Tag: finance

Folks across the Mid-Atlantic are enjoying a welcome stretch of mild weather today, with temperatures in the 70s following several rounds of extreme heat earlier this month that sent temperatures into the 90s and even into the triple digits. Enjoy the comfortable nights in the 60s and low 70s over the next few days, because another heat wave is already on the horizon.

“New heat event potentially targets East Coast Aug 5-7,” private forecaster Commodity Wx Group wrote on X.

New heat event potentially targets East Coast Aug 5-7. pic.twitter.com/GTwfR5pVrY

— Commodity Wx Group (@commoditywx) July 24, 2026

Bloomberg forecast data show temperatures beginning to climb by the middle of next week, with highs peaking in the mid-to-upper 90s during the first week of August. The incoming heat wave is not expected to match the intensity of the two earlier this month, when temperatures surged well into the triple digits.

Notably, temperatures in the Lower 48 have reached their seasonal peak and will begin trending downward.

Peak summer is a welcome relief for customers across the PJM grid, who are facing some of the highest power costs in the nation.

This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s video from Daily Signal senior contributor Victor Davis Hanson.

We’re hearing more and more from the Democratic Socialists of America about all of the sins of America and very little of the good things we’ve done to ourselves and to the world at large on our 250th birthday. 

What is it, the nature of this DSA, Democratic Socialists of America, and the diversity, equity, inclusion criticism that we were racist, sexist, nativist, cruel, ruthless, etc., etc.  

But my question is, compared to what? 

Mao Zedong? He killed 70 million people.

He was the greatest mass murderer in history, and that government is still communist in an unbroken chain from [Chinese leader] Xi [Jinping] all the way back to Mao. Do we ever talk about that or the million people who are in concentration camps in China? 

Compared to historically to the Aztecs? 

We’re told the Aztecs were great people. They had an empire, but they crushed over a million people to create their empire. Some years, they sacrificed up to 10,000, maybe 15,000 a year of conquered tribes of fellow Indigenous people. 

Do we remember Shaka Zulu, the 19th-century creator of the Zulu nation?

He was responsible for a genocide in crushing his enemies that probably cost over a million lives. 

Do we really think that the Native Americans were living in paradise until Europeans came? The story of Native Americans was conquest, enslavement, butchery of rival tribes. 

So, what is going on? 

We have a tradition in the West of self-criticism. That’s what makes us different. Rationalism, self-criticism, improvement. But when that goes to an extreme, it ventures from self-criticism and self-reflection to nihilism, and it’s quite destructive. 

So, let’s just take a look at where the United States is compared to the rest. 

Look at immigration. Why do a million people, or 2 million people, 10,000 a day under Joe Biden, from very poor countries, most of them from what we would call the former Third World that were victims of socialism, why do they risk their lives coming here every year? 

Why do all these critics of the United States … [Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez], why did her parents want to come here? Why did [Rep.] Ilhan Omar’s father want to come here? Why did [Rep.] Rashida Tlaib’s father want to come here? Why did [New York City Mayor] Zohran Mamdani’s parents want to come? Was it so bad? 

Can’t they ever acknowledge that they came here because they had greater security, they had greater freedom, they had greater economic opportunity? And if they had criticisms, it was never enough that they wanted to go back to the places that they praised, but only from a distance and in the abstract. 

The truth is that the poor in the United States are better off than most of the middle classes in every other country. 

We saw that in the World Cup when middle- and upper-middle-class Europeans came over, and unlike … to watch the games, and unlike most tourists, they didn’t just stick on the coasts. They went to places in Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, the South, and the Midwest. 

And they found two things.

One, Americans were amazingly friendly and open, upbeat, not downers and drab, and everything’s terrible, which they expected from their experiences in Europe. 

And more importantly, they were affluent. They had big homes. They had air conditioning. the poor had appurtenances. Everybody has a cell phone. Nobody worries about the cost, apparently. 

There’s also then the hypocrisy of a lot of our critics.

And let me just give you an example of a few of them. 

Hasan Piker is a child of very, very wealthy Turkish immigrants that became U.S. citizens. He grew up for much of his life in Turkey. He gave a talk the other day in a Mao suit to Democratic Socialists of America. Think about that. He put on the uniform, so to speak, of the greatest mass murderer in history, and then he denounced capitalism. 

But he didn’t denounce capitalism in his own life because his parents are multimillionaires. He is a multimillionaire, and he drives a, what? $120,000 Porsche. Isn’t that a luxury of the bourgeoisie? 

And then there’s Zohran Mamdani, of course. His family, as I pointed out numerous times, was the elite of the elite of the elite in Uganda, a community of expatriates, Indians, from India that control 60% of the wealth, and they’re only 1% of the population. 

And he grew up in privilege here. He had a very nice home. He has a family estate on Lake Victoria, of all places. 

Ro Khanna, the congressman from California, he always is pointing out the evils of Republicans, and as he looks at the drift of the Democratic Party, he puts his finger in the wind, and he says socialism is the answer. Ro Khanna does. 

But he’s a multimillionaire. His father-in-law is one of the wealthiest members of the Indian American community, probably worth $500 or $600 million. His own children have been deeded golf courses. His wife drives a $190,000 Range Rover, and he’s lecturing us about our shortfalls? 

