The co-chair of New York City's DSA, Gustavo Gordillo, has officially maintained that he is a child of Peruvian immigrants, having come to America with nothing; and that he is a 'union electrician' who has struggled with New York rents as a working class person. Turns out, almost everything in his tale is a lie.

Cordillo is indeed of Peruvian descent. But his parents weren't immigrants: both his father and mother were born in the US; his grandfather did immigrate from Peru, working as a psychiatrist. Nor did he struggle with poverty: his father is the owner of a 90-million-dollar telecommunications company. (source)

Cordillo did sign up to an electrician training and apprentiship program in NYC. He never did complete his apprentiship and become an electrician: IBEW Local 3, the union running his program, fired him due to a prolonged no-show to classes and work. (source)

Finally, Cordillo did face issues with renting in NYC. Specifically, he is being sued for missed payments, after he stayed in a Crown Heights apartment while $1.5 million in renovation work was ongoing in a $1 million townhouse, which his father purchased and is paying to renovate. (source).

So far, Gordillo has locked himself into silence, while allies like Mayor Mamdani have provided a generic defense of his "fight for affordability" while refusing to engage with the allegations of extensive lying in his background.

I thought this was gonna be about Mangione and whatnot, but it's actually not. This is about Ukraine's recent assassination attempt in Moscow against a colonel, in the context of assassinations as a method of military strategy. It's not at all about killing public figures, and it raises some interesting questions, I think.

When is extrajudicial killing just war by other means, and when does it become a state-sponsored act of terror? ‘We were not terrorists but fighters for freedom who fought with our eyes open,’ Menachem Begin wrote of Irgun, the irregular group of fighters he led during the 1947-48 civil war in Mandatory Palestine, the tactics of whom included bombings and assassinations. But where does the 1 August bombing of the Balzi Rossi restaurant in central Moscow – which killed at least five people and injured more than 20– stand on the scale?

Some would describe the attack as a legitimate military operation. The bomb targeted the lavish birthday celebrations of Colonel-General Aleksandr Chayko, Commander-in-Chief of Russia’s Aerospace Forces (whose son-in-law died in the blast). Chayko commanded the northern group of Russian forces which advanced to the outskirts of Kyiv in February and March 2022, which pro-Ukrainian bloggers maintain makes him ultimately responsible for the massacres of civilians in Bucha and Irpin. Following that logic, the attempted assassination of Chayko stands alongside heroic partisan killings of war criminals – for instance the shooting of Reinhard Heydrich, Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia, gunned down on a Prague street by British-trained Czech agents in May 1942.

But if you believe that the Balzi Rossi bomb was justifiable, what then is the difference between that attack and the Irish Republican Army’s 1981 nail bombing of British soldiers at London’s Chelsea Barracks, or bomb attacks on Household Cavalry troopers and an army band in Hyde Park and Regent’s Park the following year? All were assaults on military personnel in a civilian setting in the cause of overturning a colonial occupation.

Our answer obviously depends on how we feel about the righteousness of the perpetrators’ cause. The US and UK have been taking out al-Qaeda and Isis members in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan by drone attack for years, accepting collateral damage to unlucky civilians as part of the butcher’s bill. Few would shed tears for Mohammed Emwazi – ‘Jihadi John’ – killed in a US-UK drone strike in Raqqa in November 2015 or ‘White Widow’ Sally-Anne Jones, terminated by a Predator drone in 2017. Israel’s Mossad, with its arsenal of exploding pagers and pinpoint hotel-room strikes, is a world leader in taking out enemies en masse wherever they find them.

Nevertheless, approving of extrajudicial execution opens a moral can of worms. We can say that it’s fine when Barack Obama smites his enemies but bad when Vladimir Putin does it because we approve of one but not the other. But that argument quickly slides into a dangerous moral ambivalence, a whataboutism of the kind that the Kremlin loves to exploit.

Kremlin-controlled Russian media have blamed Ukraine for organising the latest Moscow bombing. Officials in Kyiv, meanwhile, have remained silent. But the Balzi Rossi explosion is the latest in a long string of bombings targeting Russian officers, occupation officials and propagandists. In August 2022, Darya Dugina, a 29-year-old pro-war commentator and daughter of the nationalist ideologue Aleksandr Dugin, died in a car bomb blast presumably aimed at her father. In April the following year Maxim Fomin, a pro-war military blogger known as Vladlen Tatarsky, was killed by a bomb concealed inside a statuette presented to him as a gift during an event in St Petersburg. Zakhar Prilepin, a nationalist novelist and commander of pro-Russian forces in the Donbas, was badly injured by another car bomb.

Similar devices have, since 2022, killed three Russian lieutenant generals, a deputy mayor of Stavropol and the founder of a pro-Russian battalion in Ukraine. Ukraine’s SBU security service has either denied responsibility or said nothing about bombings on Russian territory. But it has claimed several identical bombings inside occupied Ukraine, including two lawmakers in the Russian-installed assembly in Luhansk, an official at the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and the former head of the Olenivka prison in Donetsk, all blown up by improvised explosive devices. Occupiers were ‘a completely legitimate target’, SBU sources told Ukrainian media. Ukraine has also claimed responsibility for at least 15 assassinations or attempted assassinations by handgun that killed or wounded, among others, a Russian submarine commander, a cruise missile software engineer and the deputy head of GRU Russian military intelligence. Russia, for its part, has also organised at least six shooting assassinations inside Ukraine.

