Crooked Bough News Round-up

— San Francisco Snubs Pelosi's Pick For A Radical With Creepy Legislative Record

 

at 11/5/26 9:00pm

San Francisco Snubs Pelosi's Pick For A Radical With Creepy Legislative Record San Francisco Supervisor Connie Chan (D-CA) conceded the race for the city's open congressional seat to state Sen. Scott Wiener on Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2026, handing the seat Rep. Nancy Pelosi held for decades to the candidate she did not endorse. Pelosi, the former House speaker, backed Chan and campaigned for her in the closing stretch of the race. Chan announced the result in a statement her campaign released Wednesday. Scott Weiner ((Getty Images)) "After reviewing the results and the ballots remaining to be counted, while we expect the margin to narrow significantly, we do not have a clear path to victory," Chan said. "I congratulate Scott Wiener on his election and wish him success in serving San Francisco."The concession ends a costly, bitter contest for a seat Pelosi seemed reluctant to give up for years, despite rumors of retirement. The race also served as a test of Pelosi's influence in the city she represented since 1987. She and many of her House allies lined up behind Chan, and the voters chose Wiener anyway.WELCOME TO CONGRESS! https://t.co/ZygVdSOTCm pic.twitter.com/Kuj7poq8EI— Michael Savage (@ASavageNation) November 5, 2026The rift between Pelosi and Wiener dates to October 2025. Many in local politics had viewed Wiener as Pelosi's likely successor, but he launched his campaign that month while she was still technically a candidate for reelection. According to reports at the time, the move offended her. Pelosi reportedly wanted Wiener to hold off until after the vote on Proposition 50, the California redistricting referendum on the November 2025 ballot, and saw his announcement as a distraction from that. Pelosi announced her retirement shortly after voters approved the measure.Wiener's legislative record includes a series of far-left bills on LGBTQ issues, criminal justice, and public health that drew opposition from parents' rights groups and law enforcement advocates during his tenure.In 2017, Wiener authored SB 239, which Gov. Jerry Brown (D-CA) signed. The law reduced the penalty for intentionally exposing another person to HIV from a felony to a misdemeanor. In 2020, Wiener authored SB 132, which required California prisons to house inmates according to their gender identity, including placing male inmates who identify as women in women's facilities, unless officials cite management or security concerns. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) signed it into law.That same year, Wiener authored SB 145, which gave judges discretion to waive mandatory sex offender registration for adults convicted of certain sexual offenses involving minors ages 14 to 17, provided the offender is no more than 10 years older than the minor. The measure weakened existing safeguards surrounding the legal consequences of sexual conduct with underage teens. Wiener defended the bill as an effort to end discrimination against LGBTQ young people.Wiener also authored SB 107, which Newsom signed in 2022. The law gives California courts temporary emergency jurisdiction over custody disputes involving children who are in the state to receive gender transition care, and bars enforcing conflicting out-of-state orders, even when a parent objects. That same year, Wiener introduced SB 866, which would have allowed children 12 and older to get vaccines without parental consent; it was later amended to age 15. Wiener pulled the bill in August 2022 before an Assembly vote, saying it lacked the votes.Wiener also co-authored AB 957, Assemblymember Lori Wilson's 2023 bill. It would have required judges in custody disputes to consider whether a parent affirms a child's gender identity as part of evaluating the child's health, safety, and welfare. Newsom vetoed the measure.He also co-authored SB 94, Sen. Dave Cortese's bill, which would have let some people sentenced to death or life without parole for crimes before 1990 petition for resentencing after serving at least 25 years. The bill died in 2024.This is California Senator Scott Weiner, a close friend and ally of Kamala Harris. These are some of the bills he's behind:AB 957: Penalizes parents who don't affirm a chiId's trans identity SB 107: Removes an out of state chiId from their parents if they travel to... pic.twitter.com/xa1FHbHr2M— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) September 30, 2024Chan's statement noted that county election officials still have ballots left to count, and she said she expects Wiener's lead to shrink as they finish. Wiener will take the seat when the 120th Congress convenes in January 2027. Tyler Durden Thu, 11/05/2026 - 23:00

