Update (0800ET): After a record 43 days (and 14 failed votes)…

…the shutdown is finally over as Democrats folded (amid the fire and brimstone from their colleagues), voting with Republicans to reopen the government.

The 222-209 vote saw 6 Democrats vote to reopen the government and 2 Republicans vote against the measure (h/t Jake Sherman)

There was some drama when Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-Wash.) shocked and dismayed colleagues with a rogue effort to condemn retiring Rep. Chuy García (D-Ill.) for effectively ensuring his chief of staff would succeed him in Congress.

But other than that it was the usual moments for House Dems to conjure ‘TikTok’-size monologues about how evil Republicans are.

As we detailed below, the plan combines a continuing resolution to keep the government funded through Jan. 30 with a three-bill “minibus” package – when we get to do this all over again! (joy of all joys) Of note, the Minibus provisions are good until Sept. 30. 

• It will also reinstate federal workers fired during the shutdown and guarantee back pay. It will also prevent further layoffs through the end of January. 

• It also excludes an extension of advanced Obamacare premium tax credits – which Democrats caved on at the 11th hour. 

Equity futures surged on the vote…

And now the spice (macro data and TGA unwind) can flow.

*  *  *

Update (1830ET): The House just voted to advance the funding package to reopen the federal government for a final vote, a key step in ending the record-long government shutdown.

Most Democrats are firmly against the funding package, while Republicans are largely supportive.

House Speaker Mike Johnson said of the pending legislation that “our long national nightmare is finally coming to an end, and we’re grateful for that.”

The bill appears poised to cross the finish line having seen the shutdown reach its (record) 43rd day.

The final vote is slated for around 8 p.m.

Watch the 90-minute ‘debate’ live:

The White House earlier Wednesday signaled the president could sign the bill into law as soon as this evening. 

*  *  *

Members of the House of Representatives are back on Capitol Hill today for the first time in 54 days, to vote on legislation that would reopen the federal government by midnight, ending the longest shutdown in U.S. history.

A Path to Reopening

Early Wednesday morning, around 1:30 a.m., the House Rules Committee cleared the way for lawmakers to take up a Senate-passed funding package. The plan combines a continuing resolution to keep the government funded through Jan. 30 with a three-bill “minibus” package – when we get to do this all over again! (joy of all joys) Of note, the Minibus provisions are good until Sept. 30. 

• It will also reinstate federal workers fired during the shutdown and guarantee back pay. It will also prevent further layoffs through the end of January. 

• It also excludes an extension of advanced Obamacare premium tax credits – which Democrats caved on at the 11th hour. 

The full House vote is expected later this evening, likely around 7 p.m., Punchbowl News reports – after which it will head to Trump’s desk for his signature.

Republicans on the committee rejected Democratic attempts to amend the bill, including one proposal to extend expiring Affordable Care Act premium subsidies. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) is expected to preside over the swearing-in of Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva (D-AZ) at 4 p.m. before debate begins. Grijalva, elected in September to fill her late father’s seat, has faced an unusually long delay before taking office – a delay that has frustrated Democrats, particularly because her vote is needed to release a new cache of Epstein files.

As Rabobank notes:

The end of the government shutdown should lead to the (delayed) release of economic data collected by federal agencies. This will end the episode of limited visibility for policy-makers and private sector decision-makers, who had to rely mostly on data provided by the private sector. The Employment Report for September may be one of the first to be published, because it was originally scheduled for October 3, so it was likely almost or completely finished. This will be lagging data, but it could confirm the continued labor market weakness assumed by the FOMC and shown in other labor market data for September. The Employment Report for October may take more time to produce. What’s more, the quality of data collection in October (and early November) may have been compromised, undermining their reliability. This could even have a longer-lasting impact on year-on-year data, through November 2026.

Tight Margins and Calm GOP Leadership

With a razor-thin two-vote majority, Johnson and GOP leaders are urging all 219 Republican members to be in Washington. Flight disruptions that delayed lawmakers earlier in the week had eased significantly Tuesday, giving the leadership hope for a full turnout.

Despite the high stakes, Republican leadership and the Trump administration appear confident in support within their ranks. There are no immediate plans for Trump to directly lobby House Republicans, though aides said that could change if the vote tightens.

Several key conservatives – including Reps. Thomas Massie (R-KY), Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), Victoria Spartz (R-IN), and Warren Davidson (R-OH) – are being closely watched. Greene, who has rebranded her political image in recent weeks, has been sharply critical of Johnson’s handling of the shutdown.

That said, Rep. Andy Harris, leader of the House Freedom Caucus, offered his support – a signal that others on the party’s more conservative flank might fall in line.

Democrats Regroup After Failed Strategy

For Democrats, the six-week standoff has underscored the limits of using shutdowns as leverage. Party leaders had hoped the funding lapse would force Trump to break with Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) and negotiate directly with Democrats – a strategy that failed to materialize.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) held his caucus together throughout the impasse, with only Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME) breaking ranks on the initial continuing resolution. Some Democrats have expressed frustration over messaging as the shutdown winds down, arguing the party should pivot toward highlighting Republican responsibility for rising health care costs.

Janet Mills, the Democratic governor of Maine, criticized members of her party on MSNBC for backing the measure to reopen the government, saying Congress lacks a “backbone.” Thune’s promise for a future vote on renewing the Obamacare health insurance credits “doesn’t mean much to me,” said Mills, who is running for Senate.

Yet the moderates saw the future Senate vote — coupled with the legislation’s protections for the federal workforce and full-year spending for food aid — as a path to reopening the government. -Bloomberg 

There’s also growing chatter among House Democrats about Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D-NY) leadership, though the calls to replace him carry no practical weight in the upper chamber.

Getting Back To Normal

On Tuesday, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy warned that there would be “massively more disruption as we come into the weekend if the government doesn’t open,” adding “It is going to radically slow down, so the House has to do its work.” 

