US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth called on Congress to approve his request for a $1.5 trillion military budget for 2027 during remarks at a ceremony in South Carolina for the renaming of Joint Base Charleston to Joint Base Lindsey Graham in honor of the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, who died unexpectedly last month.
Hegseth claimed that before he died, Graham told him that the $1.5 trillion request was the best military budget he’d ever seen.
“As we gather here today, the War Department is seeking a historic generational investment of $1.5 trillion for American warriors. And Lindsey himself said, to me in his office, ‘this is the best military budget I’ve seen since I’ve been in Congress,'” Hegseth said, according to a transcript released by the Pentagon.
“This department pays tribute to Lindsey Graham in the naming of this base, but there could be no greater tribute than Congress could give than to invest in our warriors for the full $1.5 trillion,” he added.
Hegseth said that he had known Graham for nearly 20 years, going back to when he was a member of a veterans group pushing for the US to escalate the war in Iraq.
“Nineteen years ago, young lieutenant, uh, First Lieutenant Pete Hegseth came back from Iraq and was a part of a veterans’ organization called Vets for Freedom that believed in the surge in Iraq and advocated for the troops on the ground,” he said. “The first and only senator willing to meet with First Lieutenant Pete Hegseth and nowheresville Vets for Freedom was Sen. Lindsey Graham.”
The event came as Hegseth has been struggling to get support from Congress for the full $1.5 trillion military budget, a nearly 50% increase from this year’s budget.
The Trump administration seeks to reach that figure through a $1.15 trillion National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) plus a supplemental funding bill worth about $350 billion. Hegseth said that he and Graham discussed the plan just a week before the senator’s death.
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth was joined today by Secretary of the Air Force Dr. Troy E. Meink, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, and Sen. Darline Graham for the renaming of Joint Base Charleston, South Carolina, as Joint Base Lindsey Graham,… pic.twitter.com/5dz6TvGOhB
“He looked at me and said, how’s $355 billion sound? He wanted to give even more than $350 billion. He wanted to ensure our military was as equipped as humanly possible, because he was thinking of places like this one right here,” Hegseth said.
Hegseth was joined at the ceremony by Darline Graham, Lindsey Graham’s sister, who has taken over his Senate seat and is expected to pursue the same policies as her brother. Lindsey Graham was notorious for his hawkishness, and following his death, footage came out of him laughing and celebrating days after the start of the US-Israeli bombing campaign in Iran, a war he had been pushing for years.
Phoebe Gates & Co-Founder Caught In The Cookie Jar: Slack Logs Contradict Phia’s ’24-Hour Bug’ BS
When Bloomberg first caught Phia – the AI “personal shopping assistant” co-founded by Bill Gates’ daughter Phoebe Gates and climate-activist-turned-founder Sophia Kianni – claiming affiliate commissions on sales it had nothing to do with, the company’s ham-fisted damage control was a Silicon Valley classic: an unfortunate software bug, discovered “within the last 24 hours” – and of course it was ‘fixed immediately.‘
Except that’s total bullshit.
According to a follow-up investigation published Tuesday, they knew about it for at least seven months – and Gates along with other execs were actively pushing for its use, according to internal Slack messages and people familiar with the matter.
According to the report, an internal dashboard screenshot shows the automatic cookie-dropping behavior was a named feature flag that could be toggled remotely – independent researcher Ben Edelman identified it in Phia’s own code as enable_coupon_auto_drop. It was reportedly switched on December 10 and switched off July 7 – which happens to be the day Bloomberg first reached out for comment. Two people familiar with the matter confirmed the toggle meant the feature was live. So after seven months, the “bug” was magically cured the moment a reporter shot off an email.
The Bug = The Business
A Phia data scientist estimated in a July 7 Slack message that cookie stuffing accounted for roughly 51% of the gross merchandise value the company claimed credit for in June, per Bloomberg. An internal revenue chart reportedly tells the same story: when the features went dark in early July, average daily revenue collapsed from about $80,000 to somewhere between $10,000 and $28,000.
The company disputes the math – a spokesperson called the 51% figure a preliminary analysis built on flawed methodology, and says the revenue cliff also reflects Phia voluntarily shutting down most of its monetization at the same time. Except – when switching off the “bug” vaporizes the majority of your revenue, that’s the business.
The receipts
For readers unfamiliar with the affiliate marketing underworld: publishers earn commissions by dropping a tracking cookie when a shopper intentionally interacts with them – clicking a referral link, applying a coupon. Dropping cookies without user interaction is called cookie stuffing, it’s prohibited by essentially every affiliate network contract, and it works by hijacking credit (and commission) from whoever actually drove the sale.
