My end-of-week morning train WFH reads:

• People Loved the Dot-Com Boom. The A.I. Boom, Not So Much.: The dot-com era generated genuine public excitement. The AI boom is generating anxiety, skepticism, and resentment — even as the money keeps pouring in. (New York Times)

• Constellation Brands: The Fastest Growing Beer Company in America: The parent company of Modelo and Corona has been on a tear, riding the wave of shifting American beer preferences and demographic change. (Fiscal.ai)

• Luxury’s Overexposure Is Biting: The luxury sector bet on ubiquity — logos everywhere, collabs with everyone, accessibility as strategy. Now the bill is coming due as exclusivity evaporates. (Matter / Substack)

• Crypto Is Pointless. Not Even the White House Can Fix That.: Despite unprecedented government support, crypto still hasn’t found a reason to exist beyond speculation. The problem was never regulation — it was utility. (New York Times)

• The Biggest New Fans of 401(k)s Are Small Businesses: New tax incentives and simpler plan structures are driving a wave of small businesses offering retirement plans for the first time. (Wall Street Journal)

• The Trump ‘Affordability’ Pivot That Never Came: The president promised to bring down costs for working families. Heading into the State of the Union, housing, groceries, and healthcare are all still crushing household budgets. (The Bulwark)

• 10 Least Reliable Cars of 2026: Consumer Reports’ annual survey of 380,000+ vehicles names the models most likely to leave you stranded. (Consumer Reports)

• Across the US, people are dismantling and destroying Flock surveillance cameras: Citizens are taking matters into their own hands, physically removing the license plate reader cameras that have quietly blanketed American cities. (Blood in the Machine)

• How scammers are using AI deepfakes to steal money from taxpayers: AI-generated voices and faces are being used to impersonate government officials and steal public funds. The fraud is getting more sophisticated faster than defenses can keep up. (Washington Post)

• How Did Hendrix Turn His Guitar Into a Wave Synthesizer?: Jimi Hendrix was a systems engineer who happened to play guitar. A technical breakdown of how he precisely controlled modulation and feedback loops to create sounds nobody had heard before. (IEEE Spectrum)

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business next week with Jeff Chang, cofounder and President of VEST. The firm manages over $55 billion in client assets across various “Buffered” and “Target Outcome” strategies. Backed by Y Combinator, the firm launched in 2012 and pioneered an approach to portfolio construction based on defined outcomes and engineered certainty.

 

Irrational Exuberance vs Chat GPT Launch (No earnings versus earnings)

Source: @steve_donze

 

Sign up for our reads-only mailing list here.

 

 

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

Sophie Baker of Pensions & Investments reports liquidity focus pays off for Ontario Teachers’ as dual CIOs mark two-year milestone:

It’s been two years since the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan restructured its leadership team, appointing two people to oversee investments — and despite some major changes and challenges in global markets, the so-called dual CIOs haven’t made any knee-jerk reactions. 

Rather, the focus for the two has largely been creating liquidity in the C$269.6 billion ($197 billion as of June 30) portfolio. 

"We have been quite proactive in terms of generating liquidity on the private asset side, and seen some good success there, particularly in the market," Stephen McLennan CIO-asset allocation, said in an interview. "We're in position now where we would like to deploy into attractive opportunities and continually assess what the right balance is between passive and active to generate active returns." 

"We also want to spend a lot of time focusing on the more technical definition of liquidity, how we manage the balance sheet, what we need for margin calls and making sure we have the flexibility in the portfolio across the markets," he said. 

McLennan and Gillian Brown, CIO-public and private investments were named CIOs in January 2024 by CEO Jo Taylor. Their appointments split the role previously held by Ziad Hindo (now senior advisor at Bridgewater Associates), separating the responsibilities of the position, and Taylor has dubbed them dual CIOs, each with distinct lanes of responsibility, they said. Among the so-called Maple 8 of Canada's largest public pension funds, OTPP is the only with this structure.

The thinking behind splitting the role was to acknowledge a changing world with more geopolitical conflict, greater focus on inflation and central banks, disjointed activity in markets, and disruption to business models, they said.

Taylor looked into how to "lean into value creation, thinking strategically about those businesses and how we go forward," Brown said in the same interview. "It was existential, almost a bandwith questions to involve CIO operating model."

Brown -- previously head of capital markets, who joined in 1995 -- oversees the public and private investment functions, covering equities, infrastructure and natural resources, venture growth, real estate and capital markets investment departments. 

McLennan oversees the overall asset allocation mix, with an eye on total fund performance and management portfolio risk. He's also responsible for the liquidity management, investment allocations and portfolio optimization. McClellan most recently oversaw total fund management comprising the portfolio construction, treasury funding and global trading capabilities, and joined the pension fund in 2003.

Between them, they're running a 475- person investment team. They overlap in a few areas. Two such examples are Europe, Middle East and Africa coverage and Asia Pacific. While both regional teams report to McClellan, they are more active in nature, so in line with Brown's responsibilities, they said. Ass of December 31 2024, 70% of total investments were EMEA and 8% in APAC.

"It's nice for me having a trusted partner," Brown said. Added McLennan: "It's good to have somebody you can trust also deals off challenging -- as well as positive -- circumstances." 

Challenging period since appointments as dual CIOs

Although the executives haven't made any "knee-jerk" moves in the portfolio in response to challenging global markets and powers, that's not to say they haven't had a lot to think about. 

For McLennan and Brown the US administration that came into power in January 2025 has been top of mind with market movements as President Donald Trump unveiled a raft of tariffs, an example of key consideration. However, the portfolio has been steady in light of that volatility, they said. One-third of the gross investments were in the US as of December 31 2024,

"We need to be on top of that since it has impacted global markets, which impacts all the portfolios. McLennan said. "Areas we have been spending some time on equity markets-- public and private fixed income in terms of both interest rates in the US and globally; currencies and commodities we are trying to digest and think through what the new administration means, not only this year, but for the years to come." 

The CIOs have also been cognizant of the need for diversification and when to start looking beyond the US in terms of equity performance that's been dominated by technology stocks. 

"Many are talking including ourselves, about diversification? Are we getting full diversification? Given the equity index is driven by a few names, it's a trend that has been beneficial for all investors, particularly non US investors. But is that going to continue forever?" McClellan said. "It doesn't mean that it's going to end, but at some point, there are valuations and other things we should be cognizant of." 

The fund achieved a 2.1% net return on investments for the six months ended June 30 with the total fund returns driven by public assets. Its asset mix of June 30 was 37% equity, including public and private equity and venture growth. 24% fixed income, 20% inflation, sensitive assets, commodities, natural resources, inflation edge. 24% real assets, real estate and infrastructure, 30% credit and 10% absolute return strategies, the asset mix includes 28% in funding and other assets such as overlays, the five-year and 10-year annualized net returns were 7.5% and 6.9 % respectively. 

Evolving private markets thinking and approaches

OTPP has been looking at where to be a direct investor and to have a more governance and control over private equity holdings, and when to partner with others. The fund's private equity allocation was 21% as of June 30.

"My view is, it doesn't make sense to have really dogmatic approach, and it's more about understanding what we are good at." Brown said. "The partnership question is interesting. Some investors use it to think 'fund- plus-partner'. We want to be humble about where we need more expertise, such as in sectors that require really specialized knowledge. Therefore we pick the right partners to work with on those assets." 

OTPP has always had assets that it co-owns without necessarily having a fund relationship, and has also always "had a lot of partners throughout the portfolio; so it's more about making sure we unlock the right ones to find the right tool for the situation," she added. 

Within its venture growth portfolio, which had C$10.4 billion in net assets as of December 31 2024, 42% was direct investments in North America-based assets, 21% in direct APAC investments, 13% in direct EMEA investments, and the remaining 24% was in funds. 

The fund paused private investment activities in China in early 2023 and more recently, made the difficult decision to close its Hong Kong office. The majority of the staff relocated to Singapore and Asia-Pacific region as a whole remains important. Brown said, with private equity, infrastructure and venture growth teams active in the region. 

At the same time, Bloomberg reported that the Hong Kong office was closed as OTPP optimized its footprint in the region, having added Singapore, Mumbai offices. The team in Hong Kong primarily focused on outward markets -- including Australia, Japan, South Korea -- and the spokesperson said activities could be effectively and efficiently served out of Singapore.

Executives have also been talking about where they see growth opportunities. "I think India has become more of a focus for growth in that context, as a market that is still maturing with good depth of capital markets." Brown added. 

And while the major portfolio changes haven't been in the cards for the dual CIOs, they have made a key addition to their private markets capabilities amid ever-changing investment pacing and exit environments and the increasing importance of accountability and monitoring. In that context, McLennan and Brown said 

In January 2025, OTPP created its portfolio solutions group, a team of 37 people, monitoring and enhancing performance, improving best practice and providing more centralized value creation oversight in a single cross-asset function. About 80% of OTPP's portfolio is actively managed and private markets accounts for a large proportion of that total. 

The team is staffed with existing OTP members, led by Executive Managing Director Kevin Kerr, and works with deal teams on underwriting at point of entry, assists with variations and perspectives, refreshing value creation plans ahead of exits, helps deliver on key performance indicators and gets involved in an asset when it's not performing versus expectation. 

"They have been identifying the important areas where we want deeper subject management expertise, for example, talent management, new relationships, capital market access for technology and data opportunities," McClellan said. "In a world where realizations globally have slowed down, (and) we're owning assets for a longer period, we're making sure the holding period gets more attention, not less." 

The team also brings an impartial view on assets. "At Teachers', we believe challenge is a healthy thing," Brown said. "People can fall in love with them, with assets that they hold, so it's good to have external person say, is that really a good process, a good holding?" 

This is a really great in-depth article which I wanted to share with my readers.

It not only provides a glimpse into the dual-CIO structure at OTPP, how it works, their respective functions, but also how they collaborate with each other and across asset classes, leveraging off external partners and making sure internal teams stick to their value creation plan.

Gillian Brown has been around OTPP for a very long time (since 1995), has worked with some great CIOs (Bob Bertram, Neil Petroff and Ziad Hindo) and she knows her stuff across public and private markets.

Stephen McLennan has also been there since 2003 and he was in charge of total fund management prior to becoming CIO, Asset Allocation. His group has to think more macro and how to extract the most out of the total fund to deliver on their objectives.