And then, of course, we come to [California Gov.] Gavin Newsom. He wants to get in on the socialist craze, so he said the other day, as is his wont, moving his arms around and being very slick and glib, that capitalism fails. It didn’t work. 

It worked for you, Gavin. You have a $9 million home. 

You are the, basically, the quote-unquote, “protégé” of the Gordon Getty oil for- fortune, who backed all of your business opportunities. 

Graham Platner, the now-disgraced madman who thought he was going to be senator with a Nazi tattoo. He criticized capitalism. He said that, you know, he was drifting towards socialism, very critical of America. 

But he really wasn’t a small-business person. He was a construct. His mother and father, who were very wealthy, one owned an upscale restaurant, the other was a well-known, often corporate real estate lawyer. They set him up in business, and they were his only client, and they allowed him to have land to use. 

So, what I’m getting at is most of this criticism of America is not coming from the so-called poor. It’s not coming from the lower middle classes. It’s coming from elites in urban enclaves who have done very well with capitalism, and they feel that by mouthing these socialist and communist platitudes, it’s a way to get power within the Democratic Party first, and then within the United States second. 

And remember one thing, this is not new. Most of the violent socialist communist movements in history, whether we look at the anarchist of the late 19th century, or whether we look at the Bolsheviks of 1905 all the way up to the Russian Revolution of 1917, or we look at the revolutions of 1848 in Europe, especially the Reign of Terror, 1792 and 1793, when a bunch of very wealthy, this should sound familiar, socialists hijacked the French Revolution and turned it into a Stalinist-like murder spree. 

They all had one thing in common. They were very, very wealthy, and they hated the very system that had enriched them, and they wanted to try out a whole series of nihilist projects on whom? On the middle class and the poor, with the proviso that none of their ideology would ever apply to themselves. 

They are far less active across the US in 2026, but not truly gone.  Is it exasperating, or, is it entertaining?  It depends on how you look at it.  Yes, the Black Lives Matter movement is back, and big surprise, they’re angry over the police shooting of another violent minority criminal.  But, is he black?

Not according to his extensive offender detail record, in which his race is listed as “White” and his ethnicity is listed as “Latino”.  Yet another in a long line of imprisoned minority perpetrators falsely identified as white on their rap sheet in order to artificially reduce official crime stats.  That said, it’s nice to know that BLM is finally admitting that all lives matter. 

Corey Durrell Ruiz, 38, recently released from prison, was approached by police while riding a bicycle after allegedly attempting to enter (break into) random vehicles in Madison, Wisconsin.  He was also suspected of a previous bike theft.  

When officers attempted to detain Ruiz, he ran.  He was tackled off the bike, but produced a fixed blade knife and stabbed one of the officers.  The wounded officer fired three shots, killing the suspect.  

July 22, 2026 – Madison, Wisconsin.

Four officers struggle to arrest a man suspected of stealing bikes and checking cars.

During the fight, he pulls a large fixed-blade knife.

One officer is stabbed. A second officer is also injured.

A female officer yells “Taser, Taser,…

— Louis Montoya (@montoyalouis1) July 24, 2026

Generally speaking, pulling any weapon during an arrest and trying to use it against an LEO is legal justification for the use of deadly force in return.  It is unlikely that the officers involved will face charges in court.  Not to be overlooked, Corey Ruiz has a long criminal history of up to 40 separate misdemeanors and felonies dating back to 2007. 

This includes an extensive history of attacking police officers, and yes, this does matter because it shows a consistent pattern of violence.  A world without Corey Ruiz is, objectively, a better world.

 

The Black Lives Matter movement and the mainstream media have immediately seized on the shooting in an effort to exploit it for political purposes.  The local Democrat run government is already bending the knee to protesters as they hijack press briefings with inane fatiguery.  BLM mobs are stalking Madison looking for chances to create chaos.  Wisconsin’s leftist governor is calling for “accountability” in the shooting.

It’s fascinating that the family of Corey Ruiz has appeared on camera to demand transparency, given that Ruiz was listed as homeless at the time of the encounter with police.  Multiple reports indicate mental health and substance abuse issues, and apparently no one from Ruiz’s family was willing to give him a place to stay.  They are, though, readily available to soak up the media spotlight and feed the activist fervor in the wake of his death. 

News outlets are circulating photos of Ruiz from 2014; a common tactic used by the media to make the suspect look younger and elicit greater empathy from gullible portions of the public.

  

Concert attendees in Madison got a taste of the old BLM mob mentality when protesters stormed the venue and demanded a platform for their grievances.  As much as they would like this to become a “George Floyd moment”, however, times have changed and BLM has exhausted much of the public support they had in 2020. 

Mob of angry protesters crashed a concert in Madison, Wisconsin, demanding “justice” for Corey Ruiz, a black man who was shot and killed by police after he allegedly pulled a knife during an arrest.

They essentially held the attendees hostage while hijacking the stage. The event… pic.twitter.com/J2GALWl4ob

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) July 23, 2026

The shooting is a clear case of officer self defense based on eye witness accounts and the available video footage.  Police body cams are liable to give more detailed insight into the incident, but the evidence against Ruiz is already damning.  

