64.9 F
Chicago
Sunday, October 11, 2026
type here...
Home Blog Page 198

“Spider-Man: Brand New Day” Crushes Woke Odyssey Film At Box Office

survivalnomics
-
0
“Spider-Man: Brand New Day” Crushes Woke Odyssey Film At Box Office

Hollywood pulled out all the stops for “The Odyssey” – They relied heavily on director Christopher Nolan’s built-in and generally pretentious audience to drive early box office revenues. 

The hype machine was running non-stop for months before the release.  The distributor’s focused heavily on IMAX ticket sales, which cost more than double a normal theater ticket. They attempted to hide the woke content of the film from the public for as long as possible (an ancient Greek epic with no Greeks, featuring black, Asian, Hispanic and trans actors with a story that deconstructs the hero’s journey of Odysseus, making him into a broken shell of a man.  Historical inaccuracies and modernization are rampant in the movie.

Critical websites also froze the audience ratings above 95% by rejecting most negative reviews. 

Despite all of this, The Odyssey’s early box office was not impressive compared to most blockbuster movies.  It didn’t even break the top 60 movies for opening weekend revenues (adjusted for inflation).  The political left rushed onto social media to declare victory, claiming that “Get Woke, Go Broke is over”. 

Then, Spider Man: Brand New Day opened and ate The Odyssey’s lunch, showing how a real blockbuster is supposed to perform.  

For its opening weekend, Spider Man raked in $927 million worldwide – Compare that to The Odyssey’s $264 million global box office for the first weekend. Spider Man crushed The Odyssey without trying.  Spider Man is projected to make around $2.5 billion in the next few weeks while Nolan’s movie is struggling to hit $1 billion.  If Nolan had made a non-woke movie, maybe he would have had better numbers.

The Odyssey’s theater take sounds like a success, despite being easily surpassed by Spider Man.  However, with all the bluster over the film’s “woke triumph”, leftists are avoiding an inconvenient truth: The Odyssey has yet to make a single penny in raw profit.  

Nolan’s woke translation has brought in $911 million after three weeks, but it needs around $950 million just to break even.  This is accounting for marketing costs, theaters taking their 50% cut, and Nolan taking his own 20% cut of revenues as part of his contract.  Will the Odyssey break even?  Probably, but Universal Studios will be straining to make any meaningful profit from the production.

Nolan will be laughing all the way to the bank, but distributors will not be as fortunate.  Spider Man has already surpassed the break even point and made a profit.

In the end, The Odyssey will represent nothing more than a woke vanity project for a director who is fading in talent. Nolan says he may be taking several years away from the business after Odyssey, which means Hollywood expended all its ammunition on one last stand.   

The Hollywood model has long been to force progressive content on audiences while ignoring public pleas for less propaganda.  In the minds of the elites, the masses must be conditioned over time to accept wokeness.  They believe that if they saturate the market for long enough, movie-goers will eventually capitulate and accept woke as the new normal.  This has not happened. 

Instead, nearly every woke movie and streaming series has failed, losing the industry billions in cumulative production costs.  Studios have been forced in the past couple of years to return to less political messaging and more classic entertainment. 

The Odyssey is a defiant rebellion, specifically designed as a vehicle to revitalize the Hollywood argument in favor of woke content.  Yet, compared to non-woke movies, the profit margin is looking dismal.

The political left never learns, they only double down on failure and convince themselves that their own propaganda is reality.  Even if one considers The Odyssey a “success” for making it’s money back, how many woke movies can Christopher Nolan possibly direct?  One every few years?  No other director has a similar simp audience to lean on. 

Meaning, The Odyssey is likely the last gasp, the death rattle of far-left content gaining any momentum in theaters for years to come.  One woke movie breaking even does not make up for hundreds of box office disasters.     

Tyler Durden
Mon, 08/03/2026 – 20:30

The Pentagon’s Hidden Housing Scandal: Outsourcing Duty Of Care

survivalnomics
-
0
The Pentagon’s Hidden Housing Scandal: Outsourcing Duty Of Care

Authored by Jay Rogers via RealClearDefense,

Sen. Jon Ossoff released a report on July 8 documenting lead exposure in a newborn, mold-related emergency room visits, and a cockroach infestation living inside a family’s oven, all in privatized military housing at Fort Benning and Fort Stewart. Read it and you’d think it was written in 2022. It wasn’t. That’s the scandal: the Pentagon outsourced a duty of care to private landlords and never enforced the contracts meant to keep it intact.

I’ve spent thirty years in institutional investment management and now serve as an expert witness in fiduciary litigation. The pattern is one I recognize immediately: an institution hands a core obligation to a private operator, collects a fee for oversight it doesn’t actually perform, and treats the delegation itself as if it discharged the duty. It didn’t. Outsourcing a duty of care doesn’t outsource the duty.

Congress created the Military Housing Privatization Initiative in 1996 to fix decrepit on-base housing without loading the capital cost onto the Pentagon’s books. Private companies would own, renovate, and maintain the homes under leases running as long as fifty years, with servicemembers’ Basic Allowance for Housing flowing straight to the landlord as rent. The Pentagon would keep oversight, backed by incentive fees for good performance and penalties for bad. On paper, a clean alignment of interests. In practice, a guaranteed revenue stream with an oversight function nobody actually staffed.

Fort Stewart’s housing has been run by Balfour Beatty Communities since the base was privatized. In December 2021, Balfour Beatty pleaded guilty to one count of major fraud against the United States, agreeing to pay more than $65 million in criminal fines, restitution, and a related civil settlement. The company’s employees falsified maintenance records and destroyed resident comment cards between 2013 and 2019 to fraudulently collect incentive fees they hadn’t earned. Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said the fraud was “a consequence of BBC’s broken corporate culture” that put profit ahead of servicemembers’ welfare.

Four months later, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations found the conduct hadn’t stopped. Its bipartisan staff report on the mistreatment of military families in privatized housing documented that Balfour’s post-2019 behavior mirrored the misconduct behind its guilty plea; in the same period the company was under active federal investigation. A company can plead guilty to defrauding the government over housing conditions and keep collecting Basic Allowance for Housing checks from the families living in the homes it failed.

Fast-forward to this month. Fort Stewart is still Balfour Beatty’s. Fort Benning’s housing is run by a different company, the Michaels Organization’s Villages of Benning. Ossoff’s report found nearly identical failures at both: mold, lead, cover-ups, families told their complaints were handled when they weren’t. That detail should stop anyone from treating this as one bad company. Two operators, two installations, the same pattern. The failure sits in the oversight structure, not the logo on the leasing office.

