Update: Big surprise!! They passed it!!

BREAKING: The California State Senate just voted overwhelmingly to pass AB 1840, which allows illegal aliens to apply for taxpayer funded down payments on homes up to $150,000.

An unbelievable betrayal of the citizens of their state. pic.twitter.com/WX3i4F1imM

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) August 27, 2024

As a reminder, US median home prices are already at record highs… so what exactly do they think this free-money will do?

* * *

As Eric Lundrum detailed earlier, via American Greatness,

The state of California could soon pass a law that will make illegal aliens eligible to receive as much as $150,000 in taxpayer-funded loans to purchase new homes.

According to Fox News, the “California Dream for All” act is likely to pass through the overwhelmingly Democrat-controlled state legislature.

The bill would implement a statewide program that provides 20% in down payment assistance, as high as $150,000, for illegals who seek to buy homes in the state.

The only requirements to apply are that one must be a first-time homebuyer and a first-generation homebuyer; the program will also require income levels to be below a certain limit relevant to the county where the applicant lives.

Governor Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) has not yet said whether or not he will sign the bill into law.

A spokesman for his office said that the governor “doesn’t typically comment on pending legislation,” but that “if the bill reaches his desk, the Governor will evaluate it on its merits.”

Democrats in the state have defended the bill, claiming that it simply promotes equality and gives the same opportunities to illegals that American citizens would have.

Assemblyman Joaquin Arambula (D-Calif.), the author of the bill, has claimed that the legislation would still require applicants to meet federal requirements, which includes providing either taxpayer identification or a Social Security number, both of which are things that illegals are generally not supposed to have.

“We simply wanted to be as inclusive as possible within our policies so that all who are paying taxes here in our state were able to qualify,” said Arambula.

“Without the intentional law that we are introducing, we felt that there were complexities and questions that many in the immigrant community would have.”

A similar effort is ongoing in the state of Oregon, being carried out by a taxpayer-funded organization called Hacienda CDC, which is offering handouts of up to $30,000 exclusively to illegal aliens as down payment assistance in buying new homes.

Authored by Jenna McCarthy via Jenna’s Side Rocks blog,

Dear Democrats,

I hope you’ve got your organic, ethically-sourced stress balls and fair trade lavender calming spray handy, because I think you’re going to need them. The anti-vax black sheep of Camelot has thrown his support behind the felonious, mean-tweeting Cheeto, and despite laughable heroic MSM attempts to convince the masses otherwise, the unlikely duo appears to be unbeatable. Even if you cheat harder than you did in the last election—and let’s be real, you set the bar pretty high for yourselves there—it’s looking like you might have to make good on that threat to move to Canada come November.

I can only imagine how that makes you feel. Probably like someone decided to mix peanut butter and ketchup and everyone else is like holy crap you have to try this it’s actually delicious but you’re allergic to peanut butter and ketchup and now you’re about to throw up.

I know you’re clinging to your MOMALA yard sign like Rose on that wooden door after the Titanic went down, and frankly, I don’t blame you. We both know the list of things you cherish *that’s about to vanish like socks in the dryer* is longer than a CVS receipt.

DEI? Yeah—Discriminate, Exclude, and Ignore

In an RFTrump administration, you can expect your beloved Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion to disappear faster than the free Italian meatball samples at Costco. How much do you want to bet that despotic duo will try to install some sort of transphobic meritocracy where pronouns, chromosomes, and sexual preferences don’t even matter, and hard work and talent will determine how successful you’ll be? I know! Imagine this dystopian future world where job promotions are handed out based on skills and accomplishments rather than skin color or relative neurodivergence or how well your beard compliments your breasts. Go get yourself a paper bag and breathe into it. I’ll wait.

Not anymore, I’m afraid.

KKKritical Race Theory? RIP.

I hope you’ve gotten your fill of those engaging CRT discussions, because I’ve a hunch they’re about to go the way of the flip phone. Bobby-loves-Donny will surely put their privileged, white-cloaked heads together (God help us all!) and declare CRT a national threat—right up there with climate change which, by the way, they’ll likely rename something like “ weather”. (I know, for a minute there you thought that Bobby, a lifelong tree hugger, was going to immediately ban gas-powered cars or at least start taxing cow farts or something, but sadly the guy has repeatedly disappointed and angered environmentalists, so I wouldn’t hold your breath.) All that progress you made trying to shame white people for being born melanin deficient and encouraging minorities to feel ever more oppressed, bitter, and victimized? Poof! Gone. (Maybe tissues will become affordable again.)

