Month: September 2024

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Ohio’s governor says he is sending law enforcement officials and millions of dollars in health care resources to Springfield, a city at the center of a national spotlight on Haitian illegal immigrants.

Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, said he doesn’t oppose the Temporary Protected Status program under which some 15,000 Haitians have arrived in the city of about 59,000 people since 2020. However, he said, the federal government must do more to help impacted communities.

In a news conference on Sept. 10, DeWine said that “dramatic surges” in illegal immigrants “impact every citizen of the community,” adding that the small Ohio cities of Lima and Findlay also have had influxes.

“The federal government simply has to be part of the solution,” the governor said. “They have to step up. It’s their policies that have created these surges.”

He said the influx affects “moms who have to wait hours in a waiting room with a sick child, everyone who drives on the streets, and it affects children who go to school in more-crowded classrooms.”

On Sept. 11, the Ohio State Highway Patrol is being dispatched to help local police with traffic issues in Springfield.

City officials and social media posts have indicated that Haitian drivers are frequently involved in accidents and crashes, the governor said.

“The goal, of course, is to reduce dangerous driving regardless of who the driver is,” he said.

DeWine said he is also earmarking $2.5 million over two years for more primary health care through the county health department and private health care institutions.

Controversy over migrants in Springfield erupted earlier this month after some social media users said that Haitian immigrants were eating people’s pets, as well as ducks from a park.

People who spoke at town hall events, videos of which were uploaded online, also said that the immigrants frequently crash their vehicles, camp, and squat on locals’ property, cannot speak English, and haven’t tried to assimilate into the broader American culture.

The allegations were enhanced by Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), the Republican vice presidential nominee, who said on social media that “people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country.” He added that immigrants are allegedly “causing chaos all over Springfield.”

In a newer post on Sept. 10, Vance wrote that his office received inquiries about the claims and that it’s possible “that all of these rumors turn out to be false.”

In a statement on Sept. 10, Springfield Strategic Engagement Manager Karen Graves told The Epoch Times, “There have been no credible reports or specific claims of pets being harmed, injured, or abused by individuals within the immigrant community.”

Multiple requests to the Springfield Police Division for comment have not been returned.

Halt in Deportations

Earlier this year, the Department of Homeland Security announced Temporary Protected Status for Haitians who arrived in the United States before June 3, including those who entered illegally, protecting them from being deported back to Haiti.

DeWine’s family operates a charity in Haiti, which has built a network of schools. Earlier this year, a school founded by the charity was forced to close as armed gangs took over swaths of Haiti in the latest round of unrest to hit the impoverished country, the Ohio governor told reporters.

Long considered the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, Haiti has been beset by gang warfare since the country’s president, Jovenel Moise, was assassinated in July 2021. The U.S. Embassy currently lists the country as “Level 4—Do Not Travel,” because of crime, kidnappings, general unrest, and poor health care infrastructure.

“U.S. citizens in Haiti should depart Haiti as soon as possible by commercial or other privately available transportation options, in light of the current security situation and infrastructure challenges,” the embassy said in a bulletin last year, which hasn’t been updated.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

On Thursday Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov issued a bombshell of an accusation against Ukraine. He said that Ukrainian intelligence agents are “actively recruiting Islamist militants” in northwest Syria, the Sahara, as well as in the Sahel regions of Africa “to carry out terrorist operations.“

“Now there is information that Ukrainian envoys, those of Ukrainian intelligence, are in the Idlib de-escalation zone on the territory of Syria, where they are recruiting militants of Jabhat al-Nusra, now called Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS),” the foreign minister said.

Lavrov alleged that the al-Qaeda linked militants are being recruited for “new hideous operations planned.” The fresh comments came during a conference involving the heads of Russian diplomatic missions abroad, held in Moscow.

“They are already looking further south, to the Sahara–Sahel zone of the African continent, where they are also carrying out terrorist attacks on government troops of numerous countries together with recruited extremists,” Lavrov alleged of Ukrainian intelligence.

In the remarks the top Russian diplomat highlighted the Moscow Crocus City Hall terror attack which killed at least 145 people on March 22 of this year. At the time Russian authorities alleged that the four Islamic militant attackers had links to Ukraine and that some of their associates involved in the plotting tried to escape across the border. The attack was later claimed by ISIS.

