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Feds Charge Atlanta Man Who Gave Border Agents ‘Self-Destruct’ Password For Phone

Feds Charge Atlanta Man Who Gave Border Agents ‘Self-Destruct’ Password For Phone

A federal judge in Atlanta is weighing whether to throw out the evidence in what appears to be the first US prosecution of a traveler over a phone’s built-in “duress password” – a privacy feature that erases a device when the wrong code is entered.

Samuel Tunick, an Atlanta resident and US citizen, was charged under 18 U.S.C. § 2232(a), which makes it a crime to destroy or damage property to prevent the government from seizing it. The offense carries up to five years. He has pleaded not guilty and is seeking to suppress the government’s evidence, arguing the search and seizure that produced it were unlawful. A ruling is not expected before the end of October.

Tunick was returning from vacation on January 24, 2025, when Customs and Border Protection pulled him into secondary inspection at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. According to his motion to suppress, agents demanded access to his phone on the stated suspicion that it contained child exploitation imagery, without offering evidence to support that suspicion. They told him they did not need a warrant because he had not yet crossed into the country – the government’s long-standing position that arriving travelers are not on US soil until admitted.

His lawyers say he asked for an attorney repeatedly and was refused, and that he was never advised of his rights.

Tunick provided a passcode. An officer entered it. The screen went dark, flashed repeatedly, and the device restarted with its contents gone. Agents seized the phone anyway and told him he was free to enter the country.

The indictment, returned in the Northern District of Georgia, alleges he knowingly destroyed, damaged, wasted, disposed of or otherwise acted to delete the phone’s digital contents in order to impair the government’s lawful authority to take the property into its custody. The document contains the typo “Untied States Code.”

At a hearing last Monday, a Justice Department attorney and the agents who ran the stop characterized the encounter as an ordinary airport inspection. They were looking for “anything that’s prohibited,” CBP officer Larry Findley testified.

What Preceded The Stop

Three hours before Tunick’s plane landed, a Homeland Security agent circulated an email carrying his name and photograph and stating that he was under investigation for suspected terrorism activities. It went to agents on CBP’s tactical terrorism response team and to an officer with the FBI’s Atlanta joint terrorism task force, according to The Guardian, which first reported the case.

Tunick’s attorneys argue the child-exploitation rationale was a pretext, and that the real interest was his association with Defend the Atlanta Forest, the movement that spent years opposing the police training campus known as Cop City. The state’s own sprawling racketeering case against 61 people tied to that movement was dismissed last year by a Fulton County judge, with the Georgia attorney general appealing.

CBP’s tactical terrorism response teams were created in 2015 and have operated with almost no public visibility. The ACLU sued the agency in 2019 seeking records on the units, describing them as highly secretive teams that target, detain and interrogate travelers.

GrapheneOS

Tunick’s attorneys have confirmed his Google Pixel was running GrapheneOS, a hardened Android replacement stripped of Google’s tracking components. Among its options is a duress PIN – a second code, indistinguishable from the real one, that triggers an irreversible wipe. No warning, no confirmation prompt, nothing to give it away. Whoever types it cannot know what it is doing until it is finished.

GrapheneOS documents the feature as intended for people who may be forced to unlock a device, naming journalists, activists and travelers facing border searches – and warns in the same documentation that a triggered wipe could be treated in some jurisdictions as destruction of evidence. 

Matthew Dodge, an assistant federal public defender on Tunick’s team, called the use of the statute in this context incredibly rare. Runa Sandvik, who runs the security consultancy Granitt, said she had never seen a case built on a duress password, though she has spent years walking journalists and activists through the scenario. Christophe Boutry, a French cybersecurity and surveillance specialist, said the prosecution mirrors what is already unfolding in France and Spain, where authorities have run into GrapheneOS on the phones of journalists, lawyers and political opponents. His argument is one of ownership: the device belongs to the user, and the state does not get to dictate how it is configured.

Unfriendly Venue?

The Eleventh Circuit may be the government’s biggest advantage in the case. In United States v. Touset (2018) it held that border agents need no suspicion of any kind to search a device, forensic or manual, reasoning that if none is required to open a suitcase, none should be required for a phone. In the Fourth or Ninth Circuits the pretext argument would carry real weight – both require reasonable suspicion for forensic searches, and the Ninth confines border phone searches to digital contraband rather than general evidence of domestic crime. In Atlanta, the defense has to attack the scope of the search rather than the absence of grounds for it.

The statute, meanwhile, is also narrower than it looks. Section 2232(a) requires impairing the government’s lawful authority to seize such property. Lawfulness is an element of the offense, not merely a suppression question, so an unlawful seizure could put the conduct outside the statute altogether

A Fourth Amendment win may not end the case regardless. The alleged offense occurred in the agents’ presence, in response to the demand the defense says was unlawful, and courts generally hold that a new crime committed in reaction to an illegal search is not suppressible.

The Fifth Amendment may be the more promising route, because the act constituting the offense is speaking a passcode. If that was compelled in custody without warnings or counsel, the utterance itself may be suppressible. There is a wrinkle in Tunick’s favor: the same circuit that is least protective on border searches is among the more protective on compelled decryption, having held in 2012 that forced decryption can be testimonial. Prosecutors will argue that secondary inspection is not custody and that “unlock it or we keep it” is not legal compulsion.

