Month: March 2024

Authored by Russell Clark of the Capital Flows and Asset Markets substack

Being the reserve currency has enormous benefits. And in the entirety of financial history, the US is the first and only fiat reserve currency. Sterling, and any other reserve currencies derived their value from the ability to maintain their value to gold. With the two World Wars, the US came to be seen as the government most able to honour its commitments, and saw huge inflows of gold, but in the 1960s, gold started to flow back to Europe and elsewhere, and in essence, Nixon decided that higher interest rates needed to maintain the link to gold price was not worth the effort, and cut the link to gold price.

Moving from a gold based currency to a fiat currency has had enormous benefits for the US. First of all is that it no longer needs to ever run a current account surplus. That is it never needs to reduce consumption or imports, which is a huge political benefit. The norm since 1980 is for the US to have a current account deficit.

The US also does not need to balance the budget. The budget was balanced in 2000, but this was probably now seen as a tactical error on the part of the Democrats.

What I find most interesting about the transition from gold to US treasury backed financial system is how Asian nations, despite a long history of using gold, accepted this system. China and Japan have some of the largest foreign reserves in the world, but their holdings of gold are limited. Even India holds a relatively small amount of gold as foreign reserves.

Japan is the most interesting, where almost all of its foreign reserves are held as US treasuries. Unfortunately US treasury data on foreign holders only begins in 2000, but I have no reason not to believe the Japanese were big buyers in 1990s as well.

Why do the Japanese only buy treasuries? Well for most of the time since 1980, treasuries have been much better investments than gold. They offer an income stream, they are very liquid, and they have a natural pull to par, which means that there is never a need to book a loss – which will have powerful appeal to bureaucrats. From 1980 to 2000 long dated treasuries consistently outperformed gold, while from 2000 its has been far more of mixed bag.

Typically when people talk about reserve currency status, they talk about the size of the US economy or its military might, and basically imply that this can never end, so US dollar reserve status is forever. I think about the US dollar as a reserve currency I think it is something more akin to Microsoft, or Google. The product is not that good, the management is of debatable quality, but because everyone else uses it, its just too hard to switch. Given the infrastructure, and ease of using the US dollar for almost all financial transactions, why would anyone bother to use a different system? And even as US trade deficits exploded this just left more money for Asian exporters to recycle back into treasuries. The flywheel worked for all parties.

As pointed out in the last post, the US itself has started the process of creating a parallel financial system, by basically trying and failing to cut off Russian energy exports from the US financial system. For years the Russian wanted to price their oil in non-US dollar form, and made little headway, but the US basically did the job for them.

What would be the next step in the US dismantling the US centric financial system? For years I have wondered why the Hong Kong dollar has remained pegged to the US dollar. Why not just repeg to Chinese Yuan? Hong Kong could then sell large chunks of its foreign holdings, and reducing the scope of the US to influence trade in HK.

Of course changing from USD to peg to a CNY peg would be hassle for all the existing contracts and present financial and legal problems, which no doubt would fan more resentment of Beijing in Hong Kong. A far better solution for Beijing would be for the US government to begin sanctioning HK businesses, and changing the legal status of HK, a process that has begun under the Trump administration. All this involves doing is China integrating Hong Kong into its political system, and the US will predictably react. It is hard to see how this process could be reversed.

The problem for the US is that Russia has been cut off from the US financial system, and not imploded. That makes the fear of sanctions more tolerable. The Euro/Ruble exchange rate, which is as a good of as a measure for Russian economic health shows that the sanctions have had an effect, but not as dramatic as hoped. That is there is life after sanctions.

The political calculation for US attitude towards China is now very difficult. The more financial sanctions that it applies to China, the more it weakens the case for the US treasury as a reserve asset, but without applying sanctions, China has a chance to continue to grow to be the largest economy in the world. We can already see a change in behaviour in Asian governments. Vietnam has been a huge beneficiary of the move away from China. It now runs a huge trade surplus with the US. This is larger than Japan.

But we do not see Vietnam accumulating treasuries likes South Korea, Japan or China.

There is no guarantee that all this money will end up in gold. But whenever I see GLD/TLT trade well, I feel that the US is losing ground.

As mentioned previously, the US politically and culturally probably feels compelled to defend its position at the largest economy in the world. Can it do this without losing its special status as the reserve currency of the world? Without a political collapse in China, I doubt it.

