A federal jury in Philadelphia has delivered a resounding guilty verdict against two Pennsylvania brothers and a longtime associate, convicting them of masterminding one of the most elaborate and prolonged racketeering operations uncovered in recent years. The scheme, which prosecutors say drained more than $32 million from Pennsylvania’s Medicaid program while exploiting vulnerable foreign workers through the H-1B visa system, spanned over a decade and involved layers of deception across multiple states.

At the center of the criminal enterprise – self-dubbed the “Savani Group” – were brothers Bhaskar Savani, 60, a trained dentist from Ambler, Pennsylvania, and Arun Savani, 58, from Blue Bell, Pennsylvania. Bhaskar controlled the group’s extensive network of dental practices, while Arun oversaw finances and real estate holdings. Together, they built what U.S. Attorney David Metcalf described as a “complex web” of sham entities and fraudulent operations, amassing tens of millions through outright fraud “at every turn.”

A third defendant, Aleksandra “Ola” Radomiak, 48, of Lansdale, Pennsylvania—a longtime associate—was also convicted for her role, primarily in the healthcare fraud components.

The multi-faceted conspiracy encompassed several interlocking schemes:

• Visa fraud and worker exploitation: The group filed numerous false H-1B visa petitions with the U.S. Department of Labor and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. These applications misrepresented job titles, duties, and other details to bring in foreign workers—most from India—who were dependent on the Savani Group for their legal status. Once employed, many were coerced into kicking back portions of their salaries and paying additional fees back to the enterprise, creating a captive, underpaid workforce.

• Healthcare fraud against Medicaid: After the Savani Group’s legitimate dental practices lost their Medicaid contracts due to prior issues, the conspirators pivoted to using nominee-owned shell entities and sham dental practices. They fraudulently billed Pennsylvania Medicaid in the names of non-treating dentists for services that were either unnecessary, never performed, or grossly inflated. This alone resulted in over $32 million in improper payments, robbing taxpayers and depriving the healthcare system of vital resources.

• Money laundering and tax evasion: Proceeds from the fraud were funneled through a sophisticated network of financial transactions, including concealment and transactional money laundering. The group also conspired to defraud the U.S. Treasury via wire fraud tied to false tax returns.

• Obstruction of justice: When federal investigators closed in, the conspirators actively obstructed a grand jury probe.

The convictions, handed down on March 9, 2026, after a lengthy trial, covered a sweeping array of charges under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act and related statutes. Both brothers were found guilty of: Conspiracy to conduct a racketeering enterprise, Conspiracy to commit visa fraud and visa fraud, Conspiracy to obstruct justice, Conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud and multiple counts of healthcare fraud, Money laundering conspiracy, concealment money laundering, and transactional money laundering, Conspiracy to defraud the U.S. Treasury, Wire fraud.

Bhaskar Savani faced additional conviction for conspiracy to distribute an adulterated and misbranded medical device in interstate commerce.

After emigrating from India, Bhaskar Savani, known as “Dr. B,” earned his dental degree from Temple University in 1995 and quickly set about building his practice into an empire.

Aside from his dental practices, he became an evangelist for the importation of Indian mangoes, persuading the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 2007 to lift a 18-year ban, and expanded into real estate, becoming one of the financial backers of a proposed indoor velodrome in Valley Forge in 2006.

Meanwhile, he brought on brothers Arun, to oversee financial affairs for the businesses, and Niranjan, a fellow dentist, to help him expand his core dental businesses into an empire. –Philadelphia Inquirer

U.S. Attorney Metcalf emphasized the collaborative effort behind the case: “This sprawling investigation and prosecution meant untangling a complex web of fraudulent billing practices and sham medical entities. Our office worked with numerous state and federal partner agencies to unravel and prove the multiple healthcare fraud schemes at the heart of this operation. It’s gratifying to dismantle this crooked enterprise and hold those responsible to account. Fraud and abuse cost U.S. taxpayers billions of dollars each year and rob the healthcare system of vital resources.”

The brothers now face severe penalties: Bhaskar Savani up to 420 years in federal prison, and Arun Savani up to 415 years. Sentencing is scheduled for July 2026.

This case underscores the high stakes involved in combating sophisticated fraud rings that target public programs and exploit immigration pathways. The Savani Group’s downfall highlights the determination of federal authorities to pursue even deeply entrenched operations, no matter how layered or long-running.

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The Food and Drug Administration on March 11 made public a new, consolidated platform for tracking side effects experienced by people following receipt of vaccines and drugs.

Officials are folding a number of existing platforms into the Adverse Event Monitoring System, which they are describing as a unified system that will be easier to search on.

“The FDA’s previous adverse event reporting systems were outdated and fragmented and made important data difficult to access. These clunky systems also wasted millions of taxpayer dollars and created blind spots in our postmarket surveillance of products ranging from drugs and vaccines to cosmetics,” Dr. Marty Makary, the FDA’s commissioner, said in a statement.

“We’re fixing the problem through a major modernization initiative. Starting today, the FDA will have a single, intuitive adverse event platform that will better serve agency scientists, researchers, and the public.”

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has previously criticized health agencies’ reporting of adverse events following vaccination and has said that fixes were coming.

The new FDA system is already providing data previously accessible in separate places, including the FDA Adverse Event Reporting System. Other systems, such as the Center for Tobacco Products Adverse Event Reporting System, are slated to be added in May.

The FDA receives more than two million reports of adverse events and medication errors each year. Regulators use those reports to monitor the safety of approved products, including vaccines.

Utilizing seven databases for the reports was expensive and made for a poor user experience, FDA officials said. They pegged the cost of running those databases at $37 million a year.

The new system is estimated to save the agency about $120 million over the next five years.

The Adverse Event Monitoring System can be accessed here.

Users of the new system are told that the reports provide valuable information but may contain inaccurate information, and cannot provide the prevalence of events or conclusively link products with problems. Consumers also should not stop or change medications without consulting a health care professional, the FDA says in the new system’s disclaimer.