The  dual CIO structure has been tried before -- at AIMCo where it unfortunately failed--  but in this case, I really think Gillian and Stephen complement each other well and they're making it work.

Jo Taylor isn't an easy boss, he has high expectations from them and other senior executives and so it all has to work or else he"d be the first to pull the plug.

And the Portfolio Solutions team which Kevin Kerr manages is critically important in this process, they really need to realize on value creation, see when dispositions make sense, and work on assets that need to be worked on. 

One thing Teachers' does well is leverage off its partners, be it in private equity, venture, hedge funds, infrastructure, real estate to really get a good sense of what is going on in each asset class.  

Alright, I'm going to wrap it up there, make sure you read the latest news at OTPP here. 

I will soon be covering OTPP's 2025 results and look forward to catching up with Gillian, Stephen and Jo.

Below, the CNBC Investment Committee debate the software sector as Stephanie Link and Malcolm Ethridge makes some moves in the space. 

Also, Dan Niles, founder of Niles Investment Management, offers a measured view of the stock sell-off driven by concerns over AI disruption, saying companies perceived as linked to OpenAI were caught up in an unsustainable wave of speculative buying. 

I don't know, as I stated last Monday, it's time to nibble on software stocks, I think AI disruption fears are running amok. 

The Graveyard Of Destructive Ideas

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson,

How do destructive ideas and bouts of collective madness so quickly become policy, law, and the status quo?

After all, most have little public support—and are not Western nations supposedly rationally governed?

There is usually a multi-step process on the road to these self-destructive fits of society-wide insanity.

The suicidal impulse so often begins with left-leaning researchers in elite universities (i.e., the tenured in search of a novel, grant-getting theory). They begin insisting that a new existential threat requires immediate government intervention, novel legislation, ample funding, and public awareness of the impending danger.

So out of nowhere, the public is warned that the scorching planet will be inundated by rising seas in a mere decade. Or that millions of transgender youth are our next civil rights frontier, given that they suffer in silence without political advocacy, new laws, programs, and the chance for “life-saving,” powerful hormonal treatments and radical sex-reassignment surgeries. Indeed, the travel time from an outlandish idea by the faculty lounge to liberal status quo is a mere few years.

Next, the media, hand-in-glove with academia, springs into action to persuade the skeptical public to “follow the science” and “trust the experts.” It castigates any doubters as cranks or “conspiracy theorists” who spread “disinformation” and “misinformation”; or as racists, nativists, sexists, homophobes, and transphobes who must be silenced.

Hollywood and sports celebrities often piggyback on the frenzy, hijacking awards ceremonies and pre-game national anthems to out-virtue-signal each other, warning the public that they must adapt and change—or else!

Almost overnight—to take just one example—going to an isolated beach without a mask during the COVID pandemic, showing skepticism about the efficacy or safety of experimental mRNA COVID vaccines, or daring to believe that the Wuhan gain-of-function virology lab (in part aided and abetted by grants and support from Dr. Fauci’s National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases and the National Institutes of Health) was the source of a manufactured COVID pathogen became heresies. And the perpetrators, as always, had to be punished either legally or through social ostracism and cancel culture.

Third, liberal foundations begin funding more “research” to “prove” that partisan “experts” should not be ignored. They also fund activist groups that hit the street to gin up popular support, which often results in the required tumult and occasional violence. They embrace the theory that any disruption will so bother the public that it will support almost anything if it just makes the bedlam go away.

New victims and their oppressors are created ex nihilo.

Yesterday’s radical new policy becomes today’s wishy-washy cop-out, as tomorrow’s once-unthinkable radical idea becomes commonplace and institutionalized. So it was that a few years ago, the public was told of a new and huge victimized group in the shadows, suffering from “gender dysphoria”—an age-old malady known to the ancients and, according to modern researchers before the millennium, affecting about one in 10,000–30,000 people.

No matter—almost overnight, transgenderism joined the gay and lesbian community to become the new LGB—T oppressed. Drag shows, once confined to enclaves in San Francisco or New York, were suddenly mainstreamed into military bases, children’s libraries, and cruise ships. Thirty percent of students on some campuses polled said that they might consider “transitioning.”

Abruptly, professors and students began reading emails appearing from their finger-in-the-wind administrators with strange new runes under their titles and names, identifying their “preferred pronouns”—sometimes the standard “she/her/hers” or “he/him/his,” and sometimes the unfathomable, such as “Ze/hir/hirs” or the plural “they/them.”

Groupthink and mob mentality prevail. Soon, not listing pronouns on correspondence indicts someone as a counterrevolutionary, a transphobe, or, worst of all, a Trump sympathizer.

Fourth, fence-sitting liberal and socialist officials and candidates equate the well-funded activism, the performance-art street demonstrations, and the media fixations on victims and victimizers with growing grassroots support for yet another cause.

This is well illustrated by how initially liberal officials—stunned that 70 percent of the public wanted secure borders, no more illegal immigration, and deportation of the 10 million Biden-era illegal aliens—kept quiet about Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration.

However, after massive and violent demonstrations in major blue cities—with the deaths of two protestors who confronted ICE officers and tried to impede their efforts to detain illegal aliens—biased media blared out that officers were manhandling “mere bystanders.” ICE is now routinely likened by Democratic politicians to the Nazi Gestapo, well beyond the usual boilerplate smears as “pigs” and “fascists.”

The public buys into the fable that ICE agents were not arresting some 4,000 criminal illegal aliens in Minnesota while elected officials were siccing protestors on them, but were instead “murdering” innocent unarmed bystanders, who were harmlessly protesting ICE’s “goon” tactics.

Fifth, once the delusion—whether it is of a doomed sizzling planet, a utopian open border, the systemic oppression of a huge transgendered victimized class, or the habitual and flagrant shooting of innocent unarmed black males by predatory racist police—is institutionalized, then the government and institutions, public and private, ignore public opinion. And they begin passing laws and protocols once deemed unthinkable.

The once-meritocratic SAT, originally aimed at nullifying the old-boy admissions network at the Ivy League, becomes “racist” and is dropped. “Defund the Police” becomes the elite white activist mantra.

Soon, the politicians’ talking points become gospel, as formerly crackpot “critical legal theory” and “critical race theory” are used to “prove” that police hunt down minorities rather than the criminals among them.

Productive, safe nuclear clean-energy plants are shut down. Billions of dollars are invested—and lost—by government mandates aimed at phasing out internal combustion engines and subsidizing unpopular electric vehicles. Government-built high-speed rail boondoggles waste billions before laying a foot of track.

Schools and public offices must suddenly install “gender neutral” bathrooms. What follows is the surreal sight of biological men competing in women’s sports and undressing with teen girls in locker rooms—acts that just a few years prior would have landed someone in jail.

However, there sometimes occurs a sixth stage, which we might call the “Emperor Has No Clothes” wake-up call, that occasionally stops the lemmings in their mad dash over the cliff.

Gradually, the public wonders why it pays twice as much for electricity as it did a mere few years earlier. Supposedly doomed polar bears appear to be thriving in the Arctic. John Kerry is routinely spotted on a carbon-spewing private jet to get to climate change conferences abroad. California’s “permanent” drought strangely ignores near-record wet years and snowfall. Too little rain proves global warming; too much is proof of “climate chaos.”

Barack Obama, the Cassandra of rising seas, nonetheless prefers to buy and live in multimillion-dollar mansions on the Hawaii beach and Martha’s Vineyard seaside.

A few brave reporters cite China building two coal plants a month, even as it brags about the Paris Climate Accords and urges the West to embrace “clean energy.”

The public begins to wonder why, after mass shootings, authorities mysteriously conceal the transgender status of the shooter or suppress the perpetrator’s incriminating target list and diary.

Quietly, university studies start citing the cardiac, pulmonary, and hematological side effects of the mRNA vaccines.

Some universities, without much fanfare, begin to reintroduce the SAT after remedial math courses have had to expand to accommodate nearly half the entering class.

Economists at last come out of the shadows to cite data that shows the massive COVID lockdowns were a catastrophic blunder that permanently stunted the education of millions of youths and birthed an epidemic of psycho-social maladies that disrupted entire communities.

Accusations grow that the architects of Black Lives Matter embezzled millions of dollars in donations and spent freely on upscale homes for themselves. Data drips out that police shoot no more unarmed black suspects than white, when compared to the relative rates of arrests by race. The Somali community—the supposed DEI face of the new Minnesota Democratic majority—is found to be at the heart of a $9 billion fraud epidemic. And so it is revealed as most ungracious, treating its hosts’ magnanimity as naivete to be exploited rather than as generosity to be appreciated.

On the border, the old mantra that the crime rate of illegal aliens is well below that of citizens is revealed as politically tainted. Estimates emerge that 500,000 criminals or more swarmed the border, as the body count of U.S. citizens murdered and assaulted by illegal aliens grows daily.

In sum, just five years ago, when Joe Biden and his masters took control of the government, the orthodoxy was that we were to restructure the entire economy along failed European lines in order to save the planet.

There were no longer to be the two age-old sexes, but a dozen or more in 2021 America.

“Men” could become pregnant (but only if they were born as biological women).

Tampons were politically correct in male bathrooms.

Preferred pronouns dotted memos.

A swarm of 10,000 illegal aliens a day proved America was compassionate and caring while creating a “new Democratic majority,” given that “demography is destiny.”

Blue-city prosecutors released thousands of criminals either without formally charging them or after merely fining them for lesser crimes.

Racial obsessions destroyed merit-based hiring of everyone from air traffic controllers to pilots to professors to museum docents.

And then abruptly in 2025, these destructive manias began shriveling up and were destined for the graveyard of forgotten collective lunacies.

Tyler Durden Thu, 02/26/2026 - 17:40

Iran Rushes To Load Oil Onto Ships In Anticipation Of US Strikes

Via Middle East Eye

Iran is loading almost three times the amount of oil it normally does onto tankers in the Persian Gulf in a sign it is anticipating a US attack that could prevent its oil from hitting the market. 

Iranian oil exports from Kharg Island reached nearly 20.1 million barrels between 15 and 20 February, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday, citing Kpler data. That is the equivalent of more than three million barrels per day (bpd) and almost three times the amount loaded over the same dates in January, Bloomberg said. For comparison, Iran’s previous three-month average of loadings was 1.54 million bpd.

