Revolving Green Door: Former Biden Officials Landed Jobs With Environmental NGOs After Funneling Money To Them

As the Trump administration's Department of Energy moves to wipe out over $83 billion in "Green New Scam" loans and conditional commitments approved in the final months of the Biden administration, a new analysis reveals that not only did the rush to spend accelerate right after Biden's disastrous June 27, 2024 debate with now-President Donald Trump, senior Biden officials landed roles at organizations that received agency funding. In some cases, money was steered to NGOs that the officials worked for before joining the government - where they then returned following the cash bonanza. 

Following the debate where Biden revealed how cooked he is, nonprofit watchdog Democracy Restored found that billions of dollars began rushing out the door to over a dozen environmental and climate-focused NGOs, including that Alliance for Sustainable Energy, Climate United Fund, the Ocean Conservancy, the Nature Conservancy, and Rocky Mountain Institute, according to Just the News. 

Using data from USASpending.gov, Democracy Resorted found that federal agencies had obligated more than $600 million in taxpayer money to these organizations since July 1, 2024. The obligations began to drop the day after the election. Obligations to these same organizations since Nov. 5, 2024 fell to $246 million. 

While various agencies were providing millions in support to these organizations, high-level officials within the agencies either went to work for them after Trump took office, or they had previously worked for them prior to assuming key roles at the agencies under Biden. -JTN

Using data from USASpending.gov, Democracy Restored found that federal agencies obligated more than $600 million to environmental and climate-focused nonprofits beginning July 1, 2024 — including the Alliance for Sustainable Energy, Climate United Fund, Ocean Conservancy, Nature Conservancy, and Rocky Mountain Institute.

That flow of taxpayer cash slowed dramatically after the election. Since Nov. 5, 2024, obligations to the same organizations dropped to $246 million, according to the watchdog group.

At the same time, Democracy Restored identified a pattern that raised eyebrows: senior federal officials moving into roles at organizations that received agency funding — or having previously worked for them before holding key government posts.

I think the money being shoveled out after President Biden’s debate and the apparent revolving door of appointees going to recipients of these federal funds raises many questions about the timing of the money, the impact of special interests in the Biden administration and the general ethics surrounding this behavior," said Houston Keene, director of Democracy Restored, in comments to Just the News.

Loan office under fire

Scrutiny has focused on the Department of Energy’s Loans Programs Office, now renamed the Office of Energy Dominancy Financing.

In August 2024, the DOE awarded the World Resources Institute a $1 million grant aimed at supporting school bus fleet electrification training and collaboration.

Two former senior DOE officials are now senior fellows at the institute: Jigar Shah, who served as director of the Loans Programs Office, and Jennifer Wilcox, who was principal deputy assistant secretary at the Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management.

Jigar Shah attends the 2024 TIME100 Gala (Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for TIME)

Shah’s tenure has drawn particular attention. The Washington Free Beacon reported in May that the Loans Programs Office approved a loan to Plug Power, a New York-based green hydrogen company, in May 2024.

According to the repoprt Shah’s private equity firm previously invested $100 million in Plug Power, and the company once described the firm as a “longstanding partner.” Shah told the Beacon that he did not work directly on Plug Power’s loan and said the company applied before he joined the office.

An Office of Inspector General audit released in December found that 20% of Loans Programs Office employees reviewed had a potential conflict of interest - or the appearance of impaired impartiality - while performing their duties.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright testified in May that the office issued roughly $40 billion in loans over the prior 15 years, but that figure ballooned to $100 billion in just the final 76 days of the Biden administration. Wright said those rushed loan agreements lacked safeguards traditionally required by the DOE.

The revolving door keeps spinning

Democracy Restored’s review identified other examples of officials cycling between government agencies and nonprofit recipients.

Renee Stone, formerly in senior leadership roles at NOAA, now serves as vice president of climate for the Audubon Society. During the Biden administration, Audubon received nearly $4 million across three grants for habitat restoration projects.

Monica Medina, another former NOAA official, is now a distinguished fellow at Conservation International, which received a $9 million grant in 2023 for an ecosystem restoration project in Hawaii.

Chetan Hebbale, once a policy adviser in the White House, later joined the Nature Conservancy as a climate and conservation finance policy adviser. The organization received more than $6 million in federal funding during Biden’s term.

Federal ethics law restricts certain post-government actions by former senior officials, but it does not prohibit them from accepting employment with private or nonprofit organizations — even those that received government funding.

Keene emphasized that there is no evidence any of these individuals directly worked on the grants in question, but said the relationships warrant closer examination.

Offshore wind ties raise questions

The Biden administration’s aggressive push for 30 gigawatts of offshore wind also drew scrutiny.

Oceans Conservancy, a vocal supporter of offshore wind expansion, received nearly $6 million in two grants from NOAA during the Biden years. The group has also received support from Orsted, a major offshore wind developer.

Susan Ruffo, who previously served as managing director of international initiatives at Oceans Conservancy, later worked for NOAA and other federal agencies.

“I think it says a lot about the stewardship of tax dollars under the Biden administration,” Keene said. “If you were an organization that agreed with the administration politically, they weren’t afraid to cut you a check. That’s a problem for the taxpayer.”

Tyler Durden Mon, 02/02/2026 - 22:10

Clintons Bend The Knee To Comer, Agree To Testify In House Epstein Inquiry

Just hours after Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) rebuffed Bill and Hillary Clinton's attorney's last-ditch conditional offer, the former president and former secretary of state appear to have acquiesced and agreed to key demands from the Republican-led House Oversight Committee to testify about Jeffrey Epstein in a closed-door deposition.

The initial correspondence, obtained by CNN, revealed that the Clintons’ team has been in search of an off-ramp for days.

Attorneys for Bill and Hillary have been in discussion with the Republican-led committee multiple times since lawmakers from both parties voted in January to hold the Clintons in contempt for refusing to appear for in-person depositions as part of the panel’s investigation into Epstein.

“It has been nearly six months since your clients first received the Committee’s subpoena, more than three months since the original date of their depositions, and nearly three weeks since they failed to appear for their depositions commensurate with the Committee’s lawful subpoenas,” Comer wrote.

“Your clients’ desire for special treatment is both frustrating and an affront to the American people’s desire for transparency.”

As CNN reports, according to the letter dated January 31, the Clintons’ lawyers laid out the terms under which the former president would sit for a voluntary, transcribed interview.

He would sit for four hours in New York City for an interview limited to the scope of the Epstein probe, they said.

Lawmakers from both parties and their staff could ask questions, and the lawyers said both the Clintons and the committee could have their own transcriber present, according to the letter.

Comer rejected the offer from the Clintons’ attorneys as “unreasonable” and said he could not accept such terms.

He could not agree, he said, to changing the interview from a sworn deposition to a voluntary interview, and rejected the way in which the attorneys sought to limit the interview’s scope. 

“But given that he has already failed to appear for a deposition and has refused for several months to provide the Committee with in-person testimony, the Committee cannot simply have faith that President Clinton will not refuse to answer questions at a transcribed interview, resulting in the Committee being right back where it is today,” the Kentucky Republican wrote.

By rejecting the Clintons’ initial offer, Comer had all but ensured that the House would hold a final vote this week on the contempt resolutions.

“Your clients’ desire for special treatment is both frustrating and an affront to the American people’s desire for transparency,” Mr. Comer wrote in a letter to the Clintons’ lawyers on Monday that was also obtained by The New York Times.

Indeed, as The NYTimes reports, after some Democrats on the panel joined Republicans in a vote to recommend charging them with criminal contempt, an extraordinary first step in referring them to the Justice Department for prosecution, the Clintons ultimately waved the white flag and agreed to fully comply with Mr. Comer’s demands.

In an email sent to Mr. Comer on Monday evening, attorneys for the Clintons said their clients would “appear for depositions on mutually agreeable dates” and asked that the House not move forward with a contempt vote, which had been slated for Wednesday.

However, it was not immediately clear Monday evening whether Comer would accept the Clintons' terms and, subsequently, whether the contempt votes would still take place.

Comer said:

"The Clintons' counsel has said they agree to terms, but those terms lack clarity yet again and they have provided no dates for their depositions. The only reason they have said they agree to terms is because the House has moved forward with contempt."

"I will clarify the terms they are agreeing to and then discuss next steps with my committee members," Comer said in a statement.

For Mr. Clinton to testify in the Epstein investigation would be nearly unprecedented.

No former president has appeared before Congress since 1983, when President Gerald R. Ford did so to discuss the celebration of the 1987 bicentennial of the enactment of the Constitution.

When Mr. Trump was subpoenaed in 2022 by the select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol, after he had left office, he sued the panel to try to block it. The panel ultimately withdrew the subpoena.

It was a victory for the Republican chairman, shifting the focus of his panel’s Epstein investigation onto prominent Democrats who once associated with the disgraced financier and his longtime companion, Ghislaine Maxwell.

Tyler Durden Mon, 02/02/2026 - 21:20

Israel Surrenders To The Truth: Admits 70,000 Killed In Gaza

Via Brian McGlinchey at Stark Realities

Throughout the Israel Defense Forces' post-Oct 7 war on Gaza, the State of Israel and its collaborators and sympathizers around the world have ridiculed the alarming death toll maintained by Palestinian health authorities, dismissing the count as a gross exaggeration aimed at maliciously demonizing Israel. Now, after more than two years of casting doubts, the IDF has finally admitted its own estimates match the Gaza Health Ministry’s accounting of some 70,000 confirmed dead.

It’s a grand example of Israel’s long-running practice of vehemently denying accusations — and vilifying accusers — before eventually acknowledging their validity. Those acknowledgements usually come after overwhelming evidence has been produced, by which time the denials have provided some degree of protection for Israel’s standing. Where the Gaza death toll is concerned, the IDF’s capitulation seems to some extent preemptive, in anticipation of an eventual opening of Gaza to journalists from around the world. However, the long string of denials helped muddy the waters, giving Israel and its allies a degree of cover as the IDF’s astonishing death-and-destruction blitz was carried out.

Palestinians bury war dead in a mass grave (via Egypt Today)

The IDF’s admission came in a Thursday briefing given to reporters by a senior military official. Speaking on condition of anonymity, the official said approximately 70,000 people have died in Gaza since the Oct 7, 2023 invasion of Israel by Hamas militants. As of Sunday, Gaza health officials say 71,795 have died.

