Last week we reported on a slow but progressing US-Belarus detente, after President Aleksandr Lukashenko agreed to release 52 political prisoners to NATO member Lithuania. In return, Washington granted sanctions relief to the country’s national airline Belavia. President Trump also issued Lukashenko a warm letter, and even a gift of cufflinks

Ironically this positive momentum between the US and Belarus is happening at a moment the Moscow-allied ‘Union State’ is hosting joint Russian war games, the “Zapad-2025” drills – also amid soaring tensions with NATO. But another unexpected development has occurred Monday: the Pentagon has sent representatives to observe the war games from Belarusian soil.

US military officers are on hand to observe the war games in what’s being described as a surprise visit wherein Belarusian Defense Minister Viktor Khrenin instructed that the US officials could look at “whatever is of interest for you.”

According to a description in Reuters:

“Who would have thought how the morning of another day of the Zapad-2025 exercise would begin?” it [the defense ministry] said in a statement noting their presence among representatives from 23 countries including two other NATO member states — Turkey and Hungary.

The ministry released video showing two uniformed U.S. officers thanking Khrenin for the invitation and shaking his hand. “We will show whatever is of interest for you. Whatever you want. You can go there and see, talk to people,” the minister told the Americans, who declined to speak to reporters.

This development is also unprecedented and highly unusual given Belarus has been Moscow’s closest partner in executing the ‘special military operation’ in neighboring Ukraine, having utilized its territory to send tens of thousands of Russian troops into Ukraine in February 2022 and after.

Watch: American greeted by the Belarusian Defense Minister, Viktor Khrenin, who, according to the Belarus MoD, instructed his military to provide “the best seats for American guests, and to show absolutely everything that interests them.”

🇧🇾🇷🇺🇺🇸 The Ministry of Defense of Belarus released footage showing U.S. military officers making a visit at the joint Russia-Belarus “Zapad-2025” strategic exercise in Belarus to observe the ongoing drills.

“Who would have thought how the morning of the next day of the… pic.twitter.com/mSbTUlXkp7

— Status-6 (Military & Conflict News) (@Archer83Able) September 15, 2025

Cross-border drone operations have also at times been reportedly launched from Belarusian territory. There’s also the fact that President Putin had previously ordered strategic nuclear weapons to be stationed at Belarusian bases, overseen by Russian military and intelligence officers.

The Zelensky government, as well as his hawkish backers in Europe and among NATO allies, will likely be furious at this news. They will see it as the Trump admin ‘colluding’ with the enemy amid the standoff with the West.

Importantly, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov in fresh remarks Monday painted a picture of NATO and Russia being in a de facto state of war.

“NATO is at war with Russia. It is obvious and does not require any additional proof,” he told a press briefing. “NATO is de facto involved in this war. NATO provides both indirect and direct support to the Kiev regime. Therefore, it can be said with absolute certainty that NATO is at war with Russia.”

‼️Americans at Lukashenka and Putin’s drills

Unexpected guests at Belarusian training grounds: U.S. officers shake hands with Defense Minister Viktor Khrenin during joint Russia–Belarus military exercises observed by representatives from 23 countries, including the U.S., Turkey,… pic.twitter.com/o8QRMJIe7c

— NEXTA (@nexta_tv) September 15, 2025

While many among Trump’s base have been disappointed that Washington has not yet deescalated its involvement, seeing US colonels in Belarus seems a clear sign that Trump is still serious about seeing it happen. Pentagon officers on hand is largely symbolic, and yet it is resounding, even as US sanctions still exist on the Belarusian government and its military. For now the White House is content with drastically improving its bilateral ties with both Moscow and Minsk, as the war grinds on.

Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

Airbus is much worse than Boeing on toxic fumes sucked into planes.

Toxic Fumes Are Leaking Into Airplanes

The number of airplane fume incidents is soaring. People and pilots are getting sick. In some cases, people have been crippled for life. Smaller airlines are worse, and Airbus is much worse than Boeing.

The FAA knows the exact cause and refuses to take action. Primarily it’s design flaws and maintenance.

On most planes, about half the air in the aircraft is recirculated. Fume events occur when engine oils and hydraulic fluids leak into the section of the engine that recirculates air.

The Wall Street Journal has an excellent trio of links regarding toxic fumes leaking into airccraft. With thanks to the Journal, here are free links to a set of articles on the problem.

FAA Has Been Ignoring the Problem for Years

Please consider Toxic Fumes Are Leaking Into Airplanes, Sickening Crews and Passengers

“Do you smell that?” Florence Chesson was asked by a fellow Jet Blue flight attendant as they prepared for landing in Puerto Rico.

Chesson, as trained, inhaled a lungful of air through her nostrils in a single deep breath. “It smells like dirty feet,” she told her colleague.

Instantly, she started to feel like she had been drugged, Chesson said in an interview.

When the flight landed, the two cabin crew were taken to a hospital in an ambulance, one on a stretcher.

Chesson, her uniform and hair soaked in sweat and with an overpowering metallic taste in her mouth, went to meet her supervisors. “I felt like I was talking gibberish,” she recalled. “I remember being very repetitive, saying ‘What just happened to me? What just happened to me?’”

After months of worsening symptoms, Chesson was diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury and permanent damage to her peripheral nervous system caused by the fumes she inhaled. Her doctor, Robert Kaniecki, a neurologist and consultant to the Pittsburgh Steelers, said in an interview that the effects on her brain were akin to a chemical concussion and “extraordinarily similar” to those of a National Football League linebacker after a brutal hit. “It’s impossible not to draw that conclusion,” he said.

Kaniecki said he has treated about a dozen pilots and over 100 flight attendants for brain injuries after exposure to fumes on aircraft over the last 20 years. Another was a passenger, a frequent flier with Delta’s top-tier rewards status who was injured in 2023.