The platform is designed to provide better data through changes such as standardized reporting protocols. Artificial intelligence is being used for some of the data digitization and other work.

“Consolidating the FDA’s adverse event systems and converting to real-time publication was challenging, but made possible by a highly aggressive schedule,” Jeremy Walsh, the FDA’s chief artificial intelligence officer, said in a statement. “The team executed with perfection and delivered the biggest technical transformation in agency history. This is the new FDA.”

Iran’s asymmetric warfare in the Strait of Hormuz has shifted from kamikaze drone strikes on tankers, bulk carriers, and container ships to littering the world’s most important maritime chokepoint with naval mines.

Even though much of Iran’s conventional naval capability has  been severely degraded in the 12 or so days of the Operation Epic Fury campaign, IRGC forces retain asymmetric leverage in Hormuz and the Gulf region through sea mines, drones, small vessels, and missile threats.

“It’s a good tool of asymmetric warfare,” Jahangir E. Arasli, a senior research fellow at Baku-based Institute for Development and Diplomacy who specializes in maritime threats, told the Wall Street Journal.

“The conventional capability is wiped out, but they have this asymmetrical capability,” Arasli said, noting that he was speaking in a personal capacity.

BREAKING:

Iran is planting mines in the Strait of Hormuz, turning the vital waterway into a battlefield with daily clashes.

The U.S. Navy is rejecting requests from oil and shipping companies for escorts through the Strait of Hormuz due to the high risk of Iranian attacks,… pic.twitter.com/XPN6zhQk6B

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) March 11, 2026

The U.S. military said earlier this week that it had severely degraded IRGC naval forces, prompting Iran to shift away from sea denial operations in the maritime chokepoint and toward creating havoc in the waterway by laying naval mines.

Congressional Research Service, a nonpartisan public policy research arm of the U.S. Congress, released a 2020 report titled “Iran’s Foreign and Defense Policies” that assessed Iran has roughly 3,000 to 6,000 naval mines, with some more recent estimates putting the stockpile toward the upper end of that range.

On Thursday, President Trump told reporters that U.S. forces have struck 28 Iranian mine-laying vessels. This move to disrupt naval mine operations comes as such activity would be a nightmare for commercial ship traffic in the narrow waterway.

Tehran deployed naval mines during its conflict with Iraq in the 1980s, during the so-called “tanker war,” forcing the U.S. to escort tankers and other commercial ships.

“Mines are the weapon of the poor,” a former senior officer with the French navy and specialist on the subject told AFP News on condition of anonymity.

Earlier, CNN reported that Iran’s new supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei issued a new message that said the Hormuz chokepoint will remain closed as a “tool of pressure.”

Naval mines in the waterway, along with the growing number of ships awaiting safe passage, suggest that U.S. and allied naval escorts may soon be required if Washington wants to unclog the chokepoint. Even so, Tehran appears to retain enough asymmetric capability to keep tensions high for weeks to come.

Authored by Vince Bielski via RealClearInvestigations,

Half a century after the book “Why Johnny Can’t Read” sounded an alarm about the rise of illiteracy in the U.S., it has only gotten worse: A quarter of all young adults, many of them high school graduates, are now functionally illiterate. Unable to read more than basic, short sentences, their prospects in today’s information economy are bleak. 

This crisis gave rise to a movement that embraced the science of reading and produced a surprising success story in the Deep South, a region dogged by the highest rates of childhood illiteracy in the nation. State leaders and education reformers in Mississippi and Louisiana led a remarkable improvement in elementary reading scores that now rank among the highest in the nation. 

The turnaround was a long slog, requiring a heavy hand from the state to win buy-in for a wholesale transformation of curricula, teaching methods, accountability, and more. Former state education chief Carey Wright called it the “Mississippi Marathon.” One of the biggest questions in public education now is whether the southern surge can spread nationwide, turning millions of struggling students into proficient readers with a brighter future. 

But such a top-down approach is running into resistance, particularly in blue states like New York and Illinois, where strong teachers’ unions have fought to preserve local control over schools. And nowhere is the political battle over who runs the classroom more pronounced than in Massachusetts, which has long boasted the nation’s best public schools. 

Massachusetts’ governor is expected to sign a literacy bill in the coming months, making it one of about a dozen states to mandate adoption of curricula based on the science of reading in elementary grades. Laws in another 30 states merely encourage its use. Although these laws suggest a big step forward for the nation, Massachusetts illustrates the challenges ahead in some states – many of the educators responsible for implementing the mandated reforms see them as an affront to local control of classrooms.

The influential Massachusetts Teachers Association (MTA) led the campaign against the legislation, suffering a rare defeat at the statehouse. At least 300 superintendents, principals, and teachers in about 40 Massachusetts districts also signed a letter opposing the mandate, arguing that local educators know what’s best for students. 

The pushback in Massachusetts raises concerns among advocates about whether the reforms, especially the evidence-based curriculum and teacher training, will be fully implemented across the state. ExcelinEd, an advocacy group chaired by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, has identified many science of reading policies, big and small, that have helped states boost literacy rates. The group’s research found that the difference between states with the biggest reading gains and those that floundered boils down to how thoroughly they implemented most of the reforms.

“We know what works, and we have state exemplars like Mississippi, Louisiana and Florida that have actually done it,” said ExcelinEd Senior Policy Fellow Christy Hovanetz. “So unless more states are willing to do the hard work, we’re not going to see improved outcomes for our kids. And that severely impacts our economic prosperity and future. So yes, I’m concerned.”

State Versus Local Control

In the U.S., most school districts call the shots regarding the curriculum – the crucial teaching materials that determine how kids are taught. Although research shows that the quality of curricula makes a big difference in whether Johnny and Jill learn to read, this area of public education remains largely unregulated by most states, leaving 13,000 districts to pick instructional materials based on convenience, corporate marketing, or price if not quality. And nobody knows what curricula most districts use since only six states require such disclosure, according to Karen Vaites of the Curriculum Insight Project. 