The government’s own auditors have said as much. In an April 2023 report, the Government Accountability Office made 19 recommendations to improve DOD’s oversight of privatized housing, including a priority recommendation that the Pentagon set clear, consistent, department-wide home inspection standards, after finding that comparable maintenance problems were getting graded differently depending on who held the clipboard. As of GAO’s most recent public status update, that priority recommendation was still open, with DOD not expecting signed guidance until mid-2025 at the earliest. Congress had to legislate the fix GAO had already recommended.

This is the same structural failure I’ve written about previously in public pension governance, wearing a uniform instead of a suit. A pension trustee who delegates asset management to an outside manager doesn’t delegate away fiduciary responsibility for the outcome; the law is explicit that the duty stays with the trustee. The Pentagon’s relationship with its housing contractors works the same way as a matter of principle, even though the enforcement mechanism is a lease rather than ERISA. Both share the same defect: an incentive-fee structure that pays out on paperwork instead of results, and an oversight office too thin to catch the difference until a senator’s staff does the job for it.

That fix is now in the books. The Fiscal Year 2026 National Defense Authorization Act, signed in December, directs the Secretary of War to establish a standard inspection and audit program for privatized and government-owned housing using independent, qualified inspectors, and separately tightens the rules on when a housing company may close a maintenance work order. Falsified paperwork closed BBC’s work orders and inflated its bonuses for six years before anyone with subpoena power looked at the underlying data; an inspector who doesn’t answer to the landlord closes that loophole.

Whether the law works depends on what determines whether any oversight regime works: whether a breach costs the party responsible for it. Balfour Beatty’s $65 million penalty amounted to roughly one percent of the $6 billion in military housing assets the company reported managing at the time of its plea. A one-percent toll on a six-year fraud scheme is a minor cost of doing business, not a deterrent. If the penalty barely registers against the portfolio, the next audit will look exactly like the last one. Congress wrote the inspection program. It still has to write the consequence.

Jay Rogers is a financial professional with more than 30 years of experience in private equity, private credit, hedge funds, and wealth management. He has a BS from Northeastern University and has completed postgraduate studies at UCLA, UPENN, and Harvard. He writes about issues in finance, constitutional law, national security, human nature, and public policy.

Tyler Durden
Mon, 08/03/2026 – 20:05

The Kospi Made South Korean President Lee Jae Myung; It May Yet Unmake Him…

survivalnomics
-
0
The Kospi Made South Korean President Lee Jae Myung; It May Yet Unmake Him…

There is a particular cruelty in the timing. When the Kospi began its final, cratering descent in late July, President Lee Jae Myung was roughly 11,000 miles away, midway through an 11-day diplomatic tour of South America, watching from hotel suites as the index he had made the totem of his presidency collapsed. His finance minister apologized to lawmakers. The heads of both financial regulators cancelled their holidays as retail investors laid funeral wreaths at the gates of the National Assembly in Yeouido.

Near the main gate of the National Assembly in Yeouido, Seoul, there are condolence flowers installed calling for the delisting of single-stock leveraged ETFs. (Photo: Yonhap News)

From its record close of 9,114.55 on June 22, the benchmark fell into the 5,600s by July 30 – a peak-to-trough drawdown of roughly 39 percent on a closing basis, erasing more than $2 trillion in market value in under six weeks. Trading was halted four times during the month, a record run of circuit-breaker suspensions for a tool that was barely used before this year.

Then, on Friday, after an emergency late-night meeting of the country’s top financial authorities produced a package of curbs on leveraged products, the index ripped 17.91 percent higher to close at 6,595.45 – the largest single-day gain in its history. SK Hynix hit its 30 percent daily limit. Samsung gained 27 percent. On Monday it gave back 5.12 percent, closing at 6,257.45.

Some retail traders have vowed not to step back in.

Samsung fell 8.76 percent, SK Hynix 8.79 percent. Foreign and institutional investors sold a net 2.84 trillion won and 1.95 trillion won of shares respectively. Retail investors bought a net 4.65 trillion won – stepping in front of the same train, four days after the government had promised to protect them from it.

Also on Monday, Realmeter published a weekly tracker putting Lee’s approval at 45.9 percent, the lowest of his presidency, with disapproval at 50.5 percent – crossing the majority threshold for the first time. The fieldwork matters here: 2,508 respondents surveyed from July 27 to 31, with a margin of error of two points. The poll closed on the day of the record rally and captured none of Monday’s reversal. Realmeter attributed the third consecutive weekly decline to the market rout and to a parallel controversy over whether a constitutional amendment might let a sitting president seek reelection.

The same pollster had Lee at 59.7 percent in May, against 35.7 percent disapproving. A net positive margin of twenty-four points has become a net negative of nearly five – a swing of some twenty-eight points in under three months. Realmeter runs lower than its peers; Gallup had him at 51 percent in late June, the National Barometer Survey at 53 percent on July 30. But all three recorded lows for his presidency, and all three were falling.

The problem of ownership

Presidents survive bad markets all the time, but this debacle is Lee’s to own – after running in 2025 on a campaign drive the Kospi past 5,000 – an unusual promise for a head of state, and one he blew past in January. He is a former day trader, a fact his opponents recite with relish. He urged Koreans to move their savings out of Seoul property and into equities. In June, with the index sagging below 8,000, he told reporters the retreat was temporary and Korean shares remained undervalued. His policy chief, Kim Yong-beom, predicted Korea would become a top-three equity market by capitalization within three years.

And then there are the ETFs.

The sixteen single-stock leveraged and inverse funds tracking Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix launched on May 27, roughly a week before the June local elections – instruments that use derivatives and debt to double a stock’s daily move, sold to professionals almost everywhere else in the world. Retail investors poured about 78 trillion won ($54.2 billion) into Kospi shares across May and June. As we noted, three SK Hynix vehicles alone held over $23 billion at the peak – more than 2.5 times average daily turnover in the underlying shares. Assets across the complex went from under $10 billion at the start of 2026 to more than $50 billion in June, then down to roughly $16 billion by late July.

The combined weight of the two chipmakers in the Kospi rose from 51.06 percent on May 26, the day before listing, to 55.17 percent by July 10. Their share of total market trading value went from roughly 30 percent to 44 percent. A market that was already a two-stock bet became a two-stock bet with a gamma engine bolted on.

The opposition’s charge is not that Lee failed to prevent a crash. It is that his office built the machine that produced one. “It was pushed through at an extraordinary pace,” said Park Soo-young, a People Power Party member of the National Assembly’s Strategy and Finance Committee, arguing that such speed was inconceivable without direction from the presidential office. The PPP is now demanding Kim Yong-beom’s dismissal and a full parliamentary investigation. Finance Minister Koo Yun-cheol, pressed by lawmakers on whether he would resign, said it would be irresponsible to speculate while markets were still unstable.

