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Sun, 19 Jul 2026 02:10:00 +0000 Election Integrity: Is Representative Democracy A Foolish Fantasy?
Election Integrity: Is Representative Democracy A Foolish Fantasy?
Election Integrity: Is Representative Democracy A Foolish Fantasy?
Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us
The US Constitution is perhaps the most significant historical and governmental document in a millennia. It established the modern conception of the western Republic, along with true representative government designed to answer to the people rather than rule over the people.
The Bill of Rights outlined clear restrictions on federal and state powers to legislate away the inherent and God given freedoms of the citizenry; an accomplishment which had been attempted in the past but was never truly realized until the war for independence and the creation of the United States. Until that moment, the idea that common men answer to authority and authority answers to no one was the accepted norm.
It’s a document and an ideal that gave birth to an epoch.
However, our constitutional republic was created based on conditions that, frankly, no longer exist. The American population was 95% Christian. The implementation of “patriarchy” was widespread and embraced as the most solid foundation for society. Meritocracy was absolute. Cultural identity was rooted in western civilization without any deviation or distraction.
Marxism did not exist. Atheism was rare. Degeneracy was shunned or punished. Shame was an effective social tool. Psychopathy was easy to identify and remove from within the smaller population. Women were expected to raise families and care for the home. Men were expected to feed and protect those families; perhaps even die for them.
Voting was for land owners and people with an actual stake in the success or failure of government policies. Women did not vote until a hundred years later in 1920 (many commentators have offered compelling arguments that the country quickly went downhill from there).
In 2026, many Americans still treat the notion of representative democracy as sacrosanct and untouchable, even though they don’t really know why. They just think it’s about freedom, but, they are basing their devout reverence on a system that used to work because it heavily restricted who was allowed to participate.
As John Adams sated in 1802:
“We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other…”
Like many conservatives, I started out as predominantly libertarian. Millions of us of us launched our political lives in the era of the Ron Paul Revolution. That said, whenever I hear libertarians wax romantic about the Constitution and why we must strictly adhere to it today regardless of the circumstances, I have to remind them that if the system today looked like it did when the Founders were in charge, most people would not be voting.
I’m not saying this is a bad thing. In fact, the central question I want to ask is, would that actually be a better way of governing than what we have now? Should we return to the idea of restrictions on civic participation for people who have a habit of causing harm? In our liberal drive to create total democratic inclusivity, did we end up destroying the social structures and expectations that made our country and elections work in the first place?
Hell, in 2026 we are actually fighting for our lives just to get voter ID laws in place to prevent foreigners from influencing election outcomes. Around 80% of the country supports this policy, yet, the Senate refuses to pass it and 20% on the radical left are viciously opposed because they WANT illegal migrants to be able sneak into the vote.
As if it wasn’t already obvious, this proves the fact that Democrats and Neo-Con politicians have no regard for “democracy” – They cry about majority rule all the time but when there’s a clear case of an overwhelming majority in favor of secure elections, they do the opposite.
The top 0.2% and the bottom 20% work in tandem to make life miserable for everyone else.
Is representative democracy even possible when a large portion of the population is actively fighting to burn our republic to the ground by any means necessary? How can our elections and our government maintain integrity when people who want to destroy everything are allowed to vote or take political office?
Maybe that 20% of militant leftists and Neo-Cons should NOT be allowed to vote. Maybe they should be denied participation in government. Maybe they should be kicked out of the country. It’s what the Founding Fathers would have done…
During and after the Revolutionary War, many states required oaths of allegiance to the new American cause. Refusal (often by Loyalists/Tories who supported Britain) led to disenfranchisement, property confiscation, banishment, etc. These rules and restrictions were explicitly ideological – punishing pro-British or “neutral” political views. Pennsylvania, New York, and other states used such tests and the Founders saw this as necessary for security.
The idea that every American citizen should be allowed to have a hand in national matters despite their dubious background or belief system is a foolish fantasy. The Founders were correct to make distinctions.
That said, is the system so broken by corruption and delusion that it cannot be mended? How do we fix this situation? Do we merely sit back and allow the country to deteriorate in the name of liberal hedonism? Because that’s not an act of freedom. Rather, it’s the attitude of anarchy and it’s important to understand the difference.
Anarchy is freedom without accountability; the abandonment of any personal responsibility for the future. It means national suicide.
This week, the Trump Administration released classified information which they argue is proof of election manipulation in 2020. In response, the legacy media has refused to air Trump’s speech addressing the issue. Many outlets “fact checked” Trump’s arguments online as false without having time to read the reports and classified documents he offered.
I’m not saying that 2020 was unequivocally rigged, but, I’m willing to look at the evidence and clearly the political left and the media are not. This tells us all we need to know about them.
Everyone remembers the “hockey stick” graph and the impossible voting numbers for Joe Biden in the early morning hours of November 4th . Even the skeptics found it hard to come up with a believable rationale. To this day, Democrats are unable to explain how Biden got 81 million votes, the highest raw vote count for any presidential candidate in US history, in the middle of a pandemic.
In 2024, Kamala Harris fell short of Biden’s totals by over 6 million votes. It shouldn’t be possible, but it happened. The recent rigging revelations, if accurate, help us to understand why the Democrats (and some Neo-Cons) absolutely refuse to pass voter ID laws and limits on mail-in ballots despite the vast majority of Americans in favor.
But ballot rigging and illegal migrant voting are only two threats among many to our country’s elections. Let’s not forget:
1) The mentally ill still get a vote. Over 23% of all US adults report having at least one mental illness. Meaning 1 in 4 US voters many not have the mental stability required to make reasonable or logical decisions. Nearly 20% of US adults are on some form of prescription medication for mental health issues. The number of women on medication is double the number of men on medication.
2) Low IQ people get to vote. Around 10% of the population has an IQ under 80, which is 20 points below the average. An IQ of 80 or less is associated with poor impulse control, extreme aggression and an inability to maintain normal day-to-day responsibilities. Should such people be allowed to vote?
3) Psychopaths and sociopaths get to vote. Around 4% of the population has these dangerous psychological traits. Yet, they can vote, run for office, and get jobs within the bureaucratic system. There is certainly some nuance to consider here (for example, some sociopaths are highly functional and are not a threat when operating ion positions of authority), but I would argue that all candidates should be tested openly for these issues before they’re allowed to enter government office.
4) Finally, how do we bring transparency to a government that is built around a bureaucracy that has no term limits and few checks and balances? To Trump’s credit, he has been attempting to dismantle this “deep state” edifice and has had a few successes, including the shutdown of the nefarious USAID. But it would take multiple presidencies to accomplish any long-lasting changes to this entrenched secondary government.
The efforts of DOGE showed us that the bureaucracy has always been the true base of power – protected by an array of corrupt politicians, judges, journalists and NGOs. It doesn’t matter who ends up in office because the people managing the bureaucracy usually keep their jobs for life, and when a confrontational administration leaves, they simply change everything back to the way things were.