Science of reading advocates say local control over curricula isn’t working. Consider fourth graders, about the age when a child’s reading skills strongly predict their future academic success or failure. In 2024, 40% of fourth graders across the nation scored below the Basic level, up from 34% in 2019 and nearly matching levels in 1992, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the gold standard in testing. These students have trouble reading aloud, recognizing and decoding many grade-level words, and thus comprehending the meaning of text. They will struggle in all their classes through high school if they aren’t reading well in elementary school. 

States like Massachusetts are responding with mandates that require districts to pick from a menu of approved curricula backed by research showing their effectiveness. The Massachusetts Teachers Association doesn’t dispute that there’s a literacy crisis. But the union opposed the mandate, casting it as a form of government overreach in complex curricular matters best left to trained educators. 

“Our members have opposed legislated curriculum mandates for literacy education because they know losing flexibility to do their jobs and restricting their professional judgement inevitably means some students will continue to struggle with learning to read and write,” MTA President Max Page and Vice President Deb McCarthy said in a statement to RealClearInvestigations. “The law in Massachusetts will cost hundreds of millions of dollars to implement, and that money would be better spent on hiring staff and increasing professional development opportunities for educators.”

The union says it supports the voluntary adoption of evidence-based curricula by districts, which has been spurred on by grants from programs like Literacy Launch. Advocates estimate that about half of the state’s districts are experimenting with or rolling out higher-quality curricula. The other half is still using less-effective instructional materials, including Lucy Calkin’s popular Units of Study, which is based on the principles of a teaching strategy called Balanced Literacy. 

Failed Reform Efforts

Balanced Literacy emerged during the “reading wars” of the 1990s in an attempt to address the nation’s literacy decline. At the time, the prominent approach to instruction, called Whole Language, required students to learn words and sentences by looking at simple picture books as they were read aloud, and if needed, guess at pronunciation and meaning by the story’s context and images. Experts hoped that this loosely structured method would inspire a love of reading. 

While it worked for some students, critics said the lack of any explicit instruction in methods to decode words left many students struggling. Balanced Literacy came about as a compromise, adding a dash of phonics to help these students sound out words while keeping the fundamentals of the Whole Language strategy. 

De’Shawn Washington, winner of the 2024 Teacher of the Year award in Massachusetts, saw the damage done to his elementary students from Balanced Literacy’s Units of Study. In his Boston and Lexington classrooms, students who were already proficient readers advanced at a fast clip. But most students, who were one or two grade levels behind because they didn’t have exposure to reading at home or suffered from a disability, learned at a much slower pace, if at all. A few of his third graders were unable to read books for kindergarteners or write their names. Washington did his best to supplement Units of Study with more phonics, but it wasn’t much help.

“The struggling readers tended to get left behind, and the disparity between them and the proficient readers widened,” said Washington, whose experience turned him into an advocate of Massachusetts’s mandate. 

Calkins, a professor at Columbia, has publicly acknowledged her curriculum’s shortcomings. Yet Units of Study remains entrenched in more than two dozen districts in Massachusetts, which are part of the “widespread” resistance to literacy reforms, including in Boston Public Schools, says Darci Burns, executive director of HILL for Literacy, which trains Massachusetts teachers in evidence-based literacy practices. 

Burns says many of the gatekeepers of instructional materials, such as assistant superintendents and directors of curriculum, were trained to use Balanced Literacy and remain wedded to it like a religion. Teachers like its unscripted approach, giving them more freedom. Burns predicts they will try to skirt the mandate rather than support it. 

“These districts might adopt a reading program that’s the most aligned with Balanced Literacy,” Burns told RCI. “And then they’ll go through the motions, but they won’t really do it.”

The Science of Reading

In 2000, a National Reading Panel of top experts was set up to distill what several hundred gold-standard studies revealed about literacy instruction. Although the panel didn’t explicitly reject Balance Literacy, it found that a more structured approach to instruction in five areas was the most effective: phonemic awareness (learning word sounds), phonics (matching sounds to letters), fluency (reading aloud), vocabulary (learning word meanings), and comprehension (gleaning the meaning of text). 

The science of reading movement was built on these five pillars, with Massachusetts and other states incorporating them into legislation. Although more recent research has brought new insights – leading scholar Louisa Moats says language skills need much more emphasis in the five pillars – they remain the best approach to improved literacy. 

Yet two decades after the panel’s findings, most universities still haven’t read the memo. Signaling the challenges of wholesale reform, only a quarter of teacher preparation programs cover all five pillars, denying most instructors the training they need to be effective. 

This leaves educators in an unusual position – unlike most professionals, they are not trained in, and sometimes reject, the best practices of their trade. It’s another knock on the relevancy of higher education that Massachusetts and other states are now addressing by requiring teacher preparation to include the five pillars. 

“Most teachers don’t know the science of reading – that the point of phonemic awareness is to facilitate word recognition with an alphabetic writing system, or that the primary comprehension enabler is vocabulary,” said Moats. “I don’t want my grandkids in a classroom where the teacher has the autonomy to do whatever the hell she wants because I have seen the results of that.”

The five pillars may be on solid footing, but the curricula based on them are a work in progress. Some are comprehensive, others are too narrowly focused on the foundational skills like phonics and don’t include enough book reading and writing; some don’t focus enough on building students’ knowledge about subjects like history and science, which is key to reading comprehension; some haven’t been around long enough to have a proven track record. 

States with new literacy laws are not all doing a good job of vetting curricula to ensure they give districts the strongest options, says Vaites of the Curriculum Insight Project. The varying quality of the curricula has given ammunition to critics of mandates, like Superintendent Julie Hackett, whose affluent Lexington district in Massachusetts uses Units of Study. “We’ve done some looking into results around districts that have adopted new curricula and we are not seeing the results that would necessarily justify” spending up to $1 million to buy new instructional materials, Hackett said at an MTA event.

