Apple Selects Google's Gemini To Power AI Siri

Apple shares moved up 1% in the morning U.S. cash session after CNBC reported that Apple will partner with rival Google to power key artificial intelligence features, including Siri, later this year.

In a statement cited by CNBC's Jim Cramer, Apple said it selected Google after a competitive review, calling Gemini "the most capable foundation" to support its AI roadmap and unlock new user experiences.

"After careful evaluation, we determined that Google's technology provides the most capable foundation for Apple Foundation Models, and we're excited about the innovative new experiences it will unlock for our users," Apple wrote.

We previously reported that Apple was tapping Google's Gemini model to overhaul Siri. This development is particularly alarming for Apple, as it shows how heavily the company relies on external AI technology.

The Apple-Google partnership has made Wedbush's research team, led by Dan Ives, look like superstars this morning, as it was one of their top three predictions for 2026.

Dan Ives's top 3rd prediction for 2026 was just realized with the AAPL/GOOGL partnership https://t.co/mIBHmaQIcF

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) January 12, 2026

View the rest of Ives' predictions here.  

Tyler Durden Mon, 01/12/2026 - 10:46

DHS Blasts Anti-ICE Protesters Sharing List Of Hotels Allegedly Hosting Agents

Authored by Jacki Thrapp via The Epoch Times,

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said on Jan. 11 that federal agents in Minnesota were put at risk after a list of their alleged hotel locations circulated online.

“Revealing their locations puts them at enormous risk of retaliation from these monsters,” DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin wrote in a statement to The Epoch Times.

Sunrise Twin Cities, a youth-led group against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations, is publishing a weekly list of hotels where they suspect that immigration agents are staying.

The Minneapolis-based group has spent weeks urging locals to hold “noise demonstrations” outside hotels, hoping that management will become fed up, kick out the agents, and cancel future reservations.

DHS would not confirm or deny the accuracy of the list.

“We would never confirm where our officers are staying and put their lives in jeopardy, that would be insane,” McLaughlin said.

McLaughlin said these lists of locations can be harmful, as officers face a surge of assaults, vehicular attacks, and death threats, many of which have already been directed at the agent involved in a deadly altercation with a protester last week.

The hotel demonstration on Jan. 9, hosted by Sunrise Twin Cities, resulted in 30 people being detained after an unlawful assembly was declared outside the Canopy Hotel.

“I felt like I was in ‘The Purge,’” a Canopy Hotel staffer told The Epoch Times on Jan. 10.

A staffer from the Canopy Hotel told The Epoch Times that he felt like he was in a horror movie when anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement protesters tried to barge into the building in Minneapolis on Jan. 9, 2026. Jacki Thrapp/The Epoch Times

The Canopy Hotel was up and running on Jan. 10 with seemingly no signs of damage inside or broken windows outside.

But that was not the case for the Renaissance Minneapolis Hotel, just a few blocks away from the Canopy Hotel.

The Renaissance Minneapolis Hotel had damage worth approximately $6,000 done to windows from graffiti on Jan. 9.

By the afternoon on Jan. 10, the graffiti was removed, and fencing and “no trespassing” signs were scattered across the property and surrounding area.

Fences and “no trespassing” signs were placed outside the Renaissance Minneapolis Hotel in Minneapolis on Jan. 10, 2026. Jacki Thrapp/The Epoch Times

A large number of police officers were present both inside and outside of the hotel on the night of Jan. 10.

The hotel bar inside was also standing by to close early if another round of protesters decided to brave the 20-degree-Fahrenheit temperatures to hold additional noise demonstrations.

The anti-ICE hotel demonstrations—and repeated phone calls to front desks to demand that they cancel reservations from agents—also had an effect at a Hilton-affiliated hotel in the Minneapolis area.

“We have noticed an influx of GOV reservations made today that have been for DHS, and we are not allowing any ICE or immigration agents to stay at our property,” an email from a hotel employee shared by DHS in an X post on Jan. 5 reads.

“If you are with DHS or immigration, let us know as we will have to cancel your reservation.”

Protesters face off with federal officers in front of the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis on Jan. 9, 2026. John Fredricks/The Epoch Times

DHS slammed the cancellations.

“This is UNACCEPTABLE,” the department posted on X.

On Jan. 6, Hilton said it would sever its ties with the hotel. The Lakeville, Minnesota, hotel is now listed as “permanently closed” online.

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

Tyler Durden Mon, 01/12/2026 - 10:35

Mamdani Hails Rat-Infested Bronx Slum As 'Model' For His Housing Agenda

Zohran Mamdani was elected mayor of New York on a slew of socialist promises marketed under the banner of affordability.

On his first day in office, he signed three executive orders to address the housing crisis. The first revives the Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants, led by tenant advocate Cea Weaver, to coordinate agencies and crack down on abusive landlords. Another creates the LIFT task force to fast-track city-owned sites for housing, while the SPEED task force will cut red tape that delays construction. Days later, he picked 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in the Bronx’s Morris Heights to introduce Dina Levy as the new Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) commissioner. 

Back in 2011, Levy, who will now earn a $277,605 annual salary as Mamdani’s HPD commissioner, helped flip the 102-unit building from private ownership to the nonprofit Workforce Housing Advisors. Her group, Urban Homesteading Assistance Board, teamed with HPD on a $5.6 million city loan. 

Mamdani touted that move as a win. He told the crowd that Levy organized tenants against a predatory buyer. The building stayed affordable. "Dina will no longer be petitioning HPD from the outside," Mamdani said. "She will now be leading it from the inside, delivering the kind of change that can transform lives." He painted Levy as the perfect person to implement his affordable housing agenda, which leans heavily on replacing private landlords with nonprofits. 

But what Mamdani didn’t say at the event was that this model for his housing agenda is a rat-infested slum.

According to a report from the New York Post, the building “as of Saturday had a staggering 194 open housing-code violations dating back to 2016 - including 88 ‘Class C’ violations considered ‘immediately hazardous.’”

Records show that rat and roach infestation, broken doors and refrigerators, and mold were among those violations. 

Tenants of the building say conditions were better under the building’s former private landlord and that the property has steadily deteriorated since being turned over to a nonprofit. 

“I have been here over 20 years, and I preferred it when it was under private management because they used to screen people in and out of the building,” longtime tenant Mordistine Alexander told the paper. She has been in the building since 1999.

 Today, the building is plagued by chronic heat and hot-water issues, crumbling bathrooms and kitchens, broken windows, and months-long delays in basic repairs. She said she has been without a kitchen light for months and fixed a serious rodent problem herself because she “couldn’t wait any longer” for Workforce Housing Group to act. “Since [the nonprofit] took over, the building has deteriorated. They lack porters. No one is maintaining it, and the complaints fall on deaf ears – especially if you complain a lot,” Alexander said, adding she wishes Levy had never succeeded in transferring the building to nonprofit control. Despite these complaints, Mamdani is pushing for more buildings like the Sedgwick Avenue complex, backing communist policies that restrict private property sales to allow nonprofits to take over more rent-stabilized apartments.

"You have to laugh at the hypocrisy," Councilwoman Joann Ariola (R-Queens) said. "These nonprofits are proving themselves to be little more than taxpayer-funded slumlords, and this blatant double-standard is all part of the administration’s planned attack on private ownership in New York City." 

The Sedgwick Avenue site has more open HPD violations than roughly three-quarters of the privately owned, rent-stabilized buildings in NYC — but Mamdani is “too focused” on pushing the abolition of private property, said Kenny Burgos, a former Bronx assemblyman who heads the New York Apartment Association that represents landlords of rent-stabilized units.

Nonprofit-managed housing “consistently run higher violation counts despite having government-backed loans and [being eligible to avoid] paying property taxes, so they should have a lot more freed-up cash to make these buildings run efficiently, and yet are unable to do so - even with good intentions and no goal of profit,” added Burgos.

The New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development defended the rat-infested slum and Levy’s involvement in the sale of the building to Workforce Housing Group.

“When the building was at risk of being purchased by a predatory buyer, Dina Levy organized alongside the tenants and kept the building affordable,” spokesman Matt Rauschenbach said. “And now the building is undergoing an $8 million preservation renovation to improve conditions and make sure it is a safe, affordable place for the tenants who live there to call home.” 

Tyler Durden Mon, 01/12/2026 - 10:25

Ayatollah Posts That 'Arrogant' Trump Will Be 'Overthrown' As Iran Protests Lose Steam

Update(10:15ET): Iran's Supreme Leader is really playing with fire here in posting the below image on X. While the message didn't appear on his English language account, it is on his Persian account, and thus mainly directed at the Ayatollah's own domestic population.

According to a machine translation, the message says: "That father figure who sits there with arrogance and pride, passing judgment on the entire world, he too should know that usually the tyrants and oppressors of the world, such as Pharaoh and Nimrod and Reza Khan and Mohammad Reza and the likes of them, when they were at the peak of their pride, were overthrown, This one too will be overthrown."

آن بابایی که با نخوت و غرور نشسته آنجا راجع به همه‌ی دنیا قضاوت میکند، او هم بداند که معمولاً‌ مستبدّین و مستکبران عالم، از قبیل فرعون و نمرود و رضاخان و محمّدرضا و امثال اینها، وقتی که در اوج غرور بودند سرنگون شدند،
این هم سرنگون خواهد شد.#مثل_فرعون pic.twitter.com/hxzJVQQOiL

— KHAMENEI.IR | فارسی (@Khamenei_fa) January 11, 2026

Khamenei perhaps suddenly feels more embolden to poke and mock Trump like this perhaps given the emerging widespread reports that the protests are losing steam, after weekend clashes with policy reportedly resulted in many deaths. There was definitely a major and deadly security crackdown, but this also as the government asserts that dozens of police and military have been attacked and killed, and buildings set on fire by 'rioters' and 'saboteurs'.

There are also very large pro-government 'counter protests' taking over whole areas of cities Monday, including in the capital:

WATCH: Large crowds gather for pro-regime rallies in Iranian cities in support of Khamenei. pic.twitter.com/9mTo5bbTJD

— Clash Report (@clashreport) January 12, 2026

The Trump administration was quite out front with saying it would "stand" with the Iranian people, and even protect them if they come under assault from government forces. This allowed Iranian leadership to tell people in the streets that they are doing the bidding of foreign powers like the US and Israel.

This also amid more tough talk from Iran's parliament on Monday:

Iran’s parliament speaker has described the response to the protests as a fight with “terrorists” while addressing a large rally in the capital.

Iran is fighting a “four-front war”, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said, listing economic, psychological and military engagement with the United States and Israel, and “today [is] a war against terrorists”.

“The great Iranian nation has never allowed the enemy to achieve its goals,” Ghalibaf said as supporters chanted, “Death to Israel, death to America.”

He pledged Iran’s military would teach Trump “an unforgettable lesson” in case of a new US attack, adding: “Come and see all your facilities in the region destroyed.”

Trump on Sunday did raise the question of direct help to the protesters (who may not actually be interested in Washington's help). Trump said he will speak to Elon Musk about sending Starlink to protesters in Iran, following the government-imposed outage which has remained in place since Thursday.

"We may get the internet going if that's possible," the president told reporters. Elon "is very good at that kind of thing. I'm going to call him as soon as I'm finished with you."

A video from three nights ago in #Iran shows rioters entering a mosque and attempting to burn carpets and #Quran. pic.twitter.com/YD4turTRHL

— iribnews | خبرگزاری صدا و سیما (@iribnews_irib) January 11, 2026

Is the rhetoric between Washington in Tehran softening as it becomes clear the regime is not under threat by the protests?

Iran says it is “prepared for war” but ready to negotiate with the US based on “mutual respect and interests,” after US President Donald Trump said Tehran called to negotiate as his administration weighs possible military intervention during widespread anti-government protests.

* * *

The NY Times and others are confirming that President Trump has recently been briefed on a series of new military strike options targeting Iran as he weighs whether to act on his threat to attack the country over its crackdown on protesters, which have also clearly themselves engaged in violent acts in some locales at times.

In some of among the well over 100 cities or towns where protests have raged since the end of December, buildings and even mosques have been burned, cars torched, and police officials reportedly shot and stabbed. Amid an internet blackout across the country, which has made accurate information hard to come by and/or verirfy, there is a battle of narratives and 'infowar' happening. 

AFP/Getty Images

Starlink terminals were said to be smuggled into the country during the 2022 wave of protests, and so there has been some limited information and videos emerging even amid the several consecutive days of internet shutdown by the government.

President Trump during Friday's meeting of oil executives again warned Iranian leadership not to kill protesters: "I've made the statement very strongly that if they start killing people like they have in the past, we will get involved," he said. "We’ll be hitting them very hard where it hurts. And that doesn’t mean boots on the ground, but it means hitting them very, very hard where it hurts."

Trump later narrowed the warning, "I tell the Iranian leaders: You better not start shooting, because we’ll start shooting, too."

Secretary of State Marco Rubio on top of that issued on X that "The United States supports the brave people of Iran" - something much vaguer and coupled with no specific threat.

From there, unverified reports throughout the weekend said that body bags from protest deaths were piling up. By last week, around 30 people were reported killed, including several or more among police and security officials. But by Sunday into Monday that figure ballooned.

Reuters and CNN have relied on a US-based group to claim, "More than 544 people have been killed over the past 15 days during anti-government demonstrations, including eight children, according to the Human Rights Activist New Agency (HRANA)."

IRAN: Anti-regime protests in Iran, where demonstrators torched the Al-Rasool Mosque in Tehran's Saadat Abad district. Over 300 similar attacks on religious sites nationwide this evening. pic.twitter.com/N68KoHATT1

— @amuse (@amuse) January 10, 2026

This new, high death count, is unverifiable but is still being widely circulated on Monday. It has been issued at a very sensitive and dangerous moment that the anti-Ayatollah opposition which largely lives in Europe and the United States is lobbying hard to get Trump's ear and attention.

All the usual other enemies of Tehran are being very active in this regard too, such as the powerful Israel lobby in the United States.

On the 'options' briefings, the NY Times has described that briefings President Trump has already received included a variety of potential actions such as strikes against nonmilitary locations in Tehran.

When reporters asked about preparations for possible military action, the White House pointed instead to the president’s recent public statements and posts on social media. "Iran is looking at FREEDOM, perhaps like never before," Trump had additionally stated on Truth Social on Saturday. "The USA stands ready to help!!!"

If Trump were to actually kick off yet more US military action in the Middle East, this time against a large nation like Iran which would hold the serious potential for escalating into a full-blown conflict, it would likely prove deeply unpopular among his base. Broadly, the American public would likely not be on board.

Evidence of a very bloody state clampdown is now starting to come out from people who either have managed to connect to Starlink or who have left Iran and brought videos with them.

But even Iranian State TV is reporting from the morgue, where a large number of body bags can be… pic.twitter.com/QcY2iPYyCp

— Trita Parsi (@tparsi) January 11, 2026

A Goldman Sachs note highlights that the build-up rhetoric threatening US intervention in and of itself will have an impact on oil, gold, and across markets:

Attention shifts to Iran as we speak. Unlike the 2022 protests centered around social liberties, this episode looks to be triggered by economic paralysis with inflation spiking and the sudden collapse of the Iranian rial in late Dec. The protests have now turned violent with death toll rising to the hundreds. What can potentially add oil to fire is if foreign interference continues to get talked up with the US signaling the threat of a potential intervention. Oil and Gold creeping up as the Iranian unrests unfold. This illustrates our view of the insurance value of commodities. We see a strong role for broader commodity length in strategic portfolio allocations with increasing geopolitical, trade and AI competition has led to more frequent use of commodity dominance as leverage.

