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ISIS Terrorist Reaches Britain Via Small Boat After TikTok Assured Him UK ‘Accepts Everyone’

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ISIS Terrorist Reaches Britain Via Small Boat After TikTok Assured Him UK ‘Accepts Everyone’

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity News,

A convicted ISIS terrorist who attended beheadings and public floggings in Iraq has been jailed for two years after arriving in Britain on a small boat. He told officials he came because he heard on TikTok that the UK “accepts everyone” and respects human rights.

Mohammed Yaseen, 35, had lived a desolate existence in Iraq before aligning with ISIS. He watched ceremonies including stonings and was found with a Kalashnikov rifle. He later travelled to Germany in 2014, made multiple asylum claims, and was convicted in Dusseldorf for participating in a terrorist organisation and membership of ISIS. He received a four-year-and-three-month sentence and a 20-year expulsion order.

Instead of being returned to Iraq, Yaseen made his way to France and then crossed the Channel. On 13 December 2025 a Border Force vessel intercepted the small boat carrying around 80 people. Yaseen gave a false name, claimed to be from Kuwait, and lied about his age and background. He was placed in a hotel in Basingstoke with clean clothes and asylum support.

Of course he was.

Biometrics exposed the deception. He was arrested on Christmas Eve and later admitted attempting to enter the UK without valid clearance. Winchester Crown Court heard the full extent of his past.

Prosecutor Steven Molloy told the court: “He said he travelled from Kuwait to France from Belgium and was seeking asylum. He said he did not like it in France but heard on TikTok that the UK accepts everyone and respects human rights.”

Molloy added: “There is a deeper and lengthy involvement in terrorism and Islamic extremist ideology. Our assessment is that he is high risk in all categories. There is a danger that this individual poses to the whole of the UK.”

Defence barrister Katie Porter-Windley acknowledged the German convictions but insisted they had no bearing on his UK intentions and that he had committed no further offences here.

Yes, they really argued that the convicted ISIS terrorist should be allowed to claim asylum.

Judge Christopher Parker KC noted evidence that Yaseen could speak English despite claiming otherwise and stated: “You made absolutely no mention of what had happened in Germany in 2020 when you were convicted of a serious offence. My judgment is that your culpability is exceedingly high. There is a strong likelihood that you will be deported from this country either at the start of or before your sentence is concluded.”

Yaseen is now serving his sentence and faces removal.

The question is, how many more cases like this have slipped through the net?

The case occurs against the backdrop of sustained small boat arrivals across the English Channel. Official figures show around 36,000 people reached the UK by small boat in the year ending 31 May 2026, down 13% on the previous period.

In 2025 the total stood at approximately 41,500. The first five months of 2026 saw roughly 9,000 arrivals, 38% lower than the same stretch of 2025, though numbers typically rise through summer. Recent daily counts have fluctuated, with over hundreds arriving some days.

A Home Office spokesperson claimed the government is “bearing down on small boat crossings, with removals of small boat migrants at record levels and asylum claims down by 12%,” adding that joint work with France has stopped over 44,000 attempted crossings since the election and that nearly 70,000 people here illegally have been removed or deported, up 41%.

Yet the presence of a convicted ISIS operative who simply watched a TikTok video and decided Britain would take him demonstrates that vetting and deterrence remain dangerously inadequate.

Footage captured by GB News shows the mindset of some arrivals. Illegal migrants on a small boat in the Channel can be seen discarding passports and shouting “this is the end of England” moments before landing on British shores.

Meanwhile, the government plans to house more than 1,000 adult single male boat migrants at a former MOD site near the villages of Upper Arncot and Piddington (combined population around 1,600).

The men, who crossed from France, will not be detained and will be free to wander local areas. Even voters in areas that backed pro-migration parties are now confronting the direct consequences.

The same pattern appears in housing decisions that have sparked fury in rural communities. There is outrage over plans to move more than 80 asylum seekers into £250,000 new-build homes on what locals call “Migrant Street” in Stoke Heath, Shropshire.

The properties had been promised as social housing for local families. Residents described feeling lied to and expressed fears for safety, particularly around children.

GB News correspondent Alex Armstrong spoke to locals in Stoke Heath. One resident stated: “These houses were built for locals, for families who’ve never had a chance… It’s putting our lives in danger.”

The new-build estates purported to be for social housing are instead now being allocated to hundreds of random foreign men, placed next to a children’s playground and primary school.

Proposals for large numbers at sites such as Linton-on-Ouse and former military bases, stand in stark contrast with 1.5 million British households on council waiting lists and the lack of local consultation or amenities in many receiving areas.

Residents have voiced concerns about safety, cultural change, and the sudden tripling of small village populations.

Beyond immediate arrivals and housing, policy shifts are accelerating the erosion of British identity. The Centre for Migration Control has today highlighted how citizenship is being systematically devalued.

After the earlier emphasis on vague “British values,” the Home Office is now allowing illegal migrants to obtain British citizenship simply by remaining in the country for six years, regardless of integration or values.

Further examples underscore the enforcement gap. GB News reported that Labour has been urged to pursue rapid deportation after the so-called “Godfather of smugglers,” who boasted “this city is ours,” claimed asylum in the UK.