— Arab-Led Parties To Back Eisenkot To Form Israel's Next Government

 

at 11/5/26 8:35pm

Arab-Led Parties To Back Eisenkot To Form Israel's Next Government via Middle East EyeThe Arab-led Joint List has said it will back Israeli opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot to form a new government, dealing a heavy blow to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's efforts to remain in power.The Joint List announced on Thursday that it would "recommend that Gadi Eisenkot be tasked with forming the government", bringing the total number of lawmakers backing him to 67 in the 120-seat Knesset. The decision follows Wednesday's endorsement by Ra'am, another Arab-led party, whose eight lawmakers also backed Eisenkot. via AFP The two parties together secured a record 19 seats in last week's general election, giving them a potentially decisive role in determining who forms Israel's next government.Netanyahu's right-wing bloc won 53 seats in the 27 October election, while the opposition alliance led by Eisenkot secured 48. A majority in parliament requires 61 seats.The results left both camps short of the numbers needed to govern independently, making the support of Arab-led parties and smaller political factions crucial to the coalition negotiations.The Joint List said its unanimous decision reflected public demands to prevent Netanyahu and his government from returning to power. It also said the endorsement was intended to widen the gap between Eisenkot and Netanyahu and strengthen the chances of replacing the incumbent government.The alliance, which comprises three Arab-led factions, said its decision came despite the opposition's failure to sufficiently challenge Netanyahu's political direction, incitement against Arab citizens and attempts to undermine the legitimacy of their electoral choices.However, the endorsements do not necessarily mean the Arab parties will join an Eisenkot-led government.The Joint List has said it is prepared to support an opposition government from outside the governing coalition, rather than take ministerial positions.Its leaders have opposed joining a government while Israel continues its occupation of Palestinian territory.Eisenkot and his opposition partners have also faced divisions over cooperation with Arab-led parties. The opposition bloc has set conditions for potential partners, including recognizing Israel as a Jewish state, supporting military conscription and condemning Hamas.Arab-majority party Ra’am and the Democrats have backed Gadi Eisenkot in a bid to form Israel’s next government. The endorsement comes amid Benjamin Netanyahu’s attacks on Arab-majority lists following their record turnout in last week’s election. pic.twitter.com/JaguKAvaFL— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) November 5, 2026 Some opposition figures have rejected relying on Arab lawmakers, while others have argued that their support is essential to ending Netanyahu's rule.Eisenkot, 66, has repeatedly rejected the idea of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. While serving as army chief between 2015 and 2019, he publicly advocated for closer ties with Saudi Arabia, saying the two countries should work together to counter Iran's influence in the region.He also said Israel would be willing to share intelligence with Riyadh to confront Tehran. Tyler Durden Thu, 11/05/2026 - 22:35

— Exclusive Sperm Donor Access For IVF Can Now Cost Up To $70,000

 

at 11/5/26 8:10pm

Exclusive Sperm Donor Access For IVF Can Now Cost Up To $70,000 Sperm banks and donor-matching services are expanding premium options for patients undergoing in vitro fertilization (IVF), offering greater control over donor selection, identity disclosure and the number of families permitted to use sperm from the same donor. These services are increasingly available to single women, same-sex couples and couples experiencing male infertility, according to Bloomberg. Traditional donor sperm can cost less than $2,000 per vial, excluding storage, shipping and fertility treatment. Premium donor services charge substantially more for screening, matching, access to donor information and exclusive arrangements that limit the number of recipient families.Coast to Coast Sperm Donation offers packages starting at approximately $25,000, limiting each donor to six families, with additional fees to reduce that number. The Seed Scout charges $10,500 for standard donor matching or $24,500 for exclusive access, plus approximately $7,000 in legal, counseling and related expenses. Its standard program limits each donor to three recipient families and includes direct contact between donors and prospective parents.Cryos International offers exclusive donor access for $49,000 before additional fees, while Fairfax Cryobank has offered 10 vials from a donor restricted to one family worldwide for $45,000. California Cryobank charges $70,000 for exclusive access to a donor's stored sperm or $35,000 to limit sales to nine additional families.Bloomberg writes that these fees generally exclude IVF procedures and may not include genetic testing, medical screening, donor compensation, legal services and other associated expenses. Depending on the provider and level of exclusivity, total donor-related costs can exceed $80,000 before fertility treatment begins.The use of donor sperm in IVF has increased. Among IVF retrieval cycles using patients' own fresh eggs, donor sperm use rose from 5.6% in 2014 to 8.8% in 2022. In 2024, approximately 100,158 babies were born through IVF in the United States, although not all procedures involved donated sperm. The number of female same-sex couples living with their own minor children also increased, reaching approximately 151,000 in 2024, compared with 87,000 a decade earlier.Premium services also increasingly offer arrangements allowing donor-conceived children to obtain identifying information about their biological donors. Some programs facilitate meetings between donors and prospective parents before donation and establish agreements governing future contact and the sharing of medical information.Despite the higher prices, exclusive donor arrangements have limitations. The United States lacks a centralized donor registry, and sperm banks cannot fully verify whether donors have contributed to other facilities. Consequently, exclusivity agreements may restrict distribution through individual providers but cannot guarantee that no additional biological siblings will result from donations elsewhere.The expansion of premium donor services reflects a growing market for donor selection, identity transparency and restrictions on the number of recipient families, with pricing varying considerably according to the services and contractual arrangements provided. Tyler Durden Thu, 11/05/2026 - 22:10