Importantly, both the IDF official and the Gaza Health Ministry says these numbers do not include bodies yet to be discovered under the incomprehensible volume of rubble across Gaza. The Gaza ministry says its numbers only reflect deaths directly resulting from military fire, excluding those who’ve died from disease and malnutrition.

Neither party has yet broken down the death toll into combatants and civilians. However, leading up to the October ceasefire, the IDF said it had killed at least 22,000 combatants in Gaza. Placed atop this week’s 70,000 denominator, that claim now suggests that civilians account for a significant majority of those killed by the IDF. Netanyahu has boasted that the Gaza campaign has achieved the “lowest ratio of civilian to combatant deaths in the history of modern urban warfare.” However, an IDF report leaked in August concluded that 83% of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces were civilians.

The mere fact that the Gaza Health Ministry is part of a Hamas government was all that Israel’s and its proxies and supporters needed to promote the assumption that the ministry’s death tally was a lie — and to buy time for Israel to continue its shattering of Gaza, with financial, military and diplomatic backing of the the United States and other Western governments.

Palestinians carry the bodies of children killed by an IDF strike on a shelter in Gaza City (Hadi Daoud / APA Images)

“The Biden administration, Congress, and the U.S. media played along with Israel’s lies and deception about the horrific death toll in Gaza — over 80 percent civilians; over half, women and children — so that they could gaslight Americans into continued support for Israel,” Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of human rights group DAWN, told the Intercept after the IDF’s capitulation on the death toll.

President Biden was among the first to who sought to discredit the fatality figures coming from Gaza. “I have no notion that the Palestinians are telling the truth about how many people are killed,” Biden told a reporter 18 days after Oct 7, when Gaza authorities had already reported more than 6,000 dead from IDF fire. “I have no confidence in the number that the Palestinians are using.”

Attacks on the Health Ministry’s fatality reporting came from every type of Israel supporter, from politicians to network-TV “analysts” to think tanks and individual social media users. The Intercept’s Jonah Valdez assembled a catalogue of such criticism; here’s a sampling:

• “Every day, Hamas churns out misinformation. They inflate casualty numbers and make false accusations to smear Israel’s reputation,” said Maryland Rep. Steny Hoyer.

• “The data that we hear from Hamas is way, way exaggerated, the number of actually purely innocent civilians that have been killed are a tiny fraction,” said Alan Dershowitz, the Israel-promoting lawyer and law professor.

• “Validating the public health arm of Hamas is like validating the public health arms of Al Qaeda and ISIS or the public health arms of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan,” said New York Rep. Ritchie Torres.

• Decrying the media citations of Health Ministry data, the Anti-Defamation League said the Hamas-controlled ministry “distorts information about the casualties in Gaza.”

The Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a thinly-disguised component of the sprawling Israel lobby, criticized the Biden White House for eventually giving some credence to the Gaza Health Ministry’s reporting. “As a result of trusting numbers from a Hamas-controlled entity, the Biden administration has become more focused on the restraints it can put on Israeli forces than how it can help accelerate Hamas’s defeat,” said senior fellow David Adesnik.

Efforts to suppress the Gaza Health Ministry’s death toll went far beyond pointed rhetoric. In 2024, Israel-catering Republicans and Democrats in the US House passed an amendment that would have barred the State Department from citing the numbers. While it didn’t become law, a similar measure in the defense bill enacted later that year made it illegal for the Pentagon to cite the Health Ministry’s fatality numbers as “authoritative.” It’s doubtful that, in the wake of the IDF’s admission, a repeal is now in the offing.

Israel’s heavy use of 2,000-pound bombs in densely-populated areas — something Western militaries avoid — has figured heavily in Gaza’s enormous death toll (Reuters)

Throughout the war, many third parties — from new bureaus to the World Health Organization and researchers at Johns Hopkins — deemed the Gaza Health Ministry numbers legitimate, based on analysis of the ministry’s detailed reporting, and the ministry’s record of accuracy over previous Israeli military campaigns.

Last summer, a Pentagon insider quietly said that, despite public statements by spokespeople and top officials, the US government believed the Health Ministry’s reporting too. “Along with the World Health Organization and United Nations, we (Department of Defense, Department of State and the U.S. Intelligence Community) consider the Gaza Health Ministry figures to be generally reliable (though not precise),” wrote Army Col Nathan McCormack in a comment exchange on X, using a semi-anonymous, personal account.

In a 2023 reply to another X user, McCormack wrote, “Israel’s responses always (always—not hyperbole) disproportionately target Palestinian civilians.” In June 2025, after Jewish News Syndicate publicized these posts and others that were sharply critical of Israel, McCormack was forced out of his Israel-and-Levant-focused role supporting the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Beyond dismissing the top-line number of deaths reported by the Gaza Health Ministry, Israel has also denied credible accusations that IDF soldiers have frequently and deliberately targeted civilians. In addition to the accounts of Palestinians, accusations have also poured forth from American and European doctors who’ve voluntarily traveled to Gaza and worked in its bombed and blood-splattered hospitals.

“I have two children that I have photographs of, that were shot so perfectly in the chest I couldn’t put my stethoscope over their heart more accurately — and directly on the side of the head, in the same child,” Dr. Mark Perlmutter, a Jewish orthopedic surgeon in North Carolina and vice president of the International College of Surgeons, told CBS Sunday Morning. “No toddler gets shot twice by mistake by the ‘world’s best sniper.’ And they’re dead-center shots.”

Surgeon, Dr. Mark Perlmutter, on what he witnessed in his first month in Gaza. On @CBSSunday

“No toddler gets shot twice by mistake by the world’s best sniper.” pic.twitter.com/wAoRWaNngo

— Samira Mohyeddin سمیرا (@SMohyeddin) July 22, 2024

Twenty other visiting doctors confirmed Perlmutter’s characterization of the IDF’s conduct. One, also an American, said he couldn’t believe what he was seeing on CT scans — “that this many children could be admitted to a single hospital with gunshot wounds to the head." Other groups of doctors have given similar testimonies to other outlets. Israel has said the claim of IDF soldiers targeting civilians is “entirely unfounded and is categorically rejected.”

Israel has also denied widespread reports —substantiated by video — that soldiers shot at civilians gathering at aid distribution points set up last May as malnutrition surged in Gaza and global outrage mounted. By August, more than 1,300 Palestinians were reportedly killed as they sought aid. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called such claims an antisemitic “blood libel.” However, enlisted soldiers and officers told Haaretz that lethal fire was routinely used to control crowds. Said one:

"It's a killing field. Where I was stationed, between one and five people were killed every day. They're treated like a hostile force – no crowd-control measures, no tear gas – just live fire with everything imaginable: heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, mortars. Then, once the center opens, the shooting stops, and they know they can approach. Our form of communication is gunfire."

Other whistleblowers said the IDF routinely killed civilians by dropping hand grenades from modified commercial drones on anyone who wandered into areas of Gaza that were declared off-limits by Israel — even though those forbidden areas weren’t marked on the ground. The IDF campaign has also been marked by attacks on hospitals and ambulances, including an incident where soldiers fired on Palestinian emergency vehicles without provocation, then crushed the vehicles and buried them with bulldozers. The IDF’s initial claim that the vehicles had acted suspiciously were belied by video captured by one of the men killed by Israeli fire.

Then there’s Israel’s relentless bombing that systematically rendered vast swaths of Gaza uninhabitable. The Israeli government condemned accusations that it was engaged in an ethnic cleansing campaign, but those denials fly in the face of explicit statements by senior members of Israel’s government.

“Within a few months...Gaza will be totally destroyed,” Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich assured a West Bank settlers conference last May. “The Gazan citizens will be concentrated in the south. They will be totally despairing, understanding that there is no hope and nothing to look for in Gaza, and will be looking for relocation to begin a new life in other places.”

RAFAH, GAZA BEFORE & AFTER.

-TRT World pic.twitter.com/EusxcxEHdP

— International Defence Analysis (@Defence_IDA) July 3, 2025

After the Times of Israel and Haaretz reported the IDF senior official’s validation of Gaza’s death-toll numbers, an IDF spokesman attempted to deflect attention, using social media to say “the details published do not reflect official IDF data.” Stopping short of categorically refuting the official’s statements, the post seemed to reflect an IDF irked that an official prematurely spilled the beans without permission. “Any publication or report on this matter will be released through official and orderly channels,” the post concluded.

If and when the IDF finally lets foreign journalists roam in Gaza, we’ll likely see even more validation of war-crime accusations. As international criminal lawyer Jonathan Meta wrote in a weekend opinion piece at the Times of Israel, “If, for two years, a number was dismissed as propaganda, and then, suddenly, treated as a close approximation, what else was waved away not because it was false, but because it was inconvenient?”

Stark Realities: Invigoratingly unorthodox perspectives for intellectually honest readers. Join thousands of free subscribers at starkrealities.net

* * *

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

Tyler Durden Mon, 02/02/2026 - 20:55

Musk's SpaceX Combines With xAI At $1.25 Trillion Valuation

Confirming earlier reports, late on Monday Elon Musk said SpaceX has acquired xAI, a deal that combines his powerful rocket-and-satellite business with his artificial-intelligence startup that is facing steep competition. SpaceX confirmed the deal Monday, posting a memo Musk sent out about the arrangement on its website. 

The deal gives SpaceX a valuation of $1 trillion, and xAI a value of $250 billion, Bloomberg added citing sources. The combined company’s valuation of $1.25 trillion was announced to employees in a memo on Monday.

“SpaceX has acquired xAI to form the most ambitious, vertically-integrated innovation engine on (and off) Earth, with AI, rockets, space-based internet, direct-to-mobile device communications and the world’s foremost real-time information and free speech platform,

The deal brings together two of the largest closely held companies in the world. XAI raised funds at a $230 billion valuation in January, while SpaceX was set to go ahead with a share sale in December at a valuation of about $800 billion. Additionally, the combination will bring together a mature and dominant company in SpaceX, with one that is in a nascent stage. Musk’s xAI is also facing formidable competition from OpenAI, Anthropic and others to build large language models and big businesses around AI technology.

Terms of the offering including price and valuation weren’t disclosed in the statement on SpaceX’s website. 

The company is still expecting to hold an initial public offering later this year, one of the people said. SpaceX had been planning an IPO that could raise as much as $50 billion, Bloomberg News reported earlier.

