Zerohedge

Why Are So Many Countries Suddenly Warning Their Citizens To Prepare For An Emergency And Stockpile Essential Survival Supplies? Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse,What in the world is going on? Why are governments all over the planet suddenly encouraging their citizens to become preppers? Do they know something that they aren't telling us? If it was just one nation that was suddenly instructing people to stockpile food, water and other essential supplies, that wouldn't be a big deal. But it isn't just one nation. As you will see below, quite a long list of countries have simultaneously decided that now is the time for everyone to get prepared. So what has prompted this sudden sense of urgency?For some reason, governments in Europe seem to have more of a sense of urgency than anyone else...Governments in the UK, Sweden, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands and France have encouraged households to keep food, water, medicines and other essentials available for emergencies.I can't recall a time when so many European governments have been so concerned about making sure that their citizens are prepared for an emergency.In the UK, the "Be Ready campaign" has been launched.Every citizen is being encouraged to stockpile at least enough food and bottled water to last for 72 hours...Every Briton is being urged to stock up to nine litres of bottled water and three days' worth of food in new government guidance designed to ensure that households can survive a weather, cyber or other serious emergency.The Be Ready campaign is aimed at persuading people to stock up with supplies to last 72 hours, amid growing official concern about the impact of the climate crisis, technological dependency and hostile state threats.Dan Jarvis, the security minister, said that "those who can follow this advice should follow this advice". It amounted to "simple steps to be ready for everyday emergencies" as part of a wider, community-oriented effort "to improve our resilience as a nation", he said.So why has it suddenly become so important to do this?The UK's defense secretary is saying that it is because we "live in a more dangerous and turbulent world"...UK families are suddenly being told to stock up on emergency supplies - and to prepare for war.Wes Streeting, the UK's defense secretary, went on a media blitz to push a new "Be Ready" campaign to boost Brits' preparedness for crises - which he said could range from floods and wildfires to terrorism and cyber attacks and ultimately even war."There's no sugarcoating the fact that we do live in a more dangerous and turbulent world," Streeting told BBC's "Newsnight.""It's about saying to households across the country to be ready by just having some everyday essentials indoors should there be disruption from these sorts of events."Yes, our world has certainly become more "dangerous" and more "turbulent", but I also get the impression that there is something that he isn't telling us.In Sweden, citizens are being told that they may have to survive on their own for at least a week "in case of crisis or war"...In Sweden, the country's civil defense guidance is warning households to be able to manage on their own for at least one week 'in case of crisis or war.''The state of the world has worsened drastically in recent years. War is being waged in our vicinity. Extreme weather events are becoming increasingly common. Terror threats, cyberattacks, and disinformation campaigns are being used to undermine and influence us,' the bulletin stated.It is noteworthy that Swedish authorities are using the word "war", because a lot of people out there are convinced that military conflict is what has prompted all of this talk about preparing.On social media, many are speculating that European governments are getting ready to go to war with Russia...But if European governments are bracing for a military showdown with Russia, why is the government of Japan urging their citizens to stockpile food, water and other necessary supplies?...Statements from Japan's Disaster Management Minister indicate that the government is preparing to issue a national "emergency request"⁠ on November 2, 2026. The request aims to urge all households across the country to stockpile essential survival supplies. The announcement is planned for the same day as the official launch of Japan's National Disaster Management Agency.The new national agency will lead coordination efforts across the country regarding disaster planning, immediate emergency response, long-term recovery, and reconstruction.I can't remember the Japanese government ever doing anything like this.Just like in the UK, Japanese citizens are being instructed to have enough on hand to last for at least three days...The emergency request lays down a self-sufficiency window of at least three days. However, the Disaster Management Minister Gishi Hosono emphasized that a one-week supply is recommended wherever possible.Here in the United States, Project FORTRESS has just been initiated.The goal is for the U.S. military to be able to keep fighting for at least 90 days if all civilian infrastructure goes down...The Pentagon is preparing U.S. military bases to keep operating for at least 90 days without outside support as it prepares for the possibility of a major war that could cripple power grids, disrupt supply chains and threaten critical infrastructure on American soil.The new requirement is part of FORTRESS, a broader military initiative aimed at ensuring American forces can continue fighting even if the civilian systems they depend on are disrupted, according to documents reviewed by Fox News Digital."We don't want to rely on standard civilian municipal infrastructure to run our national defense. We just simply can't. It's an intolerable risk," Pentagon chief spokesperson Sean Parnell told Fox News Digital.What kind of scenario would "cripple power grids, disrupt supply chains and threaten critical infrastructure"?I can only think of a few, and most of them involve military conflict.So what do they think might happen?Shortly after we learned about Project FORTRESS, former Deputy Director of the FBI Dan Bongino issued a very urgent warning...The former Deputy Director of the FBI has issued an urgent warning to Americans as countries worldwide start stockpiling supplies for a potential crisis.Dan Bongino, who left the bureau in January, said the public needs to do what the UK and European governments are telling citizens: Have a preparedness plan and at least three days of food and power ready.'Have yourself an emergency radio, have yourself some batteries, get yourself some emergency food, get yourself a rain collection and water filtration, some filtration tablets,' he said on Monday.'Get your stuff today. Please. Do it for your family,' Bongino added.Even though he no longer works for the government, Bongino still has lots of contacts inside the government.Has he been told something that would prompt him to literally beg his listeners to go out and buy emergency supplies?Someone should really ask him that question.And why is he urging us to have a "rain collection" system?You wouldn't need to collect rain unless you were facing some sort of a long-term catastrophic emergency.Without a doubt, everything that he is saying is wise advice.But why has he suddenly developed such a sense of urgency?I have a feeling that something big is coming.Perhaps after the midterm elections in the United States we shall find out what it is. Tyler Durden Sun, 11/01/2026 - 23:20

DOJ Uncovers $29M More In Minnesota Benefits Fraud, Calls State 'Epicenter For Fraud In America' Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times,The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced it identified roughly $29.1 million in government benefits fraud in Minnesota over a one-month period.Between Sept. 30 and Oct. 30, the DOJ's National Fraud Enforcement Division and the District of Minnesota charged, convicted, or sentenced 13 individuals for proven or alleged schemes that caused nearly $83 million in intended losses to the federal government.The DOJ said in an Oct. 30 statement that it uncovered $29.1 million in fraud in newly charged cases, which is part of the total $83 million.🗳️💰 @DOJFraudDiv and @DMNnews Uncover Voter Fraud and Nearly $30M in Benefits Fraud in Enforcement SurgeThis year alone, the DOJ has issued over 1,000 subpoenas and executed over 40 premises warrants for the purpose of uncovering fraud in Minnesota.“Minnesota is the… pic.twitter.com/DF4scK5Sdr— U.S. Department of Justice (@TheJusticeDept) October 30, 2026 The targeted benefits programs include Minnesota's Medicaid program, the Federal Child Nutrition Program, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. Some are accused of engaging in bribery as part of carrying out their schemes.In one case, Shaakir Mohamud Ibrahim, 54, of Pelican Rapids, Minnesota, is facing wire fraud and money laundering charges for being part of a scheme to defraud the Federal Child Nutrition Program through the nonprofit Feeding Our Future.Ibrahim and his co-conspirators are alleged to have falsely claimed to be serving thousands of meals to children every day for four months. The department alleged he used this fake meal distribution to collect more than $1.1 million in reimbursements through the nonprofit.In another case, the DOJ said it charged Feisal Mohamed Elmi, 46, of New Brighton, Minnesota, with 11 counts related to health care fraud in an $8.2 million scheme that targeted the state's Medicaid program..