The Journal’s reporting—based on a review of more than one million FAA and National Aeronautics and Space Administration reports, thousands of pages of documents and research papers and more than 100 interviews—shows that aircraft manufacturers and their airline customers have played down health risks, successfully lobbied against safety measures, and made cost-saving changes that increased the risks to crew and passengers.

In a February incident captured on video by several passengers, enough oil entered the bleed air supply of a Boeing 717 that thick plumes of smoke started piling through the vents midflight. “Ladies and gentlemen, please breathe through your clothing, stay low,” the Delta Air Lines flight attendant told passengers, some of whom had noticed a strange smell during takeoff.

In a 2017 internal email, excerpts of which were produced in a lawsuit, Boeing quality inspector Steven Reiman wrote:

Just think what would happen if people realized they are being poisoned by coming to work on our airplanes or as passengers.

The FAA on its website says the incidents are “rare” and cites a 2015 review that estimated a rate of “less than 33 events per million aircraft departures.” That rate would suggest a total of about 330 fume events on U.S. airlines last year.

In reality, the FAA received more than double that number of reports of fume events in 2024 from the 15 biggest U.S. airlines alone, according to the Journal’s analysis of service difficulty reports for flights between 2010 and early 2025. The rate has soared in recent years. In 2014, the Journal found about 12 fume events per million departures. By 2024, the rate had jumped to nearly 108.

The Journal’s analysis suggests that the growth is driven by the world’s bestselling aircraft: the Airbus A320. In 2024, among the three largest U.S. airlines with mixed fleets, the rate of reports on A320s had increased to more than seven times the rate on their Boeing 737 aircraft.

At JetBlue and Spirit—both majority-Airbus operators—the increase is stark. Together, the airlines saw a 660% surge in the frequency of incidents on their A320s between 2016 and 2024.

The Journal’s analysis shows incidents began climbing in 2016, the year Airbus started delivering its new A320neo, what would become the world’s fastest-selling model. It boasted a new generation of fuel-efficient engines, including one that was plagued by rapidly degrading seals meant to keep oil from leaking into the air supply.

Under pressure from airlines who complained that fume events were keeping aircraft out of service for up to days at a time, Airbus loosened maintenance rules, according to a review of internal documents and people familiar with the changes.

The FAA inspector wrote:

These toxic chemicals are present in today’s modern synthetic jet engine oils and are passing into the aircraft cabin/cockpit unfiltered, affecting the air that crew and passengers breathe in.

‘Passed out pilots’

The United Nations has formally recognized fume events as a risk to flight safety since 2015. In addition, more than a dozen accident investigation teams in countries across the world have asked Boeing, Airbus and their regulators to implement measures to mitigate the risk, according to a review of official accident investigation reports. No major changes have been made.

One exception is the 787, Boeing’s first all-new design since smoking on commercial planes was fully banned in the U.S.

An email chain from Boeing’s early marketing meetings for the plane showed managers were grappling with how and whether to promote the new design. In one marketing brief it was referred to as “removing gaseous contaminants” from the air supply.

One executive was concerned that “if we elaborate on the 787 air purification and say how great and important it is,” he’d be asked why the system wasn’t available on Boeing’s other models, according to a deposition citing internal Boeing documents.

Congress is trying again. A bipartisan bill reintroduced last month would phase out the use of bleed air and require specialized filters on aircraft within seven years.

What You Need to Know About Fume Events on Airplanes

Next, please consider What You Need to Know About Fume Events on Airplanes

Due to a design element that has been a feature of almost every commercial jetliner since the 1950s, toxic fumes can leak from jet engines into the cabin or cockpit. The fumes have led to emergency landings, sickened passengers and crew members, and affected pilots’ vision and reaction times midflight, according to official reports.

The health effects are often mild but can also be severe, including brain injuries. Here’s what to know:

Where does the air on a flight come from?

On most planes, about half the air in the aircraft is recirculated. That refers to air that’s already on the plane that’s breathed in and exhaled by passengers with the remaining oxygen filtered and then pumped back inside the cabin. The other half is pulled from outside via the aircraft’s engines using a system known as “bleed air.” Engines are used for air supply on every modern aircraft, with the exception of Boeing’s 787.

Sorry, but why is my air pulled through an engine?

Good question! Because air at altitude is very thin and very cold, it has to be compressed and heated before it can be sent to us to breathe. Aircraft manufacturers realized in the 1950s that jet engines were already doing that work, and they decided to “bleed” the air from the engines’ compression chambers and then run it through air conditioners to get it back down to breathable temperatures. Fume events occur when engine oils and hydraulic fluids leak into that section of the engine.

How worried should I be?

It doesn’t happen often. The rates we identified in 2024 showed an incident rate on top U.S. airlines of 108 per one million departures, or roughly twice a day. But we also know that fume events are massively underreported. Internal industry data reviewed by the Journal estimated a rate of 800 incidents per million flights in the U.S., or just about 22 a day. Still, as one researcher put it, it’s highly unlikely you’ll be exposed, but almost guaranteed it’ll happen on an aircraft somewhere in the U.S. today.

What about dropdown oxygen masks and existing air filters? Should I bring my own mask?

Because dropdown passenger oxygen masks aren’t sealed, they don’t provide proper protection. In one extreme fume event investigated by the FAA, passengers stood on their seats to break into the overhead compartments to access the masks—that’s a safety hazard that can cause other problems on a flight.

Cloth and even N95 masks also aren’t designed to filter vapors and gases. Until fume events have been addressed, often the best bet is to flag it to your cabin crew.

Why do cabin crew appear to be the most at risk?

There’s some evidence indicating that repeat exposures coalesce to cause more-severe damage. Cabin crew aren’t just flying more, but are also more active when they do. That means their breathing rates are typically higher than a seated and docile passenger.

While pilots have longer-lasting emergency oxygen supplies, cabin crew only have access to 15-minute oxygen tanks, which is often shorter than it takes for a pilot to divert and land the aircraft. Prolonged use of that oxygen supply is also dangerous.