That is the language of a government buying time with subordinates. It usually works. It works less well when the paper trail leads upward.

The arithmetic says he is safe

South Korean impeachment requires 200 votes in a 300-seat National Assembly, followed by Constitutional Court confirmation. Lee’s Democratic Party holds 179 seats. Removing him would require his own party to supply twenty-one executioners – and the DP has no incentive to hand the presidency back to a PPP that lost the June local elections nationwide, capturing only Seoul’s mayoralty as consolation. There is no national election until April 2028. Lee’s term runs to 2030. He is fourteen months in.

The market case for calm is similarly strong. Even at Monday’s close the Kospi sits at roughly double its 52-week low, and Bloomberg had it up more than 50 percent on the year as of Friday’s close, the best performance among the world’s biggest economies. The fundamentals underneath are not the problem: SK Hynix posted record second-quarter revenue of 79.3 trillion won, up 257 percent year on year, at a 76 percent operating margin. Samsung’s preliminary operating profit for the period rose nineteenfold to about 89.4 trillion won. Korean semiconductor exports in June came in at $44.8 billion, up 199.5 percent. Morgan Stanley upgraded Korea to overweight on the back of the leverage unwind. Lale Akoner of eToro, who called the episode a textbook collision of a crowded trade and leverage, was careful to add that it should not be read as a collapse of the AI investment case.

Both chipmakers fell hard anyway, on the days they reported those numbers. That is the tell: this is a positioning event, not an earnings event. Positioning events resolve.

On the numbers, Lee is in no danger whatsoever.

THAT SAID…

South Korea has impeached two presidents in the last decade. Park Geun-hye in 2016. Yoon Suk Yeol in December 2024, which is the only reason Lee holds the office at all. Whatever the threshold once meant as a norm, it now means considerably less. What changed in both cases was not the seat count on day one – it was ruling-party lawmakers deciding the president had become a heavier liability than the opposition.

Three things could shift that calculation.

The first is the scale of household damage, which is no longer hypothetical. By July 13, more than 1.2 million leveraged retail accounts had triggered margin calls, with an estimated 320,000 to 360,000 fully liquidated by brokers – some left owing money. Korea Investment & Securities reported that nearly half of its 880,000 clients holding Samsung were underwater, and nearly 70 percent of its 408,000 SK Hynix investors. The KODEX SK Hynix leveraged product is down more than 80 percent from its June peak. This is not a story about speculators. In a country of 52 million, it is a story about a constituency.

The second is the Democratic Party’s own convention – though here the case has to be made against the present data rather than with it. In a companion Realmeter survey, DP support rose 3.8 points last week to 45.1 percent, while the PPP fell 2.9 points to 37.7 percent. The party is gaining as its president falls, and that is precisely the configuration under which lawmakers stay loyal. What changes it is the calendar. Song Young-gil, competing for the leadership, has already said the presidential office’s policy line needs thorough re-examination. Whoever wins runs the party into the 2028 general election – the contest that determines whether the DP ever reaches the two-thirds majority it has coveted. A party polling ahead of the opposition has no reason to move against its own president. A party leader who concludes that Lee’s name on the ballot costs seats is the beginning of a lame-duck presidency, and Korean presidents are traditionally devoured by their own side, not by the opposition.

The third is the constitutional amendment, and this is where Lee has already, almost certainly, lost something irretrievable. Placing a two-term, four-year presidency at the top of a 123-item agenda was the signature legacy project. Article 128(2) bars the sitting president from benefiting, so this was never about his own reelection; it was about being the president who rewrote the 1987 constitution. Amendment requires 200 votes and a national referendum, meaning PPP cooperation. Speaker Cho Jeong-sik has floated 2027 as the window – and his suggestion that voters should decide whether an incumbent may seek another term is, on Realmeter’s own reading, one of the two forces currently dragging Lee’s numbers down. The legacy project has become a liability before it has become a bill. A president polling below 50 percent, with two trillion dollars of household wealth destroyed on his ledger and a parliamentary investigation pending, has no leverage to extract twenty-one opposition votes for anything.

What losing the job actually looks like

South Korean President Lee Jae Myung attends an agreement-signing event at Villa Doria Pamphili in Rome, Italy, June 12, 2026. REUTERS/Remo Casilli/File Photo

Tyler Durden
Mon, 08/03/2026 – 19:40

“I No Longer Trust Anyone…”

survivalnomics
-
0
“I No Longer Trust Anyone…”

Authored by Todd Hayen via Off-Guardian.org,

Sad, but true. Since the Covid fiasco, I’ve seen the true nature of people – or at least the nature they were willing to show once the fear got turned up and the herd started moving.

Most of them are still firmly under the sheep banner, content to graze wherever they’re told.

A small handful stand under the “critical thinker” banner. Those are the ones I still trust.

The sheepies? I don’t trust them anymore. Did I ever, really? I thought I did, back when I was younger and still believed most people were basically decent when the chips were down. Turns out that was optimistic.

Lately this loss of trust has had me thinking about the American Wild West. Not the Hollywood version—the real one.

Back then, almost every man who wanted to stay alive carried a revolver on his hip. It wasn’t for show. You never knew when some mean-eyed bastard might decide your horse, your money, or your life was worth more to him than it was to you.

The sensible ones stayed ready. They watched people. They didn’t assume good intentions just because someone smiled and said howdy. Trust was something you earned slowly, usually after a man had proven he wouldn’t sell you out the first time it became convenient.

So, did folks in that dusty, hard country go around trusting their neighbours? Hell no. You bet your boots they didn’t. And the ones who did—the tenderfoots who rode into town believing everybody was basically good underneath—usually got fleeced, shot, or both. The sheep of that era didn’t last long.

I keep coming back to that because it feels uncomfortably close to where we are now. The difference is the wolves don’t need to hide behind a bandana anymore. They wear white coats, or sit in glass offices, or smile at you from a television screen while they tell you what you need to do for your own good.

And the sheep-types? They didn’t just follow along during Covid. A lot of them became enthusiastic enforcers.

They reported neighbours for having too many people over for dinner. They cut off family members who wouldn’t take the shot. They posted smug little memes about how the unvaccinated were selfish and stupid while their own kids were losing years of school and their elderly parents were dying alone in nursing homes. They did it with a clear conscience, because the authorities had given them permission to be cruel.

That’s the part that still sticks in my throat. Not the government lying—governments always lie when it suits them. Not even Big Pharma doing what Big Pharma does—make scads of money and not giving a crap who suffers for it. It was the ordinary people, the ones I used to think were mostly harmless, who turned out to be so willing to turn on anyone who stepped out of line.

The masked Karens. The vaccine passport enthusiasts. The ones who genuinely seemed to enjoy punishing others for non-compliance. I saw longtime friends and even family members do things I would have sworn they were incapable of. And they did it without a second thought. That’s what really got to me—not the betrayal itself, but how easily it came to them. How little it seemed to cost them.