Then there is intent. Officers typed the code, not Tunick, so the government must prove purpose rather than infer it from a physical act – and the defense has pointedly declined to concede he meant to wipe anything. The evidence that a duress code was configured at all lived on the device that now holds no data.

We’ll be keeping an eye on this one…

Tyler Durden
Mon, 07/27/2026 – 22:10

Utility Profits In The Crosshairs Amid Affordability Concerns

Utility Profits In The Crosshairs Amid Affordability Concerns

By Herman Trabish of UtilityDive,Last month, protesters angry over high electricity costs disrupted a Las Vegas conference of executives for the nation’s biggest investor-owned utilities — a vivid example of growing public outrage that has forced the industry to again defend their legally guaranteed profit margins. 

As affordability concerns increase political pressure, several states have taken steps to lower utilities’ return on equity, either through regulatory or legislative action. Consumer advocates say these measures are long overdue, while utilities say suppressing their ROE could impact their credit rating, which would carry over into higher customer costs. 

It is possible the combination of how vital electricity has become in the 21st century and its rising cost in the 2020s could lead to a turning point at this moment in the acceptable level of utility profits, experts told Utility Dive.

In a potentially pivotal and soon-to-be-decided Maryland rate case, utility executives said the matter should be left to state regulators, while consumer advocates said regulators should lower the utility’s profits closer to its costs for serving its customers. 

Utilities in the hot seat

Affordability has become a more pressing issue as national average electricity prices have outpaced inflation, and many people blame utilities. A March Pew Research poll found 85% of respondents saw utilities “wanting to make more money” as a reason for increased home energy prices. 

The impact of profits is not only a matter of public perception. According to a series of reports from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, prices charged by investor-owned utilities, which represent about 70% of national electricity sales, are higher and have risen faster compared to public utilities without strong profit motives.

The reports also found that IOU revenue requests are higher than they have been in decades – totaling $18 billion last year – and that over the past five years, regulators have approved, on average, 64% of the dollar value of these increases, compared to an average of 52% over the previous two decades. 

Energy affordability concerns have also merged with popular backlash to data centers and their huge resource demands. The resentment has stirred up a large, receptive audience for consumer advocates questioning the regulated utility profit model.

Utility profit margins are set by regulators around the country and averaged 9.7% in 2025, while fluctuating from 9% to 10.5%, according to Synapse Energy Economics. Unregulated economic sectors have ROEs within, far above, and far below that range, but do not have the obligation to serve and are not required to seek approval for their profits like regulated utilities, according to the Regulatory Assistance Project’s 2016 Guide

ROEs are a matter for state utility regulators, said Dani Marx, spokesperson for the Edison Electric Institute, the trade group for U.S. investor-owned utilities and utility holding groups.

“Independent state regulators work through open and transparent proceedings to evaluate infrastructure needs,” Marx said. 

Utility infrastructure often includes “an equity component, including a return on equity, to attract sufficient investment to fund these projects,” she added.

In December, California regulators lowered the ROE for its three largest investor-owned utilities by 0.3 percentage points each. Several states, including Pennsylvania, are weighing legislation to tie utility ROE to 10-year Treasury bonds, among other reforms.

ROEs get political

Some states, like Maryland, have begun chipping away at utility returns by passing laws requiring power companies to join regional transmission organizations in order to do away with so-called adder – additional ROE the company earns on transmission for being a voluntary member. 

Meanwhile, state leaders in Virginia, New Jersey and Pennsylvania have asked regulators to consider rate requests carefully, signaling they may take more direct action in rate cases. 

The issue has also gained momentum in Congress. Rep. Greg Casar, D-Texas, has gathered more than 20 cosponsors for the Lowering Utility Bills Act (H.R. 8568). The bill would require a utility to “calculate the return on equity at the lowest return on equity in an established range of reasonableness” determined by its regulators.

Reducing utility profits “saves all electricity users money on their bills,” said Mark Ellis, a former chief of strategy and economics with Sempra who now works as an independent consultant. 

In his opinion, today’s utility profits are “an unjust enrichment of utility investors at the expense of customers,” he added.

Utilities argue their profit margins must be set high enough to attract capital at low interest rates, which saves their ratepayers money in the long run while allowing utilities to maintain grid reliability.

If a utility’s authorized returns “are below those of comparable utilities, its ability to attract capital is at risk,” said Robert Leming, vice president of regulatory policy and strategy for Pepco Holdings, which is now engaged in a regulatory debate over profits at the Public Service Commission of Maryland.

Utilities need that capital “to provide safe and reliable service for customers,” he told Utility Dive in an interview.

An ROE case study

Some say the AI boom has introduced bottlenecks that are forcing utilities to consider alternatives to building, but others worry that the opposite is happening, and the hype cycle is fueling ill-conceived spending that will be on ratepayer bills for decades.

The current Pepco rate case offers an illustrative example of the state of the debate. The utility has proposed an ROE of 10.5%, an increase from its current 9.5% allowed ROE. The Maryland Office of People’s Counsel has proposed 7.7%.

The head of the OPC, David Lapp, told Utility Dive that many of the utility’s recent infrastructure investments could have been deferred. 

“Pepco is investing too much too fast and not in things that are cost effective and needed going forward,” Lapp said.

