Who is teaching the teachers? Critical theorists, DEI peddlers, and all manner of indoctrinators who have weaponized the American education system to further their ideological and cultural goals.

That’s my conclusion after reading a study released Wednesday by the American Enterprise Institute’s Daniel Buck.

Buck reviewed the syllabi of many of America’s top graduate schools of education and found that they were not only ideologically uniform, but that they were mostly “advancing dogmas grounded in progressive and critical theory frameworks rather than exposing prospective teachers to intellectually diverse ideas and training them in pragmatic instruction and classroom management methods.”

Most Americans have caught on to the reality that our nation’s top schools are overwhelmingly bastions of the Left. But many still don’t realize just how much the ideological bent of these schools affects nearly every major institution across the Western world.

What happens on campus doesn’t stay on campus. Instead, the political and cultural milieu that’s fostered there is spread everywhere else, by design. And nowhere is that impact more pernicious than in K-12 classrooms.

Buck stressed that among the institutions he was able to review there was a heavy emphasis on “immutable characteristics and activism” rather than “preparing teachers for the realities of the classroom.”

For instance, teachers are being taught to “queer education” rather than teach math. Future teachers are being told that special needs education requires an “anti-capitalist politic” and “collective liberation.”

“That these critical texts appear so frequently, often without any degree of traditional or practical balance, presents to the outsider a concerning picture about the state of these institutions,” Buck wrote.

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The Chinese Communist Party has pursued a decades-long, multilayered strategy to embed its influence in American education, adapting each time federal investigations closed one channel.

At the university level, Confucius Institutes, Chinese government-funded language and culture centers, peaked at 118 in 2017. In August 2020, the Trump administration designated their US coordinating office a Chinese “foreign mission,” and Congress cut off Pentagon funding to host universities. By 2023, fewer than five remained.

However, the K-12 version of the program, Confucius Classrooms, was never subjected to the same pressure. The State Department reported in 2020 that there were about 500, more than the number of university-level institutes at their peak. No equivalent disclosure law or funding threat targeted school districts. A 2023 investigation by Parents Defending Education found that 143 school districts, including 20 near military bases, were still running Confucius Classroom-style programs.

The same pattern has resurfaced in a new form: the Young Envoys Scholarship (YES) program, administered by the China Education Association for International Exchange (CEAIE). The organization states on its Chinese-language website that it is guided by Marxism-Leninism and Xi Jinping Thought and that it “integrates the Party’s work into the entire process of the association’s operations.”

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With no reactors under construction, the restarts offer the most immediate options to grow nuclear power in the U.S. Opposition to the restarts, and nuclear power in general continues, but it’s lost the clout it once had to block and delay projects.

he Trump administration has announced it is loaning NextEra Energy as much as $1.9 billion to support the restart of a nuclear power plant in Iowa.

The project is one of three projects underway to restart nuclear power plants that have been shut down. Besides support for two of those restarts, the Trump administration in its announcement last week said it has provided support for the development of new nuclear power plants and advanced reactor technology.

While opponents of nuclear energy had the clout to block or delay nuclear power development and construction of plants, President Donald Trump’s expansion of nuclear energy hasn’t been met with much pushback, and it’s generally enjoyed bipartisan support, suggesting that a decades-long opposition to nuclear energy may be fading into history.

Shift in opinions

The shift in public opinion toward increasing support for nuclear energy began during the Biden administration, according to multiple polls.

Nuclear energy as a share of total U.S. electricity generation grew from 2.4% in 1971 to 20.1% in 1992, and it’s hovered around that figure ever since. Only three commercial reactors have gone into service in the last 30 years, the latest being two new units at the Alvin W. Vogtle Electric Generating Plant in Georgia, which came online in 2023 and 2024.

The 1979 partial nuclear meltdown at Three Mile Island, in Pennsylvania, and the 1986 Chernobyl disaster near Pripyat, Ukraine, eroded public confidence in nuclear energy’s safety.

In 2011, the Fukushima disaster released large amounts of radioactive materia into the atmosphere and the Pacific Ocean. Though it caused no deaths, like the Three Mile Island incident, the accident helped buoy opponents’ arguments that nuclear energy is unsafe.

However, nuclear has seen public opinion growing more favorable in the several years as concerns about climate change make carbon-free electricity attractive, and the intermittency of wind and solar continue to drive up electricity prices and lower grid resilience.

A Gallup poll from April found that the percentage of Americans who think more emphasis should be placed on producing domestic energy from natural gas, wind and solar declined, while the percentage who feel the same about nuclear energy increased.

The 2026 National Nuclear Energy Public Opinion Survey released in May found that 77% of respondents favor nuclear energy, a record high. That was up from 49% in 1983. A 2025 Pew Research Center poll also found growing support for nuclear power.

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Americans are increasingly using artificial intelligence (AI), but they become less comfortable when it makes decisions for them, according to a new survey.

Seventy-two percent of American adults have used at least one AI product, up from 50% from November 2024, according to the National AI Opinion Monitor, a project led by Rutgers University researchers that tracks public opinion on AI. More than a quarter of Americans use AI every day, although a less than one-in-ten would allow it to make final decisions for them without supervision.

More than a majority of Americans want stricter government oversight of AI, although experts believe there is a big difference between wanting regulation and knowing how to regulate AI.

“Americans wanting a human in the loop for major life decisions isn’t all that surprising. In fact, it’s human nature. People naturally are going to want agency over high-stakes choices like hiring, loans, or medical care,” James Czerniawski, the head of emerging technology policy for the Consumer Choice Center, told the DCNF.

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Democrats are using every means possible to keep pushing the can down the road to buy time, but there is no time left to return integrity to America’s elections.

The SAVE America Act, which would have cleaned the rolls and secured the elections, passed the House and is dead in the Senate. House and Senate recesses used up the calendar. Trump then tried to do by executive order what the Senate refused to do by statute: requiring proof of citizenship, a reliable federal voter list, and limits on mailed ballots.

Election officials in fraud-prone areas, however, refuse to produce the ballots and the rolls. They call it privacy, and say doing so would expose illegal aliens to ICE! The real reason is to conceal their own conduct.

Activist federal district judges blocked those executive orders that would have counted this year.

With midterms rapidly approaching, Trump could declare a national emergency, as he has teased, on election integrity. If he does not, November runs on the same black-box machines with source code no outsider may examine, the same dirty rolls, and mass-mailed ballots that are an open invitation to fraud.

I have extensive education, training, and experience in law enforcement and criminal investigation, including conspiracy, fraud, forgery, identity theft, and related economic and computer crimes. I know how those crimes are committed.

As president of a large city police officers’ association and a statewide criminal investigators’ association, I worked with the California Legislature on matters of interest to those groups. After retiring, I spent ten years, including 2020, working on election nights at an Associated Press data center that collects returns from state and local counting centers.

Officials and the legacy press dismissed my work—and the work of other independent investigators—as conspiracy theory. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s claim that the 2020 election was “the most secure in American history” is still treated as fact. I worked that night. I had never seen swing-state feeds go down together and return with a 180-degree switch between winning and losing candidates. I disagree.

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Mexican authorities said they arrested an American who allegedly was bringing ammunition into Mexico for a drug cartel.

The woman had 5,400 rounds of ammunition with her when she was detained, Mexican authorities said, according to the New York Post.

The name of the woman was given variously as “Yanet ‘N’” and Yanet Dowden.

The second name was based on a report from the Mexican newspaper Excelsior, which said an Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation & Reentry identification card calling the suspect “Yanet Dowden” was found on the suspect.

The card said she was a “Level II correctional officer.”

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NBC Boston spearheaded a harassment campaign against the lone black juror holdout in the Lindsay Clancy murder trial – and now he has been doxxed.

The Gateway Pundit will not share the juror’s name.

Lindsay Clancy strangled her three children to death in January 2023.

The young children, Cora (5), Callan (8 months), and Dawson (3), were found dead in the Clancy, Massachusetts, home’s basement.