Oil facilities on Kharg Island in the Persian Gulf about 1,250 km south of Tehran, NurPhoto

Kharg Island is home to a massive terminal from which 90 percent of the Islamic Republic’s oil is exported. Iran raced to get its oil out of the country and onto ships for export abroad in June 2025, just before the US joined Israel’s attack on the country.

Kharg Island would also be more vulnerable to attack than the shadow fleet of tankers Iran uses to transport its oil. But Iran is not the only oil producer in the Middle East ramping up exports.

Reuters reported on Wednesday that Saudi Arabia is increasing its oil production and exports as part of a contingency plan - should a US attack on Iran disrupt supplies.

Saudi Arabia also made a similar decision in June 2025, lifting oil exports by around 0.5 million bpd and shipping crude to overseas storage units around the time of the US strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, Reuters reported. 

In a sign that more crude is hitting the seas, the costs of chartering Very Large Crude Carriers or VLCCs have more than tripled since the start of the year to over $170,000 per day, Reuters reported, citing data provided by financial market data group, LSEG.

Shipping rates are determined by supply and demand. The supply of VLCCs available to rent is largely fixed because they are massive vessels that take years to make. Prices rise when more VLCCs are booked.

F-22 fighter jets sent to Israel

Brent crude, the international benchmark, has risen in the past month amid rising tensions. It was trading up .38 percent on Wednesday at $70.84 per barrel.

US President Donald Trump has been toying with a strike on Iran since January, when the Iranian government oversaw a brutal crackdown on protesters. The demonstrations have died down, but Trump has continued to threaten Iran with an attack.

Iran is conducting military exercises on Abu Musa and other islands near Straits of Hormuz — unmistakable threat to shut the Staits if the US attacks. Iran has many drones and mines to put oil tankers at great risk and only need sink a few to shut down shipping lanes for weeks or… pic.twitter.com/7UCm0blu4u

— Robert A. Pape (@ProfessorPape) February 25, 2026

He has ordered the largest build-up of US military assets in the Middle East since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. There are two aircraft carriers in the region along with dozens of F-35, F-16 and F-15 fighter jets.

The New York Times reported on Wednesday that the US also deployed a group of F-22 Raptor jets to Israel this week. The F-22 is a stealthy fifth-generation fighter jet used for dogfighting and ground strikes. Experts say the deployment of a group of F-22s to a foreign country in peacetime is virtually unheard of, given their limited numbers and advanced features.

Tyler Durden Thu, 02/26/2026 - 17:00

Dorsey's Block Fires Nearly Half Of The Company In 'Massive' AI Bet, Sending Shares Soaring

One week after WIRED reported that things were pretty dismal over at Jack Dorsey's payment processing company Block (formerly Square), the company announced that they are cutting 4,000 employees - nearly half of their headcount - in order to invest 'heavily' in artificial intelligence tools to run more efficiently, including its own called Goose, Bloomberg reports. 

The news sent shares up over 30% in after hours trade.

"We are taking bold and decisive action here, but we’re doing it from a position of strength," CFO Amrita Ahuja told Bloomberg, adding "We’re doing it in a way that we believe positions us to move even faster for our customers."

The reduction in force, which was announced in a shareholder letter on Thursday, comes after rolling job eliminations that have often been tied to annual performance reviews. 

...

In the shareholder letter, the company highlighted strong financial performance over 2025 including that gross profit growth more than doubled from the first quarter to the fourth quarter. Dorsey, the company’s co-founder, touted how the company has reignited growth of users of its peer-to-peer payments app Cash App, scaled its lending products and accelerated Square gross payment volume. Block reported gross profit of $10.36 billion in 2025, up 17% year-over-year. -Bloomberg

"Intelligence tools have changed what it means to build and run a company," wrote Dorsey, adding that "we’re already seeing it internally. A significantly smaller team, using the tools we’re building, can do more and do it better."

we're making @blocks smaller today. here's my note to the company.

####

today we're making one of the hardest decisions in the history of our company: we're reducing our organization by nearly half, from over 10,000 people to just under 6,000. that means over 4,000 of you are…

— jack (@jack) February 26, 2026

As noted, according to a report last week in WIRED, things are bad over at Block...

"Morale is probably the worst I’ve felt in four years," reads one employee complaint submitted to Dorsey in a recent all-hands meeting (AI workers will notably not be submitting complaints anytime soon). "The overarching culture at Block is crumbling."

"We don't yet know if our livelihoods will be affected, and this makes it incredibly hard to make major life choices without knowing if we still have a job next week," another employee said in a complaint. 

Is this the first domino in the AI-driven layoff dystopia that we have been feamongered about, bringing fictional predictions into factual problems, as companies look upon Block's big gains and stroke their Dorsey-like beards at just how many of the proletariate can be replaced by an agent or two?

Tyler Durden Thu, 02/26/2026 - 16:40

As ordered reported by the House Committee on Natural Resources on February 11, 2026

As reported by the House Committee on Small Business on February 17, 2026

The Great Reversal: Trump's Real Progress In Tackling Legal Immigration

Via White Papers Policy Institute,

Sixty-plus years of unchecked mass immigration have eroded the fabric of American society to the point where Americans are beginning to wonder if the country can survive. The focus of the media, left and right, when it comes to immigration, has been on the Minneapolis riots over the arrest and detention of illegal aliens.

What goes unnoticed however, is the seismic shift in immigration policy, particularly legal immigration policy, that arrived with the latest Trump administration.

The fantastic truth is that the floodgates that allow more than 1-1.2 million legal immigrants in the United States every year since 1990 are closing. The tide is in fact going out—net emigration of immigrants is becoming the new reality. Under President Trump’s renewed mandate, legal immigration has plummeted. Millions are already departing voluntarily, and millions more who would have come to America have been deterred from doing so. Moreover, projections from within Trump’s administration signal an even sharper decline in legal immigration for 2026 and beyond.

What the executive branch has managed to do, with little help from Congressional leadership, is affect a necessary reset of the legal immigration system that will finally bring an end to the decades of mass immigration that Americans have consistently voted against. While there must be legislation passed by the (as of now) GOP controlled Congress to ensure these immigration changes are enshrined into law, we should take a moment to recognize and celebrate the accomplishments of this administration.

The Sharp Drop in Legal Arrivals

In fiscal year 2025, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) processed 2.7 million immigration cases in its third quarter. This marked a 16% plunge from the same point 2024. In other words, fewer people are applying for visas, and the government has taken measures to increase processing times. USCIS and DHS are also simply not approving as many visas. According to a great report by the Niskanen Center, approvals cratered by 21%, while work authorization applications halved in October 2025 compared to the previous year. Consulates issued 20% fewer immigrant visas and 16% fewer nonimmigrant visas in May 2025 compared to 2024, with family-based categories hit hardest. For example, there were 6,128 fewer FX1, FX2, and FX3 visas for immediate relatives requesting to relocate to the United States. International student numbers dropped by 17,457 overall, and overseas visitors fell by over 828,000 in the first 11 months of 2025. This isn’t happenstance. It’s the fruit of aggressive enforcement and bureaucratic action that makes potential immigrants think very seriously about their move to America. Potential fraudsters understand they won’t make the cut under more serious scrutiny.

Most importantly, overall net international migration turned negative (net emigration?) in 2025 for the first time in half a century. According to a January 2026 report by Brookings, anywhere between 10,000 and 295,000 more people left the United States than entered the country in fiscal year 2025.

Source

This is a major turnaround from a period when net migration (including legal immigration, 1-1.2 million annually, and illegal immigration together) into the United States has run into the multiple millions since the 1990s. Green cards issued abroad dipped to 560,000-575,000—down more than 100,000 from 670,000 in 2024. Refugee admissions plummeted to 7,600-12,000 from 105,000. And virtually all new refugees are Afrikaners and other White South Africans fleeing the persecution of their post-apartheid ‘rainbow’ government.

The immigrant population shrank from 53.3 million in January 2025 to 51.9 million by June. This is a 2.6% drop, the first decline since the 1960s.

Overall population growth slowed to 0.5%, adding just 1.8 million to the overall American population which sits somewhere between 345 and 355 million. Every state except two experienced reduced growth rates. These declines stem from the administration’s unyielding stance: travel bans, public charge restrictions, and/or visa restrictions on 93 countries, suspension of refugee programs, and restrictions on family sponsorships. This is on top of the new fees, paperwork, and bureaucratic barriers the administration has been steadily putting into place to reduce legal immigration.

Miller’s Projections

The administration appears to be far from done, and the change in public charge rules looks promising in terms of slashing legal immigration even further. Stephen Miller, currently Deputy White House Chief of Staff, expects that the new rules coming into force in 2026 will cut legal immigration by 33% to 50% over four years, denying 1.5 to 2.4 million green cards. Based on FY2023’s 1.17 million legal immigrants, this means 4.7 million over a term without restrictions. We can expect only half that number under the new regime. The new policies are already affecting immigrant’s immediate relatives, who constitute 48% of legal inflows and are already facing more denials under the expanded public charge criteria. The new rules for 2026 and beyond stand to prevent a further 941,000 to 1.65 million family-based immigrants.

We do, of course, wish that Congress and the administration would restrict immigration even further. The H-1B program needs to be abolished, the Optional Practical Training Program needs to be scrapped, and Chip Roy’s PAUSE Act to institute an immigration moratorium is the single most important piece of legislation sitting in Congress right now. Still, we are grateful for the progress in slowing or reversing our replacement.

For 2026, net migration is projected to land somewhere between -925,000 to +185,000 and given the increasing restrictions, it will likely remain on the lower rather than the higher end of that prediction by the Brookings Institution. Green cards could fall to 490,000-575,000, temporary visas to 1.65-1.99 million, refugees are expected to remain stable at roughly 7,500 and overwhelmingly from South Africa. It is important to note, though, that the projections vary and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) forecasts net immigration at 410,000 in 2025 and 570,000 in 2026. Though this is a major downward revision from earlier projections due to administrative crackdowns.