Pepco Holdings’ Leming disagreed. “Maryland’s ambitious climate and electrification goals require investment to modernize and upgrade the system,” he said.

Ellis, Lapp and others see high utility ROEs as a perverse incentive because it biases utilities toward expensive investments that add to a utility’s base of financed costs that earn ROEs and increase rates.

In addition, Lapp argues Pepco’s ROE is “inflated” by a financial strategy called ”double leveraging,” involving Exelon Utilities, Pepco’s parent corporation and only investor.

OPC contends that Exelon’s lower cost debt is being used by Pepco as higher cost equity, allowing it to borrow more lower cost debt.

Double leveraging “is not illegal if regulators approve it,” Lapp said. But if Pepco counts Exelon’s debt as equity in its capital structure, it raises the total ROE and, as a result, customer rates, he added.

“Exelon’s role does not change Pepco’s ROE needs,” Pepco consultant Adrien McKenzie told Maryland commissioners. Equity to support Pepco operations “must be raised in the capital markets,” based on returns competitive with “risk-comparable alternatives,” he added.

If Exelon debt to be paid back in 10 years is invested by Pepco in 50-year assets, Exelon would not be reimbursed soon enough to meet its debt, Pepco’s Leming added.

To justify the proposed 10.5% ROE, McKenzie presented multiple quantitative analyses and “a proxy group of risk-comparable electric utilities.” Credit ratings for Pepco of Baa1 from Moody’s and A- from S&P were central to his conclusion, McKenzie testified.

“Rating agencies and potential debt investors tend to place significant emphasis on maintaining strong financial metrics,” McKenzie told the commission. And this emphasis on financial metrics and credit ratings is shared by equity investors, he added.

Pepco’s Leming told Utility Dive he is focused on utility operations.

“Affordability is one of Pepco’s top priorities right now,” he said. Recent rising rates are linked to investments that have made Pepco highly ranked for customer satisfaction, he added.

But Pepco must be adequately funded to meet today’s “unprecedented” demand with new infrastructure, Leming continued. “That underscores the importance of having a competitive ROE to attract capital,” he said.

Lapp said his focus is customers.

“Everyone agrees investors in utilities should have the opportunity to earn the same return as an entity with a comparable level of risk,” he said. “But Pepco’s proposed 10.5% ROE is unfair to customers because its cost of equity is not just a little bit less, but significantly less.”

A ruling on Pepco’s ROE is expected in August.

Finding solutions

Reducing ROE can in fact impact a utility’s credit quality. Several Connecticut utilities, including Eversource and Avangrid, saw their credit ratings downgraded by credit agencies citing an inconsistent and unsupportive regulatory environment.

But that impact can be offset, Ellis said. “Increasing the equity portion of the debt-equity ratio and lowering the ROE produces ratepayer savings” without significantly altering the utility’s credit ratings, he added.

Ellis is a proponent of “competitive direct equity” as the “structural and political solution,” he said. “It would replace administratively set ROEs with a supply and demand-determined cost of equity through a competitive auction that would fundamentally change the utility incentive structure,” he explained.

In today’s rate cases, ROE determination “is a charade that is not calculated consistently or accurately,” Ellis continued. “The utility says it should be 11% and the consumer advocate says it should be 9% and the regulators compromise at 10% and move to the next proceeding.”

Utilities are accustomed to obtaining satisfactory ROEs through rate cases adjudicated by their state regulators and have no widely proposed alternative political solution. They warn regulators that reducing working capital puts reliability at risk.

But utilities’ rate case filings, like Pepco’s, typically include complex formulas for calculating ROE that overwhelm regulators and conclude that the utility needs an ROE increase, said Karl Rabago, a former Texas utilities commissioner and a frequent rate case intervenor on behalf of consumers.

“The original focus on balancing cost-of-service and earnings anticipated regulators would substitute for the forces of competition, and that has been lost,” Rabago said.

Tyler Durden
Mon, 07/27/2026 – 21:45

Inside America’s Left: Mapping The Five Factions Battling For Power

Inside America’s Left: Mapping The Five Factions Battling For Power

Many transformations are unfolding within America’s political left, and its shifting factions can be difficult to track.

The Democratic establishment is fighting to preserve its grip on power as progressives and reformist socialists gain ground in local elections, with some openly promoting the dismantling of capitalism and adopting increasingly hostile rhetoric toward America.

Fox News has begun publishing explainers to educate its audience about the emerging far left, while Trump administration officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, have declared war on the radical left and foreign subversion networks linked to Cuba, China and elsewhere (read report).

Related:

Understanding the left requires recognizing that it is not a monolith. To help map its many layers, Karlyn Borysenko, who describes herself as an anti-communist analyst, published an easy-to-understand infographic on X titled “Mapping the Modern Left,” noting that “not all leftists are created equal.”

The graphic is a five-tiered “rainbow cake” view of the American left, ranging from establishment Democrats who favor incremental reform within capitalism to revolutionary socialists seeking to abolish and destroy the nation from within.

Her infographic divides the left into two main camps. The “neoliberal left” includes Democrats, liberals, and progressives, while the “far left” comprises reformist and revolutionary socialists. The graphic claims that progressives may favor policies associated with socialism, such as Medicare for All and the Green New Deal, without seeking to eliminate capitalism. Reformist socialists, by contrast, pursue a post-capitalist system… 

Borysenko also uses symbols to indicate which tiers she believes have adopted elements of queer ideology.