Per Bloomberg, here’s what the founders were doing while their future PR statement about a 24-hour-old bug was still unwritten:
December 18: Gates, worried that Etsy commissions were coming in light, pressed developers on Slack to confirm that automatic cookie-drops were live across every site offering a coupon – so the company would monetize all merchandise value flowing through checkout. When an engineer confirmed cookies were being set even when shoppers never touched a coupon, she reportedly reiterated that every transaction should be captured regardless. (Phia’s explanation: she was concerned a broken pop-up meant users weren’t seeing coupons, which would also depress attribution. Noted.)
October through July: a feature internally dubbed “passive trigger” reportedly re-dropped a Phia cookie every two hours on any top-1,000 website where the user had ever interacted with the extension – potentially steamrolling other publishers’ legitimate referrals along the way. Bloomberg says its review of Phia’s historical source code confirmed the features existed.
A second feature, also per Bloomberg, reportedly set a cookie if a shopper clicked anywhere on the page after Phia’s pop-up appeared – including while trying to close it.
Kianni, after a colleague warned that dropping cookies on dismiss events violates Google’s Chrome extension policy, reportedly floated the idea of claiming users had been trying to open the extension and simply reversing charges if anyone complained – before cheering the team on to keep the cookies dropping by whatever means available. (A spokesperson says that particular feature was never implemented or launched.)
Oh, and the Slack exchanges in question? Per two people familiar with the matter, they’re no longer visible to Phia employees. Memory-holed, as it were.
Ben Edelman – the advertising consultant who has spent 20 years dismantling deceptive marketing schemes – reviewed Phia’s source code and merchant data, corroborated Bloomberg’s findings, and described a multipart effort engineered to inflate Phia’s revenue while delivering nothing to merchants. His suggestion that the founders should have spent more time reading their contracts and less time building tricks is about as polite as this gets. Phia declined to comment on his analysis.
Sound familiar?
It should. This is the Honey playbook – the same last-click attribution hijacking that blew up in PayPal’s face in late 2024 and spawned a wave of class actions and a creator revolt. The difference is that Honey’s scandal was reconstructed from the outside. Phia’s, per Bloomberg, comes with the founders’ own fingerprints on the toggle. And cookie stuffing isn’t some novel gray area: a decade ago, in the infamous eBay affiliate cases, it ended in federal wire-fraud pleas.
The fallout is already rolling. Affiliate network Impact.com suspended Phia from its marketplace after Bloomberg’s first story and is reallocating unpaid commissions attributed to the startup since June 20. Phia has begun repaying retailers – and with the timeline now stretching back to at least December rather than July, that refund bill is unlikely to shrink. Nike, Gap and Nordstrom, all reportedly among the affected merchants, did not respond to Bloomberg’s requests for comment.
One question the piece leaves hanging: Phia announced a $35 million Series A led by Notable Capital on January 27, at a $185 million valuation – roughly seven weeks after the auto-drop toggle reportedly went live, and weeks after that December Slack thread. The launch announcement touted, among other things, a 40% increase in monetized GMV. The growth metrics were, evidently, impressive. It’s just that, if Bloomberg’s reporting holds, a meaningful chunk of that growth may have belonged to somebody else.
Phia, for its part, says all misattribution features were removed on July 7, that it is reviewing every transaction and issuing reversals to brand partners, and that it is hiring a head of compliance – a role whose necessity apparently revealed itself the same day Bloomberg’s phone number did. The company adds that it remains focused on giving users the best possible shopping experience, including its new digital closet feature.
What binds the new Democratic Party to the new Democratic Socialists is a set of shared issues and values. That is, the radicalism of the Democrats in the age of Trump Derangement Syndrome – lawfare, de-balloting, the Mar-a-Lago raid, and calls to destroy the Electoral College, the nine-justice Supreme Court, and the filibuster – helped give birth to the socialists.
But the overriding commonality among those on the new Left is that if they do not get their way, they blame the “system.” Then they seek to change the rules, no matter how hallowed those laws and conventions may have been or how much they themselves benefited from them in the past.
When the Left lost the White House, Congress, and, for the most part, the Supreme Court, it began clamoring to change the system. For left-wing Democrats, that angst also translated into calls to bring in two new blue states, weaponize the FBI and DOJ, ally with social media to suppress the news, and spy on congressional representatives. All the socialists and communists did was up the ante in destroying norms by calling for the end of the presidency, the Senate, the border, the police, and the Pentagon.
By 2021, it was time to destroy the southern border and welcome in some 10 million illegal immigrants – without audits, English proficiency, health checks, or the ability to support themselves.