Also, it’s possible we’re only more aware of affected crew because of the lack of awareness among passengers. Whereas crews have avenues to report their exposure, passengers don’t. Because symptoms can take time to fully manifest, the connection between exposure and symptoms becomes harder to make.

How the Journal Analyzed More Than One Million FAA Reports

Finally, please consider How the Journal Analyzed More Than One Million FAA Reports

The Federal Aviation Administration, airplane manufacturers and airlines don’t release a public accounting of how often engine fumes leak into airplane cabins. So The Wall Street Journal conducted its own.

Airlines are required to submit “service difficulty reports” to the FAA detailing many kinds of operational issues they encounter during a flight. The Journal built a database of more than one million of them—every accessible filing from 2010 through mid-2025. SDRs contain identifying information about the aircraft as well as narrative text describing the issue.

“These reports are an important part of the FAA’s safety surveillance system,” an FAA spokeswoman said in a statement. “By collecting this information across thousands of aircraft and operators, the FAA can identify trends, detect patterns, and spot potential risks.”

To ensure a clean comparison, the Journal limited its analysis to the aircraft built by the three largest planemakers and flown by the top fifteen U.S. carriers by number of departures with one point in the U.S. between 2010 and the first quarter of 2025—the last date for which there were reliable departure statistics.

Journal reporters used machine learning algorithms, large-language models and manual review to find reports describing so-called fume events. In these, oil or hydraulic fluid contaminates the air supply and causes fumes to enter the cabin or flight deck. To validate the methodology, reporters spoke with experts and reviewed multiple studies, including one with funding from the FAA, as well as internal documents from aircraft manufacturers and airlines.

The Journal’s analysis was a two-step process. First, reporters trained a statistical model using a list of classified SDRs compiled by Judith Anderson, a researcher and occupational health specialist at the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA union who advocates on this issue and whose work the FAA cites for its 33 fume events per million departures figure. Testing against 25% of Anderson’s data not used in the training, the model correctly identified fume events 94% of the time.

To minimize false positives, reporters then created a prompt for a large language model based on academic literature and aviation industry documents. Only reports classified as fume events by both methods were counted.

Airbus Statement

“Airbus aircraft are designed and manufactured according to all relevant and applicable airworthiness requirements,” a spokesman said in a statement.

Yeah, right.

Criminal Behavior

It’s criminal behavior by the airlines and the FAA to not immediately address these issues.

The Journal reported “Airbus loosened maintenance rules, according to a review of internal documents.”

Airbus and the airlines lobbied for this to prevent planes from being grounded.

Authored by Roger Kimball via American Greatness,

In the aftermath of the brutal assassination of Charlie Kirk last week, does the Right need to “lower the temperature” of its rhetoric? That’s what the usual suspects on the Left are saying.

As it happens, “lowering the temperature” while simultaneously raising the intelligence of discussion was one of Charlie Kirk’s specialties. A theme of his campus “American Comeback” tour (which his widow Erika plans to continue) was dignified debate. “Prove Me Wrong” was Charlie’s mantra. He eagerly engaged with college students who disagreed—or, sometimes, merely thought they disagreed—with him about a wide range of political, social, moral, and religious issues.

If you have never seen him debate, I recommend you consult Mr. Google or one of his professional counterparts and watch Charlie in action. He was robust but also unfailingly kind, patient, and attentive to his interlocutors. The reason? He wished to persuade his audience about the rightness of his point of view, about the virtues of America, the wisdom of Christianity, and the leadership of Donald Trump. Charlie was fundamentally a teacher.

How about his opponents?

The internet is full of revelatory compilations of left-wingers denouncing their opponents as “fascists,” “Nazis,” and so on.

One series (and here is another) includes CNN’s Anderson Cooper asking Kamala Harris whether she thinks Donald Trump is “a fascist.” “Yes, I do” was her answer.

The word “fascist” had obviously been circulated by Democrat headquarters on the run-up to the 2024 election. Tim “Nimrod” Walz (remember him?) told a crowd that “No one has ever been more dangerous to this country than Donald Trump and he is a fascist to his core.”

“There needs to be blood,” we are told, which is only natural, since, as Senator Chris Murphy from Connecticut said, “We’re in a war right now, so you have to be willing to do whatever is necessary to save the country.” New York Governor Kathy Hochul agreed. “We are at war,” she said. In his infamous speech at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Joe Biden said that “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.” “The very foundations of our republic,” forsooth! Nancy Pelosi, reflecting on Donald Trump’s border policy, said, “I don’t know why there aren’t uprisings all over the country and maybe there will be.”

Uprisings are something that House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries can get behind. “We are going to fight this in the streets,” a sentiment echoed by Illinois Governor JB Pritzker: “Time to step out into the streets,” he said.

It is all part of the ethic summarized by Eric “Wingman” Holder, Barack Obama’s loyal attorney general. “They go low,” he said, “we kick them.”

It has long been obvious that Left has a black belt in what psychologists call “projection.”

They are masters of the art of accusing their ideological opponents of vile things of which they themselves are guilty. Their demand that we all must work to “lower the temperature” and “come together” in unity after the murder of Charlie Kirk is a subset of projection. They call their opponents “fascists” and an “extreme threat to the very foundation of the republic,” but when someone from their flock responds with violence, they blame “intemperate,” “right-wing,” MAGA rhetoric.

The tactic is not working this time. That cosmic suspiration you heard on Thursday night was the sigh of relief issued by the left when it learned that Tyler Robinson, the 22-year-old man who killed Charlie Kirk, was white and that he came from a family of Republican Trump supporters. “You said he would be a black transsexual Trump hater, and here it turns out he is a cisgendered MAGA-supporting cracker.”

Nice try. Social media was full of that contention in the immediate aftermath of Robinson’s being identified as the shooter.