As a result of all these fantastic immigration changes by the administration, it is expected that by 2028-2035 the workforce could shrink by 6.8-15.7 million. Progressives and market fundamentalist conservatives would like you to panic about this, but the reality is that there are more than 7 million prime age working males (ages 25-54) currently out of the job market in the United States. Putting these men back to work is far more important than continuing to import immigrants at a large scale who undercut the American job market. These 7 million young men are not included in the further 10.4% of Americans aged 16-24 who are unemployed (and are looking for work) and the 6.1% of recent tech grads who report unemployment. Millions more Americans are “underemployed” and working in part-time or poverty level wage jobs. According to Bloomberg. more than 8% of American workers could now be classified as “underemployed.” Further reporting by The Hill shows that underemployment rates for recent STEM grads now averages 20%. America does not need more immigrants. It needs to fewer so that our own young people can be directed by a healthier market into more productive, well-paying employment.

A Word on Illegals

In 2025, nearly 3 million illegal aliens left according to figures provided by DHS. The department claims that it has facilitated the deportation of 675,000 illegals while 2.2 million more have opted for self-deportation. While there is some disagreement about these numbers, few institutions disagree that interior enforcement, and therefore illegal departures, have risen rapidly. Brookings pegs illegal immigrant outflows at 520,000-720,000, with 210,000-405,000 more voluntary self-deportations than in a normal fiscal year. This is unsurprising seeing as ICE arrests quadrupled, detention doubled to 70,000 daily, and the government continues to build more facilities and hire more agents.

Public charge rules also amplify these departures. The proposed rescission of 2022 regulations expands scrutiny to all benefits, chilling enrollment. At 10-30% disenrollment rates, 1.3 million to 4 million immigrants (both legal and illegal) could forego Medicaid/CHIP benefits. DHS estimates 460,000 disenrollments, but reporting by the KFF shows even broad disenrollment in welfare programs by non-citizens. 11% of immigrant adults avoided programs since January 2025. This “chilling effect” spurs departures, as immigrants weigh benefits against status risks. Past rules caused 18% drops in child participation. Now, with CMS sharing data to ICE, the exodus intensifies.

Toward a Moratorium

Yet projections warn of incomplete victory. Without a full moratorium as proposed by Texas representative Chip Roy and an entirely new immigration system, which we believe should resemble the 1924 Immigration Act proposed here, residual inflows could rebound. If the Congressional GOP does not get its act together and legislate more restrictions into law, a future Democratic president could undue all the Trump administration’s executive actions with executive actions of his or her own. Millions upon millions more legal and illegal immigrants would come pouring into the United States and replacement migration would begin again.

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

Tyler Durden Thu, 02/26/2026 - 16:20

 

I am very excited to announce that RWM is coming to San Francisco, California, on April 14th.

Our relationship with the City by the Bay goes back to the early days when Josh, Kris, Michael and I would spend a few days here meeting clients. The tech center of the world is filled with amazing people, companies, and stories. We always had a great time in SF and looked forward to our trips.

But it’s been too long since we were here. I am very jazzed to be coming back to meet wth current and prospective clients, potential advisor hires, and others.

I will be doing several Master’s in Business Live on April 16 at the Bloomberg Pier 3 HQ/Auditorium. We have an outstanding lineup of guests; I’ll share more info as we get closer to the date.

