Los Angeles Is Painting Its Streets To Fight Heat Waves
Researchers found that coating more than 700,000 square feet of asphalt in a Los Angeles neighborhood with a solar-reflective material helped reduce urban heat, though the benefits came with limitations, according to the Times of India.
The project, conducted in Pacoima in the San Fernando Valley and published in Environmental Research Communications, covered roads, parking lots, playgrounds, and basketball courts with a reflective coating designed to bounce sunlight away instead of absorbing it. During a September 2022 heat wave, afternoon air temperatures in treated areas were as much as 3.5°F (1.9°C) cooler than in a nearby untreated neighborhood. Pavement surface temperatures also dropped by roughly 10°F.
The report says that researchers cautioned, however, that cooler pavement doesn’t always translate into greater comfort for pedestrians. While reflective surfaces absorb less heat, they can also reflect more solar radiation back into the surrounding environment, potentially increasing the radiant heat people experience. Factors such as direct sunlight, humidity, wind, and surrounding surfaces all influence how hot it actually feels outdoors.
The findings suggest reflective pavement can help reduce urban heat, particularly during extreme heat waves, but works best as part of a broader strategy that also includes trees, shade, and other cooling measures. Researchers also noted that coatings can lose effectiveness over time due to weather, traffic, dirt, and routine road maintenance.
A top-tier Chinese university said on July 26 that it is investigating gene editing research by one of its researchers following reports that scientists treated a 6-year-old girl as part of their research, who died during the unprecedented human trial.
Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, one of China’s Ivy League-level institutions, said in a statement that it “attaches great importance to the matter and has established a special working group to conduct a comprehensive investigation.”
New York-based nonprofit science watchdog Retraction Watch and peer-reviewed journal Science disclosed on July 23, on behalf of her grieving family, the death of the 6-year-old girl, who underwent an experimental gene editing procedure in a clinical trial conducted by Shanghai Jiao Tong University researchers at the affiliated Xinhua Hospital.
The girl had been diagnosed with global developmental delay in March 2023, her parents told Science. Genome sequencing later pointed toward a single-base mutation in her CHD3 gene as the cause. The rare mutation, which causes Snijders Blok-Campeau syndrome, impacted a vital protein essential for brain development, leaving her with challenges in her motor and language skills that became more evident when she turned 4.
The condition doesn’t usually impact life expectancy, University of Montreal geneticist Philippe Campeau, who helped link the condition to the CHD3 gene, told Science. Symptoms can range from mild cases where the only obvious indication is a slightly enlarged head, to severe cases with intellectual deficits, seizures, and heart problems.
The girl, who died in March 2025 seven days into the world-first clinical gene editing trial, which was aimed at removing her condition, had milder symptoms.
Her parents told the watchdog that they were persuaded by the team of China-based researchers, led by neuroscientist Qiu Zilong, to fund an experimental procedure that would edit one nucleotide in the chromosomes of their daughter’s treated cells, changing a T to a C in her mutated gene. The parents and relatives were asked to contribute $860,000 toward the experiment.
Following the girl’s death, the scientists returned the funds, and the hospital was fined by local authorities, her parents told Science.
While the clinical trial was never published in a medical journal following the death, Science and Retraction Watch revealed that the researchers injected doses of two novel engineered viruses into the girl’s spinal fluid. The method is currently the most common delivery system for gene-editing therapy. The trial was the first attempt to use this particular gene-editing method to treat a human.
The family told the watchdog that the cause of death was identified by the hospital’s ethics committee as a severe immune response to the procedure. They also said that potential death was not explicitly listed as a risk in the procedure.
Qiu and his co-authors published related research in Nature in February 2026 that involved conducting the CHD3 gene editing procedure on mice. A peer reviewer of the study, Campeau told Science he did not notice the extent of changes made when the mouse study – whose original experiments were funded by the family – was resubmitted without the family’s genetic data or a sentence recognizing their “participation and support.”
He approved it for publication. The paper only mentioned that research “bridging the gap between preclinical research and clinical translation remains a significant challenge.”
The child’s parents told Science they submitted a formal request to the School of Medicine dean that the mice model paper be retracted “to prevent more children from suffering and our blood and tears flowing in vain.” According to Science, the experiment was also conducted on monkeys, after which the ethics committee approved the family’s clinical trial on Jan. 2, 2025. Other research, published Feb. 17, would soon show that monkeys receiving similar gene-editing therapies suffered moderate to severe liver damage.
The school said in its statement that it has “always attached great importance to research integrity and research norms, and resolutely opposes conducting medical scientific research in violation of research ethics.”
“The medical school will take this matter seriously based on the investigation results,” it said. “We appreciate the concern and oversight from all sectors of society.”
A spokesperson from Nature told The Epoch Times by email, “We are looking into the matter carefully following an established process.”
The same day that the family’s report of their daughter’s death was published by Science, Shanghai Jiao Tong was added to the Pentagon’s list of research institutions deemed a threat to U.S. national security.