It could still take days for air travel to return to normal and probably longer for most of the 42 million low-income Americans enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to receive delayed benefits. Lengthy backlogs and delays are likely across the federal government as it reopens. –Bloomberg

What Comes Next

Once the funding package passes, Johnson plans to send members home for the remainder of the week. The speaker has warned of “long days and long nights” ahead – but not this week.

In the weeks to come, Johnson faces three major challenges:

1. A Short-Term Fix: The new continuing resolution extends funding for just 79 days, meaning another shutdown fight looms early next year. Negotiators must still resolve disagreements over contentious appropriations bills covering Labor-HHS, Commerce-Justice-Science, Defense, and Homeland Security.

2. Health Care Deadlines: ACA premium tax credits are set to expire at the end of the year. Johnson will need to present a credible health care reform plan to prevent moderates from joining a discharge petition to extend the subsidies. Passing major health legislation within 49 days — during the holiday season — is a tall order.

3. Intraparty Disputes: Conservative members including Reps. Chip Roy (R-TX) and Austin Scott (R-GA) are pushing to repeal a provision in the Legislative Branch appropriations bill allowing senators to sue the government if their phone records were obtained by the Justice Department.

Adding to the tension, by the end of the day, the Jeffrey Epstein records discharge petition is expected to reach 218 signatures, triggering a full House vote on whether to force the Justice Department to release the complete Epstein files. Vulnerable Republicans could face political blowback if they oppose the measure.

If tonight’s vote proceeds as expected, the federal government will reopen for the first time since Oct. 1 – but the brief reprieve may only set the stage for another high-stakes funding showdown early next year.

By Tsvetana Paraskova of OilPrice.com

China has seen its carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions keep a flat or falling trend for 18 consecutive months as electric vehicles and renewable energy uptake soars, a new analysis for Carbon Brief showed on Tuesday.  

CO2 emissions in China, the world’s biggest polluter, were unchanged from a year earlier in the third quarter of 2025, extending a flat or falling trend that started in March 2024, the analysis found.  

The rapid adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) helped CO2 emissions from transport fuel drop by 5% year-on-year in the third quarter, while there were also declines from cement and steel production, which decelerated amid weaker demand. 

China’s CO2 emissions from the power sector remained flat in the third quarter despite stronger electricity demand growth with the consumption increase accelerating to 6.1%, up from 3.7% growth in the first half of the year, according to the analysis for Carbon Brief.  

The flat emissions amid rising power demand were the result of solar power generation surging by 46% and wind electricity jumping by 11% from a year earlier in Q3. 

China completed 240 gigawatts (GW) of solar and 61 GW of wind capacity in the first nine months of the year. This puts the country on track for a new renewable record in 2025, the analysis found. 

Oil demand and emissions in the transport sector fell by 5% in the third quarter, but grew elsewhere by 10%, as the production of plastics and other chemicals surged. 

In September, China pledged to cut greenhouse gas emissions by up to 10% by 2035 compared to peak levels, while “striving to do better”, President Xi Jinping said in a videotaped message to a UN climate summit in New York. 

With the Trump Administration abandoning emissions pledges and the fight against climate change, analysts see China as potentially taking over the global leadership in the push to reduce emissions and limit global warming.  

Via American Greatness,

Progressives are trumpeting a report that consumers’ financial data may be less secure following Trump administration efforts to shrink the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

But in their eagerness to attack Trump, attention is refocusing on a massive scandal that plagued the “consumer watchdog” agency under Joe Biden– one that left over 250,000 people’s data exposed.

Democrat Rep. Maxine Waters—a top MAGA foe— blasted Trump’s efforts to downsize the CFPB, claiming staffing and contractor cuts put Americans’ data at risk.

In a statement, Waters said, “Over the past year, we have witnessed an unprecedented assault on the CFPB by the Trump Administration, which has systematically weakened the agency’s abilities to protect American consumers.”

Waters added that Trump administration efforts to shrink the federal workforce and expenditure of taxpayer money on high-priced government contractors “paved the way for the alarming findings in the report.”

But critics say that in blasting current Bureau chief, MAGA favorite Russ Vought, progressives like Waters are forgetting about the biggest threat to consumer data security in recent years: A massive data leak that occurred under the previous Biden administration, under the leadership of leftist favorite, former CFPB head Rohit Chopra. And by attacking Trump now, they are merely serving to highlight the leak and the huge risks of the agency having such expansive power and authority.

Around Valentine’s Day 2023, a CFPB staffer leaked the financial information of over 250,000 Americans.

While the staffer was fired, it remains unclear to this day what other action was taken to rectify the leak by Biden administration officials, including Chopra.

No prosecution of the staffer in question appears to have occurred.

Chopra, who ran the agency when the leak occurred, was not sanctioned.

Financial institutions overseen by the CFPB indicated at the time that they were asked to notify their customers whose data had been leaked of the event, instead of CFPB doing so.

Some institutions privately criticized the plan as likely to result in their being erroneously blamed for the leak, when in fact it was a CFPB problem.

One financial services industry advocate told American Greatness that over two years later, it is still unclear whether all affected consumers ever were notified that their data had been leaked.

“Reporters covering this were told they had been, but CFPB was very cagey about providing the text of letters or emails that would have been used to notify customers. No one really knows for sure, to this day,” one consultant working on CFPB regulatory issues said.

At the time, now-retired House Financial Services Chairman Patrick McHenry said that the “breach raises concerns with how the CFPB safeguards consumers’ personally identifiable information.”

McHenry pledged that Republicans would ensure that any bad actors were held accountable.

However, lobbyists working on financial regulation say that some Republicans on McHenry’s former committee still feel full answers were never provided by Chopra or the CFPB.

Progressive gloating over the current allegations of inadequate data security at CFPB may prompt Vought and relevant oversight committees to look again at the circumstances surrounding the leak, which remains one of the bigger, but less publicized scandals, of the Biden era.

Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa said in an interview with Fox News that President Trump didn’t bring up his past as an al-Qaeda fighter and commander during their meeting at the White House on Monday.

“I think this is a matter of the past now,” Sharaa said through a translator when asked if Trump raised his al-Qaeda history. “We did not discuss this actively. We talked about the present and the future. We talked about the investment opportunities in the future, so that Syria is no longer looked at as a security threat, but it is now looked at as a geopolitical ally and a place where the United States can have great investments, especially extracting gas.”

When asked if he had “regrets” that al-Qaeda carried out the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, Sharaa said he wasn’t involved with the group at the time.

“I was only 19 years old, I was a very young person, and didn’t have any decision-making power at that time, and I didn’t have anything to do with it. Al-Qaeda wasn’t present then in my area, so you’re speaking to the wrong person about this subject,” he said.

“We mourn for every civilian that got killed, and we know that people suffer from the war, especially civilians who paid a price, a hefty price, for the war,” Sharaa added.

The US fought the “war on terror” for more than 20 years — it’s ongoing. It not only cost trillions of dollars and more than a million lives, but radically and permanently eroded core civil liberties for Americans.

Now, someone the DOJ called an Al Qaeda terrorist less than a… https://t.co/efxKy1YqJ3

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) November 11, 2025

Sharaa first joined al-Qaeda after the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 to fight US troops, and was imprisoned by the US military from 2006 to 2011. After that, he traveled to Syria, where he founded the al-Qaeda affiliate in the country, known as the al-Nusra Front.

At the time, he was allied with Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the founder of ISIS. Sharaa rebranded in 2016, claiming he cut ties with al-Qaeda, and merged his jihadist group with other factions to form Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which took power in Damascus in December 2024.

Sorry but it’s very funny they’ve not deleted this https://t.co/tqzbTlSECF

— Congolesa Rice (@judeinlondon) November 11, 2025

Now, the US is working to build a military alliance with the HTS-led Syrian government. Syrian Information Minister Hamza al-Mustafa announced that Syria has joined the US-led anti-ISIS coalition, and Reuters reported last week that the US is planning to establish a military base in Damascus.

* * *

Meanwhile, the absurdity of this scene…

US President Donald Trump applied perfume to Syria’s interim leader Ahmed al-Sharaa, known by his nom de guerre al-Julani, and his foreign minister at the White House. pic.twitter.com/g634I8IgNe

— IRNA News Agency (@IrnaEnglish) November 12, 2025

Authored by Edward Ring via American Greatness,

“Stick it to Trump.”

That is the strategy of the Democratic Party in California, and it’s working.

For 28 years, the Democrats have controlled both houses of the state legislature, and apart from Schwarzenegger’s interlude from 2004 to 2010, there’s been a Democrat governor since 1999.

Nothing seems likely to change; this month, California’s voters approved a redistricting plan that is expected to reduce the number of Republican U.S. Congressmen to four out of 52. Democratic dominance in California’s cities and counties is equally absolute.

And yet they’re not accountable.

Democrats in California have perfected the art of persuasion with an electorate that for over two generations has been indoctrinated in public schools by teachers who themselves have been indoctrinated to hate capitalism, resent wealth, rebuke “whiteness,” and celebrate hedonism. All Democrat candidates have to say is “protect abortion,” “fight racism,” “climate emergency,” or “stop the Nazis,” and voter reaction is Pavlovian. Peak conditioning was achieved in the special election of 2025, when all they had to say was “stick it to Trump,” who they have turned into the biggest boogeyman since Hitler (someone who, just to be clear, really was a boogeyman).

So who are these Democrats?

Who are the elites that have locked down the largest state in America, and who aspire to extend their dominion over the rest of America?

The figurehead, of course, is the suddenly pugilistic Gavin Newsom, a gifted politician and a terrible governor.

His latest schtick is to throw out profanity and threats as if he’s the noirish reincarnation of a 1930s gangster. And in an intriguing twist, this phony act camouflages a genuine thug because the substance of Newsom and the machine he represents are crimes against the people of California, justified and sold with lies.

Newsom is the front man for a coalition of public sector unions, including the communist teachers union, radical environmentalists and their crony corporate backers, grifting “homeless advocates” and the politically connected and taxpayer subsidized developers who back them, a public sector bureaucracy that preys on law abiding people trying to run small businesses while deliberately ignoring an entire underground economy of illegal immigrants, trial attorneys and litigators who feed on private attorney general laws that empower them to exploit countless laws and regulations to extort money from honest people, addict enabling civil liberty extremists and the libertarian dupes who find common cause with them, tribal “nations” who extract billions from gambling addicts and exercise increasing veto power over anything anyone does anywhere in the “stolen” state, drug addicts, drug dealers, and drug cartels who control entire sections of California’s major cities and thousands of square miles of territory in California’s remote northern counties.

That’s who’s running California. That’s the coalition. It survives on synergy, and if not synergy, symbiosis. The political economy of California is not socialist; it’s fascist. Economic fascism whereby the largest corporations, the biggest unions, and powerful government agencies work in lockstep to eliminate competition, consolidate power and control, and maximize profits. Ideological fascism whereby the population is manipulated by continuous presentation of scapegoats and threats—Nazis and Nazism, racists and racism, sexists and sexism, climate deniers and the climate emergency. The list goes on, but you get the idea.

It’s too bad California’s voters don’t get out more. Take a drive down South Figueroa Boulevard in Central Los Angeles and have a look at the prostitutes who police can’t rescue from traffickers because it violates state laws. Drive through the Tenderloin in San Francisco and observe the blitzed-out fentanyl addicts and schizophrenics. Or to really experience an eye-opener, talk with members of law enforcement in Mendocino County in California’s remote north, and ask them how they intend to root out the illegal drug plantations and drug processing labs when they’ve got less than a dozen deputies to cover a county that spans 3,878 square miles. Ditto for Humboldt County and Siskiyou County.