The cumulative picture is stark. A terrorist who attended beheadings enters because social media told him Britain would accept him – and the court record confirms the claim aligned with his experience. Migrants on incoming boats declare the end of England. Rural communities watch new homes handed to unvetted arrivals while local families remain on waiting lists. Citizenship rules loosen further, and even notorious smugglers are benefitting from the system.

Britain’s borders are not merely porous; they function as an open invitation that high-risk actors and economic migrants alike have learned to exploit.

Every fresh arrival and every housing dispute adds to the pressure on communities already stretched by years of uncontrolled inflows.

Secure borders, rigorous vetting, swift removals of those without valid claims, and an end to policies that place newcomers ahead of citizens are baseline requirements for any nation that intends to remain sovereign and safe.

Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/04/2026 – 08:10

German Clampdown On Sick Leave: No More Phoning It In, Doc Note Needed On Day 1

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German Clampdown On Sick Leave: No More Phoning It In, Doc Note Needed On Day 1

In a stark departure from its reputation for employee-coddling, the German government is attacking the mass abuse of sick leave with strict new policies that would require a doctor’s note obtained on the very first day an employee is sick, with no ability to simply take a sick day with a mere phone call. The reform package also targets retirement ages, tax rates,  regulations, welfare benefits and the ease of hiring and firing. It’s expected to pass parliament by year’s end. 

“The number of sick days is too high,” German chancellor Friedrich Merz told reporters. “We are creating a set of tools that will enable those involved, both employees and companies, to correct this. We know this is a tough decision. But we can no longer afford the competitive disadvantage caused by prolonged absences from work.” Merz said the changes are needed to invigorate Germany’s economy, which has faltered after the COVID pandemic and suffered from the West’s interventions in the Ukraine war and Iran. 

Previously, employees in Germany didn’t need a doctor’s note until their third day of absence, and they could obtain the note via a phone call to a doctor. The rules also granted up to six weeks of leave per illness. A new bout of sickness started a new six-week clock. 

On top of enjoying six weeks of vacation time, the average German has been taking nearly three weeks of sick leave per year. The German sick-time pace is about double the US pace, and is also higher than the call-out frequency in Sweden, the Netherlands, Denmark, Poland and Italy. However, sick-leave abuse is even worse in France and most of the Nordic states. 

Predictably, German trade unions are up in arms. Frank Werneke, who leads the services-sector union Verdi, said Merz was “creating a culture of distrust of employees.” (Seems like maybe the employees collectively cultivated that distrust by casually calling out sick.)  

Medical professionals are squawking too, warning the policy will be a hammer-blow to efficiency and doctor availability. The German Association of Family Physicians called the new rules “an absolute catastrophe,” adding that “our practices would be flooded with patients who don’t need in-person care and would be better off in bed.” 

The German reform package resulted from negotiations between Merz’s center-right Christian Democratic Union Party and the Left-wing Social Democrat Party that is part of the ruling coalition. The package also includes:

  • A gradual increase of the retirement age from 65 to 67
  • The introduction of a capital-markets fund for the investment of contributions to the state pension system
  • Greater ease in hiring short-term workers and firing top-earners
  • Welfare reform that incentivizes laid-off workers to get a new job as soon as possible 
  • €10 billion in income tax relief for working-class and middle-income households, fueled by a tax hike on those earning more than €250,000 a year, along with reductions of assorted tax breaks
  • Deregulation, including sweeping relief that drops most requirements for employers to feed statistics to government bureaucracies, and the easing of data privacy regulations for small firms
  • Bakeries and pastry shops will have the freedom to stay open later on Sundays

Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/04/2026 – 07:35

The American System Rejects Europe’s Economic Suicide

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The American System Rejects Europe’s Economic Suicide

Authored by J.B. Shurk via American Thinker,

National self-sufficiency beats globalism’s mass dependency.

What makes a nation wealthy?  It’s not just arable lands surrounded by other lands filled with water, timber, coal, gas, oil, metals, and minerals.  It’s the farmer who knows best how to cultivate those lands in order to maximize food production.  It’s the woodsman, miner, fisherman, and oilman who can extract nature’s bounty and provide the raw materials for every kind of manufacturer.

Producing things requires knowledge and skill.  Competition between producers creates an incentive to innovate.  This motor of discovery — in which human ingenuity uses established knowledge and long-harnessed skills as inputs for creating new forms of knowledge and skill — generates increasing efficiencies in production.  Costs go down; prices go down; producers produce more; consumers consume more.  Economic freedom, therefore, is a wealth-generating feedback loop that benefits all of society.

A nation that can do all of these things on its own is a self-sufficient nation.  A nation that is capable of producing more than it consumes is an exporting nation.  A nation that exports more than it imports is a nation whose people become increasingly wealthy.  The rest of the world pays that nation for its way of life.  The world pays that nation simply for existing.

Anyone who says that a nation’s culture is irrelevant to a nation’s standard of living is a liar.  Productive cultures generate national wealth.  Lazy, reckless, or destructive cultures ensure lasting poverty.  There’s an adage so old and universally embraced that numerous cultures claim authorship: Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day.  Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.  People generally acknowledge these truths.  Whether you are a ninth-century Viking raider or a twenty-first-century welfare queen, if you cannot produce for yourself, you cannot feed yourself without taking from others.  Whether a Somali pirate or a Somali “l-e-a-r-i-n-g” center fraudster, you are dependent on theft from others because self-sufficiency is out of reach.