Open Borders? More Like a Swiss Bank Vault Inside Fort Knox.

Remember when the United States was all about welcoming and helping the huddled masses yearning to breathe free? Yeah, you can tuck that away on a shelf with your model pyramid and replica Rosetta Stone. Get ready for a giant, impenetrable wall complete with laser beams and possibly a moat filled with piranhas. Instead of the government spending our collective money to import, welcome, house, feed, clothe, educate, connect, and otherwise support strangers who pay no taxes and may or may not have come here to kill us, now those funds are probably going to be used to [gasp!] benefit American citizens. It’s so narcissistic and xenophobic, I don’t even know where to start. The good news is once they eliminate that censorship that kept you so safe during Covid, at least you’ll be able to virtue signal express your displeasure online by using a variety of hashtags like #ImmigrationIsBeautiful and #NoHumanIsIllegal and #I’mStuckInACountryBeingLedByAPairOfRacistWhiteDudesSendHelp.

Fear not, snowflakes. This is not an actual thing.

Just Make Rich People Pay for Everything? I Don’t Think So.

With two famously flush white guys running the show, you just know that hyper-taxing the affluent (like AOC’s brilliant and clearly fair and not in any way punitive proposed 70% income tax on the country’s highest earners) is not going to happen. Obviously it’s way better to force those snooty, fat-cat uppercrusters to fork over exponentially more of their hard-earned money to support social programs and reduce income inequality and put gay pride flags in all our classrooms. Now you’re going to have to contribute to all of that, too! It’s so not fair, I honestly can’t even.

Second Amendment Rights? Don’t Tread on THOSE.

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Seriously? But… but… that means people will continue to be able to defend themselves against criminals and tyrants! If they would just ban guns completely, everyone knows all the murderous thugs would turn in their weapons and violent crime would cease to exist. Thanks to this nauseating turn of events, the next thing you know, everybody and their granny will be packing heat and folks will be shooting each other over parking spaces instead of just stabbing each other, which is obviously far more civil and less scary. The only safe solution is to lock yourself in your home and never leave again (except for during elections, because they’ll definitely be banning mail-in ballots, those bigoted trolls). Or move to Canada.

You can bring this one up in therapy.

Foreign Policy? You Mean Nasty Nationalism [shudders].

I know. We were (still are!) thisclose to going to war with China Russia Iran Syria … somebody. They were about to start drafting our daughters! What an exciting and patriotic time to be alive and to be given the opportunity to fight for… something surely extremely important! I know, America’s meddling nose doesn’t really belong in every other country’s politics; in fact, Ayatollah Khamenei and Kim Jong Un have been begging the US to MIOB for basically ever. Now, not only won’t you have any fun, colorful flags to superimpose over your Facebook profile picture; you just know Trumpedy is going to insist on selfishly putting America First (so anti-Semitic!) and withdrawing from the Paris Agreement (so rude!) and the WHO (again). Oh, and they’ll tax the hell out of Chinese imports, so you can say a sad so long to all those sweet Shein and Temu deals. Sorry, boo. It was fun while it lasted.

Free Speech? You Mean, Mean Tweets Are Coming Back.

It’s a frightening thought but one we must all come to terms with: The leader of the free world will be able to communicate with people—openly and without censorship—on the largest and most influential free speech platform in the digital universe. Not only that, but you can bet the channel’s formerly progressive founder isn’t merely going to allow this; that suddenly right-wing sycophant will amplify it. (Although surely there’s lots of overlap, Trump, Musk, and Kennedy Jr. have a combined 288 million followers on X. Timala, in comparison, have a sort of embarrassing 16M collective fans. Go ahead and fact-check that while you still can, because I’m pretty sure fact-checking will soon be a thing of the past.)

