Zerohedge

Has Faucism Destroyed A Hollywood Film Icon? Authored by James Lyons-Weiler via Brownstone Institute,Anthony Fauci does not appear in The Dog Stars. He is nevertheless in the theater.Ridley Scott's new science-fiction film opens after a catastrophic flu has erased most of humanity. A pilot, his dog, and an armed former Marine inhabit what remains. The machinery is familiar: contagion, social collapse, desperate survivors, violent scavengers, and one more search for a pocket of human decency after civilization has failed. Scott did not invent this machinery, but the director of Alien and Blade Runner is one of the people who taught modern audiences how to surrender to it.This time, audiences largely stayed home. The Dog Stars opened in fifth place with about $8 million in North America and another $11.3 million overseas, against a reported production budget of $70 million to $100 million. The Associated Press called it a flop. The result was especially poor because Boxoffice Pro had forecast an $18 million to $23 million domestic opening. The film landed at less than half the low end of that range.There are ordinary explanations. Critics found the movie slow and derivative. As of September 1, Rotten Tomatoes showed a 39 percent critic score and a 71 percent verified-audience score. Marketing was weak. Adult dramas have a difficult theatrical market, streaming has trained people to wait, and post-apocalyptic fiction has been feeding on itself for years. A bad opening weekend cannot tell us what millions of people privately thought.Yet the scale of the miss invites a harder question. Has the public's experience of Covid changed the mental contract on which the killer-virus movie depends? More bluntly, did Fauci and the institutions for which he became the human logo spend so much public trust that even Ridley Scott can no longer borrow it for two hours?The Genre Ran on Institutional CreditThe classic outbreak story asks for a larger gift than belief in an unusually lethal pathogen. It asks the audience to accept a hierarchy of knowledge. The virus is invisible. The scientist can see it. Government may be slow, corrupt, frightened, or politically compromised, but somewhere inside the system there is a technically competent truth-teller trying to get reality through the door. The audience is expected to recognize that person immediately, usually by the white coat, the lab bench, or the lonely briefing at which the room finally falls silent.The formula survived many variations because it rested on a presumption: the expert might be wrong, but the expert was trying to find out. Institutional failure came from delay, cowardice, budget cutting, or a villain who ignored the scientists. Once the pathogen was loose, emergency orders carried a certain moral clarity. People who resisted quarantine were reckless. People who demanded ordinary liberties while bodies accumulated were selfish. The drama could compress epidemiology and ethics into the same clean line.Covid broke that line.The public watched recommendations change, which is normal in a developing emergency. It also watched provisional judgments presented as settled science, policy preferences presented as epidemiological necessities, and dissent treated as evidence of defective character. Those are different things. Science can revise itself without shame. Authority cannot demand obedience on the ground that uncertainty has ended and then claim the privileges of uncertainty when the rule fails.That distinction became painfully concrete. In his 2024 Congressional interview, Fauci said the six-foot distancing rule "sort of just appeared" and that he was not aware of studies supporting that exact threshold. He did not say distancing itself was useless; the admission was narrower and more revealing. A number with enormous social consequences had acquired the tone of scientific law without the evidentiary pedigree the public had been led to assume.The same House transcript records Fauci saying that he technically signed off on NIAID grants without reviewing the individual proposals and that he could not say with confidence how the biosafety of foreign laboratories receiving NIAID funds was independently verified.These details matter to cinema because the outbreak genre relies on compression. A script needs the audience to accept that "the scientists say" is enough to move the plot. Covid trained a large part of the audience to ask which scientists, reviewing which data, operating under which definition, with what conflicts, and under whose institutional protection. That is terrible for a lazy screenplay. It is healthy for a republic.The Expert Is No Longer an Innocent NarratorFauci became the face of the American pandemic response because he was made to carry more than scientific advice. He became a character: reassuring, unflappable, credentialed, above the political noise, and able to translate an uncertain emergency into instructions. Supporters treated attacks on him as attacks on expertise itself. Opponents increasingly saw a powerful official whose public certainty exceeded what the record could support.The conflict has not faded into history. On August 6, 2026, only three weeks before The Dog Stars opened, a Republican-led Senate committee voted along party lines to hold Fauci in contempt after he invoked the Fifth Amendment more than 100 times during questioning about the pandemic. Senator Rand Paul then sent a referral to the Justice Department without a vote of the full Senate.Fauci's attorney called the proceeding a political stunt, Democrats challenged the process, and one lawyer told Reuters that the referral could be legally ineffective without full-Senate approval. Those disputes matter legally. Culturally, the picture is already fixed: the man sold to the public as the calm voice of scientific transparency was now declining to answer questions under a Constitutional protection against self-incrimination. Reuters documented both the vote and the dispute over its validity.Invoking the Fifth destroys the old Hollywood shorthand in which the senior infectious-disease official can be presumed to function as the story's disinterested narrator. A post-Covid audience may reasonably wonder whether the expert on screen is explaining the emergency, managing liability, protecting a research program, shaping a politically useful narrative, or doing several of those things at once.That question now arrives before the monster. And the public demands its own skepticism be heard.Why Viewers May Withhold the Gift of Suspended DisbeliefSuspended disbelief is often described as something an audience does for itself. The phrase makes the transaction sound passive, as if viewers simply turn off their skepticism at the door. Good storytelling earns that concession. The viewer lends the filmmaker a set of assumptions so the film does not have to prove every brick in its world.The killer-virus movie once received several assumptions almost free of charge. A natural spillover was an adequate origin story. A public-health agency was presumed to be working from the best available evidence. A changing recommendation meant the evidence had changed. Suppression of a claim suggested that the claim was dangerous nonsense. The pharmaceutical countermeasure entered the story as rescue, while the people delaying its distribution supplied the conflict. Coercive rules were regrettable necessities whose moral legitimacy came bundled with the emergency.Millions of people no longer grant those assumptions automatically.First, the origin of a pandemic can no longer be treated as atmospheric background. Covid taught the public about gain-of-function disputes, grant intermediaries, biosafety levels, unpublished databases, intelligence assessments, and the institutional stakes of the lab-leak question. Fauci himself acknowledged in 2024 that a laboratory