What might a nation do to encourage wealth creation?  Just as a good farmer cultivates the land to maximize a harvest, good national leaders cultivate social values that maximize personal production.  A culture that values knowledge, skill, and hard work encourages members of society to learn and labor in pursuit of productive innovation.  A legal system that prioritizes protections for private property and personal liberty encourages increased production and wealth creation.  A society that takes pride in building and manufacturing new things fosters a spirit of entrepreneurship.  An entrepreneurial society encourages a self-sufficient society.  A self-sufficient society produces a self-sufficient nation.  Therefore, the cultivation of virtue within society simultaneously cultivates a wealthy nation.

These aren’t difficult concepts to understand.

Why, then, do most Western nations reject the proven path toward national wealth?  Why do Western politicians celebrate “multiculturalism” over the historically productive virtues of Western culture?  Why do Western pundits disparage knowledge, skill, and hard work as attributes of “white supremacy”?  Why do Western lawmakers make it more difficult for Western citizens to own land and personal property?  Why do Western bureaucrats churn out rules and regulations that limit what can be built and manufactured?  Why do Western governments make it difficult for small businesses to thrive?  Why do Western news media claim that only foreign migrants are willing to perform blue-collar jobs?  Why do Western bankers claim that only foreign slave laborers are capable of manufacturing critical goods?  Why do Western professors spend more time lecturing about racism and oppression than how to critically think, invent, and build new things?  Why do Western NGOs support open borders, “climate change” regulations, and economy-killing taxes?  Why do religious leaders praise the criminal and not the faithful Christian?  Why do cultural leaders encourage citizens and foreigners alike to become dependent on social welfare?  Why do pop culture leaders extol frivolous excess over hard work and discipline?  Why do Westerners celebrate gay “pride” for at least a month each year instead of encouraging all citizens to take pride in what they build, learn, and accomplish?  Why do Wall Street and the City of London work so hard to deprive the United States and the United Kingdom of economies that benefit Main Street businesses as much as multinational conglomerates?

Reading through the above questions should lead a rational person toward a reasonable conclusion: The people who currently maintain economic and political power in the West have no interest in making the nations that they ostensibly call “home” wealthy.  The United Kingdom and the European Union cannot produce wealth if their manufacturers are forced to use windmill-generated energy that has been exponentially outpowered by coal and steam for four centuries.  Germany cannot produce wealth if it subsidizes Chinese automakers while bankrupting its own with “green energy” regulations.  Canada cannot produce wealth if it refuses to use its abundant natural resources while importing most manufactured goods from Asia.

Western nations that refuse to use hydrocarbon and nuclear energies are nations dependent on foreign powers for manufacturing.  Western nations that refuse to allow their farmers to grow crops and produce meat and dairy supplies for their home populations are nations dependent on foreign powers for food.  Western nations whose people lack the knowledge and skills to repair everything from small appliances to entire electric grids are nations dependent on foreign powers during crises.  Western nations that lack the cultural will to be self-sufficient are nations stuck in a permanent state of dependency.  If you hand out food stamps liberally and look down on people who insist on providing for their families without government assistance, then you will produce a nation of pirates and fraudsters who make, grow, and build nothing.

How does the United Kingdom survive when it produces next to nothing?  Right now it generates most of its revenue by acting as the economic middleman for most of the globe.  Even though its empire has collapsed and its navy has disappeared, the City of London’s army of bankers, consultants, and lawyers still take a nice cut of every economic transaction around the planet.  They collect insurance fees, regulatory fees, and investment fees like an absentee landlord still bilking old colonies with “rules-based” trade agreements that put money in the pockets of English lords who create nothing.  The Bank of England and the Secret Intelligence Service work together to game the international economy by stirring up regional conflicts and using insider knowledge to bet on the eventual market winners.  Britain’s central bank has ensured that the wealthiest members of society profit from market manipulation while the rest of society suffers from currency depreciation.  This is an economic model engineered to benefit a small cabal of “noble elites” while impoverishing the larger nation.

Ever since some of Britain’s nobles succeeded in convincing some of America’s nobles to erect a Federal Reserve central bank in the Bank of England’s image back in 1913, this funny money con game has drained America’s wealth, too.  Although Americans’ can-do spirit has buoyed economic liberty and growth, the parasitic structure of central banking has steadily deprived the United States of its once unparalleled self-sufficiency.  The gradual debasement of the U.S. dollar has led to the decoupling from the gold standard, the creation of a petrodollar dependent on forever-wars and foreign entanglements, the offshoring of industry and manufacturing, and international trade “deals” that make America more dependent on foreign powers while kicking back “service” fees to Wall Street and City of London bankers.

This is what globalization really produces: dependency.

For the United States to be wealthy and strong, we must return to an American system that mines, grows, and builds everything.  Our people must embrace both personal and national self-sufficiency.  We must reject Europe’s economic suicide.

Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/04/2026 – 07:00

Would The Founders Still Recognize Their Republic?

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Would The Founders Still Recognize Their Republic?

