Zero Hedge

Cuban President Warns "McCarthyism Is Back" As US Begins Fight Against Marxist Subversion Networks

Cuban President Warns "McCarthyism Is Back" As US Begins Fight Against Marxist Subversion Networks

One day after the US government convened delegations from 65 countries at the Harry S Truman Building in Washington to coordinate action against far-left extremism and Marxist subversion networks across the West, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel responded sharply in a post on X, signaling grave concern that the Trump administration intends to unleash a new era of McCarthyism to combat the "radical left."

"A new and more dangerous version of McCarthyism is back in the United States," Díaz-Canel wrote on X one day after Secretary of State Marco Rubio, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent postured and essentially declared war on the radical left, Marxist groups, and foreign subversion networks.

Díaz-Canel visiting the grave of Karl Marx 

Why would Díaz-Canel care about Rubio and Bessent combating the far-left NGOs on US soil?

Well, as a State Department report released on Monday showed, "For more than six decades, the Cuban regime has been the leading sponsor of radical leftism and Third Worldism in the United States."

We explained in December how Cuba's subversion networks are run, and at the center of the influence network is the now-sanctioned Cuban Institute of Friendship with Peoples, known as ICAP. The organization claims more than 2,000 affiliated solidarity groups across 150 countries.

Former Cuban intelligence agents cited in the State Department report allege that roughly 90% of ICAP personnel are connected to Cuban intelligence operations. So this basically means ICAP functions as the intake valve for the National Network on Cuba (NNOC), a deliberately loose coalition that links 77 left-wing activist organizations, nonprofits, and campaigns while minimizing legal exposure and clear command structures.

Notice that the Democratic Socialists of America are members of NNOC. Also, it is worth noting that the DSA has said they are "partners" of sanctioned ICAP.

It now makes sense why the DSA wants to "destroy America from within"... Cuban communists feel the same way. 

Díaz-Canel sees US pressure tightening around Havana as a wake-up call for him and his communist partners. The era of far-left activists and US political leaders participating in workshops with Cuban communist organizations appears to have come to an abrupt end.

The Trump administration's campaign to dismantle foreign-backed influence and subversion networks linked to Cuba and China could significantly weaken Havana's ability to shape radical movements across the American left. With elements of the DSA embracing revolutionary rhetoric that even establishment Democrats have rejected, the effort to expose and disrupt Marxist networks could develop into a rare bipartisan national-security initiative. We suspect that's already underway.

Democrats have become so radical that now lefty Bill Maher is contemplating a vote for JD Vance.

Tyler Durden Tue, 07/21/2026 - 18:00

This Sex Robot Is Going To 'Teach' Your Kids In Schools

This Sex Robot Is Going To 'Teach' Your Kids In Schools

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity News,

A rural New York school district on the Seneca Nation reservation is set to become one of the first in the United States to place a lifelike humanoid robot in front of high school students.

Starting this fall, Salamanca High School will introduce "Sally," an M-Series robot built by Realbotix, to assist in coding, robotics, and AI classes for 11th and 12th graders.

Sally comes with brown hair, silicone skin, a Western New York accent, upper-body movement, and facial expressions. She remains seated and cannot walk the room. Students will log in with unique identification codes so the machine can recognize them and pick up previous interactions.

The full package - robot plus the accompanying Optio AI tutor platform - cost the district $57,590, a discounted figure below the average New York teacher salary and well under the company's listed starting price near $95,000.

"The Realbotix educational robot will never replace teachers, staff members, or meaningful human interaction," the Salamanca City Central School District stated. Instead, they describe it as an instructional tool loaded only with district-approved curriculum, historical information about Salamanca, and content designed to encourage critical thinking rather than simply spit out answers.

The system reportedly operates offline with no internet connection, collects no personally identifiable information, records neither video nor audio, and transmits nothing back to the company. If asked something outside its knowledge base, it is programmed to reply "I don't know."

Realbotix CEO Andrew Kiguel called the deployment "a landmark moment for both AI and humanoid robotics." He added: "We are moving beyond lab demonstrations and pilots to deliver real, embodied AI directly into classrooms, supporting teachers, engaging students, and proving that advanced robotics can thrive in live educational environments. Salamanca marks the beginning of a new era where humanoid robots and intelligent AI assistants become standard tools in STEM education."

Superintendent Dr. Mark Beehler expressed enthusiasm for giving students "a safe, Salamanca-specific AI tutor" and educators customized tools. The pilot begins with students in the district's Woz ED AI and Robotics pathway - curriculum inspired by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak - and could expand to roughly 500 high school students if deemed successful.

Students will also interact with digital avatars of the robot on laptops for after-hours tutoring, homework help, and support in multiple languages.

The company behind Sally has a more colorful history. Realbotix previously acquired the parent firm of RealDoll, the well-known manufacturer of hyper-realistic sex dolls and companion robots. Officials stress that the education division operates separately in staff, facilities, and technology, with a planned ownership separation, yet the connection has not gone unnoticed.

Reactions on X captured the skepticism. One popular reply asked bluntly, "Why does the robot have lip injections?" Another observed the contradiction in officials promising robots will never replace teachers while simultaneously noting the machine costs less than a human educator.

Critics pointed to the company's adult-product roots and questioned the wisdom of placing such technology in front of teenagers in an economically challenged community. Homeschool advocates seized on the moment to argue that parents should simply keep their children out of systems experimenting with this level of automation.

Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

Tyler Durden Tue, 07/21/2026 - 17:40

Democrats Are Fighting A Civil War, And Bernie Sanders Started It

Democrats Are Fighting A Civil War, And Bernie Sanders Started It

Democrats desperately want to retake the House in November, not just to thwart President Donald Trump's legislative agenda, but to launch countless investigations under the guise of oversight. However, their most stubborn obstacle to achieving this goal isn't President Trump or the Republican Party. The biggest obstacle actually sits inside their own party. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has spent this cycle bankrolling primary challengers against sitting Democrats, and the fight has split the party into two camps that can barely stand each other.

Sanders recently announced plans to defeat a sitting House Democrat from North Carolina who belongs to the Congressional Black Caucus. House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries called Sanders personally to warn him off interfering in House primaries during a midterm year that could decide control of Congress, CNN reported, citing three Democrats familiar with the previously unreported call. Rep. Greg Meeks (D-N.Y.) sat in on that call and told the outlet that Sanders showed little concern about the warning. The call came just before Rep. Valerie Foushee defeated primary challenger Nida Allam in North Carolina in March. Jeffries later declined to describe the exchange beyond calling it honest.

Sanders sits at the height of his influence in Democratic politics right now, which makes the timing of this civil war particularly inconvenient for a party trying to project unity heading into the fall. The dispute comes down to a simple question: should Democrats run candidates who can actually win swing districts, or candidates who fire up the base and risk losing everyone else? Sanders has chosen one side, and the establishment the other. He has endorsed more than 90 candidates this cycle and helped topple House incumbents in New York City and Colorado. Of the 60 Sanders-backed candidates whose races have concluded, 42 have won, including 10 of 16 federal candidates. Senior Washington Democrats grumble that Sanders is forcing the party to burn money on internal fights instead of saving it for Republicans in November.

Then there's Graham Platner, the Maine Senate candidate Sanders backed and defended even after the New York Times reported allegations of abusive behavior toward women. Sanders kept defending him until after allegations of rape surfaced, which Platner has denied. Sanders withdrew his endorsement only then.

Platner's exit from the race, according to OpenSecrets, put the Democratic Party in a deep financial hole. Platner can't simply transfer his campaign funds to his replacement, and whoever takes his place will ultimately have to overcome a huge cash disadvantage compared to Sen. Susan Collins.

"Bernie has endorsed some flawed candidates recently," Rep. Hillary Scholten of Michigan said. "I think it's really important to look at the judgment that has been exercised. The Graham Platner situation should be a huge warning sign to a lot of voters about what that stamp of approval might mean."

Michigan is where this rift boiled over this weekend, as Sanders held rallies - joined by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - for Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed and House candidate William Lawrence. Asked whether he's making it harder for Democrats to win in November, the 84-year-old Sanders said no and argued his candidates represent working people rather than wealthy donors. El-Sayed's support for Medicare for All and his criticism of Israel and AIPAC have made him a progressive favorite. At the same time, the party establishment favors Rep. Haley Stevens as the safer bet against likely GOP nominee former Rep. Mike Rogers. Retiring Sen. Gary Peters had planned to stay neutral in the August 4 primary but endorsed Stevens last week instead.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has made his preference for Stevens clear. However, he avoided direct criticism of Sanders when asked, saying Democrats would settle on a nominee suited to the state. Rep. Ro Khanna compared Sanders' standing in the party to that of the pope and Barack Obama. Rep. Josh Gottheimer sees something else entirely.

"The DSA, which Bernie's part of, is trying to hijack the Democratic Party, and what you're seeing is people don't want that," Gottheimer said. "The Democratic Party wants to be the Democratic Party, and he's trying to use the Democratic Party as a vessel for socialism, and people don't want socialism."

Lawrence, a 35-year-old democratic socialist and climate activist, brings his own headache. Jeffries and Meeks condemned remarks reported by the Huffington Post in which Lawrence said black political leaders "take the teeth out of the white left" - language Jeffries called deeply disturbing - and party leaders worry a Lawrence win could cost them a must-win Lansing-area seat held by Republican Rep. Tom Barrett. Lawrence apologized on CNN, saying the comments misrepresented his values. The Congressional Black Caucus's political arm is funding ads against him, and Sen. Elissa Slotkin broke her usual neutrality to back former Navy SEAL Matt Maasdam, one of Lawrence's two rivals in the three-way primary along with former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Bridget Brink. Even Ocasio-Cortez, scheduled to appear at the same Sunday stop, would not say whether she was comfortable campaigning alongside him: "I haven't endorsed in it. I haven't waded into it at all."

Tyler Durden Tue, 07/21/2026 - 17:20

DOJ Seeks To Rescind US Citizenship Granted To 10 Individuals

DOJ Seeks To Rescind US Citizenship Granted To 10 Individuals

Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times,

The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced on Monday that it has filed to denaturalize 10 individuals charged or convicted with various crimes, including offenses against minors.

“Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, a naturalized U.S. citizen’s citizenship may be revoked, and certificate of naturalization canceled, if the naturalization was illegally procured or procured by concealment of a material fact or by willful misrepresentation,” the DOJ said in a July 20 statement, adding that the Trump administration was continuing its “largest denaturalization effort ever.”