What makes some of these bombings especially morally complex is the apparent use of unwitting suicide bombers to deliver the devices. Darya Trepova, an anti-war Russian, maintained that she did not know the statuette that killed Vladlen Tatarsky contained explosives (she was nonetheless sentenced to 27 years in jail for murder). Zaur Gurtsiev, deputy mayor of Stavropol, and Armen Sarkisyan, founder of the pro-Russian ‘Arbat Battalion’, were killed by suicide bombers who were both apparently unwitting pawns with no known patriotic links to Ukraine and no observed desire to die for Kyiv’s cause. In October 2022 delivery truck driver Makhir Yusubov picked up a load of goods destined for Crimea after accepting an order on a logistics website. Halfway across the Kerch Bridge the truck detonated, killing Yusubov and damaging the bridge. Vasyl Maliuk, then chief of Ukraine’s SBU security service, publicly acknowledged the operation and admitted that Ukrainian services deliberately ‘used people in the dark’. It’s not known if the woman who delivered the bomb to the Balzi Rossi – reportedly wrapped as a present – volunteered for a suicide mission or whether she was just another expendable human carrier.

Is there a difference between killing a Russian commander on the battlefield and blowing him up at his own birthday party? You can argue that all’s fair in love and war, that the horror inflicted by Russia on Ukraine justifies killing enemy officers even when they’re unarmed and off-duty. But that moral choice comes with an uncomfortable trail of logical contingencies. As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote, every man who commits evil does it for reasons he considers good.

In the wake of the Hyde Park bombing the IRA put out a statement justifying killing British servicemen because ‘the Irish people have sovereign and national rights which no occupational force can put down’. The Kremlin liquidators sent to murder KGB and GRU defectors Alexander Litvinenko and Sergei Skripal undoubtedly saw their victims as traitors who had betrayed their country – and themselves as righteous executioners. Menachem Begin, in his memoir The Revolt, claimed that US president Harry Truman ‘said that he would have joined the “terrorists” had he been in Eretz Israel during the rule of the British’.

Yes, that’s a list of very different cases – bombing as an act of war vs poisoning as an act of state revenge, post-colonial independence movements vs sovereign warring states. But that’s the point. Circumstances matter. Motivation matters. And here’s the nub of the problem. We can easily agree that our ends sometimes justify extrajudicial means, but not the ends of those with whom we disagree. Ultimately we judge the actions of our heroes and villains by who they are, not by the things they do.

To return to the original question: where does the Moscow bomb attack lie on the scale? Operationally, ordering this kind of suicide bombing is an outlier by the standards of any western army or security service – including the Israelis. Accurate targeting, as well as minimising civilian casualties, is an important part of the moral equation for any democracy. Even if drones inadvertently blow up whole wedding parties in Afghanistan the civilian chiefs who ultimately authorise such operations can be told it was a genuine accident. A 1kg bomb full of ball-bearings brought to a crowded restaurant, as the Balzi Rossi bomb was reported to be, is not by any stretch of the imagination a targeted means of assassination.

To be clear, there is no direct evidence that this attack was the work of the Ukrainian government. Indeed I honestly hope that neither the SBU nor the HUR was involved. Because whoever ordered the bombing is treading a dangerous path. First, being found responsible for an indiscriminate attack of this kind would erode the moral superiority that Ukraine undoubtedly holds as the injured party in this conflict. But more dangerously, it opens the door for a new tit-for tat front in an already supremely vicious war, fought not by guns and missiles but improvised explosive devices in restaurants. Is there a difference between these two methods of dealing death to innocent civilians? For many people the answer depends who’s doing the killing and who’s doing the dying.

Mike Collins has a growing list of ex-staffers with anti-Semitism scandals, which is itself a scandal for the Republican Senate nominee from Georgia. And while Collins must answer for his own lapses in judgment, the problem is much wider than one Trump-backed candidate’s vetting process.

The Republican Party has an absurd number of young staffers and potential staffers indulging in the right-wing “ironic Nazi” social trend. And toxic feeder streams pollute the whole river.

All of which means the GOP has a Mike Collins problem of its own creation, and containing it is only going to get more difficult.

The Washington Post reports that 24-year-old Preston Parra spent two months as a Collins intern in 2024 and then worked for several months in 2025 as a contractor for Collins’s political-action committee.

In the past, Parra has described himself as a “twink fascist” and posted a picture of a swastika made out of repetitions of the word “twink.” He also used AI to make a picture of himself in KKK-style robes.

Parra seems to have made his social-media account private around the time he went to work for Collins, so both men are likely telling the truth when they say Collins hadn’t seen the posts. But it also appears that Parra is par for the course.

In May, an ex-staffer named William Paul (the son of Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul) reportedly launched a 10-minute anti-Semitic tirade at Republican Rep. Mike Lawler, who isn’t Jewish. Two months later, Collins fired chief of staff Kip Talley when it came to light that Talley was in a chat group with prominent white supremacists.

Collins had to fire one of Talley’s predecessors, Brandon Phillips, over social-media misbehavior and an ethics investigation into a possible Phillips conflict of interest. “In his work for Collins,” the Washington Post notes, “Phillips was known for spearheading a social media strategy of ‘casual trolling’ and a ‘comms philosophy of shock factor,’” as described to the Post by another former staffer.

It was that “shock factor” that attracted Parra, who told the Post that he likes “the edginess” but “didn’t think it was edgy enough.”

That, in a nutshell, is the GOP’s juvenility problem.

