Why Greenland Isn't Chasing The Dream Of Becoming A Mining Superpower

Authored by Felicity Bradstock via OilPrice.com,

• Greenland, despite possessing vast mineral reserves and past ambitions from the U.S. to acquire it for these resources, is not interested in becoming a major mining superpower.

• The country's minister for business and mineral resources emphasized a desire for only 5 to 10 active mines at any given time, prioritizing high environmental, social, and governance standards.

• Concerns about the environmental impact and the uncertain economic return from mining activities, particularly with an unstable market for rare earths, contribute to Greenland's cautious approach.

Early in Donald Trump’s presidency, he announced his ambitions to acquire Greenland. In March, Trump said, “We need Greenland for international safety and security. We need it. We have to have it.” As well as stating ambitions to counter Russia’s presence in the Arctic, taking control of Greenland would put vast quantities of rare earth minerals and rare earth elements in the possession of the United States. However, Denmark quickly shot down the idea of Trump’s acquisition, saying that Greenland was not for sale. Meanwhile, Trump’s announcement led several political figures in Greenland to suggest that Greenland should be independent, rather than under the ownership of Denmark or the U.S. 

International powers have long eyed Greenland for its vast mineral potential. As several countries around the world strive to undergo a green transition, the demand for critical minerals is expected to grow dramatically in the coming years. Demand for critical energy transition minerals like lithium, cobalt, and copper could increase almost fourfold by 2030, according to United Nations estimates. 

At present, China dominates the global mineral mining market. According to International Energy Agency (IEA) data, China contributes around 80 percent of the world’s natural graphite and 60 percent of mined magnet rare earths. In 2024, it produced more than 60 percent of the world’s lithium, 40 percent of refined copper, and 70 percent of refined cobalt. As the U.S. looks to reduce its reliance on China for energy, critical minerals, and other goods, President Trump sees Greenland as the potential solution. 

Greenland holds vast mineral reserves, including rare earth metals, coal, graphite, uranium, copper, lead, and zinc. A 2023 Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland survey found that 25 of the 34 critical raw materials recognised by the European Commission are present in Greenland. In addition, as ice sheets melt due to climate change, Greenland’s previously hard-to-retrieve mineral reserves are expected to become more accessible. 

Caroline Kennedy-Pipe, a professor of war studies and Arctic security specialist at the U.K.’s Loughborough University, explained, “The fight for infrastructure in the Arctic is incredibly important. Plus, because Greenland’s ice sheet is melting, and melting fast, those rare earth minerals will become cheaper to access. So, these are seen as long-term investments for America.”

To date, mining activity in Greenland has been limited, as investors have avoided financing mining operations due to the harsh conditions and environmental pushback from community groups. Developing the country’s mining industry would require significant funding, as well as support from local groups. 

Around a decade ago, a team of geologists published a paper that warned of unrealistic expectations for Greenland’s mineral potential. It states, “Even if estimates of the quantity and quality of ore in a geological deposit are well documented… it is difficult to translate this into economic potential and even more difficult to predict a specific revenue for Greenlandic society.” 

Minik Thorleif Rosing, one of the authors of the report, said that the situation remains relatively unchanged since the date of publication. “There is a misconception that Greenland will be like a new Saudi Arabia, only at the size of a small British town,” Rosing said. He blamed the uncertainty on global market conditions for rare earth metals. There has been significant pushback against mining operations, as many Greenlanders believe the cost of mining will far outweigh the benefit. It is unclear just how much of a return on investment Greenland would see from mining activities, as there is no stable market for rare earths, according to Rosing. However, many are more concerned about the environmental impact of mining in the Arctic. 

In June, Naaja Nathanielsen, Greenland’s minister for business and mineral resources, said that while some mining operations are already underway in the country, there is little interest in Greenland becoming a major mining power. “For Greenland, we are not necessarily interested in becoming a really great mining country. We just really want 5 or 10 active mines at any given time,” said Nathanielsen. “We are a very small population, so for us, we don’t need the entire country to be covered in mines. We are happy with managing a few, and I think that is feasible,” she added. 

Nathanielsen emphasised the “very high” environmental, social and governance (ESG) standards held by Greenland. She said, “I think the people of Greenland really support the mining industry, which is quite kind of rare when you look at other jurisdictions. But they do so because they have faith in us having a high environmental standard and taking care of local communities.” Nathanielsen went on to say that if the government compromises its environmental standards, it could lead Greenlanders to no longer support the mining industry, which could be highly detrimental for future projects. 

Tyler Durden Mon, 06/30/2025 - 03:30

Oceania Has The Highest Cocaine Use In The World

Oceania recorded by far the highest cocaine use prevalence among 15- to 64-year-olds of any region in the world in 2023, according to the latest report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

As Statista's Anna Fleck shows in the chart below, that year, just over 3 percent of people said that they had used cocaine.

You will find more infographics at Statista

In the Americas, 1.64 percent of the age group had taken it, with a more detailed breakdown showing that 1.92 percent had used cocaine in North America, versus 1.55 percent in South America and 0.94 percent in Central America.

The UNODC reports that 1.1 percent of Europeans had used cocaine in 2023, with prevalence far higher in Western and Central Europe (1.66 percent), compared to Eastern and South-Eastern Europe (0.28 percent).

In Africa and Asia, far lower shares of people are thought to have used the drug that year, at 0.38 percent and 0.11 percent, respectively.

The global average was 0.47 percent.

By absolute number, it is a different story.

On this metric, the Americas rank first with an estimated 11.41 million people having taken cocaine. It is followed by Europe with 5.97 million, Asia with 3.37 million, Africa with 3.22 million and Oceania with 880,000 people.

Between 2019 and 2023, there was a 68 percent increase in the amount of cocaine seized worldwide. Production of the drug also increased, jumping up nearly 34 percent between 2022 and 2023 to 3,708 tons.

According to the UNODC, global cocaine production "has hit an all-time high once again, accompanied by significant increases in cocaine seizures, cocaine users and – most tragically – cocaine-related deaths in many countries in recent years."

Tyler Durden Mon, 06/30/2025 - 02:45

Continued Russian-US Talks Prove Putin Doesn't Think Trump Duped Iran With Diplomacy

Authored by Andrew Korybko via Substack,

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed last week that the US’ bombing of several nuclear sites in Iran won’t affect their bilateral dialogue, declaring that “These are independent processes.”

This is significant since many observers speculated that Trump duped Iran with diplomacy while supposedly plotting to attack it this entire time. If true, then it would follow that he might also be duping Russia too, albeit not in preparation of a direct US attack but in pursuit of some other nebulous goal.

Putin doesn’t adhere to that interpretation, however, which is also proven by him later talking about his “great respect” for Trump and praising his “sincere commitment” to peace in Ukraine.

Skeptics might speculate that he’s playing “5D chess” as part of some “master plan” to “psyche out” the US but that doesn’t make much sense.

There’s no point in continuing a dialogue if one of the parties is convinced that the other isn’t negotiating in good faith. That would be a total waste of time and resources.

Nevertheless, Russian politicians and experts were very critical of Trump’s decision to bomb Iran, as was the country’s Permanent Representative at the UN.

Their polemics don’t equate to Putin supposedly suspecting Trump of foul play in the US’ talks with Iran, however, but they do show that Russia was very displeased with what he ended up doing even though it later expressed cautious optimism about the ceasefire that he claimed credit for brokering. All of this is consistent with Russian policy.

On that topic, Russia is also interested in a ceasefire with Ukraine, but only on its terms. These include Ukraine withdrawing from the entirety of the disputed regions, declaring that it’ll no longer pursue NATO membership, and Western countries cutting off arms shipments to it, among other demands. Russia believes that continued dialogue with the US can lead to Trump ultimately coercing Zelensky into these concessions, to which end Putin offered him a strategic resource-centric partnership as an incentive.

The idea is that the US could invest in Russia’s rare earth and Arctic energy industries, with the first providing the US with its sought-after minerals and the second leading to them jointly managing the global oil and natural gas markets, thus giving each of them stakes in the other’s success. This could then in turn help ensure that relations remain manageable even if another crisis unexpectedly erupts. With time, Russia and the US would then reshape the world order, but only if their détente remains on track.

Therein lies the importance of continued Russian-US dialogue, which Putin is committed to in spite of speculation that Trump duped Iran with diplomacy ahead of attacking it. From his perspective, Trump isn’t just saying the right things about the conflict (most of the time at least), but he more importantly hasn’t doubled down on military-intelligence aid to Ukraine. Simply put, it’s Trump’s actions (or lack thereof in this case) that impress Putin, not his words, which he’d be foolish to take at face value.

That said, there’s no guarantee that Putin can convince Trump to coerce Zelensky into his demanded concessions, and the potential failure of their talks could indeed lead to the US escalating its involvement in Ukraine and therefore worsening tensions with Russia. Even so, Putin won’t prematurely abandon diplomacy just because some speculate that the US never truly intended to reach a deal with Iran, the assessment of which he doesn’t share as confirmed by his own and Peskov’s recent statements.