The civilian institution joins 87 other institutions in China that have been barred from projects involving U.S. federal funding and collaboration starting fiscal year 2026.
Scientists in China and around the world are vying to be the first to deliver safe gene-editing treatments, with most at this early stage focusing on treating life-threatening conditions.
Some scientists have had success in gene-editing treatments, including the most recent breakthrough last year by a Philadelphia team who used lipid nanoparticles delivered by intravenous infusion to treat a baby boy with a life-threatening liver disorder.
DSA Platform Includes Abolishing Prisons, Supreme Court, And Presidency
The Democratic Socialists of America wants you to know exactly what it wants, and Megan Romer, the group’s national co-chair, laid it out on national television without once reaching for a hedge word over the most radical ideas on the party platform.
The platform itself reads like a fever dream a committee wrote line by line. A 32-hour workweek with no reduction in pay and benefits, a federal jobs guarantee, canceling all student debt, and free college from pre-K through graduate school anchor the economic wish list, alongside healthcare that is universal, free, and includes gender-affirming care as a guaranteed right.
The platform calls for more publicly owned social housing, universal rent control, and a guaranteed lawyer for every tenant. On policing, the platform wants demilitarized police departments, defunded police unions, and money pulled out of police budgets entirely, all of which the DSA frames as a first step toward abolishing prisons and policing outright.
On foreign policy, the platform demands the defunding of the Department of War, the closure of overseas military bases, and an end to all foreign wars, and it pairs that with support for International Criminal Court prosecutions of what it deems American war criminals. As for Israel, the DSA calls for an end to all U.S. military and economic aid, prosecution of American and Israeli leaders over what many consider a genocide in Gaza, and recognition of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.
The DSA is just as blunt about reimagining how the government works. The platform seeks statehood for Washington, D.C., self-determination for U.S. territories, and the abolition of both the Electoral College and the Senate, alongside an expanded House and a presidency and Supreme Court that answer to Congress instead of operating independently. The DSA wants to swap the two-party system for proportional representation and ranked-choice voting and pay for all of it through full public financing of every election.
And, to top it all off, the platform calls for slavery reparations.
Fox News host Shannon Bream ran through the DSA’s platform position by position, true or false, no room to dodge. Romer never flinched. She confirmed that the Democratic Socialists of America’s platform calls for abolishing the Senate, replacing the presidency and Supreme Court, eliminating ICE, ending borders while granting amnesty to illegal immigrants, defunding the Pentagon, abolishing prisons as a long-term goal, and placing most large corporations under government or public ownership. At every step, she answered without hesitation, affirming that each position accurately reflected the DSA’s platform.
DSA Co-Chair Megan Romer confirms their platform includes:
– Abolishing the Senate, presidency, & Supreme Court
– Abolishing ICE, borders, & prisons
– Defunding the Pentagon
– Mass amnesty for illegals pic.twitter.com/rPQiT9HCXN
The problem this presents for Democrats is that the DSA is no longer a fringe group begging for a seat at the table. DSA candidates are running for Congress as Democrats and winning. Claire Valdez won her primary in New York’s 7th congressional district. Darializa Avila Chevalier took the 13th. Brad Lander won the 10th. All three ran with DSA muscle behind them and the backing of New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who has become the group’s biggest trophy. Melat Kiros knocked off longtime Rep. Diana DeGette in Colorado’s 1st District, a seat DeGette had held for decades. Chris Rabb won his primary in Pennsylvania’s 3rd District. Janeese Lewis George won the mayoral primary in Washington, D.C.
Asked whether the Democratic Party ought to be nervous about where the DSA is dragging it, Romer flipped the question back on the party’s leadership.
“The establishment Democrats should be worried about the voters and about what the voters think and about what the constituency thinks, and … right now they have not been delivering, and our candidates are and have been, and it’s resonating with voters,” Romer replied. “I also have been told a lot of times by Democrats, don’t vote third party. It’s wasting your vote,” the DSA co-chair continued. “So, we run on the Democratic ballot line where it makes sense. We run independents sometimes where that is a viable possibility, but it’s a ballot line. And what matters is what the voters think. And the voters are overwhelmingly choosing our candidates.”
Republicans are likely to use the DSA’s radical platform as a cudgel against every Democrat on the ballot in this year’s midterms. Establishment Democrats can keep insisting the DSA is a small, manageable faction, but the reality is that its candidates are winning real primaries as Democrats nationwide, and that leaves Republicans a simple play: put every Democrat opponent on the spot and force them to either embrace the DSA’s agenda or publicly reject it.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE’s) Homeland Security Investigations carried out a nationwide operation between June 22 and July 10 that dismantled “SIM farms” run by transnational criminal organizations.
SIM (subscriber identity module) farms are systems containing large numbers of SIM cards from different wireless carriers, often housed in banks of cellphones, modems, or specialized devices known as SIM boxes.
These can be used to send and receive bulk messages or calls and often exploit voice over internet protocol (VoIP) technology to do so. Initially developed for legitimate purposes, the technology has become prominent among organized fraudsters targeting mass audiences through phishing texts, scam calls, and fraudulent online accounts.