Authored by Andrew P. Napolitano

Which is better — to be ruled by one tyrant 3,000 miles away or by 3,000 tyrants one mile away?
— Rev. Mather Byles (1706-1788)

Does it really matter if the instrument curtailing liberty is a monarch or a popularly elected legislature? This conundrum, along with the witty version of it put to a Boston crowd in 1775 by the little-known colonial-era preacher with the famous uncle — Cotton Mather — addresses the age-old question of whether liberty can long survive in a democracy.

Byles was a loyalist who, along with about one-third of the American adult white male population in 1776, opposed the American Revolution and favored continued governance by Great Britain.

He didn’t fight for the king or agitate against George Washington’s troops; he merely warned of the dangers of too much democracy.

Many of us who monitor federal excess are fearful of out-of-control democracy, which is what we have in America today, yet there remain in our federal structure a few safeguards against runaway federal tyranny, such as the equal state representation in the Senate, the Electoral College, the state control of federal elections, the remnants of state sovereignty, and life-tenured federal judges and justices.

via Fund for American Studies

Of course, the Senate as originally crafted did not consist of popularly elected senators. Rather, they were appointed by state legislatures to represent the sovereign states as states, not the people in them.

Part of James Madison’s genius was the construction of the federal government as a three-sided table. The first side represented the people — the House of Representatives. The second side represented the sovereign states that created the federal government by surrendering limited powers to it — the Senate. And the third side manifests the nation-state — the presidency, which is both head of state and head of the executive branch of the federal government. The judiciary, whose prominent role today was unthinkable in 1789, was not part of this mix.

In his famous Bank Speech, Madison argued eloquently against legislation chartering a national bank because the authority to create a bank was not in the Constitution and thus was retained by the states and reserved to them.

In that speech, he warned that expansion of the federal government would trample the powers of the states and also the unenumerated natural rights of the people that he would soon protect in the Ninth Amendment.

Madison gave the Bank Speech in February 1791, 11 months before the addition of the Bill of Rights — the first 10 amendments — to the Constitution. Given the popular fears of a new central government, Madison assumed that the Bill of Rights would be quickly ratified. He was right.

Had Madison been alive during the presidency of the anti-Madisonian Woodrow Wilson — who gave us World War I, the Federal Reserve, the administrative state of government by experts, the popular election of senators, the judicially sanctioned suppression of political speech, and the federal income tax — he would have recoiled at a president destroying the three-sided table. Wilson did that by leading the campaign to amend the Constitution so as to provide for the direct popular election of senators.

Part of Madison’s genius was to craft anti-democratic elements into the Constitution, as well. And some of them — like state sovereignty — created laboratories of liberty, since some states protect more personal liberties than the Bill of Rights does. President Ronald Reagan reminded the American public in his first inaugural address that the states formed the federal government, not the other way around. Had I been the scrivener of that speech, I’d have encouraged him to add: “And the powers that the states gave to the feds, they can take back!” Of course they can.

Reagan also famously said that we could vote with our feet. If you don’t like the over-the-top regulations in Massachusetts, you can move to New Hampshire. If you’re fed up with the highest state taxes in the union in New Jersey, you can move to Pennsylvania.

But the more state sovereignty the feds absorb — the more state governance is federalized — the fewer differences there are among the regulatory and taxing structures of the states. This has happened because Congress has become a general legislature without regard for the constitutional limits imposed on it.

If Congress wants to regulate an area of governance that is clearly beyond its constitutional competence, it bribes the states to do so with borrowed or Federal Reserve-created cash. Thus, it offered hundreds of millions of dollars to the states to lower their speed limits on highways and to lower the acceptable blood alcohol level in peoples’ veins — this would truly have set Madison off — before a presumption of DWI may be argued; all in return for cash to pave state-maintained highways.

The states are partly to blame for this. They take whatever cash Congress offers, and they accept the strings that come with it. And they, too, are tyrants. The states mandated the unconstitutional and crippling COVID lockdowns of 2020-2021, not the feds. The states should be paying the political and financial consequences for their misdeeds, not the feds. They took property and liberty without paying for it as the Constitution requires them to do. And, of course, some of the states maintained legal protections for slavery.

Byles feared a government of 3,000. Today, the feds employ close to 3 million. Thomas Jefferson warned that when the federal treasury becomes a federal trough, and the people recognize it as such, they will only send to Washington politicians — faithless to the Constitution — who promise to bring home the most cash.

In a democracy, a faithless majority will take whatever it wants from the minority — including its liberty and property. That’s where we are today on the 250th anniversary of the start of this Jeffersonian and Madisonian experiment — a country the Founders wouldn’t recognize as their creation.

Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/03/2026 – 23:20

First $1 Billion, Now $50 Million: Khanna Says Wealth Tax “Must Not Stop At Billionaires”

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First $1 Billion, Now $50 Million: Khanna Says Wealth Tax “Must Not Stop At Billionaires”

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) – fresh off endorsing California’s November ballot measure to seize 5% of billionaire wealth – published a Substack essay Wednesday titled, no really, “Why I Support a Billionaire Wealth Tax.”

He makes it roughly a dozen paragraphs before explaining that it isn’t one.

“The tax should not stop at billionaires, it must reach centimillionaires,” Khanna writes, before spelling out exactly what that means: every fortune of $50 million and up, hit with a 2% federal levy on wealth above that line – every year, forever, on top of everything else you already pay. The vehicle is Elizabeth Warren’s Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act, which Khanna notes he has cosponsored every single year it’s been introduced.

