Donald Rumsfeld's New Europe Is Waiting For Its Second Act

Authored by José Niño via The Libertarian Institute

On January 22, 2003, Donald Rumsfeld stepped behind the podium at the Foreign Press Center in Washington and, with one answer to a Dutch public television reporter, redrew the map of Europe. The reporter wanted to know why so many Europeans trusted Saddam Hussein more than then-President George W. Bush. The defense secretary fired back with words the Pentagon transcript preserved in full:

"Now, you’re thinking of Europe as Germany and France. I don’t. I think that’s old Europe. If you look at the entire NATO Europe today, the center of gravity is shifting to the east. And there are a lot of new members."

Rumsfeld kept going. “Germany has been a problem, and France has been a problem.” When the reporter cited public opinion, he refused to budge. “But you look at vast numbers of other countries in Europe. They’re not with France and Germany on this, they’re with the United States.”

Berlin and Paris erupted in response. The transcript shows Rumsfeld never spoke the words “new Europe,” yet headlines supplied them within hours, and Radio Free Europe conceded that his underlying point about a split continent held up. A year later in Munich, he told reporters he felt too old for regretting his comments at the time.

The Iraq showdown gave the phrase its teeth. France and Germany, backed by Russia, wanted inspectors to keep working, and Paris threatened to veto a second war resolution at the United Nations. On January 30, 2003, the leaders of Britain, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Denmark, Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic answered with the “Letter of Eight,” a joint commentary urging unity against Baghdad. Six days later, foreign ministers from the Vilnius Ten, a bloc stretching from Albania to the Baltics, endorsed what they called Secretary of State Colin Powell’s “compelling evidence” and demanded “a united response from the community of democracies.”

Washington repaid the loyalty. On May 8, 2003, the Senate voted 96 to 0 to admit Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia while their foreign ministers watched from the balcony. The Senate’s own ratification resolution cited their February 5 statement on Iraq. All seven entered NATO in 2004, bringing three former Soviet republics into the alliance for the first time.

Troops trailed the rhetoric. On August 16, 2004, the Bush White House announced a posture overhaul that would bring home “about 60,000 to 70,000 uniformed personnel” over a decade and ship heavy Cold War forces out of Germany. Romania signed a defense cooperation agreement in 2005, and Bulgaria followed in 2006, opening Mihail Kogalniceanu, Novo Selo, and Bezmer to rotating American units. At Bucharest in 2008, Bush pressed allies to declare that Ukraine and Georgia “will become members of NATO.” Russia later went to war with Georgia that August.

Every president since has pushed the line east. Barack Obama canceled Bush’s Polish interceptor plan in 2009 but substituted a phased shield whose Romanian base at Deveselu went operational in May 2016. After Crimea joined the Russian Federation, NATO stationed four multinational battlegroups in the Baltic states and Poland, with Americans leading the Polish unit. Donald Trump’s first administration quit the INF Treaty in August 2019, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared that “Russia is solely responsible for the treaty’s demise.” A 2020 pact with Warsaw produced a forward headquarters for V Corps in Poznan.

President Joe Biden hardened the frontier further. After February 2022, American forces in Europe swelled to roughly 100,000, congressional researchers noted. The Army opened its first permanent garrison in Poland in March 2023, and NATO declared the Aegis Ashore interceptor site at Redzikowo mission ready in July 2024.

Esteemed diplomat George Kennan saw where this road led. Reacting in 1998 to the first round of enlargement, the father of containment told Thomas Friedman, “I think it is the beginning of a new cold war. I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else,” as The American Conservative recounted.

Donald Trump’s second term scrambled the script. In October 2025, the Pentagon sent a 101st Airborne brigade home from Romania without a replacement, leaving about 1,000 Americans in the country. U.S. Army Europe and Africa insisted the move was “not an American withdrawal from Europe or a signal of lessened commitment to NATO and Article 5” but “a positive sign of increased European capability and responsibility.” Armed Services Chairmen Senator Roger Wicker (R-MS) and Rep. Mike Rogers (R-AL) fired back that the decision “appears uncoordinated and directly at odds with the President’s strategy.”

Then Trump feuded with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz over the Iran war. On May 1, 2026, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell announced, “The Secretary of War has ordered the withdrawal of approximately 5,000 troops from Germany.” Defense officials told CBS the missile battalion slated for Germany would go elsewhere. Three weeks later, Trump rewarded Warsaw instead. “Based on the successful Election of the now President of Poland, Karol Nawrocki, who I was proud to Endorse, and our relationship with him, I am pleased to announce that the United States will be sending an additional 5,000 Troops to Poland,” he wrote. Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski suggested the move would simply hold American numbers near previous levels.

Punish old Europe, reward new Europe. Rumsfeld would recognize the playbook.

Ukraine will decide how far that playbook runs. In July 2026, Thomas Graham of the Council on Foreign Relations outlined a plausible settlement built on a ceasefire along the front, Western security ties for Kiev without NATO membership, and an end to further eastward enlargement, terms Moscow could market as victory. Graham warned against assuming the tide favors Kiev. Bloomberg sources reported that Vladimir Putin wants the rest of Donbas before serious talks, and envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner left Moscow in September without a breakthrough.

Suppose Russia keeps its conquests at a ruinous price. A pyrrhic win of that kind would shut NATO’s door to new members, and Washington’s national security class would likely respond as it did in 2003, by pouring money and manpower into the eastern allies it already has. The scaffolding survives every Trump trim. Allies have pledged 5% of GDP on defense by 2035, and a CRS report counted about 86,000 U.S. personnel in European NATO countries as of March 2026, with Congress requiring certification before numbers fall below 76,000.

Once Trump exits, the hawks who blasted his Romania cut will still hold the blueprints and the bases. They may well revive Rumsfeld’s New Europe as a permanent front against Moscow, anchored in Poland, Romania, and the Baltics. Kennan warned that such a posture breeds the hostility it claims to deter. Americans deserve a debate before Washington signs them up for another generation of geopolitical tension with the Russian Bear.

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/22/2026 - 03:30

Houthis Threaten Strikes On Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan Interests As Yemen Intervention Looms

Houthi officials have put Egypt, Turkey, and Pakistan on notice amid the ongoing Saudi-Yemen conflict, and as Riyadh urges partners to assist militarily against the Ansar Allah movement. Iran's state Nour News, which is affiliated with the country's Supreme National Security Council, has issued a report saying the three Saudi allies "will likely be targeted in the next stages"
 - per a Houthi official.

The Houthi official warned that "The targeting of Iran by the enemies will not be limited to the country's borders and, according to him, the next efforts will be to target Egypt, Turkey and Pakistan."

Source: SPA

Already the Houthis have launched several attacks on Saudi Aramco facilities, also including fuel depots next to Riyadh's international airport. The Houthis subsequently confirmed sending ballistic missiles on the capital, in a first of the war. This happened Friday night into Saturday.

According to more from the Iranian media report:

Referring to the position of these three countries in the Islamic world, he said that their power and influence could be an obstacle to the Zionist regime's plans. The Ansarullah official stated that this plan is based on pushing Egypt, Turkey, and Pakistan towards wars and internal conflicts, and that Saudi Arabia plays a role in this process. According to him, such a situation could lead to the erosion of capabilities, weakening, and disintegration of the internal social fabric of these countries

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was just in Cairo meeting with Egyptian leader Abdel Fattah El-Sisi. The visit came just in the wake of an Iranian-backed militia attack on the key Saudi East-West pipeline, which one US official described as having been launched from Iraq.

A big focus of the MbS-Sisi meeting was regional security. The Saudis have been asking all regional allies for support at a moment the internationally recognized Sanaa government is rapidly losing ground to the Houthis.

Washington has appeared to shrug its shoulders, staying on the sidelines thus far. President Trump was reported ready to pull the trigger against the Houthis but reportedly TACO'd by close of the weekend.

But there's even greater pressure on the Pakistanis and Turks to take action, given the recently signed Mecca Defense Pact. We featured the following commentary last week:

Turkey's new commitments to Saudi Arabia under the Mecca defence pact could increase the risk of Ankara being drawn into a confrontation with Yemen's Houthis, a development that could have significant consequences for Turkish supply lines to the Horn of Africa. Although Turkey has yet to ratify the pact, expected in October, continued Houthi attacks against Saudi Arabia, and Ankara’s recent participation in the Saudi-led Multinational Maritime Defense Alliance make some form of confrontation possible.

Another big, obvious risk includes the whole thing spinning out into a full-on regional war, which would likely further fuel US-Iran confrontation, and possibly bring in the Israelis.

Bigger conflict would also likely close Red Sea shipping. The Houthis have so far only declared the Bab Al-Mandab Strait off limits to Saudi and Israeli-linked ships. But the fear is that any moment the group could begin assaults on all international shipping, akin to the ongoing crisis in the Strait of Hormuz.

Even very good reporting on Saudi-Houthi situation often says the Houthis e.g. "reignited" the war this summer, or some such. But this July, Saudi struck airport in Sanaa, the Yemeni capital, to block an Iranian plane from landing. Sometimes that's not even mentioned...