@FBIDirectorKash in Minnesota: Yesterday, @FBIMinneapolis and our partners executed 17 search warrants in a single day to combine into a 26-count indictment, and arrested four of the alleged fraudsters:Feisal Elmi, Aspen Associates — 11 counts of healthcare fraud, $8 million… pic.twitter.com/rtUaSZY3tQ— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) October 30, 2026 So far this year, the Justice Department said it has issued more than 1,000 subpoenas and executed over 40 warrants to identify fraud in Minnesota."Minnesota is the epicenter for fraud in America," acting deputy attorney general Trent McCotter said in the statement."The Trump administration's crackdown is working, and the results speak for themselves. Through the Minnesota Fraud Task Force, we are systematically dismantling schemes preying on Americans. Backed by more than a thousand subpoenas and 40 warrants, the message is simple: No one stealing from taxpayer-funded programs is safe," McCotter said.The Epoch Times reached out to Shaakir Mohamud Ibrahim's legal representative for comment but did not receive a response by publication time. The Epoch Times could not reach Feisal Mohamed Elmi's legal representative.During an Oct. 30 news conference, Trump administration officials highlighted the crackdown against fraud in Minnesota. FBI Director Kash Patel told reporters that FBI Minneapolis and other law enforcement officers executed 17 search warrants on Oct. 29, with four people arrested for allegedly seeking to defraud more than $41 million from thousands of victims.Colin McDonald, assistant attorney general for the National Fraud Enforcement Division, said during the conference that prosecutors charged five people in the past week for Medicaid fraud schemes involving $48 million in intended losses."The days of indifference are over ... wherever the money leads, the full weight of government will follow," Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said at the event.Earlier, in August, the Treasury said in a statement that various fraud schemes based out of Minnesota have siphoned off federal and state dollars meant for people with disabilities, individuals lacking housing, or those struggling with procuring food. This has potentially cost Minnesota billions of dollars, with some of the stolen funds laundered abroad.To tackle this issue, the Treasury announced the renewal of a Geographic Targeting Order requiring money transmitters and banks in the state's Ramsey and Hennepin counties to report information about fund transfers of $3,000 or more to recipients or banks outside the United States.The order aims to help law enforcement detect when fraud proceeds are sent overseas and act quickly to deal with the issue, the Treasury said..@SecScottBessent in Minnesota:“The Vice President’s task force first convened in March, and he has worked tirelessly to restore vigilance and responsible stewardship in the management of public money. Since January 2025, the Trump Administration has uncovered more than 260… pic.twitter.com/WqbOmBIQfB— Vice President JD Vance (@VP) October 30, 2026 "We will continue to give law enforcement critical tools to trace criminal networks that siphon taxpayer dollars and move them overseas. The Trump Administration will not allow criminals to profit from programs intended to help vulnerable Americans," Bessent said in the statement. Tyler Durden Sun, 11/01/2026 - 22:30

Down Under, Going Under: Australian Housing Implodes As RBA Hikes Into The Slump For three decades, the one trade every Australian knew by heart was "buy property in Sydney." Now it's disintegrating.That's the gist of a Bloomberg feature from this summer, titled "One of the World's Longest Housing Booms Is Cracking in Sydney," which at the time read like a slightly alarmist look at a market that was "only" 3.6% off its peak. Two months, one rate hike and a whole lot of downward revisions later, it reads more like the opening chapter. According to the October Cotality data released just hours ago, capital-city prices fell another 1.4% last month and are now 8.1% below their March peak, with Sydney down 9.4% from a year ago. That's already most of the way to Goldman's latest peak-to-trough forecast of -12% (cut for the second time in two months), which would be a historically large drop for a country where housing is, well, basically the economy.And the Reserve Bank of Australia is about to make it worse: on Tuesday the RBA is widely expected to hike for the fifth time this year, to 4.85%, the highest cash rate since the GFC. As Goldman's rates desk put it after last week's parliamentary testimony, the RBA made a "clear effort to downplay any dovish pushbacks (no concerns on financial stability, housing, household leverage, growth)."In other words, the central bank has looked at the housing slump and decided it's somebody else's problem."The Surest Bet In Australia"Start with the scale of the bet. "For the past three decades, buying a home in Sydney has been the surest bet in Australia," Bloomberg's Nasteho Said, James Mayger and Richard Henderson wrote on August 31. "Rising prices have enriched families and made property the engine of household wealth." That wealth engine is enormous: about 60% of Australian household wealth is tied up in property according to Commerzbank, and the average Sydney home costs almost 14 times annual disposable income, making it the second-most expensive city in the world to buy property after Hong Kong (per Demographia). Nationally, prices jumped about 67% in the past decade, while home values more than doubled in Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth.Regular readers know how Australians got here. As we noted in August in "Wealth Exodus: Australians Flock To Property Investment Over Business", a CEDA report aptly titled "Bricks, not Businesses" found that the share of wealth the richest 20% of households hold in businesses collapsed from 11% to 4.4% over two decades, while their investment-property share rose from 10.2% to 14.2%. And the borrowing kept accelerating right up to the top: here is what we tweeted in February, about a month before prices peaked.*AUSTRALIA 4Q HOME-LOAN VALUES RISE 9.5% Q/Q; EST. 4.8%— zerohedge (@zerohedge) February 11, 2026 Nearly double the consensus. Nothing says "healthy market" like quarterly mortgage growth running at twice what the economists thought possible.Then three things hit at once. First, the RBA started hiking in February (more on that below). Second, the Hormuz energy shock sent Australian fuel prices to records (recall that back in March, hundreds of Australian gas stations literally ran dry), which pushed inflation higher and made the RBA even more hawkish. And third, Treasurer Jim Chalmers took aim at the investor bid itself in the May 12 budget: existing properties bought after May 12 no longer qualify for negative gearing, the tax break that lets landlords deduct rental losses from their personal income. As Domain's Nicola Powell told Bloomberg, "first-time buyers are not large enough to replace investors... We are really yet to see the true impact of fewer investors in the housing market."The fallout spread quickly to the banks (mortgage applications fell as much as 20% after the budget, per Bloomberg) and to developers: in late August, Sydney developer Bathla Group fell into insolvency owing A$3.3 billion after borrowing heavily from private credit funds. Long-time readers may experience déjà vu: we covered a near-identical episode back in 2019 in "Australia Housing Slump Prompts Collapse Of One Of The Nation's Largest Developers." The difference this time is that the lender of last resort for overlevered builders is private credit, and we all know how relaxed private credit has been about marks this year.Then It Got Worse. Much WorseWhen Bloomberg published, Cotality's national index had just dropped 0.9% in August, for a cumulative decline of 3.6% from the March peak. The data since then has been ugly, and the data revisions even uglier.A month ago, Goldman's Australia economics team (Andrew Boak and co.) reported that capital-city dwelling prices fell 1.2% in September after a downwardly revised 1.5% drop in August (originally reported as -1.1%), while July had also been revised from -0.9% to -1.5%. You can probably guess what happened next. In its note out this morning in Sydney, titled "Australia: Cotality House Prices: Large price declines continue", Goldman writes:"Australian capital-city dwelling prices fell 1.4%mom in October, following a downwardly revised 1.5%mom fall in September (originally reported: -1.2%mom). Prices are now 8.1% below their March 2026 peak, to be around May 2025 levels. Prices declined most across the previously more resilient mid-sized capital cities, with the largest declines in Brisbane and Perth."That's four straight months of drops of 1.4% or more, and every one of the previous three got revised lower after the fact. Annual growth in capital-city prices has swung from +7.7% in May to -4.8% y/y in October. Here is the bank's chart of each monthly vintage, which says all you need to know about how reliable the "first print" has been:The downturn has also gone from a luxury problem to everyone's problem. Back in early September, Goldman noted that 93% of capital-city suburbs had recorded a decline over the prior three months, up from 46% over March-May, quoting Cotality: "what started as a more concentrated easing across higher-value segments has now become a much more generalised softening." In October the previously bulletproof mid-sized capitals got hit hardest again: Brisbane fell 2.0% m/m (its fourth straight drop of 1.8% or more) and Perth 1.7%, with both cities' once-spectacular annual gains (18.2% and 24.4% in May) now almost gone, at +0.4% and +3.9% y/y. Sydney fell another 1.6% and is now down 