And before anyone reaches for the estate planner: Khanna wants the levy to pierce irrevocable trusts, with the tax billed to the grantor who set them up – because parking a fortune in a trust, in his telling, shouldn’t take it off the government’s books.

Former Microsoft executive Steven Sinofsky summed up the reveal in eight words: “Just like that, no longer a billionaires tax.“

Pirate Wires’ Mike Solana was less diplomatic, characterizing the scheme as an annual asset seizure in which the government tallies everything you own and demands a cut on top of your existing tax bill – now openly targeting anyone worth $50 million. His prediction for where the ratchet stops: “this ends with your 401k.”

For those keeping score at home, the threshold discourse has traveled a long way in a short time:

The measure headed to California voters in November is a one-time 5% tax on the state’s roughly 250 billionaires. Newsom, opposing it, countered on June 26 with a national “billionaires’ tax” – which, in its original form, applied to anyone worth $100 million or more, language that was quietly scrubbed after multiple outlets quoted it as we reported. Six days later, Khanna planted the flag at $50 million.

None of this is exactly new, of course. The Warren bill has carried the $50 million line since she rolled it out in 2019, and Biden’s 2022 “Billionaire Minimum Income Tax” kicked in at $100 million households. The branding always says billionaire, but the fine print ios a slippery slope.

Then there’s inflation… The bill’s $50 million threshold is a flat statutory number that hasn’t moved since 2019 – meaning inflation has already quietly cut the real threshold by more than a fifth. The creep shows up in the sponsors’ own math: when the bill debuted, backers said it touched the top 0.05% of American households; the 2026 reintroduction, per the same Saez-Zucman analysis the sponsors tout, now reaches 260,000 households – the top 0.15%. Same words, triple the coverage, five years. Asset inflation does the broadening automatically. Congress just has to sit still.

The escalator, meanwhile, is pre-drafted: buried in the bill is a provision doubling the top rate to 6% automatically in any year that qualifying trigger legislation is on the books. 

And anyone curious where a “normalized” wealth tax eventually settles can consult the countries that already normalized one. Norway’s kicks in around $160,000 of net worth. The Netherlands taxes deemed returns on assets above roughly €57,000. Swiss cantons start in the low six figures. The European wealth taxes that stayed rich-only – France, Sweden, Germany, Austria, Denmark – were repealed as revenue duds. The ones that survived did so by reaching the middle class. The slippery slope is quite literally the only way these things ‘work.’ 

Khanna spends a portion of the essay taking intramural shots at Newsom, dismissing the governor’s version as an income tax billionaires will never feel – since they take no salary, borrow against their stock, and pass fortunes to their kids without selling a share – while boasting that he and Bernie Sanders tax the wealth itself, to the tune of a claimed $4.4 trillion.

The replies were not kind. Christopher Rufo suggested Washington recover the estimated half-trillion dollars a year lost to fraud before inventing new revenue streams. The most-liked response, from James Hafner, noted that the essay’s “philosophical case” never actually argues its one load-bearing premise – that one man’s need constitutes a claim on another man’s property. “There is arithmetic, and there is need,” Hafner wrote of the piece’s actual contents.

Khanna’s comeback – asking Hafner what he thinks of property taxes – was promptly ratioed, sitting at 135 replies to 11 likes at press time.

Except – property taxes are local, visible, and appealable; they pay for the pothole crew, the 2 a.m. patrol car, and the school down the street – and when assessments outran paychecks, voters famously revolted and capped them. Khanna’s essay actually frames the California fight as Proposition 13 in reverse, which is a remarkable self-own: he’s marketing the sequel to a movie that ended in a taxpayer revolt, triggered by precisely the dynamic critics warn about – paper valuations rising faster than the cash available to pay the levy.

The federal version offers none of the offsetting virtues. The Ultra-Millionaire Tax deposits into the general fund; the child-care-and-community-college wish list lives in the press release, not the bill text. What the bill text does contain is enforcement – just not of the spending. It orders the IRS to audit at least 30% of everyone subject to the tax, every single year. It hands the agency expanded authority to assign values to private businesses, farmland, art, and anything else that’s hard to price. It wires in FATCA-style third-party reporting. And should you decide you’ve had enough of the annual appraisal and leave, it imposes a 40% exit tax on net worth above $50 million on your way out the door. In other words: relentless annual oversight of the taxpayers, and none whatsoever of where the money goes. Even Khanna seems to grasp the trust problem – he launched a state-fraud probe in December, conceding taxpayers “need to have a receipt” for what their money funds – which rather makes Rufo’s point: by his own estimate Washington loses half a trillion a year to fraud, and the remedy on offer is an audit of your art collection.

All of which lands a little awkwardly next to this week’s Free Beacon report detailing how Khanna’s own family fortune – courtesy of centimillionaire father-in-law and auto-parts magnate Monte Ahuja – is sheltered through the very sort of irrevocable trusts the congressman now wants taxed to the grantor. Per the Beacon, Khanna’s minor children hold trust stakes in three private golf clubs and multiple hedge funds, the family occupies a $6 million, marble-clad Washington home with a private elevator, and the congressman’s financial disclosures run to 333 pages of conveniently non-searchable tables.

