Supreme Court Chief Justice Pauses Block On White House Ballroom Construction

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts on Aug. 21 said the Trump administration can proceed with construction of a new White House ballroom.

Roberts, in a brief order, paused the preliminary injunction that had been entered by a U.S. district judge and upheld by a federal appeals court.

The lower court order “is hereby stayed pending further order of The Chief Justice or of the Court,” Roberts said, granting an appeal from the Trump administration.

Construction of the planned 90,000-square-foot ballroom began in 2025. Its cost has been pegged at $400 million, with financing coming from private donors.

Judge Richard Leon of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in March entered the preliminary injunction against construction of the ballroom.

Leon said that there are no laws that give the president the authority to build the ballroom and that construction must stop until Congress authorized the ballroom’s completion, even if private funds are being used for the work. Leon later clarified that the block was for above-ground construction.

A panel of judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of ​Columbia Circuit in April temporarily halted Leon’s injunction as it considered the case.

A majority of the panel on Aug. 7 reinstated the injunction. The majority said that “whether or not a massive ballroom should be constructed is for Congress to decide and is not a matter for Executive self-help” and that Congress had not ceded “unfettered authority” to the president to dramatically alter the White House.

That prompted the government’s appeal to the Supreme Court.

U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer said in the emergency application to the court that a quick decision was imperative because the injunction would halt work that was “vitally required by national security.”

Officials have also said that a completed ballroom would host crucial diplomatic functions and that construction delays give foreign countries more time to gather intelligence on the White House complex.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation, which filed the case, told Roberts that a removal of the injunction would cause irreparable harm because the ballroom will be substantially finished soon absent an injunction, and be virtually impossible to deconstruct once completed, citing administration statements.

“The injuries to the National Trust, its members, and the public from the unauthorized construction of the ballroom—catalogued by Petitioners’ own Environmental Assessment and already found to be irreparable by the lower courts—will in all likelihood become irreversible,” it said in a filing.

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/21/2026 - 18:25

The Push To Bring Back Recess Time In Public Schools

Authored by Aaron Gifford via The Epoch Times,

Spencer Taylor describes his high school experience as a dark time, rife with detentions, suspensions, and over-medicated peers who acted up because they, too, couldn't sit still in class all day.

New students tour Nora Sterry Elementary School in Los Angeles on Jan. 15, 2025. There is a nationwide push to bring back or increase recess time for public school students. (Chris Delmas/AFP via Getty Images

"You would have maybe five minutes to go out and see the sun," the Michigan native recalled. "We just needed to run around. We just needed to get all our energy out. ... I barely graduated."

Fifteen years later, Taylor released a documentary about a similar problem affecting millions of U.S. students, "The Death of Recess."

He researched laws and policies across the nation and visited schools across several U.S. states and Europe. He snuck into a national teachers union annual meeting to understand why so many competing interests continually overshadow conversations about school recess time.

"There's no voice that represents the parents and students," Taylor said during a June panel discussion hosted by The Heritage Foundation in Washington. "Everybody's trying to get a hold of those valuable minutes of the kids being in the classroom because they view that - they all view it - as social engineering."

The film, released earlier this year, coincides with a nationwide push to bring back or increase recess time for public school students based on research citing higher academic achievement and improved mental health in children who attend schools with more free play time between blocks of instruction.

Thirteen states now have laws requiring recess periods until at least middle school, while 12 states have passed legislation mandating minimum "physical activity" minutes per week that can include recess and physical education class.

In May, the American Academy of Pediatrics updated its guidance on school recess, calling for multiple 20-minute breaks per day. A new parent organization, Say Yes to Recess, is lobbying policymakers and elected leaders across the nation.

"The issue has created this momentum," Debra Lawrence, president of the U.S. affiliate of the International Play Association, told The Epoch Times. "Parents are talking."

A student studies in a classroom in Nevitt Elementary School in Phoenix on Oct. 26, 2022. Research suggests higher academic achievement and improved mental health in children who attend schools with more free play time between blocks of instruction. Olivier Touron/AFP via Getty Images Policy

In December 2025, Johns Hopkins University published a policy guide for advancing recess in school laws.

Its model legislation calls for at least 20 minutes of daily recess for grades K through 8 and mandates that schools cannot withhold recess from children as a disciplinary measure. There should also be enforcement and accountability measures, it says, along with an explanation of how districts and states will monitor the requirement.

The Department of Health and Human Services recommends at least 60 minutes of daily physical activity for children aged 6 to 17, regardless of whether that's at school, at home, or elsewhere, while the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advises that the 20 minutes of daily elementary school recess should be supplemented by regular physical education classes, the policy report states.

Lawrence said there should be a clear national standard for recess, preferably outdoor unstructured play, covering kindergarten through 12th grade. Twenty minutes a day for elementary school children, she added, isn't much if that includes the time students take to put on jackets and boots, get in line, and make their way out of the building.

Her organization recommends up to 15 minutes of outdoor recess time for every 45 minutes of instruction, a longstanding practice in Finland.

Short-term memory breaks are needed for information to be absorbed into the brain, while long-term memory develops with proper sleep.

"Their little brains need a break," she said.

Students run and play on the playground at Freedom Preparatory Academy in Provo, Utah, on Sept. 10, 2020. In May, the American Academy of Pediatrics updated its guidance on school recess, calling for multiple 20-minute breaks per day. George Frey/AFP via Getty Images State Legislation

South Carolina is the latest state to mandate recess. Its law, which was signed in June and takes effect this academic year, requires 20 minutes of unstructured outdoor recess time for pre-K through eighth grade in addition to 90 minutes of physical education class per week.

Illinois, Kentucky, Texas, Tennessee, Vermont, and Virginia enacted school recess-related laws last year. California, Connecticut, and Washington state enacted laws in 2024.

In Kansas earlier this year, Gov. Laura Kelly vetoed legislation that would have required 30 minutes of daily recess for elementary school students. Similar legislation in Oregon and Utah failed, but passed in Oklahoma.

New York state legislators are still considering a measure providing 30 minutes of daily recess to K-6 students. It also prohibits school leaders from withholding recess for disciplinary reasons.

Ohio state House Reps. Tom Young and Melanie Miller have introduced legislation calling for 30 minutes of morning and 30 minutes of afternoon recess for students through eighth grade. Gov. Mike DeWine supports the measure.

"Developing healthy habits can help every Ohioan reach their God-given potential," he said of the proposal during his March 10 state of the state address.

Students leave P.S. 234 after their first day of school in Astoria, New York City on Sept. 4, 2014. New York state legislators are still considering a measure providing 30 minutes of daily recess to students in grades K-6. Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times Parent Organizations

The Say Yes to Recess group was formed by three mothers in early 2025, after a local push for more outdoor time for kids in Tennessee resulted in only a 10-minute increase.

After successfully pushing a state mandate in the Volunteer State, the organization launched a national movement for 60 minutes of unstructured play. It now has chapters in 18 states. Additional chapters in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Utah are expected in the coming months, according to its website.

Kathryn Truman, one of the group's founders, said Say Yes to Recess prevailed in Tennessee because it found practical solutions without extending the length of the school day to accommodate more recess time while still complying with state curriculum mandates.

"Some instructional time requirements were recommendations rather than state mandates," Truman told The Epoch Times. "This distinction created opportunities for schools to reorganize their schedules and prioritize recess without lengthening the school day."

Read the rest here...

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/21/2026 - 17:40

Former Alabama Basketball Player Wins Defamation Suit Against NY Times

Authored by Aldgra Fredly via The Epoch Times,

An Alabama jury ruled on Aug. 20 that The New York Times defamed ex-college basketball player Kai Spears when the newspaper falsely reported in 2023 that he was present during a fatal shooting in Tuscaloosa.

Kai Spears #32 of the Alabama Crimson Tide dribbles the ball during a practice session at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Ariz., on April 5, 2024. Christian Petersen/Getty Images

Spears, who was then a walk-on basketball player for the University of Alabama's Crimson Tide, filed a defamation suit against the newspaper in May 2023 after it falsely reported that he was one of the passengers in a car involved in the Jan. 15, 2023, shooting that killed 23-year-old mother Jamea Harris.

After a nine-day trial, the eight-person jury in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama sided with Spears and awarded him $9.25 million in damages.

Spears's attorney Matt Glover welcomed the ruling in a statement, saying he believed it would help improve journalism across the country.

Charlie Stadtlander, a spokesperson for the NY Times, said the company was disappointed by the jury's decision to hold it liable for he called "an honest mistake" and will review its legal options.

"We thank the jury for its service, but believe the verdict and award of damages are contrary to law and not supported by the evidence," the spokesperson said in a statement.

The case stemmed from a 2023 article that identified Spears as being present during the shooting, citing an anonymous source.

Spears said in his complaint that the newspaper's false reporting had affected his education and his ability to advance in basketball. He also said the false statements would permanently associate him with the murder.

The newspaper later issued an editor's note, saying that its article "misidentified the person who was in the car with Brandon Miller when the shooting occurred" and that it regretted the error.

"Based on information from a person familiar with the case, the article erroneously identified that person as Kai Spears, a freshman basketball player. After the article was initially published, Alabama's athletic director and Spears's father denied that Spears was present," the editor's note said.