9.4% y/y, Melbourne is down 7.6% y/y, and only Darwin (+0.6%) and Hobart (+0.5%) managed to rise.Seven months of declines have taken capital-city prices back to around May 2025 levels. In other words, the 2026 boom has been fully erased, and prices are now closer to the next line on Goldman's chart (a 10% fall takes prices back to mid-2024) than to the peak. At this pace, maybe two more prints get them there.Volumes are, if anything, worse than prices. Cotality's latest chart pack showed an estimated 39,747 homes sold nationally in September, down 20.9% from a year earlier, with selling times blowing out to more than five weeks. In mid-October, just 1,423 homes went to auction across the combined capitals in a week, 45.8% fewer than the same week a year ago. And sellers are now paying up to get out: per today's Cotality release, "median time on market, at 39 days, is the highest since August 2020, while vendor discounting, at 4.7%, is the largest since May 2019." Even the one part of the market that was supposed to stay tight is cracking: the rental vacancy rate rose to 2.3%, close to its decade average of 2.4% (it was a record low 1.5% in February), while rents rose just 0.9% over three months, the smallest gain since January 2025.Cotality also offered what may be the single most important sentence for anyone trying to figure out how deep this goes:"With household debt at high levels, borrowers are far more sensitive to interest rates compared with almost fifteen years ago when interest rates were previously this high."Hiking Into The SlumpWhich brings us to the RBA. After cutting three times in 2025 to 3.60%, the central bank reversed course in February and hasn't stopped: hikes on Feb 3, Mar 17, May 5 and Sep 29 took the cash rate to 4.60%, fully undoing 2025's easing and then some. Tuesday's widely expected move to 4.85% would push the rate above the 4.75% peak of 2010-11 and to the highest level since the financial crisis.The bond market noticed early. On the same day that Bloomberg's housing feature dropped, Australian 10Y yields hit a 15-year high.Australia 10-Year Bond Yield Rises to Highest Since 2011 https://t.co/GLLXT1fSYm— zerohedge (@zerohedge) September 1, 2026 The problem for the RBA is that inflation, which the IMF warned back in April would be among the highest in the developed world, keeps proving it right. Last week's Q3 CPI showed trimmed mean inflation of 1.00% q/q (3.66% y/y), "materially above" the RBA's August forecast of 0.83%, while monthly headline CPI hit 4.3% y/y, driven by a 9.4% m/m jump in fuel prices. As Goldman noted, the print "reinforces our expectation of a 25bp RBA rate rise to 4.85% at next Tuesday's November meeting" (available to pro subs, see "Australia: CPI: Underlying inflation increases +1.0%qoq").And the RBA has made no secret of where its priorities lie. In September, Deputy Governor Andrew Hauser told ABC that "people are furious about inflation... and what they want us to do is our job and bring inflation down." On housing he was remarkably relaxed: prices had fallen "a bit," but "house prices are still 3% higher than they were a year ago, and nearly 50% higher than they were at the beginning of this decade," and "a supply crisis" creates a "floor to house prices." (Capital-city prices are now 4.8% lower than a year ago, so that particular argument has already expired.) At the September 29 hike, Governor Bullock, per Goldman, "placed little focus on arguments which might have supported" a hold, "for example, the weakening housing market."Last week's Senate testimony was more of the same. Bullock said "the labour market seems a little tighter than we previously judged" and that the NAIRU is "probably above where the unemployment rate is at the moment" (translation: expect more hikes, not fewer). The hedge funds got the message. Here is Goldman's AUD rates desk in its Oct 28 market update (available to pro subs):"Immediately after CPI, there was strong interest from hedge funds to add to their November RBA shorts with the meeting climbing from 15.5 to 22.5bp of hikes priced... the front end bid shifted out into the February 2027 meeting which is now priced at a 50/50 chance of another hike post November... With this increased hawkish intensity, it feels the RBA is unlikely to let up in its tightening campaign until it sees clear evidence of a meaningful slowdown in the hard activity data."Here's why that matters more in Australia than almost anywhere else: fewer than 5% of Australian mortgages are on fixed terms, according to the RBA (as Bloomberg noted). Unlike in the US, where homebuyers typically take out 30-year fixed mortgages, every hike lands on Australian household budgets within weeks. Ask Chris Hanna, the 33-year-old Sydney investor Bloomberg profiled with a roughly A$6.5 million portfolio of four properties, who said another quarter-point hike would cost him "an extra couple of thousand dollars a month" and who is now thinking about selling one or two homes instead of buying a fifth. Multiply him by a few hundred thousand leveraged investors who just lost their negative gearing on future purchases, and you probably get September's auction volumes.Chasing The FloorThe most telling chart in this story may be the one tracking the forecasts. Before September, Goldman expected a 5% peak-to-trough decline in capital-city prices. Then, on September 3, it doubled the call:"The RBA's policy trade-off has become more difficult over the past month, as a deeper housing downturn has coincided with a still-resilient economy and a much firmer-than-expected July CPI print... We now expect house prices to fall by a historically large 9% peak-to-trough (GS prior: -5%), prompting us to lower our growth and labour market forecasts."- Goldman Sachs, "Australia & NZ Views: RBA To Tighten Into Deeper Housing Drag" Prices blew through most of that within two months (they are now down 8.1%). So last Wednesday, after the CPI print, the bank cut again: "we now forecast a larger peak-to-trough fall in house prices of 12% (prior: 9%), slower 2027 GDP growth of 1.6% (prior: 1.8%) and a higher unemployment rate peak of 4.9% by end-2027." It also pushed back the start of RBA easing to 4Q 2027. Westpac, meanwhile, now sees prices falling just over 10% peak-to-trough, which it says would be the largest decline since national price measures began in 1980 (with Sydney seen down 12% this year alone). "That risk is crystallising with turnover already down 20% and prices off 8%," wrote Westpac's Matthew Hassan.Notice a pattern? The forecasts keep moving to where the prices are going, a month or two late. Now, to be fair, there's a bull case, and AMP's Shane Oliver made it to Bloomberg: prices "keep falling into the June quarter," the RBA starts "making noises about potentially cutting interest rates through the second half of next year," and that sets up "some sort of rebound in property prices through 2027 and 2028." It's also worth remembering that the last time a big Aussie bank turned this bearish, in 2022, CBA called for a 15% drop, and the actual drawdown stopped well short of that (it's visible in Goldman's chart above) before the RBA pivoted and the boom resumed.The difference this time? In 2022-23 the RBA was hiking into a market where investors still had their tax breaks and inflation was about to roll over. In 2026, the investor bid has been legislated away, oil is still elevated thanks to the Iran war, and the RBA itself keeps telling anyone who will listen that inflation will be higher than it forecast. CommBank's Belinda Allen, who also expects 4.85% on Tuesday, put it bluntly: "the RBA has picked a side and is leaning into the fight."Meanwhile the banks are already fighting over scraps. According to Goldman's Sydney futures desk, CBA just launched a mortgage rewards program, including tokens for phone bills and travel, "as the country's lenders vie for a dwindling pool of customers amid the fastest housing slump in a generation." Free phone credit with your jumbo variable-rate mortgage: surely that will stem the tide.Catastrophic? Ask Anyone Holding 60% Of Their Wealth In BricksSo is "catastrophic" really on the table? Maybe not tomorrow, but for a country where property is the household balance sheet, the banking system's main asset and the government's favorite policy lever, a 12% decline would be bad enough. The transmission is unusually direct: variable-rate mortgages, a central bank that has explicitly declined to weigh housing, falling turnover that hits stamp-duty revenue and construction, and a private-credit-funded developer sector that is already cracking. Even the RBA's chief economist Sarah Hunter acknowledged in September that falling prices would weigh on the economy through lower turnover, wealth effects and construction activity, before adding that the RBA "wouldn't expect right now to see a recession or anything like that in the economy." Which is probably what every central bank says right up until it does.As Bloomberg noted, "there are few recent examples of countries trying to tackle overheated housing markets without seeing a sustained slump": China is five years into a property crisis, New Zealand's boom turned into a prolonged downturn, and a 20% plunge in Canadian home prices still hasn't fixed affordability there. Australia is now trying to deflate one of the frothiest housing markets on the planet while hiking rates into a stagflationary energy shock. Our bet: Goldman's -12% gets revised again before this is over, and the "supply crisis floor" Hauser described in September will prove about as durable as his "prices are still 3% higher than a year ago" argument did.Then again, as one Castle Hill seller told Bloomberg after slashing his asking price by A$300,000-A$400,000 to sell to the only bidder who showed up: "We decided to take the money and run." Probably good advice. The RBA decides on Tuesday at 2:30pm AEDT (10:30pm ET Monday), with the latest house price print already in hand. We doubt it changes their mind.Much more in the full Goldman Sachs "Australia & NZ Views: RBA To Tighten Into Deeper Housing Drag," "Australia: CPI: Underlying inflation increases +1.0%qoq" and "Cotality House Prices: Price falls broaden further in September" notes, all available to pro subs. Tyler Durden Sun, 11/01/2026 - 21:15