Ukraine’s President Zelensky has more or less indicated he’s ready to build the wall—to borrow the old Trump phrase…

He announced on Telegram Monday that he has ordered the construction of some 2,000 kilometers of fortifications in order to solidify the front lines with Russian forces. He touted the good “pace of construction of new defense lines.” 

He reviewed the status of the fortification in a meeting with military commanders and ministers following approval of a “record amount” of funds allocated for the fortification efforts, at between $500 and $800 million.

According to Ukrainian media reports, “In the fall of 2023, the authorities received criticism for slow progress on fortifying defensive lines. A working group was established in November to coordinate fortification efforts.”

Zelensky is busying trying to paint an optimistic picture of how his forces are fairing on the battlefield, after months of Western media reports that the Ukrainians have steadily lost ground, especially after abandoning Avdiivka in the east to the better-armed and more numerous Russian army.

The Wall Street Journal has detailed that “West of Avdiivka, excavators more common to a construction site than a battlefield are carving up the earth to create antitank ditches and trenches. The Ukrainians are attempting to replicate the physical obstacles that Russia created on its side of the front more than a year ago, with deadly effectiveness in stymying Ukraine’s offensive last summer.”

Zelensky has been urging private donors to fund the ambitious undertaking: “On all the main fronts, we need to dig in, speed up the pace of construction,” he has underscored. “The priority is obvious.”

It became evident starting last summer that the Ukrainian counteroffensive had failed, but now it’s becoming more clear by the day that Kiev forces are being steadily pushed back. The WSJ acknowledged this in an investigative report days ago…

“But Western officials and Ukrainian soldiers say that the campaign hasn’t yielded significant results, and the absence of progress is proving a liability for Ukraine as Russia steps up its assaults,” WSJ wrote. “In recent days it has pushed Ukrainian forces out of a string of villages west of Avdiivka, although hills and bodies of water a little further west can serve as natural obstacles for Kyiv that are easier to defend.”

With not enough troops to hold and advance positions, front line areas resemble large construction sites…

“Dig, dig, dig”: Ukraine enters new phase of war – trench warfare – WSJ

With Ukrainian troops trained for combat missions forced to dig trenches in anticipation of a major Russian offensive this spring, the frontline now looks more like a construction site than a battlefield.… pic.twitter.com/cSpWtMaUSx

— Slava 🇺🇦 (@Heroiam_Slava) March 7, 2024

So this means the half-billion dollar plus “wall” or military fortifications could prove too little, too late in terms of preparing the battlefield space. Ukraine is bracing for another major Russian ground assault at some point this spring.

On the Russian side, the Kremlin’s aim has been to solidify gains, particularly over the four annexed territories in the east, while sending sporadic major air assaults in retaliation for Ukrainian cross-border attacks on Russian cities and energy infrastructure. These operations have stepped up particularly in Crimea and the Black Sea, where Russia has reportedly lost a couple of small warships.

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

The vast majority of tattoo inks sold in the United States are contaminated with unlisted ingredients that can cause serious health issues, including organ damages, according to a recent study.

The study, published in the Analytical Chemistry journal on Feb. 22, investigated nine different brands of tattoo ink common in the United States, from minor to major brands.

Out of the 54 inks of the nine brands analyzed by researchers, 45 (83 percent) were found to contain “unlisted additives and/or pigments,” the study stated.

“Major, unlisted adulterants include polyethylene glycol, propylene glycol, and higher alkanes. Many of the adulterants pose possible allergic or other health risks.”

Over half of the inks contained unlisted polyethylene glycol, which causes organ damages following repeated exposure. Fifteen inks contained propylene glycol, a potential allergen. Some contained a compound called 2-phenoxyethanol that posed health risks to nursing infants while other inks were contaminated with an antibiotic used to treat urinary tract infections.

“Taken together, the results from this study highlight the potential for a significant issue around inaccurate tattoo ink labeling in the United States,” the study stated.

The research was unable to identify whether unlisted ingredients were added unintentionally or whether the manufacturer was provided with contaminated materials. It is also unknown whether the manufacturer incorrectly labeled the inks.

Risks associated with tattooing usually focus on skin cancer and reaction to the pigments. However, ink additives can be dangerous as well, including having negative impacts beyond the skin. If a person with a tattoo starts experiencing reactions, unlisted ingredients can make it challenging to ascertain what reaction is happening and why it is occurring.