— Andrew Day (@AKDay89) September 21, 2026

The Iranians and Houthis know they hold this card, and are likely intentionally slow-playing their leverage, but ready to pull the trigger on the next potential round of escalation with the US-Saudi-Israeli axis.

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/22/2026 - 02:45

Germany's Debt King Merz Gets a Greek Lesson in Fiscal Policy

Submitted by Thomas Kolbe

Revenge is sweet. It tastes all the sweeter the longer one has had to wait for it to arrive, and the deeper the pain of the humiliation that preceded it.

Some may still have the images of the great debt crisis of a decade and a half ago before their eyes: German politicians, led by then-Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble, traveled to Athens at regular intervals to make sure everything was in order. Greece, the supposed sinner of the debt crisis, had gone off the rails, accumulated too much debt and was quickly made the scapegoat for the financial-market and sovereign-debt crisis. It was convenient - because it diverted attention from Germany’s own failures.

That someone had apparently left a score to settle was made clear by Greek Finance Minister Kyriakos Pierrakakis in an interview with Handelsblatt on Monday. When the conversation turned to the debt question, Pierrakakis, who also serves as president of the Eurogroup, noted that reforms in fiscal policy might be painful at first, but would ultimately pay off politically and economically.

The man is right. And Berlin should listen to him, because the debt club around Friedrich Merz is knowingly driving the budget into the wall with new borrowing of more than 5 percent next year.

It really does sound like an open score to settle when the Greek generously praises Germany’s economic potential in flowery language while at the same time noting that the country is not untouchable: “Germany is the industrial locomotive of Europe” — Pierrakakis is mercilessly putting his finger on the wound. For he cannot have failed to notice how rapidly the country is economically destroying itself, how quickly it is deindustrializing in the grip of climate fanaticism and mutating from a nation of tinkerers and engineers into an open-air institution for moralists and degrowth ideologues.

While Germany has embarked on the road to second-class status, Greece is gradually growing out of its permanent crisis. The problem with the local economy remains the euro: The Greeks actually need a significantly devalued currency in order to compete more effectively on international markets. After the introduction of the euro and the cheaper borrowing costs made possible by Germany’s credit anchor, the country slipped into an artificial debt trap — the land of spendthrifts and pleasure-seekers, according to the ugly narrative.

German banks and insurers had invested as much as 45 billion euros in Greek bonds at the time — money for which German taxpayers ultimately had to foot the bill. Distorted interest rates caused by the introduction of the euro and the euro debt club’s highly heterogeneous economies were bound to produce such a disaster — and the next debacle is already taking shape: Debt is rising everywhere, while interest rates are climbing. The bond market is responding by selling government bonds, thereby driving up the cost of servicing debt through higher interest rates.

Were Greece’s efforts toward austerity and thrift ultimately in vain?

Whether the moment of the great debt reckoning has now arrived is rather unlikely — there is still plenty of room to push the sovereign-debt crisis to the point of rupture. Nevertheless, much is reminiscent of the period 15 years ago, when the bond market reacted in a similar way and the U.S. housing crisis spread through the market mechanism to the fragile European sovereign-bond markets. Greece, the EU’s smallest economy with the highest level of government debt, was hit first before the dominoes began to fall.

Schäuble’s Greek counterpart at the time was Giannis Varoufakis: an intellectual, committed socialist who stood up to the Teutons and the Troika of the European Central Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the European Commission — until his party Syriza and Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras were brought to their knees.

The consequence: austerity policy. Massive pension cuts, hospital closures — the shrinking of the welfare state. The Greeks experienced their social-policy Waterloo and have since managed to reduce their government debt ratio from the peak of the crisis, around 180 percent, to 146 percent.

Chapeau! The Greeks deserve every bit of respect in the face of the lax fiscal policies all around them — whether in Italy, Germany, France or Spain. Athens is staying the course, voting conservatively and struggling through this painful period of adjustment.

In the Handelsblatt interview, Pierrakakis becomes something of a fiscal-policy armchair philosopher: The cost of doing nothing, he says, is ultimately higher for everyone than the cost of reforms. That may be true. But the lesson contains a kernel of truth that will not move the German governing coalition even a millimeter toward the mountain of necessary reforms growing larger by the day.

Because consolidating this year’s 180-billion-euro deficit-ridden chaos budget would imply corresponding spending cuts. Tax increases would strangle the economy — Germany would have to begin with remigration, end development aid, reform the welfare state and seriously consider what to do about the war with Russia and the massive military buildup it entails.

The pain of austerity is still ahead for the Germans. Whether it is brought about through the bond market or through the harsh cuts of a reform government makes no difference.

All in all, it was a memorable interview because it describes Germany’s changing era from the perspective of the underdog. Above all, Pierrakakis’ remark that Germany has economic potential should resonate for a long time in its ironic sharpness. Because the country has overstretched its public finances and now lives on credit — just as the Greeks once did.

* * * 

About the author: Thomas Kolbe, a graduate economist, has worked for or over 25 years as a journalist and media producer for clients from various industries and business associations. As a publicist, he focuses on economic processes and observes geopolitical events from the perspective of the capital markets. His publications follow a philosophy that focuses on the individual and their right to self-determination.

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/22/2026 - 02:00

Chinese County Orders Lawyers To Get Government Approval Before Defending Criminal Charges

Authored by Michael Zhuang via The Epoch Times,

A county justice bureau in southwestern China has ordered local law firms to report cases related to the government's "anti-organized crime" campaign and obtain official approval before lawyers can argue that a defendant's alleged offense should be classified differently.

The No. 2 Intermediate People's Court in the Beijing suburb of Fangzhuang on Aug. 15, 2006. Goh Chai Hin/AFP via Getty Images

The notice, issued directly to law firms by the Justice Bureau of Pu'an County in Guizhou Province, requires lawyers handling cases covered by a recent anti-organized crime public notice to report them to the bureau's public legal services department, according to a Sept. 18 blog post by a legal blogger on Chinese news portal NetEase.

The requirement has prompted concerns among Chinese lawyers that a government administrative agency is attempting to exercise control over how defense lawyers present their cases in court.

The notice states that law firms handling cases covered by the campaign "must promptly report [them] to the county justice bureau's public legal services department."

It adds: "If the defense argument is to change the legal characterization of the crime, it must be reported to the county justice bureau for study and approval before that defense theory can be expressed. All law firms are requested to strictly implement this."

Under the arrangement, lawyers would therefore need to do more than simply notify the justice bureau that they are handling a particular case. Before presenting a defense argument that challenges the prosecution's characterization of an alleged offense, they would have to obtain approval from the same government agency responsible for regulating the local legal profession.

Lawyers Question Restrictions

Two China-based attorneys spoke to The Epoch Times on condition of anonymity, giving only their surnames out of fear of reprisal.

Zhang, a human rights lawyer from Hubei Province, said the local county requirement violates China's Criminal Procedure Law and interferes with defendants' rights to a defense, as well as lawyers' independent practice.

"Lawyers [should act] independently in accordance with the law and not be subject to unlawful interference by any administrative agency," Zhang said. "Establishing administrative approval or consent as a prerequisite for using a defense argument is tantamount to placing the review of judicial administrative agencies above the law."

China's Criminal Procedure Law provides that defense lawyers should, based on facts and law, present materials and opinions concerning innocence, lesser offenses, or the reduction or exemption of criminal responsibility.

However, the Pu'an County notice requires lawyers to wait for the justice bureau to "study and approve" one category of such defense arguments before presenting it.

Liu, a Beijing-based human rights lawyer, told The Epoch Times that the requirement is particularly significant in cases arising from government-led anti-organized crime campaigns, in which lawyers may need to challenge the evidence or the prosecution's classification of an alleged offense.

"In mainland China, the more anti-organized crime is designated by the authorities as a task, the more lawyers need to question the evidence and the characterization of the crime," Liu said.

If administrative agencies can screen out defense arguments they do not approve of, he said, a trial could effectively be left with only the prosecution's account, reducing the defense to a mere formality.

"Special campaigns such as the 'anti-organized crime' campaign launched by the Chinese Communist Party ... carry clear political-task implications for local officials," Liu said. "This precisely reflects that the [local] authorities concerned are moving toward abandoning judicial fairness, and doing so will lead to more wrongful and unjust cases."

Similar Rule Previously Withdrawn

The requirement in Pu'an has a precedent elsewhere in Guizhou Province.

According to a 2015 report by Chinese state-owned media outlet The Paper, the Zunyi Municipal Justice Bureau introduced a rule in late 2014 requiring lawyers to report cases in which they intended to argue for a defendant's acquittal or seek a change in the criminal charge.

Lawyers filed a government information disclosure request concerning the rule. The justice bureau responded that because the provision was controversial, it had decided to withdraw it.

The earlier rule required lawyers to report such cases. The Pu'an notice goes further by explicitly stating that a lawyer seeking to change the legal characterization of a crime must obtain the county justice bureau's "study and approval" before expressing the defense argument in court.