“The investigation is still underway, but it has already revealed evidence that the Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry was involved in the preparation of the terrorist attack. In particular, the escape routes of the killers across the Russian–Ukrainian border were planned in detail,” Lavrov continued.

So it seems that Lavrov is accusing Ukraine of plotting more sabotage and terror attacks in side Russia by recruiting and paying Syrian and North African Islamist mercenaries.

The specific accusation regarding Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) is interesting, given that the Syrian AQ group has long held Idlib province in northwest Syria. It has for years been fighting the Syrian and Russian militaries, and in 2015 Islamic fighters had first seized Idlib with the support of a NATO operations room in southern Turkey.

The only additional significant source claiming that Ukraine is tapping Syrian mercenaries is Turkish newspaper Aydinlik. The newspaper reported this week that Ukrainian government officials recently traveled to Idlib and met with members of Syria’s HTS to discuss a “drones-for-fighters” deal. “A delegation from Ukraine went to Idlib in recent months and met with the leaders of the terrorist organization,” the newspaper claimed of a meeting reportedly held in June.

However, there’s been no specific proof. But it would perhaps be an interesting way for Ukraine to solve its manpower problems. Syrian anti-Assad militants have also been known to travel to north Africa in support of Turkish defense firms. Turkey has long overseen what’s essentially a ‘jihadist highway’ in and out of Syria, or at other times “looked the other way”. It all started in and after 2011, amid US-Gulf efforts to oust Bashar al-Assad.

By Campus Reform,

The University of Michigan’s Office of the Vice President for Research (OVPR) has granted almost $500,000 to research subjects tied to “anti-racism.” 

The announcement was made by the OVPR and published by The University Record on Wednesday. The $500,000 was distributed to eight different research teams.

One of the “anti-racism research projects” is titled “Ubuntu-AI: Empowering Design Collaborations Across the Black Atlantic with Artificial Intelligence,” which will examine how “AI might reverse its potentially debilitating impact on Black artisans.”

Another group will study “Racial Capitalism and Anti-Racism in Kenyan Conservation,” a project that seeks to “identify how and why racialized conservation injustice occurs and how it can be prevented in the future.”

Another project is “Ways of Knowing and Storytelling as Diversity Training Mechanisms,” which “will examine the effectiveness of ‘ways of knowing’ and storytelling interventions on diversity training activities.”

The OVPR began its Research Catalyst and Innovation Program in 2021, which fosters research that looks into “complex societal racial inequalities to inform systemic action that achieves equity and justice.”

In the three years since, OVPR has granted almost $2 million in “anti-racism grants” to support research into “anti-racism.”

“The work these teams are pursuing is key in understanding how to dismantle the effects of systemic inequalities across multiple communities,” said Trachette Jackson, a top Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) official at the school.

Other schools have also been using research grants dedicated to promoting DEI and “anti-racism.”

This August, the National Science Foundation gave $4.5 million to Louisiana State University to found a “Center for Equity in Faculty Advancement” focused on working “to understand mechanisms that drive bias, along with policy and training interventions to mitigate it.”

Campus Reform has contacted the University of Michigan for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.

The combination of extremely tight beef supplies in the US, with the national cattle herd size sliding to the lowest levels since 1951 and new estimates of declining beef production in agricultural juggernaut Brazil, points to elevated burger prices for the foreseeable future, yet more bad news for cash-strapped consumers struggling with rampant food inflation.

Bloomberg cited consulting firm Datagro analyst Joao Otavio Figueiredo’s presentation at a conference in Sao Paulo this week, which noted Brazil’s cattle availability is expected to decline as early as next year. This essentially means the cost of producing beef will rise, straining global supplies of red meat at a time when the South American country has ramped up exports of beef to the US. 

Figueiredo expects Brazil’s animal slaughter rates to fall 4.6% next year and 7.5% in 2026. This means that years of expanding beef production capacity in South America are ending abruptly. This is happening at a time when US companies are turning to Brazil for beef supplies to counter extremely tight domestic supplies, the lowest since 1951. 