accident is a possibility and not inherently a conspiracy theory, while saying the evidence he had seen still favored natural emergence.A film that begins with "a flu wiped out nearly everyone" and rushes directly to armed scavengers may feel as if it has skipped the part of the story the audience now finds most urgent: Who made this possible, who knew what, and who controlled the first account of what happened?Second, the public has learned to separate a scientific observation from a policy command. A pathogen may spread through the air; it does not follow that every closure, distance rule, school policy, mandate, passport, or employment consequence was dictated by a laboratory result. Each policy contains value judgments about risk, age, proportionality, collateral damage, and who must bear the cost. Pandemic movies often erase those judgments by placing a scientist in front of a graph. After Covid, the graph no longer completes the argument.Third, risk is no longer a single red number. The public spent years hearing about age gradients, comorbidities, prior infection, waning immunity, variant-specific behavior, absolute and relative risk, and the difference between preventing severe disease and preventing transmission. Viewers do not need graduate training in epidemiology to notice when a script uses "deadly flu" as a magic solvent that dissolves demography, immunity, treatment, logistics, and time. The more biologically sweeping the premise, the more explanation it now needs.Fourth, the memory of coercion changes the moral casting. Before 2020, the citizen who challenged an emergency order could be written as the fool who opens the gate. After school closures, business failures, employment ultimatums, travel restrictions, and the policing of family life, some viewers will inspect the order before condemning the dissenter.They will ask whether the intervention has evidence, whether the burden is distributed fairly, whether less destructive options were considered, and whether the official issuing it will pay any price for being wrong. Hollywood's old moral shortcut no longer works on everyone.Fifth, the audience has seen information control become part of the emergency response. The lab-leak hypothesis, the durability of naturally acquired immunity, the limits of vaccination against transmission, the merits of particular treatments, and the harms of prolonged school closure were not argued in a quiet seminar.Claims were labeled, throttled, moralized, or attached to political identities. Some claims deserved rejection. Others deserved open examination. The lasting injury came from the attempt to make institutional permission a substitute for scientific adjudication. A movie that assigns truth to the credentialed character and error to the outsider now asks viewers to forget the structure they just lived through.Sixth, a pandemic is no longer safely imaginary. For many people it means a parent who died alone, a child who lost part of a childhood, a business that never reopened, a delayed cancer diagnosis, a hospital rule that prevented a final visit, or a career damaged by a mandate. The apocalypse may still entertain, but it no longer arrives as a clean thrill. A fictional flu that exists only to clear the landscape for a handsome survivor can feel less like daring speculation than appropriation of unresolved experience.Finally, the real pandemic made bureaucracy more frightening than the virus story Hollywood prefers to tell. The old plot locates danger in the microbe and heroism in the response. The post-Covid plot must allow a more disturbing possibility: institutions can be partly competent, partly self-protective, scientifically informed in some decisions, politically captured in others, and unable to admit which is which. That is a richer story. It is also much harder to make.Fauci Is a Face, Not a Box-Office ModelNone of this means that Anthony Fauci personally removed $10 million from Ridley Scott's opening weekend. The box office does not provide a referendum question with every ticket. The Dog Stars may have failed because people heard it was dull. Its 39 percent critic score and middling audience response provide plenty of explanation. The same weekend, viewers spent heavily on Spider-Man, Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey, and a rescued Wile E. Coyote film. The audience has not abandoned theaters, fantasy, danger, or cinematic unreality.Nor has every outbreak-adjacent story failed since Covid. Audiences will still follow zombies, fungi, aliens, radiation, engineered organisms, and social collapse when the characters and world earn their attention. The important change is that a pandemic can no longer do all the narrative work by itself. "A virus wiped out civilization" used to be a premise. It may now sound like a writer asking to skip the audit.Fauci matters because public memory condenses systems into people. He did not act alone, set every policy, write every headline, run every platform, or make every hospital decision. He became the emblem of an alliance among federal health agencies, political executives, media organizations, universities, technology companies, and pharmaceutical interests that often spoke with one voice while insisting that the voice belonged to science.The collapse of trust in that arrangement is measurable. Pew Research Center reported in January 2026 that 77 percent of Americans retained at least a fair amount of confidence in scientists, which is still high, but below the 87 percent recorded in April 2020. The partisan division is now severe: 90 percent of Democrats expressed at least fair confidence, compared with 65 percent of Republicans.That is not the disappearance of trust. It is the disappearance of a common presumption. A national movie audience can no longer be expected to bring the same view of scientific authority into the theater.Hollywood Has to Earn the Premise AgainThe killer-virus film is not dead. Its easy version may be.The next great pandemic movie will have to understand that knowledge has a production history. Someone funds the work. Someone selects the model. Someone decides which signal counts as an emergency. Someone chooses the comparison group, writes the press release, defines the acceptable hypothesis, and determines what the public is permitted to hear before the evidence is complete. Those choices do not make science fraudulent. Hiding them makes scientific authority brittle.A serious outbreak film made after Covid should be willing to show uncertainty without making uncertainty a synonym for incompetence. It should distinguish evidence from policy, and policy from enforcement. It should let scientists disagree for substantive reasons. It should give the audience enough biology to understand why risks differ, enough institutional detail to see why incentives matter, and enough respect to recognize that citizens who ask for evidence are not automatically villains.That approach would also restore suspense. The most frightening question is no longer whether the official will persuade the president to act before the virus escapes. It is whether the people controlling the response can tell the truth when the truth threatens the institutions, programs, and reputations on which their authority rests.Fauci did not destroy Ridley Scott. He may have helped destroy the automatic credibility of the world in which the classic killer-virus movie took place. That world required an audience willing to assume that the pathogen was opaque, the experts transparent, and emergency power temporary. After Covid, each assumption looks like a claim to be tested.Hollywood can still ask for suspended disbelief. The audience is simply checking the borrower's books. Tyler Durden Mon, 11/09/2026 - 21:00

