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Border Czar “Expects” Kinetic Warfare Between US Troops & Mexican Drug Cartels

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Border Czar “Expects” Kinetic Warfare Between US Troops & Mexican Drug Cartels

Trump administration Border Czar Tom Homan told ABC News in an exclusive interview that he anticipates a potential kinetic engagement between the US military and drug cartels, though he did not specify a location. His remarks come as thousands of US troops have been deployed to the southern border. Additionally, earlier this week, a US Air Force surveillance aircraft conducted a signals intelligence (SIGINT) operation over cartel-controlled areas in Baja California.

“Look, I’m looking at numbers this morning, about 14,000 arrests, and about 76% of them are criminals,” Homan told ABC News’ Kyra Phillips and Terry Moran when asked about the ICE raids.

“We’re not going to neighborhoods looking for people different than us. These are well-planned, investigated leads,” the border czar said.

When Homan was asked whether the US military could get involved if cartels strike, Homan replied: “Yes, and we expect them to,” adding that US troops “need to protect themselves.”

At the start of the week, in what appeared to be the shortest trade war in history, Mexico and Canada each committed 10,000 troops to their respective borders, while the US reinforced its southern border with thousands of soldiers in the last few weeks. 

By Monday evening, a USAF RC-135V/W Rivet Joint reconnaissance aircraft conducted a SIGINT operation over the southern half of Baja California, a region home to heavily armed Tijuana Cartel and Sinaloa Cartel members. 

On Wednesday… 

Last week, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had some strong words for drug cartels.

Dismantling Mexican drug cartels could be a very messy operation, which is why the Trump administration fortified the border with the military. The challenge, however, is that if US special forces operators kill cartel leaders, retaliatory attacks by cartel members could occur at Mexican beach resorts or, worse, on the streets of US cities. 

Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/06/2025 – 19:40

CDC Confirms Webpages Removed To Comply With Trump’s DEI Executive Orders

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CDC Confirms Webpages Removed To Comply With Trump’s DEI Executive Orders

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A spokesperson for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed Tuesday that multiple webpages have been taken down in response to President Donald Trump’s executive orders on gender ideology and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention headquarters in Atlanta on April 23, 2020. (Tami Chappell/AFP via Getty Images

A review of the websites by The Epoch Times shows that between Jan. 31 and Feb. 4, a multitude of CDC webpages were removed and remain down as of Feb. 4.

“All changes to the HHS (Department of Health and Human Services) website and HHS division websites are in accordance with President Trump’s January 20 Executive Orders, Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government, and Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing,” the CDC spokesperson told The Epoch Times.

“The Office of Personnel Management has provided initial guidance on both executive orders and HHS and divisions are acting accordingly to execute.”

That comment came in response to a question about several CDC webpages that were offline as of Tuesday.

These include Health Disparities Among LQBTQ Youth; Interim Clinical Considerations for Use of Vaccine for Mpox Prevention; Fast Facts: HIV and Transgender People; pages for HIV data; the page for the U.S. global HIV program called PEPFAR, and others.

A page that was titled “Safer Food Choices for Pregnant People“ was renamed ”Safer Food Choices for Pregnant Women.” When the previous version is accessed, the page displays a message saying it moved to the one referencing women.

An analysis from the health nonprofit KFF, formerly known as the Kaiser Family Foundation, noted that some CDC webpages were taken down but were put back online with a message saying the webpage was being changed.

“CDC’s website is being modified to comply with President Trump’s Executive Orders,” says the message at the top of the National Center for HIV, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and Tuberculosis Prevention website.

Several other CDC pages, including one with demographic and health surveys, also displayed that message, as did the agency’s front page on Tuesday.

The CDC’s official public portal for health data was taken down entirely on Jan. 31 but went back up over the weekend with the message about website modifications. The agency’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey data was restored, too, but with at least one of the gender columns missing and its data documentation removed.

Some of the sites came back online on Monday, other data analysts said. However, it’s not clear exactly what was removed or changed.

“You go looking for something and it’s just not there,” said Amy O’Hara, a Georgetown University researcher who is president of the Association of Public Data Users. The website changes sparked “a mad scramble right now” to grab copies of whatever federal data was posted before, O’Hara said.

Researchers say datasets and summaries were affected, as were codebooks that explain different variables. There were changes to published research that used affected datasets and redactions to lists of publications about certain topics, O’Hara said.

Paul Schroeder, executive director of the Council of Professional Associations on Federal Statistics, said people looking for data may have to resort to suing for access or submitting Freedom of Information Act requests.

“The removal of several public datasets from agency websites goes against everything the statistical agencies stand for and were intended for,” Schroeder said on Monday. “Public data users are being left in the dark about what is going on.”

In the wake of Trump’s signing the executive orders, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) released a memorandum on Jan. 24 stipulating that agency heads will terminate DEI offices and positions within 60 days.