Borysenko’s infographic provides an easy-to-view understanding of the  intensifying power struggle within the Democratic Party as the party establishment attempts to fend off a takeover by far-left socialists:

With fewer than 100 days until the midterm elections, the left’s internal power struggle is already emerging as one of the campaign cycle’s most intriguing spectacles of the summer. 

Tyler Durden
Mon, 07/27/2026 – 21:20

Washington Gets A Win After Post-Maduro Venezuela Withdraws From ICC

Washington Gets A Win After Post-Maduro Venezuela Withdraws From ICC

Via Middle East Eye

The US has welcomed a decision by the new Venezuelan government to withdraw the country from the International Criminal Court (ICC).

In a post on X, the US State Department hailed the move as marking a “partnership on American-led efforts to dismantle the corrupt and worthless ICC.

It pointed to an investigation by the court into former Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro, who was abducted from the South American country during a US military assault in January 2026, saying it had produced “no result”.

“The ICC has instead wasted its resources on investigating and charging persons from countries that have competent, independent judicial systems and which never submitted to the jurisdiction of the court,” the statement read.

“This is blatant overreach, political bias and selective enforcement,” it said, adding that the court is “neither credible, independent, nor legitimate”.

“It is time to dismantle the ICC,” it said, calling for all its members to “withdraw from the Rome Statute”.

via AFP

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had spoken with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who he said reaffirmed Washington’s intention to act “forcefully” against the ICC.

In a statement, Netanyahu said the court “endangers justice around the world” and “threatens the right of democratic, sovereign states to exercise their sovereignty,” adding that it sought to subject their security “to the decisions of a corrupt clique in The Hague.”

The development comes after ICC member states voted on Friday to remove chief prosecutor Karim Khan over misconduct claims.

On Friday, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Felix Plasencia announced that the government had informed the UN of its “irrevocable” decision to quit the court, citing the body’s “geographical bias” against countries in the global south.

The move signals a greater alignment by Venezuela with US policies, a week after US Secretary of State Marco Rubio vowed “a whole-of-government response to systematically disable” the tribunal.

The Trump administration has repeatedly sought to undermine the international court, levelling sanctions against prosecutors involved in investigating the actions of US and Israeli militaries.

In an executive order signed last year, Trump wrote that the ICC “has engaged in illegitimate and baseless actions targeting America and our close ally Israel”, citing the arrest warrants issued in November for Netanyahu and his then defense minister, Yoav Gallant.

Tyler Durden
Mon, 07/27/2026 – 20:55

Ex-Wife In Korea’s $645M “Divorce Of The Century” Gets Iced Out Of AI Boom

Ex-Wife In Korea’s $645M “Divorce Of The Century” Gets Iced Out Of AI Boom

A Seoul court has ordered SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won to pay his ex-wife 944 billion won ($645 million), in the largest divorce award in South Korean history. And while the figure is a record, it was calculated against a stock price more than two years old – before it went ballistic in the AI boom. 

Chey Tae-won, chairman of SK Group. Lee Young-hwan/Newsis/Associated Press

The Seoul High Court’s First Family Division, presiding judge Lee Sang-ju, issued the ruling on Friday, nine years after Chey filed for divorce mediation in 2017. The court ordered the money paid in cash with 5 percent annual interest from the day after the judgment becomes final, and declined to hand over any stock, citing the role Chey’s shares play in his control of the group, according to the WSJ. Neither side has said whether it will appeal again.

Chey did not attend. He was in California, accompanying President Lee Jae-myung on a San Francisco trip and dining with Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang in Woodside.

The Two-Year-Old Price

The court fixed the valuation at April 16, 2024, the date arguments closed in the earlier appeal. SK Inc. finished that session at 160,000 won ($110) a share, putting Chey’s 17.9 percent stake at roughly 2.07 trillion won ($1.4 billion). When arguments closed in the remand trial on June 26, 2026, the stock closed at 810,000 won ($555). Five times higher thanks to an AI boom that runs from Nvidia’s high-bandwidth memory orders through SK Hynix, up through SK Square, and into the holding company at the top.

Roh’s lawyers argued for the June 2026 date. Chey’s argued for April 2024. The court sided with Chey. Supreme Court precedent holds that divisible property is measured as of the closing of the last fact-finding trial, which the court took to be the pre-remand appeal. It added that share prices are volatile and listed stock is a cash-equivalent asset that can be sold at any time, so declining to split gains that land after a marriage has legally ended does not obviously defeat the purpose of an equitable division.

The court acknowledged the price had risen sharply between the two dates, said Chey’s management deserved credit for part of that, and stated that it had taken the surge into account in setting the division ratio rather than in the valuation

On what Roh contributed, the court was more generous than the first-instance judge had been in 2022, when he ruled the SK shares were Chey’s separate property and awarded her 66.5 billion won ($45 million). Her homemaking, her raising of the couple’s three children and her public activity on the group’s behalf, the court found, had helped form and sustain the value of the stock. It rejected Chey’s argument that the shares were inherited and gifted assets outside the marriage. Then it set her share at one-third.