Vaites wrote that Hackett’s concerns are overblown. Although Massachusetts’ current list isn’t perfect, it does offer comprehensive programs covering the five pillars with an emphasis on reading books and building knowledge.

“Most of the curricula on Massachusetts’s list is pretty good, and now with the mandate, most people think that state leaders are savvy enough to make it even better,” Vaites told RCI.

Arduous Training

Southern states found that a new curriculum isn’t worth much unless teachers are trained to master it. Washington, the former teacher, says adopting a new curriculum is a lot of work, and classes and coaching gives teachers more confidence about handling such a big transition, convincing them that the science of reading is not just another education fad. 

“The training shifts the conversation away from resistance because teachers realize they are not going into this new situation blind and that there’s a big investment being made to improve the profession,” Washington said. 

The bills in Massachusetts offer training to all teachers rather than requiring it, as 18 other states, including Louisiana, have done, according to ExcelinEd’s literacy policy tracker. If that’s a concession to opponents, so is the decision by Massachusetts lawmakers not to adopt another reform that has proven effective in Louisiana, Mississippi, and other states: retaining third graders who can’t read at or near grade level from promotion. It’s a highly controversial policy that parents almost always oppose despite the long-term literacy benefits, according to a study of Mississippi that found retention “led to substantially higher ELA scores in sixth grade.”

In all, ExcelinEd has identified 18 reforms, including dyslexia screening and parental notification of reading problems, that the most successful states have implemented. Given the heavy lift, it’s not surprising that some states have stumbled. 

Of the 15 states that adopted most of the 18 policies by 2019, 10 of them outpaced the national average in fourth-grade NAEP reading scores by 2024, with Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida, and South Carolina far out in front, according to Hovanetz, the policy fellow. These 10 states illustrate the effectiveness of the reforms.

But test scores in four of the 15 states declined more than the nation’s did, and Michigan tied, showing the difficulty of implementing the reforms. Among the backsliding states, Hovanetz says, New Mexico didn’t train and deploy all of its reading coaches, and Oklahoma and North Carolina ended their third-grade retention policy. 

“States get a whole bunch of constituent calls saying, ‘It’s not fair you’re retaining my kid.’ Then they back off of the policy and lose any momentum that they had gained,” says Hovanetz, a former Florida education official. 

Minnesota illustrates how things can go wrong when districts are encouraged, rather than mandated, to adopt evidence-based curricula and teacher training. “Some teachers took the training, not everyone did, and when they went back to their schools, teachers didn’t have the instructional materials to support what they learned in training, and they might not have had a leader at the school to support them,” Hovanetz said. “So Minnesota probably wasted a whole lot of money.”

A number of other states haven’t bothered to pass meaningful science-of-reading laws. They include both liberal states like Washington and Illinois and conservative states like Montana and Maine.

In Massachusetts, a conference committee is reconciling the two bills, with the rollout of reforms set for 2027. The Senate bill requires districts to regularly assess K-3 students’ reading abilities and create improvement plans for those who score significantly below grade level. It’s a measure of accountability that advocates hope will produce positive results in a state that’s moving backwards in literacy on the NAEP test. 

In another concession to opponents of the mandate, lawmakers gave districts a narrow escape hatch. They can apply for a waiver from the mandate if their alternative curriculum is backed by research evidence. While the waiver could open the door to the adoption of Calkin’s revised Units of Study, it will have to pass muster with the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

Mary Tamer, who convened the Mass Reads coalition of 40 education groups to support the legislation that she helped write, is bullish about the adoption of reforms. Despite the opposition, she says the political momentum, underscored by the unanimous votes for the literacy bills in both the House and Senate, is strong enough to compel most districts to buy in.

“Our expectation is that districts will move toward evidence-based instruction as quickly as they can because it’s proven to teach children how to read,” she said. “And that is our goal here.”

Rep. Eric Swalwell has primarily been living in Washington, D.C. for years, and now that he’s running for governor of California, he’s hit a snag over residency. 

According to reports, Swalwell is renting a single room in a home in the eastern Bay Area that’s occupied by a family of three to claim residency in the state. Public records show it’s a three-bedroom, 1,350-square-foot home owned by Nicolas and Kristina Mrzywka. It is unlikely that Swalwell has ever truly lived there. And now, one of his Democratic primary rivals is calling him out on it.

“The alleged discovery of Swalwell’s Livermore rental came from the congressman’s top Democratic opponent, billionaire Tom Steyer,” reports the New York Post. “Steyer says Swalwell appears to ‘live in California on paper only’ as the governor race heats up, ‘making him unlikely to meet the basic residency requirements to run for Governor.’”

Ryan Hughes, Steyer’s attorney, is now calling on Secretary of State Shirley Weber to “enforce a dormant residency requirement in the governor’s race.” Hughes also encouraged Weber to “allow for robust legal proceedings as to whether Swalwell is eligible to serve as Governor,” which could be problematic when dealing with the Trump administration.

“If elected, questions of legitimacy would hang over Swalwell, allowing the Trump Administration to sow doubt, exploit the ambiguity, and advance its perverse agendas,” Hughes wrote. “The Trump Administration could question Swalwell’s legitimacy as Governor and, therefore, imperil California’s receipt of federal funds, the state’s ability to deploy the California National Guard, and act in emergencies.”

Why is Swalwell renting that particular room? Kristina Mrzywka is the sister of Stephanie Sbranti, the wife of Tim Sbranti, Swalwell’s ex-deputy chief of staff and district director from 2015 to 2018, whom Hughes described as Swalwell’s “longtime mentor who helped introduce him to politics.”

Deed searches turn up no trace of ownership for Swalwell in Livermore. Meanwhile, a 2022 deed of trust lists him as the buyer of a house in Washington, D.C., which he claimed as his primary residence.

In an interview, Sbranti said he suggested Swalwell rent a room in the Livermore home “as a way to maintain an affordable base in an expensive district, ” the Sacramento Bee reported.