One of the individuals targeted for denaturalization is Rodriguez Perez, 45, of Cuban origin, who was naturalized as an American in 2018. Prior to obtaining citizenship, Perez engaged in Medicare fraud worth more than $886,694 and concealed this conduct during the naturalization process.

Perez pleaded guilty in the case and was convicted of conspiracy to commit healthcare and wire fraud.

Another individual, Urbano Vazquez Ortega, 53, a Mexican naturalized in July 2017, had sexually assaulted children while being employed as a church priest in Washington. The crimes were committed between 2015 and 2017. Ortega was sentenced to 15 years in prison in 2019.

A third individual, Omar Cantu-Montalvo, 44, from Mexico, was naturalized in December 2005 after claiming in his application that he had never committed a crime. However, Cantu-Montalvo was later sentenced to 100 months in prison by a court for conspiracy to distribute cocaine, a scheme he joined just a few months before applying for naturalization.

Other individuals have been charged with crimes such as carrying a concealed firearm, sexually abusing a minor, misrepresenting identity to secure citizenship, and wire fraud.

“These 10 criminal aliens—including child sex abusers, a $900,000 Medicare fraudster, and a cocaine trafficker—lied their way into U.S. citizenship,” acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said in the statement.

“Each of these individuals lacked the good moral character required by law and procured citizenship through willful misrepresentations and concealment of their crimes. Under President Trump’s leadership, this Department of Justice will continue to aggressively pursue denaturalization to restore integrity to America’s naturalization process.”

In January, the Southern District of Texas court, McAllen Division, issued an order to revoke the citizenship of a naturalized person convicted of a child sex offense.

In March, the DOJ announced it had secured the denaturalization of two individuals—a convicted gun trafficker and a healthcare fraudster.

As of late April, the Trump administration had filed 22 denaturalization cases in its second term, according to the DOJ. During the entire Biden administration, 24 such cases were filed.

A DOJ memo from June 2025 prioritized investigations and enforcement actions advancing denaturalization. The memo directed the department’s Civil Division to aggressively pursue denaturalization cases by evidence, especially those involving national security threats, undisclosed felonies, gang activity, and terrorism.

Sanctity of US Citizenship

In an April 24 post on X, Rep. Grace Meng (D- N.Y.) criticized the Trump administration’s denaturalization efforts.

Naturalized people are American citizens, Meng said. Individuals who undergo the naturalization process are “extensively vetted,” often spending years navigating America’s immigration system, taking exams, and pledging loyalty to the United States, she said.

“The President’s targeting of naturalized U.S. citizens is not only a reckless weaponization of the Department of Justice, it is an attack on core American values,” Meng said.

During a Senate hearing last month, Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) argued that denaturalization is a crucial safeguard to protect the sanctity of U.S. citizenship, according to a June 4 statement from the lawmaker’s office.

“For too long, Washington treated naturalization like paperwork. Check the boxes. Say the words. Get the passport. Collect the welfare check or federal tax credit. Move on. That approach desecrates American citizenship. It insults every immigrant who came here honestly, followed the law, learned our history, embraced our Constitution, and took the oath in good faith,” Schmitt said.

“The Supreme Court has made the rule clear: no alien has the slightest right to naturalization unless every statutory requirement is met. Citizenship obtained by fraud is stolen status. Stolen status should be revoked.”

Tyler Durden Tue, 07/21/2026 - 17:00

The Conflicts Brewing In America's Ten Classes

The Conflicts Brewing In America's Ten Classes

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

What we do know is that things have internal structures with dynamics that operate whether we "like" them or not.

Correspondent Manoj S. recommended an essay from the always-insightful John Michael Greer on the dissolution of unproductive classes behind the smokescreen of AI: A Game of Musical Chairs

"You can sell Americans on anything, no matter how wretchedly unsatisfactory it is, by labeling it as progress. That's what's being done now, with AI being used as a justification for firing useless workers, deleting unnecessary departments, cutting office staff down to scales that actually make sense, and shutting down the classroom-to-cubicle pipeline that once poured new graduates into salary class jobs. We can expect that process to accelerate dramatically in the years ahead."

Greer begins by laying out a compelling taxonomy of class in America, four self-explanatory classes defined by this question: how do different groups in today's America get their income?

1. investment class: income from investments (i.e. capital)

2. salary class: income from a monthly salary with benefits

3. wage class: income from an hourly wage with no benefits

4. welfare class: income from welfare programs

Greer argues that the salary class is now the gravitational center of power in the U.S., absorbing much of the national income in unproductive faux-problem-solving for fabricated problems explicitly devised to justify generous salaries and benefits.

The nation can no longer afford this staggeringly costly unproductive work force and so "replacing cognitive work with AI" is the cover story for the mass evisceration of this class, in a parallel to the previous gutting of the factory work force by automation and offshoring.

I've been addressing the class taxonomy of the US since 2012, and I'd like to add some commentary on the dynamics Greer so succinctly describes. In America's Metastasizing Class Wars (August 27, 2020), I laid out ten classes, based not just on sources of income but on several additional criteria:

Systemic Power: political control of the state's monopoly of force / coercion; financial control of the system's taxation, incentives and optimizations; corporate control of essential technologies - platforms; corporate-state "soft power" control of cultural, social and intellectual belief structures and sources of influence: media, social media, think-tanks, foundations, the Higher Education Clerisy, etc.

The power to protect bureaucratic-institutional fortresses from budget cuts, transparency and accountability.

Agency: the power to leave employment or a locale and change one's life; freedom from debt-servitude / employment bondage.

My ten classes: yes, this is more complicated that Greer's four classes but since power has sources other than income, accuracy demands an accounting not just of income but of power and agency, which is an individual form of power with systemic consequences such as social mobility.

1. The Deep State. Unelected, unaccountable, they wield state power. Call them if you're about to be renditioned. But you need either power or relationships to have their number. Relationships are a form of power.

2. The Oligarchs. Top bidders in the auction for political and financial influence. The top .001%. Able to rig the structures of power to serve their private interests.

3. New Nobility. The super-wealthy class just below the Oligarchs. The top .01%. They have the means to serve their private interests via lobbyists and campaign contributions. $10 million in campaign contributions nets $100 million in tax breaks / subsidies.

4. Upper Caste. The technocrat/professional class that manages the Status Quo for the upper classes. This includes wealthy entrepreneurs and owners of enterprises: rich but not rich enough to rig the structures of power to serve their private interests.

5. State Nomenklatura. Well-paid government administrators with ironclad job security and power.

Together, the Upper Caste and the Nomenklatura comprise the upper-middle class. Owners of enough capital (real estate and stocks) to cheer serial credit-asset bubbles. Since I'm doing well, the system is working great.

6. The Middle Class. Wage-earners and salaried employees, owners of traditional sources of financial security: family home, 401K retirement funds, etc. Due to high debt, many qualify as debt-serfs / wage-slaves with minimal agency despite their ownership of middle-class status signifiers.

7. The Working Poor. Households with earned income but it is not sufficient to secure the basics of middle class life. Many qualify for social welfare programs such as food stamps and Medicaid. Due to high debt, many qualify as debt-serfs / wage-slaves with minimal agency.

8. State Dependents. Though often labeled "poor," those with cash / black-market income often live better than the working poor, due to generous social welfare benefits.

9. Mobile Creatives. Self-employed independents, entrepreneurial sole proprietors with adaptive skills. They may collaborate with other Creatives rather than have employees, and may have part-time conventional jobs. They have mobility between sectors and ways of earning income sufficient to acquire capital / assets. They "own their livelihoods." Their credo is trust my network, not the corporation or the state.

10. Gig economy precariat. May supplement insecure employment (limited hours, no benefits, etc.) with gig work, may combine cash work with rideshare gigs, may juggle several delivery / eBay sales / rideshare gigs. The difference between precariats and Mobile Creatives is precariats are generally in survival mode (high debt, unreliable income, etc.) and are unable to acquire capital / assets. They "rent" their livelihoods rather than "own" them.

Here is a curated list of my essays on the taxonomy of class in the US:

The Three-and-a-Half Class Society (October 22, 2012)

America's Nine Classes: The New Class Hierarchy (April 29, 2014)

What the Global Status Quo Optimizes: Protecting Elites and the Clerisy Class That Serves Them (September 26, 2014)
Explicitly describing what the system optimizes would trigger social instability.

The New Class: Mobile Creatives (May 1, 2014)
The key characteristic of the Mobile Creative class is that they live by this credo: trust your network, not the corporation or the state.

When Belief in the System Fades (March 12, 2008)

Let's distill the key dynamics this structure reveals.

1. This is a neofeudal society passing itself off as a free-market democracy. Power is concentrated in the top state-private sector classes. No one below has any real power. Electing another leader or party changes nothing: life gets more difficult, insecure and expensive for commoners regardless of who's in office. The Imperial project grinds on, regardless of the delusional hope that electing someone else will change anything. Everything else is an illusion of power, not real power.

Try switching the 37% tax rate on labor to capital gains and all income from capital, and see how far you get.

2. Debt and social engineering are the foundations of America's neofeudalism. The essence of neofeudalism is debt penury and wage-slave bondage to the owners of the debt, which is capital that generates income. Commoners have no agency because they have to work for corporations or the state to service their debt. They can't change jobs because they'll lose healthcare insurance, and so on.

Social engineering: as Greer highlighted, Americans can be sold anything, no matter how destructive, unhealthy and exploitive, as long as it's packaged as Progress, especially technological Progress and novelty-as-progress. This is the power of The Mythology of Progress.

3. Beneath the endless marketing of "free market capitalism," few have any real agency. Stripped of PR gloss, the majority of workers have a false choice of servitude: they can serve their current oligarch / state agency / corporation, or they can toil in another noble's domain. Six one way, half-dozen the other.

4. America's neofeudalism now depends on inflating an endless series of credit-asset bubbles that generate phantom wealth, financial claims that are easily inflated without actually creating any real value via increasing income streams by means other than inflation and monopoly extortion.

This has worked so well for so long that recency bias has kicked in and we now believe this is a well-oiled permanent mechanism we can rely on. Alas, credit-asset bubbles are inherently unstable and the current system-wide bet on AI being something that will actually generate value / massive new income streams is an all-in last-ditch bet. When this bubble pops, the conditions enabling a future bubble will no longer exist.

But nobody says that, do they?