Tyler Durden Mon, 06/30/2025 - 02:00

Bovard: Trump’s Iran Bombing Is The Latest In Presidential Absolutism

Authored by Jim Bovard

Does President Trump have any legal basis for his foreign policy actions aside from his personal entitlement to absolute power? Presidents have been scorning congressional leashes on their foreign interventions since at least the Korean War. But Trump’s erratic behavior and fevered comments almost make President Richard Nixon look mild-mannered.

Democratic members of Congress and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) are pushing for a vote on a War Powers Act resolution to put a leash on Trump. But in the same way that President George W. Bush found lawyers that assured him the president was authorized to order torture, so Trump supporters are denying the validity of any law restricting the White House’s warring. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) declared on Tuesday: “Many respected constitutional experts argue that the War Powers Act is itself unconstitutional. I’m persuaded by that argument. They think it’s a violation of the Article 2 powers of the commander in chief.” Johnson is blocking any vote in the House of Representatives on that resolution.

Some Trump apologists are claiming that the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), enacted in response to the 9/11 attacks, provides all the legal justification that Trump needed. Since President George W. Bush listed Iran as part of the “axis of evil” in his 2002 State of the Union address, that entitles subsequent presidents to scourge Iran forever. There was no justification for putting Iran in that 2002 trifecta, but lack of evidence rarely impedes presidential prattle.

Besides, the AUMF seems as archaic nowadays as a balanced budget amendment. In the same way that congressmen can perpetuate deficit spending by promising decades hence to balance the budget, so the AUMF allows politicians to perpetually pummel any group or nation accused of wrongdoing.

Trump appears to be claiming unlimited power to intervene abroad. In February, Trump posted on Truth Social a saying attributed to Napoleon: “He who saves his country does not violate any law.” Sounding like he was entitled to rule the world, Trump proclaimed in February: “We’ll own Gaza.” Trump signaled support for forcibly expelling more than a million Palestinian refugees in order to create “a Riviera of the Middle East.” In 2023, he boasted to Jewish donors that “I gave you Golan Heights,” signaling his prerogative to dispose of Syrian territory and redraw national boundaries as he pleased.

Trump’s pattern of issuing sweeping demands is driving his response to the Israel–Iran clash. Trump demanded “unconditional surrender” from Iran, as if he were General Ulysses S. Grant in 1862 waiting outside a fort commanded by a dimwitted Confederate general. Trump decreed that Iran must completely end all its efforts to enrich uranium, regardless of prior international approval and the lack of evidence for an active weapons program. At one point, Trump ominously warned Tehran’s 10 million residents to “immediately evacuate”—though he didn’t specify any locale where they would be safe from Israeli bombing. Perhaps Trump’s most bizarre utterance was his Truth Social post Saturday night. After announcing that the U.S. had bombed three sites in Iran, Trump concluded, “NOW IS THE TIME FOR PEACE! Thank you for your attention to this matter.” On Wednesday morning at the NATO summit, Trump scoffed at Defense Intelligence Agency doubts on knocking out Iran’s program and compared his bombing attack with Hiroshima and Nagasaki that were “essentially the same thing that ended that war.” That comparison is not expected to boost Trump’s popularity in Japan.

Turn back the clock two decades, and defenders of a bellicose president insisted that George W. Bush was smarter than he sounded. But many Trump supporters seem to think 47 is omniscient. Trump’s posts on Truth Social are now presumed to be vastly more accurate than any U.S. government intelligence report. As Vice President J.D. Vance said on Sunday on Meet the Press, “Of course we trust our intelligence community, but we also trust our instincts.” But what if the strongest instinct is to gratify pro-Israel donors? Secretary of State Marco Rubio provided the lodestar for Trumpian foreign policy: “Forget about intelligence.” DOGE missed a great chance to save over $80 billion a year by abolishing the intelligence agencies that the White House is determined to scorn. (Meanwhile, both the Washington Post and New York Times reported that Trump actually made the final decision to bomb Iran after seeing Fox News hosts lauding Israeli successes attacking Tehran.)

Presumed presidential omniscience is razing constraints on the Oval Office. Trump’s lawyers are touting the same legal nitroglycerine that helped destroy George W. Bush’s presidency. The Trump administration is echoing Bush’s “unitary executive theory” to assert that the president effectively has untrammeled power over almost everything in the solar system. Bush issued more than a hundred signing statements announcing that he would disregard specific provisions in legislation, thanks to “the President’s constitutional authority to supervise the unitary executive branch and to withhold information” from Congress and the American people. Bush used that invocation to justify scorning congressional prohibitions on torture. His administration presumed that “checks and balances” were archaic. But Bush’s legal power-grabs helped make him intensely unpopular by the end of his reign and opened the door for Barack Obama to win the presidency by masquerading as a civil-liberties savior.

Trump-style legal absolutism appears to be the mirror image of tolerance—if not also common sense. Trump’s National Park Service wants to delete any material at national parks that “inappropriately disparages Americans past or living,” so official history will become an even bigger fairy tale.

These legal doctrines are not a hypothetical threat to freedom. On March 25, masked ICE agents seized Rümeysa Öztürk, a Turkish graduate student, off the streets outside Boston. Öztürk was locked up for 45 days and her student visa covertly canceled because she coauthored an op-ed criticizing Tufts University for failing to divest from Israel in response to its actions in Gaza. Rubio vilified her as a “lunatic” and implied that the feds had ample evidence of her crimes and abuses. A leak to the Washington Post revealed that the feds had nothing on her—except that op-ed. Federal Judge William Sessions ordered Öztürk released because her arrest “potentially chills the speech of the millions and millions of people in this country who are not citizens.” Uh, judge… maybe that was the whole point.

No matter how many bombs Trump drops or how many freedoms he skewers, he will retain an iron core of MAGA supporters who view Trump’s own power as the best hope for America. The New York Times noted a similar pattern in 1973 at the start of Nixon’s second term: “Conservatives who have traditionally favored a strong Congress and a weakened Presidency are now advocating the reverse.” Nixon’s attempt to “fix” Washington by radically centralizing power in the White House did not survive the Watergate scandal.

On Monday, Trump proclaimed a ceasefire between Iran and Israel. On Tuesday morning, after ceasefire violations, Trump raged: “We have two countries that have been fighting so long that they don’t know what the f*ck their doing.” Millions of Americans reached the same conclusion about Trump’s own foreign policy. Unfortunately, citizens cannot rely on Congress, the Constitution, or federal law to curb Trump’s interventions at home or abroad.

Tyler Durden Sun, 06/29/2025 - 23:20

Peter Thiel Warns: One-World Government A Greater Threat Than AI Or Climate Change

In a wide-ranging interview on the future and global existential risks, billionaire technology investor Peter Thiel raised alarms not only about familiar threats like nuclear war, climate change, and artificial intelligence but also about what he sees as a more insidious danger: the rise of a one-world totalitarian state. Speaking to the New York Times’ Ross Douthat, Thiel argued that the default political response to global crises—centralized, supranational governance—could plunge humanity into authoritarianism.

Thiel, co-founder of PayPal and Palantir, shared his worries using examples from dystopian sci-fi stories. “There’s a risk of nuclear war, environmental disaster, bioweapons, and certain types of risks with AI,” Thiel explained to Douthat, suggesting that the push for global governance as a solution to these threats could culminate in a “bad singularity” - a one-world state that stifles freedom under the guise of safety.

Thiel critiqued what he described as a reflexive call for centralized control in times of peril.

“The default political solution people have for all these existential risks is one-world governance,” Thiel observed, pointing to proposals for a strengthened United Nations to control nuclear arsenals or global compute governance to regulate AI development, including measures to “log every single keystroke” to prevent dangerous programming. Such solutions, the investor warned, risk creating a surveillance state that sacrifices individual liberty for security.

Drawing on historical and philosophical analogies, Thiel referenced a 1940s Federation of American Scientists film, One World or None, which argued that only global governance could prevent nuclear annihilation. Thiel juxtaposed this with a Christian theological framing: “Antichrist or Armageddon?” In both, the billionaire said he sees a binary choice between centralized control and catastrophic collapse. Yet, Thiel questioned the plausibility of a charismatic “Antichrist” figure seizing power through hypnotic rhetoric, as depicted in apocalyptic literature. Instead, he offered a modern twist: the path to global control lies in relentless fearmongering about existential risks.

“The way the Antichrist would take over the world is you talk about Armageddon nonstop,” Thiel explained. The billionaire contrasted this with earlier visions of scientific progress, like those of 17th- and 18th-century Baconian science, where the threat was an evil genius wielding technology. Presently, Thiel argued, the greater political resonance lies in halting scientific advancement altogether. “In our world, it’s far more likely to be Greta Thunberg than Dr. Strangelove,” he quipped, invoking the radical Swedish climate activist as a symbol of anti-progress sentiment.

On AI specifically, Thiel struck a balanced tone, tempering both utopian and apocalyptic predictions.