Had Kamala Harris been elected in 2024, we would have had another four years and another five million illegal aliens. And perhaps America would have gone from 50 million foreign-born residents to 60 million, or about 18 percent of the population.
In this regard, the Left sees California as our most liberal – and most ideal – state and perhaps concludes that the reason is that 28 percent of its resident population is now foreign-born, with the majority arriving with vast needs for health, education, housing, and food subsidies.
Today, 50 percent of all births in California are paid for by Medi-Cal, which serves 40 percent of the population. When second-generation immigrants are added to the foreign-born population, the two groups together comprise roughly 45 percent of California’s current population. This demographic transformation is one of the most profound in American history and came at a time when traditional civic education stressing assimilation, acculturation, integration, and knowledge of American traditions, history, and values was nearly nonexistent in California public schools.
So one way of achieving radical change was to alter the demography and welcome as many immigrants as possible who, in the first or second generation, might follow the examples of Reps. Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, or Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed. They represent an entirely new sort of immigrant who arrives – or is born to immigrant parents – with both complaints against and dependence on their host country. They can see only the sins of America, never the catastrophes of their homeland that drove them or their parents here. This strange demand to change the rules whenever they do not bode well for angry and aggrieved parties permeates every possible manifestation of the Left, but is especially egregious when demanded by immigrants who came originally as uninvited guests but almost immediately damned their magnanimous host.
It is strange for so many new immigrants to act on an elemental desire to reach America – only on arrival to profess that it is full of toxic, sinful people, living and dead. Yet the damned hosts have inexplicably welcomed total strangers like themselves, and have allowed them to share in the freedom, security, and prosperity created by the dead whom the newcomers nonetheless endlessly slander and smear.
If particular minorities statistically did not do as well on the SAT as Asians and whites did on average, the solution was certainly not SAT tutorials in the inner city or K-12 SAT outreach, demands for tougher classes in grammar, math, and analytics, or a return to the melting pot rather than the current salad-bowl tribalist model.
Instead, after the George Floyd riots, the call went out to abolish the SAT entirely – as if there had never been a purpose behind its creation. In fact, merit-based SAT exams were designed in the 1920s and 1930s to allow anyone, regardless of race, gender, region, or class, to enter college through meritorious performance on the tests – and, in particular, to overcome old-boy insider preferences and regional and ethnic prejudices.
Yet when the SAT was mostly abolished for four or five years, higher education thought it had solved the problem of minority underrepresentation.
In fact, its racialist war on standards only magnified its dilemmas. The SAT had once informed admissions officers not only about applicants’ qualifications but also whether admitted students could do the work once enrolled.
But soon liberal professors learned that many of the newly admitted cohorts lacked the K-12 training necessary to do customary university coursework. Yet if professors maintained their regular courses, requirements, and grading, they might soon be labeled racists once particular minorities were shown to do less well than Asians and whites.
So universities inflated grades. They introduced new remedial and gut courses. And they reduced the required coursework. But again, racialism is never a solution to problems. Instead, it is a catalyst that fuels them – as we have seen with the new notion that plagiarism is not an actionable offense when the culprit can plead victim status, whether a former president of Harvard or a current professor at Cambridge. But there are ancient laws and norms that insist intellectual theft is a crime and should be punished, not rewarded or ignored.
Soon employers noticed that the reading, writing, and analytical skills of graduates from prestigious schools were proving dismal. Alumni complained both that the reputations of their almae matres were in decline and resting on the fumes of the past and that their own children, who had prepared diligently to ensure suitably competitive grades and SAT scores for admission, were being rejected solely on the basis of their race.
The Left likewise pushed for lower physical standards for the military’s ground-combat brigades so that women, on average far less strong than their male counterparts, could join elite units. Again, the same ignorance and arrogance were evident. Physical standards were based on a century of combat experience in which morale, group discipline, and unit success rested on ensuring that all soldiers achieved a common level of physical strength and endurance.
This neo-Marxist-driven demand to mandate equality – albeit now substituting racial and gender consciousness for class consciousness – requires the destruction of established traditions, laws, and norms. The radical Left’s key agendas – defunding the police, destroying the border, granting mass amnesties to illegal aliens, subsidizing wind and solar energy while waging a war on fossil fuels, and expanding racial essentialism in hiring and admissions – have never won more than 30 to 40 percent support among the general public. Yet the solution was not to ask why, and then to reflect, reboot, and recalibrate in order to discover how the Left had lost public support.
Instead, the solution was to alter or destroy the system that had denied them power.
So communists, socialists, and radical Democrats prefer moving the goalposts. When equality of opportunity was largely achieved, next they demanded a mandated equality of outcome.
With the ascendancy of a large, affluent middle class, the Left, in its eternal search for a victimized class, pivoted and replaced class oppression with racial victimization.