Looking forward to seeing you in Fog City.

~~~

Seats are limited — reach out to us at RWM or Bloomberg for tickets.

For those people interested in learning about how RWM works with clients, or information about the event, reach out to us at Info AT RitholtzWealth.com.

 

The post RWM Coming to San Francisco April 14-16 appeared first on The Big Picture.

Tech Bosses To Meet At White House, Pledge Their Data Centers Won't Boost Electricity Bills

Authored by Jacki Thrapp via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Leaders in big tech are expected to meet with President Donald Trump at the White House next week to pledge that their data centers will not increase the energy bills of Americans living near the facilities.

The logos of Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft displayed on a mobile phone and a laptop screen. Justin Tallis/AFP via Getty Images

“Major tech companies will join President Trump at the White House next week to formally sign the Rate Payer Protection Pledge that he announced during his historic State of the Union address,” a White House official told The Epoch Times on Feb. 25.

The March 4 event will include representatives from Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, xAI, Oracle and OpenAI.

The initiative will require massive companies to build, bring, or buy their own power supply for new artificial intelligence data centers in order to avoid causing Americans’ electricity bills to skyrocket.

“President Trump is committed to ensuring American AI dominance while simultaneously lowering costs for working families,” the White House official added on Wednesday.

Trump first revealed the plans during his wide-ranging and record-breaking State of the Union address at the Capitol on Feb. 24.

“We’re telling the major tech companies that they have the obligation to provide for their own power needs,” Trump said on Tuesday night. “They can build their own power plants as part of their factory, so that no one’s prices will go up and, in many cases, prices of electricity will go down for the community, and very substantially down.”

In July 2025, Trump issued an executive order aimed at streamlining data center projects in America.

“These plans include artificial intelligence (AI) data centers and infrastructure that powers them, including high‑voltage transmission lines and other equipment,” the executive order said. “It will be a priority of my administration to facilitate the rapid and efficient buildout of this infrastructure by easing federal regulatory burdens.”

Any data center project must have more than “100 megawatts (MW) of new load dedicated to AI inference, training, simulation, or synthetic data generation,” the order stated.

Surging electricity bills caused by data center development was one of the key issues in the November gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia.

Customers in New Jersey paid an average of 19 percent more for energy in 2025 compared with 2024.

Virginia customers who already experienced 30 percent hikes from 2020 to 2023 will likely see rate increases up to 21 percent by 2027.

Big tech is planning a series of data center projects, including a 400 megawatt natural gas plant by Meta in New Albany, Ohio, while Energy Northwest and Amazon plan to build a Cascade Advanced Energy Facility near Richland, Washington.

Tyler Durden Thu, 02/26/2026 - 15:45

Automakers Push Toward "Eyes-Off" Driving Despite Mounting Doubts

Global automakers are zeroing in on a controversial waypoint in the autonomy race: “eyes-off” driving, known in the industry as Level 3, according to a new report by Reuters.

The idea is simple but provocative — motorists could look away to send a message or work on a laptop until the vehicle signals them to retake control.

After years spent refining hands-on driver aids that manage steering and speed, companies see Level 3 as a potential bridge between today’s supervised systems and tomorrow’s fully driverless cars. It could also help justify the billions already sunk into automation. “We can start saving them time immediately, and do it in a very affordable way,” said Doug Field of Ford Motor, which aims to roll out eyes-off capability on lower-cost EVs in 2028.

Yet enthusiasm is far from universal. Some executives question whether temporarily shifting responsibility between human and machine is workable — or safe. Others doubt buyers will pay enough to cover development costs that consultants at McKinsey & Company estimate at up to $1.5 billion for highway-capable Level 3 systems.

Reuters reports that a decade after bold predictions that autonomous cars would be everywhere, most vehicles — including “Full Self-Driving” from Tesla — remain Level 2, requiring constant attention. Besides Ford, General Motors and Honda Motor have outlined Level 3 ambitions.

But pullbacks are mounting. Mercedes-Benz, the only brand to launch Level 3 in the U.S., paused the program amid limited demand tied to speed and geographic restrictions. Stellantis has shelved its effort. Former Waymo CEO John Krafcik said attempts so far suggest “the juice isn’t worth the squeeze.”

Legal exposure adds another layer of risk. Analysts say eyes-off capability increases the likelihood that manufacturers — not drivers — would bear responsibility in a crash, an issue scholars warn could stall deployment without clearer regulation.

Meanwhile, competition from China is intensifying. Automakers such as BYD and Leapmotor bundle advanced driver-assistance features into sticker prices, raising the prospect of a pricing clash if Western consumers resist subscription fees. As one industry strategist put it, “This is a war of global business models.”

Tyler Durden Thu, 02/26/2026 - 15:25

US Treasury To Allow Resale Of Venezuelan Oil To Cuba to Ease Island's Fuel Crunch

Authored by Kimberly Hayek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The U.S. Treasury Department on Wednesday announced a new licensing policy to streamline the resale of Venezuelan oil to Cuba, with the goal of supporting the island’s private sector and bolstering humanitarian efforts amid ongoing fuel crises.

The refinery El Palito in Puerto Cabello, Carabobo state, Venezuela, on Jan. 22, 2026. Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP via Getty Images

The Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) will extend the new licensing policy to specific applications seeking authorization for the resale of Venezuelan oil for use in Cuba.

The move was done “in accordance with the United States’ support and solidarity for the Cuban people,” reads the new policy.

The policy does not cover entities or persons connected to the Cuban military, intelligence services, or other government institutions, including entities on the U.S. State Department’s Cuba Restricted List.

The Treasury’s Cuban Assets Control Regulations generally already authorize U.S. persons to export oil from the United States to Cuba, or to reexport U.S.-origin oil from a third country to Cuba, where that export or reexport has been authorized by the Commerce Department.

The United States has in recent months placed increased pressure on Cuba’s energy procurement network, especially in the wake of former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s capture in January. Oil shipments to Cuba plummeted, worsening shortages that have disrupted everyday life.

Canadian officials earlier this month advised citizens to prepare for unpredictable conditions in Cuba due to fuel scarcity. U.S. federal advisories warned against nonessential travel, with oil shortages a key issue.

In January, President Donald Trump imposed tariffs via executive order on any nation selling oil to Cuba.

“I find that the policies, practices, and actions of the Government of Cuba constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat, which has its source in whole or substantial part outside the United States, to the national security and foreign policy of the United States,” the executive order reads.

The United States recently eased certain sanctions, permitting established American firms to trade Venezuelan crude under strict conditions, but it prohibits deals with adversaries such as Russia, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, and China.

In an unrelated press briefing on Wednesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio echoed Trump’s push for reform in Cuba.

“The reason why things are as bad as they are is because they have an economic model that doesn’t work, doesn’t exist anywhere in the world,” Rubio said. “It is not functional. And the only way Cuba is going to have a better future is if it has a different economic model.”

Tyler Durden Thu, 02/26/2026 - 15:05

"You're Not Alone": Reporters Comfort Those Triggered And Traumatized By Scenes Of Patriotism

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

This week, most Americans found a moment of rare unity in our pride over the performance of our athletes in the Winter Olympics.

After years of rage politics, there was a brief respite as we joined in cheering our team in representing the United States in Milan and Cortina.

Well, most of us. Some in the media found the entire demonstration of patriotism to be intolerable and triggering.

What is striking is how this aversion to our flag and country was so openly expressed in major media.

This week, the nightmare continued for some on the left who were traumatized by seeing the American flag and open displays of patriotism.

Jack Hughes, one of the heroes of the gold medal hockey game, returned to New Jersey to play and was met with cheers of “USA, USA” and a sea of American flags. Hughes immediately called his Olympic teammate Tage Thompson of the visiting Buffalo Sabres to the ice to join him. The two skated arm in arm as the crowd celebrated them and our country.

It was another unifying moment for the country. The fans joined arm in arm to relish this moment for the nation.

These scenes are clearly having a different impact on some on the left.

The HuffPost even published an article with therapeutic advice for liberals triggered by seeing so many American flags. The liberal publication ran an article titled “There’s a Name for the Discomfort You’re Feeling Watching the Olympics Right Now.” It then published it a second time before the gold-medal hockey game with Canada — presumably to prepare its readers for the nightmare of the United States actually winning.

The subheading read, “If waving the American flag or chanting ‘USA!’ turns you off right now, you’re not alone.”

Senior writer Monica Torres began the article with this line: “While President Donald Trump’s deportation agenda separates families, and federal agents detain 5-year-olds and kill unarmed civilians, American athletes are winning medals on behalf of the nation at the Olympics right now.”

Torres goes on to interview three therapists for this “story” about how the celebration of the United States team has forced many liberals into therapy over their trauma and “the cognitive dissonance of rooting for U.S. sports.”

Los Angeles-based licensed clinical social worker Aimee Monterrosa explained that the “atrocities” of the United States can trigger feelings of guilt, despair, shame, anger” in seeing the country celebrate these sports victories.

Expert Lauren Appio echoed how “waving the American flag or chanting, ‘USA!’ [can make] us feel grossed out or ashamed.”

Over at Vox, Senior correspondent (and former Atlantic writer) Alex Abad-Santos wrote an article on the winners and losers of the Olympics. The column perfectly summed up the pathological opposition of some to this country’s symbols and celebrations.

Abad-Santos declared the men’s hockey team one of the biggest “losers” of the games. He blamed that team for alienating citizens by their patriotic statements: “The conversation surrounding the win quickly shifted into how the team celebrated and who it celebrated with.” He expressed outrage over the team accepting the celebratory call from the President of the United States.

In the meantime, the “winner,” according to Abad-Santos, was . . . wait for it . . .  Eileen Gu, the American who reportedly took millions from the repressive Chinese regime to ski for China.

Gu used the games to criticize the United States while saying nothing of how China arrests anyone who speaks out against that country.

Abad-Santos gushes:

“Gu symbolizes the reality that athletes don’t need the US’s backing or support to be commercially successful. That makes some Americans like Vance uneasy. She also embodies the very American idea of relentlessly pursuing success and maximizing it, no matter what it takes. Gu represents the American dream and the startling concept that America isn’t necessary for it.”

The last line is particularly telling. Abad-Santos is celebrating the idea that you can live the American dream without America.

Others joined in lionizing Gu. Charlotte Harpur, writing for The New York Times’ (NYT) The Athletic, virtually declared her a new deity: “You would be forgiven if you thought Gu was a quasi-human robot expertly created by artificial intelligence, so eloquent are her responses to the media.”

The next day, the Times then slammed Men’s Hockey Team in an article titled “The U.S. men’s Olympic hockey team won gold — and then lost the room.” The Athletic‘s Jerry Brewer acknowledged that speaking with the U.S. president after such a win is “an obligatory celebration.” However, he declared that these are not “normal times”:  “This isn’t a neutral climate. This isn’t a neutral president. And in a nation this polarized, the proximity carries weight whether the players are being intentional or merely naive.”

These columns on sites like HuffPost and Vox stripped away the pretense of past pieces and laid bare the antagonism for the United States by some on the left. The open celebration of the country was too much for many rage addicts today.

Fortunately, these writers are largely writing for each other. The public long ago left these sites. They now write for a minority of Americans who are triggered by the appearance of American flags or traumatized by expressions of patriotism.

What these writers find repulsive is rousing for the rest of us. Watching Hughes and Thompson skate together last night was everything that is great about this country, as those Jersey fans went wild. Hughes said that he was struggling not to get emotional at that moment. He was not alone.

Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the author of the New York Times bestselling “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”

Tyler Durden Thu, 02/26/2026 - 14:25

Bondi Sands Self Tanning Instructions: A Comprehensive Guide

Achieve a sun-kissed glow with Bondi Sands! This guide details preparation, application, and aftercare, ensuring a flawless, natural-looking tan every time, starting today.

Bondi Sands has rapidly become a global leader in self-tanning, celebrated for delivering a beautiful, natural-looking tan inspired by the iconic Australian beaches. Their formulations are designed to cater to all skin tones and experience levels, from beginners seeking a subtle glow to tanning enthusiasts desiring a deeper bronze. The brand’s commitment to quality and ease of use has made it a favorite among beauty influencers and everyday users alike.

Unlike traditional tanning methods, Bondi Sands self-tanners offer a safe and convenient alternative to sun exposure, minimizing the risk of harmful UV damage. The range includes foams, lotions, and gradual tanning milks, each formulated with nourishing ingredients to hydrate and condition the skin while developing a stunning tan. Preparing your skin correctly and following the application instructions are key to achieving optimal results and avoiding common tanning mishaps.

This comprehensive guide will walk you through every step of the Bondi Sands tanning process, ensuring you achieve a flawless, salon-quality tan in the comfort of your own home.

Understanding Bondi Sands Product Range

Bondi Sands offers a diverse range of self-tanning products designed to suit various preferences and skin types. Their core collection features Aerated Self Tanning Foam, known for its lightweight texture and quick-drying formula, providing a streak-free application and a natural-looking tan. Alongside the foam, Bondi Sands provides classic Lotions, offering deeper color development and intense hydration – ideal for drier skin.

For those seeking a more subtle and buildable tan, the Gradual Tanning Milk is a perfect choice. This product gradually develops color with each application, allowing you to customize your desired level of bronze. The range also includes specialized products like exfoliating mitts and application mitts, designed to enhance the tanning experience and ensure optimal results.

Understanding the differences between these formulations is crucial for selecting the product that best aligns with your tanning goals and skin needs, ultimately leading to a flawless and satisfying self-tan.

Bondi Sands Aerated Self Tanning Foam

Bondi Sands Aerated Self Tanning Foam is a flagship product, celebrated for its incredibly lightweight and airy texture. This innovative formula allows for effortless application, spreading smoothly and evenly across the skin without feeling sticky or heavy. The aerated consistency ensures rapid absorption, minimizing transfer onto clothing and bedding.

The foam’s unique formulation contains nourishing ingredients that hydrate the skin while developing a natural-looking tan. A key benefit is the built-in guide color, which provides instant visual feedback, ensuring complete coverage and preventing streaks. It’s particularly beginner-friendly due to this feature, making self-tanning less intimidating.

Available in various shades, the Aerated Foam caters to diverse skin tones, allowing everyone to achieve their desired level of bronze. It’s a popular choice for those seeking a quick-drying, streak-free, and naturally radiant tan.

Bondi Sands Lotion vs. Foam

Choosing between Bondi Sands Lotion and Foam depends on your preference and skin type. The lotion offers a more gradual tan development, ideal for those wanting a subtle glow or maintaining existing color. It’s deeply hydrating, making it suitable for dry skin, and allows for precise application, particularly on areas prone to dryness like elbows and knees.

Conversely, the foam provides a faster, more intense tan. Its lightweight texture is perfect for normal to oily skin, minimizing the feeling of stickiness. The foam’s quick-drying formula reduces transfer risk, making it convenient for busy schedules. The built-in guide color aids in even application, preventing streaks.

Ultimately, foam is often recommended for beginners due to its ease of use and visible results, while lotion suits those desiring a more controlled, moisturizing tanning experience.

Bondi Sands Gradual Tanning Milk

Bondi Sands Gradual Tanning Milk is designed for daily use, building a subtle, natural-looking tan over time. Unlike instant foams or lotions, it provides a customizable glow, perfect for those new to self-tanning or wanting to maintain an existing tan. This milk is incredibly hydrating, enriched with aloe vera and vitamin E, leaving skin feeling soft and nourished.

Application is simple: apply evenly to clean, dry skin, just like a regular moisturizer. Reapply daily for a deeper tan, adjusting the amount based on your desired intensity. It’s a fantastic option for all skin types, especially those with sensitive skin, as it minimizes the risk of streaks and unevenness.

Remember to exfoliate regularly for optimal results and to maintain an even fade. This milk is your secret weapon for a year-round, healthy-looking glow!

Pre-Tanning Preparation: Essential Steps

Proper preparation is key to achieving a flawless Bondi Sands tan. Begin with thorough exfoliation to remove dead skin cells, creating a smooth canvas for even application. The Bondi Sands Exfoliation Mitt is ideal for this, gently buffing away impurities and promoting a longer-lasting tan. Don’t skip this step – it prevents patchiness and ensures optimal color development!

Consider your hair removal routine. Shaving or waxing should be done at least 24 hours before application to avoid irritation and uneven tan absorption in freshly sensitized skin. Immediately before applying your Bondi Sands tanner, avoid applying regular moisturizers, body oils, or lotions. These create a barrier, hindering the development of the tan.

A clean, dry, and hydrated (but not moisturized) base is the perfect starting point for your self-tanning journey.

Exfoliation: Using the Bondi Sands Exfoliation Mitt

The Bondi Sands Exfoliation Mitt is your first step to a streak-free, long-lasting tan. Unlike harsh scrubs, the mitt gently yet effectively removes dead skin cells, revealing a smooth surface for optimal product absorption. Wet the mitt thoroughly in the shower and use circular motions, working your way from your feet upwards.

Pay extra attention to areas prone to dryness, such as elbows, knees, and ankles. Don’t rush this process; spend a good 2-3 minutes exfoliating your entire body. This ensures even tan development and prevents patchiness. Rinse off any exfoliated skin and pat your skin dry with a towel.

Remember, exfoliation isn’t just for pre-tan prep; maintaining regular exfoliation post-tan will help your tan fade evenly, extending its life!

Shaving or Waxing Considerations

Timing is crucial when it comes to hair removal before applying Bondi Sands self-tanner. To achieve the best results and avoid irritation, complete any shaving or waxing at least 24 hours before your tanning session. This allows your skin to calm down and any open pores to close.

Freshly shaved or waxed skin is more porous and can absorb more tanner, potentially leading to a darker, uneven result, or even temporary spotting. Waiting a full day minimizes this risk. If you must shave on the day of application, do so well in advance and rinse thoroughly, ensuring no razor burn or irritation remains.

Prioritizing skin health ensures a flawless, natural-looking tan. Remember, patience is key for a beautiful, sun-kissed glow!

Moisturizing – What to Avoid Before Application

Hydrated skin is important, but avoid applying any moisturizers, lotions, or oils for at least 24 hours before your Bondi Sands self-tan application. These products create a barrier on the skin, preventing the tanning agents from properly absorbing and developing a natural-looking color.

This barrier can lead to streaking, unevenness, and a tan that simply doesn’t last. While daily moisturizing is essential for healthy skin, it’s best to skip it immediately before tanning. If you have naturally dry skin, a light exfoliation (using the Bondi Sands Exfoliation Mitt) is preferable to moisturizing.

Focus on prepping your skin with exfoliation to remove dead skin cells, creating a smooth canvas for the tan. Remember, a clean, dry, and oil-free base is vital for optimal results!

Application Technique: Achieving a Flawless Tan

Mastering the application is key to a streak-free, natural-looking Bondi Sands tan. Begin with the Bondi Sands Application Mitt – it’s your best friend! Pump a moderate amount of foam directly onto the mitt; start with less, you can always add more.

Using long, sweeping motions, blend the foam onto your skin, working in circular movements. Avoid rubbing vigorously. Ensure even coverage, overlapping slightly as you go. Work section by section – legs, arms, torso – to maintain control and avoid missing spots.

Remember to apply in a well-lit area to visually confirm complete coverage. The guide color will assist in seeing where you’ve applied product. Don’t stress about perfection; the mitt helps distribute the tan evenly, minimizing streaks and maximizing a beautiful, bronzed result.

Using the Bondi Sands Application Mitt

The Bondi Sands Application Mitt is essential for a flawless, streak-free tan. This velvety mitt acts as a barrier, protecting your palms from staining and ensuring even product distribution. Before each use, ensure the mitt is clean and dry for optimal performance.

To use, simply slide your hand inside the mitt. Pump a small amount of Bondi Sands self-tanner directly onto the mitt – starting with less is always best! The mitt’s texture allows for controlled application, preventing over-saturation and minimizing the risk of dark patches.

Employ long, sweeping motions, blending the product into your skin. The mitt’s design helps buff the tan, creating a natural-looking finish. Remember to wash the mitt after each use with mild soap and water, allowing it to air dry completely before storing.

Foam Application: Amount and Motion

Begin with a small amount of Bondi Sands foam on your application mitt – approximately a golf ball size for each limb. Remember, you can always add more, but removing excess is difficult! Utilize long, sweeping motions, working in circular patterns to blend the foam evenly across your skin.

Avoid applying too much pressure, as this can lead to streaking. The guide color will help you visualize coverage, ensuring no areas are missed. Work quickly and systematically, section by section, to maintain an even application.

Focus on blending the foam thoroughly into the skin, paying attention to areas prone to dryness, like elbows and knees. Consistent, fluid motions are key to achieving a natural, sun-kissed glow. Don’t forget to blend down towards the wrists and ankles to avoid harsh lines!

Application to Specific Areas (Elbows, Knees, Hands, Feet)

These areas require a lighter touch! For elbows and knees, apply a very small amount of foam to your mitt and blend it out thoroughly, as these areas tend to absorb more product. Use even less product on your hands and feet – a tiny amount is sufficient;

When applying to hands, blend the foam onto the back of your hands first, then gently blend onto the palms, ensuring you get between your fingers. For feet, apply to the tops and sides, avoiding the soles.

Immediately after application to hands and feet, use a damp wipe or a clean, damp mitt to remove any excess product from your palms, knuckles, ankles, and toes to prevent overly dark areas. Remember, less is more with these tricky spots!

Development Time & Rinse Off

Allow the Bondi Sands self-tan to develop fully for optimal results. The recommended development time is between 2 to 8 hours, depending on your desired depth of tan – longer for darker results. Avoid applying any clothing during this period to prevent staining.

Once the development time is complete, it’s time to rinse! Use lukewarm water and gently massage your skin in circular motions to evenly remove the guide color. Do not use soap, shower gel, or exfoliants during the initial rinse, as this can hinder the tan’s development.

Continue rinsing until the water runs clear. Pat your skin dry with a soft towel – avoid rubbing. Your tan will continue to develop over the next 24-48 hours, deepening into a beautiful, natural-looking glow.

Recommended Development Time

The ideal Bondi Sands development time hinges on your desired tan intensity. For a light golden glow, a development period of 2-3 hours is sufficient. If you’re aiming for a medium tan, allow the product to work its magic for 4-6 hours. For those desiring a deep, bronzed look, leave it on for the full 8 hours – or even overnight!

Remember, the longer you leave the tan on, the darker it will become. It’s always best to start with a shorter development time and build up the color gradually in subsequent applications; Avoid any activities that might cause excessive sweating during development, as this can affect the evenness of the tan.

Prior to rinsing, ensure you’ve allowed the full recommended time for optimal color development and a flawless finish.

Rinsing Technique for Optimal Results

Rinsing is crucial for revealing your Bondi Sands glow! Begin with lukewarm water – avoid hot water, as it can strip the tan. Gently rinse off the guide color, using circular motions and avoiding harsh scrubbing. Don’t use any soap, shower gel, or exfoliants during this initial rinse; water alone is best.

Continue rinsing until the water runs clear. Pat your skin dry with a soft towel, avoiding vigorous rubbing. Resist the urge to moisturize immediately after rinsing; allow your skin to fully dry for optimal color development. This allows the tan to fully oxidize and reach its deepest, truest shade.

Proper rinsing ensures an even, streak-free tan and maximizes longevity.

Post-Tan Care: Maintaining Your Glow

Extend the life of your Bondi Sands tan with proper aftercare! Hydration is key – moisturize daily with a lightweight, oil-free lotion. This replenishes skin’s moisture barrier and prevents the tan from fading unevenly. Avoid harsh soaps, body washes containing sulfates, and exfoliating scrubs, as these can accelerate tan removal.