The rest of us were the ones who kept their powder dry. We asked questions when the story kept changing. We noticed the bodies didn’t match the narrative. We refused to pretend that “following the science” meant following whatever the people who owned the science told us to do.

For that, we got called dangerous, selfish, and—my personal favourite—grandma killers. The irony was almost funny if you had a dark enough sense of humour. The real danger was coming from the people screaming the loudest about keeping everyone safe.

I don’t know if this loss of trust is permanent. Maybe it softens over time. But right now, it feels pretty solid. I still have my circle. Those are the people I can still talk to without wondering whether the conversation is going to end up on some government list or get repeated at the next family gathering as evidence of how crazy I’ve become. With them I can lower my guard a little. We’ve got each other’s backs. That counts for something in a world where most people will throw you under the bus the moment the authorities give them a good enough reason.

Everyone else?

I’ll be polite. I’ll make small talk. I’ll even hold the damn door. But I’m not handing over trust again just because someone seems nice or shares my politics or went to the same school. That ship sailed somewhere around 2021, and I don’t see it coming back into port anytime soon. Once you’ve watched people you cared about turn into informants and punishers, it changes how you move through the world. You don’t go back to the old way of seeing things. You can’t.

Maybe that’s the real lesson buried in all this mess. The Wild West never actually ended. The outlaws just got better costumes and much better PR. And the sheep-types learned to police each other instead of waiting for the sheriff. The thinkers are still here, though—eyes open, hands near the metaphorical holster, not particularly interested in pretending everything is fine just to make other people comfortable.

All this has seemed to calm down a bit. But don’t kid yourself. It is still there. That’s the hard part now; you can’t tell who from who. But you know it is there. There are still occasional masks, a tell-tale sign the murmuring sheep-mind is still bubbling underneath. We don’t have to be mean to strangers; we can still love our fellow human beings no matter how lost they may be, but we must be wary, and not automatically expect a helping hand if needed.

So yeah. I no longer trust anyone the way I used to. And I’m not sure that’s entirely a bad thing. It’s clarifying, at least.

You find out who’s really with you when the pressure is on. And you find out who was only ever along for the ride until it got inconvenient. The ones who stayed? Those are my people now. The rest can go graze somewhere else.

Tyler Durden
Mon, 08/03/2026 – 19:15

Children’s Hospitals To Begin Offering Restorative Care For Detransitioners

survivalnomics
-
0
Children’s Hospitals To Begin Offering Restorative Care For Detransitioners

Authored by Darlene McCormick Sanchez via The Epoch Times,

When Texas Children’s Hospital’s “detransition clinic” opens in Houston, it will become the first facility of its kind, giving patients who regret life-altering procedures a chance at restorative care.

Illustration by The Epoch Times, Zereshk/CC BY-SA 3.0

The facility, which has yet to announce an opening date, is part of an agreement with state and federal authorities to halt “gender-affirming care” at children’s hospitals while offering help to those who transitioned medically.

A 10-page settlement term sheet, recently obtained by The Epoch Times through an open records request to the Texas attorney general’s office, showed that services at the clinic will focus on multidisciplinary care.

Services are to include endocrinology, surgery, fertility counseling, psychiatry, psychotherapy, and speech pathology, among others.

In May and June, the Department of Justice (DOJ), along with the attorneys general of Texas and Ohio, secured settlements with large hospitals over allegations of fraudulent insurance billing practices related to “gender-affirming care” for children.

The hospitals denied wrongdoing in their billing practices or standards of care.

These agreements require the hospitals not only to cease transitioning procedures, but also to offer discounted or free restorative medical care to detransitioners.

Attorneys representing detransitioners and their clients praised the efforts of the DOJ and the states to assist those suffering from the consequences of life-altering medical changes.

Detransitioners are those who stopped or reversed a medical gender transition they started earlier in life.

‘They Deserve Specialized Care’

Mark Trammell, CEO of the Center for American Liberty, which represents several detransitioners, including Chloe Cole, told The Epoch Times that restorative care for detransitioners was an important step.

“The creation of these clinics is a recognition that detransitioners are real, their experiences matter, and they deserve specialized care,” Trammell said in a text message.

Cole, who drew national attention after speaking out against subjecting children to gender-reassignment procedures such as hormones and surgeries, told The Epoch Times that healthcare for detransitioners was a long-needed win.

“The opening of Texas’s detransition clinic and the funding being put into care for those of us who need it most will transform a sorely neglected area of healthcare,” Cole said.

Cole, who was 15 when she received hormones and a double mastectomy that changed her life forever, said via text that it took five years to find medical professionals to help her.

When she decided to seek help, medical providers referred her back to the gender clinic that refused to address her needs, she said.

In Texas, attorney Josh Payne, founding partner of Campbell Miller Payne, which represents detransitioners, including Soren Aldaco, agreed that establishing a restorative care clinic was needed.

“Many detransitioners need specialized care for the rest of their lives to cope with the damage of lost body parts and the ability to function normally,” Payne told The Epoch Times in an email.

“Some detransitioners may not want to return to health centers that harmed them in the first place. Hospitals like Texas Children’s should establish a fund for victims to defray the costs of lifelong care and compensate them directly for their injuries.”

Aldaco, a detransitioner whose fight to continue her medical malpractice lawsuit put her in the spotlight, won her appeal before the Texas Supreme Court on June 26.

By a unanimous decision, the Texas court reversed the dismissal of her lawsuit, ruling that the statute of limitations had not expired, meaning her medical malpractice case against her former therapist could proceed.

The statute of limitations for medical malpractice suits is two years in many cases, which is a major hurdle for many detransitioners.

Aldaco was 19 when she had her breasts removed.

“If you’re a 13-year-old on puberty blockers, you might not realize you’re infertile until you’re 26 and you just got married, and you’re trying to have kids,” she told The Epoch Times in a February interview.

Aldaco’s story is like those of many others who spent years “transitioning” as teenagers, only to change their minds later in life.

First-of-its-Kind Clinic

Under an agreement reached on May 15, Texas Children’s Hospital, the largest pediatric hospital in the country, is set to create the nation’s first detransition clinic.

In an email to The Epoch Times, the hospital declined to confirm an opening date or comment about the facility’s future operation.

The Houston-based hospital will establish the detransition clinic to provide medical care to patients who received gender transitioning procedures through age 21, and obstetric-gynecology care for those over age 21, according to documents.

Additionally, the hospital will provide clinic services at no cost to patients for a period of five years.

Texas Children’s will create and maintain an easily accessible landing page on its website describing the available services. The facility will be listed on the hospital’s donation website, and the funds will support free detransitioning services beyond the initial five years of operation.