Trump Concedes Post-War Ukraine Will Have A 'Different Shape' Ahead Of Trilateral Talks Just ahead of scheduled trilateral negotiations involving Ukraine, Russia and the United States set for this week, President Trump has made some comments that are very bad for the Zelensky government.He suggested that Ukraine's territory is likely to change as part of a future agreement with Russia - despite President Zelensky having consistently rejected that Ukraine will cede territory in the east."I think we're going to have it done and I think it's going to happen, and they're going to end up with a little bit different shape (for) Ukraine," Trump has told CBS's 60 Minutes in a fresh interview."There's a very important meeting taking place," Trump said additionally. "I believe that that war is going to end and it's going to end soon. And the only reason it's going to end is because of me."The US-mediated talks are set to begin in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday, and will run through Wednesday. Trump expressed optimism that these talks will produce a tangible outcome toward peace.However, he didn't eleborate on what Ukraine's "different" future shape might look like. From the Kremlin's point of view, and given the current status of the battlefeld, the annexed territories in the Donbass are under Russia sovereignty. via Al Jazeera Washington might finally be ready to recognize that Russia is not ever going to exit Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia - and also certainly will never relinguish hold over the Crimea.The issue of territory and political recognition remains Russia's main sticking point in negotiations, along with Ukraine never joining the NATO alliance. Over the past year or so, Moscow has further framed its troops expanse inside Ukraine as necesary to establish a permanent security 'buffer zone' amid ongong long-range drone attacks targeting Russian territory.Secretary of State Marco Rubio has also recently addressed the crisis ahead of the Abu Dhabi talks."What is the postwar security infrastructure of Ukraine and more broadly of the European continent going to look like?" Rubio posed to reporters just before going to a G7 meeting."I think that's what the president's alluding to - is that there's been some advances made in what that architecture could look like post-conflict," he added.Trump on Ukraine/Russia/Deal: When they had their first meeting, there was great disrespect shown to Russia… I think it’s going to happen and they’re going to end up with a little differently shaped Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/tpWHoN79B7— Acyn (@Acyn) November 9, 2026 As for Europe, it apparently won't be totally sidelined in the trilateral talks. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has confirmed there will be EU representation at the talks. France is also expected to have officials directly present - though its unclear if the EU will be given a seat at the main table. European leaders have long worried that Washingon and Moscow could cut the EU out of negotiations altogether, given this has not been a priority for Trump. Tyler Durden Mon, 11/09/2026 - 20:20

Surprising Red State Becomes New Hotspot For Gen Z Workers South Carolina is rapidly becoming one of America's most attractive destinations for young workers, as affordable living, expanding employment opportunities and a growing economy draw Generation Z away from traditional economic powerhouses. The Battery, Charleston SC The Palmetto State recorded a net influx of 22,843 Gen Z adults in 2024, the largest gain of any state, according to a new LendingTree analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data.An estimated 60,223 adults ages 18 to 27 moved into South Carolina, compared with 37,380 who departed.The migration reflects a broader shift in where younger Americans are choosing to build their careers, with housing costs and economic opportunity increasingly influencing decisions. Columbia, SC Charleston, Columbia and Greenville have emerged as major destinations, attracting newcomers with expanding regional economies and comparatively affordable lifestyles. South Carolina's proximity to Charlotte, North Carolina, also provides access to a major employment market without necessarily requiring workers to absorb the same housing expenses, the LendingTree report said.However, it's a very different story in traditional economic hubs.California suffered the nation's largest net loss of Gen Z adults, shedding 58,109 residents in the same age bracket. New Jersey and Illinois also posted net outflows, losing 37,556 and 20,031 residents, respectively, to other states.The figures come as roughly 10.7 million Gen Z adults moved across state lines in 2024 alone.Meanwhile, employment isn't the only factor driving moves between states. LendingTree found that 38.1% of Gen Z adults who crossed state lines in 2024 were attending college that year, highlighting the importance of universities.In an interview with Fox News, LendingTree researcher Matt Schulz said that the low cost of living and promising job market may explain its popularity."Gen Z is at the most mobile time of their lives, and they're looking for a place where they can live affordably, where there are decent jobs and good opportunity," Schulz said. "Ultimately, it is about looking for job opportunity and looking for the best place to get started with your career and being able to afford the things that you want to do and have the life you want to live." Tyler Durden Mon, 11/09/2026 - 19:40

Judge Clears Lindsay Clancy For Retrial, And Tells Her Lawyer To Watch His Mouth A Massachusetts judge on Monday rejected Lindsay Clancy's bid to dismiss her triple-murder case on double jeopardy grounds, clearing the way for a second trial in the 2023 deaths of her three young children - and refusing to let her lawyer go after the lone juror who wouldn't acquit her. Lindsay Clancy listens to prosecutor Jennifer Sprague say that they plan on re-trial, in Plymouth Superior Court in Plymouth, Mass., Nov. 2, 2026. (Greg Derr/Pool/The Patriot Ledger via Reuters) Plymouth Superior Court Judge William Sullivan wrote that "because the Court concludes that there was a manifest necessity for a mistrial based on the jury's deadlock, a retrial on the murder indictments does not violate Clancy's right not to be placed in double jeopardy." Sullivan declared the mistrial on Sept. 4 after jurors split 11-1 in favor of finding Clancy not guilty by reason of insanity.BREAKING: Lindsay Clancy's motion to dismiss her case on double jeopardy grounds is DENIED by Judge Sullivan. Read it here -- (1/5) pic.twitter.com/L4ERqM6CVO— Kristina Rex (@KristinaRex) November 9, 2026 That one vote belonged to Michael Desronvil, the only black member of a jury of nine women and three men. The other 11, all of them white by one juror's account, spent days trying to bring him around. Desronvil said "I didn't have any doubts" that Clancy knew what she was doing, and that it was the other jurors who didn't keep an open mind and tried to shut him down.Within days of the mistrial, three of the female jurors went on a media tour calling him "arrogant" and a "rogue juror," with juror Paula Devlin saying the panel knew its verdict could "make it better for other women." Defense attorney Kevin Reddington said the jury had been "robbed by one man for whatever his agenda was." Paula Devlin, Roni Carlson and Kellie Farina all served as jurors during the Lindsay Clancy trial. They spoke in depth about their experience with NBC10 Boston courtroom insider Sue O’Connell. A liberal witch hunt followed, of course. While Desronvil's name was still under court seal, Boston outlets dug up a restraining order, a dispute with his landlord and domestic violence charges that had been dismissed. His family was hounded at home - "They are leaving notes at my mother's house," his brother said - and Desronvil hired a lawyer and moved to an undisclosed location in northern New England. A