The Bribe That Counted For Nothing

Two years ago a different panel awarded Roh 1.3808 trillion won ($945 million) after she argued that her father’s money helped build the company, and that Chey’s SK shares were therefore a joint dynastic project rather than his alone. To prove it, her side put a slush fund memo written by her mother, Kim Ok-sook, into evidence, documenting 90.4 billion won ($62 million), and argued that 30 billion won ($21 million) of former President Roh Tae-woo’s slush money had passed to SK founding chairman Chey Jong-hyun in 1991 and gone toward the acquisition of Pacific Securities and other business.

In May 2024, the appellate court accepted it. It found the transfer real, treated the money as seed capital, and found that Roh Tae-woo had smoothed regulatory obstacles for SK’s move into mobile telecoms during his 1988-1993 presidency, playing what it called “the role of a protective shield” for the elder Chey. It valued the couple’s joint property at some 4 trillion won ($2.7 billion), set Roh’s share at 35 percent, and ordered 1.3808 trillion won ($945 million) paid.

On October 16, 2025, the Supreme Court’s First Division threw that out. The money may well have moved, the justices held, and that was the problem. Roh Tae-woo was arrested in 1995 and convicted the following year of taking hundreds of billions of won (hundreds of millions of dollars) from businessmen, and Article 746 of the Civil Act bars anyone from suing over a benefit conferred for an illegal purpose. A president routing part of a bribe to his in-laws and staying silent about it was, in the court’s words, so markedly anti-social, unethical and immoral as to fall outside the protection of the law. Since the conduct had no legal value worth protecting, it could not be counted as his daughter’s contribution when the marital estate was divided.

Roh’s lawyers had a reply. She was not trying to recover the money, only to have its effect acknowledged. The court was not interested.

On remand, the 30 billion won ($21 million) came out and her ratio slipped from 35 percent to one-third – a small move, because the slush fund had never carried much weight in the ratio to begin with. The larger cut came from a second holding in the same Supreme Court ruling: shares Chey had gifted to his younger brother and other relatives before the marriage collapsed were not divisible property either. The estate shrank while her percentage held roughly steady, and the award fell by 436.8 billion won ($300 million).

Now He Has To Find The Cash

Chey holds 12,975,472 SK Inc. shares, 17.90 percent, worth roughly 8.5 trillion won ($5.8 billion) at last Thursday’s close. The award is about 11 percent of that – and the court told him to pay it in money, not stock.

Roh Soh-yeong arrived at court in June. YONHAP/AFP/Getty Images

Tyler Durden
Mon, 07/27/2026 – 20:30

Los Angeles Mayoral Candidates Spar Over Response To Rise In Homelessness

Los Angeles Mayoral Candidates Spar Over Response To Rise In Homelessness

Authored by City News Service via The Epoch Times,

Mayor Karen Bass and her challenger in the Nov. 3 election, Councilmember Nithya Raman, criticized one another on July 24 over the increase in homelessness in Los Angeles.

Homeless tents are seen in the Skid Row area of downtown Los Angeles on June 11, 2026. Apu Gomes/AFP via Getty Images

Homelessness increased by 3.4 percent in the city to an estimated 45,194 people, and unsheltered homelessness also rose by nearly 8 percent, according to figures from the 2026 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count. The data showed the first increase in the unhoused population following two consecutive years of decreases.

Raman, who represents the Fourth Council District, held a news conference in Studio City to discuss the results of the count released on the afternoon of July 24.

“By now you’ve probably seen the reports: despite hundreds of millions of dollars spent – and repeated assurances that Los Angeles had turned a corner – unsheltered homelessness increased by nearly 8% in this city,” Raman said in a statement.

“That is a moral outrage. And it is a failure of leadership,” Raman added.

The councilwoman noted her district experienced a 49 percent decrease in unsheltered homelessness.

“We track every case, break through the barriers holding up placements, connect people with housing and care, and stay involved until they are housed,” Raman said in her statement.

Raman said, if elected, she would bring that approach and results citywide.

She added homelessness is “not an unsolveable problem. It’s a mismanged one.”

In response, Bass’s campaign said Raman claimed credit for the decrease in her district while avoiding the rest of the city’s data as chair of the City Council’s Homelessness and Housing Committee.

Bass’s campaign said Inside Safe brought 236 people in the Fourth Council District into interim housing since 2023. It further alleged Raman has not attended a single Inside Safe operation in her district last year.

The homeless count further showed that the Fourth Council District had a reduction of recreational vehicles used as housing for people experiencing homelessness from 103 in 2023 to 38 in 2026, a 63 percent decline.

Bass’s campaign said the removal of RVs involves towing, storage, and relocation operations that the city’s homelessness teams run.

“Nithya Raman is taking credit for the results of Inside Safe while campaigning against it,” Alex Stack, a spokesman for Bass’s campaign, said in a statement.

“While Raman takes credit for the city’s work in her district, ignoring the fact that she’s the chair of the Homelessness & Housing Committee for all of Los Angeles, Mayor Bass is working to move our city forward and address years of neglect,” Stack added.

Bass served on the LAHSA Commission for a three-year term that ended June 30. The commission consists of 10 appointed members – five representatives from the city and five from the county.

Commission members hold authority over budgetary, funding, planning and program policies.