Also, the hospital will amend its bylaws to ensure swift dismissal for any physician who violates the state’s prohibition on medical interventions aimed at transitioning minors.

The hospital will pay more than $10 million in damages and civil penalties to Texas and the federal government to resolve a three-year federal and state investigation into the hospital’s alleged improper billing practices to the state’s Medicaid program to transition children, according to a press release by the Texas attorney general from May.

Texas Children’s agreed to permanently fire and revoke privileges for five “woke” doctors who performed harmful medical procedures on Texans, according to the release.

The hospital said in a May press release that it had agreed to a settlement “to protect [its] resources from endless and costly litigation.”

“This settlement will allow us to redirect those precious resources to focus on the life-saving care and groundbreaking discoveries of our exceptional clinicians and scientists,” the release said.

According to the Texas attorney general, Texas Children’s billed Texas Medicaid for “unallowable and illegal ‘gender-transition’ interventions, including by using false diagnosis codes.”

Nonetheless, the DOJ commended the hospital for its cooperation during the investigation and its commitment to providing care for detransitioners.

Prestigious Clinic Agreement

On June 5, the DOJ announced that the Cleveland Clinic, a renowned medical institution in Ohio, had reached a similar settlement with the federal government and the state.

The agreement requires the clinic to provide restorative care to detransitioners and prohibits the use of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and transgender surgeries for minors for the next 20 years.

Like in Texas, the clinic was under investigation for allegedly falsifying billing to cover transgender procedures for minors. The Cleveland Clinic denied any wrongdoing, according to the government agreement.

As part of the settlement, the clinic will pay $308,000 in penalties and provide $2 million in restorative care for detransitioners who face financial barriers to such services.

The Department of Justice in Washington on Feb. 21, 2026. ​In May and June, the Justice Department, along with the attorneys general of Texas and Ohio, secured settlements with large hospitals over allegations of fraudulent insurance billing practices related to “gender-affirming care” for children. Madalina Kilroy/The Epoch Times

Tyler Durden
Mon, 08/03/2026 – 18:25

Zelensky: We Seek To End War By Winter Through Escalation On Military, Diplomatic Fronts

survivalnomics
-
0
Zelensky: We Seek To End War By Winter Through Escalation On Military, Diplomatic Fronts

Ukraine is openly advancing plans to escalate militarily against Russia, in hopes that it will force a return to diplomacy, and hasten an end to the war by winter time.

President Volodymyr Zelensky has made clear he aims to ramp up diplomatic, economic, and military pressure on Moscow, while acknowledging that a short timeline is ideal but likely very difficult to achieve. 

via Reuters

Speaking Monday at a gathering of Ukrainian ambassadors in the capital, Zelensky identified autumn 2026 as the target window. “We will try very hard to make this happen before winter, in the autumn,” he said, according to Ukrainian national media.

But he quickly tempered expectations, adding: “We clearly understand who we are dealing with and that Putin hopes to continue dragging out this war.”

According to Zelensky, the Kremlin is preparing for a prolonged conflict. “He is preparing mobilization at home and new strikes. We see Russia’s true intentions, we are uniting our partners and putting pressure on the aggressor,” he said in reference to Putin.

He said this campaign is to include continued reliance on allied military and economic measures, until Moscow has no realistic alternative but to negotiate.

Zelensky pointed to what his government calls “long-range sanctions” – Ukraine’s term for strikes on Russian military and industrial infrastructure supporting the war, alongside conventional sanctions imposed by Western governments.

The objective, he said, is to bring all of these tools to “such a level of pressure that Russia is left with no alternative other than peace.”

Lately attacks have expanded to include targeting online Russian retailer giant, Wildberries…

On Monday yet another large Wildberries warehouse went up in flames, this time in Vladimir region, marking the third attack in a mere two weeks on the e-commerce company’s logistics network. There’s been over a dozen similar attacks so far over the last month.

Zelensky has alleged these warehouses are involved in providing Russian forces with drone components, navigation equipment and other military supplies listed on its website. There have also been reports of underequipped Russian soldiers ordering straight from Wildberries to make up for front line deficiencies. 

Tyler Durden
Mon, 08/03/2026 – 16:40

Everybody Knows

survivalnomics
-
0
Everybody Knows

Authored by James Howard Kunstler,

“I underestimated how emotionally committed much of the press is to rallying around Anthony Fauci. His reputation is more important to them than anything. . .”

– Matt Taibbi

The baleful afterburn of Dr. Fauci’s one-sentence testimony (“On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer. . . .”) seeps over the land like some ghastly pestilence now. You couldn’t have seen a more vivid demonstration of manifest evil than the master bureaucratic grifter formerly self-styled as “The Science” stonewall his way through that fateful reckoning in Sen. Rand Paul’s committee hearing last Wednesday.

The score so far: over a million dead in America from the Covid-19 virus that Dr. Fauci helped develop starting as far back as the 1990s, with Dr. Ralph Baric of the University of North Carolina. Tens of thousands left with serious, lasting injuries from the vaccines they promoted. The exact number of vaccine-connected deaths unknown because the public health agencies refused to report honestly on an operation that they caused to happen. There are whole legions of high officials and doctors behind Dr. Fauci now desperate to cover their asses.

Along with the mendacious news media. HHS Sec’y Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. happened to be on Dana Bash’s CNN Sunday morning program. By the way, Dana Bash used to be married to one Jeremy Bash, Chief-of-Staff to CIA-Director Leon Panetta under Barack Obama. CNN lied consistently to the American people during the years of the Covid emergency. You have to wonder if CNN takes direction from the CIA, or maybe rogue elements in (or retired from) the agency. Sunday, Dana Bash went on offense against RFK,Jr.

Didn’t work. RFK, Jr. kept his cool. The harshest thing he said to Bash through all her hectoring was “you were part of the problem,” a startling understatement. Ms. Bash otherwise only wrecked herself, over-speaking her guest at every opportunity, pettifogging, and filibustering. Everybody could see what she was up to. Imagine how desperate CNN was to think that Dana Bash could bluster her way over Mr. Kennedy. He helped her expose herself as a tool.

The news media has been a very active co-conspirator in the Covid operation. You’d think Senator Paul might want to subpoena some network executives from CNN, CBS, NBC, MSNOW (especially), plus Executive Editor Joe Kahn of The New York Times (and his predecessor during Covid, Dean Baquet) to find out why they reported so much pure falsehood around the so-called pandemic. How did they happen to become the propaganda department for the Democratic Party, and what was the party’s interest in the Covid operation? D’unh. . . .