“One question we can frame is: Just how big a thing do I think AI is?” he asked himself. “My stupid answer is: It’s more than a nothing burger, and it’s less than the total transformation of our society.”

Thiel compared AI’s potential impact to the internet in the late 1990s, suggesting it could create “some great companies” and add “a few percentage points” to GDP, perhaps boosting growth by 1% annually for a decade or more. However, the billionaire expressed skepticism that AI alone could end economic stagnation, viewing it as a significant but not revolutionary force.

While Thiel expressed nuanced views on artificial intelligence, his venture capital firm, Founders Fund, is aggressively backing the technology. Namely, it recently led a $600 million investment in Crusoe, a vertically integrated AI infrastructure provider.

“The biggest risk with AI is that we don't go big enough. Crusoe is here to liberate us from the island of limited ambition,” Thiel said at the time.

Tyler Durden Sun, 06/29/2025 - 22:45

CDC: New COVID Variant Estimated To Be No. 1 Strain In US

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A new estimate from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that a COVID-19 variant that has been driving cases in China earlier this year is now the No. 1 strain in the United States.

This scanning electron microscope image shows the novel coronavirus (orange), which causes COVID-19 disease, isolated from a patient in the United States, emerging from the surface of cells (green) cultured in the lab. Photo published on Feb. 13, 2020. NIAID-RML

A CDC estimate, updated on June 26, shows that between June 8 and June 21, the NB.1.8.1 variant now makes up 43 percent of COVID-19 cases in the United States and is ahead of the LP.8.1 variant.

Earlier this month, CDC data showed that NB.1.8.1 had 37 percent of cases and was No. 2 behind the LP.8.1 variant, which saw 38 percent of reported cases at the time. The new CDC estimate this week shows that LP.8.1 now makes up 31 percent of all cases.

The CDC says that wastewater levels show COVID-19 activity is “currently low” despite the NB.1.8.1 variant increase. Only Alaska is reporting “high” levels of the virus, while Hawaii, Nevada, Texas, Missouri, Mississippi, Florida, and Connecticut are seeing “moderate” levels, according to the CDC.

Last week, private data showed that states reporting the variant, which has been dubbed “Nimbus” in some media reports, include Arizona, California, Colorado, New Jersey, New York, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Ohio, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington state as of June 19.

Chinese doctors earlier this month predicted a peak of nationwide COVID-19 cases in July, as the latest data released by Chinese health authorities show that variant NB 1.8.1 is still the main pathogen causing the rapid increase in COVID-19 infections in China.

An internal university research report at China’s Peking University stated that NB.1.8.1 may become the next dominant global strain, with symptoms including a sharp sore throat, fever, runny nose, vomiting, and diarrhea, according to previous Epoch Times reporting.

A worldwide rise in cases late last month is primarily in the Eastern Mediterranean, Southeast Asia, and Western Pacific regions, the World Health Organization said on May 28. The new variant had reached nearly 11 percent of sequenced samples reported globally in mid-May.

The WHO said some Western Pacific countries have reported increases in COVID cases and hospitalizations, but there’s nothing so far to suggest that the disease associated with the new variant is more severe than other variants.

In a statement to The Epoch Times in late May, a CDC spokesperson said the agency “is aware of reported cases of COVID-19 NB.1.8.1 in China and is in regular contact with international partners.”

Prior reports from The Epoch Times, citing Chinese doctors and outside health experts, have said that patients are reporting a sharp sore that’s been dubbed the “razor blade throat” or “razor throat.” Some media outlets, including The Associated Press and international media reports from the UK and India, have used the “razor throat” moniker to describe the NB.1.8.1 variant.

Due to the Chinese Communist Party’s history of covering up information and publishing unreliable data, including underreporting COVID-19 infections and related deaths since 2020, information provided by local doctors and health workers can offer valuable information for understanding the situation on the ground in the totalitarian country.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Tyler Durden Sun, 06/29/2025 - 22:10

"Bespoke Bombs": The Secret 15-Year Plan Behind US Strikes On Iran

Authored by Ryan Morgan via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

WASHINGTON—The United States’ B-2 stealth bomber strike on Iran’s Fordow uranium enrichment facility was the culmination of more than 15 years of study and planning, according to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine.

A June 25, 2025, poster from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) shows unclassified aerial images of Iran's Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant’s two ventilation shafts during construction in 2008, post-construction in 2009, and after the June 21, 2025, strike. According to Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Dan Caine, two DTRA employees spent years analyzing the site's geology, construction materials, and equipment to model the facility and develop a strike plan. The Pentagon

Caine joined Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for a press briefing on June 26, in which the defense secretary said the June 21 bombing mission was a resounding success that set Iran’s nuclear development back by years.

Caine detailed the military planning that began in 2009 to design a purpose-built method to knock out the Fordow facility, which is buried hundreds of feet underground in a mountainous region of Iran.

A Briefing in a Vault

Caine shed new light on the role of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), an organization tasked with preparing bespoke solutions to destroy highly sensitive targets, including emerging weapons of mass destruction.

“DTRA does a lot of things for our nation, but DTRA is the world’s leading expert on deeply buried, underground targets,” Caine said.

“In 2009, a Defense Threat Reduction Agency officer was brought into a vault at an undisclosed location and briefed on something going on in Iran,” Caine said, declining to identify the DTRA officer by name.

This DTRA officer, and another unnamed member of the agency, were then tasked to work with the intelligence community to study the construction of the Fordow site.

“For more than 15 years, this officer and his teammate lived and breathed this single target: Fordow, a critical element of Iran’s covert nuclear weapons program,” Caine said.

The two DTRA employees spent years studying everything from the geology surrounding Fordow, to the construction materials and other equipment arriving at the facility, so they could model the site and devise a plan.

“They literally dreamed about this target at night when they slept,” Caine said.

A satellite view shows an overview of the underground Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant, after the U.S. struck the nuclear facility, near Qom, Iran, on June 22, 2025. Maxar Technologies/Handout via Reuters Bespoke Bombs

In the course of their study of the Fordow facility, Caine said the pair of DTRA employees leading the project soon determined the U.S. military did not have a weapon that could adequately address the challenge the fortified Iranian nuclear facility presented.

“So, they began a journey to work with industry and other tacticians to develop the GBU-57,” Caine said.

The GBU-57, also known as the Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) or bunker-buster, is a 30,000-pound bomb designed to burrow and explode deep underground.

Military planners then spent years testing the bomb, specifically for the Fordow facility.

“They tested it over and over again. ... They accomplished hundreds of test shots, and dropped many full-scale weapons against extremely realistic targets for a single purpose: kill this target at the time and place of our nation’s choosing,” Caine said.

Each GBU-57 is “bespokely” designed for a specific target. He said each one dropped on the Fordow facility “had a unique desired impact angle, arrival, final heading, and fuse” corresponding to its role in the overall mission.

The Air Force, in coordination with the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, tests the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator, a precision-guided, bunker-busting weapon designed to destroy deeply buried and hardened targets, in Washington on Dec. 11, 2020. The test demonstrated the Air Force’s ability to strike heavily reinforced underground facilities and mountain complexes. Air Force Television Pentagon/Defense Visual Information Distribution Service

In addition to live-testing the GBU-57, Caine said the program to develop the heavy bunker-buster involved extensive and complex computing.

“In the beginning of its development, we had so many PhDs working on the MOP program, doing modeling and simulation, that we were quietly and in a secret way, the biggest users of supercomputer-hours within the United States of America,” he said.

Operation Midnight Hammer

The U.S. bomber strikes on Fordow were part of a larger mission, dubbed Operation Midnight Hammer, that also targeted Iran’s Natanz and Isfahan nuclear facilities.

B-2 Spirit stealth bombers tasked with striking the Fordow facility were specifically assigned to drop their GBU-57 bombs on a set of ventilation shafts running out of the underground facility. Ahead of the strikes on the Fordow facility, U.S. military planners observed last-minute changes to the site, including the placement of concrete caps on the ventilation shafts to further fortify the facility against an attack. 

Caine said the first weapon dropped on Fordow was specifically designed to remove the concrete caps shielding Fordow’s ventilation shaft. From there, he said, weapons two, three, four, and five were designed to enter the shaft and burrow down into the underground complex at more than 1,000 feet per second, and explode.

Airmen look at a GBU-57, or the Massive Ordnance Penetrator bomb, at Whiteman Air Base in Missouri on May 2, 2023. File/U.S. Air Force via AP

The general said a sixth bomb was designed as a “flex weapon,” in case one of the first five weapons failed to achieve its intended effect.

When it comes to assessing the true damage of the strike, Caine said the U.S. intelligence community plays the leading role, rather than the military.

“We don’t grade our own homework; the intelligence community does,” Caine said.

Read the rest here...