Should we ignore constitutional protocols and remove the vast majority of these people from their jobs? The courts are doing everything in their power to prevent these people from being fired. What if we ignored the courts and kicked them out anyway? What alternatives do we have?
None of the answers to these problems can be found within the Constitution and the current legal environment. Again, we can’t even get Congress and the Senate to pass commonsense voter ID laws. Which means, we would have to go outside the Constitution to save the Constitution.
Ah yes, the slippery slope reveals itself. But the constitution is designed to limit the actions of the federal government, not the people. This leaves us with the age-old conundrum of rebellion and reformation. Maybe this is the only way that things will ever really change.
What I know is this: We cannot continue on the path we have been following for so many decades. We cannot rely on the system to police itself. And, we cannot allow certain subsections of the population to continue to have influence over our society.
Something has to change, dramatically and for the long term. We could do it through partisan government while breaking a number of constitutional laws, or, we could do it through popular revolution and hope that the country survives the aftermath of total domestic war. In the end, sitting back and doing nothing is not an option.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/18/2026 - 22:10 Close
Sun, 19 Jul 2026 01:00:00 +0000 Welcome To Trillionistan; Don't Get Comfortable...
Welcome To Trillionistan; Don't Get Comfortable...
Welcome To Trillionistan; Don't Get Comfortable...
Authored by Peter C. Earle via The Daily Economy ,
Not long ago, the notion of trillions belonged either to the furthest cosmic reaches of the universe or the submicroscopic world of atoms. These numbers describe galaxies in the observable universe, roughly two trillion , or, at the opposite extreme, the picosecond - one trillionth of a second - is used to measure molecular motion and chemical reactions. Until recently, magnitudes denominated in trillions were almost entirely confined to the theoretical hinterlands of astronomy, physics, and schoolyard exaggeration.
Today, trillion-dollar quantities have become commonplace in economic and financial life. At least 12 American companies boast trillion-dollar market capitalizations , with Apple approaching $5 trillion . BlackRock now manages more than $15 trillion in assets. The largest technology firms, cumulatively, measure their investments in the trillions as they build data centers, semiconductor capacity, and power systems on an unprecedented scale. SpaceX's 2026 initial public offering valued the company at more than $1.7 trillion , and its subsequent surge briefly pushed Elon Musk's paper wealth above $1 trillion .
Billionistan opened its gates in 1901, when JP Morgan assembled US Steel into the world's first billion-dollar corporation . Perhaps it surrendered statehood on January 13, 2016, the day Powerball offered the first billion-dollar lottery jackpot. After ten more , Billionistan moved from a numerical destination to a waypoint. We now inhabit Trillionistan.
Governments, unsurprisingly, were early movers; they frequently are. Trillion-dollar economic figures first appeared during the great hyperinflations of the twentieth century. In the United States, the national debt crossed $1 trillion in October 1981 , inaugurating an era in which ever-larger fiscal quantities gradually lost their capacity to shock. Annual deficits now exceed the entire national debt of 45 years ago , while America's current indebtedness - as measured by the fiscal gap - extends into the hundreds of trillions .
Public finance is only one province of Trillionistan. The larger phenomenon is the steady upward drift of nominal magnitudes - and our tendency to mistake financial scale for real, truly productive achievement. Prices rise, credit and money supplies balloon , economies grow, markets deepen, and expected future earnings are capitalized across ever-longer horizons. Each process quietly extends the number of zeroes layered onto economic life.
Inflation is plainly part of the explanation. A dollar simply buys far less than it once did. Even if nothing real changed - if no new factories were built, no technologies discovered, and no improvement in living standards achieved - the same collection of assets would be priced higher over time as each dollar lost purchasing power. Nominal dollar records are easier to achieve than real value-driven ones.
But inflation alone cannot explain Trillionistan. The economy has also become larger , richer , more technologically sophisticated, and more global . Companies now serve billions of customers, software scales almost without cost, and intellectual property can generate extraordinary returns worldwide. Genuine wealth creation and monetary depreciation are operating simultaneously, both enlarging the nominal quantities around us. But it's difficult for most observers to distinguish between a trillion dollars of productive assets, a trillion dollars of debt, a trillion-dollar market cap, a trillion-dollar spending bill, and a trillion dollars of future pension liabilities.
Sound economics cautions against confusing abstract money prices with the goods, services, productive capacities, and human satisfactions to which those prices refer. Additional wealth is not created merely because accountants add zeros to balance sheets, central banks expand the money supply , or financial assets are quoted at higher prices . Yet neither are such price changes meaningless. Money is a messenger: prices may reflect changes in scarcity, expected earnings, risk, preferences, credit conditions, monetary supply, or some combination of them. Wealth is created when entrepreneurs discover more valuable ways to arrange scarce resources, including capital and labor, to satisfy human wants. Market prices signal judgments about those uses, but they are not themselves the value being created.
Viewed through that lens, a trillion-dollar company is less alarming, and perhaps more inspiring. A trillion-dollar market capitalization is not a warehouse containing a trillion dollars; it is the market's continuously revised estimate of future earning power (see the price trend in SpaceX since the IPO for confirmation of that phenomenon). Stock prices condense millions of judgments about technology, competition, consumer demand, production costs, and risk into a single signal of likely value. That estimate - whether it proves accurate or wildly optimistic - is a wager, a priced forecast of the future, rather than an inventory of existing riches.
Like the trillions now being committed to AI infrastructure , some investments will transform productivity; others will become expensive monuments to extrapolation. Entrepreneurship has always involved speculation. The more important question is whether monetary policy choices have the effect of systematically warping entrepreneurial judgment and promoting malinvestment. Persistently easy credit and artificially suppressed interest rates do more than raise prices generally. They encourage longer-duration projects, inflate the present value of distant earnings, and allow financial valuations to outrun the economy's underlying productive capacity.
Certainly not every trillion dollar valuation is a bubble. Monetary distortion and genuine innovation frequently coexist. Railroads truly transformed nineteenth-century Millionistan - the impressive Mohawk and Hudson Railroad was built for just $600,000 - though many fortunes disappeared in speculative railroad manias . The internet continued to power our economy well after the collapse of the dot-com bubble . Artificial intelligence may likewise reshape civilization while simultaneously destroying vast quantities of invested capital. Entrepreneurial ventures, especially at the cutting edge of technology, are entrepreneurial wagers. Profit and loss exist precisely because no one knows the outcome beforehand.
Life in Trillionistan has rewired our perceptions. Large numbers anesthetize. A million dollars once represented unimaginable wealth; a billion eventually replaced it; today even the billion is becoming commonplace. As each numerical frontier becomes familiar, it commands less wonder and less scrutiny . We experience reflexive suspicion of individuals who command great fortunes , but slip into complacency toward inflation , debt , and public liabilities . In both cases, the magnitude obscures the institution that produced it.
Not all trillions are created equal. A trillion accumulated through entrepreneurial discovery differs fundamentally from a trillion generated through monetary expansion, leverage, or habitual political can-kicking. Most modern trillions contain elements of both: genuine productive achievement expressed through a steadily depreciating unit of account. The trillion has migrated from cosmology and quantum mechanics into ordinary economic discourse because the economy has genuinely grown, but also because the monetary unit has contracted precipitously.
