Following his Michigan Senate primary win, Republicans launched attack ads against Abdul El-Sayed. The ad opens with a narrator branding him “the most radical Senate candidate in America,” shows him standing alongside left-wing streamer Hasan Piker – who once said Americans deserved 9/11 – and cuts to El-Sayed declaring himself “pretty damn dangerous.” But Democrats and the liberal media are focusing on the fact that the ad uses his full name, “Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed,” and accusing the ad of being Islamophobic.

The NRSC debuts first attack ad in the US Senate Michigan race against Abdul El-Sayed pic.twitter.com/d3N3RB3CGT

— Politics & Poll Tracker 📡 (@PollTracker2024) August 5, 2026

Debate over the ad got heated on CNN’s NewsNight after guest host John Berman opened the segment with a clip of CNN’s Manu Raju pressing Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) on the ad.

Raju asked Scott whether the full-name treatment was meant to signal to voters that El-Sayed is Muslim. Scott denied it. “Not at all,” he said. “He says he’s the most dangerous candidate you can find. He’s right. We should trust his words, not ours.” Pressed again on why the ad would not simply use the name El-Sayed goes by, Scott reached for a comparison to his own name. “I go by Timothy Eugene, and so I get called that all the time,” he said. “It’s about what he stands for.”

“And we’re going to focus and bring attention to the fact that not only is he sympathetic for Hamas, not only does he run around with Hasan Piker – someone who said that Americans deserved 9/11 – he should be held account for exactly where he stands and what he’s for,” Scott added.

RAJU: Why use El-Sayed’s full name in attack ads? Are you trying to say, ‘Hint hint, he’s Muslim’?

TIM SCOTT: Not at all

RAJU: But why not just use the name he goes by?

TIM SCOTT: Listen, I go by Timothy Eugene. I get called that all the time. pic.twitter.com/p3YrkSYIfF

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 9, 2026

Berman was not buying it. “I have never heard Tim Scott referred to as Timothy Eugene in a campaign ad,” he said, setting up a panel that spent the next several minutes proving his point in the worst possible way.

El-Sayed himself has not shied away from his whole name. After the NRSC press release, he told his opponent: “If you can’t say the name Abdulrahman, keep the name out of your damn mouth! I’ll be happy to give you lessons!”

Michigan socialist finally introduces himself with his full name:

Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed pic.twitter.com/oCResAMy5y

— Senate Republicans (@NRSC) August 1, 2026

Niall Stanage, an Irish journalist and White House columnist at The Hill, dismissed Scott’s comparison as absurd. “The idea that using Tim Scott’s full name, unabbreviated, is equivalent to using Abdul El-Sayed’s full name is just ludicrous,” he said. “It is obviously in El-Sayed’s case an appeal to anti-Muslim, anti-Arab sentiment.”

But conservative radio host Jason Rantz wasn’t buying the idea that El-Sayed’s Islamic faith was some kind of secret. “People didn’t know he was Muslim until they said his full name,” he said sarcastically.

Stanage eventually pivoted to the Biden administration’s record, accusing it of “forfeiting concerns for human rights, all the while shoveling weapons to Mr. Netanyahu with which to kill 70,000 Palestinians.” That is when the segment stopped being about a Senate race.

“But it always goes back to the Jews, like every single time,” Rantz said. “Which is a perfect example of like some of what you’re talking about, like the coded language and whatnot. El-Sayed has brought up AIPAC, and brings it up absolutely every single time he can, because he wants to talk about the Jews.”

Stanage rejected the framing. According to him, AIPAC draws criticism “because they support the most right-wing government in Israel’s history.” Jesse Arm, executive director of external affairs at the Manhattan Institute, mocked Stanage by saying, “we understand that Ireland cares a lot about Palestine.” Stanage swung back. “Because we don’t like people militarily subjugating and occupying people!” he said.

Berman stepped in and gave each panelist ten seconds to land a point before the crosstalk could swallow the segment again.

“People in Michigan are actually scared of Abdul El-Sayed, not because of Israel or whatever. No one cares about Israel. He’s going to rip away Obamacare,” Arm argued. “He’s going to rip away private health insurance from the 66 percent of Americans who have it.” He also pointed to Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s primary attacks on Stevens over her support from General Mills and General Motors, calling it the kind of anti-business politics Michigan voters tend to punish.

Stanage argued that those attacks are a distraction from an economic message that has polled well for years, anchored in Medicare for All and reducing money in politics, an idea with appeal across the ideological spectrum. “That combination,” he said, “is why he won.”

After Niall Stanage goes on an unhinged bender about using Abdul El-Sayed’s full name and, @jasonrantz and @Jesse_Leg chime in with a much needed dose of reality on CNN NewsNight:

Stanage: Using El-Sayed’s full name is “an appeal to anti-Muslim, anti-Arab sentiment…. [If… pic.twitter.com/4oux3f0DkN

— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) August 11, 2026

Rantz then proved him wrong, pointing out that El-Sayed won the primary “by the skin of his teeth” after once leading Stevens by 10 to 13 points, and Rantz claimed Democrats are conceding behind closed doors that he will lose the general election. This would sink their chances of retaking the Senate.

Authored by M. Walter via AmericanThinker.com,

Do you, as an American citizen, have to hand over your cell phone — along with the access code to open it — upon a (warrantless) demand by a border agent at the airport?

There’s a case grinding through the courts about that right now because one man, a Mr. Sam Tunick, refused.  

Not only did he refuse but he had an app on his phone that triggered its erasure once you keyed in a particular code to open it.  That was the code he gave CBP (Customs and Border Patrol) when they demanded his code to open it.  And then his phone was, indeed, erased right there on the spot, in the hands of the CBP agent.