Tyler Durden Sun, 06/29/2025 - 21:00

MSM Claims MAHA "Threatens To Set Women Back Decades" 

An increasing number of Americans are abandoning processed foods and taking control of their own food supply chain—planting backyard gardens and sourcing meat, eggs, dairy, and pantry staples directly from local markets and farms. The trend, which is gaining momentum under the "Make America Healthy Again" movement—and even noted by Goldman—reflects a broader push for food independence and a return to community-based sourcing.

Not everyone is on board with MAHA — especially not the feminist journalists at SELF (owned by the corporate media company Condé Nast), who recently penned an article that reads like a hit piece against MAHA.

Erica Sloan's critique of MAHA is that food independence is unrealistic and burdensome for women in the modern progressive world. 

In her article titled "How the MAHA Food Agenda Threatens to Set Women Back Decades," Sloan writes...

But it's what MAHA isn't saying that's most important: Stoking so much fear around these vital industries implies that Americans—more specifically, the mothers of America—need to find a different way to feed their families.

"Women do a disproportionate share of the kind of work that the MAHA movement is asking people to do, which is to grow their own food, to prepare all of their food from scratch, and to avoid processed food and even packaged foods," Norah MacKendrick, PhD, associate professor of sociology at Rutgers University and author of Better Safe Than Sorry: How Consumers Navigate Exposure to Everyday Toxics, tells SELF. Even today, with approximately 60% of women working outside the home, women still spend about two hours more on housework daily and cook more than twice as many meals a week as men do. The implication that our current food system is inherently unsafe just stands to pile on the labor.

"In order for a family to eat a diet of mostly homegrown or even just homemade meals… that's going to be a lot more work for women and mothers especially," Dr. MacKendrick says. It's an ideal that the MAHA moms have already embodied—and that would be not only unrealistic but unfair to expect from all American families.

Decades? 

The angle that Sloan uses to bash MAHA via a quote from some woman in acemedia is entirely flawed, that's because MAHA doesn't force anyone to grow their own food or make everything from scratch—it simply raises awareness about the systemic failures of Big Food and Big Pharma and empowers families to reclaim control where possible. Some folks plant gardens, while others buy from local ranchers and farmers. The movement calls for informed choices and better public policy—not a return to the primitive 1800s—or is asking women to live like the modern-day Amish. 

My wife’s sous vide with reverse sear tenderloin. I married well. pic.twitter.com/4TU6pizHyK

— Paul Charchian (@PaulCharchian) September 17, 2024

Heaven forbid women to cook from scratch for their families! More nonsense from the PR journalist ... 

MAHA's villainization of food processing just adds the burden of cooking from scratch to women's plates.

The journalist concluded the article with this: "Processed and ultraprocessed items are also functional necessities for many, and can spark joy. And again, some of them have positive nutritional value." 

Meanwhile...

At the end of the article, SELF advises readers to...

Why SELF is targeting MAHA remains a mystery, though the answer may lie in who their mega-corporate advertisers are.

Tyler Durden Sun, 06/29/2025 - 20:25

Justice Kagan's Own Words Come Back To Haunt Her On Nationwide Injunctions

Authored by Matt Margolis via PJMedia.com,

The Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision in Trump v. CASA, Inc., released Friday, finally put the brakes on the reckless abuse of nationwide injunctions by lower courts—and has Democrats in full meltdown mode. The left’s favorite judicial weapon just got neutered, and the hypocrisy is impossible to ignore.

The liberal wing of the court didn’t do itself any favors, either. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s dissent was so horrible that Justice Amy Coney Barrett felt compelled to call it out in the majority opinion.

But Justice Elena Kagan’s credibility also took a direct hit. In a stunning display of judicial flip-flopping, Kagan’s own words from 2022 have come back to haunt her, exposing the left’s all-too-familiar habit of changing the rules when it suits their political objectives. 

Nationwide injunctions have been the left’s go-to tactic for derailing conservative policy at the stroke of a single judge’s pen. Under Trump, district judges from deep-blue enclaves repeatedly issued sweeping orders to block administration policies nationwide at an unprecedented pace, no matter how tenuous the legal grounds. 

Despite all the apocalyptic rhetoric, there’s no doubt that the left’s current position on nationwide injunctions is purely political—and Justice Elena Kagan accidentally proved it.

How? Well, Justice Kagan, who dissented in this case, was singing a very different tune just a couple of years ago.

Back in 2022, when President Biden was in the White House and conservatives were the ones seeking relief from his executive orders, Kagan was openly skeptical of nationwide injunctions. 

“This can’t be right that one district judge can stop a nationwide policy in its tracks and leave it stuck for the years that it takes to go through a normal process,” she said. 

That’s not some out-of-context paraphrase—it’s her own words, on the record.

Fast forward to 2025, and suddenly Kagan’s skepticism has evaporated. Now that Donald Trump is back in the Oval Office, she’s all-in for the same judicial overreach she once panned. It just goes to show you who the real partisans on the court are. They aren’t adhering to any particular judicial philosophy or the Constitution, they care only about whether a particular ruling hurts or benefits the Democratic Party.

This isn’t just about one justice’s hypocrisy. It’s a window into the left’s broader approach to power. When they control the levers of government, they demand deference and restraint from the courts. When they’re out of power, they want unelected judges to act as a permanent veto against any policy they dislike. It’s not about the Constitution or the separation of powers—it’s about maintaining their grip on the bureaucracy by any means necessary.

The Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. CASA, Inc. is a must-needed correction, that frankly, should have been bipartisan. It restores a measure of balance and puts an end to the judicial free-for-all that has plagued our system for far too long. And if Justice Kagan and her allies are upset, maybe they should reread their own words from just a few years ago. Consistency, after all, used to be a virtue. But in today’s Democratic Party, it’s just another casualty of the endless war for power.

The Supreme Court just restored the rule of law—and the left can’t handle it.

Tyler Durden Sun, 06/29/2025 - 19:50

Weekend:
• Schedule for Week of June 29, 2025

Monday:
• At 9:45 AM ET, Chicago Purchasing Managers Index for June.

• At 10:30 AM, Dallas Fed Survey of Manufacturing Activity for June.

From CNBC: Pre-Market Data and Bloomberg futures S&P 500 are up 17 and DOW futures are up 212 (fair value).

Oil prices were down over the last week with WTI futures at $65.52 per barrel and Brent at $67.77 per barrel. A year ago, WTI was at $83, and Brent was at $82 - so WTI oil prices are down about 21% year-over-year.

Here is a graph from Gasbuddy.com for nationwide gasoline prices. Nationally prices are at $3.17 per gallon. A year ago, prices were at $3.49 per gallon, so gasoline prices are down $0.32 year-over-year.

11 Signs That The Entire Country Is Facing Enormous Economic Challenges Right Now

Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

While everyone has been preoccupied with the war in the Middle East and the anti-ICE protests going on around the nation, economic conditions in the U.S. have continued to deteriorate.  The housing market is in abysmal shape, consumer spending is down and layoffs are way up.   Meanwhile, fear of our seemingly endless cost of living crisis is preventing the Federal Reserve from cutting interest rates, and we shouldn’t expect any additional “economic stimulus” from our politicians in Washington any time soon because the federal government is already facing an unprecedented debt crisis.  In other words, our economy is a giant mess and the cavalry isn’t going to come riding along to save us.

If you find yourself deeply struggling in this difficult economic environment, you are definitely not alone.  

The following are 11 signs that the entire country is facing enormous economic challenges right now…

#1 Sales of new homes in the United States absolutely tanked last month…

Sales of new single-family homes dropped 13.7% in May compared with April to 623,000 units on a seasonally adjusted, annualized basis, according to the U.S. Census.

That sales total was 6.3% lower than May 2024 and well below both the six-month average of 671,000 and the one-year average of 676,000. It also lags the pre-pandemic average in 2019 of 685,000 units sold.

Wall Street analysts were expecting May new home sales of 695,000, according to estimates from Dow Jones.

#2 According to the latest numbers that we have been given, home prices in the U.S. have fallen for two months in a row…

After US home pries declined in March (the latest data) for the first time in over two years, this morning’s Case-Shiller Home Price Index data was expected to show another drop in the cost of buying a home.

And the consensus was right but way off in magnitude as prices in April tumbled 0.31% MoM (-0.02% exp) – the biggest MoM drop since Dec 2022…

#3 Last month, existing home sales in the U.S. were the worst that we have seen during the month of May since 2009.

#4 Retail sales fell even more than expected last month…

Consumer spending pulled back sharply in May, weighed down by declining gas sales and looming unease over where the economy is headed, the Commerce Department reported Tuesday.

Retail sales declined 0.9%, even more than the 0.6% drop expected from the Dow Jones consensus, according to numbers adjusted for seasonality but not inflation. The decline followed a 0.1% loss in April and came at a time of unease over tariffs and geopolitical tensions.

#5 The Federal Reserve Bank of New York is warning that the labor market “deteriorated noticeably” during the first quarter of this year…

Economic research from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York indicated the labor market “deteriorated noticeably” in the first quarter of 2025, with those just entering the workforce taking the hardest hits.