Lindsay Clancy admitted to killing her three children; however, her defense team argued that she should not be found guilty by reason of insanity.

Last Friday, Judge Sullivan declared a mistrial after the jury was deadlocked because one lone juror refused to buckle under pressure.

It was revealed on CBS Mornings last week that the one holdout juror is a black man.

CBS Mornings host Gayle King was in shock: “Well, I have to sit with that for just a second.”

Later Friday, NBC Boston reported that they obtained the lone juror’s court records, interviewed family members, and repeatedly contacted his landlord.

NBC Boston launched a harassment campaign against the lone juror even though Judge Sullivan sealed the court list identifying the jurors.

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LG smart TVs have been caught secretly collecting disturbing amounts of information from inside their owners’ homes, including recording conversations and scanning private Wi-Fi networks for other connected devices.

An investigation by computer hardware experts at Gamers Nexus found that LG televisions can monitor what users watch, map devices connected to their home networks, and use built-in microphones to capture audio.

Even more alarmingly, researchers found that some of the surveillance can continue while the television appears to be switched off in standby mode.

The investigation also found that data can continue to be collected while the television is disconnected from the internet, with information stored locally until the connection is restored.

With polling favoring Democrats to win a House majority in the fall and two months till US midterms Nov. 3 (where BofA’s Michael Hartnett expects a market rout in case of a Democratic sweep), Dems have begun to preview priorities should they win back the gavel.

Earlier this week, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), who won a crowded primary in August for Florida’s 20th congressional district, vowed if re-elected to help Democrats block Trump’s agreement over Venezuelan oil production. Lobbyists are already beginning prepwork in anticipation of industry executives being subject to congressional probes or subpoenas, Politico reported.

Winning back the House would give Democrats the ability to govern committee schedules, set investigative agendas, and leverage subpoenas. In the energy sphere, it is unlikely that we we see as hefty a climate focus as in the 117th Congress. Any clean energy focus will be instead from an affordability lens, i.e. how an “all of the above” energy approach helps lower electricity costs. Trump energy dealmaking, in particular equity stakes in companies, will also get attention from Democrats.

Below, courtesy of Bridge DiCosmo and James Lucier of Capital Alpha Partners, we look at some of the likely oversight targets for a Democratic House:

Oil companies and profit margins likely back in the spotlight.

When Democrats last had control of the House in the 117th Congress from January 2021-23, the House Oversight environment subcommittee under then-chair Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) held at least three hearings in which executives of ExxonMobil, BP America, Chevron, and Shell were called to testify. Much of the scrutiny then was around climate disinformation. This time around, Trump’s ties with the oil sector are likely to be front and center of oversight investigations, with a focus on how companies have benefited from Trump administration regulatory rollbacks. We may see an uptick in Democratic support for windfall profits tax proposals like S.4111, introduced earlier this year by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R), though they won’t go anywhere.

Clean energy focus may center on Trump agencies’ efforts to block wind and solar, and pull grant funds.

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California has discovered a miracle. High school transcripts glow. Straight-A applicants to the University of California have roughly doubled in a decade. And the kids still cannot do the math.

That is not a punchline. It is the state’s operating system.

According to UC data reviewed by the New York Post, students applying to the University of California with a 4.0 or better jumped from 52,989 in 2015 to 103,138 for the class of 2025. The spike sharpened during the COVID years, when classrooms went online and standards went wherever the administration needed them to go. The vast majority of those applicants are California residents.

The report cards say excellence. The placement exams say fifth grade.

State testing does not play along with the fairy tale. On the Smarter Balanced exam for 2024-2025, only 57 percent of California 11th graders met the English standard. Math sat at 30.5 percent. Those numbers ticked up from the 2021-2022 floor of 54.8 percent and 27 percent. They remain worse than before the lockdowns. A diploma and a 4.0 now describe a feeling, not a skill.

Teachers Were Told Not to Fail the Product

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Tom Homan, the border czar appointed by President Donald Trump, is rejecting claims U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents will be hunting for illegal aliens at polling stations during the midterm elections.

“I want to put that to bed,” Homan told Jacqui Heinrich of Fox News on “The Sunday Briefing.”

“There is no plan to sweep polling places looking for illegal aliens.”

He continued: “I have not seen any operational plans or any discussions on any immigration-enforcement operations at polling places. This is another fear tactic.”

“This is another attack on ICE and this administration. They don’t want ICE near the polling places, they don’t want to vote for voter ID, they don’t want observers. What do they got to hide to begin with? There is no plan for immigration-enforcement action at polling places. It’s just another attempt to smear ICE and smear the president.”

The city of Denver and a coalition of civil-rights organizations on Thursday sued the Trump administration to block ICE at the polls, claiming argues any such measure would violate a Civil War-era statute criminalizing the positioning of troops at voting locations.

“The specter of armed officers at polling places threatens the freedom of this upcoming election,” the coalition said. “It places voters in fear that they will be confronted by armed federal immigration enforcement officers if they choose to cast a ballot.”

Homan told Heinrich: “There is no sensitive-location policy.”

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A Long Island man stabbed a 65-year-old guy in the neck during a meeting in the basement of a Suffolk County church last week, police said.

Daniel Escobar, 33, of Bay Shore is accused of attacking the victim in a scuffle in the basement of First United Methodist Church in Amityville around 8:30 p.m. Friday, then fleeing, according to cops.

Escobar was tracked down and taken into custody shortly after 10:20 p.m. the same day, authorities said.

The victim was taken to a local hospital with serious injuries, police said.

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Meanwhile, in the Democrat hellhole of Chicago…

A 15-year-old girl has been charged with first-degree murder for fatally pushing an Amazon worker from a moving train in Chicago.

29-year-old Kyle Bickham died after he was pushed onto the electrified third rail and was hit by a train near 69th Street earlier this week.

The unidentified teen was charged with first-degree murder, mob action, aggravated battery to a transit employee, and other charges.

WBBM reported:

A 15-year-old girl who police say pushed a man out of a Chicago Transit Authority Red Line train earlier this week will remain in jail.

Chicago police say they arrested the teenage girl just on Friday, four days after they say she pushed that victim off the train. She was charged with felony counts of first-degree murder, mob action, murder by other forcible felony, and aggravated battery to a transit employee.

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A black man has been arrested and charged with murder in the death of Tasia Fortune, a black woman who was found hanging from a tree sparking unfounded claims of a potential lynching case, fueled by leftwing media and Democratic politicians.

The tragic scene unfolded when Fortune, a 29-year-old mother of four, was found hanging from a tree on August 3rd in Jackson, Mississippi. Now, her murder is being politicized and used by sick people to further the Democrats’ agenda.

Early in the investigation, CNN was quick to paint the incident as racial terror, with CNN’s Omar Jimenez reporting that “the raw imagery of a Black person hanging from a tree in the American South evokes a very painful history.” Meanwhile, as the Gateway Pundit reported, Jimenez omitted the fact that a person of interest, Tasia’s black boyfriend, who has since been cleared in the case, was already in custody.

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From the start, the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran has been a story of unintended consequences. Contrary to President Donald Trump’s hopes for a quick victory, the conflict has morphed into a sustained crisis, one that has driven up oil prices, driven down tourism in the Middle East, and reshaped the region’s geopolitical map.

Now, a new unintended consequence has emerged: the return of piracy to Somalia’s coasts. This shift, which comes after a decade of quiet, threatens some of the world’s most important shipping lanes and the interests of the United States and its allies.

Pirates have attacked at least 15 vessels in the region this year, a sharp uptick from the five attacks that occurred last year, according to data from the International Maritime Organization. The renewed criminal activity has led to extended hostage situations, including one ongoing seizure of an oil tanker and its crew.