In all of these hypothetical fact-finding drives and countless others, don’t stop. Don’t get out of your car. You are not in America anymore. You are traversing territory controlled by foreign gangs and their local affiliates, funded by hundreds of billions collected from addicts, at least those millions who are still alive, since over one million Americans have died from overdoses of illegal drugs just over the past decade. And while you’re at it, reflect on the fact that these foreign drug cartels receive logistical support from aspiring superpowers bent on destroying America.

California’s maladies ought to be patently obvious to its voters, but instead of recognizing that federal intervention is the only way we might have a hope of rooting international drug and human traffickers and foreign intelligence operatives out of our cities and sparsely populated areas, these voters hear a nonstop barrage of distracting propaganda from the coalition.

It is unrelenting and scientifically tested for effect. It sounds simple, but it works: “President Trump wants to be a dictator, and he’s throwing away the Constitution.” No. He doesn’t, and no, he isn’t. And every year we wait to try to reassert control of our state, the evil infiltration of the “coalition” proceeds deeper into its vacuous, grifting heart.

What ought to be perfectly clear to Californian voters is that we are losing our state. Where do California’s voters think all that money from trafficking, prostitution, gambling, and drug profits goes? Their wealth accumulates, and they hire armies. These armies aren’t just a small gang of goons. These armies have thousands of soldiers, including experienced mercenaries and assassins, sophisticated attorneys and accountants, chemists and engineers, police, and politicians.

Keep it up, California. Keep listening to the dangerous clowns who lead the ruling coalition. Let them destroy the oil industry until there are lines for gasoline and the price goes from $5/gallon to $10/gallon. Let them shut down natural gas and nuclear-fueled power plants at the same time as EVs and AI are rolling out, so there are brownouts and blackouts, and electricity rises from $.30/kWh to $.60/kWh. And while they laugh all the way to the bank as you pay four times the national average price for gasoline and electricity, remember it’s because of the “climate emergency.”

Keep it up, California. Keep pretending that “reparations” in the form of affirmative action, contract preferences, and hiring quotas weren’t enough, as if they did anything but harm the people they were intended to help anyway. Go ahead and accept that now taxpayers have to shell out additional billions of dollars to descendants of African slaves and indigenous “first peoples.” Keep on sitting still, silent, and obedient, while yet another coalition hack precedes a public meeting with a “stolen land acknowledgement.” When liberal, Democrat-appointed, paid-for judges uphold transfers of land and gifts of cash to self-proclaimed tribes that the federal government doesn’t even recognize, remember you allowed the precedent to be set every time one of your nitwit coalition politicians opened a public meeting with a stolen land acknowledgement.

More to the point, as the state races to set aside 30 percent of all land to either belong to “first peoples,” government wilderness reserves, or nature conservancies managed by NGOs, remember that 94 percent of California’s population lives on only five percent of the state’s land area. Remember that developers and investors are routinely denied permits to build homes, reservoirs, and roads or develop practical sources of energy, and remember that all of this is why the average home in California costs over $800,000. Who then, in this enlightened new century, is being herded onto reservations?

California’s thoroughly conditioned voters can keep up their delusions of righteousness until the entire system fails, as all systems that are built on corruption must. They can retain their smug hatred of conservative Republicans until the price of gas immobilizes millions, the state declares insolvency, and the suddenly bereft beneficiaries of free everything pour out of their state-subsidized, crime-ridden, dilapidated, and decaying “affordable housing” and loot everything in sight. Until that day, California’s progressives can indulge their anti-fascist fascist fantasies, believing in the inevitable triumph of their passions with the same fervor that animated the stormtroopers basking in Nuremberg’s Cathedrals of Light. They, too, were so sure of themselves until bombs started falling like rain.

There’s something that Californians who fervently support the state’s disenfranchising, downwardly mobile, ongoing excursion into degeneracy will have to face. Things will not get worse forever. California’s voters have rejected rational recognition of policies running amok to enrich a deceitful coalition of elites. They have instead chosen an all-consuming righteous hatred of MAGA and all the previous iterations of right-wing scapegoats for which MAGA is merely the apotheosis. For a generation, voter denial of common sense in favor of self-righteous hate has sustained an elite coalition that has nothing but contempt for the generations of hard-working Californians who built the state and even now keep it afloat.

Economic reality will dismantle this dysfunctional political consensus. The coalition could fracture explosively, with the most powerful functioning remnants also the most lawless and deadly. This is what California’s voters flirt with, as they vote for financially unsustainable, character-destroying nonsense in the name of compassion and anti-fascism. The depth of irony at work here is historic in scope. If chaos erupts in California, spreading out of the current no-go zones of the inner cities and coming down from remote mountains, armed, desperate, and ruthless, what suspension of civil liberties would then become necessary to restore order and ensure safety?

The alternative is to restore common-sense government today, if it’s not too late. But judging from the results on November 4, common sense and California’s electorate are still worlds apart.

New documents released Oct. 30 by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) offer a potential smoking gun regarding American complicity in the creation of COVID-19. 

As the Daily Caller‘s Emily Kopp writes: 

New documents show that intelligence risked implicating ODNI’s own bioengineering advisor — University of North Carolina professor Ralph Baric.

Baric, who engineered novel coronaviruses with the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), advised ODNI four times a year on biological threats, according to documents released Oct. 30 by Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul.

…

The professor’s ties to American intelligence may run even deeper, the documents reveal, as ODNI facilitated a meeting between the CIA and Baric about a project on coronaviruses in September 2015.

The email exchange with the subject line “Request for Your Expertise” shows an unnamed government official with a CIA-affiliated email address pitching a “possible project” to Baric relating to “[c]oronavirus evolution and possible natural human adaptation.”

The new documents add to the growing body of evidence that our own intelligence agencies knew more about the threat posed by manipulating bat COVID in a lab than they told the public.

Sen. Paul is seeking more documents from ODNI regarding potential ties between US intelligence and the Wuhan lab as part of an ongoing investigation, and will hold public hearings in the coming months. 