5. Here is a chart of the income distribution from owning capital. Note that it follows a power-law distribution: the few collect the lion's share of the income generated by capital. The vast majority don't own any income-generating capital, and the top 20% are delighted by the steady rise in their phantom wealth as the bubble-du-jour inflates the nominal price of the assets they own, setting up the inevitable crash when tulip bulbs revert from "investments" to flowers.

Meanwhile, those collecting 95% of the income from capital look down on the toiling peasantry from their Kafkaesque castles with amusement. Student loans, mortgages, 27.99% interest rate credit cards--it's really quite marvelous, isn't it?

6. Symbolic work versus productive work. Much of the work Greer describes as unproductive is considered highly productive because our exploitation of hydrocarbons and technology has generated such a vast surplus that we could spend it on symbolic work--meetings about meetings, compliance reports, marketing plans, projections, consulting, and so on, work that despite claims to the contrary has little to do with harvesting grain, connecting pipelines, replacing transformers, making beds, performing surgery or any other real-world work.

What If the Work We're Busy Automating Is Needless? (June 19, 2026)

Try telling the priesthood of the temple gods that their work is symbolic. Ours is the most valuable labor, as we're the ones keeping the whole thing glued together. If we stop, the gods will be angered and all will fail. Indeed.

As a result, we have no experience of a way of life stripped of symbolic work based on seeking positions of status, accumulating credentials, and so on.

7. The number of Mobile Creatives is modest. Some years ago I dug into IRS data on types of income and found that only a tiny sliver of the workforce is truly independent / self-employed, i.e. they earn a middle-class income from royalties, ownership of enterprises or professional services. Out of roughly 160 million employed people, around 16 million are self-employed, but only 6.9 million are professional-class with some form of incorporation, and around 3 million others make enough income to live well. So around 6% of the work force is truly independent.

We're inundated with glowing accounts of individuals earning big bucks on "passive income" schemes, just as there are endless posts about how to make six figures using "can't lose" techniques that just so happen to cost $200.

The reality is it's extremely challenging to live outside the peasantry-Nobility arrangement. In my experience, it takes a willingness to constantly absorb risk and failure, and wear an absurd number of hats: accountant, manager, programmer, laborer, creative wizard, psychologist, consultant, student--and even after all that, success is not guaranteed. The difference between living in a shack and "success" is often some form of luck.

8. Something's gotta give. Soaring debt, public and private, rampant corruption, extortion, exploitation, dynamic pricing, unaffordable shelter, utilities and food, tulip-bubble scale euphoria, moated bureaucracies, complexity thickets that stifle competition, neofeudal lords digging bunkers and hiring private armies as they sense the peasantry's distemper--something's gotta give, we just don't know what will break first.

The usual explanations no longer explain anything. Their incoherence is obvious but lacking anything more coherent, we go back to insisting that all will be well if only everyone would wear their Silly Hats. What Once Explained Everything Now Explains Nothing.

What we do know is that things have internal structures with dynamics that operate whether we "like" them or not. I put together this chart of the Lifecycle of Bureaucracies some years ago to illustrate how institutions decay as self-interest replaces the original purpose of the organization. This leads to implosion - collapse. Again, whether we "like" it or not.

Greer's forecast of the end of white-collar symbolic work may well be prescient. Costs are funny things. We can play games with "money" and think we've solved the problem of costs, but costs are weirdly embedded in the real world, and so thinking that we can overcome all those costs by requiring everyone to wear Silly Hats doesn't actually work.

As Peter Drucker observed, enterprises don't have profits, they only have costs. This is also true of governments, households, institutions and, well, everything else. Calling tulip bulbs "wealth" works like magic for a time, and then reality intrudes.

*  *  *

My book Investing In Revolution is available at a 10% discount ($18 for the paperback, $24 for the hardcover and $8.95 for the ebook edition). Introduction (free). Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com. Subscribe to my Substack for free

Tyler Durden Tue, 07/21/2026 - 16:20

Lockheed Unveils Move Towards Cheaper Patriot Missiles As Interceptor Stockpiles Dwindle

Lockheed Unveils Move Towards Cheaper Patriot Missiles As Interceptor Stockpiles Dwindle

With US-Iran tit-for-tat strikes on their ninth day and the Russia-Ukraine war grinding on in Eastern Europe, US inventories of certain air-delivered munitions are being depleted. This has made the rapid procurement of lower-cost missiles and bombs a top priority for the Trump administration.

The Wall Street Journal reports that defense giant Lockheed Martin is planning a low-cost version of the Patriot interceptor missile that will cost less than half as much as the current version.

The PAC-3 Adapted Capability Effector will cost less than half the price of Lockheed's PAC-3 Missile Segment Enhancement interceptor, which currently costs $4 million per round.

The new missile is designed to counter cruise missiles and short-range ballistic threats while using existing Patriot launchers.

A separate report from the Financial Times states that Lockheed is exploring a European production line for the new low-cost interceptor missiles, which could drive the price down to between $1.5 million and $2 million per round.

Lockheed is already considering European suppliers for solid rocket motors, guidance electronics, and other critical components, potentially through a partnership with a leading defense contractor on the continent.

Lockheed's decision to look toward Europe, rather than expand exclusively in the US, may signal limitations within the domestic defense-industrial base, just as the Trump administration's war economy begins to accelerate.

So about lead time for these new missile? How many years?

Tyler Durden Tue, 07/21/2026 - 15:40

SpaceX Rebounds From Near-50% Rout As Starship Launch Catalyst Nears

SpaceX Rebounds From Near-50% Rout As Starship Launch Catalyst Nears

SpaceX has slipped below its heavily hyped $135 IPO price and has been nearly halved from its all-time high, which was reached during the June 15 gamma squeeze that briefly sent shares above $220 in overnight trading.

Last Thursday's scrub of Starship's 13th test flight added further downward pressure, with shares touching $119 on Monday. The stock rebounded on Tuesday ahead of Thursday's next launch attempt, positioning Flight 13 as a near-term catalyst.

The last-second abort was triggered after four of the Super Heavy booster's 33 Raptor engines failed to ignite, prompting an automatic shutdown. "To be confident of a good flight, two Raptors will be removed and replaced," Elon Musk wrote on X.

Flight 13 will be the first Starship launch conducted with SpaceX trading as a public company, giving investors direct exposure to the mission's outcome. A successful flight could help restore confidence in the company's stock and bonds, while another failure would likely deepen the latest sell-off.

Credit markets are already flashing caution. SpaceX issued $25 billion of bonds across five maturities, including $3.5 billion of 6.65% notes due in 2056, which have moved steadily lower since entering secondary trading.

Quite a divergence today...

The question now is whether a successful Starship launch Thursday can put a floor under SpaceX shares, which have underperformed most other major Nasdaq IPOs during the opening days and weeks of trading.

Wall Street, however, remains broadly bullish on the stock, except for Morningstar's Nicolas Owens with the only "Sell" rating. 

Tyler Durden Tue, 07/21/2026 - 15:00

Chaotic Bodycam Video Shows Trans Florida Student Confront Cop Over 'Misgendering' Before Arrest

Chaotic Bodycam Video Shows Trans Florida Student Confront Cop Over 'Misgendering' Before Arrest

Newly released police bodycam video shows a University of Central Florida student confronting a campus officer over pronouns before being pepper-sprayed, tased, and taken away in handcuffs.

The footage shows Jarrett Vick, a 27-year-old blue-haired UCF student from Treasure Island, Florida, shouting at an officer who had arrived at a campus building on an unrelated call. The video was recorded in February 2025 but released Friday by the YouTube channel Inside The Blue TV.

"Why do you let those pigs get away with this? They are not supposed to be here," Vick says at the start of the clip.

The officer tells him to lower his voice or be placed in handcuffs. Vick responds by cursing at him: "Fucking try it. Are you threatening me? You're threatening me."

The officer calls for backup on his radio. "He is having a breakdown," he tells dispatch - at which point Vick screams, "She! She! Just say the right pronoun!"

The officer draws his pepper spray and orders Vick to calm down, deploying it when he does not. A university employee appears and attempts to defuse the situation.

"Get away! Fuck you! Fuck you, cop!" Vick shouts, and the employee walks off.

Later in the footage, Vick is seen stomping his foot and shouting "She!" at the officer, and asks the university employee to tell the officers to use the right pronouns, saying it is causing him a lot of distress.

"She, sheeee!!!!!" Vick shrieked. "Just say the right pronoun!"

He was taken into custody after being tased by a second officer, according to the video, which followed Vick attempting to kick and swing at the officers. He is then shown being placed in the back of a squad car. The incident is dated Feb. 5, 2025.

Approached by the Post, Vick said he had been "fucking harassed by the cops" and blamed them for what he described as harassment from the media.

Court records show Vick was charged that day with battery on law enforcement, resisting arrest, and disorderly conduct. He pleaded not guilty to all three counts. His most recent court appearance is dated Jan. 16, and Orange County records list the cases as closed. He is listed as male in his arrest records.

Tyler Durden Tue, 07/21/2026 - 14:20

Appeals Court Rejects Biden's Bid To Block Release Of Bumbling Memoir Audio Tapes

Appeals Court Rejects Biden's Bid To Block Release Of Bumbling Memoir Audio Tapes

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

A federal appeals court on July 20 ruled against former President Joe Biden, finding that he was not entitled to an injunction blocking the release of audio recordings and transcripts of his interviews with his memoir’s ghostwriter.

“Biden has not shown a likelihood of success on the merits,” Circuit Judges Sri Srinivasan and Gregory Katsas in Washington said.

The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, sued the government in 2024, alleging it wrongly withheld most of the recordings and transcripts from conversations Biden had with ghostwriter Mark Zwonitzer in 2016 and 2017.

After President Donald Trump took office in 2025, the Department of Justice said that it planned to disclose the withheld materials to The Heritage Foundation and a House of Representatives panel. Biden intervened, seeking court rulings prohibiting the disclosure of the materials.

Judge Dabney Friedrich of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in June ruled in favor of The Heritage Foundation, citing how the case “involves an unusually strong public interest in the release of law enforcement materials,” which she said outweighs the privacy interests protected by exceptions to the Freedom of Information Act, which allows requests for government-held information.

Friedrich stayed her order to let Biden appeal if he chose, and he did, leading to Monday’s decision.

A majority of the split panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said that the primary question is whether Biden will likely succeed in showing exemptions to the act apply to the recordings and transcripts.