“The reduction in the Brazilian cattle herd comes when beef production is already constrained by a severe shortage of slaughter-weight animals in the US, which has eroded profits for processors such as Tyson Foods Inc. and Cargill Inc. That is unwelcome news for JBS SA, Marfrig Global Foods SA and Minerva SA, which rely on Brazilian cattle for a sizable share of their beef output,” Bloomberg noted. 

Notice how US meat imports from Brazil have ramped up in the last several years.

Data from Statista shows that in 2022 , the imports of beef from Canada and Mexico to the US were 51%, while Brazil was in the number three spot with 14%. 

No one is coming to the rescue to save the rapidly deteriorating US beef cattle herd.

Retail ground beef prices at the supermarket continue marching higher.

According to VP Harris, the solution to rising beef and food prices is communist price controls… 

We don’t expect a meaningful rebound in the nation’s beef cattle supply until at least 2026. It will take years.

Maybe the Fed can print more beef? Oh wait, no, but you know who can: Bill Gates.

Authored by Darlene McCormick Sanchez via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas criticized Texas’s attempts to stop illegal immigration while praising Vice President Kamala Harris’s role in addressing the “root causes” of the border crisis.

Mayorkas spoke Sept. 6 at the Texas Tribune Festival in Austin.

The annual festival hosts a slate of political speakers, newsmakers, and journalists who discuss current events.

“This is the first time that in my 20 to 22 years of government service that I have seen a state act in direct contravention of national interests,” Mayorkas said.

Some 10 million illegal immigrants have entered the United States since President Joe Biden took office in January 2021. In March 2021, he put Harris in charge of dealing with illegal immigration. Harris, now the Democratic Party nominee for president, faces criticism for the border crisis as the 2024 election draws near.

Texas has spent $11 billion on Operation Lone Star, deploying thousands of Texas National Guard soldiers and Texas Department of Public Safety troopers, transporting illegal immigrants to self-declared sanctuary cities, installing strategic barriers, and building the state’s border wall, according to Andrew Mahaleris, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s press secretary.

Texas’s Operation Lone Star was introduced in March 2021 to address “dangerous gaps” in border security created by Biden and Harris, Mahaleris said in an email to The Epoch Times.

Those efforts have decreased illegal border crossings by 85 percent, he said.

“Until President Biden and Border Czar Harris step up and do their jobs to secure the border, Texas will continue utilizing every tool and strategy to respond,” Mahaleris said.

Mayorkas called Abbott’s efforts to bus illegal immigrants to other states and cities without notice to or coordination with receiving cities “incomprehensible” and not good governance.

“Is it purely to wreak havoc and disorder in the receiving communities to make a political point?” Mayorkas said.

He also criticized Senate Bill 4, which Abbott signed into law and was meant to go into effect on March 5, but it instead remains in limbo after the Biden administration sued. Mayorkas said immigration is the federal government’s responsibility.

SB 4 makes crossing into Texas unlawfully from a foreign nation a state felony and empowers state and local law enforcement to make arrests and carry out deportations. The law has some similarities to a 2010 Arizona law that ended up being mostly struck down in a 5–4 Supreme Court decision in 2012. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has said the Supreme Court got the Arizona decision wrong and that it needs to be relitigated.

In Austin, Mayorkas defended Harris, saying she had done her job in addressing the “root causes” of mass migration to the United States.

“The vice president has done an extraordinary job in a public-private partnership driving resources to the countries in the Northern Triangle: El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala specifically,” he said.

The public–private partnerships invest in those countries to build industries and generate jobs as a way of addressing why migrants leave their countries, he said.

Root causes include violence, poverty, extreme weather events, and corruption, he said.

Mayorkas said the Senate’s failed bipartisan border bill would have helped control immigration, but “forces stepped in to prevent the solution.”

Republicans blocked the bill twice, and former President Donald Trump said it would do more harm than good, writing on Truth Social that it gives border shutdown authority only after 5,000 illegal immigrant encounters per day.

Trump maintains that the president has the authority to close the border like he did without additional legislation.