Leftist groups and Democrats seem to be angling for more Kenosha-style riots, perhaps as a means to create disruption during an election year.  But the American populace is tired of the theatrics.  If the protests don’t fade due to lack of interest and riots do take place, few people are going to shed a tear if the National Guard drops the hammer on them.  

Ultimately, Ruiz is one of many repeat offenders who had no chance of reform; a member of the 1% of people who cause the vast majority of societal grief for the other 99%.  He should have stayed locked up for the safety of the community at large, and if he had been he would still be alive today.  Maybe, though, that’s not what the Democrats and BLM really want.  

Authored by Mary Prenon via The Epoch Times,

While nearly one in four homes across the United States are located in areas susceptible to severe weather conditions, many homebuyers are still seeking out properties in these high-risk regions, a July Realtor.com report found.

The organization’s data show that 23.1 percent of America’s homes – with an estimated $11.2 trillion in value – are currently situated in areas prone to natural disasters.

The report indicates that, despite the likelihood of flooding, wildfires, or extreme windstorms in some areas, homebuyer demand remains strong, often driven by lower list prices than in nearby lower-risk areas.

“Price is still the biggest motivator for a lot of home shoppers, even in places where climate risk is well known,” Realtor.com economist Jiayi Xu said in the report.

“But that doesn’t mean the risk disappears. It shows up later, in insurance premiums, HOA fees, and financing, often after the sale is already done.”

Homeowners in these high-risk locations are already paying a premium to protect their properties against possible damage, a median of $192 per month in homeowner association (HOA) fees, which is 53.6 percent more than homeowners in lower-risk areas, according to the report.

Realtor.com found that Delaware, South Carolina, and Oregon lead the nation for the widest gaps between HOA fees in high- and low-risk areas. In Oregon, for example, the median HOA fee in high-risk areas is $423, compared with $114 in lower-risk areas.

In California, where certain regions have suffered from devastating wildfires over the years, many homebuyers are still not deterred from purchasing in those areas.

According to the report, listings in high-risk Santa Clara County are priced at 78 percent of the per-square-foot price of homes without severe risk. These properties also command 48 percent more views per listing.

Los Angeles County homes in higher-risk areas also offer discounts, with homes there priced at 75 percent of those in lower-risk areas and accounting for 23 percent more views.

“When disaster strikes, shoppers retrench, but the effect is short-lived,” the report states. “Following the January 2025 LA wildfires, buyer interest in high-risk homes dropped 10%, yet fully recovered within one month.”

However, in other markets such as Anne Arundel County, Maryland, homebuyers are willing to pay 44 percent more per square foot to live in areas deemed at high risk for weather damage because waterfront access often outweighs the risk.

A similar situation in Llano County, Texas, shows homebuyers paying almost double for a home in a higher-risk area so they can live near a river.

The report said other areas of the country that have been continuously hit by flooding include Oklahoma, Idaho, Mississippi, and Alabama.

“Buyers are not seeking risk – but in markets where affordability has long been an issue, price is the dominant signal, and high-risk homes happen to offer the discount that makes ownership possible,” the report states.

A May 2026 Pew Research Center report found that 71 percent of U.S. homeowners said their home insurance premiums had increased. Among those homeowners, many cited rising repair and rebuilding costs and more frequent extreme weather events as major reasons for the increases.

In an April report, Insurance.com, an online comparison service and digital agency, stated that Florida’s high hurricane risk has made it difficult for residents to obtain home insurance.

It also noted that many carriers in the state had gone out of business, leaving just the state insurance option, Citizens Insurance, which can cost homeowners about $7,000 a year and even more in coastal areas.

Obtaining insurance in California is also difficult, the report noted, due to wildfires. As a result, some major carriers, including State Farm and Allstate, have stopped issuing new policies.

For those who still choose to purchase homes in high-risk weather zones, Insurance.com recommends ensuring they have adequate replacement cost coverage in the event of a natural disaster.

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

Top officials with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) expressed misgivings about researchers with the agency studying people with neurological issues after they received COVID-19 vaccines, according to newly released emails.

Dr. Avindra Nath, a senior investigator with the NIH’s National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, was studying people with post-vaccination neurological problems in 2020 and 2021.

In an email on April 10, 2021, he sent a draft of a paper to the institute’s director, Dr. Walter Koroshetz, that outlined what he had found.

“Early recognition and treatment with corticosteroids can reverse the symptoms,” Nath wrote.

The following day, the institute’s director sent the manuscript to Dr. Anthony Fauci, who at the time was director of another NIH institute.

“There have been steady slow stream of reports to me of post vaccination neurologic conditions, seem to be mostly peripheral nerve disorders … maybe an occasional spinal cord issue,” Koroshetz told Fauci. “Avi has been collecting a bunch. He has a report sent out to publish. Hard to know not due to chance but are timed to the vaccination.”

Another NIH employee sent the manuscript to then-NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins and Dr. Lawrence Tabak, a second top NIH official, and shared that the New England Journal of Medicine rejected the paper.

“What do you make of this?” Collins wrote in response. “The draft letter doesn’t explain how these 32 patients were referred – leaving one to wonder whether this is common or rare.”