A controversial operation to free the MV LATUF, carried out by Somali forces and the Turkish navy late last month, raised questions about whether a ransom was paid. The government of Puntland, a semi-autonomous region of Somalia, says it has evidence of phone contacts between Somali government officials and the pirates, which undermines the official story from both Ankara and Mogadishu. The vessel was carrying Turkish weapons and satellite and communication equipment bound for a Turkish training facility in Mogadishu.

Global piracy dropped in the first half of 2026 to its lowest level since 1992 – only 38 incidents, compared to 90 in the same period of 2025 and 60 in 2024. But data from the International Chamber of Commerce shows that, by the end of last month, six commercial ships were still being held, with more than 90 seafarers on board.

When ransom money funds the pirates

The pirates recently received a new ransom estimated at around $1.7 million for the release of the hijacked ship MV Sward off the coast of Puntland, along with its crew of Syrian and Indian sailors, after a crisis that lasted more than four months.

On 26 April, about ten armed Somali men in three speedboats intercepted the ship near the town of Garaad. The vessel flies the flag of St. Kitts and Nevis and is managed by Turkey-linked companies. It was only six nautical miles from the coast. The ship had left the Egyptian port of Adabiya/Suez heading to Mombasa in Kenya with a cargo of cement or fertilizer.

According to a well-informed maritime source in Puntland, this incident shows the pirates going back to their classic method: using the hijacked ship as a mother vessel to carry out more attacks, including the hijacking of Iranian fishing boats.

Before the war on Iran, the threat from piracy to international shipping had dropped significantly. Now that the pirates are active again, the international community needs to rethink how military forces are deployed in the Middle East and the Red Sea to close the security gap the pirates are exploiting – a gap that stretches from Somalia’s eastern coast through the Gulf of Aden to the route linking the Indian Ocean with the Red Sea and the Suez Canal.

Dr. Ian Ralby, a maritime security expert at Auxilium Worldwide, says the Houthis are playing a key role in the return of piracy. He points to the transfer of know-how and technology from them to Somali pirates, which could increase their ability to disrupt shipping.

Ralby says the main beneficiaries are the pirates themselves. But he does not rule out that other groups, including the Houthis and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, may find an indirect interest in the ongoing chaos. He also notes that the attacks have reached the waters off Yemen, widening the threat and increasing pressure on naval forces and coast guards.

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Fox News stars and friends of Andrew Wimsatt expressed sadness and shock on social media Thursday at the news of his brutal murder in Austin, Texas.

Host Greg Gutfeld wrote on X, “This person was murdered this week in Austin Texas. He was one of the sweetest most helpful persons I’ve ever met. Supremely gentle. Willing to do just about anything for another person. And he was stabbed to death on a street at 11 am in the morning. For no reason other than a maniac was free to roam the streets. Rest in peace Andrew. We won’t forget you.”

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An unimaginably horrific crime occurred on Monday in Austin, Texas, area and not enough people are talking about it. And it’s a crime Texas voters might want to be thinking about when they make their way to the ballot box this November to choose a new senator.

A 62-year-old man had just visited his mother in a nursing home in Round Rock and taken her for a walk in a local park. After he got her settled back in at the home, he returned to the park on his own and sat down on a bench, minding his own business.

This is when, according to police, a complete stranger walked up behind the man, wrapped an arm around him, and proceeded to stab him repeatedly in the neck. Surveillance video reportedly shows the victim desperately trying to fight back before being overpowered by the suspect.

And then it got even worse.

According to the arrest affidavit, the attacker allegedly forced the man to the ground, knelt over him, and began moving the knife back and forth across his neck in a sawing motion. Some are describing it as an attempted beheading.

The victim was Andrew James Wimsatt, a 62-year-old engineer and longtime transportation researcher. A passerby later found him near the Chandler Creek Trail and called 911, but it was far too late to save Wimsatt.

Police arrested 26-year-old Benedict Ogbodiegwu Jr. and charged him with first-degree murder. There is no indication suspect knew the victim.

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The push follows President Donald Trump’s executive orders renaming the Gulf of Mexico and Lake Ontario

Pennsylvania state Rep. David Maloney, a Republican, is asking President Donald Trump to rename Lake Erie to “Lake Pennsylvania” following similar renaming efforts by the president.

Maloney is preparing a resolution calling on Trump, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and lawmakers on Capitol Hill to take steps to rename Lake Erie to “Lake Pennsylvania,” arguing that the change is needed to reflect the lake’s modern identity.

“This is Pennsylvania’s only Great Lake. Its modern economy and identity are increasingly tied to the boaters, anglers, families and tourists who come to enjoy it,” Maloney said in a statement. “Ohio has plenty of shoreline. New York already has two Great Lakes. Canada has four others.”

“Pennsylvania has one. Let’s call it Lake Pennsylvania!” he added.

Lake Erie is the smallest of the Great Lakes by volume as well as the shallowest, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. The lake has about 12 million people in its watershed, with 10.5 million people in the U.S. and 1.9 million people in Canada.

This comes after Trump signed an executive order last month to rename Lake Ontario to “Lake America,” a rebranding that Canada does not recognize and has firmly rejected.

“We know that America is changing. Their trading relationships, their foreign policies, their national monuments, their hydronyms. Canadians also know that naming reality means calling it Lake Ontario — then, now and always,” Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said in a statement.

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With DOGE disbanded more than a year ago, and tariffs struck down by the Supreme Court, the US is no longer even pretending that there is any hope to normalize spending, or any kind of happy ending to the US debt trajectory.

At 2pm today the US Treasury published the latest, August, monthly budget deficit data, and it should come as no surprise to anyone that things are looking ever worse.

Total US receipts were $360 billion, a modest improvement from the $344 billion a year ago, with individual income taxes accounting for $179 billion, or half of the total, and the bulk of the balance coming from Social Insurance and Retirement receipts of $141 billion.

On the spending side, things were ugly: total outlays were $527 billion, a modest improvement to the $689.1 billion a year ago, but much of that had to do with the calendar impact of tariffs.

Putting receipts and spending in context, a chart of the trailing 6 months of government revenue and spending shows that the two trendlines are rapidly diverging, with spending on pace to surpass the covid all time high, even as government revenue remains stuck in a much more narrow range.

The difference between the two, is of course, the US budget deficit, which in August was $166.8 billion, an improvement from July’s massive $432 billion deficit, which however was the result of some calendar discrepancies between the two months. What matters more is that fir the first 11 months of fiscal 2026 (with just one month left in the fiscal year), the total US deficit is now $1.97 trillion, identical with last year, although since 2025 saw a big drop in the final month of the year, we are confident that 2026 will be about $200bn worse than the previous year when all is said and done, and be the 3rd worst year for the US deficit on record, with just the crisis years of 2020 and 2021 worse.

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After July’s rebound to pre-war levels, a re-escalation in the MidEast (and soaring fuel costs) sent confidence back towards YTD lows. Preliminary September data was expected to show UMich headline sentiment sliding further.

‘Slide’ is not exactly how we would describe preliminary September confidence data’s collapse (headline from 51.7 to 47.8 vs 51.0 exp). The current conditions gauge fell to 50.9 from 51.9 in the previous month, while the expectations index plunged to 45.8 from 51.5 – just off record lows.

Democrats and Republicans alike posted sizable declines, while independents were little changed from August.

“Opinions of the government’s economic policy worsened about 10% this month and remain substantially below February 2026, just prior to the Iran conflict,’’ Joanne Hsu, director of the survey, said in a statement.

“Notably, even Republicans, who generally supported economic policy under the current administration, have exhibited a marked decline in favorability.’’

Year-ahead inflation expectations jumped from 4.0% last month to 4.6% this month, the highest reading since June.

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President Trump on Wednesday told reporters to expect more US attacks on Iranian tankers, as the war over the Hormuz Strait continues to escalate in piecemeal tit-for-tat fashion.

“The attacks are made by us. We’ve knocked out nine of their ships. I would say that the attacks are caused by us, and you’re going to see a lot more,” the president told reporters on Wednesday, adding that many of the Iranian tankers are “donezo” – as global oil prices continue to climb.