That’s when CBP got really p***ed off.

According to the reporting on his case, this man was not a criminal.  He was not under suspicion or surveillance for anything, so far as we know. He is not related to Spencer Tunick, an artist who famously creates mass nude photo shoots in public places. He was, in point of fact, a left-wing activist with environmental interests, but, again, without any contact with or prior interest from law enforcement that we know of.

He was just a guy.  Coming home from an international trip (the Dominican Republic.).

You may well be thinking, “A left-wing activist with an erasure code?  Sounds suspicious!”

Let me pause to explain why I don’t think so.

A “right-winger” I know just traveled internationally recently and she traveled with a burner phone to avoid exactly this kind of search in another country.  It was England specifically.  

In England there is no Fourth Amendment and they can search your phone when you land.  They also have no First Amendment and they have terrible censorship laws now.  You can be arrested and jailed for social media posts.  Even some perfectly benign ones, like “Islam is incompatible with Liberty” — that kind of thing.

The Dominican Republic also has no Fourth Amendment and if they simply suspect you have contraband or are engaged in some other illegal activity (so a very wide berth), they have every right to inspect your phone.  Maybe this young man just didn’t want the hassle. Maybe this app was this “left-winger’s” choice instead of a burner, and in the heat of the moment, decided to deploy it once facing our own CPB here in the U.S.

In short, I don’t find it suspicious at all knowing the legal overreach climate we are living in now.  And we certainly can’t be searching American citizens and seizing their devices based on politics alone.  I hope we can all agree on that.

Back to the case:

One attorney, Mike Fox of the Cato Institute characterized Mr. Tunick’s situation this way: “This is new, uncharted territory.”

The Supreme Court has never ruled on your Fourth Amendment rights as they specifically relate to your cell phone at American airports/border crossings.  They have ruled on whether or not your phone is searchable in the interior of the United States and the answer is “no” — not without a warrant.

But somehow an American in an American airport on American soil has to surrender his rights to an American customs agent?  What is this sorcery?

Let’s review the Fourth Amendment, in its entirety:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

The Supreme Court has ruled on Fourth Amendment exceptions at border crossings, but not cell phones in particular.  That’s why you have to go through customs and scanners and open your luggage, etc.  We’ve all been doing it forever without a thought.

But your phone ought to be a separate matter entirely, containing as it does, your digital “papers and effects.”  According to the available reporting, there was no “probable cause” to search Mr. Tunick. CPB wasn’t looking for anything specific, which is what a warrant would demand.  They just wanted to go out on a scenic drive, seeing what they could see on his phone.

Hell. No.

The Washington Post just published an op-ed about Mr. Tunick’s case entitled “Your privacy rights don’t disappear at the border,” with the sub-headline, “Congress or the courts need to make clear that a smartphone is not a suitcase.”  It was written by Mike Fox, the attorney mentioned above.

Mr. Fox was also quoted in a CNN article on the case and it sums up his position in both pieces pretty well:

“Obstruction means I’m obstructing some type of investigation, and without any type of warrant or even reasonable suspicion of criminal activity, what investigation am I obstructing?”

The definition of “reasonable” and the deployment of the key code erasure seem to be the real sticking points here, but the larger issue of your cell phone privacy absolutely deserves specific adjudication.

One hopes Mr. Tunick isn’t subjected to a crushing ordeal here, but one does hope that his case makes it to The Supreme Court so we can settle this once and for all.  The other option would be for the Hill to act and pass some legislation making a specific carve out specifying the need for warrants for cell phones, but I’m still choking on the jet fumes from them hurrying out of town for six weeks before they could vote on the Save America Act, so them?  Useful?  On this or any other matter?  That strikes me as a fool’s errand.

There’s no magic fairy dust in the soil at American airports. Your Fourth Amendment rights do not defy gravity there. It’s one thing to paw through my underwear looking for explosives;  I think we can all appreciate the safety concern in that, as absurd as it sounds and even though it’s a pain.  It’s entirely another to thumb through my cell phone just for the heck of it.

Get a warrant.

Some 20 months after Syria’s Bashar al-Assad fled Damascus and went to Moscow, amid jihadist groups taking over the capital city in December of 2024, Russia has finally reached a negotiated settlement over the fate of its Syrian bases with the new Sharaa government.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry said Tuesday that a memorandum of understanding over the future of its bases at Tartus and Khmeimim has been set. While some Russian forces will remain at the bases, civilian facilties at these locations will be handed over and operated by the Syrian government and civilian administrators, including Khmeimim airport and the commercial berth at Tartus port.

The military facilities are expected to be repurposed as joint training sites, where Russian troops will still be based, and the sites will also likely serve as transit hubs for Russian military and logistics operations in Africa. 

It’s as yet unclear the degree to which this marks Russia losing its only deep-water naval port on the Mediterranean, at Tartus, but it certainly at least represents a significant downgrade.

The Sharaa government described that the new arrangements represent a “reorganizing of the Russian presence” along Syria’s coast and that “this move marks the most significant development since negotiations began approximately a year and a half ago, paving the way for a new phase in Syrian-Russian relations.”

Russian forces have long been on their way out of Syria after the Syrian Arab Army under Assad had lost the long-running proxy war. Russian troops had intervened in 2015 in Syria, at Assad’s request, and for much of that time had pounded Al-Qaeda held Idlib from the air. 

Ironically it’s many of those same jihadists which the Russians were fighting in Idlib which now hold government posts in Damascus.