In the letter, Hughes stated that at least since 2018 the Secretary of State’s office “has taken the legal position that the five-year residency requirement is unconstitutional under the U.S. Constitution.”

In response, a declaration was filed on March 6 by Swalwell’s attorneys from his landlord Mrzywka.

In it she states that “under penalty of perjury” that “I entered a lease agreement with Eric and Brittany Swalwell in June 2017 for a property that I own in Livermore, California. Mr. and Mrs. Swalwell has leased the property from me since June 2017.”

Democrat Members of Congress from California are also sticking up for Swalwell.

“Like all members of the California congressional delegation, we work and live both in this great state and in Washington, DC, representing our constituents in Congress,” their joint statement reads. “Tom Steyer’s insinuation that there is something wrong with that undermines us all. Steyer is pushing a bogus residency conspiracy that originated in MAGA circles at Donald Trump’s bidding.”

The statement continued, “Eric Swalwell has spent his entire career fighting for California families – both in his district, and in our nation’s Capitol. We have endorsed our colleague so he can continue this important work of protecting Californians from Trump and making the Golden State more affordable.”

The statement was signed by Reps. Jimmy Gomez, Adam Gray, Zoe Lofgren, Mike Thompson, Doris Matsui, Raul Ruiz, Ted Lieu, Lou Correa, Nanette Barragán, Jimmy Panetta, and Kevin Mullin

Steyer’s campaign isn’t buying it.

 “With so much at stake in this election and this administration making anti-democratic moves all across the country, we hope that the Congressman can resolve this issue to avoid Donald Trump or Republican extremists exploiting it down the line or creating confusion for voters later in the process.” 

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

If conditions change beneath the surface, the folks behind the curtain will be powerless to do anything but make it worse.

This just in: predicting is hard, especially about the future. One solution is ambiguity: couch predictions in poetic allusions that are open to interpretation.

What’s hard is making an unambiguous prediction that turn out to be correct. Recency bias often trips us up, as making predictions based on projecting the recent past seems to work well until trends and dynamics change. But due to recency bias, we tend to ignore these signals and focus on whatever supports our belief that the future will be a continuation of the recent past.

If we live long enough to experience several epochal transitions, we start noticing longer-term patterns. One such pattern that attracts little attention is that recessions tend not to replicate the previous recession; they tend to follow the recession before.

So the recession we’re now entering won’t track the 2008-09 recession, it will likely track either The 1991 recession–shallow and brief–or the previous “real recessions” of 1980-83 or 1973-75.

The recession of 2008-09 was characterized by these dynamics:

1. The price of oil spiked, but fell rapidly back to its previous range.

2. Low inflation generated by the massive deflationary impact of China’s expansion of low-cost manufacturing and credit expansion enabled the Federal Reserve to flood the financial system with trillions of dollars, pinning interest rates to zero (ZIRP–zero interest rate policy).

3. Low inflation enabled authorities to “run the economy hot” with cheap, abundant credit that inflated credit-asset bubbles in real estate, stocks and other assets, generating a “wealth effect” in the top 10% who own the majority of the assets.

4. The Fed’s balance sheet and federal debt were both modest when measured by GDP, and so these could be expanded with little downside, as these acted as buffers.

The 1991 recession was trigged by a spike in oil prices and risk-off reaction to the first Gulf War (Desert Storm). Once oil prices fell, the impact on interest rates, asset valuations, unemployment, etc. were, by historical standards, mild.

The 1973-75 and 1980-83 recessions were different–stagflationary confluences of embedded inflation generated by price shocks and “running the economy hot.” Over time, interest rates (bond yields) tend to track the cost of oil, as the entire economy rests on a foundation of energy.

Adjusted for inflation, oil leaped to a new level in the “oil shock” of 1973-74, triggering a reset of the economy already reeling from higher inflation, foreign competition and sagging productivity.

As the supergiant oil fields discovered in the 1960s started producing at scale in the 1980s, the inflation-adjusted price of oil fell, and remained at historically modest levels interrupted by occasional short-lived spikes (Desert Storm, invasion of Ukraine, etc.).

In the 1970s, energy plateaued at a higher cost level. This–along with other factors–contributed to embedding higher costs, i.e. inflation, that were exacerbated by “running the economy hot,” i.e. assuming inflation would magically decline due to “growth.”

Instead, inflation became self-reinforcing, threatening to cripple the economy. The only real solution was pushing interest rates high enough to suppress credit expansion, which in an economy dependent on ever-expanding credit, pushed the economy into a deep recession.

Assets fell, valuations stagnated, unemployment soared, credit tightened, and the “easy money” fixes of the past were no longer the solution, they were the problem.

Here we see the yield on 10-year Treasury bonds, a proxy of interest rates:

Here is the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA), a proxy of the stock market, adjusted for inflation: by the time the Dow regained the magic 1,000 level in 1982, it had lost 2/3rds of its real (inflation-adjusted) value from its 1966 1,000 peak.

We have succumbed to the illusory belief that “the powers behind the curtain” can–and will–always save us from a market crash and “real recession.” What history teaches us is this can only happen in a very specific set of conditions which no longer apply: if oil costs plateau at a higher level, inflation becomes self-reinforcing, credit expansion leads to extremes of risk and productivity remains stagnant, then those behind the curtain will only make the situation worse by lowering interest rates and “running it hot.”

At that point, everyone predicting a continuation of the past 18 years will be reaping their reward for being wrong: a margin call in a bidless market. Predicting is hard, but it’s good to keep an open mind and avoid recency bias. If conditions change beneath the surface, the folks behind the curtain will be powerless to do anything but make it worse.

*  *  *

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Ben Affleck—who has previously warned about the risks artificial intelligence poses to Hollywood—has sold his own AI filmmaking startup to Netflix in a deal that could reach $600 million, according to Bloomberg.

The cash portion of the acquisition is smaller, with additional payments tied to performance targets, but it still ranks among the largest AI-focused deals by a major studio.