Another executive order specifically directed the CDC to stop working with the World Health Organization, and HHS placed a pause on posts and reports issued by both the CDC and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), subjecting them to review first.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/06/2025 – 19:15

Trump Nukes All Govt-MSM Contracts After Politico Firestorm, Will Axe 97% Of USAID Staff

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Trump Nukes All Govt-MSM Contracts After Politico Firestorm, Will Axe 97% Of USAID Staff

In light of the firestorm over tens of millions of dollars going from the US government to various media outlets in the form of subscriptions, particularly Politico, President Trump has directed the General Services Administration to terminate “every single media contract” expensed by the agency, according to an email obtained by Axios.

Photo via @bennyjohnson

“GSA team, please do two things,” the email begins.

  • Pull all contracts for Politico, BBC, E&E (Politico sub) and Bloomberg
  • Pull all media contracts for just GSA – cancel every single media contract today for GSA only.

The move comes after internet sleuths discovered tens of millions of dollars going towards Politico Pro subscriptions, with particular focus on one $8 million allocation.

On Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that the executive branch would cancel their contract with Politico…

…and today we find that it goes much further than just the rag that laundered the deep state’s ’51 intel officials’ Hunter Biden laptop propaganda. For example, the NY Times was also cut off.

Politico responded on Thursday, claiming that they have “never received any government funding — no subsidies, no grants, no handouts. Not one dime, ever, in 18 years.”

No, just tens of millions in Politico Pro subscriptions from the government. Like Hunter Biden received $200,000 for a painting of his excrement, which was totally not influence peddling.

Deep Cuts To USAID

Meanwhile, the White House is also planning to cut USAID’s staff from roughly 10,000 employees to just 294 – a 97% reduction, after Elon Musk’s DOGE team revealed that the international aid organization has essentially been funding woke pet projects and anti-American activities.

On Tuesday, the administration put a stop on all USAID work and placed all employees on leave, with thousands of overseas workers to be recalled within 30 days.

According to Reuters, Secretary of State Marco Rubio – who was placed in charge of USAID earlier this week, said that the Trump administration was identifying and designating critical programs that would be exempted from the stop work order and deep cuts.

According to the report, over 2/3 of USAID’s workers are located outside the United States. As of 2023, the ‘aid’ organization managed more than $40 billion in projects. USAID’s website informed people that as of midnight on Friday, February 7, “all USAID direct hire personnel will be placed on administrative leave globally, with the exception of designated personnel responsible for mission-critical functions, core leadership and specially designated programs.”

Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/06/2025 – 18:50

VDH: Are Trump’s Tariffs Really Tariffs?

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VDH: Are Trump’s Tariffs Really Tariffs?

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness,

Hysteria has erupted here and abroad over President Trump’s threats to level trade tariffs against particular countries.

Both American and foreign critics blasted them variously as either counterproductive and suicidal or unfair, imperialistic, and xenophobic.

Certainly, tariffs are widely hated by doctrinaire economists.

They complain that tariffs burden consumers with higher prices to protect weak domestic industries that, shielded from competition, will have no incentive to improve efficiency.

Their ideal is “free” trade. Supposedly a free global market alone should adjudicate which particular industry in any country can produce the greatest good for the world’s consumers, whether defined by lower prices or better quality, or both.

Even when “free trade” becomes “unfair trade”—such as China’s massive mercantile surpluses—many neoliberal economists still insist that even subsidized foreign imports are beneficial.

Cheap imports, Americans were told, supposedly still lowered prices for consumers, still forced domestic producers to economize to remain competitive, and still brought “creative destruction,” as inefficient domestic industries properly gave way to more efficient, market-driven ones.

But many exporters to the U.S. are propped up by their own governments.

They may seem more competitive only because their governments want to dump products at a loss to capture market share, subsidize their businesses’ overhead to protect domestic employment or seek to create a monopoly over a strategic industry.

Yet when Trump threatened to level tariffs against Mexico, Canada, Colombia, Venezuela, China, or the European Union, they were not primarily aimed at propping up particular inefficient U.S. industries at all.

Instead, an exasperated Trump threatened Mexico with tariffs for three reasons.

It refused to address its cartels’ illegal multibillion-dollar export of lethal fentanyl into the United States.

The cartels buy Chinese-supplied raw fentanyl with impunity, disguise it to resemble toxic drugs, and smuggle the product across a porous border.

The result over the last decade is more dead Americans from fentanyl than the total number of all U.S. soldiers lost in the wars of the twentieth century.

Second, Mexico had stonewalled all American efforts to stop their export of millions of illegal aliens into the United States—10-12 million in the last four years alone.

Mexico adds insult to injury by raking in profits from some $63 billion in remittances sent from its former resident citizens now residing in the United States and often subsidized by American taxpayers.

Third, Mexico grows its American trade surpluses each year. The imbalance is now a mind-boggling nearly $170 billion.