In his memo, Musk also said global electricity demand for AI can’t be met with data centers on the ground, and that space-based technology will be the only way to scale up AI over the long term (something we discussed in December, sharing several stock picks which have since more than doubled). 

He pitched using solar power from space as a transformative option to ramp up computing resources needed for AI. The executive has been frequently discussing orbital data centers at events and on X.

Polymarket odds of a deal being formalized by June 30 initially came out around 20% on Jan 30 when the first reports of a combination emerged. They then spiked earlier today after the Bloomberg report, and are now trading at 100%. 

*ELON MUSK'S SPACEX CONFIRMS MERGER WITH XAI IN COMPANY MEMO

And we have lift off as odds hit 98%. Congrats to those who bought. https://t.co/k2lqtGyOAR pic.twitter.com/JK6uCEeZ8X

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) February 2, 2026

On Friday, SpaceX said in a regulatory filing that it wants to deploy an orbital AI network with up to one million satellites over time. The company will need to secure regulatory permission to deploy that fleet. Even if it gets it, which will be problematic to say the least under any Democratic regime, it is unclear just how SpaceX will provide physical service for the airborne data centers. 

It will also need to demonstrate further progress with Starship, a powerful two-stage rocket the company has been testing in flight since 2023. Starship hasn’t yet deployed an operational payload during the test missions, and SpaceX has grappled with setbacks during the development campaign. 

Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported SpaceX and xAI were planning the tie-up, and other news organizations reported on discussions about the deal. 

The deal further entangles Musk’s various business ventures. The billionaire acquired Twitter in late 2022, renamed it X, then merged the site with his artificial intelligence startup xAI in a $33 billion deal. XAI, which also operates chatbot Grok, is an expensive operation, burning around $1 billion a month in service of its stated ambition to gain “a deeper understanding of our universe.” A merger with SpaceX will pool capital and talent, while providing access to computing power. 

SpaceX stands out as arguably Elon's most successful and consistent business. The company, the only American one that can routinely send astronauts to and from the International Space Station, is a key rocket launch provider for both NASA and the US Department of Defense, which the White House has moved to rename the Department of War. The increasing revenue it’s generating from the Starlink network of more than 9,000 satellites is even more significant, now outpacing launch sales and presenting a potential source of funding for xAI’s capital-intensive business.

Tyler Durden Mon, 02/02/2026 - 20:30

UAE Firm Bought 49% Of Trump-Linked Crypto Startup For $500M: WSJ

Authored by Amin Hagshanas via Cointelegraph,

A UAE-backed investment vehicle quietly agreed to buy nearly half of World Liberty Financial, a cryptocurrency startup linked to President Donald Trump, just days before he returned to the White House, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal.

Aryam Investment 1, an Abu Dhabi entity backed by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, signed a deal in January 2025 to purchase a 49% stake in World Liberty Financial for $500 million, the Journal said, citing documents and people familiar with the matter.

Half of that amount was paid upfront, sending $187 million to Trump family-controlled entities, with additional tens of millions flowing to entities tied to co-founders, including relatives of US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, per the report.

The agreement was reportedly signed by Eric Trump. The Journal reported that the deal had not been publicly disclosed, despite World Liberty later revealing that the Trump family’s stake had fallen sharply.

Tahnoon’s ambitions grow after Trump election

Tahnoon, the brother of the United Arab Emirates president and the country’s national security adviser, has been central to Abu Dhabi’s push to become a global leader in artificial intelligence. Under the Biden administration, his efforts to secure advanced US-made AI chips were limited amid concerns that sensitive technology could reach China, particularly through companies such as G42.

Following Trump’s election, those efforts gained momentum. Tahnoon met multiple times with Trump and senior US officials, and within months the administration committed to granting the UAE access to hundreds of thousands of advanced AI chips annually.

Anatomy of the deal. Source: WSJ

The Journal reported that executives from G42 helped manage Aryam Investment 1 and took board seats at World Liberty as part of the deal, making Aryam the startup’s largest outside shareholder. Weeks before the US-UAE chip framework was announced, another Tahnoon-led firm, MGX, used World Liberty’s stablecoin to complete a $2 billion investment into Binance.

World Liberty and the White House have reportedly denied any wrongdoing. Spokespeople told the Journal that President Trump was not involved in the deal and that it did not provide any influence over US policy.

World Liberty faces US probe calls

Last year, Democratic senators called on US authorities to investigate alleged links between World Liberty Financial’s token sales and sanctioned foreign actors. In a Nov. letter to the Justice Department and Treasury, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Jack Reed cited claims that WLFI governance tokens were bought by blockchain addresses tied to North Korea’s Lazarus Group, as well as Russian- and Iranian-linked entities.

The controversy is heightened by WLFI’s ownership structure, which gives Trump family-linked entities control over the majority of token revenue. Lawmakers argue this creates a direct conflict of interest, as most proceeds from token sales flow to the president’s family.

Tyler Durden Mon, 02/02/2026 - 20:05

California Plans "Mileage Tax" To Bleed Citizens For Even More Cash

Lawmakers in the California State Assembly have moved to direct the Transportation Commission to prepare a study on the effects of a road charge for delivery to the legislature.  A road charge is a program that imposes fees based on the number of miles each citizen drives over a specified period, and is designed to offset gas tax losses from the wider use of electric cars on California roads. 

In 2014, California passed Senate Bill 1077, authorizing a “Road Usage Charge Technical Advisory Committee” to explore whether the state could replace its gas tax with a mileage-driven tax.  The project was based on the assumption that "cleaner vehicles" and a potential zero-emission future would lead to dwindling gas tax revenues. 

The state has been running road charge pilot programs since 2016. Last year, a pilot project concluded where mileage rates were set at 2.5 cents per mile for light-duty vehicles, such as cars, and other vehicles weighing less than 10,000 pounds. The rate for heavy-duty vehicles is dependent on their weight.

Today, proponents complain that implementation is not going fast enough.  The latest bill is being called an "extension" of the pilot project and not a move to pass the actual tax.   Democrats assert that Republicans are interfering with the project and misrepresenting its intent.  However, taxes based on climate ideology are often kept on the shelf by exploratory committees, waiting for politically opportune moments to pass them quickly with minimal public opposition or debate.  The Democrats are simply biding their time.

It is not clear yet when the mileage tax will be made official or if it will replace the gas tax; it is far more likely that both taxes would ultimately exist in tandem.  Republicans argue that the tax is unfair to residents of rural counties where driving distances are much greater and gas vehicles are common.  The tax is useful, though, for climate "re-wilding":  The globalist idea of forcing people to abandon rural areas and move into population centers so that large swaths of the nation can be "returned to nature."   

California currently has the highest gas taxes in the country.  Total state taxes and environmental fees frequently exceeding .90 cents per gallon, contributing significantly to the nation's highest pump prices ($4.30 per gallon compared to a national average of $2.87). 

Over the past few years Governor Gavin Newsom and Democrats have sought to deflect blame for the state's exorbitant fuel costs by accusing oil companies of "price gouging" consumers; a claim which was ultimately proven false the government's own investigations. State interference has led to multiple refinery closures and the loss of numerous small business gas stations; prices are expected to rise even further.  

The relentless (and baseless) hostility towards the oil industry in liberal states is forcing citizens into electric vehicles, but officials have no intention of letting the public escape taxation.  The concept goes well beyond the old school idea of toll roads.  A charge for mileage could require intrusive surveillance technology, including "black box" GPS devices in every vehicle to track miles driven.  Or, yearly inspections of odometers with arduous paperwork and bureaucratic red tape. 

If they can't tax the gas, they will tax residents simply for driving.  Next comes a tax simply for breathing.          

Tyler Durden Mon, 02/02/2026 - 19:40

Border Czar Homan Says More Than 145,000 Illegal Immigrant Children Located

Authored by Aldgra Fredly via The Epoch Times,

U.S. authorities have located more than 145,000 illegal immigrant children who were previously unaccounted for under the Biden administration, border czar Tom Homan said on Jan. 30.

Homan said the findings came as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the FBI, and the Health and Human Services Department’s Office of Refugee Resettlement continue efforts to locate “more than 300,000 unaccompanied alien children” whom he said had been “turned over to unvetted sponsors, lost track of, and weren’t looking forward” under the Biden administration.

“Through their outstanding efforts, they have so far been able to locate more than 145,000,” the border czar said on X. Homan did not provide details on the status or condition of the children.

“President [Donald] Trump promised that we would find these children, and under his strong leadership and with his unwavering support, the patriots at these, and other partner, agencies have been—and will continue to do—just that,” he added.

The investigation followed an August 2024 report by the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Office of Inspector General, which showed that more than 323,000 illegal immigrant children were unaccounted for in the United States.

Of those, more than 291,000 unaccompanied migrant children had not been served court notices by ICE as of May 2024, while another 32,000 were served notices to appear in court but failed to do so, according to the report.

The Trump administration has launched efforts to find and track these children after taking office in January last year. In December, federal agencies located more than 129,143 illegal immigrant children, according to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem.

“Too many of these children were exploited, trafficked, and abused. We will continue to ramp up efforts and will not stop until every last child is found,” Noem said on Dec. 19, 2025.

DHS said last November that ICE launched an initiative with state and local law enforcement to conduct welfare checks on 450,000 illegal immigrant children who were placed with unvetted sponsors under the Biden administration. The initiative aims to ensure children’s safety and protect them from exploitation, the agency said.

DHS assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin said the Trump administration has located more than 24,400 of those children through visits and door-to-door checks.

“Many of the children who came across the border unaccompanied were allowed to be placed with sponsors who were smugglers and sex traffickers,” McLaughlin said in a November 2025 statement.

“We’ve jump-started our efforts to rescue children who were victims of sex and labor trafficking by working with our state and local law enforcement partners to locate these children.”

“President Trump and Secretary Noem are laser-focused on protecting children and will continue to work with federal, state, and local law enforcement to reunite children with their families,” she added.

Tyler Durden Mon, 02/02/2026 - 19:15

Have Fiat Money, Will Tyrannize

Authored by George Ford Smith via The Mises Institute,

“My fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask instead what your country has been doing to you and is likely to keep doing to you for as long as it can buy with fiat money the votes of a majority.”