— Pentagon Delivers 25,000+ Drones And Counter-Drone Systems To CENTCOM In A "Massive Surge"

 

at 11/5/26 7:45pm

Pentagon Delivers 25,000+ Drones And Counter-Drone Systems To CENTCOM In A "Massive Surge" Authored by Timothy Frudd via The Epoch Times,The U.S. Department of War announced on Wednesday that a "massive surge" of over 25,000 drone and counter-drone systems were delivered to U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) this year. A member of the U.S. military carries an Anduril Ghost-X drone during Falcon Peak, an exercise to test anti-drone technology at the Yuma Proving Grounds near Yuma, Ariz., on Sept. 24, 2026. Mike Blake/Reuters The drones and counter-drone systems were delivered by the Pentagon's Direct Reporting Portfolio Manager, a structure implemented by the U.S. military to accelerate the development, procurement, and fielding of unmanned technology. The Pentagon said delivery of the systems was part of an investment of roughly $782 million.The announcement comes after Secretary of War Pete Hegseth directed the Pentagon in September to remove what he described as "unnecessary barriers" causing delays in counter-drone capabilities and to accelerate the use of capabilities designed to provide a defense against unmanned aircraft systems.The deliveries announced on Wednesday included more than 24,000 counter-unmanned aerial systems, which the Pentagon said can be used to create a "multi-layered defensive shield" to protect U.S. forces against enemy drone attacks through Joint Interagency Task Force 401.The Pentagon created the task force in August 2025 to counter threats posed by drones. U.S. military bases have been repeatedly targeted by drones in recent years.Other deliveries included more than 1,300 one-way attack unmanned aerial vehicles, more than 100 unmanned surface vessels, and unmanned underwater vessels."Under Secretary Hegseth's direction, we are moving at the speed of modern combat to equip our forces with decisive, affordable mass," Owen West, CEO of Project Agincourt and Direct Reporting Portfolio Manager for Unmanned Systems, said in a statement on Wednesday."DRPM-UxS (Direct Reporting Portfolio Manager for Unmanned Systems) was established to cut through red tape and put lethal technology directly into the hands of our frontline troops."Hegseth announced Project Agincourt in a speech on Sept. 30 as a Pentagon effort to accelerate the adoption of autonomous systems.The Pentagon said the delivery of over 25,000 drone and counter-drone systems to CENTCOM demonstrates the department's shift from multiyear development to what it described as a "Warfighting Acquisition" model and a restructuring of its defense procurement.The effort also supports the development of the Autonomous Warfare Command, which was announced by Hegseth in September. The command, which the Pentagon aims to have established by October 2027, will be tasked with scaling both autonomous and robotic capabilities across the U.S. military.In addition to delivering additional autonomous systems to CENTCOM, the Pentagon said it will expand fielding pipelines for the technology to Pacific Command, European Command, and the broader military force."The thousands of systems operating across CENTCOM this year are just the beginning," West said. "We will out-innovate, out-build, and out-adapt any adversary on the battlefield. The goal is to scale these capabilities across the Joint Force."The Pentagon also announced on Wednesday that it awarded a contract of over $6.9 million to CHAOS 1, Inc., for Vanquish Prime advanced radar systems aimed at strengthening counter-drone protection for U.S. military forces and critical assets in the CENTCOM region.The Pentagon said the advanced radar systems will improve situational awareness by helping U.S. forces identify and track potential aerial threats.The radar systems will be delivered to designated locations in CENTCOM's area of responsibility as part of the contract, which also includes training and technology for the integration and operational use of the systems."This acquisition is a testament to our commitment to providing the warfighter with the most advanced capabilities available," said Lt. Col. Matthew Strohman, Joint Interagency Task Force 401's capability manager for mobile counter-unmanned aircraft Systems."The threat from unmanned systems is real and constantly evolving. By equipping our forces in CENTCOM with state-of-the-art technology, we are ensuring they have the decisive edge needed to protect our personnel and secure our strategic interests. This is about delivering the right tools at the speed of relevance."Last month, the Pentagon also signed a framework agreement with BAE Systems to increase production of interceptor kits used to defend against drones and other aerial threats. Under the agreement, the Pentagon would purchase up to 25,000 interceptor kits each year for up to seven years.Ryan Morgan contributed to this report. Tyler Durden Thu, 11/05/2026 - 21:45

