHS said that with summer months approaching and the FIFA World Cup kicking off in June, impacts to travelers could be significant.

The department announced the drastic drop in staffing in a post on X, blaming Democrats in Congress for the prolonged shutdown.

“This loss has SIGNIFICANTLY decreased TSA’s ability to meet passenger demand and left critical gaps in staffing, as each new recruit requires 4-6 MONTHS of training,” DHS wrote.

Fliers at airports across the United States experienced hours-long security lines earlier in the spending lapse.

To ease travel pains, President Donald Trump on March 23 deployed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers to 14 U.S. airports.

“[The American public is] going through a big struggle right now, and we just put ICE in charge, and they’re helping TSA—the agents—and they’re working together so far very well,” Trump said at the time.

If longer wait times persisted, Trump pitched the idea of also deploying the National Guard.

Lauren Bis, acting assistant secretary for public affairs at DHS, told The Epoch Times that from the start of the shutdown through March 24, 450 TSA agents had quit. Thousands more were calling out sick and could not afford gas, childcare, food, or rent, she added.

“As Democrats continue to put the safety, reliability, and efficiency of our air travel system at risk, [President] Donald Trump is taking decisive action—deploying hundreds of ICE officers, already funded by Congress, to the airports under the greatest strain,” Bis said.

TSA acting Administrator Ha Nguyen McNeill told Congress on March 25 that airports might be forced to close if the partial shutdown continued.

“At this point, we have to look at all options on the table. We don’t have the luxury of picking and choosing how we maintain our operations,” McNeill told lawmakers.

“And that does require us to, at some point, make very difficult choices as to which airports we might try to keep open and which ones we might have to shut down as our callout rates increase.”

Only days after McNeil testified on Capitol Hill, Trump signed a presidential memorandum to pay TSA agents with DHS emergency funds.

More than 50,000 TSA employees had been working without pay for weeks.

Wait times at airports eased as TSA agents began receiving paychecks and backpay. Security lines that were taking multiple hours to pass through were down to 10 minutes or less.

But there’s still no long-term plan from Congress to fully fund DHS.

Republicans and Democrats are blaming each other for the spending standstill. An array of funding proposals have come from both sides, but none have successfully advanced.

GOP lawmakers are criticizing their counterparts for not passing their proposals, as Democrats demand a guaranteed overhaul of immigration operations in exchange for a funding agreement.

On March 27, the House passed a stopgap plan to fund DHS for 60 days. The bill was sent to the Senate, which had already left for a two-week recess.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin warned on April 21 that DHS will soon run out of its emergency funds to pay TSA if Congress cannot reach a deal. The money would run dry by the first week in May, he said in a “Fox and Friends” interview.

“My payroll at DHS is just over $1.6 billion every two weeks,” Mullin said. “There is no more emergency fund, so the president can’t do another executive order for us to use money, because there’s no more money there.”

The Senate, using the budget reconciliation process, advanced on April 23 a $70 billion funding plan for ICE and Customs and Border Protection through 2029. The process allows passage by a simple majority, bypassing the Senate’s 60-vote threshold.

If brought up by the House, the resolution would allow congressional committees to write detailed legislation on allocation of the funds, which would then require Trump’s signature to take effect.

Trump praised the Senate’s effort and urged Republicans to unify to achieve full funding for DHS.

Tyler Durden Tue, 04/28/2026 - 12:20

Top Fauci Advisor David Morens Charged In COVID Records Cover-Up: DOJ

With Pam Bondi out (related?), the U.S. Department of Justice announced today that it has indicted Dr. David M. Morens, a longtime senior advisor to former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci. The 78-year-old Morens faces charges including conspiracy against the United States, destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in federal investigations, concealment, removal, or mutilation of records, and aiding and abetting.

Dr. David Morens. Look at that criminal brow. 