The region has now seen over six months of war since Trump launched an operation that he and White House officials at first suggested would just be ‘days’ – and then insisted (repeatedly) would be a ‘four to six week’ campaign.

All along the White House has kept moving the goal posts, amid lack of overall strategic vision and failure to articulate what exactly enough of a ‘victory’ to establish a military exit would look like.

Speaking of drastically moving the goal post, the below was another key media exchange with Trump on Wednesday:

Q: Do you expect negotiations with Iran to restart at some point?

Trump: Uhhhhhh… we’re not looking for it to be honest with you. This war will end immediately after our election.

This as The Wall Street Journal has issued a report saying Trump’s top advisors are now warning him that the Iran conflict could last through the rest of his term.

Trump has called it ‘small potatoes’ – but he may now have his very own forever war…

Top White House advisers have raised privately with President Trump the prospect that the Iran war could drag on through the remainder of his term, U.S. officials said, a message at odds with Trump’s public assurances of a swift victory.

In the Oval Office and Situation Room, Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and others have discussed with the president that Tehran could continue to resist U.S. pressure under the blockade and other military tactics, potentially extending the conflict past Inauguration Day in January 2029, the officials said.

…oh to have been a fly on the wall during that little meeting.

According to more snippets from the WSJ report:

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Veteran commodities strategist Jeff Currie has spent the summer warning that scarcity in physical commodity markets is becoming a persistent source of inflationary pressure and giving way to a commodities supercycle.

After appearing on CNBC on Thursday, he joined Bloomberg Television on Friday morning to amp up that message, warning that tightening crude products supplies make $5-a-gallon US gasoline highly likely by November.

“Crude is the signal, and now we think about products … they are the noise,” Currie said.

Currie, the founder and chief executive of Real Macro and former Goldman commodities head, also warned that scarcity and currency debasement were driving the next phase of the energy shock, with shortages spreading from refined products into crude oil.

Currie described the probability of average US gasoline prices reaching $5 a gallon by the midterm elections as “extremely high.”

Currie warned that refiners shifting production between diesel and gasoline would eventually exhaust their operational flexibility, limiting their ability to relieve shortages. US diesel prices could reach $7 to $9 a gallon, he added.

The latest AAA data show the national average price of diesel in the US has topped $6 a gallon.

US Diesel Crack Spread

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Following fuel-driven jump in Producer Prices, consensus was for a concomitant jump MoM in Consumer prices this morning, after last month’s decline as energy prices have rebounded (though we warned that amid all the interventionist-y chatter, nothing would surprise us less than ‘cool’ print to offset the PPI scare).

And analysts were right with headline CPI rising 0.4% MoM (exactly as expected) – biggest MoM since May – but prices rose 3.5% YoY (in line with expectations and flat to the prir month)…

Core Services accelerated…

…BUT Fuel prices dominated the rise in headline CPI…

Headline CPI rose 0.4% MoM in August, after rising 0.1% in July. Over the last 12 months, the all items index increased 3.4%.

• The index for energy increased 2.1 percent over the month: The index for gasoline rose 3.9% in August, accounting for over one third of the monthly all items increase.
• The shelter index rose 0.3 percent in August after rising 0.1 percent in July.
• The index for food increased 0.1 percent over the month, as the index for food away from home increased 0.3 percent.

Just like we saw yesterday with PPI, the rebound in crude (and refined product) prices snapped CPI’s Energy component notably higher…

Energy helping on a 6m annualized basis but hurting on a 3m annualized basis…

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Bill Clinton‘s White House was warned that Osama bin Laden wanted to crash a bomb-packed plane into an American city three years before the hijackers struck, explosive CIA files reveal.

The warning was a part of a September 10, 1998 report prepared for senior Clinton officials cleared to read the then-president’s most secret morning intelligence digest, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Headlined ‘Bin Laden’s Location and Intentions,’ it offered no date or target, but made clear the terror chief had Washington, DC, in his sights. Bin Laden’s terrorists would crash an airplane into the Pentagon three years later.

Other papers show analysts told the White House in July 1998 that a bin Laden strike on the US was ‘plausible,’ and in October 2000 that he remained ‘committed’ to hitting American targets, though spies ‘cannot pinpoint targets or timing.’

The revelation surfaced as Clinton was at Ground Zero for the 25th anniversary, standing among the very families whose loved ones died in the attack the memo foreshadowed.

In 2001, bin Laden was featured in at least 18 separate editions of Bush’s daily intelligence digest, seven of them landing on the former president’s desk weeks before the towers fell.

One July 24, 2001 memo even flagged that an ‘expected imminent’ bin Laden operation had been postponed, while cautioning that other attacks could still be in motion.

The 71 documents were released by the CIA to mark a quarter-century since nearly 3,000 people were murdered in New York City, the Pentagon and in a Pennsylvania field.

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An illegal alien released under the Biden administration has been accused of executing a California woman in cold blood at a shopping center after she tried to run away from him.

Law enforcement said the suspect had been stalking the 38-year-old victim for months, according to a news release from the Department of Homeland Security.

The agency cited a report from KCRA-TV that detailed how the illegal alien from India, Rohit Rohit, 22, approached the victim at her car in Sacramento Tuesday.

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Trump’s top immigration official claims an internal investigation found that Congresswoman Ilhan Omar ‘married her brother’ and could be facing deportation.

‘We know that she married her brother to try to bring him into the United States,’ Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said of the Minnesota Democrat. ‘We know he lives now in London.’

He was speaking about the second man Omar married, who the Daily Mail has previously reported is Ahmed Elmi. Both are originally from Somalia.

She allegedly was still married to her first husband, Ahmed Hirsi, at the time of the second marriage, the congresswoman has told friends who relayed the account to the Daily Mail. 

Omar has long denied the allegations. She has since remarried a third time and is wed to political consultant Tim Mynett.

Mullin told conservative pundit Benny Johnson that Omar’s actions amounted to ‘possible illegal activity’ and the investigation is ‘ongoing,’ breaking a standard where officials typically do not discuss active investigations.

‘We’re investigating,’ he said before threatening to deport her should the investigation warrant such a dramatic action.

‘There’s no expiration to that,’ he said of the potential charges. ‘If we can prove it that, maybe you shouldn’t have been here in the first place, we’ll deport you.’

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The price of diesel is hitting record highs just when many U.S. farmers need it to power combines, tractors and other equipment to harvest two of the nation’s largest commodities, soybeans and corn.

The spike adds to an already tough year for these farmers, who also faced higher costs for fertilizer, seeds and equipment.

Diesel hit a record price in the U.S. on Sept. 4, soaring to an average of $5.85 a gallon for the first time as the six-month war with Iran disrupted the world’s flow of fuel. It has gone even higher since then, going for an average price of $6.05 a gallon on Friday, according to AAA.

“Those prices hurt,” said Paul Mitchell, a professor of agricultural and applied economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “And it’s not just the harvesting. It’s the hauling of everything, moving the grain or the silage from the field to the farm and then from the farm to wherever they’re selling it.”

Jason Kurtz, a corn and soybean farmer near Forest City, Missouri, said he was paying twice as much for diesel this year. His combine uses 200 gallons (760 liters) of fuel a day; he expected to run it for 30 days. He also needed diesel for a tractor and trucks.

“We have to harvest,” he said in an interview at his farm about 90 miles (145 kilometers) outside Kansas City on Tuesday. “We have to run the machines. We have to use the diesel, so it cuts into our bottom line.”

Kurtz, 49, said his finances were “already tight” this year after he also had to pay more for fertilizer and chemicals.

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A quaint Maryland suburb is being plagued by a rotten stench so overpowering residents say they are unable to leave their homes.

Dundalk residents gathered at an explosive town hall meeting on Thursday night where they passionately voiced their anger about the strong sewage odor coming from a Back River Wastewater Treatment Plant.

The situation had become so concerning that locals also said they were unable to eat the region’s famous crabs as they are fished from the putrid-smelling water.