America Begs For Speed, Gets Bureaucracy: Thiel-Backed Nuclear Enrichment Project Told To Wait As Orano Misses Deadlines Two recently published letters from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) display a painfully large gap in the sense of urgency felt by America's two newest uranium enrichment projects.✅ We’ve accepted for review General Matter’s application to build and operate a uranium enrichment facility in Kentucky, a step toward reducing reliance on foreign enrichment. Our review is underway to ensure it meets all requirements. https://t.co/TtHsodmwW3 https://t.co/0EDeeUrI21— NRC (@NRCgov) October 29, 2026On October 29, the NRC published its acceptance of General Matters' new license application for its uranium enrichment plant in Paducah, Kentucky. In the same week, the NRC also published the long list of failures from Orano's Project IKE enrichment plant planned for Oak Ridge, Tennessee.The American company was begging to go faster and was told to be patient, while the French company was given an open field and decided to drop the ball."Best I can do is 18 months"General Matter submitted their license request for a new uranium enrichment facility at the end of September. The company asked for an accelerated NRC review, which means they were looking for a license decision to be returned to them in 12 months, compared to the standard timeline of 18 months.The NRC praised "the quality and completeness of the application" and said General Matter's early engagement let staff accept it in "approximately half the timeframe typically allotted for an acceptance review."Despite the application's quality, the NRC refused to open the fast lane.Instead of blaming the company, though, the NRC actually blamed their own shortcomings for not committing to the faster timeline…"Given the anticipated increase in the workload and associated resource constraints, the NRC staff cannot commit at this time to a schedule shorter than the estimated April 2028 completion date,"It's not a complete loss. The NRC also stated in the letter that if the company "maintains this strong level of engagement, supplies timely and complete information, and NRC resources are available," staff will "consider opportunities to expedite portions of the review."Translation: We will go as fast as you let us.General Matter was incubated at Peter Thiel's Founders Fund and is run by Scott Nolan, an early SpaceX engineer. The company claims it will use its own proprietary process on DOE land at the old Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant, the last fully U.S.-owned enrichment plant until it closed in 2013.When we covered its Ex-Im Bank backing in March, the company had "yet to make any serious progress" at Paducah. Compared to earlier this year, the company now has multiple site works underway, including cleared land and utility installation.Driving slow in the fast laneOrano, the French state-backed enrichment giant, got everything America’s General Matter asked for.In May 2026, the NRC published an accelerated review timeline for the Project IKE facility planned for Tennessee, “assuming high-quality and timely inputs”. The review was expected to be completed in April 2027.With the U.S. commercial nuclear fleet importing 26% of its uranium enrichment needs from Russia...one would think there would be a sense of urgency to construct domestic enrichment capacity as quickly as possible to remove the Russian dependency...Apparently, Orano isn't feeling the pressure. The “timely inputs” requested by the NRC either failed to be of high quality or have failed to show up at all.One set of the NRC's requests for additional information were expected by August. As of last week, Orano had provided "final responses to only a portion" of them.The NRC listed nine technical areas with neither a final response, or even a draft, including topics concerning fire and chemical safety, and site geology. The federal regulator also flagged Orano's structural design criteria as a “high-impact technical issue” that has actually been a problem area since the beginning of the application process.One of the biggest opportunities for shortening the license review timeline was supposed to be Project IKE's similarity to Eagle Rock. Eagle Rock was a planned enrichment facility that made it through the NRC licensing process in the 2010s. Orano claimed their new facility planned for Tennessee was extremely similar to Eagle Rock and should enable the NRC to abbreviate some of the data reviews.Nope.After waiting long enough, the NRC stated “the crosswalk was not provided” to explain the similarities and differences between the two projects. The presenting of the crosswalk data wouldn't have mattered, as NRC staff have since found “limited similarities” anyway.By mid-October, Orano had asked for more time and is now not expected to submit answers to outstanding questions until December, over three months late. The NRC accordingly moved its license decision target to June 2027, two months to the right from the original target.The NRC also provided further warning that if the answers are incomplete or late, “the staff may assign an 18-month review schedule.”Perhaps the most frustrating part of this scenario is just how much American taxpayer money France’s Orano was happy to take without putting in the effort. The company was awarded $900 million by the DOE in January 2026 to build out new low-enriched uranium (LEU) enrichment capacity in the U.S.Our readers might additionally remember, in September, when we covered commentary from DOE officials that were pushing enrichment companies to build capacity as fast as possible.“Washington is ​urging the companies who enrich ⁠the uranium to fuel nuclear plants, including Orano of France, and US companies, Centrus and General Matter, to develop enrichment capacity as quickly as possible, said Michael Goff, US principal deputy assistant ​secretary at the Department of Energy.”The French have responded by dragging their feet and kicking the timeline to the right before construction even starts.We wonder what Centrus and General Matter could each do with an additional $450 million… Tyler Durden Sun, 11/01/2026 - 20:25

Radiant Wins First-Ever DOE OK For Full-Power Microreactor As Nuclear Stocks Crash To Multi-Year Lows For the first time ever, Washington has signed off on a commercial nuclear microreactor running at full power. On Wall Street, nobody seems to care.On Thursday, the Department of Energy approved the Documented Safety Analysis (DSA) for LA-based Radiant's Kaleidos, a 1-megawatt, truck-transportable reactor that is now sitting inside the DOME test bed at Idaho National Laboratory. According to the company, it is the only microreactor design to secure DOE safety approval covering operation at power, as opposed to the zero-power criticality tests that every other entrant in the DOE pilot program has run so far.And yet the stocks most levered to the small modular reactor story are trading like the industry is going out of business: Oklo (OKLO) closed Friday at $25.25, down 86% from its October 2025 peak and at its lowest since April 2025, while NuScale (SMR) is down 89% and sitting at a price last seen in April 2024.Regular readers know we have been tracking the microreactor buildout since well before it was a meme (and long before it stopped being one), so let's take a closer look at what Radiant actually got, where the rest of the pack stands, and why the market has decided none of it matters, at least for now.What Radiant Actually WonThe DSA approval is the step that comes after DOE signed off on Radiant's preliminary safety analysis back in February. With it in hand, Radiant moves into DOE's Readiness Review, which will check whether the reactor and the crew operating it are ready to go nuclear. Once that is done, Radiant fuels Kaleidos and kicks off a five-phase test campaign at the National Reactor Innovation Center's DOME facility.The campaign goes from first criticality through progressively higher power, and ends with at least 150 hours of continuous full-power operation with no operator intervention. Radiant also plans to run the same unit for 60 effective full-power days over several months, using essentially the same design and custom fuel that customers will get. DOE's acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Reactors Chimi Zacot called it "another important step forward in President Trump's vision for an American nuclear renaissance."Which, to be fair, is a meaningful upgrade from what we have seen so far. As we covered in "The Rebirth Of America's Nuclear Industry" (Jun 5) and then in "Four By The Fourth", Antares, Valar Atomics, Deployable Energy and Aalo all hit criticality at INL ahead of Trump's July 4 deadline, and Oklo's Groves test reactor in Texas followed on August 5. But those were zero-power demonstrations: proof the physics works, with nothing plugged into the other end. Kaleidos is being cleared to actually make power, for weeks at a time.The commercial pipeline behind the box is also starting to look real:Army / DIU: a binding agreement