Of note, current DNI Tulsi Gabbard disbanded the ODNI biological threats office earlier this year following questions by the Caller regarding its suppression of COVID origins intel in August. 

In January of 2020, Baric gave a presentation to the ODNI in which he advised US intelligence that COVID-19 may have emerged from a lab, and that the Wuhan Institute of Virology had sequenced thousands of SARS-like coronaviruses – including strains that could cause an epidemic. 

Baric, who created special ‘humanized mice’ for the lab to test COVID on lung tissue, noted that WIV works under low biosafety levels. 

He did not tell ODNI that he had applied for a grant in 2018 to conduct research that could lead to the creation of COVID-19, ‘jotting in the margins of a draft of the grant application that Americans would “freak out” if they knew about the shoddy standards.’

And in January 2021, when the State Department pushed to declassify certain US intelligence regarding the lab leak, ODNI raised concerns that it would “call out actions that we ourselves are doing.”

Former ODNI National Counterproliferation and Biosecurity Center (NCBC) Director Kathryn Brinsfield, a medical doctor, also dismissed a January 2021 presentation by government officials about a plausible lab origin of COVID as “misinformation,” two sources told the DCNF. Her top aide Zach Bernstein, who possesses a master’s degree in security studies but no scientific credentials, also dismissed the presentation, according to three sources. -Daily Caller

The report notes that the precise nature of the CIA’s interest in Baric’s COVID work remains unknown – as the documents don’t elaborate on work that the CIA and Baric may or may not have undertaken. 

Interesting, USAID funded the discovery of novel coronaviruses – and shipped samples to WIV through a 2009-2020 program called PREDICT. Kopp also notes that “USAID sometimes acted as a CIA front before Trump dismantled it earlier this year — but no evidence exists that the CIA directed PREDICT.”

An unnamed FBI special agent was in communication with Baric about responding to public requests for his research and emails with the Wuhan lab through the North Carolina Freedom of Information Act, according to a 2024 congressional letter, but details about the contact between the FBI and Baric also remain uncertain.

The CIA was slow to acknowledge that a lab was the pandemic’s most likely source, an assessment that the CIA made public more than five years after the pandemic emerged and well after the FBI and the Department of Energy. -Daily Caller

Meanwhile, outlets like ZeroHedge were demonetized, censored, and treated to MSM hit pieces for suggesting that the virus came from the WIV. 

Authored by Matthew Piepenburg via VonGreyerz.gold,

I often close public interviews with the recommendation that investors facing an increasingly complex, distorted and landmine-rich economic setting need to focus on being informed rather than emotional.

Free Power

In other words, facts, cycles and patterns matter—in everything from the history of debt cycles and the otherwise “boring” patterns of bond marketsto an ignored template of centralizationwhich always follows bankrupt financial systems.

Being informed offers clarity; being emotional creates fear.

And clarity is both powerful and free.

One does not need millions to feel more empowered in a world otherwise usurping your power with each passing day via the invisible tax of misreported inflation—i.e., open theft through the hidden yet deliberate fiat currency debasement sovereigns employ to inflate away their own criminally negligent bar tab at your expense.

The entire premise of our enterprise of preserving wealth through real money—i.e., precious metals—is built upon such informed thinking.

Trust Your Own Judgement

This does not mean, of course, that being informed means blind conformity to other informed viewpoints—ours or anyone else’s.

I, for example, enjoy debating the dollar/DXY with folks like Brent Johnson or Henrik Zeberg precisely because they are informed disagreements.

In the end, however, we all agree on gold’s penultimate role in preserving real wealth against paper wealth. As I’ve said elsewhere: Today, the case for gold is almost too obvious…

We All See the Cracks

Even more importantly, such informed opinion makes for better strategies and conversations within an economic and geopolitical backdrop which most of us (left or right, rich or poor, black or white, BTC or gold-bugging) would agree is becoming increasingly distorted, dangerous and well, just plain corrupted.

Such corruption is the direct and objective result of the deliberate mismanagement, complexity and dishonesty that underpins a global financial system racing toward a fourth turning whose massive yet not entirely known risks and consequences are playing out with each passing headline.

What Complexity? What Dishonesty?

But what do I mean by deliberate complexity and dishonesty?

As we see below, the most obvious signals can be found within the living case studies of: 1) the not-so-federal “Federal Reserve,” and 2) that other equally grotesque monster hiding in plain sight, namely the global derivatives market.

But before we touch upon these two examples, let me also warn that becoming “informed” comes with a price, typically in the form of deep disillusionment, as the informed are typically a minority crowd.

Melting Laws, Melting Ideas

I know as many lawyer jokes as the next guy, but in truth, nothing I’ve studied (from Plato to Dalio) compares to what I learned in the first year of law school.

Lawyers, after all, make it easy to laugh at, well…the law.

But the very structure and mechanics of our society can be found in the beautiful ideals of a 1L (first-year) legal curriculum.

Constitutional law, for example, grants free society an institutional framework. Criminal Law, in theory at least, lauds justice while punishing those who abuse it. To make that system work, you also need the laws of Civil Procedure. No less important to free citizens is a way to govern ideals of domain, i.e., Property Law.

Finally, and of equal importance, we need to believe and know that citizens, from the governed to the governing, from Wall Street to Main Street, will keep their agreements and honor their promises. That’s Contracts Law.

But sadly, and boy do I mean sadly, we see that these bedrock principles of our core structural and societal laws are, like our fiat dollars, melting before our very closed eyes.

How so?

Well, let’s get back to today’s two case studies: The Federal Reserve and the global derivatives markets.

First: The Fed

I’ve written ad nauseum about the Fed (here, here and elsewhere), and won’t repeat all its numerous sins.

Instead, let’s just stick to the simple crazy and see how our government broke its constitutional contract with its citizens yet paid no criminal price for its clever theft/crime.