The recent nationwide operation, dubbed Operation Signal Break, “dismantled critical command-and-control infrastructure used to perpetrate large-scale telecommunications fraud across the United States,” ICE said in a July 24 statement.
Authorities will now analyze the seized SIM data to identify victims and assess losses caused by such fraud. The illicit proceeds from the fraud, which are suspected to be linked to Chinese transnational criminal organizations and distribution networks, will be traced.
This is expected to support criminal indictments, sanctions targeting national and international infrastructure used in criminal activity, and asset seizures. SIM box operations are estimated to result in losses worth $15 million annually to Americans, according to ICE.
SIM box fraud, “also known as interconnect bypass fraud, is a scheme in which fraudsters reroute international calls to appear as local ones,” a Nov. 8, 2025, post from IT services provider Synaptique said.
For instance, when a foreign national calls someone in the United States, the call is diverted through VOIP to a SIM box in America instead of passing through a legitimate international call gateway. The SIM box then uses one of the local SIM cards to place a new local call to the recipient.
SIM boxes can be used by criminals to communicate in a clandestine manner. Foreign rival states and intelligence agencies can also use SIM boxes in their operations.
In its statement, ICE said that Operation Signal Break mobilized specialized SIM Box Surge Teams composed of criminal analysts, special agents, and computer forensic analysts, surging them to California, Florida, Texas, Massachusetts, New York, and New Jersey to tackle SIM farm operations.
“I commend our special agents for their outstanding dedication and teamwork in dismantling illicit telecommunications infrastructure,” Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Acting Executive Associate Director John Condon said in the statement.
“Their relentless pursuit of justice and commitment to protecting the integrity of our communications networks have made our communities safer and sends a clear message to those seeking to exploit our systems to defraud Americans.”
Since 2024, the HSI has seized more than 1,900 SIM boxes, more than 500,000 SIM cards, and in excess of $700,000 in illicit proceeds. It has executed more than 116 federal criminal search warrants. In total, 68 SIM farms used to facilitate fraudulent texts and calls have been disrupted across 15 states. The probes have led to one criminal arrest and 11 administrative arrests.
In September 2025, the U.S. Secret Service (USSS) announced the dismantling of an “imminent telecommunications threat” in the New York tristate area that involved the use of thousands of SIM cards.
A network of electronic devices located throughout the region was used to conduct telecommunications-related threats against senior government officials. In total, more than 300 co-located SIM servers and 100,000 SIM cards were found across multiple sites.
In addition to enabling anonymous telephonic threats, the infrastructure could facilitate other crimes, such as enabling encrypted communications between criminal enterprises and threat actors, and disabling cell phone towers, according to the U.S. Secret Service.
“The potential for disruption to our country’s telecommunications posed by this network of devices cannot be overstated,” Secret Service Director Sean Curran said in the statement.
In an international case of SIM box criminal operations, Europol announced in October 2025 that it had taken down a cybercrime-as-a-service criminal network that provided SIM box services to criminals worldwide.
Kaiser Permanente wrongly fired an employee who declined to receive a COVID-19 vaccine because she gave proper notice to the company of her religious objection to COVID-19 vaccination, a federal appeals court has ruled.
Mimi Weiss, who worked for Kaiser Permanente’s The Permanente Medical Group for 20 years before being fired, “plausibly alleged that she provided notice of her religious conflict with the mandate in her initial request for a religious exemption,” Circuit Judge Danielle Forrest wrote on July 24 for a unanimous panel of judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
Weiss was working fully remotely, or off-site, in August 2021 as a senior managerial consultant when Kaiser Permanente imposed a COVID-19 vaccine mandate. Weiss, a Christian Jew, within weeks filed for a religious exemption, and Kaiser Permanente initially approved the request.
In September 2021, though, Kaiser Permanente said employees had submitted religious accommodation requests with identical language. Expressing concern that some of the requests were not legitimate, the company asked employees to file fresh requests using their own words. Officials then asked Weiss new questions, including, “What else besides the COVID-19 vaccine do you refuse to put in your body as a result of your religious belief?”
Weiss said she would not provide private information. Kaiser Permanente placed her on unpaid leave. Then it fired her for not complying with the mandate, prompting a lawsuit by Weiss.
A federal judge in 2024 ruled against her, concluding that Weiss had not provided Kaiser Permanente with sufficient notice of the conflict between receiving a vaccine and her beliefs.
The Ninth Circuit ruling overturns that decision, pointing to a previous opinion in which the appeals court said that to provide notice, an employee must only give “enough information about [her] religious needs to permit the employer to understand the existence of a conflict,” and that requiring any more details “would permit an employer to delve into the religious practices of an employee in order to determine whether religion mandates the employee’s adherence.”
Applying that framework to the current case means that Weiss did give adequate notice, the panel said, because she identified herself as a Christian Jew, listed specific doctrines that she said barred her from receiving a COVID-19 vaccine, and outlined her belief that she should not “introduce foreign substances” into her “body temple” that would “change how [her] Creator designed it.”