The Russian Foreign Ministry has acknowledged, “We regard the signing on Aug. 9 of the memorandum between the Russian Federation and the Syrian Arab Republic on the operation of our bases in Khmeimim and Tartus as an important step aimed at further improving bilateral cooperation in the military sphere.”

“We believe that reaching this agreement will give further impetus to the development of the full range of relations between our countries, which are based on a long history of friendship and partnership,” it added.

Moscow is now having to deal with a completely new reality in the Levant region, and is facing a greatly diminished presence and influence in this post-Syrian war situation. Iran also retreated from Syria, and Hezbollah has completely moved back to its home front in Lebanon.

Foreign policy investigator Adam Kredo of The Washington Free Beacon revealed on Monday that California regulators ordered Arc of Justice, a nonprofit operated by left-wing Code Pink cofounder Medea Benjamin, to cease charitable operations after years of missing tax filings and unanswered questions about what happened to $51 million in reported assets. 

The state attorney general revoked the foundation’s charitable registration in January 2025, barring it from distributing assets without prior approval. A June 19 warning letter went further, directing Arc of Justice to stop soliciting, holding or spending charitable funds in California and warning that board members could face personal liability for unauthorized distributions.

Kredo cited an investigation by the watchdog group Intelligent Advocacy Network (IAN) that said since California first revoked the foundation’s charitable registration 18 months ago and ordered it to provide a full accounting of $51,445,599 in outstanding assets it held as of 2023, “no public document establishes what has happened to the money, where it is held, or whether any of it has moved.” 

The California Franchise Tax Board subsequently confirmed that the foundation was no longer in good standing or certified as tax-exempt. At the same time, the Secretary of State listed the organization as suspended.

“The silence from Arc of Justice raises unanswered questions about a foundation that has long served as the financial backbone for a network of radical advocacy groups tied to Benjamin and her Code Pink cofounder, Jodie Evans,” Kredo wrote in the report. 

Far-left extremist Hasan Piker & Jodie Evans in Cuba 

He added, “Evans is married to Neville Roy Singham, a Maoist American tech mogul who funds far-left causes from his base in Shanghai and who’s currently the subject of a Justice Department criminal probe.” Read the report here. 

FIRST ON FOX: A federal grand jury is investigating China-based tech tycoon Neville Roy Singham over alleged financial improprieties involving $278 million that investigators say moved through his financial network over the past decade.

Federal investigators are examining… pic.twitter.com/cqqt9QthU6

— Fox News (@FoxNews) June 29, 2026

Interesting https://t.co/HHh8RcM3gI

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 29, 2026

Risk intelligence platform Sayari shows Evan is Arc of Justice’s registered agent and serves as the bridge to a broader network of entities, including:

• Codepink Action Fund
• Codepink: Women for Peace
• Environmentalism Through Inspiration and Nonviolent Action
• The MEP Foundation
• MP & JK, LLC
• Gateways and Passages, LLC
• Agrarian Land Trust
• Schumacher Center for a New Economics

The chart’s main takeaway is that Arc of Justice is connected through Evans to several far-left Code Pink-related and other nonprofit or corporate entities. 

Singham, who resides in China, has a long track record of supporting far-left entities, such as Code Pink and the Party for Socialism and other socialist NGOs, that oppose U.S. interests and support U.S. adversaries.

According to investigative reports (e.g., New York Times, 2023), Singham has worked closely with pro-CCP propaganda networks targeting the US.

From NYT:

What is less known, and is hidden amid a tangle of nonprofit groups and shell companies, is that Mr. Singham works closely with the Chinese government media machine and is financing its propaganda worldwide.

From a think tank in Massachusetts to an event space in Manhattan, from a political party in South Africa to news organizations in India and Brazil, The Times tracked hundreds of millions of dollars to groups linked to Mr. Singham that mix progressive advocacy with Chinese government talking points.

Bitcoin Policy Institute documented one of those alleged Singham foreign influence operations: 

Circling back to Kredo’s report. Here’s more color: 

Singham is reportedly under federal investigation for breaching federal law by funneling millions through his nonprofit groups to Chinese entities and then lying about it on tax forms. The shadowy benefactor’s dark money operation is under pressure, according to Sam Lyman, a former senior adviser to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

“For years, Neville Singham and his associates have been playing financial shell games across a series of U.S.-based nonprofits,” said Lyman, who now serves as head of research at the Bitcoin Policy Institute. “The goal is to fund extremist causes that undermine American sovereignty by using the 501(c)(3) legal structure as a shield. But the scheme is starting to unravel, and Medea Benjamin’s Arc of Justice is the latest example.”

The California Attorney General’s Registry of Charities and Fundraisers first revoked Arc of Justice’s registration in January 2025, barring it from spending any assets without approval from the attorney general. In June of this year, the California oversight agency went even further, according to a previously unpublished document obtained by IAN and shared with the Free Beacon. The June 19 warning letter, issued by the California Department of Justice, directly orders Arc of Justice to cease “any activity in California for which registration is required … including holding or soliciting assets for charitable purposes.”

“A revoked registrant is prohibited from distributing or expending charitable assets without prior written approval from the Attorney General,” the letter makes clear. “Members of the board of directors or any person directly involved in distributing or expending charitable assets may be held personally liable for assets improperly expended.”

The foundation’s dire tax situation was revealed further on Aug. 3, when the California Franchise Tax Board confirmed that Arc of Justice “is not in good standing” with regulators and is no longer certified as tax-exempt, according to a copy of that document reviewed by the Free Beacon. The California Secretary of State’s online system also declares Arc of Justice’s status as “suspended.”