The newspaper "included those responses and reviewed its reporting, but did not conclude that any other change to the article was warranted at that time," it added.

The New York Times headquarters in New York City on Dec. 7, 2009. Mario Tama/Getty Images

The newspaper said its editors assigned further reporting after Spears filed the suit, which "determined that the other person at the scene was not Spears."

A NY Times article reporting on the verdict Thursday said the newspaper "had not lost a defamation lawsuit brought in the United States over one of its articles in more than 50 years."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/21/2026 - 17:00

Trump To Flood US With 300,000 Tons Of Tariff-Free Ground Beef To Tame Prices Ahead Of Midterms

With 74 days remaining until the midterm elections and average retail ground-beef prices hovering near $7 per pound, President Trump said in a Truth Social post Friday morning that his administration will temporarily waive certain tariffs on ground-beef imports. The move follows our Monday report highlighting signs that consumers are balking at record beef prices, with demand destruction beginning to surface against a backdrop of household stress, including Walmart sales that missed estimates and dismal July retail-sales data.

"Today, I concluded a deal to substantially lower the price of ground beef for working American families. As everyone knows, under President Biden, beef prices soared at their fastest rate and the American beef herd fell to its smallest size in modern history," Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Trump continued, "As we work to rebuild this herd and help our ranchers, for the next 90 days, the United States will allow up to 300,000 metric tons of product for ground beef to be imported with no out-of-quota tariff."

He concluded, "We have a commitment that this beef will be sold at 25 percent below current market prices. This deal will reduce prices for Americans while giving space for our Great American Beef Herd to grow again."

The temporary import waiver appears intended to address affordability concerns in supermarket aisles ahead of the midterm elections.

Because the relief is temporary, the longer-term supply backdrop remains challenging. Bank of America analysts recently cited Oklahoma State University agricultural economist Derrell Peel, who warned that the US cattle cycle is unlikely to improve anytime soon and that beef prices are poised to remain elevated through at least next year.

Data from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) show that the national average price of ground beef in supermarkets is hovering just below $7 per pound, a record high, as a prolonged cattle shortage shows no signs of abating anytime soon.

New data from Chicago-based market research company Circana, first published by Bloomberg on Monday, show that beef sales volumes declined .3% during the 13 weeks through mid-July. Volumes had risen about 5% during the same period in each of the previous two years. The decline is notable because it occurred during the peak grilling season around Memorial Day and July Fourth. Translation: demand destruction.

Source: Bloomberg

Read:

• When Will The Cattle Cycle Turn? BofA Has Answers For Beef Lovers

With the cattle cycle likely to take several years to rebound properly, we recently outlined the one overlooked protein that is far cheaper than beef (read here).

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/21/2026 - 16:40

Remember The Names

Authored by James Howard Kunstler,

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

- El Gato Malo on Substack

An eerie quiet masks the panic rising among the many players in the long-running train of crimes carried out under color-of-law against the people of this country that goes roughly under the clunky name of The Grand Conspiracy. What is Joe DiGenova up to, exactly, in the Southern District of Florida, with its several grand juries grinding away? Indictments will fly, for sure, but then who will flip on whom? It won’t take a whole lot of flippers to seal many fates in this skein of sedition and treason. The tension must be terrible for them.

The question has long been: how do you even begin to organize a set of coherent cases around this roaring avalanche of nefarious acts that got bigger with each successive attempt at cover-up?

Let’s see if we can block out a panoramic picture of potential prosecutions.

The gigantic mess must be separated into packets.

It’s probably best to begin with the FBI’s “Midyear Exam” op of 2016 - the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server. You can bet that the server contained evidence of HRC’s two seminal crimes that kicked things off: 1) the transfer of US military technology to Russia’s Skolkovo high-tech hub and payments from seventeen companies involved coincidentally received by the Clinton Foundation when she was Sec’y of State; and 2) the “Uranium One” deal transferring US-owned nuke material to Russia (via Canada) that required a State Dept signoff by HRC — coincident with husband Bill receiving a half-million dollar “lecture fee” from a Russian bank. Players involved in Midyear Exam: Comey, Strzok, McCabe, Page, then-AG Loretta Lynch.

That potential embarrassment of this sketchy business was simply squashed by Lynch and Comey, while HRC took care to physically destroy the server and devices linked to it. But it also prompted the creation of the Russian collusion prank against then-candidate Donald Trump, (“Crossfire Hurricane”) to distract attention from all that. . . which turned into the huge RussiaGate operation that marshaled the FBI, the CIA, the Senate Intel Committee, and offices deep in the Pentagon to put over a gigantic hoax. It was green-lighted by President Barack Obama and organized by CIA-Director John Brennan, with FBI Director Comey and DNI James Clapper. Supporting players (potential defendants) include Susan Rice, Sally Yates, Veep Joe Biden (or “Joe Biden”), then White House aide Lisa Monaco, and CIA agent Eric Ciaramella (who wrote the actual Intel Community Assessment that jump-started the op). McCabe, Stzrok, Page, Ohr (and wife, Nellie), Rosenstein, and many FBI agents are potential defendants. Also Gina Haspel, CIA London station chief, who coordinated with the UK’s MI6 agent, Christopher Steele of the Steele Dossier. Throw in DOD-sponsored spook Stefan Halper and FBI liaison in London, Alan Kohler. After May, 2017, Christopher Wray was responsible for all FBI mischief and FISA Court irregularities (along with FISA Judge James Boasberg).

The Mueller Investigation was a subset of RussiaGate, but deserves its own case packet. It was an attempt to legitimize the RussiaGate hoax, and to keep the news media fed with innuendo. In effect it was a hoax unto itself, consumed $32-million, and ran nearly two years. It produced exactly nothing in evidence that President Trump had “colluded” with Russia about anything. Since Robert Mueller was mentally incapacitated, the investigation was run by subordinates, Aaron Zebley, Andrew Weissmann. Attorneys Jeanie Rhee, Elizabeth Prelogar, Brandon Van Grack and others. It was a fraud on the public and probably an obstruction of justice.

Impeachment No. 1 (the Ukraine phone call impeachment) was an entirely false operation cooked up by lawfare ninja Norm Eisen in collusion with Reps. Jerrold Nadler and Adam Schiff, with assistance from CIA agent (“whistleblower”) Eric Ciaramella and NSC member Lt. Col. Alex Vindman, with a boost from then-IC Inspector General Michael Atkinson. Eisen later admitted on a video that the aim of the impeachment was to “prebunk” Veep “Joe Biden’s” bribery and grift activities in Ukraine as the Democratic party prepared to run him for president in 2020. Ciaramella had accompanied Veep “Joe Biden” on several trips to Ukraine and knew what “JB” was up to there. Indict them all for sedition and treason.

The 2020 election op was pulled off in coordination with the Covid-1 scam that positioned the nation for massive mail-in ballot fraud, which was coordinated by lawfare ninja Marc Elias, then employed by the Democratic Party law firm Perkins Coie. Elias was assisted by Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook, now Meta), whose nonprofit, Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), distributed over $400-million to roughly 2500 election districts around the country, much of it used to pay select officials who would count and report mail-in ballots. The mail-in ballot fraud had been planned and gamed-out previously by the non-profit org Transition Integrity Project, run by Rosa Brooks and Nils Gilman.

In October 2020, fifty-one former intel officials signed a public letter denouncing the Hunter Biden laptop as having “the earmarks of Russian disinformation.” The letter was organized by Antony Blinken and former CIA-Director Michael Morrell. It was done in coordination with a social media campaign to suppress public knowledge of the laptop (and the Biden family record of international grift inside it) to influence the presidential election a month later. Potential fraud indictments.

The Jan 6 riot at the US Capitol has never been adequately investigated. FBI Director Wray was allowed to evade answering to Congress about the number of FBI agents and associated employees (including CIA personnel) that were mixed in with the crowd to provoke the intrusion inside the building and related violence. Speaker Nancy Pelosi engineered the situation so that the certification of electoral vote slates would not be challenged as procedure allowed. Sedition and Treason.

The Jan 6 Congressional Committee was a fraud on the American people put together by Speaker Nancy Pelosi to coverup her involvement in the crimes behind the Jan 6 Capitol riot. The members involved likely enjoy Congressional immunity for the spectacle itself, but perhaps not for destroying all the evidence that was collected in the course of the investigation. Chairman Bennie G. Thompson was responsible for that.

The Mar-a-Lago raid of August 2022 was authorized by Attorney General Merrick Garland and carried out by FBI Director Wray with Assistant Director Steven D’Antuono. Three months later, Garland appointed Jack Smith Special Counsel to oversee the Mar-a-Lago documents case, which he botched, resulting in its dismissal two years later. The raid itself arguably lacked probable cause and was based on an improper scope of evidence sought. Indict Merrick Garland under 18 U.S.C. § 241, conspiracy against rights.