In a split 2-1 decision, the panel also said that Weiss has shown sufficient evidence to bring forth allegations that Kaiser Permanente violated her right to privacy.
Kaiser Permanente did not return a request for comment by publication time.
“I never imagined my faith would end up costing me my job,” Weiss said in a statement.
“I wasn’t asking Kaiser for special treatment, just the freedom to live according to my conscience. After 20 years of service, I didn’t think that was too much to ask.
“I’m grateful the court recognized that religious employees should not have to give up their beliefs or their privacy to keep their jobs.”
When and why did the word “gender” displace the word “sex?” “Gender” refers to a person’s socially constructed identity of being male, female, or some other category, while “sex” refers to physical characteristics of male or female, such as chromosomes. Gender is a matter of a person’s self-perception; sex is a circumstance of birth.
When did sex get pushed to the curb by gender? In his book The Man Who Invented Gender, Terry Goldie claims that the sexologist John Money of Johns Hopkins Medical Center (Baltimore) first used the word “gender” in its modern meaning in 1955. Money pioneered the word to describe his famous John/Joan experiment that was conducted on a young boy named Bruce who’d lost his penis in an accident. To ‘prove’ Money’s theory that sexual identity was learned and not biological, Bruce’s parents raised him as a girl, complete with a surgically constructed vagina. The experiment failed. Bruce ultimately insisted on living as male, but he did not recover from the ordeal Money imposed on him, which he called torture. Bruce committed suicide in his 30s.
By then, however, Money had declared for decades that John/Joan was a complete success; discussions of “gender identity” abounded in ’60s medical journals and academia. By the ’70s and ’80s, feminists brought the term to the streets, with “gender” describing a person’s self-defined sociocultural identity and “sex” meaning biology. Then, the word wedged its way into government. In 1993, for instance, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) replaced “sex” with “gender” in its literature. In 2011, “sex” returned to the FDA to mean biology while “gender” meant “a person’s self-representation.” The term went global. Also in 1993, the United Nations Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women (DEVAW) vaguely defined this aggression as “any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women.”
Genderspeak became the language of elites, social justice activists, and the government, while average people still spoke of “sex”. But more than elitism lies behind the difference in words. By swapping in their own terms, elitists – especially professional feminists – grabbed the narrative on sexuality and politicized it to dismiss anyone who disagrees. Since the average male generally still uses biology to define his sexuality, he is an opponent; the average male is a living, breathing disagreement.
The ideology of gender faces an obstacle, however. If people can argue effectively against gender, then the narrative is difficult to manage. Those who dissent must be intimidated into silence or otherwise marginalized. The main strategy is to condemn dissenters as hate-filled. If some people cannot be silenced, then their words or opinions can become hate crimes punishable by law. George Orwell’s novel Nineteen-Eighty-Four is about a dystopian society of social control, which is maintained largely through restricting language. Since words are the foundation of thought, this means people cannot form thoughts, let alone articulate them. The villain of Nineteen-Eighty-Four proclaims, “The whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought.” He concludes, “The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect.”
Men’s health researcher James L. Nuzzo highlights an attempt to perfect the language. “In recent years, use of the phrase ‘gender-based violence’ (or ‘gendered violence’) in the titles and abstracts of papers indexed in PubMed has increased noticeably. Between 2019 and 2025, the phrase ‘gender-based violence’ (or ‘gendered violence’) appeared in the titles or abstracts of 2,784 articles indexed in PubMed.” [Chart available here.]
A typical definition of gender-related violence or gendered violence is “any form of physical or non-physical violence or abuse against a person or group of people because of biased or harmful beliefs about gender. It can include things that happen online and that use digital technology.” This definition is typical because it includes non-physical violence (discrimination) and abuse (words) that are motivated by non-specific “biased or harmful beliefs about gender.” Nineteen-Eighty-Four would refer to such non-physical violence as “crimethink,” with thought itself being an assault.
Just as “sex” is displaced by “gender,” well-researched and comparatively clear terms such as “domestic violence” are displaced by less-defined ones such as “gender-related violence.” This achieves several goals. For one thing, the confusing definition becomes elastic. Almost any word or act can be stretched to qualify as “gender-related violence,” especially since virtually everything in the politicized feminist universe is gender-related.
But the most important purpose of swapping in the word “gender” is to introduce a subtle but powerful bias that controls the narrative; it creates Genderspeak.
The concept of gender comes directly from the twin ideologies of Social Constructionism and Gender Feminism. Social Constructionism tells us that male and female are learned forms of behavior (gender) rather than biology (sex).
To this, Gender Feminism adds an ideological layer. Male and female are patriarchal learned behaviors; they are social concepts derived from white male capitalistic culture. Thus, approaching violence in a correctly gendered way means rejecting white male capitalism – the economic system that is said to vest power and wealth in the hands of white men at the expense of everyone else. To embrace gender is to reject white male culture and capitalism, with ‘the free market’ usually viewed as a synonym.