Koroshetz told Collins that many reports had been lodged with the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System and that Nath had been attracting referrals because he had appeared on a podcast to discuss neurological problems following COVID-19 vaccination.

Koroshetz also said that Nath, and another employee at his institute, had suffered tinnitus after receiving COVID-19 vaccines, and that Nath had hearing loss.

Collins said the approach taken by Nath’s team was “very troubling,” adding, “collecting anecdotes and then trying to build a case isn’t scientifically compelling – and will have the main consequence of feeding vaccine hesitancy and social media overreaction.”

Tabak wrote privately to Collins, telling him, “I don’t understand why Walter does not shut this down.”

“While the emails do not prove that Collins, Tabak, or Fauci expressly ordered Nath to abandon the manuscript, they raise serious questions about whether NIH leadership viewed its potential effect on vaccine confidence as a compelling reason to suppress its publication,” the Informed Consent Action Network, which released the missives on July 22, said in a statement.

Collins, Fauci, and Nath did not return requests for comment by the time of publication. Tabak could not be reached.

The paper was never published in a journal. It was released as a preprint, or without peer review, in May 2022, more than one year after Nath sent it to Koroshetz.

Dr. Danice Hertz, a retired gastroenterologist who received the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine shortly after it was authorized in 2020 and suffered severe problems, was one of the patients who was examined by Nath’s team.

“I have always believed that Fauci must have told Nath to stop talking to us, as we were all abruptly dismissed from Nath’s care without explanation. Now I know that my suspicions were true,” Hertz told The Epoch Times in an email after reading the newly released missives.

Authored by Emel Akan via The Epoch Times,

President Donald Trump attended the rescheduled White House Correspondents’ Dinner in Washington on July 24.

The event that was originally held on April 25 was abruptly canceled due to an assassination attempt against him.

“I am delighted to be here,” Trump said as he began his speech, which lasted an hour.

“Amazing people, a lot of people that I like. Some I don’t like at all, but I respect most of them. I must say that you do a great job, amazing job, and it’s an honor. As I said three months ago, the show must go on.”

Trump continued his speech with jokes and said, “This place is really the largest group of Trump derangement syndrome people ever put together.”

The rescheduled gala took place at the Waldorf Astoria.

During his speech, Trump said he is the most transparent president in history and took several jabs at the media, joking that many media organizations would be “broke” once he leaves the White House.

“When I’m gone, you’re all going to be broke. Your business model is going to be finished,” the president said.

He took direct aim at CNN’s Kaitlin Collins (and ‘Fake Tapper’):

“I want to personally congratulate CNN’s Kaitlan Collins… I thought she had really made it big with a major new sponsorship, but then I informed her that it wasn’t her on the Bud Light can, it was Dylan Mulvaney.”

CNN released a statement during Trump’s speech defending its reporters, writing in part:

“Honest, accurate journalism may sometimes irritate politicians, but our right to report and present that reporting without government interference is fully protected by the U.S. Constitution.”

He also joked that, in order to save the media, he would announce a fourth presidential run.

“That’s why tonight, to show just how much I care about the press,” Trump said, “I’m pleased to announce my intention – and this is somewhat of a scoop – my intention to run for a fourth term as president of the United States.”

He then put on a “Trump 2028” hat, drawing laughs from the audience.

This was his first time attending the dinner as president, except for the April event, which was canceled after a shooting occurred just outside the main ballroom.

Trump joked about the dinner itself, saying it was “far worse” than he expected.

At the same time, he acknowledged that he and the reporters who attended the April dinner “went through a period of trauma” that created a unique bond between them. He said he would attend next year’s dinner.

Throughout the speech, Trump occasionally praised the media, saying he respected most reporters and liked some of them. However, he also said that much of the coverage of his administration and policies had been unfair.

The president also criticized his opponents, targeting individual journalists before shifting to Democrats and other public figures.

Trump rebutted the longstanding claim that he decided to run for president after former President Barack Obama mocked him at the 2011 White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner.

He said Obama’s remarks were not a factor in his decision to enter the race in 2016.

“I just decided that I wanted to make America great again. This had nothing to do with that dinner,” he said.

After Trump’s remarks, mentalist Oz Pearlman took the stage and performed mind-reading tricks for the audience, concluding the event.

‘We Will Not Be Intimidated’

White House Correspondents’ Association outgoing President Weijia Jiang delivered the opening address at the dinner.

“Whatever may divide us, we stand together against political violence,” she said.

“An assassination attempt on our president is an attack on democracy itself,” she added, drawing applause from the crowd.

“Tonight, our message is this: We are back. We will not be intimidated.”

The dinner at the Washington Hilton hotel on April 25 was interrupted when gunshots were fired outside the ballroom. Cole Tomas Allen, a 31-year-old man from California, allegedly got past security with a shotgun and shot at a Secret Service officer who was wearing a bulletproof vest. Security officers quickly responded and arrested Allen. The officer was not injured, and no one else was hurt.

The Secret Service immediately evacuated Trump, First Lady Melania Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and several Cabinet members from the venue.

Allen is charged with attempting to assassinate Trump at the event. He also faces one count of transporting a firearm across state lines with intent to commit a felony and one count of discharging a firearm during a crime of violence. He has pleaded not guilty.