Tensions between congressional Republicans and Mayorkas caused the House of Representatives to impeach him on Feb. 13. However, the effort died in the Democrat-controlled Senate.

Mayorkas did not address the potential for a new wave of illegal immigrants following the resumption of a controversial parole program and a coordinated effort with Mexico to assist migrants to the U.S. border.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, announced on Aug. 23 that its updated CBP One app was expanded to operate south of Mexico City for migrants seeking appointments at U.S. ports of entry.

The app allows would-be illegal immigrants to be processed for asylum claims by CBP agents at ports of entry in border states, with most being released into the country.

Mexico recently announced that it will offer migrants in the southern parts of its country free bus rides and meals to the U.S. southern border if they have a confirmed appointment through the app.

A few weeks ago, Mexico was rounding up migrants and busing them back to the southern part of Mexico, where the app wasn’t in operation.

The result was a decrease in illegal immigrants crossing the U.S.–Mexico border between ports of entry.

Homeland Security has also resumed its parole program after it shut down over fraud concerns revealed by a government watchdog agency. The Federation for American Immigration Reform obtained the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services report, which showed instances in which the same Social Security numbers, addresses, and phone numbers were used hundreds of times.

Up to 30,000 foreign nationals from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela are allowed to fly directly into U.S. airports every month under the program.

The program was resumed with additional vetting of the sponsors, their financial records, and their criminal backgrounds, a Homeland Security spokesperson said on Aug. 29.

The program enables most to stay up to two years and receive work permits.

Parole applicants need a sponsor and to purchase their airplane tickets to qualify for the program.

Homeland Security Committee Chairman Rep. Mark Green (R-Tenn.) has called the mass parole an “unlawful” program that was introduced to obscure the problem of an overrun border.

Credit card processing service Slim CD, popular in the U.S. and Canada, has revealed a massive data breach that exposed the personal information of nearly 1.7 million customers. The hack, which went undetected for almost a year, has raised serious concerns about data security in the financial sector.

The Florida-based company, which offers payment gateway services and develops credit card-processing software, discovered suspicious activity in its computer environment on June 15, 2024, according to a customer notification letter dated September 6. The company later determined that unauthorized access to its systems occurred between August 17, 2023, and June 15, 2024.

Slim CD warned that this breach may have allowed hackers to view or obtain sensitive customer data, including names, addresses, credit card numbers, and card expiration dates. A filing with the Maine Attorney General’s office estimates that over 1.69 million customers were affected. Despite the scale of the breach, Slim CD has not offered any identity theft protection services to those impacted.

In its notification to customers, Slim CD urged vigilance against potential identity theft and fraud. The company recommended that affected individuals regularly review their account statements, monitor credit reports for suspicious activity, and consider placing a “fraud alert” or “credit freeze” on their credit files to protect against unauthorized transactions.

The Slim CD incident is just the latest in a series of cyber attacks targeting financial institutions. In June, Evolve Bank & Trust, based in Tennessee, suffered a data breach that compromised sensitive information, including customers’ Social Security numbers and bank account details. Earlier in February, Prudential Financial disclosed a breach impacting over 2.55 million customers.

Cybersecurity experts warn that such attacks are becoming increasingly common in the finance industry. A July report by SOCRadar, a computer security firm, found that data breaches and leaks account for 62.52% of cyber threats targeting financial institutions, followed by credit card fraud and unauthorized access sales. The report identified the United States as one of the most frequently targeted countries for these cyber attacks.

A second-quarter analysis by Check Point Research found a 30% increase in global cyber attacks, with the finance and banking sector ranking as the fourth most targeted industry, trailing only retail/wholesale, healthcare, and manufacturing.

As cyber threats escalate, government agencies are taking note. The U.S. Department of Treasury released a report in March highlighting the “capability gap” in managing AI-specific cybersecurity threats between large and small financial institutions. While larger institutions are building their own AI systems to counter threats, smaller firms like Slim CD may lack the resources to do so, leaving them vulnerable to increasingly sophisticated attacks.

With the financial sector under siege, Slim CD’s data breach serves as a stark reminder of the need for robust cybersecurity measures to protect customer information in an age of growing digital threats.