Ye Zilong contributed to this report.

Tyler Durden Mon, 09/21/2026 - 21:45

Seattle Mayor Calls For New Gun Laws While Letting Repeat Offenders Roam Free

It's the communist playbook in real time.  Allow crime to fester, then disarm law abiding citizens rather than punishing the people responsible.    

Democratic Socialist Mayor of Seattle, Katie Wilson, has been a disaster for the city and she's only been in office nine months.  So far, multiple major corporate employers are leaving Seattle to avoid tax expansion, homeless camps are growing exponentially, she has triggered several public safety controversies, faced potential recall and plunging public approval. 

Anyone with sense could have predicted this, but Seattle is a nesting ground for woke cultism and Wilson said all the right things during her campaign.

As with any far-left administration, it was only a matter of time before Wilson went after firearms rights.  In a recent announcement on a "new approach to gun violence", the Mayor calls for "preventing gun violence before it happens".  Part of this plan includes Wilson pushing for added restrictions to firearms carry in Washington. 

Wilson wants to work with the state legislature to advance gun violence prevention legislation, including regulation of firearms “in sensitive spaces,” regulation of firearms at the city's center, and an update to juvenile firearm possession and sentencing laws (she does not specify what these updates would entail).  

Washington already preempts most local gun regulation. Cities cannot ban carry on their own; any broader restrictions would require a change in state law. Current state rules limit guns in some city-run stadiums and convention centers, with exceptions for people who have a valid concealed pistol license.

Wilson’s proposal has not spelled out whether licensed concealed carry would be included in every “sensitive space.”  But her added restrictions, as presented, would only affect legal and law abiding gun owners.  

The problem with this model is that it ignores the source of the crime.  The vast majority of gun violence in Seattle is committed by 0.1% of all residents, and the majority of these criminals are repeat offenders.  Roughly 900 people in a city of 780,000 are connected to 52% of the violence.  Why not simply lock these 900 people up for good? 

On such case is Alrick Hollingsworth, who served only seven years for shooting five people are a Seattle bus stop and was released early.  Hollingsworth went back out on the streets this year only to commit another shooting.

Wilson and leftists like her will never lock up repeat offenders this because it would contradict their position on "social solutions" to crime response. Many criminals who commit violence are already on law enforcement radar because they have a long rap sheet of lesser offenses.  Wilson promotes a program called "LEAD Seattle" (Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion) which "diverts" offenders with "lesser crimes" away from prosecution and into social services projects. 

This problem is magnified in juvenile courts where offenders consistently get a slap on the wrist and sent to the revolving door.     

Whether or not the WA legislature agrees with Wilson on increased gun carry restriction is not yet clear, but the narrative is predictable.  Leftist candidates have consistently lost favor with the American public when it comes to gun control and they seem to have backed away from their more aggressive rhetoric on the issue.  However, that doesn't mean they are abandoning their gun grabber roots.  

As we have seen in the past, gun control always starts with incrementalism - They start with less contentious restrictions, like a ban of concealed carry in public spaces, then move the ball forward from there.  Why should the rest of Seattle's citizens pay the price for the actions of 900 dangerous thugs?  There's no logical reason other than control.  The goal is not to solve crime, the goal is to exploit crime as a vehicle to add new laws.  

Tyler Durden Mon, 09/21/2026 - 21:20

China Will Dominate Global Nuclear Energy Through 2035, Analyst Says

Authored by Haley Zaremba via OilPrice.com,

The future of nuclear energy is in China's hands. While the United States remains the world's largest producer of nuclear energy, China's sector is growing at such a rapid clip that it is expected to overtake France as well as the United States to become the world's leading nuclear power producer within the next decade. In addition to this rapid expansion of traditional nuclear power capacity, Beijing has also quickly become the global leader in a broad and diverse range of advanced nuclear power technologies.

"By a wide margin, China will have the world's most dynamic and significant nuclear industry through 2035," Damien Ma, energy lead analyst for Gavekal Technologies, wrote in a recent report, as quoted by the South China Morning Post. "Construction efficiencies mean China can build a new plant in about six years, compared with more than a decade for the latest Vogtle reactors in the US," Ma went on to say.

The United States has added just one nuclear plant in the last decade, Georgia's long-delayed, over-budget, and controversial Plant Vogtle. Over the same time, China added a staggering 34 gigawatts of capacity. And, Beijing's latest five year plan shows that China has no intentions of slowing down.

"With innovation and security as its leading themes, the latest FYP illuminates how nuclear energy underpins multiple strategic priorities for China in the context of not only energy security but also technological innovation and global engagement," the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a nonprofit policy research organization and bipartisan think tank recently reported.

The Chinese government has been eager to build up the most advanced nuclear power sector in the world as a part of Beijing's broader bid to establish lasting dominance in the global energy sector by becoming the world's first electrostate. Building the world's most advanced nuclear energy fleet is a part of this goal, and includes innovative approaches to how nuclear reactors are designed, deployed, and fueled.

"From the world's first in-reactor thorium breeding confirmation to a dual PWR-HTGR plant and commercial supercritical CO2 generation, China is assembling a vertically integrated advanced nuclear ecosystem," Power Magazine reported in March of this year. "The breadth of activity signals a coordinated push toward fuel independence and industrial deployment."

The United States has also been bullish about building up and advancing its aging nuclear sector. The Trump administration has publicized its intentions to "produce lasting American dominance in the global nuclear energy market" and is likewise bullish on developing next-gen nuclear reactors and nuclear fusion technology on its own home turf. Similarly to China, the United States is also fighting to free itself from international nuclear fuel supply chains, and is attempting to do so by building up domestic uranium extraction and enrichment capacities. But the United States' advanced nuclear sector is lagging far behind China when it comes to spending and technological knowhow.

But while China is historically quite secretive about its technological advancements and cutting-edge energy sector developments, this week Beijing made a surprising move to share its expertise with the rest of the world. This week, China signed a deal with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to more freely share its knowledge on high-temperature gas-cooled reactors (HTGRs) with other countries. HGTRs are a form of advanced fourth-generation reactor that is capable of producing nuclear energy at extremely high temperatures, opening avenues for use in a variety of industrial applications.

The new deal "covers cooperation in HTGR research and development, reactor design, construction, commissioning and operation," as well as the exchange of "information on supply chains and personnel training," according to a recent Interesting Engineering report. "The deal could give other countries greater access to China's engineering experience with HTGRs as interest grows in nuclear systems that can provide both electricity and high-temperature industrial heat."

This development is a promising starting point for a more cooperative approach to what is indeed a borderless problem - climate change and the growing problem of artificial intelligence's energy demand growth. Advanced nuclear energy systems could provide a critical lifeline by offering clean energy 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Tyler Durden Mon, 09/21/2026 - 20:55

DHS Lawyer Says Minnesota Judges Coordinated To Block Immigration Enforcement

Authored by Matthew Vadum via The Epoch Times,

The Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) top lawyer accused a federal judge of working with other judges to block immigration law enforcement after the jurist said that the Trump administration's Minnesota enforcement surge created "a grave threat to the rule of law."

Federal law enforcement agents stand in line to keep anti-ICE protesters away from the entrance to the Bishop Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis on Jan. 15, 2026. Octavio Jones/AFP via Getty Images

The accusations followed a New York Times article published on Sept. 17 featuring a joint interview with seven Minnesota judges.

It is unusual for federal judges to sit for wide-ranging media interviews dealing with their rulings and what impact they have had. The high-profile enforcement surge in the Twin Cities ran from December 2025 to the middle of February 2026.

On Jan. 28, U.S. District Judge Patrick Schiltz issued an order saying Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had failed to comply with nearly a hundred court orders. Schiltz, who was confirmed by the U.S. Senate in 2006 after being nominated by President George W. Bush, previously clerked for conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

"ICE is not a law unto itself," the judge said in a written order. "ICE has every right to challenge the orders of this Court, but, like any litigant, ICE must follow those orders unless and until they are overturned or vacated."

During the surge, DHS moved detainees out of Minnesota almost as quickly as attorneys could get into court. DHS General Counsel James Percival said Minnesota judges sat ready to issue emergency orders to keep those cases from leaving the judicial district. Schiltz said the court was responding to the government's failure to obey its orders.

Judge Nancy Brasel said judges "are allowed to speak out about judicial independence" and "should, in order to keep it." Judge Eric Tostrud said Schiltz was "the perfect person to lead us" during the surge, calling him "independent, brilliant, courageous. And not faint of heart." Judge John Tunheim said the government "wasn't arresting, in my view, people who were dangerous criminals on the street."

Percival said on X on Sept. 17 that Schiltz's comments that appeared that day in The New York Times show "profound bias against DHS and the current [administration] and he admits to extreme misconduct." Percival said that Schiltz admitted to "essentially conspiring with his judicial colleagues to thwart DHS's immigration enforcement in Minnesota."

Percival said the next day on X that the article described "judges sitting by their phones ready to issue [temporary restraining orders] ASAP," during the surge even though "there was no emergency." The restraining orders were issued "to prevent judges from outside [Minnesota] from hearing the cases," he said.