Iranian businesses have in many cased been forced to suspend all activity because of Iran's internet shutdown, especially those companies which are dealings or staff based abroad. The shutdown is said to be so severe that even the banking system isn't operating, and something as simple as removing money from an ATM can't be done.

BREAKING: Trump told reporters on Air Force One that Iran reached out to the U.S. yesterday and proposed holding talks on a nuclear deal. "We may meet them", he said

— Barak Ravid (@BarakRavid) January 12, 2026

Leadership in Tehran might have made things much worse for itself with the decision to block internet access, given the protesting and rioting crowds hadn't dispersed, but instead clashes with police may have grown more intense and violent. Iran's foreign ministry has been cited in Bloomberg Monday as follows:

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi says police and security forces brought protests "under control" from Saturday, according to statement to state TV. Araghchi: we have huge amount of evidence pointing direct Israeli and US interference in protests Says internet will be restored "soon after full control of security situation"

"Israel is directly responsible, and also Americans through their remarks by promoting violence," Araghchi says.

NOW - Trump says Iranian leaders called him yesterday and "they want to negotiate... a meeting is being set up, but we may have to act because of what's happening, before the meeting." pic.twitter.com/CF2DC6Pwbg

— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) January 12, 2026

As for what's next, President Donald Trump will be briefed on Tuesday on "some kinetic and many non-kinetic" options in Iran, according to a couple of unnamed administration officials to Politico. But there have indeed been signs that the protests have begun to abate or in some places been halted completely.

Tyler Durden Mon, 01/12/2026 - 10:15

UK, Germany, France Push New Plan To Appease Trump On Greenland

President Trump's Friday's remarks to reporters Friday made clear he is willing to take control of Greenland - even if it's the "hard way" - and this sent the Europeans scrambling over the weekend to come up with plans or strategies for quickly de-escalating inter-NATO tensions.

"I'm not talking about money for Greenland yet. I might talk about that. But right now we are going to do something on Greenland, whether they like it or not," the President had said, adding: "I would like to make a deal. You know, the easy way. But if we don’t do it the easy way, we’re going to do it the hard way."

In the wake of this, NATO member Denmark responded firmly in the face of the US threat to its colony. Such a scenario as a US military move on Greenland would be the collapse of NATO, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has made clear. Among the remarks from last week, Frederiksen said, "If the United States were to choose to attack another NATO country, then everything would come to an end."

"The international community as we know it, democratic rules of the game, NATO, the world’s strongest defensive alliance – all of that would collapse if one NATO country chose to attack another," the Danish PM added. But he missed the irony in the fact that country after country that refused to play by the so-called "democratic rules of the game" got bombed or overthrown by NATO and the West - with Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Iran and others lying in ruins and societal fragmentation.

Warner: "We've had American intervention in Syria, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Nigeria, Venezuela, maybe Greenland where he would blow up NATO. Did you see the Brits and Germans are putting troops in Greenland because they want to send a message. How is this leading to price stability,… pic.twitter.com/kLF5eWENJL

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 12, 2026

 But now, as Bloomberg reports, European countries are seeking to seize on Trump's talking points about Greenland being strategically crucial for Arctic security, as rival powers like Russia and China allegedly seek to move in.

"A group of European countries, led by the U.K. and Germany, is discussing plans for a military presence in Greenland to show U.S. President Donald Trump that the continent is serious about Arctic security and to try to tamp down American threats to take over the self-ruling Danish territory," reports Bloomberg.

So this seems all about creating a fresh NATO joint mission to appease Trump, soften the rhetoric, and take away one of his main geostrategic justifications for a Greenland takeover.

Bloomberg continues, "Germany will propose setting up a joint NATO mission to protect the Arctic region, according to people familiar with the plans."

This includes backing from Britain, with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer having separately called on allied nations to strengthen their security footprint in the far north. Pre-planning discussions have been held with French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.

AP/Sky News: Danish military forces participate in an exercise with NATO troops in Greenland.

The topic is likely to be broached when German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul meets with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio this week.

"Because security in the Arctic is becoming increasingly important, I also want to discuss on my trip how we can best bear this responsibility in NATO — in view of old and new rivalries in the region by Russia and China — together," Wadephul said in a statement Sunday. "We want to discuss this together in NATO."

It will be interesting to see whether the White House pursues this as an off-ramp, dropping the Greenland project, or whether Trump will read this as a ploy to co-opt forward momentum.

Selling a counter-plan based on running with the exaggerated threat and lie...

The US will defend Greenland from the US?
- Trump said that Russian and Chinese ships are around Greenland as an excuse for annexation. The Europeans know this is not true, but hope that Trump will believe his own lie to elevate the relevance of NATO? pic.twitter.com/XHr7pqSro6

— Glenn Diesen (@Glenn_Diesen) January 12, 2026

Trump has said on outright seizing it, "If we don’t do it, Russia or China will take over Greenland. And we’re not going to have Russia or China as a neighbor." But there have also been other creative solutions offered - such as paying each Greenlander something like $1 million in exchange for US sovereignty over the mass which could be the size of a continent. 

Currently, each citizen of Greenland is a full citizen of Denmark and of the European Union, and so many locals might not want to swap this out for being an American. However, many would likely be very attracted to some kind of huge single sum payout.

Tyler Durden Mon, 01/12/2026 - 09:45

Fire Departments' New Emergency: Affording Their Trucks

Authored by Eric Salzman via Racket News,

When I was a kid, one of the coolest things was that every year, a few days before Christmas, our town’s fire department would drive through all the neighborhoods in its gleaming fire engine with the lights flashing, giving short bursts of the siren. All the firemen were in full gear hanging off the sides, while Santa, sitting at the top, threw candy canes to us all. The fire department was special, especially to the kids whose dads or uncles were volunteers.

Illustration by Daniel Medina

These days, that truck may not be as shiny as it once was, as there are many trucks in service that should have been retired or kept only as backups because of how prone to failure they are. That’s what happened in Camden, NJ, in March 2024. From NJ.com:

Camden Fire Capt. Will Johnson and his crew arrived within five minutes in Engine 8, a battle-scarred, 21-year-old truck. Flames roared from the second-floor windows as firefighters rushed in, spraying water to try to save Shawn, 35.

But then the hose went limp. The red-and-white truck’s pump had failed, according to incident reports. About two and a half minutes passed, Johnson estimates, before water was restored.

Shawn did not make it. The captain wrote in a report that “we could not advance quickly enough to suppress a bulk of the fire or have an adequate primary search done to locate the victim.”

We don’t know if Shawn would have lived if the pumper truck had worked. But a 21-year-old pumper truck should not be on the front lines of service. The National Fire Protection Association recommends that trucks older than 15 years be relegated to a station’s reserve fleet and completely removed after 25 years.

Los Angeles is a prime example of an aging fleet. The Los Angeles Times reports that as of last June, 60% of its 210 pumper trucks and 48% of its ladder trucks were operating beyond their recommended lifespans. During the Palisades fire, roughly 40 pumper trucks were in the shop; 70 percent of them were 15 years or older, including three built in I999.

“These aging and inoperable fire trucks have certainly harmed emergency responses and cost lives,” Edward Kelly, the president of the International Association of Fire Fighters union, said during a U.S. Senate hearing in September.

He cited an incident in Chicago last summer when a ladder on a reserve truck failed during a rescue. Firefighters had to restart the truck to raise the ladder. Four people died, including a five-year-old.

What the hell is going on?

Lack of competition, for one. Three manufacturers have emerged in the last two decades to control 70% to 80% of the market, according to a federal lawsuit filed by the town of Newstead, NY.

One of the companies, REV Group, was created by a private equity firm, American Industrial Partners (AIP). It got into the fire apparatus business in 2008 with the purchase of E-One, a huge player in the industry, and proceeded to purchase six more companies over the next 12 years. It’s been quite successful for investors. AIP launched an IPO for Rev Group in 2017 and sold a portion of its stake in the company for $275 million, and then got out completely in 2024 by selling its remaining shares for $127.6 million.

But before cashing out, AIP’s purchase of so many manufacturers enabled Rev Group to join the companies Oshkosh and Rosenbauer as dominant players in the industry. As a result, the lawsuit argues they gained near monopolistic pricing powers.

Kelly, the union president, says costs have doubled in the past decade. Pumper trucks cost about $1 million; ladder trucks roughly $2 million. To make matters worse, Kelly testified that the price often changes after they’re ordered.

Manufacturers wield their market power to impose surprise price hikes after order placement through “floating” price terms. These price hikes exacerbate other budget constraints. Fire departments with budget challenges have had to cancel essential training and even lay off fire fighters.

Awesome Returns Bro!

In 2025, REV Group’s stock price surged 93%, while Oshkosh rose 33%. Both companies outperformed the S&P 500, which increased 16.5% for the year.

In REV’s blowout third-quarter 2025 earnings call — a day in which its stock jumped 19% — CEO Mark Skanechnie stated:

Given the inventory levels we had on hand at the start of the quarter, along with the efforts of our supply chain team, we were able to mitigate a portion of the expected inflationary impacts related to tariffs within the third quarter, which resulted in delivering a 28% incremental margin year over year as compared to our prior guidance of twenty percent to 25% incremental margin for the 2025.

The increase [in incremental margin] versus last year was related to the continued demand for fire apparatus and ambulance units as well as pricing actions, partially offset by the benefit of the increased throughput mentioned earlier.

In other words, the floating price hikes weren’t completely tied to increased costs during production, which typically takes a year to 18 months, depending on the truck. A 28% incremental margin is generally considered outstanding for vehicle manufacturers.

Antitrust Complaints

The Newstead Fire Department filed its class action complaint on October 31 against REV Group, Oshkosh and Rosenbauer. From the complaint:

Beginning in or about January 2016, Manufacturing Defendants entered into an agreement, combination, or conspiracy to limit the supply, and to fix, raise, maintain, or stabilize prices of Fire Trucks sold in the United States at supra-competitive levels. As a result of the unlawful conduct of Defendants, Plaintiff and Class members paid artificially inflated prices for Fire Trucks and as a result have suffered antitrust injury in violation of the federal antitrust laws.

The result, the lawsuit argues, is inflated prices with long wait times that “have forced municipalities to keep older and less reliable Fire Trucks” or forced them to redirect funding to cover the higher costs.

This complaint came on the heels of a similar antitrust complaint that La Crosse, Wisconsin, filed in August against the three companies.

Rev Group, Oshkosh, and Rosenbauer told Reuters, “the company believes the suit is meritless and intends to challenge the allegations in court.”

Additionally, In April 2025 Senators Elizabeth Warren (D) and Senator Jim Banks (R) opened an investigation into this matter, making the following statement,

While CEOs and shareholders pad their pockets, consolidation in the industry impedes fire fighters’ ability to do their jobs safely and effectively, squeezes fire departments’ budgets, and forces taxpayers to bear the consequences. We have heard from dozens of fire departments in Massachusetts, Indiana, and elsewhere about difficulties they have faced related to serial roll-ups of fire truck manufacturers, including delivery delays, defective parts, and price increases… Private equity consolidation of fire truck manufacturers has led to higher costs and a nationwide shortage of fire trucks.

In response, Mike Virnig of The Rev Group told the New York Times that the industry has had a shortage in skilled labor and that it was affected by pandemic supply chain disruptions. The Times reports he also said a backlog resulted from a flood of orders that came with federal stimulus money.

Perhaps, but jacking up prices during production and bragging about a 28% incremental margin that resulted from doing that doesn’t instill confidence that everything is aboveboard. A year-over-year stock price increase of 93% probably does not represent a company struggling to meet its customers’ needs. It represents the market perception that REV Group has its customers over a very profitable barrel.

You can also listen to Eric Salzman discuss this topic on his podcast, “Monkey Business.”

Tyler Durden Mon, 01/12/2026 - 09:25

* Hopefully…

 

This is likely the week the Supreme Court issues a ruling on the IEEPA tariffs in place since April 2025 (excluding the 90-day suspension, and other sundry modifications, revisions, pauses, exemptions, etc.). As I noted from the start, this is a deeply flawed policy of questionable legality that was implemented haphazardly (my priors are below).

During the SCOTUS this past November, I explained why the “Tariffs are likely to be overturned.” No new information has come out since then that has changed my perspective.  Indeed, the Customs department was updating its website and added a way for companies to apply for tariff refunds, revealing their expectations about the SCOTUS decision.1

There has been too much “opinionating” about the tariffs, much of which is misguided and/or misinformed. If you are NOT an attorney, perhaps it is best that you do NOT play an attorney on TV.

For investors, the key question is whether a SCOTUS decision affirming the appellate court’s rejection of the tariffs will be easy for the administration to circumvent. The quick answer is that if it had been quick and straightforward to achieve legally, they would have done so initially. Instead, many of the IEEPA tariffs will require congressional approval; others need the type of administrative action that this government has not demonstrated as its strong suit.

Specifically, I surmise it will be more difficult to navigate around these tariffs if the Supreme Court invalidates all or most of these.2

The other question for investors is exactly how much of the tariff repeal is already reflected in market prices. It’s always difficult to assess what is in the collective minds of traders, but consider that since the April 2nd tariff announcements (markets since April 3rd), the S&P 500 and the Industrial sector are up about the same — 29.1% vs 28.7%. However, since the November 5th argument at the Supreme Court, the S&P500 is up 2.4%, while the SPX manufacturing sector is up more than double that at 5.7%.

 

I can imagine that a resounding rejection of the tariffs would cause a healthy rally in the broad indices, led by manufacturing companies, retailers, and any firm deeply involved in importing or exporting physical goods. Perhaps that is my wishful thinking, reflecting how RWM’s clients (including myself) are positioned.

A few reminders that provide additional insight to those who non-lawyers discussing tariffs in the media:

-President Trump’s second‑term tariffs have pushed the average effective US tariff rate to the highest level in more than a century.

-The legal question is whether IEEPA, which does not mention tariffs, gives the executive branch powers that have previously been reserved to Congress.

-The House IEEPA report stated: “Emergencies are by their nature rare and brief, and are not to be equated with normal ongoing problems.”

-Does the word “Emergency” mean what common usage assumes, or is there some other legislative interpretation as to what an “Emergency” is?

-50 U.S.C. § 1702 allows the President to “investigate, regulate, or prohibit” certain transactions and the “importing or exporting of currency or securities;” this does not give the president the authority to “impose unlimited tariffs on goods from nearly every country in the world.”

-In his first term, President Trump applied Section 232 and Section 301 broadly to both rivals and allies; those tariffs were authorized by legislation and used as a central, recurring instrument of economic/foreign policy.

We could go deeper into the weeds, but instead, I will point you to my conversation with Neal Katyal, the attorney who actually won this case at the DC Court of Appeals and argued it before the Supreme Court.

As to my priors, here is my disclosure: Whatever you are reading here is influenced by my understanding of both the law and markets. That includes three major factors:

A) Bad Policy: From an economic standpoint, tariffs are a terrible idea; this has been proven repeatedly throughout history, but most especially through The Smoot Hartley Tariff Act in 1930, which deepened the Great Depression.