According to the indictment, Morens allegedly used his personal Gmail account to evade Freedom of Information Act requests and worked with others to conceal communications related to COVID-19 research grants during the pandemic.

Fauci advisor David Morens admits in an email that he "learned from our foia lady here how to make emails disappear after i am foia'd but before the search starts" https://t.co/sn6hvwDF7R pic.twitter.com/1MroXRWNQO

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) April 28, 2026

Morens served as Senior Scientific Advisor in NIAID’s Office of the Director from 2006 through 2022 - advising senior leadership, including Fauci, on policy matters, infectious disease issues, and aspects of COVID-19 origins research. He also gathered information from grantees and the scientific community and helped prepare briefings for Fauci to use with the White House, Congress, and the public.

The Congressional Investigation

The indictment follows years of scrutiny by Congress. In June 2023, the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic began obtaining emails showing that Morens had been using his personal Gmail account for official government business specifically to avoid FOIA disclosures. Over the following months the subcommittee issued document requests and subpoenas, conducted transcribed interviews with Morens in December 2023 and January 2024, and ultimately obtained tens of thousands of additional pages from his personal email account in late April 2024.

As Paul Thacker of the DisInformation Chronicle noted in 2024, the subcommittee released a detailed staff memo and more than 150 pages of emails on May 22, 2024, documenting what it described as serious questions about potential wrongdoing and illegal activity by Morens. The emails included discussions of deleting records and routing sensitive communications through personal accounts.

Sen. Ron Johnson had raised similar concerns even earlier. In November 2023 he wrote to HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra and Inspector General Christi Grimm, stating that Morens’ actions may have directly obstructed congressional oversight efforts related to NIAID activities during the pandemic.

More than two years ago, my PSI staff discovered and made public emails in which Dr. David Morens bragged to colleagues about his efforts to avoid transparency by destroying federal records and using his personal email to communicate on “sensitive issues.”

Today, @OIGatHHS…

— Senator Ron Johnson (@SenRonJohnson) April 28, 2026

Key Emails

Two emails in particular have drawn significant attention. In a February 24, 2021 message to Peter Daszak of EcoHealth Alliance and Gerald Keusch, Morens wrote that he had learned from an NIH FOIA official “how to make emails disappear after I am FOIA’d but before the search starts, so I think we are all safe. Plus, I deleted most of those earlier emails after sending them to Gmail."

In an April 21, 2021 email to Daszak, Morens added: “PS, I forgot to say there is no worry about FOIAs. I can either send stuff to Tony on his private gmail, or hand it to him at work or at his house. He is too smart to let colleagues send him stuff that could cause trouble." (“Tony" refers to Anthony Fauci.)

These messages, along with others detailing coordination with EcoHealth Alliance after its NIH grant was terminated, formed a central part of the congressional record.

'Tie Your Shoe'

On May 22, 2024, Morens appeared for a public hearing before the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic. He faced questions from both Republican and Democratic members about the emails, his relationship with Daszak, and his role in efforts to restore EcoHealth’s terminated grant and shape public messaging around COVID-19 origins.

During the hearing, Morens was confronted with evidence that he:

• Edited compliance letters and press releases for EcoHealth Alliance
• Wrote to the EcoHealth board on Daszak’s behalf when the latter feared being fired
• Used personal email to route information to Fauci while attempting to avoid FOIA
• Discussed methods for deleting or hiding emails after FOIA requests had been filed

As Paul Thacker writes: 

Reading back to Morens passages from his own emails and prior congressional testimony, Chairman Brad Wenstrup forced Morens to confirm that he had conspired with EcoHealth Alliance’s Peter Daszak to restore Daszak’s NIH grant. Morens admitted that he edited a compliance letter Daszak sent to the NIH, edited an EcoHealth Alliance press release after NIH terminated Daszak’s grant, and “put in a word” to the EcoHealth Alliance board when Daszak was worried about being fired.