The startup, InterPositive, developed software designed to help directors edit footage after filming, such as removing stray objects or changing elements in the background. The tools are intended to work with existing film rather than generate entirely new content. Director David Fincher has already used the technology on an upcoming movie starring Brad Pitt.

Netflix’s purchase highlights how studios are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence to streamline production and reduce costs. Rivals such as Amazon and The Walt Disney Company are also exploring AI tools for film and television development.

Bloomberg writes that Affleck built InterPositive with backing from RedBird Capital Partners and initially kept the project quiet before seeking investors in 2025. He has argued the technology should function as a controlled filmmaking aid: the system trains only on footage from a specific film and doesn’t scrape outside movies or generate new works independently.

For Netflix, which has historically favored building technology internally over large acquisitions, the purchase represents a rare buyout aimed at strengthening its in-house AI capabilities for movie and TV production.

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The White House and FBI on Thursday disputed claims of an internal government alert saying Iran wants to launch drones to attack the West Coast of the United States, saying that ABC News should move to retract its reporting.

A report and social media post from ABC News on Wednesday said that the FBI warned police departments in California of the potential threat. The media outlet said it cited an FBI alert that its reporters reviewed.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt wrote in an X post on Thursday, “No such threat from Iran to our homeland exists, and it never did.”

Leavitt said the ABC News story and X post “should be immediately retracted … for providing false information to intentionally alarm the American people.”

“They wrote this based on one email that was sent to local law enforcement in California about a single, unverified tip,” she wrote. “The email even states the tip was based on *unverified* intelligence. Yet ABC News left out this critical fact in their story! WHY?”

Responding to ABC, FBI spokesman Ben Williamson said that ABC’s report omitted the word “unverified” from the bulletin that was sent by the FBI to its local Joint Terrorism Task Forces partners. He included a screenshot of ABC’s report and a screenshot text of the FBI’s bulletin.

“We recently acquired unverified information that as of early February 2026, Iran allegedly aspired to conduct a surprise attack” with drones targeting the United States from “an unidentified vessel,” the FBI bulletin stated, in part, according to his X post.

The bulletin added the law enforcement bureau has “no additional information on the timing, method, target, or perpetrators of this alleged attack.”

ABC News, which is owned by Disney, has not publicly responded to Leavitt or Williamson. The Epoch Times contacted ABC News for comment on Thursday.

The Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department said in a Wednesday post that the office is keeping “an elevated level of readiness and is maintaining increased vigilance as we continue to protect our residents of Los Angeles County. We are working closely with our federal and local law enforcement partners to share intelligence and monitor the ongoing conflict in the Middle East and assess any potential impacts in our communities.”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office office said the bulletin ​was one of many security updates ⁠the state receives from federal partners daily. California, it said, had elevated its security posture since the start of the Iran conflict.

In a message posted on X, the governor’s office said Newsom was “in constant coordination with security and intelligence officials” to ​monitor “potential threats to California—including those tied to the conflict in the Middle East.”

The confidential alert, issued by the FBI, surfaced publicly on Wednesday as the war, which began on Feb. 28 with massive U.S.–Israeli bombardments of Iran, stretched into its 12th day.

The Iranian regime, whose supreme leader and other top officials were killed in the air ​strikes, has responded with missile and drone aircraft attacks against Israel and several Gulf states that host U.S. military installations. The regime has said it would target commercial vehicles in the strategic Strait of Hormuz, while the country’s new leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, said on Thursday that the strait should remain closed indefinitely.

President Donald Trump on Wednesday, when asked by a reporter about Iranian sleeper cells in the United States, said that the administration is tracking most of them and knows where they are.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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Summary:

• State media: Iran claims responsibility for shooting down US refueling plane, says US refueling plane was downed with all crew killed in Western Iraq.

• CENTCOM confirms search and rescue operation underway after large KC-135 refueling tanker goes down over Western Iraq.

• Trump: Iran paying a ‘big price’ right now; situation ‘moving along rapidly’

• Netanyahu confirms hitting IRGC and Basij checkpoints, in effort to ‘topple regime’

• Iran’s top security official to Trump: ‘we will not relent until you are sorry’

• Oil pares gains after report that Iran lets some ships cross strait, denies mining Hormuz

• Bloomberg: Trump admin set to temporarily suspend Jones Act shipping rules to help cool rising oil prices.

• Ayatollah Mojtaba in first public message says the closure of the Strait of Hormuz should be continued as a tool to pressure the enemy

• Mojtaba vows to keep attacking US bases, and signals ‘new fronts’ could soon open

• President Trump simultaneously says the US is stopping Iran “from having Nuclear weapons” and “destroying” the Middle East and “the World”.

• Shipping turmoil escalates as multiple vessels (at least six) struck overnight

• Brent crude oil prices top $100 amid “the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market,” the IEA reports.

• Energy Secretary Chris Wright says the US Navy is not yet ready to escort tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, as military assets remain focused on degrading Iran’s offensive capabilities.

• Dubai suffers significant drone attacks

• Northern Israel hammered by Hezbollah, “largest wave” of missiles since war began

• IDF says it struck key Iranian nuclear development site

• US Intel assesses Iranian regime remains intact

• Oman port operations halted

• Trump proclaims “we won”

*  *  *

Update(1855ET): In a huge battlefield development and significant first and setback for US forces operating against Iran, a large American military aerial refueling tanker has gone down over Western Iraq, where it was operating in connection with Operation Epic Fury. CENTCOM says there’s a rescue effort ongoing, amid likely casualties. In an official statement it said:

U.S. Central Command is aware of the loss of a U.S. KC-135 refueling aircraft. The incident occurred in friendly airspace during Operation Epic Fury, and rescue efforts are ongoing. Two aircraft were involved in the incident. One of the aircraft went down in western Iraq, and the second landed safely.

But the statement also sought to emphasize: “This was not due to hostile fire or friendly fire.” But Tehran is contradicting this: 

Iran claims responsibility for shooting down US refueling plane, says US refueling plane was downed with all crew killed in Western Iraq.