The important question, then, is not whether another company, fortune, industry, or balance sheet will cross the trillion-dollar threshold. Many will. The more interesting and relevant question is what kind of trillion it will be: one representing genuine wealth creation, one reflecting the capitalization of future possibilities, one inflated by monetary expansion, or some unstable mixture of all three. In Trillionistan, the zeros hint at the scale, but they do not tell us the actual story. And even as we acclimate ourselves to the trillion, the foundations of Quadrillionistan are quietly being laid .
Peter C. Earle, Ph.D., is Senior Director of Research at the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER), which he joined in 2018. An economist and financial market practitioner with over 30 years of experience in financial markets, macroeconomics, and economic analysis, Dr. Earle holds a Ph.D. in Economics from l'Universite d'Angers, an MA in Applied Economics from American University, an MBA in Finance, and a BS in Engineering from the United States Military Academy at West Point.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/18/2026 - 21:00 Close
Sun, 19 Jul 2026 00:25:00 +0000 Flock Safety Defends Cameras After AI System Triggers Wrongful Police Stops Of Two Journalists
Flock Safety Defends Cameras After AI System Triggers Wrongful Police Stops Of Two Journalists
Plymouth, Minnesota - Automotive journalist Joel Feder and his wife were detained by multiple police officers in a coord
Read more.....
Flock Safety Defends Cameras After AI System Triggers Wrongful Police Stops Of Two Journalists
Plymouth, Minnesota - Automotive journalist Joel Feder and his wife were detained by multiple police officers in a coordinated stop while driving a Jaguar Land Rover press vehicle, after Flock Safety's automated license plate recognition (ALPR) cameras flagged the car based on a flawed database entry.
Screenshot Plymouth Police Department via The Drive
According to Feder's detailed account in The Drive , officers boxed in the $155,000 Range Rover in a Kohl's parking lot after the vehicle triggered alerts via Flock's network. Police had been tracking it for days, believing the New Jersey manufacturer plate (34 10 DTM) was stolen. Officers approached with hands on their weapons, ordered the couple out of the vehicle, and conducted pat-downs before verifying the car's legitimacy through Jaguar Land Rover. Feder subsequently obtained and published the body camera footage of the encounter.
The incident stemmed from an incomplete report of a similar plate (34 03 DTM) lost during a photo shoot in California, which was entered into the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) database simply as "34 DTM." Flock's AI system matched Feder's plate - ignoring the smaller middle digits - and generated alerts. Local officers did not fully verify the complete plate visible in Flock's own images.
The problem was not confined to one vehicle. Last Wednesday, fellow auto journalist Tim Esterdahl, publisher of Pickup Truck + SUV Talk, was pulled over by two officers in Scotts Bluff, Nebraska, while driving his 14-year-old child in a $105,000 Range Rover Sport loaned to him by Jaguar Land Rover for review. Its plate: New Jersey 34 08 DTM. Jaguar Land Rover has been working to correct the underlying reports.
Flock Safety maintains that its cameras performed as designed, matching partial plates per law enforcement preferences for hotlist alerts. Chief Communications Officer Joshua Thomas told The Drive the system was asked whether those characters were present and correctly answered that they were - it simply was not built to flag that additional characters existed. He conceded that for alerts originating from NCIC rather than an individual agency's custom list, the system arguably should test for an exact match rather than mere presence, and called that fair feedback to take back to his team.
Thomas said Flock is working to get the original police report corrected and is meeting with the FBI officials who curate NCIC to develop a way for incomplete data to be flagged as such for officers seeing automated alerts in the field. He emphasized that a camera alert "does not equal probable cause," comparing it to an alarm going off, and stressed that the system depends on both valid inputs and humans verifying outputs.
But the scale is what makes the error rate consequential. Thomas said the system is roughly 99 percent accurate while performing approximately 20 billion reads per month - arithmetic that leaves on the order of 200 million misreads every month. How many of those escalate into armed stops is unknown.
Plymouth police acknowledged shortcomings in verification but pointed to the challenges of varying license plate formats nationwide. According to the department's Flock transparency portal , the city operates 18 cameras that read more than 580,000 license plates in a recent 30-day period , generating over 14,800 hotlist hits - one of which was Feder.
Broader Concerns Over Flock's Expanding Network
This case adds to a growing list of incidents underscoring the privacy implications of Flock Safety's widespread ALPR deployment. As we have previously reported on ZeroHedge, these camera networks - now operating in thousands of communities across dozens of states - create detailed movement logs of vehicles with minimal oversight , raising serious questions about unwarranted surveillance of law-abiding citizens.
Critics, including privacy advocates, have long warned that reliance on partial matches, inter-agency data sharing, and integration with other surveillance tools can lead to false positives , chilling effects on daily movement, and potential misuse. While proponents highlight their value in recovering stolen vehicles and aiding investigations, the aggregation of location data over time effectively enables broad tracking without individualized suspicion.
Joel Feder via The Drive
Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/18/2026 - 20:25 Close
Sat, 18 Jul 2026 23:50:00 +0000 The View's Sunny Hostin Hates 'Privilege'... Except For Her Own
The View's Sunny Hostin Hates 'Privilege'... Except For Her Own
The View's Sunny Hostin Hates 'Privilege'... Except For Her Own
Authored by Andrea Widberg via AmericanThinker.com,
No one hates “privilege” more than Sunny Hostin.
The slightly black co-host of The View, who earns $2 million annually and lives with her orthopedic surgeon husband in a 12,000-square-foot New York City apartment, repeatedly castigates those—usually white—who exercise their “privilege.”
However, when it came to throwing her weight around with the cops to protect her son from allegedly illegal conduct, the whole idea of “privilege” vanished from Hostin’s mind.
Hostin, a former federal prosecutor with a pretty face, landed herself a gig on The View, a show that is aggressively woke. In that context, Hostin often complains about privilege—all kinds of privilege that imply that talent and hard work are meaningless. Here are some notable examples:
In April 2019 , when he was running for the Democrat nomination, Pete Buttigieg made obeisance to the race and sex hustlers by reflecting on his “white privilege or male privilege.” Hostin was thrilled that Buttigieg had this empathetic insight into his privilege.
In May 2024 , while the shrews...er, hostesses were discussing Caitlin Clark, Hostin stated, “I do think that there is a thing called pretty privilege. There is a thing called White privilege. There is a thing called tall privilege, and we have to acknowledge that.
Most tellingly, though, for purposes of this essay, in September 2019 , when actress Felicity Huffman was trying to get a more lenient sentence for her role in a college admissions scandal, Hostin was outraged that someone prominent, wealthy, and generally in a better (presumably whiter) situation than other people, would dare ask for leniency: “She had wealth, privilege and a platform, and she didn’t use it appropriately.”