“We’re hoping the manufacturers take this as an opportunity to reevaluate their processes, and that artists and clients take this as an opportunity to push for better labeling and manufacturing,” said John Swierk, an assistant professor of chemistry at Binghamton University who is also an author of the study.

Tatto Ink Regulation

It was only recently that regulation on tattoo ink was introduced in the United States. In late 2022, Congress passed the Modernization of Cosmetics Regulation Act (MoCRA), allowing the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to regulate tattoo inks for the first time, including regulating labeling practices.

Before the Act was passed, tattoo inks were considered to be cosmetic and not subject to regulations. “The FDA is still figuring out what that is going to look like and we think this study will influence the discussions around MoCRA,” Mr. Swierk stated.

“This is also the first study to explicitly look at inks sold in the United States and is probably the most comprehensive because it looks at the pigments, which nominally stay in the skin, and the carrier package, which is what the pigment is suspended in.”

The study only focused on substances present in quantities of 2,000 parts per million (ppm) or more, which are usually considered to be high concentrations.

However, in Europe, even substances in the range of just two ppm are considered by authorities when assessing risks. As such, the tattoo inks could contain even more potentially toxic substances than what the study has found.

Tattoo Ink Risks

A 2021 study on tattoo inks conducted in the European Union arrived at similar conclusions. It analyzed 73 tattoo inks in the market, investigating labels as well as ingredients.

The study found that “ninety-three percent of the bought tattoo inks violated European, legal requirements on labeling.”

“Fifty percent of the tattoo inks declared at least one pigment ingredient incorrectly,” authors wrote. “Sixty-one percent of the inks contained pigments of concern, especially red inks.”

Main metals detected in the inks included iron, aluminum, titanium, and copper, most of which were in green or blue inks. “The levels of iron, chromium, manganese, cobalt, nickel, zinc, lead, and arsenic were found to covary significantly.”

Researchers of the study called on tattoo ink manufacturers to follow regulations and minimize the presence of nickel and chromium impurities to prevent allergy and toxic reactions among users.

A December 2016 retrospective study looked at 493 health complications resulting from tattooing among 405 individuals. They identified 184 cases of allergic reactions, 53 instances of bacterial infections, and 46 psycho-social complications.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has asked people to “think before you ink.” Multiple research studies have “reported that some inks contain pigments used in printer toner or in car paint,“ the agency stated, adding that it ”has not approved any pigments for injection into the skin for cosmetic purposes.”

After receiving a tattoo, the person may see some redness, swelling, or warmth on the skin. If the tattooed area does not heal or if there is a rash forming in the region, the FDA advises people to contact their healthcare professional. This is especially true if they develop a fever.

“More aggressive infections may cause high fever, shaking, chills, and sweats. Treating such infections might require a variety of antibiotics—possibly for months—or even hospitalization and/or surgery. A rash may also mean you’re having an allergic reaction. And because the inks are permanent, the reaction may persist,” the FDA warned.

“Scar tissue may form when you get a tattoo, or you could develop ‘granulomas,’ small knots or bumps that may form around material that the body perceives as foreign. If you tend to get keloids—scars that grow beyond normal boundaries—you may develop the same kind of reaction to the tattoo.”

Four weeks after the family of a 9-year-old Kansas City Chiefs fan sued Deadspin after ‘journalist’ Carron Phillips falsely accused him of wearing blackface at a game, the outlet’s parent company, G/O Media (previously Gizmodo Media Group), announced that it had fired everyone and sold the sports blogging site to a European company, Lineup Publishing. Lineup seeks to “build a new team more in line with their editorial vision for the brand,” CEO Jim Spanfeller announced Monday.

We don’t imagine the sale is likely to impact the lawsuit, which was filed against G/O Media.

Phillips, meanwhile, has gone private on X, and may find himself in the unemployment line for a while.

Barstool Sports owner Dave Portnoy, who Deadspin has talked massive shit about in the past, celebrated – as one does when an enemy self-vanquishes.

“How many times can I pop a bottle for the same goddamn company? How many times can I kill Deadspin? How many times can Julie DiCaro lose her goddamn job?” Portnoy said, adding “Those motherfuckers just don’t get it. Being miserable, hating life, never laughing. It’s never going to pay the bills. See you motherfuckers on the employment line. Again! Victory!”