Genderspeak is similar to Orwell’s Newspeak. Both are ambiguous speech that embeds ideology into the language so that every word perpetuates correcthink – officially approved thought. In Orwell’s dystopian world, Newspeak serves the ideological goals of Ingsoc – an abbreviation for English Socialism. It gradually replaces Oldspeak and becomes pivotal in defining politics and culture.
Genderspeak has the same ideological goal. If you embed gender ideology into words, then you control how people think and how culture develops.
The process goes something like this:
Embed new ideologically-driven language when possible. For example, substitute the term “gendered violence” for the more research-driven term “domestic violence.”
Eliminate “wrong” words. In Nineteen-Eighty-Four, salvageable literature was rewritten in Newspeak so that authors either disappeared or were reinterpreted to serve Ingsoc. Today, school texts are commonly reviewed to eliminate wrong words. ‘Improper’ ones like “Founding Fathers” are changed to proper ones like “Framers.”
Change the meaning of words. In Nineteen-Eighty-Four, the word “free” is used only in the simple form of ‘my sweater is free of lint.’ The concept of freedom does not exist. The current usage of “diversity” in Genderspeak is similar. It is a diversity that tolerates no deviation. Its conclusions are or can be mandated by law.
Introduce doublethink. Doublethink is when someone accepts two contradictory ideas as being true. A modern example is students who attend “sensitivity training,” which includes publicly ridiculing and humiliating whites and males because of their race and sex. This is sensitivity?
Last of all, decry anyone who objects as a hater and oppressor; punish them.
Precise wording provides the incredible benefit of letting people know what they are talking about. It is time to reclaim the richness of precise English…verb by verb, adjective by adjective. Words should not be propaganda that blocks thought; disagreement is no crime. And sex is reality, while gender is not. The concept and the word “gender” should be abandoned by people who respect either accuracy or truth.
‘Pray For Kospi’: SK Hynix Earnings Miss, Sending Stock Reeling
Things are not going to be fun in South Korea tonight…
Good news first…
SK Hynix’s net income surged a bigger-than-expected 1,242% (though admittedly on one-time investment gains) with the ginat chipmaker bragging that it won multiyear contracts with around 10 customers.
Ok, now the bad news…
SK Hynix’s quarterly profit rose a smaller-than expected 557%.
The key supplier of Nvidia reported operating profit of 60.5 trillion won ($42 billion) in the June quarter, well below analysts’ average projection for 64.2 trillion won.
Revenue came to 79.3 trillion won, significantly below the consensus 83.9 trillion won.
All further raising fears that the hyperbolic nature of the AI-driven boom that has suspended reality from the cyclical chipmakers, may be starting to decelerate…
“When you’re the dominant supplier of the high-bandwidth memory that powers Nvidia’s chips, the AI boom lands directly on your bottom line,” said Josh Gilbert, Etoro’s lead analyst for APAC and the Middle East.
“That means the market is unlikely to focus on the headline numbers alone. The bigger question is whether margins and guidance can justify its recent performance.”
Add to that the recent fears of rising competition from China and it is no surprise that SKHY (the US ADRs) is trading down 16% in the after-hours (before Korean trading has begun)…
Following yesterday’s major drop in Kospi, we have three simple words..
Detroit Gets Drafted: Ford And GM Head Back To The Battlefield
One of the defining themes of the Trump administration’s second term has been rebuilding America’s industrial base—not just by bringing manufacturing back to U.S. soil, but by restoring domestic capacity in industries considered critical to national security.
Defense production sits squarely at the center of that effort, with Washington increasingly looking to private industry to expand military manufacturing. The latest example is the Pentagon’s push to enlist Detroit’s automakers in building the Army’s next generation of tactical vehicles.
In that vein, Ford is stepping back into military vehicle manufacturing in a meaningful way, entering the competition to develop the U.S. Army’s next tactical transport vehicle—its largest defense opportunity in decades, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The Army has selected Ford, General Motors, and specialty vehicle builder BC Customs to produce prototype trucks as part of a program expected to field around 600 vehicles. The new platform is designed to do more than move soldiers across difficult terrain: it will also provide onboard electrical power for drones, communications gear, and other battlefield technology.
WSJ writes that Ford’s prototypes will be based on its Super Duty pickup platform, while GM is continuing development of a heavier-duty Silverado-derived vehicle already being evaluated by the military.
The effort reflects the Pentagon’s broader push to tap the manufacturing expertise of U.S. automakers as it rebuilds defense capacity amid rising geopolitical tensions. Ford has signaled it sees opportunities beyond military vehicles, including supplying critical components and strengthening domestic supply chains, while GM has expanded aggressively into defense with programs ranging from tactical vehicles to munitions manufacturing.
Americans long knew that their elections were in embarrassingly poor shape, but President Donald Trump’s address this month revealed just how extensive the problems had become. The Trump administration’s investigation revealed foreign interference and deep-state, treasonous subterfuge.
The documents he declassified demonstrated five major problems.
First, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) hacked voter data, gaining access to the data of 220 million Americans.
Second, the U.S. intelligence community deliberately downplayed the PRC’s penetration of the American electoral system to deceive Trump. The intelligence community knew that the PRC had a sophisticated strategy from 2018 to defeat Trump’s reelection in 2020. This strategy included employing the PRC’s business contacts within the United States and paying American journalists to write negative stories about Trump. The Presidential Daily Brief was manipulated to keep Trump from knowing about the PRC’s influence.
Third, the U.S. government knew that voting machines were vulnerable and could compromise U.S. election infrastructure.
Fourth, when evidence of fraud was found, it was covered up, slow-walked, or downplayed, as in Michigan, where the Biden administration ignored voter fraud.
Fifth, the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) review of data from a small number of states found about 278,000 noncitizens on voter rolls. The next day, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin revealed in remarks that about 400,000 dead people were also on the voter rolls, and the numbers are believed to be much higher because Democratic states would not share their voter data.
These actions are unprecedented because we are in precarious times. If not repaired, this could destroy the social contract between the citizenry and the government.
Trump identified the American electoral system as being almost broken. But that is neither an accident nor the result of a natural evolution. It is by design. From the perpetrators’ perspective, it is a remarkable achievement. American elections were once the envy of the world. Americans voted on one day, and the results were known that night. America had a high-trust society and sense of civic duty that was inherent in Americans’ understanding of their country and American identity, including a citizen’s duty to his country. Now American elections are far from the envy of the world and resemble those in unstable and corrupt countries.
It is appropriate to pause for a moment and ask how that happened.
The answer lies in another, related major theme of Trump’s: his identification of communism as the greatest threat that America has ever faced and his determination that America will never be a communist country. Communists outside the United States, principally the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and communists in the United States are working together to demolish America. Destroying American elections is one of the most important tools they have to destroy America because it obliterates the social contract between the citizenry and the government. Once the social contract is broken in the minds of most Americans, fundamental political change is possible.
The problem with elections is a symptom of the deeper problem of how domestic and international communists are working together in America.
This is political warfare designed to impose communism, executed at home and abroad, using the strategy that has worked since the Bolsheviks came to power: the tried-and-true communist strategy of the united front. The communists are advancing a revolution in the United States to change its polity from a constitutional republic to communism.
At a fundamental level, these are not discrete actors; they are coordinating in what should be considered a modern Communist International, or Comintern. The CCP and other countries work with individuals and major organizations like ActBlue, Tides, Neville Roy Singham and his scores of organizations, George and Alexander Soros and their dozens of organizations, Laurene Powell Jobs’ Emerson Collective, their associated think tanks, political action committees, law firms, and the Democratic Party itself.
Destroying election integrity is only one mechanism they are using. Another is their funding and facilitation of mass immigration in Western states. Terrorism is another. Communist terror has domestic and international dimensions, as Secretary of State Marco Rubio, White House Deputy Chief of Staff and Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller, and Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent emphasized on July 16, 2026, at a ministerial on the resurgence of political terrorism, particularly from the political left. Their remarks helped to frame and inform Americans about the contemporary threat from communists and their terror networks at home and abroad.
Communist efforts are found in other countries as well, such as South Korea, where CCP influence is endemic in A-WEB (the Association of World Election Bodies, currently composed of 118 election management bodies), which is headquartered there, as well as in South Korea’s National Election Commission. In South Korea, U.S. citizen Morse Tan, who served in the first Trump administration as U.S. ambassador-at-large for global criminal justice, exposed fraud in the June 3, 2025, South Korean presidential election as part of an international election-monitoring team, of which the present author was a member. As of this writing, Tan is under a travel ban and must remain in South Korea well into August. This is in connection with a criminal defamation investigation regarding Tan’s comments about South Korean President Lee Jae-myung, made in Washington and thus protected by the First Amendment. De facto, Tan is a political prisoner of the Lee government, held because he exposed the truth about the CCP’s malign influence in South Korean politics, including its elections.
Trump stated that Americans, Democrats and Republicans alike, should be united to evict communist China from U.S. elections. Decades ago, that would have been possible. But today’s Democrats are neo-Bolsheviks. Before coming to power, the Bolsheviks had a slogan: “The worse, the better.” They worked to make the conditions in Russia worse, not better. They sought to destabilize, undermine, and weaken Russia to further the revolution. That logic of “The worse, the better” is relevant for today’s neo-Bolsheviks. They are laboring to destroy America and execute their revolution. Americans should recall that during Trump’s February 2026 State of the Union address, the Democrats would not stand to celebrate American heroes. They do not want to celebrate America; they want to terminate it and replace it with a communist polity in America. That is why Trump has called it the greatest threat that Americans have faced in their history and why it is completely foreign to American identity.
Trump identified election interference as a major mechanism to advance neo-Bolshevik tyranny in the United States. It is not the only mechanism, but election vulnerabilities, along with immigration, are the most immediate problems for Americans to address. America faces a communist revolution. It is time to recognize that the threat from communism is existential, and it is targeting American institutions, identity, and the American people themselves. You may not be interested in communism, but it is interested in you.