McSeriously? You Can Kiss Your Fast Food Addiction Goodbye

I know, your kids live for Chick-fil-A Fridays at school. It’s the highlight of the whole week, practically the only way you can get those little rugrats to the bus stop on time—with tantalizing promises of soggy waffle fries and greasy poultry nuggets awaiting during the midday break. Well, just listen to what that Fauci-bashing anti-vaxxer had to say:

“Two-thirds of American adults and children suffer from chronic health issues. Fifty years ago that number was less than 1%. In America, 74% of Americans are now overweight or obese, including 50% of our children. One-hundred and twenty years ago, when somebody was obese, they were sent to the circus. When my uncle was president, our country spent $0 on chronic disease. Today, government healthcare spending is almost all for chronic disease, and it’s double the military budget, and it is the fastest growing budget item in the federal budget. Chronic disease costs more to the economy as a whole, at least 4 trillion dollars, five times our military budget. We’re going to bring healthy food back to school lunches. We’re going to stop subsidizing the worst foods with our agricultural subsidies. We’re going to get toxic chemicals out of our food. We’re going to reform the entire food system.”

There’s no getting around it: Friday mornings are going to suck.

Spoiler: There’s a NEW New World Order Coming to Town.

I know the dramatic and shocking Kennedonald combo is going to take some getting used to. I mean, we were about to have our country’s first Black Indian, female assigned-female-at-birth cackler commander-in-chief. It was going to be historic; unprecedented! I’ll bet Kamalamadingdong was packing her visit-the-border bag when this bombshell dropped—now she’ll never get to go! (Maybe Doug can take her to Europe instead?)

That woman had plans, dammit. She was somehow going to lower the cost of living that skyrocketed under her veepdom and fix inflation (apparently, by defining it—simplistically and repetitively) but now she won’t get the chance to do that, either! She was going to completely reform our healthcare and criminal justice systems while also ensuring socialism economic equality for all (but not, you know, at her luxurious level or anything, don’t be ridiculous). She promised to expand Medicaid which would guarantee that more people—especially kids and lower income families—would have access to wonderful pharmaceuticals like Ozempic and vaccines! For free!

With RFK Jr. in or around the White House, now everyone’s going to have to learn about (ugh) healthy eating and (yuck) preventative health, which is so much harder and more annoying than jabbing yourself with skinny serum. Alas, the curtain is about to fall on that glorious and golden age. If vaccines even survive at all (which they probably won’t because Kennedy likes to claim—based on nothing but peer reviewed literature the CDC refuses to look at which he actually compiled into a bestselling book you’ve never heard of—that unvaccinated kids are healthier across the board in nearly every metric you can think of), you definitely won’t be getting a donut with your next series, I’m afraid.

You Can Retire Your MAKE AMERICA OBAMA AGAIN hat.

I wish I had some soothing words of comfort for you, but there’s no getting around it; this is a terrifying time to be alive. Even though Trump was already president and didn’t do any of these things, he could literally declare martial law the day he takes office. He could imprison his political opponents and critics, refuse to leave the White House ever again, and basically destroy democracy by continuing to point out that our beloved news media is fake and corrupt. And Kennedy? That psychopath actually muttered the following words in his (definitely don’t watch it) campaign suspension speech: “Ultimately, the only thing that will save our country and our children is if we choose to love our kids more than we hate each other.”

(Can you imagine that level of rhetoric spewing from the Oval Office on a routine basis? I mean, sure your side is filled with hatred, but it’s toward specific, hate-worthy things like white privilege, toxic masculinity, police officers, Christians, and Trump!)

Sadly, it’s looking like this is our future. I guess the good news is, it’s only four years.

Consumer sentiment lifted modestly today (headline Conf Board) but under the hood it was a shit-show with labor market weakness accelerating and purchasing-plans puking. Regional Fed surveys were also ugly (as home prices hit new record highs).