And when there were not yet enough victimized minorities to guarantee a majority constituency of the aggrieved, the Left redefined the victimized to include anyone who was not a white heterosexual male, regardless of income and privilege.
And when the people finally tired of the Leftists’ totalitarian social engineering, the Left sought to change the system by radically altering the way Americans vote, the manner in which government is formed and functions, and, finally, the very demography of America.
The common denominator? Human nature revolts at forced statism, coercive redistribution, and government-mandated equality of results. It instead yearns for liberty and freedom.
No matter how much deception, camouflage, or brainwashing is employed, statism, socialism, and communism can never sustain public support. Throughout history, the Left has therefore begun by changing the rules and altering the demography – if not initially through changes to election rules, bureaucratic fiat, and biased court orders, then eventually through sheer violence.
Victor Davis Hanson is a distinguished fellow of the Center for American Greatness and the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He is an American military historian, columnist, a former classics professor, and scholar of ancient warfare. He has been a visiting professor at Hillsdale College since 2004, and is the 2023 Giles O’Malley Distinguished Visiting Professor at the School of Public Policy, Pepperdine University. Hanson was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2007 by President George W. Bush, and the Bradley Prize in 2008.
The Diamond Standard Index, tracked on Bloomberg under the ticker DIAMINDX, tumbled to new record lows during the first half of August as a surge in affordable lab-grown stones eroded the scarcity premium underpinning natural diamond prices.
“Technological progress in growing diamonds in labs has been amazing. It’s no surprise most engagement rings are now using lab diamonds,” X user Crémieux said.
Technological progress in growing diamonds in labs has been amazing.
X user Saul Sadka warned that the diamond downturn will likely persist for years as lab-grown stones flood the market:
Expect the collapse in diamond prices to accelerate substantially over the next few years. The natural-diamond market is shrinking in both size and value and circling the drain following the commoditization of its product by modern technology. The same thing happened to pearls 100 years ago, but it will be much worse for diamonds: they will become a signal of bad taste rather than wealth, just as pearls went from high society to a matronly cliché within 50 years.
I have been telling friends in the diamond industry to find a new line of work for ten years. It was clearly only a matter of time before lab-grown diamonds became a mass-market commodity, sold at some small premium over production costs, which would themselves continue to plummet.
Since they are identical to natural diamonds, and buyers actually have multiple reasons to choose them instead, including no “blood diamonds” and supposedly greater environmental friendliness, most buyers will not care.
Attempts to differentiate the products using $20,000 machines will not help: they are indistinguishable in real life.
There was always going to be some multiple that people would be willing to pay for “natural” over “lab,” but it did not really matter whether that multiple was 2× or 10×. Once lab-grown diamonds can be made for next to nothing, even ten times next to nothing is still very little. People will pay more, perhaps much more, for an identical product because of its backstory, but not infinitely more.
The reason natural-diamond prices have held up reasonably well over the past four years, “only” falling by around 50% in real terms, has more to do with supply cutbacks. Production has been reduced by about 20% over that period, from 120 million to 98 million carats, in a desperate attempt to support prices as the natural and lab-grown markets diverge. If production returned to its previous level, prices would fall even faster.
But it is going to get much, much worse. A trip to Miami will explain why: people who look like gangsters walk around wearing enormous tennis bracelets that would have cost a million dollars 20 years ago but can now be purchased for the price of a used Rolex.
Diamonds are going to become a sign of tackiness, as, frankly, they always should have been, rather than class or exclusivity. And then the game will be up for everyone in the diamond industry.
Expect the collapse in diamond prices to accelerate substantially over the next few years. The natural-diamond market is shrinking in both size and value and circling the drain following the commoditisation of its product by modern technology. The same thing happened to pearls… https://t.co/XdHRsgSp6hpic.twitter.com/c0zHoUqi2L
One of the biggest problems for hopes of a residual natural-diamond industry is that diamonds ARE, in fact, FOREVER. At some point, the market will shrink to the point where the secondhand supply, fed by the estates of Boomers as they fall off this mortal coil, will provide sufficient supply to make any mining or polishing uneconomic.
One of the biggest problems for hopes of a residual natural diamond industry is that diamonds ARE, in fact, FOREVER. At some point, the market will shrink to the point where second-hand supply, fed by the estates of Boomers as they fall off this mortal coil, will provide… pic.twitter.com/VkOhukpH5I
This would have been true 30 years ago, and it would have been a big blow to the Israeli economy, but it’s not true anymore. The industry once accounted for up to 3% of Israeli GDP, but it’s now under 0.2%. Sorry, Turkey.