In 1913, a cabal of private bankers convinced Woodrow Wilson to make legal a Federal Reserve, which now sits on Constitution Avenue, that is objectively neither “federal,” a “reserve” nor even remotely constitutional.

Yet almost no one understands what it does, how it works or what it destroys.

How the Fed Works…

In simple yet objective terms, the Fed is a private bank which includes 12 regional Federal Reserve Banks, from Richmond to Boston.

These reserve banks, managed by a board of governors, are private corporations whose shareholders are those TBTF commercial banks, which you readers helped bail out in 2008.

As Fed shareholders, these private banks and their unelected CIO’s (Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs etc.) effectively own the Fed, and they receive a 6% dividend from the Fed every year.

Again, not very “federal”, is it?

But it gets crazier.

How the Fed Steals…

If you can actually find a dollar bill, you’ll see that it says “Federal Reserve Note” across the top of its fading paper.

By “Note,” this just means that a dollar is a promise to pay—i.e., it’s credit. An IOU, a debt instrument. It’s no longer backed by anything real—it’s just a (broken) promise to be a store of value.

In 1913, President Wilson, the leader and fiduciary for all US citizens, granted this private bank the power to create as many of those dollars as it wanted. That’s what the Fed does.

But how does the Fed earn/create those dollars?

Literally out of thin air. Money is created with a mouse click out of a computer at the Eccles Building. Yes. Really.

The Fed then lends these magical dollars to the US Treasury Department (via “open market operations”) to pay for Uncle Sam’s ever-expanding deficits.

We, the taxpayers, then pay interest (i.e., a forced profit) to the Fed for those created/lent dollars.

But here’s the rub and the question which is never taught in schools—from high school civics to Wharton MBA programs: To whom does the Fed owe money?

The answer is: To no one.

The Fed, which has the power to create unlimited dollars which it then lends out for interest payments (i.e., profit) to itself, is not beholden to anyone. It’s a private cabal which profits for free while debasing your greenback.

This literally makes its immaculate 1913 conception the greatest wealth and power transfer in the history of our now legally neutered nation, for in 1913, the US gave a private bank its once constitutionally-mandated power(Article 1, Section 8) to make and control our money.

Or to misquote Dire Straits, the Fed gets its “money for nothing and its power for free.”

Meanwhile, and since 1971, that same dollar has lost 99% of its purchasing power when measured against the very gold our now insulted Constitution once (1787) promised its dollar to protect its citizens.

That’s a legislative crime for which our criminal laws have done nothing to redress…

Second: The Global Derivative Crime

Speaking of criminal acts and broken contracts, understanding the basics of derivative (i.e. futures, forward and swap) “contracts” will make you both angry and scared.

“Derivatives” literally “derive” from an underlying asset and are little more than uber-levered paper contracts, which institutions say they use to hedge risk in theory.

In actual practice, however, they are nothing more than betting instruments of massive leverage which profit banks when liquidity and markets are smooth, yet crush economies when liquidity and markets misfire.

Again, I’ve written about the absurd math, danger and crimes of these deliberately complex instruments here and here for those seeking more color and cringe.

For now, let’s keep the complex simple.

Remember 2008?

Most of us, for example, recall the Lehman Brothers’ headlines of 2008. At that time, Lehman was telling the markets in had a clean, $600B balance sheet of matched assets and liabilities.

What Lehman did not say, however, is that it also had levered bets (i.e., derivative contracts) on mostly sub-prime mortgages with over $35T in actual (what the fancy lads call “notional”) exposure in underlying bets on pooled mortgages (assets) it never owned—but just levered/gambled on.

But hey, why worry, mortgages never default? Right?

As soon as the bet on the underlying asset went sideways, Lehman was a corpse carried off the Wall Street battlefield.

Sad?

No, tragic.

Why?

Because all the other Wall Street banks and funds were guilty counterparties to the Lehman trade, which means once one domino fell, the others—from AIG to Citi fell too.

The contagion then went global, and when the dust settled, over $25T in bailout funds (from TARP, the Fed and other global central banks) was needed to prevent a global collapse of over $60T in global (and highly complex) notional derivative exposures.

Whewwww.

No Lessons Learned…

The market must have learned a hard lesson in 2008, right?

After all, the Dodd-Frank regulations kicked in to safeguard better transparency and centralized clearing to prevent such levered timebombs from ever risking the financial system again, right?

Wrong.

Fast-forward to 2025, and the notional value of the global derivatives market has skyrocketed from $60T in 2008 to over $600T today.

Read that last line again.

That $600T exposure is 6X global GDP, and if just 5% of this levered market went sideways, the bar tab would be $30T, which is more than the 2008 crisis and far more than any bailout of central banks could afford today.

The Banking Risk No One Sees

What’s even crazier is that the very banks exposed in 2008 to that derivative madness have increased their derivative bets exponentially (by 10X), and in a concentrated manner that defies belief and screams of risk, which almost no one hears or sees.

Today, only four banks (JP Morgan, Citi, BofA & Goldman) hold 90% of the global derivative exposure. JP Morgan has a $54T notional derivative exposure against only $3.7 in total assets and an equity capital of $300B.

Citi is staring at $48T in notional derivative exposure against $2.4T in total assets and $200B in equity capital. Goldman, in turn, has $47T in notional exposure against $1.6 T in total assets and $120B in equity capital, while BofA is risking $37T of derivative bets against $3.1T in total assets and $280B in equity capital.

Folks, this is madness hiding in plain sight.

Risk Has Never Been Higher

The banks, and the economically clueless in the House of Representatives, however, believe that such “sophisticated players” know how to hedge risk with these instruments.

This is what Larry Summers told Congress years before those same players and deregulated derivatives brought the world to its knees in 2008.

What is not said today is that those very same concentrated banks are all “hedged” (i.e., gambling) on the same trades, signals and “good times.”