- Gary North, “History Revisionism - High Priests of Woodrow Wilson’s Covenant”

Gary North’s article focuses mostly on Woodrow Wilson’s influence on the inaugural addresses of Eisenhower and Kennedy and their meaning in the world of 2008. As he observed, we have had “one long war since 1917,” with Fed fiat money playing an indispensable supporting role.

Everything the government does costs money, and it produces nothing with which to acquire it. For 2025, it coerced a total of $5.4 trillion from taxpayers and dollar-holders but ended up spending $7 trillion, producing a “rolling” deficit of $1.7 trillion. The biggest fights have always been over whose ox gets gored to fund it. Almost no one wonders whether government as it stands should exist at all.

When Wilson decided to impose democracy on the world, he had the backing of two newly-created theft mechanisms that he signed into law in 1913: The income tax and the central bank. The first extracts wealth directly from those who own it; the second takes it surreptitiously, which, as Copernicus wrote in 1526,

…is noticed by only a few very thoughtful people, since it does not operate all at once and at a single blow, but gradually overthrows governments, and in a hidden, insidious way.

Knowingly or not, Keynes, in 1919, expressed a similar thought with his famous “one man in a million” declaration:

There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.

Americans like to think of themselves as sharp, incapable of being hoodwinked.

If they get scammed a second time they blame themselves for not seeing it—“Fool me twice, shame on me.”

But most of them have missed the biggest scam of all: The Federal Reserve System.

Of the various reasons for missing it, the biggest one is the conviction that market economies are vulnerable to harmful forces that only the state and its central bank can avoid. Experts on the Great Depression such as former Fed Chair Ben Bernanke build their arguments on the grounds that markets sometimes violate the fundamental law of trade—production buys production (sometimes known as Say’s Law)—and need supervision and intervention to avoid this problem.

When the roof began to fall in August 1929, they were at a loss as to which intervention to pursue. They could’ve referred to the Depression of 1921 for guidance when the government watched as the Fed tightened then eased. As one economist explained, “During this period, there was nothing remotely like a fiscal stimulus package, a TARP program, or even a QE policy designed to prevent economic collapse.” Deflation—seen as the villain in the 1930s Depression—cured the earlier slump because prices had been inflated.

Most people who study economics at state-funded universities treat the Fed as a necessary institution, not a scam. Their acquired expertise will include the view that the Fed’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) has undertaken the formidable task of determining interest rates that best promotes full employment and low inflation. The Fed has a superhuman challenge and if it sometimes fails to please everyone, who could do better?

But it goes deeper. According to a FAQ section posted by the Kansas City Fed, “The Fed has long viewed transparency as a fundamental principle of central banking that supports accountability.” If Fed operations are transparent, most people are blind. The Fed’s operations are largely a mystery to most people. And this is to its advantage.

How the Fed Conducts Its Mission

It is commonly said the Fed prints money when it targets a lower Federal Funds Rate. While this is true, it shrouds all the plumbing that makes it happen.

The Federal Funds Rate is “the interest commercial banks charge when they lend money to one another for extremely short-term periods—literally, overnight.” It influences other rates such as rates for mortgages, loans, credit cards, and savings.

The FOMC meets at least eight times a year to decide what to do about the current Federal Funds Rate. Their discussions are augmented by the Beige Book report of conditions in the 12 Reserve districts. Lowering the rate means the Fed will print more money (in its convoluted manner) to get the consumer price increases it wants. If it decides that prices are running too high, it will pull money out of the economy by selling some of its securities. This is how it attempts to lower or raise the Federal Funds Rate.

Influencing the Federal Funds Rate is “the interest the Fed pays on the funds that banks hold as reserve balances at their Federal Reserve Bank, which is the Interest on Reserves Balances (IORB) rate.” If banks make more keeping their reserves than lending them to other banks, the reason is likely a high IORB. Both the Federal Funds Rate and the IORB rate are considered important tools for manipulating market prices.

Actual market prices sometimes defy Fed intentions to raise them, as seen by the Moore’s Law effects on computer technology. Fortunately for consumers, innovation can outpace monetary debasement in specific sectors.

The Arsonist is Seen as a Firefighter

The Fed sets as a target a 2 percent inflation rate. It defines inflation as “the rate at which the price of goods and services increases over time.” In other words, its job is to increase prices. Price increases, not the Fed actions that increase them, are the measure of inflation. And while many judge the results by the Consumer Price Index (CPI), the Fed relies on the Personal Consumption Index (PCI), presumably because it covers more consumer spending than the CPI.

Please note, the Fed is not perceiving inflation and reacting to it. It is instead pursuing inflation as a goal, as stated in its mandate. Quoting Chairman Powell:

In conducting monetary policy, we will remain highly focused on fostering as strong a labor market as possible for the benefit of all Americans. And we will steadfastly seek to achieve a 2 percent inflation rate over time.

It is pursuing, in other words, a steady 2 percent depreciation in the purchasing power of the dollar. The Fed has been exceptional in this regard: Since my daughters were born in 1982, consumer prices have risen roughly 235 percent. Its policy bias pushes people to spend rather than save, even if it means they go into debt. Savers get punished, as do people living on fixed incomes. Since savings are the pool from which investment draws, entrepreneurs are punished too. Yet investment is the springboard of rising productivity and higher living standards. It sounds like a predatory computer game but it’s Fed policy.

Inflation provides the wealth transfer. The interest-rate juggling is how it’s accomplished.

Changing Definition

As discussed in On the Origin and Evolution of the Word “Inflation” by Michael F. Bryan, published by the Cleveland Fed, inflation once had an entirely different meaning:

What was once a word that described a monetary cause now describes a price outcome. This shift in meaning has complicated the position of anti-inflation advocates. As a condition of the money stock, an inflating currency has but one origin—the central bank—and one solution—a less expansive money growth rate. But as a condition of the price level, which may have originated from a variety of things (including a depreciating dollar, rising labor costs, bad weather, or a number of factors other than “too much money”), the solution to—and the prudence of— eliminating inflation is much less clear.

Confusion accelerated after the publication of Keynes’s General Theory in 1936:

In addition to separating the price level from the money stock, the Keynesian revolution in economics appears to have separated the word inflation from a condition of money and redefined it as a description of prices. In this way, inflation became synonymous with any price increase.

The Fed thus escapes the public’s scrutiny when prices rise.

Conclusion

If the modern global fiat regime began in 1971 with the Nixon Shock and the stagflation of the 1970s, it deserves applause: it was not an instant disaster.

Fiat money is a politician’s best friend because it creates an invisible tax through the institutionalized depreciation of currency. We shouldn’t expect them to part with it—especially as their perpetual interest in war demands ever greater funding.

Tyler Durden Mon, 02/02/2026 - 18:25

"All In" On AI: Deutsche Bank Says Tesla No Longer Just A Car Company

Deutsche Bank’s latest note argues that Tesla Inc. is no longer mainly a car company, but a long-term bet on artificial intelligence, robotics, and autonomy. In the report, Edison Yu and his team of analysts at Deutsche say that after Tesla’s latest earnings, any doubt about its direction is gone, describing the company as now “all in on Physical AI.”

The clearest sign of that shift is spending. Tesla plans to more than double capital expenditures, potentially topping $20 billion, with most of the money going toward AI training systems, data centers, custom chips, robotics factories, and new platforms. The analysts estimate that billions will be poured into computing alone, as Tesla builds the infrastructure needed to train self-driving and robot systems at scale. Management, they note, is aiming to “structurally disrupt labor intensive services” through vertical integration.

Autonomy and robotics now sit at the center of Deutsche’s long-term outlook. The firm highlights Tesla’s 1.1 million Full Self-Driving subscribers and sees FSD eventually generating up to $10 billion in annual revenue. It also expects the robotaxi network to grow to hundreds of thousands of vehicles by the end of the decade, producing more than $15 billion a year.

On Optimus, Tesla’s humanoid robot, the analysts are optimistic but realistic, warning that complex engineering, new supply chains, and slow early production will limit volumes in the near term.

Despite its bullish view on AI, Deutsche slightly trimmed its numbers. It cut earnings and revenue forecasts and lowered its price target from $500 to $480, while keeping a Buy rating. The reduction reflects more conservative assumptions on vehicle sales and slower model rollouts, along with a revised valuation that separates FSD, robotaxis, and robotics into distinct businesses.

Most of Tesla’s long-term value, in their model, now comes from software, autonomy, and robots rather than car sales.

The note also flags risks, including weaker EV demand, intense competition, high execution hurdles in AI and robotics, regulatory scrutiny, and Tesla’s dependence on Elon Musk. Still, Deutsche argues that Tesla’s scale, data advantage, and vertical integration give it a strong chance to win if its strategy works.

Overall, the report frames Tesla as a company in the middle of a major transformation. Short-term forecasts have been trimmed, but Deutsche believes the real story is Tesla’s push to become a leader in AI-powered mobility and automation, with the potential to reshape multiple industries over the next decade.

Tyler Durden Mon, 02/02/2026 - 18:00

The Circular Firing Squad: Staffers At CNN And CBS Denounce Efforts To Restore Balance

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

The decline of American mainstream media has long been obvious, with public trust and revenues plunging. Some companies are responding with the novel idea of restoring objectivity and neutrality to coverage. For years, news organizations have essentially written off half of the country.

However, as news organizations struggle to avoid even greater layoffs, staffers are fighting efforts to bring balance to their networks. That was evident last week in meetings at CNN and CBS where staffers continue to fight to retain their bias rather than their jobs.

CNN has long aired controversial hosts and guests who engaged in controversial statements on race and politics from the left. However, a meeting last week focused on the airing of one of the few conservatives who regularly appear on the network. As one staff member reportedly raised, there was outrage that Jennings is “allowed to exist” on the network. Even as CNN continues to languish in ratings, staffers want to fire one of the few remaining conservative voices on the network.

One of the key issues raised in the meeting was Jennings referring to “illegal aliens.” While CNN bars the term, it is used in federal law and federal cases, including by the United States Supreme Court.

In one exchange on Jan. 19, Jennings trades barbs with fellow panelist Cameron Kasky, a survivor of the 2018 Parkland school shooting. Kasky criticized Jennings for saying that ICE should be allowed to “chase down illegals” in Minnesota.

Jennings pushed back: “Who are you to tell me what I can and can’t say? I’ve never met you, brother. I can say whatever I want.  They’re illegal aliens. And that’s what the law calls them. Illegal aliens. That’s what I’m going to call them.”