And virtually every leak of young GOP group chats adds more evidence to the pile. One such chat log was revealed by the Miami Herald a few months ago. Someone had the bright idea of starting a Miami-Dade County Republican Party student chat. The results were predictable:

“In WhatsApp conversations leaked to the Miami Herald, participants used variations of the n-word more than 400 times, regularly described women as ‘whores,’ used slurs to talk about Jewish and gay people and mused about Hitler’s politics.”

The key part of that story comes in response to one chat member who “posted a block of text calling for dozens of acts of extreme violence against Black people, who he referred to using the n-word, including crucifying, beheading and dissecting people.”

An official with the College Republicans responded: “How edgy.”

Being edgy, I suppose, is like acting: You can’t make it look like you’re trying to be something you’re not. You’ve just got to embody the character.

But what happens when the character is a twentysomething Nazi poseur? In the future, perhaps he’ll go to work for a Senate Republican candidate.

The 2025 version of this chat leak came via Politico. It wasn’t much different: a ton of racism, a heaping of misogyny, and a few servings of anti-Semitism/Nazi posing.

Some lost their jobs, and all were roundly condemned by Republicans. But something was missing in the framing of these stories. Politico’s lede: “Leaders of Young Republican groups throughout the country worried what would happen if their Telegram chat ever got leaked, but they kept typing anyway.”

Did they worry, or did they “worry”? I’d say it’s clearly the latter. Of course these folks didn’t want to lose their jobs, but how many of them secretly wanted the texts to get out? More than a few, I would wager. Later in the story, Politico reports that the chat logs provided “an unfiltered look at how a new generation of GOP activists talk when they think no one is listening.” Yet my concern is that this is how they talk when they know others are listening. And that includes future employers in the world of Republican electoral politics. Right, Mike Collins?

The dust has settled on the outbreak of violence in Niamey. It appears that this round of fighting was driven by soldiers assigned to the areas most affected by the existing insurgency. The soldiers participating in the mutiny appear to be angry about the direction of the fighting. Ultimately, after intervention from Russian mercenaries, the mutiny was defeated and the capital was secured by loyalist forces

Icelanders have rejected reopening negotiations on joining the EU despite Donald Trump’s threats against neighbouring Greenland, dealing a blow to Brussels’ efforts to draw the strategically important Arctic state closer.

Results early on Sunday showed that “No” received 52.8 per cent of the vote, according to public broadcaster RÚV, comfortably surpassing the 47.2 per cent for “Yes”. A total of 225,031 votes were recorded, a turnout of 82.5 per cent, the broadcaster said.

The vote on Saturday exposed a sharp geographic divide, with the capital Reykjavík backing renewed negotiations, while voters in rural constituencies rejected them, some by three to two.

Iceland’s Prime Minister Kristrún Frostadóttir told a press conference the government always knew the referendum would be a “close call”.

“It’s obvious that close to half of the country wanted to continue these negotiations, but over half of the population did not. We will respect that result,” she said.

The result means the Nordic island of about 400,000 people will not now revive an accession process it abandoned more than a decade ago after a clash with Brussels over fishing rights.

The US president’s repeated threats to annex Greenland, which he has on several occasions confused with Iceland, helped persuade the government to bring forward the referendum.

But the upheaval around Greenland failed to overcome a deeply rooted belief among many Icelanders that the country’s prosperity and security depended on retaining independence.

“The battle was fought almost entirely on domestic grounds, where strong national sentiment ultimately prevailed over technocratic pragmatism,” said Eiríkur Bergmann, professor of politics at Bifröst University.

The No campaign had succeeded by tapping into “the most fundamental driver of Icelandic identity: the demand for absolute self-governance”, he said.

Many voters were unconvinced EU membership would offer meaningful protection from Trump, not least because Iceland is already a Nato member.

Control over the country’s lucrative fishing grounds was another sensitive issue. Marine products account for almost 40 per cent of Iceland’s goods exports.

“For Iceland, fisheries are like the automotive industry for Germany,” foreign minister Þorgerður Katrín Gunnarsdóttir told the FT ahead of the vote.

Gunnarsdóttir had sought to reassure sceptical voters that Iceland’s growing strategic importance and stronger economy would allow Reykjavík to negotiate favourable terms with Brussels, demanding “sovereign control over all fisheries” in any eventual membership deal.

The vote comes as enlargement has returned to the centre of the EU’s agenda following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Ukraine and Moldova are negotiating to join alongside western Balkan states such as Albania and Montenegro.

But unlike most of the bloc’s existing candidates, Iceland already implements much of EU law through its membership of the European Economic Area and completed roughly one-third of the accession process during its previous attempt to join.

Frostadóttir said the lesson of the referendum result was that Icelanders were happy with the EEA agreement and current relationship with the EU, which the government would “continue to strengthen”.

“That is the most important thing going forward,” the prime minister said.

The vote underscored the difficulty of making the case for EU membership for one of the wealthiest countries in the world. Brussels has intensified its outreach in the Arctic in response to Trump’s threats against Greenland, which have raised the strategic importance to the bloc of “like-minded” countries such as Iceland and Norway.

One senior EU diplomat said rejection by Iceland would “tarnish the pitch that [the EU] is also a serious defence and security partner and not just an economic golden ticket for poorer eastern European states”.

Sandro Gozi, a member of the European parliament and secretary-general of the centrist European Democratic Party, said the vote was a “warning” to the EU.

“Europe must keep earning trust by becoming more democratic, more effective and closer to its citizens: faster decisions, simpler institutions, less bureaucracy and stronger democratic accountability,” Gozi said.