Still, the mystery surrounding Arc of Justice and its multimillion-dollar assets has only deepened in recent months: On May 8 of this year, seven days before the federal tax filing deadline passed, a new Florida-based nonprofit corporation was founded with the same name and same officers, according to IAN’s research. The address provided for the group, in Miami’s downtrodden Little River neighborhood, is the same one “the California foundation used on its federal filings for years,” the watchdog group found. Google Street View images of the address, dating back to 2022, show a small, colorful shack adorned with peace signs and other cheerful imagery.

The tangled tax web surrounding Arc of Justice is drawing scrutiny amid the closely watched federal grand jury probe into Singham, who has poured millions of his own money into Code Pink and other related causes. While Benjamin’s Arc of Justice foundation is not suspected of any related wrongdoing, its tax woes are certain to raise further questions about Code Pink and the advocacy network tied to it.

“Arc of Justice — a $51 million California foundation founded by Code Pink’s Medea Benjamin — went completely dark in 2022. Benjamin remained its president of record at least through November 2024. California regulators revoked its exemption and froze its assets,” said IAN CEO and cofounder Susan George. “The federal exemption, however, is untouched, and nobody outside the foundation can say where the money is or what has happened to it. IAN found this one. How many more are operating entirely in the dark?”

Code Pink’s March trip to Cuba included Ilhan Omar’s (D., Minn.) daughter, Isra Hirsi, and anti-Israel streamer Hasan Piker, who both praised the communist government. Benjamin herself, the New York Post reported, traveled to Gaza at least seven times between 2009 and 2012 to meet with Hamas leadership, including the terror group’s late chairman Ismail Haniyeh. Benjamin and her Code Pink cohorts have also traveled to Iran while stoking opposition to the U.S. and Israeli military campaign against the Islamic Republic. Code Pink, Sen. Tom Cotton (R. Ark.) said in November 2025, “has received funding from groups aligned with the Communist Chinese government and partnered with designated foreign terror organizations.”

Arc of Justice, formerly known as the Benjamin Fund, was incorporated by Benjamin in California in 2002, when she signed its articles of incorporation as the sole initial director. Benjamin’s daughter, Maya Danaher, was listed as the foundation’s treasurer at the time and, as of June 2026, is now listed as the CEO. Benjamin herself is no longer listed as an Arc of Justice officer, per the June 2026 filing.

From 2009 to 2022, Arc of Justice paid Code Pink $2,214,200, available documents compiled by IAN show, even though federal law generally prohibits “self-dealing” between a private foundation and disqualified individuals, including foundation managers. “The extent of the related-party grantmaking documented here — much of it undisclosed — raises serious questions about potential self-dealing that only regulators can resolve,” IAN concluded in an earlier May 19 report on Arc of Justice’s finances.

During the time of these disbursements, Benjamin simultaneously served as Arc of Justice’s president and Code Pink’s treasurer, IAN discovered. Arc of Justice also disbursed $1,897,950 to Global Exchange, another purported “human rights organization” cofounded by Benjamin. Code Pink itself—flush with Arc of Justice cash—doled out $1,550,000 between 2018 and 2024 to Environmentalism Through Inspiration & Non Violent Action (ETINA), another left-wing advocacy group that lists Evans as its president on tax forms. Evans, notably, is also listed as the Arc of Justice foundation’s California agent for service of process. (She was replaced as its agent in a 2026 statement of incorporation that was submitted to the California secretary of state.)

“Arc of Justice’s own 990-PF filings disclosed Code Pink as a related-party grantee, identifying the relationship as ‘Common Board Member/Officer,'” IAN noted in its May report. “No comparable disclosures appear for Global Exchange or ETINA despite the documented relationships described above.”

Still, much about Arc of Justice’s finances remains opaque. The foundation did not file the required Form 990-PF tax return for fiscal years 2021, 2023, 2024, and 2025. Under federal tax law, a charity that fails to file its return for three consecutive years should have its tax-exempt status automatically revoked. For Arc of Justice, that should have occurred on May 15 of this year, though records indicate no such action was taken by the IRS, which did not respond to a Free Beacon request for comment on the matter.

The last tax document filed by Arc of Justice also offers little clarity about its finances and disbursements. In 2024, the foundation furnished a 990-T form to the IRS, which only documents “business income” and is mostly unrelated to a charity’s tax-exempt activity. That form, which Benjamin signed, “reports no grants, no recipients, and nothing about how charitable funds were used,” according to IAN.

The irony is that this NGO is part of a network that sympathizes with communism and failed to meet basic tax obligations. More importantly, the enforcement action phase suggests federal investigators may be circling NGO networks suspected of promoting revolutionary Marxism and potentially serving as financial channels or for foreign subversion operations (read here).  

By Tsvetana Paraskova of OilPrice.com

China’s independent refiners are likely to return to buying higher volumes of Iran’s crude oil this month as stockpiles in Shandong, home to the independent Chinese refiners, have dropped to the lowest level this year after the biggest estimated monthly draw in a decade.

For most of the Middle East conflict, now in its sixth month, China’s independent refiners, the so-called teapots, have drawn on their reserves and limited purchases and imports amid spiking international crude oil prices and what appears to have been an unofficial Chinese policy to slash crude imports. China could afford to slash imports as it was estimated to have amassed more than 1.3 billion barrels of crude oil stashed in all commercial and strategic reserves.    

However, current stockpiles at Shandong are estimated to have dropped to the lowest level in eight months at about 360 million barrels at the end of July, per data by Energy Aspects cited by Bloomberg.

The drawdown in July was about 35 million barrels in July alone, the biggest decline in a month since Energy Aspects began estimating and compiling data in 2016.