Staff members reportedly denounced him as a “MAGA mouthpiece” and a “firebrand Trump loyalist” who “frequently gets into verbal spats with other CNN guests.”

It is a curious objection since these panels are supposed to be lively contrasts between guests.

The meeting is reminiscent of the effort at the Washington Post to get staffers to recognize the company’s declining position.

Robert Lewis, a British media executive who joined the Post earlier this year, reportedly got into a “heated exchange” with a staffer. Lewis explained that, while reporters were protesting measures to expand readership, the very survival of the paper was now at stake:

“We are going to turn this thing around, but let’s not sugarcoat it. It needs turning around. We are losing large amounts of money. Your audience has halved in recent years. People are not reading your stuff. Right. I can’t sugarcoat it anymore.”

The response from staffers was to call for the new editors to be fired. 

One staffer complained, “We now have four White men running three newsrooms.”

The Post has been buying out staff to avoid mass layoffs, but reporters were up in arms over the effort to turn the newspaper around.

The same dynamic is playing out at CBS, where Bari Weiss was brought in to turn around the network.

Weiss has been the subject of anonymous attacks since the company brought her in to reverse the decline in ratings.  Like Lewis, Weiss tried to explain that the staff is “not producing a product that enough people want” and that something has to change.

According to reports, Weiss was direct and candid with the staff. She stated:

“I need to start by acknowledging that there’s been a lot of noise around me taking this job. … I get it. I also get why, in the face of all this tumult, you might feel uncertain or skeptical about me or what I’m aiming to do here. I’m not going to stand up here today and ask you for your trust. I’m going to earn it, just like we have to do with our viewers.”

However, she was also clear that returning to past practices is not one of the options:

“So, here it is as plain as I can say it: I am here to make CBS News fit for purpose in the 21st century. Our industry has changed more in the last decade than in the last 150 years and the transformation isn’t over yet. Far from it. It’s almost impossible to conceive of how fast things will move from here…Back then, 30 million people watched Walter Cronkite every night. Some were on the left, some were on the right. But they trusted him. Through Cronkite, they inhabited a shared world with shared facts and a shared sense of reality. We can’t reverse time’s arrow. He had two competitors. We have two billion, give or take.”

She then made the same point as Lewis with a brutally honest and brilliantly blunt assessment:

“What we can do is what journalists do best: look at the world as it actually is. We have to start by looking honestly at ourselves. We are not producing a product that enough people want.”

Bravo.

Weiss concluded with this powerful line:

“I realize that none of these ideas are revolutionary on their own. What’s different now is that the stakes are so very high. And the hour is late. And we are in a position, with the support of all of the leadership of this company, to really make the change we need.”

Any rational person would hear these words and understand that Weiss is struggling to protect these staffers from themselves; struggling to keep their jobs. Instead, the response has been glacial from journalists, who believe they should be able to continue covering stories for one another and for an ever-shrinking audience on the left.

The fact is that we need CNN and CBS. The Framers understood the importance of an independent press. These companies helped revolutionize media and could be restored if the staff stopped obstructing reform efforts.

Instead, staff members continue to furiously saw at the branch upon which they sit.

Tyler Durden Mon, 02/02/2026 - 17:40

Clinton Judge Goes On Unhinged Rant In Order Releasing Illegals

In a country now run by activist judges who get to decide the 'will of the people,' a Clinton-appointed US District Judge has just written quite the screed.

Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, the father of Liam Ramos, left, is being detained with his son in Texas after being arrested by federal immigration authorities. (Obtained by Columbia Heights Public Schools; Department of Homeland Security) via Fox News

In a three-page ruling ordering the immediate release of a 5-year-old and his father from an immigration detention facility because it's mean to detain illegals, U.S. District Judge Fred Biery, 78, went on a complete unhinged rant against the Trump administration. 

U.S. District Judge Fred Biery

A few examples: 

"Observing human behavior confirms that for some among us, the perfidious lust for unbridled power and the imposition of cruelty in its quest know no bounds and are bereft of human decency. And the rule of law be damned."

"The case has its genesis in the ill-conceived and incompetently-implemented government pursuit of daily deportation quotas, apparently even if it requires traumatizing children."

"Apparent also is the government's ignorance of an American historical document called the Declaration of Independence. Thirty-three-year-old Thomas Jefferson enumerated grievances against a would-be authoritarian king over our nascent nation."

Biery also compared the Trump administration to King George III - quoting grievances from the Declaration of Independence, and accused the government of needing a "civics lesson" on the Fourth Amendment. 

In addition to ending the ruling with a bible quote, the elderly judge also dated the ruling on Feb. 31, 2026, an impossible date. 

The verses referenced Matthew 19:14 and John 11:35. The first contains Jesus’s words about letting children come to him. The second simply states "Jesus wept."

Legitimately the most unhinged ruling.

1) “With a judicial finger in the constitutional dike,”

2) Signed a date that doesn’t exist.

3) Adds a photo with a Bible verse.

What? pic.twitter.com/HMLPC6dfks

— Dustin Grage (@GrageDustin) February 1, 2026

The case at hand: according to DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin, "the facts in this case have NOT changed," adding that claims the agents used the child as "bait" were an "abject lie." 

According to McLaughlin, the father "fled on foot, abandoning his child," when ICE agents approached on Jan. 20 in Minnesota, the Daily Caller reports.

"On January 20, ICE conducted a targeted operation to arrest Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, an illegal alien from Ecuador who was released into the U.S. by the Biden administration. As agents approached, Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias fled on foot - abandoning his child," said McLaughlin. 

Deputy AG Todd Blanche told ABC's "This Week" on Sunday that the administration may appeal the ruling, saying "Generally speaking, we are complying with the law every single day." 

We're guessing Judge Biery was silent when his boy Obama built the cages and deported millions more than Trump. 

2013. Obama is asked why his administration is deporting so many people and separating families.

Obama: I'm the President, not the Emperor. I have to enforce the law even if it is tragic and heartbreaking. pic.twitter.com/r3aeS5fPqL

— MAZE (@mazemoore) January 25, 2026

Tyler Durden Mon, 02/02/2026 - 17:20

Bezos' Blue Origin Pauses Space Tourism To Focus On The Moon

Authored by T.J.Muscaro via The Epoch Times,

Blue Origin decided to shift its focus from the edge of space to the Moon.

The company announced on Jan. 30 that it was pausing all of its suborbital commercial flights on its reusable New Shepard rocket for no less than two years in order to focus more resources on delivering a crewed lunar lander to NASA in time to meet Congress’s set deadline to establish a permanent human presence on or around the moon by 2030.

“The decision reflects Blue Origin’s commitment to the nation’s goal of returning to the Moon and establishing a permanent, sustained lunar presence,” the company said in a statement.

January saw Blue Origin achieve successes on both fronts. Its Blue Moon MK-1 lander Endurance was shipped from its assembly facility at Cape Canaveral to Johnson Space Center in Houston on Jan. 20 to undergo critical testing.

“Named for Ernest Shackleton’s legendary ship that journeyed to Earth’s South Pole, MK1 honors resilience under pressure,” Blue Origin said on X. ”That same spirit of perseverance guides our mission to the lunar South Pole.”

The MK-1 lander is the first phase of Blue Origin’s plan. Designed as an unmanned cargo transport, the company explained on its website that this first one will be used for what it called the “Pathfinder Mission.”

That will be a demonstration mission that proves out the critical systems of both the lander and the New Glenn rocket that will carry it. Along with propulsion, communications, and avionics, this mission must also demonstrate a precision landing within 100 meters of a chosen site. This was intended to occur before NASA’s uncrewed Human Landing System mission for the Artemis Program.

In its full form, the MK-1 will enter commercial service as a lunar cargo lander designed to remain on the lunar surface and provide affordable, safe, and reliable access to the Moon.

Rendering of Blue Origin’s Blue Moon MK-1 Lander on the lunar surface. Blue Origin

MK-2 will be a crewed landing craft built and operated in accordance with NASA standards.

NASA previously had an agreement with Elon Musk’s SpaceX to provide the lunar lander that would return humans to the surface for the first time since 1972 during the Artemis III mission. However, acting NASA administrator Sean Duffy reopened the mission to competition.

“We are in a race against China, so we need the best companies to operate at a speed that gets us to the Moon FIRST,” Duffy said on X.

“SpaceX has the contract to build the [Human Landing System], which will get U.S. astronauts there on Artemis III. But, competition and innovation are the keys to our dominance in space so @NASA is opening up HLS production to Blue Origin and other great American companies.”

NASA’s new full-time administrator, Jared Isaacman, agreed with his predecessor’s decision and visited Blue Origin’s facilities on Jan. 15.

Meanwhile, the 38th New Shepard mission was successfully completed on Jan. 22, carrying another six humans on an autonomous ride from a launch site in West Texas to above the Karman Line—the internationally-recognized boundary of outer space—and back.

The operation has carried more than 90 individuals and more than 200 scientific and research payloads over those commercial ventures, including the first all-female multi-person crew to fly to space.

The company noted in its press release that it has built a multi-year customer backlog, which it attributes to the rocket’s consistent, reliable performance and customer experience.

“We’re focused on continuing to deliver transformational experiences for our customers through the proven capability and reliability of New Shepard,” New Shepard senior vice president Phil Joyce said after the latest mission.

Tyler Durden Mon, 02/02/2026 - 17:00

"F**k ICE!": Awards Season Exposes 'Spoiled, Entitled, Reality-Denying Tyrants'

Authored by James Howard Kunstler,

The political grandstanding started way back in 1973 when the irascible Marlon Brando stayed home from the Academy Awards but sent an Apache princess, one Sacheen Littlefeather, to the podium to decline his award (Best Actor for The Godfather) on account of the 71-day standoff at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota between federal agents and Oglala Lakota activists who had seized the little town of Wounded Knee.

After that, political “statements” at awards ceremonies of all kinds became modish, then obligatory, and now in the age of Lefty-left Woke Jacobin activism, all you get is one denunciation after another of the monster who lives in their heads: ChrumpChrumpChrump. Cue the audience of fellow “stars” for the also obligatory standing-O, which is really a test to see if any among them dare not join in the hosannahs — so they can be anathemized.