GoFundMe for Clancy's family, meanwhile, topped $1.16 million.Reddington had argued that Sullivan should have questioned the holdout, identified in the ruling as Juror Doe, before ending the trial. Sullivan said any further questioning "would undoubtedly have a coercive effect," and that the foreperson's notes claiming the holdout wasn't following the law on reasonable doubt were not "reliable evidence of Juror Doe's inability or refusal to deliberate or follow the law.""The Court made its decision based on what was known at the time," Sullivan wrote. "Information that has since come to light cannot serve to undermine that decision."He denied the defense's requests for the holdout's phone records and for records from jury selection and deliberations, saying "the Court declines to exercise its discretion to order production" because Clancy had not shown the material was relevant to a retrial. He also saw no "valid justification for examining Juror Doe under oath." Handing over the records, he said, would violate juror confidentiality and "discourage citizens from being willing to serve as jurors in the future." Michael Desronvil, the holdout juror in the Lindsay Clancy trial, leaves Plymouth Superior Court after a mistrial in Plymouth, Mass., Friday, September 4, 2026.Dave Zajac/Hearst Connecticut Media Reddington had alleged that Desronvil used his cellphone during deliberations and wasn't truthful during jury selection. At the Nov. 2 hearing he named Desronvil in open court, and Sullivan cut him off mid-sentence.Sullivan also denied prosecutors' request for a gag order on the defense, which they sought after Reddington publicly criticized the holdout, as we reported. "The Commonwealth has not sufficiently demonstrated that defense counsel's extrajudicial speech poses a serious threat of harm by materially prejudicing the jury venire or the outcome of any retrial," he wrote, calling a gag order an "extreme remedy" of "prior restraint." Prosecutors can ask again if circumstances change before a new trial, and Sullivan reminded Reddington of his "ethical obligations" under the state's rules of professional conduct.Her defense, which has never denied that Clancy killed her children, is that postpartum psychosis left her unable to control her actions, while prosecutors say she acted deliberately and knew what she was doing was wrong. Prosecutors have said they plan to retry her but haven't said whether they will bring the same murder charges.Clancy is due back in court Nov. 16, when Sullivan plans to set a trial date. At the Nov. 2 hearing he said he would like the retrial to begin in March 2027, while Reddington said he "can't do a trial before June." Tyler Durden Mon, 11/09/2026 - 19:00

"Only Joking - Maybe Not": Sotomayor Takes Aim At Supreme Court's Presidential Immunity Ruling Justice Sonia Sotomayor said Saturday she hopes the Supreme Court will one day reverse its 2024 ruling that gave former presidents broad protection from criminal prosecution, calling it one of several decisions she wants to see overturned in her lifetime.She was speaking at a public discussion on civic education at George Washington's Mount Vernon estate in Virginia, according to Just the News. "I dissent a lot. I'm hoping that the court will take back some of the crazy things that it's done," she told the audience, then added that she was "only joking - maybe not."She dropped the joke a moment later. "You know, I've spoken openly about this, there are some opinions that I hope in my lifetime will get overturned," Sotomayor said. "The immunity case is one of them." No video or transcript of the event has been posted that we could find, so the remarks come from the reporters who were in the room.The decision she means is Trump v. United States, decided July 1, 2024. Chief Justice John Roberts's majority opinion held that a president is absolutely immune from criminal prosecution for conduct within his exclusive constitutional authority and "at least presumptively immune" for his other official acts, with no immunity for unofficial conduct. Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh joined in full, and Amy Coney Barrett joined all but one part.Sotomayor wrote the principal dissent, joined by Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson."In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law," she wrote, and closed:"With fear for our democracy, I dissent." Jackson filed a separate dissent.Saturday's remarks are the sharpest in a pattern. In February 2025, in Louisville, she said she "had a hard time" with the immunity case and that the court would probably gain public support if it went more slowly in undoing precedent, according to AP's report. Last September, in New York, she told an audience that Americans may not grasp the difference between a president and a king. Tyler Durden Mon, 11/09/2026 - 18:20

"No Such Thing": SCOTUS Lets Trump Resume Big Bend Border Wall... And Torches Legal Theory That Stopped It The Supreme Court on Monday let the Trump administration resume border wall construction in Texas's Big Bend region, staying a federal judge's injunction while the government seeks further review. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson noted that she would have denied the request.The unsigned order in Mullin v. Friends of the Ruidosa Church turns on who may hear the case, not on the actual wall. A 1996 immigration law lets the Homeland Security secretary "waive all legal requirements" needed for fast border construction, and allows lawsuits against such waivers only if they allege a violation of the Constitution. The Court said the government "is exceedingly likely to prevail" on its argument that the district court lacked jurisdiction over the challenge.The challengers had framed their case around the major-questions doctrine, the idea that Congress must speak clearly before an agency claims vast power. U.S. District Judge Kathleen Cardone blocked the waivers and construction on Oct. 2, finding that claim likely to succeed. The Supreme Court rejected the premise. "There is no such thing as a 'constitutional' major-questions claim," the justices wrote, because the doctrine is a rule for reading statutes, and the plaintiffs' claim "alleges instead that the Secretary exceeded his statutory authority."The Court also found the injunction was costing the government real money. A Customs and Border Protection official said the halt was running up "nearly half a million dollars in costs per day" that "cannot be recouped" if the government wins in the end. And on the harm to the plaintiffs, the justices said Congress had already struck the balance: "The Government's interest therefore outweighs any aesthetic, recreational, and environmental harm alleged by respondents."The challengers are the Center for Biological Diversity, a group trying to preserve a historic church in Ruidosa, Texas, and a river guide, Danny Miller. They sued after Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and her successor, Markwayne Mullin, issued a series of waivers between February and July that set aside environmental and conservation laws across the Big Bend Sector. Each waiver found the sector to be "an area of high illegal entry," and the government says Border Patrol apprehended more than 89,000 people there over five years.Cardone found the opposite in her ruling: that the Big Bend Sector has "the lowest rate of illegal entry along the entire U.S.-Mexico border." The challengers told the Supreme Court the stay would bring "the permanent alteration of an irreplaceable landscape" that includes Big Bend National Park, Big Bend Ranch State Park and nearly 200 miles of the Rio Grande's Wild and Scenic River corridor. They also said the government began construction inside the national park in early August without giving the 30 days' notice it had agreed to, then paused it the same day they went to court.The ruling is a stay, not a final decision. It lasts until the government files its petition for certiorari and the Court disposes of it. If the Court denies review, the stay ends automatically. If it takes the case, the stay ends when the Court's judgment goes back to the lower court. As we reported, the injunction froze the project and the administration went to the Supreme Court on Oct. 21. Tyler Durden Mon, 11/09/2026 - 18:00