Bass, who is seeking a second term, continues to campaign on what she has deemed as progress in her first term – part of that includes her administration’s ability in moving unhoused people into temporary housing.

The 2026 Homeless Count represents an opening for Raman, who is attempting to garner voter support with a new approach to address homelessness.

Raman has criticized Bass’s Inside Safe program for being too costly, and failing to produce better results.

While Bass has defended Inside Safe, her signature program for encampment resolution, a Los Angeles Times analysis found that in the nearly four years since the program began, about 41 percent of unhoused people who participated in the program had returned to homelessness.

In a statement Thursday, Bass blamed the Trump administration for the increase in homelessness, saying its policies have driven up the cost of living and while reducing federal funding for safety net programs. She noted that reductions in state funding for homelessness have also impacted the city’s ability to respond to the crisis.

The mayor also criticized Los Angeles County for a “lack of adequate services,” which she said was a contributing factor to people cycling in and out of homelessness. The county provides cities with services such as mental health and substance-abuse counseling.

Bass noted the city has reduced unsheltered homelessness by 11 percent since 2023, and housing more than 1,000 homeless veterans.

Recently, critics have expressed frustration with Bass over the slow cleanup of rotting food left by the Lineage Logistics cold-storage warehouse fire in Boyle Heights, as well as concerns raised over a crisis communications consultant who worked for Bass’s office for free, among other issues.

Meanwhile, Republican Party of Los Angeles County Chair Roxanne Hoge told City News Service in an email that the rise in homelessness was caused by existing leadership.

“Every parent knows that you get more of behavior you reward. Karen Bass, Nithya Raman, Lindsey Horvath and the entire Homeless Industrial Complex comprised of NGOs and the California Democrat Party reward everything from criminal vagrancy, drug addiction, untreated mental illness and the takeover of public spaces. The results we see are the results they want,” Hoge said in a statement, referring to Los Angeles County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath and nongovernmental organizations.

Tyler Durden
Mon, 07/27/2026 – 19:15

Mitch McConnell Pokes Head Out Of Shell With New ‘Proof Of Life’ Pic From Rehab

Mitch McConnell Pokes Head Out Of Shell With New ‘Proof Of Life’ Pic From Rehab

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) on Monday ‘said’ he’s undergoing physical therapy, but that he hasn’t been medically cleared to leave rehab after being admitted to the hospital after his June 14 fall. 

“I’m still working hard to get back to my full schedule of work in the Senate and in Kentucky, keeping up with intense physical therapy per my doctors’ orders,” McConnell, 84, one of the oldest members of the Senate, said in a statement – adding that he won’t be able to make it to a popular event called Fancy Farm slated to take place in Kentucky on Saturday.

The reason for the hospitalization was not disclosed until July 12, with McConnell stating at the time it was due to a fall that left him briefly unconscious. He’s also apparently suffering from a mild case of pneumonia and has totally not been dead for six weeks. 

On Monday, Congress’s Office of the Attending Physician said that McConnell fell while at home in June and that he has been moved from the hospital to another facility.

“Since his discharge from hospital care, he has maintained a strenuous course of physical therapy and rehabilitation, including multiple sessions a day designed to rebuild strength and reduce the risk of future falls,” the office said.

“His bout with childhood polio continues to be a significant factor in his mobility. He is not yet medically cleared to leave the rehab facility and return to the office.”

McConnell said on Monday that he was sorry to miss Fancy Farm and wished the community the best for the event.

“As always, I appreciate all of your continued well wishes, and I’m looking forward to getting back to the Senate and to Kentucky soon,” he wrote.

McConnell has previously dealt with a number of health problems, including documented instances of him freezing while being near or addressing reporters. His office has said he experienced momentary lightheadedness at those times.

The senator said in 2025 that he would not run for another term. His current term ends on Jan. 3, 2027.

In the primary elections for the race to succeed McConnell, Republican voters chose Rep. Andy Barr (R-Ky.), while Democratic voters selected former Kentucky Rep. Charles Booker.

Tyler Durden
Mon, 07/27/2026 – 18:50

YouTube, Instagram, And The Future Of Ministry

YouTube, Instagram, And The Future Of Ministry

Authored by Van Mylar via RealClearReligion,

Meta is testing Instagram on television. Pinterest has acquired a connected-TV ad-buying platform. Social media content is becoming one of the most-watched video types on American television. And YouTube is leading the way, with tens of millions of Americans now watching YouTube on the biggest screen in the house.

YouTube’s move into creator-led, 24/7 “Stations” points to something larger: digital and social platforms are no longer simply competing with television. They are becoming television.

For nonprofits and ministries, this is not a passing media trend. It is a strategic signal.

The migration of social behavior back to the living room represents a fundraising, awareness and discipleship opportunity too large to ignore. It is also a warning to organizations still treating television, streaming, social, direct mail, radio and email as disconnected channels.

That means the old channel-by-channel mindset is no longer enough. Direct mail, television, radio, email, YouTube, social media and connected television must work together as one integrated donor journey.

A short clip may create discovery. A long-form video may build trust. A host-read appeal may deepen credibility. A direct mail package may provide a tangible response moment. A TV placement may bring the mission back into the shared household space.