The Labor Department reported that employers added 139,000 jobs in May while unemployment held steady at 4.2%. The unemployment rate for all college grads was 2.7%, but the rate for those between the ages of 22 and 27 years old jumped to 5.8%, according to the New York Federal Reserve. That’s the highest reading since 2021.

#6 According to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, U.S. employers announced 47 percent more job cuts in May 2025 than they did in May 2024…

Layoffs of U.S. workers were nearly 50% higher in May than they were a year ago, with reductions attributed to the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) remaining the leading reason for job cuts this year, according to a new report.

Global outplacement Challenger, Gray & Christmas on Thursday released a report that said there were 93,816 job cuts announced by U.S. employers in May. That amounts to an increase of 47% from 63,816 announced last May, while last month’s figure was down 12% from 105,441 cuts in April.

#7 For the first five months of this year, U.S. employers announced 80 percent more job cuts than they did during the first five months of last year…

That brings the total number of job cuts announced this year to 696,309 — an increase of 80% from the 385,859 jobs cut in the first five months of 2024. This year’s total is just 65,049 job cuts away from matching the 2024 annual total.

“Tariffs, funding cuts, consumer spending, and overall economic pessimism are putting intense pressure on companies’ workforces. Companies are spending less, slowing hiring, and sending layoff notices,” said Andrew Challenger, senior vice president of Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

#8 Factories in California are permanently shutting down at a staggering pace…

All within a week, California lost Amy’s Kitchen’s San Jose plant (331 jobs), Anheuser-Busch’s Oakland warehouse complex (142 jobs), and several smaller plants, all for unsustainable prices and operational disruption.

Amy’s Kitchen, for example, was losing $1 million monthly, consumed by inflation, labor shortages, and supply chain problems. Anheuser-Busch’s exodus, conversely, left workers in suspense as the plant changed hands without a guarantee of employment.

It is not bad luck, evidence of a business environment where even legendary companies can’t survive the relentless fiscal squeeze.

#9 More than 3 percent of Paramount’s entire workforce will be hitting the bricks…

Paramount Global is trimming its U.S. workforce by 3.5% in a move to cut costs.

The company’s plans to cut jobs were announced Tuesday by its three co-CEOs in a company-wide memo viewed by FOX Business.

Co-CEOs George Cheeks, Chris McCarthy and Brian Robbins said in the message that Paramount was “taking the hard, but necessary steps to further streamline our organization this week.”

#10 Microsoft is cutting jobs in its gaming division for the fourth time in 18 months…

Microsoft is planning another round of cuts at Xbox as part of the tech giant’s ongoing reorganization.

Xbox managers are expecting substantial job cuts across the entire group as soon as next week, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg. This marks the fourth time Microsoft downsized its gaming division in the past 18 months, the outlet reported. Several video game studios at the company’s Xbox division were shuttered in 2024, too.

#11 At this point, things are so bad that even Google is reducing headcount…

Google on Tuesday offered buyouts to employees across several of its divisions, including those within its knowledge and information and central engineering units as well as marketing, research and communications teams, CNBC has learned.

Knowledge and information, or K&I, is the unit that houses Google’s search, ads and commerce divisions. The buyouts Tuesday are the company’s latest effort to reduce headcount, which Google has continued to do in waves since laying off 12,000 employees in 2023.

CNBC could not confirm how many employees were impacted by the latest round of buyouts. The Information reported earlier that the company offered buyouts to employees in the search and ads unit.

Our ongoing economic decline is just one element of the “perfect storm” that we are now experiencing.

Everywhere around us, chaos is erupting.

Unfortunately, I believe that conditions will become even more chaotic in the months ahead.

If you currently have a job that you value, I would hold on to it as tightly as you can.

We all remember what happened in 2008 and 2009, and now it appears that another very serious downturn has arrived.

*  *  *

Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

Tyler Durden Sun, 06/29/2025 - 12:50

Zohran Mamdani's Socialist Policies Would Put The Final Nail In New York's Coffin

Socialists always rise to power in the midst of failed liberal leadership.  The assumption being that liberal policies accomplish nothing because they "don't go far enough" to push the collectivist values of wealth redistribution and equity-based cultural engineering.  If only the political left asserted more control over people's lives and property, all the ailments of American society would magically disappear.

In most cases socialism also fails to make people's lives better.  Though one could argue that it does eventually achieve its goals of equal wealth - Socialism makes everyone equally poor.  In countries where socialism actually finds "success" a couple of factors are always present:  A small population that avoids multiculturalism and mixed demographics, and access to abundant natural resources.   

Wherever socialism in introduced into an otherwise prosperous economy, the standard of living automatically degrades.  When socialism is used as a bandage to stop the financial bleeding of a depressed market wounded by liberal management, it always makes things far worse.

The city of New York is on the verge of learning this lesson the hard way with the sudden popularity of mayoral candidate Zohran Mandani.  Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old assemblyman, democratic socialist and "rap music producer", defied expectations when he pulled well ahead to presumed victory over former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in New York City's June 24 Democratic mayoral primary. 

While there were 11 candidates on the ranked-choice ballot, preliminary polling named Cuomo and Mamdani the front-runners by a large margin. Cuomo frequently polled above Mamdani in the weeks leading up to voting day, but the former governor ultimately ended up calling his opponent on Tuesday night to concede.  Mamdani led Cuomo 44% to 36% among first-place votes, with 96% of ballots counted as of around 1 p.m. on Wednesday, June 25

A Muslim immigrant born and raised in Uganda, Mamdani only became a legal citizen in the US in 2018.  He supports communistic economic reforms and woke social engineering concepts.  If you thought NYC could not be any worse, get ready because if Mamdani becomes Mayor his policies will prove the progressive enclave has far further to fall.  A look at his campaign proposals reveals a disturbing list of childish ideas that would put the final nail in New York's coffin.

Rent And Housing Controls

New York already made this deadly mistake during the covid lockdowns when they applied an eviction moratorium from 2020 to 2022.  Government property controls in any form tend to force owners out of rental markets, compelling them to sell their properties in order to avoid losing money in the future maintaining homes and apartment buildings that don't bring in a profit.

As owners sell, renters are made homeless and the supply shrinks, causing rents to skyrocket even higher.  The vacancy rate for rental housing in NYC has dropped to 1.4%, (the lowest since 1968).

Mamdani has consistently called for multi-year rent price freeze and acts as if property owners are the source of New York's rent inflation.  In reality, the prices are rising because of basic supply and demand.  A price freeze would not solve the the problem of diminishing supply for renters.  In fact, it would drive more owners out of the market and reduce the supply even further.  Prices might be suppressed by the government, but more and more people will have to leave New York or become homeless. 

The result would be a disaster for the city as the population shrinks and tax revenues decline, and Mamdani's reforms require more taxes, not less. 

The candidate hopes to offset the supply problem with government subsidized housing, but this will mean billions in tax expenditures over the course of the next ten years.  Similar efforts in California have resulted in disaster along with billions in wasted taxes and their homeless problem has only increased.  Building housing is also expensive and socialists can't make contractors work for free.  The solution would be for progressive politicians to drastically reduce regulations on construction and cut taxes, but they will never do this.

Defunding The Police

Mamdani has long been a proponent of defunding the police along with other woke notions of reducing crime by reducing enforcement.  He has recently changed his position, claiming he will not cut funding to police as New Yorkers grow increasingly fearful of theft and violence.  However, his policies remain suspect and he argues that criminal violence "is an artificial construct".

Zohran Mamdani on why he wants to empty jails: "VioIence is an artificial construct" pic.twitter.com/N4G7jSmEDX

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) June 26, 2025

He plans to create a "Department of Community Safety", a proposal that includes increased investment in mental health programs and crisis response, expanding "evidence-based gun violence prevention programs" and increasing funding to "hate violence prevention programs" by 800%. 

In other words, Mamdani is going to pursue strict gun controls that will disarm law abiding citizens, making them easier to victimize.  Furthermore, focus on mental health will likely come at the expense of actual prosecution and jail time for offenders, meaning repeat criminals will run rampant.  "Hate violence" is a non-issue in NYC unless one counts attacks on Asians, often committed by black perpetrators as video evidence shows.  This is not something that a leftist like Mamdani will acknowledge.

As we have seen in leftist cities like Seattle and Portland, overt restrictions on policing lead to a law enforcement exodus.  Cops quit in droves and move away, leaving the population with less protection and more crime.

City Owned Grocery Stores

Leftists are outraged by the fact that retailers are closing up shop in high crime neighborhoods, leaving residents with "food deserts" and less jobs.  The thing is, the residents are the problem, not the companies that are forced to leave to avoid constant theft. 

On top of this, grocery prices are incredibly high after the stagflation crisis struck under the Biden Administration, leaving Democrats struggling to find a way to reduce costs and avoid losing even more of their working class voter base. 

Mamdani's solution is, of course, more price controls.  This time through government operated grocery stores. Mamdani has said he plans to address the cost of food by creating city-owned grocery stores that will pay no rent or property taxes, buy and sell at wholesale prices from centralized warehouses and partner with local vendors to keep prices down.  Meaning, the city would have to manage the entire supply chain to these stores in order to get the price cuts Mamdani wants.

