Month: October 2024

Authored by Gabrielle Temaat via The College Fix,

Texas A&M University is discontinuing its LGBTQ+ minor due to low enrollment, following criticism of the program from Republican lawmakers over what they called “liberal indoctrination.”

The Battalion, the school’s student newspaper, reported last week that the university is cutting 14 minors and 38 certificates following an internal review that deemed them “low-producing” programs.

The university slashed programs that awarded “fewer than five degrees per academic year and fewer than 25 degrees in five years.”

The description of the LGBTQ+ minor on the school’s website states that it “prepares students to examine the ways in which gender and sexuality are socially constructed and offers a critical understanding [of] how sexuality and sexual orientation shape gender roles, identities, and social statuses in societies.”

The minor “also examines homophobia and transphobia’s relationship to racism, colonialism, sexism, ableism, classism and other forms of power,” the description states.

“After months of calling for A&M to end this absurd program, I was pleased to learn…they plan to end it. Proud to have helped deliver this victory for Texas taxpayers, who should never be forced to fund liberal indoctrination,” Texas Representative Brian Harrison wrote in a post on X.

“I look forward to further discussions with A&M and will continue fighting to keep taxpayers from funding leftist propaganda that does nothing to strengthen our economy or the workforce of tomorrow,” he told the Daily Caller.

Harrison (pictured) called for the school to discontinue the minor in March to “protect [his] constituents’ tax dollars, as well as the integrity of Texas A&M,” the Battalion reported.

“I asked them to discontinue this minor or provide to me in writing a justification for this minor to be continued. The most charitable way to characterize the response is as a ‘non-response,’” Harrison told the Daily Caller.

Texas Representative Chip Roy also called for the school to be “held accountable” for pushing “radical woke policies” earlier this year.

In contrast, Texas A&M Sociology Professor Mary Campbell said that removing the minor would negatively impact students opportunities and academic freedom. 

“The minor is a legitimate area of study that you should be able to study at A&M,” Campbell said. 

“If we want to be a high-quality university, that’s how we do it: by providing those opportunities to students,” she said. 

“I think we should work very hard to protect academic freedom, the freedom to study any legitimate area of study, which this minor absolutely is,” the professor said. 

The school also discontinued the Asian Studies minor, along with certificates in “Diversity and Social Justice,” “Popular Culture,” and “Performing Social Activism,” the student newspaper reported.

However, “courses associated with the deactivated programs will be unaffected,” according to the Battalion.

The full list of deactivated minors and certificates will not be public until Oct. 14 when it “appears before the Faculty Senate.”

Oil prices surged today as the record spec shorts suddenly realized that the Middle East is shitshow of geopolitical bomb fuses just ready to be lit. WTI spiked dramatically up near $72 on the Iranian missile attack in Israel before fading back a little

“Iran sits astride the world’s most strategic energy region, oil- and gas- production facilities and transit choke points,” said Bob McNally, founder of Rapidan Energy Group and a former adviser to president George W Bush.

“So, when Iran is involved in a shooting war with its neighbours, you have to price in some geopolitical disruption risk, especially when it comes to Israel,” he added.

Will the already low (tank bottoms) crude and Cushing stockpiles get tested further…

API

• Crude -1.46mm (unch exp)

• Cushing +700k

• Gasoline +900k (-300k exp)

• Distillates -2.7mm (-1.4mm exp)

For the sixth week in the last seven, crude stocks fell last week (and distillates inventories tumbled). Cushing stocks increased for the second week in a row…

Source: Bloomberg

Total crude stocks are back at their lowest since April 2022…

Source: Bloomberg

WTI was hovering just above $70 ahead of the API print and inched higher on the unexpected crude draw….

“This fresh escalation is serious and justifies oil’s jump,” said Bill Farren-Price, a veteran oil market watcher and senior research fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies.

“But we’ve been here before — the conflict needs to show signs of spreading to the Gulf if it is to ignite a broader and sustained oil price rally. At the moment it has not.”

Helima Croft, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets and a former CIA analyst, said oil traders needed to assess whether Israel would retaliate by directly targeting critical Iranian military and economic assets, including energy infrastructure.

“In April, the Israelis opted for a muted response to the Iranian missile and drone strikes. And yet in the past two weeks the [government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu] has demonstrated an increasingly high-risk tolerance for escalatory actions to achieve their strategic objectives.”