This would have been true 30 years ago, it would have been a big blow to the Israeli economy, but it’s not true anymore. They once were up to 3% of Israeli GDP, but its not under 0.2%.
There might be some limited residual market at the high end, but my guess is that there will be enough supply from Boomers as they “check out” to glut that demand without any need for miners or cutters, etc.
There might be some limited residual market at the high end, but my guess is that there will be enough supply from the boomers as they “check out” to glut that demand without any need for miners or cutters etc.
To sum up: natural diamonds face a structural, rather than cyclical, collapse. If you’re in the market for an engagement ring and hoping it will serve as some store of value, you might be out of luck because lab-grown stones are destroying the scarcity premium, while a potential wave of secondhand supply from aging Baby Boomers could pressure the market even further.
A federal judge on Monday largely dismissed Minnesota’s lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s interpretation of Title IX, the 1972 law that bars sex discrimination in federally funded education programs and activities.
U.S. District Chief Judge Eric Tostrud of the District of Minnesota ruled that most of the state’s claims fell short.
Minnesota had argued that the administration violated the Administrative Procedure Act and the 10th Amendment by determining that the state’s policies allowing transgender students to compete on sports teams and use facilities consistent with their gender identity breached federal law. Tostrud determined that the administration’s findings and related letters to the state to enforce Title IX did not constitute final agency action that could be challenged under the Administrative Procedure Act. The findings and letters themselves, he wrote, imposed “no legal injury on Minnesota.”
He also referenced a June Supreme Court decision upholding state bans on male athletes in female sports. While the high court did not rule on whether states or schools may allow such participation, the judge said its determination that “sex” in Title IX refers to biological sex offers “at least some support” for the administration’s reading of the statute.
Part of Lawsuit Still Standing
The orders also outlined penalties for federally funded entities that allow male athletes to compete in women’s sports. The administration used the threats of withholding federal education funding to press school districts to end policies allowing students to act based on their gender identity.
Tostrud left intact Minnesota’s challenge tied to the potential loss of roughly $2.9 billion in federal funding, finding that it presented a concrete injury for the court to consider.
The judge noted that the funding issue was a separate issue from challenging the interpretation of Title IX, as the state did not have “sufficiently clear notice” of Title IX’s prohibition on transgender women and girls at the time it accepted the federal funding.
Minnesota stands as the only state to sue President Donald Trump and his administration over his executive orders this term defining sex as binary.
The Justice Department’s enforcement action against the Minnesota Department of Education and the Minnesota State High School League for violating Title IX by allowing males to compete against and access intimate spaces designated for females remains pending.
The Minnesota Attorney General’s office has defended the state’s longstanding policies as consistent with the Minnesota Human Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination based on gender identity. The state has maintained that executive orders and agency findings cannot override state law or rewrite Title IX without proper process.
Putin Pardons Ailing Former US Marine After Years In Russian Prison
A Marine veteran who had been held in Russian prisons since his arrest in January 2022 has been released back to US custody, reportedly after a consistent pressure campaign from Trump administration officials and global advocacy groups.
32-year old Robert Gilman, a former US Marine and English teacher imprisoned in Russia, is said to have received direct pardon from President Vladimir Putin based on humanitarian reasons, given reports say Gilman’s health has been rapidly deteriorating. Soon after Gilman’s arrest he was slapped with an steep eight-year prison sentence for allegedly kicking a police officer while drunk, followed by an alleged assault on a prison official, according to court records.
Gilman had actually following his jailing owned up to the attacks on prison staff – but claimed self-defense and that he was provoked and responding to insults.
Gilman’s family as well as advocacy groups say he was wrongfully detained on false charges, and further that was held as a bargaining chip for future possible prisoner swap with Washington. Here’s how one such US non-profit organization characterized his arrest:
Robert is a Marine Corps veteran, who was traveling in Russia when he fell sick on a train. Instead of medical help, he was taken to a police station. He fell into a cycle of charges, which began with a case that was dismissed, a second that was without evidence, and a third for assault of a police officer where even the police officer says he should not be charged.
A typical Russian Government tactic is getting Americans into their system, and pile on various unfounded charges to keep them there. This is Robert’s story, and they continue to put him in conditions that set him up for further charges that further politicize his case. Beyond this, the profile of the case against Robert appears eerily familiar to the Trevor Reed case, where a former Marine unexpectedly blacked out and was charged with punching a police officer, suggesting this may all have been staged.
So there does seem to be an admission that Gilman indeed acted violently toward law enforcement officials. The whole situation might be a politicized case, but it’s also the reality that Americans sometimes do stupid and drunken criminal acts abroad.