What it does say, in writing, is what the fine print has said all along: the number was never $1 billion. This week it’s $50 million. Ask again next cycle.

Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/03/2026 – 22:40

Alibaba Bans Employees From Using Anthropic’s Coding Tool Over Distillation Scandal

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Alibaba Bans Employees From Using Anthropic’s Coding Tool Over Distillation Scandal

While in the US, the government’s periodic bans of the latest model from Anthropic (which has made AI doomerism – in hopes of getting the government to regulate everyone else expect Anthropic, yet repeatedly achieving just the opposite – into an art form) has been all the rage in recent months, in China it is the other way around, with China’s tech giant Alibaba banning employees from using Anthropic’s Claude ‌Code at work after the tool drew scrutiny for features that can help identify China-linked users, Reuters reported.

The ban is part of a deepening spat between the two companies after Anthropic accused Alibaba of illicitly extracting ​its Claude AI model capabilities – a dispute that highlights the frantic race between the U.S. and ​China to take the lead in artificial intelligence.

Claude Code is Anthropic’s AI coding assistant for software developers, and has become popular among programmers in China despite Anthropic’s restrictions on access by users and entities in China.

To avoid further escalation of the distillation scandal, Reuters says that Alibaba employees were being told to use the company’s own coding platform Qoder.

As we reported at the time, in late June Anthropic said that it had suffered a strike by Alibaba, which it described as a “distillation” effort that involves training a less capable model on the outputs of a stronger one.

The distillation helps accelerate China’s ability to reach Anthropic’s advanced Mythos Preview capabilities, the company alleged in a letter sent to two U.S. senators.

Alibaba’s ban comes just days after developers said Claude Code contained mechanisms that inspected user environments, including timezone and proxy-related information, and inserted subtle markers into prompts sent to Anthropic’s servers.

An Anthropic employee wrote on Tuesday on X that the feature was “an experiment we launched in March” intended to prevent account abuse by unauthorized resellers and protect against model distillation.

The person who spoke to Reuters about Alibaba’s ban said that Anthropic’s restrictions targeting China were difficult to enforce on individual users who can deploy servers in the United States and make traffic appear as if it originated there. But companies were now more aware of legal and compliance risks.

As US AI model developers seek to prevent unauthorized access, resale and distillation of their systems, Chinese cloud and AI firms have shifted toward domestic and open-source models such as DeepSeek, Alibaba’s ?Qwen, Moonshot and Zhipu.

At the same time, Chinese AI models are making inroads in the U.S. market — a development that sparked concern among some U.S. industry experts, since China’s models are about 90% cheaper yet perform just fractionally worse than the latest US frontier models. 

Souce: UBS

We discussed this extensively in one of our flagship reports, “Answering The “Trillion Dollar Question”: Are China’s AI Models A Better Value Than US Models.“

The answer, judging by the rapid token transition to China, is a resounding yes.

Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/03/2026 – 22:00

Backlash After Columbus, Ohio Announces It Will Raise Flag Of Somalia At City Hall

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Backlash After Columbus, Ohio Announces It Will Raise Flag Of Somalia At City Hall

Via American Greatness,

The city of Columbus faced criticism from conservatives after a now-deleted social media post stated that City Hall would raise the Somali flag in recognition of Somali Independence Day.

The post, published Wednesday by the Columbus Recreation and Parks Department on X, read:

“Happy Somali Independence Day! As we celebrate the unification of the Trust Territory of Somaliland and the State of Somaliland into the Somali Republic in 1960, City Hall will be raising the flag of Somalia.”

The message quickly drew criticism from conservative commentators and elected officials, many of whom questioned why a government building would display the flag of another nation just days before the United States marks the 250th anniversary of its independence.

White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller wrote on X, “Columbus, Ohio raising the flag of Somalia for America 250.”

Journalist Mark Hemingway added, “No American government building should ever be raising another country’s flag. Ugh.”

Ohio attorney and political commentator Mehek Cooke also criticized the announcement.

“City Hall is not a foreign embassy,” Cooke wrote. “As an Ohioan, I am repulsed by the anti-Americanism here. Our leaders treat foreign nationalism as sacred while treating American patriotism as controversial. America’s public buildings should honor America.”

Ohio state Rep. Brian Stewart, a Republican, argued the celebration sent the wrong message.

“If Somalia is such a failed state that we need to take in tens of thousands of its citizens as ‘refugees,’ then we really don’t need to be celebrating its supposed ‘independence’ with patronizing posts on social media,” Stewart wrote.

“One more way in which we encourage the refusal to assimilate.”

The Recreation and Parks Department deleted the post shortly after Fox News Digital sought comment.

After the story was published, a city spokesperson said the original post was inaccurate.

“A social media post created by a city department falsely stated that City Hall would raise the Somalian flag in recognition of Somali Independence Day,” the spokesperson told Fox News Digital. “While the City recognizes and respects the aspirations of people around the world to live in freedom, this post was inaccurate and has been deleted.”

Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/03/2026 – 18:00

Independence Week

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Independence Week

By Bas van Geffen, Senior Macro Strategist at Rabobank

It was a reassuring week for those who are concerned about central bank independence. At the ECB’s annual conference in Sintra, moderator Sarah Eisen channeled a bit of her inner Beyoncé, asking a panel of central bank heads “To all you [bankers], who are independent, throw your hands up at me.” All four policymakers, including Fed Chairman Warsh, confirmed the importance of central bank independence: “The Fed acted independently before the Supreme Court ruling, and the Fed will continue to do so after the ruling.”