B) Illegal: The 2025 Tariffs are wholly and incontrovertibly unconstitutional.1 Article 2 Section 8 of the US Constitution reserves the power to tax, raise duties, and levy exclusively to Congress and not the Executive branch.

C) China has been a bad actor in international trade, engaging in theft of intellectual property, dumping, anti-competitive import rules, and other bad behaviors. That said, there must be a more productive and intelligent way to negotiate with China about its bad behavior.

There is no guarantee that SCOTUS will release its decision this week, but it did fast-track the case back in September. We shall soon find out exactly what this policy, its legality, and economic impact, means to the markets…

 

 

See also:
Trump’s tariff revenue tracker: How much is the US collecting? Which imports are hit?
By Gary Clyde Hufbauer and Ye Zhang
PIIE, December 15, 2025

New Trump tariffs collection hits $200 billion, Customs says
By Lori Ann LaRocco and Dan Mangan
CNBC Dec 15 2025

 

Previously:
Tariffs Likely To Be Overturned (November 5, 2025)

Which States Could Suffer the Most From Trade War Tariffs? (September 16, 2019)

Transcript: Neal Katyal on Challenging Trump’s Global Tariffs (September 8, 2025)

MiB: Special Edition: Neal Katyal on Challenging Trump’s Global Tariffs (September 3, 2025)

Are Tariffs a New US VAT Tax? (March 31, 2025)

The Muted Impact of Tariffs on Inflation So Far (July 17, 2025)

Might Tariffs Get “Overturned”? (July 31, 2025)

The Consequences of Chaos (April 7, 2025)

7 Increasing Probabilities of Error (February 24, 2025)

 

 

__________

FOOTNOTES:
1. “Automated Commercial Environment” (ACE) is a secure electronic portal allowing businesses to file import/export data, trade information, and comply with regulations. This is where companies apply for Tariff refunds.

2. Side note about this particular SCOTUS case: It is so painfully obvious to any student of constitutional law that these tariffs are unconstitutional. It should be a 9-0 or 8-1 decision, but is likely more likely to be 7-2 or 6-3 due to the most extreme and/or partisan Justices.

If it’s somehow not overturned, I will venture that marks the end of the Supreme Court’s credibility as we know it. Even a 5-4 decision will be problematic for the court. We will save that discussion for another time.

My guess? Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and maybe Neil Gorsuch will dissent…

3. Article I, Section 8, often called the Taxing Clause:

“The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises … but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States.”

 

The post It’s Tariff Week! * appeared first on The Big Picture.

Musk Says X's New Algorithm Will Be Open Source In 6 Days

Authored by Jacob Burg via The Epoch Times,

Elon Musk said on Jan. 10 that his X social media platform would open its new algorithm to the public within a week.

“We will make the new X algorithm, including all code used to determine what organic and advertising posts are recommended to users, open source in 7 days,” Musk wrote in a post on X on Jan. 10.

“This will be repeated every 4 weeks, with comprehensive developer notes, to help you understand what changed.”

Authorities in the UK and the European Union notified Musk’s X and xAI on Jan. 5 that its regulatory bodies were aware of reports alleging that X’s artificial intelligence chatbot Grok had been used to generate sexually explicit images, including images that appeared to depict minors.

European Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier said that the EU is “very well aware of the fact that [Grok] is now offering a ‘spicy mode’ showing explicit sexual content with some output generated with childlike images.”

“This is not spicy. This is illegal. This is appalling. This is disgusting,” Regnier told reporters on Jan. 5

Musk had written in a post two days prior that “anyone using Grok to make illegal content will suffer the same consequences as if they upload illegal content.”

On Jan. 8, Regnier said a retention order the EU sent to X last year would be extended to the end of 2026. The order regarded the platform’s algorithms and the potential dissemination of illegal content.

The EU also fined X 120 million euros, or $140 million, last month, accusing the company of violating the bloc’s Digital Services Act transparency obligations. The fine was levied in relation to X’s “blue checkmark” subscription model, allegations of limited transparency regarding X’s ad repository, and the platform not giving researchers access to its public data.

French prosecutors in July 2025 launched a probe into X, citing alleged algorithm abuse and fraudulent data extraction by either the platform or its executives. The investigation followed a previous preliminary probe from January 2025 after the French government received complaints from a lawmaker and a senior French official about suspected foreign influence by X.

After French public institutions and researchers provided prosecutors with their findings from the preliminary probe, prosecutors asked police to investigate the company as “both a legal entity and through individual persons.”

Prosecutors called the alleged crimes “organised interference with the functioning of an automated data processing system” and “organised fraudulent extraction of data from an automated data processing system.”

X dismissed the probe as a “politically-motivated criminal investigation” in a post from its Global Government Affairs account on July 21, 2025.

“French authorities have requested access to X’s recommendation algorithm and real-time data about all user posts on the platform in order for several ‘experts’ to analyze the data and purportedly ’uncover the truth' about the operation of the X platform,” the company wrote at the time.

“The involvement of these individuals raises serious concerns about the impartiality, fairness, and political motivations of the investigation, to put it charitably. ... French authorities have classified X as an ‘organized gang’ for the purpose of the investigation.

“This characterization, which is usually reserved for drug cartels or mafia groups, enables the French police to deploy extensive investigative powers under French law, including wiretapping the personal devices of X employees.”

X stated that it “remains in the dark as to the specific allegations made against the platform.”

“However, based on what we know so far, X believes that this investigation is distorting French law in order to serve a political agenda and, ultimately, restrict free speech,” the social media platform stated.

Tyler Durden Mon, 01/12/2026 - 08:50

Stocks, Dollar Drop, Gold Jumps As Fed Probe, Iran Unrest Darken Mood

"Sell America" is back: US equity futures and other US assets - including the dollar - are lower (even as Europe and Asia rise) while precious metals surge to new record highs after the DOJ subpoenaed the Fed and launched a criminal probe into Jerome Powell; ongoing protests in Iran are also denting sentiment. As of 8:15am, S&P 500 contracts are lower by 0.5%, Nasdaq down 0.7%. In premarket trading, credit card stocks are down following President Trump’s late Friday remarks on rate caps. The attack on the Fed has been felt on the US yield curve, with 10- and 30-year yields higher by 3bps and 4bps, respectively. The dollar is down versus most major currencies - Bloomberg Dollar Index lower by 0.3%. Swiss franc outperforms on haven appeal, yen unable to benefit amid the prospect for Japanese elections. Precious metals hit further record highs; gold up 1.7%, silver higher by over 5%; the former stalled ahead of $4,600/oz. Brent crude faded upside triggered by supply concerns from Iran, lower by 0.8%. Bitcoin down 0.2%.  

In premarket trading, Mag 7 stocks are mostly lower (Apple +0.5%, Tesla -0.7%, Alphabet -0.7%, Microsoft -0.6%, Amazon -0.8%, Meta -0.8%, Nvidia -1%)

• Credit card companies and banks slide as President Donald Trump said credit-card lenders would be “in violation of the law” if the firms don’t cap interest rates at 10% for one year. Movers include American Express (AXP -4%), Capital One (COF -8%) and JPMorgan (JPM -2.5%).
• Precious metals and mining shares rally after the US threatened the Federal Reserve with a criminal indictment, undermining the dollar and sending gold and silver prices to record highs. Deadly protests in Iran and the possibility of a government overthrow also boosted demand for haven metals.
• Akamai Technologies Inc. (AKAM) rises 4.5% after Morgan Stanley upgraded the infrastructure software company by two notches, to overweight.
• Albemarle Corp. (ALB) gains 3.9% after analysts raised their price targets on the lithium producer as metal prices rally.
• Day One Biopharmaceuticals (DAWN) rises 20% after the drugmaker reported preliminary sales for its Ojemda cancer drug in the fourth quarter that topped expectations. The company also gave revenue guidance for 2026 that came ahead of the average analyst estimate.
• Shake Shack Inc. (SHAK) falls 5% after the burger chain reported preliminary revenue for the fourth quarter that missed the average analyst estimate.
• Soleno Therapeutics (SLNO) rises 4% after announcing some preliminary fourth quarter results.
• Sun Country Airlines Holdings Inc. (SNCY) jumps 15% after Allegiant Travel agreed to buy the company in a $1.5 billion cash-and-stock transaction, further driving consolidation in the US airline industry amid intensifying competition.
• UnitedHealth (UNH) slips 1% after the Wall Street Journal reported that a Senate committee investigating the company’s practices found that the health insurer deployed “aggressive tactics” to collect payment-boosting diagnoses for its Medicare Advantage members.

In other corporate news, shares in French biotech Abivax are surging amid speculation over a possible takeover. UBS said planned Swiss banking reforms are a threat to the national economy as pressure builds on the government to water down its proposals. Meta Platforms has shut down almost 550,000 accounts in Australia to comply with the country’s landmark social media ban for children. 

Stock futures and the dollar fell as investors trimmed exposure to US assets after the Trump administration significantly escalated its attacks on the Federal Reserve. Longer-dated yields surged while gold hit a new high. In a video message, Powell said the threat of a US criminal indictment — related to his congressional testimony on renovations at the Fed’s HQ — was because of disagreement over monetary policy. While Trump faced immediate bipartisan pushback from key Republican Thom Tillis, the development is fueling concerns over Fed autonomy. Bloomberg Economics’ 2025 modeling of a hit to Fed independence is a helpful read.

“Concerns about the Fed’s independence have really been reinforced with the latest criminal investigation,” Jan Hatzius, chief economist at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., said at a strategy conference in London. “Our expectation, though, is that this is a committee decision. I have no doubt that in his remaining term as chair, Powell is going to make decisions based on the economic data.”

Geopolitics is also adding to the cautious mood, with haven assets like gold and silver rising to records amid deadly protests in Iran over the weekend (the attack on the Fed doesn't help). Elsewhere, a group of European countries led by the UK and Germany is discussing plans for a military presence in Greenland.

Shares in banks stocks and credit card firms like American Express are sliding in premarket trading after Trump said lenders would be “in violation of the law” if the firms don’t cap interest rates at 10% for one year. Barclays Plc dropped as much as 4.8% in London, while Citigroup Inc., American Express Co. and Capital One Financial Corp. retreated in early US trading.  And the rally in US bank stocks will be tested this week when big Wall Street names report results. Top of mind will be consumer lending, with the data potentially clouded by the government shutdown. 

While JPMorgan, Citigroup and Bank of America are expected to post slower revenue growth as trading gains ease from the elevated levels experienced in recent quarters, investment-banking fees are likely to remain robust following a wave of deals, with upbeat projections for 2026.

“US banks have performed pretty well during the past quarter, so I’ll be looking into whether this earnings season provides confirmation,” said Andrea Tueni, head of sales trading at Saxo Banque France. “If that’s the case, the sector may actually become one of the drivers of this year.”

Goldman Sachs strategists expect S&P 500 companies to report fourth quarter year-over-year sales growth above the 6% consensus estimate. They also forecast 2026 EPS growth of 12% to $305, driven by sales growth of 7% alongside margin expansion of 70 bps. Economy-linked cyclical sectors are likely to outperform in 2026, driven by a supportive trade off between growth and inflation, according to JPMorgan strategists.

Citi strategists led by Beata Manthey expect diversification away from US stocks to continue this year, with European fiscal spending, reflation in Japan and widespread AI adoption supporting flows elsewhere. Today’s Taking Stock looks at positioning: Cash levels at asset managers are sending a sell signal while the general mood is pretty bullish. That may make the market prone to setbacks, but something would really need to break to trigger a proper drawdown.

Elsewhere, US consumers probably experienced a modest pickup in inflation in December, consistent with price pressures that are gradually abating. Core CPI is seen rising 2.7% in December from a year earlier, with economists expecting 0.3% increases in both overall and core prices on a monthly basis.

Stocks in Europe have a mild negative tilt, Stoxx 600 down 0.1%. IBEX 35 lags, down 0.2%, DAX continues to outperform regional peers, higher by 0.4%.  Miners outperform on elevated demand for havens, while travel and leisure stocks lag. Here are some of the biggest movers on Monday: 

• Abivax shares surge as much as 31% to a record high as speculation mounts over a possible takeover of the French biotech.
• BE Semi shares rally as much as 9% after the chip equipment company reported preliminary orders of about €250m, beating analyst estimates amid a rapid rollout in AI data centers.
• Fresnillo shares climb as much as 7.1%, leading a rally in precious metals miners after gold and silver hit record highs as concerns over independence of the US Federal Reserve and protests in Iran drive demand for havens.
• Oxford Nanopore shares rise as much as 10%, the most in more than two months, after the British DNA-sequencing company said it expects to report 2025 revenue growth slightly ahead of guidance.
• BAE Systems shares rise as much as 3.1% to a record high as defense stocks rally on continuing Greenland tensions.
• Barclays shares fall as much as 4.8%, the most since October, as the bank is seen as exposed to President Donald Trump’s demand to cap credit card interest rates at 10% for one year.
• Heineken shares drop as much as 3.9%, the most since July, after the brewer said CEO and Chairman of the Executive Board Dolf Van den Brink would step down at the end of May.
• Impax Asset Management shares fall as much as 3.6% after the investment firm reported £1.6 billion net outflows for the quarter ended December 31, 2025.
• British Land shares fall as much as 3.3% as the commercial property group announces CEO Simon Carter is to step down to become CEO of P3 Logistics Parks, according to a statement.

Asian stocks rose as a rally in the region’s tech shares and a weaker US dollar boosted sentiment, helping offset broader concerns over rising geopolitical tensions. The MSCI Asia Pacific excluding Japan Index rose as much as 0.8%, poised to snap a three-day losing streak. Alibaba, Tencent and TSMC provided the biggest boosts to the gauge. Most markets were in the green, with Hong Kong-listed Chinese stocks and indexes in Taiwan and South Korea among key gainers. Japan was shut for a holiday. South Korea’s tech-heavy market extended its new-year rally, with the Kospi rising for a seventh session to a fresh record. It has been up in every session so far in 2026 and is less than 10% away from a much-touted 5,000 level.

In FX, the dollar is down versus most major currencies - Bloomberg Dollar Index lower by 0.3%. Swiss franc outperforms on haven appeal, yen unable to benefit amid the prospect for Japanese elections.

In rates, treasuries hold losses in early US trading led by long-end tenors ahead of an accelerated and compressed auction calendar that includes 3- and 10-year note sales Monday and a 30-year bond reopening Tuesday. Risk to Fed independence is a factor after Chair Powell’s response to Sunday’s revelation of a federal criminal investigation.US yields are 1bp-4bp cheaper on the day with 2s10s and 5s30s spreads both wider by more than 2bp. European debt is steadier, German 10 year yield down 1bps, UK up 1bps. US 10-year near 4.2% trails bunds and gilts in the sector by 4bp and 2bp.  Monday’s Treasury auctions are $58 billion 3-year new issue at 11:30am and $39 billion 10-year reopening at 1pm; WI 3-year yield near 3.61% is less than 1bp richer than last month’s, which stopped through by 0.8bp; WI 10-year near 4.2% is 2.5bp cheaper than December’s result.IG credit new-issue calendar has begun to build; around $60 billion of supply is expected this week, following last week’s $90.2 billion haul, the fourth largest on record. 