The independent Chinese refiners are therefore expected to increase imports of Iranian oil as of August, especially after millions of barrels of crude from Iran exited the Strait of Hormuz and are positioned to ship to Asia during the mid-June to early July window when the U.S. lifted its blockade aimed at preventing Iranian exports.

Total Chinese crude oil imports rebounded in July from the decade-low in June, with a 22% jump from June to an average of 8.45 million barrels per day (bpd) last month, customs data showed last week.

Thanks to this substantial supply cushion, China became instrumental in keeping a cap on global oil prices despite the turmoil in the Middle East, as the biggest importer of the commodity in the world could hit pause on imports for a while. However, analysts have warned that at some point China will return to international markets, and that would not be a good day for oil bears.

Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth called on Congress to approve his request for a $1.5 trillion military budget for 2027 during remarks at a ceremony in South Carolina for the renaming of Joint Base Charleston to Joint Base Lindsey Graham in honor of the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, who died unexpectedly last month.

Hegseth claimed that before he died, Graham told him that the $1.5 trillion request was the best military budget he’d ever seen.

“As we gather here today, the War Department is seeking a historic generational investment of $1.5 trillion for American warriors. And Lindsey himself said, to me in his office, ‘this is the best military budget I’ve seen since I’ve been in Congress,'” Hegseth said, according to a transcript released by the Pentagon.

“This department pays tribute to Lindsey Graham in the naming of this base, but there could be no greater tribute than Congress could give than to invest in our warriors for the full $1.5 trillion,” he added.

Hegseth said that he had known Graham for nearly 20 years, going back to when he was a member of a veterans group pushing for the US to escalate the war in Iraq.

“Nineteen years ago, young lieutenant, uh, First Lieutenant Pete Hegseth came back from Iraq and was a part of a veterans’ organization called Vets for Freedom that believed in the surge in Iraq and advocated for the troops on the ground,” he said. “The first and only senator willing to meet with First Lieutenant Pete Hegseth and nowheresville Vets for Freedom was Sen. Lindsey Graham.”

The event came as Hegseth has been struggling to get support from Congress for the full $1.5 trillion military budget, a nearly 50% increase from this year’s budget.

The Trump administration seeks to reach that figure through a $1.15 trillion National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) plus a supplemental funding bill worth about $350 billion. Hegseth said that he and Graham discussed the plan just a week before the senator’s death.

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth was joined today by Secretary of the Air Force Dr. Troy E. Meink, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, and Sen. Darline Graham for the renaming of Joint Base Charleston, South Carolina, as Joint Base Lindsey Graham,… pic.twitter.com/5dz6TvGOhB

— OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) August 10, 2026

“He looked at me and said, how’s $355 billion sound? He wanted to give even more than $350 billion. He wanted to ensure our military was as equipped as humanly possible, because he was thinking of places like this one right here,” Hegseth said.

Hegseth was joined at the ceremony by Darline Graham, Lindsey Graham’s sister, who has taken over his Senate seat and is expected to pursue the same policies as her brother. Lindsey Graham was notorious for his hawkishness, and following his death, footage came out of him laughing and celebrating days after the start of the US-Israeli bombing campaign in Iran, a war he had been pushing for years.

When Bloomberg first caught Phia – the AI “personal shopping assistant” co-founded by Bill Gates’ daughter Phoebe Gates and climate-activist-turned-founder Sophia Kianni – claiming affiliate commissions on sales it had nothing to do with, the company’s ham-fisted damage control was a Silicon Valley classic: an unfortunate software bug, discovered “within the last 24 hours” – and of course it was ‘fixed immediately.‘ 

Except that’s total bullshit. 

According to a follow-up investigation published Tuesday, they knew about it for at least seven months – and Gates along with other execs were actively pushing for its use, according to internal Slack messages and people familiar with the matter.

According to the report, an internal dashboard screenshot shows the automatic cookie-dropping behavior was a named feature flag that could be toggled remotely – independent researcher Ben Edelman identified it in Phia’s own code as enable_coupon_auto_drop. It was reportedly switched on December 10 and switched off July 7 – which happens to be the day Bloomberg first reached out for comment. Two people familiar with the matter confirmed the toggle meant the feature was live. So after seven months, the “bug” was magically cured the moment a reporter shot off an email. 

The Bug = The Business

A Phia data scientist estimated in a July 7 Slack message that cookie stuffing accounted for roughly 51% of the gross merchandise value the company claimed credit for in June, per Bloomberg. An internal revenue chart reportedly tells the same story: when the features went dark in early July, average daily revenue collapsed from about $80,000 to somewhere between $10,000 and $28,000.

The company disputes the math – a spokesperson called the 51% figure a preliminary analysis built on flawed methodology, and says the revenue cliff also reflects Phia voluntarily shutting down most of its monetization at the same time. Except – when switching off the “bug” vaporizes the majority of your revenue, that’s the business. 

The receipts

For readers unfamiliar with the affiliate marketing underworld: publishers earn commissions by dropping a tracking cookie when a shopper intentionally interacts with them – clicking a referral link, applying a coupon. Dropping cookies without user interaction is called cookie stuffing, it’s prohibited by essentially every affiliate network contract, and it works by hijacking credit (and commission) from whoever actually drove the sale.