White Robinson certainly is. But he is also, as Utah Governor Spencer Cox put it, “deeply indoctrinated with leftist ideology.” A complete inventory of Robinson’s hatreds is still being compiled. As for the transgender motif, it turns out that his roommate (some outlets say his “partner”) is in the process of “transitioning.” Hmm. I suspect many people will, like me, agree with the commentator Scott Adams: “When the Charlie Kirk story first broke,” Adams wrote, “I unfairly leapt to the assumption the shooter was probably trans. Now, I feel terrible for making that assumption because the killer was only the boyfriend of a trans. I was way off.”

Adams added, “I am now unfairly leaping to the assumption the boyfriend is on antidepressants.”

It is curious that the last question Charlie Kirk was asked before being murdered bore on the question of transgenderism.

“Do you know how many transgender Americans have been mass shooters over the last 10 years?”

Charlie replied, “Too many.”

He was then asked, “Do you know how many mass shooters there have been in America over the last 10 years?”

Charlie replied, “Counting or not counting gang violence?”

Charlie was then assassinated.

The left is terrified by the response to the ideologically motivated murder of Charlie Kirk. They should be. In the couple of days since the shooting, his organization, Turning Point, has signed up 18,000 new chapters. There have been mass demonstrations across the country—indeed, across the world—expressing sorrow at Charlie’s death and solidarity with his humane and humanizing ideas. As has been often pointed out, unlike the destructive “demonstrations” (what the rest of us would rightly call riots) that followed the death of the career-criminal, drug-abusing, arrest-resisting George Floyd, the mass gatherings for Charlie have featured prayer, not arson.

One key lesson that emerged from the horror of Charlie Kirk’s assassination was summed up neatly by a post on X: “They don’t kill you because you’re a Nazi; they call you a Nazi so they can kill you.” More and more people are coming to understand this.

One bullet fired by a deranged leftist silenced Charlie Kirk forever. But it also awakened millions of embryonic followers. It is too soon to say for certain what the aftermath of his tragic death will be. I would not be surprised if the words “Turning Point” eventually come to be seen to name not only Charlie Kirk’s organization but also a mighty fulcrum created by his death.

A US appeals court issued an 11th ruling, blocking President Trump from removing mortgage-challenged Fed Governor Lisa Cook from her post while her lawsuit challenging the dismissal proceeds. In a win for the embattled economist, an appeals court in Washington on Monday affirmed that Cook can continue working for now. The ruling means that she can attend the Fed’s highly anticipated Sept. 16-17 meeting to vote on whether to lower interest rates. Still, Trump will immediately ask the Supreme Court to step in, at which point all bets are off. 

On Sept 9, US District Judge Jia Cobb – and a sister of the same sorority in which Cook was formerly a member – ruled that Cook could remain on the job as her case proceeded, saying that Trump’s attempt to oust her likely violated the law. The appeals court decision allows that ruling to stand for now.

BREAKING: The DC Circuit has *rejected* Trump’s bid to fire Lisa Cook from the Fed board, allowing her to participate in tomorrow’s interest-rate setting meeting.

Trump’s last hope is a quick stay from SCOTUS. https://t.co/wNtfx9GWW2 pic.twitter.com/1eZGAmLjhO

— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) September 16, 2025

Last month, Cook sued Trump after the president moved to oust her over allegations of mortgage fraud, which she denies even though she has yet to give a clear reason why she listed two primary residences. The lawsuit has emerged as a major flash-point in the growing clash between the White House and the Fed, which has resisted Trump’s demands to lower interest rates.

What is somewhat ironic in this whole situation, is that Trump is pursuing the person seen as one of the biggest doves on the FOMC during the Biden admin. As Rabobank’s Benjamin Picton wrote this morning, “Bloomberg Economics lists Cook amongst the most dovish Fed Governors on its spectrometer, which seems to run counter to the idea that Trump wants to stack the FOMC with doves.”

So what is really going on here? Could it be, Picton asks, that the President is convinced that Fed Governors’ determinations of the appropriateness of monetary policy are not a purely technocratic process and actually exhibit some malleability dependent on who happens to be occupying the White House?

If he is right, this former super dove may well vote for a rate hike on Wednesday (even as Bowman and Waller vote for a 50bps rate cut), in the process confirming what Trump may have set out to demonstrate all along: that the Fed is anything but independent, may very well be vindictive, and is certainly not impartial depending on who is in the White House. 

In somewhat offsetting news, and hitting at almost the same time as the Cook update, the Senate confirmed Trump’s economic adviser Stephen Miran, to a post on the Fed Board, clearing his presence at the Wednesday meeting. 

In a 48-47 vote along party lines, the Senate voted to approve Miran’s nomination, setting him up to walk into the Fed’s Washington offices Tuesday morning, just in time for a crucial FOMC meeting scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday. Republicans had fast-tracked approval of Miran’s nomination with Trump pressuring the central bank to cut interest rates. 

Investors and economists surveyed by Bloomberg expect Fed officials to lower rates by a quarter percentage point on Wednesday, although there i a roughly 10% chance of  a 50bps rate cut, which by the way is what we got exactly a year ago, when inflation was far hotter, and when the economy was decidedly stronger, especially following last week’s record negative jobs revision. 

“I think you have a big cut,” Trump told reporters on Sunday on his way back to Washington. “It’s perfect for cutting.”

Miran had to sit through his second grueling hearing this year, facing Democrats who ripped his temporary leave of absence from the White House as ridiculous and a threat to the independence of the central bank, especially after Trump moved to fire Fed Governor Lisa Cook and bragged to reporters he would soon have “a majority” on the Fed board.

“Every claim he makes and every vote he takes will be tainted with the suspicion that he isn’t an honest broker, but instead is Donald Trump’s puppet,” Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts said at his hearing.

Ironically, it was the same Senator who exactly one year ago, said that the “Fed must cut by 75bps on Sept 18” and then Powell proceeded to cut by 50bps two days later, confirming he was Warren’s – and Biden’s – puppet.