Ranking Member Raul Ruiz berated Morens at several points, saying his actions were a “stain on the legacy” of the NIH and his colleagues. After Wenstrup banged down his gavel to end the hearing, Morens remained seated and was approached by his lawyer, white collar crime attorney Timothy Belevetz.

Leaning into his client’s ear, Belevetz whispered, “Before you get up, tie your shoe.”

Today’s DOJ Indictment

The indictment alleges that after NIH terminated EcoHealth Alliance’s grant Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence — which included a subaward to the Wuhan Institute of Virology — Morens and unnamed co-conspirators conspired to help restore the grant and counter the lab-leak narrative. The charges further claim that Morens used his personal Gmail account to hide these communications from public view and that he received illegal gratuities, including wine delivered to his home, in connection with official acts favorable to EcoHealth.

Maximum penalties if convicted:

• Conspiracy against the United States: up to 5 years in prison
• Destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in federal investigations: up to 20 years per count
• Concealment, removal, or mutilation of records: up to 3 years per count

An indictment is not a finding of guilt. All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

Timeline of Key Events

• 2020–2021: Key emails written regarding FOIA avoidance, back-channel communications, and coordination with EcoHealth Alliance
• June 2023: House Select Subcommittee begins obtaining Morens’ personal emails
• October 2023: Morens subpoenaed for documents
• November 2023: Sen. Ron Johnson raises concerns with HHS leadership about potential obstruction of oversight
• December 2023 and January 2024: Morens gives transcribed interviews to the subcommittee
• April 2024: Additional subpoena issued; Morens produces roughly 30,000 pages of emails
• May 22, 2024: Public hearing held and staff memo plus 155 pages of emails released
• June 3, 2024: Dr. Anthony Fauci testifies before the subcommittee
• April 28, 2026: Department of Justice indicts David Morens

Broader Context: The Offshoring of Risky U.S. Research

In 2014, the Obama administration imposed a pause on federal funding for certain gain-of-function research on pathogens such as influenza, SARS, and MERS viruses, citing serious biosafety concerns following several laboratory incidents. The moratorium was lifted in 2017, but by then much of the work had effectively moved overseas. EcoHealth Alliance, led by Peter Daszak, continued receiving millions in NIH grants for bat coronavirus research - with a significant portion funneled through subawards to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in Wuhan, China.

Related: 

• CIA Met With Ralph Baric In 2015 To Discuss "Coronavirus Evolution And Possible Human Adaptation": Emails
   
• Is This The Man Who Created COVID-19 In Fauci's US Lab?

At the same time, University of North Carolina virologist Ralph Baric - one of the world’s leading experts on coronaviruses - had been collaborating closely with WIV scientists, including Shi Zhengli, in work described in a 2018 DEFUSE funding proposal (that was rejected by DARPA) to create an aerosolized bat covid that could infect humans. Baric’s lab created “humanized mice” expressing the human ACE2 receptor and engineered chimeric viruses to study how bat coronaviruses could jump to humans. Much of this high-risk work, which had previously been conducted on U.S. soil, was effectively transferred to the WIV - located in the very city where COVID-19 first emerged. 

Details of the DEFUSE project were first leaked by Major Joseph Murphy, an employee of US military research agency DARPA, in the summer of 2021 and further details of earlier drafts have come to light this month thanks to public record requests from U.S. Right to Know (USRTK).

In DEFUSE, Baric proposed to create a virus that was, to most intents and purposes, SARS-CoV-2. The proposal included inserting a furin cleavage site into a coronavirus spike protein, an order for the restrictive enzyme BsmBI, the search for a binding domain that would infect ACE2 human receptors and a requirement for a viral genome around 25% different to SARS.

One down (until Boasberg knights him), many to go.

Tyler Durden Tue, 04/28/2026 - 12:00

A Nation Divided: The Chilling Embrace Of Political Violence In The US

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

We are seeing increasing support for violent action across social media, including those lamenting that the recent presidential assassination was not successful. Conservative sites have been featuring teachers and others who were upset that the recent effort failed, including one who has now lost her job. The current violence and violent rhetoric have been building for years as our leaders fuel the rage in the nation.