Everybody knows. Even the super-hyped-up cat ladies, nose-rings, NPR stars, and moiling transsters of the lefty-left know. They have kin and friends who either died on respirators with IV lines of remdesivir in their arms, or were gifted by the vaxx shots with turbo-cancer or myocarditis or neuromuscular disease or immune system failure or some mystery illness. They have been harmed even more than those of us who declined to get vaxxed. Sooner or later, that’s got to mean something.

As for Dr. Fauci’s motive in this huge fiasco. . . it’s got to be clear both from the record of his career — nicely reported in RFK,Jr’s 2021 book The Real Doctor Fauci — and from the 1000-plus-page personal diary he recorded on the HHS computers, that Fauci was doggedly in pursuit of glory. Glory! And that his personal holy grail was to find a “universal vaccine” that could defeat any virus, so as to be acclaimed by all mankind! Glory! Glory! Glory! Given what is understood now about viruses and their interaction with vaccines — for instance, the flu vaccine which uniformly fails to adapt to annual virus mutations — that Dr. Fauci’s quest was quixotic, very basically foolish. All he ever produced, from the AZT wonder-drug for AIDS he developed back in 1986 (that probably killed as many people as died from the disease itself) to the Pfizer / Moderna mRNA shots for Covid in 2021 . . . all that frantic, questing “science” just ended up killing and harming the credulous in large numbers. The buttoned-up little fellow appears to be guilty of mass-murder on an epic scale.

Of course, he is presumed to be protected by the autopen-signed peremptory pardon he received from minions of “Joe Biden.” Perhaps Dr. Fauci’s invoking the Fifth Amendment under those circumstances will prompt an overdue look at just how this autopen thing really worked. In any case, Dr. Fauci is liable to be voted in contempt of Congress this week for not answering any questions put to him. The connected legal procedure will keep Dr. Fauci’s misdeeds under public scrutiny for at least months to come.

It’s also a fact that the autopen pardon does not shield him from charges brought in state courts. The AGs of Florida, Louisiana, Alabama have declared investigations. Louisiana and Missouri have already made Dr. Fauci sit for depositions, and now they can compare his answers with the entries from his diary. It is obvious that on countless occasions and on many vital issues, Dr. Fauci told the public one thing while he believed (and recorded) the opposite in his diary.

One question that the public badly wants Secretary RFK,jr. to answer: how come you haven’t pulled the mRNA Covid vaccines altogether?

They don’t work and they harm people.

Why are they even still available? Would such a move amount to an admission that the whole emergency was a fake and a failure? And that the government’s own public health agencies are culpable? Would the survivors of the 268-million Americans who got the shots be a little pissed-off? What, then?

Tyler Durden
Mon, 08/03/2026 – 16:20

Trump Says Iran Faces ‘Decapitation’ If It Doesn’t Sign A ‘Good’ Deal

survivalnomics
-
0
Trump Says Iran Faces ‘Decapitation’ If It Doesn’t Sign A ‘Good’ Deal

Summary

  • Trump says Iran faces ‘decapitation’ if it doesn’t agree to a deal.
  • Trump says Gulf allies halted planned US strikes in favor of diplomacy.
  • Iran says Hormuz talks with Oman are progressing, but US actions remain the obstacle.
  • Oil prices still falling on optimism over Hormuz negotiations & uptick in transit.
  • Tehran is betting it can outlast Trump by raising the costs of confrontation.

Will the U.S. invade Iran before 2027?
Yes 21% · No 80%
View full market & trade on Polymarket

*  *  *

Trump Speaks to Reporters, Addresses Iran (non)Talks

President Trump has told reporters in the Oval Office that the Iran conflict is “working out very well” and that this is Tehran’s “last chance to sign a good document”.

“I ⁠think we’re going to maybe get ​something, but I want to give ​them every last chance before decapitation,” he said, reiterating a threat to launch a major ​attack on Iran.

On Hormuz, he said:

“It has to be [free], I am not going to let them charge. If anybody is going to charge, we will charge, we are the ones … with a total control,” he said. “We have a thing called a blockade … No, no, there is not going to be charging. We are not talking about charging at all. There won’t be charging.”

On engaging Iran in talks even while the Iranians themselves insist they will not participate in any new talks:

When we talk we say ‘we’re talking’, if we’re not talking, when you ask me, ‘no we’re not talking’, I’ll say it. But we are talking right now, we’re talking, and we’re talking at the request of Iran, backed by Saudi Arabia, backed by UAE, and backed by Qatar in particular, but others also, many countries called, many-the leaders of many, I’m friendly with a lot of them–This is a last chance, this is not something-if it doesn’t happen, this is a last chance for them to sign a… good document.

Curiously, Trump is again insisting that when Iran says talks are off, they are lying…

Trump: Looking for Solution ‘Caused’ by Iran

President Trump on Monday issued a new Truth Social, perhaps trying to explain his latest weekend TACO move, accusing Iran’s leadership of being “unbelievably duplicitous,” claiming Tehran privately sought and sheduled talks while publicly insisting it is only dealing with Oman. He asserted that the Strait of Hormuz is already “completely controlled by the United States Navy” through what he called the “United States Wall of Steel,” adding that “nothing gets through to Iran” unless Washington allows it. Trump also insisted discussions toward a resolution are underway despite Iranian denials, while reiterating his bottom line: “IRAN WILL NEVER HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON!”

U.S. officials say that no novel negotiations are scheduled with Iran despite Trump’s statements, maintaining that ongoing talks are limited to indirect discussions via mediators involving envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. – CBS

Trump is increasingly letting his frustration and ‘exasperation’ go public. This seems to only confirm that indeed there are no talks taking place at this point. The US president continues to insist that the whole crisis was “caused” by the Iranians “for decades” but that it is the US now looking for a “solution” – but Iran won’t play ball, after apparently ‘begging’ for talks…

We’re only 5 months in… one wonders what the narrative will be with the US still bogged down in Hormuz by November:

Trump Claimed Talks Set For Monday Afternoon, Tehran Balks

President Trump now says new talks with Iran will begin Monday afternoon after he called off a planned “massive attack” – following high level Saudi intervention, and also likely White House advisors and Pentagon leadership failing to agree on a strategic vision.

“The Saudis expressed concern and asked for clarity about the plan of action,” one US official told Axios over the weekend, with another saying that crown prince Mohammed bin Salman urged Trump to de-escalate and refrain from launching the strikes. Trump aknowledged all of this to reporters aboard Air Force One while returning from Bedminster, New Jersey, to Joint Base Andrews. He claimed the canceled attack would have been “the biggest attack since World War II” and could have been “disastrous” for Iran.

“I was asked to by Saudi Arabia, the UAE, by Qatar, and by Iran to hold off strikes,” Trump said. “It would have been a massive attack.” He added: “When the allies asked to call it off, you gotta say, Well, let’s see.”