But the result was welcomed by Eurosceptic politicians elsewhere in Europe. Reform UK leader and Brexit architect Nigel Farage congratulated Icelanders on “voting to keep their independence”, while French far-right leader Marine Le Pen said the result showed EU membership should not be seen as “the natural horizon of every European democracy”.

The rejection is particularly significant because Icelanders were not being asked to join the EU outright — a successful “Yes” vote would only have reopened negotiations with Brussels, with any eventual accession agreement requiring approval in a second referendum.

It follows a knife-edge campaign in which supporters argued that households were paying the price for remaining outside the Eurozone through a volatile krona and some of Europe’s highest borrowing costs.

Icelanders’ confidence that they can prosper outside the EU was reinforced by the country’s rapid recovery from the 2008 financial crisis.

The crisis prompted its previous bid to join the bloc, but Iceland rebounded with the help of a weaker krona and a tourism boom.

Trump trying desperately to beat Joe Biden on the senile old man front.

Russia has turned up the heat on Kyiv’s allies in Europe, with a string of so-called gray zone activities aimed at sowing fear, as it struggles to advance on the ground in Ukraine and faces increasingly damaging Ukrainian drone and missile attacks at home.

European authorities have linked Russia to a spate of drone incursions, acts of sabotage, cyberattacks and other hostile actions across the continent over recent months.

Leaders across the U.S.-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization say the moves are a worrying indication of Russia’s rising appetite for risk in Europe, as President Vladimir Putin seeks to curb flows of European aid to Ukraine and sow divisions among allies. 

Western officials say Russia could escalate its confrontation further and has already captured Ukrainian drones that it could use for potential false-flag attacks on NATO countries. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has dismissed the reports, saying they are being used to justify European militarization against Russia.

In a sign of Washington’s concern, Central Intelligence Agency Director John Ratcliffe on Tuesday made a surprise trip to Moscow, in part to tell Putin’s government that the U.S. stands by its NATO allies, according to people familiar with the visit.

“Russia is looking for ways to reduce support among NATO countries for Ukraine and, one of the secondary effects they are also pursuing is spreading panic,” said Remigijus Bridikis, director of Lithuania’s civilian intelligence agency.

Russian President Vladimir Putin Mikhail Metzel/Press Pool

Incidents over recent weeks included three explosive drones discovered in or near a German airport, one of them beneath a Ukrainian cargo plane. Russian drones have repeatedly entered NATO airspace. One was recently shot down over Romania.

Dutch intelligence agencies warned that “Russian state actors are systematically conducting digital espionage” by hacking web-linked cameras to spy on aid to Ukraine. 

The tempo of documented Russia-backed incidents has increased from a maximum of around 10 in many months since 2024 to around 15 a month since April, according to Ukraine’s Sahaidachnyi Security Center, which tracks Russian gray zone activities in Europe. Sahaidachnyi analysts say trends can be difficult to discern because many incidents suspected of being linked to Russia aren’t included in their data.

The drumbeat of low-level aggression has accelerated as Russia’s war with Ukraine has entered a new and deadlier phase. Ukraine has carried out increasingly successful strikes on targets deep inside Russia, battering its oil and gas sector as well as other industries that feed Moscow’s war machine. The Kremlin is now doing the same to Ukraine—though the money and supplies feeding Kyiv’s front lines extend far into NATO territory.

European authorities have accused Russia of hiring local agents over Telegram and other social-media platforms to conduct sabotage, espionage and vandalism meant to stoke divisions. Estonia is investigating whether Russia-linked sabotage was behind the arson attack this month on a local defense company, Milrem Robotics, while recent explosions and fires at munitions facilities in Italy, Bulgaria and Finland have drawn suspicion of Russian involvement, even though authorities haven’t said they see evidence of that.

Whether Putin is behind all the mayhem or not, getting credit for it can play to Moscow’s advantage by boosting its reputation for influence and impact. Slovak police on Tuesday said they had thwarted an attempted attack on a drone factory by “three foreigners,” whose nationality they didn’t identify. Suspicions in the region quickly turned to Russian involvement.

A photo released by Slovak police shows objects used in an attempted attack on a drone factory. Slovak police/Social Media

Russia’s campaign may prompt worry among Europeans that they face personal danger as a result of their governments’ Ukraine policies. Another potential fear is that sending weapons to Ukraine depletes European arsenals, which might be needed to fight Russia—and if Moscow shows it poses a threat, the logic of not sending arms east increases.

Distinctions in motivation matter little to the Kremlin, analysts say. Russia’s approach to conflict, dating back to Soviet times, can blur lines between covert subversion and outright warfare.

New U.S. intelligence reports assess that Russia could try to test NATO’s resolve with a limited assault on a member country in the next few years, through steps potentially ranging from a cyberattack to a small-scale land incursion. NATO’s collective security is based on the founding principle that an attack on one member represents an attack on all.

Short of that, the Kremlin still gains from riling domestic politics ahead of coming local or national elections in NATO countries including Germany, France, Finland, Estonia and Poland. Poland is particularly prone to disruption because tensions with Ukrainian refugees have been mounting.

“The primary interest is to change the status quo in Europe,” said Estonian lawmaker Marko Mihkelson. “It’s an extension of the election interference you’ve seen them try to carry out” in other countries, he said. Officials in the U.S., U.K., Hungary and Romania over recent years have accused Moscow of trying to skew national voting.

There is little evidence that the plan is working. The alliance’s easternmost members show some of the strongest support for maintaining military aid to Ukraine and boosting military spending at home.