The judge said in the interview that his Jan. 28 order was prompted by concern that the federal government's failure to obey court orders had clogged court dockets, exacerbated tensions in the protest-riven metropolis, and jeopardized the constitutional order. He said he believed most of the noncompliance arose from incompetence and understaffing, rather than conscious decisions to defy the court.

Several federal district judges, appointed by presidents from both parties, also spoke with the newspaper.

The Epoch Times reached out for comment to the U.S. Department of Justice. No reply was received by publication time.

Jacob Burg contributed to this report.

Tyler Durden Mon, 09/21/2026 - 20:05

Massachusetts School District Investigated Over Alleged Secret 'Gender Transition'

Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times,

The Department of Education has announced that it is investigating a Massachusetts school district over allegedly enabling a minor girl student's "gender transition" without the knowledge of parents or securing their consent.

The probe was launched by the department's Student Privacy Policy Office (SPPO) against the Public Schools of Northborough and Southborough school district, the department said in a Sept. 17 statement.

The girl was enrolled at Algonquin Regional High School, where school personnel allegedly facilitated the student's "social transition to a boy" while keeping her parents in the dark.

"The parents claim that their daughter participated in counseling sessions after school to support the transition while they were under the impression she was receiving academic assistance for her math class," the department said.

The school personnel also allegedly began referring to the child by a male name and using male pronouns without the parents' knowledge.

According to the Education Department, a school counselor is accused of reporting the parents to the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families (DCF) for countering the school's actions.

In December 2024, DCF removed the child from her family home. The parents are still engaged in custody litigation over their daughter.

The Education Department said the allegations raise serious questions about the school district's compliance with federal laws protecting parental rights, specifically the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment (PPRA).

FERPA grants parents the right to access their children's education records for inspection and review. Parents also have certain control over the disclosure of personal information from these records.

Under PPRA, parents have rights regarding surveys, analyses, or evaluations of their children in certain areas, including sex behavior or attitudes and mental or psychological problems.

The law also covers the administration of physical examinations of minors. Parents have the right to review instructional materials used in the educational curriculum.

The Education Department said that under FERPA, parents can request changes to their child's education records. If the school rejects the requested changes, parents can seek a hearing on the issue at the institution.

According to the department, it is currently unclear whether the school district and the school complied with FERPA and PPRA. The SPPO probe will determine whether these regulations were violated.

"Parents have a right to know what is happening with their children at school, particularly when it concerns deeply personal matters involving their health and well-being," Frank Miller, director of SPPO, said in the statement.

"These egregious allegations are not an isolated problem. Families deserve answers, and SPPO will thoroughly investigate reports like this and hold any educational institution that violates federal law accountable."

The Epoch Times reached out to the Public Schools of Northborough and Southborough and Algonquin Regional High School for comment but did not receive a response by publication time.

Another school district from Massachusetts was previously identified by the Education Department as violating parental rights. In that case, the district was found to have asked students to take part in a survey containing sexually explicit questions despite parents having expressly requested that their children be exempted.

The survey of students as young as seventh grade included questions regarding sexual encounters, alcohol and drug use, and gender identity, the department said, alleging the school district violated PPRA and parents' rights to shape their children's moral education.

Meanwhile, the department announced last month that it had sent letters to schools across the United States, reminding them of educators' obligations under FERPA and PPRA and warning that noncompliance could result in the loss of federal funding.

The letters were sent while the 2026-2027 academic year was underway and were prompted by reports of educational institutions withholding crucial information from parents and issuing surveys containing sexually explicit material even after parents had opted their children out of such activities.

Miller said that in certain cases, state education departments had pressured school districts to violate FERPA.

"The department is committed to putting parents back in the driver's seat. We will fully enforce FERPA and PPRA and ensure parents have the information and authority they need to make decisions for their children," Miller said.

Tyler Durden Mon, 09/21/2026 - 19:15

Saudi Arabia Reroutes Oil Exports As Houthi Strikes Target Yanbu

Satellite images gathered by Bloomberg show supertankers with capacity for 14 million barrels at Saudi Arabia's Gulf export terminals over the weekend, the highest tanker count observed since at least June, according to data compiled from the European Union's Sentinel-2 satellite.

Source: Javier Blas

However, as OilPrice notes, overall Hormuz traffic kept falling over the same weekend, nonetheless. Just a dozen commodity vessels crossed the strait, down from 35 a week earlier, and Thursday's crossings totaled four tankers against a 10-day moving average of 16, Kpler data cited by Reuters showed.

Saudi Arabia moved crude through the strait at 2.9 million barrels a day over the past six days, JPMorgan said in a Friday note, calling the kingdom's shift "the most notable pivot" among Gulf producers.

On September 11, drone strikes launched from Iraq shut down Saudi Arabia's East-West pipeline, also known as Petroline, which normally carries as much as 7 million barrels a day across 1,200 kilometers from Eastern Province fields to the Yanbu terminal on the Red Sea. The attack took 4-5 million barrels a day of that capacity offline, with total Saudi crude loadings falling from 7.5 million bpd in January and February to about 2.1 million barrels a day by mid-September, a decline of more than 70%.

US Energy Secretary Chris Wright said September 15 the pipeline would restart within days, but an industry analyst told Al-Monitor pump stations were destroyed in the strike and full restoration could take six weeks or more.

Yemen's Houthi movement claimed cruise missile, ballistic missile and drone strikes on Riyadh and on Aramco facilities at Yanbu overnight September 18-19, and Saudi Arabia confirmed the Houthis targeted civilian infrastructure at the port where the East-West pipeline terminates. The Riyadh missile was intercepted and Saudi authorities reported no casualties or damage from either strike, but the attempt puts Yanbu, the kingdom's primary outlet since the Hormuz freeze, under renewed threat.

Aramco pipes crude to its Ras Tanura terminal on the Persian Gulf, ships it on smaller vessels to the Gulf of Oman, and transfers it to larger tankers there, a routing it is using to move about 60 million barrels loaded at Ras Tanura for September and October delivery, mainly to Chinese and South Korean refiners. Gulf exports have rebounded to an average of 1 million to 1.5 million barrels a day, roughly in line with August levels.

Tyler Durden Mon, 09/21/2026 - 18:50

Nvidia CEO Says "Zero Percent" Chance Of AI Making Humans Extinct

Authored by Chris Summers via The Epoch Times,

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has rejected the claims of some artificial intelligence researchers that the technology could wipe out humanity, calling the arguments "doomsday narratives."

Huang said in a Sept. 17 interview with CBS News that predictions made by former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon and Anthropic's alignment science lead, Evan Hubinger, were not grounded in science.

Coxon said in a Sept. 9 post on X that the "people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade."

Hubinger said he agreed it could end humanity.

"Jacob is correct here - We really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans! I personally think it is >10% within the next decade," he wrote.

Huang told CBS's senior business and technology correspondent Jo Ling Kent on Thursday that 2030 won't be the end of the world.

"There is zero percent chance that's going to be the end of the world," he said. "Scaring people is unnecessary. It is irresponsible."

U.S. President Donald Trump said in a Sept. 14 post on Truth Social that the United States needed no AI guardrails and that it already had significant criminal and regulatory power over Big Tech companies.

"There is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers, and the only one that is happy about it is China," Trump wrote.

Nvidia CEO Agrees With Trump

Huang said on Thursday that he agreed with the U.S. president's view on legislation and regulation.

"Before we come up with new laws and new regulations, let's apply the current laws and current regulations," Huang said.

"There are all kinds of laws and regulations. ... You have cybersecurity unauthorized entry, you have damage liabilities, all kinds of liabilities associated with cybersecurity. All kinds of liabilities associated with products. ... My point is apply those first, don't let this doomsday narrative cause someone to relieve them of the laws that currently exist."

Huang has been invited to a dinner at the White House on Sept. 24, when Trump will host Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

Trump has said AI will be on the agenda during his meeting with Xi.

China

Huang told CBS that Xi wanted China to benefit from AI.

"They want China to prosper, just as we want America to prosper," Huang said.

Nvidia manufactures specialized H200 chips that power large language models (LLMs) used by AI agents to synthesize information.

Trump said in a Dec. 8 post on Truth Social that he had told Xi the United States would allow exports of Nvidia H200 chips to approved customers in China "under conditions that allow for continued strong National Security."

In July 2025, Nvidia restarted exports of H20 graphics processing units (GPUs) to China after U.S. regulators approved it.

Nvidia is now worth more than $5 trillion, making it the most valuable company on the planet. The company manufactures many of its chips in Taiwan, but last year, it opened a semiconductor fabrication plant in Phoenix, Ariz.

Last month, Taiwanese authorities indicted nine people, including a senior partner manager at Nvidia's Taiwan unit, for allegedly taking part in a scheme to export servers with advanced Nvidia chips to China.

In June, Taiwan-born Huang told Nvidia shareholders that attempts to build artificial intelligence data centers with smuggled chips were a "dead end," because the company provides no support or repairs for such products.