“I asked the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, ‘What would you rather have us do?'” Trump said. “He said, ‘We would prefer a deal rather than an attack.'” And more: “Allies think there is a deal,” Trump explained. “There is a deal on Hormuz, and it will be a deal on the nuclear.”

Iran says No Negotiations Happening

Iranian officials said there are currently no negotiations with the United States and that Tehran is not planning to send or host any delegations “these days.”

However, Iran has confirmed that it is deep into negotiations over managing the Strait of Hormuz with Oman, and that it desires to get more ships moving through the vital transit waterway. According to Bloomberg on Monday:

Iran suggested negotiations to get more ships moving through the Strait of Hormuz are making progress, after President Donald Trump called off what he said was a major attack on the Islamic Republic.

Oil fell on Monday, with Brent crude down about 4.5% to just over $83 a barrel, after Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said discussions between Tehran and Oman over management of the strait are in the final stages.

While Tehran officials acknowledged that negotiations with Oman are ongoing and that progress has been made toward securing a temporary passage through the Strait of Hormuz, they stressed that reaching an agreement with Oman alone would not be enough to reopen the waterway, warning that the situation will remain unchanged as long as US “aggression” continues.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei conveyed also that China is concerned about “the escalation of conflict and insecurity in the region” and is working to prevent the situation from worsening. He described that there is no new mediator involved in contacts with Washington, with Pakistan and Qatar continuing to carry out that role.

On the broader conflict, Baghaei argued that the US-Israeli war on Iran is not merely a war against one country, but “a war against the entire region.” He laid out that Iran once again rejected attempts to tie developments in Yemen to the conflict with Iran, calling such claims “a form of evasion of responsibility.”

“We currently do not have negotiations with America,” and Iran had no plans to host foreign delegations or send negotiators abroad in the coming days, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei told reporters.

Iranians ‘Won’t Bend’ – Reuters Analyst Points Out

Meanwhile, the on-again, off-again style of escalation and de-escalation pattern we are witnessing is likely only helping Tehran’s side in terms of leverage, as the conflict grinds on and potentially becomes more politically costly for the White House. 

Referring to the Iranians, Reuters writes in new analysis, “They see an opportunity in what they regard as President Donald Trump’s reluctance to become deeply entangled ​in another Middle East conflict ahead of November’s midterm elections.”

“The Iranians…believe that by widening the war and increasing the pressure, he will eventually give in,” a Gulf source is cited in the report as saying. “Trump thinks he can hit the Iranians hard and bring them to the negotiating table, but they won’t bend.” That much should be obvious by now, as Trump Tacos once again.

According to more from Reuters: “Iran is betting it can outlast Washington by turning the Middle East’s trade routes, shipping lanes and energy infrastructure into pressure points that steadily raise the cost of confrontation, according to Gulf officials and analysts.”

Who can outlast? This is currently month #6 of the war…

via ABC7

“Rather than seeking a ​decisive military victory, Tehran is pursuing a strategy of calibrated escalation aimed at widening the conflict without triggering full-scale war,” the report continues. But that much should have been obvious and anticipated from week one of the war, and clearly the US side underestimated things.

More Latest Developments

via Newsquawk

  • US President Trump said the US is locked and loaded and ready to go against Iran, but they “have just been asked by Iran, and other Middle Eastern Countries, to hold off any attack in that the perimeters of a deal have been agreed to. This would include the Immediate, Complete, and Total OPENING OF THE HORMUZ STRAIT, and an end to Iran’s nuclear threat. Based on this request, I have agreed, for the future benefit of the WORLD and, likewise, the survival of a successful and prosperous Iran, to cancel the attack, subject to being able to rapidly make a DEAL.”
  • In further comments, US President Trump said the Iran attack would have been a massive one if not paused, adding there’s a deal on Hormuz and there will be a deal on denuclearisation. He added that he was asked very strongly by Iran to hold off the attack. On negotiations, he said they will begin tomorrow afternoon.
  • US CENTCOM was reported on Friday to have prepared a large-scale operation in the form of a decisive two-week bombing campaign should President Trump choose escalation to break the deadlock in the Middle East, according to The Hill reports, citing sources.
  • US Central Command intelligence official wrote in an email that they are seeking new and unconventional ways to increase pressure on and punish Iran, according to an internal message circulated among military analysts, according to CNN
  • Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson said negotiations with Oman are progressing, with the two sides holding constructive talks on a new framework and exchanging maps over the past seven to eight days for review, IRNA reported.
  • Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Baghaei said Iran is working with Oman to establish a temporary security corridor in the Strait of Hormuz, adding that Tehran is not currently in dialogue with the US and is holding talks with Oman on the waterway. Baghaei added that issues with the US should be addressed at a later stage and that there are no plans to receive a US delegation or send an Iranian delegation in the coming days.
  • Iranian Foreign Minister Araghchi told a cabinet meeting on Sunday that the negotiations with Oman to manage shipping through the Strait of Hormuz “were in the final stages”, according to FT. It was separately reported that Araghchi held phone calls with Saudi, Pakistan and Iraqi counterparts and exchanged views on the latest developments in the region, while he warned on Saturday against any adventurous action by the US and stressed Iran’s readiness to respond decisively to any aggression.
  • Iranian lawmaker Qashqawi said there are no discussions with the US or talks on the nuclear issue, adding that US sanctions amount to war; lasting peace can only be pursued once the military, economic and media conflict ends, SNN reported.
  • Iran’s Mehr News Agency rejected US President Trump’s claim that he halted attacks at the request of Iran and Middle East countries, while it called it “a new lie” and emphasised that Iran’s forces are on full alert.
  • UKMTO said on Saturday it received a report of an incident 21 nautical miles northeast of Oman’s Khasab, where the master of the tanker saw a large splash and explosion in close proximity to the vessel, although no damage to the vessel was reported.
  • Israel told the White House it has significant security concerns over a proposed Hamas disarmament agreement, saying intelligence suggests Hamas intends to rebuild its military capabilities rather than genuinely disarm. Israel added that it will not withdraw from most of Gaza until Hamas has fully completed the disarmament process.
  • Palestinian civil defence said Israeli drone and airstrikes hit multiple locations across the Gaza Strip, killing at least 18 people, including two women and four children, with residential apartments, tents sheltering displaced people and civilian areas among the reported targets.
  • Kpler shipping data showed 18 vessels passed through the Bab al-Mandeb on Sunday, compared to the 27 vessels on Saturday.