One exemption sought by Biden protects law enforcement records that, if shared, would reasonably be expected to invade personal privacy.

There is significant public interest in a special counsel investigation of Biden’s alleged mishandling of classified information, and because the special counsel relied on the tapes and transcripts, “the requested materials are germane to that interest,” the majority said.

The “extensive redactions” that the Department of Justice entered on the version of the records it plans to release help protect Biden’s privacy, and the public interest outweighs any remaining personal privacy interest, they added later.

The panel gave Biden until Aug. 3 to appeal to the full appeals court or the Supreme Court.

Special counsel Robert Hur’s year-long investigation produced a 345-page report, published in February 2024, that concluded that no criminal charges were warranted against the then-81-year-old president. Hur said the evidence was insufficient to prove a criminal case beyond a reasonable doubt.

A lawyer representing the former president did not return a request for comment by the time of publication.

Jeffrey Clark, vice president of litigation for the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project, said in a July 20 post on X that “we continue to beat Joe Biden’s heavily overcompensated lawyers trying to continue to hide the Autopen Presidency.”

Circuit Judge Florence Pan said in a dissent that she would have sided with Biden.

“In my view, Biden has shown a substantial privacy interest,” Pan wrote, adding that the interest of the public does not outweigh the privacy of Biden because many of the materials from the special counsel investigation have already been made public.

“Even if the substantial competing interests might ultimately weigh in favor of releasing the materials, there is no urgency that requires revealing them at this time,” Pan said.

Tyler Durden Tue, 07/21/2026 - 14:00

Convicted Illegal Migrant Murderer Sues Trump Over "Emotional Distress"

Convicted Illegal Migrant Murderer Sues Trump Over "Emotional Distress"

The entitlement never stops, even when illegal migrants are convicted of murder and thrown in prison, they still expect free stuff and access to the American Dream.

Brandon Ortiz-Vite, a Mexican national who was living in the U.S. illegally, was convicted of the 2024 murder of his girlfriend, Ruby Garcia, in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, carjacking, carrying a concealed weapon, and felony firearm.  He shot Garcia multiple times (including a shot to the head after she was already wounded), dumped her body on the side of U.S. 131, and later turned himself in.

He was sentenced to a minimum of 39 years in prison and a maximum potential sentence of over 100 years.

The migrant killer had already received substantial coverage from the media in the lead up to his trial and conviction.  However, Donald Trump used Ortiz as an example of illegal alien crime during his 2024 election campaign bid and made the man into a mascot for mass deportations.  

Ortiz had DACA status (which expired in 2019), was deported by the Trump administration in 2020 after prior arrests, but re-entered the US illegally as soon as Joe Biden took office. The case was highlighted by Trump's 2024 campaign in ads and speeches using his mugshot and details to criticize the Democrat Party's  open border policies.

After his conviction for murder, Ortiz has filed a handwritten complaint in federal court, naming Trump and White House Principal Deputy Press Secretary Steven Cheung as defendants.  Ortiz claims that he has suffered "emotional distress" do to the highly public nature of his conviction, making him the target of ridicule by his fellow inmates. 

He claims that public scrutiny pressured him to take a plea deal, and that the use of his mugshot by Trump's campaign was illegal. He describes feeling “belittled,” having his “dignity shattered,” public “humiliation,” becoming a “target” and “publicly infamous.”

Brandon Ortiz-Vite demands compensation of $75 million, U.S. citizenship and a public apology from Trump.

Ortiz is self represented in the case and the lawsuit is likely to be thrown out for frivolity.  Mugshots and case details are a matter of public record, they are not private information.  Campaign speech is highly protected under the 1st Amendment and the convicted killer would face serious hurdles in any civil case against a sitting president with immunity.  Furthermore, "humiliation" is much more difficult to establish than defamation; they are not the same thing. 

Suing over a subjective feeling is nearly impossible.

Of course, no one cares if a murderer has his feelings hurt and the fact that he entered the country illegally to commit a murder makes Ortiz an even more detestable character in the eyes of many.  The notion that the man was "pressured" into a plea deal holds no water, given the substantial amount of evidence against him. 

Beyond the mountain of forensic evidence linking him to Garcia's death, Ortiz made a full confession several months before the Trump Campaign picked up on the case.  His conviction was assured regardless of Trump, and his plea deal had nothing to do with public pressure. 

What is most interesting about this situation is not the lawsuit, but the level of entitlement consistently displayed by illegal migrants when they are captured or convicted of a crime.  Ortiz is not an isolated anomaly; he is representative of a cultural attitude held by third world foreigners seeking easy access to the "American Dream" (the American economy and a government subsidized life). 

The third world views the west as a global open air bazarr, a wealthy market that is ripe for exploitation.  They think all they have to do is cross the border and take what they want.  US laws mean nothing to them, and under Democrat rule in blue states and cities, the laws are rarely applied to illegal migrants. Too many arrests or prosecutions of aliens would make Democrat sanctuary policies look bad.

And so, under Biden, many repeat offenders flooded back into the US, including Ortiz, and started pillaging once again.  They were so emboldened by the open border and progressive pro-immigration rhetoric that they now think they can sue the US when they do finally get punished.      

Tyler Durden Tue, 07/21/2026 - 13:40

Meanwhile, In Dearborn, Michigan...

Meanwhile, In Dearborn, Michigan...

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity News,

A viral video from inside a Home Depot in Dearborn, Michigan shows department signs for the likes of Appliances, Paint, Plumbing now carrying Arabic script alongside the English.

This is not some minor accessibility tweak. It is another clear marker of demographic transformation in a city where Middle Eastern and North African ancestry already exceeds 54 percent.

The footage captures shoppers navigating orange-and-black signs that translate core retail categories into Arabic. A woman in full niqab walks the aisle as the camera pans across the bilingual displays. The same pattern has appeared at other major chains serving the area, including Walmart, Costco, Kroger and Albertsons.

This represents the quiet rewriting of the public commercial space to accommodate a parallel linguistic reality.

Dearborn has long been held up as the model of successful Arab-American settlement. What the signs demonstrate is something different: the expectation that American businesses will adapt to the language of the newest arrivals rather than the other way around.

One commenter wrote, "That doesn't encourage integration. It only causes increased segregation for a people which don't want to integrate anyway. If I were to move to an Arabic country. I would never expect them to learn to speak English. I have too much respect for other lands to consider thinking like that. US citizens have been down that road, encouraging segregation is wrong."

Another simply stated, "Gross. Never going to Home Depot again, it's tainted now." A third declared, "Damn, I guess I'll be shopping at ACE or Lowe's from now on. This is fucking absurd."

Dearborn's large immigrant population from Iraq and other Middle Eastern countries is the stated rationale for the change. Yet the practical effect is to normalize foreign-language dominance in everyday American retail.

English remains the common language of the country. Private businesses are free to chase customers however they choose. That does not make the visual result any less revealing of the direction of travel.

This development sits on a continuum of institutional accommodation that has also reached local law enforcement in the same metro area.

Just months earlier, the Dearborn Heights Police Department became the first in the United States to introduce an official uniform patch featuring Arabic script. The episode revealed how quickly "diversity" initiatives move from optional gestures to official symbols of authority.

Dearborn Heights has a combined Middle Eastern and North African population of around 40 percent, while nearby Dearborn has a majority 55 percent.

Both areas, along with other towns such as Hamtramck, have attracted Arab communities with immigration from Lebanon, Yemen, and other Middle Eastern countries.

While there are Arabic speaking Orthodox Christians in Dearborn from earlier immigration movements in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, they have become proportionally smaller due to immigration trends favoring Muslim-majority groups, which now define much of the city's Arab identity.

This has sparked controversies, such as over public broadcasts of the Islamic call to prayer.

Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

Tyler Durden Tue, 07/21/2026 - 13:20

These Chips Are Scorching Hot: Utz Soars 90% On Take-Private Deal

These Chips Are Scorching Hot: Utz Soars 90% On Take-Private Deal

Chips are scorching hot on Tuesday, but not the kind made by Nvidia, AMD or Intel.

Shares of Utz Brands, the Hanover, Pennsylvania-based snack maker known for its potato chips, cheese balls and red-and-white "Little Utz Girl" logo, erupted after European snack giant Intersnack agreed to take the company private.

Utz Brands surged 90% after European snack maker Intersnack agreed to take the potato-chip producer private for $14.25 a share in cash.

Utz Brands

The transaction will be financed with about $920 million from Intersnack, new term and asset-backed loans, and rollover equity from the Rice and Lissette family. BofA Securities advised Intersnack and arranged the debt financing.

"Intersnack shares our vision for Utz, and their marketing, manufacturing, and technology capabilities will be invaluable as we continue to invest in our brands and accelerate our strategy," Utz CEO Howard Friedman said.

The Utz take-private deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2026, pending shareholder and regulatory approvals. Holders controlling about 42% of the stock have agreed to support the transaction. Utz will delist from the NYSE, with Intersnack and the Rice and Lissette family each owning 50%. Dylan Lissette will become executive chair.

"Our partnership with the Rice and Lissette Family, and commitment to Utz, represents a compelling opportunity for Intersnack to expand our exposure into the large and attractive US snacking market, where we do not currently have a presence," Intersnack Executive Chairman Johan van Winkel said.

The deal gives Intersnack its first foothold in the US snack market. Utz, which maintained its 2026 organic-sales growth forecast of 2% to 3%, reports second-quarter earnings early next month.

Utz shares are trading nearly 90% higher, close to the $14.25 take-private price. Short interest stands at roughly 11% of the float, equivalent to about 8 million shares and 3.9 days to cover, likely amplifying the move.

Shortly after Utz completed its SPAC merger with Collier Creek Holdings in August 2020 at roughly $10 a share, the stock surged to nearly $30 before entering a five-and-a-half-year downtrend.