Per Bloomberg, here’s what the founders were doing while their future PR statement about a 24-hour-old bug was still unwritten:

• December 18: Gates, worried that Etsy commissions were coming in light, pressed developers on Slack to confirm that automatic cookie-drops were live across every site offering a coupon – so the company would monetize all merchandise value flowing through checkout. When an engineer confirmed cookies were being set even when shoppers never touched a coupon, she reportedly reiterated that every transaction should be captured regardless. (Phia’s explanation: she was concerned a broken pop-up meant users weren’t seeing coupons, which would also depress attribution. Noted.)
• October through July: a feature internally dubbed “passive trigger” reportedly re-dropped a Phia cookie every two hours on any top-1,000 website where the user had ever interacted with the extension – potentially steamrolling other publishers’ legitimate referrals along the way. Bloomberg says its review of Phia’s historical source code confirmed the features existed.
• A second feature, also per Bloomberg, reportedly set a cookie if a shopper clicked anywhere on the page after Phia’s pop-up appeared – including while trying to close it.
• Kianni, after a colleague warned that dropping cookies on dismiss events violates Google’s Chrome extension policy, reportedly floated the idea of claiming users had been trying to open the extension and simply reversing charges if anyone complained – before cheering the team on to keep the cookies dropping by whatever means available. (A spokesperson says that particular feature was never implemented or launched.)

Oh, and the Slack exchanges in question? Per two people familiar with the matter, they’re no longer visible to Phia employees. Memory-holed, as it were.

Ben Edelman – the advertising consultant who has spent 20 years dismantling deceptive marketing schemes – reviewed Phia’s source code and merchant data, corroborated Bloomberg’s findings, and described a multipart effort engineered to inflate Phia’s revenue while delivering nothing to merchants. His suggestion that the founders should have spent more time reading their contracts and less time building tricks is about as polite as this gets. Phia declined to comment on his analysis.

Sound familiar?

It should. This is the Honey playbook – the same last-click attribution hijacking that blew up in PayPal’s face in late 2024 and spawned a wave of class actions and a creator revolt. The difference is that Honey’s scandal was reconstructed from the outside. Phia’s, per Bloomberg, comes with the founders’ own fingerprints on the toggle. And cookie stuffing isn’t some novel gray area: a decade ago, in the infamous eBay affiliate cases, it ended in federal wire-fraud pleas.

The fallout is already rolling. Affiliate network Impact.com suspended Phia from its marketplace after Bloomberg’s first story and is reallocating unpaid commissions attributed to the startup since June 20. Phia has begun repaying retailers – and with the timeline now stretching back to at least December rather than July, that refund bill is unlikely to shrink. Nike, Gap and Nordstrom, all reportedly among the affected merchants, did not respond to Bloomberg’s requests for comment.

One question the piece leaves hanging: Phia announced a $35 million Series A led by Notable Capital on January 27, at a $185 million valuation – roughly seven weeks after the auto-drop toggle reportedly went live, and weeks after that December Slack thread. The launch announcement touted, among other things, a 40% increase in monetized GMV. The growth metrics were, evidently, impressive. It’s just that, if Bloomberg’s reporting holds, a meaningful chunk of that growth may have belonged to somebody else.

Phia, for its part, says all misattribution features were removed on July 7, that it is reviewing every transaction and issuing reversals to brand partners, and that it is hiring a head of compliance – a role whose necessity apparently revealed itself the same day Bloomberg’s phone number did. The company adds that it remains focused on giving users the best possible shopping experience, including its new digital closet feature.

But sure. It was a bug.

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness,

What binds the new Democratic Party to the new Democratic Socialists is a set of shared issues and values. That is, the radicalism of the Democrats in the age of Trump Derangement Syndrome – lawfare, de-balloting, the Mar-a-Lago raid, and calls to destroy the Electoral College, the nine-justice Supreme Court, and the filibuster – helped give birth to the socialists.

But the overriding commonality among those on the new Left is that if they do not get their way, they blame the “system.” Then they seek to change the rules, no matter how hallowed those laws and conventions may have been or how much they themselves benefited from them in the past.

When the Left lost the White House, Congress, and, for the most part, the Supreme Court, it began clamoring to change the system. For left-wing Democrats, that angst also translated into calls to bring in two new blue states, weaponize the FBI and DOJ, ally with social media to suppress the news, and spy on congressional representatives. All the socialists and communists did was up the ante in destroying norms by calling for the end of the presidency, the Senate, the border, the police, and the Pentagon.

By 2021, it was time to destroy the southern border and welcome in some 10 million illegal immigrants – without audits, English proficiency, health checks, or the ability to support themselves.

Had Kamala Harris been elected in 2024, we would have had another four years and another five million illegal aliens. And perhaps America would have gone from 50 million foreign-born residents to 60 million, or about 18 percent of the population.

In this regard, the Left sees California as our most liberal – and most ideal – state and perhaps concludes that the reason is that 28 percent of its resident population is now foreign-born, with the majority arriving with vast needs for health, education, housing, and food subsidies.

Today, 50 percent of all births in California are paid for by Medi-Cal, which serves 40 percent of the population. When second-generation immigrants are added to the foreign-born population, the two groups together comprise roughly 45 percent of California’s current population. This demographic transformation is one of the most profound in American history and came at a time when traditional civic education stressing assimilation, acculturation, integration, and knowledge of American traditions, history, and values was nearly nonexistent in California public schools.

So one way of achieving radical change was to alter the demography and welcome as many immigrants as possible who, in the first or second generation, might follow the examples of Reps. Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, or Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed. They represent an entirely new sort of immigrant who arrives – or is born to immigrant parents – with both complaints against and dependence on their host country. They can see only the sins of America, never the catastrophes of their homeland that drove them or their parents here. This strange demand to change the rules whenever they do not bode well for angry and aggrieved parties permeates every possible manifestation of the Left, but is especially egregious when demanded by immigrants who came originally as uninvited guests but almost immediately damned their magnanimous host.