According to more on the context of the American citizen’s release:
Gilman’s sudden release comes after his family and the hostage advocacy group Global Reach had appealed to Moscow for his release, warning that he was “near death” following months of alleged torture in Russian prison. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio was also said to have raised Gilman’s imprisonment with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov during a meeting in the Philippines last month.
The family and some US officials are alleging that the former Marine was tortured while in Russian prisons, including being subject to mind-altering drug injections:
But Eric Lebson, chief strategy officer of Global Reach, an advocacy group representing Gilman’s family, told Reuters last week that Gilman was moved in late June from the prison hospital to the psychiatric ward of a civilian emergency hospital in a catatonic-like state assessed as a “dissociative stupor.”
The U.S. officials said Gilman on Tuesday was on a State Department plane carrying him from Russia to Washington Dulles Airport.
BREAKING: U.S. Marine veteran Robert Gilman, a Lowell native detained in Russia since 2022, has been released after advocates raised dire concerns about his health. pic.twitter.com/njUt3OQt5D
However, concerning his current state of health while being transferred back to America, there is this line in Reuters: “All things considered he seems to be in good shape,” an unnamed US official said.
It is as yet unclear if a prisoner swap will emerged, but so far there’s been no word of any Russians being released from US custody. There may have as yet been other undisclosed incentives that Moscow was responding to.
Trump quickly took to social media…
🚨 GREAT NEWS: President Trump just secured the release of American Robert Gilman from a Russian prison. The former U.S. Marine is coming home tonight. Russia agreed to free him with no exchange required. This is another major win for bringing Americans home. Welcome back to… pic.twitter.com/kutNhNN2H2
— Commentary Donald J. Trump Posts From Truth Social (@TrumpDailyPosts) August 11, 2026
By Bas van Geffen, senior macro strategist at Rabobank
Yesterday, my road cycling took me along the Lek River, which branches off from the Rhine. I frequently ride the path along this river, but the Lek was almost unrecognisable in the distance and what is normally part of the riverbed has now run dry.
It’s a very tangible reminder of numbers we’ve recently been watching on our screens: Upstream, at Kaub, the water level in the Rhine has fallen to historical lows. And a new heatwave that is due to hit Europe, is bound to make matters worse: current forecasts see the level drop to less than 5 centimetres above the station’s zero mark by the end of the week.
Ships were already forced to reduce the amount of cargo they carry, but soon they may be unable to sail the entire river. The drought is effectively splitting this key piece of infrastructure into two halves between Cologne and Frankfurt. Inland shipping costs have surged, and companies are scrambling to find alternative transport for resources and finished product. This, as diesel prices in Germany have largely rebounded in the last month.
Concerned about the impact for local industry, several German Bundeslander are suspending Sunday driving bans for trucks and lorries. Indeed, the hit to economic activity will be noticeable.
But these droughts also underline that a once-convenient shipping route is becoming unreliable. Higher shipping costs and possible disruptions of key supplies add to high energy costs and other headwinds facing German industry. And although Germany has earmarked billions for the revitalization of key infrastructure, this will probably be insufficient to remedy the issue.
That’s a problem for Brussels’ strive to regain strategic autonomy – and a physical challenge for European plans to revive key industries and build new ones on European soil.
European –and American– plans to move critical industries back home are increasingly causing geopolitical friction. This is, after all, a zero-sum game where China in particular stands to lose.
Beijing realizes this too. China recently broadened its travel restrictions to include experienced engineers with knowledge of critical technologies such as rare-earth processing, solar panels or battery technologies. Those who “may endanger technological security” can be barred from leaving the country. The tightened rules must prevent that these engineers help companies set up production lines in rival countries.
These restrictions may clash with the European Commission’s planned Industrial Accelerator Act, which requires that large foreign investments in Europe’s critical industries generate knowledge transfers and local research & development.
In markets, the joint Japanese-US intervention in the JPY exchange rate is starting to lose its grip on the currency. The prospect of further FX interventions continues to provide some support, but USD/JPY is gradually drifting higher, and the currency has and it has reversed about half of the peak-to-trough move versus both EUR and USD.
As we noted last week, these FX interventions may prop up the currency temporarily, but it will probably not last unless there are structural improvements in the yen’s fundamentals. Last week, we also learned that the government’s plans are unlikely to do this in the near-term.
Interest rate differentials are also weighing on the currency, and the central bank is signalling that it may remedy this to some extent. Sources within the Bank of Japan told reporters that policymakers could raise rates again in September. The comments follow a relatively hawkish write-up of the July meeting.
The Australian dollar also slipped briefly after today’s RBA decision. The central bank kept its policy rate unchanged as expected, but traders read some dovish language in the statement, and the downward revisions to the bank’s growth and inflation forecasts.