 

Tyler Durden Tue, 07/21/2026 - 13:00

Trump Eyes Pickaxe Mountain Nuclear Site Heavy Strikes: "Iran Hasn't Seen Anything Yet, We've Been Nice"

Trump Eyes Pickaxe Mountain Nuclear Site Heavy Strikes: "Iran Hasn't Seen Anything Yet, We've Been Nice" Summary
  • Shipping disruption: Houthi threats forced two Saudi oil tankers to turn around in the Red Sea as Hormuz traffic slowed sharply after more tanker attacks.
  • Escalation in Gulf: Iran claimed strikes on infrastructure in Bahrain, Kuwait, and Jordan, while Kuwait reported a second day of attacks on power and desalination plants.
  • Trump vows more to come: The US launched fresh strikes on Iranian targets, Trump vowed retaliation, and Reuters reported a proposed 10-day ceasefire. "We've been nice," Trump says, warning of more attacks to come.
  • Oil surges: Crude prices hit multi-week highs amid shipping disruptions, with warnings oil could reach $120 if fighting continues.
  • Pentagon scrutiny: The New York Times reported the Pentagon withheld information about dozens of US troops injured in Iranian attacks before the deadly Jordan missile strike.
//--> //--> Strait of Hormuz traffic returns to normal by August 31?
Yes 14% · No 87%
View full market & trade on Polymarket

*  *  *

Trump Gives Wide-Ranging Comments on Iran: Doesn't Want to Talk, "We've Been Nice"

President Trump issued a series of big claims to reporters in the Oval Office on Tuesday. For starters he asserted that Iran wants to "desperately" meet but said "we" have no interest, and that the US military is not finished at all with Iran, and so there's no interest in talking at the moment.

And amid polls that show the war is increasingly unpopular among American voters, he stated that Iran is "probably" trying to hurt his and his Republican Party's chances in the upcoming congressional elections in November by seeking to control Strait of Hormuz, and with the latest attacks on international shipping. "I'm just going to do the right thing," Trump claimed, before saying that "The election, I can’t think about that having to do with this. I think people are very impressed."

He also revisited the Obama-era JCPOA, saying if the US hadn't "terminated the nuclear deal" then "you wouldn’t have Israel right now because they would have had a nuclear weapon years ago." He added that "if we didn’t do the B2 bombers knocking out the nuclear sites a year ago, one of the first things we did early in the administration, they [Iran] would have a nuclear weapon, and you wouldn’t have Israel." Trump continued, "And in my opinion, you wouldn’t have various other countries in the Middle East [as] they would have been terminated, extinguished."

He continued to be pressed on what the 'plan' and end goal is, and what the stopping and exit point might be. The president's response:

Another big threat and warning came when Trump declared that "Iran hasn't seen anything yet" as "we've been nice" so far. Below is a quick rundown of some key statements from the fresh press interaction:

  • No interest in meeting Iran until they are ready.
  • Iran has very evil people leading the country.
  • Our deal will not let Iran have a nuclear weapon.
  • We'll hit any site Iran is thinking about for nuclear.
  • Iran probably trying to impact elections with Hormuz.
  • Iran hasn't seen anything yet; have been nice.
  • On Pickaxe Mountain, will hit that area soon and very heavily.

Israel has meanwhile been alleging that Iran is concentrating its nuclear program at highly fortified Pickaxe Mountain. Trump in the comments suggested the US military will take direct aim at the underground complex:

Trump says the U.S. will be hitting Pickaxe mountain in Iran "pretty soon very heavily and there is nothing they can do about it"

'Slip through Jordan'... where American troops were killed:

Two tankers carrying Saudi crude make U-turns in Red Sea after Houthi warning

The just-declared (as of Monday) Houthi blockade on Saudi maritime shipping has already begun to witness ill-effects, as reports emerge of two oil tankers having made U-turns while initially en route toward the Suez Canal. The reports say their crews received threats from Houthi militants in Yemen. The emerging details:

Two ⁠oil ⁠tankers which loaded Saudi crude for China ⁠and India made ⁠U-turns in the Red Sea and headed toward ‌the Suez following a warning from Yemen’s Houthi militia.

...The group, in an email sent to shipping companies, warned them not to load or discharge cargo at Saudi Arabian ports and said such activity may result in being targeted “in any location”.

Dollar and yields spiking as oil rises.... West Texas Intermediate (WTI) has reached six-week highs on Tuesday.

Iran state media taking note of inflicting pain...

IRGC Says it Attack Amazon's Main Data Hub in Bahrain

Amid a spate of fresh attacks on Gulf states, the IRGC claimed its cruise missiles destroyed Amazon's central data infrastructure in Bahrain and also hit US air defense systems. Bahraini, US and Amazon officials issued no response in the immediate aftermath.

The IRGC said its Aerospace Force targeted and "destroyed" the central data infrastructure hub in Bahrain using several cruise missiles. It further stated that "US air defense systems and radar installations in the Bahraini areas of Muharraq and Riffa were also targeted" in the attack.

If accurate this highlights yet again that billions of dollars worth of infrastructure is going up in flames in the Gulf, and that defense against missiles and drones has been waning 

Kuwait Water Desalination & Power Plants Attacked for 2nd Consecutive Day

For a second consecutive day, Kuwait is reporting attacks on power-generation and water-desalination plants. The fresh assault caused fires and disrupted electricity generation, amid an emergency response and efforts begin restoring affected units. 

Further attacks on Bahrain, Kuwait, and Jordan are also being reported, as well as new IRGC strikes on foreign tankers seeking 'unauthorized' transit of the Strait of Hormuz. According to some latest via Al Jazeera:

  • A desalination facility and power plants caught on fire and suffered serious damage in Kuwait after new Iranian strikes targeted the crucial facilities, along with areas of Bahrain and Jordan, following a 10th-consecutive night of US bombing.
  • “Massive fires” broke out on two tankers that “took an unsafe route” in the Strait of Hormuz, says Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.

On Tuesday Kuwait has confirmed it is dealing with inbound Iranian drone and missile attacks yet again, also with sirens continuing to sound in Bahrain.

Iran Seeks To Hold Hormuz Leverage 'At All Costs'

Despite daily US saturation strikes on Iran, and in turn Iran's daily attacks on Gulf states, nothing has really changed in what seems a stalemated situation and quagmire. 

Amin Saikal, emeritus professor at Australian National University, has described that "Both sides have really been trying to inflict heavy damage on each other, and they’ve come really to a point of saturation in many ways." He continued, "Logically, that should really lead them to negotiation. But of course, that is not really happening at the moment simply because the United States wants to gain control over the Strait of Hormuz, and that’s something the Iranians will never give up."

Saikal called Hormuz “a reward” for Tehran, while pointing out that "Because of this unprovoked war, the Iranians have gained this leverage, and they want to retain it at all costs."

Still, President Trump is warning that Iran will pay "many times over" for the deaths of American soldiers, and has said he gave his Pentagon leaders directives for carrying this out. 

10th Strait Day of Escalation

The tit-for-tat escalation between the US and Iran entered its tenth day as another tanker was struck in the Strait of Hormuz. Meanwhile, the Iran-backed Houthis threatened shipping at a second strategic chokepoint in the southern Red Sea.

US Central Command launched strikes targeting Iranian command and control centers, missile and drone launch sites, and air defenses to "further degrade Iranian military capabilities used to attack commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz."

Pvt. Isabella Gonzales, 19, of Carrollton, Texas, was killed by an Iranian attack on Jordan on July 17, 2026

President Trump wrote on Truth Social, "Every time Iran kills an American soldier, they will pay for that killing many times over!"

Still, Pakistan and Qatar are urging both sides to return to their positions before the latest escalation began on July 9. Iran says it remains open to diplomacy but will not negotiate under attack, while the Trump team has signaled that strikes will continue until Tehran stops attacking tankers and bulk carriers in the critical waterway. Reuters reported that mediators have proposed a 10-day ceasefire.

Hormuz Traffic at Near Standstill as Another Tanker Struck

Shipping flows in the Hormuz have all but slowed, according to new Bloomberg data. As of Tuesday morning, just six vessels have transited the critical waterway. The data doesn't account for ships turning off transponders.

Bloomberg reports that Iran struck another tanker in the strait:

Visible traffic through Hormuz came to a near standstill on Monday following Iranian attacks on vessels over the weekend.

An oil supertanker called the Acheloos and a smaller fuel tanker were both struck in the waterway, according to Dynacom Tankers Management Ltd., the ships' manager.

Early Tuesday, the UK Maritime Trade Operations said that a tanker had been struck by an unknown projectile in the strait northeast of Oman's Limah, citing multiple reports, without identifying the vessel. The notice indicates a separate attack to those on the Dynacom tankers.

The flare-up in violence sent Brent crude oil futures surging in recent weeks to over $90 a barrel, with Goldman commodity expert Daan Struyven warning on Monday that oil prices could rally to $120 if there is no de-escalation.

"Escalation in the Middle East and the decline in estimated Persian Gulf flows to below 45% of pre-war levels have pushed oil prices back up," Struyven said in a note to clients.

Related:

US Consumers Feeling the Pinch

Meanwhile, US consumers are feeling the pinch again at the pump, with the national average for regular 87-octane gasoline topping $4 a gallon once more. This is the politically sensitive line in the sand at which the Trump administration takes notice and consumer behavior begins to shift down at convenience stores, gas stations, and QSRs (quick-service restaurants).

Pattern of Pentagon Concealing US Casualties: NYT

The New York Times reported Monday that the Pentagon withheld information that US troops had been injured in Iranian attacks on Jordan in the week before the missile strikes that killed at least two US soldiers and left one missing.

"Those attacks injured dozens of U.S. service members and damaged several helicopters, according to several U.S. officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters," the report says. "But the Pentagon did not disclose the earlier strikes, nor the casualties and damage they inflicted."

The slain soldiers in Jordan were reportedly staying in flimsy prefabricated housing at the time of the deadly ballistic missile attack. US officials described a situation that suggests American forces were essentially sitting ducks, and that not enough has been done to protect the Pentagon's Mideast bases.

NYT painted a picture of a US admin pattern of concealing the true extent of American casualties. "In statements after airstrikes against Iranian military sites last week, U.S. Central Command said it was retaliating for Iran’s attacks against commercial ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz, never mentioning Iran’s strikes on bases in the region, including in Jordan," it noted.

Overnight Headlines

courtesy of Bloomberg...

US-Iran Tit-For-Tat

  • The US and Iran have exchanged strikes for a 10th consecutive day, with US Central Command targeting Iranian military command centers, launch sites, maritime capabilities, and air defenses.
  • Iran has retaliated by attacking US military sites in Kuwait and Jordan.
  • Trump vowed Tehran "will pay" after Iran killed three US soldiers.
  • According to the Washington Post, US intelligence reports suggest US strikes are unlikely to move Iran.
  • Iran's Khorramabad area in Lorestan Province was attacked earlier today.