I couldn’t help thinking of these (and other) attacks on privilege when I read about Hostin throwing around her privileged weight as co-host of The View when she tried to stop police from arresting her son who had allegedly been caught walking along the railroad tracks in chi-chi Westchester County last month:
“The View” co-host Sunny Hostin tried to talk cops out of issuing her Ivy League-educated son a trespassing citation — telling them he “has no criminal record” and repeatedly citing her legal background, according to newly released police bodycam footage.
The TV personality and former federal prosecutor was on the phone with her 24-year-old son, Gabriel Hostin, when he was stopped by police along Metro-North Railroad tracks in Westchester County last month.
“My name is Sunny Hostin and I’m one of the co-hosts of ‘The View’ and I’m a former federal prosecutor,” the 57-year-old mom can be heard saying to the responding officers in the bodycam footage obtained Friday by The Post.
You and I both know that she talked about her role on The View as a subtle threat to the police: I’m powerful, I know people, and I can use my show to destroy you is the privileged subtext of that statement.
And then more privilege: “That’s my son. He’s a Harvard graduate, he doesn’t have a criminal record.” In other words, Harvard grads, among the most privileged people in America, shouldn’t be arrested. That was such an important point to Hostin that, when she raced down to meet the cops personally, she reiterated his privilege: “He’s a Harvard grad...” And then, to assure the arresting cop that her blackish, Puerto-Rican-ish, white-ish son was a good person, she added that he “teaches 4th grade geometry to South Bronx kids.”
Thankfully, the cops were unmoved by the claimed privilege and the virtue signaling. They noted that Gabriel Hostin could not have missed clearly posted “no trespassing” signs, and that they had no option but to detain him. As it was, they limited themselves to issuing a trespass violation, rather than arresting him.
Here’s the full bodycam video:
Those were very nice cops . If they hadn’t been so polite, they could have told Sunny and Gabriel that being a Harvard graduate doesn’t mean you’re not too dumb to live if you think running on a railroad track is a good idea. But apparently being a mixed-race Harvard grad who’s the son of a famous mother makes you think your privilege leaves you immune to the laws of physics. Those immutable laws say that, when a train hits a human, the human loses.
I fully understand Hostin’s impulse to go full Mama Bear when she felt her son was under attack. That’s a very human emotion. But her approach—which basically boiled down to a politely expressed version of “do you know who I am and do you know who my son is?”—is still a stinking bit of leftist hypocrisy when you consider Hostin’s long history of identifying and attacking any type of so-called “privilege,” especially those attached to wealth and prestige.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/18/2026 - 19:50 Close
Sat, 18 Jul 2026 23:15:00 +0000 DC Circuit Gives Trump A Huge Election Integrity Victory On Mail-In Ballots
DC Circuit Gives Trump A Huge Election Integrity Victory On Mail-In Ballots
On Friday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit issued a temporary order allowing the Postal Service to move forw
Read more.....
DC Circuit Gives Trump A Huge Election Integrity Victory On Mail-In Ballots
On Friday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit issued a temporary order allowing the Postal Service to move forward with a proposed rule requiring states to verify voter registration data before mailing federal election ballots. A three-judge panel, ruling per curiam , granted USPS's request to stay a district court injunction that had blocked the rule earlier this month in a lawsuit brought by the NAACP.
The panel decided the challenge was premature since the rule remains in proposed form , and it found the measure unlikely to violate the 2021 agreement obligating USPS to prioritize timely delivery of election mail through 2028.
The D.C. Circuit granted a stay pending appeal, ruling that the appellants had met the "stringent requirements" required to pause the lower court's order while the case proceeds. In its order, the court wrote that the appellants "have made a strong showing that they will likely succeed on two of their arguments."
The rule traces back to Executive Order 14399 , signed March 31, 2026, which directed federal agencies to compile and share state-by-state "citizenship lists" of eligible U.S. citizens using federal databases , to help states verify that only citizens vote in federal elections. It instructs the U.S. Postal Service to tighten rules and tracking for mail-in and absentee ballots, including rejecting ballots from people who are not on these federal-state eligibility lists or otherwise properly enrolled for mail voting. It also directs the Department of Justice to prioritize enforcement of federal election laws against officials who provide ballots to ineligible voters and to use the threat of withholding federal election funds to pressure states to comply with these new verification measures.
U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan blocked the Postal Service from implementing the rule on July 1, siding with the NAACP's argument that it conflicted with the 2021 settlement. That is the order the D.C. Circuit paused on Friday. A separate injunction, issued in June by a federal judge in Massachusetts in a suit brought by 23 states, continues to block the executive order in those jurisdictions and is unaffected by Friday's ruling.
The judges first found that the proposed rule was "likely neither constitutionally nor prudentially ripe for review." The court also concluded that, even if the proposed rule were ultimately adopted, it likely would not violate the terms of the parties' settlement agreement. The appeals court also found that the appellants had demonstrated they would suffer irreparable harm if the stay were denied. Without a stay, the court said, the lower court's injunction "will render [them] unable" to "issue and implement a final rule in advance of the November 2026 general election." The court also emphasized the timing concerns surrounding the election, stating, "there can be no do over once the election occurs."
Finally, the panel determined that any potential harm to the opposing party or the public interest did not outweigh the factors supporting a stay. "On this record, any countervailing harm to appellee and the public does not outweigh appellants' success on the two 'most critical' stay factors," the court concluded. The order does not resolve the underlying case or decide whether the rule is ultimately lawful.
Bill Essayli, first assistant U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, celebrated the ruling as a win for election integrity with implications for states that decline to hand over their voter rolls.
Nearly every voter in California casts a ballot by mail , and while state officials have repeatedly insisted the system is safe and secure, the sheer volume it processes and its repeated inability to count votes promptly have raised doubts. The Los Angeles mayoral election on June 2 took nearly a month to finish counting ballots. State law accounts for much of that lag - California counts mailed ballots postmarked by Election Day for a full week afterward, and counties have 30 days to certify - but critics argue the drawn-out timelines corrode public confidence in the results. State election officials have directly pushed back against Trump's claims of fraud, framing the volume and complexity of California's system as a feature rather than a vulnerability.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/18/2026 - 19:15 Close
Sat, 18 Jul 2026 22:40:00 +0000 Academia Embarrasses Itself... Again
Academia Embarrasses Itself... Again
Academia Embarrasses Itself... Again
Authored by J.B. Shurk via American Thinker ,
Over at Twitchy , a publication that curates the news in funny yet insightful ways, a headline reads, “Head of Medical School Tells Congresswoman the Vast Majority of Pregnancies Occur in Women.” Sure enough, Twitchy is telling the truth.
During witness testimony before a congressional committee examining the impact of forced “diversity,” preferential (non-merit-based) admissions, and “woke” ideology upon the quality of medical schools, the chancellor of UC San Francisco testified under oath that not all pregnancies come from women. That chancellor, Samuel Hawgood, is not some administrative bureaucrat with a made-up bachelor’s degree in the discriminatory effects of man-made “climate change” upon “transgender” Pakistanis (and an obligatory master’s in why American taxpayers must foot the bill for all “sex change” surgeries around the world). No, Hawgood is an actual pediatrician who previously served as UCSF’s dean of the School of Medicine. A man who did his residency at the Royal Women’s and Children’s Hospital in Brisbane cannot tell us how babies are made.