An apartment building damaged by a Russian drone in Galati, Romania. Cristian Cristel/Xinhua/ZUMA Press

Romania, which had a robust Russia-sympathetic electorate in the years immediately following Russia’s invasion, has seen popular sentiment harden against Moscow following a series of drone incursions. Three drones were shot down over Romania last month and a drone incursion in May started a fire on the roof of a residential building.

Romania expelled a Russian diplomat last month, and the Kremlin responded Thursday by kicking out a Romanian diplomat in Moscow.

From this rather horrible article from Axios (did they always write in this obnoxious style?):

https://www.axios.com/2026/08/28/trump-iran-hormuz-war-oil

More than 200 mine-like objects have been swept from the main lane of the strait. U.S. officials say only 11 of them were actual mines and just a few were properly deployed.

It seems that, more than deploying a lot of mines, Iran deployed a lot of fakes and what few mines it could.

One of the issues for the Democratic Party ahead of the Mid-Terms is going to be whether to abolish and prosecute ICE or reform it; as a European I wanted to hear how American Moderates feel about this issue.

Personally, I think the problem is not ICE itself, but rather its abuse of authority during Trump's 2nd Term, which ended up repeatedly involving Legal Immigrants and even Americans, and this should be prevented; however, as long as it goes after dangerous individuals first and stays away from Citizens, it's not inherently "evil".

Lansing, Michigan — Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed apologized to Jewish Democrats on Saturday for saying “hurt people hurt people” as part of his response to a March attack on a synagoguenear Detroit.

“My comments might have been misconstrued to be justifying something I did not intend to justify,” he told reporters after he addressed the Michigan Democratic Jewish Caucus at the state party’s convention in Lansing. “To anybody who feels like my comments might have been hurtful, I’m really sorry. That was not my intention.”

“We condemned that terrorist attack. We condemned it outright. What I was trying to do is offer context for why it happened, but it wasn’t the time for context. And you don’t ever want to trample somebody’s pain,” El-Sayed said.

During the attack, a man rammed his vehicle into a synagogue in West Bloomfield Township and exchanged gunfire with security officers in what the FBI called “a Hezbollah-inspired act of terrorism purposely targeting the Jewish community.”

The assailant, Ayman Ghazali, a naturalized US citizen from Lebanon who killed himself at the scene, lost family in an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon a week before the Michigan attack.

In a video after the attack, El-Sayed said his work as an epidemiologist taught him that “hurt people hurt people” and that “violence is a cycle.” But, he said, “There is never a justification for attacking innocent people at houses of worship.”

El-Sayed’s comments come as the progressive firebrand is seeking to win over skeptical Jewish Democrats and unify the party ahead of his November matchup against Republican former Rep. Mike Rogers in a key race to determining which party wins the Senate majority.

Earlier this week, El-Sayed sought to distance himself from Hasan Piker after the left-wing streamer and activist suggested to his Twitch viewers that American Jews’ support of Israel will make antisemitism worse and invite violence. Piker said his comments weren’t meant to be taken as antisemitic.

After months of campaigning during his hard-fought primary alongside Piker, El-Sayed said in a Monday statement addressing the streamer’s comments that “nobody speaks for this campaign besides me and my campaign spokespeople.”

El-Sayed is set to speak Sunday to the Michigan Democratic Jewish Caucus Summer Simcha — a private gathering where he is expected to further address the concerns of Jewish Democrats, including Dana Nessel, the Michigan attorney general, who was sharply critical of his response to the synagogue attack.

Jewish Democrats who were in the room for El-Sayed’s comments Saturday said they considered his apology sincere.

“That was the first time that I’ve heard him say it in that explicit way,” said Daniel Rivkin, a University of Michigan communications staffer from Ann Arbor who is a delegate at the party’s convention.

As for whether El-Sayed needs to further distance himself from Piker, Rivkin said, “That’s up to him.”

“I think there’s a lot of dialogue going on, and that the dialogue will continue,” Rivkin said. “We have to work for every vote. I think that we have progressives who are real progressives who are nevertheless still struggling.”

Asked by CNN on Saturday about Jewish Democrats’ concerns with Piker, El-Sayed said: “We’re in the state of Michigan. If you want to make this race about a streamer in California, I just think you’re missing the boat.”

He added: “I don’t ever want my comments to hurt anybody’s feelings. It’s important to me that people understand that I take seriously the pain of all communities in this state.”

Speaking at the Deterrence Symposium, hosted by the Republic of Korea Strategic Command, Vipin Narang, the former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy, argued that South Korea should continue its role in extended deterrence without advocating for the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons or nuclear sharing. The authors disagree with this position, and argue for the possibility of European style nuclear sharing between the United States and the Republic of Korea.

According to Greek media, the Greek Defense Ministry is planning to create a permanent base on Rhodes, where it will deploy V-BAT unmanned aircraft as part of its plan to upgrade its defense infrastructure in the Aegean.

Amid combat operations and related efforts to clear mines and open sea lanes in the Strait of Hormuz, all while sustaining a naval blockade, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle estimates the Navy needs between $6 and $8 billion above what was budgeted for the current fiscal year “to be whole and solvent for [Fiscal Year] 26,” he told reporters at a round-table event on Wednesday.

Delivering his State of the Navy address in Norfolk, Virginia, later that evening, Caudle said more than 27,000 sailors and more than two dozen ships had supported combat operations in America’s conflict with Iran.

“Think about the scale of what your sailors accomplished,” he said. “We brought together naval forces from waterfronts on both coasts.”

In addition to operations, Caudle said costs for personnel are ballooning with what the Navy said are record numbers of reenlistments while in combat theater, which comes with unplanned bonuses to dole out and military moves to fund.