Trump threatened Canada because it has so far refused to police its side of an open and increasingly dangerous border. And it has racked up a $50 billion surplus by leveling asymmetrical tariffs on lots of U.S. products.

Canada also has refused to keep its NATO promises to spend 2 percent of its GDP on defense.

Canada’s pathetic 1.37 percent expenditure is predicated on American magnanimity. The U.S. alone protects Canada under the American North American nuclear shield and subsidizes NATO deadbeats like Canada by funding some 16 percent of the budget of the 32-nation alliance, as well as policing the international seas.

As for Venezuela and Colombia, both communist nations have deliberately emptied their prisons to send hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens into the U.S.—many of them violent felons. They do so either out of crass self-interest, hatred, or a strategic desire to weaken America.

China is a special case.

Its entire 20th-century ascendance was based on stealing U.S. technology, dumping its products on the U.S. market below the cost of production to capture market share, and forcing American corporations to relocate, offshore, and outsource—leaving our industrial hinterland a “rustbelt.”

The European Union runs a gargantuan half-trillion-dollar surplus with the U.S.

How?

Because for nearly the last 80 years, the U.S. has subsidized its defense during the Cold War and afterwards.

Europe acts as if it is recovering from World War II, so it can hit up a supposedly limitlessly rich American patron with asymmetrical tariffs.

Consider the various Trump “tariffs” leveled by an exasperated, and now $36 trillion-indebted, America.

Almost none of them meet the traditional definitions of an industry-protecting tariff.

Instead, they are the last-gasp tools of American leverage used only when decades of bipartisan diplomacy, summits, entreaties, and empty threats have all failed.

So, Trump is not a mercantilist.

Instead, he is trying to stop the multimillion-person influx of foreign criminals, the crashing of the border by millions of illegal aliens, the cartels’ export of American-killing drugs, the violation of past trade agreements, and allies from using America to subsidize their own defense.

The Trump tariffs are the last, desperate effort to reestablish global reciprocity and keep America safe.

And our “shocked” friends, allies, and enemies privately have known that all too well.

Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/06/2025 – 17:40

DoD-Contracted Spy Plane Crashes In Philippines

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DoD-Contracted Spy Plane Crashes In Philippines

The US Indo-Pacific Command (USINDOPACOM) announced on X that a spy plane contracted by the Department of Defense crashed in a rural area of Maguindanao del Sur in the Philippines.

“The aircraft was providing intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance support at the request of our Philippine allies. The incident occurred during a routine mission in support of US-Philippine security cooperation activities,” USINDOPACOM said. 

USINDOPACOM continued, “We can confirm no survivors of the crash. There were four personnel on board, including one US military service member and three defense contractors,” adding the cause of the “crash is under investigation.” 

Local media outlet Philippine News Agency said the spy plane was a Beechcraft King Air 350 twin-turboprop aircraft used for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance operations.

“A small private plane, Beech King Air 350 (B350), crashed around 2:30 p.m. Thursday (Feb. 6, 2025) in Barangay Malatimon, Ampatuan, Maguindanao del Sur. According to police, four bodies, including two male, were retrieved by responding villagers from the wreckage,” the media outlet wrote on X. 

Footage of the wreckage has surfaced on other X accounts:

USINDOPACOM did not disclose details about the targets the spy plane was tracking and or if those targets were related to terrorism trends in Southeast Asia.

Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/06/2025 – 17:20

Why Mass Deportations Are Necessary And How To Keep Illegals From Coming Back

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Why Mass Deportations Are Necessary And How To Keep Illegals From Coming Back

Authored By Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us

For months before and after Donald Trump’s election win there was an army of naysayers crawling the internet claiming that he would “never follow through” on his promises and that deportations “were not going to happen”. Most of these people were leftists trying to sow the seeds of doubt. At least some claimed to be conservatives and were perhaps disenchanted with the inaction of Donald Trump’s first term in office. I know I was not expecting much back then.

In 2017 Trump’s cabinet confirmations took a decidedly swampy turn and his administration was overrun with Neo-Cons and banking elites. I criticized this outcome harshly at the time. However, I was willing to acknowledge a reasonable explanation – That Trump was being misled by advisers with ulterior motives. After all, every president has around 4000 positions to fill in their administration and most of them will defer that duty to their advisers.

Trump would go on to admit in multiple interviews that he had trusted his inner circle too much and made mistakes in choosing his cabinet. They had sabotaged his efforts.

His second term is so far a 180 degree flip from his first, and Trump’s shift in focus is evident. Like most liberty movement conservatives I’ll reserve judgment.  Trump’s presidency will likely be the most scrutinized in recent history, not only by his political opponents but by those who supported him.  We’ll be scrutinizing everything he does with primary attention on his policy efforts. “Will he take action?” is the question everyone is asking.

The answer has been a resounding “yes”. The illegal immigration issue is of course one of the most pressing crises of our era and I would consider Trump fulfilling his promise to counter the threat a bare minimum. He has to, or he loses his entire base of support and the country falls apart at the same time. Trump’s swift move to execute mass deportations is redeeming.