One poll by the University of Virginia Center for Politics found that 52 percent of Biden supporters say Republicans are now a threat to American life, while 47 percent of Trump supporters say the same about Democrats. Among Biden supporters, 41 percent believed violence is justified “to stop [Republicans] from achieving their goals.” An almost identical percentage, 38 percent, of Trump supporters embraced violence to stop Democrats.

The support for violence has been growing. One prior poll shows a quarter of Americans supporting political violence.

An earlier survey from the Baker Center at Georgetown University also captured the growing divide among Americans on this 250th anniversary year of our revolution. The public’s distrust of the media, democracy, and each other appears to be growing as one out of seven Americans now embraces political violence.

That survey also showed the continuing drop in support for the media. As the mainstream media continues to show the same bias and advocacy journalism that has been alienating many citizens, roughly half (49%) of the public has little or no confidence in the press. Roughly the same percentage believes that the press favors the Democrats in its coverage. The percentage with great confidence in the media is now just 18%.

One of the most chilling aspects of the survey is the drop in faith in each other and in democracy. A shocking 57% believe that members of the opposite party are a somewhat or very serious “threat to the U.S. and its people.” Only 69% say that democracy is “preferable to any other kind of government.”

The drop in support of democracy is particularly concerning with almost 10% of the public saying that political violence is “sometimes” warranted and 5% say that individual acts of political violence are “often” or “very often” justified.

With the third attempted assassination of President Donald Trump, the survey suggests and a sizable number of Americans may share the views of Cole Allen that even murder is now a legitimate, even righteous, response to political opponents.

The New York Times recently ran a podcast in which radical Hasan Piker, the New York Times Opinion Culture Editor Nadja Spiegelman, and New Yorker writer Jia Tolentino captured the moral relativism that has taken hold of the left in American society. They cheerfully described the rationale for everything from “microlooting” to murder.

In response to the latest assassination attempt, Hakeem Jeffries declared, “I don’t give a damn” about criticism over his reckless rhetoric. That is hardly surprising for a politician whose favorite political prop appears to be a baseball bat, but it shows how politicians hope to ride this rage wave back into power. For Jeffries, rage may be the ticket to becoming the next Speaker of the House of Representatives.

The sad fact is that violent rhetoric works in an age of rage. Virginia Democratic gubernatorial nominee Abigail Spanberger  called upon her supporters to “Let your rage fuel you.” She then refused to withdraw her support for the Democratic candidate for Attorney General, Jay Jones, who once expressed his desire to kill his political opponents and his children.

It is the combination of this rising moral relativism with the failing faith in our system that represents an existential threat to our Republic. We will be facing unprecedented economic and social challenges in this decade. We have a system that is designed for such changes.

In my book, Rage and the Republic” I discuss what I view as a crisis of faith in our values and ourselves.

When Michel Guillaume Jean de Crèvecoeur asked, “What then is the new American, this new man?” he was a Frenchman. Later, the author, cartographer, farmer, and diplomat would adopt a new name as John Hector St. John as well as a new identity: an American farmer. ,,, What was so striking about Letters from an American Farmer was the fourth word: American. At a time when most people still identified with their states as Georgians or Virginians, Crèvecoeur wrote as one of a new people known as Americans…

The greatest challenge of this century may be a rediscovery of that essential character that seemed so clear to these early writers when they first came upon our shores. Call it a crisis of faith or a confusion of the times, but many seem unsure whether we represent something beyond the totality of our wealth or power. We were much more than that when we first assumed the moniker of Americans. The question, is what we are now? Or, perhaps more pointedly, what do we aspire to be in this new century?

Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the New York Times best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”

Tyler Durden Tue, 04/28/2026 - 11:40

BOJ Keeps Rates On Hold In Rare 6-3 Vote Split As It Warns Of Looming Stagflation

In the first G5 central bank announcement of the week, overnight the Bank of Japan held its benchmark interest rate in a 6-3 vote, despite forecasting a sharp rise in inflation as the war in the Middle East sends commodity prices higher and clouds the global economic outlook while testing Japan's given its exposure to rising energy prices.

While the decision on Tuesday to keep rates at about 0.75% was in line with market expectations, it came via a rare six-to-three vote split of the Monetary Policy Committee, the biggest divergence of opinion under governor Kazuo Ueda, and since the launch of the bank’s negative interest rate policy in 2016.

The three dissenters called for an immediate rate increase to 1%, reflecting fears that the BoJ is at risk of falling even further behind the curve by postponing rate increases as it seeks to “normalise” monetary policy at a time when Japan's inflation is dangerously overheating due to sharp wage increases in recent years. 

After the BOJ announcement, traders were convinced that rates will rise after the next meeting in June.

Speaking at a press conference later on Tuesday that was widely interpreted as hawkish, Ueda said the central bank would make appropriate decisions “so that we do not fall behind the curve”, yet even now he refused to outline a formal timeframe for the BoJ to decide whether conditions were right to raise rates.

“Given the high level of uncertainty around the conflict in the Middle East, the likelihood of achieving our forecasts has declined,” said Ueda. 

He added that the central bank “wants to spend a little more time scrutinizing how the Middle East conflict affects the economy and prices, and whether the risk to growth and inflation could change”.

While two of the three dissenters, Naoki Tamura and Hajime Takata, are known hawks who have voted against the governor at previous meetings, analysts noted the addition of the more dovish Junko Nakagawa.

“Three dissenting votes is not a huge surprise, but Nakagawa being one of them is,” said JPMorgan senior Japan economist Benjamin Shatil. “The Board is sending a clear signal that it is ready for a June rate hike. Whether global conditions have settled sufficiently and tacit government approval is in place by then is another question.”

In the BoJ’s stagflationary outlook statement, the bank warned that Japan’s economic growth was likely to slow in the current fiscal year; at the same time it also significantly raised its inflation forecast over the same period.

The committee said core CPI was expected to reach 2.8% for the current fiscal year ending in March 2027, up sharply from its previous forecast of 1.9% issued just three months ago. 

“The rise in crude oil prices reflecting the impact of the situation in the Middle East is expected to push down corporate profits and households’ real income,” the BoJ said.

The statement added that the risks to economic activity were “skewed to the downside and risks to prices are skewed to the upside”. In other words, a classical staglationary setup. 

Japan is particularly vulnerable to energy shocks from the crisis in the Gulf. The country is heavily reliant on imported energy, and sources more than 90% of its crude from the Middle East.

The BoJ was the first of five major central banks making rate decisions this week, with the Fed, the European Central Bank, the Bank of England and Bank of Canada all expected to follow its lead and keep rates on hold as they asses the war-related risk of prolonged inflation.

Marcel Thieliant, head of Asia-Pacific at Capital Economics, underlined the BoJ’s upward revision of inflation forecasts, including that inflation will average 2.2% in fiscal 2028.

“Barring a renewed escalation in the Middle East, the bank will probably lift its policy rate again at its next meeting in June,” he wrote in a note to clients.

Goldman's Akira Otani said that July is still his base-case scenario for the next rate hike. "However, uncertainty over the timing of the rate hike is high. While it could come earlier than July depending on inflationary pressures, we would expect it to be pushed back from July to H2 if the Japanese economy were to fall into a recession through factors like a deterioration in the terms of trade."