Fragile Iran ‘Pause’ Shattered As US Base In Jordan Comes Under Attack, Oil Soars
Summary
Oil soars on reports of Iran targeting US Jordan base; Iraqi militants attack KSA for 2nd day.
Hormuz indirect talks continue amid reports of a possible resurrected MoU deal.
Shipping remains stalled with virtually no tanker traffic through Hormuz.
Iran insistsHormuz stays closed unless its terms are accepted.
Houthis escalate attacks, prompting more ships to avoid the Red Sea.
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Fresh Unilateral Strikes on Jordan Base; Iraqi Militants Again Target KSA
Iranian state media in the overnight hours (local) are reporting fresh apparent Iranian missile attacks in Jordan. A “US base in Jordan was possibly targeted” after reports of explosions there, Fars and IRIB report. Tehran officials have insisted they have not requested US talks following the prior nearly two straight weeks of fighting, though a ‘pause’ took effect last Friday when President Trump ordered a halt to US airstrikes. The day was filled with headline hype of a potential ‘resurrected’ MoU deal. Once again these ‘deal is close’ headlines prove misleading and premature. CENTCOM is confirming on the heels of the Iranian media reporting:
Senior American official: Iran launched missiles toward an American base in Jordan (Axios)
CENTCOM: IRGC forces launch multiple ballistic missiles from Iran and all Iranian missiles were effectively intercepted
Adding to the uncertainty and jitters of already sensitive global oil, Iraqi militants on Tuesday fired projectiles on Saudi Arabia for a second day, also amid the ongoing missile threat from Yemeni Houthis. According to the Associated Press:
Saudi Arabia said Tuesday that it shot down drones fired by Iran-backed militias in Iraq for a second day, while Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen claimed to have forced a Saudi oil tanker to turn around as part of their self-styled blockade of the kingdom.
The attacks underscored lingering tensions despite a period of calm between the United States and Iran, neither of which has announced attacks for days following weeks of escalation over the Strait of Hormuz.
The Saudi Defense Ministry said in a statement that air defenses intercepted and destroyed several drones that had attempted to target petroleum facilities in the nation’s eastern region. It said the attacks were “once again launched from Iraqi territory and carried out by Iran-affiliated terrorist militias.”
Oil climbing on the headlines of the rare pro-Tehran aggression during a ‘pause’:
WTI OIL JUMPS 5% AS US INTERCEPTS IRANIAN ATTACK ON ITS TROOPS
Below: unconfirmed initial image circulating…
Preliminary: footage of a direct hit on Muwaffaq Al Salti air base in Jordan. pic.twitter.com/NGi3R0DLkG
Iran has reaffirmed that if Oman does not agree to its terms for the Strait of Hormuz, the the vital oil transit waterway will remain closed, per Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister. This also as things are again heating up in the Red Sea region, with the Houthis late Tuesday announcing they’ve once again targeted a Saudi oil tanker for violating the blockade. Reuters reports:
Yemen’s Houthis claim to have fired ballistic missiles at a Saudi oil tanker, accusing the vessel of violating what they describe as their maritime blockade on Saudi Arabia in the Red Sea and ignoring warning calls.
The Iran-aligned group’s military spokesperson, Yahya Saree, claims the vessel was forced to turn back.
According to separate reporting, China is holding direct negotiations with Yemen’s Houthis to ensure safe passage for its ships through the southern Red Sea.
Iran says it hasn’t sought US talks in past 16-17 days, reports Irib News
And a US CENTCOM update on its latest figures: it says that as of Tuesday the US military has redirected 18 commercial vessels, disabled two, and boarded another two to “ensure full compliance of the US blockade against Iran.” The latest from Netanyahu’s meeting with Trump at the White House:
Channel 12 on a senior Israeli official: Netanyahu confirmed to Trump that additional strikes on rehabilitated Iranian nuclear facilities are unavoidable
More vessels reportedly turning away from planned routes after Houthi threats:
Three product tankers loaded at Saudi Arabian Red Sea ports and bound for Asia-Pacific and east Africa have turned north towards the Suez Canal, as Houthi-related threats to shipping prompt charterers to reassess passage through the Bab el-Mandeb strait.
Here we go again… despite no evident change in war posturing on either side, and despite shipping traffic still largely at a complete standstill in the Strait of Hormuz, Fox News is out with claims that the failed Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) could be ‘resurrected’… bringing us back to the ‘deal is close’ constant headlines of earlier this summer (though of course the sides were never in reality close – and simply returned to a wider bombing campaign)…
“Mediators of the ongoing conflict in the Middle East believe the U.S. and Iran are close to a deal that would resurrect the failed memorandum of understanding, according to The Times of Israel,” Fox writes, based on the earlier Israeli media article. Negotiators from Pakistan, Egypt and Qatar have been haggling over an Oman-proposed Strait of Hormuz management plan. It will involve fee-collection and is backed by the Gulf states, supposedly. The timing of all of this interesting given Trump is currently hosting Netanyahu at the White House. More from Fox:
Iran and Oman — both of which are situated on the Strait of Hormuz — have reportedly signed off on the proposal advanced by the mediators.