‘The stench is so bad. Imagine the worst possible backup you’ve had in your bathroom, that’s what it smells like in our neighborhoods,’ local man John Zaganas told WBALTV 11.

‘It was in my throat so bad the other day that we could not even sit outside,’ another exasperated resident said during the meeting, which descended into a shouting match in parts.

The smell has been blamed on various operational failures at the treatment plant stretching back to May, according to a Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) inspection report.

This included excess sludge stored in large lagoon tanks that have not been processed properly and high pollutant discharge levels that may be adding to the stench.

‘They just don’t care about us. It’s been going on for years now, and it hasn’t been every day, but it’s enough to where it’s scary down here now. I don’t know what we’re breathing in, and I don’t know what we’re gonna get from it,’ Zaganas said.

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On the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, CIA Director John Ratcliffe released 71 President’s Daily Brief documents spanning from February 1998 through the morning of September 12, 2001. This is the largest public dump of 9/11-related presidential intelligence the Agency has ever made.

The collection, which includes more than 100 pages of heavily redacted documents, was framed by Ratcliffe as “an act of exceptional transparency” and “consistent with President Donald Trump’s historic transparency initiative.”

Ratcliffe continued: “25 years ago, the 9/11 attacks struck a blow to our Nation, but they did not break us. Generations of CIA officers have since dedicated their careers to securing justice for our fallen Americans and ensuring al-Qa’ida would never again harm our country. In the years that followed, numerous CIA officers made the ultimate sacrifice in the Global War on Terror. We honor their memory and service through our commitment to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat those who wish to cause us harm.”

The children of bloodthirsty Somali dictator Siad Barre, whose rule left as many as 200,000 people dead, are quietly living in the US — alongside victims of his regime.

The Post located the despot’s “right-hand man” son Ayanle and daughter Deka Mohamed Siad, in Columbus, Ohio, where they lead unassuming suburban lives.

However, among the wider Somali community, their presence is a painful reminder of the regime and some are calling for US authorities to investigate.

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“Siad Barre and his men committed so many war crimes so I was shocked to see his son [Ayanle] in the mosque enjoying his freedom,” Ali-Guban Mohamed, 64, told The Post.

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On the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, former President George W. Bush took the chance to reflect on his actions in the time that followed that day.

He was spectacularly wrong about Islam then, and he is now.

Bush sat down Thursday with former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at the George W. Bush Presidential Center in Dallas, Texas. While the full interview can be viewed on YouTube, one particular moment stuck out for a comment made by Bush about Islam, perpetuating the lie that this religion is peaceful.

It was posted to social media platform X by conservative media outlet The Blaze.

Rice asked Bush to speak about what happened following that day, to which he responded boldly, but incorrectly, declaring how he set the tone for the country.

“I also made it clear that Islam was a religion of peace, not a religion of war, and that these people subverted their religion.”

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Three detained in Tuesday morning stop on Coastal Highway

In the long run, a party that stumbles from one vacuous trendy issue to another for its core identity is doomed to collapse.

Successful American political parties cannot offer narrowly crafted, closely argued programs. Moreover, unlike ideology-based European parties, American parties with their heterogeneous electoral supporters must win majorities to gain office, and this requires coalition building.

That reality acknowledged, the current Democrat party’s offerings far exceed the usual hodgepodge of appeals. What, for example, links facilitating sex change operations for minors and increasing taxes on billionaires? Or “free” government-funded medical care (“Medicare for All”) and defunding the police? How is “affordability” related to enacting the “Green New Deal,” a policy that invariably increases energy costs? Can government lower prices while simultaneously boosting everyone’s wages? Why defend open borders and sanctuary cities when the resulting cheap labor will drive down wages for American workers? Will millions vote Democrat to allow men to play on women’s sports teams, legalize deadly addictive drugs, condemn Israeli “genocide” in Gaza? This “platform” is an incoherent collection of bumper stickers-like slogans.

Many of these appeals are also unpopular and have zero chance of implementation. Do Americans really want to pack the Supreme Court to advance some vague agenda or replace it altogether? What about supporting a political party that displays a lukewarm enthusiasm for patriotic symbols like the flag and the glories of American history? American political parties typically resemble budget-breaking Santa Clauses, but the Democrat party’s current version of Old Saint Nick promises toys few want, will not work as advertised, and are dangerous.

Nor is altering the English language a winning election strategy though it is alluringly cheap to accomplish. Using “sex workers” versus the supposedly offensive “hooker” is hardly a winning election strategy. Or “birthing person,” to replace “mother.” Such often comic wordplay only conflates terminology with reality and fools nobody.

Particularly desperate is chasing electoral advantage by invoking “socialism.” No doubt, few Americans correctly understand “socialism” other than lots of “free stuff.” More importantly, implementing genuine socialism necessarily requires deeply unpopular measures such as public ownership of key industries, government-controlled media, eliminating private banks and similar draconian government controls over people’s private lives.

Even further afield from the party’s historic identity is playing footsie with Muslim extremism, especially Michigan’s Abdul El-Sayed, despite his anti-American and Anti-Israeli baggage. This is in Michigan, the home of the United Auto Workers, a traditional core Democrat constituency, and one hardly disposed towards Islam. Apparently, the Democrat “Big Tent” here excludes the old faithful in favor of a religion deeply antithetical to American values.

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The Route 346 Emporium is offering FREE albums by the thousands today. We brought in a trailer load of big band, orchestra and jazz albums that I simply do not have room for so I’m giving them away for free.

First come, first serve. I;m open from 12 to 3 today. 32993 Old Ocean City Rd. Parsonsburg, Md. 21849.

Families of 9/11 victims confronted former presidents George Bush, Barack Obama and Joe Biden at the Ground Zero NYC memorial, accusing them of protecting Saudi Arabia instead of the families of those killed 25 years ago.

Terry Strada, the widow of 9/11 victim Tom Strada, drew cheers from the crowd as she accused the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia of fomenting ‘anti-American terrorism’ and sending its agents to support the hijackers.

‘And still we have no justice for the role that Saudi Arabia played in your murder,’ she said.

Vice President JD Vance and all the living former presidents, including Bill Clinton, sat feet away as she spoke at the memorial service.

‘For 25 years, administration after administration, including leaders in front of us here today, chose to protect the Saudis instead of standing with the 9/11 families,’ she said. ‘They broke promises both public and private. It has been one betrayal after another.’

Strada said Donald Trump ‘can still change that,’ urging him to ‘tell the Saudis to stop lying’ and make clear they cannot be friends with the USA while denying their role in the attacks.

She then addressed Vance directly, thanking him for attending and asking him to ‘carry that message back’ and stand with the families and survivors.

Another relative, who lost his aunt Lisa Marie Terry in the attacks, told the crowd that ‘for 25 years the Deep State has hidden the truth’ and issued a direct plea: ‘President Trump, you’re our last hope. Release the unredacted files that implicate Saudi Arabia while what’s left of the victims’ families are still alive to see it.’

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The fact remains that Democrat-run states and cities make it impossible to verify someone’s identity, on purpose, and make it easy for an illegal alien to vote should they want to take that risk…

The Department of Justice announced on Friday that five individuals in battleground states had been arrested and charged with illegal voting in the 2022 or 2024 election as the Trump administration seeks to secure the nation’s voting process.

“The integrity of our elections, which are fundamental to democracy, should be of utmost importance to every American,” said Attorney General Todd Blanche. “It is a cherished right for eligible American citizens, and only eligible American citizens, to vote for their representatives in government. Election fraud is a serious crime, and it is the duty of the Department of Justice to treat it as such.”

The FBI and Homeland Security Investigations were part of the sweep.

In Pennsylvania, Thomas Holtzman and his wife Marisol Guzman were indicted by a federal grand jury due to Guzman allegedly voting as an alien in the 2024 election. Guzman was charged with voting as an alien. Holtzman, a U.S. citizen, was charged with false statement of citizenship in order to vote and aiding and abetting and fraudulent registration and aiding and abetting.