Of course President Biden (well – whoever is running the show behind getting ‘her’ elected) will not want to see crude prices rising (nor will Jay Powell, so soon after his mission accomplished 50bps cut out of nowhere).

Authored by James Rickards via DailyReckoning.com,

I’d like to start today’s issue by extending my thoughts and prayers to those impacted by Hurricane Helene, which has devastated significant portions of the southeast with massive flooding.

The death toll is over 100 and may increase significantly. Let’s all hope the affected areas will recover.

Moving on, with so much attention focused on the U.S. presidential election, the war in Ukraine and the war in Gaza, which is spreading to Lebanon, it’s easy to lose sight of other geopolitical developments that may be even more significant in the long run.

One of these developments is the rise of the new BRICS currency and its potential role in the global monetary system.

I’ve been warning readers about the collapse of the dollar for years and I was one of the first people to alert you to the rise of BRICS.

It’s a monetary shock about to hit the global financial system, and something I consider the most significant development in international finance in over half a century.

The annual leaders’ summit of BRICS nations is being held in Kazan, Russia from Oct. 22–24, and will include announcements moving the BRICS currency plans forward in material ways.

The Power of BRICS

The original BRICs membership from 2009 consisted of Brazil, Russia, India and China. South Africa was added in 2010 when the group’s name was changed to BRICS.

That group expanded significantly at the 2023 leaders’ summit in South Africa when Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) were added. (Argentina and Saudi Arabia were also permitted to enter but Argentina withdrew its application, and Saudi Arabia deferred its membership saying it was still considering the matter.)

BRICS has been active over the years in institutionalizing its initiatives. In 2014, the BRICS created the New Development Bank (NDB), which functions along the lines of the World Bank to promote infrastructure development in emerging economies.

The NDB was capitalized with over $100 billion from its members and currently has 53 projects underway with commitments of over $15 billion to those projects.

Beyond the nine current members, there is a waiting list of over 20 aspiring members including economic powers such as Nigeria, Venezuela, Indonesia, Malaysia, Turkey, Thailand and Vietnam.

The BRICS are part of an emerging Global South that is challenging the Collective West for world economic and geopolitical dominance.

The BRICS Currency Defined

The subject of a BRICS currency is confusing to most observers and is a fraught topic even for many experts. We’ll call the potential currency a BRIC for convenience, although no formal name has been announced.

The BRICS currency is very far along in establishing itself as a viable payment currency. The prerequisites are: agreed-upon value (which can be fixed to another currency, floating or pegged to a weight of gold), secure payments channels (basically high-speed, encrypted digital pipes for authenticated message traffic), digital ledgers and an agreed issuer (the NDB based in Shanghai may be suitable for this purpose, but another institution could be created).

The single most important element is a sufficiently large membership in the BRICS currency union such that a recipient of BRICS payments can use them for purchases in many jurisdictions for many goods and services.

This last point is where most alternative currency payment arrangements fall down. Russia can sell oil to China for CNY (which they are currently doing), but they are constrained in terms of where they can spend the CNY (basically limited to Chinese manufactured goods and semiconductors).

The same issue arises when Russia sells oil to India (for rupees) or weapons to Iran (for rials). The seller is limited in terms of what they can buy with the trading partner’s currency.

This constraint goes away in a currency union with 15 or 20 members or more. If Russia earns BRICs from China, they can buy Embraer aircrafts from Brazil or semiconductors from Malaysia.

For that matter, the use of a payment currency in a multi-member currency union is not limited to members. With access to the payment channels, non-members can nevertheless agree to receive the BRICS currency in payment, confident in their ability to spend it among the other BRICS members who are trading partners.

The proof of this is the eurozone, which is currently a 20-member currency union with a single central bank and worldwide acceptance of the euro.

New Developments to Watch

There are several interesting developments taking place. The first is that the U.S. is squandering its rule-of-law advantage with sanctions on Russia, the freezing of the assets of the Central Bank of Russia and efforts to actually steal those assets and convert them into a $50 billion loan to Ukraine using structured finance.

Given this rogue behavior by the U.S., countries are becoming more cautious about large U.S. Treasury note reserves. This may account in part for the recent rally in the price of gold.

The second is that the BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia in late October will announce significant progress in building out secure payment channels and will admit new members, which will drive the group closer to the critical mass needed to launch a currency union.

None of this happens overnight. It’s helpful to recall that the euro took almost 10 years to launch from the Maastricht Treaty in 1992 to the actual creation of the euro in 2000.