Elizabeth Warren, Sept 16, 2024: “Fed must cut by 75bps on Sept 18” (Fed cut 50bps two days later)

Elizabeth Warren, Sept 15, 2025: “Every claim [Stephen Miran] makes and every vote he takes will be tainted with the suspicion that he is Donald Trump’s puppet” pic.twitter.com/dXFgTC9wu1

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) September 16, 2025

Miran, who has chaired the White House Council of Economic Advisers, told senators he would take an unpaid leave of absence to join the Fed, with no clarity yet on how long he might remain. Trump could nominate him for a full 14-year term to begin in February, or he could choose someone else. Miran could also stay on indefinitely if Trump chooses no one to fill the new term.

One thing is certain: Miran will vote for a 25bps rate cut, and may even vote 50, and he won’t be alone since both Waller and Bowman may do the same. Which means that on Wednesday history may be made when we get a four-way vote split: uber doves voting for a 50bps rate cut, Powell and the “moderates” voting for 25bps. Then you have the hard-line pro-Biden supporters (sorry guys, hate to break it to you, but the Fed – which until recently was tasked with enabling a green agenda and social “equity” – has never been and never will be independent) like Goolsbee and Hammack, who may vote to keep rates unchanged, and there is the Lisa Cook wildcard, who may decided to go scorched earth and to vote for a 25bps rate hike. 

In such a circus outcome, all bets will truly be off. 

With just over two weeks until yet another episode of government funding distraction theatre, Congress is bracing for a high-stakes showdown that could once again bring the federal government to the brink of a shutdown.

House Republicans this week plan to introduce a short-term measure, known as a continuing resolution, that would keep the government open until Nov. 20 while appropriators attempt to negotiate a broader deal on fiscal year 2026 spending. GOP leaders are framing the bill as a “clean” extension, free of partisan add-ons.

But the proposal pointedly excludes provisions Democrats are demanding, particularly on health care. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) have said they will not support a stopgap that fails to address issues such as Medicaid cuts or Affordable Care Act premium subsidies.

“If Republicans follow Donald Trump’s orders to not even bother dealing with Democrats, they will be single handedly putting our country on the path towards a shutdown,” a Schumer spokesperson told Punchbowl News.

Republicans, led by Senate Minority Leader John Thune (R-SD), say they have no intention of adding health-care policy to a seven-week extension. “This is about buying time, not rewriting law,” Thune said last week.

House Dynamics

The first hurdle lies in the House. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) is under pressure to release the bill text soon, with Republicans traditionally granting 72 hours for review. With Democrats unlikely to support the measure, Johnson can afford to lose no more than two GOP votes. And since Kentucky Republican Thomas Massie is expected to oppose the measure, Johnson is left with almost no margin for error.

Johnson is expected to argue that failing to pass a GOP-only bill would weaken Republicans’ leverage in the negotiations. But conservatives remain wary, fearing the Senate could eventually force through a bipartisan long-term deal more favorable to Democrats.

Senate Timetable

Should the House pass the bill, the Senate could begin work later in the week. Without unanimous consent, processing the measure could consume several days, potentially cutting into the chamber’s planned recess for Rosh Hashanah. Schumer and Jeffries are preparing to filibuster the GOP bill, raising the risk of a shutdown if neither side budges.

Both parties appear confident in their positions. Republicans argue Democrats are overreaching; Democrats counter that Republicans are refusing to negotiate. Historically, Republicans have absorbed more political blame in shutdown fights.

Security Questions

Amid the funding standoff, security for lawmakers has emerged as another point of tension. The White House has requested $58 million for executive and judicial branch security, with the Trump administration indicating support for extending additional protection to lawmakers. Democrats, still unsettled by recent threats, held a call Sunday with U.S. Capitol Police Chief Michael Sullivan to discuss extending the $5,000-per-month member security allowance, set to expire at the end of September.

With only 15 days remaining before current funding lapses, the chances of a shutdown are rising. Democrats are signaling unity behind their leadership, while Republicans are struggling to maintain cohesion in the House. Unless one side concedes, the standoff

President Donald Trump on Monday threatened to declare a national emergency in Washington DC after Mayor Muriel Bowser announced that DC police will no longer cooperate with federal immigration enforcement. 

Last month Trump declared a crime emergency in the nation’s capitol – with a 30-day federal takeover beginning on Aug. 11, which included federal law enforcement and National Guard troops to combat crime in the city. 

With that 30 day emergency now over, Trump said Bowser had notified the administration that the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) will end its cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which Trump strongly opposes. 

“The Federal Government, under my auspices as President of the United States of America, has stepped into the complete criminal mess that was Washington, D.C., our Nation’s Capital,” Trump posted to Truth Social. “Because of this, D.C. has gone from one of the most dangerous and murder ridden cities in the U.S.A., and even around the world, to one of the safest — in just a few weeks.”

According to Trump, “crime would come roaring back” if the MPD stops cooperating with ICE, and said he would federalize the police department again if he feels its necessary.

“To the people and businesses of Washington, D.C., DON’T WORRY, I AM WITH YOU, AND WON’T ALLOW THIS TO HAPPEN. I’ll call a National Emergency, and Federalize, if necessary,” he continued.

Last week Bowser told reporters that the MPD’s public safety mission remains unchanged, but the department will no longer help ICE after the emergency order expires. 

“The presidential declaration compels the mayor to provide MPD services as requested by the president during the emergency for federal purposes. Immigration enforcement is such a service,” she said. “Immigration enforcement is not what MPD does. And with the end of the emergency, it won’t be what MPD does in the future.”

LIVE: Mayor Bowser Hosts Press Q&A https://t.co/Djowx4b6AM

— Mayor Muriel Bowser (@MayorBowser) September 10, 2025

Earlier this month Bowser signed an executive order to establish the “Safe and Beautiful Emergency Operations Center” (lol wut), or SBEOC – which is tasked with overseeing DC’s response to Trump’s federal task force, which will continue coordinating law enforcement efforts with federal agencies including the US Marshals Service and the DEA, but does not include ICE. 