At the event, the White House Correspondents’ Association presented special awards to Secret Service Police Officer Victor Gonzales and to the staff of the Washington Hilton to honor their exceptional service during the shooting. The association plans to return to Hilton for next year’s dinner.

The White House Correspondents’ Dinner is a black-tie gala attended by media personalities, business leaders, celebrities, lawmakers, and Cabinet officials to celebrate the Fourth Estate and White House reporters.

The association said the logistical challenges in organizing a second dinner led it to scale back the event, resulting in a smaller gathering with a reduced guest list. The Washington Hilton’s ballroom can hold 3,000 people, while the Waldorf Astoria only fits 700.

While most of Trump’s Cabinet attended the rescheduled event, the first lady, Vance, and Rubio were not among the guests due to prior commitments, a White House official told The Epoch Times.

According to the White House, the following Trump administration officials attended the dinner: acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, FBI Director Kash Patel, Education Secretary Linda McMahon, Small Business Administration chief Kelly Loeffler, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, Energy Secretary Chris Wright, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., acting Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz, and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.

As part of the enhanced security measures, each guest was required to present a unique QR code and a government-issued photo ID to get through the ticketing.

The guests then went through layers of security to access the ballroom.

The White House Correspondents’ Association was founded in 1914 to protect press freedom and preserve journalists’ access to the White House. It held its first dinner in 1921, and the first president to attend was Calvin Coolidge in 1924.

Watch the full speech below:

SpaceX launched Starship on its 13th test flight on Friday evening, the first since the company’s massive IPO, successfully deploying 20 next-generation Starlink V3 satellites while demonstrating further progress with its largest rocket.

“Deployment of 20 @Starlink V3 satellites complete. Today’s test will provide critical data as we prepare to expand our Starlink constellation,” SpaceX announced on X.

Deployment of 20 @Starlink V3 satellites complete. Today’s test will provide critical data as we prepare to expand our Starlink constellation pic.twitter.com/jWKLwXGlsk

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) July 24, 2026

The Super Heavy booster separated about two minutes after liftoff but suffered engine relight failures before a splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico.

Starship soared on the second flight of the next generation, deploying advanced Starlink satellites for the first time and providing priceless data as it travelled through air, space, and sea → https://t.co/Rp7VwBzpWx pic.twitter.com/vCYYKvGvDK

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) July 25, 2026

Starship’s upper stage performed better, completing a soft landing in the Indian Ocean and remaining intact. This gave engineers their first detailed view of an undamaged heat shield after reentry.

“This is the softest splashdown we have ever had with the Starship there in the Indian Ocean,” Dan Huot, communications manager at SpaceX, said on a livestream, adding, “I’m a little over the moon right now. Wow. Lucky number 13. Hell of a great day for Starship.” 

Splashdown confirmed! Congratulations to the entire SpaceX team on the 13th flight test of Starship! pic.twitter.com/g27YJCQgiN

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) July 24, 2026

In a statement after the test flight, SpaceX said the booster landing “attempted to relight its engines for the landing burn,” but only a subset successfully ignited before the “hard splashdown,” adding that the upper stage of the rocket made a “soft splashdown” in the Indian Ocean. It noted that Starship came “to rest intact in the Indian Ocean and providing critical views of an intact heatshield for the first time.”

Latest coverage:

• SpaceX Reportedly Turns Away Falcon Customers As Starship Gamble Comes Into Focus
• SpaceX Starship Flight 13 Launch Scrubbed At The Last Second

SpaceX stock and bonds:

• SpaceX Rebounds From Near-50% Rout As Starship Launch Catalyst Nears
• SpaceX Shares Fall Below $135 IPO Price, But The Real Story Is Its Bonds

When will SpaceX hit bottom?

The test advances SpaceX’s plans to expand Starlink, develop orbital data centers and support NASA missions to the moon.

The United States has sanctioned a senior UK-based Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood (MB) official alongside six other individuals and entities that it said provided material support to terrorist group Hamas.

State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott said on July 23 that the action exposes MB affiliates and “Hamas-directed front organizations that use charitable facades and underground networks to disguise and move funds in support of terrorism.”

As Evgenia Filimianova reports via The Epoch Times, the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) identified Mahmoud al-Abyari as one of the sanctioned individuals, describing him as the UK-based secretary general of the Muslim Brotherhood General Secretariat.

OFAC said al-Abyari helped raise funds for two organizations it had previously sanctioned over alleged Hamas ties—Filistin Vakfi and Hayat Yolu—and worked with MB groups to provide financial support to Hamas.

Two charities were also named, including Indonesia-based Tujah Bulah Global and Gaza-based Madad Palestine Charitable Society.

A Turkey-based money exchange rounded out the list. Treasury said El-Kahira for General Trading transferred hundreds of thousands of dollars to Hamas and separately provided underground banking services to organized crime groups in Sweden.

OFAC also designated three men connected to the firm: the owner, Khuldun Khamis Zakaria Alden, and shareholders Zaid Issam Ahmed Al-Jebouri and Abdullah Issam Ahmad Al-Jebouri.