That ‘bad’ news prompted a dovish shift in rate-cut expectations (with attention once again shifting to 2024 from 2025)…

Source: Bloomberg

The slight easing sent gold to a new record high…

Source: Bloomberg

Treasury yields were mixed on the day with the short-end outperforming (2Y -3bps, 30Y +2bps), which dragged the 2Y yield lower on the week. Note that bonds were bid from early in the US session after an ugly EU session…

Source: Bloomberg

Nasdaq outperformed on the day (after all the majors were weak out of the gate). Small Caps were the biggest loser with The Dow unchanged…

NVDA was the notable outperformer among the Mag7 today…

Source: Bloomberg

Most notably, 0-DTE traders piled aggressively into calls today (but late on were more conservative with buying straddles)…

Source: SpotGamma

Notably, it has been Dem-policy-driven stocks that have outperformed in the last couple of weeks (but notice the lower pane shows we are at a key relative strength level for Dems/Reps right now)…

Source: Bloomberg

The dollar was unchanged on the day, unable to recover any more of the post-J-Hole losses…

Source: Bloomberg

As gold rallied, the other alternative currency (Bitcoin) crumbled back to pre-J-Hole levels…

Source: Bloomberg

Oil prices fell today, seemingly stalling at recent resistance…

Source: Bloomberg

Finally, it’s the big one tomorrow… NVDA’s earnings. The S&P 500 vol market is ready…

Source: Bloomberg

Are you?

Source: Bloomberg

Of course, it’s different this time.

Authored by Eric Lundrum via American Greatness,

On Monday, a federal judge in Texas blocked the Biden-Harris Administration’s attempts to implement a “parole in place” program that would have awarded a pathway to citizenship to illegal aliens who are the spouses of American citizens.

As reported by Just The News, the decision was the result of a lawsuit filed by a coalition of 16 Republican-controlled states, led by Texas.

The lawsuit sought to block the program, due to its implementation being the result of illegally bypassing Congress for “political purposes.”

U.S. District Judge J. Campbell Barker ultimately agreed with the coalition of states, issuing his administrative stay on the program for at least two weeks while he hears the argument from the plaintiffs.

“The claims are substantial and warrant closer consideration than the court has been able to afford to date,” Barker wrote in his opinion.

The “Parole in Place” program had launched just last week, allowing illegal aliens who are married to American citizens to remain in the country legally so that they can apply for green cards. Requirements include having lived in the U.S. for at least 10 years, having no criminal history, and having been married to a citizen by June 17th.

Previously, illegal aliens who had married Americans could still apply for green cards but had to leave the country during the application process, which would take several years.

In addition to Texas, the 15 other states involved in the lawsuit are: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, North Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Wyoming.

Israel’s military has announced another big breakthrough operation on Tuesday, after a small handful of prior hostage recoveries. An Israeli Bedouin man has been recovered alive after spending more than ten months in Hamas captivity.

52-year old Qaid Farhan Alkadi is a father of eleven and has been returned safely following a “complex mission” by Israeli commandos which took them deep underground. 

Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari confirmed in a press conference that “He is alive and back home in Israel.”

Alkadi had been taken hostage on Oct.7 while working as a private security guard at Kibbutz Magen in southern Israel. Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) had overrun several civilian communities while also attacking border bases during the attack which has been widely dubbed “Israel’s 9/11” – leaving mass slaughter in their wake.

The IDF and the Shin Bet national security agency said they are withholding details of the raid “due to considerations of the safety of our hostages, the security of our forces, and national security.” However an IDF briefing revealed the following:

“This morning, Shayetet 13 troops, the Yahalom unit, and the Shin Bet, rescued Farhan alive from a tunnel in southern Gaza,” he said in a press conference. “The troops reached the area thanks to precise intelligence,” Hagari added

Hagari denied rumors that al-Qadi managed to escape the tunnel in which he was held, saying that troops “rescued Farhan from underground, he met our forces underground.”

Al-Qadi was not discovered by Israeli special forces “by chance” as some reports described, although there was no pre-planned operation to specifically rescue him, military sources said.

The agencies revealed that Alkadi is in stable medical condition after undergoing thorough evaluation in a regional hospital. Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs shared video on X showing the rescued man being rushed by his joyful family members upon his return.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been facing pushback from hostage victims’ families amid stalled efforts to achieve a ceasefire, is hailing it as a win for IDF forces and for his government’s Gaza policy. He has argued staying the course militarily until Hamas is eradicated, but opposition leaders have demanded that a ceasefire and hostage exchange deal should be prioritized.