It is astounding to watch just how far down the propaganda rabbit hole so-called “institutions of higher learning” have dragged society. Until very recently, this kind of public display of sophistry would have embarrassed an intellectual of the lowest order. For a medical doctor and university chancellor to pretend that men can get pregnant is a flashing neon sign warning just how corrupt and dishonest all of academia has become. These days, university leaders sound indistinguishable from North Korean spokespeople assuring starving citizens that they are better off than anyone else in the world.
How did we get to this point in time when professors tell rank lies to the American people, while hiding behind their titles as false evidence that those lies are somehow “truths”? Well, social media favorite “Oilfield Rando” points to part of the problem. In an X post responding to the doctor’s pseudoscientific testimony, Rando includes an itemization of Chancellor Hawgood’s university pay and accompanying benefits. The man in charge of one of the country’s top educational institutions takes home well over a million dollars each year. Unless Chancellor Hawgood is a moron who genuinely believes men can get pregnant, it is likely that he is willing to sell his intellectual reputation and personal honor for a seven-figure salary.
What does that say about the current state of our society? The modern university arose from Christian monasteries dedicated to God’s truth. This is why divinity degrees are generally accorded highest honor during processions accompanying graduation ceremonies. As monasteries developed into secular institutions of higher learning, they remained places dedicated to the pursuit of truth. Harvard’s motto, veritas , simply means “truth.”
For hundreds of years, faculty members did not take positions on college campuses because they sought fame or fortune. They became scholars and professors because they were dedicated to the rigors of their calling. Just as a Christian monk lived in poverty because the pursuit of truth provided spiritual nourishment and personal fulfillment, a scholar embraced a penurious life within academia in exchange for the privilege of seeking authentic truth. The reward — unvarnished enlightenment — was understood to be more valuable than money.
I have spent enough time on university campuses to understand that they are no longer sanctuaries for truth. There was a time not so many decades ago when campuses were “safe spaces” for all ideas. Unlike the real world, where an employee might be fired for taking unorthodox positions in the workplace, colleges once encouraged professors and students to advance eccentric, heretical, and dissenting points of view on any subject. Intellectual debate was more important than “hurt feelings” or “political correctness.”
Now , the opposite is true. Universities are so concerned about “hurt feelings” and “political correctness” that they proudly designate most of their campus a “safe space” free from the “dangers” of debate, disagreement, or dissent. Of course, the kicker is that in the process of creating “safe spaces,” colleges must first decide what points of view to defend as part of their unquestionable curricula. They stake out positions just as a cleric might do with tenets of a religious faith. In this way, the university has come full circle. It has once again become a medieval monastery filled with members of a religious order. It’s just that these twenty-first-century “monks” despise God, truth, and Christianity.
In 2026, a pediatrician and chancellor of a major university is incapable of stating the truths that biological sex is real and that only women can become pregnant. As much as we might be inclined to laugh, this should make us feel sad. There has never been a time in human history when people struggled with the distinctions between men and women.
We are presently in an era when the people with the most prestigious titles and credentials are either dumber or more dishonest than the least educated members of any human society that ever existed. In exchange for their dumbness and dishonesty, they are paid extremely high salaries. The corporate news media command us to treat these people with respect because they have been recognized as official “experts.” And these highly paid, credentialed, respected experts from prestigious institutions of higher learning are too cowardly to tell the truth. The noble pursuit and defense of veritas have been replaced with ignominy and indoctrination.
University cowardice, of course, does not stop with the idiotic fad of “transgenderism.” There are all kinds of bizarre, fanciful, and unscientific commandments within the “woke” faith. Believing in hard work, skill, intellect, and merit is now cast as unacceptable “white supremacy.” Instead, we are told, people should be admitted to universities and receive degrees based on the color of their skin, their recognized victimhood, and/or their sexual proclivities. Entire generations of intellectual lightweights are now certified “experts” because they claimed to have Native American blood or wrote college admissions essays about having sexual relations with broccoli. They can’t do math. They can’t write without the help of AI. But since they call themselves “doctors” or were handed Ivy League degrees, they expect the rest of society to respect them and believe what they say.
It is such an odd time to be alive . In the halls of government and academia, nonsensical beliefs masquerading as “truth” run rampant. Within these wonderlands of delirium, two ideas are so sacrosanct that they cannot be questioned:
(1) using any kind of energy other than those available during the Middle Ages causes catastrophic “climate change”; and
(2) mass immigration and “multiculturalism” strengthen a society.
Consequently, university professors and government ministers expect us to believe two preposterous things.
First, unless we pay carbon taxes and allow bureaucrats to centrally manage the economy, we will all die.
Second, unless we replace Western civilization with other civilizations, we are all bigots.
In other words, our “educated elites” treat as indisputable “truths” the canards that bad weather and insufficient “diversity” are the two biggest problems of our time. Their solutions? Central bankers, multinational corporations, and government bureaucrats should strictly regulate how productive people build things and prosper. Ideally, incompetent people rewarded for their perceived “victimhood” and “diversity” should be put in charge of future production. This is not a plan for success. This is an idiotic operation that guarantees civilizational self-destruction.
Should we survive this age of stupidity, our descendants will look back and wonder why clear-thinking scholars from our august institutions of higher learning didn’t do more to halt the suicidal impulses now gripping Western civilization.
How could the very universities that trace their lineages back to Western monasteries’ pursuit of God’s truth become cesspools of falsehood, paganism, and superstition?
Western civilization’s survivors will not have to look hard for their answer: University chancellors were given millions of dollars to “educate” the public about men having babies.
College campuses are catnip for crazies.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/18/2026 - 18:40 Close
Sat, 18 Jul 2026 22:05:00 +0000 "We've Burned Through All Buffers": Oil Traders Warn Market Running On Fumes
"We've Burned Through All Buffers": Oil Traders Warn Market Running On Fumes
Brent crude futures jumped a little more than 4% to nearly $88 a barrel, putting the crude oil benchmark on track for its biggest weekly gain since April.
Read more.....
"We've Burned Through All Buffers": Oil Traders Warn Market Running On Fumes
Brent crude futures jumped a little more than 4% to nearly $88 a barrel, putting the crude oil benchmark on track for its biggest weekly gain since April. That move followed an Axios report that said the Trump administration had notified Israel it was deploying additional aerial assets to the region, signaling the US military could expand strikes on Iran as soon as this weekend.
Financial Times spoke with energy traders at the end of the week who warned that slowing tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz could trigger a more severe supply crunch than the first round of the US-Iran war because emergency reserves and stockpiles around the world that cushioned the earlier disruption have been mostly depleted.
"We've burned through all of the buffers we had. Everything," said one trader. "All of that's now gone.
Related:
Bloomberg noted:
Fuel markets strengthened again , with the ICE gasoil crack closing at the highest on record and the Nymex heating oil crack the strongest since March. More narrow Brent put spreads around the low $70s traded in sizable numbers.