This means if markets–from Interest rate volatility, the $600B CMBS trade, tanking European banking shares or sovereign credit defaults to geopolitical black swans–ever go from liquid and smooth to illiquid and bumpy, the risk (inevitability) of another derivative-domino nightmare is exponentially higher today than it ever was in 2008.

By the way, each of those foregoing risks/triggers for a derivative implosion are now making ignored but terrifying moves, from post-2022 rate volatility signals and defaulting commercial loans, to Credit-Suisse-like rumblings at Deutsche Bank and sovereign credit risks from Japan and China to even the USA…

Make Your Own Justice

But where’s the justice? Where’s the criminal laws and civil procedures to punish these well-dressed gamblers masquerading as bankers?

Where’s the constitutional guidance to protect the governed from the mafia-like centralization (and usurpation) of our once free markets and free society by a neo-feudalistic minority/monopoly of corporate centralization over our once idealistic and hopeful nation?

Stated more simply: Where are the laws and ideals I knew as a 1L in law school, all lawyer jokes aside?

Gold, of course, can’t protect me or the rest of us from such dishonesty hiding behind intentional complexity. It can’t alas, do everything.

But at least when it comes to protecting us against paper money, which our governments no longer or even constitutionally respect, at least we can do what our now-ignored Constitution originally recommended by backing our fiat toilet paper with real gold.

In short, we can and must consider becoming our own central bankers, and do for ourselves what the Fed has failed to do for the nation—namely, gold-back our own wealth as Article 1, Section 8 warned centuries ago…

President Trump will host a private dinner Wednesday with top Wall Street executives as he looks to strengthen ties with the business community and encourage new investment in U.S. manufacturing, according to CBS News.

Invited guests include JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, Nasdaq’s Adena Friedman, Blackstone’s Stephen Schwarzman, Morgan Stanley’s Ted Pick, BlackRock’s Larry Fink, and Goldman Sachs’ David Solomon. The dinner follows a similar White House gathering in September with major tech CEOs, part of a broader effort to align corporate leaders behind Trump’s economic agenda.

CBS writes that Trump has pointed to the stock market as evidence of his success, recently telling 60 Minutes, “We’re doing really well, and everybody knows it.” JPMorgan recently pledged $1.5 trillion over the next decade to support “industries critical to national economic security and resiliency.”

His relationship with Dimon has long fluctuated. After calling him a “Highly overrated Globalist” in 2023, Trump later said he had “a lot of respect for Jamie Dimon.” Dimon has criticized Trump’s tariffs as potentially harmful but later said they had been “greatly moderated.”

Trump’s policies have occasionally unsettled business leaders, from steep tariffs and immigration fee hikes to pressure on the Federal Reserve to cut rates. Still, many on Wall Street see renewed alignment between the administration’s pro-growth stance and their own priorities. As Dimon told 60 Minutes, “People were angry at whatever they called the state – the ‘swamp.’ Ineffective government. That people wanted kind of more pro-growth and pro-business policies, that they didn’t want to be lectured to on social policies continuously.”

President Trump’s relationship with Wall Street this term has been pragmatic and opportunistic. He’s brought top executives into the White House to discuss policy and announce new investments, presenting himself as a pro-business president focused on growth through deregulation, tax breaks, and manufacturing. The outreach has strengthened his ties to the financial sector and underscored his reliance on corporate support to drive economic momentum.

Still, the partnership has its tensions. Bankers and investors back Trump’s pro-growth agenda but remain uneasy about his tariffs, trade volatility, and pressure on the Federal Reserve. Market drops after tariff announcements and disagreements over monetary policy have shown how quickly Wall Street’s confidence can waver.

Even so, many in finance see Trump as a valuable ally. His administration has created a favorable environment for business and markets, and figures like Jamie Dimon and Larry Fink remain key voices in shaping his economic plans.

By Charles Kennedy of OilPrice.com

All but two Indian refiners have skipped placing orders for Russian crude for December after the U.S. sanctioned Russia’s top oil producers, Rosneft and Lukoil, sources with knowledge of the purchases told Bloomberg on Tuesday. 

India’s refiners, which have come to rely on cheap Russian crude in the past three years, have withdrawn from the December purchasing window which typically closes by November 10.   

Five large refiners, including state-owned Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL), Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited (HPCL), and Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Limited (MRPL), and private firms Reliance Industries Ltd and HPCL-Mittal Energy Ltd, have not requested any Russian crude for December. 

Combined, these five firms have imported two-thirds of all Russian crude oil into India year to date, according to Kpler data cited by Bloomberg. 

Only India’s biggest state-held refiner, Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), and Nayara Energy, in which Rosneft holds 49%, have purchased crude from Russia for December, per Bloomberg’s sources. 

At the end of October, following the U.S. sanctions on Russia, IOC acquired five December-arriving cargoes of Russian crude from non-sanctioned sellers. 

IOC has bought about 3.5 million barrels of Russia’s ESPO crude at about the same price as the Dubai quotes for delivery at an eastern Indian port in December, a trade sources told Reuters, without naming the sellers of the Russian oil. 

IOC has vowed that it would fully comply with international sanctions related to crude oil imports from Russia.  

IOC is also looking to buy 24 million barrels of crude oil from the Americas in the first quarter of next year to replace lost Russian supply. 

Indian refiners are pivoting away from Russian crude and are buying additional barrels from the Middle East and the Americas to offset what is expected to be a steep decline in Russian loadings in December and January. 

For much of the past 18 months we have been banging the table on what we said would be the Next AI Trade (which we first discussed in April 2024) pitching the “picks and shovels” angle of the AI revolution, namely going long the “Power-Up America” basket – i.e., companies that produce and support the massive energy backbone that will be needed to energize the hundreds of new data centers popping up across the country (and which in some cases are now dark because they don’t have access to energy) predicting that energy would materially outperform the pure AI/data center trade. That’s precisely what has happened as the following chart breaking down the AI trade into its three core components – broad AI, data center equipment, and our preferred trade, Power Up America (or energize the grid) – shows. The blue line has doubled since we first discussed its merits in April ’24.