The lawfare operations of 2023-2024 in several jurisdictions resulted in indictments against candidate Donald Trump and others in Fulton County, GA, and New York City. The Fulton County case under DA Fani Willis (later disqualified for “the appearance of impropriety”) was assisted by the “Joe Biden” White House, possibly by attorneys Richard Sauber and Beth Mueller in the WH Counsel’s Office, giving it the odor of a purely political prosecution. In the the Stormy Daniels hush money case against Donald Trump brought by Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, DOJ officer Matthew Colangelo left his cushy position as Principal Deputy Associate US Attorney General to take a job assisting DA Bragg in the NYC court. Colangelo delivered the opening statement at the 2024 trial and played a central role in the prosecution. The trial was presided over by political judge Juan Merchan. Just days ago, The New York Times reported that the Democratic Party fundraising company, Authentic Campaigns, previously owned by Judge Merchan’s daughter, Loren Merchan, has been under investigation the past year. Anybody detect the odor of politics? Malicious prosecution, improper judicial conduct.

Many of the political celebrities mentioned above, and probably many not-so-well-known players, must be freaking out as the waves ominously pound the beach and the summer days tick down toward the ill winds of fall. I’m pretty sure that readers and commentors can add some candidates to the list of potential indictments, and perhaps some ops I might have overlooked. (The entire odious Covid-19 affair is partly a separate matter, but that has also commenced a new phase with the guilty plea deal announced days ago by Dr. Fauci’s chief advisor, Dr. David Morens.) Even former President Obama looks boxed-in. He enjoys immunity from actions he took as president, but that immunity prevents him from hiding behind the fifth amendment as a now-private citizen in a court of law.

Things are livening up.

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/21/2026 - 16:20

ICE Arrests 5 Suspected Child Predators In Undercover Operation

Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times,

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested five suspected child predators during an operation in Omaha, Nebraska, between Aug. 12 and 14, the agency said in an Aug. 20 statement.

(L–R) Bryan Dady, Jocsan Aparicio Santos, Logan Trigg, Law Eh, and Tillian Hutton were arrested for suspected sexual crimes against children in Omaha, Nebraska, between Aug. 12 and 14. Courtesy of ICE

The undercover operation was carried out by ICE's Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Omaha unit together with state and local partners. Among the five arrested and charged, three had prior convictions for sexual crimes against children and were also listed on sex offender registries, the agency said.

If convicted on the new charges, these three individuals could face enhanced penalties, likely adding 10 more years to any sentence.

ICE said the HSI is "delivering on President Trump and Secretary Mullin's mandate to protect America's children."

More than 5,000 child predators and human traffickers have been arrested since President Donald Trump took office in January 2025, according to an Aug. 18 White House statement.

Trump has backed law enforcement agencies and empowered the Federal Bureau of Investigation to "hunt predators instead of political targets," the White House said.

In its recent statement, ICE said that one of the arrested individuals, Bryan Dady, 48, a U.S. citizen, has been listed in Nebraska's sex offender registry for a 2023 conviction for enticing a 9-year-old girl. The person was also arrested in January this year on new charges alleging the grooming and enticement of a 13-year-old.

Another individual, Jocsan Aparicio Santos, 39, a Mexican citizen with lawful permanent residency in the United States, is currently on a sex offender registry for a 2010 conviction linked to assaulting a 15-year-old girl.

A third individual, Logan Trigg, 29, an American citizen, is also on a sex offender registry for a conviction related to sexually assaulting a 13-year-old girl.

The fourth person, Law Eh, 39, a naturalized American from Burma, also known as Myanmar, was charged with possessing files containing child sexual abuse material, while the fifth, Tillian Hutton, 25, another U.S. citizen, is facing charges of sex trafficking children.

ICE Homeland Security Investigations logo. Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times

All five suspects intended to engage in sexual acts with children, according to ICE.

"These cases are not hypothetical; they show a real demand for the sexual exploitation of children in our community," HSI Kansas City Special Agent in Charge Rick Sabatini said in the statement.

"They show why law enforcement must continue to identify and disrupt offenders before they have the opportunity to harm a child."

According to ICE, the HSI Omaha Metro Juvenile Sex Trafficking Task Force has obtained 21 federal convictions for sex trafficking children since 2021.

The Epoch Times reached out to the public attorneys representing the charged individuals but did not receive any response by publication time.

Child Trafficking, Exploitation

According to data from the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, it received more than 113,500 reports of potential child sex trafficking last year, a 323 percent increase from 2024.

A child can be trafficked by family members, strangers, and gangs. In some cases, exploitation of children may not involve any trafficking. Instead, the children may be offered food, money, or shelter in exchange for sexual engagement.

Some of the risk factors of child trafficking include intergenerational sexual abuse, low self-esteem, substance abuse, gang activity, and developmental or physical disabilities, the center said.

Legislative actions have been taken to address the issue of child exploitation. On June 10, Trump signed the Secure America Act into law, which contained a provision to combat child exploitation.

The provision provided the Department of Homeland Security with $108.5 million to hire 200 new child exploitation investigators and analysts, according to a June 9 statement from the office of Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who introduced the provision.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) in Washington on Sept. 21, 2021. Ken Cedeno/Getty Images

Before the legislation was in place, Homeland Security employed seven full-time specialists to identify child exploitation victims, the statement said.

"That's two hundred new law enforcement officers to find and rescue kids trafficked by predators and a new initiative to coordinate local, state, and federal enforcement," Hawley said in the statement. "This is the biggest surge against online child exploitation ever by the federal government. It's time to rescue these kids."

Members of the U.S. Marshals’ Missing Child Unit during "Operation Never Forgotten 2021" in Atlanta, Georgia. Courtesy of Shane T. McCoy/U.S. Marshals

In an unrelated operation, the U.S. Marshals Service said on Aug. 10 that 48 missing children from Massachusetts were rescued during a multi-agency operation tied to the FIFA World Cup.

The agency said the rescued children were between 12 and 17 years old. Several of them were found outside state borders after investigators tracked leads across the country and to multiple states. The children have since been reunited with their families or referred to child welfare and victim services, the service said.

In another major operation conducted in April, Operation Iron Pursuit, the FBI targeted alleged child exploitation predators across the United States. The effort led to the rescue of more than 200 child victims and the arrests of more than 350 individuals, the FBI said in a May 15 statement.

An earlier effort, the two-week Operation Relentless Justice conducted in December, resulted in 205 child victims being located and 293 alleged offenders being arrested.

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/21/2026 - 15:45

Saylor's Strategy Treasury Back To Breakeven As Crypto Rips, StanChart Says $100k Bitcoin Year-End Call May Be 'Too Low'

Markets are reminding investors that volatility has two sides in digital assets.

As Standard Chartered's crypto guru, Geoffrey Kendrick, begins his latest note, we’ve been used to (earlier in 2026) prices falling sharply.

Now we are starting to see (only starting) what happens when prices rise sharply.

So far this week, Kendrick notes that we have mostly seen liquidation of short positions, as chart (source: Coinglass).

In fact if I look at the full history on Coinglass, this is the largest liquidation of BTC shorts ever (data back to June 2021)...

The good thing is that for long term investors BTC is a Giffin good (people want to buy more when prices go up).

As a result, ETF inflows have begun too... A little bounce, and the crowd rushes in:

Bitcoin biggest ETF inflows since May...

Ether biggest ETF inflows since January...

But, if we zoom out on ETFs, Kendrick says this pick up is small/just getting started.

At roughly USD1.5bn in inflows so far this week, this is good.

History shows that at some stage we will get a daily inflow of more than USD1bn (perhaps today).

The next point to note is that because crypto has lagged AI all year, open interest is very low.

As prices rise, interest in the asset class will rise too.

All of which leads to Kendrick's big line.

In a Feb. 12 report, Kendrick cut Standard Chartered’s year-end Bitcoin target to $100,000 from $150,000 and its Ether target to $4,000 from $7,500. At the time, he expected Bitcoin to fall to around $50,000 and Ether to $1,400 before recovering during the rest of the year.

Today, he write: “For the first time this year there is now a risk my end year forecast (of USD100k) is too low."

He is not alone.

As CoinTelegraph reports, other industry watchers have also pointed to signs that the bear market may be nearing an end.

Swan Bitcoin CEO Cory Klippsten said Bitcoin may bottom in October, while 10x Research founder Markus Thielen said an August close above $63,000 could confirm a bear-market bottom.

New BTC buy wall sits below $68,000

CoinTelegraph goes on to note that amid misgivings over the durability of Bitcoin’s volatile upside move, analysis from onchain analytics platform Glassnode revealed a new safety net forming below $70,000.

Some 3.44 million BTC now have an onchain cost basis, also known as realized price, between $58,000 and $67,000. Of this, 2.23 million BTC - equal to around 11% of the total supply - was added over the past 11 weeks.

“It’s the densest cost-basis cluster below spot — a key potential support zone on any retracement,” Glassnode cofounder Rafael Schultze-Kraft commented on X.

Bitcoin UTXO realized price distribution data. Source: Rafael Schultze-Kraft on X.com

BTC/USD broke through several key resistance levels this week, including its 200-day simple moving average (SMA) at $68,967, a key target to reclaim to end the long-term BTC price downtrend.

Furthermore, Bitcoin's 20% surge in the last three days saw it reclaim a key level for Strategy, the world’s largest corporate Bitcoin treasury company.

Data from monitoring resource BitcoinTreasuries puts the cost basis for Strategy’s holdings of 840,447 BTC at $75,385, currently with a year-to-date gain of approximately $450 million.

As Cointelegraph reported, between Aug. 3 and Aug. 9, Strategy opted to sell a small portion of its treasury worth 1,690 BTC to repurchase 1.15 million shares of its STRC preferred stock for $108.6 million. The move represented the company’s fourth Bitcoin sale of 2026.