Body cam footage from the latter part of the daring rescue operation…

New body cam video from Qaid Farhan Alkadi’s rescue today in the southern Gaza Strip pic.twitter.com/LxGtJFpCCH

— Brian BJ (@iamBrianBJ) August 27, 2024

“The Prime Minister congratulated Farhan and told him that the entire Israeli people are excited by his release,” a statement said, and added that the prime minister “clarified in the conversation that he will continue to do everything to return all our abductees home.”

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant also hailed that the operation “joins a series of actions taken by the IDF that bring us closer to achieving the goals of this war.” He stressed that “Israel is committed to taking advantage of every opportunity to return the hostages home.”

By Russell Clark of Capital Flows and Asset Markets

Reading the excellent article by Brian Meehan of Bloomberg Intelligence, “Basis Trade Growth Is Massive”, I was reminded just how stupid clearinghouses really are. If you ever meet a head of a clearinghouse, I can assure it was not brains that got them to this key position in global finance.

As the article points out, there is now a $1.1 trillion notional short position in US treasury futures. You should not read this as the market being bearish on treasuries. It is a levered trade to make a “risk free” return on the difference in price between off the run treasuries and treasury future positions. For every short position in the treasury futures, there should be a long position in the physical market.

The size of the trade has been large for awhile. The Federal Reserve took a look at it and thought it was not a problem (uh oh!). It has the same data as above, just that Bloomberg has provided an up to date estimate. In the post GFC world, much of this trade has migrated from prop desks at banks to hedge funds.

This is not a new phenomenon. BIS noted in 2019 reports that the Repo market has become bifurcated between banks and hedge funds. See dotted line in middle graph.

This is a natural by-product of how clearinghouses work. The clearinghouses at the centre of repo trading (LCH and CME) are only concerned with how quickly trades can be liquidated. As they tend to settle on a daily basis, and hedge funds and other asset managers need to settle constantly, they tend to allow trades to grow in size much more than when investment banks were at the centre of repo market.

Clearinghouses cannot go bust. So they pursue policies to grow volumes as much as possible. One such policy is compression trades. This is where very similar interest rates products can be compressed into a single product to allow more leverage to be used. Below show that a multiple of outstanding notional is being compressed every year.

The problem is that when there is a shock in interest rate markets, then liquidity disappears and clearinghouse starts demanding more margin from all players, which then leads to spiraling weaker market. We saw just such a circumstance in the UK gilt market under the PM Truss. The sell off in gilts could only be contained by the Bank of England becoming a buyer of last resort.

The big investment banks know that the clearinghouse misprice risk, which is why they suggested that they should take more financial risk in pricing, to incentivise them to do a better job. Regulators have so far ignored this advice. The proposed risk waterfall is presented below. More detail here. A close look at the proposed margin from the waterfall is a the ability to bankrupt CCPs. This has so far been rejected.

So how does this fit in with LTCM? Well LTCM focused on risk free arbitrage trades. The problem with most of the trades is that you need substantial leverage to make them work. Most banks would feel uncomfortable lending a hedge fund that much. The downfall of LTCM as it was told to me, and I did work at UBS, was that one day there were industry drinks and one trader mentioned how much business he was doing with LTCM – and another trader said, hang on a second, we are doing just as much business as well. The traders then worked out that LTCM had far more leverage than they had disclosed, and as they traders worked this out, sold their positions before LTCM could. This put downward pressure on their trades, eventually forcing them bankrupt and bringing about a bailout. In essence, LTCM became the market, and at that point, it was destroyed. But it only became so leveraged because it acted in secrecy.

Under the new clearinghouse system, no such subterfuge is necessary. The clearinghouse actively wants you to borrow as much as possible, as long as you meet the liquidity and volatility seen over the look back period – typically 10 years. The problem, as the details above show, is that the hedge funds are all in. So are retail investors. Shares outstanding in TLT has skyrocketed.