Over 2,000 arrests have been made across the DC area since the federal takeover began, according to FBI Director Kash Patel. Meanwhile, the National Guard has extended its troop encampment in the nation’s capital through Nov. 30. 

Even Bowser admitted late last month that crime has decreased since Trump deployed Guard troops and took federal control of the MPD, the Epoch Times notes. 

Authored by Joseph Varon via The Brownstone Institute,

For 715 consecutive days — every single day — I put on full protective gear in the ICU at Houston’s United Memorial Medical Center, fighting Covid-19 on the frontlines.

I never took a day off, because when lives hang in the balance, doctors don’t get the luxury of excuses. We act. We fight. We serve.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was created to serve with that same urgency — to protect Americans from infectious disease through science, transparency, and rapid response.

But what the public got instead during the pandemic was an agency more obsessed with narratives and control than with saving lives.

During the pandemic, the CDC didn’t just make mistakes — it fundamentally betrayed its mission. It manipulated data, censored debate, and colluded with Big Tech to silence dissenting physicians. That isn’t science — that’s politics and narrative-control masquerading as public health, and it comes at a dear cost to this nation.

That’s why HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. must enact a forceful and immediate, top-to-bottom house cleaning.

Consider just a few of the documented failures.

• The CDC released Covid-19 test kits with internally known fundamental defects, contributing to catastrophic delays in detecting the virus.

• It shifted guidance back and forth on whether to require masks — not based on any evidence but under political pressure. This helped destroy public trust.

• Then there’s the data manipulation — at least 25 documented statistical errors, 80 percent of them exaggerating the severity of the pandemic.

• The agency suppressed transparency, refusing to release full vaccine injury data because the public “might misinterpret it.”

• It colluded in censorship, training Facebook, X, and Google employees to erase posts from experienced physicians who challenged CDC orthodoxy.

• It surveilled US citizens, buying massive location-tracking databases to monitor lockdown compliance.

• It also buried risk data, scrubbing evidence of myocarditis risk from the vaccine and overcounting child deaths from the virus. This fueled destructive school closures and unnecessary child masking.

These are not minor missteps. They represent institutional malpractice — an agency actively choosing political control over scientific honesty.

It has cost countless lives.

Even as frontline doctors treated wave after wave of patients, the CDC insulated itself behind bureaucratic walls, doubling down on arrogance and ideology.

Instead of humbly correcting course, the agency turned inward, obsessed with power and control.

The result? Americans no longer know if they can trust the very institution designed to protect them.

Public health depends on trust. Once lost, it is nearly impossible to rebuild.

Again, that’s why Kennedy must take bold action now, at this juncture, to restore integrity. That means purging the political operatives and career bureaucrats who turned the CDC into a fortress of ideology. It means bringing in real doctors —leaders with actual hands-on clinical experience, not detached administrators or partisan activists. It means requiring full, unredacted release of all data — good, bad, or inconvenient.

In short, to rebuild trust, Kennedy must make sure the CDC is putting patients and science first, not politics and profit.

The CDC desperately needs leaders who understand that their first duty is not to narratives, not to politicians, and not to authority or control, but to the health and well-being of the American people.

The CDC’s failures during the Covid-19 pandemic were not just bureaucratic errors. They were betrayals that cost lives, undermined freedom, and shattered trust. Unless we act now, the next public health crisis will expose an even weaker, more distrusted CDC — one that Americans may simply ignore from the outset.

As a doctor who has dedicated my life to saving patients, I will not stand silent. The American people deserve a CDC worthy of its name, that works harder to control diseases than it does to control narratives.

Republished from The Hill

We’re all for free speech – even disgusting free speech… but then there’s assault. A Texas Tech student found herself in hot water after mocking the brutal assassination of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk during a prayer vigil for the prominent conservative activist.

Camryn Giselle Booker, 18, was caught on camera jumping around, yelling at students, and shoving her phone on the faces of people honoring Kirk, callously shouting, “Fcuk y’all homie dead, he got shot in the head.” The outrageous behavior didn’t stop there. Booker confronted a man in a red MAGA hat, who groaned and remarked while panning to her, “Evil is real, people — and it kind of looks like that.”

Update: she was arrested and expelled from her college pic.twitter.com/oQJpfr0L4S

— GABRIEL™ 🪽 (@TheGabriel72) September 14, 2025

The footage shows Booker erupting when someone off-camera suggested she was being too emotional. “I’m not being emotional, ma’am. Don’t tell me what I am and what I’m not,” she snapped. “’You could get out of my face ’cause I can tell you what you are, but you won’t like it.”

“I want to be left alone,” said a man in a MAGA hat, before someone told Booker she was being emotional. 

According to the Daily Mail;

The situation then escalated when Booker allegedly shoved several people, including an elderly veteran and a young mother with her child – which prompted a physical altercation that spread into the street.

Booker was then taken into custody and was charged with battery, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest and was cited for assault.

She was released on a $200 bond the next day, the Lubbock County Sheriff’s Office confirmed to the Daily Mail.

Booker then played the race card (shocking, we know), accusing vigil attendees of bigotry for calling out her disgraceful conduct. “I’m not being aggressive. My voice is very calm. You’re calling me aggressive because I’m a black woman,” she claimed.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R) didn’t hold back, sharing an image of Booker in handcuffs. “This is what happened to the person who was mocking Charlie Kirk’s assassination at Texas Tech,” he wrote, adding the blunt acronym “FAFO” — short for “Fuck around and find out.”

This is what happened to the person who was mocking Charlie Kirk’s assassination at Texas Tech.

FAFO https://t.co/eaFMdWKsIS pic.twitter.com/q6z0X2tLLQ

— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) September 15, 2025

Booker was hit with charges of battery, disorderly conduct, and resisting arrest, with an additional citation for assault, according to the New York Post. She was released on a measly $200 bond the next day. Texas Tech has since expelled her for her appalling actions.