Tyler Durden
Mon, 08/03/2026 – 15:50

‘Cycles Line Up Like They Did Before 1929′: Charles Nenner Warns Of “Very Big Downturn” In Stocks’

survivalnomics
-
0
‘Cycles Line Up Like They Did Before 1929′: Charles Nenner Warns Of “Very Big Downturn” In Stocks’

Via Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com,

Renowned geopolitical and financial cycle expert Charles Nenner is usually way ahead of market moves.  When nobody wanted silver ($29), he was buying it.  When everyone wanted silver a few months ago ($120), he was selling it. 

So, what is Nenner seeing in the markets right now?  Let’s start with the big surprise prediction coming in oil prices.  Lots of people say oil is going higher, a lot higher.  There are plenty of predictions of oil breaking over $200 a barrel.  Heck, even President Trump thinks oil will hit $200, but Nenner says he’d be wrong.  Nenner explains:

“The crazy thing is, based on all my analysis, is crude oil looks weak for the next year.  I am not sure what it means. . .. I see oil going down longer term. 

Maybe other countries are going to find oil because they cannot rely on oil (from the straight of Hormuz) anymore.  By the way, Saudi Arabia has plans to make a pipeline through Israel to bring it to the sea.  So, they won’t need the Strait of Hormuz anymore. 

Intelligence will find a solution.  I think they are going to pump more oil.  If people think they will flood the world with oil from other countries, then the price will come down. . .. there may be an outside chance of oil hitting $101 (per barrel).”

On gold, Nenner predicts, “Some cycles are very interesting.  The gold cycle came down at $5,300 (per ounce).  We have a 30-day free subscription, and you can see those cycles.  They are close to bottoming now.”

” Soon, there should be a new up move for gold.  We had a (downside) price target of around $3,800 per ounce.  We are very close.  So, gold starts looking good into 2027.” 

Nenner says the next gold bull market starts next month in August.

On silver, Nenner says:

 “Silver was a catastrophe because we had the cycle top at $121 (per ounce), and we couldn’t get people out of it. . ..

Silver is also going to be in a new bull market.   It could go back to the old highs of $120.”

On the stock market, Nenner says:

“The cycles in 1926 and 1927 line up like they did before the crash of 1929. 

This is almost August, and big investors have time to be very defensive. 

I want to repeat my forecast of a very big downturn in the stock market.”

Nenner likes cash, and he says watch out for big losses coming from some big banks. 

Nenner says:

“Real estate is a bad investment. 

I know big pension funds, and they have real estate in New York, and they are selling with a loss.  Other banks have losses, and nobody speaks about it—yet…

So, there is a lot going on that the average person doesn’t know. 

I know it because I work with these people, and things don’t look very safe…

I think we could have a banking crisis.”

There is much more in the 40-minute interview.

Join Greg Hunter of USAWatchdog as he goes one-on-one with renowned cycle analyst and financial expert Charles Nenner for 7.31.26.

Tyler Durden
Mon, 08/03/2026 – 15:40

Murders In The US Set To Hit 126-Year-Low Following Illegal Immigrant Deportations: DHS

survivalnomics
-
0
Murders In The US Set To Hit 126-Year-Low Following Illegal Immigrant Deportations: DHS

Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times,

Crime rates have fallen to “historic lows” across the United States, with homicides this year on track to register the lowest level in at least 126 years, according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

In the first half of 2026, homicides were down 18 percent compared to the first half of last year, DHS said in a July 31 statement. Carjacking crimes tumbled 47 percent during this period, motor vehicle thefts fell 20 percent, robberies dropped 17 percent, and residential burglaries declined 13 percent.

The numbers come from a July 2026 report from the nonpartisan think tank Council on Criminal Justice (CCJ) that assessed crime stats across various U.S. cities.

Compared to the first half of 2022, the second year of the Biden administration, homicides in the first half of 2026, the second year of the current Trump administration, were down by 51 percent, according to the CCJ report.

For violent crimes, 2 percent fewer aggravated assaults and 6 percent fewer gun assaults were reported in the first half of 2026 compared to the same period last year. However, domestic violence incidents were up 8 percent, and sexual assaults by 3 percent for this period.

When compared to the first half of 2019, the year prior to the COVID-19 pandemic onset, homicides, aggravated assault, gun assault, sexual assault, domestic violence, robbery, and carjacking crimes were all lower in the first six months of 2026, the report said.

In its statement, DHS gave examples of some of the illegal immigrants with criminal histories who have been deported from the United States: A Salvadoran national with convictions for homicide and assault, a Costa Rican with convictions for property crimes and burglary, a Honduran Tren de Aragua gang member convicted for robbery, and a Vietnamese national convicted for armed carjacking.

“President [Donald] Trump promised to make America safe again, and he has done just that,” Lauren Bis, assistant secretary at the DHS’s Office of Public Affairs, said in the statement.

“Crime has fallen to record lows under the Trump Administration.”

“It’s no surprise that this drop in crime coincides with deportations of dangerous criminal illegal aliens. It is common sense. When you remove criminals from the country, crime rates fall,” Bis said.

In the first year of the current Trump administration, almost three million illegal immigrants had left the United States, then-DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said in a Jan. 20 DHS statement.

Declining Homicides

The CCJ report said that there is no single explanation for the historic low in homicide crimes in the first half of the year. It cited potential impacts from changes in criminal justice operations and strategies, shifts in society and culture, and technological advances.

In a July 23 statement, CCJ said it planned on convening a two-day summit in September with researchers from fields such as criminology, psychology, economics, and sociology to examine the factors likely driving the decline in homicides.

“Murder and other crime rates are falling across the map, in cities with different political leadership, housing and economic conditions, policing and prosecution strategies, violence reduction models, and levels of federal enforcement activity,” CCJ president Adam Gelb said in the statement.

“Local policies and programs surely matter, but the striking consistency of the decline suggests that macro-level forces are exerting enormous influence as well,” Gelb said.

The White House attributed the crime decline in the first half of the year to the Trump administration’s policies in a July 29 statement.

America’s neighborhoods are now safer, registering fewer victims and a decisive end to the crime surge seen in the last decade, the White House said, highlighting that this was “not accidental.”

“It is the direct result of the Trump Administration’s relentless efforts to enforce the rule of law, back the police, and surge resources into communities,” according to the White House.

On Jan. 20, 2025, the first day in his second term, President Donald Trump signed an executive order restoring the death penalty, highlighting that capital punishment was an “essential tool” to deter and punish those who would commit heinous crimes.

The same day, Trump signed another executive order targeting illegal immigrants. In the order, Trump clarified that it is the policy of the United States to faithfully execute immigration laws against all removable illegal immigrants, especially those who “threaten the safety or security of the American people.”

And in April last year, Trump signed an executive order that focused on providing new best practices to local and state law enforcement to “aggressively police communities against all crimes.”

Tyler Durden
Mon, 08/03/2026 – 15:20

1...197198199...4,516Page 198 of 4,516

About Us

Popular Category

Editor Picks