Typically this leads suppliers to stop supplying as their profits shrink to nothing when dealing with socialist government buyers.  One must also ask why Mamdani doesn't simply reduce taxes on existing retailers in exchange for helping food prices go down?  Government grocery stores with price controls might lower costs for consumers, but they would also destroy local competition, causing more and more companies to leave NYC, creating even more "food deserts".

Raising Minimum Wage To $30

The minimum wage debate is built on naivety.  Socialist think they can dictate one aspect of the free market without negative consequences on all other aspects of the free market.  Mamdani's plan to raise New York City's minimum wage to $30 would be devastating to the economy, driving employers out of the area.  The same thing that happened when Seattle raised their minimum wage to $20, and California is experiencing an exodus of fast food jobs after they raised wages to $20.  

The only way this idea would not end with businesses fleeing the city is if the government forced a tax as punishment for companies that relocate (as California tried to do). 

Higher Taxes On "Richer And Whiter" Neighborhoods

Mamdani is fully onboard with DEI initiatives including race based wealth redistribution.  In his "Soak The Rich" proposal, Mamdani states:  

“Shift the tax burden from overtaxed homeowners in the outer boroughs to more expensive homes in richer and whiter neighborhoods..."

While many New Yorkers support the idea of balancing property taxes, the candidate's calls to target "white neighborhoods" has raised concerns that he is seeking to implement hidden reparations through race-based taxation. 

At bottom, Mamdani's campaign is rooted in an even more extreme version of the platform that led to the defeat of the Democratic Party in 2024.  As mayor in NYC, it's inevitable that these policies would destroy what remains of New York's already struggling economy and trigger a capital flight the likes of which the city has never seen before. 

Tyler Durden Sun, 06/29/2025 - 12:15

Texas Law Gives Grid Operator Power To Disconnect Data Centers During Crisis

By Brian Martucci of UtilityDrive

Utilities, energy system analysts and ERCOT expect exponential growth of data centers and other large loads in Texas over the next several years. ERCOT forecasts 138 GW of large loads on its grid by 2030, up from 87 GW this year.

Even if only a fraction of proposed data centers get built, the boom could threaten grid reliability during the spring and fall months, when many thermal generators go down for planned maintenance, Aurora Energy Research said earlier this month. Reliability is already a concern in some parts of ERCOT — including the San Antonio area, where ERCOT is deploying more than 400 MW of mobile generation units and inked a costly “reliability must run” agreement with an aging 400-MW gas plant. 

Aurora models suggest data centers will be the largest single source of load flexibility available to mitigate Texas’ reliability risk. By 2030, up to 50% of the expected 35 GW of ERCOT’s data center capacity could provide some degree of emergency reliability support, Aurora said.

S.B. 6 authorizes the Public Utility Commission of Texas to develop two demand management programs — one mandatory and one voluntary — to ensure Texas data centers and other non-critical large loads help rather than hinder reliability.

The law’s intent is “to make sure [large loads] pose as little reliability risk to the system as possible and [are] not drinking the milkshake of all other Texas power customers,” NRG Vice President of Regulatory Affairs Travis Kavulla said in an interview.

S.B. 6 could avoid a future scenario like Winter Storm Uri, the dayslong freeze in February 2021 that saw millions of residential customers cut off from the grid as nearby industrial loads hummed along, Kavulla added.

The mandatory demand management program applies to loads of 75 MW or greater that interconnect to ERCOT from January onwards. It allows utilities to disconnect eligible loads during firm load shed events and mandates the installation of shutoff equipment as a condition of grid interconnection.

The voluntary program is a competitively procured reliability service active during specific times of the year, subject to a minimum 24-hour notice period and off-limits to any large-load customer that “curtails in response to the wholesale price of electricity … or that otherwise participates in a different reliability or ancillary service,” the law says.

The advance warning period is key for this sort of voluntary program, especially one counting on participation from hyperscale data centers with sensitive IT equipment worth billions, Kavulla said.

“This should not be the kind of demand response where you’re calling it with no notice and curtailing the customer straight off,” he said.

The mandatory program will surely alleviate stress on the ERCOT grid during extreme weather events but the jury is still out on customer uptake for the voluntary program, Kavulla said. Some data center operators have sounded open to voluntarily curtailing their loads or switching to onsite backup generation when needed, while others have been more resistant, he noted.

Kavulla credited Texas legislators for “calling the question,” however. 

“They have decided to create a market and test [customers’] willingness to participate,” he said. “Nothing gets people thinking like offering them money.”

Kavulla and Texas Blockchain Council President Lee Bratcher cheered other S.B. 6 provisions, like a $100,000 minimum initial interconnection fee for large load customers and a requirement that such customers disclose to utilities any potentially duplicative interconnection requests elsewhere in Texas. 

Both provisions could mitigate the “phantom loads” gumming up utility and grid operator forecasts in Texas and elsewhere, Bratcher said in an email.

“The Texas Blockchain Council and our member companies are glad to see that Senate Bill 6 tackles the phantom load challenge associated with the interconnection queue [and gives ERCOT] a more accurate picture of future load growth,” Bratcher said.

Some experts say 80% to 90% of proposed data centers in the U.S. interconnection queue will never get built, in part because they duplicate requests made in other utility territories.

The next step for ERCOT and its continental counterpart, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, is to “develop a non-firm load category for modeling purposes [that] would greatly increase the efficient utilization of transmission infrastructure and properly signal load behavior expectations to the transmission/distribution service providers,” Bratcher said.

And while Texas’s intrastate electricity market makes it something of a special case, some core S.B. 6 provisions are transferable to other states in the restructured Eastern markets, Kavulla said.

For example, states in the PJM Interconnection “could certainly precondition or accelerate interconnection of large loads on the basis of their willingness to participate in demand response,” he said.

Tyler Durden Sun, 06/29/2025 - 11:40

 

 

Bullish:

Boaz Weinstein on Card Counting, Private Credit and Night Sweats:

Strategy. Risk. Pattern recognition. Wall Street pros often play poker, chess, blackjack and other games that rely on skills that are highly transferable to their work. What role does game theory play in the markets? And how are successful traders using it? Sonali Basak interviews Boaz Weinstein and Liv Boeree for Bullish.

 

 

 



 

 

 

Source:
Bullish with Sonali Basak
Episodes 1-9

The post The Gambler’s Edge on Wall Street appeared first on The Big Picture.

From STR: U.S. hotel results for week ending 21 June

The U.S. hotel industry reported positive year-over-year comparisons, according to CoStar’s latest data through 21 June. ...

15-21 June 2025 (percentage change from comparable week in 2024):

• Occupancy: 70.5% (+1.3%)
• Average daily rate (ADR): US$163.77 (+2.0%)
• Revenue per available room (RevPAR): US$115.39 (+3.3%)
emphasis added

The following graph shows the seasonal pattern for the hotel occupancy rate using the four-week average.
Click on graph for larger image.

The red line is for 2025, blue is the median, and dashed light blue is for 2024.  Dashed purple is for 2018, the record year for hotel occupancy. 
The 4-week average of the occupancy rate is tracking behind both last year and the median rate for the period 2000 through 2024 (Blue).
Note: Y-axis doesn't start at zero to better show the seasonal change.
The 4-week average will increase during the summer travel season; however, we will likely see a hit to occupancy during the summer months due to less international tourism.

Avert your eyes! My Sunday morning look at incompetency, corruption and policy failures:

• Dollar’s Decline Meets Rising Dedollarization: The Threat Comes from Within. The Bloomberg Dollar Index has fallen nearly 8.5 percent, its steepest drop since the 1980s. Elsewhere, incremental signs point to emerging alternatives. (The Daily Economy)

• The End of Publishing as We Know It: Inside Silicon Valley’s assault on the media. (The Atlantic) see also You can’t do your own research without doing your homework first: Here in 2025, many of us claim to come to our own conclusions by doing our own research. Here’s why we’re mostly deluding ourselves. (Big Think)

• How the United States Helped Create Iran’s Nuclear Program: A reactor in Tehran is a monument to the U.S. relationship with Iran when the country was led by a secular, pro-Western monarch. New York Times)

• Landmark AI ruling is a blow to authors and artists.Books are particularly valuable for LLMs precisely because humans have taken such care to produce them. If you want to teach a computer the nuances of many different topics — and how to write clearly — there is no substitute for books. But when it came time to train Claude, Anthropic did not start by buying books. Instead, it “downloaded for free millions of copyrighted books in digital form from pirate sites on the internet,” including books by the three authors who filed the lawsuit. (Popular Information)

• Why Did It Take 65 Seasons to Pay the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders a Living Wage? For decades, their pay was embarrassingly low, but that is (finally) about to change. (Texas Monthly)

• How to Steal a House: When Arash Missaghi was murdered in suburban Toronto last year, his killer accused him of swiping properties and ruining his investors’ lives. (Businessweek)

• The Hollow Men of Hims: An admittedly partial–but deeply troubling–case against America’s most brazen medical grift, involving Chinese knockoffs, subscription traps, and prescription gas station sex pills. (Alex Kesin)

• The Department of Veterans Affairs Is Not O.K. V.A. insiders describe themselves as miserable—and they worry that the Trump Administration will do long-term damage to the agency. (New Yorker)

• A.I. Is Starting to Wear Down Democracy: Content generated by artificial intelligence has become a factor in elections around the world. Most of it is bad, misleading voters and discrediting the democratic process. Artificial intelligence has long threatened to transform elections around the world. Now there is evidence from at least 50 countries that it already has. (New York Times)

• Ben McKenzie Made One of the Best Documentaries in Years. Will Anyone Get to See It? The O.C. heartthrob’s crusade against crypto continues with Everyone Is Lying to You for Money. But in a crypto-friendly climate, finding a distributor may be a challenge. “Everyone Is Lying to You for Money” (Texas Monthly)

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business this week Velina Peneva, where she manages more than $100 billion of Swiss Re‘s internal cpaital as the firm’s Chief Investment Officer: Previously, she was Private Equity practice leader in Zurich for Bain & Company.