In commodities, precious metals hit further record highs; gold up 1.7% above 4600, silver higher by over 5% as repeated attacks on the Fed were a major factor aiding gold and silver in 2025, and that driver looks set to persist. Brent crude faded upside triggered by supply concerns from Iran, lower by 0.8%. Bitcoin down 0.2%.  

“All the reasons that pushed it higher last year are still relevant this year, even more so given what we’re seeing on the geopolitical side,” said Peter Kinsella, head of foreign-currency strategy at Union Bancaire Privee SA. “A question I’m often asked is, ‘is it too late to buy gold?’ My answer is a resolute ‘no.’”

The US economic calendar is empty Monday,  while ahead this week we gett CPI, PPI and retail sales data. Scheduled Fed speakers include Bostic (12:30pm), Barkin (12:45pm) and Williams (6pm). Five Below is expected to issue December sales before the market opens. JPMorgan Healthcare conference begins in San Francisco with Johnson & Johnson, Medtronic, Biogen and Pfizer among many companies presenting. Investors will also watch the Supreme Court’s next opinion day on Wednesday for a possible ruling on Trump’s tariffs. New York Fed President John Williams and Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic are set to speak on Monday.

Market Snapshot

• S&P 500 mini -0.6%
• Nasdaq 100 mini -0.9%
• Russell 2000 mini -0.5%
• Stoxx Europe 600 -0.2%
• DAX +0.1%
• CAC 40 -0.3%
• 10-year Treasury yield +3 basis points at 4.2%
• VIX +1.9 points at 16.4
• Bloomberg Dollar Index -0.2% at 1208.95
• euro +0.4% at $1.1678
• WTI crude -0.6% at $58.76/barrel

Top Overnight News

• Jerome Powell said the Fed was served grand jury subpoenas threatening criminal charges over his testimony on renovations at the central bank’s headquarters. He said the move was part of the administration’s “ongoing pressure” on interest rates. Republican Senator Thom Tillis vowed to oppose any Fed nominees until the matter is resolved. Donald Trump told NBC he had no knowledge of the DOJ’s investigation. BBG
• U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Friday said the goal of the Trump administration's launch of mortgage-backed securities purchases is to roughly match the rate at which those bonds are rolling off the Federal Reserve's balance sheet. RTRS
• Credit card and bank shares fell premarket after Trump doubled down on a demand that issuers lower rates to 10% by Jan. 20 and keep them there for a year. Capital One was down nearly 9%. BBG
• China overtook the US in investing abroad in the first half of 2025, signaling a historic shift in global capital flows. BBG
• A group of countries led by the UK and Germany is discussing plans for a military presence on Greenland to appease Trump and show that Europe is committed to Arctic security, people familiar said. BBG
• President Trump is scheduled to be briefed Tuesday on options to respond to the protests in Iran, according to U.S. officials, a sign the president is considering reprimanding the regime for its crackdown on demonstrators as he has repeatedly threatened. WSJ
• Iran warns it will hit American bases in the Middle East if the Pentagon launches strikes, along with Israel and regional shipping lanes. WSJ
• Israel and Hamas are preparing for renewed fighting as the Palestinian militant group is refusing to disarm, a requirement that is holding up progress on President Trump’s peace plan for Gaza. Israel’s military has drawn up plans for a new ground operation inside Hamas-controlled territory in Gaza. WSJ
•  
• Exxon CEO Darren Woods offered the starkest assessment, telling Trump in the live-streamed meeting in the East Room that Venezuela is “uninvestable” under current conditions. He said major changes were needed before his company would return to the country, and that big questions remain about what return Exxon could expect from any investments. Politico
• Trump said he might block Exxon from drilling in Venezuela following comments by the Co.'s CEO: WSJ. 
• Judge grants US FTC request to block Edwards Lifesciences Corp's (EW) acquisition of JenaValve Technology Inc, via court records.

Trade/Tariffs

• India announces plans to conclude FTA with the EU during visit to the EU next week.
• EU Commission issues Guidance Document on submission of price undertaking offers for battery electric vehicles from China. "It covers various aspects to be addressed in a possible undertaking offer, including the minimum import price, sales channels, cross-compensation, and future investments in the EU.".
• China's Commerce Minister said the EU will release guidance document on submitting price commitment application, in regard to talks with EU on EV. EU will assess every price commitment application based on WTO rules.
• India's Trade Minister said they are in the 'final' stages, in regards to trade deal with Europe.
• China is resuming its soybean auctions after a three-week pause to free storage while continuing US purchases under the trade truce.
• The US is to host a meeting on rare earths this week, according to Bloomberg.

Central Banks

• Federal prosecutors have opened up a criminal investigation into Fed Chair Powell over the central bank’s renovation of its Washington headquarters and whether Powell lied to Congress about the scope of the project, NYT reported citing officials.
• Fed Chair Powell said DoJ served the Fed with subpoenas, threatening indictment; Powell said he will continue to do the job. Fed Chairman Powell said the Department of Justice is threatening a criminal indictment against him. The Fed Chairman said it is about his testimony in front of the Senate Banking Committee last June, but called this a pretext. The Fed Chairman thinks this is really about interest rates saying, "The threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the President.".
• US President Trump denies involvement in the DoJ's issuance of federal subpoena to the Fed; issued subpoenas unrelated to interest rates.
• US Senator Tillis criticises the move against Fed Chair Powell, and said he will “oppose the confirmation of any nominee for the Fed—including the upcoming Fed Chair vacancy—until this legal matter is resolved.
• Goldman Sachs expects the Fed to deliver 25bps cuts in June and September (vs. prior forecast of cuts in March and June).
• ECB's Muller said there's no reason to ease further in the near term and that rates have been in the right place for some time. Rates, however, could edge higher in a few years.
• ECB's de Guindos said the USD is not behaving as a haven, at this point.
• ECB Bulletin: "Inside the food basket: what is behind recent food inflation?"; "Looking ahead, food inflation is expected to ease further, supported in the near term by easing selling price expectations".
• Former PBoC Director of Statistics and Analysis Department Songcheng expects the central bank to take "small steps" toward monetary easing in the near future, Shanghai Securities News reported citing a speech.
• SARB is reportedly working on a review of its Prime Lending Rate, via Bloomberg. This has historically been fixed at the policy rate +350bps.

A more detailed look a global markets courtesy  of Newsquawk

APAC stocks were mostly in the green, following on from the positivity seen stateside during Friday's session. Japanese traders were away today amid a domestic holiday. ASX 200 saw gains of as much as 0.7% as the APAC session got underway but pared back slightly as XAU pulled back from new record highs. Despite spot XAU pulling back, gold miners outperformed, followed by consumer discretionary and energy. KOSPI was the Asian outperformer, with gains as much as 1.5% but the index completely reversed the move alongside further losses in tech-laden NQ. Hang Seng and Shanghai Comp conformed to the regional gains, although upside was capped amid a lack of major drivers for the bourses.

Top Asian News

• China Vanke (2202 HK) dollar bondholders have been advised to consider calling a default on the Cos noted, Bloomberg reported citing sources.
• China's MOFCOM says its key priorities are to strengthen legal frameworks, improve export controls, and enhance risk prevention to safeguard supply chain resilience and national security.

European equities (STOXX 600 -0.2%) are trading mostly on the backfoot, in contrast to a mostly stronger APAC session. Sentiment appears to be subdued by Fed independence woes, after Federal prosecutors opened a criminal investigation into Chair Powell. European sectors are mixed. Leading sectors are Basic Resources (+0.6%), Food Beverage and Tobacco (+0.3%) and Retail (+0.3%). Basic Resources has been underpinned by stronger metal prices. On the downside, Autos (-0.9%), Banks (-0.9%) and Travel (-1.4%) lag, with the banking sector pressured by Trump’s credit card fee cap plan.

Top European News

• EU Sentix Index (Jan) -1.8 vs. Exp. -4.9 (Prev. -6.2)
• Swiss Consumer Confidence (Dec) -31 vs. Exp. -33 (Prev. -34).

FX

• DXY is under pressure this morning as Fed independence takes the limelight once again. Currently trading at the lower end of a 98.70-99.24 range, and just shy of its 200 DMA at 98.82. Further pressure for the index could see a test of its 100 DMA at 98.62.
• Downside for the USD this morning can be attributed to Fed independence woes. In brief, Federal prosecutors have opened up a criminal investigation into Fed Chair Powell over the central bank’s renovation of its Washington headquarters. As it stands, markets appear to be running with the “sell America” theme, with the USD & US equity futures lower and the curve steeper. The USD may also be pressured thanks to the affordability implications of Trump’s demand for credit card rates to be capped at 10%.
• JPY remains the only currency flat vs the USD, with USD/JPY currently trading within a 157.90 to 158.20 range. The JPY was pressured overnight amidst further reporting of PM Takaichi planning to dissolve the Lower House – as a reminder, this was first reported last Friday which spurred hefty upside in USD/JPY. Since, price action has stabilised with USD/JPY gradually moving back towards overnight troughs as the risk tone remains subdued.
• Other G10s are stronger against the USD to varying degrees. The Antipodeans are amongst the top performers, benefiting from the strength seen across the metals complex. The CHF appears to be the favoured haven this morning, and currently sits second in the G10 leaderboard.

Fixed Income

• Fixed benchmarks in proximity to the unchanged mark.
• Overnight, while modest, the bias was downward as the US yield curve steepens over Fed independence concerns and the narrative that a more dovish Fed now could lead to higher inflation and, by extension, higher rates further down the line.
• USTs at the low-end of a 112-02 to 112-11 band, posting losses of five ticks at most. Support resides at 111-31 from Friday, below that we look to 111-26 from late-August. By extension, the 10yr yield is at a 4.2% peak, just shy of last Friday's 4.21% high. Thereafter, we return to levels from early-September/late-August when 4.35% printed (18th Aug.).
• In Europe, action is much the same. Bunds were unchanged for much of the session, but now incrementally firmer in 127.82 to 128.10 parameters. Elsewhere, Gilts opened near-enough unchanged before coming under modest pressure, echoing the above. At the low-end of a 92.30-53 band with downside of 18 ticks at most.
• OATs await Wednesday's no-confidence motions against the French government re. Mercosur. On Wednesday, January 14th, two no-confidence motions will be placed against the government, one from the far-left (LFI) and another from the far-right (RN). Neither motion is expected to succeed, as LFI will not support RN and the Socialists (PS) will not support LFI. However, Politico has a line from a centrist official noting that "there could be an accident". Amidst this, the OAT-Bund 10yr yield spread remains just above the 71bps mark and at the top-end of the 69-72bps 2026 range. OATs themselves trade in line with fixed income peers, as the updates around Fed Chair Powell dominate, and as such are near enough flat.

Commodities

• A softer start to the week for crude benchmarks, under modest pressure of c. 0.50/bbl at most to lows of USD 58.64/bbl and USD 62.89/bbl for WTI and Brent, respectively. Benchmarks spent APAC trade chopping in relatively wide bands in excess of USD 1.00/bbl. The complex began APAC firmer, peaking at USD 59.80/bbl and USD 64.00/bbl. Upside driven by increased geopolitical tensions, particularly relating to Iran. However, despite the escalatory remarks from POTUS that Iran is beginning to cross the line, the benchmarks failed to sustain early gains. Thereafter, they came under modest but notable pressure and slipped into the red.
• Spot gold opened on a slightly firmer footing, made a trough at USD 4,511.41/oz before gradually sauntering higher as the APAC session got underway. Thereafter, the yellow-metal surged beyond the USD 4.6k/oz mark, to make a fresh ATH at USD 4,601.19/oz. Since, spot gold has scaled back below USD 4.6k/oz, albeit it remains within a handful of dollars of that mark. Price action during European trade has been sideways.
• Upside for the yellow metal can be attributed to two points, which have attracted haven inflows. 1) Fed independence woes, and 2) heightened geopolitical tensions. Starting with the Fed, US Federal prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation into Fed Chair Powell over the central bank’s renovation of its Washington headquarters, and whether Powell lied to Congress about the scope of the project, NYT reported, citing officials. This has raised concerns among traders regarding the Fed's independence, given Trump's continued attempts to threaten Chair Powell's job.
• Base metals have followed the metals sentiment, with 3M LME Copper currently higher by around +1.7% and towards the upper end of a USD 13,086-13,233/t range. In Shanghai, tin hit its daily limit, rising 8% to CNY 376,920/ton to set a new ATH.
• Kazakhstan oil shipments from the Black Sea CPC terminal halted on Saturday, Bloomberg reported citing sources, this caused crude intake into the pipeline system to stop.
• Hunan Silver has restarted production on 12th January, following the completion of its maintenance plans.
• Australian Resources Minister King said Australia is to have an operational critical minerals reserve by year-end.
• Trafigura CEO expects to load first vessel for Venezuelan oil exports to the US next week.
• China buys at least 10 cargoes of US soybeans for April-May shipment, according to traders.

Geopolitics: Ukraine 

• Ukraine President Zelensky said US President Trump should enter a free trade deal with Ukraine.
• Over the weekend, Ukraine targeted three drilling platforms in the Caspian Sea owned by Lukoil. Elsewhere, Russian troops struck a Ukrainian military-industrial and energy facilities, according to TASS.

Geopolitics: Middle East

• US President Trump said Iran has proposed negotiations after US leader threatened action on Tehran for crackdown on protesters, AP News reported.
• US President Trump said the military is considering very strong options on Iran.
• An increase in the number of US planes near Iranian airspace, according to Israel's Channel 14.
• US President Trump said Iran called to negotiate yesterday on nuclear, we may meet them.
• US President Trump said Iran has proposed negotiations after US leader threatened action on Tehran for crackdown on protesters, AP News reported.
• US President Trump said Iran called to negotiate yesterday on nuclear, we may meet them.
• An increase in the number of US planes near Iranian airspace, according to Israel's Channel 14.
• US President Trump said "Iran is starting to cross it [Trump's red line]".
• US President Trump said the military is considering very strong options on Iran.
• Iran, in letter to UN, said US is to blame for the transformation of peaceful process into violent subversive acts and widespread vandalism.
• Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Baghaei said communication with the US Special Envoy is open. Adds, they are ready to negotiate on the basis of mutual respect.
• US President Trump said in contact with Iranian opposition leaders.

Geopolitics: Other

• German Finance Minister Klingbeil said the transatlantic relationship "is disintegrating", Die Zeit reported. Adds, We must further strengthen Europe, and we must do so much faster. The current pace is inadequate. European sovereignty now has top priority".
• State Department Spokesperson said US Secretary of State Rubio spoke with Mexican Foreign Secretary de la Fuente today about the need for stronger cooperation against narcoterrorists and trafficking of fentanyl and weapons.
• US President Trump posted a picture in which he is labelled "Acting President of Venezuela", via Truth Social.
• US President Trump said we are going to have Greenland, one way or another. We are talking about acquiring, not having short-term.
• US President Trump said working well with Venezuela's leadership. Meeting with Machado is on Tuesday or Wednesday.
• Trump administration officials are set to meet with Danish officials about Greenland on Wednesday, diplomatic sources tell CBS News. Multiple European diplomats said that they increasingly understand that America's commitment to the defence of Europe and NATO is no longer as ironclad as it has been over the past decades.
• Trump administration officials are set to meet with Danish officials about Greenland on Wednesday, diplomatic sources tell CBS News. Multiple European diplomats said that they increasingly understand that America's commitment to the defence of Europe and NATO is no longer as ironclad as it has been over the past decades.
• North Korea accused South Korea of provocation via a drone, via local press.