For decades conservatives and right leaning independents have been disillusioned with the Republican Party because of their incessant inaction. When leftists take power in government they waste no time exploiting every advantage – The only thing that stops them from total dominance is patriot culture and the fact that 50 million+ Americans are heavily armed. When the GOP takes power they change very little.

One factor that truly sets the Trump Administration apart from all other modern Republican Presidencies is the acknowledgment of the culture war. The leftists have been waging this war for at least 50 years and GOP leaders have mostly dismissed it as trivial compared to politics. It’s the reason why we came within a razor’s edge of total moral relativism and degeneracy under the Biden Administration. The left has been normalizing the hatred of basic American principles for generations.

Part of that effort has been the introduction of open borders ideology and mass illegal immigration. I consider this a kind of “final stage” of the leftist/globalist agenda – If you can demonize western culture to the point of self hatred, then people won’t care when you saturate the west with third-world migrants and put the final nail in the coffin.

Illegal aliens don’t want to assimilate, they want to pillage and if possible to conquer.  This is why you see hundreds of Mexican flags flying at every migrant protest march; they have no interest in becoming American, they only want access to American wealth.  They look at the US citizenry as rubes and easy targets for plunder.

There is also the danger of cultural replacement.  Many migrants from Latin American identify with the Marxist “La Raza” ideology, which asserts that America is “stolen land” that they have an ethnic claim to.  The globalists know this and use mass migration as a weapon, opening the gates and making it easy for the invasion to happen.  As we have seen in Europe and the UK, migrant hordes are like a mercenary army perfect for oppressing native citizens and preventing future rebellion against multicultural erasure.

The core of this process is to incentivize migrants with subsidies and jobs. And this lead me to the greater dilemma of the border crisis – Locking down the border is not so hard, but getting rid of the tens-of-millions of illegals that are already in the country is much more difficult.  Making sure they don’t come back is also a conundrum.

As we’ve seen in the first weeks of Trump’s presidency, establishment Democrats are intent on interfering with deportations in any way they can (all the future power of leftists requires forced immigration to the US from socialist leaning countries). By extension, leftist activists will seek to disrupt deportation efforts using civil unrest (when the weather warms up these goblins will come out in droves, bank on it).

On top of the internal sabotage, there are many foreign governments that will desperately try to obstruct the return of so many unwanted citizens. Keep in mind that the US is seen by these governments as a dumping ground for their refuse. America is a steam valve to release the pressure so that these countries can get rid of their criminals, revolutionaries and those in poverty.

Mexico, Columbia, Haiti and others continue to argue that they can’t take their own people back because it would lead to “societal catastrophe”. Why? Because these governments have been knowingly sweeping their problem children under the rug for years, and America is the rug.

At the current rate of deportations (around 1500 per day) we are looking at around 500,000 per year. At least 10 million illegals are projected to have entered the US under Biden’s watch, and that’s not counting the millions that were in the US previously. Estimates indicate that 16 million to 20 million illegals are living in America today. To expedite matters, illegals will have to be convinced to self deport.

There is evidence that this is happening to some extent. Border stations have seen an uptick in outgoing traffic into Mexico and border encounters have slowed (Texas has played a big part in the border slowdown with their Operation Lone Star). But how could the US pressure a majority of aliens to self deport and never come back?

Here are a few surefire methods…

Increased Penalties For Businesses That Hire Illegals

This is common sense, but a large part of mass immigration depends on access to the US jobs market. Our government has been turning a blind eye to low-wage migrant labor for a long time and usually, if caught, businesses will only be fined a few hundred dollars for each migrant they employ. The savings on wages make it worth the risk.

Federal fines should be increased greatly, changing the cost benefit ratio and making it less enticing for companies to gamble on illegal migrant labor. If companies stop hiring migrants then most aliens will leave the US overnight.

If an industry desperately needs foreign labor then they can hire people with work visas. The process could be streamlined for certain jobs, but there has to be PROOF that these industries cannot find American workers to fill those positions. Furthermore, migrants should not be allowed to work in the US for greatly reduced wages (this drives down wages for Americans). Companies should be required to pay the same wage they would normally pay an American citizen of equivalent skill and experience.

Permanently Cut All Government Welfare Subsidies For Asylum Seekers

A general cancellation of amnesty and “catch and release” policies might make this action a moot point, but under the Biden Administration most migrants had access to a list of welfare subsidies. These subsidies and various migrant programs are projected to cost American taxpayers over $150 billion dollars per year. This isn’t counting state and city expenditures on illegals (New York City alone spent over $5 billion on migrants in 2024).

Housing programs under HUD do not distinguish between legal and illegal immigrants and often migrants will receive preferential treatment by landlords because of guaranteed government payouts and tax incentives. This has helped to exacerbate the housing crisis in the US, driving up rent prices to extreme levels.