 

U.S. companies with greater foreign revenue exposure have outperformed their domestic counterparts since the start of 2017

Source: Indexology

 

Sign up for our reads-only mailing list here.

~~~

To learn how these reads are assembled each day, please see this.

 

The post 10 Sunday Reads appeared first on The Big Picture.

Senate Advances Trump Tax & Spending Bill In Saturday Night Vote

Update (2335ET): Senate Republicans narrowly advanced President Trump's tax and spending package, as GOP lawmakers in both chambers are hoping to pass the legislation by the 4th of July. Now that the bill has advanced, it will be followed by a Democrat-demand to read the entire 1,000-page bill on the floor (total children) before a maximum 20 hours of debate on the legislation and a multi-hour vote-o-rama, putting it on course for final passage from Sunday into Monday.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (AP)

Two Republicans voted against the bill; Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) - who opposed raising the debt ceiling by $5 trillion, and Thom Tillis (R-NC), who says the 'Big Beautiful Bill' could cost his state heavily when it comes to Medicaid funding.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) flipped his vote from "no" to "aye," while Sens. Mike Lee (UT), Rick Scott (FL) and Cynthia Lummis (WY) also voted yes. 

There was drama into the home stretch... less than an hour after the vote opened up, Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Lee, and Scott, hadn't made an appearance on the Senate floor. Paul and Tillis had previously announced that they would oppose the motion to proceed, and could not support the bill in its current form. 

When Murkowski finally sauntered onto the floor, Thune quickly approached her along with Sens. Barrasso, Graham, and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Mike Crapo (R-ID), who peppered her with demands - as one does when it comes to Lisa Murkowski...

*  *  *

Update (1718ET): Elon Musk has weighed in on the Senate's latest iteration of President Trump's tax and spending bill, calling it "utterly insane and destructive," and that it will "destroy millions of jobs in America and cause immense strategic harm to our country!"

The latest Senate draft bill will destroy millions of jobs in America and cause immense strategic harm to our country!

Utterly insane and destructive. It gives handouts to industries of the past while severely damaging industries of the future. https://t.co/TZ9w1g7zHF

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 28, 2025

Musk also called it 'political suicide.'

Polls show that this bill is political suicide for the Republican Party pic.twitter.com/HJwKZ9g4tu

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 28, 2025

Meanwhile, Senate Republicans are marching toward an initial vote Saturday afternoon despite several GOP Senators expressing grave concerns. 

Both Sens. Susan Collins (Maine) and Thom Tillis (North Carolina) are either "leaning against" or "no" on final passage. According to Politico, Trump "has personally reached out to Tillis to try to work him on the bill."

If at least two other Republicans join Tillis to oppose the procedural vote Saturday afternoon, Senate leadership would have to rely on Vice President JD Vance to break a tie to move forward to debate the bill. Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Tim Sheehy (R-Mont.) all have concerns that could drive them to vote against moving forward.

Johnson and Paul, who have been vocally opposed to the bill because of its impact on the national debt, met with the president on Saturday shortly before the vote, according to Lee.

According to Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK), "We won’t bring it to the floor if we don’t have the votes," adding "I think it’d be better to have the vice president close. I don’t know if we’re going to need him."

*  *  *

Senate Republicans unveiled a revised version of President Trump’s $4.2 trillion tax package early Saturday morning, making targeted concessions on state tax deductions, Medicaid policy, and renewable energy provisions in an effort to unite their caucus ahead of a July 4 deadline set by the White House.

The updated draft reflects compromises among Senate GOP factions that have sparred for weeks over how aggressively to cut social safety net programs and whether to roll back clean energy incentives enacted under the Biden administration. The legislation, if passed, would serve as the centerpiece of Mr. Trump’s second-term economic agenda.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune announced that voting on the bill would begin Saturday afternoon, with a final vote potentially coming as soon as Sunday. If it does pass the Senate, Republican leaders have indicated they will call House members back to Washington early next week in hopes of sending the legislation to the president’s desk before Independence Day.

However, it remains uncertain whether all 50 Republican senators are prepared to back the measure. Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin said Saturday on Fox News that he would oppose beginning debate on the bill immediately, citing the need for more time. “This is an important bill,” Johnson said. “There’s no need to rush it.”

A Revised SALT Cap

To address concerns from House Republicans representing high-tax states, the new draft raises the cap on the state and local tax (SALT) deduction from $10,000 to $40,000 for five years. The cap would snap back to its original level thereafter, with a modest 1% annual increase during the interim period. The deduction would begin phasing out for taxpayers earning more than $500,000 annually.

A House provision aimed at curbing SALT workarounds used by pass-through businesses was stripped from the text. While fiscal conservatives have criticized the SALT compromise as overly generous, the deal is expected to secure the support of swing-district Republicans and has been endorsed by the White House.

Senate Republicans also removed a controversial Section 899 “revenge tax” on foreign companies and investors following concerns from Wall Street and a request from Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

Tax Relief and Medicaid Tweaks

The legislation makes permanent the individual and corporate tax cuts first enacted in 2017 and introduces new temporary breaks for tipped workers, seniors, and car buyers. In a nod to moderate Republicans, the revised bill creates a $25 billion rural hospital fund intended to mitigate the effects of Medicaid spending reductions that critics warn could threaten services in underserved areas.

Senator Susan Collins of Maine had pressed for a $100 billion allocation but has not yet commented on whether the smaller fund will earn her support.

The new version delays the full impact of a 3.5% cap on state Medicaid provider taxes from 2031 to 2032. The cap, which would begin phasing in by 2028, applies only to states that expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. Additionally, the bill imposes new work requirements for Medicaid recipients and would require ACA-expansion beneficiaries to contribute to their care through co-pays or deductibles.

Renewable Energy Rollbacks and New Land Sales

Republicans accelerated the phaseout of tax credits for wind and solar energy projects, now requiring such projects to be fully operational by the end of 2027 to qualify. That change, reportedly supported by Mr. Trump, could impact companies like NextEra Energy, the nation’s largest renewable developer.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer criticized the change, warning on social media that the rollback would “jack up your electric bills and jeopardize hundreds of thousands of jobs.”

The bill also ends the $7,500 electric vehicle tax credit sooner than earlier versions proposed, cutting it off after September 30, 2025, including for used and commercial EVs.

A separate provision reinstated in the draft would authorize the sale of up to 1.2 million acres of federal land across 11 western states for housing and community development, a measure pushed by Senator Mike Lee of Utah. The plan could raise up to $6 billion but faces resistance from GOP senators in affected states.

Tax credits for hydrogen production, originally slated to end this year, would now continue through 2028 for projects started by then.

Broader Cuts and Debt Ceiling Increase

The legislation includes steep cuts to funding for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and federal food assistance programs, while increasing allocations for the U.S.-Mexico border wall. It preserves $15 million in funding for a task force to study alternatives to the IRS Direct File program, though it drops language that would have terminated the free filing service entirely — a defeat for tax software providers like Intuit.

A proposed tax on money transfers by non-citizens was scaled back from 3.5% to 1%, a win for companies like Western Union and MoneyGram.

Finally, the bill would raise the debt ceiling by $5 trillion, a move intended to avert a potential federal default projected for as early as August.

With internal GOP divisions still simmering, the path to final passage remains uncertain. Yet with Independence Day looming, Senate Republicans are betting that the new concessions will be enough to unify their ranks — and deliver a long-sought legislative victory for the president.

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/28/2025 - 23:43

China's Economy Spirals With No End In Sight, Says Kyle Bass

Authored by Frank Fang and Jan Jekielek via The Epoch Times,

Communist China is grappling with the most severe economic crisis in its history, a downturn that the regime will not recover from, according to Kyle Bass, founder and chief investment officer of Hayman Capital Management.

“There is nothing that is going to bail China out of their economic spiral. They’re having a real estate crisis, a banking crisis, a youth unemployment crisis, and now they need to be worried about their current account,” Bass said in an interview on EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders” that aired on June 26.

Bass said U.S. tariffs and declining trade threaten China’s economic advantage, which is its trade surplus with the United States.

China’s exports to the United States plunged by 35 percent in May compared to a year earlier, according to Chinese customs data.

“China’s once bright spot is now in question,” Bass said. “I actually am surprised it’s not down more.”