You are seeing sheer ritual performance by performers, the highest perq of stardom being the approbation of their peers, fellow performers — nevermind the lowly gorks out in Flyover Land who “consume” the products of pop culture. This is cliché narcissism-on-parade, of course, and is now so completely institutionalized in the pop culture industries that seemingly all actors, musicians, dancers, mimes, comics, and literary figures must act-out an activist fantasy or face the pretty extreme punishment of being run out of their business.

It’s all fake and pathetic, and the more they do it, the more their various culture industries suffer — to the point now that feature production in Hollywood was down over 16-percent in 2025. It’s dying in a self-reinforcing doom-loop. The reason is no secret, but it is dangerous to speak of it: the management of our “sense-making” institutions — movies being an important one — has been taken over by women (and womanish men) acting out Cluster-B psychodrama fantasies obsessively attacking “the patriarchy” — by which they mean (but cannot say) civilization itself, the thing sedulously built by men.

The latest wrinkle in this tragic saga is the psychodrama over ICE, the men tasked with finding and deporting people who came into the country illegally. The Cluster-B women mis-direct their nurturing instincts to rescue this politically-designated “oppressed minority,” overlooking the fact that not a few of these illegal aliens turn out to be murderous psychopaths. Conveniently, too, the illegal aliens also happen to be a very useful device for the Democratic Party to pad the census and provide illicit votes, all to keep the party in power and sustain its rackets.

President Trump completes the doom-loop circle because he is the mythic figure who prompts all the anxiety behind the “mass formation” phenomenon we are witnessing. Mr. Trump is patriarchy-in-action, so he must be destroyed by the goddess-heroines of show business. The goddess-heroines seem to believe they are ushering-in a Utopia of Nurture in which no oppressed minority will be left behind. That fantasy happens to intersect with the leveling fantasies of Karl Marx and his apostles, the mentors of the obscenely-rich denizens of Hollywood so eager to abolish obscene riches. So, you see how either stupid, or mentally-ill, or both, the people in show business can be.

Last night’s awards extravaganza was the Grammys, for music.

The anti-ICE ritual flared in full effulgence with Song of the Year winner Billie Eilish - costumed not to look as a woman but rather like a piece of luggage - bathed in applause for heroically muttering, “Fuck ICE,” after picking up her little golden gramophone statuette. Perfect.

Few musicians can make a dime anymore, and a very few of those few make billions while the rest starve. The record album was the supreme art-form of my generation, and it is long gone. Record labels don’t continue to exist when there are no records. Musical acts don’t get contracts and don’t get paid. Nobody listens to FM radio anymore and so nobody is introduced to new musical talent. Live music on the small club scale is dying because the drinks cost too much. Does anyone still have a quaint old home stereo, a gigantic wall-of-sound, with four-foot-high speakers? All I’ve got is a seven-inch Bluetooth speaker.

The lively arts are dying and the remaining lively artists are assisting with the suicide.

Not far in the future, the motion picture might be a dead letter. Technology marches on.

Immersion in human experience depicted on a silver screen, using the techniques of dramaturgy, will be supplanted, we’re told, by video games that put you immersively into “a world” where a story is spinning that you can now act-out a role in.

You might see how that would entice an awful lot of people to check-out of reality altogether — and if that happens, you might well ask: who is left to run civilization?

The answer you get will be: artificial intelligence, AI. Oh, great.

But then, is it running civilization for all those pathetic people losing themselves in immersive video games? Or just for AI itself? And where does that take the human race?

Personally, I don’t expect it to work out that way. If I were disposed to investing money in the entertainment business, I’d build a theater for puppet shows.

That’s the level our civilization-destroying antics are taking us to, with the Democratic Party leading the way.

Tyler Durden Mon, 02/02/2026 - 16:20

Detroit Judge Charged In Plot To Embezzle Money From Over 1,000 'Incapacitated Individuals'

A Detroit judge, her attorney father, and two other individuals were charged by federal prosecutors in an alleged "years-long scheme" to embezzle nearly $300,000 from individuals deemed incapacitated or otherwise vulnerable.

Judge Andrea Bradley-Baskin, 46, is alleged - among other things, "to have used $70,000 in a ward’s funds to purchase an ownership stake in a local bar," and "money embezzled from the estate of a ward to pay a two-year lease on a new Ford Expedition for herself."

In addition to Bradley-Baskin, her father, Avery Bradly, 72, Nancy Williams, 59, and Dwight Rashad, 69, were charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and several counts of money laundering. The judge was also hit with a single count for making a false statement to a federal law enforcement agent.

Bradley-Baskin and her father Avery represented a firm that was appointed to manage the estates of incapacitated wards of over 1,000 cases, the DOJ claims. The firm, Guardian & Associates, was run by indicted co-conspirator Nancy Williams, and would siphon funds from the estates of vulnerable individuals to the judge and her father - along with to a group home operator, Dwight Rashad, officials allege. 

Bradley, Rashad, and Williams are accused of stealing $203,000 from one ward's legal settlement, while spending nothing on the individual.

Guardian and Associates is further accused of paying out sums to Rashad for individuals who weren't even living in his facilities, the indictment claims. 

According to the indictment, probate courts regularly appoint guardians and conservators to manage the personal and financial affairs of adults, known as wards, who have been found by the court to lack the capacity to do so themselves. Guardians and conservators are fiduciaries who are obligated to act in the best interests of their wards. The indictment alleges that Nancy Williams owned Guardian and Associates, an agency that was appointed as a fiduciary by the Wayne County Probate Court for incapacitated wards in over 1,000 cases. 

...

Avery Bradley is an attorney, who, along with his daughter (and fellow attorney) Andrea Bradley-Baskin, operated a law firm that often represented Guardian and Associates in Wayne County Probate Court and otherwise practiced regularly in that court. Bradley-Baskin is currently a district judge on Michigan’s 36th District Court. Dwight Rashad operated a series of group homes and residential facilities for elderly individuals, including wards, who needed support and care. -DOJ

They also claim Williams paid Rashad rent for wards who never lived in his facilities. Lawyers for Bradley-Baskin have not responded to requests for comment. The case is being investigated by the FBI and IRS Criminal Investigation.

"We respect the authority that covers a black robe. This state judge and her cronies allegedly abused that high honor for personal gain by preying on the needy protected by the court," said U.S. Attorney Jerome Gorgon in a statement. "This would be a grievous abuse of our public trust."

FBI Detroit Field Office chief Jennifer Runyan said, “Regardless of a person’s position in society, no one is above the law,” and accused the defendants of exploiting their authority to profit from vulnerable people.

Tyler Durden Mon, 02/02/2026 - 15:45

'Rock Now Beats Paper': Making Sense Of "Silver Friday's" Utterly Rigged Nonsense

Authored by Matthew Piepenberg via VonGreyerz.gold,

On Friday, January 30, 2026, the world learned (or rediscovered) just how grotesquely rigged the paper gold and silver markets truly are.

The Great (Yet Familiar) Fall

Despite no change whatsoever in global supply and demand forces, silver went from a $120 near-high on Thursday to a $78 low on Friday, marking this as the largest single-day crash (35%) in the silver market in 44 years.

It goes without saying that such price moves don’t happen naturally.

Something far more engineered was in play, a trick which many investors may not immediately recognize, but which anyone familiar with the nefarious insider mechanics of banking, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the COMEX and the London Bullion Market Association can see as plainly as a dentist sees a cavity.

So, what happened?

Look No Further than a Banker’s Rescue

As usual, whenever something so openly rigged, insider and market-distorting occurs, the very first place to look for a smoking gun, guilty child and a liar’s grin is among the banks, most of whom are and were drowning in levered silver short positions by Thursday night’s $120 silver price.

This meant that with each passing day of rising silver, the banks were getting squeezed to the point of self-destruction.

This is not fable but fact. Rising silver was literally strangling the big banks. They needed to exit their short squeeze as soon as possible, but preferably at a lower rather than higher silver price.

And then, almost by magic, silver conveniently fell like a rock to save their collectively levered @$$es.

Coincidences Galore…

But was it really any “magical” coincidence that JP Morgan was able to exit its massive (and fatally stupid) short exposure at the absolute bottom/floor of the silver price on Friday? That is, at the perfect moment?

Was it also any coincidence that the London Metals Exchange went completely dark on that very same day?

And was it just an equal coincidence that HSBC, the second largest silver short holder on the LBMA, went completely offline as the choreographed Friday massacre in silver took place?

Or do you think it may also be just another coincidence that the self-regulated COMEX raised its margin requirements yet again on that same Friday to shake out even more of the levered longs, which were otherwise pummeling the short-exposed bankers?

And finally, do you think it was just a coincidence that the announcement of a new Fed Sheriff came that very same day, on the eve of a weekend, and well after the Asian markets had closed?

Engineered Carnage

Folks, let’s be very clear. What happened on “Silver Friday” was neither normal market action nor a convergence of statistically impossible coincidences.

It was an entirely engineered flushing of the silver price to save a fatally trapped cabal of bankers caught behind the grassy knoll in the mother of all short-squeezes.

But as I had warned as recently as a month ago, such desperate measures are nothing new, especially in the more volatile silver trade. Or stated otherwise: “We’ve seen this movie before.”

Same Tricks, Different Dates

In 1980, for example, when the Hunt brothers famously sought to corner the silver market, they had caught the attention and fear of the market manipulators in the US and UK, who, for obvious reasons, feared a rising silver price.

The self-regulated US exchanges have the luxury of changing the rules in the middle of a chess match, which means they effectively always win (i.e., cheat).

As the Hunt brothers helped take silver toward an alarming $50.00 in 1980, the CME simply changed the rules mid-game by making the exchange a sell-only platform, which naturally crushed not only natural price discovery, but also took 80% off the silver price with a single rule change.

How’s that for a rigged game?

But the highlights don’t end there.

In the post 2008 crisis era, silver began to make positive strides north yet again. By 2011, silver hit the spooky $49.00 level, and so the equally spooked CME proceeded to raise the margin costs for silver trades five times in two weeks.

By effectively raising the “buy-in” to play poker with the silver exchanges, the new rules (i.e., the “House”) forced most of the silver longs to sell at mass, which directly precipitated a 48% fall in an otherwise naturally bullish silver market.

Of course, we just saw similar games played in December of 2025, when the COMEX imposed margin hikes yet again in the silver markets. As I warned just weeks ago, this was a sign of desperation but not capitulation. 

The rigged game against silver would not end so easily.