Shut Down NGOs Engaged In Supporting Illegal Immigration

The shut down of the USAID department is a good start in the battle against rogue NGOs, but there’s a lot more to be done.  Globalist NGOs are the worst perpetrators behind mass immigration movements and many use religious organizations as a front (the female Bishop who famously woke-lectured Trump at a church service held after his inauguration is coincidentally a recipient of NGO cash in exchange for helping illegal immigrants into the US).

These groups are very difficult to legally obstruct or punish for such actions. One thing Trump can do is take away the 501C3 tax exemption status of NGOs involved in encouraging mass immigration to the US; these efforts are entirely political in nature, which negates tax exemption. NGOs are also subject to lawsuits.

Ultimately the NGO problem needs to be addressed on a larger scale and as a country we need to examine the harm some of these organizations are doing. In many cases international NGO operations spend millions in foreign countries to entice migrants to cross the border, but they also run numerous programs to support migrants that are already in the US, mostly through litigation and interference with deportations.  Getting rid of them would go a long way in keeping illegals out of the country.

Cut Off Federal Funding To Sanctuary Cities

Trump has already threatened this response in light of Democrat resistance to deportations, but action may need to be taken sooner rather than later. The problem is that city governments often use federal dollars as a slush fund to fill the coffers of their migrant programs. Most cities do not have the funds to subsidize migrants on their own for very long, not without making extensive cuts to other parts of their budget.

Democrats claim cutting federal funding to sanctuary cities violates the underlying principle of the Tenth Amendment, which protects states and localities from federal overreach. This is a disingenuous argument – Cities are not entitled under the 10th Amendment to federal funds without restrictions or requirements. The Spending Clause, Article I, Section 8, Clause 1 of the U.S. Constitution has been widely recognized as providing the federal government with the legal authority to offer federal grant funds to states and localities that are contingent on the recipients engaging in, or refraining from, certain activities.

There are legal restriction on the federal government as well in terms of how they refuse funds, but generally speaking cities and states cannot use federal funds to support people breaking federal law. The Constitution also specifically gives the federal government broad powers over border enforcement. Cities and states are not allowed to harbor foreign threats in the US in violation of border law. Without federal funds cash will dry up quickly in sanctuary cities and migrants will leave on their own.

Use “Griefing” Deportations For Repeat Offenders

There’s an endless supply of migrants boasting on social media this past week that even if they are deported they will simply pop right back across the border with little effort.  Since border encounters have plummeted significantly, these claims might just be bluster.  That said, what should the US do about repeat offenders?

Putting them in jail for months or years would cost taxpayers more money than deportations would.  We could take away their future ability to gain citizenship, but this assumes that they care.  My suggestion?  What if we use a different method – what the kids call “griefing”.

In other words, we make the lives of repeat offenders as difficult as possible.  For example, why does border patrol keep transporting migrants to cities directly across the national line where they can easily come right back?  If a repeat illegal is captured, why not put them on a plane and drop them off as far away from the border as possible (Mexico is 3000 miles long) and let them figure out how to get home?  There’s also the option of slowing down their processing for weeks, making them wait in lockup instead of sending them back quickly.  Do this for a year and watch the the number of returning illegals drop to zero.

The Economic Time Table

In order to have a dramatic effect on price inflation in the US many millions of migrants will have to be removed in a short period of time. To save the housing market and cut product costs, demand has to be diminished and the fastest way to do that is boot out the people that shouldn’t be here. Deportations through ICE are a good start, but they are slow. Even with the expansion of agents and enforcement the only way to achieve visible results is to make self-deportation an imperative for illegals.

Most migrants will have to leave on their own. It saves the taxpayer a lot of money in deportation costs, it saves time on arrests and makes it easier for everyone to get on with the process of making America better for Americans.

Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/06/2025 – 17:00

Amazon Reverses 7% After Hours Plunge Despite Cloud Miss, Ugly Guidance

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Amazon Reverses 7% After Hours Plunge Despite Cloud Miss, Ugly Guidance

Ahead of Amazon’s earnings, UBS said that the online retailer is the “cleanest Mag7 name to own”, although in retrospect it may also be the cleanest Ma7 name to sell, which is what is taking place after hours when the stock tumbled after it missed on Q4 cloud revenue and also guided well below estimates.