Damn. Hate to see it. #deadspin https://t.co/MTNUKg3ItL pic.twitter.com/3Q1xXho7fY

— Dave Portnoy (@stoolpresidente) March 11, 2024

More on the sale, via Axios:

•     Impacted staffers were notified Monday that they were being let go from G/O Media, marking the third round of cuts at the firm in less than a year.
•     Spanfeller said Lineup Publishing approached him about the sale and that the company was not “actively shopping Deadspin.”
•     “The rationale behind the decision to sell included a variety of important factors that include the buyer’s editorial plans for the brand, tough competition in the sports journalism sector, and a valuation that reflected a sizable premium from our original purchase price for the site,” Spanfeller wrote in the memo.
•     “While the new owners plan to be reverential to Deadpin’s unique voice, they plan to take a different content approach regarding the site’s overall sports coverage,” he added.

Catch up quick: G/O Media has been offloading sites and cutting staff gradually over the past year as it streamlines its focus to become more efficient.

    The company shuttered its female-focused brand Jezebel and laid off 23 editorial staffers as part of a broader restructuring last November. It later sold Jezebel to Paste Magazine.

    It sold its lifestyle website Lifehacker to Ziff Davis last March and laid off 13 staffers last June.

 Another one bites the dust.

BREAKING.🚨

“There’s a heart-warming ending to Deadspin’s famously failed story of a 9-year-old kid who was caught wearing ‘black face’…”

Sports Journalist Who Wrote ‘Black Face’ Hit Piece on 9-Year-Old Chiefs Fan is Now Unemployed https://t.co/bBOXsdCobS

— Kyle Becker (@kylenabecker) March 11, 2024

By Benjamin PIcton of Rabobank

February non-farm payrolls superficially exceeded market expectations on Friday by printing at 275,000 against a consensus call of 200,000. We say superficially, because the downward revisions to prior months totalled 167,000 for December and January, taking the total change in employed persons well below the implied forecast, and helping the unemployment rate to pop two-ticks to 3.9%. The U6 underemployment rate also rose from 7.2% to 7.3%, while average hourly earnings growth fell to 0.2% m-o-m and average weekly hours worked languished at 34.3, equalling pre-pandemic lows.

Undeterred by the devil in the detail, the algos sprang into action once exchanges opened. Market darling NVIDIA hit a new intraday high of $974 before (presumably) the humans took over and sold the stock down more than 10% to close at $875.28. If our suspicions are correct that it was the AIs buying before the humans started selling (no doubt triggering trailing stops on the way down), the irony is not lost on us.

The 1-day chart for NVIDIA now makes for interesting viewing, because the red candle posted on Friday presents quite a strong bearish engulfing signal. Volume traded on the day was almost double the 15-day simple moving average, and similar price action is observable on the 1-day charts for both Intel and AMD. Regular readers will be aware that we have expressed incredulity in the past about the durability the AI thematic melt-up, so it will be interesting to see whether Friday’s sell off is just a profit-taking blip, or a genuine trend reversal.

AI equities aside, this week ought to be important for markets because the BTFP program expires today. That means that the Fed will no longer be loaning cash to the banking system in exchange for collateral pledged at-par. The KBW Regional Banking index has so far taken this in its stride and is trading 30% above the lows established during the mini banking crisis of this time last year, but the Fed’s liquidity facility was effectively an exercise in can-kicking that makes regional banks a sector of the market worth paying attention to in the weeks ahead. Even here in Sydney, regulators are warning of external risks posed to the banking sector from scheduled refinancing of commercial real estate loans following sharp falls in valuations.

Markets are sending signals in other sectors, too. Gold closed at a new record-high of $2178/oz on Friday after trading above $2200/oz briefly. Gold has been going ballistic since the Friday before last, posting gains even on days where 2-year Treasury yields have risen. Gold bugs are buying as real yields fall from the October highs and inflation breakevens creep higher. This is particularly interesting as gold ETFs have been recording net outflows; suggesting that price gains aren’t being driven by a retail pile-in. Are gold buyers now betting on a stagflationary outcome where the Fed cuts without inflation being anchored at the 2% target? The price action around the US CPI release tomorrow ought to be illuminating.

Leaving the day-to-day movements to one side, we are also seeing further signs of structural change at the macro level. The UK budget last week included a provision for the creation of a British ISA. That is, an Individual Savings Account that provides tax breaks to savers who invest their money in the stock of British companies. This follows moves last year to encourage pension funds to head up the risk curve by allocating 5% of their capital to unlisted investments.