Diplomacy & Ceasefire Efforts

  • Iran's Interior Minister Eskandar Momeni began meetings Tuesday with mediators in Pakistan as diplomats sought to salvage a collapsed interim deal.
  • Mediators have proposed a 10-day ceasefire between Iran and the US to revive the interim deal, according to an unidentified senior Iranian official cited by Reuters.
  • Iran's president said communication with Supreme Leader Khamenei has increased, per Tasnim reports.

Regional Risks

  • The Kaifan, an oil-products tanker owned by Kuwait Oil Tanker Co., was struck by an unknown projectile in the Strait of Hormuz northeast of Oman's Limah.
  • The Houthi militant group in Yemen is threatening to blockade Saudi Arabia and target shipping in the Red Sea, adding to regional maritime risks.
  • Southeast Asian nations expressed "serious concern" over the conflict, warning of spillover effects on regional trade, food security, and energy markets.

Energy & Market Impact

  • Goldman Sachs says Brent crude could top $120 per barrel by the fourth quarter if Strait of Hormuz disruptions persist, though its base case remains $80 per barrel assuming de-escalation.
  • European natural gas futures extended gains, surging more than 20% over the previous seven sessions, as the conflict tightens supply ahead of winter.
  • Pakistan and Bangladesh were forced to buy some of their most expensive LNG shipments in years due to supply disruptions from the conflict. Pakistan LNG paid about $21.88 per MMBtu, its highest since 2022, according to traders with knowledge of the matter.
Tyler Durden Tue, 07/21/2026 - 12:10

Trump Reaches For A 1930 Tariff Law To Hit Canada With 50% Duties - But Not On These Items

Trump Reaches For A 1930 Tariff Law To Hit Canada With 50% Duties - But Not On These Items

President Donald Trump signed three proclamations Monday imposing an additional 50 percent tariff on a broad list of Canadian goods, accusing Canada of discriminating against American dairy, alcohol, and auto exports. The White House said the president was acting to hold Canada accountable for what it called "continued discrimination" against U.S. commerce, according to The Epoch Times. The duties take effect in 30 days.

American whiskey is seen on the shelves of a SAQ liquor store in Montreal on March 4, 2025. The Canadian Press/Christinne Muschi

This is not a blanket levy on everything crossing the northern border, and what got left out is as revealing as what got hit. Oil - of which Canada is the largest foreign supplier to American refineries - is exempt. So is potash, the fertilizer input U.S. farmers depend on and cannot readily source elsewhere. Fish and critical minerals are out. So are goods already carrying national-security tariffs, including steel and many auto parts, per the White House fact sheet.

What remains is still enormous. The covered list runs from milk and cream to alcohol, hockey equipment, food products, construction materials, clothing, furniture, technology, and car parts, ABC News reported from a senior administration official's briefing. That official put the range at "wine to hockey sticks to cement." The automobile proclamation alone lists 18 pages of eligible goods.

Rather than the emergency powers that underpinned earlier rounds, these proclamations invoke Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930 - a Depression-era provision allowing duties of up to 50 percent against countries found to discriminate against American commerce. It has sat essentially unused for decades. Reporting on the action notes the statute permits exactly the 50 percent ceiling the administration went to, and that reaching for a dormant 1930 authority is likely to draw court challenges quickly. The 30-day runway before the tariffs bite is the window in which those challenges would be filed.

The duties apply whether or not the goods previously qualified for exemption under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement. Trump's own renegotiated North American trade deal, in other words, will not shield Canadian exporters from this round.

As justification, the administration official pointed to Canadian provincial conduct on alcohol: all but two provinces and territories have halted the purchase, distribution, or retailing of American alcoholic beverages while imposing no comparable restrictions on other countries. The official also cited Canadian tariffs on some American cars and the long-running dairy quota dispute, framing the action as "leveling the playing field for crucial American exports."

Canada is one of only two countries - China being the other - to have retaliated against Trump's earlier tariffs, and the administration has said repeatedly it intends to make an example of both. The Associated Press notes the move risks a fresh round of economic disruption, with higher consumer prices and further deterioration in a relationship that was among Washington's closest before this term. 

Tyler Durden Tue, 07/21/2026 - 12:00

Goldman Warns Brent Could Top $120 If Gulf Chokepoint Crisis Deepens

Goldman Warns Brent Could Top $120 If Gulf Chokepoint Crisis Deepens

Brent crude futures are trading in the low $90s as the Gulf area escalation enters a tenth consecutive day. Iran attacked a tanker in the Strait of Hormuz, while two tankers carrying Saudi crude reversed course in the southern Red Sea after warnings from Iran-backed Houthi forces placed another critical maritime chokepoint under threat.

For more color on energy markets, Goldman commodities expert Daan Struyven warned clients on Monday that Brent crude futures could surge above $120 a barrel by the fourth quarter if disruptions in the Hormuz maritime chokepoint persist; he noted that such an outcome is not his base case.

Struyven sees Brent around $80 in the fourth quarter and $75 next year, assuming US and Iran tensions ease, but warned that risks remained tilted to the upside as Persian Gulf flows fall below 45% of prewar levels and Houthi threats in the southern Red Sea chokepoint.

"Escalation in the Middle East and the decline in estimated Persian Gulf flows to below 45% of pre-war levels have pushed oil prices back up," Struyven said.

The key upside price risks are:

  • Shipping disruptions in Hormuz--and potentially the Red Sea--as the estimated 5mb/d rise since the start of the war in pipeline flows via Yanbu to the Red Sea, to more than 6mb/d (Exhibit 3), has played a key role in offsetting part of the decline in Hormuz flows. Damage to energy infrastructure from the Middle East and Russia-Ukraine wars.

  • While the Iran war has likely not caused lasting major damage to oil production capacity so far, our analysis of the 5 largest prior supply shocks shows an average 42% hit to production in the affected country after 5 years, often reflecting infrastructure damage, underinvestment, or tight sanctions (Exhibit 4).

Struyven noted, "Brent might exceed $120/bbl in 2026Q4 and average $100 in 2027 if Hormuz remains disrupted through 2027 (Exhibit 2, red line). This scenario assumes Gulf output only fully recovers by Dec27, supported by pipeline extensions."

Struyven touched on how China's retreat from the crude market has temporarily capped prices, with net seaborne imports falling 4.7 million barrels a day from a year earlier in June. Weaker refinery runs, a 21% drop in retail gasoline volumes and estimated crude destocking of more than 1 million barrels a day drove the decline. He said imports may remain subdued if prices rise, given China's estimated 2 billion barrels of inventories and its ability to substitute coal and electricity for some oil consumption.

Struyven recommends clients buy the December 2026 to March 2027 European diesel timespread to hedge persistent Middle East and Russian supply risks. Diesel markets were already tight before the Iran war, while Russian refinery outages, low inventories and seasonal demand could push spreads higher. European diesel is preferred over crude, gasoline and US diesel because of constrained refinery output, less price-sensitive demand and fewer US policy-related risks.

According to the latest Bloomberg data, Hormuz traffic is at a near standstill. Analysts at Rystad Energy AS warned in a note that the Houthi threat against crude flows means that Saudi Arabia's Red Sea export route "is now directly in the line of fire."

"If a ceasefire does not materialize, and Hormuz remains largely closed while the Houthi threat to Red Sea shipping intensifies, the risk of a significant rebound in oil prices would be substantial," said Rystad analyst Jorge Leon.

Henri Patricot, Paris-based energy equity research analyst at UBS, also has an upside scenario for Brent:

In the near term, we see the main potential upside risk coming from a breakdown of negotiations and further escalation, pushing oil prices back to ~$100+/bbl. If major oil infrastructure in the region is targeted and the conflict extends beyond the summer, prices could spike to $120+/bbl. This would drive more severe demand destruction, with limited OPEC+ ability to act. While such a price may be short-lived, a structurally higher risk premium could keep prices in the $80s/bbl range and ongoing disruptions would keep it even higher.

The big risk now is that Hormuz disruption is unfolding after global oil buffers have already been depleted, with Cushing inventories reportedly near "tank bottoms." That leaves the market with limited capacity to absorb a prolonged supply shock and will likely increase pressure on the Trump administration to revive diplomacy once the US military has sufficiently degraded Tehran's missile and drone capabilities used to threaten commercial shipping through the strait.

 Gloal inventories

The US national average for regular gasoline breached $4 a gallon on Monday, intensifying pressure on the Trump administration to pursue Gulf diplomacy.

Gas prices may go higher...

The $4 threshold is both economically and politically sensitive, as it is where lower-income consumers typically begin cutting discretionary purchases and trading down across gas stations, convenience stores and quick-service restaurants, further weighing on consumer sentiment.

Professional subscribers can read the full GS note here at our new Marketdesk.ai portal.

Tyler Durden Tue, 07/21/2026 - 11:40

Why Retail Traders Consistently Underperform Over Time

Why Retail Traders Consistently Underperform Over Time

Authored by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

Decades of data across global markets reach the same verdict: the more frequently retail traders trade, the worse they perform. The infrastructure has never been more inviting. The losses have never been more documented. Here are some key statistics we will dive into further.

Retail traders have never had it so easy. Zero commission platforms, options on your phone, social media feeds full of “10 bagger” tips, and a Reddit thread for every stock in the S&P 500. The infrastructure for frequent trading has never been more frictionless, more democratized, or more psychologically seductive.

And the evidence is overwhelming that it is destroying investor wealth at scale.

The data is not subtle. It is not marginal underperformance that can be dismissed as noise. Across decades of academic research, multiple global markets, and every asset class retail traders favor, from stocks to complex options, the conclusion is remarkably consistent: the more frequently retail traders trade, the worse they perform. Not slightly worse. Dramatically, often catastrophically, worse.

The Behavioral Gap Is Growing

Every year, DALBAR publishes its Quantitative Analysis of Investor Behavior, the most comprehensive long-term study of how retail investors actually perform versus the benchmarks they chase. The 2025 report covering 2024 returns delivered yet another indictment.

The average equity investor earned 16.54% in 2024. The S&P 500 returned 25.02%. That 848-basis-point shortfall was the second-largest investor performance gap of the past decade. In one of the strongest bull markets in recent memory, retail traders left nearly a third of available returns on the table. And 2024 was not an anomaly. Retail traders have now underperformed the S&P 500 for 15 consecutive years.

DALBAR’s “Guess Right Ratio,” meaning how frequently investors correctly time their entries and exits, fell to just 25% in 2024, tying a record low. Retail traders got market direction right just once out of every four times. And yet, the urge to act, reposition, and trade around every headline only intensified.