worth up to $750 million for 15 Kaleidos units under the Army's Janus program (Aug 26), one of the largest awards DIU has ever made.Air Force / DIU: selected in April to develop and operate a microreactor at Buckley Space Force Base in Colorado, with first commercial units to Buckley and Fort Benning in 2028.Navy: picked on October 20 to deploy Kaleidos at Naval Weapons Station Crane in Indiana, making Radiant the only nuclear company working with all three branches.Equinix: a commercial agreement for 20 units, the data center angle that matters most for the AI power trade.Factory production is slated for Radiant's 300,000-square-foot R-50 campus in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, which will also handle fueling, refueling and spent-fuel storage, so that customer sites never store spent fuel. Each unit runs up to five years between refuelings, needs no cooling water and has a 20-year design life. In other words, this is the closest thing yet to the plug-and-play "energy in a box" that the behind-the-meter crowd has been promising for years.We have, of course, been on this story for a while: we flagged the Army's plan to put nuclear microreactors on its bases by 2028 a year ago this week, declared that "The Microreactor Race Is On" in March, and noted in August that Kaleidos had locked up its fuel supply into the 2030s. And when the Pentagon first opened the microreactor door to the SMR names back in April 2025, we summed up the market's mood in one word:OKLO SELECTED BY THE US DOD AS ONE OF THE COMPANIES ELIGIBLE TO PROVIDE MICROREACTOR POWER SYSTEMS TO MILITARY BASESjackpot— zerohedge (@zerohedge) April 10, 2025 Oklo traded in the low $20s back then. It is at $25 now, after a round trip to $174. Some jackpot.Meanwhile, In The Other Nuclear Market...So with reactors going critical, the military writing checks and DOE finally approving full-power runs, the stocks must be ripping?Well, no. October was brutal. From October 1 to October 30, Oklo lost 30%, NuScale 28%, NANO Nuclear (NNE) 26% and Centrus (LEU) 26%, while the S&P 500 slipped about 1%. The only name in the sector that held up was Constellation (CEG), which has the small advantage of owning reactors that already exist and sell power to Google.Even X-energy (XE), the "safe" SMR IPO of April, is down 70% from its post-debut high and trading near its lows. As for the multi-year lows: NuScale is at levels last seen in April 2024, NANO Nuclear in September 2024, Oklo in April 2025 and Centrus in May 2025. That's 12 months of nuclear-renaissance headlines erased, and in NuScale's case closer to 30.What changed?Mostly rates. The big break came on October 14, when the hotter-than-expected September CPI report pushed the 10-year Treasury yield to 5.26%; Oklo fell 8.6% that day and NuScale roughly 10%, per TIKR. For companies whose first meaningful revenue is years away, the math is brutal. UBS, which cut its Oklo target to $41 in late September, values the company on year-end 2034 EBITDA discounted back 6.5 years at Oklo's cost of capital. BofA's $80 price objective (still a Buy) is built on a DCF that assumes a 4.6% risk-free rate. The 10-year has spent most of October well above that (it's a little lower now, but not by much).Put differently, every 25bps on the long end takes a visible bite out of a valuation that lives almost entirely in the 2030s.Then came the downgrade parade. Over the span of a few days around October 20-22, Piper Sandler cut Oklo to $49 from $55, Barclays to $59 from $76 (and moved NuScale to Underweight on the lack of binding contracts), Citi chopped Oklo to $33 from $57.50 while slapping a $4 target on NuScale with a Sell, and Truist slashed its target to $31 from $51. Citi pinned the weakness on higher rates, policy uncertainty and rising costs; for good measure, TD Cowen then initiated Oklo at Hold with a $26 target, which the stock promptly hit. Street targets now range from $26 to $80, which is either a screaming buy signal, or a reminder that price targets tend to follow price, and not the other way around.The dilution math doesn't help either: Oklo's share count is up 26%, with about $3 billion in cash and marketable securities as of June 30 against an estimated $6.5 billion of cash burn through 2030, according to TIKR's tally of consensus. NuScale, for its part, just launched a fresh $750 million at-the-market program.Goldman: "Time To Reengage?" ... One Week Too EarlyWhich brings us to the sell side, and a small case study in timing.On October 6, the day nuclear stocks were enjoying a burst of good news (a $4 billion DOE loan for Vistra, $120 billion for reactors in the US-Korea investment package and Alphabet's 20-year PPA with Constellation), Goldman's Nelson Armbrust noted that positioning in the bank's Uranium basket (GSXURANI) was "at the lows," and asked whether it was "time to reengage?"A day later, Goldman's Marquee team doubled down in its Overlay note, "The Nuclear Disconnect" (available to pro subs), with equity derivatives salesman Cullen Morgan writing that while nuclear investment keeps accelerating, positioning in uranium-related equities remains near the low end of recent ranges. The chart was hard to argue with: the GS long/short crowding ratio for the uranium basket had collapsed from about 3.6 in early 2025 to around 1.4, near two-year lows.Goldman's argument was that the market was ignoring the fundamental backdrop, which it illustrated by showing its Data Center Equipment basket up more than 3x since October 2024, and its broad AI basket roughly doubling, while the Power Up America basket lagged far behind.The bank's preferred expressions were a GSXURANI November 107.5%/125% call spread and a URA Nov-26 45/50 call spread (with URA at $40.19 at the time). URA closed Friday at $33.73, which leaves the lower strike roughly 33% out of the money with three weeks to go. Positioning, it turns out, can always get lower.Goldman's own fundamental analysts were more cautious. In his October 12 "Nuclear Nuggets" note (also available to pro subs), GS utilities and clean tech analyst Brian Lee showed that the bank's nuclear coverage had underperformed the S&P 500 by 24% over the prior quarter, with short interest rising in both SMR and OKLO over the prior month; and by October 22, Lee's team picked Oklo as Clean Tech's weakest mid/large-cap performer of the month in Goldman's Energy, Utilities & Mining Pulse.We went through much of this in last week's "Everyone Wants Nuclear Power, Nobody Wants Nuclear Stocks", where the paradox was that utilities and hyperscalers are scrambling for every nuclear megawatt they can uprate or restart, while the equity market dumps anything that won't generate power before the end of the decade.Everyone Wants Nuclear Power, Nobody Wants Nuclear Stocks: Inside The Great Uprate Rush https://t.co/EVGf2mQPJl— zerohedge (@zerohedge) October 26, 2026 Radiant's approval sharpens that split. The tech is clearly moving: ironically, the most important microreactor milestone of the year belongs to a private company, and public investors can't buy it.Where The Listed Names Actually StandFor the public names, the regulatory clock is still measured in years:Oklo: Groves went critical in August, and DOE approved the preliminary safety analysis for the first Aurora powerhouse at INL in June, but Aurora's commercial debut is still targeted for 2028. As BofA put it after the company's analyst day, Groves is a test reactor and a "useful execution reference point" rather than validation of the power business. Oklo also lost its PJM interconnection queue fight at FERC in late September.NANO Nuclear: the NRC accepted the KRONOS construction permit application in May, with the agency's schedule pointing to a final safety evaluation around September 2027 and construction starting in the second half of 2027. NANO also just brought in Hyundai Engineering on the Illinois build.NuScale: still the only SMR with an NRC design certification, and still without the kind of binding commercial order that would let Barclays and Citi stop calling it a Sell.Meanwhile, Radiant aims to start delivering reactors to the military in 2028 and to have 15 units in the Army's hands by 2030. If the DOME campaign goes as planned, the first company to run a commercial microreactor at full power in the US may well be one that isn't public, and won't be swept up in whatever happens to the 10-year next.Next up: Oklo and NuScale both report Q3 results this week, with consensus expecting Oklo to book roughly $99,000 in quarterly revenue. That's not a typo.The Physics Is Done Arguing; The Discount Rate Isn'tSo who's right: the engineers, or the market?Probably both, just on different clocks. The case for modular nuclear has never been stronger, and Radiant's approval is the clearest sign yet that the regulatory machine Trump rebuilt last year is actually producing hardware on schedule. With the grid queue now measured in years, and data centers in PJM about to be told to bring their own power, small reactors sitting behind the meter are probably the long-term answer, as we have said many times before.But the market isn't paying for 2035 megawatts with a 10-year north of 5%, especially from companies that will need to raise several billion more before they get there. As long as long-end yields keep doing what they have been doing (and with Warsh's Fed and the global bond rout, there is little reason to expect relief), the nuclear trade will remain a bet on the term premium as much as on fission. Goldman's "time to reengage" call may well end up being right; it was just early by a few hundred basis points of drawdown.Then again, there is something fitting about a reactor that needs 150 hours of uninterrupted full power to prove itself. The nuclear stocks will need about the same from the bond market.Much more in the full Goldman "The Nuclear Disconnect" Overlay and the "Nuclear Nuggets" note, both available to pro subs. Tyler Durden Sun, 11/01/2026 - 19:10