Earlier today, the International Energy Agency revealed that member countries released three-quarters of the planned 400 million-barrel emergency reserves announced in March.
Amrita Sen, founder of Energy Aspects, pointed out that heading into the US-Iran war, the global oil market had around 400 million barrels of excess inventories, not including strategic reserves controlled by governments.
"Now we have close to nothing ... and market complacency around Hormuz flows is being severely tested," Sen warned.
UBS analyst Henri Patricot wrote in the daily "Hormuz tracker" note that further Hormuz escalation has occurred, Gulf tanker crossings remain limited, and there is a sharp pullback in Gulf loadings:
Further escalation
The conflict in the Middle East is escalating further as Iran reportedly targeted power plants and desalinisation plants in Kuwait. Previous strikes had focused on US military targets. These followed US strikes on bridges and an airport in Iran.
Limited Gulf tanker crossings
Increased attacks continue to weigh heavily on flows via Hormuz. The latest UBS Evidence Lab data (> Access Dataset) show that oil and gas tanker crossings fell to one, with only one product tanker entering the Gulf (Figure 1).
July-to-date crossings have averaged 10, down from the mid-to-high teens recorded in late June and early July, and remain well below the c.50 level seen in February. Oil on water in the Gulf is ticking up again, up ~5Mb in recent days (Figure 10).
The absence of outbound oil and gas flows takes the July average down to 5.4Mboe/d, compared with 3.7Mboe/d in June and 1.3Mboe/d in May (Figure 4).
Capacity entering the Gulf fell to 0.7Mboe/d and has averaged 5.2Mboe/d month to date (Figure 5).
Meanwhile, flows via the Bab al Mandeb Strait have not been disrupted so far and increased further to 9.7Mb/d yesterday, above the July-to-date average of 6.7Mb/d.
A sharp pullback in Gulf loading
Gulf crude loadings ex-Iran fell sharply to 1.0Mb/d yesterday from 6.0Mb/d on Wednesday, with the past-week average at 3.2Mb/d vs 5.1Mb/d in July and 3.4Mb/d in June. Iranian loadings rose to 5.0Mb/d yesterday, lifting the July average to 1.5Mb/d, still below the typical 1.7-1.8Mb/d range, but above June's 0.8Mb/d (Figure 9).
Crude loadings at ports outside the Strait (Yanbu in Saudi Arabia and Fujairah in the UAE) eased following a sharp rebound, falling to 3.6Mb/d yesterday below the July-to-date average of 5.9Mb/d and June's 6.9Mb/d. Yanbu declined to 2.7Mb/d, below the month-to-date level of 4.2Mb/d and June's 4.8Mb/d. Product loadings inside the Gulf remain close to May-June levels (Figure 15).
The normalization pathway of tanker flows appears to have been disrupted as the US and Iran become locked in an escalation spiral, with neither side willing to back down. Any sustained reopening of the Strait of Hormuz has now been postponed.
With or without Tehran's cooperation, US-allied Gulf countries are in the beginning innings of what we've described as a "great energy rewiring" to bypass the Hormuz chokepoint.
Latest:
"Ultimately, the market was pricing an optimistic flow trajectory that now is clearly not on the table, at least . . . not until we get another round of diplomacy ," Natixis Bank analyst Joel Hancock wrote in a note.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/18/2026 - 18:05 Close
Sat, 18 Jul 2026 21:55:00 +0000 State Department Issues "Worldwide Caution" As US-Iran Tit-For-Tat Spirals Into Regional Crisis
State Department Issues "Worldwide Caution" As US-Iran Tit-For-Tat Spirals Into Regional Crisis
Summary
CENTCOM Says US Forces Launch New Strike On Iran
State Dept. Issues Worldwide Warn
Read more.....
State Department Issues "Worldwide Caution" As US-Iran Tit-For-Tat Spirals Into Regional Crisis
Summary
CENTCOM Says US Forces Launch New Strike On Iran
State Dept. Issues Worldwide Warning
CENTCOM says two US troops killed in Iranian attack on Jordan base.
Iran formally suspends MoU with the US , declaring agreement is over & commitments will no longer be fulfilled.
Fighting escalates into seventh straight day of heavy bombings.
Iran reportedly struck a US base in Saudi Arabia for the first time in four months.
US strikes disrupt southern Iran's telecom network, knocking out 116 communication towers amid new infrastructure war.
Iran pounds Kuwait's energy infrastructure, damaging power & desalination facilities .
Will the US announce withdrawal from MOU negotiations by July 31?
Yes 14% · No 86%View full market & trade on Polymarket * * *
CENTCOM Says US Forces Launch New Strike On Iran
CENTCOM said US forces struck Iranian missile and radar systems stationed along the Strait of Hormuz, further dismantling Tehran's surveillance and strike capabilities while eroding its ability to control the maritime chokepoint.
"Today at 6 p.m. ET, U.S. forces began launching new airstrikes against Iran at the Commander in Chief's direction ," CENTCOM wrote on X.
CENTCOM added, "The strikes are designed to further degrade Iran's ability to threaten commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and swiftly punish Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps forces who launched attacks against American service members in Jordan last night ."
State Department Issues "Worldwide Caution"
Iranian ballistic missile strikes on Jordan's Muwaffaq Salti Air Base, which killed two U.S. service members and injured others, are likely to trigger a major U.S. retaliation.
Israel's Channel 14 reported late Saturday that President Trump instructed CENTCOM to "open the gates of hell" on Iran.
The U.S. State Department issued a worldwide caution , warning: "Due to heightened tensions in the Middle East, the security environment remains complex, with the potential for unforeseen escalation ."
Will tensions ease before the NY futures open on Sunday evening?
Americans Killed by Iranian Missiles on Jordan
Footage has been widely circulating over the past half-day showing massive Iranian ballistic missile strikes on Jordan. Iran said it targeted a US base there, and took out various aerial and radar assets, and caused casualties among American troops.
But the Pentagon has been radio silent on the extent of potential damage, until now: US officials are reporting that two American service members were killed in the overnight Iranian attack. According to emerging details in Axios :
Two U.S. service members were killed and more wounded in an Iranian ballistic missile attack on an airbase in Jordan on Saturday, military officials said.
This is the first time U.S. troops have been killed since the fighting resumed two weeks ago. The incident raises the number of U.S. service members killed in the war to 16.
On Saturday at least two Iranian ballistic missiles hit the Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan, which hosts U.S. troops and fighter jets.
CENTCOM posted to X, officially confirming the news: "On July 17, two U.S. service members in Jordan were killed in action as U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) and partner forces defended against Iranian ballistic missile and drone attacks. Additionally, one service member is currently missing in action ."
The statement has noted additional injuries: "Four American service members were medically evacuated to Jordanian hospitals. They have since been discharged. Other personnel who were evaluated for minor injuries have returned to duty," CENTCOM said.