Concerns over the long-term viability of the company’s Bitcoin investment thesis accompanied the sales, something that the subsequent BTC price run-up should help alleviate, independent crypto analyst William Clemente suggested.

“Not only should Saylor/Strategy fears have been abated for a while once he showed that he was willing to sell BTC to rebuy STRC, but now after this price impulse they are even more over-collateralized by their BTC holdings,” he wrote on X, referring to former CEO Michael Saylor.

In an interview with Fox News earlier in August, current CEO Phong Le stated that Strategy would return to buying Bitcoin before the end of the year.

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/21/2026 - 14:45

Biden Adviser Warned Fauci, CDC Director Cloth Masks Didn't Work Well: Text

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

A doctor who advised President Joe Biden on COVID-19 warned Dr. Anthony Fauci and other top Biden administration officials in a newly disclosed text message that wearing cloth masks provided “very limited protection.”

Dr. Michael Osterholm, who was part of Biden’s COVID-19 transition advisory team, told Fauci and other officials, including the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention at the time, in August 2021, that the government needed to encourage the wearing of N-95 masks, rather than masking in general.

“Note the very limited protection from face cloth coverings,” Osterholm said in the text. He said that he supported masking, “but we must be promoting the use of N-95s, even if not fit tested.”

The CDC recommended masking in 2020 after the COVID-19 pandemic started, prompting mask mandates in schools and other places. The agency promoted cloth masks, in addition to better quality face coverings, citing research it published in its quasi-journal.

Osterholm, the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, leading up to the 2021 text said publicly that cloth masks provided limited benefits and that he favored N-95s.

After Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis threatened to withhold funds from schools that forced masking on children, a reporter during a White House press briefing on Aug. 6, 2021, referenced Osterholm’s comments.

Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary at the time, noted that Osterholm was no longer a government adviser. She said the Biden administration was relying on medical experts in the federal government for masking. The issue with DeSantis, she added, was that the governor was “preventing schools and teachers and others from protecting themselves and the students in their classroom.”

Osterholm reacted by composing a message to Fauci, then-CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky, and several others.

“I’m sending this via text messaging to avoid any FOIA issues,” he wrote on Aug. 8, 2021, referring to the Freedom of Information Act.

A former Fauci adviser just pleaded guilty to the federal crime of defrauding the government by destroying and conspiring to destroy federal records subject to the act, which lets people request government records.

Osterholm, in his message, pointed to a fact sheet from the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists that said with cloth masks, people had little protection against COVID-19.

He told the administration officials that “none of the studies that CDC uses to support its statement as to the significant protection of face cloth coverings stand up to scientific scrutiny” and urged them to “strongly promote” N-95s to the public.

“I am certain one day that one of the take-away findings of this pandemic was the constant [government] emphasis on masking while at the same time providing minimal guidance to the public what effective masking means,” he said.

The message was obtained by The Epoch Times from Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who acquired it from the Department of Health and Human Services, the CDC’s parent agency. The record was produced in response to Grassley’s requests for documents related to the origins of COVID-19, a spokeswoman said.

Osterholm, Walensky, and Fauci did not respond to requests for comment by the time of publication.

Walensky through 2022 advised schools to keep mask mandates in place. Many states and districts throughout that year rolled back masking requirements. The CDC says on its website now that wearing a mask “offers you an extra layer of protection from respiratory illness” and that “cloth masks generally offer lower levels of protection to wearers.”

Ian Miller, author of “Unmasked: The Global Failure of COVID Mask Mandates,” wrote on X that the newly disclosed message showed that top experts “knew that cloth masks didn’t work and were already failing to stop or even slow transmission and they kept demanding more mask mandates and forced school and toddler masking anyway.”

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/21/2026 - 14:05

FERC Approves SPP "Topology Optimization" Plan For Cutting Grid Congestion

By Ethan Howland of UtilityDive

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Wednesday approved the Southwest Power Pool’s proposal for using “topology optimization” to reduce grid congestion and its related costs.

Traditionally, grid operators respond to grid congestion by redispatching power plants, which can lead to higher production and congestion costs, SPP said in its May 21 proposal to FERC.

However, with grid-enhancing technologies, grid operators can use topology reconfiguration to change power flows as a less expensive way to handle congestion, according to SPP, which runs the grid in all or part of 17 states from north Texas to North Dakota.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Aug. 19, 2026, approved the Southwest Power Pool’s proposal for using “topology optimization” to reduce grid congestion, which could cut down on the amount of wind generation the grid operator curtails. Getty Images

Under SPP’s plan, market participants will be able to submit proposals for reconfigurations due to power plant outages or grid constraints, or the grid operator itself may offer a reconfiguration, according to SPP’s application at FERC.

SPP will analyze the potential reconfigurations to determine if the wholesale market as a whole will benefit from the reconfiguration, the grid operator said. SPP will also assess the reconfiguration’s effect on grid reliability before approving a change.

A study conducted by NewGrid, SPP and the Brattle Group found that historical system operating limit violations could be eliminated for 75% of the constraints that were analyzed, with potential congestion cost savings of $18 million to $44 million a year, the grid operator said.

In its application, SPP pointed to the Midcontinent Independent System Operator’s success with economic topology reconfiguration, which MISO started using in 2024. So far this year, MISO has saved $95 million through economic reconfigurations, according to an Aug. 18 staff presentation to the grid operator’s Reliability Subcommittee.

SPP’s plan was developed through its stakeholder process and supported at FERC by Advanced Energy United, the Working for Advanced Transmission Technologies Coalition, and a joint filing by Evergy, Enel North America and EDF Power Solutions.

SPP’s congestion costs averaged $1.6 billion a year over the last three years, Evergy, Enel and EDF noted, citing the grid operator’s market monitor’s most recent state of the market report.

Also, SPP averaged 1,382 MW of curtailed wind and solar resources throughout 2025, “representing cost increases for consumers and creating reliability risk due to potential generation shortfalls,” the companies said.

“Reconfigurations reliably reroute electric flow around congestion by opening or closing circuit breakers, and has afforded millions of dollars in congestion savings across MISO and SPP,” they said, adding that SPP already uses topology reconfigurations to manage reliability issues.

In separate concurring statements, FERC commissioners Judy Chang and David Rosner urged other grid operators to adopt topology optimization as a means for better managing power flows, including during extreme weather conditions.

“It is an example of the type of advanced transmission technologies that can readily help the U.S. power system quickly integrate more load and generation while reducing costs to all consumers,” Chang said.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas is set to implement a topology optimization mechanism early next year, SPP noted.

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/21/2026 - 13:25

 

 

There has been a lot of discussion about the impact of AI slop on writing and other creative works. I can’t speak to AI music or AI-created actors, but I can talk a bit about writing.

To me, the biggest single issue is output over process.

Any output – from a full-length book to a short blurb and everything in between – is only part of what the writer who creates a work accomplishes. It is what readers see, what professional writers get paid for, and the written legacy they leave behind.

The greatest value in writing (to me at least) is not necessarily this finished product, but rather, the process the author goes through to create that work. Putting a word down on paper or pixels forces a coherence and clarity that is typically unavailable until the writing is done. Perhaps the best observation on this predates AI by decades and comes from former Librarian of Congress Daniel Boorstin, who said, “I write to figure out what I think…”1

The written word is the most visible work product, but it is not the valuable part of writing – the process is…

Boorstin viewed the act of writing not merely as a regurgitation of what they knew, but rather as an exploratory process, a mechanism for thinking about ideas, context, framing, secondary effects, unintended consequences, inversions, and what-ifs. The process allows an author to strengthen and clarify their arguments and to formulate complex ideas.

I could spill another 10,000 words on this, but after 30 years of writing countless blog posts, it is not necessary. I have already figured out what I think about this.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

__________

The quote in full reads, “I write to discover what I think. After all, the bars aren’t open that early.”

The post The Written Word Is Not Your Work Product appeared first on The Big Picture.

Woman Charged In ISIS-Inspired Plot To Bomb NY State Capitol

Authored by Jill McLaughlin via The Epoch Times,

FBI agents foiled an alleged ISIS-inspired bomb plot on the New York State Capitol on Aug. 19 that they say was concocted by a local woman who had pledged allegiance to the terrorist group earlier this year.

Jessica Bowie, 35, was captured by surveillance while doing reconnaissance on the New York Capitol in an undated photo. U.S. Department of Justice

Jessica Bowie, 35, of Albany, New York, was formally charged on Aug. 20 with attempting to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization, the U.S. Department of Justice announced.

The FBI discovered and stopped the alleged plot, which included a plan to kill state senators and destroy the building, the statement said.

“As alleged, Bowie plotted to deploy an explosive device at the New York State Capitol, intending to kill public officials and to destroy ‘as much of the building as possible’ before fleeing to ISIS‑controlled territory in Syria,” Assistant Attorney General for National Security John A. Eisenberg said in a statement.

The New York State Capitol, built between 1867 and 1899, houses the governor’s office, the state Legislature, and the famous Million Dollar Staircase.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said on X that she was grateful the FBI and the New York State Police made the arrest. The state strengthened security at the Capitol and across the government after a rise in violence and threats against public officials this year, she said.