— Newsom Wipes Out 548 'Racist, Inhumane' Death Sentences With One Letter

 

at 11/5/26 7:20pm

Newsom Wipes Out 548 'Racist, Inhumane' Death Sentences With One Letter California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Thursday he will commute every death sentence in the state to life in prison without the possibility of parole, wiping out the largest death row in the Western Hemisphere with 548 people on it, 529 men and 19 women, according to ABC7.In a letter he shared with the announcement, Newsom said he was using his "constitutional clemency authority" and that "state-sanctioned killing is incompatible with California's values, undermines the foundations of our legal system, and diminishes each of us." Presumably the diminishment of the victims was less incompatible.He called it one of the most difficult decisions of his career and wrote, "I alone bear responsibility for this decision and its impact," while acknowledging it will resurface painful memories for victims' families.The commutations are not final for most of the condemned. The state constitution requires California Supreme Court approval to grant clemency to anyone convicted of a felony more than once, which ABC7 reports applies to 382 of the 548 cases, about 70%. The other 166 do not need the court's sign-off.Nobody has been executed in California since Clarence Ray Allen at San Quentin on Jan. 17, 2006, as KTVU notes, and Newsom imposed a moratorium on executions in 2019. Voters upheld the death penalty at the ballot box in 2012 and again in 2016, which is the heart of the objection from prosecutors. San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe said voters rejected a repeal in 2016 and told KTVU, "I don't think that's democracy at work."Victims' groups were harsher. Topo Padilla of Crime Victims United said, "We are absolutely disgusted" by the move and suggested it was driven by political ambition, and Patricia Wenskunas, founder of Crime Survivors, called the decision "offensive" and "outrageous." The California District Attorneys Association did not immediately comment, but in a letter to Newsom last month its president, Jeannine Pacioni, warned that to "simply erase all those judgments with the stroke of a pen" would be "a profound disservice" to justice.The ACLU praised the move. Executive director Anthony Romero called the death penalty "racist, error-prone, and inhumane." Newsom adviser Dan Newman answered critics by saying, "Life without parole is hardly leniency."The timing is the political story. Newsom leaves office in January after eight years and is weighing a presidential run, and the decision clears the biggest death row in the hemisphere in one stroke. Per ABC7, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown granted broad clemency to death row prisoners in 2022, and in 2024 President Joe Biden commuted 37 of the 40 federal death sentences.Among those affected, KTVU lists Richard Farley, who killed seven people in a 1988 Sunnyvale shooting, Robert Fairbanks, convicted in a 1985 killing of a San Francisco State student, and Yosemite killer Cary Stayner.What happens next is up to the state's top court, and then to the next governor. Xavier Becerra, who takes over in January, has said he will extend the state's death penalty moratorium, per ABC7. Tyler Durden Thu, 11/05/2026 - 21:20

— Congress Demands Closed-Door Briefing With Nvidia's Jensen Huang Over His Alleged Chinese Spy Contact

 