Texas Tech University told Newsweek in a statement that the “referenced individual is no longer enrolled at Texas Tech University.”

“Any behavior that denigrates victims of violence is reprehensible, has no place on our campus, and is not aligned with our values,” the spokesperson told the news outlet.

Kirk was gunned down on stage Wednesday evening during a packed “American Comeback Tour” event at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah. Video footage captured the horrifying moment as Kirk, mid-debate on transgender gun violence with a heckling audience member, recoiled in agony from a sniper’s bullet to the neck, collapsing in a pool of his own blood before stunned bodyguards and supporters dragged him to safety. A 22-year-old suspect, Tyler Robinson, has since been apprehended after a frantic 33-hour manhunt fueled by surveillance images, but the alleged assassin refuses to cooperate. Utah Governor Spencer Cox (R) confirmed that Robinson harbored a “leftist ideology” and was reportedly living with a transgender person, Lance Twiggs, with whom he was in a romantic relationship.

*  *  *

EDC Must-have…

Or a bit more colorful…

Authored by Autumn Spredemann via The Epoch Times,

Artificial intelligence-generated code has become a daily fixture for developers across the technological spectrum. These digital tools have made writing lengthy code much easier. However, experts say this trade-off comes with new security risks and a continued need for human oversight.

Developers say artificial intelligence (AI) slashes a lot of the grunt work in writing code, but seasoned developers are spotting flaws at an alarming rate.

The security testing company Veracode published research in July—gathered from more than 100 large language model (LLM) AI tools—that showed while AI generates working code at astonishing speed, it’s also rife with cyberattack potential.

The report noted 45 percent of code samples failed security tests and introduced vulnerabilities outlined by the cybersecurity nonprofit, the Open Worldwide Application Security Project.

Veracode researchers called the study’s findings a “wake-up call for developers, security leaders, and anyone relying on AI to move faster.”

Some experts say the high number of security flaws isn’t shocking given AI’s current limitations with coding.

“I’m surprised the percentage isn’t higher. AI-generated code, even when it works, tends to have a lot of logical flaws that simply reflect a lack of context and thoughtfulness,” Kirk Sigmon, programmer and partner at intellectual property law firm Banner Witcoff, told The Epoch Times.

Cybersecurity researcher and former mission operator for the Iris Lunar Rover, Harshvardhan Chunawala, compared AI code writing to home building. He said it’s like having AI draft a quick blueprint for a house, but the blueprint might include doors that don’t lock, windows that don’t fit, or wiring that’s unsafe.

And with AI’s advance into critical digital infrastructure, he said the system isn’t just making “blueprints” anymore, but ordering materials and beginning construction before a foundation inspection has taken place.

“A human architect still has to check every detail before the ‘house’ is safe to live in,” Chunawala said.

Sigmon has extensive coding experience with AI and its subset, machine learning. He used a recent example to highlight the limitations of AI-generated code.

“I was helping a friend program a space-themed website one night, and I tried to see if an LLM could give me some quick and easy code for CSS3-friendly panoramic stars for the website background,” he said.

Sigmon noted the results were underwhelming and demonstrated AI’s current limitations.

“The model’s output did indeed comprise code that tried to generate stars, but it lumped all of them in the upper-right corner of the browser and, instead of making them twinkle nicely, made them strobe like some sort of impromptu rave,” he said.

“It knew to draw stars in a background and knew they should twinkle, but had no bigger-picture context on why I’d want that, much less how it could look aesthetically pleasing.”

Sigmon said AI-generated code is also creating lazy habits that will have an impact on the industry’s future.

“Code quality has gotten way, way worse overall. One of the more concerning issues is on the academic side. If students can use AI models to generate their homework projects, then they don’t tend to learn good coding practices,” he said.

Hallucinating Code

Sigmon said he learned to code the way many old-school programmers did: through trial and error.

“The ready availability of lazy, AI-generated code means that new graduates are entering the workforce and also generating bad [or] unreliable code, which means that lots of programs are simply becoming worse,” he said.

Consequently, many modern codebases are largely incomprehensible or not very useful anymore, according to Sigmon.

“I used to be able to pick up any other coder’s work and roughly understand their intent … Nowadays, lots of it just gives me a crippling headache,” he said.

A person holds a telephone displaying OpenAI s ChatGPT artificial intelligence logo in Brittany, France ,on Feb. 26 2025. Vincent Feuray/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images

A fellow coder and former web content manager who asked only to be referred to by his first name, James, agreed with Sigmon.

“You need to be really careful with your edits. You just can’t trust AI code,” James told The Epoch Times. He said coders need to be careful because the more complex a project gets, the worse AI’s “hallucinations” will be.

When AI perceives a pattern or object that either doesn’t exist or is imperceptible to human observers, it can create outputs that are either illogical or just plain wrong. This pattern is often referred to as a “hallucination,” and James said it can be an infuriating part of dealing with AI-generated code.

“You can get pretty far down the line [in code] before realizing there’s a mistake and AI was just hallucinating,” he said.

AI hallucinations have already made headlines for the problems they can create in the workplace. A 2024 study observed LLMs had a “hallucination” rate between 69 percent and 88 percent, based on responses to specific legal queries.

Stanford RegLab and the Institute for Human-Centered AI researchers found that LLM performance “deteriorates when dealing with more complex tasks that require a nuanced understanding of legal issues or interpretation of legal texts.”

In a recent side-by-side comparison of some of the largest LLM products—Claude, Gemini, and ChatGPT—Claude was found to have the lowest “hallucination” rate, at around 17 percent.

Throwing another wrench into the equation, James said AI sometimes doubles down on its mistakes, or even defends them.

“This happened while I was developing a role-playing combat app. What I wanted was just to grab the name from the first file, and it [AI] kept losing that, and it kept trying to take other data from the same file,” James said.

When James pointed out the mistake, he said the AI tool “refused to let it go.” It’s an issue he’s encountered with several different AI tools in the LLM category.

Changing the Vibe

Chunawala said AI has been a game-changer for code writing.