Also in Pennsylvania, Katya Rodriguez, an illegal alien from Mexico living in Harrisburg, was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges related to illegally voting as an alien in the 2024 election.

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A North Carolina state trooper fatally shot his sheriff captain love rival, investigators claim.

Highway Patrol Sgt Nekime Matu Oxendine, 44, was charged this week over the killing of Cumberland County Sheriff’s Capt Adam Bean, 42, earlier this year.

Bean was killed outside of a Hope Mills home in March, with cops arriving on the scene to find a woman performing CPR on him. He was later pronounced dead.

According to a probable cause statement obtained by Law and Crime, that woman, 43, had been in long-term relationships with the two men.

She is said to have first dated Oxendine before leaving him for Bean, until they broke things off last December and she returned to Oxendine, the statement said.

The outlet reported that the night of the shooting, Bean had texted the woman saying he wished to speak with her but she turned him down.

‘F*** it, I’ll come to you,’ he then texted her to which she responded ‘Please don’t,’ the probable cause statement said.

Bean arrived at the address and ‘appeared irate and questioned why Oxendine’s vehicle was parked outside,’ it added.

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An incredibly bloody and horrific crime occurred earlier this week in Texas that could have been avoided had authorities done their job.

As FOX 7 Austin reported, 62-year-old Andrew James Wimsatt, an accomplished civil engineer who published several notableworks, was seen in video footage obtained from a neighborhood HOA sitting on a park bench in Round Rock at roughly 10:55 a.m. on September 7.

Then his life ended a few minutes later.

The footage goes on to show a black male with a knife in his hand sneaking up behind Wimsatt. The black person proceeds to stab Wimsatt multiple times in the neck while wrapping his arm around him.

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For the last five years, the War Department has largely overlooked whistleblower warnings about the adverse effects of the COVID-19 shot on military personnel, which include rising cancer rates and even death. This total disregard by the Biden administration has long raised concerns regarding the health and safety of those who serve.

In light of this, Dr. Theresa Long, an Army doctor board-certified in aerospace medicine, has recently been appointed as the senior medical military adviser to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Her role includes examining whether COVID-19 shots contributed to the deaths of more than 2,500 military personnel.

The previous administration may have attempted to conceal the health conditions initially identified in the Defense Medical Epidemiology Database (DMED), even in the face of a “notable rise in several serious medical diagnoses,” including cancer.

The advance puts Iran-backed forces closer to controlling a second critical chokepoint as oil prices surge past $100 a barrel

Iran-backed Houthi forces seized Yemen’s strategic port city of Mocha on Thursday and pushed toward positions overlooking the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, opening a potentially dangerous new front for global trade as shipping through the Strait of Hormuz remains severely constrained.

The advance threatens the southern gateway to the Red Sea just as Saudi Arabia has increasingly relied on that route to bypass Hormuz — putting pressure on critical shipping lanes on both sides of the Arabian Peninsula and raising the risk of further disruptions to oil and commercial traffic through a key global trade choke point.

“Now you have Iran on one side of the Arabian Peninsula controlling Hormuz, and now the Houthis controlling Bab el-Mandeb on the other side of the peninsula,” Hisham Al-Omeisy, senior Yemen advisor at the European Institute of Peace, told Fox News Digital. “Which basically is going to drive prices — oil prices, goods and everything else — up exponentially.”

On background, a senior administration official told Fox News Digital: “The United States is focused on protecting our core national security interests — such as ensuring freedom of navigation in the Red Sea — while empowering our regional partners to take the lead in managing and resolving regional security challenges. We are in continuous dialogue with Saudi Arabia and the Republic of Yemen Government regarding regional stability.”

Yemeni government sources said Thursay the Houthis captured Mocha and reached the Hanish Islands, while Saudi-backed Yemeni government forces withdrew south toward Dhubab, which sits directly on the Bab el-Mandeb opposite the strategic island of Perim. Control of Dhubab and Perim would be critical to gaining a stronger hold over the strait, Yemeni government sources told Reuters on Sept. 10.

Bab el-Mandeb is only about 18 miles wide at its narrowest point and connects the Indian Ocean and Gulf of Aden with the Red Sea and, farther north, the Suez Canal. It is a major artery for goods moving between Asia and Europe as well as energy shipments.

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Former Anthropic insider Jacob Coxon is doubling down on his warning that artificial intelligence could become an extinction-level threat to humanity within just a few years — insisting his doomsday prediction is no publicity stunt.

“There is a substantial probability that this technology could kill everyone,” Coxon told NBC News’ Tom Llamas on Wednesday after resigning from the AI giant this week.

“This isn’t hyperbole,” he said. “It’s not a marketing stunt.”

Coxon, who spent three years doing research across Anthropic and OpenAI, has sounded the alarm in a blitz of television interviews following his resignation, arguing that rapidly advancing AI could soon become capable of improving itself with diminishing human involvement.

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Republicans are groaning over President Donald Trump‘s campaign promise to award voters $5,000 if Republicans win the midterms in November, with some likening it to a ‘bribe.’

‘If Republicans win both the House and the Senate, because of our tremendous economic success, I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States for $5,000,’ Trump declared Wednesday evening at a Republican rally in Dallas.

Trump did not delve into the details of the plan, only noting that dividend payments would be awarded to American citizens and would need to be spent within the US.

The stunning pledge floored some of the president’s most devout supporters.

‘For the record, I am hugely in favor of winning the midterms, and love much about this admin, but am strongly against bread and circus bribes,’ Palantir co-founder and GOP donor Joe Lonsdale reacted.

At $5,000 per citizen, the payments would dwarf those given out during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Estimates vary, but the plan could cost between $1 and $1.3 trillion, a massive figure that would surely increase the national debt, blow out the federal budget and potentially lead to further inflation.

‘I would like to know how they would plan to pay for … back of envelope … well over $1 trillion,’ Texas Republican Congressman Chip Roy wrote on X.

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Donald Trump’s tech guru has called for AI giant Anthropic to be investigated amid explosive warnings about the safety of the technology.

David Sacks, chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, called for the company’s planned IPO to be paused until claims made by a whistleblower can be probed.

Researcher Jacob Coxon sensationally resigned from Anthropic this week and accused the company and its rival OpenAI of not doing enough to address the potential dangers of the technology.

n posts on X, Coxon warned that the companies were ‘racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives’ and said researchers working in the field believe AI could potentially ‘kill all humans’ by the end of the decade.

He has also described AI as potentially ‘the most dangerous technology that humanity has ever created,’ warning that the race to develop increasingly capable systems could outpace efforts to make them safe.

It comes as investors prepare for what could become one of the biggest stock-market listings in history, with Anthropic reportedly targeting a valuation of around $2 trillion or more when it goes public, potentially as soon as October.

That figure would be more than double Anthropic’s latest private valuation of about $965 billion, making the IPO an important test of whether investors are still willing to pour money into the AI boom at sky-high prices.

Sacks, a prominent Silicon Valley investor, wrote on X on Tuesday: ‘Surely Anthropic’s IPO must be paused until the claims of this ‘whistleblower’ can be investigated.’

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The Route 346 Emporium 32993 Old Ocean City Rd Parsonsburg is now open on Saturday’s 10-4 and Sunday’s 12-3. We’ve discounted tens of thousands of albums and furniture to move in new inventory so come get them while the deals are hot.

Among men between 20 and 54, colorectal cancer was leading cause of alcohol-linked cancer deaths

Annual U.S. cancer deaths tied to alcohol consumption more than doubled over a three-decade period, according to a recent study led by researchers at the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine.

The findings, published in The Lancet Regional Health — Americas and presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting in Chicago, revealed that alcohol-attributable cancer deaths jumped from 11,361 in 1990 to 23,126 in 2023.

Researchers analyzed more than 30 years of data from the Global Burden of Disease study to track the trends.