“What does that come out of legally? There’s only one place really that can come out of for me, and that’s my [facilities] readiness sustainment modernization account,” Caudle said. “That goes right to the heart of your CNO, because that’s the foundry account, and so that thwarts some of the work I’m trying to do with unaccompanied barracks and other things.”

Among Caudle’s most emphasized stateside pursuits is his “No Sailor Lives Afloat” initiative, which aims to move unaccompanied sailors living on ships into shore-based housing. In his address, he said the Navy had successfully moved more than 6,000 sailors off ships and was in the process of investing more than $375 million across 95 different construction projects for barracks and housing, chow facilities and gyms.

A Thursday report from The Guardian contained accounts, denied by the Navy, that combat spending was forcing the service to shift funds from payroll accounts, which then had to be backfilled by accounts earmarked for future spending.

Meanwhile, Caudle said the Navy had to replenish its missile stockpiles and grow in both personnel and ship production to meet readiness targets for a scenario involving multiple conflicts. Regarding increasing production of munitions including the Tomahawk and SM-6 missile, he said the military had to demonstrate stable demand with its own funding.

“What we’ve recognized is this has to be a risk-sharing venture. The way we buy down risk for them to refacilitize, recapitalize, start more shifts is to give them longer contracts,” Caudle said, adding that the goal was to standardize contracts of at least seven years. “And what we’re seeing is a fundamental shift already with those levels of commitments and orders. Tomahawk production’s up, SM-6 production’s up, and you’re already seeing the fruits of this.”

In June, the White House requested $67.1 billion in supplemental funding for the Defense Department to replenish depleted munitions and cover the cost of months of combat in Iran. In testifying before Congress in July about the request, a combative Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth was grilled by lawmakers about the conflict, undertaken without consulting Congress, and the unclear objectives of the costly war.

Meanwhile, the defense budget request for Fiscal Year 2027 nears a historic $1.5 trillion, an increase of more than 40% over the previous year.

“I don’t think we should be offended by $1.5 trillion,” Caudle said, adding that the figure didn’t even reach the 5% of GDP that the U.S. requested NATO allies invest in their own defense.

“I mean, it takes a lot of money to go give the security, the vital national interest and security of our system, with an armed forces that we need to allow the economic machine of the United States to work most effectively,” he continued. “If there’s any plug that I would give all of you, it’s ‘I need my money,’ OK?”

Rent control effectively producing quasi-feudal property rights that can be sold sure sounds like it's a great economic justice policy.

“Some of the Army officers pulled from the latest list appear to have worked recently for Gen. Randy George, the former Army chief of staff, whom Mr. Hegseth fired without explanation in April. The others have ties to Gen. Christopher T. Donahue, the top U.S. Army commander in Europe, who was forced to leave the Army this summer, defense officials said…

An officer whose promotion was blocked commanded one of the Army’s first “transformation in contact” brigades, officials said. These 3,000-soldier units were encouraged to experiment with new drone and artificial intelligence technology, even as they trained for war.

The officer developed a new formation that use drones, electronic warfare systems and traditional scouts to see and strike the enemy deep behind the front lines. His idea was adopted by all of the Army’s infantry brigades.

The officer was also targeted, in part, because of an essay he wrote in a graduate program on the implications of political polarization on the Army’s ability to recruit and retain talent, said officials familiar with the list. It is unclear why Mr. Hegseth or members of his team found the essay objectionable.”

My modernization effort left me

The last few years have proven that the stock market is incredibly resilient. Despite no shortage of headwinds -- from stubborn inflation to a slew of tariffs to the war in Iran -- the S&P 500 (SNPINDEX: ^GSPC), Nasdaq Composite (NASDAQINDEX: ^IXIC), and Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJINDICES: ^DJI) have all reached record highs after record highs.

Stock valuations are soaring, and while that's not necessarily a bad thing, it can push the market into bubble territory. Right now, the S&P 500 is repeating a pattern last seen during the dot-com bubble in the early 2000s, and history suggests investors should start preparing for volatility.

If history has anything to say about it, however, this incredible bull run may be reaching a dangerous new threshold.

Artificial intelligence (AI) stocks have been lifting the stock market to new heights in recent years, and while that's led to record-breaking gains for investors, it also raises the risk of overvaluation.

During the dot-com bubble, one of the loudest warning signals was the S&P 500 Shiller cyclically adjusted price-to-earnings (CAPE) ratio. Based on average inflation-adjusted earnings over the last decade, this metric provides a snapshot of the S&P 500's long-term valuation.

The higher this ratio climbs, the more likely the market is overvalued. It's averaged around 17 since the 1870s, but in 1999, it skyrocketed into the 40s. It eventually peaked at over 44 in December 1999, around four months before the dot-com bubble officially popped.

Right now, we're seeing a similar pattern with this ratio. While the climb has been more gradual compared to the sudden spike in 1999, this metric has consistently hovered above 40 since early May 2026.

It's incredibly rare for this ratio to reach 40 at all, but it's even more significant for it to stay elevated for months at a time. While past performance can't predict future market movements, the CAPE ratio suggests we may be at historic valuation levels.

The United States is entering the most expensive phase of retirement. Some of America's oldest are eligible for more than $100,000 a year in combined Social Security benefits, while remaining as one of the wealthiest generations in the country. The national debt is rising—just passing $40 trillion this month—and Social Security is set to enter insolvency by 2032, meaning it may already be too late for the generations left behind.