It is strange for so many new immigrants to act on an elemental desire to reach America – only on arrival to profess that it is full of toxic, sinful people, living and dead. Yet the damned hosts have inexplicably welcomed total strangers like themselves, and have allowed them to share in the freedom, security, and prosperity created by the dead whom the newcomers nonetheless endlessly slander and smear.

If particular minorities statistically did not do as well on the SAT as Asians and whites did on average, the solution was certainly not SAT tutorials in the inner city or K-12 SAT outreach, demands for tougher classes in grammar, math, and analytics, or a return to the melting pot rather than the current salad-bowl tribalist model.

Instead, after the George Floyd riots, the call went out to abolish the SAT entirely – as if there had never been a purpose behind its creation. In fact, merit-based SAT exams were designed in the 1920s and 1930s to allow anyone, regardless of race, gender, region, or class, to enter college through meritorious performance on the tests – and, in particular, to overcome old-boy insider preferences and regional and ethnic prejudices.

Yet when the SAT was mostly abolished for four or five years, higher education thought it had solved the problem of minority underrepresentation.

In fact, its racialist war on standards only magnified its dilemmas. The SAT had once informed admissions officers not only about applicants’ qualifications but also whether admitted students could do the work once enrolled.

But soon liberal professors learned that many of the newly admitted cohorts lacked the K-12 training necessary to do customary university coursework. Yet if professors maintained their regular courses, requirements, and grading, they might soon be labeled racists once particular minorities were shown to do less well than Asians and whites.

So universities inflated grades. They introduced new remedial and gut courses. And they reduced the required coursework. But again, racialism is never a solution to problems. Instead, it is a catalyst that fuels them – as we have seen with the new notion that plagiarism is not an actionable offense when the culprit can plead victim status, whether a former president of Harvard or a current professor at Cambridge. But there are ancient laws and norms that insist intellectual theft is a crime and should be punished, not rewarded or ignored.

Soon employers noticed that the reading, writing, and analytical skills of graduates from prestigious schools were proving dismal. Alumni complained both that the reputations of their almae matres were in decline and resting on the fumes of the past and that their own children, who had prepared diligently to ensure suitably competitive grades and SAT scores for admission, were being rejected solely on the basis of their race.

The Left likewise pushed for lower physical standards for the military’s ground-combat brigades so that women, on average far less strong than their male counterparts, could join elite units. Again, the same ignorance and arrogance were evident. Physical standards were based on a century of combat experience in which morale, group discipline, and unit success rested on ensuring that all soldiers achieved a common level of physical strength and endurance.

This neo-Marxist-driven demand to mandate equality – albeit now substituting racial and gender consciousness for class consciousness – requires the destruction of established traditions, laws, and norms. The radical Left’s key agendas – defunding the police, destroying the border, granting mass amnesties to illegal aliens, subsidizing wind and solar energy while waging a war on fossil fuels, and expanding racial essentialism in hiring and admissions – have never won more than 30 to 40 percent support among the general public. Yet the solution was not to ask why, and then to reflect, reboot, and recalibrate in order to discover how the Left had lost public support.

Instead, the solution was to alter or destroy the system that had denied them power.

So communists, socialists, and radical Democrats prefer moving the goalposts. When equality of opportunity was largely achieved, next they demanded a mandated equality of outcome.

With the ascendancy of a large, affluent middle class, the Left, in its eternal search for a victimized class, pivoted and replaced class oppression with racial victimization.

And when there were not yet enough victimized minorities to guarantee a majority constituency of the aggrieved, the Left redefined the victimized to include anyone who was not a white heterosexual male, regardless of income and privilege.

And when the people finally tired of the Leftists’ totalitarian social engineering, the Left sought to change the system by radically altering the way Americans vote, the manner in which government is formed and functions, and, finally, the very demography of America.

The common denominator? Human nature revolts at forced statism, coercive redistribution, and government-mandated equality of results. It instead yearns for liberty and freedom.

No matter how much deception, camouflage, or brainwashing is employed, statism, socialism, and communism can never sustain public support. Throughout history, the Left has therefore begun by changing the rules and altering the demography – if not initially through changes to election rules, bureaucratic fiat, and biased court orders, then eventually through sheer violence.

Victor Davis Hanson is a distinguished fellow of the Center for American Greatness and the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He is an American military historian, columnist, a former classics professor, and scholar of ancient warfare. He has been a visiting professor at Hillsdale College since 2004, and is the 2023 Giles O’Malley Distinguished Visiting Professor at the School of Public Policy, Pepperdine University. Hanson was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2007 by President George W. Bush, and the Bradley Prize in 2008.

The Diamond Standard Index, tracked on Bloomberg under the ticker DIAMINDX, tumbled to new record lows during the first half of August as a surge in affordable lab-grown stones eroded the scarcity premium underpinning natural diamond prices.

“Technological progress in growing diamonds in labs has been amazing. It’s no surprise most engagement rings are now using lab diamonds,” X user Crémieux said.

Technological progress in growing diamonds in labs has been amazing.

It’s no surprise most engagement rings are now using lab diamonds. https://t.co/MZ4zWVlQNq pic.twitter.com/fH1lFYD3Ih

— Crémieux (@cremieuxrecueil) August 8, 2026

X user Saul Sadka warned that the diamond downturn will likely persist for years as lab-grown stones flood the market:

Expect the collapse in diamond prices to accelerate substantially over the next few years. The natural-diamond market is shrinking in both size and value and circling the drain following the commoditization of its product by modern technology. The same thing happened to pearls 100 years ago, but it will be much worse for diamonds: they will become a signal of bad taste rather than wealth, just as pearls went from high society to a matronly cliché within 50 years.

I have been telling friends in the diamond industry to find a new line of work for ten years. It was clearly only a matter of time before lab-grown diamonds became a mass-market commodity, sold at some small premium over production costs, which would themselves continue to plummet.