First, here is a big picture of what the company reported for the just concluded 4th quarter:

  • EPS $1.86 vs. $1.43 q/q, beating estimates of $1.50
     
  • Net sales $187.79 billion, +10% y/y, beating estimates of $187.32 billion
    • Online stores net sales $75.56 billion, +7.1% y/y, beating estimates of $74.71 billion
    • Physical Stores net sales $5.58 billion, +8.3% y/y, beating estimates of $5.4 billion
    • Subscription Services net sales $11.51 billion, +9.7% y/y, missing estimates of $11.58 billion
      • Subscription services net sales excluding F/X +10% vs. +13% y/y, estimate +10.3%
    • North America net sales $115.59 billion, +9.5% y/y, beating estimates of $114.27 billion
    • International net sales $43.42 billion, +7.9% y/y, beating estimates of $44.13 billion
    • Third-Party Seller Services net sales $47.49 billion, +9% y/y, missing estimates of $48.02 billion
      • Third-party seller services net sales excluding F/X +9% vs. +19% y/y, estimate +10.2%

So far so good (with some exceptions). But what caught the market’s attention first was Amazon’s AWS revenue, which came in just below estimates:

  • AWS net sales $28.79 billion, +19% y/y, estimate $28.82 billion
  • Amazon Web Services net sales excluding F/X +19% vs. +13% y/y, estimate +19%

Turning to operating results, here the results were uniformly solid:

  • AWS operating profit 36.9%, down from 38.1% but beating estimates of 34.7%
  • Operating income $21.20 billion, +61% y/y, beating estimate $18.84 billion
  • Operating margin 11.3% vs. 7.8% y/y, beating estimate 10.1%
  • North America operating margin +8% vs. +6.1% y/y, beating estimate +6.48%
  • International operating margin 3% vs. -1% y/y, missing estimate 3.08%

As for fulfillment expenses, these came in slightly below estimates, while the seller unit mix was slightly higher than expected:

  • Fulfillment expense $27.96 billion, +7.2% y/y, estimate $28.45 billion
  • Seller unit mix 62% vs. 61% y/y, estimate 60.2%

Of the above, the most notable highlight – as per our preview – was AWS which grew revenue by 19% for a second consecutive quarter to $28.79BN, which however was just below the sellside estimate of $28.82BN. So maybe a little weakness here similar to Microsoft.

Still, if revenue growth for AWS was a bit light, the 36.9% margin likely offset it, beating estimates of 34.7%, but below last quarter’s print of 38.1%. Elsewhere, North American profit rose to $25 billion, resulting in a profit of 6.44%, the highest since at least 2015 (although one wonders how much higher this number can rise). Meanwhile, international margins dipped to 3.03% from 3.63%.

As a result of the jump in North American profits, Amazon’s consolidated operating margin rebounded strongly, and after dipping modestly in Q2 from the previous record, rose to a new all time high of 11.3% in Q4.

However, while the above data was mixed to modestly solid, it was the company’s guidance that led to an after hours drop in the stock; that’s because the company projected profit and revenue in the current quarter both of which came in below Wall Street expectations:

  • Sees net sales $151.0 billion to $155.5 billion, below the estimate of $158.64 billion 
  • Sees operating income $14.0 billion to $18.0 billion, below the estimate $18.24 billion

If accurate, that would mean Q4 revenue will grow at the slowest pace since the global financial crisis.

And while any other day the cloud miss and ugly guidance would have been enough to send the stock tumbling – as it did for a bit, sliding as much as 7% after hours, the unprecedented retail BTFD kneejerk reaction has taken the stock after hours and remarkable pushed it back flat on the session as the market plumbs new levels of stupidity.

Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/06/2025 – 16:38

10 Days That Shook The World

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10 Days That Shook The World

Authored by Jeffrey A. Tucker via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

In 1917, American journalist Jack Reed, a naive but talented communist ideologue with a blue-blood education, was in Russia to watch and cheer on a revolution. He was there in October when the provisional government of Alexander Kerensky held power—Czar Nicholas II had been overthrown—but refused to pull the nation out of the murderous Great War or otherwise reform.

Donald Trump is sworn in as the 47th President of the United States by Chief Justice John Roberts as Melania Trump holds the Bible in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 20, 2025. Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AFP via Getty Images

The government was thus overthrown again, this time by the Bolsheviks who ruled for 70 years thereafter. Reed chronicled the moment in his famous book “Ten Days that Shook the World.” It set forth the narrative of these days for a century. It was a major reason why that generation of literate Americans, lacking access to other information sources, considered Vladimir Lenin to be a hero. Reed, by the way, later died and was buried in the Kremlin.

That book and the events it valorized has now been superseded by another 10 days that have shaken the world. Donald Trump took the oath of office to become U.S. President on Jan. 20, 2025, following a sweeping and decisive victory that the entire establishment fought ferociously.

I’m typing this 10 days later. It is clear to me and many others that nothing will ever be the same, not in the United States and not anywhere in the world that is watching the exciting events unfold. It’s nothing like we’ve ever seen, and far beyond anything we had expected or even been promised.

Whereas Reed’s Ten Days were about the building of the Leviathan state, our own 10 days is about tearing it down and restoring freedom. Already what has been uncovered and stopped is for the ages, to the point that as I write the United States has plugged scandalous spending leakage at a rate of $4 billion per day, thanks to the work of Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency.

That appears just to be the beginning. Agencies and funding sources are being shut down by the day and hour. The whole spending machine was shut down for a few days before a federal judge intervened. Even that did not stop the push to shut down the spigots: it took a second judge to intervene and finally restart it all. Even then, it was just the beginning.