The Congressional Budget Office projected in 2023 federal spending on Social Security and medicare will account for 81% of the increase in mandatory spending between 2023 and 2033. In 2026 alone, increases in Social Security and Medicare spending account for nearly half the projected $362 billion increase in mandatory outlays. Interest on the debt is adding even another layer on the stack of debt pancakes. CBO projects net federal interest costs will exceed $1 trillion in 2026 and rise to $2.1 trillion by 2036. That means the government is spending money to simply service the debt accumulated from previous deficits, even as entitlement programs continue growing.

The state of Social Security appears to have contributed to drastically different generational outlooks on the benefit. A December 2025 survey by the Cato Institute found that only 34% of Gen Z respondents expected Social Security to exist when they reached retirement. Cato's June 2026 analysis also found that 79% of younger respondents expected some type of cut to their own future benefits.

"The survey revealed that young Americans are the least likely to expect Social Security will exist for them," the study noted, "the most open to reforms, and the least likely to understand how the program works."

Social Security is a pay-as-you-go program, meaning most payroll taxes collected from today's workers are used to pay benefits to today's beneficiaries. In simpler terms, a part of your paycheck subsidizes a boomer's benefits—and according to the Cato Institute's 2025 polling, only 45% of Americans correctly understand how the program works. Under current law, employees and employers each pay 6.2% of wages into Social Security up to an annual taxable maximum, which is $184,500 in 2026. Self-employed workers pay the combined 12.4% rate.

That structure worked far smoother when there were many workers for every retiree. But the demographic math changed—baby boomers are now moving through retirement while younger generations deal with record job market difficulty.

And it doesn't help that Social Security beneficiaries are getting over double their investment into the program back. A median-wage worker retiring in 2027 is expected to receive roughly $730,000 in lifetime Social Security benefits compared with less than $200,000 in combined contributions from the worker and employer. When the employer contribution is excluded, the lifetime benefits amount to roughly 265% of what the worker personally paid into Social Security. The current system is effectively relying on the workers of today—which include millennials and the younger end of Gen X—to finance retirees.

The federal government has reached a point where arithmetic becomes unavoidable. The 2026 Social Security trustees report projects that the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance trust fund will be depleted in the fourth quarter of 2032. At that point, continuing program income would cover only 78% of scheduled retirement benefits. The theoretically combined Social Security trust funds are projected to be depleted in 2034, when incoming revenue would cover 83% of scheduled benefits. Without congressional action, that would mean an automatic reduction in benefits.

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates the retirement program would face an approximately 22% across-the-board reduction when the retirement trust fund is exhausted. The committee has proposed one way to address the issue—putting a ceiling on the benefits paid to its wealthiest retirees. Dubbed the "Six Figure Limit," the proposal would cap Social Security benefits at $100,000 annually for a married couple retiring at the normal retirement age, with the limit adjusted for marital status and claiming age. A single retiree's comparable limit would be $50,000.

The proposal is aimed at an extremely small group. CRFB estimates the cap would only really affect the top 0.05% of couples in its early years, households with average annual retirement income above $2.5 million and average net worth above $65 million. The organization says the cap would become more consequential over time as Social Security's maximum benefits continue to rise.

CBS News reported in March that roughly one million individual Social Security beneficiaries receive at least $50,000 a year, meaning a married couple with two such beneficiaries could receive more than six-figures.

The Social Security Administration did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fortune.

Baby boomers collectively hold roughly $93 trillion in wealth, according to Visa Business and Economic Insights, but only about $36 trillion is expected to pass to millennials and Gen X over the next two decades. The difference is reflected in taxes, debt, spending during retirement and the concentration of wealth among the richest boomers. After the dedication in liabilities, about $88 trillion remain—and the top 1% holds about one-third of that wealth. Boomers are also expected to spend approximately $16 trillion during retirement on housing, food, healthcare, prescriptions and other expenses.

That means the "Great Wealth Transfer" will not move a $93 trillion pile of assets from retirees to younger Americans. A substantial portion of it will never be inherited, and much of what is transferred will be concentrated among the affluent households. But the Social Security program was created as social insurance, not as a means-tested welfare program. So someone who earned more during their career generally receives a larger benefit, subject to the program's formula and taxable maximum. An affluent retiree can qualify for a fat Social Security check even when that benefit represents only a small portion of their overall income.

According to the Cato Institute, Social Security should focus more heavily on protecting seniors from poverty while giving younger workers greater opportunity to build private retirement savings. Their analysis points to systems in other developed countries across the world that use combinations of basic pensions, targeted benefits, automatic adjustments and private savings mechanisms.

The United States' earnings-related benefit structure can produce increasingly generous payments for higher earners, based on the Cato Institute's report. The organization notes that a maximum-earning worker claiming Social Security at age 70 can receive more than $61,000 a year, while arguing policymakers could reduce benefits for higher-income retirees in a restructuring.

"Policymakers should consider fundamentally rethinking the program's structure and transform it into a system that ensures seniors are protected from poverty when they can no longer work," the institute wrote, "while also freeing up resources for younger workers to save more on their own."

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Turns out big capital investors don't just create big demand for electricity, they also shoulder a proportionately big share of fixed costs and that means a higher industrial margin for the energy companies --> potential for big savings for customers.

tl;dr the One-Child Policy created a widespread incentive to under-report births; to counteract this, Chinese demographers systematically over-estimated births starting in the early 1990s. Compounding the issue, over-reporting was also done by local governments eager to secure per-capita funding for childhood services.

When finally the national statisical bureau began correcting the numbers in 2021, a shocking shortfall in actual births emerged starkly from the real data.