Authored by Michael Washburn via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

New York City Police Commissioner Edward Caban on Sept. 12 resigned from his position, days after his phone was seized in a federal investigation.

Caban said he made the decision to resign after the “news around recent developments” had “created a distraction for our department,” according to an email to the police department obtained by The Associated Press.

“I am unwilling to let my attention be on anything other than our important work, or the safety of the men and women of the NYPD,” he added.

The Epoch Times has contacted the New York Police Department for more details.

New York Mayor Eric Adams said Thursday that he accepted Caban’s resignation. “I respect his decision and I wish him well,” he said in a streamed appearance from the Mayor’s mansion.

Caban had been on the job for a little over a year, having been appointed by Mayor Eric Adams in July 2023.

The resignation comes as part of a federal probe of high-ranking members of the Adams administration.

On Sept. 4, federal law enforcement officials seized Caban’s phone and those of his brother James, Adams’s first deputy mayor, schools chancellor, and others close to the mayor.

Federal agents also raided the homes of several administration officials. Federal authorities have not disclosed the subject of the investigation or whether there are multiple probes.

Adams said that Tom Donlon, a law enforcement veteran with experience in antiterrorism efforts, has been appointed interim commissioner.

Donlon served as the city’s director of the Office of Homeland Security, led the FBI’s national threat center, and played a role in investigating the 1993 World Trade Center attack. He started his own security firm in 2020.

In the days leading up to the resignation, members of the New York City Council, which has feuded repeatedly with the mayor over issues such as solitary confinement in the city’s jails, the accommodation of migrants from out of state, and the recording of data on persons whom the police arrest, pushed for Caban to step down.

In November 2023, agents took the mayor’s phone and iPad in order to examine them for evidence relating to his fundraising activities during his 2021 mayoral run.

As police commissioner, Caban has played a central role in Adams’s efforts to fight crime and promote public safety. But under Caban’s leadership, the NYPD’s recent record on this front has been mixed.

According to NYPD statistics for the week ending Sept. 8, 251 murders have occurred in New York City so far in 2024, only a relatively slight decline from the 288 recorded for the same period in 2023.

In other categories of serious crime, such as rapes and robberies, the rates are higher than the same period last year, the figures show.

A total of 1,119 rapes happened in the city in the first nine months of 2024, compared to 1,008 in the same period in 2023, while 11,536 robberies were recorded, up from 11,358 in the equivalent 2023 period.

In an email to The Epoch Times, Brendan McGuire, an attorney at the law firm WilmerHale which is representing Adams in the federal probe, said he had no comment.

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

Harvard University is feeling the impact of the Supreme Court’s decision to ban the use of race in college admissions – as the woke Ivy League institution has reported a noticeable decline in the number of back students in its incoming class, marking a significant shift in the demographics of one of America’s most elite institutions.

According to a statement released by Harvard on Wednesday, black students make up just 14% of the new class of first-year undergraduates, down sharply from 18% last year. Meanwhile, latino students saw a bump, now accounting for 16% of the class—up 2 percentage points. Asian American students, who were at the center of the affirmative action debate, held steady at 37%, Bloomberg reports.

The ruling has sent shockwaves through the world of higher education, forcing colleges and universities to scramble for new ways to promote diversity. For decades, affirmative action policies aimed to boost enrollment of underrepresented groups, particularly black and hispanic students, while asian applicants were often perceived to be disadvantaged by these same policies. Now, it appears the tables are turning.

Columbia University also reported a significant drop in black freshman enrollment, with the percentage plummeting from 20% to 12% in just a year. Conversely, Asian American or Pacific Islander students at Columbia surged, jumping 9 points to 39%. Similar trends were observed at other prestigious schools, including MIT, Brown, and Tufts.

That said, Yale and Princeton, two of Harvard’s fiercest rivals in the Ivy League, reported a steady percentage of black freshmen, but both schools saw a slight dip in Asian American enrollment.

Harvard, known not only for being the oldest but also the richest college in the U.S., insists it remains dedicated to fostering a diverse student body. “Our community is strongest when we bring together students from different backgrounds, experiences, and beliefs,” said William Fitzsimmons, Harvard’s dean of admissions and financial aid. Still, the university revealed that 8% of its incoming class chose not to disclose their race or ethnicity, double the 4% from last year – a possible indication of the uncertainty surrounding the new admissions landscape.