Typically three members operate KC-135, but there can sometimes be another navigators, or possibly up to six on board. This could be an event with serous casualties.

The pressure is piling up on the administration…

CENTCOM claims an accident led to the loss of a KC-135 refueling aircraft over Iraq. I wish I could take them and face value, bc they were flying in close proximity to Iranian fire.

But one way or the other, this is yet another cost to American forces. More reports are coming… https://t.co/wBSjpg7Dmg

— Daniel Davis Deep Dive (@DanielLDavis1) March 12, 2026

*  *  *

Update(1205ET): Some fresh development impacting closely watched oil prices:

OIL PARES GAINS AFTER REPORT IRAN LETS SOME SHIPS CROSS STRAIT

IRAN ALLOWED SOME SHIPS TO CROSS STRAIT, DEPUTY FM SAYS: AFP

IRAN DEPUTY FM SAYS NOT LAYING MINES IN HORMUZ STRAIT: AFP

IRAN DEPUTY FOREIGN MINISTER TAKHT-RAVANCHI SPEAKS TO AFP

Reuters reports say at least a dozen explosive mines have been put in shipping lanes. As for Iran’s denial, this doesn’t mean the war shows signs of immediately stoppage, instead per the AFP:

Iran wants to ensure that a war will not be imposed again on it in the future, deputy foreign minister Majid Takht-Ravanchi told AFP, as the conflict raged with the United States and Israel. “We want to see that war is not going to be imposed again on Iran,” said Takht-Ravanchi in an interview in Tehran.

“When the war started last June, after 12 days there was so called cessation of hostilities… but after eight or nine months, they regrouped and they did it again.“

*  *  *

Update(0940ET): Coming near in time to each other Thursday morning, President Trump and Iran’s Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei issued public statements. This marks the first public statement by supreme leader Mojtaba since replacing his slain father. The statement has been posted to Iranian state TV sources, and below are the most crucial remarks.

Mojtaba says the closure of the Strait of Hormuz should be continued as a tool to pressure the enemy. He additionally states that “all US bases should immediately be closed in the region and those bases should be attacked.” Indeed these attacks have been ongoing this week, as the cross Gulf drone and missile strikes continue, also reportedly most recently in northern Iraq, and around Erbil. On the question of base attacks, he claimed that Iran “only” targets military bases and sites, and says this will continue. However, he did try to assure angry Gulf neighbors, who have been pummeled by Iranian missiles and drones for close to two weeks now, that Iran believes in “friendship with our neighbors”. The message further praises ‘martyrs’ of the Islamic Republic and is one that emphasizes Iran is not backing down, despite the immense daily US-Israeli bombings. He also ‘thanked’ regional militias for their ‘support’ – at a moment Shia Iraq militant groups are said to be launching strikes on US targets inside neighboring Iraq. Ominously, the new Ayatollah is warning of opening “other fronts”.

Click, add to cart, get it done…

As for President Trump, he’s still seeking to try and calm global oil prices, posting “The United States is the largest Oil Producer in the World, by far, so when oil prices go up, we make a lot of money. BUT, of far greater interest and importance to me, as President, is stopping an evil Empire, Iran.” This once again echoes lines from the Bush era war in Iraq. He also said he’s stopping Iran “from having Nuclear weapons” and “destroying” the Middle East and “the World”.

WTI Crude as the rival messages went out almost simultaneously:

An earlier Thursday threat from Iranian leadership:

Trump has said “we can take apart Iran’s electric capacity within one hour, but we have not done it.”

Well, if they do that, the whole region will go dark in less than half an hour and darkness provides ample opportunity to hunt down US servicemen running for safety.

— Ali Larijani | علی لاریجانی (@alilarijani_ir) March 12, 2026

*  *  *

Brent crude futures in Asian trading jumped above $101/bbl overnight, despite news of a planned record emergency SPR release by the International Energy Agency’s 32 member countries, in an effort aimed at capping triple-digit oil prices.

Today’s focus is on reports that IRGC forces struck two foreign oil tankers in the Gulf area, bringing the total to six vessels hit over the past 24 hours. Iranian kamikaze drones also struck an energy export hub in Oman, while IRGC naval mine threats in the Strait of Hormuz soared by midweek.

The Wall Street Journal reported that two oil tankers were struck in Iraqi waters. The U.K. maritime security agency UKMTO also said a containership was hit off the coast of Dubai, adding to earlier reports that three cargo vessels were struck around the Strait of Hormuz area. Also worth recalling is the dramatic video from yesterday showing an IRGC drone slamming into a critical tank farm in Oman.

Video footage from the deck of a Chinese cargo ship which allegedly shows the moment an Iranian one-way attack drone, a Shahed-136, struck an oil tank earlier today at the MINA Petroleum Facility on the Port of Salalh in Oman. pic.twitter.com/45KGfrjYak

— OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) March 11, 2026

The market reaction to the overnight hostilities, as Operation Epic Fury rages on this week and IRGC forces lob missiles and bombs at Gulf states, was a surge in Brent crude futures to the $101 handle.

The insane videos of tanker attacks just keep coming…

NEW: Video shows moment Iranian boat filled with explosives hits U.S.-owned oil tanker in the Persian Gulf pic.twitter.com/nYwnA2BzRl

— BNO News Live (@BNODesk) March 12, 2026

Goldman’s Rich Privorotsky on the overnight energy market moves: 

A series of attacks across the Gulf has sent oil up nearly another 10% (fading to up 5%), with Brent back briefly through the $100 level. The move in products looks even more acute, with distillates leading. Quite telling yesterday that, after yet another Whitehouse jawbone and the IEA’s record reserve release announcement, oil still failed to come in meaningfully. Overnight  Reuters reported, “Iran has laid about a dozen mines in Strait of Hormuz, sources say” … if that is confirmed it’s not quickly reversible.