at 11/5/26 6:55pm

Congress Demands Closed-Door Briefing With Nvidia's Jensen Huang Over His Alleged Chinese Spy Contact Three House Republican committee chairs have asked Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang to sit for a closed-door briefing on Nov. 18 about his dealings with Alice Huang, the Megaspeed executive they describe in a Nov. 5 release as a publicly reported Chinese intelligence asset.Chairmen @RepBrianMast, @RepMoolenaar and @RepRickCrawford sent a letter to NVIDIA CEO @JensenHuang requesting that he appear before a joint, closed-door briefing on Huang's interactions with Megaspeed executive Alice Huang, a publicly reported People's Republic of China (PRC)...— House Foreign Affairs Committee Majority (@HouseForeignGOP) November 5, 2026Reps. Brian Mast (R-Fla.), John Moolenaar (R-Mich.) and Rick Crawford (R-Ark.), who chair the Foreign Affairs Committee, the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party and the Intelligence Committee, want Huang to speak to all three at once.They also want to hear about Nvidia's security protocols against foreign espionage. They gave him until Nov. 11 to accept the date or propose another."Recent reports raise significant national security concerns regarding the PRC's access to sensitive U.S. technology," the chairmen wrote. "It is vital that Congress determines the extent to which U.S. national security has been placed at risk."As we first reported last week, according to people briefed on the surveillance who spoke anonymously to the New York Times, U.S. spy agencies concluded that Alice Huang was passing intelligence to Beijing and that surveillance of her showed contact with Huang. They also say President Trump was briefed roughly a year ago and took no action. Officials reportedly did not believe at the time that Huang knew what she was doing, and no one has charged Alice Huang or Megaspeed with a crime. Nvidia has said Huang's "interactions with Ms. Huang are not unusual or unexpected," and told CNBC that "meetings with customers are part of a CEO's job." Alice Huang did not respond to the Times' requests for comment.The date is no accident of the calendar: Nvidia reports earnings on Nov. 17, the day before the briefing. As we noted on Nov. 1, and now even more so after the last couple of day, the market is already leaning hard on that report, and Huang now walks into it with a congressional invitation hanging over him. Nvidia have not said yet whether Huang would attend. Tyler Durden Thu, 11/05/2026 - 20:55

— Tanker War Continues: Iran Says 5 Ships Hit Naval Mines In Last 24 Hours

 

at 11/5/26 6:30pm

Tanker War Continues: Iran Says 5 Ships Hit Naval Mines In Last 24 Hours Iranian state media on Thursday is citing several more instances of tankers on fire in the Strait of Hormuz and regional waters.Iran's IRGC military says, "This afternoon, two more offending oil tankers collided with naval mines in the insecure area east of the Strait of Hormuz and caught fire," as cited in IRIB. Piror incident on Sept. 5, 2026. Image via Tasnim Earlier on Thursday, the IRGC announced two prior instances of tankers hitting mines, which happened in the overnight hours while they attempted 'illegal' passage south of the strait.If accurate, this would bring the number of impacted tankers over the past 24 hours to five: In a statement published by state broadcaster IRIB, the navy said “ignoring maritime warnings and entering prohibited areas without coordination are reported to be among the reasons for the fires in these two oil tankers”.The navy has now reported blazes on at least five tankers in total attempting to cross the waterway through “unauthorized routes” in the past 24 hours.One of these was a smaller tugboat, per some recent regional reports. Some may have been hit earlier in the week but may still be drifting, or on fire. October had seen a record pace of these shipping attacks, with only a slight slowdown observed so far in November.In the wake of the midterm elections this week, after major Democratic victories across the House and Senate, there's been relative silence on the Iran issue coming from the White House.There's been ample reporting on the potential for Trump to order a "short and intensive" new attack on Iran, but the question would still remain: what then?Washington might be able to keep up the current status quo, despite these frequent Iranian attacks, but it's also the case that the Pentagon's 'limited' strikes against the southern Iranian coast could persist.Two more oil tankers catch fire after striking naval mines in Strait of Hormuzhttps://t.co/M1IGzWSY2S pic.twitter.com/FXUTa6DFzA— PressTV Extra (@PresstvExtra) November 5, 2026 The war remains quite obviously deeply unpopular among the American public, and Trump has certainly felt this pressure, especially given the outcome of the election.Tehran actually sees itself as having the upper-hand at this moment, at least when it comes to PR and 'leverage' in a political sense. Its leaders have been bragging that they essentially accomplished a 'regime change' of sorts in American Congress. Tyler Durden Thu, 11/05/2026 - 20:30

— Is Anthropic About To Delay The Biggest IPO Ever?

 