“While there is no immediate threat at this time, we will continue working closely with our law enforcement partners to protect New Yorkers and keep our communities safe,” Hochul said in her post.

FBI Special Agent Joshua Parker, assigned to the Joint Terrorism Task Force in Albany, detailed the investigation into Bowie’s alleged plans in the court complaint.

Bowie converted to Islam about five years ago and adopted the Islamic name “Aisha Saif,” Parker said.

She also used social media to spread anti-American messages using a dozen profiles, he said.

Jessica Bowie is seen on store surveillance buying items that authorities say were meant to build an explosive device. U.S. Department of Justice

Between May and July, prosecutors said several of her accounts praised Allah for the 9/11 terrorist attack in New York in 2001 and allegedly also said she wanted to poison infidels. She also allegedly relayed other messages supporting terrorism, according to the FBI.

On May 28, Bowie posted messages indicating she had pledged allegiance to the ISIS terrorist group and to people who engage in jihad, which can mean “violence” when used by the terrorist organization and its members, according to Parker.

Authorities allege Bowie planned the attack on the New York State Capitol from about July 16 to Aug. 17.

An FBI confidential source posing as an ISIS facilitator spoke with Bowie through a messaging app, according to the complaint. Bowie allegedly discussed her plans to attack the building in Albany over the next two weeks.

On July 16, an FBI source acting as an ISIS facilitator asked Bowie about her views, and she allegedly told him “jihad is an obligation until the day of judgment.”

That same day, Bowie allegedly asked for help on another social media platform to carry out the attack and later described the location as the state Capitol.

Parker said Bowie also mentioned she wanted to fly to Syria to join other ISIS-controlled territories.

Bowie then pledged her allegiance to the leader of ISIS on July 17 and surveilled the Capitol, walking around the building on five occasions between July 21 and Aug. 9, according to court documents.

Messages sent later suggested Bowie allegedly wanted to destroy as much of the building as possible and kill state senators while they were meeting. Investigators say she also wanted to destroy a lot of important documents.

The New York Capitol in Albany on June 20, 2023. Hans Pennink/AP Photo

Investigators recorded Bowie at a home improvement store where she allegedly purchased about $200 worth of items to create a bomb on Aug. 5.

FBI informants met again with Bowie in a car on Aug. 19 when they say she told them she was ready to carry out the attack.

“Bowie also told [a paid FBI informant] that she went from a little girl waving an American flag after 9/11 to now having stickers of the fallen towers,” Parker wrote in the complaint.

She left the meeting with a firearm, magazine, and ammunition, and a fake explosive device in her bag. She was arrested by the FBI as she exited the car, according to the complaint.

The complaint says Bowie told FBI agents after her arrest, “There’s no helping me, you guys know enough, there’s no helping me, I’m … going to prison for the rest of my life.”

Bowie remains in federal custody at the Schenectady County Jail and was not reachable for comment.

She faces a maximum of 20 years in federal prison, a fine of up to $250,000, and a lifetime term of supervised release if convicted.

Her lawyers at the Federal Public Defender’s Office in the Northern District of New York didn’t immediately return a request for comment.

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/21/2026 - 12:45

Situational Flipping: Citadel Has Dumped Almost All Of The Stocks It Acquired From Leopold Aschenbrenner

After the market learned in late July that Leopold Aschenbrenner's Situational Awareness hedge fund had blown up under too much Total Return Swap and option leverage (as we had warned a month earlier would happen), the next big question facing investors was: how long would Citadel keep the positions it bought from Leopold (at a huge market and transactional discount - recall Citadel only agreed to purchase the public book at a 10% discount off what was already a badly beaten down price), and would Ken Griffen prove to be as firm a believer in the AI theme as the prior, 24-some year old owner of stocks such as Bloom Energy, Sandisk, Micron, Taiwan Semi and Nebius.

We got the answer from Griffin himself earlier today when the Citadel CEO said in a letter to investors that Citadel has sold most, or more than 80%, of the portfolio it took on from buying the majority of Situational Awareness’s stock bets last month after the AI-focused hedge fund was nearly toppled by the recent tech sell-off.

“To date, we have successfully shed more than 80% of the aggregate risk from the original portfolio" Ken Griffin wrote in the letter that rushed to make it clear he has zero intentions of holding the extremely volatile memory and other chip stocks longer than was absolutely necessary. 

Ken Griffin to his investors in a letter, three weeks after buying Leopold Aschenbrenner’s portfolio:

"We have now successfully shed more than 80% of the aggregate risk from the original portfolio. We completed nearly 100 block trades totaling over $4 billion"

this is CNBC on… https://t.co/WyBAMvd9tG pic.twitter.com/dK7llJOdUP

— bodila (@51bodila) August 21, 2026

Griffin also said that he has "completed nearly 100 block trades totaling over $4b in market value ” adding that the trades included the “largest intraday block trades of the year.”

Why block trades? Because as Leopold's liquidation demonstrated, the only reason why his stocks exploded as high as they did, is because they are abysmally illiquid and Situational Awareness - with the help of lots of leverage - ended up being the only size buyer of his own stocks! Of course, we all saw what happened when it then flipped to size seller, much to Ken Griffin's delight.”

Which was only possible because the stocks in his portfolio were catastrophically illiquid

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 14, 2026

“Over our nearly thirty-six-year history, we have prided ourselves on being front-footed and proactive during periods of market dislocation,” Griffin wrote in the letter.

Said otherwise, after making several billions dollar in profit on Leopold's momentum darling liquidation, Citadel is now almost fully out, and has largely closed the trade, leaving other momo chasers to re-engage with what Griffin clearly did not view as "value stocks."

“A transaction of this magnitude could not have been completed without the extraordinary cooperation of the trading and prime brokerage teams at the banks serving both firms,” Griffin wrote in the Friday letter to clients. “I am grateful for the focused effort they brought to the rapid transfer of the portfolio.

Citadel’s Wellington fund finished up the month 5.94%, YTD up 12%, with half of the YTD upside thanks to Leopold's distressed liquidation. Most of Citadel's rivals lost money in July.

Citadel’s sudden, last minute swoop for the Situational Awareness stock portfolio marked one of the largest rescue deals in Wall Street history, and a dramatic episode in a rollercoaster period for equities as investors rushed into stocks linked to AI before being gripped by anxiety that the boom in the sector was overblown, as the FT put it. The weeks-long sell-off of tech stocks in July spurred widespread pain on Wall Street. Situational Awareness, the hedge fund run by 24-year-old OpenAI alumnus Leopold Aschenbrenner, emerged as its biggest casualty.

Aschenbrenner, who was fired by OpenAI, boasted extensive connections in Silicon Valley and was hailed by some as a prodigy and the “Nostradamus of AI”.

As he faced losses in July’s sell-off, Aschenbrenner first tried to raise additional funds through individual asset sales, but then pivoted to selling the majority of his stock holdings to Griffin’s firm in a deal that was pulled together in just 24 hours.

Citadel purchased the positions at a roughly 10 per cent discount, the FT has previously reported, betting that it could afford to hold the stocks until the market steadied. Shares of Situational Awareness’s biggest holdings, including chipmakers Sandisk and Micron, quickly recovered, giving Griffin a window to turn a rapid profit.

Griffin's rescue was also a self-fulfilling prophecy. Griffin’s agreement to buy Aschenbrenner’s stock book stymied fears of more forced selling on Wall Street, which helped to boost share prices across the tech industry. Ironically, the very same boost that was sparked by confidence that the selling was now over, is what allowed Griffin to quietly unwind the same stocks he had acquired, for billions in profit.

Griffin rarely writes letters to investors. His message this week was a testament to the extraordinary nature of the rapid deal he cut with Situational Awareness last month.

“Over our nearly thirty-six-year history, we have prided ourselves on being front-footed and proactive during periods of market dislocation,” Griffin wrote. The firm’s flagship fund was up 6 per cent in July, while many of its rivals lost money or were relatively flat.

“Only Citadel could have delivered a solution of this scale on this timeline,” he added.

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/21/2026 - 12:25

Trump Tells Michael Cohen "They Weaponized You" In Radio Interview, Praises His Recanting

Authored by Emel Akan via The Epoch Times,

President Donald Trump appeared on Michael Cohen’s radio show and commended his former attorney for recanting his previous statements.

Their conversation marked a surprising thaw years after their relationship collapsed amid public feuds and legal battles. Part of the interview with Cohen’s show “When You Know, You Know” aired on 770 WABC Radio at 6 p.m. Thursday. The rest will be released on Aug. 23.

“They weaponized you. They weaponized a lot of people,” Trump told Cohen. “I respect the fact that you recanted everything you said, and that’s a big thing that you did.”

“You’re going to go down as a man of courage, great courage, because you did something that a lot of people wouldn’t have the guts to do,” Trump told Cohen.

“I guarantee your family greatly respects what you did.”

This was Cohen’s first public conversation with Trump in eight years.

Cohen shared a Substack article that served as a recollection of the public feud the two had, which included Cohen’s testifying against Trump in his New York City criminal trial in 2024. Cohen served as one of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office’s star witnesses, alleging the president was involved in a plan to pay off a former adult film actress, Stormy Daniels, during his 2016 campaign.

“Eight years of silence. Hundreds of thousands of headlines. Fifteen years of history fractured in an instant, and somehow, against almost every expectation, here we are,” Cohen wrote.