The Supreme Court kept the FOMC’s Cook in her seat for now, pending “due process.” However, that does not bar Trump from continuing to try to fire her. In the same ruling, the court overturned a nine-decades-old precedent to allow the US president more freedom to fire the heads of federal agencies at will.

The justices did acknowledge that the Fed is a special case, and that the president’s power to fire a governor “for cause” was deliberately enacted by Congress to prevent that governors only serve at the president’s pleasure. And, the justices concluded, the burden of proof is not a low bar; since independence is key to the Federal Reserve’s design, they argue that “for cause” should be a substantial threshold.

So, the legal disputes will continue over what constitutes “for cause.” Bloomberg reports that the Trump administration is “doubling down” on their efforts to reshape the central bank, as Trump seeks to place more allies in the FOMC.

But the next line of the chorus was a bit more difficult for some of the panellists to sing along with. “All the [govvies], making money, throw your hands up at me” seems to have struck a nerve with the ECB’s Governing Council.

From the sidelines of the Sintra conference, Reuters reported that the central bank is considering increasing the minimum reserve requirement for banks from 1% to 2%. Tweaking the policy stance does not appear to be the reason. From a monetary policy perspective, the minimum reserve requirement is not a very potent instrument. Instead, it appears to be a cost consideration.

It wouldn’t be the first time that this is discussed. In 2023, policymakers changed the remuneration of banks’ minimum reserves – also motivated by some quick cost savings. Today, the ECB still pays more interest on the excess reserves that banks have deposited with the ECB than the central bank earns on the assets in its QE portfolios.

The result is negative net interest income, and various national central banks have thus been lossmaking in the past couple of years. That’s not an immediate problem for the central bank, but the ECB is certainly mindful of the optics and the political sensitivity. Last month’s decision to hike the policy rate by 25 basis points adds new impetus to that discussion.

At Sintra, Warsh also reiterated his aversion against forward guidance. The Fed chair refused to comment on the implications of economic data releases, or even which data series he prefers. But that doesn’t stop the market from drawing their own conclusions. On that note, US non-farm payroll growth disappointed. Companies added only 57,000 new jobs in June, and the 172,000 print for May was revised down to a much more moderate 129,000.

The employment statistics weren’t any better. The unemployment rate declined to 4.2% from 4.3%, but that was due to a large decline in the labor force. The fall in participation even outpaced the large decline in household employment. So, both the establishment survey and the household survey painted a picture of a weak labour market in June.

As a result, US money markets pared back their pricing of Fed rate hikes somewhat. That may also have given some new support to equities. Renewed AI-optimism also helps. The South-Korean Kospi index leads the charge, which appears to be led by Samsung Electronics. The company is up 8% after reportedly securing an order from Anthropic for customized AI chips.

Turning to geopolitics, negotiations between the US and Iran in Qatar have concluded, without much hiccups. The Washington Post reports that US officials feared that Israel might try to assassinate Iran’s negotiating team during the talks. So much so, that they even sent warning to Tehran. Similar risks may resurface as Iran holds the funeral ceremony for Khamenei. Iran warned both the US and Israel to refrain from attacks during the days of mourning.

Following the talks, President Trump told CNBC that Iran “agreed to just about everything we need.” Yet, reality still seems to be different. The US maintains that Iran will not get any frozen assets until it fulfills its part of the memorandum of understanding. Iran, meanwhile, is still demanding the reverse order of these events. And then there’s the issue of Hormuz tolls – or fees. The US insists that Iran does not impose any control or toll, but several European leaders have reportedly accepted the reality that some fees are unavoidable now.

Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/03/2026 – 17:55

Massive Security Presence For Khamenei’s ‘Multi-City’ Funeral Amid Hezbollah, Hamas, Taliban, China, Russia Paying Respects

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Massive Security Presence For Khamenei’s ‘Multi-City’ Funeral Amid Hezbollah, Hamas, Taliban, China, Russia Paying Respects

Via The Cradle

Intensive preparations and security measures took place on Friday for late Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei’s massive funeral, as foreign officials and delegations began arriving in the country from dozens of nations to pay their respects. 

The heightened security measures, including airspace restrictions and mass deployment of security forces, began this week and extended into Friday.

via AFP

The event is being described as a “multi-city” funeral that will span several parts of Iran, including Tehran, Qom, and Mashhad. 

According to authorities, more than 10 million citizens are expected to gather in Tehran alone, with millions more expected to take part in ceremonies in the cities of Mashhad and Qom. 

Large-scale commemorations and ceremonies are also set to take place in Iraq, where the late Iranian leader was also revered. Tehran has coordinated these matters with authorities in Baghdad. 

The late supreme leader’s coffin arrived at the Imam Khomeini Mosalla in Tehran on Friday. 

Several Iranian officials were seen paying respects to the assassinated leader, including President Masoud Pezeshkian, Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. 

Footage also showed Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif reciting a prayer in front of Khamenei’s coffin along with members of his delegation. 

Delegations representing Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Amal Movement and the Iraqi resistance faction Kataib Hezbollah were also present. 