However, RBA Governor Bullock corrected that in her press conference. She commented that policymakers debated whether to hold or to hike, adding that it is “quite possible” that the RBA needs to hike rates again. Monetary policy is currently seen as “a bit restrictive” and domestic demand has slowed in line with expectations. But, according to the governor, the domestic economy is still operating above capacity. So, consumer spending growth and the economy need to slow further for capacity pressures to ease sufficiently to return inflation to target on the projected timeline.
As our Australia strategist noted prior to today’s meeting, the RBA seems to hope that the three rate hikes since the start of the year will be sufficient to dampen domestic demand. However, we are not entirely convinced that it is. Accordingly, we forecast that the central bank will have to raise rates once more, in November
Zelensky Claims North Korea Sending Up To 50K Troops To Russia, Presses Seoul To Send Missiles
Ukraine’s President Zelensky has in fresh remarks warned North Korea against its deepening involvement with Russian in executing the war against Ukraine.
Zelensky’s late Monday words alleged that Russia recently received additional ballistic missiles from Pyongyang and is preparing to deploy more North Korean troops, after already sending thousands to fight on the Russian side.
While reports from the last couple years have estimated that North Korea has maintained up to around 10,000 troops in Russia related to the ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine, Zelensky is now floating a huge number of projected new DPRK forces.
It started on Saturday when Zelensky took to X to say – without evidence – that “a decision has been made for 30,000 to 50,000 North Koreans to be deployed on the territory of Russia,” a higher figure than his estimate of 30,000 in July.” He didn’t specify where he obtained the alleged data from.
He also said that Ukrainian intelligence had located some North Korean missiles in Ukraine’s territory, without further elaborating. What is clear is the Moscow and Pyongyang do have a robust defense cooperation pact, which was signed in June of 2024.
On Tuesday Ukrainian officials said that overnight at least nine people were killed in new Russian ballistic missile attacks, and scores wounded.
Zelensky then newly said in reference to the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia, “The city was struck with North Korean ballistic missiles, Zircons, and guided aerial bombs” – and he described “a vicious attack, calculated to, inflict maximum damage specifically on civilian infrastructure.”
But again, no proof of the North Korean origins of the missiles was forthcoming. “It is absolutely clear that North Korea will continue to build its experience in modern warfare, receive licenses from Russia, and receive all kinds of military tools from them,” Zelensky has also said.
Interestingly, Zelensky is using this narrative to try and goad South Korea into changing its policy and export heavy weapons, including anti-air defenses, to Ukraine:
Zelensky said North Korea was gaining valuable battlefield experience through its cooperation with Russia and urged South Korea to provide Ukraine with air defense systems and other capabilities.
“They have a legal restriction under their Constitution. But we would like to have this cooperation and are counting on it. Our diplomats are in contact,” Zelensky wrote.
🚨 Zelensky: Russia struck Zaporizhzhia with North Korean ballistic missiles
According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Russia launched more than 120 drones at Ukraine overnight, most of them Shaheds. In Kyiv, a missile strike damaged an infectious diseases hospital… https://t.co/khmFsf7xcupic.twitter.com/Xj2ORoM4S8
However, this new pressure campaign on Seoul prompted one senior South Korean official to tell The Korea Times, “South Korea’s supply of defense materials to any country has always been carried out in accordance with domestic law.”
The official made clear that there is no policy change in the works, and that South Korean weapons will not start flowing to Kiev anytime soon – or this is the official response at least.
Wheat Futures Volatile As Black Sea Crisis And Hormuz Chokepoint Spark Concerns
Chicago wheat futures are coiling for a breakout (one way or another) as ongoing Russia-Ukraine attacks on Black Sea grain infrastructure and bulk carriers threaten exports from one of the world’s most important breadbaskets.
Most-active Chicago wheat has been choppy in the last few days…
Hard red winter wheat gained as much as 2.7% to $7.505 a bushel.
Soft Red Winter wheat futures are poised for a much larger breakout if prices sustain a move above $7 a bushel.
Bloomberg noted Monday that Turkey temporarily suspended Black Sea transits by its cargo ships over the weekend amid ongoing maritime security risks in the critical shipping corridor. Ukraine warned that its agricultural exports for the 2026-27 season could be halved due to Russian attacks.
Joe Davis, director of commodities at brokerage Futures International, was quoted by the outlet as saying that potential supply disruptions had boosted US-grown hard red winter varieties more sharply because the grain is seen as a direct competitor to higher-protein milling wheat from the Black Sea region and Europe.
“While the disruptions don’t necessarily translate into immediate additional US export business,” Davis said, adding, “they do tighten the global exportable supply outlook and balance sheets, forcing importers to diversify origins and keeping support under higher-quality wheat values.”