As a Hail Mary option for a government cruising toward an electoral drubbing it’s a curious choice, but it’s worth highlighting as cash-strapped governments increasingly see private savings pools as a funding solution for their spending priorities.

Of course, the UK is not alone in making creeping moves towards financial repression. In contrast to announcements today of increased trade liberalisation, Australian Treasurer Jim Chalmers has in the recent past flagged his interest in tapping private pension savings to fund state spending priorities, including defence, public housing and renewable energy projects. Both the UK and Australia appear intent on finding ways to open up the lungs of their economies, but government wants more say in directing private capital flows for state goals.

So, how far is the blurring of the lines between free markets and state planning likely to go? Given the immense and varied budgetary (and security) pressures that governments are facing, could we see a re-up of WWII-era Victory bonds, where private investors are encouraged to do their patriotic duty by directly financing government at negative real rates?

That would really light a fire under the gold market.

The Biden administration has released a proposed budget that would boost federal spending to $7.3 trillion next fiscal year. To pay for it, they plan to raise taxes on the wealthy and large corporations.

And while there’s virtually no chance of it passing given the current makeup of Congress (WSJ calls it ‘largely symbolic’), it will give Biden a steady supply of talking points to read off teleprompters across the land during his re-election campaign.

According to the White House, the 2025 budget would cut the deficit by $3 trillion over the next decade, and raise taxes by a net of $4.9 trillion – a boost of roughly 7% in collections without any policy changes, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Other features of the proposed budget include:

• A boost in defense spending to $895 billion, up from $886 billion.

• Congressional approval for roughly $1.6 trillion in discretionary spending – slightly lower than the current year’s budget.

• This will be offset by $1.6 trillion in spending caps which were agreed to last year by House Republicans and the Biden administration, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

• Medicare taxes and drug pricing are also included, with tax increases on people earning more than $400,000 per year (which we all know is total bullshit). The plan will also significantly expand the number of drugs subject to government price negotiation, to 50 per year, up from 20, and it would extend a $2,000 cap on out-of-pocket prescription drugs under Medicare.

• Immigration and international aid: The Department of Homeland Security would receive an additional $8.7 billion under the proposal – much of which would plug a budget hole created by the ‘unexpected’ surge in migrants last year. $2.9 billion of it would fund longer term investments, including hiring more Border Patrol agents and asylum officers.

• Ukraine: Of course, the budget proposal also reiterates Biden’s supplemental request for $60 billion in emergency aid for his favorite country.

Other items of note: the budget calls for shoring up Social Security but does not specify a plan. It also calls for extending Trump-era tax cuts for most households after they expire in 2025, but does not detail how they should be paid for. It also calls on restoring the expanded child tax credit on a temporary basis.

Under his plan, families making less than $200,000 a year would be guaranteed subsidized child care, with the lowest income families paying nothing. The president proposed building or preserving more than two million housing units, and a series of tax credits to ease the high cost of purchasing a home. He calls for spending $12 billion to come up with strategies to reduce the cost of college, while expanding Pell Grants and offering tuition-free community college. And he again outlined a federal paid family and medical leave program. -WSJ

According to White House spox Olivia Dalton, the budget “invests in all of America to make sure everyone has a fair shot, we leave no one behind,” adding that congressional Republicans “have made their values clear in the meantime; they have repeatedly fought to slash critical programs that the American people rely on.”

House Republican leaders, meanwhile, said in a statement that “the price tag of President Biden’s proposed budget is yet another glaring reminder of this administration’s insatiable appetite for reckless spending and the Democrats’ disregard for fiscal responsibility.”

The budget proposal comes less than eight months before Election Day and amid polls that show Trump with a narrow lead over Biden. As he shifts his focus to the general election, the president is expected to increasingly seek to draw a contrast with his presumed opponent, casting Trump as out of touch with voters’ priorities and a danger to democracy. Trump, in turn, has railed against the president, targeting his spending on issues such as clean energy.  -WSJ

According to Shalanda Young, director of the Office of Management and Budget, Americans are “going to have a robust tax debate at the end of 2025.”

Authored by Andrew Thornebrooke via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Top Republicans from multiple House committees are sounding the alarm on a series of mysterious devices that appear to have been implanted into container cranes used throughout the U.S. port system by China.