"The Pope Doesn't Take Sides": Should A Foreign Head Of State Be Able To Vote In United States Elections? Authored by Jonathan Turley via Jonathan Turley,"So, the Pope doesn't take sides. Prevost has another opinion, but we won't do that now."That funny quip from Pope Leo XIV (born Robert Prevost) referred to the historic game in Rome when the Villanova and Notre Dame basketball teams play each other.However, a story this week raised a different question of when the Pope, as opposed to Prevost, can "take sides."This month, American-born Pope Leo XIV became the first pope ever to vote in a U.S. election.A longtime Chicago native, the Pope mailed an absentee ballot to Will County, and the clerk's office confirmed to Fox News Digital that "Robert Prevost is on the list of individuals who requested a Vote by Mail ballot." There is no question that the Pope can vote in the Holy See. Indeed, he is the ultimate and final vote in the Vatican, but can he actually vote in Illinois races (including the governor's race involving incumbent Democrat J.B. Pritzker)? The answer appears to be yes, but it raises some novel questions.Now, as a threshold matter, I want to shed some bias. I was raised Catholic in Chicago. No, that is not the bias. There is that lingering conflict with the Pope coming out as a White Sox fan. Many of us on the North Side hoped for a conversion to restore our faith in papal infallibility. However, he has remained entrenched in his South Side allegiance.This column rises above that historic rivalry and does not suggest that White Sox fans can be challenged at the polls. (Besides, I previously explained that the Pope is a Cubs fan without knowing it.)Rather, what surprised me was that the head of a foreign state could vote in U.S. elections. The Vatican is a distinct nation with a diplomatic corps, a court system, a local government, and even a military in the form of the legendary Swiss Guards.The Holy See Press Office declared, "Pope Leo XIV has exercised his right to vote as a United States citizen whenever he was eligible to do so. The Holy See Press Office confirms that, in keeping with this long-standing practice of civic participation, he has submitted his mail-in ballot in Chicago."The Holy See maintains that Pope Leo retains his status as a U.S. citizen while serving as the head of a foreign nation. There is support for this position.The State Department has maintained that dual citizens do not have to choose between their countries, though it does not expect them to serve as the head of another country."U.S. dual nationals owe allegiance to both the United States and the foreign country (or countries, if they are nationals of more than one). They are required to obey the laws of both countries, and either country has the right to enforce its laws. Claims of other countries upon U.S. dual-nationals may result in conflicting obligations under the laws of each country. U.S. dual nationals may also face restrictions in the U.S. consular protections available to U.S. nationals abroad, particularly in the country of their other nationality."Notably, the State Department requires dual citizens to use a U.S. passport to enter the country. Does that mean that, when traveling as head of state, Pope Leo has to use a U.S. passport? Unlikely, but intriguing.It strikes me as odd that a person can lead another country and still vote in U.S. elections. With all of those worried about Russian interference in elections, imagine if Putin could actually vote in U.S. elections. Obviously, Pope Leo is greatly loved and represents someone whose values are aligned with this country. Yet, he is also the head of state of a foreign nation.Under the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA), military personnel and citizens abroad are allowed to vote in U.S. elections. It is no longer considered an absentee vote requiring an excuse but simply a mail-in ballot.The question is whether this right should be suspended when you assume a position in a foreign nation, let alone the head of such a nation. Dual citizenship has long been debated over the difficult questions raised by nations with opposing values and interests. However, being the head of a foreign government with potentially opposing interests and actions to the United States creates a curious status.It turns out that when Gov. Pritzker met with the Pope last year, he was actually meeting with a constituent and voter.I am most surprised that the Vatican does not have a policy against such voting, though this is admittedly unprecedented. I would think that the head of the Catholic faith and the head of a foreign government would have a single national citizenship for the Holy See. All popes are selected from the global faithful by the College of Cardinals and thus have national citizenship with other countries.In assuming their positions, the cardinals "pledge and swear, as individuals and as a group, to observe faithfully and scrupulously the prescriptions contained in the Apostolic Constitution." They also reaffirm that they are not subject to countervailing allegiances or pressures from outside of the College: "And never to lend support or favour to any interference, opposition or any other form of intervention, whereby secular authorities of whatever order and degree or any group of people or individuals might wish to intervene in the election of the Roman Pontiff."However, it is fascinating that, once elected, Popes do not shed that status upon assuming the head of the Holy See.It is an uncomfortable question since it also raises whether the head of a foreign government should have dual citizenship. Most people were legitimately thrilled (including myself) by the first American Pope and can view this as an unlikely "one-off." However, it could just as easily happen with another nation and a dual citizen.At the risk of my own excommunication, it seems a worthy question for discussion, even though I doubt any politicians would relish such a debate. For his part, Pope Leo stated before the Villanova-Notre Dame game that the Pope will not take sides in the U.S. elections, but Robert Prevost will.Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the New York Times best-selling author of "Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution." Tyler Durden Sun, 11/01/2026 - 17:55

Woman Dies After Following Medical Advice Provided By ChatGPT Authored by Bryan Hyde via American Greatness,The family of a 31-year-old Seattle woman who died from a catastrophic seizure is suing OpenAI after the woman followed medical advice from ChatGPT urging her to stop taking her epilepsy medication.The Daily Wire reports that Bowen Wan had been consulting ChatGPT in the weeks leading up to her death about ways to wean herself off her medication without her doctors' knowledge.The family of a 31-year-old Seattle woman is suing OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, alleging ChatGPT provided dangerous medical advice and coached her through a rapid taper off an anti-seizure medication before she died earlier this year. https://t.co/1YQIVs5hot— KIRO 7 (@KIRO7Seattle) October 28, 2026Wan had lived with epilepsy for more than a decade and successfully managed it with prescription medication.However, after becoming concerned about side effects, she turned to ChatGPT-4o for advice on weaning herself off the drugs, according to CNET.The New York Times reports that Wan's chat logs show that ChatGPT provided a week-by-week schedule to reduce her 400-milligram daily dose down to zero.The lawsuit alleges that when Wan expressed distrust of her doctors, the chatbot validated her, and further praised her for hiding a tapering plan from her primary care provider, labeling it a "solid avoidance strategy".According to The Daily Wire, days before her death, she appeared to have a seizure while on the phone with her father and she later asked the bot, "Maybe it's not a major issue?"The bot's response was, "There's no need to worry too much about your health."Wan died alone in her Seattle apartment in February 2026 and the official cause of death was Sudden Unexpected Death in Epilepsy (SUDEP).The lawsuit naming OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman alleges that the company bypassed built-in safety guardrails and failed to prevent the AI from dispensing unlicensed, hazardous medical instructions, according to KIRO.OpenAI spokesman Drew Pusateri called the situation "heartbreaking" and noted, "While ChatGPT is not a substitute for medical care, we believe AI can play a role in helping people make sense of health information, navigate insurance and complex health care systems, and prepare for appointments with medical professionals."OpenAI and other tech firms are facing concurrent lawsuits involving users who suffered severe psychological dependency or died by suicide after extended, unrestricted interactions with AI chatbots. Tyler Durden Sun, 11/01/2026 - 17:05