What is popularly known as the “deep state” has never faced such disruption.

Hardly a minute goes by when we do not get news of various outrages operating at all agencies of government, spending that gives new meaning to the word decadence. It’s all been happening for many years, even decades, even as the American middle class has been hollowed out, real incomes have declined, and economic opportunities for average people have thinned out to create culture-wide despair and ill-health.

The excitement began minutes after inauguration when the team of Elon Musk, tasked by Trump to figure out what is going on with this empire of lies, unfurled a plan that had long been in the works but never announced. They installed sofa beds on the 5th floor of the Office of Personnel Management and tossed out the chief of staff. The plan was to work 24/7 to get the job done, never leaving the offices. Yes, in Godfather parlance, they literally “went to the mattresses.”

They gained access to the computer system and sent a memo to 2.3 million federal government employees. It invited all of them to resign immediately and get 8 months of severance. They only needed to hit reply and type “resign.” The expectation going into this was that 10 percent would flee but it could be more. We are still waiting for the numbers.

All the while, the Trump administration was issuing executive orders, more than 300 in these magical 10 days. They froze regulations. They froze spending. They issued a universal fatwa against all DEI policies and abolished “affirmative action”—all while heralding the single principle of non-discrimination. They proclaimed that no government agency may ever again tell private media and social media accounts how to operate, either directly or indirectly through third-party cutouts. They banned the absurdities of the transgender movement and made adolescent mutilation illegal.

The orders were so sensible that they generated almost no resistance other than predictable sputtering. There were of course muttering that Trump was behaving like an authoritarian. If so, it is an odd form of authoritarianism that uses power to take power away from government and give it back to the people. The driving motivation of all these efforts was to reboot the promise of 2016 to drain the swamp. This time they were serious.

Following the takeover of the Office of Personnel Management, the truly great challenge was to get to the source of the largess, the spigot spilling so much money that it was creating $1 trillion in debt every 100 days. This has gotten worse decade after decade. It is the determination of DOGE to get to the bottom of it.

The team—which converted itself quickly into an official government office to evade that obvious criticism—headed to the U.S. Treasury and announced an audit of the entire government. In order to conduct that, they would need the logins to the system. The auditors had already figured out that the whole government was operating on autopay, with billions flowing to enemy regimes and rackets of all sorts. Shutting that down had to be priority number one.

What they found was an acting head of the U.S. Treasury named David A. Lebryk, who turns out to be the highest-ranking person in the civil service. Lebryk had been promoted to that position on January 20, but his former boss was the deputy head of Treasury, a Nigerian émigré named Wally Adeyemo, who had at one time been head of the Obama Foundation. His resignation put Lebryk in the driver’s seat of the world’s biggest outgoing payroll system.

That’s right, you cannot make this stuff up!

Lebryk absolutely refused to turn over the passwords. After what was said to be a shouting match, he resigned on the spot. Then Elon’s crew took control of the passwords to the system that was sending out $6 trillion on autopay.

This action generated panicked headlines in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal that the Trump administration has gotten hold of the control center of government spending, strongly suggesting that nothing like this has ever happened. For reasons that are unclear, regime media seemed shocked and alarmed that the Trump administration had broken into the sanctum sanctorum.

When regular people think about this, they start asking serious questions. Why is it not a normal thing for the new administration to be in control of the spending systems? Why is this such a shocking thing to have happened? Isn’t auditing the books just what any new president would do?

Most likely, it is shocking simply because it has never happened. For all the world, this looks to be a situation in which we are witnessing the very first actual transition of power in our lifetimes.

There will be more court challenges, claims, and counterclaims, but mainly we can look forward to an information flood of finding out precisely how our tax dollars have been used these many years if not for decades. This is in many ways the ultimate nightmare of any entrenched bureaucracy that has been unburdened by accountability for a very long time.

Change is now here, and it appears that the Trump administration is not letting up. All the while, Trump’s cabinet picks were facing a brutal grilling from Senators. This time, however, we have the means to discover the hand in the glove. We have tools like Open the Books, Open Secrets, and others, to reveal precisely what industrial interests are behind these politicians. It appears as of this writing that public pressure is going to push all of Trump’s picks through.

No one can say for sure how this story ends but we are getting an intuition. The Trump administration, barring some unforeseen disaster, is well positioned to go down in history as the regime that saved the country from secret and systematic pillaging that has been going on without check for probably all living memory.

Is that an exaggeration? Sadly, it does not appear to be so based on what we are learning by the hour. These are the new Ten Days that Shook the World. The first time around, history was set on a path toward the disaster of communism and totalitarianism. This time, the revolution is being reversed—the people are really taking charge from an elite class that has enjoyed unchecked rule in the Western world for all of living memory.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/06/2025 – 16:20

Shares Of Tungsten Miner Erupt After China Chokes Supply; CEO Says Customers In “State Of Disbelief”

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Shares Of Tungsten Miner Erupt After China Chokes Supply; CEO Says Customers In “State Of Disbelief”

The Trump administration’s additional 10% tariffs on all Chinese imports took effect Tuesday, prompting Beijing to fire back with retaliatory measures, including tariffs on US goods, antitrust probes on US big tech firms, entity list additions, and export controls on critical minerals. 