US Event Calendar

 

DB's Jim  Reid concludes the overnight wrap

It’s hard to believe that we’ve only had one full week so far this year. A lot seems to have happened in a short space of time. For this week, the highlight will be the US CPI report for December and the start of US earnings season, both tomorrow. We may also get a ruling on the IEEPA tariffs from the Supreme Court (possibly Wednesday as that’s when the next “opinion day” from the Court arrives), and a meeting between US Secretary of State Marco Rubio with Danish and Greenland officials at some point this week. Also keep an eye on events in Iran where the nationwide anti-government protests that started on December 28th have become more violent with the US and Israel keeping a very close watch. We might also hear news of a snap Japanese election in the lower house, although with the next Parliamentary session starting on January 23rd we may have to wait for then on any official announcement. If that's not enough, last night Fed Chair Powell disclosed that the Department of Justice issued a subpoena to the central bank on Friday, signaling the potential for a criminal indictment. In a video statement he stated that the threatened indictment pertains to his June testimony before the Senate regarding the renovation of Federal Reserve office buildings. He made it clear that he views the move as one aimed at influencing Fed independence. So remarkable stuff and all in all plenty of opportunities for big headlines over the coming days.  

Turning to the week’s main data now, Tuesday’s December CPI report will capture most of the limelight. Our expectations are for this data to come in on the stronger side, unwinding some of the distortions induced by the government shutdown. Specifically, DB are looking for a 0.36% gain in headline CPI which would keep the year-over-year rate roughly unchanged (2.75% vs. 2.74%). As to core, DB expect a 0.35% gain (just barely rounding down to 0.3%), which would have the year-over-year rate increase by a rounded up two-tenths (2.77% vs. 2.63%).

Wednesday brings producer prices, covering October and November, forecast at +0.1% month-on-month for both months, and retail sales, expected to rebound by +0.4% after being flat in the prior month. For PPI, the read through for the categories that feed directly into core PCE will as ever be the most important part of the release.

The week closes with industrial production on Friday, pencilled in at +0.1%, signalling only incremental improvement in manufacturing output. The Fed’s Beige Book, also due Wednesday, will offer qualitative insights into demand, labour conditions, and pricing trends across districts, complementing the hard data. For the rest of the US data see the global day-by-day week ahead at the end as usual.  

Beyond the US numbers, policy signals will be abundant. A roster of Fed officials—including Bostic, Barkin, Williams, Musalem, Kashkari, and Jefferson—are scheduled to speak throughout the week, providing markets with nuanced views on the balance of risks and the timing of potential rate adjustments. These remarks will be parsed against the backdrop of last week’s employment report, which showed the unemployment rate unexpectedly falling to 4.375%, with November’s reading revised down a tenth to 4.5%. This occurred alongside other decent employment data last week with a firmer quits rate, decent claims, and low Challenger layoff data. While these developments ease fears of a sharp labour market deterioration, payroll growth remains narrow and subdued. Headline payrolls were in line with DB expectation of 50k (consensus 70k) and private payrolls were only slightly below our expectations at 37k (consensus 75k), but after -76k of downward revisions to the prior two months, average monthly private payroll gains over the past three and six months are only 29k and 43k, respectively.

In terms of US earnings season, the major banks will lead the charge. JPMorgan Chase, Bank of New York Mellon, and Delta Air Lines report first tomorrow, followed by Citigroup, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo on Wednesday, and Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and BlackRock on Thursday, alongside TSMC for a global tech angle. Our equity strategists anticipate S&P 500 earnings growth rising to 15% year-on-year in Q4, up from 14% in Q3, implying average beats of 5.5% versus consensus, slightly above the historical norm of 4.9%. See their preview here.

Away from the US, Europe faces a lighter calendar, though Thursday’s UK November GDP will be closely watched for signs of stabilisation amid a soft recent growth narrative. Denmark’s December CPI today adds to the recent regional inflation picture, while the euro area releases industrial production and trade balance on Thursday. ECB speakers, including Guindos and Villeroy, will punctuate the discussion with policy nuance, complemented by Thursday’s Economic Bulletin.

In Asia, attention turns to China’s December trade balance on Wednesday, where exports are expected to slow to +4% year-on-year from +6%, reflecting softer global goods demand and ongoing electronics cycle normalisation. Japan’s data flow includes producer prices and machine too orders (Wednesday), seen unchanged at +2.7%, alongside the Economy Watchers survey (tomorrow). These releases will help shape expectations for BoJ policy calibration as the debate over normalisation continues. On Friday we saw widespread speculation that PM Takaichi may soon call snap lower house elections to capitalise on 70% approval ratings and try to boost its slim majority. This could put an election in early to mid February if called by the time parliament starts sitting on January 23rd. Given her expansive fiscal program it probably wasn’t a surprise to see the Yen hit a one-year intra-day low on Friday. It's a holiday in Japan today so markets are closed but Nikkei equity futures are up +3.1% so it's clear how markets view this but watch out for JGB yields in the days ahead. Bond futures are testing multi year lows again this morning.

Asian equity markets are opening the week higher even with S&P (-0.66%) and Nasdaq (-0.99%) futures lower on the Fed indictment story. The Hang Seng (+0.86%) is being driven by gains in the technology sector, alongside the Shanghai Composite (+0.83%) and the KOSPI (+0.30%).
Recapping last week now and markets started their first full week of 2026 in buoyant mood despite geopolitical developments, including Maduro’s removal and new US pressure around Greenland. The S&P 500 climbed +1.57% (+0.65% Friday) to a new all-time high, while the NASDAQ moved +1.88% higher (+0.81% Friday). There were a few notable sectoral stories. Oil services majors SLB (+12.44%) and Halliburton (+10.24%) led the gains for the S&P 500 energy sector (+2.13%) on the week following the Venezuela news and ensuing uptick in oil prices. Meanwhile, the S&P Aerospace & Defense index surged +10.56% amid the geopolitical volatility and President Trump’s proposal to increase the military budget to $1.5 trillion in 2027. More broadly, non-tech cyclical stocks outperformed, with the small cap Russell 2000 up +4.62% (+0.78% Friday), also supported by solid US data.   

While the ISM manufacturing index, which came in at a 14-month low of 47.9 (vs. 48.4 expected), pointed to a weak manufacturing sector, more domestic-oriented data was more positive, as the services ISM hit a 14-month high of 54.4 (vs. 52.2 expected). The US labour market data was mixed but apart from a slightly disappointing payrolls print generally showed no alarms. That led pricing of a January Fed rate cut to decline to just 5%, with the amount of cuts priced by December falling to 52bps (-5.7bps on the week and -4.4bps Friday). This drove a significant flattening in Treasuries, with the 2yr yield rising +5.9bps to 3.53% (+4.4bps Friday), while the 10yr yield fell -2.6bps to 4.17% (-0.2bps Friday).

In Europe, softer-than-expected December CPI prints and PMI releases led investors to consider that the ECB might yet cut rates again this year. Sovereign bonds rallied, with 10yr bund yields down -3.7bps to 2.86%, with OATs (-8.8bps) and BTPs (-11.8bps) outperforming amid the risk-on mood. Gilts saw an even better performance, with the 2yr yield down -9.0bps and the 10yr yield -16.2bps to 4.37%. Equity markets put in a strong performance, helped by defence companies such as Rheinmetall (+18.60%) and BAE (+17.05%), with the STOXX 600 +2.27% (+0.97% Friday), the DAX +2.94% (+0.53% Friday), the FTSE 100 +1.74% (+0.80% Friday) all hitting new record highs. Credit also rallied, with EUR IG (-2bps) and HY (-13bps) credit spreads slightly outperforming their US counterparts (-1bps and -11bps respectively).

In commodities, precious metals continued to rally on the back of heightened geopolitical stress, with gold up +4.09% to above $4,500/oz, and silver +9.67% higher at $79.86/oz. Oil experienced high volatility, with Brent crude initially falling below $60/bbl due to more optimistic output expectations after Maduro’s removal. However, by Friday it had rebounded to $63.34/bbl (+4.26% on the week), including a +2.18% rise on Friday as Trump’s meeting with oil executives delivered no new investment promises for future Venezuelan production.

Tyler Durden Mon, 01/12/2026 - 08:39

I've been thinking about this for some time.
After 21 years of writing this blog almost daily, I've decided to stop writing the daily updates on the blog.
However, the economic data "IV" is still in my arm, and I'll be writing a weekly economic summary at the end of each week (via a newsletter - see below). This will have three parts: the Schedule of economic data for the following week, a Review of data for the previous week, and a Commentary on a current topic. 
And I'll be writing the Real Estate Newsletter usually 4 to 6 times per week (this remains my main focus).

Thanks for reading the blog all these years! I hope it has been useful and informative.
Thanks to all the people who have helped me over the years.  And a special thanks to my friend Tanta; I miss her dearly.   Best to all.
The weekly update will be here:
and the Real Estate Newsletter (published 4 to 6 times per week) is here:

My back-to-work morning train reads:

• Peter Navarro: ‘There’s No Softening on China’ Trump’s longtime trade adviser discusses tariffs, doing business with Beijing, and the Supreme Court case that could define his legacy. (Bloomberg free)

• US prosecutors launch criminal investigation into Federal Reserve’s Jay Powell: Central bank chair says grand jury subpoenas are retaliation for refusal to bow to demand to cut interest rates. (Financial Times) see also U.S. Prosecutors Are Investigating Fed Chair Jerome Powell: A criminal probe looks at his testimony to Congress over central bank renovations. (Wall Street Journal)

• How Google Got Its Groove Back and Edged Ahead of OpenAI: After ChatGPT dominated early chatbot market, Google staged comeback with powerful AI model; biggest search-engine overhaul in years. (Wall Street Journal)

• The Year of the $100 Million House: For the first time ever, every luxury property on the list of 2025’s 10 biggest sales traded at nine figures or more (Wall Street Journal)

• Ten Lessons the Market Taught Us in 2025. Lessons the Market Taught Us in 2025 (Larry’s Substack) see also Even Warren Buffett couldn’t keep beating the market without fail. Here’s why.Would you have invested in Berkshire Hathaway stock at the start of Buffett’s career? (Marketwatch)

• It’s One of America’s Most Successful Experiments, and It’s Coming to an End. Amid an astonishing wave of anti-Indian animus, it’s a question many Indian Americans are asking. In its crudest form, mostly expressed on social media, this antipathy shows up as gutter racism and religious bigotry — an endless stream of invective declaring that Indians have low I.Q.s, worship devils, cheat their way into the country and commit terrible crimes. (New York Times)

• More than 10% of Congress won’t return to their seats after 2026: More than a tenth of the current Congress has now indicated they will not return to their seats after the 2026 midterms, driven by redistricting, retirements and lawmakers running for different offices. (NPR)

• Cuba Is Already on the Brink. Maduro’s Ouster Brings It Closer to Collapse. Cubans speculating about whether their government will be next to fall, with crucial Venezuelan oil imports now in jeopardy. (Wall Street Journal)

• We are all le Carré’s people now: Look into his wilderness of mirrors and see our own world reflected all around. (New Statesman)

• Instructional Manual for Good Writerly Practice: An Interview with Rob Mclennan (Cleveland Review of Books)

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Ben Hunt, founder of Perscient, a firm that studies how narratives and stories shape markets, investing, and social behavior through the lens of information theory, game theory, and unstructured data analysis. His work analyzes the language, story arcs, and viral spread of explanations in media.

Wells Fargo’s economic chart of the year

Source: @MylesUdland

 

Sign up for our reads-only mailing list here.

 

The post 10 Monday AM Reads appeared first on The Big Picture.

DOT Strips California Of $160 Million Over Foreign Truckers

By John Gallagher of FreightWaves

A showdown between the U.S. Department of Transportation and the State of California reached a breaking point on Wednesday after Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration will withhold approximately $160 million in safety program money from the state.

The move follows California’s failure to meet a January 5 deadline to cancel more than 17,000 commercial truck driver’s licenses that Duffy asserts were unlawfully issued by the state to foreign truckers.

The California Department of Motor Vehicles announced in late December that it would delay the cancellation until March 6, but FMCSA did not agree to the extension.

“It’s reckoning day for [Governor] Gavin Newsom and California,” Duffy stated in a press release announcing a final determination letter that was sent to Newsom and the DMV.

“Our demands were simple: follow the rules, revoke the unlawfully-issued licenses to dangerous foreign drivers, and fix the system so this never happens again. Gavin Newsom has failed to do so – putting the needs of illegal immigrants over the safety of the American people.

“While Gavin may not care about protecting you and your family on our roads, the Trump Administration does. We’re pulling this funding to ensure federal tax dollars don’t fund this charade.”

A nationwide audit issued by FMCSA last summer of non-domiciled CDLs – which allow individuals who are not U.S. citizens or permanent residents to obtain commercial licenses – uncovered what government officials called a “systemic collapse” in California, where licenses were allegedly issued with expiration dates years beyond a driver’s lawful presence in the U.S.

FMCSA Administrator Derek Barrs emphasized that the agency would not compromise on the removal of these drivers from the road.

“Federal regulations are clear: states must correct safety deficiencies on a schedule mutually agreed upon by the agency, and California failed to meet its commitment,” Barrs stated. “We will not accept a corrective plan that knowingly leaves thousands of drivers holding noncompliant licenses behind the wheel of 80,000-pound trucks in open defiance of federal safety regulations.”

The $160 million penalty marks the first year of potential sanctions. Under federal law, if California continues to defy the FMCSA’s Final Determination, the amount withheld could double in the second year.

“We strongly disagree with the federal government’s decision to withhold vital transportation funding from California – their action jeopardizes public safety because these funds are critical for maintaining and improving the roadways we all rely on every day,” California DMV Public Affairs Deputy Director Eva Spiegel told FreightWaves in an email statement.

“The DMV is fully compliant with state and federal regulations and had engaged in positive conversations with FMCSA and DMV about extending the January 5 cancellation date to allow additional time for FMCSA to review the department’s commercial driver’s license program.”

The crackdown is expected to further tighten capacity in a West Coast freight market already grappling with shifts in regulatory policy. FreightWaves has previously reported on the potential for capacity crunches as thousands of drivers – many of whom have been integral to spot market operations – are forced out of service.

Todd Spencer, president of the Owner Operator Independent Drivers Association, said the crackdown on non-domiciled CDLs is overdue. “The days of exploiting cheap labor on the basis of false ‘driver shortage’ claims are over,” Spencer said in a press statement in response to DOT’s latest announcement.

“For too long, loopholes in this program have allowed unqualified drivers onto our highways, putting professional truckers and the motoring public at risk.”

Tyler Durden Mon, 01/12/2026 - 06:30

'Regime Influence': Trump's Foreign-Policy Third Way

Authored by David DesRoisiers via The Spectator,

At 2 a.m. on Saturday, President Trump gave a New Year’s kinetic expression to his recently published National Security Strategy and what it means in the American hemisphere. If we take President Trump at his blustering word – which those in the administration’s Maduro-adjacent crosshairs should – this is just the first, big, shock-and-awe move by the United States in a resetting of the rules-based order that has governed our hemisphere.