Silver Friday…

Which brings us to Silver Friday, one of the greatest price spoofs ever witnessed in the totally rigged, and now totally desperate paper metals markets.

As silver hit $120, the levered bankers and the incestuous system they rigged went into open panic and cheat mode against that otherwise revered notion of dying capitalism, which the rest of us call “free price discovery.”

By adding more margin hikes on Friday, the insiders forced a sell-off in the paper silver markets and covered their embarrassing shorts at a 35% discount off natural price action.

This was the market equivalent of Lance Armstrong conducting his own drug tests…

What’s Next?

If some of you are glad to understand the twisted plumbing behind the manipulation of silver (and gold) in the COMEX cesspool, a theme we’ve covered numerous times elsewhere, you may nevertheless be concerned.

That is, you may be glad to see how the game is rigged, but your next question, naturally, is how does that help you as a silver or gold investor if the House always wins?

After all, it may be nice to call out a dirty cop, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy to beat one.

Or stated even more simply, if the game is so openly rigged, how does one ever win? What can you do with your gold and silver in such a corrupt backdrop?

Fair Question

In fact, the disconcerting tricks behind Silver Friday are by no means the end of the longer story for silver in particular or precious metals in general, as the exchanges are clearly terrified of silver and gold’s inevitable direction northwards.

They see what we see.

If anything, the desperation behind this headline move only signals a stronger silver and gold market ahead.

Why?

Supply & Demand Gets the Last Laugh

Because the crash of Silver Friday did not solve the much larger problem (or more powerful forces) of basic supply and demand.

Silver has seen five consecutive years of 200M ounces/year of supply deficits, totaling over 1B ounces in collective silver supply deficits.

All Silver Friday achieved was a flushing out of uber-levered speculators and a classic butt-saving of those ever-so-stupid commercial banks who found themselves trapped (and now rescued) from the mother of all short-squeezes.

A rigged system which favors insider bankers is nothing new. We’ve written about their staggering games for years.

But here’s the rub.

Rock Now Beats Paper

What we just witnessed on Silver Friday is pure confirmation that the silver (and gold) paper markets are dying before our watering yet wide-open eyes.

In October, for example, the London exchange effectively seized up. They were out of physical silver. In the summer of 2025, the COMEX saw 100% delivery of gold, leaving an exchange whose typical delivery percentage was 1%.

In short: The world wants physical metals, not paper tricks.

The CME and COMEX cheaters may be able to brazenly manipulate the paper price of silver, but they have yet to find an alchemist’s ability to create actual silver.

Moving forward, actual buyers of real silver will move further and further away from the now discredited and increasingly desperate and openly rigged paper markets in the US and UK.

The physical metals will be in greater demand, and the once-powerful paper exchanges will lose their leverage and influence.

Industrial as well as monetary demand for silver will continue to push demand and physical pricing higher.

As for gold, the rising demand for real money (physical gold) over paper currencies will continue its secular and historical momentum north for all the reasons we’ve already covered.

This rising preeminence of physical gold and silver over levered paper gold and silver will steadily outpace the increasingly desperate and disclosed mechanizations on the paper exchanges.

Or stated more simply: The CME may have won a paper battle on Silver Friday, but rising demand for physical silver and gold will win the war on paper systems losing credibility, power and options with each tick of a global debt bubble and currency timebomb.

For those who hold physical gold and silver as part of a long game of wealth preservation against the short game of desperate yet dying paper money, Friday’s speedbump was nothing more than that: A bump in an otherwise wide-open road forward.

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

Tyler Durden Mon, 02/02/2026 - 15:05

Apple Prioritizes Premium iPhone Rollout As 'Great Memory Crunch' Tightens Global Supply

We have repeatedly warned about the "Great Memory Crunch," driven by AI data center buildouts absorbing a growing share of global memory supply, and industry insiders now telling consumers and enterprises (read here) should accelerate purchases of electronics that use high-bandwidth memory before prices accelerate further, as supply shortages are expected through 2027.

One key signal that the memory shortage is worsening is that Apple, one of the world's most valuable companies, is having to prioritize the production and shipment of its three most premium new iPhone models due to the memory crunch, according to a new report by Nikkei Asia.

Not even Apple can mitigate the threat of the HBM shortage.

Here's more from the report based on industry insiders:

The U.S. tech giant will focus on delivering its first-ever foldable iPhone as well as two non-folding models with higher-end cameras and larger displays for its flagship launch in the second half of the year, said four people with knowledge of the matter. The standard iPhone 18 model will be scheduled for shipment in the first half of 2027, they said.

The move is intended to optimize resources and maximize revenue and profits from premium models amid surging prices for memory chips and other materials, multiple sources told Nikkei Asia. It is also critical for Apple to minimize any potential production hiccups while mass producing its first-ever foldable iPhone, which requires more complicated industrial techniques and new materials that could require more time to reach required levels of production quality, according to the people.

Choosing to focus on premium models in the second half of this year and targeting sales for its relatively standard models in the first half of 2027 could help the company better manage supply chain resources and develop a better and clear marketing strategy, one of the people said.

. . .

Apple has at least five new iPhone models in the pipeline: a revamped iPhone Air, its thinnest-ever model; the standard new iPhone; and three premium models. It is not yet clear when shipments of the Air will start, but they are not expected this year.

To visualize the HBM memory crunch, Amazon price-tracking website CamelCamelCamel shows a parabolic surge in the price of Crucial Pro DDR5 64GB RAM, rising from $145 to $790 in just six months.

More than one month ago, we cited Goldman analyst Maho Kamiya, who told clients that concerns about rising memory prices and the absence of top-down tailwinds had sent Nintendo shares spiraling.

TrendForce expects 70% of HBM chips produced this year will be consumed by data centers.

The list of memory-crunch victims has continued to grow.

Last week, we noted that smartphones, PCs, and other consumer electronics dependent on HBM were set to come under pressure. Goldman then followed with another note, warning that it had slashed global PC shipment forecasts due to soaring memory prices. That list continues to expand:

• "Do It Now": Industry Insiders Urge Consumers To Front-Run PC, TV, Smartphone Purchases As 'Memory Crunch' Will Intensify

In addition to the Nikkei Asia report, Apple CEO Tim Cook told investors during an earnings call this past week that "We do continue to see market pricing for memory increasing significantly. As always, we’ll look at a range of options to deal with that."

If even one of the world’s largest and most powerful companies is struggling to secure enough memory supply, the warning signs are flashing red: the Great Memory Crunch is rapidly accelerating and could impact product availability, while sending prices for popular electronics soaring.

Tyler Durden Mon, 02/02/2026 - 14:50

Schools Closed For 8th Day Across Multiple States As Cold Weather Persists

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

Superintendents are keeping schools closed to students across multiple states on Feb. 2 as cold weather persists, leaving some roads and sidewalks difficult to navigate.

Officials in Montgomery County, Maryland; Fairfax County, Virginia; and Winston-Salem/Forsyth County, North Carolina were among those announcing canceled classes on Monday for the eighth day in the wake of a storm that dumped snow and ice along the East Coast.

“Snow and ice removal from this winter weather event has been slow, where Monday will be the first day above freezing in 9 days,” Montgomery County Public Schools said on the district’s website.

“We know we will not have perfect conditions any time soon, but many streets and sidewalks are NOT passable for buses or safe for student walkers,” officials added later.

They said they want to resume classes on Tuesday, but doing so would be partially contingent on people clearing sidewalks around them.

Fairfax County Public Schools said on its website that classes were canceled because of “continued concerns about safe travel for students and staff to and from school.” The district did not commit to opening on Tuesday.

At least some employees in both counties are expected to report to work on Feb. 2, officials said.

Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools said on its website that schools were closed Monday “due to unsafe road conditions.”

Those three districts were among those not holding remote classes or instruction over the Internet.

Other districts, such as Randolph County Schools in North Carolina, were having a remote learning day rather than holding classes as normal in person.

Still others, including schools in Baltimore County in Maryland and the District of Columbia, opened for in-person instruction, but two hours later than usual.

A number of states are dealing with snow and ice brought by a January storm. Some areas reported multiple feet of snow. Many recorded at least eight inches.

Since then, freezing temperatures have persisted, keeping the snow and ice in place unless it is removed by hand or machine.

The National Weather Service issued a winter weather advisory for portions of Michigan and North Carolina on Monday due to freezing temperatures and additional accumulations of ice.

Forecasters also warned residents across Florida that temperatures as low as 30 degrees, with cold wind chills, were expected late Monday into early Tuesday.

The cold temperatures atypically affected the Southeast, including Alabama and Florida.

More snow is projected to fall in Delaware, Maryland, and New Jersey, among other states, in the coming days, although the total would likely be no more than 1 inch in most areas and a maximum of 5 inches, the weather service said.

Tyler Durden Mon, 02/02/2026 - 14:20

What Corporate America Is Saying About AI Adoption On Earnings Calls

With roughly 50% of the S&P 500's market capitalization having reported results so far this earnings season, we are focusing on what companies are saying about artificial intelligence on earnings calls.

To do that, we lean on Goldman analysts led by Ben Snider, who track executive commentary focused on AI adoption.

"AI adoption has remained a popular topic on earnings calls this quarter, but only a handful of companies have quantified their productivity gains from AI use," Snider said. 

Those companies include: 

Bank of America (BAC):

"We have 18,000 people on the company's payroll who code - using the AI techniques, we've taken 30% out of the coding technique - the coding part of the stream of introducing a new product or service or change, that saves us about 2,000 people... And I use an example, our audit team has built a capability they think a series of prompts around doing audits and stuff to allow them to shape the head count back down that they had to grow during the regulatory onslaught over the last few years."

C.H. Robinson Worldwide (CHRW):

"Our fleet of AI agents is growing quickly as we continue to pioneer new ways to automate manual tasks and supercharge our industry-leading freight experts to solve for complexity and deliver high-quality service to our customers and carriers… This includes an expectation that we will generate double-digit productivity improvements in both NAST and Global Forwarding in 2026, as we continue to implement agentic AI across our quote-to-cash lifecycle of an order... These digital capabilities also enabled us to continue delivering double-digit productivity increases in NAST in 2025. Since the end of 2022, we have delivered a more than 40% increase in shipments per person per day, and this is measured across the entirety of our NAST organization... Additionally, 95% of our checks on missed LTL pickups are now automated, saving over 350 hours of outsourced manual work a day… Take the example we give often around our request for freight quote operation... Previously, we were only getting to 60% of those requests; today, we get to 100%. Previously, it was taking a cycle time of 17 to 20 minutes; today, it takes less than 32 seconds... These new AI agents are tracking down missed pickups and using advanced reasoning to determine how to keep freight moving... As a result, shippers' freight moves up to a day faster and return trips to pick up missed freight have been reduced by 42%... the growing automation across our quote-to-cash lifecycle enables us to decouple head count growth from volume growth and to create greater operating leverage and operating margin expansion... Our average head count was down 12.9% year-over-year in Q4 and was down 3.8% sequentially..."