Harvard was a named defendant in the Supreme Court case along with the University of North Carolina. In UNC’s freshman class, the share of Black freshmen declined to about 8% from almost 11% a year earlier. Asian American students edged up by a percentage point to nearly 26%. -Bloomberg

The Supreme Court ruling was a major victory for Students for Fair Admissions, the group that argued Harvard unfairly penalized Asian Americans during the admissions process by giving them lower ratings on subjective measures like leadership and likability, while favoring black and hispanic applicants. Chief Justice John Roberts noted in the ruling that universities can still consider how race has affected an applicant’s life, “be it through discrimination, inspiration or otherwise.”

In response, Harvard has tweaked its application process, now asking students to reflect on how their life experiences, achievements, and extracurricular activities have shaped them. However, this year, admissions officers were not privy to applicants’ self-reported answers regarding race and ethnicity, nor could they see aggregated data.

Looking ahead, Harvard and several other top-tier universities are bringing back standardized testing requirements for applicants in 2025—a move that could further influence diversity numbers in the future.

To counter the decline in diversity, Harvard is stepping up its recruitment efforts, including a new rural recruitment initiative and continuing programs targeting minority students and first-generation college hopefuls. As for financial accessibility, about 21% of this year’s 1,647 first-year students qualified for Pell Grants, a federal aid program for low-income students.

Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Substack,

“The world is a dangerous place to live – not because of the people who are evil but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.”

– Albert Einstein

When The New York Times tells you that the United States Constitution is a threat to democracy – As it did on the front page of its August 31 edition – you know that you are in thrall to exceedingly subtle minds. The Times only employs persons, both birthing and other, of the subtlest minds. You can tell because they are credentialed by our country’s finest institutions of educational credentialing.

They come to The Times fully equipped with the armamentarium of advanced, progressive, innovative, nuanced, cutting-edge modes of understanding our world — which, you’ll agree, is a pretty goshdurned complex place, and rather niggardly in yielding its secret workings. Hence, The Times has concluded that the Constitution is flawed, perhaps fatally, because it allowed for the election of Donald Trump once, and now, possibly, a second time:

“It’s no surprise, then, that liberals charge Trump with being a menace to the Constitution. But his presidency and the prospect of his re-election have also generated another, very different, argument: that Trump owes his political ascent to the Constitution, making him a beneficiary of a document that is essentially antidemocratic and, in this day and age, increasingly dysfunctional.”

The Constitution does not stipulate a particular election day, but subsequent US law established the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November as the day for federal elections (the states can establish their own election dates for state and local offices). This changed beginning in the year 2000, when Oregon legislated to conduct all elections by mail-in ballot and other states followed with alterations to voting methods beyond a single election day. The Covid-19 pandemic prompted states to permanently relax rules on absentee ballots and expand mail-in voting, under guidance from the federal agencies such as the CDC, while the CARES Act of 2020 provided emergency funding to implement procedures for mail-in voting in order to reduce in-person voting that might enable the spread of Covid-19.

All of that followed orderly legislative procedure. The result was widespread ballot fraud, especially in crucial swing voting districts, much of it arrant. Contrary to official narratives out of the “Joe Biden” administration and the salient organs of corporate news, the allegations of widespread fraud were not “baseless” nor were they “conspiracy theories.” Subtle minds schooled in nuanced, cutting-age modes of analysis agreed to ignore documentary evidence of ballot fraud because it disfavored their preferred candidate, “Joe Biden.” Subtler judicial minds subsequently dismissed challenges to official tallies.

Other shenanigans such as the $400-million that Mark Zuckerberg  (Meta and Facebook) injected into swing districts for “election administration and voter turn-out,” via his Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), was not adjudicated in any court. The upshot of the “Zuckerbucks” prank was that polling offiicials in many precincts were replaced by Democratic Party activists who ended up counting the votes. The Federal Election Commission (after “Joe Biden” became president) decided that under federal campaign finance law, the contributions were not seen as illegal — though the “Zuckerbucks” scandal did lead to legislative reform in several states.