The two sources said the White House was waiting to make a decision until after President Donald Trump meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday.
Meanwhile…
JMIC: DATA INDICATES ZERO TANKERS IN EITHER DIRECTION OF HORMUZ
Still, the return to deal ‘optimism’ has pushed oil prices down further – which is perhaps the entire point of US officials anonymously hyping that a deal is ‘close’ once again.
And S&P futures briefly reached High of Day on the headline…
Oman’s Hormuz Management Proposal
US-Iran attacks have remained paused, and oil prices have extended their declines, as President Trump has claimed Tehran and Washington are now having “very friendly talks” while at the same time suggesting negotiations might not be prolonged.
“We are in very deep talks with Iran. If they don’t work out, we will go back to very strong military action,” Trump told Axios, as we highlighted previously. But possibly the most promising development in terms of an off-ramp is that Oman has presented Iran with a plan backed by Gulf states to manage the Strait of Hormuz.
This would reportedly include including collecting voluntary fees for using it, according to sources who spoke to Reuters Tuesday. The report notes that “The plan could serve as a basis to end the disruption to trade through the strait caused by the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.”
However, this also to some degree represents the stalemated situation going back to square one, given the United States has consistently and vehemently opposed any fees being collected that would go to Iran. An immediate response from Tehran on the proposal has not been forthcoming, and talks could drag on for days related to the Oman plan. Already Tehran is adding some strict conditions regarding frozen or seized Iranian assets abroad, per Bloomberg citing state media:
“Any company or country that receives funds from Iranian assets will not be allowed to pass through the strait,” semi-official Tasnim news agency cites a spokesman for Iran’s central military command as saying in response to recent US proposal.
Reuters provides more detail in the following: “The system would be analogous to one in place on Asia’s Strait of Malacca, where Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore ask ships to pay voluntary contributions to fund navigation, environmental protection and search-and-rescue operations.”
“The Western diplomat compared it to a voluntary carbon tax for flights, where anyone buying a plane ticket can choose to tick a box if they want to pay to offset their emissions,” the report adds.
‘Glimmer of Hope’ Amid Indirect Hormuz Talks
The Wall Street Journal has said this represents a “glimmer of hope” as fighting has halted since last Friday:
A U.S. official and mediators said Iran and Oman were still far apart on some issues, including whether to charge fees for transit. But both sides said there was progress, marking the first glimmer of hope for diplomacy since President Trump ordered a new round of military strikes on Iran more than two weeks ago in response to Tehran firing on commercial vessels in the strait.
…The goal of the Iran-Oman talks is to agree on which route vessels can take through the 22-mile-wide strait. Conflict erupted earlier this month after the U.S. began guiding ships through the strait by hugging the Omani coast, while Iran wants vessels to cross through its territory.
In the meantime President Trump had laid out Monday while speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One his view that there’s “plenty of time” to deal with Iran and that “we are talking right now..” He laid out that while “there’s a good chance that something could happen,” it remains that If not, “we go back to doing what we were doing two days ago.”
Trump has on Tuesday reiterated to Fox News that Iran understands it will never have a nuclear, and reaffirmed that the two sides are talking.
.@POTUS on Iran’s Pickaxe Mountain: “We have the greatest cameras in the world focused on [it]… I know exactly what’s going on at Pickaxe, it’s not a big problem. We took out their nuclear sites, and we’ll have to take out Pickaxe if we don’t make a deal. If we don’t make a… pic.twitter.com/PMdXaBkDvu
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) July 28, 2026
Jazan Oil Refinery Shut Down for Repairs After Strikes
Over in Saudi Arabia, where missile and drone attacks out of Yemen (and possibly Iraq) over past days have damaged Aramco facilities, one regional media source says that“Saudi Aramco has shut down its Jazan oil refinery after a Houthi missile and drone attack damaged key facilities at the site, according to reports.”
“The refinery, which processes 400,000 barrels of crude per day, suffered damage to its Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) complex and tank farm area. Repairs are expected to be completed and operations to resume by Aug. 15, according to a note from consultancy IIR,” Turkiye Today adds.
Satellite imagery also shows alleged damage to gas storage tanks at Saudi Arabia’s Abqaiq facility, most recently to be hit targeted likely by the Houthis:
🔥 Satellite imagery shows damage to multiple gas storage tanks at Saudi Arabia’s Abqaiq (Buqayq) refinery. White and black cooling covers are also visible over two storage tanks to prevent spread.
As for the possibility of where things go from here, amid potential escalation which could see the Houthis further target Saudi oil complexes, President Trump had also warned in the aforementioned Fox interview that the US will “take out” Pickaxe Mountain if it doesn’t reach a deal with Iran.
He noted that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants the US to stay involved in the Iran war, and the two leaders will meet Tuesday in the late morning hours at the White House.