So what could go wrong? Well in the US, after the presidential election is out of the way, you could expect inflationary policies to be announced (higher minimum wage, more tariffs, more stimulus). This leads to inflation expectations rising. Physical treasuries are held in ETFs like TLT, which probably see redemptions. Treasuries fall, basis trade widen, margin calls are issued, which leads to more selling of treasuries, and more basis widening, until the Fed steps into buy treasuries. This seems likely to me: a long GLD/TLT trade should do well in that environment. Having gone sideways for a few months, a move higher looks overdue.

The clearinghouse reform is failed reform – but it will take a crisis to change. Maybe this will be the one.

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Democratic Party of Georgia have sued the state election board, in a move supported by Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign.

Filed on Monday, the lawsuit seeks to challenge a new rule approved weeks earlier that  gives local officials more power to investigate votes after election day – authorizing any member on a county board of election “to examine all election related documentation created during the conduct of elections prior to certification of results.”

The new rule also requires the board of elections in each county to meet no later than 3pm on the Friday after the election to compare the total number of unique voter ID numbers in each precinct with the number of total ballots cast in the precinct. Votes in each precinct can’t be counted until the investigation is resolved. If the results cannot be reconciled, the board is then authorized to “determine a method to compute the votes justly.”

“If the board found votes that were made illegally, they should not be counted,” said Election Board member Janice Johnston, a Republican.

Democrats contend that “chaos” will ensue in November if the new rules are allowed to stand.

The lawsuit claims that the new rules will give local election officials broad license to “hunt for purported election irregularities of any kind, potentially delaying certification and displacing longstanding (and court-supervised) processes for addressing fraud.”

The Republican-controlled State Election Board has moved aggressively to implement new procedures ahead of the election, which they say gives local boards the power to conduct a “reasonable inquiry” into elections before certifying them.

According to the lawsuit, the new rules create the impression that local election officials have discretionary power over certifying election results.

Members of the board who voted to pass the new rules said that they would not permit officials to ignore deadlines for certification set by state law. But the lawsuit notes that some local election officials in Georgia have already sought to delay or refuse certification, and that the new measures add to a legal uncertainty that undermines the entire election process across the state.

“These novel requirements introduce substantial uncertainty in the postelection process and — if interpreted as their drafters have suggested — invite chaos by establishing new processes at odds with existing statutory duties,” the lawsuit argues. –Seattle Times

The lawsuit asks the court to clearly state that certification is mandatory and cannot be delayed by election officials (which is hilarious, considering the country-wide, multi-day delays in Democrat strongholds that began happening with the 2020 US election).

The suit also claims that delaying certification could also result in “mass disenfranchisement of eligible, registered Georgians.”

“The three members Donald Trump called his ‘pit bulls’ for ‘victory’ disagree, and they’re determined to establish a new power of not certifying an election result should their preferred candidate lose — as he did in 2020,” said Rep. Nikema Williams, chair of the Democratic Party of Georgia, referring to praise heaped on members of the State Election Board by the former president.

The election integrity rules unsurprisingly came under fire from GOP Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who claimed that the last-minute changes were undermining confidence in elections.

“Activists seeking to impose last-minute changes in election procedures outside of the legislative process undermine voter confidence and burden election workers,” he said in a statement. “Misguided attempts by the State Election Board will delay election results and undermine chain of custody safeguards. Georgia voters reject this 11th-hour chaos, and so should the unelected members of the State Election Board.”

Update (1153ET): The Trump campaign has responded to Axios reporting that Kamala Harris now supports a border wall.

“How much longer will the mainstream media allow Kamala Harris to hide and use staff to speak on her behalf? It’s DAY 37 of ZERO interviews and Kamala’s anonymous campaign sources are now claiming she supports President Trump’s border wall – this is a preposterous and false claim.”

“Kamala’s ACTIONS speak much louder than the WORDS of the anonymous staff she is cowering behind.”

From Karoline Leavitt @kleavittnh National Press Secretary:

🚨Trump Campaign Statement on Open Border Kamala Harris

How much longer will the mainstream media allow Kamala Harris to hide and use staff to speak on her behalf? It’s DAY 37 of ZERO interviews and Kamala’s anonymous… pic.twitter.com/ZCfajXafTX

— Donald J. Trump Posts From His Truth Social (@TrumpDailyPosts) August 27, 2024

*  *  *

After presiding over the worst illegal immigration crisis in US history, failed ‘border czar’ Kamala Harris has now pledged to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to build a wall at the southern US border – a plan she called “un-American” during the Trump administration.