Ever since he announced that Trump would appear on his radio show, Cohen stated that his inbox became a “digital battlefield.”

“It has been flooded with hatred, anger, disbelief, and some of the most spectacularly vicious things imaginable,” Cohen wrote.

In 2018, Cohen was sentenced to three years in federal prison after pleading guilty to campaign finance violations, tax evasion, bank fraud, and lying to Congress. He completed his sentence and supervision requirements in November 2021.

Speaking to Politico on Aug. 19, Cohen answered a question about whether he would seek a presidential pardon.

“We’ll see,” he said in response. “Will I make that request down the road? I don’t know. Maybe, maybe not.”

Trump, who was convicted in a jury trial on 34 counts of falsifying business records, denied the charges against him and pleaded not guilty. He has long said that the Manhattan district attorney’s case and cases that were brought against him in Georgia, Washington, and Florida were a “political witch hunt.”

The judge who oversaw the case, Juan Merchan, sentenced Trump to an unconditional discharge in January 2025, about two months after Trump won reelection.

In his first term, Trump often criticized Cohen in response to claims his former lawyer made about him, writing on X in 2018, “If anyone is looking for a good lawyer, I would strongly suggest that you don’t retain the services of Michael Cohen!”

During the interview with Cohen, Trump also talked about the economy, Venezuela, and the Iran conflict.

He said that if he ran again, “I think I’d win by 25 points.”

“The economy has never been stronger,” the president said.

Regarding Iran, Trump said, “It’s not easy to make a deal” with the regime.

“Nobody knows who’s leading,” he said.

Trump also defended his military decisions, telling Cohen, “I would have done it again a hundred times.”

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/21/2026 - 12:05

ActBlue Co-Founder Invokes the Fifth Amendment As House Fraud Probe Widens

ActBlue co-founder Matt DeBergalis sat before the Committee on House Administration, the House Oversight Committee, and the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday and declined to answer a single substantive question during a closed-door deposition that reportedly lasted less than half an hour. DeBergalis invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and left. DeBergalis joins a growing list of ActBlue executives who have chosen silence over testimony as Republicans dig into whether the Democratic Party's primary fundraising platform let foreign money slip into American campaigns.

ActBlue has raised roughly $20 billion for Democratic candidates and liberal causes since its founding.

House Administration Committee Chairman Bryan Steil opened the Committee's investigation into ActBlue in 2023. The original complaint centered on a simple but significant security gap: ActBlue did not require a credit card CVV number to process donations. This policy made it easy to run stolen or fabricated card numbers through the platform undetected. 

"ActBlue executives and staff are aware that both foreign and domestic fraudulent actors are exploiting the platform but do not take the threat seriously," a committee report released in April 2025 concluded. ActBlue rejects that characterization, and has called the investigation politically motivated and denies breaking any law.

Whether the platform has genuinely tightened its standards since then is the question Steil says he still cannot answer. In an interview with Fox News ahead of Thursday's deposition, he laid out the committee's core uncertainty. "It's unclear how serious ActBlue is now taking fraud," Steil said. "We know that they weakened their fraud standards previously. Did they make the changes that are needed to root out foreign funds from coming into U.S. Elections?"

DeBergalis is not the first ActBlue official to invoke their Fifth Amendment rights. ActBlue CEO Regina Wallace-Jones previously pleaded the Fifth during a public hearing before the House Administration Committee In June.

House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan pressed her directly on a figure attributed to her own board chairman. "Your board chairman said ActBlue accepted up to $38 million in contributions in 2024 that had the signs of foreign origin," Jordan said. "How much fraud is too much for all?"

Wallace-Jones declined to answer.

"What is so frustrating for me, and I think countless others - they have a right to not answer our questions,” Steil said. “But I think the American people also have a right to know exactly what's taking place on this platform that has raised roughly $20 billion for Democratic candidates and liberal causes since its creation," he said.

ActBlue board chairwoman Kimberly Peeler-Allen offered the closest thing to a public defense back in April, when she told The New York Times that "less than 1%" of contributions during the 2024 cycle showed signs of foreign origin, a cycle in which ActBlue raised $3.82 billion. That percentage, applied to a number that large, still lands somewhere in the tens of millions of dollars, which is roughly the figure Jordan cited to Wallace-Jones two months later. ActBlue's own lawyer, Vincent Cohen, wrote to the committee chairs that same April, defending the platform's technical safeguards and insisting the organization "built a robust platform with anti-fraud technology."

The Justice Department is also investigating whether ActBlue adequately policed fraud on its donation portal. ActBlue maintains it has done nothing wrong and frames the entire multi-committee, multi-agency effort as a partisan exercise aimed at hobbling the left's most important fundraising infrastructure ahead of the midterms.

That defense gets harder to sustain each time a key person from ActBlue, who has knowledge of the platform's internal decisions, won’t answer questions by invoking their constitutional right against self-incrimination.

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/21/2026 - 11:45

Pink-Clad Feminist Mob Rallies In Support Of Confessed Child Murderer

A mob of liberal women decked out in pink is taking to the streets in front of the Plymouth Superior Courthouse in Plymouth, Massachusetts for a rally in support of Lindsay Clancy during her ongoing murder trial.  The group, which is often accused of being "terminally online", has been invading social media discussions for weeks to inject arguments in defense of Clancy, who confessed to the murder of her three helpless children. 

Now, these women (and a few beta husbands) are going offline and showing up en masse to explain why Lindsay Clancy should go free. 

Hundreds of Lindsay Clancy supporters, many wearing pink with the words "Believe," "She Needed Help" and "Peace For Lindsay," gathered Thursday outside the courthouse.  Several of the women said Clancy's story resonated with them and that they wanted to raise awareness about how the mental health system treats women.

Clancy's lawyer does not dispute that she killed the children, but says she should not be held criminally responsible because she was mentally ill and suffering from "postpartum psychosis."  

Lindsay Clancy brutally strangled her 3 kids to death

Current scene outside the courthouse: pic.twitter.com/LC6do0LdzT

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) August 20, 2026

This defense claim is highly strategic.  Contrary to the arguments of leftists, in the past women have often received lighter sentences or escaped prison time by exploiting an insanity plea.  In studies on postpartum in murder cases, around half of women child killers got a "Not Guilty By Reason Of Insanity" verdict after claiming postpartum psychosis as the cause. 

Those are good odds.

The message among feminists is clear:  Women are perpetual victims, therefore they cannot be convicted as predators.  In the liberal mythos, women are pure and devoid of masculine evil, and thus, when they commit atrocities it is only because the system forced them to do so, or because the system broke them and drove them insane.  

HAPPENING NOW: A sea of Lindsay Clancy supporters dressed in pink gathered outside Plymouth Superior Court Thursday morning as the Duxbury mother's murder trial nears a pivotal moment. pic.twitter.com/Vcitza3pQp

— Boston 25 News (@boston25) August 20, 2026

In other words, there can be no structure of justice for female criminals, because in the minds of feminists, there are no female criminals (except female conservatives). 

The postpartum argument is held up as if it is proof of innocence, but in reality, it suggests that the person is even more dangerous than a typical criminal.  If an otherwise unassuming woman has the ability to appear absolutely normal and insinuate herself into the lives of others, only to become a bloodthirsty murderer of children at the flip of a switch, then she can never be trusted to enter back into society ever again.  She can never be trusted to have children or go near children again.

The punishment should be more severe, not less.  This is why America used to have a large network of mental hospitals, to keep people like this locked away for good.  Instead, liberal ideology has created an environment in which criminals with the right identity are treated with more empathy than their victims.  

If this continues for much longer, it will mean the downfall of western civilization.

The Lindsay Clancy trial has also become another focal point for what many now call a "plague" on the internet:  Amateur Detective Wine-Moms (ADWMs).  

Conspiracy theories on social media, spread by these same women, assert that Lindsay Clancy is actually a "patsy" and that her husband is the killer.  Even though numerous pieces of evidence including surveillance footage and cell phone tracking shows Clancy's husband at a local CVS pharmacy at the time of the murder, these women have read hundreds of true crime novels and think they are better investigators than the authorities involved.

Some commenters note that a similar mob of female detectives has been spreading endless conspiracy theories about Tyler Robinson and the murder of Charlie Kirk, even though it's on record that Robinson confessed to his family, friends and boyfriend that he killed Kirk.  Facts and evidence do not matter to these people. 

The problem has become so pervasive that officials within the legal system are beginning to worry that finding jurors not tainted by online madness will be impossible.  They are calling this problem the "TikTok Jury" and it is growing into a cancer. 

It's not just the high profile cases anymore, it could be any case that happens to catch the attention of this unhinged brood of hens stalking the internet for new distractions from their meaningless lives.    

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/21/2026 - 11:05

Intervening Oneself Out Of Quagmire?

By Elwin de Groot, head of macro strategy at Rabobank

Intervening Oneself Out Of Quagmire?

Yesterday’s market moves again showed that jawboning and temporary interventions are rarely enough when the underlying problem is fundamental.

As a “thank you” for Trump’s last-minute intervention to reduce joint US-South Korean military drills – and his claim to have spoken with Kim Jong Un – Pyongyang launched around 10 ballistic missiles on Thursday, according to South Korean news agencies. The message was clear: action versus words. Developments in the Middle East, where Iran has effectively defied US military power, may only have reinforced North Korea’s conviction that its nuclear missile programme gives it an edge even Iran still lacks. The broader ramifications are unsettling.