Iran Formally Suspends MoU
It is now "official": the Iranians have declared that the signed Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the United States is dead. Tasnim is reporting Saturday that Iran will no longer fulfill its MoU obligations amid alleged repeat US violations. The past weeks have seen each side hurl warnings and threats to pull out, while attaching conditions that must be fulfilled.
But after what is now a full week of renewed fighting, it has been effectively torn up, with negotiations no longer happening . Al Jazeera is citing a top Iran official's precise statement on suspending the MoU in the following:
Previously, we have seen again and again Iranian officials accusing the US of violating the MoU and also putting some conditions if the aggression continues.
What we’re seeing is Kazem Gharibabadi, Iran’s deputy foreign minister, who is also head of the Iranian technical negotiating team, saying that in practice, the US has violated all the commitments and suspended the MoU entirely.
“We also likewise have suspended all of our commitments as a result; we are no longer implementing those commitments,” he added.
So, officially, this is the first time the Iranians are saying the MoU is over and they’re not going to implement any clause.
Given President Trump has apparently just ordered dozens more aerial refueling planes to the region, the conflict looks to continue going up the escalation ladder for at least the next week or longer. Each side will seek to impose more economic and military pain, while waiting for the other to blink . Battle of narratives over damage and retaliation:
Saudi Base Attacked for First Time in 4 Months
Saudi Arabia has come under attack by Iranian missiles in the last 24 hours, the kingdom is confirming on Saturday, in a major escalation given that this is a first since near the start of the war several months ago. According to Reuters :
The Saudi civil defense early on Saturday issued two early warnings for Al-Kharj city and Yanbu to be alert to “potential danger,” but it later says the danger has passed in both areas, without providing details on the danger that triggered the warnings.
A US official tells the Axios news site that Iran targeted an American military base in Saudi Arabia with a ballistic missile , the first time that the Islamic Republic has directly attacked the kingdom in four months .
Locations in Jordan and even Syria have also been hit in recent salvos, but the US military has downplayed these attacks - and there's a battle of narratives over just how destructive these have been amid the fog of war.
Kuwait also reeling from stepped-up attacks...
116 Telecoms Towers In Southern Iran Taken Out
As we featured earlier , Iranian communications and even the supply of drinking water have been severely impacted in some places of southern Iran, amid continuing US airstrikes on civic and national infrastructure, amid the seventh consecutive day of war. "Hormozgan's chief of communications and information technology says the US's overnight attacks disrupted telecommunications in Bandar Abbas and Hajiabad , in the northern part of the province," Al Jazeera reports
Authorities there have tallied at least 116 telecommunication towers which were taken out of service due to the US onslaught. This has resulted in outages and disruptions of fixed-line, mobile, and internet services, per Tasnim news agency.
This suggests the US is returning to a strategy which seeks to create destabilization within , targeting the ability of the public to communicate and access information , returning the situation to the early weeks of the war, which saw Tehran authorities themselves curb internet and some telecoms access for the citizenry.
Kuwait Power & Desalination Plant Hit
Kuwait was bombarded overnight in one of the fiercest Iranian retaliatory strikes since the US-Iran conflict erupted in late February, with missiles and one-way drones targeting power infrastructure and other critical energy assets.
Local outlet Kuwait News Agency reports an unspecified site of the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation suffered "significant material losses" as the week-long flare-up in Gulf tensions has derailed any near-term normalization of tanker flows through the Strait of Hormuz.
There was a report that the Al-Subiya power station was struck. This marks the second attack on Kuwaiti power infrastructure in just days, after a transformer at the Zour South electricity and desalination complex was hit on Friday.
Authorities disconnected several power-generating units as a precaution and urged residents to conserve electricity. A Kuwaiti army base was also struck during the latest escalation, injuring several personnel.
Infrastructure War in Full Swing
On March 2, we warned:
Bahrain and Jordan intercepted Iranian missiles and drones. The overnight barrage followed a seventh consecutive night of US strikes targeting Iranian surveillance sites, weapons storage, logistics infrastructure and maritime offensive capabilities as the Department of War seeks to erode Tehran's leverage on the Hormuz waterway.
As of late Friday, the previous US-Iran wrap stated :
Surge in more large US refueling planes headed to Mideast, signaling likely expansion of strikes on Iran.
US attacks hit Iranian energy and transport infrastructure.
Iran threatens stronger retaliation and claims strike on US base in Qatar - and deepens attacks to include US outposts in Jordan, Syria.
Iran urges power conservation ; Hormuz shipping traffic declines further.
Oil prices rise to session highs on fears of broader regional conflict.
Brent chart
The latest Hormuz tanker transit data via Bloomberg shows that activity at the maritime chokepoint has all but ceased. This data is based on ships activating their transponders and doesn't account for ships that 'go dark'...
Overnight headlines
...courtesy of Bloomberg:
US-Iran Escalation
The US launched its seventh consecutive night of strikes against Iran on Friday at 3 p.m. ET, aimed at degrading Iran's military capabilities, including hitting bridges, energy infrastructure, and a port facility in southern Iran, according to Iranian state media.
The conflict has intensified beyond military targets, with the US striking six road bridges and reports of attacks near Bushehr's nuclear power plant and the province of Lorestan, raising fears of a return to full-scale war.
The hostilities were triggered by an Iranian drone strike on a cargo ship in the Strait of Hormuz on June 25, just days after the US and Iran signed a preliminary ceasefire deal, setting off a chain of escalating attacks.
Iran has threatened a "full-scale offensive" in response to US strikes, with the Strait of Hormuz remaining virtually closed as of Saturday.
Iran Attacks Kuwait
Iran launched a heavy barrage on Kuwait on Saturday morning, striking a vital oil facility and causing significant material losses and injuries, according to Kuwait Petroleum Corporation via state news agency KUNA.
Kuwait airport suspended flights following the Saturday attacks, which triggered multiple rounds of sirens from around dawn.
Iran also struck a power and desalination plant and a transformer at the Zour South facility, causing a fire and marking Tehran's first targeting of power infrastructure during the current escalation.
Kuwait's foreign ministry accused Iran of systematically targeting civilian sites and vital infrastructure, saying it "endangers the lives and safety of civilians."
Iran's Counterstrikes
Iran has been targeting US bases in Kuwait, Jordan, and Bahrain in retaliation for US strikes. The IRGC claimed its 20th wave of "Nasr 2" operations destroyed several American aircraft at a US airbase in Jordan.
US-sanctioned Iranian tankers are U-turning and zig-zagging in the Gulf of Oman as the US enforces an aggressive blockade of Iranian shipping, having redirected three merchant ships, boarded one vessel, and disabled a non-compliant tanker.
Energy Market Impact
Crude oil prices surged sharply, posting their biggest rise since April, as fears of renewed escalation grew and shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz slumped significantly.