This time on America First terms.

In Europe, those who take Trump seriously and see the long-term upside in his policies, call him “Daddy.” Last weekend Trump showed the “Papi” side of this national security strategy in our hemisphere. The Venezuelan people woke up praising the Papi of Venezuelan freedom. There is a new sheriff overseeing the hemisphere – and there are going to be regional and global consequences.

China is going to have to tighten its belt and stop building roads and propping up adversaries in our hemisphere. Cuba, too, should be very worried. What happened in Venezuela was not a product of a Bay of Pigs military mindset. Like Venezuela, Cuba is surrounded by the US Navy. Cuba’s infrastructure was shot before the hurricanes hit. The country looks like North Korea at night – and its people spend their days in a Hunger Games-pursuit. Without Venezuelan oil and other needed subsidies, Cuba will find itself completely dark in a matter of weeks. And their best fighters are stuck in Venezuela. Going home is not an option; escaping to Colombia and joining the Narcos is the likelier move. Soon enough, the Cuban regime with collapse under its own weight, followed by a Cuban Diaspora returning home, welcomed as liberators.

The narco-industrial complex needs to show that they are listening to Papi Gringo and adapting to new market conditions. Discontinuing the fentanyl trade and hanging its leadership from bridges would be a constructive first act of  “We hear you, Papi.”  Taking this step would help the cartels protect their core business, which has not always been poisoning Americans.

To date, President Trump has been a model of kinetic restraint and has studiously avoided the excesses of regime change and nation-building overreach.

Trump blew the minds of the neocons and their America First critics in Iran. He showed the world, in Operation Midnight Hammer, a middle path. Trump is doing so again in Venezuela with Operation Absolute Resolve. Under Trump’s leadership and direction, his administration scrupulously planned and executed a multi-agency kinetic response with minimal casualties to the regime’s key players – none to populace – resulting in a tomorrow that favors peace, and an orderly transition to better. When have we seen that before?

Tucker Carlson – with whom I disagree, but whom I refuse to quit, cancel, or stop listening to – is a not-so-stable genius when it comes to foreign policy and conduct of war. In contrast, Carlson has much to offer on how “We the People” think about our nation’s obligations to each other, citizen to citizen, which includes our elected representative. Domestic policy is the constructive lane for Tucker’s flavor of America First Quakerism.

But foreign policy is not Tucker Carlson’s strong point. Nor, frankly, is it a strong point of his foil and former colleague Mark Levin, who Carlson often depicts as a totem of neoconservatism. However, it is a strength of President Trump, and it is being faithfully executed by his Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, and Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth.

It is worth noting that his two war captains both have neocon resumes and let’s-give-war-a-chance tendencies, a cause of concern for the America First crowd. It does appear, however, that they have evolved to embrace a third way – Trump’s way – between the excesses of neoconservatism and the deficits of America First Quakerism.

Tucker and Levin are both prisoners of mindsets that necessarily lead to failure. In contrast, Trump’s approach to peace and war defies the worst features of each, and in doing so delivers on the partial in both within a win-win outcome. Iran’s nuclear ambitions got crushed without American boots on the ground, regime change and suffering of non-combatant, and combatants and leadership.

Just because Trump’s actions in Iran, and now in Venezuela, make Senator Lindsay Graham giddy, doesn’t mean that Trump’s foreign policy instincts have been captured. As in Iran, what is happening in Venezuela is not regime change; it is regime influence through leverage. This difference between the former and latter is a distinction with a huge, game-changing difference. 

Here’s a tactical expression of the American strategy: Trump does not punish the innocents – men, women, or children – or all the guilty for that matter. That is America First, restraint born of prudence. Trump hits targets – Iran’s nuclear enrichment and weaponization capacity – and cocksure leadership who don’t know the comparative size of their stick: Maduro. And when Trump does act, he does so with a precision and measure born of patient, disciplined planning and rehearsal, and with open communication to those on the ground, counseling calm, and, if not, a reality of more coming. Trump offered Maduro an off-ramp that did not require a jail cell. He could be living the al-Assad life somewhere that fits his despotic liking. He did not take it, however, and woke up in a very different position. Trump offered his second-in-command, Delcy Rodríguez – his ruthless Lady Macbeth – a second chance and new lease of life, a receivership relationship for her and her dirty-hand cronies.

This is not regime change. This is regime influence. On the same day of the extraction, the Venezuelan leadership that was spared was offered a peace-and-reconciliation olive branch. He has extended that opportunity to those already charged as co-conspirators to become collaborators in building a better Venezuela on terms that the US dictates. Foment chaos and expect to be replaced by your number two, who will distinguish themselves as a patriot by killing their boss, assume the title and play nice with Papi.

Just imagine if what we pulled off in Venezuela with Maduro, we did in Iraq with Saddam Hussein. Get him in his palace while he is sleeping and leave his people and leadership alone. And while this is happening, reach out to his second-in-command and make an offer that he or she can’t refuse with wash, rinse and repeat consequences of noncompliance.

This is a genuine Art of War insight. Give the existing leadership an opportunity to survive and evolve into better, or at least enough time to steal enough money and get out of the country. Doing so will take away the incentive to circle around the leader and fight like their fates are locked at the hip with his. Decouple their fates and you compete on a completely different terrain.

How much human suffering could have been avoided if this was our default, first response to bad behavior in Afghanistan and Iraq?

Trump’s National Security Strategy is an evolution of the art of war and statecraft. The “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine is an improvement to rally around.

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

Tyler Durden Mon, 01/12/2026 - 05:00

Cancer Drugs Drive Nearly One-Fifth Of Pharma Sales

The global pharmaceutical industry's revenue is increasingly concentrated in a handful of high-value drug classes, with oncology, diabetes/obesity treatments and immunology leading the charge.

As Statista's Tristan Gaudiat details below, according to estimates from Statista Market Insights, cancer drugs alone generated over $217 billion last year, making oncology the largest therapeutic segment, driving nearly one-fifth (18 percent) of all pharmaceutical sales.

You will find more infographics at Statista

Antidiabetic medicines rank second, with estimated sales of over $85 billion in 2025, contributing 7 percent to global market revenues.

Some of the top-grossing drugs include Merck's Keytruda, an immunotherapy for multiple cancers with almost $30 billion in revenue in 2024, as well as Eli Lilly's Mounjaro and Novo Nordisk's Ozempic/Wegovy, used for diabetes treatment and weight loss, and bringing in more than $10 billion annually for their parent companies.

Tyler Durden Mon, 01/12/2026 - 04:15

Germany's Intelligence Service Set To Expand Surveillance

Submitted by Thomas Kolbe

According to plans from the Federal Chancellery, Germany’s foreign intelligence service, the BND, is set to significantly expand its surveillance capabilities. The focus is particularly on internet communication transmitted from within Germany to abroad, which is to be included in the agency’s monitoring catalog going forward.

After months of heated debates over the expansion of the Brussels censorship apparatus under the Digital Services Act and EU chat control, attention to the EU Commission’s espionage activities has somewhat subsided. Now, a draft law from the Chancellery, obtained by WDR, NDR, and Süddeutsche Zeitung, is causing a stir.

The proposed expansion of BND powers makes one thing clear: German politics is moving in lockstep with the Brussels Commission—going all out against the privacy and communications of citizens, media, and government-critical organizations.

A Reminder of the NSA Scandal

We recall the scandal over a decade ago involving the US National Security Agency (NSA). Whistleblower Edward Snowden exposed the agency’s operations. The NSA collected global telecommunications and internet data—including phone calls, emails, and online communications of millions of citizens—often without any criminal cause. Programs like PRISM, which allowed direct access to data from US tech companies, or X-Keyscore, which could monitor internet activity in real time, already showed how advanced state surveillance had become and what technical possibilities were available to government actors.

The leaked Chancellery document now shows where Germany is headed: the draft law follows almost the same principle. The BND would be allowed to monitor internet traffic from Germany to abroad, which was previously prohibited, capturing up to 30% of traffic. Internet communications would be stored for six months, this time including content—not just metadata—tracking connections between specific actors.

A Strategic Door Opener

The Chancellery’s approach to expanding BND powers is familiar: first, the door to the actual rule-breaking is opened. Safe spaces for journalists working for state media of authoritarian states are gradually eroded. Determinations of who counts as “authoritarian” will likely fall to an “ethics commission” subjected to the strict ethical rules of Merz’s Chancellery.

Soon, terms like “hate and incitement” or “anti-democratic activities,” as always cited in the fight against the opposition, come into play. In short: priority content revolves around the AfD circle. This also affects libertarian and conservative viewpoints opposing the climate-socialist complex or military sector expansion. Issues like a “Europe of regions” and resistance to the growing Brussels power complex will likely become part of the BND’s monitoring guidelines.

From this starting point, surveillance powers are gradually expanded—based on political urgency.

If foreign providers and platform operators are uncooperative, the BND could gain permission to legally hack and extract personal data and communications—even within Germany’s borders. It is a carte blanche for every “spy hat.” The social climate in Germany is visibly taking on the features of a digitalized DDR.

Digital Mass Surveillance

Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s draft goes far beyond previous EU-wide chat control attempts. Legal hacking of foreign systems, including Google, Meta, or Elon Musk’s platform X, is planned. The justification for this invasive policy is constructed as a strategic necessity: Germany’s IT infrastructure is increasingly threatened by hostile cyberattacks.

The BND is to play a key role and act more independently from US intelligence services. Germany aims to participate in the global intelligence network chessboard. In practice, surveillance is more likely to target its own citizens, as technical and personnel resources are insufficient to operate on an international level. The long retention and analysis periods make the direction clear: while French intelligence may store data for up to four years and the UK or Italy operate “as long as necessary,” German citizens are slowly losing privacy against an expanding bureaucratic state.

Cynical Politics and Opposition Oversight

For Green Party politician Konstantin von Notz, chair of the Parliamentary Control Panel for Intelligence (PKGr), the situation is clear: cybersecurity should be better funded but within strict legal frameworks.

At first glance, this sounds lawful but is systematically undermined by actual government actions—the proposed powers go far beyond necessary intelligence work. Brussels and Berlin’s political direction points precisely toward mass surveillance of digital communication. Platforms like X act as catalysts for opposition voices against Berlin and Brussels, criticizing Russia policy, the pandemic regime, and the growing bureaucratic apparatus. Here, clashes between state and opposition flare up.

Particularly distasteful is outsourcing monitoring to so-called “Trusted Flaggers” who report undesired content—creating a surveillance network reminiscent of DDR methods: opposition members face pressure, legal action, or loss of bank access—a social death by government command. In this context, expanding BND powers is a step toward interlinking multiple surveillance systems. The end of the secrecy of correspondence and anonymous digital communication seems sealed for EU citizens.

Repressive and Hypocritical

During the EU chat control debate, Germany initially publicly opposed indiscriminate surveillance to maintain appearances and give the impression of adhering to civil liberties traditions. Historically, libertarian forces in Germany successfully resisted state-driven data retention—proof of a healthy societal immune system.

Now, the BND is set to close this “informational” gap, initiated directly by the Chancellor. Merz theatrically portrays himself as a defender of freedom while leaving his party and coalition to ostentatiously oppose deep EU chat control.

Merz remained silent during year-end debates, fully aware that the next 180° turn had already been drafted into law. Now, with calculated cynicism, he positions Germany’s spy apparatus against its own citizens.

When the draft will enter parliament remains unclear. The Chancellery has provided no statements on this critical issue; it operates clandestinely. Germany of the 2020s still lacks effective societal “antibodies” against the growing state repression apparatus, possibly due to decades of media framing portraying the state as benevolent.

In summary: Germany has become a driving factor in both destructive climate policy and systematic erosion of civil rights in the EU—or perhaps always was, skillfully avoiding the appearance of being a malicious player in this unpleasant game.

Tyler Durden Mon, 01/12/2026 - 03:30

Overhauling Air Traffic Control Involves 5,000 Locations And 600 Radar Systems: Here's What To Know

Authored by Jacob Burg via The Epoch Times,

The federal government is embarking on what Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has called “the most important infrastructure project that we’ve had in this country for decades.” It is attempting to modernize and upgrade the nation’s entire air traffic control system within a timeline of roughly three- and-a-half to four years.

Multiple aviation experts, ranging from former pilots and controllers to professors and an aviation lawyer, say the changes are needed and long overdue.

The entire project is projected to cost at least $32.5 billion, according to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), with the initial $12.5 billion downpayment funded by President Donald Trump’s spending bill in July 2025. Duffy has asked Congress for an additional $20 billion to complete the project by the end of the president’s term.

This is what the FAA has said it plans to do in this multi-year modernization project, which portions of the project experts say are most critical, some of the obstacles the federal government might face, and background on the company chosen to lead the endeavor.

What to Expect

The FAA’s plan to “deliver Americans a state-of-the-art air traffic control system” will involve replacing telecommunication lines, radar systems, software, hardware, and other core U.S. aviation infrastructure.

The agency said it will replace copper lines with fiber optics—a project that Duffy recently said is already more than 30 percent complete—and will swap outdated communication hardware with wireless and satellite technology.

These changes will be made at nearly 5,000 locations, alongside implementing more than 25,000 new radios and 462 new digital voice switches, according to an FAA fact sheet.

An air traffic controller monitors screens beside a digital Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) clock inside the control tower at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) on Sept. 4, 2013. Reed Saxon/File/AP Photo

The agency said more than 600 radar systems that “have gone past their life cycle” will be replaced. Some U.S. radar systems, particularly ground-based radar, date back to between the 1940s and the 1970s.

“The primary radar system—that goes back to World War II, and that’s still in use. And that’s basically detecting that there is something in the air. You can’t always tell what it is,” said Margaret Wallace, a former military air traffic controller and an assistant professor of aviation management at Florida Institute of Technology.

In the decades since World War II, the FAA has “added layers of technology … and if a lower level has an issue, then that’s going to create issues in all the other layers of technology,” Wallace told The Epoch Times.

Additionally, the FAA is increasing the number of airports that deploy the “Surface Awareness Initiative” (SAI). SAI is a ground-based monitoring system that allows air traffic controllers to see all aircraft traversing runways, taxiways, and other surface movement areas at airports.

As of March 2025, SAI was operational at 18 airports. The FAA aimed to install it at 50 airports by the end of 2025 and a total of 200 airports overall. An FAA spokesman told The Epoch Times on Jan. 6 that the system has now been installed at 52 air traffic control towers.

Modernizing air traffic control will also involve building a new consolidated air route traffic control center for the first time in six decades and replacing multiple control towers and one Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON) facility.

TRACON facilities manage air traffic for several airports in specific regions, such as the New York City or Tampa metropolitan areas.

Air traffic controllers monitor aircraft activity at Philadelphia International Airport on Nov. 11, 2025. John Fredricks/The Epoch Times

Desperately Needed

U.S. airspace is in desperate need of upgrades, multiple aviation experts said.

“The basic radar technology obviously needs to be upgraded and have better detection systems. With all the GPS [global positioning system] and everything we have, I think it would be reasonable to use that as a secondary technology as well,” said Wallace, who teaches classes on air traffic control and airport management.

She described how other countries have upgraded the way their air traffic control infrastructures identify aircraft and communicate across multiple systems within their airspace, leading to improved reliability throughout.