“The Trump Administration will relentlessly pursue terrorists and those who finance them,” said Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

“Whether operating under the guise of charities, businesses, or underground financial networks, those who enable Hamas will be exposed, sanctioned, and held accountable.”

The measures build on designations announced in January and March that targeted Hamas financial facilitators, operatives, and MB-linked charities.

Pigott said on July 23 that Washington is “committed to dismantling the financial infrastructure that sustains Hamas and the MB.”

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent speaks during a press briefing at the White House on May 28, 2026. Madalina Kilroy/The Epoch Times

The sanctions freeze any property and interests in property of the designated individuals and entities that are in the United States or under the control of U.S. persons. The measures also expose foreign financial institutions to potential secondary sanctions if they knowingly facilitate significant transactions on behalf of sanctioned persons.

Different Approach

The latest U.S. action highlights a policy difference between Washington and London.

The Treasury designated the Egyptian, Jordanian, and Lebanese branches of the MB as specially designated global terrorists in January 2026 for providing material support to Hamas.

The MB has been designated a terrorist organization by Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain. Jordan outlawed the movement in 2025.

The UK has not proscribed the organization. The UK produced a review of the MB in 2015, which concluded that membership of, association with, or influence by the MB should be regarded as “a possible indicator of extremism.”

It said, however, that these factors alone were not sufficient to justify legal action. Downing Street also found that parts of the movement had used or supported violence in some countries, but stopped short of recommending a ban.

Former UK Commissioner for Countering Extremism Robin Simcox said the United States has taken a more robust approach than London toward MB networks operating in the UK.

Speaking during a Foundation for Defense of Democracies program on July 17, Simcox said, “This is a UK problem first and foremost, and we are not dealing with it in anything like the seriousness that the United States is, and that’s a major problem.”

Simcox said the British government, police, and security services have not considered the MB a sufficiently high priority compared with other terrorist threats.

He described that approach as “a massive strategic mistake” and said he hopes the latest U.S. measures will encourage the UK to revisit the issue.

The Epoch Times reached out to the UK Home Office for comment but didn’t receive a response by publication time.

Authored by Andrew Korybko,

The goal is to create a growing class of malcontents by inflicting major harm to small business owners who might then shift the electoral odds against the ruling party ahead of September’s next elections and later possibly form the core of a future protest movement that could be exploited from abroad.

Ukraine’s US-assisted long-range drone campaign against Russia has recently begun targeting the country’s online retailer Wildberries, which is essentially the “Russian Amazon”, with recent strikes either totally destroying or greatly damaging several of its logistics centers. The Financial Times cited Russia’s edition of Forbes to report that these attacks might have already destroyed 150-275 billion rubles’ worth of inventory thus far, equivalent to around $2-3.5 billion, or more than Wildberries’ net profit last year.

They also importantly cited Alexander Kolyandr, a director at Eurasia Group, who told them that “The loss of the goods will put thousands of traders out of business, resulting in unpaid taxes, defaulted loans and the like.” Therein lies the political motive behind Ukraine’s drone campaign against the “Russian Amazon”. Zelensky announced a 40-day influence operation against Russia late last month with the objective of coercing it into a ceasefire without any concessions from Ukraine or its Western patrons.

It’ll formally end in early August, so nearly six weeks before the next Duma elections in late September, the first since the special operation began as the last ones were in 2021. His influence operation will likely be extended, however, even if only informally. With this political context in mind as well as the explicitly stated goal that he aims to achieve, it’s clear that Zelensky authorized his forces to do whatever they can to maximally inconvenience average Russians for the purpose of turning them against Putin.

This explains the prior spree of strikes against Russian energy infrastructure, which led to a spike in fuel costs that Ukraine expected would raise prices across the board due to higher transport costs for slashing average Russians’ disposable income, and the Wildberries campaign is the next phase. Harming small businesses more directly affects average Russians, both buyers and of course sellers, and the particular intent appears to be to create a new and growing class of malcontents within the country.

If taken to its extreme, and it’s possible that more logistics centers will be targeted and at least damaged since 18 of the 20 largest in Russia are reportedly within range of Ukrainian drones, this could have long-term socio-political and economic consequences for Russia. The state, which is already under financial strain due to the combination of sanctions, attacks against its energy infrastructure, and the recent large-scale destruction of small business’ taxable inventory, might thus be pressured to bail them out.

Inadequate support for struggling small business owners could shift the electoral odds against the ruling party in what would then be spun as a symbolic setback to Putin, create the earlier mentioned class of malcontents, and thus possibly rekindle long-dormant protest potential that could be exploited from abroad. The consequences could therefore cascade in the worst-case, which admittedly isn’t likely since the state still has time to avert it, so it’s premature to expect this yet it also shouldn’t be ruled out either.

The larger trend is that Ukraine’s spree of strikes against Russia is gradually evolving from showmanship into strategy, assisted as it’s been by the US, which provides targeting intelligence and overall guidance to its proxy. “Trump 2.0’s Escalation Strategy Against Russia Is Starting To Take Shape”, and it’s centered on a “war of attrition” that’s now setting its sights on largely civilian targets like Wildberries, the aim of which is to advance political goals that are in any case unlikely to get Putin to declare a ceasefire.