'Despicable Betrayal!','Sold Her Soul!': Haley Stevens' Staff Quits, Dems Melt Down After She Endorses Republican In Michigan Update (1335ET): Democrats are having a meltdown after Rep. Haley Stevens flipped and endorsed Republican Mike Rogers for a coveted Michigan Senate seat - appearing with him on Sunday at a black church in Detroit ahead of midterms, just two days away.  Mike Rogers and former Democratic Senate candidate Haley Stevens (photo via Fox2 Detroit) According to RawStory, Haley's congressional staff began resigning 'almost immediately,' and "observers online suggested she "sold her soul" for power."Stevens appeared with Rogers, a former GOP congressman endorsed by President Donald Trump, at a Sunday morning service at Perfecting Church in Detroit, according to Bridge Michigan. Shortly afterward, Detroit News Washington correspondent Melissa Nann Burke reported that “Haley Steven’s official staff including her longtime chief are resigning from her office this morning, per spox.”HuffPost senior politics reporter Igor Bobic posted an automatic email reply from Stevens’ communications director: “Hello, as of November 1st I am no longer with the Office of Congresswoman Haley Stevens.” -RawStoryMeanwhile, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) called it a "despicable beytrayal from Rep. Stevens."This is a despicable betrayal from Rep. Stevens. Senate Democrats are united in our support for Abdul El-Sayed, because we know he will fight for the economic interests of working families in Michigan, unlike Mike Rogers, who is a tool of Donald Trump and billionaire donors.— Chuck Schumer (@chuckschumer) November 1, 2026 Except, Schumer's hands aren't exactly clean this election cycle (are they ever?)...This is insane! The man who delivered decoy Daniel J Sullivan's declaration of candidacy form to the Alaska Division of Elections is the same “Alan” from “Anchorage” appearing in Chuck Schumer’s PAC ads for Mary Peltola. Pretty clear what's going on & that Schumer & Pelota did it https://t.co/eDSVdndf6x— Izengabe (@Izengabe_) October 31, 2026 ***After losing her party's Senate primary to Abdul El-Sayed in August, Rep. Haley Stevens has officially endorsed his Republican opponent Mike Rogers, attending Sunday church services with him in Detroit. The two were seen separately entering Perfecting Church, a prominent Black church in the city - an extremely unusual move for a sitting Democrat in the closing days of a race her party is fighting to hold. Election Day is Tuesday.Rogers sitting next to Stevens, Stevens’ fiancé Jason Turkish beside Rogers’ wife Kristi Rogers. pic.twitter.com/1J6rw1ewDF— Sam Robinson (@samueljrob) November 1, 2026 Stevens and El-Sayed had been scheduled to campaign together Sunday at a get-out-the-vote event at another Detroit church with Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC), which would have been their first joint public appearance in months, according to MS NOW. Stevens endorsed El-Sayed days after the primary, and they appeared together at a unity breakfast that month, but have not campaigned together since. Abdul El-Sayed (Photo by Finn Gomez/Getty Images) The plan went south after Stevens issued a statement calling on El-Sayed to condemn an anti-Israel ad from Rebellion PAC, an outside group not affiliated with his campaign, posted by Cenk Uygur - which blames high grocery prices on U.S. aid to Israel. New @RebellionPac ad dropping in Michigan. We have to suffer here at home, so Israel can get all its wars. That’s why they buy politicians like Mike Rogers. He promised to serve Israel “unconditionally,” but never made that promise to you. pic.twitter.com/mtgVOyNczg— Cenk Uygur (@cenkuygur) October 24, 2026 In response: I am endorsing Mike Rogers for the United States Senate today. pic.twitter.com/pQgfSBuhOJ— Haley Stevens (@HaleyforMI) November 1, 2026 Stevens wrote that the ad "did not invent its argument" and reflected El-Sayed's own rhetoric, and that he could begin his effort to remove money from politics "by getting Israel out of his explanation for everything Michigan cannot afford," MS NOW reported.On the eve of the eve of the eve of our BIG and important election, a unifying moment has arrived, our democratic nominee for U.S Senate disavows the Rebellion PAC ad made by Hasan Piker's uncle that claims Jews are responsible for America's economic woes. We have learned from... pic.twitter.com/y8BRiV9odX— Haley Stevens (@HaleyforMI) October 30, 2026El-Sayed responded, writing that Stevens "seems intent on relitigating a primary that ended three months ago." His campaign then asked Stevens to stay away from its events for the rest of the race, a Democratic source told MS NOW on condition of anonymity.pic.twitter.com/NEd1uijz11— Dr. Abdul El-Sayed (@AbdulElSayed) October 30, 2026After a Saturday rally in Sterling Heights, El-Sayed told MS NOW, "You guys love to play the 'condemn' game," adding that the ad "was not made by me, and I do not agree with the contents of that ad." Stevens answered in a statement that did not name him: "I was glad to see our senate nominee say he does not agree with the content of the vile Rebellion PAC ad which claimed Israel and Jews were to blame for the high costs of groceries."🚨 JUST NOW: Haley Stevens and Mike Rogers drop this truth nuke on Abdul El SayedSTEVENS: He said I'm not welcome in his campaign? You take the message. THAT'S WHAT ABDUL SAID.ROGERS: This is COURAGE in politics in America today...we're gonna change the direction. We've been… pic.twitter.com/I5mvCHkgL9— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) November 1, 2026 According to Newsweek, the ad repackages a spot from Uygur's failed 2024 presidential run. In response, El-Sayed campaign spokesperson Roxie Richner said it is "not affiliated in any way with the Abdul for Senate campaign" and that "no one speaks for Abdul but himself and his campaign." DNC chair Jaime Harrison said the ad "doesn't help him," and Uygur wrote on X that anyone who thinks it is antisemitic is "in a cult."This is a close, key race. According to a WDIV/Detroit News poll by the Glengariff Group, taken Oct. 19 to 22 among 600 likely voters, El-Sayed is sitting at at 51.4%, with a margin of error of 4 points. The Democrat's campaign has been under pressure on other fronts, as we reported when undercover video and when AIPAC pulled back. Tyler Durden Sun, 11/01/2026 - 16:20

Pokemon Card Mania Sparks Bubble Fear: "Just Doing A Crazy Bull Run" The hyperscaler and neocloud bubble has dominated the attention of traders and investors this fall as cracks emerge in the AI data center buildout craze. But a much smaller speculative bubble has emerged in Pokémon cards, echoing the Beanie Baby pump-and-dump craze of the late 1990s. A PSA 10 Aquapolis Crystal Lugia just sold for $360,000 again, tying the record from earlier this month; in August one sold for $148,511, per . New floor or the top?Follow us for more collectible news pic.twitter.com/BDysHzoZxu— Nerdcave’77 (@nerdcave77) November 1, 2026 "Facebook Marketplace is littered with people offloading under market. Sealed is going up 20-30% week over week of some generations. Card shows becoming much more frequent. Restocks happening consistently. Seems like market is just doing a crazy bull run, anyone worried about the drop off?" one Redditor recently wrote in the subreddit PokemonInvesting.A sealed Pokémon Yellow in PSA 10?! 🤯🎮 Don't miss this incredible piece of Pokémon history in our Pokémon 30th Anniversary Auction that closes tonight with Open Extended Bidding at 10pm ET: https://t.co/qjMNQ0Qq1lThis is the 1999 Game Boy Special Pikachu Edition, one of the… pic.twitter.com/6gYC0Ud5Im— Goldin (@GoldinCo) October 26, 2026 Pokémon card pricing and market analytics website CardTrack has created an index tracking the 100 most valuable cards, valued at $274,371 and up 161% since September 2021.Much like the stock market's "Fear & Greed" indicator, CardTrack captures a snapshot of investor sentiment, which has entered "Extreme Greed" territory."The 100 most valuable Pokémon cards aren't a fund you can buy ... but if you could, here's how the same money would have done against Bitcoin, gold and the stock market Sep 2021 → Nov 2026," the card-tracking website wrote on its site.Here are the biggest movers in the index.The index's top constituents.InvestingLive analyst Justin Low commented on the Pokémon craze:We are no longer just talking about people spending a few thousand dollars on nostalgia anymore. At these extravagant prices, collectibles are competing for the same pools of capital that could otherwise be sitting in stocks, crypto, watches, art or other alternative assets.In the current landscape, there is somewhat of an investment infrastructure forming around the hobby. Grading companies provide the necessary authentication and condition benchmarks, major auction platforms are playing a role in terms of improving price discovery, while vaulting services and online marketplaces make it easier for expensive collectibles to change hands without owners physically carrying millions of dollars worth of cardboard around.Low asks whether all this momentum in Pokémon card prices is a bubble.I would say parts of it definitely does draw some parallels to one. Record prices attract attention, and the attention then attracts new buyers and new buyers push prices higher and higher. We've seen that script play out one too many a time in traditional markets before.For context, baby boomers and young millennials remember the the Beanie Baby craze that inflated in the mid/late 1990s, peaked around 1998, and unraveled in 1999, just ahead of the Dot Com bust. That bubble turned $5 plush bears into perceived investments, while some consumers paid thousands of dollars for rare bears at the market's peak. Tyler Durden Sun, 11/01/2026 - 15:50