The lawmakers say that numerous modems with no known function were uncovered from ship-to-shore (STS) cranes, which are used to unload cargo at the nation’s largest ports.

All of the cranes in question were manufactured by Shanghai Zhenhua Heavy Industries (ZPMC), a subsidiary of the state-owned China Communications Construction Co.

Relatedly, the lawmakers noted that ZPMC’s manufacturing facility is located adjacent to China’s most advanced ship-making facility, where the regime builds its aircraft carriers and houses advanced intelligence capabilities.

In a letter (pdf) addressed to the president and chairman of ZPMC, the lawmakers demand to know the purpose of the cellular modems discovered on crane components and in a U.S. seaport’s server room that houses firewall and networking equipment.

“These components do not contribute to the operation of the STS cranes or maritime infrastructure and are not part of any existing contract between ZPMC and the receiving U.S. maritime port,” the letter said.

“The Committees have serious concerns that this proximity to the [Chinese military’s] main shipyard provides malicious CCP [Chinese Communist Party] entities, including its intelligence agencies and security services, with ample opportunity to modify U.S.-bound maritime equipment, exploit it to malfunction, or otherwise facilitate cyber espionage thereby compromising U.S. maritime critical infrastructure.”

U.S. Coast Guard Rear Adm. John Vann, who leads the Coast Guard’s Cyber Command, told reporters last month that there were over 200 China-manufactured cranes operating across U.S. ports and regulated facilities.

At that time, Coast Guard cyber protection teams had assessed the cybersecurity or hunted for threats on 92 of those cranes, he said.

The discovery comes amid an ongoing congressional investigation into the operation of cranes manufactured in China and operating at U.S. ports.

Though the investigation is still ongoing, the committees identified serious concerns regarding ZPMC’s relationship with the CCP, particularly given the recent discovery of Chinese malware on vital infrastructure related to the port system.

As part of another cybersecurity investigation, some of the modems in question were also found to have active connections to the operational components of the STS cranes, suggesting they could be remotely controlled by a device no one previously knew was there.

Speaking to reporters last month, White House Deputy National Security Adviser Anne Neuberger said the cranes were designed to be serviceable from a remote location, which leaves them open to such exploitation.

“By design, these cranes may be controlled, serviced, and programmed from remote locations,” Ms. Neuberger said. “These features potentially leave [China]-manufactured cranes vulnerable to exploitation.

As such, the letter suggests that every U.S. seaport with ZPMC cranes could already be, or is at risk of being, compromised by the CCP.

Retired Army Col. John Mills told The Epoch Times that the cranes were effectively an extension of the CCP’s global cybercrime operation, which could be used during an invasion of Taiwan to sow chaos in the United States.

“Those container cranes are not cranes,” Mr. Mills said. “They’re IP endpoints on a worldwide intelligence collection system.”

To that end, he said that the cranes’ operational and safety features could likely be overridden remotely. This would allow the CCP to potentially trick one of the giant cranes into shifting its counterbalance in such a way that would cause it to crash into ships or containers in the nation’s busiest ports.

Complicating the issue all the more, he said, was the fact that the niche nature of the cargo cranes and their programming means it is unlikely a tailored cyber response to secure the systems will be created anytime soon.

To counter the threat in the long term, he added, the United States would need to ensure that it manufactured such vital equipment in its own territory.

“As things play out, they’re [the CCP] going to start initiating the hitting of target sets in cyber. The port cranes are a perfect example,” Mr. Mills said.

“This is the importance of making things here. If you want to reduce the Chinese threat, start making things here.”

“Effective immediately, I have been removed (banned) from the next 3 NXXT tournaments that I already signed up for and been approved to play,” wrote transgender golfer Hailey Davidson last week.

The message came after he/she was removed from the NXXT Women’s Pro Tour, who has now announced that participants must be “a biological female at birth” to participate in its events, according to Fox News and the NY Post. 

Davidson expressed his/her discontent because he/she was already crushing the woman’s field: “They changed their policy mid season, after me signing up already and being 2nd in Player of the Year race.” 

The tour faced massive backlash after Davidson won a tournament earlier this year that attracted significant media attention. 

NXXT GOLF CEO Stuart McKinnon said: “As we navigate through the evolving landscape of sports, it is crucial to uphold the competitive integrity that is the cornerstone of women’s sports.”