I worked closely with Alberto Giovannini in the late 1990s. He was one of the leading economists and scholars who helped create the euro. I was quite familiar with the technical hurdles to creating a new currency, especially the determination of the exchange rates at which Deutsche marks, lira, francs and other member currencies would be converted to euros.

A Linkage to Gold

It will take years to develop a BRICs-denominated bond market, although the process could be accelerated if BRICS members offered bonds directly to their own citizens as retail investors.

There is a short path to making the BRICs a viable reserve currency — gold. Members of the BRICS currency union could use surplus BRICs to buy gold bullion to hold in their reserves.

Russia, China and South Africa are all major gold producers and China has an extensive network of refineries so there should be ample gold available for purchase. When needed for purchases or settlements, the gold could be easily sold for BRICS currency. The common thread in these and other solutions is that they obviate U.S. dollar transactions.

It will still take a few years to add members, build out the infrastructure and firm up some valuation issues. Still, this currency is coming.

Even as a payment currency, the BRICS unit could be used in a material percentage of global trade giving the dollar a run for its money. The BRICS unit does not mark the end of the dollar as a widely accepted currency.

Still, in conjunction with the badly misguided weaponization of the dollar, it could mark the beginning of the end.

Slowly, then suddenly, said Hemingway about how men go bankrupt. The same could apply to the dollar.

Complex, sophisticated ‘Ocean’s Eleven’ style burglaries are becoming widespread across the U.S., so much so that jewelers have been officially put on notice.

The Jewelers’ Security Alliance (JSA) and Jewelers Mutual warned this week about some stores suffering major losses as a result of the break-ins, according to a new report from JCK.

Scott Guginsky, the JSA’s vice president, said: “We see burglaries everywhere, from New York to Texas. Some of the hits are in the millions. These are the largest dollar losses we’ve seen in some time.”

“It doesn’t appear like they’re stopping,” said Howard Stone, vice president of global risk services and analytics for Jewelers Mutual. He started noticing the crimes in June, the report says. 

Thefts usually happen on weekends, with gangs dressing as construction workers to blend in, the report says. They use cellphone and Wi-Fi blockers, cut power cables, and wait for backup alarms to drain. Sometimes, they set up hunting cameras as motion sensors.

The JCK report says that the gangs meticulously plan their heists, gathering detailed intelligence beforehand. “They’re all from South America and they are somewhat in communication. But it’s a loose-knit group. It’s not like there’s a [mob boss] John Gotti coordinating everything.”

Guginsky added: “They usually roll into town for a week and do surveillance. They scout out the store, follow the jeweler home. They often send someone in the store during business hours, with a camera on their hat and their shirt, so they have a sense of the layout.”

To prevent burglaries, the JSA and Jewelers Mutual suggest several measures for jewelers: stay alert to suspicious individuals who may be scouting the store or following you, and report any concerns to both the JSA and local authorities, keeping a log of incidents.

They also suggest regularly testing alarms and cameras, updating your emergency contact list, and ensuring contacts are available on weekends and holidays.

Lastly, they tell store owners to build relationships with local law enforcement and mall security to identify store vulnerabilities, the report concludes. 

Authored by T.L.Davis via Substack,

If you’re looking toward this election as anything other than a trigger event, you’re missing the point. It doesn’t even matter who wins in respect to your preparedness. Contact with the enemy is ensured either way. There is no peaceful path other than total and complete compliance; abandoning any hope for the future of the republic and human rights.

As LTC Steven Murray put it in a recent video, this vote is not like any other, it is the last act of a civilized man participating in a civilized act simply to erase the last vestige of responsibility before becoming absolutely ungovernable. The goal is to make the communists exert every effort to overcome the popularity and vote count to arrive at a Kamala win. The harder they have to work the more careless they become and the more eyes open as to the real status of the coup.

Where Trump would have to be inaugurated before implementing any of his policies, Kamala could start immediately, bypassing the ordinary transition, because all of her secretaries and sychophants would already be in place. They would basically be those of Barack Obama’s fourth term, anyway. She will then be able to go to sleep like Joe and let them run it all, but with much strengthened zeal toward the outright denigration of the population.