You might suppose in the years since the 2020 election that opportunity would be seized to materially correct the weaknesses of mail-in ballots, early voting, ballot “harvesting” practices, giant “balloting centers,” and the use of vote-tallying machines (Dominion, etc.) with modems allowing for Internet hackery. The best and simplest reform would be a return to paper ballots cast only on one election day, with voter ID and proof of citizenship (accomplished prior in voter registration), conducted in smaller, distributed precinct polling places that make hand-counting of ballots practical. Alas, this was too difficult for Congress, while the subtle, nuanced, cutting-edge minds working in news media were not interested in such straightforward reform and did not advocate for it.

Rather, the news media advocated for further laxity in voting rules. And so, now they are actually arguing about whether it is desirable for non-citizens to vote.  The “Joe Biden” administration allowed at least 10-million people to enter the country illegally since 2021 and have gotten a million or more of them registered to vote via motor-voter laws — automatic registration when an illegal alien gets a driver’s license, and ditto when they apply for various social services. Alejandro Mayorkas’s Department of Homeland Security has shrewdly distributed large numbers of these illegal aliens into swing districts of states crucial to the Democratic Party’s election chances.

The inquiring mind is prompted to wonder whether it is the US Constitution that is a “menace to democracy” or the Democratic Party. Mr. Trump is issuing communiqués on “X” (Twitter) that his party is paying special attention to voting fraud in the current election, with imputations of very severe punishment to cheaters and fraudsters. You might think that the Kamala Harris campaign would declare likewise.

ECB cut rates by 25bps as expected (along with a stagflationary cut to growth and hike to inflation forecasts) but all eyes were on US data. A hotter than expected PPI followed the hotter than expected core CPI pushed rate-cut expectations lower (although jobless claims fell). Interestingly, rate cut expectations for 2024 jumped after the ugly 30Y auction and WSJ Fed-whisperer Nick Timiraos comments (which were entirely useless, merely stating that policymakers were considering whether to cut by 25bp or 50bp)…

Source: Bloomberg

As the chart above shows, the shift in rate cut expectations was away from 2024 and into 2025 today… even though Sept rate-cut odds shifted dovishly after Timiraos (erasing all of yesterday’s CPI-driven hawkish shoft)…

Source: Bloomberg

…and despite the hawkish shift in US STIRs, the dollar dumped as EURUSD rallied after The ECB statement had a smidge of hawkishness (about domestic inflation fears) and then the WSJ comments accelerated the decline…

Source: Bloomberg

…the dollar weakness drove gold to a new record high above $2550…

Source: Bloomberg

Small Caps (big short squeeze) and Mega-Cap tech (safe haven flows and NVDA) dominated the equity indices today with the Dow lagging (but still higher)…

‘Most Shorted’ stocks dipped and ripped…

Source: Bloomberg

…and Mag7 stocks extended their rebound…

Source: Bloomberg

Goldman’s trading desk noted that they were seeing the market “quiet flow wise with volumes muted and S&P top of book tracking lower.”

Our floor is -3% better for sale with HF’s $120mm net for sale (Short sales are outpacing long sales) and LO’s $250mm net to buy. LOs buying Hcare and Tech vs HFs selling Discretionary + macro Products.

Back to bond land, yields were higher across the curve (with the long-end marginally underperforming – 30Y +3bps, 2Y +1bp) leaving rates back to unchanged on the week…

Source: Bloomberg

…with the 30Y yield breaking back above 4.00% (after the ugly auction)…

Source: Bloomberg

…and 2s10s briefly inverted again today, before reverting back to bear steepening and dis-inversion…

Source: Bloomberg

Oil prices extended their rebound with WTI testing up towards $70 handle again…

Source: Bloomberg

Bitcoin also extended its rebound, back above $58,000…

Source: Bloomberg

Ethereum continues to underperform, dropping to a new post-DeFi-boom low relative to bitcoin…

Source: Bloomberg

Finally, with gold at record highs, real yields have started to shift back lower…

Source: Bloomberg

What’s more likely a return to negative real yields or gold back at $500?