Old People Are Falling For Gold Scams Like Crazy Across the country, older Americans are draining their savings into gold bars and handing them to strangers. It usually starts with a pop-up, an email or a phone call warning that a bank account has been hacked or an identity stolen. A "fraud investigator" or "federal agent" then offers the fix: liquidate everything, buy gold to keep it safe, and give it to a courier who shows up with a password. 78-year-old Washington woman 'Shane' was scammed out of $3 million this year The callers usually work out of call centers overseas, while the couriers who make the pickups often travel in from out of state, some of them barely out of their teens. Police and federal prosecutors from Washington to Florida have been chasing the scheme in recent months, and single victims are losing millions.A 78-year-old Washington woman says she handed roughly $3 million to scammers this year - amounting to about 95% of everything she owned - after a fraudulent pop-up on her computer warned her she was being hacked."I'm sitting there holding a million dollars' worth of gold in my hands, and I hand it to a stranger," said the Shoreline business owner, who gave only her first name, Shane.Her story surfaced on Nov. 5 during a joint briefing held by the King County Sheriff's Office, the FBI's Seattle field office, and federal and county prosecutors. Officials said gold courier scams cost Americans approximately $312 million in 2025, while federal prosecutors noted that FBI data placed total scam losses among Americans over 60 at $7.7 billion last year. The sheriff's office has logged at least $12 million in scam losses this year alone, including $4.6 million tied directly to gold bar fraud.Shane's ordeal began in April, when a pop-up alert instructed her to call "Chase fraud and Apple fraud." The individuals who answered claimed she was assisting an ongoing investigation and told her that her assets would be safe only if she converted them into physical gold. Investigators said couriers collected cash and gold in person at mundane public locations, such as a church parking lot and behind a Verizon retail store. Each courier carried a dollar bill with a secret password written on it, which was read back to the scammer coordinating the call, and victims were given counterfeit receipts designed to look as though they had originated from the Federal Reserve."It was hellish. It was absolutely hellish, not telling anyone," Shane said. Both bank staff and bullion dealers warned her that she was being conned, but she dismissed their concerns, the Seattle Times reported. Only when the handler who phoned her daily finally assured her that she had no need to liquidate further assets did she confide in a friend, who urged her to contact law enforcement immediately."If a scammer asks you to keep a secret, that's usually a giant red flag," said King County Prosecuting Attorney Leesa Manion.Other recent county losses also reached into the hundreds of thousands. Det. Sgt. Michael Glasgow pointed to a 79-year-old woman who lost $700,000 to an imposter posing as an Apple representative, a 69-year-old who lost $650,000 through the same pretext, and a 93-year-old man who lost $475,000 after clicking a phishing link. None of these victims have recovered their funds.Coast To Coast Top row, from left: Gurpinder Singh and Javed Ashiq. Bottom row: Rajdeep Singh and Yug Chauhan. Defendants in separate gold-scam cases; Ashiq was sentenced to 14 years in prison. That same day, federal prosecutors in Florida announced an indictment charging 10 individuals in an elder-fraud gold bar scheme, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Florida. Seven of the defendants reside in California and are between the ages of 20 and 26; two are from DeLand, Florida, and one is from Pennsylvania. Each faces charges of conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud as well as conspiracy to commit money laundering, with a trial scheduled for Dec. 30 in Gainesville.One suspect was captured in a targeted sting. An elderly victim received an email disguised as an Amazon notice, followed by a phone call from an operative alleging her identity had been stolen, before she was transferred to a fraudulent Federal Trade Commission agent, the Alachua Chronicle reported. In May, she purchased $101,220 in gold from a local coin and jewelry dealer and surrendered it to a purported "Treasury agent" at an Orange Lake gas station. When the syndicate demanded an additional $400,000, federal agents orchestrated a controlled exchange in Gainesville. On June 1, authorities arrested 20-year-old Gurpinder Singh. Singh, who was carrying an Indian passport and a California driver's license, told investigators that the Gainesville rendezvous was his first pickup.In the Omaha metropolitan area, an elderly couple - coerced by a bogus federal agent threatening an arrest warrant - purchased 35 gold bars valued at $158,000 and handed them over in a public parking lot to a courier using an authentication passphrase, the Douglas County Sheriff's Office said last month. Investigators traced the courier's rental vehicle using surveillance feeds and automated license plate readers, prompting a nationwide bulletin that yielded an Illinois traffic stop where police recovered the bullion. The sheriff noted that federal authorities provided an aircraft to transport investigators to Sterling, Illinois, to reclaim the property. The couple's gold was returned intact.The driver told officers he was en route to drop the package at a Chicago motel and was initially released. Douglas County authorities have since issued an arrest warrant, and investigators believe he collected assets from victims across five regions of the United States.On Oct. 6, a federal judge in Augusta, Georgia, sentenced 52-year-old Javed Ashiq of Decatur to 14 years in prison and ordered him to pay $886,799.84 in restitution, WRDW reported. Ashiq's co-conspirators, impersonating FTC personnel, convinced a 90-year-old that their identity had been compromised, prompting the victim to acquire $241,000 in bullion. Ashiq, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud, was apprehended in July 2024 en route to another pickup; he will face deportation proceedings following his prison term. "This case highlights the ruthless tactics scammers use to exploit senior citizens," said U.S. Attorney Meg Heap.In September, police in Friendswood, Texas, arrested California courier Rajdeep Singh after an elderly woman - misled by an imposter agent claiming her and her husband's Social Security profiles were compromised - purchased $25,000 in gift cards and converted roughly $185,000 into gold bullion, FOX 26 reported. Singh was charged with theft with an elderly enhancement, held on a $5 million bond, and placed under an immigration detainer. Detectives suspect he visited multiple victims throughout the greater Houston area over a four-week stretch. Friendswood Police Chief Josh Rogers said these rings are "terrorizing our elderly community."In August, the NYPD disclosed that New York City residents had lost more than $100 million to gold bar operations over two years, with some individual victims losing $9 million or more. Authorities published surveillance footage showing an elderly woman in Flatbush surrendering approximately $300,000 in gold bullion to an operative she believed was collecting on behalf of the IRS. The