at 11/5/26 6:05pm

Is Anthropic About To Delay The Biggest IPO Ever? Backers want a lower price, the November timetable is in doubt, and executives and advisers are set to meet to review the deal...Major institutional backers are pushing Anthropic to cut the $1.5 trillion valuation it had been targeting for its IPO, and one suggested pricing could fall closer to $1 trillion, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday, after the Nasdaq Composite lost $2.5 trillion of market value in a single session.Anthropic had aimed to raise up to $100 billion around the week before Thanksgiving, which would top SpaceX's June listing as the largest offering ever. According to the Journal, executives and advisers plan to meet in the coming days to review the IPO, and backers are debating whether to adjust the price range or push back the timeline. With a mountain of cash on hand, the company can afford to shrink the raise or wait.Potential investors doubt Anthropic can complete its roadshow the week after next and still list in November, four people familiar with the discussions told Reuters. The roadshow had been expected to start the week of Nov. 9, with pricing the week after. Some now see $1.5 trillion as the high end of expectations, and Anthropic may need to offer a bigger discount because of its record of quarterly losses and its huge commitments to partners in the AI buildout. If the pressure on AI-related assets continues, the company could postpone until markets look sturdier, the sources said. Anthropic declined to comment.Investors are also waiting on Anthropic's October revenue, which was left blank in its updated S-1, to see whether growth has recovered from its recent slowdown, two of the sources told Reuters.The valuation has been marked down once already. After Anthropic told investors in October that third-quarter revenue grew 45% from the second quarter, down from more than doubling the quarter before, IPO investors marked it down from about $2 trillion to $1.5 trillion, as we reported.Tech stocks suffered their sharpest selloff in a year after Tuesday's midterms handed Democrats the House and Senate, a blue wave that knocked the market's teeth in. The Journal tied the retreat to AI-skeptical lawmakers and local data center moratoriums; Reuters pointed to ballot efforts in many states to limit data center development. Meta president Dina Powell McCormick said Wednesday that building data centers will be "harder following the election results," Yahoo Finance reported.Prediction markets have cut the odds of a November listing. On Polymarket, the odds of an Anthropic IPO by Nov. 30 fell from 84% to 58%, and by Dec. 31 from 90% to 73%...In private markets, OpenAI has secured only $11 billion of the $30 billion it targeted in its latest round, at an adjusted $1.25 trillion valuation, according to the Journal.As for those commitments, this week's amended filing put Anthropic's committed spend at $895.4 billion, more than $1 trillion all-in......, with $69.8 billion due in the next 12 months...Buyers would also inherit Anthropic's philanthropy. Anthropic has already put 5% of its fully diluted stock into its own Anthropic Public Benefit Fund, managed initially by CEO Dario Amodei, his sister Daniela, Jack Clark and Buddy Shah, and the board may add up to another 2% every time the stock rises 50%. The co-founders, who stand to be worth hundreds of billions after the IPO, have each pledged 80% of their personal equity to charity. The employee donation-matching program alone produced a $2.0 billion non-cash charge in the third quarter, one of the two items that pushed Anthropic back to an operating loss.And whoever buys in won't get much say. As we detailed when Anthropic's S-1 landed last month, a single Class F share owned by the seven co-founders carries 50.1% of the vote, the Long-Term Benefit Trust elects a majority of the board, and public shareholders will never hold more than 49.9% of the vote, one of the 10 biggest red flags we found in the filing. Tyler Durden Thu, 11/05/2026 - 20:05

— McCullough To Rogan: Fauci's Emails Show "They All Knew" COVID Came From A Lab

 

at 11/5/26 5:40pm

McCullough To Rogan: Fauci's Emails Show "They All Knew" COVID Came From A Lab Cardiologist Peter McCullough, told Joe Rogan that Anthony Fauci's own emails and texts show the scientists behind the foundational "natural origin" paper knew COVID came out of a lab, calling the paper a "cover-up manuscript." The former Baylor Medical bigwig (and current Wellness Company chief scientific officer), dropped in on Rogan for the first time in about give years - where he also said that a Texas hospital gave monoclonal antibodies to a pastor's wife, admitted the pastor, withheld the drugs, and watched him die. Peter Daszak / Peter McCullough / Anthony Fauci composite image McCullough walked through the origin story - which many of you already know. Peter Daszak's EcoHealth Alliance, he said, brokered the coronavirus research in Wuhan that Fauci's NIAID funded. Then, when the World Health Organization went to investigate, it turned down the independent American scientists former Trump task force member Brett Giroir offered to send. "We'll take Peter Daszak," he said the WHO told Giroir. Daszak went to Wuhan, McCullough said, looked around and declared the virus "didn't come from the lab." "This all happened under the watch of people," he said.Then came the paper. "Do you know that there were 12 papers written? It looks like Fauci commissioned the first one with Jeremy Farrar, who was at the Wellcome Trust at the time, and with Peter Daszak," McCullough said. He was describing the Nature Medicine paper by Kristian Andersen and four co-authors, which concluded that laboratory manipulation of a related coronavirus was improbable. "In Fauci's emails and texts, they all knew it came out of the lab. That was a cover-up manuscript," he said, adding that "there were 12 more manuscripts published to this day that haven't been retracted that say, well, it came out of the lab."According to internal Slack messages between the paper's authors revealed by Sen. Rand Paul, Andersen privately putting the odds of a lab origin at about 30%, and Eddie Holmes first at 20% and later 10%, against a published paper that was far more confident. The Pastor And The ERAn hour into the conversation, Rogan asked why monoclonal antibodies were so hard to get. McCullough - who said he used them "hundreds of times" - was reminded of a case "just south of Dallas": a pastor and his wife, both sick with COVID. "They give her monoclonal antibodies and say, you know, you're well enough. You go home, take care of your five kids. They look at him. He's a little heavier guy. They said, oh, you're too sick. We're admitting you. They don't give him monoclonal antibodies and he dies," McCullough said. "It can't be any more clear."Rogan asked what the reasoning could be. McCullough's answer: "That wasn't the way it was tested in clinical trials. It was only tested in outpatients." That matches the FDA's FDA authorization, which covered mild-to-moderate COVID in people who were not hospitalized, and the agency said a benefit had not been shown in hospitalized patients and warned the drug might be associated with worse outcomes in those needing high-flow oxygen or ventilation.McCullough called that "clinical judgment" and said he would have given everyone the drugs. "When my patients were anywhere close to the ER, I made sure that they got these monoclonal antibodies. I held them up in the ER. I said, listen, you're not going into the hospital until you get monoclonal antibodies." Denying them, he said, "tells you something about what this pandemic was really about."Rogan offered his own theory: "What I had heard was they wanted to limit the use of monoclonal antibodies because they felt that it contributed to vaccine hesitancy."  Tyler Durden Thu, 11/05/2026 - 19:40