Markets told a similar story. The benchmark US 10-year Treasury more than gave back the gains made the previous day, while the 30-year long bond retraced over 7bp after Thursday’s 10bp rally, which followed Treasury’s announcement that it would at least double long-dated bond buybacks from 9 September through 4 November.

The price action may matter more than the amounts involved. The additional purchases total only about USD 14bn in the current refunding quarter – a rounding error next to a roughly USD 32trn Treasury market and federal debt now above USD 40trn. Nor is this quantitative easing: Treasury must finance buybacks by issuing other debt. The programme can improve liquidity in off-the-run bonds and temporarily reduce the duration dealers and investors must absorb, but it neither cancels debt nor changes the deficit path.

That distinction explains why Thursday’s long-bond rally should not be extrapolated – and why part of it has already faded.

In the short run, supporting the back end can work. It reduces pressure on term premia, improves dealer balance-sheet capacity and makes outright shorts in long Treasuries riskier. But it also increases reliance on continued bill demand, with no certainty that future stablecoin issuance can offset that exposure for foreign holders. If borrowing needs remain large, Treasury may eventually have to return to greater coupon issuance – or accept higher funding costs.

The medium-term implication is therefore less “lower yields” than “a more managed yield curve”. Call it YCC-light. The Treasury has shown sensitivity not only to poor liquidity, but also to the economic and political consequences of rapidly rising long-term yields. Thirty-year rates above 5% feed into mortgages, corporate financing, equity valuations and, through higher interest costs, the deficit itself. That creates a feedback loop: higher yields worsen the fiscal outlook, which warrants a larger term premium, which raises yields further. Wednesday’s intervention interrupted that loop; it likely did not break it.

The episode also risks blurring the line between debt management and monetary policy. If investors conclude that Treasury will adjust issuance or buybacks whenever long yields rise too quickly, that creates an implicit “Treasury put”. It may suppress volatility for a while, but it could prove self-defeating. Easier financial conditions from lower long yields sit awkwardly alongside above-target inflation, complicating the Fed’s task, as minutes show several policymakers were prepared to raise rates in July. The Treasury may be insuring the market against a tail event just as the Fed tries to keep conditions restrictive.

The dollar’s negative reaction is therefore revealing. Normally, lower Treasury yields weaken the currency through the interest-rate channel. This time, gold and crypto also rallied, suggesting concern about fiscal credibility and the perceived management of borrowing costs. Yesterday’s price action reinforced that message: both the dollar index and gold have extended Thursday’s moves. Could the end-result soon be unchanged long-term yields, but a weaker dollar?

Of course, the dollar still benefits from deep capital markets, strong nominal growth and reserve-currency status. But those advantages are less reassuring if foreign investors believe they are being asked to finance widening deficits while the authorities lean against the resulting rise in term premia.

This week’s geopolitical backdrop sharpens the dilemma. Higher oil prices and uncertainty around Iran and the Strait of Hormuz add an inflation premium; the 5y5y US inflation swap forward is now close to its May peak even though headline inflation has fallen by almost a percentage point since then. This comes just as fiscal supply tests investors’ appetite for duration. The Treasury can address market plumbing, but it cannot buy back geopolitical risk, inflation risk or fiscal arithmetic.

The Friday takeaway is that Wednesday’s announcement matters mainly as a signal. It tells investors the authorities are unwilling to leave the long end entirely to its own devices. That may intermittently cap yields and curve steepening. Yet if every rise in long yields elicits more bills, larger buybacks or smaller long-bond auctions, the adjustment may migrate elsewhere: into front-end funding costs, inflation expectations, gold – or the dollar. The market may have been calmed, but it has learnt where Treasury’s pain threshold lies.

That said – and allowing for possible European bias – investors watch fundamentals not only in absolute terms, but also relative to other regions and asset classes. This week’s widening of the French spread over German Bunds serves as a case in point: a clear warning that markets are focused on the upcoming presidential election and France’s structural challenges.

Finally, the speed of technological change seems to be widening the gap between Europe and the US. The geopolitical overlay is pungent and spicy: for Europe, it smells of rising tensions with major trading partners in the coming months.

China has been warning European trading partners already through several channels that it willing to play hardball to stave off intensification of European trade defense measures. Another example are news reports yesterday suggesting that the US is preparing to force the Netherlands to ban ASML from selling to China entirely. As both Republicans and Democrats seem to be on the same page with potential legislation backing such a move, this raises the risk of coercion.

Perhaps these pressures will push Europe towards next steps, such as integrating capital markets. If so, that would be fundamental change. For now, it remains mostly words in Europe too.

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/21/2026 - 10:45

Lacy Hunt: Fed's Been "Stealth-Easing" Since December

“We’re seeing a major secular shift, that we’re now moving into a period of capital shortage, as well as we’re witnessing the end of the three-decade period of globalization, which led to significant disinflation.”

That prediction comes from Dr. Lacy Hunt, once one of the bond market’s most prominent bulls and secular disinflationists. Well… no longer. He’s now a seller of U.S. long-dated bonds and suggested during last night’s discussion on ZeroHedge that he’s eyeing gold favorably.

Lacy told Thoughtful Money’s Adam Taggart and Brent Johnson of Santiago Capital that inflation is here to stay so get used to it and plan accordingly:

“There will be intermittent episodes when the secular forces will fade, but the big picture is considerably different. We’re going to have higher inflation. We’re going to have greater volatility in inflation. The trend in interest rate is going to be higher. And we’re going to have generally poor economic performance.”

Here were the highlights of Lacy’s tour de force, but we highly recommend the full 75-minute discussion in its entirety:

Net national savings “very close to zero”

Hunt began his case with two forces: a shortage of capital and the reversal of globalization.

“The Federal Reserve cannot solve the capital shortage situation. They can increase the money supply, but to have physical investment you need saving out of income.”

Money printing and rising rates has an increasingly deleterious effect on private investment, which will be vital to keep up with the AI boom. Higher government bond yields means the private sector needs to work harder to compete… why take risk when Uncle Sam guarantees 5% or more?

“We’re financing artificial intelligence. We’re building an expansion of semiconductors. We need to expand the electrical grid… We’ve got a massive federal budget deficit that’s deteriorating.”

Atop that, Hunt said net national saving is “very close to zero.” Net national savings is defined as the total amount of money saved by households, businesses, and the government minus the cost of replacing worn-out capital goods (depreciation).

“So there is going to be this tremendous demand for capital, which suggests that real interest rates will have to rise. And because the overall inflation is going to be going up at the same time, that means that this will reinforce the rise in nominal interest.”

pic.twitter.com/66rt9KwvR1

— ZeroHedge Debates (@zerohedgeDebate) August 21, 2026

Fed’s been “stealth easing” since December

Since mid-December, the Fed’s balance sheet has expanded by roughly $200 billion. So for all the talk of a hawkish Fed, they’re still a net buyer of Treasuries. Additionally, bank deposits and bank lending are up.

“Bank deposits and bank loans in particular, they’ve surged very dramatically since mid-December… so now you have an uptick in deposit growth and money supply growth, which in my opinion is moving further into the inflationary direction.”

This kind of monetary support, Lacy argued, only creates a longer-term problem by encouraging investment in financial assets rather than productive ones.

“When the Federal Reserve comes in and gives a signal to the market that they’re going to support the stock market... then what that serves to do is it’s a signal to the corporate managers that they should put more investment in financial assets and less investment in real assets.”

“But here’s the rub. It’s the real assets that raise the standard of living, not the financial investments.”

pic.twitter.com/ftZIUcCRMH

— ZeroHedge Debates (@zerohedgeDebate) August 21, 2026

Watch Lacy's full deep dive below or listen on the ZeroHedge Spotify. If one of the longest running bond bulls is throwing in the towel… it might be time to pay attention.

https://t.co/Vg3ZRZ4A9F

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 20, 2026

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/21/2026 - 10:25

They're Getting Revenge, Starting Today...

Via the Tom Woods Letter,

I absolutely insist to you: I really am trying to stop writing about this topic. But too much insanity keeps breaking out, and I have no choice but to comment on it.

You know the story: a Cambridge academic, Jason Arday, was found to have plagiarized his dissertation, borrowed heavily from others in his published articles, produced essentially worthless research, called the police on a reporter and on a professor who asked questions about his resume, invented wild tales of athletic and academic achievement as well as philanthropic work, and (of course) accused his critics of “racism.” And then, late last week, he was found dead at his home in an apparent suicide.

That would have been it, but the left - instead of the embarrassment it should feel at having promoted the greatest academic charlatan of the past ten years (and that’s saying something) - is trying to play the victim here: mean right-wingers in the media shouldn’t have pushed so hard on the Arday story.

This is coming from people who call their enemies Nazis 24 hours a day without thinking there might be a problem with that.

Anyway, here’s the latest: the university that employs Nathan Cofnas, the academic who first broke the story about Jason Arday’s plagiarism and worthless “research,” is now being investigated by his own university for breaking the story.

Just when you think academia can’t be a bigger joke, it always finds some way to outdo itself.