If you think Trump and his MAGA minions were attacked and brutalized under sleepy Joe, you can’t even imagine the level of hostility to be brought against them post November 5th. Should Trump win; by some massive failure of the left, or “too big to rig” actual overwhelming of the ballot box, it will probably be a short-lived victory for he will become target number one of every crackpot and government agency goon in the current administration. They’ve already proved they can coordinate nut jobs with lax security to produce the desired effect. Times that by 1000 and you might understand the situation accurately. With all of these crackpots and enemy agents activated post election, it will be something to awaken even more and importantly, expose those law enforcement agencies already on the wrong side of the republic.

It is an election of no serious consequence as to the future. It is bleak no matter how one turns it, but this is why I encourage the masses to vote, to absolve themselves of the slightest hesitance toward self-defense. It is simply a question of willing surrender or fight from this point on and the vote is the first act of willingness to fight those terrible odds.

I say this not to be inflammatory or hyperbolic, I think the sense of many are starting to realize there’s no help coming from any of the traditional sources. Tennessee and North Carolina can attest to how they are held in contempt and even hostile esteem by the federal government, punishment for not backing Harris.

This is how it goes, your state either resists and blocks federal action or they submit willingly to it. One must be in one of the states that resist and blocks or the fight will be much harder and nearly impossible to win. What I mean by “win” is to survive it.

This is no longer a long-range forecast, there’s a little over a month to the election, i.e., trigger point. The facts might come clear even before that, or WWIII, but at least then if not sooner. In my estimation, this is the time to start putting plans into place, if for no other reason than the dock strike is probably to keep last minute preparations from being completed. I’m not at the hunker-down stage yet, simply by virtue of my location, but if I were inner-city or local to a large population center, I would have a different outlook. Going to work, would be more of a day to day decision.

The two prongs are individual survivability and survivability of those I hold dear. All decisions are weighed against one or the other. Fortunately for us, we have been able to move our jobs to remote status and so work is no longer a question of the journey as survivable or not as we move into this volatile stage of the crumbling republic. Tomorrow the conflict begins, in my mind, with the strike, the squeezing and softening of the resistance to the regime, the breaking of the spirit, the restraint of goods, the civilians at war with each other to spread the chaos they seek.

This signifies the time to rise, to take advantage of their efforts toward chaos for their purposes and to use it against them. Chaos is the cover action for necessary deeds.

Today’s mixed macro picture (construction spending down, National Manufacturing surveys and Dallas Fed in contraction offset by surge in JOLTS) was overwhelmed by Strikes (from Iranian missiles and American longshoremen).

The widespread union strike deadline passed and bond markets shifted lower in yield on that news overnight. Then as Iranian missiles rained down on Israel, investors poured into safe-havens (bonds, gold) and dumped stocks as oil prices re-discovered geopolitical risk premium.

Source: Bloomberg

Treasury yields were all bid today, but are mixed on the week with the short-end significantly underperforming…

Source: Bloomberg

Gold was also bid as safe-haven (erasing all of yesterday’s losses)…

Source: Bloomberg

The dollar strengthened significantly on the day (more safe haven flows perhaps)…

Source: Bloomberg

Oil prices surged higher on the missile launches with WTI reaching almost $72 before pulling back a little.

Source: Bloomberg

Stocks lurched lower on the Iran-Israel headlines – led by Small Caps and Mega-Cap Tech – but once Europe closed, the algos started trying to BTFD. The momentum did ignite but failed to get any of the majors green before some late-day profit-taking from 0-DTEs dragged everything down again…

VIX and VVIX both surged higher today…

Source: Bloomberg

Bitcoin continued to serve its role as an anti-geopolitical risk asset – dumping every time a MidEast headline hits the Bloomberg terminal (which makes little to no sense to us… but hey we don’t have PhDs)…

Source: Bloomberg

It seems BTC and Big-Tech are joined at the hip again for now…

Source: Bloomberg

Finally, as Bloomberg reports, while investors are focused on policy cues (and liquidity infusions), earnings momentum has turned negative and could be a drag on stocks if it doesn’t improve with the upcoming earnings season.

Source: Bloomberg

Buy hey, for now liquidity is all that matters…

Source: Bloomberg

…until it doesn’t!

And there’s some liquidity stress in the banks’ plumbing…

Source: Bloomberg

Let’s just hope it’s quarter-end window-dressing (but this is one to keep an eye on).

Is that why USA Sovereign risk is also spiking…

Source: Bloomberg

Probably nothing..