"National security is first and foremost," Huang said. "Where commercial opportunities conflict with U.S. national security, national security comes first."

Tyler Durden Mon, 09/21/2026 - 18:25

Putin Plans To Skip Miami G20, Prioritizing China Trip: Officials

Both the Kremlin and the White House had recently signaled mutual openness to the idea of President Putin actually attending the G20 Miami Summit which is set for December 14-15. Some reports have recently expressed optimism that some kind of grand Ukraine peace deal could emerge from such an engagement.

However, Bloomberg has poured cold water on this, reporting Monday that "Vladimir Putin is set to travel to China for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit hosted by President Xi Jinping but is likely to skip the Group of 20 in the U.S. with Donald Trump."

Source: The White House

Kremlin officials have indicated that a personal appearance at the APEC would be Putin's first since 2017

"There’s only a very slim prospect of him joining President Trump for the G20 in Florida, the people said, asking not to be identified because the matter isn’t public," notes Bloomberg.

But it does remain possible, given the Shenzhen-hosted APEC summit takes place almost a full month ahead of the annual G20 summit.

The Kremlin now signaling that it intends to turn down any potential Trump invitation perhaps underscores that Putin is much more comfortably in Xi's corner.

Back in April, The Washington Post reported, "The United States intends to invite Russian President Vladimir Putin to the Group of 20 leaders’ summit scheduled for December at President Donald Trump’s Doral golf resort in Miami, though the invitation has not yet been sent."

And then just weeks ago there was a Russian delegation in attendance for the Asheville G20 finance ministers and bank governors meeting. The Europeans were angry over their presence, which included a meeting with Scott Bessent.

Ukraine's President Zelensky is expected to be in Miami. This raised the prospect of an unprecedented Putin-Zelensky meeting even as the war rages. But it should be remembered that Putin has time and again stated he would entertain face-to-face negotiations with Zelensky only if a final settlement was to be signed.

So if the White House does intend to get Putin there, a lot of scrambling and diplomatic progress would have to happen in the next few months. But Putin might also simply wish to send a signal that Western efforts to isolate him on the world stage have failed.

President Zelenskyy said he is ready to meet Putin in person in the United States if Putin attends the G20 summit in Miami in December.

"Yes, of course. We have to come. We have to meet, to speak and make decisions.

It’s not about words. What I will tell him or what he wants to… pic.twitter.com/PVjyTJrS5O

— Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) September 12, 2026

Traveling to Miami would send a resounding symbol to hawkish European capitals, akin to the prior Alaska summit with Trump. But again, it seems that so far the Kremlin is giving this possibility the preemptive cold shoulder.

Tyler Durden Mon, 09/21/2026 - 18:00

Houston-Area Birth Tourism Center Shut Down In Legal Action

Authored by Kimberly Hayek via The Epoch Times,

A birth tourism operation in the Houston area has agreed to close in a settlement, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced on Friday.

An advertisement for a Houston-area “birth tourism” operation known as De’Ai Postpartum Care Center. The Texas attorney general filed a lawsuit against the center, claiming it has operated an unlawful “birth tourism” business. Courtesy of the state of Texas Attorney General's Office

The center "unlawfully facilitated over 1,000 births to foreign Chinese nationals," Paxton posted on X.

Paxton's office first sued the operation in late April, stating the De'Ai Postpartum Care Center primarily helped Chinese nationals travel to Texas to give birth and secure U.S. citizenship for their children.

The center had operated for years across multiple Houston-area properties. Locations included sites in Sugar Land, Houston, Richmond, and Rosenberg, according to details from the original state lawsuit.

Gov. Greg Abbott on July 21 ordered Texas state agencies to start investigating and eliminating illegal birth tourism schemes and hold accountable any licensed healthcare providers that participate in them.

"Texas will not tolerate the exploitation of our immigration laws by individuals traveling to the United States illegally or under false pretenses to give birth and secure citizenship for their child," Abbott said in a statement at the time.

The De'Ai Postpartum Care Center did not respond to The Epoch Times after multiple attempts to contact them. The De'Ai Postpartum Care Center did not appear to maintain a public website in English, but it had two Chinese-language websites that have since been closed.

State investigators described facilities at the center that could house multiple families and an operation that was capable of handling up to 20 births per day, according to the attorney general's office.

"The Center's scheme not only facilitated an invasion of Texas, but it also involved shielding and facilitating violations of immigration law. Birthright citizenship is a scam that threatens national security, and I will do everything in my power to stop unlawful 'birth tourism' schemes like this one." Paxton said in an April 29 statement.

The lawsuit alleged the center coached clients on how to navigate immigration procedures and evade laws when seeking visas and citizenship for themselves and their children. That alleged coaching included encouraging Chinese nationals to conceal that the primary purpose of their travel was to give birth.

"To make matters worse, operators of the Center were aware that U.S. visas are prohibited for birth tourism purposes," Paxton's office said in a statement after filing the lawsuit.

"In fact, just last week, the Center noted that the federal government is 'strictly' policing birth tourism and recommended that women apply for visas 'before pregnancy' in order to avoid detection," his office stated at the time.

Expectant families could spend tens of thousands of dollars on the center's services, the suit claimed. Once a child born through the operation turned 21, that child could petition for permanent residency for parents and siblings.

Marketing occurred through social media platforms, private messaging applications, word of mouth, and Chinese websites, according to the complaint.

The lawsuit noted that since Jan. 24, 2020, the United States has expressly denied tourist travel "for the primary purpose of giving birth in the United States to obtain citizenship for the child," and has maintained that all birth tourism visa applications "will be denied."

Tom Gantert and Jill McLaughlin contributed to this report.

* * * (there's also an extra large compass)

Tyler Durden Mon, 09/21/2026 - 17:40

Diesel Hits New Record Above $6.50 As Export Ban Fears Mount, Gasoline Squeeze Looms

UBS analysts warned that the global diesel squeeze could get worse as two major suppliers potentially pull barrels from an already strained petroleum products market. Russia may extend diesel export restrictions through October, while chatter in Washington about a US fuel export ban continues to grow.

As of Monday morning, AAA data show the national average for diesel has reached $6.51 per gallon, with prices gaining a staggering 88 cents so far this month. Prices are rising nearly every day and surging beyond the peak set in 2022 during the early days of the Russia-Ukraine war. 

UBS energy expert Anna Kishmariya says a Russian extension would derail her team's assumption that exports would begin recovering in October as a domestic diesel surplus emerged. She said keeping restrictions in place could suggest more extensive damage to refinery units and a longer repair cycle than previously expected.

The bigger risk is a policy decision coming from Washington, as the US has accounted for roughly 30% of global diesel and gasoil exports this year. Any US export ban would leave major overseas importers highly exposed.

Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley wrote on X this weekend that diesel prices at the pump in his state were hitting $6.57 a gallon and proposed the idea: "Why doesn't Pres. Trump put an embargo on diesel exports like presidents in the 70s put embargoes on ag products bc food prices were inflated."

On Monday morning, Trump said Russia had "lost control" of its diesel industry due to the war with Ukraine, calling for an end to the "ridiculous and never-ending" war.

Trump was quoted by the Financial Times earlier today as saying he had been on a call with Ukraine's Zelensky, pressing him to stop drone attacks on Russian refineries.

The fuel shock is coming at an uncomfortable time for the Federal Reserve as it confronts broader inflation pressure. Policymakers raised interest rates by 25 bps last week, and Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari warned that excessive inflation extends beyond energy.

Goldman Sachs commodity experts Yulia Zhestkova Grigsby and Daan Struyven warned last week that the diesel crisis could soon push gasoline prices higher, setting the stage for the next major squeeze.

"The key reason for this new recommendation is that refiners' switching output from gasoline to diesel is rapidly tightening gasoline markets, where less elevated price levels leave room for sharp price upside if the Mideast and Russia-Ukraine conflicts continued to constrain refining output for longer or if more energy infrastructure were damaged," Grigsby and Struyven wrote in the note. 

On the inflation front, Citi US economist Veronica Clark asked clients: "Will rising diesel costs push up goods prices?" 

Clark's take: 

We were surprised to see the median core PCE forecast in the September SEP rise to 3.4% from 3.3% in June. We think it is likely that most Fed forecasts do not include upcoming revisions and that core PCE will ultimately be lower than many officials are expecting this year. 

We continue to track core PCE around 3.0-3.1%Q4/Q4. A renewed substantial increase in energy prices has caused fresh concerns about pass-through to core inflation, particularly as elevated diesel prices mean higher transportation costs for various goods. But recent historical evidence is limited about the correlation between higher diesel prices and core goods in CPI. 

We are still hesitant to conclude there will be substantial pass-through as long as real income growth remains soft. Market rents have picked up slightly in recent months but remain softer than pre-pandemic, suggesting shelter inflation should continue to slow.

As for the proposed US export ban, Height Capital Markets research director Benjamin Salisbury noted, "While it may be politically tempting, we still expect Republicans to resist the urge to ban diesel or other petroleum exports." 