— The Media's Propaganda Machine Is Malfunctioning

 

at 11/5/26 5:15pm

The Media's Propaganda Machine Is Malfunctioning Authored by J.B. Shurk via American Thinker,Your brain is the battlefield...It feels as if the march of history is accelerating now. The number of meaningful current events around the globe continues to grow.We don't have time to process the Islamic riots across France before turning our attention to Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk's attempted judicial coup d'état. While President Trump seeks peace between Russia and Ukraine, the United Kingdom prepares its citizens for WWIII and a Russian invasion. The United States has elections, but Democrat seditionists and subversive members of the American Intelligence Community push for a "color revolution" to topple the Trump administration.Big events happen every day, and we have scant opportunity to understand what they mean before another comes across our screens. The issue of "screens" is important. If you're reading this, you are not likely a hermit living self-sufficiently in the woods. Unless you limit your "screen time," televisions, computers, tablets, and phones are pumping your brain full of information all day long. Even when we're not consciously reading or watching something on our screens, our brains are picking up signals about the events playing out in the world.If you are a fan of science fiction, it is not difficult to understand that we are now living in a version of the dystopian worlds that writers such as Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, Ray Bradbury, and Philip K. Dick envisioned. People who possess power in this world have a strong incentive to shape our minds, and they use every available tool to condition our way of thinking.Information is no longer confined to a book, catalogued in a quiet library. It is blaring at us from all directions.Different cable news hosts on competing cable news networks repeat the same words and phrases all day long until we find ourselves reaching for those words while having polite conversations in real life.Songs from pop artists representing different genres push the same messages, and when those pop artists collect awards, they use their acceptance speeches to drive those messages further into the brains of their most loyal fans. Those fans magnify those messages on their social media platforms, and pretty soon, tens of millions of people are expressing the same thoughts.Movies and television shows teach us to fear or detest "hate speech," "global warming," "white supremacy," "Russian aggression," "science deniers," "right-wingers," "fascists," "European Union skeptics," "fossil fuels," "Islamophobia," "transphobia," Christianity, immigration enforcement, Vladimir Putin, and Donald Trump. Any Hollywood character who doesn't condemn these things is depicted as a villain; any Hollywood character who denounces these things is a brilliant, beautiful hero.This is information warfare in a nutshell, and it is all around us.If you look back in time, you will realize that some version of it has always existed.Twentieth-century newspapers gave us descriptions of the facts filtered through the worldviews of their writers, editors, and publishers. Three broadcast news anchors delivered almost identical accounts of each day's news. If you scrutinized those newsrooms, though, you realized that newspaper publishers came from the same prominent families that ran parts of the government and that federal licenses required television networks to abide by certain national security protocols. The same "journalists" who gave each other awards for their "integrity" and "independence" married members of the government. Twentieth-century "journalists" were never really part of a Fourth Estate; they acted as the public relations arm of the American government.The most important aspect of "journalism" last century was its ability to seduce the reader or viewer into believing that "reporters" are impartial, just-the-facts clerics collecting important stories for the public's benefit. So long as "journalists" were seen as ink-stained priests who cared nothing for money or fame, they received a certain amount of public respect. If people could be convinced that "journalists" would risk their lives to inform the public what is "true," then some people might even consider those "journalists" heroes. Priestly heroes cultivate public trust, and public trust is its own kind of power.In this sense, the government had no interest in telling Americans not to trust the news. All governments want the public to believe the news because it is through the news that governments disseminate their public messages. In true symbiotic form, newsrooms and governments do not have competing interests. They have a shared interest: to convince the public that what it reads or hears is the "truth."The entertainment industry has long played its role in this propaganda program. A small number of publishing