"No Workable Plan": Obama Judge Throws Out DOJ Bid To Halt Alaska Certification If 'Real' Sullivan Loses Is anyone surprised?A federal judge on Sunday threw out the Justice Department's lawsuit seeking to stop Alaska from certifying its U.S. Senate race if Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan loses. U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason, an Obama nominee, ruled in a 20-page order that the government lacks standing, writing that it "failed to establish the redressability prerequisite for Article III standing," CBS News reported.🚨 BREAKING: A Obama judge just TOSSED the DOJ's Alaska lawsuit over the FAKE Dan Sullivan, per APUNBELIEVABLE. They're even working on a SUNDAY to rig the election out here.Judge Gleason dismissed the suit, which tried to BLOCK certification of a Sen. Dan Sullivan loss if... pic.twitter.com/xdjzzbVrBY— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) November 1, 2026The department sued on Oct. 22, after Trump said he had ordered the case. It asked the court to bar Alaska from certifying any result "that may be impacted by voter confusion" and to make the state "preserve and segregate" ballots marked for Daniel J. Sullivan, a Petersburg retiree who shares the senator's name, Alaska Public Media reported. The idea was to investigate whether those voters meant to pick the incumbent.Gleason was sharpest on the segregation request, which the department pressed in a Friday filing. She wrote that "the United States provides no workable plan as to how it proposes to segregate ballots" cast for the second Sullivan. The state's lawyers had argued that ballots carry no voter names and are mixed in the box, so no such inquiry is possible, and that it would violate ballot secrecy.She added that the order would likely cause voter "confusion and consequent incentive to remain away from the polls." "Such late-breaking changes to the election rules are strongly disfavored," Gleason wrote, and the requests "certainly involve the time, place, and manner of Alaska's election," which the Constitution leaves to the states, per the AP.The department had amended its complaint on Oct. 29, adding a Supremacy Clause claim built on the National Voter Registration Act. Democracy Docket reported that Gleason also denied leave to amend again, finding another rewrite futile. A Justice Department spokesperson did not immediately respond to CBS, and Alaska Public Media said an appeal is likely.The dismissal does not end the federal criminal investigation into how Daniel J. Sullivan got on the ballot. The department has issued grand jury subpoenas, and no one has been charged, according to the AP. The probe follows a New York Times report, covered here, that Democratic operatives recruited Alaskans named Dan Sullivan; Mary Peltola's campaign denies any role. Gov. Mike Dunleavy has ordered a state investigation, and the feds have surged agents into Alaska, as we noted Friday.Sullivan, appearing on CNN's "State of the Union," said "I'm sure I'm going to lose a lot of votes to that trickery." Peltola said she is "not interested in tricking voters," per CBS.The suit was the Trump administration's pre-emptive bid to shape a count that was still two days away. Trump had vowed "powerful legal options" against the other Sullivan, who got 2.5% in the primary, and Attorney General Todd Blanche defended the case on CBS. Alaska's answer to the confusion argument was that voters in the ranked-choice race can rank both Sullivans, and election officials added identifiers to the ballot to tell them apart. Voting ends Tuesday... As Jonathan Turley wrote earlier, amid the constant chatter about 'saving democracy', Democratic party leaders appear to embrace these voter confusion tactics as harmless ("it's part of the process") or even humorous ("I think it's funny.")In his work "Politics and the English Language," George Orwell explains that "In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible." If so, the news this week took a truly Orwellian turn as Democrats rationalized or even praised the effort in Alaska to put a decoy "Dan Sullivan" on the ballot to confuse Alaskans and cause mistaken votes. Other Democratic politicians are entirely silent on the allegation that the campaign of Democratic candidate Mary Peltola engineered this grossly unethical tactic. The very same people running on "saving Democracy" are, once again, defending ballot manipulation designed to negate the votes of citizens.It is the ultimate expression of rage politics, excusing any act needed to achieve power.On NewsNation Now, Rep. Suhas Subramanyam (D-VA) went beyond many of his colleagues in saying that the Alaskan scandal shows precisely where all states, including Virginia, should go. When asked about the scandal, Subramanyam insisted that it showed how all states should embrace the widely criticized ranked-choice voting system. (Alaskans may finally reject the system this year). While asked about the use of a decoy candidate, Subramanyam bizarrely spun the question as third-party candidates - a bizarre claim since the fake Dan Sullivan has not campaigned, has never run for office, and is obviously on the ballot solely to confuse voters.Nevertheless, Subramanyam insisted, while he would not run a decoy, "I also don't have a ranked-choice voting system in Virginia. I wish I did, honestly. But, in Alaska, they have ranked-choice voting, and third-party candidates are very relevant. And so, if you recruited a third-party candidate who can take votes away from your opponent, that's part of the process, and that's just how it works in Alaska." Previously, Subramanyam also supported the most radical gerrymandering effort in the nation (which was later struck down as unlawful).Sen. Chris Murphy (D., Conn.) seemed to snowball as he tried to rationalize the move. He first attempted to blame it on one woman who was a "disgruntled former employee." When CNN host Kaitlan Collins noted that The New York Times was relying on a large number of sources in the Peltola campaign, Murphy said it wouldn't bother him at all to have decoys on his ballot because no one would be confused when voting. Of course, the entire reason you put another Dan Sullivan on the ballot is to confuse voters and cause citizens to throw away their votes on the wrong man. In a close election, that can easily make the difference in the outcome of the election. Murphy also praised the Peltola campaign and said he "trusts" them, despite the New York Times saying they actively sought to cause such voting errors.Chris Murphy WON'T condemn Mary Peltola's campaign for trying to confuse voters with a fake Dan Sullivan:CNN: Why would her campaign go recruit another Dan Sullivan to take votes away from him?MURPHY: "Well, uh, again, I haven't done my own research..." pic.twitter.com/7H82IRwjNn— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) October 29, 2026 In 2025, Murphy appeared on any cable show that would have him to declare that "those of us who believe that the threat to democracy is urgent" need to "act like it."Most Democratic leaders refused to say anything at all in the face of an open effort to nullify votes through candidate confusion.Pundits and party officials have dismissed the scandal as brass-knuckles politics or even as humorous. The head of Alaska's Democratic Party, Eric Croft, insisted that the sole consideration is whether it is a crime, not whether it is unethical: "I reread all of Alaska's statutes. I'm kind of a recovering attorney up here. And there is nothing, there's no legal issue to it. On your, you know, sort of dirty tricks thing, I think Alaskans have a different take there too."When pressed whether it is a good thing to try to confuse Alaskan voters and nullify their votes, Croft responded "No, I think it's funny."That knee-slapper involves a politician and campaign that allegedly lied to the public about their involvement. It involves a decoy who is also accused of lying when he said he had no interaction with third parties and did not enter the race to confuse voters. (Notably, the decoy, when asked by the Division of Elections how his name should appear on the ballot, reportedly asked to use "S" as a middle initial (like the senator) as opposed to his own initial of "J." ).One would think that this would be an easy question for candidates who insist that they are defenders of democracy. However, in 2024, Democrats moved to remove Trump and other Republicans from ballots while claiming to be protecting voters by denying them the choice of candidates. The fact that the voters gave Trump the popular vote and swept every swing state only magnified the hypocrisy of these Democratic leaders. Yet, some of the same figures are back at it again with efforts to manipulate balloting to confuse or nullify votes in the name of protecting democracy.Some of the same figures, such as Marc Elias, have reappeared in yet another election scandal. The Elias Law Group was named by the New York Times as involved in the controversy. Elias was a central figure in the Russian hoax as the campaign lawyer for Hillary Clinton. The Federal Election Commission (FEC) fined the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign for violating election rules in hiding the funding for the infamous Steele dossier. Before the election, Clinton officials denied any such involvement.In an age of rage, consistency, like decency, is a stranger to politics. 🚨 NOW: VP JD Vance GOES OFF on the Democrats' Alaska cheating scam to confuse voters into voting for a fake Dan Sullivan over GOP Sen. Dan Sullivan"If WE were running somebody whose name was Mary Peltola (D) in the state of Alaska, the media would be accusing us of ELECTION… pic.twitter.com/p9u6MlJhHZ— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) October 27, 2026 We are left again in that moment with lawyer Joseph Welch in the Army-McCarthy hearings in 1954: "Have you no shame, sir, at long last? Have you no shame?" The answer today is clear: No, but I have the votes. Tyler Durden Sun, 11/01/2026 - 14:37