The United States still uses analog frequency radios, similar to the AM/FM radios found in cars, which—unlike radios in airport control towers—have already been outpaced by digital devices such as smartphones that utilize new technology, Wallace said.

Some of these radios have created headaches for pilots flying into busy airspaces, according to Shawn Pruchnicki, a safety expert, former pilot, and aviation professor at Ohio State University.

“The number one problem that I think if you ask any pilot, and probably the majority of controllers, would tell you, is that we have this single channel for communications that only one person can talk at a time. I don’t know how you get around that,” Pruchnicki told The Epoch Times.

Sometimes pilots will be handed off to a new radio frequency from a previous one, and “then all of a sudden … you listen, and it’s just like this constant barrage of air traffic control clearances. It’s like this person’s not even taking a breath, and you’re just like, ‘Oh, dear God … this airspace, apparently, is out of control.’”

Even though the controllers in the tower can see and direct the planes without constant communication with pilots, Pruchnicki said there are times when a pilot needs to check in with the tower, especially if there’s an emergency, and it can “become problematic” if there are too many pilots waiting to speak on congested radio channels.

An air traffic controller stands beneath a radar screen in the control tower at Washington’s Reagan National Airport. The FAA said more than 600 radar systems that “have gone past their life cycle” will be replaced. Charles Dharapak/File/AP Photo

Making these upgrades throughout the U.S. airspace requires an entire overhaul, including rebuilding whole facilities to make way for modernized hardware and software, Wallace said.

“Because you can’t just say, ‘oh, let’s flip the switch, and we’re going to use this today,’” she said.

There’s also the need to balance the need for  change with the caution to maintain safety within a system as complex and critical as aviation, according to Shem Malmquist, who has worked in aviation for nearly 40 years, including as a commercial pilot, professor, and safety consultant.

“Whether it’s politics or whatever, you have some people that want to push forward and come up with the new ideas and constantly change things. And then you have the other, that’s the conservative side, saying, ‘No, no, wait, wait, wait; we know this other thing is working. Let’s not change too quickly,’” he told The Epoch Times.

“Those two working together creates a balance, and the same thing is true on development of safety-critical systems. You want that balance.”

Compressed Timeline

Although the upgrades are necessary, some aviation experts are concerned about the three-and-a-half to four-year timeline.

“I think it’s probably aggressive,” Greg Reigel, an aviation lawyer and private pilot, told The Epoch Times.

Reigel said the project is essentially one of the most ambitious and wide-reaching infrastructure projects in American history.

“I think it’s a good thing. I think they’re on the right track,” he said.

”I just hope that they’re doing this the right way, and that safety is first and foremost, and they’re not getting outside political or financial pressure with respect to deadlines or going live” with upgraded hardware and software, Reigel said.

Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy speaks at a press conference at the U.S. Capitol on Oct. 23, 2025. Duffy recently said the FAA has replaced more than 30 percent of its copper lines with fiber optics. Eric Lee/Getty Images

Wallace said it’s not a “realistic timeline” to do a “full overhaul” of U.S. air traffic control.

“We can get some facilities started, but even when we get them up and built and everything, we still have to have a test period.”

When a new facility is built to replace an old one, it takes time to transition workers from one building to another. Throwing human factors into the mix complicates it further, Wallace said.

“It’s great to have all this new technology, but how do humans adapt to it? So they work with certain systems now; there’s going to be a big training process.” she added.

Malmquist said that any changes to a system as complex as U.S. airspace are going to require careful consideration, “management of change procedure,” and documentation of all alterations to air traffic control infrastructure and why they were replaced or modified.

“When you make a change, you can go back and trace back and say, ‘Is this going to affect these other things, but then how they’re going to interact in unexpected ways?’” he added.

Peraton to Lead Upgrade Project

The federal government on Dec. 4, 2025, announced that it had chosen Peraton, a national security and technology firm that contracts with the Department of Defense, to be the “prime integrator” of the air traffic control modernization project.

As prime integrator, Peraton’s main initiative will be managing the modernization project and making sure it is delivered on time without major disruptions to U.S. airspace, the FAA said in a fact sheet the same day.

A computer screen displays real-time air traffic over North America in the control tower at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago on Feb. 11, 2015. The FAA said it plans to replace outdated communications hardware with wireless and satellite systems at nearly 5,000 sites, along with more than 25,000 new radios and 462 digital voice switches. M. Spencer Green/File/AP Photo

Several aviation experts told The Epoch Times that they had not heard of Peraton before seeing the FAA’s announcement. The company was spun out of another defense contractor, the former Harris Corporation. Veritas Capital bought Harris Corporation’s government IT services division in 2017 and renamed it Peraton.

In a September 2025 statement, Peraton said it “brings to the table a holistic approach, unhindered by a failed history of FAA supplier performance and technical bias in serving as a pure-play systems integrator.”

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

Harris Corporation had a decades-long history of involvement in the aviation industry, with a 2016 annual report listing air traffic control management as one of the company’s four key business components.

In 2002, Harris Corporation partnered with Lockheed Martin to develop technology for air traffic management and communications.

In 2009, the Harris Corporation acquired SolaCom Technologies, Inc., a privately held air traffic control company that was based in Quebec, Canada, at the time.

The FAA awarded Harris a 15-year, $291 million contract in 2012 to provide a new communications system for air traffic control as part of the agency’s previous “NextGen” initiative.

NextGen was similar to the Trump administration’s current plan to upgrade U.S. air traffic control nationwide, but with a key difference: it had a timeline of more than 20 years, with 2025 being the initial target date for deployment. A 2024 Department of Transportation report indicated that the project had stalled, with some portions being delayed until at least 2030.

Tyler Durden Sun, 01/11/2026 - 22:10

Fed Subpoenaed As DOJ Launches Criminal Probe Into Jerome Powell, Who Vows To "Stand Firm"

Not content with launching a dizzying cascade of international conflicts, Trump just lobbed a nuke at the Fed. 

While Trump's vendetta against the Fed's Lisa Cook set for a January showdown before the Supreme Court, the Trump admin dramatically raised the stakes on Sunday when the NYT first reported, and minutes later Fed Chair Jerome Powell confirmed that the US central bank had been served grand jury subpoenas from the Justice Department threatening a criminal indictment, in what Bloomberg said was a dramatic escalation of the Trump administration’s attacks on the Fed.

As the NYT first reported, the US attorney’s office in the District of Columbia has opened a criminal investigation into Powell over the central bank’s renovation of its Washington headquarters and whether the Fed Chair lied to Congress about the scope of the project. The inquiry, which includes an analysis of Powell’s public statements and an examination of spending records, was approved in November by Jeanine Pirro, a longtime ally of President Trump who was appointed to run the office last year, the NYT sources said.

Attorney General Pam Bondi has directed US attorneys offices to look into cases of potential taxpayer abuse, said one of the NYT sources. In comments broadcast by NBC, Trump said that the DOJ's Fed subpoenas "nothing to do with interest rates" and denied any involvement in the legal matter.

The investigation escalates Trump’s long-running feud with Powell, whom the president has continually attacked for resisting his demands to slash interest rates significantly (and, in retrospect, Trump was right as the Fed did in fact cut rates at its last 3 meetings having belatedly observed the dramatic deterioration in the labor market without an offsetting surge in inflation). The president has threatened to fire the Fed chair - whom he nominated for the position in 2017 - and raised the prospect of a lawsuit against him related to the $2.5 billion renovation, citing “incompetence.”

In a striking public response to the NYT report, Powell - who has historically ignored public commentary on Trump's public assaults - issued a forceful written and video statement released Sunday evening using the Federal Reserve's official account on X, in which he said the action was related to his June congressional testimony on ongoing renovations of the Fed’s headquarters. But he said "this unprecedented action should be seen in the broader context of the administration’s threats and ongoing pressure." The Fed Chair then continued:

"This new threat is not about my testimony last June or about the renovation of the Federal Reserve buildings. It is not about Congress’s oversight role; the Fed through testimony and other public disclosures made every effort to keep Congress informed about the renovation project. Those are pretexts."

“The threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the president. This is about whether the Fed will be able to continue to set interest rates based on evidence and economic conditions — or whether instead monetary policy will be directed by political pressure or intimidation.”

“I have deep respect for the rule of law and for accountability in our democracy. No one—certainly not the chair of the Federal Reserve—is above the law. But this unprecedented action should be seen in the broader context of the administration’s threats and ongoing pressure,” 

"Public service sometimes requires standing firm in the face of threats. I will continue to do the job the Senate confirmed me to do with integrity and a commitment to serving the American people."

Video message from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell: https://t.co/5dfrkByGyX pic.twitter.com/O4ecNaYaGH

— Federal Reserve (@federalreserve) January 12, 2026

In the statement, Powell said he intends to continue doing his job “with integrity and a commitment to serving the American people.” He did not discuss the fact that his delayed actions during the covid crisis sparked the biggest bout of runaway inflation in 40 years, presided over the biggest insider trading scandal at the Fed which led to multiple resignations at the central bank, and was explicitly political by cutting rates in September 2024, two months before the November election, in a bid to sway the vote for Kamala Harris. 

Ironically, this latest dramatic escalation in the war between the White House and the Marriner Eccles building which are located less than a mile apart, takes place even as Powell has been doing what Trump has wanted all along: cutting rates. The president has repeatedly called for aggressive rate cuts and repeatedly mused about firing Powell. In another extraordinary step, Trump also sought to fire Fed Governor Lisa Cook. The Supreme Court is set to take up the Cook case later this month.

While the Fed last month cut their benchmark rate to a target range of 3.5% to 3.75%, the third consecutive quarter-point cut, after holding rates steady through much of 2025 when inflation was supposedly about to surge, yet never did while shelter inflation sank to multi-year lows, officials have signaled they’re in no rush to lower rates again until they have more data on inflation and jobs.

since a few ppl don't get it
- he has been a failure post covid, and is yet unaccustomed to any scrutiny, now playing a hero
- lawfare has been a fact of American politics since at least Obama; 10x'ed under Biden > if you were not protesting back then, sorry

— Barbarian Capital (@BarbarianCap) January 12, 2026

Policymakers meet next in  just over two weeks, on Jan. 27-28, with futures trading shows a minimal chance of a move at that gathering.

Powell’s term as chair will expire in May. His underlying seat on the Fed’s Board of Governor’s doesn’t end until 2028. He hasn’t indicated whether he intends to depart in May or stay on at the central bank.

Earlier this weekend, Trump said he has already picked his nominee to replace Powell. He has not named Powell’s successor, but Kevin Hassett, the director of the National Economic Council, is a front-runner.

In response to news of the investigation, Republican Senator Thom Tillis, a member of the Senate Banking Committee which oversees the Fed, came to the Fed’s defense on Sunday night. In a statement he said he would “oppose the confirmation of any nominee for the Fed — including the upcoming Fed chair vacancy — until this legal matter is fully resolved."

“If there were any remaining doubt whether advisers within the Trump administration are actively pushing to end the independence of the Federal Reserve, there should now be none. It is now the independence and credibility of the Department of Justice that are in question,” Tillis said.

The Trump administration last summer ramped up scrutiny over the Fed’s renovation of two historic buildings and rising costs associated with the project. Fed budget documents show cost estimates for the project had risen to $2.5 billion in 2025, compared with $1.9 billion in 2023. In testimony last June, Powell broadly disputed media reports, and criticisms from administration officials and some congressional Republicans, that the project had extravagant design features, such as a VIP dining room and roof terrace gardens, Bloomberg reported.

Powell also said during the testimony that the project’s plans had “continued to evolve” and that some earlier features “are no longer in the plans.”

Office of Management Director Russ Vought referenced the testimony in a letter he sent to Powell last July asking for details on the renovation. Bill Pulte, director of the Federal Housing Finance Administration and a fierce critic of Powell, has alleged that Powell lied about the specifics of the project during the hearing and suggested the matter could amount to sufficient legal “cause” to justify removing the Fed chief from his role. At the time, Republican Representative Anna Paulina Luna also asked the DOJ to consider investigating and prosecuting Powell for allegedly lying under oath in his testimony.

Amid the controversy, Trump toured the renovation site and signaled the project was not reason enough to fire Powell. Months later, on Dec. 29, Trump said he was considering a “gross incompetence” lawsuit against Powell related to the project.

Under the law that created the Fed, the president can remove members of the Board of Governors only for cause, generally interpreted to mean inefficiency, malfeasance in office or neglect of duty.

“It sounds like Trumpian vengeance and pressuring him to leave in May,” said Mark Spindel, author of The Myth of Independence: How Congress Governs the Federal Reserve, said in reaction to the subpoenas. “If Powell hung around on the board, that complicates Trump’s majority — he needs the seats.”

Ironically, by escalation the Fed against Powell, Trump may have made Powell's decision to stick around and mess with the president's plans for a ultradovish Fed, problematic.

Or maybe not and it's all for show: according to the latest Polymarket odds, the probability of Powell being federally charged by June 30 - a date that is beyond Powell's chairman tenure - is only 18%.

The US dollar weakened on news of the probe, falling against all its major counterparts, while gold extended gains to a record high and bitcoin jumped. Futures on the S&P 500 Index fell 0.3%.

Tyler Durden Sun, 01/11/2026 - 22:05

Trump Urges Cuba To Strike Deal With US "Before It's Too Late" After Oil, Money Cut Off From Venezuela

U.S. President Donald Trump on Jan. 11 told Cuba that it should forge a deal with the United States now that Washington has pushed Venezuela to cut off its supply of oil and money to the communist-run island.

After the U.S. military captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro on Jan. 3, interim Venezuelan leader Delcy Rodríguez has redirected oil deliveries to the United States.

Cutting off Venezuelan oil supply to Cuba, which has historically relied on support from Caracas, would apply significant pressure to the Caribbean country, which has been under communist control since Fidel Castro’s 1959 revolution.

"Cuba lived, for many years, on large amounts of OIL and MONEY from Venezuela. In return, Cuba provided ‘Security Services’ for the last two Venezuelan dictators, BUT NOT ANYMORE!” Trump wrote on social media, referring to the Cuban security forces who were killed during the operation to capture Maduro and bring him to the United States to face a federal indictment.

The U.S. president said Venezuela no longer needs protection from Cuban security forces now that it has the United States, “the most powerful military in the world,” to protect its officials.

“THERE WILL BE NO MORE OIL OR MONEY GOING TO CUBA—ZERO! I strongly suggest they make a deal, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE,” Trump said.

Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, leader of the Cuban regime, responded to Trump in a series of social media posts on Jan. 10, saying the communist nation is “ready to defend the Homeland to the last drop of blood.”

“Those who blame the [communist] Revolution for the severe economic shortages we suffer should hold their tongues in shame,” he said.

As Jacob Burg reports for The Epoch Times, assessments by the U.S. Intelligence Community paint a grim picture inside the communist nation, with Cuba’s tourism and agriculture industries significantly affected by routine blackouts, trade sanctions, and a host of other problems.

The island’s tourism industry has seen a decline since the COVID-19 pandemic, and its economy has retracted alongside Venezuela’s over the past decade. U.S. embargos have also added to Cuba’s domestic concerns.

Between January 2025 and November 2025, Caracas sent an average of 27,000 barrels per day to Cuba, accounting for roughly 50 percent of the island’s oil deficit, or a quarter of Cuba’s total energy demand, according to the Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA’s shipping data and reports.