Authored by Steven Tucker via dailysceptic.org,

Did you see that huge Muslim gathering held in Suffolk recently, which had to be called off early due to a major far-Right terror plot being hatched against it? You may well have done, as the news was all over the media and referenced in alarmist tones by leading politicians, up to and including the Prime Minister (both the ones we’ve had this week).

But did you also see that the ‘plot’ didn’t even exist? Quite possibly not, because the subsequent release of everyone concerned (bar one aberrant and misleading exception, who we’ll come to later) didn’t get anything like as much space in the media, and no mention at all from any of the politicians who had so eagerly jumped the imaginary gun to condemn it.

Empty threats

The disrupted event, called the UK Ijtima, attracted 15,000 members of the Religion of Peace from around the world to gather in the grounds of the country estate of Shrubland Hall in Barham to engage in events of a peacefully peaceful nature. This peace was suddenly shattered, however, when armed counter-terror police descended, warning visitors of a severe threat to their wellbeing in the shape of the nearby presence of some white people, causing the jamboree to be closed down a few hours early on Sunday July 12th. Eight men across the country were detained under the Terrorism Act 2000, whilst a further four individuals were apprehended upon different grounds like conspiracy to commit murder. Counter-terror cops confirmed the arrests were “Right-wing terrorism related”.

Then-Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, another recent victim of things having to end early, was quick to express shock at the “credible, serious threat”, as was his soon-to-be successor, Andy Burnham.

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood went further, saying the prompt police action “undoubtedly saved lives”, making a statement in the Commons, playing up the cancellation as all part of a wider campaign of terror and intimidation being waged against Britain’s Muslims by the agents of Anglo-Saxon hatred.

Hannah Spencer, the Green Party MP for Gorton and Gaza, joined in, demanding stronger governmental action against “anti-Muslim hatred” and bemoaning how the “alarming incident” in Barham “has barely been covered in the news”, even though it appeared on the BBC, Sky News, ITV and many major newspapers.

The lengthy ITV report is particularly cringeworthy and dhimmified. An interviewee, before any details of the ‘plot’ were even known, says that, if it had succeeded, it could have been the biggest terror massacre in British history. ITV would not have run an interview just after Axel Rudakubana’s arrest in 2024 with someone saying the same thing about his own plan to kill thousands with the bioweapons he was brewing in his bedroom, because Axel was from a minority group himself, and so speculating about his own case was officially discouraged by media and politicians alike, even though his offences, unlike those of the white Barham ‘terrorists’, were actually real.

Others doing their best to inflate the risk included the Muslim Council of Britain, who used the incident to specifically warn that “the threat facing Muslim communities is real, not imagined”. A few days later, of course, it turned out the precise reverse was true as regarded Barham, yet still the MCB’s statement remained online and unaltered.

Did it really matter to those bemoaning the ‘threat’ so loudly here that it ultimately did turn out to be wholly imaginary, though?

PCS gone mad

The PCS, our main civil service union, momentarily confused itself with the CPS, and put out an eerily similar statement to the MCB on the ‘plot’, also presenting it as part of a wider pattern:

There is no doubt there was a serious risk to life. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood described a “credible threat” and said that police action had “undoubtedly saved lives”. Britain’s Counter Terrorism Policing (CTP) confirmed that the investigation was “Right-wing terrorism related”. This is not an isolated incident. There is increasing evidence of growing Islamophobia and alarming Islamophobic attacks. On Friday June 19th PCS condemned violent attacks targeting Edinburgh’s Muslim community. This followed serious violence earlier the same month over several days in Belfast, Northern Ireland. In Manchester and Stockport, mosques have been attacked during evening prayers.

The other attacks upon Muslims referred to by the PCS here were real, physically extant events. The pseudo-events in Barham later turned out not to be. Fran Heathcote, the PCS General Secretary, reassured her union’s Muslims that the difference didn’t matter, though. Look at the sentence I’ve highlighted in bold:

Firstly I am thankful that this potentially catastrophic attack was prevented on this occasion without injury. However, I recognise that the threat facing Muslim and other religious communities is very real. Once again, we send our solidarity to those affected who may be feeling frightened and insecure at this time. PCS is ready to support any of our members affected by such events whether threatened or real. This kind of violence has no place in any society. We stand firmly against racism and religious intolerance in all its forms.

A union which explicitly promises to protect its members from imaginary threats? Would that include handing them out free cloves of garlic to ward off vampires, and silver bullets to see off werewolves? I wrote on the Daily Sceptic recently about a bizarre new far-Left faux-academic philosophy called ‘eventism’, or the unjustifiable social prejudice against false claims of things which never actually happened at all. This philosophy, which allows minority groups like Muslims to demonise majority groups like whites as being collectively ‘guilty’ of crimes like rape, murder or slavery even if they have never personally committed them, seems also here to apply to non-existent acts of ‘terror’ like the one which never occurred at Barham.

Bodies like the Muslim Council of Britain expressly want to use such purely imagined ‘events’ as a basis for implementing concrete polices. As the MCB said in its post-Barham statement, “The MCB calls on ministers to match the language of condemnation with actual action and policy, not another round of statements that change nothing.” If you want “actual action”, rather than mere abstract words, isn’t that a kind of eventism in itself?