China has also been hit hard by capital flight.

In 2024, Bass said, China experienced a massive outflow of both foreign direct investment (FDI) and portfolio investment totaling about $500 billion, pointing to the gap between its trade surplus of about $980 billion and its current account surplus of about $420 billion.

China is also facing unsustainable debts. When combining China’s sovereign debt and local government financing debt, Bass estimated that the country’s debt-to-GDP ratio should be roughly 350 percent, which he said is difficult to manage considering the various economic challenges.

Another indicator of China’s financial crisis is the performance of China’s bond market, Bass said. As of June 27, the yield on China’s 10-year sovereign bond is approximately 1.64 percent, compared to 4.26 percent for the U.S. 10-year Treasury.

“So the Chinese government is pretty good at lying about whatever they want to lie about, but the bond market kind of tells the truth, and the bond markets telling you that China is in an economic winter,” Bass said.

China’s economic troubles have persisted for several years, highlighted by the collapse of major real estate developers Evergrande and Country Garden, which marked the onset of the current property crisis in 2021.

In February, the national unemployment rate reached 5.7 percent, the highest in two years, while the youth jobless rate topped 16.9 percent.

Adding to the concerns, consumer prices fell for a fourth consecutive month in May, while industrial profits decreased by 9.1 percent compared to a year earlier, underscoring deepening deflatory pressures in the world’s second-largest economy.

Taiwan

Despite China’s economic struggles, the United States continues to rely on China for certain imports, particularly rare earths and pharmaceutical ingredients.

According to data from the U.S. Geological Survey, the United States imported 70 percent of its rare earths from China between 2020 and 2023.

In the face of China’s leverage over these items, Bass said that the United States retains the ultimate “trump card” through its control of the global dollar system.

“They don’t have the ability to purchase things around the world in yuan or RMB because no one accepts a currency they don’t trust or that doesn’t trade,” Bass said.

Bass stated that the United States should signal to Beijing its intention to sever China’s access to the dollar system, the very moment the regime initiates military action against Taiwan.

“Deterrence is something that we should all be engaging in to try to stop China from being militaristically belligerent with Taiwan,” Bass said.

“That is a better first move on our part than sending carrier strike groups of our brave men and women into the Taiwan Strait in a kinetic conflict with China ... tens of thousands of our men and women will die if that happens.”

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) claims Taiwan as a renegade province, intent on annexing the island, though the regime has never exercised authority there. Taiwan is a de facto independent nation with its own democratically elected government, military, constitution, and currency.

In May, during a speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth warned about CCP leader Xi Jinping’s timetable for making a move against Taiwan.

“It’s public that Xi has ordered his military to be capable of invading Taiwan by 2027,” Hegeseth said at the time.

“Any attempt by communist China to conquer Taiwan by force would result in devastating consequences for the Indo-Pacific and the world.”

President Donald Trump’s recent decision to bomb three Iranian nuclear facilities “got China’s attention,” Bass said.

“I bet it unmoored China’s views of warfare,” he added

Bass said he believed the situation in Iran “is going to make the Chinese think twice about being more belligerent on the military side with Taiwan.”

Ultimately, the Chinese regime aims to break the first and second island chains and “project power all the way to San Francisco,” Bass said.

Taiwan sits at the heart of the first island chain that stretches from the southern Japanese island of Kyushu, the Philippines, to the Malay Peninsula. The second island chain extends from Japan through Guam to Micronesia.

Bass warned that “allowing China to simply take over Taiwan is something that is an existential national security crisis for the U.S.”

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/28/2025 - 23:20

White House Pressures Syria To Normalize Ties with Israel Amid 'Quiet Talks'

President Trump believes Syria may soon join the Abraham Accords, based on comments given to reporters by White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt on Friday. The reasoning seems to be that with Assad out, this provides an opportunity to control the outcome and force Damascus to make peace with Israel.

After all, Syria under the Assad family was the single fiercest, longtime enemy of Israel, with a de facto state of war on for half-a-century, centered on the occupied Golan Heights.

Leavitt told reporters that Trump remains optimistic about expanding the peace agreement. She confirmed that the president brought up the issue directly with Syria’s new de facto leader, Ahmad al-Sharaa (aka. US-terror designated Jolani) during this Riyadh visit and Gulf tour. 

"One of President Trump’s main requests during his meeting with President Sharaa was for Syria to join the Abraham Accords," Leavitt said. "Achieving a lasting peace in the Middle East is a core objective for this administration."

Sharaa had reportedly told US Representative Cory Mills during a visit in April that Syria was open to joining the accords under the "right conditions."

US Special Envoy to Syria Thomas Barrack has also been bringing the pressure. He has recently referenced quiet discussions with Damascus underway, amid the reopening of the ambassador's residence in Damascus - a first since 2012.

Barrack encouraged the international community to give Syria's new leadership "an opportunity to prove its new direction."

However, so far the government stacked with Jolani's Hayat Tahrir al-Sham members has turned a blind eye to massacres targeting Alawites, Christians, and Druze - along the coast and in Damascus and elsewhere.

Sadly, this whole ugly reality seems to be missing from White House statements. Why didn't Trump name as a firm condition the protection of churches, for example, as a basis for dropping sanctions on Syria?

Just last week Mar Elias Orthodox Church in Damascus was attacked by a suicide bomber, resulting in the deaths of 25 people and scores more wounded.

Following the church bombing in Damascus, unknown individuals wrote "You're next" on the walls of Mar Elias Church in Kfarboum, Hama countryside. pic.twitter.com/XSAoO3gIQW

— Beirut Wire (@beirutwire) June 22, 2025

What government is looking out for Syria's religious minorities? Certainly Washington appears to have shrugged as Damascus' new hardline Sunni masters engage in deal-making, and a blind eye is turned to their ISIS and Al-Qaeda past.

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/28/2025 - 22:45

The Business Of Broken Self-Worth In The Digital Age

Authored by Kay Rubacek via The Epoch Times,

A new study from JAMA Pediatrics should stop us in our tracks: early adolescents who report addictive use of screens—not just frequent use—are more than twice as likely to consider suicide within two years.

Not because they’re online too much, but because they can’t stop.

At the same time, a young woman named Caroline Koziol, once a top athlete and student, is suing TikTok and Instagram after their algorithms flooded her feed with eating disorder content. What began as a search for fitness tips spiraled into full-blown anorexia. Hers is just one of over 1,800 similar cases being filed.

This isn’t a glitch in the system. It is the system.

Social media platforms aren’t just reflecting our insecurities—they’re cultivating them. Why? Because insecurity is profitable. When a teen feels like they’re not enough—too fat, too plain, too quiet—they stay online longer. They scroll, they compare, they engage. And every second they spend chasing validation, someone else cashes in.

What we’re seeing is the weaponization of low self-worth, scaled by algorithm and monetized by design.

That may sound harsh. But let’s be honest: this is not new. For decades, the beauty industry, fashion, even wellness trends have profited from telling people—especially women and girls—that they’re not quite good enough as they are. Social media just industrialized the tactic.

Now, platforms optimize for compulsive behavior, not joy or creativity. Addictive engagement is rewarded; mental health is collateral damage.

The truth is, many industries benefit when people doubt themselves: advertisers profit from the fear of not measuring up, influencers and online gurus sell the illusion of “fixing” your flaws, and even parts of the pharmaceutical and therapy world expand when anxiety and depression rise.

And those are just the commercial beneficiaries. Politically, a public that lacks confidence is easier to sway. Easier to divide. Easier to control.

The erosion of self-worth isn’t just a personal struggle—it’s a public vulnerability. And in the digital age, it’s becoming systemic.

We need to call this what it is: a cultural emergency. The lawsuits against Meta and other platforms are a start, but they won’t be enough on their own. If we want meaningful change, we need three things:

• First, legal and design accountability. Platforms must be held responsible for the psychological effects of the algorithms they deploy. That means transparency in how recommendation systems work and consequences when they clearly lead to harm.

• Second, parental and educational empowerment. We must teach young people not only how to use tech—but how to resist it. To spot manipulation. To value themselves beyond a like count.

• And third, we need a cultural shift. Self-worth cannot be treated as a niche concern or a private battle. It’s a foundation for freedom, resilience, and public health. When people believe they matter, they’re less likely to be controlled—and more likely to create.

Because the real danger isn’t just that tech platforms make people feel worthless.
 It’s that people don’t even realize it’s happening.

And when you don’t believe in your own worth, you’re willing to trade it—for anything that promises to give it back.

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

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/28/2025 - 22:10