“Our revised policy is a reflection of our unwavering commitment to celebrating and protecting the achievements and opportunities of female athletes. Protected categories are a fundamental aspect of sports at all levels, and it is essential for our Tour to uphold these categories for biological females, ensuring a level playing field.”

Recall, we reported back in January that Davidson had stepped in to win a women’s tournament in Florida, bringing with him her “dreams of making it to the LPGA tour”.

30 year old Davidson, born a man, won the NXXT Women’s Classic at the Mission Inn Resort and Club near Orlando earlier this year. 

Davidson shot one over 73 and finished the three round tournament +4, which was enough to take the trophy. Davidson was three shots behind an actual woman the next best golfer before forcing a playoff and winning. 

NXXT said at the time: “The Tour’s mission is to prepare the world’s best young women professional golfers for a successful career on the LPGA Tour” and that the tour is focused on “elevating women’s golf”. 

The Post wrote that Davidson’s recent victory placed her first on the NXXT tour leaderboard with a leading score of 1320, 150 points ahead of her closest competitor. Since November, she has secured two top-2 finishes in the league’s five tournaments, along with seventh and ninth place results.

And it isn’t just bragging rights that Davidson won: he/she was entitled to $1,576.51 in prize money, which adds to her career total which currently stands at $5,801.89 over the course of eight events. 

To qualify for two exemptions to the Epson Tour, Davidson, transitioning from male to female, needed LPGA approval. Discussions began in 2016, but eligibility was granted in 2021 after undergoing Hormone Replacement Therapy for over five years and completing gender reassignment surgery, as indicated in an October 2022 social media post.

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Mandating COVID-19 vaccination was a mistake due to ethical and other concerns, a top government doctor warned Dr. Anthony Fauci after Dr. Fauci promoted mass vaccination.

“Coercing or forcing people to take a vaccine can have negative consequences from a biological, sociological, psychological, economical, and ethical standpoint and is not worth the cost even if the vaccine is 100% safe,” Dr. Matthew Memoli, director of the Laboratory of Infectious Diseases clinical studies unit at the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), told Dr. Fauci in an email.

“A more prudent approach that considers these issues would be to focus our efforts on those at high risk of severe disease and death, such as the elderly and obese, and do not push vaccination on the young and healthy any further.”

Employing that strategy would help prevent loss of public trust and political capital, Dr. Memoli said.

The email was sent on July 30, 2021, after Dr. Fauci, director of the NIAID, claimed that communities would be safer if more people received one of the COVID-19 vaccines and that mass vaccination would lead to the end of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We’re on a really good track now to really crush this outbreak, and the more people we get vaccinated, the more assuredness that we’re going to have that we’re going to be able to do that,” Dr. Fauci said on CNN the month prior.

Dr. Memoli, who has studied influenza vaccination for years, disagreed, telling Dr. Fauci that research in the field has indicated yearly shots sometimes drive the evolution of influenza.

Vaccinating people who have not been infected with COVID-19, he said, could potentially impact the evolution of the virus that causes COVID-19 in unexpected ways.

“At best what we are doing with mandated mass vaccination does nothing and the variants emerge evading immunity anyway as they would have without the vaccine,” Dr. Memoli wrote. “At worst it drives evolution of the virus in a way that is different from nature and possibly detrimental, prolonging the pandemic or causing more morbidity and mortality than it should.”

The vaccination strategy was flawed because it relied on a single antigen, introducing immunity that only lasted for a certain period of time, Dr. Memoli said. When the immunity weakened, the virus was given an opportunity to evolve.

Some other experts, including virologist Geert Vanden Bossche, have offered similar views. Others in the scientific community, such as U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention scientists, say vaccination prevents virus evolution, though the agency has acknowledged it doesn’t have records supporting its position.

Other Messages

Dr. Memoli sent the email to Dr. Fauci and two other top NIAID officials, Drs. Hugh Auchincloss and Clifford Lane. The message was first reported by the Wall Street Journal, though the publication did not publish the message. The Epoch Times obtained the email and 199 other pages of Dr. Memoli’s emails through a Freedom of Information Act request. There were no indications that Dr. Fauci ever responded to Dr. Memoli.

Later in 2021, the NIAID’s parent agency, the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), and all other federal government agencies began requiring COVID-19 vaccination, under direction from President Joe Biden.