The Strait of Hormuz shutdown is expected to spark massive investments aimed at permanently reducing reliance on the chokepoint, restructuring global energy infrastructure and trade flows, according to Bloomberg Intelligence.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/18/2026 - 17:55 Close
Sat, 18 Jul 2026 21:30:00 +0000 "Start Spreadin' The News": New York Losing Billions As Millionaires Flee Big Apple
"Start Spreadin' The News": New York Losing Billions As Millionaires Flee Big Apple
"Start Spreadin' The News": New York Losing Billions As Millionaires Flee Big Apple
Authored by Jonathan Turley,
Below is my column in the New York Post on the sharp decline in millionaires in New York, costing the state billions as many flee. The exodus has been building for years but may now be accelerating. As Mayor Mamdani holds another press conference promising to end the “violence of evictions,” businesses are reading the writing on the wall. Rather than work to make the state more attractive to wealthy residents and businesses, Democrats are seeking to diminish the appeal of two-tax states. They want to tap into a long-barred area of taxation: the wealth rather than just the income of citizens. By passing a national wealth tax, Democrats will reduce the benefit of fleeing high-tax states like California and New York.
“Start spreadin’ the news, I’m leavin’ today” — that’s how the famous song “New York, New York ” captures the Big Apple’s draw.
Today, the line is becoming more ironic than iconic: Many people are indeed leaving … from New York, New York.
Worse yet, those “vagabond shoes” that “are longing to stray” are on the feet of the wealthiest New Yorkers.
And as they flee, according to a new study, they’re taking away billions in badly needed tax revenue.
As Mayor Zohran Mamdani and others pledge massive social programs and free services by taxing the wealthy , the wealthy are just melting away.
The reason is simple: if “you can make it there, you can make it anywhere.”
In today’s economy, it’s no longer necessary or even particularly beneficial to be in New York to make money in financial and other areas.
When any business meeting is a screen and a click away, you can go to a low-tax state like Florida or Texas and do as well as you can in the Big Apple.
Not surprisingly, many are choosing the money over the mystique and the madness.
This week the Citizens Budget Commission reported that New York’s share of millionaires fell from 12.7% in 2010 to 8.7% in 2022 — the largest drop of any state.
The exodus of wealthy citizens left New York short $10.7 billion in tax revenue .
By denouncing the remaining wealthy as effectively freeloaders who are “not paying their fair share,” Mamdani is only spurring them on.
It’s a demonstrably false claim that I discuss in my book Rage and the Republic — and part of a growing class-warfare theme the left is deliberately using to fuel political rage.
Yet it’s easy to form a mob — and far more difficult to control it.
That is particularly the case when your economic policies destroy your economy, and your ability to pay for all the free services that you’ve promised.
There’s a good-faith debate to be had over optimal tax levels, but the fact is that the top 10% of Americans pay more in taxes than the other 90% of the country. The top 1% pays roughly 40% of federal taxes.
As rational actors flee the state, Mamdani and New York Democrats are forced to cull the shrinking herd of high-end taxpayers who remain, layering on special fees like a pied-à-terre tax to be imposed on NYC’s luxury property owners.
And rather than change course to make New York a more attractive place to do business and live, national Democrats are moving to make other states no better — by nationalizing wealth taxes and by taxing fleeing citizens as if they still lived in the state.
Many are following Sen. Bernie Sanders’ and Rep. Ro Khanna’s call to impose a federal wealth tax they’ve dubbed the Billionaire Tax.
The idea is to stem the exodus from California and New York by giving the highest earners no place to go . . . except out of the country.
That’s the option many took when similar wealth taxes were attempted in countries like France , only to be rescinded after doing massive economic damage.
Fleecing the wealthy is a revenue loser.
New York is losing billions, and California has reportedly lost trillions due to top taxpayers’ departure.
Unwilling to adopt greater fiscal restraints and truly compete for businesses and residents, Democrats are looking for pockets of new areas to tax.
The wealth tax is a virtual bonanza of untapped revenue — if it can make it through the courts .
Our Constitution was amended in 1913 to allow for an income tax, not a wealth tax.
Once you pay taxes on what you earn, you’re supposed to be able to use your hard-earned money to buy whatever you wish, from bikes to boats.
Democrats now want to tax those possessions: “your Rembrandts, your stock portfolio, your diamonds and your yachts,” as Sen. Elizabeth Warren once dramatically warned .
And Khanna recently confirmed what some of us have been saying for years: The Billionaire Tax isn’t only for billionaires .
“The tax should not stop at billionaires,” he said in a pitch to his party’s rising socialist movement; “it must reach centimillionaires. The tax has to reach all fortunes $50 million and up.”
Khanna and others hope that, once taken nationally, a wealth tax would destroy the benefit of moving to low-tax states — and open up literally trillions in new potential revenue.
In the meantime, New York will continue to burn billions as it taps its dwindling number of millionaires.
As their wealthy neighbors depart, those remaining will have to make up for their loss.
Being among the last to leave New York will be a costly distinction.
They will indeed “wake up” — and find that they’re “king of the hill, top of the list” for wealth redistribution.
Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the New York Times bestselling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution .”
Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/18/2026 - 17:30 Close
Sat, 18 Jul 2026 20:55:00 +0000 FCC Head Carr Moves To Reshape TV Ownership Rules, Save Local Broadcasting From Being 'Mouthpieces'
FCC Head Carr Moves To Reshape TV Ownership Rules, Save Local Broadcasting From Being 'Mouthpieces'
The Federal Communications Commission is preparing to scrap longstanding national limits on television station owne
Read more.....
FCC Head Carr Moves To Reshape TV Ownership Rules, Save Local Broadcasting From Being 'Mouthpieces'
The Federal Communications Commission is preparing to scrap longstanding national limits on television station ownership - a regulatory overhaul that Chairman Brendan Carr says will give local outlets critical breathing room to compete and invest in community journalism - instead of being 'Hollywood mouthpieces.'
The agency is scheduled to vote on August 6 to eliminate the ownership caps in favor of a flexible, case-by-case approach for reviewing deals. Carr detailed the plan in a Breitbart News op-ed, arguing the change will help local broadcasters counter the growing influence of national programmers.
"Repealing the national cap will provide essential relief for local broadcasters by restoring a healthy counterbalance to the growing leverage of national programmers. Increased scale will enable broadcasters to attract the capital and advertising revenue needed to sustain and produce trusted and community-focused news and programming," Carr wrote .
Carr warned that inaction would risk repeating mistakes seen in another corner of local media.
"If the FCC does not act, we do not need to imagine the bleak media future ahead. Just look at local newspapers. Much like the national cap, the FCC maintained an outdated rule for more than 40 years that limited investment in local newspapers," the Trump administration official continued .
"The FCC kept that rule in place until 2017, long after the economics of local journalism had shifted. Meanwhile, local newspapers shut down by the dozen , and many Americans are now left to choose from a small number of national papers. We can't let local broadcast TV follow the same path," he added .
Carr also highlighted the growing challenges for local stations competing against national media conglomerates.
"Many local broadcast TV stations are getting hollowed out as a result and turning into little more than mouthpieces for programming produced in New York and Hollywood. That is not what Congress or the FCC intended," Carr wrote .
Carr framed the stakes as a straightforward choice about the character of American news, arguing the country would be better served by "a little less Hollywood and a little more local reporting."
Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/18/2026 - 16:55 Close