 Goldman expects longer disruptions on the Hormuz chokepoint:

Here’s where things get even more complicated: Six commercial vessels and oil infrastructure in the Gulf area were hit in IRGC strikes, and attention is now shifting to another critical maritime chokepoint.

Overnight, Iran’s semi-official Fars News Agency warned that the Houthis in Yemen and other Iran-backed groups could move to shut the Bab el-Mandeb Strait at the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula.

The overnight chaos sent Brent crude back over $101/bbl, but it has since fallen to $96/bbl by 0630 ET. This comes after the IEA’s 32 member countries agreed on a “record” 400 million barrel release to cap energy prices. U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright announced that the U.S. will contribute 172 million barrels. As we explained to readers on Wednesday, this SPR dump is likely to have only a minimal impact.

Meanwhile, President Donald Trump told supporters in Kentucky last night that Operation Epic Fury was effectively over almost as soon as it began. “It’s just a question of when—when do we stop?” he said.

“Let me say we’ve won. You know, you never like to say too early you won. We won. We won, in the first hour it was over, but we won,” Trump said.

He added, “We don’t want to leave early, do we? We’ve got to finish the job.”

NOW – Trump declares “we’ve won” the Iran War. pic.twitter.com/vx0J9Z9SJr

— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) March 11, 2026

It is clear that U.S.-Israeli operations have dealt a major blow to the IRGC’s conventional military capabilities, but the lingering threat will be asymmetric warfare, including drone attacks, naval mines, the potential sabotage of undersea cables, and a wide range of other low-cost, high-disruption weapons.

What’s important from the overnight (courtesy of Bloomberg):

Energy Market

• The Iran war is causing the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market, hitting 7.5% of global supply and an even bigger share of exports

• Oil prices surged above $100 a barrel as Iran escalated attacks on Dubai and shipping assets

• IEA members agreed to release an unprecedented 400 million barrels from emergency reserves to calm the market

IRGC Military Actions

• Iran escalated attacks on parts of Dubai with missile alerts and a drone that fell on a building in Creek Harbour on Wednesday night

• Iran says it maintains control over the strategic Strait of Hormuz and claims it carried out strikes on Israeli military and intelligence facilities

• Iran’s military announced the policy of reciprocal strikes has ended, stating, ‘from now on, our policy will be strike after strike’

• More than 2,100 Shahed-136 weapons have been fired so far, damaging oil infrastructure, shutting airports and destroying military hardware

US Security Warnings

• The US State Department warned that Iran and affiliated groups could be planning attacks on oil infrastructure owned by the United States in Iraq

• US Central Command warned that Iran is using civilian ports along the Strait of Hormuz for military operations, making them legitimate targets

• California Governor Newsom said he’s aware of potential drone strikes in California after FBI warnings that Iran has allegedly considered launching offensive drones against the West Coast

 Economic Impact

• Goldman Sachs and Citigroup told staffers in Dubai to stay away from their offices amid Iran threats

• On the Beach suspended its full-year guidance due to a ‘significant slowdown’ in demand following the Middle East conflict, with shares dropping as much as 15%

• Chinese oil refiners have begun canceling agreed refined fuel export cargoes as Beijing tightens curbs to cope with the war’s impact

Diplomatic Developments

• Iran has told regional intermediaries that for a ceasefire, the US must guarantee that neither it nor Israel will strike the country in the future

• A former IRGC chief said Iran would agree to no ceasefire until the country reaches a ‘definite outcome’

• The UN Security Council approved a resolution condemning Iran’s attacks on its Gulf neighbors including Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE and Jordan

Related energy market reads:

• Oil “VIX” At 121 — Markets Aren’t Pricing De-Escalation

• Oil Volatility Is Exploding — And Something Is Starting To Break

• IEA Agrees To Release Record 400 Million Barrels From Emergency Stockpiles: Here’s Why This Will Have Little Impact

Is it too early for Trump to be calling a “win” when asymmetric warfare is still a very big threat and will be lingering for many weeks, if not months? As one pundit has pointed out: “Endurance regimes do not need clean victory to change the game. They only need to survive the shock while making the old equilibrium too costly for their adversaries to restore.”

In a move underscoring America’s drive for nuclear fuel sovereignty, Centrus Energy and Palantir announced an AI-powered partnership aimed at slashing costs and fast-tracking the multi-billion-dollar expansion of U.S. uranium enrichment capacity.

The collaboration, showcased at Thursday’s AIPCon 9 event, deploys Palantir’s Foundry and Artificial Intelligence Platform across Centrus’ operations. Early work since late January has already pinpointed nearly $300 million in potential cost savings and efficiencies. This would be on top of the $900 million they were recently awarded for their expansion efforts. 

Further gains are expected to compress manufacturing lead times and accelerate the rollout of new capacity at Centrus’ Ohio plant, which is the only U.S.-owned commercial enrichment facility currently operating. The company is already starting to prepare additional centrifuges at their manufacturing facilities. 

Centrus President and CEO Amir Vexler remarked on the immediate cost savings and their ongoing EPC partnership with Fluor, while Palantir Industrials EVPs Joanna Peller and Tom McArdle noted how the partnership demonstrates how “AI-powered software can drive measurable impact in critical infrastructure projects”.

The announcement between the two companies came on the same day Energy Secretary Chris Wright was providing comments to CNN regarding enriched uranium imports from Russia. 

The U.S. will rely on “our partners in Europe” to enable the U.S. to fully cut off uranium imports from Russia by the current deadline of 2028. 

As Demand Grows, US Nuclear Energy Industry Faces Looming Crunch In Reactor Fuel Supply https://t.co/DfRbhoNGzD

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) February 15, 2026

There’s an obvious desire by the U.S. to cut their dependence on Russian imports, given the Russians currently supply about 20-25% of the feedstock required by the U.S. commercial nuclear fleet.

As Secretary Wright noted on Thursday morning, the quickest likely path are the ongoing expansion efforts at the already-operating enrichment facility in New Mexico owned by Urenco.