Our conviction in this trade was only reinforced by an analysis from Morgan Stanley last December, which found that for the 2025-28 period, “we project ~57 gigawatts (GW) of US data center power demand, and we quantify available power capacity to serve this demand as: near-term grid access of ~12-15 GW, plus ~6 GW of data centers under construction, resulting in a ~36 GW shortfall of US power access for data centers in 2025-28.” Indicatively 36GW is sufficient to power ~27 million homes. Instead it will be going to power chatbots. 

Fast forward one year since Morgan Stanley published its original estimate when this morning Morgan Stanley’s strategist Stephen Byrd published his follow up report, “Powering AI: Bitcoin Conversion: Business Models, a US Power Shortage, and the Big Picture” (available to pro subs), in which he reassessed US power needs through 2028.

It will probably not come as a surprise to anyone, that his latest estimate is materially higher, rising to a staggering 44GW…

… or roughly the output equivalent of 44 nuclear power plants! 

No wonder the Trump admin recently announced that it was prepared to lend hundreds of billions from the Energy Department’s Loan Programs Office almost exclusively to nuclear power plants to kickstart this process.

While the full Morgan Stanley note is a must read for those who have an interest in the AI trade, and certainly in the details of the “Next AI trade”, and includes a detailed analysis on Bitcoin-to-Data center conversions, the non-linear rate of AI improvement and the continued upward growth in compute demand (we urge all pro subscribers to read it), what we focus on in this post is the bank’s revised estimate of power shortfall facing US data center developers (we will discuss the financial implications in a subsequent post, suffice to note that 1GW in data center capacity costs roughly $50 – 60 billion in total capex spend). 

For its revised projection, Morgan Stanley conducted a probability-weighted assessment of the ability to satisfy US data center power demand, and found that with 69GW in total data center power demand from today until 2028, some 10GW will be satisfied with Data Centers under construction, and another 15GW through Utility Grid Access.

That leaves a 44GW power shortfall, or a number so staggering any hopes of the AI revolution growing into Wall Street’s optimistic projections implodes instantly… unless of course the government steps in to foot the bill (we will have more to say on that in a subsequent post).

Clearly, with precisely 0 nuclear reactors being built in the US (vs 29 for China)…

… and even if they were, the construction would take a decade if not longer – this is a massive problem, as it means that absent some miracles, the US simply can not grow its grid to support the massive data center power drain that is looming… and that generously assumes the trillions of dollars needed to build said data centers were readily available. They are not, which is why Sam Altman has been begging US taxpayers to bail him out (again, we will have more to say on this shortly).

So what then? To provide some possible solutions, Morgan Stanley has focused on so called “time to power” solutions which do  not rely on the typical grid interconnection process, that have the potential to eliminate the shortfall.

Assuming these Time to Power solutions are implemented, Morgan Stanley concludes that through 2028, we could experience a power shortfall totaling as much as 20%, which equates to a ~13 gigawatt (GW) shortfall, better than the 44GW base case above but still a huge gap of roughly 13 nuclear power plant. That said, an even more rapid increase in “time to power” solutions have the potential to eliminate this shortfall (and would certainly cost an arm and a leg).

Stephen Byrd details his proposed solutions as follows:

1. Natural gas turbine transactions could provide an incremental 15-20 GW of power
2. Bloom Energy (BE) could provide 5-8 GW of power (perhaps more in a bullish scenario in which BE increases its annual production capacity to 3 GW),  
3. 5-15 GW of nuclear Data Center deals drawing on operational plants (MS does not include nuclear deals in which the generator provides incremental natural gas–fired power generation to offset the nuclear power used by the DC – that would be included in the ~20 GW of natural gas turbine transactions).
4. Finally, MS believes that existing Bitcoin miners have almost 20 GW of large (100 MW or greater) sites that have a firm grid interconnection agreement, which could result between 10GW and 15GW of supply.

Of the above, Morgan Stanley believes that Bitcoin miners/sites offer AI players the fastest time to power with the lowest execution risk, and believe this will increasingly be valued/ recognized. The bank also continues to believe Bloom Energy (BE) can be a highly reliable, “time to power” solution that drives rapid volume growth. Beyond these two categories of solutions (fuel cells and Bitcoin conversions), we would expect to see “all of the above” in terms of “time to power” transactions — involving merchant power companies, turbine manufacturers, energy companies and others.

For those eager to jump down the rabbit hole with Morgan Stanley and contemplate – or trade – the conversion of bitcoin miners into data centers, the bank has an extended discussion of this particular opportunity, from which we excerpt below:

Continued trend of repurposing Bitcoin mining centers to host HPC data centers, with 2 different business models: (A) the “new neocloud” and (B) the “REIT endgame.”

Under the “new neocloud” model, most notably exhibited by IREN, the Bitcoin miner purchases GPUs/TPUs, builds the entire data center and leases the facility to hyperscalers and other customers – potentially under leases with relatively short durations (such as the 5-year lease signed by IREN with Microsoft). Under the “REIT endgame” model, the Bitcoin miner builds the “powered shell” (typically, everything but the chips + servers) and signs a lease with a neocloud and/ or hyperscaler, typically under fairly long-term leases (such as the APLD 15-year lease with an unnamed hyperscaler). We see value creation potential with respect to both approaches. The following chart provides an overview of the Bitcoin-to-DC conversion transactions, including the “colocation” portion of the “new neocloud”  transaction recently entered into between IREN and Microsoft:

Finally, for those seeking relative Bitcoin to DC conversion metrics, the following table shows the latest Enterprise Value/ watt multiples for Bitcoin stocks – it includes all large sites (>100 MW) with firm grid access. Needless to say, the lower the column, the cheaper the potential conversion opportunity.

Much more in the full must read Morgan Stanley report available to pro subscribers.