syndicates, typically coordinated from Asia, routinely keep victims on the phone throughout the physical handoff, police said."Have these conversations with your parents or grandparents," said Sgt. Rashawn Vaughn of the NYPD's Financial Crimes Task Force, emphasizing that families must "make sure they are not buying gold bars."Earlier this year, federal prosecutors in St. Louis indicted three couriers tied to an alleged $8 million enterprise operated out of an Indian call center. One courier, 28-year-old Monarch Sachdev, allegedly collected illicit proceeds on at least 65 occasions, accounting for at least $5.4 million in victim losses.Even The Dealers Get BurnedThe San Diego County District Attorney's Office has described the gold bar scheme as fast-growing, and its fallout is spilling over to retail bullion vendors. Bullion Standard, a San Diego-based online precious metals dealer, reported that Bank of America placed holds on hundreds of thousands of dollars after two of the firm's elderly customers were defrauded in early 2025, NBC 7 reported.Owner Kyle Horn said his company account plunged to negative $456,000 due to pending debits. Although the bank subsequently confirmed third-party fraud and cleared the funds, it permanently closed the account weeks later and froze the remaining balance of more than $50,000.Horn has since filed suit against Bank of America, which maintained that accounts are subject to closure under certain risk factors, including repeated fraud complaints. In response, Horn's staff now routinely cross-examine senior customers placing sizable orders.Not every gold-related dispute involves impersonated federal agents. As we reported last Monday, a 97-year-old La Jolla resident and his 85-year-old wife are suing former "Toy Story" voice actor Erik von Detten and TV-advertised dealer Rosland Capital, alleging they paid $2.15 million for gold coins worth roughly $1.36 million. Rosland, currently in Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings, faces approximately $49 million in unfulfilled order liabilities across 484 customers.Meanwhile, as we reported in June, a Grand Rapids, Michigan, coin dealer alerted the Kent County Sheriff's Office after suspecting that a flustered widow was on the verge of handing over nearly $700,000 in bullion.  Credit: Kent County Sheriff’s Office / WOOD-TV Undercover detectives substituted an officer in place of the victim to deliver a decoy parcel of chocolate gold coins; the courier, 20-year-old Yug Chauhan of Illinois, was subsequently charged with two felony counts carrying up to 20-year sentences.Nor are these networks limited to precious metals. Last week, we reported on a ring of Chinese couriers masquerading as federal law enforcement officers who collected more than $10 million in physical cash from elderly targets across 19 states.Shane remains doubtful she will see any restitution, while still facing an outstanding IRS tax liability on the assets she liquidated. While she managed to keep "most" of her home, she offered a direct warning to others: "Just be safe, be smart, be safe. Tell someone." Tyler Durden Mon, 11/09/2026 - 17:20

"Pettiness Is A Thing": Top Democrat Says His Gayness Will Fuel Vicious Trump Investigations Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), who takes over the House Oversight Committee when the new Congress convenes in January, told a crowd that Trump officials are still Democrat targets after leaving office, saying "maybe it's because I'm gay" but "pettiness is a thing." He spoke at Crooked Con, the Crooked Media event in Washington that also featured Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.)."Just because you're Kimberly Guilfoyle, or you're Kristi Noem, or you're Pam Bondi, and you're no longer in office, that doesn't mean that we're still not interested in accountability for all of your crimes and grift," Garcia said. "We're not going to forget. Like, we can't forget about these folks that are causing harm, like, you know, I think it's like, maybe it's because I'm gay, but like, you know, like pettiness is a thing." The crowd cheered and applauded."Maybe it's because I'm gay, but pettiness is a thing. We're not going to forget these crimes." - Rep. Robert Garcia on prosecuting Trump's administration pic.twitter.com/HhitypiGz4— Crooked Media (@CrookedMedia) November 7, 2026"Like, I am mad, you know," Garcia continued. "This is a moment in history where all the young people, in our families, in our classrooms, they have to know that what's happening now is wrong. To just move on does a disservice to the future of our country." He named no specific crimes. Trump fired Noem in March and Bondi in April.The remarks came days after Democrats won control of Congress in Tuesday's midterms. On election night, Garcia issued a statement about "The Trump Crime Family" and told Republicans to "lawyer up." Attorney General Todd Blanche then declined to rule out prosecuting Democrats who investigate administration officials: asked on CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday whether lawmakers could face charges, he said "yes, there could be," and added, "I would be very worried if I was a member on that committee," as we reported.Blanche said Congress has constitutional oversight authority but that recent Democratic statements went beyond it. "That is not oversight. I welcome oversight," he said. He cited no criminal statute and did not say any investigation had begun. He also said the Justice Department would provide legal defense to officials facing congressional scrutiny, including incoming White House chief of staff Stephen Miller.Trump had made the same charge the day before. In a Truth Social post on Saturday, he wrote: "The Democrats are going around threatening a lot of people, including the Attorney General of the United States, and others, with Impeachment and many other forms of punishment, even though they admit they have no reason to do so." He called it "extortion at the highest level," said Democrats were "threatening our Donors" with imprisonment, and accused Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) of saying she would "go after all young people that believe in Republican Values." He closed by writing that "I am ordering the Department of Justice to look into this criminal act, immediately!"Garcia answered the threats of prosecution directly: "They can come after us however they want. We're not going to be intimidated." The Oversight Committee's plans take in alleged wrongdoing by the administration, the president's family and corporate allies. Tyler Durden Mon, 11/09/2026 - 16:40

Massie Starts The Clock On Hegseth's Impeachment - Here's How Many Republicans He Needs Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) introduced eight articles of impeachment against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on the House floor Monday afternoon, and because the resolution is privileged, the House has to take it up within two legislative days, Fox News reported, which would put the vote no later than Wednesday. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.Finn Gomez / Getty file According to AP, Massie is confident that three Republicans will join every Democrat to pass it. Passage takes a simple majority, and no Democrat appears likely to oppose it.The articles cover the war in Iran, the strikes on suspected drug boats in the Caribbean, U.S. strikes against Yemen and the extradition of former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. A further article accuses Hegseth of suppressing free speech by retaliating against Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) over a video urging troops to resist "unlawful orders."Massie first filed the 34-page resolution in September and read it aloud on the floor for more than 67 minutes, until Speaker Mike Johnson canceled the remaining votes before the midterm recess. Massie said then that the articles would expire and he would have to refile them when Congress returned. He lost his own primary this summer after President Donald Trump endorsed his opponent, and he leaves Congress in January.Several House Republicans told Fox News Digital that Hegseth could very well be impeached (none was named), with absences from Republicans who lost their elections and sour sentiment about his conduct possibly enough to tip it. Several Republicans have blamed the party's midterm losses on the Iran war, and Trump acknowledged last week that the war contributed to them.Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), who is retiring, told ABC News, "I will weigh the debate and make a decision," adding that "the secretary has made some bad mistakes." House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) declined to back the effort. On the other side, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said Sunday on ABC's "This Week" that he is "a hard yes", as we reported.Hegseth said Monday, "We're not worried about that," and announced a Pentagon press conference for Tuesday. In a video posted last Thursday, he called the filing "sham articles of impeachment," saying Democrats had "tried against President Trump twice," according to ABC News. Trump said Thursday that he has "every intention to keep" Hegseth, called Massie "a very bad guy" and said he is "very destructive."Leaders can move to table the resolution, which also needs only a simple majority, or send it to committee. Either would end it without a vote on the merits, Fox said, and it was not clear Monday which way Johnson would go.Conviction would need two-thirds of the Senate, which the AP called unlikely to happen even if the House impeaches. The last Cabinet secretary the House impeached was Biden's Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, and the Democratic-led Senate dropped that case without a trial. Tyler Durden Mon, 11/09/2026 - 15:45

Nvidia Spy Scandal Widens: Feds' Megaspeed Probe Was Derailed After Nvidia Came Knocking Update (1115ET): The Commerce Department's investigation into Megaspeed was halted late last year after Nvidia's general counsel reached out to the agents running it, the New York Times now reports.According to the Times, investigators at Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security had spent months building a case that Megaspeed was smuggling Nvidia chips into China when, in August 2025, they got an email from Nvidia general counsel Tim Teter seeking information about the inquiry. Teter wrote that Jeff Kessler, their boss and a Trump-nominated under secretary, had given Nvidia permission to reach out about the case.When the agents declined Nvidia's request to meet with one of them, Teter replied that he was unsure what the issue was, since Kessler had said Nvidia could communicate with the bureau's staff. The agents forwarded the chain to Kessler, who told them hours later to keep handling the case by the book. A Commerce official told the paper that Kessler never ordered anyone to share information with Nvidia. Some agents nonetheless saw his contact with Nvidia as a breach of procedure that could taint the case, and officials questioned why the department was discussing it at all with a company that had not been ruled out as a subject of the investigation.Commerce disclosed the incident to partner agencies, the Justice Department asked it to pause its work, and the case went to DOJ, which is now running a criminal inquiry into Megaspeed. Agents who had spent months on the case were frustrated, and the handoff may have kept Commerce from moving faster to stop technology shipments to Megaspeed.The Times also reports that since Trump's return, Kessler and other department leaders have required that any investigation into Nvidia first get their approval. Other agencies have proposed adding Megaspeed to the entity list, but Commerce hasn't acted, and the department has not added a single company to the entity list in more than a year, the longest such stretch in 18 years.Commerce says it handled this and other actions strictly by the book, and DOJ declined to comment. Nvidia spokesman John Rizzo said the company consults with officials to help "halt any would-be smugglers." Megaspeed said it is conducting its own internal investigation and that its repeated offers to cooperate with the US government went unanswered.All of which sits awkwardly next to Nvidia's line that the Megaspeed diversion claims were "investigated and debunked." Megaspeed itself has pointed to inspections by Commerce's BIS, Malaysia's trade ministry and Nvidia that it says found "no evidence of any violations," even as BIS agents were building a case that is now a criminal probe at DOJ. Commerce's own handling of Nvidia is now on the table for the Nov 18 closed-door briefing.Nvidia shares slid more than 5% on Monday as the board probe sank in, with this latest revelation causing the leg down circled below. Beijing's foreign ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun rejected the "so-called Chinese spy narrative" as unsubstantiated, Secretary of State Marco Rubio declined to comment on Sunday, calling it an "internal corporate matter," and an Nvidia spokesperson insisted that "Today's news will not slow Nvidia." With Democrats having just won control of Congress, the oversight Lu describes is only likely to get tougher.* * *The affair was the headline. The chips were the point...That, at least, is the read from Taiwanese semiconductor analyst Andrew Lu, whose take on the Nvidia (NVDA) spy scandal has been making the rounds on X courtesy of a translation by Jukan. It landed just hours after Jensen Huang told staff in a memo that "I was unfaithful to my wife", and Nvidia's board launched an independent investigation into whether its founder was the target of a foreign intelligence effort.BOOM*NVIDIA'S BOARD TO PROBE IF CEO WAS CHINESE INTELLIGENCE TARGET*NVIDIA CEO JENSEN HUANG ADMITS AFFAIR WITH ALLEGED CHINESE SPY— zerohedge (@zerohedge) November 8, 2026A quick recap for anyone who spent the past ten days offline. On Oct 29 the New York Times reported that US intelligence had concluded Alice Huang (Huang Le, no relation), a senior executive at Singapore data center operator Megaspeed, was a Ministry of State Security asset with a close relationship to the Nvidia CEO, as we first reported at the time, and that Trump had been briefed a year ago and did nothing. Nvidia called the contacts "not unusual or unexpected." A week later three House GOP chairmen demanded a closed-door briefing on Nov 18, conveniently the day after Nvidia reports earnings. Then on Friday the FT reported the relationship was romantic, and on Sunday Huang confirmed it. So much for "not unusual."Which brings us to Lu's argument: the scandal is a tool, and Washington just used it to get three things it could not get while Huang was the loudest voice in the room. We reproduce it in full below, with some context from our past coverage."The Purpose Of This Scandal Is By No Means To Expose An Affair"Why the US Seized on the Scandal to Draw Its Sword: Three Strategic ObjectivesThe purpose of this scandal is by no means to expose an affair. It is to force through three critical objectives that had made no headway in the tech war between the US and China because Jensen Huang opposed them.The first cut: Completely destroy the legitimacy of Jensen Huang's lobbying against sanctions in WashingtonOver the past two years, the loudest and most influential business leader in Silicon Valley opposing a total ban on chip exports to China has been Jensen Huang. He has told the White House the same thing all along: "Cede the Chinese market to Huawei, and the only one that ends up dead is the American tech industry."But the moment US intelligence labels the woman named as Huang's affair