Representatives from over 100 nations are expected to attend and have begun arriving, including from Turkiye, India, Russia, China, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

“Ceremonies will continue on Saturday and Sunday with the body lying in state at the Grand Mosalla before a funeral procession through Tehran on Monday. Further rites are scheduled in the holy city of Qom, followed by ceremonies in Baghdad, Karbala, and Najaf in Iraq,” IRNA reported. 

Public farewell ceremonies will officially begin on July 4 at 6:00 am. The late supreme leader is set to be buried in the city of Mashhad on July 9. 

The night before the preparations kicked off on Friday, the Commander-in-Chief of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Brigadier General Ahmad Vahidi, was seen paying respects to Khamenei’s coffin in images released by Iranian media on Thursday evening. General Vahidi had not been seen in months. 

An Iranian military official warned the US and Israel on Thursday that any attack on the funeral or during its preparations will be met with a severe response. 

“We warn the ​enemies of Iran, especially the US and ​the Zionist regime, to avoid any miscalculation and ⁠to think about the harsh retaliation our armed ​forces would make to any threat and aggression against ​our country,” said Ali Abdollahi, commander of Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters. 

In February 2025, a squadron of Israeli fighter jets flew over the funeral of late Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah – who was assassinated by Tel Aviv in a brutal attack on Beirut in September 2024.

Khamenei was assassinated by the US and Israel on February 28 – the first day of the latest war on Iran.

Several members of his family were killed in the attack, including his wife, daughter, daughter-in-law, and grandchild. His son Mojtaba, who was injured in that attack, has succeeded him as supreme leader of the Islamic Republic.

Khamenei had refused to leave his residence despite warnings about a plot to kill him, telling his security team that he would only permit being moved to a safer location if the same could be done for 90 million Iranians. 

Similarly, Nasrallah had also refused to leave Beirut despite warnings prior to his assassination.

Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/03/2026 – 16:40

US Believed Israel Tried To Assassinate Iran’s Top Negotiators As Ghalibaf’s Plane Made Emergency Landing

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US Believed Israel Tried To Assassinate Iran’s Top Negotiators As Ghalibaf’s Plane Made Emergency Landing

The New York Times has issued a new report citing unnamed US officials who believe that Israel came close to assassinating Iran’s top negotiators Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi.

According to the report, a concrete Israeli threat against Ghalibaf and the FM emerged while they were traveling back to Iran from Islamabad following talks with US Vice President JD Vance on April 12.

Source: Mehr news

Prior to that point, during active fighting, Israel had worked its way through killing much of Iran’s senior leadership starting with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but questions lingered over whether the country’s top negotiators – who have come to represent Tehran on the global stage – could be deemed legitimate targets.

Even as Washington and regional brokers stepped in to try and halt the prospect of runaway conflict, wherein the US would find itself in yet another ‘forever war’ and quagmire, Israel still floated the potential for more assassinations targeting top Islamic Republic leadership. 

The NYT, citing officials, sets up the mid-April near-miss incident as follows:

In April, Mr. Ghalibaf was set to travel to Islamabad to meet with Vice President JD Vance. But Iranian security officials were concerned that Israel would use the opportunity to assassinate Mr. Ghalibaf or Mr. Araghchi to derail the talks, the officials said.

Iranians sought guarantees from the United States, through Pakistani and Qatari intermediaries, that Israel would not carry out any covert operations targeting the Iranian delegation, the officials said.

Pakistani fighter jets escorted the Iranian airplanes carrying a delegation of more than 70 Iranians from the border of Iran to Islamabad and back again when the session was over.

But on the way back to Tehran, an Israeli security threat emerged.

From there, Iranian security forces reportedly notified Ghalibaf’s plane of intelligence indicating that Israel planned to attack the aircraft – and the delegation took the warning seriously enough to divert from the original flight path and make an emergency landing in Mashhad, northeastern Iran.

Ghalibaf and his entourage then opted to return to Tehran by land, the report says. The following sounds straight out of a Hollywood script:

Iran’s security forces notified the plane carrying Mr. Ghalibaf back to Tehran that they had picked up intelligence that Israel planned to attack the plane and that two Israeli fighter jets had entered Iran’s airspace from its western border near Iraq, the two officials said.

“Mahdi Mohammadi, a senior adviser for Mr. Ghalibaf, who accompanied him to Islamabad, confirmed this account on his social media page,” the NYT notes. “The plane made an emergency landing in the city of Mashhad, Iran’s closest airport to the Pakistani border, and the Iranian delegation traveled some eight hours by land back to Tehran, Mr. Mohammadi and the two officials said.”

Some commenters have expressed deep skepticism at the Thursday NYT story…

Behind the scenes the Trump administration had reportedly been asking the Israelis to “back off” in order to allow space for negotiations. Certainly, had Ghalibaf or Araghchi been attacked and killed, the situation would have spiraled into all-out war, which still remains a prospect. 

Lately the Iranians have urged Washington to continue to ‘muzzle’ and restrain its more hawkish Israeli ally. FM Araghchi said Wednesday in reference to Trump that “POTUS has committed the U.S. to muzzling its pets in Tel Aviv. If they ignore their master, Iran will school them. Any threat against our People and Leadership will receive Immediate Powerful Response.”

Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/03/2026 – 16:00

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