While alcohol has long been classified as a Group 1 carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, surveys show that awareness of its link to cancer remains limited.

“The most surprising finding was the breadth of alcohol’s potential impact across cancer types,” Chinmay Jani, M.D., corresponding author of the study and chief fellow in hematology and oncology at Sylvester, told Fox News Digital.

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Existing home sales tumbled for the 3rd straight month in August, falling 2.0% MoM, sparking its biggest annual decline since January…

This implied an annualized rate of 3.98 million in August, marking one of only two times since the fall of 2024 that sales have dipped below 4 million…

“Mortgage rates and home sales move in opposite directions, so it’s not surprising to see a mild dip in home buying activity due to high mortgage rates,” said NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun.

“Still, home prices are rising, and existing home sales are actually up 1.6% year-to-date through the first eight months of the year…” Yun noted.

“Homebuying demand, despite higher interest rates, is no doubt being supported by rising wages, which grew 3.1% in August, along with 643,000 net new jobs added since the start of the year. Job creation and wage growth typically drive housing demand.”

The median sales price rose 1.6% from a year ago to $429,100, extending a streak of annual price increases dating back to mid-2023.

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In a relatively unusual turn around, US producer prices hit today ahead of tomorrow’s CPI. Interestingly Consumer prices get all the headlines, it is PPI that offers the most read-throughs for Core PCE – The (old) Fed’s favorite inflation gauge).

Headline producer pries were expected to rebound significantly from July’s flatline as oil prices rebounded on re-escalations in the MidEast, and they printed right in line, up 04.% MoM in August (with July’s revised up to +0.1% MoM. That lifted the annual PPI gain to +5.4% YoY (hotter than expected)…

Energy has flipped from deflation to re-inflation…

PPI final demand good rose 1.1% MoM, the most since May, while PPI final demand services rose 0.1%, the lowest since May.

Here are the details behind the breakdown:

Final demand goods: The index for final demand goods advanced 1.1% in August following two consecutive decreases.

• Over three-fourths of the broad-based rise can be attributed to prices for final demand energy, which moved up 4.2%.The indexes for final demand goods less foods and energy and for final demand foods increased 0.4% and 0.1%, respectively.

Product detail: Over a third of the August increase in the index for final demand goods can be traced to prices for diesel fuel, which jumped 24.1%. The indexes for gasoline, jet fuel, home heating oil, candy and nuts, and tobacco products also advanced. In contrast, prices for residential electric power fell 0.5 percent. The indexes for fresh sausage and for aluminum mill shapes also decreased.

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Non-German suspects account for nearly half of all violent crime in the German state of Bavaria, with the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party now calling for remigration for all criminal migrant suspects. The Interior Ministry data was released in response to a request from AfD state parliament member Martin Böhm. It revealed that police recorded 20,367 suspects in violent offenses in 2025 and about 47 percent did not have German citizenship.

Remarkably, foreigners are responsible for this massive amount of serious crime despite making up only 15.5 percent of Bavaria’s population.

Syrians were the largest group of non-German suspects, at 1,284, followed by Turks with 799, Ukrainians with 797, Afghans with 784, Romanians with 687, Iraqis with 428, Bulgarians with 350, Poles with 328, Kosovars with 319, and Italians with 250.

A different ranking appears when the figures are adjusted for population. The suspect burden figure, or TVBZ, measures how many suspects police identified per 100,000 people in a group over one year.

Ukrainians had the highest TVBZ, at 555. Turks followed at 445 and Romanians at 435. The figure for German citizens was 106. That means Ukrainians, for instance, are more than five times more likely to commit a violent crime than Germans.

The government did not calculate a TVBZ for other nationalities because each had fewer than 100,000 residents.

“For smaller population groups, the crime rate would have to be mathematically extrapolated to 100,000 people,” the state government wrote.

“However, since the relationship between population size and crime burden is not strictly linear, an error would occur in the TVBZ calculation, which is greater the smaller the population group. For this reason, the TVBZ are only calculated for non-German citizens who have a population share of over 100,000 people.”

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President Trump on Wednesday told reporters to expect more US attacks on Iranian tankers, as the war over the Hormuz Strait continues to escalate in piecemeal tit-for-tat fashion.

“The attacks are made by us. We’ve knocked out nine of their ships. I would say that the attacks are caused by us, and you’re going to see a lot more,” the president told reporters on Wednesday, adding that many of the Iranian tankers are “donezo” – as global oil prices continue to climb.

The region has now seen over six months of war since Trump launched an operation that he and White House officials at first suggested would just be ‘days’ – and then insisted (repeatedly) would be a ‘four to six week’ campaign.

All along the White House has kept moving the goal posts, amid lack of overall strategic vision and failure to articulate what exactly enough of a ‘victory’ to establish a military exit would look like.

Speaking of drastically moving the goal post, the below was another key media exchange with Trump on Wednesday:

Q: Do you expect negotiations with Iran to restart at some point?

Trump: Uhhhhhh… we’re not looking for it to be honest with you. This war will end immediately after our election.

This as The Wall Street Journal has issued a report saying Trump’s top advisors are now warning him that the Iran conflict could last through the rest of his term.

Trump has called it ‘small potatoes’ – but he may now have his very own forever war…

Top White House advisers have raised privately with President Trump the prospect that the Iran war could drag on through the remainder of his term, U.S. officials said, a message at odds with Trump’s public assurances of a swift victory.

In the Oval Office and Situation Room, Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and others have discussed with the president that Tehran could continue to resist U.S. pressure under the blockade and other military tactics, potentially extending the conflict past Inauguration Day in January 2029, the officials said.

…oh to have been a fly on the wall during that little meeting.

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Portfolio manager Tim Schwarzenberger says Nike should stop wading into political issues and focus on athletic apparel

Tim Schwarzenberger’s last pair of Nike sneakers is about 10 years old and the shoes have holes in them.

But the Christian investor who helped lead a shareholder campaign demanding more transparency from Nike says he wants a reason to buy another pair.

“For me, what resonates is forgiveness,” Schwarzenberger told OutKick. “If companies make changes, we need to applaud them.”

“I would like to get back to buying the shoes, but I can’t rationalize doing that when Nike has become so activist,” he said. “If the company can change, I would be the first to applaud them and get in line.”

Schwarzenberger is a portfolio manager and director of corporate engagement at Inspire Investing, a faith-based firm that represents investors who own Nike stock. Those investors make money if Nike succeeds, not if it collapses.

“We’re long-term investors,” he said. “Our primary goal is to earn competitive performance for the investors we serve, and we want companies to do well.”

Nike shareholders rejected Proposal 5 during the company’s annual meeting Sept. 8. Inspire backed the proposal on behalf of client William C. Cunningham.

The resolution asked Nike to evaluate and issue a report analyzing the “benefits, costs, and legal, reputational, competitive, and other relevant risks” associated with its charitable support.

The proposal’s supporting statement specifically cited Nike’s verified score of 100 on the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index. Inspire argued that the score raises questions about whether Nike’s employee health plan covers gender-transition procedures for minors, including surgery, cross-sex hormone therapy, menstruation suppression and puberty blockers.

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Not only did thousands of albums arrive today, I spent the entire week reducing prices throughout the store to make room for new inventory. I’m talking minimum 50% to 60% reduction. We are only open on weekends now so come out 10-4 Saturday and 12-3 on Sunday.

Route 346 Emporium

32883 Old Ocean City Rd.

Parsonsburg, Md. 21849

WE BUY ALBUMS 410-430-5349

A new poll finds that even as more Americans turn to AI tools in their daily lives, most remain deeply uneasy about where the technology is taking the country. An overwhelming 69 percent of respondents oppose AI data centers being built in their area.

NBC News reports that 70 percent of adults say they’re more worried about AI than excited about it, according to the NBC News Decision Desk survey conducted online among 7,105 adults from August 20 to September 1.