Focusing on export controls on critical metals, Beijing imposed restrictions on key minerals such as tungsten, tellurium, bismuth, molybdenum, and indium, along with certain metallic compounds derived from them.

Days later, Bloomberg’s Annie Lee spoke with Lewis Black, chief executive officer of North America’s Almonty Industries, who stated his customer base is in a “state of disbelief” after Beijing’s export controls on the metal used in electronics, defense systems, and machinery. 

“It’s the warning shot, because we cannot exist without it,” Black told Lee. He noted: “Our economy, manufacturing, defense, everything, is so dependent on it. And yet, Russia, China and North Korea have about 90% of the output.“

Shares of Almonty in the US have surged 40% in recent days. The company describes itself as “the largest tungsten mining company in the world outside of China.”

“The question is, how much will China tighten the screw to be heard?” Black said, adding, “I think the news was bad, but I think it’s going to get worse.”

Beijing’s willingness to restrict exports of critical minerals to the US became evident in late 2024 when it banned the export of gallium, germanium, and antimony.

Beijing’s ongoing export restrictions on critical minerals should serve as a warning to America’s military-industrial complex and chipmakers. Perhaps it’s time for the Trump administration to ramp up efforts to expand domestic supply chains for mining and refining rare earth minerals, reducing dependence on China. 

Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/06/2025 – 15:00

Investor Demand For X Debt “Upsized” As Musk Sees Revenue “Improving Rapidly” After Defeating Censorship Cartel

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Investor Demand For X Debt “Upsized” As Musk Sees Revenue “Improving Rapidly” After Defeating Censorship Cartel

Investors want a slice of X as Elon Musk’s social media platform becomes the epicenter of news distribution, while corporate leftist media outlets and their government-funded censorship cartel face a fiery demise (see: Politico). This follows a multi-year advertiser boycott led by mega-corporations and relentless lawfare by an army of leftist nonprofits in their attempt to destroy the platform. However, those efforts have failed, and Musk has gone on the offensive, positioning X for a year of success.

In the latest report from The Wall Street Journal, top banks finished up a sale of debt backed by X. Sources familiar with the debt deal stated that the banks initially planned to sell around $3 billion in debt at 95 cents on the dollar. However, due to surging demand from large high-yield fund managers, the deal was upsized to $5.5 billion. 

Buyers of the debt included Pimco and Citadel, who agreed to pay 97 cents on the dollar. The floating-rate debt carries an interest rate of 11%, with borrowing costs several percentage points higher than some of the riskiest loans on Wall Street. 

The upsized sale of X debt marks the end of the multi-year doom loop for Musk’s social media company. Since purchasing the platform in 2022, Musk has faced relentless advertiser boycotts and endless lawfare from shadowy leftist billionaire-funded nonprofit groups. However, X’s ability to circumvent the Biden-Harris regime’s censorship cartel and play a key role in the Trump-Vance presidential victory has placed Musk in Washington as a special government employee leading DOGE efforts. This, in return, has strengthened Wall Street’s confidence in X.  

Additionally, Trump’s executive order on “restoring free speech and ending federal censorship” is expected to provide additional tailwinds for X and other alternative media platforms. This is yet another key driver of soaring optimism around X. 

Last Friday, X CEO Linda Yaccarino and Morgan Stanley bankers presented prospective investors with metrics showing the social media platform’s financial health was set to rebound in 2025. 

“Revenue should improve rapidly this year, as the advertising boycott winds down,” Musk told one X user. 

WSJ noted:

Financial documents reviewed by investors showed that the artificial-intelligence company transferred hundreds of millions of dollars to the social-media company, the people said. That money has helped X pay its bills and stay current on its obligations, the people said. Growing advertising revenue at X should mean fewer transfers in the coming months and years, the people said.

The financial documents said X now holds a 10% stake in xAI, valued at around $5 billion, people familiar with the matter said. The AI company last year was valued at $50 billion. Musk had previously posted that X investors would own 25% of xAI.

X also reported to the investors 2024 adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization of about $1.25 billion and annual revenue of $2.7 billion. Investors said that was a better picture than they had expected and that X’s finances hit an inflection point a few months before the November election.

In 2021, Twitter reported adjusted Ebitda of about $682 million and about $5 billion in revenue. That was the last full year before Musk took the company private.-WSJ

X’s debt sale is a big relief for banks…

Yaccarino and X CFO Mahmoud Reza Banki told investors that advertisers are returning and that the company’s valuable stake in xAI should give them enough confidence to invest in the social media platform.

. . .  

Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/06/2025 – 12:25