"Even if tensions in the Middle East were to stabilize, we believe a July rate hike is more likely than a June one. Uncertainty over crude oil production and transportation in the Middle East will remain high for the time being and the impact remains uncertain even in a de-escalation scenario. Under such circumstances, and with no signs of groundwork being laid with the government for a rate hike, data and information showing the Japanese economy is unlikely to suffer a significant negative impact and is likely to achieve moderate growth will become more important, in our view. Therefore, while the possibility of a June rate hike cannot be ruled out, we see no need to change our base-case scenario of a July rate hike."

The BoJ’s hawkish statement pushed the yen higher against the US dollar, before the Japanese currency weakened back to around ¥159.62, and was lower on the day. The widely watched Nikkei 225 Average, which surged to an all-time high of 60,537 points on Monday, shed 1%, while the Topix, which has a heavier weighting of banks and financial companies, was up 1%. 

Tyler Durden Tue, 04/28/2026 - 11:25

US Energy Chief Says Hormuz Can Reopen Without Clearing All Mines, Warns Iran Shut-ins Could Be Devastating

US Energy Secretary Chris Wright said that not all mines placed by Iran in the Strait of Hormuz need to removed for ships to resume transiting the vital passageway: “You just need a pathway for ships to be moved in and out,” Wright said in an interview on the sidelines of the Three Seas Summit and Business Forum in Dubrovnik. “I think that can happen quickly” he added suggesting that a restart can happen far sooner than the full demining timeline. Fully clearing the strait of mines could take six months, a Pentagon official said during a classified Congressional briefing last week, the Washington Post reported.

Iran has said it laid mines along the most frequently used routes of the narrow waterway, which has been effectively closed since February 28, and through which roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil and gas transited before the US and Israel launched a war on the Islamic Republic.

Understandably, shipping companies have been highly reluctant to attempt to navigate Hormuz, fearing seizure, mines, and a lack of other safety guarantees.

The longer the Strait of Hormuz is shut the longer a historic energy disruption will continue. In the US, a surge in pump prices comes months before President Donald Trump’s Republican party faces midterm elections.

Wright also said the US plans to announce “historic” pipeline agreements that will lead to increases in the amount of US oil and natural gas Europe imports as part of the Trump “Peace Pipeline Agenda.”

Last but not least, the US energy secretary repeated verbatim what we said over the weekend, when we pointed out that a prolonged shut in would be devastating to Iran's oil reservoirs as over half of them are low pressure "putting them at risk for permanent loss after shut-ins, via near-wellbore water emulsions, clay swelling, and water blockages."

Most Gulf reservoirs have medium pressure, but over half of Iran's have very low pressure, putting them at risk for permanent loss after shut-ins, via near-wellbore water emulsions, clay swelling, and water blockages(chart Rystad/Goldman). https://t.co/I1duGf7s1R pic.twitter.com/9kIoKzDT6g

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) April 25, 2026

Fast forward to this morning, when Wright told Bloomberg TV that "Iran does not have a lot of oil storage capacity and its old reservoirs are not suitable if the country decides to shut down production." That's because “they’ve got old reservoirs that are low pressure, which means it’s much more destructive if they have to shut in their production."

With Iran having about 10-15 days before hitting tank tops (depending on how many tankers they use for storage), we'll find out in a few weeks if he is right. 

 

Tyler Durden Tue, 04/28/2026 - 11:05

Collateral Damage

By Molly Schwartz, Cross-ASset Macro Strategist at Rabobank

Negotiations between the US and Iran are going nowhere. In fact, they’re not really even happening at all. Over the weekend, Axios reported that Iran gave the US a proposal to reopen the Strait — not to end the war. The proposal includes extending the ceasefire and an assertion that any conversations about Iran’s nuclear program are off the table until the Strait is open and the US blockade is lifted. The US has not indicated whether it will accept or reject the proposal at the time of writing.

Assuming the US does agree to extend its indefinite ceasefire, a flimsy ceasefire extension, even if agreed to by both parties, holds little water. Remember, keeping the Strait open was a condition of the current ceasefire as agreed to on April 8, and we can all see how well that held up. Just take a look at the prices at the pump.