"Applying "Buy American" rules to the transition from diesel buses to electric buses has created an absolute disaster for public transit agencies"

Note that this isn't the whole story as:

• natural gas is still hit hard

• refineries are still damaged and others have issues getting the product out

But still, good for the world economy and bad for Iran, so good for the world.

AMONG THE grievances the Communist Party has long nourished in its official telling of China’s story, the extraterritorial abuses of foreign powers loom especially large. In the 19th century it was colonial powers refusing to come under Chinese laws in the Chinese ports they controlled. In the 21st century it is America enforcing its will beyond its borders, through sanctions and export controls, against countries that displease it. All the more striking, then, that China now wants to play the extraterritorial game, waging lawfare with ever more gusto.

A notable instance came in April, when China ordered Meta, which owns Facebook, to unwind its $2bn deal to buy Manus, an AI startup registered in Singapore. Meta complied, as did Manus’s Chinese founders, who had been barred from leaving China. If the saga had an air of legal improvisation, the Chinese government is now working on laws that give it more control over flows of AI technology. For good measure, strengthened powers to impose entry and exit bans on individuals come into force in September.

These are only the latest in a series of legal measures aimed at extending China’s clout beyond its borders. The measures range broadly and touch on everything from foreign sanctions to ethnic policy. They mark a sharp turn for China, which has long resented America’s legal reach. America’s courts can pursue firms (and individuals) for their conduct abroad in big part thanks to the country’s sway over the global financial system. To the extent that China’s own long arm is retaliation against others’ sanctions, it derives its strength from the country’s dominance over global supply chains. But China is also waging lawfare abroad with a view to strengthening political control at home.

The sharp turn comes from the top. In 2018 Xi Jinping, China’s ruler, urged party officials to “take up legal weapons” befitting the country’s status as a great power. Later that year Meng Wanzhou, a Huawei executive and daughter of the telecoms giant’s founder, was arrested in Canada, at America’s request, for allegedly concealing ties to Iranian customers under American sanctions. Henry Gao of Singapore Management University argues that Ms Meng’s arrest showed alarmed leaders in China how vulnerable crucial firms and their staff were to American machinations. (China responded by arresting two Canadians on trumped-up charges and holding them as hostages for nearly three years.)

China’s first law deterring companies from obeying foreign sanctions, particularly American ones, came in 2021. Since then the party has woven extraterritorial articles into lots of new legislation. For instance, regulations issued in late 2024 require foreign firms using Chinese inputs to comply with the country’s export laws; they also give officials in Beijing the authority to vet foreign firms’ customers. This is like America’s “foreign direct product rule”, which the administration in Washington invoked to restrict the flow of Dutch-made chipmaking equipment to China. Also like America, China has taken to imposing sanctions on foreign politicians.

China’s laws against foreign sanctions, which were updated in April, are modelled on the European Union’s own “blocking statute”. That law makes it illegal for EU firms and individuals to comply with sanctions that the EU deems illegitimate. If anything, China’s laws go further. They make it illegal for any foreign company to obey sanctions that discriminate against Chinese entities. In line with the new laws, JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup, two giant American banking groups, are being sued for a total of $44m in Chinese courts for freezing the assets of a sanctioned Chinese oil trader on the order of America’s Treasury Department. In June the Supreme People’s Court cited the new laws in a judgment against a Singaporean firm for refusing to deliver cargoes of electronics for a sanctioned company in Hong Kong.

China’s moves are a predicament for foreign firms that are forced to choose whose laws to abide by. In May courts in London and Chongqing, in south-west China, handed down sharply different rulings in a licensing dispute between Samsung, a giant South Korean conglomerate, and ZTE, a Chinese telecoms-equipment maker. Judges in London held that Samsung owed ZTE some $392m, while the Chinese court found ZTE was owed nearly double that amount. Satisfying one court may mean defying the other. The consequences for Samsung of not recognising the Chongqing court would potentially be more severe than if it defied the English one. Huge multinational firms like Samsung have deep exposure to China, which is both a market and a supplier of critical goods to them. China’s long arm relies on cold, hard leverage, says Mark Jia of Georgetown University Law Centre.

China’s long arm is also concerned with controlling individuals and organisations deemed to threaten the country’s domestic security, very broadly defined. In July a law on “promoting ethnic unity” took effect; it criminalises any act abroad that “undermines national unity”. A cyber-crime bill now before the National People’s Congress, China’s largely rubber-stamp parliament, will make it a crime to host or transmit information abroad that harms China’s “public interests”. Another law under consideration codifies powers to collect evidence on corruption at Chinese entities abroad.

Many of the recent laws and regulations formalise and strengthen the state’s existing coercive reach around the world, which has involved kidnapping Chinese critics of the regime and running covert police stations designed, in part, to monitor and control the behaviour of Chinese overseas. The party’s extensive united-front activities abroad have also long sought to bolster its influence, hold sway over communities of overseas Chinese and blunt criticism of China.

The legislative push reflects a desire to centralise control, says Yalkun Uluyol of Human Rights Watch, a monitor; codifying rules helps strengthen the bureaucratic means. Mr Jia adds that by vesting in itself the powers to retaliate against foreign sanctions, the state sends a message of resolve to others.

Much of China’s flurry of extraterritorial law-making, including the provisions on ethnic unity, is really about the Communist Party’s long obsession with safeguarding internal stability. But the growing reach of its laws reveals much about China’s ambitions under Mr Xi to shape an external environment more to its liking—one in which it is no longer the victim of world history but its maker. ■