* * *

Tyler Durden Mon, 09/21/2026 - 17:20

Kunstler: Suburban Sprawl Is A 'Death Trap' For America's National Spirit

Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Clusterfuck Nation,

The Late, Great Debate About Suburbia, An Apologia

"It is difficult to design a place that will not attract people. What is remarkable is how often this has been accomplished."

- William H Whyte

Greenland, yes, yes, okay ! Smooth move. . . !

But. . . today we put aside the vagaries of national and geo-politics to return to a longstanding affliction in American life that is evermore absent from the public discourse and deserves an airing: the quandary of our suburban sprawl living arrangement, and what can be done about it.

First, get this: the demolition derby we live in day-by-day is responsible for as much misery, injustice, economic failure, and ill-health as anything else in our collective doings.

Its sheer ugliness - the horror of the six-lane highway with its ensembles of strip-malls, burger shacks, muffler shops, topless bars, Big Box stops, screaming signage, and the vast wastelands of parking. . . the suicide-inducing housing pods marching out remorselessly through forest, prairie, upland, lowland, basin and range. . . the depressing freeways with their monster entanglements of on-and-off-ramps. . . this epic mutilation of our continental landscape - is an evil quite beyond our ordinary imaginings. This inescapable, immersive ugliness, I remind you, is entropy-made-visible. And entropy, of course, is the force in nature that you really don't want to mess around with because it is the agent of death.

I do not exaggerate. It's a death trap, the way we live in this country, for the mind, the body, the family, the community, and the national spirit. Until fairly recently this was widely apprehended (or at least suspected). But the politicization of everything has wrecked what had been a growing and pretty robust national discussion about it.

To re-cap briefly: this is a big country. It had once been composed of cities, towns, farmlands, and wilderness, a coherent transect of human habitation. The invention of the motor car changed all that, starting in the 1920s.

The ambiguous territory outside these cities and towns represented vast potential fortunes in property development. . . and the race was on.

The Great Depression and World War 2 interrupted the suburban expansion, but it resumed on steroids afterward when the rest of the world was a smoldering ruin and we could sell them anything (and lend them money to buy it). The construction of all the new suburban infrastructure alone was a major component of the late 20th century US economy, and then it became the scaffold for our so-called consumer economy, comprised of furnishing that scaffold with so much stuff that it overflowed into thousands of self-storage sheds.

The decanting of our cities that ensued - the steady dribble of the middle-classes moving out, along with the commerce that served them - left most of those cities ruined. Eventually even the small towns got whacked, the farms paved-over, too. What we're left with is a weird hybrid landscape that is neither town nor country, has few of the civic amenities that add-up to a genuine sense of community, and none of the rural charm formerly found in the countryside. It became painfully obvious that a suburban house was a cartoon of a house in the country, and living in a cartoon is just not spiritually rewarding. Cue the Prozac. . . .

The whole kit, aided by the dogmas of zoning and government lending schemes, became easily reproducible from one locale to the next. For the development industry, the template became a habit. . . and so it boogied on through the decades. By the 1990s, the generation coming into power (yeah, the Boomers) started a revolt against all that. It crystalized in the New Urbanism movement and its signature org, the Congress for the New Urbanism, CNU. We can do better than this, this. . . this. . . national clusterfuck, they declared.

I was excited by this movement, wrote a couple of books about it, got to know the excellent people behind it - architects, urban planners, civic officials, property developers. They were smart, skilled, visionary. They believed that walkable communities and disciplining the automobile would produce places worth caring about and worth living in - and it seemed to me that such an effort would go a long way to curing the desperate anomie of American life. Over the next several decades, the New Urbanists produced scores of great projects. Some were actual new towns, some projects were renovations of existing towns, neighborhoods, business districts, and small town Main Streets. The results of their work are visible all over the country now.

But then, the political crack-up of the country commenced around 2009 with the Great Financial Crash and the ascent of Obama-inspired Wokeness, and really accelerated with the reaction to the advent of Mr. Trump in 2016. From that point on, as a nation, we've been arguing about everything but the disastrous arrangement of daily life on-the-ground in America. Some new twists in the spin of history have made matters worse.

One is that suburban sprawl is, by default, the favorite pattern of MAGA (and I happen to be a Trump voter). To them, suburbia is all tied up with ideas about economic liberty, as is the whole apparatus of Happy Motoring. They are still mentally stuck in the imagery of the TV car commercial - the lone sedan gliding through the sine-cosine curves of the empty seacoast highway, the romantic epitome of freedom! It's a lie, pretty much, because the more universal experience of motoring these days is getting stuck at a crawl in freeway traffic with a thousand other motorists per mile, half of whom desperately need to take a pee and can't do a darn thing about it.

And then there's the fallacy of the suburban housing development being a "community" - bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! See: I don't even have to explain that. But, MAGA tends to see it this way, along with all the activity that enables it - the mortgage system, the production home-builders ("it's more than a house, you understand, it's a home!"), all of which is so central to a booming economy. So, you don't dare inveigh against suburbia - except I will, because it is making America worse, not great again, and somebody's got to say it.

Yet another thing has come along to wreck the New Urbanist dream of reconstituting the American city and small town, and that thing is the World Economic Forum's (WEF's) proposal they call the "15-minute City." Superficially, it seems to resemble the traditional neighborhood model that the NU's espouse. But deeper down the 15-Minute City is much more about a surveillance and tracking apparatus - and this has caused many conservatives (especially them) to reject anything that looks like traditional urban design.

It's a most unfortunate situation, but that's where things stand, and it's one reason that the debate over suburban sprawl has stopped. A final and equally unfortunate development is that the CNU org came to be taken over the past decade by political Wokesters more interested in Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity BS than in their original mission of providing workable remedies for the tragic fiasco of American suburbia.

And now you know why it is so hard to talk about this geography of nowhere anymore.

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of ZeroHedge.

Tyler Durden Mon, 09/21/2026 - 16:20

Judge Rules EPA Must Reinstate $7 Billion Biden-Era Subsidies For Solar Promotion

Authored by Jeremy Lott via The Epoch Times,

A $7 billion federal government grant program for solar promotion, authorized during the Biden administration, was reinstated by a federal judge on Sept. 18 in a ruling that rebuffed the Trump administration's efforts to cancel it.

Solar panel array at a solar farm near Lancaster, Calif., on June 17, 2026. Mario Tama/Getty Images

Judge Mary McElroy of the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island wrote in her ruling that the current Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) "termination of the Solar for All program is declared unlawful."

Money was appropriated in 2022 for a Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund under the Inflation Reduction Act that later spawned the $7 billion Solar for All grant program in June 2023. Congress at the time dedicated billions of dollars to the program and a separate smaller amount in the millions of dollars for its administration by the EPA.

Funds for the grant program would be used to "create and expand low-income solar programs that provide financing and technical assistance, such as workforce development, to enable low-income and disadvantaged communities to deploy and benefit from residential solar," the Biden-era EPA wrote.

Current EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin criticized the program on Sept. 7, 2025, saying that canceling it would save taxpayers billions of dollars.

"The One Big Beautiful Bill eliminated the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which included a $7 billion pot called 'Solar for All,'" he said in a statement announcing the program's cancellation.

"EPA no longer has the statutory authority to administer the program or the appropriated funds to keep this boondoggle alive."

An audit of the program found that as of early August 2025, the program's 60 grant recipients had "drawn down approximately $71 million, or 1.02 percent, of the obligated funds for various aspects of project planning and implementation."

The Trump-era EPA canceled the program. Under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the current Congress canceled some funds for administering the program and rescinded Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund money that was not already obligated.

The EPA noted that none of the plaintiffs suing the government were actually grant recipients. Instead, they were prospective subrecipients or third-order beneficiaries, such as unions. The government argued that they lacked standing to sue.

McElroy disagreed on the standing question. She also interpreted the text of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act to mean that "existing grants were not to be rescinded" and that only minor "unobligated" funds could be clawed back.

Practically, all of the funds were spoken for by designated recipient organizations. What that means is that, unless reversed on appeal, the current EPA may find itself obligated to give out the remaining nearly $7 billion in solar promotion subsidies from the Biden era.

Patrick Crowley, president of the Rhode Island AFL-CIO, one of the parties that brought suit, told The Epoch Times that he was "very pleased with the ruling."

The union president said he did not "think the federal government should appeal," as the ruling makes "very clear that this program should never have been stopped by the EPA in the first place."

Carolyn Holran, a spokesperson for the EPA, indicated that Crowley might be disappointed by her agency's next steps.

"EPA is reviewing the decision and considering options for appeal," she told The Epoch Times.

Crowley said the total Rhode Island slice of federal funding should come to $49 million, which would provide "thousands of good-paying union jobs."

Unions and the Trump administration have often been at loggerheads over green projects. Crowley said that they had notched up legal victories on offshore wind projects and solar grants, and promised more.

"We won't back down in our efforts to protect our members' jobs while we build a new carbon-free economy," he said.