“The single biggest change for us computer scientists has been speed. Where developers once spent hours setting up the skeleton of a program or writing repetitive test cases, AI can now draft those in minutes,” Chunawala told The Epoch Times.

However, he said this newfound speed comes with a significant challenge: trust.

“AI often generates code that looks flawless at first glance, yet when you examine it closely, you discover gaps in logic, outdated methods, or subtle flaws that can compromise security,” Chunawala said.

Cybersecurity expert, Nick Nikiforakis, told The Epoch Times that AI is good at writing “boilerplate” code.

“It is not difficult to write; it is repetitive, and yet it is something that is required. AI excels in producing that kind of code, which can be used with minimal modifications, assuming the prompt included all the right specifications,” Nikiforakis said.

He believes the verdict is still out on whether the average developer can create code with fewer bugs than its AI-generated counterpart. That said, Nikiforakis thinks “vibe coding” could create a dangerous scenario.

Coined by AI researcher Andrej Karpathy, “vibe coding” is a software development method that uses LLM tools to generate code from natural language prompts, with the developer focusing on goals, feedback, and experimentation versus reviewing or editing the AI code itself.

Vibe coding has become synonymous with the idea that a human developer can just trust AI to get it right while staying focused on the bigger picture.

Nikiforakis says that’s problematic.

“If you have people who don’t write software for a living, and never dreamed of trying before AI, then their only gauge on whether a piece of software is good is its functionality,” he said.

“Unfortunately, this is a case of ‘you don’t know what you don’t know,’ and therefore these users would not be able to recognize a vulnerability that finds its way into their production software.”

Undated file photo showing a “virus” warning and binary codes on a computer screen. Peter Byrne/PA

Nikiforakis said if vibe-coded software becomes popular, it’ll be a “recipe for disaster.”

Chunawala said AI code should be taken seriously from a security standpoint.

“Research has shown that roughly 40 to 45 percent of AI-generated applications contain vulnerabilities. In other words, almost half of the software created with AI could give attackers an opening,” he said.

Chunawala emphasized that these security vulnerabilities are not abstract. He called them “very real risks” and gave examples such as failing to sanitize user input, which can allow malicious commands to sneak in.

Another security risk with AI-generated code is the reliance on outdated “libraries” that hackers already know how to exploit.

“This happens because AI is trained on vast amounts of public code, and much of that public code already contains mistakes,” Chunawala said.

“The model doesn’t distinguish between best practice and bad practice; it reproduces both. Without thorough human review and guardrails, these weak spots go straight into production systems,” he added.

But therein lies another problem: Human coders and software developers are losing jobs to AI at an accelerating pace.

Research from the Federal Reserve of St. Louis indicates job postings for software developers have been declining since 2022.

James is part of the tech workforce that has been struggling to find steady work since he was laid off with the rest of his department in February. When he looked for jobs four years ago, James said employers were practically “throwing money” at him.

Now, he said, the job market is flooded with talented developers looking for work.

“Part of it is the efficiency of AI. We can do what we did before, but we can do it much faster. You don’t need extra people. Maybe you used to need two or three developers, but now you only need one,“ James said, emphasizing that competition for jobs in his field is ”through the roof.”

“In an ideal world, you would need a team to review anything AI builds. But these decisions aren’t typically made by the people who understand the technology,” he said.

Just moments after we noted UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer announcing a US-UK nuclear deal on Monday ahead of Donald Trump’s state visit, aiming to show “a golden age of nuclear”, and about 3 weeks after we inconspicuously pointed out that Centrus Energy was getting extremely cozy with the Trump administration, the Trump administration’s top energy official today said the US should expand its strategic uranium reserve to reduce reliance on Russia and bolster confidence in nuclear power.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright, speaking in Vienna at the IAEA conference, noted Russia supplies about a quarter of the enriched uranium for America’s 94 reactors, which generate a fifth of US electricity. Cutting that supply “could endanger about 5% of electricity” without alternatives, according to Bloomberg.

“We’re moving to a place — and we’re not there yet — to no longer use Russian enriched uranium,” Wright said. He added, “We hope to see rapid growth in uranium consumption in the US from both large reactors and small modular reactors. The size of that right buffer would grow with time. We need a lot of domestic uranium and enrichment capacity.”

Bloomberg writes that a uranium reserve was first proposed in 2020 with $150 million requested, though Congress approved half. Biden later supported the plan, and in 2022 the Energy Department began purchases from US miners. Still, US companies hold only 14 months of uranium on average, compared with 2.5 years in the EU and 12 years in China, according to IAEA data.

The US is “furiously at work” rebuilding nuclear-fuel supply chains, Wright said, noting Biden signed a law in 2024 requiring utilities to stop using Russian uranium by 2028. Russia later restricted exports in retaliation.

The US has just two enrichment facilities: Urenco Ltd. in New Mexico for traditional reactors, and Centrus Energy in Ohio, which recently began producing higher-enriched fuel for advanced reactors. A White House order in May aims to speed their deployment, with the first models expected to test next year.

Wright also urged private investment, citing Peter Thiel’s General Matter Corp. as an example: “That’s key for efficiency and innovation and pace. That’s how you drive progress.”

As we noted weeks ago, readers of ZeroHedge are well aware that we believe Centrus Energy could be the next obvious candidate for the U.S. government to cozy up to and acquire a stake(similar to how the Trump admin recently did with rare earth company MP Materials and of course Intel, both of which we correctly predicted ahead of time, here and here). 

Just weeks ago Centrus announced it had signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power (KHNP) and POSCO International to explore potential investment in expanding its enrichment plant in Piketon, Ohio.

The signing ceremony drew high-level attention, with U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick and Korea’s Minister of Trade, Industry and Energy Kim Jung-kwan both in attendance. The deal underscores a growing U.S.–Korea partnership in civilian nuclear energy — and highlights the demand for secure, non-Russian sources of uranium enrichment.