The living room has always carried emotional weight. It is where families hear breaking news, watch stories that move them and encounter moments that shape belief, identity, generosity and action. But the new living room is different. It blends broadcast, streaming, social video, creator content, streaming channels and algorithmic discovery into one environment.

And every generation brings a different expectation to that screen.

Gen Z views television as an extension of the feed. They are not easily moved by polished institutional messaging. They want authenticity, immediacy and evidence. They want to see who is being helped, who is telling the story and whether the mission feels credible. Creator brands are becoming television brands, and the trust younger audiences place in a familiar face is proving just as valuable as a traditional network name.

Millennials are the bridge generation. They move fluidly between television, streaming apps, YouTube, podcasts, social feeds and mobile giving. They respond to content that is useful, transparent, emotionally honest and easy to act on. They do not want friction. If the story moves them, the next step must be immediate and clear.

Gen X may be the most overlooked audience in this shift. They are skeptical, independent and media-savvy. They still understand the authority of the television screen, but they verify before giving or getting involved. For them, the formula is trust plus proof. They want to know where the money goes, whether the organization is effective, and whether the appeal is grounded in reality rather than hype.

Boomers still have a deep relationship with the living room screen, but they are not passive viewers anymore. Many stream church services, watch YouTube on their Smart TVs, and respond to familiar hosts, strong storytelling and appeals tied to faith, family and legacy.

The Silent Generation, though smaller, remains significant for legacy giving. They respond best to clarity, consistency, trusted messengers, and a sense that their giving will outlive them.

That is why the question for ministries shouldn’t simply be how to buy more advertising space, but rather who they are trying to reach.

What shaped them? What do they trust? What do they question? What kind of story moves them? What makes them believe an organization is worthy of their generosity?

There is also a deeper reason platforms are chasing the living room: mobile is running out of room to grow. Social media platforms need new attention, new inventory and new environments. Television is where much of that remaining attention lives.

That should reframe how ministries and nonprofits think about television. Connected TV (like Smart TVs or TVs with an Amazon Fire Stick) is not simply an experimental add-on to a digital media plan. It is where engaged attention is moving next.

It is also where discovery and trust can converge.

Many viewers now begin watching full programs because of a short clip they first saw on social media. For a ministry or nonprofit, that matters. A short, honest clip may be the first step in a person’s journey that ends in a gift, a prayer request, a church visit, a volunteer application or a deeper relationship with the mission.

Connected television is not just another media-buying channel. It is where generational habits, creator trust, algorithmic discovery and shared household viewing collide.

The ministries and nonprofits that thrive will build integrated ecosystems: short-form content for discovery, long-form content for trust, authentic storytelling for credibility and simple response paths for action.

The ministries and nonprofits that win will be the ones that understand who is sitting on the couch – the teenager scrolling and streaming, the Millennial parent multitasking, the Gen X skeptic verifying, the Boomer watching with a giving history and the older donor thinking about legacy.

For ministries and nonprofits, the calling is simple: Do not just reach the living room. Earn a place in it.

This article was originally published by RealClearReligion and made available via RealClearWire.

Tyler Durden
Mon, 07/27/2026 – 18:25

Putin Admits Escalation: Enemies Unable To Defeat Russia On Battlefield, Resort To ‘Open Terrorism’

Putin Admits Escalation: Enemies Unable To Defeat Russia On Battlefield, Resort To ‘Open Terrorism’

This month has witnessed a string of major Wildberries warehouses and logistics hubs go up in flames due to wave after wave of Ukrainian drones strikes. The Russian online retailer, which is by far the largest and widely deemed the ‘Russian Amazon’ – is bracing for likely more attacks to come.

Ukraine’s long-range drones strikes have very clearly moved beyond just oil and defense industrial sites, and have even included an attack on a holiday camp in Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia over the weekend, which killed at least twelve civilians. The Kremlin called it a terror attack, given it was a direct assault on a resort area.

Fresh Monday comments from President Vladimir Putin have highlighted this shift in Ukraine’s strategy. Putin says that its forces are unable to advance the battlefield, and so are increasingly moving to outright terrorism tactics.

Image via Sputnik 

“[Enemies] are unable to defeat Russia on the battlefield so they are betting on using openly terrorist methods against our people,” Putin said at a Kremlin meeting with members of the outgoing Eighth State Duma (lower house of parliament).

“However, no one has ever succeeded in breaking the Russian people. It has never happened and it will never happen,” he stressed. He further highlighted a broader Western effort to ‘rattle’ and ‘break’ Russia which the populace has successfully endured for years at this point. 

“Seeking to rattle the Russian state and provoke social division in our country, [Western countries] have attempted to strangle our economy, financial system, and banking sector, and sought to undermine the potential of science, industry, and education,” Putin said.

But he admitted some serious challenges as a result of the ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine. “In response to historic trials and aggressive external pressure, our multi-ethnic people have responded with internal solidarity. That has always been the case, and that is precisely what we see today,” he said.

“The past five years – the period of your tenure as deputies – have been challenging and immensely responsible for our country,” Putin told the legislators. 

“We have long been confronted with unlawful restrictions, with attempts at containment and pressure – both after the ‘Russian Spring’ of 2014 and even before that. But since 2022, the West has put the Russophobic machine into full swing,” he recalled.