Tyler Durden Mon, 09/21/2026 - 15:45

Verizon Says Cut Cable Behind FAA Ground-Stops East Coast Airports, Not Their Fault

(Update 1540ET): Verizon confirmed the "unknown equipment issue" behind the massive ground stop in the tri-state area was a cut fiber cable in New Jersey. The company says construction contractors working near an Amtrak rail line dug it up, that Verizon's facilities were fully functional until that happened, and that the carrier bears no responsibility for the incident. Technicians are on site, and the company says it is working to repair the damaged cable and restore connectivity.

FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford told reporters an older circuit serving Philadelphia TRACON failed this morning. Controllers tried to flip to the backup fiber the agency had installed as part of its modernization push, and the backup was already dead. The agency did not know the fiber was cut until the primary circuit went down, Bedford said. The damaged stretch is roughly 600 feet between New Brunswick and Newark. Repairing that line, he said, could take about 13 hours. "It's massive, I'm told."

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy put it more bluntly: an Amtrak construction crew cut into the fiber and forced the FAA to pause Northeast traffic.

By mid-afternoon LaGuardia had resumed in some form, and Philadelphia and JFK were being walked back from full ground stops toward delay programs. Newark and Teterboro were still the problem children. That is the airspace Philadelphia TRACON was handed in 2024, the same facility that had radio-frequency trouble last August and a string of radar and comms failures through 2025.

The FAA is trying to stand up a replacement circuit rather than wait out a 13-hour splice. Until the data is flowing again, inbound traffic into the remaining restricted fields stays on the ground at origin, which is still a ground stop, still the most restrictive tool the agency has. World leaders are landing in New York this week for the UN General Assembly.

* * *

The FAA has issued ground-stop orders to arrivals into every major New York-area airport: JFK, LaGuardia, and Newark. Teterboro, Westchester, and Philadelphia are in the same pile. Official reason: equipment outage.

What happened

The first restrictions hit Newark, Teterboro, and Philadelphia after problems with radio frequencies at Philadelphia TRACON, the terminal radar facility that handles arrivals and departures in that airspace. The FAA later added JFK, LaGuardia, and Westchester.

The agency has not publicly detailed which systems failed, how long repairs will take, or whether New York TRACON (N90) is separately affected. That lack of specifics is why the disruption is being described as an "unknown equipment issue."

92 cancellations and nearly 70 diversions at Newark so far today as an FAA equipment outage continues to hold flights bound for Newark, Philadelphia, and Teterboro at their origin airports. Traffic comparison between last week and today. pic.twitter.com/6mMwzi4mrG

— Flightradar24 (@flightradar24) September 21, 2026

A ground stop holds aircraft destined for the listed airports on the ground at their origin. It is one of the FAA's most restrictive tools and is used when controllers cannot safely accept more inbound traffic.

What actually broke? Frequencies, per the first FAA statement. Then just "equipment / outage" on the national status board. No system named, no timeline, no "we kicked the rack and it came back."

Philadelphia TRACON is not a random facility: it is the same one that took over Newark approach control in 2024 and then suffered repeated radar and radio failures through 2025, severe enough that controllers went out on trauma leave. On Aug. 28 of last year, the FAA ground-stopped Newark for roughly two hours over what it called equipment issues affecting "some radio frequencies in the Philadelphia TRACON area," with arrival delays averaging about 90 minutes - the same facility and the same stated cause as today. 

Impact

Newark saw the earliest and heaviest effects. As of 11:07 a.m. ET, FAA data showed average departure delays out of Newark running about 90 minutes and increasing, with the ground stop set to expire at 11:15 a.m. and a 30-60% chance of extension. Flight-tracking data showed dozens of jets queued on the pavement, along with dozens of cancellations and diversions. Teterboro departure delays were steeper.

Via @Bogs4NY

Boston Logan also has restrictions, though those are listed as volume and weather rather than the same equipment problem.

Because JFK, LGA, and EWR sit on one of the busiest corridors in the country, the stops ripple nationally: crews and aircraft get out of position, later banks get late, and connecting passengers miss onward flights.

Maybe another rogue AI escaped a sandbox? 

Tyler Durden Mon, 09/21/2026 - 15:40

Bessent Declares All Iran Airlines To Be 'Shut Down Around The World' Wednesday

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent declared on Monday that by Wednesday Sept. 23, "all the Iranian airlines will be shut down around the world."

"If they land, you cannot provide them with fuel, you cannot provide them with landing services, you cannot sell them tickets, or you will be knocked out of the dollar system," he described.

Bessent on Iran:

On September 23, all Iranian airlines will be shut down around the world.

How do we do that? If they land, you cannot provide them with fuel, you cannot provide them with landing services, you cannot sell them tickets, or you will be knocked out of the dollar… pic.twitter.com/pX5wfEobV3

— Clash Report (@clashreport) September 21, 2026

The new warning and 'promise' was issued after the US earlier this month imposed sanctions on "all remaining Iranian airlines" which had yet to face such penalties - thus Bessent's new declaration is that these entities are about to collapse under the weight of Washington actions, which now is to include secondary targeting.

The Treasury Department has also lately targeted Iranian companies and industries supporting Iran's aviation sector.

Some 27 airlines have already been sanctioned - also most recently the major Mahan Air has faced expanded sanctions (after first being targeted by Washington all the way back in 2011).

The Treasury has famed all of this as part of efforts to deny the Iranian government the ability to move "weapons, personnel, and illicit cargo".

Bessent stated to CNBC that all Iranian airlines will be shut down globally on Sept. 23 - given that any fuel, landing, and ticket providers involved with the companies risk dollar-system exclusion.

Ironically, Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian and his delegation is expected to fly into New York City just the day prior, on Tuesday - to attend the UN General Assembly. He is set to give a formal address to the UN body on Wednesday.

This will provide rare opportunity for potential White House diplomacy to take place on the sidelines, which could happen as early as Tuesday.

As for the heavily sanctioned aviation industry, in recent years the Islamic Republic has suffered some significant aerial disasters, which included the May 19, 2024 death of President Ebrahim Raisi. His military helicopter went down in a rugged, mountainous area of northwestern Iran.

via Reuters

Some speculate that lack of airline parts and aging aircraft, due to the long-standing US targeting of the industry, has only served to increase the chances of aviation disasters.

Tyler Durden Mon, 09/21/2026 - 15:30

US Opens Foreign Funding Investigations Into Duke, University Of North Dakota

Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times,

The State Department and the Department of Education are investigating Duke University and the University of North Dakota over allegedly violating foreign funding disclosure rules.

The statue of Washington Duke on Duke University's East Campus with Baldwin Auditorium is shown in Durham, N.C., on April 11, 2006. Sara D. Davis/Getty Images

Section 117 of the Higher Education Act of 1965 requires postsecondary institutions that receive federal financial assistance to disclose the source of foreign gifts and contracts with an annual value of $250,000 or more, according to a Sept. 16 statement.

The law aims to counter undue foreign influence in America's higher education sector. Both universities receive taxpayer support to develop crucial technologies.

However, a review of records submitted by the universities "indicated the submission of incomplete, inaccurate, and untimely disclosures," the Department of Education said in the statement.

In a Sept. 15 letter to Duke University president Vincent E. Price, the department raised concerns about the institution's research collaboration with China's Wuhan University. This agreement between the universities has led to the establishment of Duke Kunshan University in Jiangsu, China, in 2013.

Wuhan University is overseen by China's Ministry of Education and another state entity that oversees China's nuclear weapons and military research programs. The institution plays an important role in the country's national defense science and tech innovation.

China's Ministry of Education requires joint-venture universities, such as Duke Kunshan University, to have a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) unit to monitor their operations. These units can also influence administrative tasks. Moreover, Duke Kunshan University's Board of Trustees appears to include key Chinese regime officials, according to the letter.

The Education Department's review of Sec. 117 disclosure reports from Duke shows that the university has reported 1,266 qualifying foreign funding transactions since July 2020, totaling roughly $1.01 billion. The institution allegedly engages in "systemic reporting errors related to timely disclosure of contracts with foreign sources," the department said in the letter.

As for the University of North Dakota (UND), the department's Sept. 15 letter to the institution's president Andrew Armacost highlighted the university's critical role in America's national security efforts.

Specifically, UND's School of Aerospace partners with the North Dakota Army and Air National Guard, the U.S. Air Force, and private sector defense contractors. UND also provides a training environment to support U.S. drone dominance in uncrewed air systems.

Since July 2020, the university has reported 71 transactions that would qualify under Section 117, valued at around $98 million. Many of these transactions "appear to have involved Chinese aviation companies," the letter said.

The Department of Education instructed both universities to submit records of tax compliance; Section 117 compliance structure; international research collaborations; foreign government talent program compliance; foreign gifts, grants, and contracts; and international faculty, research personnel, and student agreements.

"Unfortunately, it appears that both Duke and UND have provided untimely and incomplete foreign funding disclosures, which include erroneously identifying certain governmental partners as 'non-governmental,'" Under Secretary of Education Nicholas Kent said in the statement.

"We expect these universities will cooperate fully. The Department of Education and the Department of State will continue to work together to vigorously ensure the integrity and accountability of our nation's colleges and universities in reporting their foreign gifts and contracts," Kent said.