Droning on

What actually happened at Barham during the Ijtima, then? It is quite hard to ascertain for certain, due to the mainstream media, police and previously mouthy politicians, all of whom must now know, failing completely to tell us. So, we have to guess.

The best explanation (officially unconfirmed) I have seen appears in a TikTok video from Shayne Wiskin, a Right-wing campaigner who says an anti-immigration patriot group, as it would style itself, had gone to the Ijtima bearing drones. The Ijtima gathering is banned in several Islamic nations around the globe, with the parent sect which organises it, Tablighi Jamaat, sometimes accused of being extremists. Fearing such rumours may be true, the patriots, from something called the British Security Project (BSP), decided to go to a nearby field and pilot some drones equipped with cameras overhead just to check the festival-goers weren’t secretly building a nuclear warhead.

If this narrative is true, then the supposed ‘Nazi terrorists’ were nothing of the kind, just the modern-day equivalent of Uncle Jimmy and his Fairly Secret Army from the 1970s Reginald Perrin sitcoms, attempting to protect the nation from fifth-columnists armed with little more than broomsticks and bravado. The BSP aspires to place over 120,000 members in schools and on trains nationwide, just in case a jihadi or a paedo happens to wander into one someday. This might be difficult as yet, as it would seem lucky to have 120 members. It sounds more like well-meaning fantasists than genuinely dangerous men. To be fair to the police, though, if the below alleged photographs supposedly showing BSP drone-operatives at work are real, they did look somewhat suspicious, and it was hardly unreasonable to investigate what they were doing, albeit the ultimate decision to go in so hard with nationwide arrests of alleged ‘accomplices’ appears to have been rather over the top.

It isn’t so much that the police approached these people that is the problem here – if those were masked Muslims flying drones over a Christian gathering, I’d certainly want them taken in for questioning – it was the political and media reaction to the arrests that was more worthy of critique.

Event management

Having expended so much political capital upon condemning this “credible, serious threat” to the Muslim population, politicians, activists, unions and media could hardly just come out and openly admit they had got it all horribly wrong. This, for example, is how ITV News obediently and uncritically reported the Muslim Council of Britain’s initial comments about the affair on its website:

I would have loved to have seen a follow-up headline saying ‘Far-right danger MCB described as ‘real, not imagined’, turns out to be imagined, not real’, but I suspect that would have been far too humiliating for ITV to own up to. Also, once again, to do so would have been ‘eventist’, and so just another unacceptable form of systemic white racism.

The main Establishment face-saving tactic rolled out has been simply to stay silent. Mahmood, Burnham and Starmer don’t seem to have issued any corrections or apologies, nor do the MCB or PCS union. As for the media, several outlets have dutifully printed follow-up stories explaining how everyone arrested was later released facing no specific terror charges. However, these seem less prominently reported than the initial news of the arrests, and one particular report, from the BBC, was framed in such a way as to make it all sound like the direct opposite of what really happened:

If you only read the headline there, which many users will, it sounds like there was a real terror threat in Barham after all. But if you examine the whole story, it turns out one of the men arrested, during a search of his home and vehicle, was found to possess two extendable batons and a stun-gun. He had made no attempt to take them to the UK Ijtima, had no intent to use them there and wasn’t even present in Barham during the gathering, being apprehended in distant Basildon. For this, the man has already been charged, tried and sentenced to six months in prison on a suspended sentence: the wheels of justice really can spin quite quickly on the odd occasion the state actually wants them to. Elsewhere, the BBC reported the other men’s release in more honest terms, but the headline reproduced above looks like a clear exercise in damage limitation.

Speculation nation

There’s something about all this that does not add up. I would guess it’s more an exercise in quietly obscuring yet another DEI-created policing cock-up rather than a case of initial intentional elite conspiracy, but Reform UK’s Deputy Leader Richard Tice thinks otherwise. Tice questions whether the whole thing was some government false-flag psy-op to counteract the widespread belief that the murderer of his fellow Reform member Ann Widdecombe may have been a far-Left extremist, by spuriously dragging alleged far-Right extremists back into the headlines instead. (Some have even tried to link the British Security Project to Ann’s killer.) In other words, ‘White woman killed for real, make the headlines about poor brown men feeling threatened by made-up non-threats’: anti-eventism activism in action.

This is pure speculation on Tice’s behalf, of the kind you would normally expect politicians like Mahmood, Starmer or Burnham to immediately condemn – but on this occasion, neither their lips nor their Twitter-fingers, moved. Why? Perhaps because, if they had done, Tice could legitimately have shot back that they were guilty of doing precisely the same thing themselves first.

‘Don’t speculate about motives,’ our leaders command us whenever a Muslim attacks people shouting ‘Allahu Akbar!’ In this case, some white persons do basically nothing, and our leaders themselves can’t stop speculating right from the start, because, when possessed by the dogma of ‘eventism’, fictional ‘events’ (inverted commas) which tell the right story become somehow automatically much truer than factual events (no inverted commas) which do not.

We were always brought up to believe that actions have consequences. Today, it seems children are more likely to be taught that complete non-actions have consequences too. Being arrested by counter-terror police for doing absolutely nothing wrong, for example.