When swimming, chlorine can quickly diminish your tan, so apply a waterproof sunscreen. Similarly, prolonged sun exposure without protection will fade your color. Pat your skin dry after showering or swimming, rather than rubbing.

Consistent moisturizing and gentle care will keep your Bondi Sands glow radiant for longer, ensuring you look and feel fabulous!

Moisturizing After Tanning

Replenish and protect your newly tanned skin with consistent moisturizing! After your Bondi Sands tan has fully developed and been rinsed, applying a hydrating lotion is crucial. Opt for a lightweight, oil-free formula to avoid stripping the tan or clogging pores. Focus on areas prone to dryness, like elbows, knees, and ankles.

Moisturizing doesn’t just prolong your tan; it also keeps your skin healthy and supple. Dry skin will cause the tan to fade unevenly and quickly. Apply lotion daily, ideally after showering, when your skin is most receptive.

Consider lotions specifically designed for tan maintenance, often containing ingredients to lock in color and provide extra hydration. A well-moisturized skin equals a longer-lasting, beautiful Bondi Sands glow!

Avoiding Harsh Soaps and Exfoliants

Protect your Bondi Sands tan by steering clear of harsh skincare products! Immediately after rinsing off your self-tanner, and for several days afterward, avoid soaps containing sulfates, alcohol, or strong fragrances. These ingredients can strip away the tan and leave your skin feeling dry and irritated.

Similarly, refrain from vigorous exfoliation. While exfoliation is essential pre-tan, it’s your tan’s enemy post-application. Aggressive scrubbing or using exfoliating tools will accelerate fading and create patchiness. Gentle cleansing is key.

Opt for mild, hydrating body washes and continue regular moisturizing to maintain your glow. Delay any further exfoliation for at least a few days, allowing the tan to fully develop and fade naturally. A little care extends your beautiful Bondi Sands results!

Troubleshooting Common Tanning Issues

Don’t panic if your Bondi Sands tan isn’t perfect! Streaking often occurs from uneven application or insufficient blending; re-apply a light layer to affected areas, blending thoroughly with a mitt. For an uneven tan, gentle exfoliation can help even out the color, followed by a re-application.

Orange tones usually result from leaving the tan on for too long or using too much product. Hydrate skin intensely and consider a gradual tan remover if the color is too intense. Remember, less is more!

Always patch test a small area first. If issues persist, consult Bondi Sands’ website for specific product advice. Proper preparation and aftercare significantly minimize these problems, ensuring a flawless, natural-looking tan.

Streaky Tan Solutions

Encountering streaks with your Bondi Sands tan? Don’t worry, it’s easily fixable! The most common cause is uneven application or inadequate blending during the initial process. To remedy this, gently re-apply a very light layer of Bondi Sands self-tanner specifically to the streaky areas.

Crucially, blend this second application meticulously with your Bondi Sands Application Mitt, using sweeping circular motions. Ensure you’re blending into the surrounding tanned skin, not just over the streaks. Avoid applying a thick layer, as this can worsen the problem.

Allow to develop for a shorter period than the original application, and rinse thoroughly. Prevention is key – always exfoliate and moisturize before application!

Uneven Tan Correction

Dealing with an uneven Bondi Sands tan can be frustrating, but it’s often easily corrected. The primary cause is typically inconsistent application, often due to drier areas absorbing more product. To address this, gentle exfoliation is your first step – focus on the darker areas to lightly reduce the tan intensity.

Next, apply a very light layer of Bondi Sands self-tanner to the lighter areas, blending seamlessly with the existing tan using your Application Mitt. Remember to use circular motions and avoid harsh lines. Allow a shorter development time than your initial application, monitoring the color closely.

Rinse thoroughly and moisturize. Consistent exfoliation and hydration between applications will help prevent future unevenness!

Dealing with Orange Tones

An orange tint after Bondi Sands tanning usually indicates over-application or insufficient exfoliation. The key to avoiding this is proper preparation and following the recommended development time. If you’ve already developed an orange hue, don’t panic! Immediate action can help.

Begin with a gentle, full-body exfoliation using the Bondi Sands Exfoliation Mitt, focusing on areas with the most intense color. This will help lift the excess DHA responsible for the orange tone. Follow this with a baking soda paste (mix baking soda with water) applied to the affected areas for a few minutes before rinsing thoroughly.

Moisturize deeply afterward. For future applications, use less product and ensure thorough exfoliation beforehand. Remember, a gradual tan is always preferable to a drastic one!

Bondi Sands Tanning FAQs

Q: How long does a Bondi Sands tan last? A: Typically, 5-7 days with proper aftercare, including regular moisturizing;

Q: Can I tan if I have sensitive skin? A: Yes, but perform a patch test 24 hours prior. Bondi Sands offers products formulated for sensitive skin.

Q: Will Bondi Sands stain my clothes? A: While the guide color washes off, wear loose, dark clothing during development.

Q: Can I apply Bondi Sands on my face? A: Yes, but use a lighter application and avoid the eye area. Bondi Sands also has specific facial tanning products.

Q: What if my tan is streaky? A: Exfoliate and reapply with a lighter hand, ensuring even coverage.

Q: Is Bondi Sands cruelty-free? A: Yes, Bondi Sands is proudly cruelty-free and vegan-friendly.

The post bondi sands instructions appeared first on Every Task, Every Guide: The Instruction Portal
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The Majority Leader of the House of Representatives announces bills that will be considered under suspension of the rules in that chamber. CBO estimates the effects of those bills on direct spending and revenues.

"Squatty Potty" Millionaire Charged With Possession Of Child Porn Hoard

Robert Edwards, the inventor of the "Squatty Potty" and a contestant on the show "Shark Tank", has been charged with the possession of a digital hoard of child pornography materials including videos and images. 

Edwards, 50, was arrested for allegedly buying and receiving countless images of child sexual abuse between March 2021 and November 2025, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the District of Utah announced Monday.  The entrepreneur was indicted by a federal grand jury Feb. 10 and arrested Feb. 12 in Washington County, Utah.

In March 2021, an undercover FBI agent joined a group chat used to trade child abuse materials. In the group chat, there was a meeting room where members viewed a collection of the horrific content being streamed, federal authorities detailed.  Participants, including a user later identified as Edwards, were visible in the meeting, according to the DOJ. 

In May 2025, FBI agents also learned that Edwards may have purchased additional illicit materials through his PayPal account, which was flagged for four suspicious transactions.  In November, law enforcement executed a search warrant on Edwards and his home and confiscated multiple devices that “contained videos and images of child sexual abuse material,” some of which was downloaded only two weeks prior, officials alleged.

Edwards reportedly lives with his male partner and "co-parents" four children.  There is no information on their status, and he refers to them as his "step children".  

Robert Edwards is best known for his appearance on Shark Tank with his mother, in which he pitched his idea for a foot rest designed to help people with bowel movements.  

Interestingly, one member of the Shark Tank board was noted as saying there was "something" about Edwards that she did not trust because of his odd and shifty behavior.  Her observation might have been more prescient than she realized. 

Squatty Potty is also known for cutting ties with Kathy Griffin as a spokesperson after she released her infamous promotional pictures in which she is seen holding a fake severed head that looks like Donald Trump.  The decision was a company move and not a unilateral firing by Edwards, though he noted that Griffin "crossed the line".

Edwards ultimately sold Squatty Potty in 2021 and walked away a multi-millionaire.

Edwards is also know for his advocacy work with an NGO called "Equality Utah", the largest LGBT youth advocacy group in the state.  He received an "Excellence In Advocacy" award from them in 2017 and would go on to serve on their board.  It should be noted that high profile pedophiles are often found working within NGOs that deal with children's issues; LGBT children's groups are particularly targeted. 

After the news of Edwards' arrest and the nature of the charges, Squatty Potty's viral "unicorn poop" commercial takes on even more suspicious undertones.

  

In 2019, he was a keynote speaker at the Utah LGBTQ+ Chamber of Commerce's annual "Gay-La" event (a membership drive and networking gala supporting the state's LGBT business community) and participated in their LGBTQ+ Economic Summit, sharing his business story in an LGBT-focused context.

In a 2020 interview with St. George News following the Supreme Court's Bostock v. Clayton County decision (protecting gay and transgender workers from discrimination), Edwards publicly supported equal protection under the law for LGBTQ individuals.  

His recent arrest is likely to bring into question his previous advocacy work and his true motives.    

Tyler Durden Thu, 02/26/2026 - 14:05

Hillary Clinton Says She Knew Nothing About Jeffrey Epstein's Crimes

Hillary Clinton told members of Congress on Feb. 26 that she does not have knowledge about crimes carried out by the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Munich, Germany, on Feb. 14, 2026. Johannes Simon/Getty Images

“I had no idea about their criminal activities. I do not recall ever encountering Mr. Epstein. I never flew on his plane or visited his island, homes, or offices,” the former first lady and secretary of state said in her opening statement to the House Oversight Committee.

As Zachary Stieber reported for The Epoch Times, Clinton said she was horrified to learn about the crimes and was disappointed that Epstein only received 13 months in prison in 2008 after pleading guilty to soliciting a minor for prostitution.

Clinton’s husband, former President Bill Clinton, was also slated to testify to the panel in its investigation into Epstein. The Clintons agreed to testify after the House of Representatives was prepared to hold them in contempt for originally declining to answer questions on the matter.

[ZH: of course, some might say she's a COMPLETE LIAR (that no reasonable prosecutor who likes breathing would prosecute)...]

“Hillary Clinton: ‘I do not recall ever encountering Mr. Epstein.’”

Meanwhile, Epstein once said Hillary Clinton was “much prettier in person.”

No recollection, though. pic.twitter.com/xY3XnPCbpp

— Gina Milan (@ginamilan_) February 26, 2026

Epstein died by suicide in federal prison in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2022 for conspiring with Epstein to sexually abuse young girls.

Bill Clinton flew on Epstein’s plane in 2002 and 2003, according to flight logs and photographs. Court documents stated he went to Epstein’s island, where authorities say Epstein repeatedly abused minors.

Maxwell told Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche in 2025 that she was friends with Bill Clinton and that the former president never went to the island.

“He never, absolutely never went. And I can be sure of that because there’s no way he would have gone. I don’t believe there’s any way that he would’ve gone to the island had I not been there,” she said. “Because I don’t believe he had an independent friendship, if you will, with Epstein.”

Epstein also went to the White House multiple times while Clinton was president. Maxwell also attended the wedding of the Clintons’ only daughter in 2010.

Former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrive for former President Donald Trump's inauguration as the next president of the United States in the Rotunda of the United States Capitol in Washington on Jan. 20, 2025. Shawn Thew/Reuters

Bill Clinton’s spokesperson told New York Magazine in 2002, “Jeffrey is both a highly successful financier and a committed philanthropist with a keen sense of global markets and an in-depth knowledge of twenty-first-century science.”

A spokesperson for Bill Clinton said after Epstein was arrested by federal authorities that the former president “knows nothing about the terrible crimes Jeffrey Epstein pleaded guilty to in Florida some years ago, or those with which he has been recently charged in New York.”

The spokesperson said that the trips on Epstein’s plane included stops for Clinton Foundation work and that Bill Clinton briefly visited Epstein’s home in New York and met with Epstein in a Clinton office in the city.

“He’s not spoken to Epstein in well over a decade and has never been to Little St. James Island, Epstein’s ranch in New Mexico, or his residence in Florida,” the spokesperson added.

A letter from lawmakers to the Clintons said they wanted to question them, given their family’s past relationships with Epstein and Maxwell. Lawmakers also told Hillary Clinton, “Given your past service as Secretary of State, the Committee believes that you may have knowledge of efforts by the federal government to combat international sex trafficking operations of the type run by Mr. Epstein.”

“The American people have a lot of questions,” Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), chairman of the House Oversight Committee, told reporters in Washington as lawmakers prepared to question the Clintons. “To my knowledge, the Clintons haven’t answered very many, if any, questions about their knowledge or involvement with Epstein and Maxwell.”

Comer said that no one is accusing the Clintons at this time of wrongdoing but that the committee is trying to find answers regarding Epstein, including how he accumulated so much wealth and whether he worked for the government.

Tyler Durden Thu, 02/26/2026 - 13:45

Average 7Y Auction Stops On The Screws Amid Stock Rout