About two-thirds of respondents say AI poses high risks to society, and a similar share oppose building an AI data center in their own community. Eighty-one percent say the government isn’t doing enough to regulate the technology.

None of that has slowed adoption down. 52 percent say they use AI tools very often or sometimes, up six points from a June 2025 survey. The share using AI “very often” has climbed to 23 percent, up from 14 percent a year earlier. Trust hasn’t kept pace: just 18 percent say they can trust AI-generated information most or almost all of the time.

Neither party has won the public over on AI policy. 44 percent trust neither party to handle it, while 20 percent trust Democrats, 16 percent trust Republicans, 15 percent are unsure and five percent trust both equally. Asked who should protect consumers from AI misinformation, 38 percent point to government, 34 percent to the companies building the tools, and 28 percent to individuals themselves.

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“This is the 5th Most Wanted Fraudster captured since the creation of the new list three months ago – and yet another high value target captured overseas,” said FBI Dir. Kash Patel.

The FBI has captured its fifth “Most Wanted Fraudster,” who has been accused of defrauding the government of at least $600,000 in SNAP benefits. Manjit Singh Bedi, 65, an immigrant from India, allegedly orchestrated the fraud scheme out of a grocery store he operated in Tacoma, Washington.

Bedi, a naturalized US citizen, was apprehended in India after he reportedly fled to the country last year, FBI Director Kash Patel announced on Saturday. “The FBI is actively working to secure his return to the US,” said Patel.

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Calls to investigate Republican Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell’s wife spread online after the Daily Caller News Foundation reported on her multiple appointments by Chinese Communist Party officials.

Elaine Chao, McConnell’s Taiwanese-born wife, was named to several United Front Work Department-linked posts, some of which coincided with her time as Labor and Transportation secretary, according to Daily Caller News Foundation translations of Chinese media reports. Critics claimed these appointments were a counterintelligence issue and raised questions about McConnell’s own record in office.

Former Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia seized on the opportunity to confirm her suspicions about Chao and McConnell.

“I called out Elaine Chao months ago for being a suspected Chinese spy,” Greene said in a Tuesday X post. “When is there going to be an investigation? And when is there going to be proof of life of powerful Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell?? Is the state of Kentucky really putting up with this???”

Chao did not list her United Front Work appointments on her 2017 confirmation paperwork. Moreover, Patrick O’Connor, her spokesperson, rejected the idea that Chao or her family members held any foreign government roles, even after receiving photo proof of her meetings with CCP and UFWD leaders. 

The House Select Committee on the CCP described United Front Work as “a unique blend of engagement, influence activities, and intelligence operations that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) uses to shape its political environment, including to influence other countries’ policy toward the PRC [People’s Republic of China] and to gain access to advanced foreign technology.”

The White House and the State Department did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

China hawks said the report was proof Beijing had already bought access to American politicians.

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David Beamer is the father of Todd Beamer, who is known for being one of the passengers on Flight 93 on 9/11, which crashed into a field in rural Pennsylvania after passengers fought back against the hijackers.

When Beamer and others on the plane spoke to their loved ones on the phone and found out about the World Trade Center, they deduced that Flight 93 was going to be used to crash into the Capitol Building in Washington, DC.

They decided to fight back and used the beverage cart as a battering ram to break into the cockpit. Todd Beamer was part of this group and is credited with saying the famous line, “Let’s roll.”

His father, David Beamer, recently appeared on FOX News and slammed the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), calling them enemies from within.

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You’ve heard this narrative out of Ohio over the weekend, right? That the Democrats’ candidate for governor of that state, Amy Acton, who’s in a close race with Vivek Ramaswamy at the moment, was attacked by a right-wing lunatic?

Of course you have. It’s a really big deal — if you listen to the legacy corporate propaganda press.

For example, The Hill…

An armed man lunged at Ohio gubernatorial candidate Amy Acton (D) during a Canfield, Ohio, fair on Sunday, injuring several other attendees.

Acton’s campaign shared a statement after the incident, which took place at around 2:30 p.m. at the annual Canfield Fair, located in a Youngstown suburb, NBC News reported. The Mahoning County Sheriff’s Office told the outlet they have 38-year-old Patrick Havas, a Canfield resident, in custody in connection to the incident.

“While attending the Canfield Fair, an armed individual lunged at Dr. Acton, injuring multiple people. Dr. Acton and Eric are grateful for the swift, decisive action of law enforcement and are praying for the recovery of those injured,” campaign communications director Addie Bullock said in the statement, referring to Acton’s husband, Eric Acton.

“This kind of violence has no place in Ohio,” Bullock continued. “Dr. Acton will always stand up to this chaos, hate and vitriol that pits us against one another.”

Acton was not hurt and remained at the fair to attend to those injured in the attack.

Gerry Ricciutti, a spokesperson for the Mahoning County Sheriff’s Office, told NBC that Havas approached with a cellphone set up to record Acton as she spoke at the Mahoning County Democratic Party tent. He said Havas pushed through the crowd before Acton’s security detail and Ohio State Highway Patrol troopers approached him, as two people fell to the ground.

Police recovered two handguns and brass knuckles on the scene, though the man did not wield any of these items in the confrontation, they said.

Gosh. Sounds serious.

I mean, not really. It’s not like Butler, or what happened to Lee Zeldin when he was running for governor of New York. But Serious, You Guys.

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Elon Musk’s America PAC has opened its 2026 midterm ad campaign with a barrage of ads centered on trans issues. Musk has reportedly authorized the PAC to spend more than $100 million this cycle and is targeting four Democratic Senate candidates in competitive races: Sherrod Brown in Ohio, Josh Turek in Iowa, James Talarico in Texas and Mary Peltola in Alaska.

They are running online and across streaming platforms, marking the first coordinated trans-focused push of the cycle from a major Republican-aligned outside group.

U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro on Wednesday announced that the Justice Department’s Scam Center Strike Force busted an illicit Chinese marketplace wide open.

During a press conference, Pirro said these marketplaces that are run by transnational criminal organizations “are stealing, conning, and scamming Americans out of their life savings.”

She said the DOJ has “made enormous strides in fighting a previously unknown and unidentified network of overseas criminals who are focused on us and our money.”

Pirro further explained that these groups use U.S. platforms, banks, and victims as the product and characterized it as “a generational wealth transfer from Main Street America to Chinese organized crime.”

“And they are staffed with human trafficked labor,” she continued. “These are not basement scammers. These are factories. They are compounds that have quotas, shifts. They beat the people working there, and they even have balance sheets.”

Now, President Trump made this a priority in March of 2026 when he signed an executive order making it clear that he wanted to combat cybercrime and fraud and predatory schemes against American citizens, and he has given us the ability and the resources that we need to fight this particular kind of blight. And if you don’t think this affects you, a little primer: seven out of 10 adults globally have encountered a scam one way or another. They are repeatedly trying to rip you off. They are in Southeast Asia, and there are hundreds of, as I said, industrial-scale scam compounds. And the estimates put their earnings at about $40 billion a year.

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A bank robber’s criminal career came to a sudden and permanent halt when he pulled a knife while trying to rob a Texas bank on Aug. 31.

Police in the Dallas-area suburb of Cedar Hill, Texas, were informed of a robbery in progress at a Chase bank at around 9:00 a.m. local time, NBCDFW.com, a Dallas-area TV station, reported.

Officers arrived to find the suspected robber in the parking lot, where he had reportedly fled after being shot by a customer.

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A St. Louis postal worker has been federally indicted after allegedly dumping an astonishing 30,000 pieces of Americans’ mail in overgrown vacant lots instead of delivering it.

According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Missouri, 54-year-old Armond Paige was indicted on September 2 on one count of delaying or destroying mail while employed by the U.S. Postal Service.

Federal prosecutors allege Paige discarded the mail in vacant, weed-covered lots across St. Louis from approximately 2024 through April 29, 2026.

At the time of the alleged scheme, Paige was working out of the Maryville Gardens Post Office on Meramec Street in south St. Louis.

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