According to Axios, which calls it the “latest example of Harris flip-flopping on her past liberal positions,” Harris is now embracing a ‘more hawkish’ immigration policy while the Trump campaign spends tens of millions of dollars on attack ads over the Biden-Harris administration’s failed border policies.

Last week, Harris told the Democratic National Convention that she would sign a recent bipartisan border security bill negotiated by Sens. James Lankford (R-OK) and Chris Murphy (D-CT), which calls for hundreds of millions of dollars of unspent funds to be used to continue Trump’s wall.

“It requires the Trump border wall,” Lankford told Axios. “It is in the bill itself that it sets the standards that were set during the Trump administration: Here’s where it will be built. Here’s how it has to be built, the height, the type, everything during the Trump construction.”

In 2017, then-Senator Harris called Trump’s border wall project a “stupid use of money,” and committed to blocking funding for it.

Trump’s border wall is just a stupid use of money. I will block any funding for it.

— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) April 21, 2017

Kamala Harris now says she wants a wall on our southern border if elected.

Unfortunately for her, we have receipts: pic.twitter.com/akBDYk7Qa7

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) August 27, 2024

Then, under her watch as the so-called “Border Czar,” illegal crossings on the southern border spiked (at least) 140% compared to numbers seen during the Trump administration, according to the House Committee on Homeland Security.

After Democrats gained control of the House in 2019, they opposed the large-scale funding Trump requested for the wall – leading to a government shutdown. Eventually, some funding was approved – but was far less than what Trump had requested. In response, Trump declared a national emergency in February 2019 to divert funds from other federal projects to the wall’s construction, which led to various legal challenges.

Last week Harris came under fire for a campaign video which prominently featured images of Trump’s partially built US-Mexico border wall, boasting that her credentials as a “border-state prosecutor” would allow her to get the job done.

🤔 What is that in this ad?

Looks like the @realDonaldTrump BORDER WALL to me! https://t.co/QeNVJNjOcD pic.twitter.com/QFugDm7bjc

— Mike Howell (@MHowellTweets) August 23, 2024

The flip-flop was so brazen that ABC News called her out on it!

🚨 ABC just CALLED OUT Kamala Harris for using video of President Trump’s border wall in her new ads

If even *ABC* is calling her out for her hypocrisy, you know it’s REALLY bad 🤣 pic.twitter.com/R9DakoOKw5

— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) August 26, 2024

Kamala Harris on the border wall over the years:

2017: “Asking taxpayers to pay for a border wall is a terrible idea.”

2018: “Funding Trump’s unrealistic border wall would be a gross misuse of taxpayer money.”

2019: “Trump’s border wall is stupid.”

2020: “As I said, Trump’s… pic.twitter.com/RxWrRZ1MRh

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) August 27, 2024

Amazing…

Of course, she hasn’t changed on some things…

Kamala Harris says, if elected president, she’ll use executive action to confiscate guns if Congress doesn’t act within the first 100 days of her administration pic.twitter.com/nHa605TUy8

— Paul A. Szypula 🇺🇸 (@Bubblebathgirl) August 26, 2024

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

A federal appeals court on Aug. 26 declined to block Google from removing Robert F. Kennedy’s videos, ruling that Kennedy has not shown that the California-based company was a state actor when taking down the videos.

Kennedy’s lawyers said in a request for a preliminary injunction that Google was acting on advice from government officials when it removed multiple videos for allegedly violating the company’s medical misinformation policy. The lawyers requested an injunction blocking Google from removing additional videos from Kennedy’s YouTube page.

“Americans may agree with Mr. Kennedy’s views. They may disagree with them. They may vote for Kennedy or reject him at the ballot box. Whatever the case, our Constitution requires that voters have an unfettered chance to hear Mr. Kennedy speak. That is the only way they can make an educated decision when exercising their right to vote,” they said in their motion.

Google said it was merely applying its own policy and urged the court to deny the request.

U.S. District Judge Trina L. Thompson in 2023 sided with Google, finding that Kennedy had not established Google as a state actor and, therefore, rights from the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment have not been implicated.