The compounding consequences are brutal. A hypothetical buy and hold investor who started 2024 with $100,000 in the S&P 500 finished the year with $125,020. The “average” investor, mimicking the behavioral cash flows DALBAR tracks, ended with $112,774, over $12,000 less in a single calendar year, simply from repositioning at the wrong times. Extended over twenty years, that same $100,000 left untouched in the S&P would have grown to $717,503. The average behavioral investor ended up with $345,614, forfeiting more than half their potential wealth, not to the market, but to their own decisions.

The Hazardous Truth About Stock Trading Frequency

The academic literature on trading frequency and performance is unambiguous, and it dates back decades. The landmark 2000 study by Professors Brad Barber and Terrance Odean, “Trading is Hazardous to Your Wealth” (Journal of Finance), analyzed 66,465 household brokerage accounts from 1991 to 1996. Its central finding was stark: retail traders who traded most aggressively earned an annual return of just 11.4%, while the market returned 17.9%. That is a 6.5 percentage point annual performance drag attributable entirely to excessive trading.

Even the average household in the study, turning over 75% of its portfolio every year, still earned 1.5 percentage points less than a simple buy-and-hold strategy. The gross returns were nearly identical across groups. All the destruction happened after transaction costs and the accumulated impact of poorly timed decisions. Overconfidence was the root cause Barber and Odean identified. Retail traders consistently overestimated their informational edge, leading them to trade when sitting still would have served them far better.

Subsequent research confirmed the finding globally. A study of the Colombian Stock Exchange covering 5.38 million trades by over 42,000 individual investors from 2006 to 2016 found that retail investors generated negative abnormal returns of 4% to 4.4% per year, before transaction costs. The most active traders performed the worst, even on a gross basis. The problem is not just the cost of trading. It is the trading itself.

Day Trading: Where Retail Traders Go to Lose Everything

If frequent stock trading is hazardous, day trading is in a category of its own. FINRA data from 2020 showed that 72% of day traders ended the year with financial losses. Among proprietary traders, those treating it as a professional business, only 16% were profitable. A mere 3% earned more than $50,000 for the year.

The survival statistics are equally grim. 80% of day traders quit within the first two years. Nearly 40% abandon it within one month. After three years, only 13% remain active. Only 1% of day traders maintain consistent profitability over a five-year horizon.

The most comprehensive single market study, a 2020 examination of Brazilian equity index futures traders who persisted for more than 300 trading days, found that 97% lost money. Only 1.1% earned more than Brazil’s minimum wage, and all of them experienced substantial volatility. No survivorship bias. Every trader who tried was measured over an extended period.

Retail traders, undeterred by the data, have gotten more aggressive since COVID. Post-pandemic research found that poor market timing, which cost investors roughly 0.53% per year before 2020, nearly doubled to 1.01% per year since. The explosion in retail participation, fueled by social media and zero-commission apps, has not produced better outcomes. It has produced worse ones.

Options: A Wealth Destruction Engine

If day trading is a casino, retail options trading is the casino where the house advantage is structural, invisible, and relentless. The research here is particularly damning.

A landmark study by de Silva, Smith, and So (“Losing is Optional,” MIT Sloan and Stanford, 2022) found that retail traders lost approximately $3 billion in options trades over the period from January 2010 through February 2021. Market makers were the primary beneficiaries.

Bryzgalova, Pavlova, and Sikorskaya (Journal of Finance, 2023) calculated that the aggregate retail options portfolio lost $2.1 billion from November 2019 through June 2021 alone, with the bulk of those losses coming not from bad directional calls, but from the cost of trading itself. Retail traders in options incur average gross monthly losses of 1.81%, described by researchers as “economically large and statistically significant.”

The mechanics of the losses fall into three repeating behavioral traps. First, retail traders systematically overpay for options relative to the realized volatility the underlying actually delivers, especially around earnings announcements. Second, they incur bid-ask spreads averaging roughly 8% of the option’s value on a round trip, an immediate structural headwind equivalent to a 9 to 10% drag on invested capital before any directional bet pays off. Third, they hold losing positions well past the point where price decay accelerates after a catalyst passes, sitting on deteriorating contracts as volatility collapses around them.

Since the introduction of zero-commission complex options trading, retail volumes surged by more than 75%. More access did not produce better results. It produced more frequent losing trades.

The Common Thread: Overconfidence

Across every study, every market, and every asset class, the behavioral driver is the same: overconfidence. Retail traders overestimate their ability to predict short-term price movements. Unsurprisingly, they trade more after a strong recent performance, buy into momentum precisely when the easy money has already been made, and sell winners 50% faster than they sell losers. In other words, they confuse activity with skill.

Short-term trading is largely a zero-sum game. For every retail trader who profits, a more sophisticated, better capitalized, algorithmically equipped counterparty sits on the other side. The house advantage embedded in options markets alone, via bid-ask spreads and market maker flow, is the financial equivalent of playing blackjack at a table where the dealer wins on ties.

The antidote is not complicated, even if it is psychologically difficult. Discipline, lower turnover, longer time horizons, and a ruthless focus on what can actually be controlled, including cost, diversification, and behavior, remain the only reliable defenses against the retail trading trap.

Five Tactics to Navigate Risk Without Overreacting

None of the evidence above argues for passivity in the face of market risk. Risk is real, volatility is real, and periods of genuine portfolio danger require thoughtful responses. The problem is not that retail traders care about risk. The problem is that their responses to it, frequent repositioning, speculative options bets, and tactical timing, reliably make outcomes worse rather than better. The following five tactics are designed to keep investors engaged and protected without triggering the behavioral traps revealed by the data.

  1. Write a Personal Investment Policy Statement. A written Investment Policy Statement (IPS) is the single most underused tool in retail investing. Furthermore, it forces the investor to commit, before any market stress arrives, to their asset allocation targets, acceptable drawdown thresholds, rebalancing triggers, and the conditions under which they will and will not make changes. When markets fall 15%, and every instinct screams to act, a pre-committed IPS replaces emotion with a predetermined framework. Writing an IPS does not eliminate risk. It eliminates the most dangerous variable in the portfolio, which is the investor’s own unguided reaction to it.

  2. Rebalance on a Schedule, Not a Sentiment. Rules-based rebalancing, triggered by calendar dates or percentage drift thresholds rather than market headlines, captures one of the few mechanical edges available to individual investors: it systematically forces buying of what is cheap and trimming of what is expensive. Research from Vanguard and Morningstar consistently shows that disciplined annual or threshold-based rebalancing adds 10 to 50 basis points of return per year over time while materially reducing drawdown severity.

  3. Replace Speculative Options with Defined-Risk Structures. For investors who use options, the research is clear about where losses concentrate: in naked or leveraged directional bets, especially around earnings announcements, when bid-ask spreads widen and volatility collapses after the event destroys premium value. Instead, use defined-risk structures, including covered calls on existing long equity positions, protective puts sized to hedge a specific portfolio drawdown threshold, and vertical spreads that cap both gain and loss, to generate a fundamentally different statistical profile.

  4. Require a Three-Day Waiting Period Before Any Non-Scheduled Trade. Before executing any trade that is not part of a pre-scheduled rebalance, the investor imposes a mandatory 72-hour waiting period and writes down, in plain language, why they are making the trade, what the exit criteria are, and what price action would tell them they are wrong. Most trades that feel urgent on Monday look considerably less urgent on Thursday. The behavioral literature consistently finds that the speed of a trading decision is inversely correlated with its quality. Slowing the process forces the investor to engage their deliberate reasoning rather than their reactive instincts.

  5. Calculate Your Own Behavioral Return Gap Every Year. The exercise is straightforward: take the time-weighted return of each position as if it had been held without any transactions, then compare it to the account’s actual dollar-weighted return, including every buy, sell, and repositioning decision made during the year. The difference is the personal behavioral gap, the exact cost in dollars of every trade made. For most active retail traders, this number is negative and larger than they expect. For some, it represents tens of thousands of dollars in self-imposed performance drag per year. Seeing that number concretely, attached to actual dollars rather than abstract percentages, is the most powerful behavioral intervention available.

The market will always be there tomorrow. The question is whether your capital will be, and whether the decisions you make today will compound in your favor or against you.

Tyler Durden Tue, 07/21/2026 - 11:20

ASP Isotopes Targets America’s Uranium Conversion Chokepoint

ASP Isotopes Targets America’s Uranium Conversion Chokepoint

ASP Isotopes announced Tuesday that its Quantum Leap Energy subsidiary signed a research agreement with the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station to advance and de-risk the commercial production of uranium hexafluoride, or UF6.

The work will focus on gathering data on the reactions used to convert uranium concentrate (yellowcake or U3O8) into UF6. The research is intended to support process design, modeling, scale-up, cost reductions, and the eventual commercialization of QLE’s conversion technology.

This is the unglamorous but essential middle of the nuclear fuel chain. Uranium miners can produce all the yellowcake they want, but commercial enrichment facilities cannot use it until it has been converted into UF6. The US currently has only one operating commercial conversion facility, ConverDyn’s Metropolis Works plant in Illinois, while the World Nuclear Association counted only four conversion suppliers globally as of 2025.

In other words, conversion has quietly become one of the tightest links in an already strained Western fuel cycle.

Our readers know we have been tracking ASPI’s attempt to position itself across that chain. We first highlighted the company as the next nuclear story stock, followed the Trump-linked investment in QLE, and more recently covered its agreements involving a major US nuclear operator, TerraPower, Fermi America, South Africa’s Necsa, and an unnamed European advanced reactor developer.

The Texas A&M agreement adds conversion research to those enrichment and HALEU ambitions, but ASPI is not alone in spotting the bottleneck. 

Uranium Energy Corp launched United States Uranium Refining & Conversion Corp last year and is studying a facility designed to produce roughly 10,000 metric tons of uranium annually as UF6. UEC received an NRC docket number for the project in March and is advancing feasibility work with Fluor.

FluxPoint Energy has separately announced plans for another 10,000-ton U.S. conversion plant. Silex Systems and Cameco-backed Global Laser Enrichment are pursuing a different route at Paducah, where depleted UF6 tails would be re-enriched to natural-grade UF6. Because that material has already been converted, the project could effectively release additional supply without first processing fresh yellowcake.

For QLE, the Texas A&M deal remains research, not production. A commercial facility will still require engineering, capital, permits, customers, and execution. 

But, it does bring attention to how America’s nuclear buildout will need far more than reactors and uranium mines. It will also need the conversion capacity connecting the two.