Cuba also receives oil shipments from Russia, which will likely become one of the island’s sole remaining suppliers if Washington’s oil embargo continues.

Mexico has also supplied Cuba with oil, although Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said on Jan. 7 that recent oil exports to the island are not higher than what they have been historically.

Pressure on Cuba increased after the United States seized two additional Venezuelan-linked oil tankers on Jan. 7.

Trump recently told reporters on Air Force One that he thinks that “Cuba looks like it is ready to fall.”

“I don’t know if they’re going to hold out, but Cuba now has no income,” he said. “They got all their income from Venezuela, from the Venezuelan oil.”

Richard Feinberg, a professor emeritus at the University of California–San Diego, who has served in several high-ranking U.S. national security roles, told Reuters that Cuba’s economic conditions are “certainly very bad.”

“When a population is really hungry, what it does is, your day-to-day is just about survival. You don’t think about politics, all you think about is putting bread on the table for your family,” Feinberg said. “On the other hand, people can become so desperate that they lose their fear, and they take to the streets.”

Tyler Durden Sun, 01/11/2026 - 21:35

Great Balls Of Fire

Authored by Waters, Ellwanger & Calvin via RealClearHistory,

America’s foremost heroes are cowboys, soldiers, and innovators. They imposed order on the Wild West. They showed courage on countless battlefields and saved civilization in the Second World War. Armed with a vision for the future and their own two hands, they overpowered a dark and forbidding wilderness to create our modern world. We memorialize their great deeds because strong men inspire strong reactions.

In 1841, Americans were aghast when sculptor Horatio Greenough unveiled the naked splendor of his 12-ton Enthroned Washington, a marble tribute to the Nation’s father and first president. Wearing sandals and only a toga draped over his lap, the sculpture of George Washington caused a stir among members of Congress, who were unable to look past Washington’s exposed nipples, washboard abs, and belly button to see the magic infused into his Zeus-like image. They moved the monument from the Capitol rotunda to the Capitol grounds, where it withstood the wind and rain for 65 years before finding a permanent home within the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Ross Calvin believes times have changed. He wants to install a 350-foot statue of Prometheus, the Greek titan, on top of Alcatraz Island in the San Francisco Bay. Like the scandalized critics of Horatio Greenough, Calvin’s detractors are numerous. They call his Great Colossus of Prometheus a mix of phallicism and fascism. They claim his vision is too grandiose, too audacious, too difficult to achieve. They have counter-proposed a statue dedicated to Lady Justice as a substitute for Calvin’s monument to chauvinism. But the Denver-based crypto entrepreneur believes President Trump’s America is ready for a powerful, public expression of beauty—one that will serve as a bright, blazing beacon to our latent creative spirit, and stimulate a new generation to dare greatly.

“For the last 100 years, we’ve been living in highly mythological times,” Calvin says in a sprawling interview over several days. “The public has had its creativity so beaten out of them we can barely see it.” He takes inspiration from the story of Prometheus, who took fire from the gods and gave it to mankind so they could survive and flourish in their own civilization. “Prometheus makes man persevering, creative, truth-seeking and forward-moving,” Calvin says. He sees Prometheus as a symbol of America’s regenerative destiny.

Calvin is a rarity in today’s world. He is unapologetically patriotic, provocative, and, like the leading heroes in American history, constantly searching for new frontiers. He grew up playing the piano but insisted on learning the instrument by composing and practicing his own music rather than the work of someone else. Imprinting everything we do with a “powerful, chauvinistic confidence” is the heart of the American project, he says. If we fail to uphold this duty, we forfeit our destiny to the “worldviews of the Chinese Communist Party and bureaucrats in the European Union.” What follows is part three of our conversation. Here are parts one and two. 

Your Great Colossus of Prometheus is a pipe dream driven by the whim of one man, Ross Calvin, hellbent on planting his "Lad Licentious" on top of a national park, fixing a monumental eyesore onto the iconic skyline of San Francisco. Defend yourself.

This type of grandiosity is a virtue and modest by comparison to greater men who have achieved far greater things. We know instinctively that the statue’s message calls forth something else which makes us uncomfortable and afraid, so we cower by shooting the messenger. Prometheus represents the fundamental power one recognizes when he looks up at the sky and finds it empty, empty of gods, and knows the full existential weight and responsibility falls on his shoulders. When there is no sky to look up to, it is within us that the universe must be born. The stark, vivid immediacy to find oneself alone in the cosmos is of incredible, brilliant freedom. He sees himself as living within the future. And he knows it falls to him to imprint on this lonely world a sense of meaning. This is the true heart of American Manifest Destiny. It is our job to make this spirit come to life in stone and bronze and futuristic metals. To call it forward out of the hearts of every onlooker.

And so, you will destroy the historic Alcatraz Island along your way, is that what you want?

The current premises of Alcatraz is sacred to nobody. Its dilapidated ruins interest no one, and it would be language fraud to glorify the current state of Alcatraz under the rubric of a “national park.” The site is visited by only about 7 percent of annual tourist traffic to San Francisco—93 percent of tourists ignore Alcatraz.

You claim that a propaganda complex – supported by the political Left and Right – has covered our eyes and plugged our ears for decades, stuffing the cultural void with smug, branded, machine-made artifacts that inspire no one. Explain how this works.

From the Left there is a putrid, sickly warm milk effect on art. There is a foppish tenor to the managerial worldview of the propaganda producer which reflexively fears grit and self-owned determination—a need for all the universe to be a soft-spoken mother. The propaganda complex fundamentally serves effeminate fops living in the ambrosia bosom of the state.

Outside of Maoism of 2020, there is not yet a jackboot approach to desecration of art. There is a reflexive soft cancellation instead. Expressions of dynamism and heroic potency in art are immediately suspect, and the creation of anything serious, powerful, or heroic is labeled as “fascist.” There is a deep, unconsidered anxiety about all forms of confidence. All work must be deliberately understated and stripped of force in order to gain acceptance in the Davos-styled establishment circuit. Only the egalitarian aesthetic slop bucket of formless mass, devoid of hierarchical arrangement and technical skill does not trigger. Even discipline in execution and mastery is an anathema to the equality mongers – they do not fall into the standardized semantics of the Davos-mindset. These tropes and mental artifacts recirculate into “what everyone agrees.” All of these qualities are foreclosed in a subconscious collusive allegiance to establishment left.

Take Hollywood, for example, which was the engine of cultural and religious narrative for a century—it’s synonymous with philistinism. Movie studios famously have such large capital accounts that the only productions their business model allows them to make our giant-budget, safe-bet regurgitations: the Marvel series and endless big budget remakes. In music studios it's the same problem where the mathematically measurable IQ of music across the spectrum has plummeted. No longer are they capable of producing a Sting or a Bruce Springsteen or a Pink Floyd or a Jimi Hendrix, self-contained original artists who, yes, produce their own material for generations. These media corporations are essentially hostile to the humanities, fine arts, culture, and spiritual development.

And the Right has been no less feeble in its efforts to create or sponsor real art that shocks and inspires. Is that your conclusion or do you believe there will be a renaissance? 

I believe the Right often sees traditional aesthetics as a kind of bunker under which to hide from space invaders. And it's not a verdict on the beauty of classical aesthetics in the least. It is that the RETVRN faction is not asserting anything of its own. Instead, it's hoping the gravitas of history will carry the day without the responsibility to enroll Americans into anything in particular. And they are political statements almost in their entirety actually. Original artists have their own ethos that is pre-political. Even though this faction is more political than original artists tend to be, they are utterly lazy about identifying the actual cultural and political problems at stake in the country and our civilization.

The president’s executive order to turn all federal buildings into a classical style, for example, is completely desirable but also milquetoast and feeble when it comes to the magnitude of California's, and therefore America’s, cultural challenges. Likewise, suggestions I’ve gotten for a statue of Jesus or Justice show no appreciation for how long the war has already progressed and how far away the battlefield really is. The traditional aesthetics for Right wing art mirror the useless, scripted failure to motivate of a Paul Ryan or Mitt Romney—they are platitudes.

In my opinion, authentic art should be superordinate over politics. But obviously it still has to resonate enough with the patronage to find support. For art to be truly political, patronage networks must have a great deal of political refinement as well. On the Right this refinement is lacking even if the erudition around the subject of classical liberalism and its mirror in neoclassical aesthetics is quite developed. The era of Vance, Hegseth and Gabbard might mark the step-shift moment in political refinement to support art not cadenced by the platitudes of the baby boomer gerontocracy. Combined with Gen Z nationalism, this next 15 years could be the years of greatest vitality in “Right wing political art” in a century, but it won’t look like anything that has come before and likely will not seem Right wing at all.

You want the artist to be a hero of natural selection who uses his superior creative force to topple the politically-manipulated, statist establishment. How will you, Ross Calvin, accomplish this task by reigniting the flame of manifest destiny in the Great Colossus of Prometheus? 

This project will be a beacon to popularize a way of thinking about one’s latent, natural creative power—a framework, a lexicon, a mythology and accompanying aesthetics for this can impress on individuals something deep they will not forget. I believe the more complete formation of this psyche is antidote to the slave morality which besets our culture. While it might be modest and inchoate in the beginning, it compounds quickly because great works of beauty created with a pathos toward and admiration for all Americans, made in the public trust, supersede the inferiority of politics. This monument is dedicated to the flame of triumphant beauty in the heart of every American.

Who gave you permission to launch this project? Did the president?

If you want to be a leading American, nobody on the planet can give you permission.

In my life experience, humans largely act in “Epimethean” ways. They defer to others. Almost nothing is the product of a board or a team. Team members defer to the principal. American culture is less this way than all others, but is far from free of this behavior, and in my experience, it has gotten worse over the last 20 years. The ability for multiple principals to act autonomously in development of the same goal is a definitive feature of Western culture. We are losing this.

More critically, our most powerful cultural monuments aren’t statues, republican institutions, or the artifact of money. They are the psychospiritual and mythopoetic power of our youth. I believe this is our highest technology, the most fearsome implement in the arsenal of the West. Our enemies (Zeus-worshiping Bolsheviks) obviously want us to decommission it. They will shoot the messenger all day: “Ross Calvin is some guy with an eyesore vanity project, etc.”

But I also think the coming age of the rediscovery of this arsenal will be a profound time of rightful celebration. This sense of optimism and forward moving confidence is what we’ve forgotten in our culture. Rather than a defining natural property of Man, today we treat it like hubris. We are superstitious against our own agency. They don’t want you to understand. They want you to believe that you have to ask their permission in order to claim your humanity. Martin Luther tore that down. Michelangelo tore that down. Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine tore that down. Bach tore that down. Jesus tore that down. Plato tore that down.

And Prometheus tore that down …

Yes.

And as to the greatness of Man’s nature, you can’t tear this down.

John J. Waters is author of the postwar novel River City One (Simon and Schuster, 2023). Adam Ellwanger is a professor at University of Houston – Downtown, where he teaches rhetoric and writing. Follow him at @1HereticalTruth on X.

Tyler Durden Sun, 01/11/2026 - 21:00

K-Shaped Economy Is Here To Stay As Goldman's Consumer Dashboard Shows Growing Divide

Higher-income consumers and asset owners have watched their wealth surge as stocks climb, fueled by the AI bubble, while housing markets levitate. Lower- and middle-income households, especially those without equity or home ownership, are facing a dangerous cocktail of sticky inflation, sluggish wage growth, and elevated borrowing costs. The result is a widening divide in the consumer economy, which economists describe as a “K-shaped economy.”

Goldman has been bullish on the consumer for 2026, with Bonnie Herzog, managing director and senior consumer analyst, recently telling clients it's time to buy nicotine, energy drink, candy, and beauty stocks. A separate Goldman note by Managing Director Kate McShane noted an "outperforming" middle class but a persisting K-shaped economy.

Given the widening divide, Goldman analyst Joseph Briggs recently told clients that the consumer is being propped up by fiscal stimulus, tax cuts, and solid household wealth even as the labor market cools. He said spending should stay resilient this year, but the softness in jobs and pockets of credit stress make the outlook increasingly bifurcated between higher-income and lower-income households.

Key details about the consumer that Briggs provided clients:

• Spending: The October retail sales report showed resilient spending growth, as monthly core retail sales increased by 0.8% in nominal terms and 0.7% in real terms, although headline retail sales were flat. The underlying spending trend also appears sturdy, with real consumer spending increasing by 2.4% on both 6-month annualized and year-over-year bases through September and by 3.5% in Q3 on a qoq annualized basis. Early holiday spending signals also appeared healthy and consistent with a 0.4% mom increase in core retail sales for November. We expect solid spending growth will extend into 2026 on the back of a sizable fiscal boost (which should add roughly $100bn to household tax refunds in 2026H1), and forecast 2.2% real spending growth in 2025 and 2026 (both on Q4/Q4 bases).

• Employment: The labor market continues to soften, as the unemployment rate increased to 4.56% in the November employment report. And while job growth rebounded to 64k in November following a 105k decline in October (due to a 162k drag from federal government payrolls as a result of the government's deferred resignation program), our estimate of the underlying pace of job growth remained subdued at 32k (vs. 70k GS breakeven estimate). We expect that a pickup in overall growth will lead the labor market to stabilize in 2026—we forecast that the unemployment rate will tick down to 4.5% in December 2025 and move sideways at this level through end-2026 on the back of a 64k/month average job growth pace—but see risks as skewed toward further labor market weakening.

• Income: Real disposable income grew by 1.5% on a year-over-year basis and 1.8% on a 3-month annualized basis through September. We expect year-over-year growth will pick up modestly to 1.7% through end-2025, before accelerating to 2.7% (Q4/Q4 basis) in 2026 on the back of a pickup in job growth, new tax cuts, and a fading inflation headwind from tariffs. We anticipate that new tax cuts included in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act will lead to outperformance among middle-income households in 2026, while cuts to Medicaid and SNAP benefits will disproportionately weigh on real income growth for households in the bottom income quintile.

• Wealth: Household balance sheets are very strong, and the net worth-to-disposable personal income ratio remains near its all-time high on the back of strong equity price gains. The saving rate declined to 4.0% in September (vs. 4.3% at end-2024 and 4.1% in August), but we expect it will rise back to around 5% by end-2026.

• Debt: Consumer credit growth remained soft in October (+2.2% yoy; +2.4% 6-month avg. annualized rate), although home equity loans continue to grow at a rapid pace (+6.7% 12-week annualized average). Household leverage and debt servicing costs remain low by historical standards. Delinquency rates appear to be stabilizing, but auto loan delinquencies (particularly on loans to subprime consumers and loans originated in 2022 and 2023) remain elevated.

• Consumer Confidence: The University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment index ticked up by 1.9pt to 52.9 in December, while the Conference Board's consumer confidence index declined by 3.8pt to 89.1. More timely measures of consumer sentiment have shown signs of improvement, however, with the daily consumer sentiment measure from Morning Consult fully reversing its decline during the government shutdown.

Consumer Dashboard Points to an Incrementally Softer Labor Market, Weaker Income Growth in 2025H2, and Low Sentiment, but Healthy Spending Growth and Very Strong Balance Sheets

Navigating the K-shaped economy will be complicated. See the notes above for Goldman's consumer stock picks.

Tyler Durden Sun, 01/11/2026 - 20:25