Private entities can be treated as a state actor if shown to have acted under “coercive power” or “significant encouragement” from government officials, under court precedent.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on Monday upheld the ruling.

“Google asserts that it is a private entity with its own First Amendment rights and that it removed Kennedy’s videos on its own volition pursuant to its own misinformation policy and not at the behest of the federal government. Kennedy has not rebutted Google’s claim that it exercised its independent editorial choice in removing his videos,” a three-judge panel said in the unanimous decision.

“Nor has Kennedy identified any specific communications from a federal official to Google concerning the removed Kennedy videos, or identified any threatening or coercive communication, veiled or otherwise, from a federal official to Google concerning Kennedy. As Kennedy has not shown that Google acted as a state actor in removing his videos, his invocation of First Amendment rights is misplaced,” the judges added.

U.S. Circuit Judges Consuelo M. Callahan and Gabriel P. Sanchez were part of the panel with U.S. District Judge John A. Kronstadt, who was sitting by designation.

Google did not respond to a request for comment.

A lawyer representing Kennedy said the ruling fell short.

“This unpublished opinion leaves much to be desired. It contains no analysis, much less meaningful discussion of the important First Amendment issues raised in the case,” Scott James Street told The Epoch Times in an email.

“Given the lack of meaningful analysis, we plan to move the case forward, both in the trial court and, if necessary, in the Supreme Court.”

Kennedy, an independent, suspended his campaign this month and announced his support for former President Donald Trump.

Ukraine authorities are warning the population of an extremely difficult winter ahead, following Monday’s large-scale Russian aerial attack which targeted energy infrastructure in nationwide drone and ballistic missile strikes, impacting 15 out of 24 oblasts.

Strict electricity consumption restrictions have been imposed for at least weeks throughout the country, with Ivan Plachkov, President of the All-Ukrainian Energy Assembly, saying on a public broadcast that “The restrictions will be in place not only today. I think this will be for a week or two if there are no large-scale attacks.”

Plachkov said the aim of Monday’s attack, one of the largest ever aerial assaults of the war, was to impose a total blackout on Ukraine.

President Biden too suggested that this was the aim. He said while condemning the attacks, “I condemn, in the strongest possible terms, Russia’s continued war against Ukraine and its efforts to plunge the Ukrainian people into darkness.”

“Russia will never succeed in Ukraine, and the spirit of the Ukrainian people will never be broken,” he said further while discussing the “outrageous” attacks, which come against the backdrop of Kiev’s ongoing Kursk cross-border offensive.

He said that as a result the United States is “surging energy equipment to Ukraine to repair its systems and strengthen the resilience of Ukraine’s energy grid.” At least 80% of Ukraine’s energy capacity is already damaged and degraded (with some reports putting the figure at 90%).

It goes without saying that Ukraine’s energy grid was already weak and battered. RIA Novosti has cited a warning by Energy Minister German Galushchenko, who has described that power generation is likely to deteriorate to the point that this coming winter will be the hardest ever faced by Ukrainians in the country’s history.

Another energy official described, “There were strikes on distribution systems and power supply systems, including nuclear power plants. There was also a blow to the Kyiv HPP. There, too, the power equipment was partially damaged. Serious works are now being carried out. It is necessary to restore the scheme more reliably for the possibility of providing consumers in full.”

⚠ Confirmed: Metrics show internet connectivity levels have fallen in multiple regions of #Ukraine including Kyiv after a series of deadly Russian missile and drone attacks targeting energy infrastructure followed by emergency power shutdowns 📉 pic.twitter.com/PdSmrmRjVK

— NetBlocks (@netblocks) August 26, 2024

Already by early summer reports from Ukraine were calling the prospect of rebuilding damaged facilities too “daunting”. Politico described that already “in March Russia started targeting entire power plants, which take months to rebuild, instead of hitting easily replaceable energy transformers. Even worse, there is a shortage of parts needed to rebuild the destroyed power plants.”

Clearly this Russian strategy has continued amid what has become a war of attrition. Russian forces have even taken out hydro-electric plants in various parts of the country, and Zelensky has recently been warning that sensitive nuclear energy sites are coming under threat.