Since they are identical to natural diamonds, and buyers actually have multiple reasons to choose them instead, including no “blood diamonds” and supposedly greater environmental friendliness, most buyers will not care.

Attempts to differentiate the products using $20,000 machines will not help: they are indistinguishable in real life.

There was always going to be some multiple that people would be willing to pay for “natural” over “lab,” but it did not really matter whether that multiple was 2× or 10×. Once lab-grown diamonds can be made for next to nothing, even ten times next to nothing is still very little. People will pay more, perhaps much more, for an identical product because of its backstory, but not infinitely more.

The reason natural-diamond prices have held up reasonably well over the past four years, “only” falling by around 50% in real terms, has more to do with supply cutbacks. Production has been reduced by about 20% over that period, from 120 million to 98 million carats, in a desperate attempt to support prices as the natural and lab-grown markets diverge. If production returned to its previous level, prices would fall even faster.

But it is going to get much, much worse. A trip to Miami will explain why: people who look like gangsters walk around wearing enormous tennis bracelets that would have cost a million dollars 20 years ago but can now be purchased for the price of a used Rolex.

Diamonds are going to become a sign of tackiness, as, frankly, they always should have been, rather than class or exclusivity. And then the game will be up for everyone in the diamond industry.

Expect the collapse in diamond prices to accelerate substantially over the next few years. The natural-diamond market is shrinking in both size and value and circling the drain following the commoditisation of its product by modern technology. The same thing happened to pearls… https://t.co/XdHRsgSp6h pic.twitter.com/c0zHoUqi2L

— Saul Sadka (@Saul_Sadka) August 9, 2026

Sadka continued in a series of follow-up tweets:

One of the biggest problems for hopes of a residual natural-diamond industry is that diamonds ARE, in fact, FOREVER. At some point, the market will shrink to the point where the secondhand supply, fed by the estates of Boomers as they fall off this mortal coil, will provide sufficient supply to make any mining or polishing uneconomic.

One of the biggest problems for hopes of a residual natural diamond industry is that diamonds ARE, in fact, FOREVER. At some point, the market will shrink to the point where second-hand supply, fed by the estates of Boomers as they fall off this mortal coil, will provide… pic.twitter.com/VkOhukpH5I

— Saul Sadka (@Saul_Sadka) August 10, 2026

This would have been true 30 years ago, and it would have been a big blow to the Israeli economy, but it’s not true anymore. The industry once accounted for up to 3% of Israeli GDP, but it’s now under 0.2%. Sorry, Turkey.

This would have been true 30 years ago, it would have been a big blow to the Israeli economy, but it’s not true anymore. They once were up to 3% of Israeli GDP, but its not under 0.2%.

Sorry Turkey. pic.twitter.com/pORcoY4GcK

— Saul Sadka (@Saul_Sadka) August 10, 2026

There might be some limited residual market at the high end, but my guess is that there will be enough supply from Boomers as they “check out” to glut that demand without any need for miners or cutters, etc.

There might be some limited residual market at the high end, but my guess is that there will be enough supply from the boomers as they “check out” to glut that demand without any need for miners or cutters etc.

— Saul Sadka (@Saul_Sadka) August 10, 2026

To sum up: natural diamonds face a structural, rather than cyclical, collapse. If you’re in the market for an engagement ring and hoping it will serve as some store of value, you might be out of luck because lab-grown stones are destroying the scarcity premium, while a potential wave of secondhand supply from aging Baby Boomers could pressure the market even further. 

Authored by Kimberley Hayek via The Epoch Times,

A federal judge on Monday largely dismissed Minnesota’s lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s interpretation of Title IX, the 1972 law that bars sex discrimination in federally funded education programs and activities.

U.S. District Chief Judge Eric Tostrud of the District of Minnesota ruled that most of the state’s claims fell short.

Minnesota had argued that the administration violated the Administrative Procedure Act and the 10th Amendment by determining that the state’s policies allowing transgender students to compete on sports teams and use facilities consistent with their gender identity breached federal law. Tostrud determined that the administration’s findings and related letters to the state to enforce Title IX did not constitute final agency action that could be challenged under the Administrative Procedure Act. The findings and letters themselves, he wrote, imposed “no legal injury on Minnesota.”

He also referenced a June Supreme Court decision upholding state bans on male athletes in female sports. While the high court did not rule on whether states or schools may allow such participation, the judge said its determination that “sex” in Title IX refers to biological sex offers “at least some support” for the administration’s reading of the statute.

Part of Lawsuit Still Standing

The orders also outlined penalties for federally funded entities that allow male athletes to compete in women’s sports. The administration used the threats of withholding federal education funding to press school districts to end policies allowing students to act based on their gender identity.

Tostrud left intact Minnesota’s challenge tied to the potential loss of roughly $2.9 billion in federal funding, finding that it presented a concrete injury for the court to consider.

The judge noted that the funding issue was a separate issue from challenging the interpretation of Title IX, as the state did not have “sufficiently clear notice” of Title IX’s prohibition on transgender women and girls at the time it accepted the federal funding.

Minnesota stands as the only state to sue President Donald Trump and his administration over his executive orders this term defining sex as binary.

The Justice Department’s enforcement action against the Minnesota Department of Education and the Minnesota State High School League for violating Title IX by allowing males to compete against and access intimate spaces designated for females remains pending.

The Minnesota Attorney General’s office has defended the state’s longstanding policies as consistent with the Minnesota Human Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination based on gender identity. The state has maintained that executive orders and agency findings cannot override state law or rewrite Title IX without proper process.