Ghent University rector Petra de Sutter, former leader of the Green Party, issued a statement to the effect that while Ghent attaches “great importance to academic freedom and to open academic debate, even when views are controversial,” it wants the world to know that of course it doesn’t really mean that:

“That freedom is not unlimited. It goes hand in hand with responsibility and may be restricted in order to protect the rights of others.

“For this reason, the university takes the recent public statements made by a postdoctoral researcher at Ghent University regarding this matter very seriously. Ghent University has decided to take appropriate action within its powers and the applicable framework.”

Well, we just found out what that means.

They just suspended Nathan Cofnas, and he will almost surely be fired.

Cofnas wrote the original report on Jason Arday that forced academia to take notice. What he found was too embarrassing not to elicit a response. And his point is: Arday is not an isolated case. For that he cannot be forgiven.

As Cofnas put it on August 11:

In 2023, the Guardian itself (!) published a breathless article titled “Jason Arday: he learned to talk at 11 and read at 18 – then became Cambridge’s youngest Black professor.”

More than a dozen academic journals gave the imprimatur of “peer review” to Arday’s plagiarized wokebabble.

The prestigious New York publisher Simon & Schuster is still going ahead with his memoirs.

Now the Guardian wants us to think this is just about “one academic and his bosses at Cambridge”?

There are thousands of Jason Ardays in universities all over the Western world. The only thing special about Arday is that he took the plagiarism and lies about his personal life too far, so there was a hook for a news story. But even that wasn’t enough to get him removed from academia. Until last Wednesday Cambridge was still smearing his critics as waging a “vile campaign.” He crossed the line not by being an incompetent fraud, but by claiming prestigious affiliations that he didn’t have, creating conflict between Cambridge and other universities.

“DEI” means achieving representation by doing away with elementary standards for certain people based on race. Just take a look at the content of “peer-reviewed” journals like Whiteness in Education and Educational Philosophy and Theory. The other papers in these journals are just like those written by Arday—someone who is now widely recognized to be mentally disabled.

The people trying to write this off as a fluke or an isolated case of “research misconduct” are at best delusional. The ideology of elite institutions is DEI, and DEI is Jason Arday.

This was the most embarrassing academic episode of my lifetime. Everyone just witnessed a clear-cut case of academic fraud, a man who literally called the police on people who questioned his resume, and the overwhelming response from academia was to scream “racism” and sign a petition in his defense.

After they did that, the really embarrassing stuff came out, and they persisted.

So the mask is off, in case there’s still anyone out there who didn’t know what was behind it. The whole edifice of academia nowadays is held together with Scotch tape and piano wire, and slogans.

The institutions will survive as shells of their former selves, but what was once inside will disappear. Adrian Vermeule, the one sane person at Harvard Law School, just wrote: “The elite universities are of course going to survive. They’ve been around forever and will continue on in some form. What will not survive, however, is a certain idea of the scholarly mission and life. It died of its own weakness, an inability to resist invading barbarians.”

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/21/2026 - 10:05

Services Sector Survey Surge Sparks US Growth Rebound Hopes In August

After a relatively ugly series of disappointing macro data - and a hectic week of interventions - preliminary August data from S&P Global's PMI survey was expected to signal a slowdown in growth for the US economy (but still growth).

But, the respondents had other things on their mind as while Manufacturing slipped, the Services sector of the economy soared

• Flash US Services PMI Business Activity Index: 56.8 (July: 54.6). 20-month high.

• Flash US Manufacturing PMI: 53.2 (July: 53.9). 5-month low. 

“US business is booming," says Chris Williamson, Chief Business Economist at S&P Global Market Intelligence, "with firms reporting the fastest output growth for over four years so far in the third quarter as the expansion picked up further momentum in August."

The survey data for the third quarter are currently pointing to annualized growth approaching 3.0%, up solidly from the 1.5% pace seen in the second quarter.

Jobs growth has also shown a welcome revival in August, with employers gaining in confidence as concerns fade over the negative economic impacts of tariffs and the conflict in the Middle East.

However, as Williamson writes, "the latter in particular remains a key area of concern for businesses, especially via the impact on supply lines and energy prices. "

Supply delays were again reported in August to one of the greatest extents seen over the past four years, clearly constraining output in many companies.

Price pressures, while fading, also remain elevated and prone to renewed upward pressures should energy prices rise again.

Growth momentum has meanwhile shifted from manufacturing to services between the second and third quarters.

Williamson concludes: "As reduced safety stock building and supply delays dampen factory production growth, the service sector is now playing a key role in driving a sustained US expansion, underscoring a dependency on consumer spending and financial services growth.”

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/21/2026 - 09:56

China Sentences Evergrande Founder To Life In Prison

Five years after Chinese property development firm Evergrande Group collapsed under the weight of enormous debt, founder Xu Jiayin was sentenced to life in prison on Thursday.

Xu Jiayin, also known as Hui Ka Yan, founder of property developer Evergrande, appears for sentencing at the Shenzhen Intermediate People's Court in Shenzhen, China, on Aug. 20, 2026. Shenzhen Intermediate People's Court /Xinhua via AP

Xu (Hui Ka Yan in Cantonese), 64, pleaded guilty in April to fundraising fraud, illegally taking public deposits, illegally extending loans, bribery, fraudulently issuing security, and misuse of funds. His sentence was handed down in Shenzhen in southern China. The court also confiscated his personal property.

Evergrande was also fined 8.82 billion yuan (US$1.31 billion), and slapped its Hengda real estate subsidiary with a 7 billion yuan (US$1.04 billion) fine. 

As the Epoch Times notes further, Xu has not been seen in public since 2023, but the Shenzhen Intermediate People’s Court released photographs that show him wearing a blue shirt and flanked by two officers as the sentence was read out.

Crimes Should be 'Severely Punished'

“The criminal acts of Evergrande Group, Hengda Real Estate, ‌and Hui Ka Yan ... involved ⁠particularly huge amounts and egregious circumstances, caused particularly significant economic losses and caused particularly serious social harm, and should be severely punished,” the court said in ‌a statement.

State media Xinhua news agency stated that the court sentenced 56 others to prison sentences of between 22 months and 18 years for their roles in “illegally absorbing public deposits, fundraising fraud, and illegal use of funds” in relation to the Evergrande case. It did not name any of the individuals.

It was not immediately clear whether Xu had legal representatives who could comment on his behalf.

After a two-day trial in April, Xu “pleaded guilty and expressed remorse,” according to state media outlet Xinhua.

Born into poverty, Xu became Asia’s richest man, partly because of links with senior officials in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

He expanded Evergrande massively during China’s property boom between 1996 and 2019, but the company was burdened with huge debts.

Evergrande, which was China’s biggest developer, ran into financial problems in 2020 amid China’s COVID-19 crisis, and in 2021, it developed liquidity issues.

In March 2024, the company and Xu were penalized after being accused of artificially boosting its revenues by $78 billion in the two years before it defaulted on its debt obligations.

A Hong Kong court ordered Evergrande to be liquidated in 2024, and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange delisted it in 2025.

The company has defaulted on most of its $300 billion liabilities. Its problems are emblematic of a prolonged slowdown in China’s real estate sector, which has dragged ​down the world’s second-biggest economy.

The China Evergrande Centre building sign in Hong Kong on Dec. 7, 2021. Tyrone Siu/Reuters

A former steel technician, Xu founded Evergrande in 1996.

As the communist regime gradually opened up its market and eased controls, Xu, like many other Chinese, moved to Guangdong Province, where he worked as a salesperson before founding Evergrande in 1996.

In his first project, Xu borrowed 3 million yuan (about $440,000) from the bank to purchase land, then started selling homes once construction began, according to a 2010 report by People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the CCP.

Within a day, he had sold more than 300 apartments and raked in 80 million yuan (about $11.7 million), allowing him to finance the next project, according to the report.

By the end of 2009, Evergrande had dozens of projects across 25 major Chinese cities, according to the company’s official website.

He Was Once Worth $45 Billion

In 2017, Xu ​had a net worth of $45.3 billion, according to ⁠Forbes.

Xu stepped down as chairman of Hengda in August 2021, two months before the company defaulted on a $148 million loan, the first of many debts it was unable to repay.

The liquidation process has ​moved ‌slowly. Only $255 million worth of assets were sold as of August 2025, compared with creditors’ claims totalling $45 billion.

Evergrande’s liquidators declined to comment on Xu’s sentencing.

The liquidators are trying to freeze Xu’s offshore assets and those of his ex-wife, Ding Yumei, who owns property in London and Vancouver.

Ding flew out of Hong Kong before August 2023, China’s state-controlled Tencent News reported, and her current whereabouts are unknown.

Speaking at the 2018 China Charity Awards, Xu praised the CCP and attributed everything Evergrande and he had to the regime.

Yuan Hongbing, a former professor of law at Peking University who now lives in exile in Australia, told The Epoch Times in 2023 that Xu had used political connections with Zeng Qinghong, a senior CCP official who was vice president from 2003 to 2008.

But Feng Chongyi, an associate professor in China studies at the University of Technology Sydney, told The Epoch Times this week that Xi had spent years weakening forces associated with Jiang Zemin and Zeng, who was his longtime political ally, because they once threatened Xi’s hold on power.

Reuters contributed to this report.

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/21/2026 - 09:45