The Epoch Times reached out to Duke University and the University of North Dakota for comment but did not receive a response by the time of publication.

In an email to The Chronicle, Duke's student-run news organization, a spokesperson from the institution said they were "reviewing the letter carefully." The university is "committed to complying with the law and will continue to do so in a manner that is consistent with our academic mission," the spokesperson said.

The recent investigations come after the Education Department announced its partnership with the State Department in February, aimed at improving transparency of foreign contracts and gift reporting in higher education institutions.

According to a fact sheet published at the time, the partnership aligns with President Donald Trump's April 2025 executive order, Transparency Regarding Foreign Influence at American Universities.

In the order, Trump wrote that it is the administration's policy to "end the secrecy" regarding foreign funds flowing into the country's educational institutions.

Last month, the Pentagon announced it had asked 30 academic institutions to audit their research, academic, and financial collaborations with foreign entities that are deemed to threaten national security.

The Pentagon's notices were sent to universities linked to certain research facilities or foreign schools in China, Iran, or Russia.

Tyler Durden Mon, 09/21/2026 - 15:00

Big Tech's Next AI Battleground Is Your Face, Loop Capital Says

Smartglasses are set to be the "next major computing platform," according to Loop Capital analysts, as Meta currently leads the space, with Google, Samsung, Apple, and SNAP preparing their own AI-powered eyewear.

Loop Capital analyst Rob Sanderson wrote in a note on Sunday that an "inflection point" has arrived for smart glasses, which are "transitioning from wearable camera accessories to what is becoming a primary hardware interface for conversational AI."

Sanderson and analyst Anthony Chukumba spoke with wearable-tech executive Jon Li about the smart glasses industry and where it's headed into the new year.

Li shared our view that Meta dominates the smart glasses industry with its Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, while Google is building an ecosystem around Android XR and Snap holds an advantage in more advanced augmented reality. He said Apple could remain on the sidelines until 2028 or 2029 before introducing its own smart glasses.

Here are the key points from the conversation between Loop Capital analysts and Li:

Jon Li is a seasoned technology executive with extensive product management, user experience design, and business development experience. Mr. Li is currently Managing Partner of strategic consultancy Asentio where he advises companies on product strategy, commercialization, and human-AI collaboration. He previously served as US General Manager for XREAL, where he was instrumental in driving the company's expansion into the US market through the development of strategic and retail distribution partnerships. Earlier in his career he held senior product and program management positions with Indigo Technologies, SERES EV, and YouSpace and senior design positions with Motorola, Philips, and FLIR Systems.

Bullish on Android XR broadly... Mr. Li is bullish on the Android XR smartglasses operating system (OS), which Google has developed in partnership with Samsung and Qualcomm. He noted Android XR leverages Google's existing Android OS, large developer base, and mature developer framework and tools. In addition, Mr. Li views Android XR as a "true digital assistant" with the ability to utilize users’ calendars, tasks, documents, location, etc. to provide contextual assistance in real time. He noted one significant difference between Android OS and Android XR is Google plans to more tightly control distribution of the latter by working with a limited number of partners (e.g., Samsung, XREAL). Mr. Li expects Android XR and Gemini AI features to be updated every few months, while hardware changes would occur at most once a year.

...and Warby Parker's Intelligent Eyewear more specifically. Mr. Li is also fairly upbeat about Warby Parker's forthcoming Intelligent Eyewear launch, which he views as a key component of mass market smartglasses adoption. Mr. Li believes Warby Parker is a compelling Android XR partner given the optical retailers' history of transforming the eyeglass purchase process (i.e., online and in store) as well as ability to educate first-time buyers and provide initial fittings and post-purchase support. All that said, Mr. Li questioned the strength of Warby Parker's post-purchase customer relationships given the fact Google, not Warby Parker, controls the digital assistant consumers will be interfacing with.

Views Snap as having a multi-year lead on full AR. While previous versions were not released for commercial distribution, Snap's recently introduced SPECS are the company's 5th generation hardware design. Mr. Li believes Snap's long-term focus and extensive experience with augmented reality on smartphones gives it a multi-year lead over competitors and expects the cadence of multiple iterations will shrink and cost-reduce its offering. Mr. Li sees enterprise suitability and highlights the base of customers in industrial production, manufacturing, healthcare and other verticals left stranded by Microsoft's discontinued HoloLens platform as an area of obvious interest. Mr. Li believes it will ultimately be the developer community and partner ecosystem that drives category adoption and sees Snap's ~450K developers using Lens Studio as a meaningful advantage.

Apple launch probably later than sooner, will lift overall market. Mr. Li believes Apple is unlikely to enter the smartglasses market until 2028/2029 given the company's long history of learning from competitors' earlier products to introduce a superior version later (e.g., iPod, iPhone, AirPods). Mr. Li believes Apple will initially introduce a premium, higher priced product (i.e., ~$800 as compared to $499 for the top-of-the-line Ray-Ban Meta Wayfarer Optics) and focus on user experience as opposed to hardware specifications; ultimately, he thinks Apple's success will hinge on the strength of the AI assistant and level of integration with the broader iOS ecosystem, stating Siri AI is not yet where it needs to be. Mr. Li thinks an Apple entry will be a net positive for existing industry players by drawing more attention to and legitimizing smartglasses, pointing to the impact the company's recent introduction of the iPhone Duo is having on foldable smartphones. 

Beyond Loop Capital and their insights into the smart glasses industry via an insider, Luca Solca, Bernstein's senior equity analyst and global luxury-goods sector head, covering companies including EssilorLuxottica, LVMH, Hermès and Richemont, and recently pointed out emerging backlash in the public domain of these glasses, with some trends on social media going viral, such as "pervert glasses," and such. 

We suspect Meta, Snap, Google, and other players will eventually need to confront the "pervert glasses" narrative with a counter narrative of their own. Good luck solving that with a marketing campaign.

Tyler Durden Mon, 09/21/2026 - 14:45

Trump's 48-Hour Houthi Strike Whiplash Was Triggered By Desire To 'Help His Friend' MbS

President Trump's abrupt Saturday return to the White House from Camp David, where he had been slated to spend the whole weekend, had set off an avalanche of speculation on potential military escalation in the Middle East.

The NY Times and Axios are reporting that the Commander-in-Chief was close to a ordering new anti-Houthi intervention but that he backed out, TACOing once again but this time in pretty rapid order.

Source: White House

"President Trump over the weekend considered ordering a strike against the Houthis in Yemen before deciding to hold off for now, two U.S. officials said," Axios writes Monday. "Trump was caught between wanting to help his friend and ally, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and avoiding getting entangled on a new front in the Middle East."

So now the nation stands on the brink of yet a separate Mideast adventure while the Iran conflict has yet to end, this time in Yemen, because Trump desires to "help his friend". But in the end he did not pull the trigger, for now at least.

The NY Times on Sunday laid out a wild, whiplash of a fast-paced timeline in terms of decision-making:

Mr. Trump had met with advisers just the day before and told them he did not favor strikes. But after speaking with the Saudi crown prince, he reversed himself and told the Pentagon to prepare for airstrikes against the Houthis.

But by midday Sunday, the president appeared to have reversed himself again. There would be no U.S. airstrikes against the Houthis — at least not for the time being, according to administration officials. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss military planning.

One wonders if Congress might ever be consulted, instead of going to war after a single phone call with 'friends' in Saudi Arabia and Israel?

Trump has reportedly been mulling what to do about the Yemen crisis for the last two weeks, especially as the Shia group backed by Tehran has ramped up attacks on Aramco facilities in the kingdom.

So far, the White House is only said to have authorized intelligence and targeting assistance. Still, the Houthis keep advancing, regional reports say, after having conquered Yemen's Red Sea coast. To review of some of our Monday morning coverage:

Brent crude oil prices are also lower despite news that Donald Trump had cut short a trip to Camp David to return to Washington, reports that Iran had activated its highest military readiness alert amid claims that the US is preparing to resume attacks, Houthi attacks on the Saudi capital Riyadh, and Pentagon Pizza Report activity suggestive of something afoot.

All of this was accompanied by fresh alerts for American travelers issued by US embassies across the whole Mideast region.

For a little trip down memory lane...

Trump mocked Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) for Saudi Arabia's security dependence on the US: "He didn't think this was going to happen. He didn't think he'd be kissing my ass. He really didn't." pic.twitter.com/q9vJK76O6X

— Glenn Diesen (@Glenn_Diesen) March 28, 2026

Even if Trump were to authorize new direct strikes on Yemen, any purely aerial campaign would be very unlikely to dislodge the Houthis. It could also serve to further divide already stretched-thin US forces and assets in the region. US assets operating over the Gulf area might have to be diverted.

The Houthi rebels have already endured literally dozens of major air raids from the US and Israelis stretching back through the Gaza war. The attacks seemed to only embolden them, and now they can put the chokehold on Red Sea shipping at any time they want.

Tyler Durden Mon, 09/21/2026 - 14:30