While conversations between the US and Iran stall, Iran is making friends elsewhere. Iranian Foreign Minister Araghchi met with Putin yesterday, as Bloomberg reported that Araghchi told Putin he is “committed to strengthening the country’s partnership with Russia” and that “the Iranian people are able to ‘resist US aggression and will be able to overcome it.’”

As Iran and Russia are making nice, the US and Germany are not. During a visit to a school in western Germany, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said that the Trump Administration was being “humiliated” by Iran: “The Iranians are clearly stronger than expected and the Americans clearly have no truly convincing strategy in the negotiations either. A whole nation is being humiliated by the Iranian leadership.” Trump has not commented on Merz’ claims at the time of writing.

The longer the Strait remains closed, the longer the European economy, and energy complex, is squeezed. Germany has rejected Trump’s calls to join the war under NATO, despite German leaders softly echoing support of US military efforts. Europe has drafted a plan to re-open the Strait after the war has ended, that is not enough to appease Trump, who has made his demands for NATO participation in the Iran war clear. But the question remains just how much collateral damage Europe is willing to be subject to in the pursuit of keeping its hands clean.

Europe’s reliance on energy from the Middle East and direct flows through the Strait of Hormuz suggest that they are in for more pain than the US under a prolonged closure. At the same time, they don’t have a fanatic obduracy to tolerate it like the Iran (or rather, the IRGC at the expense of the Iranian people). If negotiations fail to result in a somewhat peaceful re-opening of the Strait and conclusion of the US naval blockade, Europe may have no choice but to get involved.

It’s probable that the Trump Administration is aware of this. Trump has lambasted European leaders for refusing to support the US and in some cases, outright refusing to cooperate. If the US keeps the Strait closed and inflicts enough second-hand damage on Europe, Trump may be able to achieve the NATO military “cooperation” he has been asking for.

Crude oil futures have continued to grind higher, trading up to highs of $109/bbl yesterday. Futures prices have started to converge with the physical market, which is currently pricing crude at $113/bbl, narrowing the spread from highs of $35.9 earlier this month to only $4, which would be more consistent with levels seen pre-war.

Meanwhile, the Fed drama saga continues. The path to Warsh’s confirmation as Fed chair seems to have cleared as the US Department of Justice (DOJ) has dropped its criminal probe into Powell with regard to the Federal Reserve’s renovation budget. However, whether Powell will stay on the Board is not yet certain. While Powell’s term as Chair ends in May, he is allowed to stay on the Board of Governors until January 2028.

Despite it being a highly popular question from reporters during the Fed decision press conference, Powell had been tight lipped about his plans for a while, until confirming more recently that he would stay on the Board until the DOJ investigation levied against him was concluded.

However, while the DOJ has dismissed the case, that doesn’t mean that Powell’s troubles are over. Rather, this means that the case has now landed on the desk of the Fed’s Office of Inspector General (OIG), though according to the Fed’s own article about the renovation, the OIG has had full access to all financial records and information throughout the duration of the project.

Given the dropped charges against Powell, that has opened up Senator Thom Tillis to vote to officially confirm Warsh as Fed Chair. Whether or not the Fed meeting tomorrow will be Powell’s last is still TBD. Read more from our Fed whisperer, Philip Marey, here.

A little farther north, Canadian Prime Minister, Mark Carney, announced the creation of a Canadian sovereign wealth fund, called the “Canada Strong Fund.” The fund is designed to further lower barriers to business and investment in Canada—something the Carney has spoken about extensively as a part of his mission—by “investing in strategic Canadian projects and companies.”

A more financially-savvy Canadian government does not come without drawbacks. Carney has recently come under scrutiny by some after his ethics disclosure, which has led some to question the dissonance in Carney’s insistence that Canada needs to diversify away from the US, while he himself is heavily invested there.

Tyler Durden Tue, 04/28/2026 - 10:15