Tyler Durden Tue, 07/21/2026 - 11:00

Kidnapping Is Not A 'Violent Felony': Appeals Court Voids Two More Whitmer Plot Convictions

Kidnapping Is Not A 'Violent Felony': Appeals Court Voids Two More Whitmer Plot Convictions

A Michigan Court of Appeals panel on July 20 vacated the convictions of Pete Musico and Paul Bellar, two men a jury found guilty in 2022 of providing material support for an act of terrorism over their connection to the alleged 2020 plot to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer. 

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer speaks at an event in National Harbor, Md., on May 4, 2023. Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

The reason? Michigan's Anti-Terrorism Act defines an act of terrorism as conduct that would constitute a violent felony under state law. Kidnapping, the judges held, is not a violent felony as that term is defined. So kidnapping cannot serve as the predicate act for a material-support conviction - no matter what the defendants did or intended.

The panel did not reach that conclusion on its own. It was bound by a June decision in the case of co-defendant Joseph Morrison, decided by a different panel, which held that kidnapping "cannot properly form the basis for defendant's conviction." Monday's per curiam opinion said the court was bound by that interpretation and that the jury in this case was tainted by the same erroneous instructions. Because the trial judge had told jurors to treat kidnapping as a violent felony, and because they heard extensive testimony about the plot, the appellate judges concluded the verdict may have rested on an invalid basis.

Both men had also been convicted of committing a felony motivated by gang membership and of possessing a firearm during a felony. Because kidnapping was the underlying felony in each, those convictions were vacated too - even though, the panel noted, jurors could reasonably have found that the Wolverine Watchmen, the group the men belonged to, functioned as a gang and appeared involved in illegal activity.

The sentences erased were substantial. Michigan Advance and the Free Press report Musico had drawn 12 to 20 years, the harshest of the three; Bellar seven to 20; Morrison 10 to 20, later corrected downward. Prosecutors had cast the trio - Morrison, his father-in-law Musico, and their acquaintance Bellar - as early members and founders of the Wolverine Watchmen, the militia that trained alongside the plot's alleged ringleaders.

The cases now return to Jackson County Circuit Court. Because the reversal rests on instructional error rather than insufficiency of the evidence, the panel left the door open for further proceedings, and Attorney General Dana Nessel says she is walking through it.

"A previous ruling used linguistic gymnastics to overturn the conviction of an extremist," Nessel said. "Now, that broken precedent has legally bound this Court of Appeals panel to reverse the convictions of two more dangerous criminals." She said her office had already begun appealing the Morrison decision and would do the same here, adding that it "will not downplay domestic terrorism." Lawyers for the three men could not be reached, The Epoch Times reported.

The Big Picture

Monday's ruling lands on a prosecution whose record was mixed long before this. Fourteen people were charged across state and federal courts. Five were acquitted outright. With three convictions now vacated, six stand.

The federal case fared better for prosecutors, but only on the second attempt. In April 2022, a Grand Rapids jury acquitted Daniel Harris and Brandon Caserta of conspiracy and deadlocked on Adam Fox and Barry Croft Jr., forcing a mistrial. Retried that August, Fox and Croft were convicted of conspiring to kidnap the governor and to use weapons of mass destruction, with Croft additionally convicted of possessing an unregistered explosive device wrapped in pennies for shrapnel, according to the Justice Department. Two others, Ty Garbin and Kaleb Franks, pleaded guilty and testified for the government.

Entrapment was the defense's central theme throughout, and it worked at least twice. Attorneys portrayed their clients as loudmouthed weekend hobbyists talked into a conspiracy by federal handlers. BuzzFeed News reported that informants working under FBI direction were involved in nearly every phase of the alleged plot including its inception, raising the obvious question of whether a conspiracy would have existed without them. Prosecutors countered that the men had discussed abducting Whitmer before the sting began, scouted her vacation home, and tested explosives. The Sixth Circuit sided with the government in 2025, calling the entrapment evidence "weak" and upholding both convictions.

None of that history has anything to do with Monday's outcome; Musico and Bellar did not win on entrapment, on the facts, or on the sufficiency of the evidence against them. They won because Michigan's legislature wrote a terrorism statute that, as two appellate panels now read it, does not reach the crime they were accused of supporting. Whether the Michigan Supreme Court agrees is the next question.

Tyler Durden Tue, 07/21/2026 - 10:20

Most Adults Can Safely Drink Up To 5 Cups Of Coffee A Day: American Heart Association

Most Adults Can Safely Drink Up To 5 Cups Of Coffee A Day: American Heart Association

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

Most adults can safely drink five cups of coffee a day, according to the American Heart Association.

The organization said in a July 20 statement that synthesizes research on caffeine that the latest studies indicate that for most adults, consuming up to 400 milligrams of caffeine a day - or up to five 8-ounce cups of coffee - without added sugar and milk is not only safe, but appears to result in a lower risk of cardiovascular disease.

A cup of coffee in Culver City, Calif., in a file photograph. Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images

Higher levels of caffeine, such as those found in energy drinks, may harm the heart and blood vessels, the association said.

Most of the studies underpinning the guidance come from observational research, although there are a growing number of randomized, controlled trials that examined the relationship between caffeine and various health problems, including a trial that found no impact on glucose levels.

The data suggest that moderate consumption of caffeine lowers the risk of cardiovascular disease and stroke, among other problems, but that coffee consumption does increase premature ventricular contractions, or extra heartbeats, the group said. It indicates high doses of caffeine can lead to significant increases in blood pressure, particularly in people who already had high blood pressure. And it shows that consuming unfiltered coffee, which contains the lipid cafestol, raised serum cholesterol.

"Brewing method influences lipids," Dr. Abdulla Damluji, an interventional cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic who was not involved with the new guidance, wrote on X. "Advise patients concerned about low density lipoprotein cholesterol to prefer paper filtered or instant coffee over French press, Greek or Turkish, or boiled coffee, because cafestol in unfiltered coffee raises cholesterol."

Scientists behind the statement said there is a need for more data and noted that reactions to caffeine can vary among people.

"The data suggests that up to about three to five cups may have benefit and almost certainly is not harmful, but that doesn't mean that consuming three to five drinks is better than having one drink per day," Dr. Gregory Marcus, chair of the volunteer group that wrote the guidance, said in a video statement.

"So generally, the evidence suggests that people should listen to their bodies if consuming one cup of caffeinated coffee is enough and consuming two is uncomfortable. Individuals should not increase how much caffeine they're consuming for health reasons."

Researchers should prioritize studying caffeine in isolation from other ingredients in caffeinated beverages and examine whether introducing coffee to people who do not currently drink it yields positive health outcomes, the group said.

Most of the authors did not list any possible conflicts of interest. One listed being an unpaid consultant for the Institute for the Advancement of Food and Nutrition Sciences and working with manufacturers such as Keurig, and another said he consults for Boston Scientific Corp, which makes pacemakers and other devices for people with heart issues.

The heart association in 2025 had advised children to avoid caffeine, and had in the past said that adults could derive benefits from coffee but that drinking two or more cups a day could double the risk of heart death in people suffering from severe hypertension.

* * *

Tyler Durden Tue, 07/21/2026 - 10:00

Border Patrol Records 14 Straight Months Of Zero Releases At Southern Border

Border Patrol Records 14 Straight Months Of Zero Releases At Southern Border

Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times,

The U.S. Border Patrol released zero illegal immigrants into the United States from the southern border for the 14th consecutive month in June.

Border enforcement is at “historic levels,” and illegal crossings last month remained significantly low, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said in a July 16 statement. Border Patrol apprehended 9,848 people at the southwest border last month, 94 percent lower than the monthly average under the previous administration. It was also lower than the number of people “apprehended in 4 days” in June 2024.

“As I have said many times, leadership and policy matter. When laws are enforced, fewer people will break the law. Under the leadership of President [Donald] Trump and [Homeland Security] Secretary [Markwayne] Mullin, CBP is fully enforcing our immigration and border security laws,” CBP Commissioner Rodney S. Scott said in the statement.

“CBP is preventing dangerous criminal aliens and illicit narcotics from entering our communities, enhancing the safety of every American for generations to come.”

Last month, the Border Patrol received a funding boost for its anti-illegal immigration efforts when Trump signed the Secure America Act into law. The legislation provides $70 billion to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol through Sept. 30, 2029, beyond Trump’s current term.

The bill allocated $22 billion for Border Patrol to recruit, train, equip, and pay agents and staff members. Out of the $22 billion, about $13 billion was specifically set aside for immigration enforcement operations. The legislation also granted $5 billion to be used for border security technology and screening systems.

After the bill was passed by the House on June 9, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) justified the legislation, saying Democrats will not be able to defund Border Patrol and ICE for the next few years. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) said the bill supported law enforcement in the country.

Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) and Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) criticized the funding as a “disastrous bill” to bankroll ICE and Border Patrol, according to a June 12 statement from Duckworth’s office.

“There are an infinite number of ways we could be working to help Illinoisans get by, and it’s despicable that Trump would rather bankroll ICE and Border Patrol’s reign of terror than keep his promise and lower costs for the middle class,” Duckworth said in the statement.

2025–2029 Strategy

As the CBP counters the influx of illegal immigrants into the United States, the agency has reported strong growth in its Border Patrol workforce.

In a June 24 statement, CBP said that 21,471 Border Patrol agents were serving on America’s front lines—the highest employee count in the agency’s 102-year history.

CBP credited investments from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed into law by Trump last year, for fueling “increased applicant interest” and enabling the agency to attract top talent.

CBP said in a July 16 statement that it was filling in mission-critical roles in law enforcement and mission operations support positions at various locations throughout the United States, and it stated that it planned to conduct a virtual event on July 23 to highlight the career opportunities open to military spouses and veterans.

“CBP is an extremely welcoming employer for veterans and military spouses,” CBP Office of Human Resources Management Assistant Commissioner Andrea Bright said in the statement.

According to the 2025–2029 Border Patrol Strategy, the agency aims to counter illegal immigrant influx by expanding physical infrastructure, such as wall barriers, checkpoints, and permanent towers, in all regions of the country.

The agency seeks to deploy advanced autonomous surveillance systems as part of enhancing its detection and identification capabilities. Moreover, Border Patrol plans to proactively forecast high-risk crossing patterns and “strategically position resources to disrupt and deter illicit activities.”

Tyler Durden Tue, 07/21/2026 - 09:20

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