partner "a spy working for China's Ministry of State Security who sought to steer the US toward easing its chip controls," every bit of lobbying he has done for looser controls takes on an entirely different political meaning. It becomes a national security matter, raising the possibility that a foreign spy used a secret relationship to exert influence.Huang can no longer say a single word in defense of the Chinese market before Congress or the White House. If he does, he will be branded as someone who "fell for an intelligence operation and still hasn't come to his senses."Some context on just how successful that lobbying was. Huang first talked Trump into reversing the ban on the downgraded H20, and then in December struck the deal to sell the H200, Nvidia's second-most powerful chip, to China with Uncle Sam taking a 25% cut.NVIDIA TO GIVE US 25% CUT OF H200 CHINA REVENUE: US OFFICIAL— zerohedge (@zerohedge) December 8, 2025Trump even toyed with letting Blackwell go to China before backing off. And it is worth remembering that, according to the FT, the intelligence memo describing the romance was circulated among top officials shortly before Trump's Beijing summit in May, yet Huang still got a last-minute seat on Air Force One (boarding during a stopover in Alaska) and a seat at the Xi state dinner in September. In other words, the lobbying worked right up until the moment the memo leaked. Funny how that timing works.Ghost Offices And The Singapore PipelineThe second cut: Reverse the H200 export approvals for China and sever the link between Chinese shell companies and Southeast Asian smuggling networksLook at the timing of the two reports.On November 8, the very day the Jensen Huang scandal broke, The New York Times published an investigation for which its reporters went in person to dozens of Chinese companies that the US Commerce Department had approved to handle Nvidia's H200 chips. New Matrix in Beijing was one of them. According to the report, the registered addresses of companies approved to buy the chips turned out to be empty "ghost offices," and some of the companies had close ties to entities on US sanctions lists and to firms under contract with the Chinese military.One exposé says Nvidia's CEO was having an affair with a female spy from Megaspeed, the Singapore company that handled the chip smuggling. The other says the Chinese companies Commerce approved to buy H200s are nothing but shell companies trading on behalf of the Chinese military. The aim of these two reports is clear. They are meant to pressure the Trump administration and the Commerce Department into fully revoking or freezing H200 export approvals for China and, going further, to force a sweeping overhaul of the loophole that let chips be diverted through data centers run by third parties in Singapore and elsewhere in Southeast Asia.As we detailed on Saturday, New Matrix's listed address in a Beijing industrial park turned out to be an empty shell with wires dangling from the ceiling, and its owners have ties to Wise Road, the PE firm the US blacklisted in 2024. Another approved assembler, Maginfra, also appeared deserted and is believed to be an Inspur offshoot (Inspur is on the entity list for working with the PLA). Not exactly the sort of due diligence one expects for the world's most coveted chip.As for Southeast Asia, regular readers know this "loophole" has been leaking for a while. Back in March the US charged Super Micro's co-founder in an alleged $2.5 billion Nvidia chip smuggling scheme, and in May Bloomberg traced part of it to a Bangkok company, making Thailand a possible hub for chips headed to Alibaba. Megaspeed itself rents data center capacity in the region to, you guessed it, Alibaba. All of which makes Nvidia's response from last December age like milk:*NVIDIA: HAVEN'T RECEIVED TIPS OF 'PHANTOM DATACENTERS'*NVIDIA: SMUGGLING SEEMS FARFETCHED*NVIDIA SAYS IT PURSUES ANY TIPS IT RECEIVES— zerohedge (@zerohedge) December 10, 2025A Watchdog In The BoardroomThe third cut: Put Nvidia on a national security leash through congressional oversight and an independent investigationAs the world's largest company by market cap and the dominant force in AI, Nvidia has until now enjoyed broad autonomy in how it runs its business. But in the wake of this incident, the three congressional committees responsible for China, foreign affairs, and intelligence have begun examining Nvidia's internal security measures directly. They have even pressured Nvidia's board into forming an independent investigation committee to look into the company's own founder and CEO.In effect, Washington's national security establishment has planted a watchdog right inside Nvidia's board. From now on, the goal is to make sure that everything, down to where each and every one of Nvidia's high performance chips ends up, conforms strictly to US national security strategy. It also means there is no more room for skirting the edge of the rules or releasing chips with specs specially tailored to regulatory thresholds.The board, for its part, says it has "no reason to believe that either national security or NVIDIA secrets were compromised" and still has "confidence in Jensen." Which is exactly what boards say right before the outside counsel starts reading emails. Meanwhile there is no public succession plan and no obvious heir to the 63-year-old Huang, and as QTR asked earlier today, could the scandal force him to resign? For a stock where the CEO is the brand, that is a lot of key-man risk to price in a week."The Real Goal Was To Plug The Holes"Conclusion"The scandal was a detonator set off right on cue. The real goal was to plug the holes chips were leaking through."Jensen Huang made the fatal mistake of letting his guard down in his private life and personal relationships. In the end, he fell into a honey trap, the textbook tactic of intelligence warfare, and was compromised. America's national security and intelligence agencies ruthlessly exploited the weakness his private life had exposed. As a result, they solved three thorny problems in a single stroke: Nvidia's lobbying at the White House to ease restrictions on China, the flow of H200 chips into Chinese shell companies, and smuggling routed through Singapore.The closed congressional hearing set for November 18 will be the decisive turning point at which the US moves in earnest to tighten its sanctions on China's AI compute even further.Lu's thesis has the virtue of explaining the timing: an intelligence finding that sat on desks for a year (and through a Beijing summit) suddenly surfacing in the NYT, then the FT, then Congress, all within ten days and right into Nvidia's earnings. One could argue the opposite, of course (an administration that knew and shrugged is hardly a sword-wielding one), and China has barely taken delivery of any H200s anyway (as of May, reportedly not a single one had shipped to the approved buyers). But whoever pulled the pin, the result is the same: the most effective lobbyist for selling AI chips to China has lost his voice, probably for good.And that matters for more than Huang's marriage. As we noted on Nov 1, the entire market is already leaning on Nvidia's Nov 17 report; with the stock already off from its nearly $5.8 trillion October peak to below $5 trillion, investors now get earnings on Tuesday the 17th and a closed-door grilling on Wednesday the 18th. If Lu is right, the second date matters more, because what comes out of it is likely to be tighter controls, not looser ones. China revenue was always the upside option in the bull case. It now looks like the first casualty.Source: Andrew Lu via Jukan:Taiwanese semiconductor analyst Andrew Lu’s take on the recent scandal involving Jensen Huang:Why the US Seized on the Scandal to Draw Its Sword: Three Strategic Objectives— Jukan (@jukan05) November 9, 2026 Tyler Durden Mon, 11/09/2026 - 15:25