Costco Wholesale (COST):

"An early use case has involved integrating AI into our pharmacy inventory system... autonomously and predictably reorders inventory, improving our end stocks to more than 98%. This change has played an important role in helping us achieve mid-teens growth in pharmacy scripts filled and has improved margins while lowering prices to our members. We are now in the process of deploying AI tools in our gas business, which we expect will improve inventory management and drive incremental sales by ensuring we're always delivering the best value to our members."

Meta Platforms (META):

"Since the beginning of 2025, we've seen a 30% increase in output per engineer with the majority of that growth coming from the adoption of agentic coding, which saw a big jump in Q4. We're seeing even stronger gains with power users of AI coding tools, whose output has increased 80% year-over-year. We expect this growth to accelerate through the next half."

Northern Trust (NTRS):

"You heard me mention our productivity for 2025 was about 4% of our expense base. And this year, we bumped that up. It's going to be closer to 5%. And a lot of that is because of the impact we're seeing of AI... we are simplifying processes, upgrading platforms, and applying AI to reduce friction in service delivery."

Paychex (PAYX):

"We are excited to share that our first agentic AI pilots were a success this quarter. They autonomously handled thousands of payroll calls and emails with nearly 100% accuracy, decreasing payroll processing time and enabling our service teams to focus on higher value strategic advisory support."

ServiceNow (NOW):

"AI is also driving significant cost efficiencies that have resulted in full-year profitability beats on top of our recently raised guidance... We expect an operating margin of 32%, up 100 basis points year-over-year driven by OpEx savings enabled by AI efficiencies."

Travelers Companies (TRV):

"We've recently rolled out Gen AI agents to efficiently mine both internal and external data sources to better understand and synthesize the risk characteristics and ensure appropriate business classification. This capability both accelerates the underwriting process and results in improved risk classification and segmented pricing... In extensive testing, we achieve significantly improved engineering output and meaningful productivity gains... the efficiency gains in our claim organization come through loss adjustment expense, benefiting the loss ratio. As just one example, our claim call center population is down by a third. And this year, we'll be consolidating four claim call centers down to two... Our AI investments to automate submission intake for new business reduced our time to ingest submissions from hours to just minutes… our renewal underwriting platform leverages generative AI… with early results showing more than a 30% reduction in average handle time."

In a separate note, Goldman analyst Sarah Dong reported that the AI adoption tracker through December stood at 17.3%, with an expected target of 21.1% over the next six months.

Related:

• What To Know About Corporate America's Double-Digit AI Adoption Boom

• Which Companies Will Benefit Most From AI Adoption?

• October Layoffs Surge Most Since 2003 Amid Cost-Cutting, AI Adoption, Challenger Data Shows

We expect 2026 to be a year when AI-related layoffs accelerate as AI adoption gains traction across corporate America.

Tyler Durden Mon, 02/02/2026 - 14:05

Devon And Coterra To Create Shale Giant In $58-Billion Merger Deal

By Tsvetana Paraskova of OilPrice.com

Devon Energy and Coterra Energy announced on Monday a definitive agreement to merge and create a premier shale operator in an all-stock transaction, implying a combined enterprise value of about $58 billion.  

The deal, announced today after weeks of speculation, would create a company with a significantly increased position in the premier part of the Permian Basin and operations in the Marcellus Shale and Anadarko Basin.

The deal will create one of the top shale producers with pro-forma third quarter 2025 production exceeding 1.6 million barrels of oil equivalent (Boe) per day, including over 550,000 barrels of oil per day and 4.3 billion cubic feet of gas per day, the companies said.

The combined company will be named Devon Energy and will be headquartered in Houston while maintaining a significant presence in Oklahoma City.

Devon and Coterra expect to realize $1 billion in annual pre-tax synergies with the deal.

Lower oil prices have shale producers considering how they can boost investor returns when expanding drilling at $60 a barrel oil or lower is eating the margins.

In terms of drilling opportunities, the combined company will have the largest inventory in the Delaware basin with a breakeven of below $40 per barrel, according to Devon’s presentation of the merger deal.

The combined company will also have top-tier capital efficiency in each basin, with operations in the Permian, Anadarko, Eagle Ford, Marcellus, and the Rockies regions.

Under the terms of the agreement, Coterra shareholders will receive a fixed exchange ratio of 0.70 share of Devon common stock for each share of Coterra common stock. Upon completion of the deal, Devon shareholders will own about 54% of the go-forward company and Coterra shareholders will own approximately 46%.

The transaction, which was unanimously approved by the boards of directors of both companies, is expected to close in the second quarter of 2026, subject to regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions, including approvals by Devon and Coterra shareholders.  

Tyler Durden Mon, 02/02/2026 - 13:45

What's The Warsh That Could Happen?

By Benjamin Picton, Senior Market Strategist at Rabobank

The DXY is dealing firmer this morning and precious metals continue to be flogged like the family silver after Donald Trump confirmed the nomination of Kevin Warsh as incoming Fed Chair. In defiance of the President’s oft-stated preference, markets are convinced that Warsh is a hawk. Consequently, zero-yield risk is taking a beating (bitcoin, ouch), equities are offered and US 5y5y inflation swaps have fallen by ~2bps since Wednesday of last week.

The Financial Times marked the occasion of Warsh’s nomination by saying ‘Arise, Shadow Fed Chair Stan Druckenmiller’, suggesting that the legendary hedge fund manager who counts both Kevin Warsh and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent among his proteges is now the most powerful person in the global economy. The FT references ‘people familiar with the matter’ as describing Druck’s relationship with Warsh and Bessent as “akin to father-son relationships”, with Warsh in particular sometimes speaking with Druckenmiller “more than a dozen times a day”. Needless to say, markets will now be hanging off of Druck’s every utterance for direction on monetary policy.

While that will doubtless be the case, it seems absurd that much divination is actually required to determine where monetary policy in the United States is likely to go. The national debt burden is immense – soon to hit $39 trillion in dollar terms and now above 121% of GDP – and more than 3% of GDP is already dedicated to servicing interest expense. That – as Fed Chair Powell pointed out last week – comes at a time of healthy economic expansion with a labor market close to full employment.

With all the understatement of a career central banker, Powell described this cocktail as “unsustainable”. If something is ‘unsustainable’, logically it will not be sustained. So what is likely to change?

It won’t be the spending, as the largely futile efforts of DOGE and the fact that ‘mandatory spending’ (social programs, farm subsidies, student loan subsidies etc) plus interest expense plus defence spending accounts for almost 87% of US fiscal outlays. Interest expense will go up, not down, Trump wants to increase the defence budget by 50% and cutting entitlements is a practical impossibility that often gets talked about but never seems to happen. Besides, Trump campaigned on opposing cuts to programs like social security and Medicare.

What about the income side of the ledger? The Trump administration has already taken steps to increase taxes by introducing sweeping import tariffs, but if those tariffs prove effective over time in driving import substitution for domestically-produced alternatives it stands to reason that tariffs will become less and less effective as a revenue tool. Outright rises in direct taxation also seems unlikely given that Trump permanently extended his 2017 tax cuts that had been due to expire via the One Big Beautiful Bill in May of this year.

That leaves interest rates and growth as the only remaining levers to right the fiscal ship. Politicians always think that they are going to grow their way out of trouble, but in Trump’s case it seems likely that an inflationary boom is genuinely part of the fiscal strategy. All of the signs so far point to a willingness to ‘run it hot’ when it comes to the economy.

We have written previously about the strategy of driving adoption of US dollar stablecoins as a means to lower borrowing costs at the front end of the yield curve. Coupled with a sympathetic Fed Governor who is likely to reflect the President’s wish for a lower Fed Funds rate, this might be the best shot of the administration to move the fiscal needle. Indeed, in an era of fiscal dominance, the incoming Fed Chair may have little choice but to keep short rates low.

Along with moves to pressure mortgage relates lower through MBS purchases, threats of price caps (on credit card interest, for instance) and attempts to use tariffs as leverage to extract investment pledges from other countries, these sorts of measures veer into the realm of financial repression, where real interest rates are held negative and private savers carry the can for the government largesse.

Of course, some of these policy options are only available to the United States due to its status as the issuer of the global reserve currency. Abusing the “exorbitant privilege” of being the reserve currency issuer through erratic trade practices, financial repression and strategic currency devaluation is a high stakes gamble that could backfire spectacularly.

Xi Jinping is evidently well aware of the contradictions faced by the United States in attempting to leverage its position as reserve currency issuer without losing it. The FT yesterday reported on comments from Xi calling for the Chinese renminbi to become a global reserve currency by creating a “powerful (read: politicized) central bank” that would ensure a “strong currency” used widely in international trade, investment and foreign exchange markets.

The renminbi has been steadily strengthening against the dollar since Liberation Day last year, and the PBOC has accelerated its run stronger daily fixings from late November onwards. Xi was clear at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit last year that he wished to internationalize the role of the CNY and China has begun using its monopsony market power in commodities like iron ore to drive wider acceptance of its currency for trade settlement. Expect more of this in markets where China is the only buyer, or the only buyer of scale.

CNY is starting from a low base and still faces the Triffin Dilemma of not meeting the requirements of a reserve currency so long as China insists on running trade surpluses (there’s no sign of a change of heart on that score), but by boosting its adoption Xi could chip away at the reserve currency status of the dollar right at the moment when many other players in financial markets and the world economy are openly questioning whether the dollar’s writ still runs.

Though it still seems unlikely at this stage, if the reserve status of the dollar was genuinely threatened it would dramatically reduce the freedom to manoeuvre of US policy makers grappling with that “unsustainable” fiscal trajectory.

For the public finances of the United States, that might be the Warsh that could happen.

Tyler Durden Mon, 02/02/2026 - 13:05