After yesterday's mediocre 5Y auction, we had just one coupon sale left: 7Y paper at 1pm today. And with today's wholesale post-Nvidia, risk-off move it was expected to be an easy sale, which is more or less what it was.

The Treasury sold $44 billion in 1 Year notes at a high yield of 3.790%, down sharply from 4.018% last month, and the lowest since November. The auction also priced on the screws with the When Issued, which was also at 3.790%. It followed 5 auctions in the past 6 months which tailed so relatively speaking, an improvement. 

The bid to cover was 2.498, up from 2.454 and also over the recent average of 2.461.

The internals were a bit weaker, with Indirects awarded 63.6%, down from 66.9% in January but above the recent average of 62.6%. And with Directs taking down 26.91%, which was right in line with the six-auction average, Dealers were left with 10.4%, a small drop from last month's 10.9%. 

Overall, this was a solid, if hardly, stellar auction, with average foreign demand and mediocre metrics, which in itself is rather surprising since the money from the equity selling has to be going somewhere and bonds should be seeing more demand, if only in theory. 

Tyler Durden Thu, 02/26/2026 - 13:28

Travel Stocks In Focus After Cartel Chaos Erupts In Mexico

The U.S. State Department has lifted its "shelter in place" alerts for Americans after Mexican special forces, aided by U.S. intelligence, killed a top drug cartel boss, sparking cartel-related chaos across at least one key tourism town in the third-world country just south of the U.S. southern border.

Helicóptero del ejército mexicano operando ayer en Puerto Vallarta (Jalisco) contra el Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación.
Instagram/Cornett pic.twitter.com/ADcgqnusdW

— Niporwifi © (@niporwifi) February 23, 2026

On Sunday, Mexican Army Special Forces carried out a decapitation strike against the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), killing Nemesio "El Mencho" Oseguera Cervantes. The operation triggered dangerous cartel-related uprisings shortly after that, which extended into Monday and Tuesday, with 250 blockades recorded, many of them in Jalisco state.

Footage from Puerto Vallarta, the popular tourist town in Jalisco, was on the front cover of many major U.S. newspapers and sent a chill through the American travel industry that funnels tourists into the region. What Americans saw was cartel gunmen torching vehicles and buildings in an immediate response to the death of El Mencho, reinforcing what everyone has known all along: Mexico is a third-world hellhole.

Officials say at least 62 people died in the raid that caught “El Mencho,” longtime head of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, and violence that followed. This @vantortech satellite image of yesterday shows thick smoke across Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. More in thread.… pic.twitter.com/Cztlz8IWGY

— Christiaan Triebert (@trbrtc) February 23, 2026

Assessing the impact on the US travel industry is Goldman analyst Lizzie Dove, who found the biggest effect has been on airlines, not cruises or hotels.

For airlines, most U.S. carriers have limited exposure to Mexico. For most, less than 3% of their flights in early 2026 are tied to the country. But if travelers stay cautious, some may shift their plans to safer destinations, including Florida, the Caribbean, and other parts of Latin America.

Focusing on the airline impact, here's an excerpt from Dove's note:

Bottom line: There were significant cancellations in select airports following the events in Mexico over the weekend; however, these cancellations were in-line with or lower than cancellations at airports impacted by Winter Storm Hernando. Separate from the cancellations over the last couple days, the larger question in our view is if there will be a lasting impact on demand. We take no view on the length of the unrest in Mexico. While not directly comparable, we note that other recent geopolitical events have had a short-lived impact, if any, on demand for travel. As such, while there could be an impact from recent events, we could see the dissipation of demand headwinds fairly quickly if the situation is resolved (Volaris, one of the largest airlines in Mexico, resumed normal operations Monday 2/23). In the short-term, Sun Country has the highest exposure to Mexico, with ~10% of 1Q 2026 capacity scheduled to fly to various airports in Mexico. We note that February and March in particular represent seasonally high demand months for North to South travel to warm weather destinations as various regions of the US have spring breaks over this period. It is possible that some trips planned for Mexico could instead be re-booked to a domestic warm weather destination or elsewhere in Latin America/the Caribbean if there are lingering concerns around Mexico over the next couple months.

Cancellations were elevated on Sunday 2/22 and Monday 2/23, but largely driven by Winter Storm Hernando. On Sunday 2/22 and Monday 2/23, the industry saw an elevated level of cancellations, some of which were related to the ongoing unrest in Mexico, but with the majority driven by Winter Storm Hernando (see Exhibit 1 and Exhibit 2). For example, JetBlue had significantly higher cancellations than its peers on 2/22, with 44% of flights canceled vs. its competitors canceling less than 10% of flights, but JetBlue has <2% of capacity deployed to Mexico in 1Q 2026. Cancellations at select airports in Mexico were material, even from a global perspective, with Puerto Vallarta and Guadalajara among the top 20 airports with the highest cancellation rates across the world on Sunday 2/22 and Puerto Vallarata in the top 20 again on Monday 2/23 (see Exhibit 3 and Exhibit 4).

Recent geopolitical events showed short-lived impact to demand. While not directly comparable, if we look to two recent events we see potential for limited lasting impact to air travel demand. For example, while likely complicated by the broader post-pandemic recovery, following the events in Russia/Ukraine in February 2022, global air travel continued to recover (see Exhibit 5) and Delta had not seen any impact for travel to broader Europe as of April 2022. Following the events on October 7, 2023 in the Middle East, there was similarly a limited lasting impact to air travel (Exhibit 6; year-over-year global industry air traffic growth continued to improve following October 2023, and while there was a step-down in Middle Eastern air traffic growth in November and December 2023, January 2024 saw a marked step-up in traffic growth. We acknowledge each event may be different, and look for evidence of whether any potential demand headwind will similarly dissipate fairly quickly.

Mexico exposure is <3% of 1Q 2026 capacity for most US Airlines, except Sun Country. Looking across the US Airlines with greater than 0.1% domestic market share, Sun Country (Not Rated), Alaska (Buy), Frontier (Not Covered), and American (Sell) have the most scheduled capacity exposure to Mexico directly (see Exhibit 7). We do not currently expect a broader impact across Latin America and Caribbean demand, and believe some Mexico trips could be re-booked to other Latin American/Caribbean destinations if there are lingering consumer concerns around Mexico travel over the next couple months. Of the US Airlines with greater than 0.1% market share, JetBlue (Sell), Sun Country (Not Rated), and Spirit (Not Covered) have the most 1Q 2026 capacity scheduled to Latin America (see Exhibit 8). If there is demand to re-book Mexico vacations, domestic warm weather destinations could benefit.

Dove's view on the impact of hotels appears limited for now, but if travel warnings last, demand could weaken over time. Only a small share of the rooms at major hotel companies are in the affected Mexican states. Hyatt has the highest exposure, while Choice has very little. Hyatt could also soften the blow by moving travelers to its other all-inclusive resorts outside of Mexico.

As for cruises, she said the impact is also minor so far. Only a few Puerto Vallarta port stops have been canceled. Cruise lines do have some Mexico exposure, but many itineraries include multiple destinations, which helps reduce the risk if one Mexican port becomes problematic.

Related: 

• Cartel Kingpin "El Mencho" Dead. Here's A Shortlist Of Possible Successors

• Mexico's Cartel Decapitation Strike Fallout: "Not The End, Just The Beginning"

The full travel-impact note is available to Professional Subscribers on our new Marketdesk.ai portal.

Tyler Durden Thu, 02/26/2026 - 13:20

EPA To Reform $5 Billion 'Clean School Bus' Program

Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is revamping the Biden administration’s Clean School Bus (CSB) program, which focused on installing electric buses at U.S. schools, the agency said in a statement released on Feb. 19. The overhauled program will focus on providing school districts with “increased choice and affordable options” for school buses.

School buses bring in players from the Burbank Bulldogs and the Pasadena Bulldogs before their game at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif., on March 19, 2021. Harry How/Getty Images

In 2021, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act directed the EPA to create the CSB program and provide $5 billion over fiscal years 2022–2026 to replace existing school buses with zero-emission school buses. The Biden administration distributed about $2.7 billion in these funds, 90 percent of which was to fund electric school buses. The rest went toward propane-fueled vehicles.

“There are multiple well-documented examples of one particular bus manufacturer failing to deliver buses altogether despite preemptively receiving tens of millions of tax dollars from the CSB program,” the EPA said.

“To fix these issues, the Trump EPA will seek public input on the availability, cost, and performance of alternative school bus fuels and technologies. This feedback will help reform the program to bring consumer choice back to schools and deliver results for American families, while still fulfilling congressional intent.”

The EPA cited the case of Lion Electric, a Canadian electric vehicle company that was granted $159 million to build 435 battery-powered buses between October 2022 and May 2024.

However, Lion Electric filed for bankruptcy in December 2024. In August 2025, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said the company still hadn’t delivered school buses to 55 districts, worth approximately $95 million.

The Epoch Times reached out to Lion Electric for comment but did not receive a response by publication time.

In its latest statement, the EPA said it had issued a request for information that seeks feedback from school officials, fleet operators, energy producers, and manufacturers on a wide range of fuel options that can be used by school buses, including biofuel, hydrogen, liquefied natural gas, and compressed natural gas.

In 2023, almost 450,000 school buses were operating in the United States, the Department of Energy said, citing data from the World Resources Institute. As of July 2025, more than 5,100 electric school buses were serving roughly 265,000 students, the Electric School Bus Initiative said in a post published in July 2025.

Biden’s CSB Program

In a February 2023 EPA report submitted to Congress, the Biden administration highlighted the environmental requirement for the CSB program.

Most school buses emit nitrogen oxides and particulate matter in diesel exhaust, which contribute to poor air quality and negatively affect people’s health, especially children, who have a faster breathing rate than adults and whose lungs are not yet fully formed, the report said.

The agency’s CSB program funds the replacement of existing school buses with zero-emission and clean school buses, which will “ensure cleaner air for students, bus drivers, school staff working near bus loading areas, and the communities through which the buses drive each day,” according to the report.

Last year, a group of 17 Democrats in the U.S. Senate, along with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), sent a letter to Zeldin regarding the EPA’s decision to freeze CSB program funds, according to a Feb. 28, 2025, statement from the office of Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).

The lawmakers said that CSB funding would support the electric bus manufacturing boom in the United States and create good-paying jobs.

They said that CSB provided health and cost-saving benefits, and they urged the EPA to distribute funding for CSB program recipients with signed agreements, according to the statement.

In its latest statement, the EPA accused the previous administration of intentionally limiting the availability of these fuel options so it could push for electric buses.

“By providing more options to school districts, EPA will ensure they can purchase the right types of school buses for their specific needs,” the agency said.

The data collected from the request for information will be used to revamp the CSB program for the 2026 grant funding round that prioritizes child safety and reliable buses, according to the EPA. The agency said that updating the program is expected to bring auto jobs back into the United States and unleash domestic energy production.

“The Clean School Bus program has been a disaster of poor management and wasteful spending of taxpayer dollars,” Zeldin said.

“At the Trump EPA, we have zero tolerance for reckless spending. Today, EPA takes the next step to set the program straight.

“Americans can rest assured that moving forward, the program will be safe, effective, and use reliable forms of American energy.”

According to the EPA, revamping the CSB program strengthens oversight and compliance actions in a way that aligns with President Donald Trump’s executive orders.

On Jan. 20, 2025, Trump signed the “Unleashing American Energy” executive order, which sought the removal of incentives for electric vehicles and promoted market choice for consumers.

In November 2024, the EPA’s Office of Inspector General released a report saying the agency didn’t have adequate oversight to record CSB program rebates for fiscal years 2023 and 2024.

“We found that the EPA failed to implement internal controls to make sure funding was properly allocated for the 2022 Clean School Bus Rebates Program,“ the report said. ”The Agency recorded the full amount paid to the Clean School Bus rebate recipients as an expense, instead of an advance, prior to the recipient expending the funds.”

Tyler Durden Thu, 02/26/2026 - 13:00