In other messages, Dr. Memoli said the mandates were unethical and that he was hopeful legal cases brought against the mandates would ultimately let people “make their own healthcare decisions.”

“I am certainly doing everything in my power to influence that,” he wrote on Nov. 2, 2021, to an unknown recipient. Dr. Memoli also disclosed that both he and his wife had applied for exemptions from the mandates imposed by the NIH and his wife’s employer. While her request had been granted, his had not as of yet, Dr. Memoli said. It’s not clear if it ever was.

According to Dr. Memoli, officials had not gone over the bioethics of the mandates. He wrote to the NIH’s Department of Bioethics, pointing out that the protection from the vaccines waned over time, that the shots can cause serious health issues such as myocarditis, or heart inflammation, and that vaccinated people were just as likely to spread COVID-19 as unvaccinated people.

He cited multiple studies in his emails, including one that found a resurgence of COVID-19 cases in a California health care system despite a high rate of vaccination and another that showed transmission rates were similar among the vaccinated and unvaccinated.

Dr. Memoli said he was “particularly interested in the bioethics of a mandate when the vaccine doesn’t have the ability to stop spread of the disease, which is the purpose of the mandate.”

The message led to Dr. Memoli speaking during an NIH event in December 2021, several weeks after he went public with his concerns about mandating vaccines.

“Vaccine mandates should be rare and considered only with a strong justification,” Dr. Memoli said in the debate. He suggested that the justification was not there for COVID-19 vaccines, given their fleeting effectiveness.

Julie Ledgerwood, another NIAID official who also spoke at the event, said that the vaccines were highly effective and that the side effects that had been detected were not significant. She did acknowledge that vaccinated people needed boosters after a period of time.

The NIH, and many other government agencies, removed their mandates in 2023 with the end of the COVID-19 public health emergency.

A request for comment from Dr. Fauci was not returned. Dr. Memoli told The Epoch Times in an email he was “happy to answer any questions you have” but that he needed clearance from the NIAID’s media office. That office then refused to give clearance.

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a professor of health policy at Stanford University, said that Dr. Memoli showed bravery when he warned Dr. Fauci against mandates.

“Those mandates have done more to demolish public trust in public health than any single action by public health officials in my professional career, including diminishing public trust in all vaccines.” Dr. Bhattacharya, a frequent critic of the U.S. response to COVID-19, told The Epoch Times via email. “It was risky for Dr. Memoli to speak publicly since he works at the NIH, and the culture of the NIH punishes those who cross powerful scientific bureaucrats like Dr. Fauci or his former boss, Dr. Francis Collins.”

California Assemblyman Reggie Jones-Sawyer (D) wants to give free, taxpayer-funded legal aid to illegal migrants who have “been convicted of, or who is currently appealing a conviction for, a violent or serious felony.”

The bill, AB 2031, would also “expand those qualifying services to persons having an intent to reside in and having a nexus to the state,” and would include “legal representation and related services for removal defense.“

California’s most insane bill yet?

Meet AB 2031, a new bill just introduced by Assemblyman Reggie Jones-Sawyer.

The bill seeks to grant illegals convicted of SERIOUS and VOlLENT crimes with legal assistance, such as helping them avoid deportation.

These services will be paid… pic.twitter.com/MiUS2zThPc

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) March 10, 2024

This isn’t the first time Jones-Sawyer has tried to slide money to illegals to help them remain in the country. Last year he introduced Assembly Bill 617 (failed) – which would have similarly provided illegal immigrants convicted of serious or violent felonies obtain taxpayer-funded grants to hire lawyers to fight deportation from the United States.

In 2017 California Democrats voted to create a government grant program called One California to provide $45 million per year in grants for nonprofits that provide defense and other legal services for low-income illegal immigrants. 

Current law prevents illegal immigrants who have been convicted of serious or violent felonies from accessing these taxpayer funds. AB 617 would change this requirement and expand access to these violent felons. –reformcalifornia.org

“Not only is this offensive to taxpayers to have to pay for $45 million in legal bills for illegal immigrants — and possibly illegal immigrant violent felons, but it is offensive to treat non-citizens with the same or better benefits as citizens,” said former San Diego City Council member and talk radio show host Carl DeMaio (R), chairman of Reform California, last April.

“For example, if a citizen got sued by the federal government for not paying taxes, they would never get a grant from their state government to hire a lawyer and fight the feds – but these illegal immigrants are,” he added.