Authored by Eric Lendrum via American Greatness,

An investigation has revealed that the medical records of vice presidential nominees J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) and Tim Walz (D-Minn.) at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) were improperly accessed by at least a dozen employees over the summer.

According to the Daily Caller, the internal investigation carried out by VA investigators found that these employees would be in violation of federal privacy laws, and could themselves face criminal investigations.

The breaches occurred in the VA’s Veterans Health Administration (VHA), according to anonymous sources close to the investigation. Both campaigns have already been formally informed of the data being compromised.

Federal prosecutors have already been contacted by the VA’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG), presented with evidence that could lead to charges.

Among the accused employees are a physician and a contractor, who allegedly spent “extended time” looking at the medical records without proper authorization to do so.

“We reported to law enforcement allegations that VA personnel may have improperly accessed Veteran records,” a VA spokesman said in a statement.

“We take the privacy of the Veterans we serve very seriously and have strict policies in place to protect their records. Any attempt to improperly access Veteran records by VA personnel is unacceptable and will not be tolerated.”

The breaches occurred in July and August, shortly after the announcements that Senator Vance and Governor Walz would be serving as the running mates of presidential nominees Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, respectively. The breaches were discovered after officials conducted routine security checks of all of the high-profile accounts with records stored at the agency.

Back in August, VA Secretary Denis McDonough sent an internal memo reminding all employees that “viewing a Veteran’s records out of curiosity or concern — or for any purpose that is not directly related to officially authorized and assigned duties — is strictly prohibited.”

The subject of both Walz and Vance’s military records has become a focus of both campaigns, primarily due to controversy surrounding the exact details of Walz’ service, including his rank upon retirement and when he retired. Multiple members of Walz’ former Army unit, including his former commanding officer and his former chaplain, accused him of deliberately abandoning his unit once he found out that the unit was going to be deployed to Iraq for war. Walz also lied about his rank, claiming to have retired as a command sergeant major when he actually never completed the full requirements to achieve the rank. These and other scandals have led to widespread accusations of stolen valor on Walz’ part.

On Tuesday there was a mass shooting and large casualties in the Israeli city of Jaffa, in the south Tel Aviv area. A pair of gunmen went on a shooting rampage in or near a strain station on Jerusalem street, local media says.

Several casualties were down at the scene, amid a huge police and emergency responder presence. Police are calling it a suspected terror attack. It occurred within hours before a large-scale Iranian ballistic missile attack on Tel Aviv.

“Initial reports in Hebrew media indicate that there were at least two gunmen in the attack and that there are at least 10 wounded, including two in critical condition,” Times of Israel initially reported.

But as emergency responders made it to the scene, the death toll quickly rose: 

Israel’s Magen David Adom (MDA) confirmed that eight individuals were killed in the attacks that occurred Jaffa, the Times of Israel reported.

Police also stated that two individuals who carried out the attacks had been “neutralized” according to the outlet.

Some reports are saying that at least 14 people were shot. Initially circulating security camera images showed two Arabs or presumably Palestinian men carrying assault rifles. Reports remain conflicting as police investigate the scene.

Footage showed a chaotic shootout and many Israelis on the ground (warning: graphic):

Multiple Individuals have been Shot at the Light-Rail Station on Jerusalem Boulevard in Jaffa, in a Suspected Terrorist Attack. pic.twitter.com/UjXriTF8sK

— OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) October 1, 2024

“Eight people were murdered in the terror shooting attack in Jaffa this evening, MDA says,” according to Times of Israel.

Tuesday evening has been chaotic and fearful across Israel, given that just as headlines of the deadly Jaffa shootings began emerging, Iran began launching a huge ballistic missile assault on Israel. Millions of Israelis took to bomb shelters amid widespread alarms sounding.

Authored by Andrew Korybko via Substack,

Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) warned on Tuesday that some NATO countries and Ukraine are preparing a chemical weapons false flag provocation in Syria so as to discredit Russia in the Global South. They specified that “The plan of the operation envisages the militants dropping a mined container with chlorine from a UAV during strikes by the Syrian Armed Forces and the Russian Aerospace Forces on terrorist groups’ positions in the Idlib de-escalation zone”, which the White Helmets will then film.

The timing is suspicious since it coincides with the start of Israel’s ground operation in Lebanon. Syria isn’t any stranger to chemical weapons false flags so the latest one could have been cooked up in a jiffy by building upon the experience obtained in all the prior ones. It’s therefore possible that this scenario was speedily devised sometime in the past month after the aerial phase of the latest Israeli-Lebanese War began. The goal of this provocation might thus be to expand the scope of regional conflict.