Ukrainian drones strikes on a Wildberries facility in the vicinity of St. Petersburg last week:

Some analysts have observed that over the last several months the war has moved toward escalation – and a more ‘total war’ environment which puts civilians on either side at greater risk.

Russian ballistic missile attacks directly on the Ukrainian capital have been more devastating of late, and so have Ukraine’s long-range drones sent deep into Russia. With Russian missiles and drones increasingly falling on residential neighborhoods in and around Kiev, the Zelensky government is also hurling the terrorism charge right back at Moscow.

Tyler Durden
Mon, 07/27/2026 – 18:00

Renewables ‘Can’t Keep Up’ With Data Center Pace. As Usual, The Left Wants Government To Step In…

Renewables ‘Can’t Keep Up’ With Data Center Pace. As Usual, The Left Wants Government To Step In…

Authored by Gary Abernathy via The Empowerment Alliance,

The political left is worried that the rapid expansion of data centers across the U.S. – a controversial but necessary development considering our competition with China – is increasingly accompanied by the corresponding construction of stand-alone natural gas plants to provide the power demands of the centers.

In Ohio, 10 gas-fired power plants are in the works to fuel new data centers. In West Virginia, a startup business building AI compute campuses plans to utilize hundreds of gas generators by 2028. Newly minted trillionaire Elon Musk has purchased a gas turbine company specifically to power the Tennessee-based data centers fueling Grok.

Across the nation, similar stories are playing out region by region, with dedicated gas plants often backed by tech giants who once swore off fossil fuels before reality set in.

Natural gas plants can be stood up relatively quickly and deliver the massive power required to keep the U.S. ahead of its adversaries in the AI/data center race. While data centers have resulted in controversies in some local communities – an unsurprising NIMBY reaction – other places have welcomed the developments.

As stated here before, artificial intelligence is here, like it or not. The only question is who will make the rules, the U.S. or China?

Soldiers in the anti-fossil fuel brigade are once again coming face-to-face with their biggest enemy: reality. And as usual, rather than seeking to engage fairly in the free market, backers of renewables are demanding that government write regulations requiring their use.

The Associated Press recently reported that “tech giants are demanding power at such speed and scale – some data centers consume more energy than a mid-size city – that the construction of wind and solar simply can’t keep up,” giving natural gas a substantial advantage. Most people call that the free market playing out as it naturally will. The climate change fearmongers call it foul play.

To level the field, the same old playbook is once again being deployed. For instance, in Michigan, Oregon and Minnesota, laws have been enacted in the last 18 months “designed to protect their pre-existing requirements that electric utilities use only emissions-free energy sources by 2040,” AP reported, adding that similar bills are emerging in California, Illinois, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

New York, not surprisingly, leads the way when it comes to the heavy hand of government mandates. There, legislation would force data centers over a certain size “to meet renewable energy benchmarks starting in 2030 and, by 2040, get at least 90% of their energy from renewable energies.”

The arrogance of those demanding that alternatives be given special consideration was once more on display courtesy of a New York state lawmaker who wrote the bill in question. “We are literally talking about the wealthiest companies in the world that are looking to build in New York state,” said state Sen. Kristen Gonzalez (D), adding, “and if they have the resources to put billions of dollars into data center development, then they certainly should have the resources to build out renewable energy sources to power them.”

So there!

Insisting what other people can and should do with their money – and writing legislation forcing them to do it – is a familiar page from the playbook of the left. Such attitudes will only be magnified by the new crop of socialists who are winning Democratic Party primaries across the country.

Of course, to back up the demand that renewables be governmentally propped up to power data centers, the left will trot out friendly new studies to bolster its arguments. So, right on cue, here comes the Environmental Integrity Project with another study condemning the big, bad gas plants.

“Dozens of planned gas plants to directly power data centers in the United States could emit as much greenhouse gas annually as Australia or France,” according to a Reuters story on the findings of the study.

“An industry of the future should not be chained to dirty fuels of the past and the air pollution from fossil fuels that cause real harm to communities,” said Jen Duggan, executive director of the EIP.

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin countered, “I think that a lot of Americans would agree that we should win this race against China to be the AI capital of the world.” Amen.

The climate change movement flourished under the Obama and Biden administrations, costing taxpayers billions of dollars and funneling industries and consumers into a no-choice scenario of less reliable, less effective alternative power options. Thankfully, the Trump administration has unleashed all American energy resources – including inviting alternatives to compete in the free marketplace.

For now, the left acknowledges that the federal government is not friendly turf. So, when it comes to emerging data centers, the subsidies-and-mandates game is playing out at the state level, because without such help, as AP reported, “the construction of wind and solar simply can’t keep up.”

In the free marketplace, things that can’t keep up eventually fall by the wayside. But in the fantasyland of far-left (and socialist) idealism, government regulations keep them afloat or even put them in preferred positions – at least until their deficiencies become too obvious and too dangerous to pretend anymore. (For example, see the massive 2025 power outage in Spain, Portugal and parts of France, where alternatives failed and natural gas came to the rescue to restore power.)

The U.S. will likely win the AI race, but only because it got under way in earnest during the Trump administration. If it had happened under the Biden regime, our government would be mandating artificial benchmarks for renewables while China focused on controlling artificial intelligence for the world.

This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.

Tyler Durden
Mon, 07/27/2026 – 17:40