With wheat prices inching higher and approaching $7, which could spark upside momentum, a gauge of global food prices tracked by the UN climbed to a three-year high in July.
Disruptions not only in the Black Sea but also in the Strait of Hormuz, combined with adverse weather conditions across key US and other key growing regions as El Niño risks rise, are certainly putting a bid under food prices, as the worst may be yet to come.
UBS analysts outlined five forces driving grocery bills higher in a note last week (report here). They asked a very important question:Is this the end of cheap food?
We have previously discussed how many professors seem to compete in finding new forms of racism in every facet of society and education.
Astrophysics,math,runoffs,science,statistics, and meritocracy have all been denounced as racist. In this academic cottage industry, professors secure publications and speaking opportunities by identifying racism in the expressions, images, or entire fields. Even time itself has been declared racist.
Now, however, academics have found another undiscovered continent of white privilege: niceness.
When I saw a story in The College Fix on a study of “niceness as Whiteness,” I was skeptical and decided to take a look. The study by Vanderbilt Postdoctoral Research Fellow Abigail Beneke, Professors Benjamin Fisher (U. Wisconsin-Madison), F. Chris Curran (U. Florida), and Samantha Viano (George Mason) was first flagged by Dr. James Nuzzo.
The officers appear to be precisely what you are looking for in an SRO: empathetic and reluctant to make arrests. The researchers admit that they try to avoid arrests. However, according to the authors, hidden behind those sympathetic approaches was, of course, a boiling caldron of racism in terms of the racial disparity of those arrested.
Indeed, the researchers realized that it was the niceness itself that was the evidence of oppressive “Whiteness.” Indeed, the officers may not want to be engines of racism and use “niceness” as a “coping mechanism,” but do so by deluding themselves and others that they are nice:
“Nice SROs did not want to arrest children. Nice police officers thought of themselves as well-meaning. Yet, they expressed being required to arrest children because of real or imagined mandates. They used niceness as a strategy for upholding a system of Whiteness that systematically privileges White people and excludes those who fall outside of Whiteness. Niceness hinders possibilities for the types of political, communal relationships central to authentic care.”
The paper makes it sound like everyone would be better off, or at least more honest, to return to hostile, racist-spewing officers. The reason is that niceness is an “enduring component of Whiteness” which “allows predominantly White people to elide how their own actions contribute to inequality by maintaining a sense of their own benevolence.”
The evidence of niceness includes such findings as how officers work at “minimiz[ing] the negative impact of arrest by highlighting their own goodness.” (This includes saying things like “You want to listen to the radio? You want the window down? Is there a station you want to listen to?” after an arrest.)
Then there is the fact that these officers have good relationships and perspectives of the students. Again, it is just a shield of “whiteness”:
“SROs used niceness as Whiteness in their recounts of arrest … by highlighting the positive relationships they had with students they arrested…As with highlighting their own goodness, highlighting these positive relationships reframes violence (i.e., arrest) that contributes to racial inequality as a positive, since students still like the SROs. This strategy emphasizes the officer’s ability to retain his niceness—by virtue of the maintained interpersonal relationship—despite having arrested the student.”
The paper is an example of ideological screeds posing as academic research. Based on a few interviews, the researchers simply declare the empathy and relationships to be shields perpetuating “whiteness.” They cite other studies identifying niceness as a whiteness tactic:
“Prior research has demonstrated how primarily White women educators use niceness to uphold Whiteness in their work with children (Bissonnette 2016; Drake & Rodriguez 2022; Gardiner et al., 2023; Vlach et al., 2022; Wiborg, 2022). We found niceness was also present in the work of SROs, suggesting the potential for broader application of niceness to well-intentioned actors working in structurally violent systems. In addition to framing niceness as a means of excusing behavior that upholds Whiteness, we equally center the structural binds that delimit SROs’ capacity for providing care. In doing so, we identify niceness as a coping mechanism for arresting children.”
At these universities (Vanderbilt, Wisconsin, George Mason, and the University of Florida), these faculty members and their obvious agenda are viewed as ideal choices to teach their students.
With four kids, I found the SROs at their schools to be extraordinary and popular figures. They would routinely intervene with kids to see if they were having trouble or try to direct them away from trouble. It turns out that everything that parents valued in their SROs was a perpetuation of privilege, according to these researchers.
While the researchers insist that “we do not intend to demonize individual SROs,” they reward the cooperating officers by twisting their every comment as revealing their deep white privilege. Presumably, they conveyed to the SROs that this would be a fair, unbiased study. It was neither, and, perhaps reaffirming their own triumph over racism, they were not a bit nice about it.