The ground dimension of the latest Israeli-Lebanese War is already destabilizing enough for the region, but the Levant could be thrown further into chaos if Turkiye feels pressured by this false flag provocation into ramping up its military operations in Northwestern Syria. The worst-case scenario would be if this resulted in a conventional war between them, even if only by miscalculation, which could also greatly harm Russia’s interests as well.

It’s worked hard over the last nine years to root out terrorism in the Arab Republic, yet another large-scale conflict there could reverse its hitherto impressive gains, not to mention risk worsening its relations with Turkiye. To avoid any misunderstandings, no prediction is being made about a chemical weapons false flag actually being carried out, let alone that one would automatically lead to a conventional Turkish-Syrian war. All that’s being done is scenario forecasting in light of SVR’s warning.

Having clarified that, it’s possible that the most important reason why they decided to raise awareness about this reportedly impending plot is to inform the Turkish public and thus reduce the chances that their leadership is able to rally them in support of militarily escalating in Syria if this happens. Russia doesn’t want to see a conventional Turkish-Syrian war, let alone a sudden deterioration in their ties that sabotages its efforts to reconcile them, so it naturally follows that it would do its utmost to prevent this.

To that end, SVR’s warning not only defends Russia’s reputation ahead of this potential provocation like they explicitly sought to do, but it also advances the unstated goal of reducing the likelihood of a conventional Turkish-Syrian war afterwards, which would harm Russia’s interests too. It remains uncertain whether Turkiye will bite the bait if the orchestrators go through with their plan, but it could also be the case that its leadership or Western-aligned elements of its “deep state” are involved in it.

One can only speculate why President Erdogan or members of his country’s permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies would want this, but the first might want to exploit what he perceives to be “Russian weakness” while the second might want to provoke a crisis with Russia. Once again, the reader should remember that none of this might happen at all since this piece is just a scenario forecast and not a prediction, but they’d still do well to keep their eyes on Syria just in case.

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

Tesla has beaten a lawsuit alleging the company and its top officials misled the public and investors over the state of its autopilot systems.

Plaintiffs in the case failed to show Tesla CEO Elon Musk and other officials committed fraud with statements such as the autopilot on average being safer than normal drivers, U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín said in a Sept. 30 ruling.

Musk said during a 2019 investor event that “we publish accidents per mile every quarter, and what we see right now is that autopilot is about twice as safe as a normal driver on average.” That same year, he wrote on Twitter (now X) that “buying a car in 2019 that can’t upgrade to full self-driving is like buying a horse instead of a car in 1919.”

Those and other statements were false and misleading because they overstated the effectiveness of autopilot and omitted key information, according to the suit, brought by investor Thomas Lamontagne. The Securities Exchange Act prohibits making business-related statements that are manipulative or deceptive.

Tesla lawyers defended the statements, saying they were protected because they were forward-looking and accompanied by cautionary language.

Olguín sided with Tesla, finding that some of the statements “are plainly forward-looking statements of Tesla’s plans and objectives” and thus meet a safe harbor provision in federal law.

“Plaintiffs have failed to allege that these challenged statements contain such ‘concrete’ assertions of ‘current or past fact,’” the judge said.

Tesla and its officials also used cautionary language, such as telling investors that actual results could differ from projections.

A number of the statements, however, were not forward-looking, but plaintiffs did not show that Musk knew the statements were false, meaning they’re protected by another safe harbor provision, according to the ruling.

A third set of statements, including Musk’s saying that the system was “not going to be perfect, but what matters is that it is very clearly safer than not deploying it,” are not actionable because they constitute corporate optimism, the judge ruled.

She also sided with Tesla on other statements involving the safety of autopilot, such as Musk telling investors that autopilot was safer than normal drivers.

The plaintiffs have failed to provide contemporaneous reports or data showing the statements were false or misleading when made, the judge said.

“Even if this data existed at the time the statements were made, the fact that there were safety issues with the technology does not suggest that it was false or misleading to assert that the technology was safer than regular human driving,” she wrote.

Olguín dismissed the claims, but gave plaintiffs the opportunity to file a new complaint providing evidence the statements were false or misleading.

“Justice prevails,” Musk wrote on his social media platform X.

A lawyer for the plaintiffs did not return a request for comment.