houses controlled which books would be printed and sold. A small number of magazines controlled popular opinion. A small number of movie studios controlled what stories were told. When everybody worked in tandem, publishing houses printed books whose authors expressed ideas that the government wanted the public to read. Magazines recommended those books until they became "best sellers" on newspaper lists. Hollywood chose good-looking actors to play the characters in those best-selling books, and families sat in theaters to hear government-approved programming. Sometimes, movie stars played hero journalists, so that the public remembered that The New York Times and The Washington Post could be trusted to report only the "truth."When a propaganda system works well, you don't notice how all the various agents have clear conflicts of interest. You don't stop to ask why the deputy director at the FBI would be working with The Post to take down a sitting president (something that both Mark Felt and Andrew McCabe have in common). You don't wonder whether it's appropriate for "reporters" to depend entirely upon anonymous sources. You don't ask whether the billionaire moneymen who own newspapers might have ulterior motives that undermine the pursuit of truth. You don't notice that the same families that own movie studios and publishing houses also own multinational chemical plants, pharmaceutical firms, shipping conglomerates, and banking empires. You don't realize that these wealthy families include members of Congress and the heads of agencies. You don't see how government officials receive awards from nonprofits and NGOs that are run by the same families handing out awards to authors, musicians, actors, and "journalists" for their professional achievements or contributions to "truth."See the problem? Over the last thirty years, the public started to see through this sophisticated network of information warfare and recognize it as the propaganda that it has always been. The expanding web of the Internet allowed people to learn information that had been hidden from them. Email allowed people to communicate with groups much more quickly than traditional phone calls or written correspondence. Social media platforms turned ordinary people into public broadcasters almost overnight.Comedians lose their power over minds when ordinary people on YouTube are just as funny. Hollywood actors lose their star power when teenagers can become famous just for filming their lives. Publishing houses lose their gatekeeping power when writers publish online. "Journalists" lose their monopoly on objective "truth" when citizen reporters describe current events in real time.When all these parts of the propaganda machine malfunction together, people finally see the puppet strings moving the various actors. And whether they work in Hollywood or for CNN, the narrative engineers are allactors - people paid to deliver messages that corporations and government officials wish to spread.This is one of the reasons the march of history is speeding up! The people who have long controlled public opinion realize that they have lost their greatest weapon: legitimacy. Illegitimate systems are unsustainable. So the narrative engineers have been forced to flood the zone with so much information that it becomes ever more difficult to ascertain the truth. Global warming, Russian collusion, COVID, defending democracy, WWIII - the demand on your attention is huge and will get only worse!As this happens, remember this: Your brain is the battlefield. If you prevent others from using it for you, they will lose. Tyler Durden Thu, 11/05/2026 - 19:15

— Multifamily CRE Meltdown Keeps Getting Uglier

 

at 11/5/26 4:25pm

Multifamily CRE Meltdown Keeps Getting Uglier Authored by Wolf Richter via Wolf Street,There are about $2.3 trillion in multifamily commercial real estate (CRE) loans out there, backed by buildings with rental apartments. The US government, via Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, holds about $1.2 trillion of that. Fannie and Freddie have become very aggressive multifamily CRE lenders. So, dear taxpayer, you're on the hook for about half of the multifamily CRE debt.The rest is held around the globe by banks, insurance companies, real estate funds, alternative asset managers - a melted-down mortgage just hit Bridge Investment Group, a unit of PE giant Apollo (more on that in a moment) - holders of Commercial Mortgage-Backed Securities (CMBS) and Collateralized Loan Obligations (CLOs).All of them have gotten hit by melted-down mortgages as the higher interest rates make it just about impossible to refinance the balloon payments when they come due on fixed-rate loans, or even make interest payments on variable-rate loans pegged to SOFR, which jumped when the Fed started hiking its policy rates. The result has been wave after wave of multifamily defaults, and it keeps getting worse.CMBS holders got hit by another default: The $210 million interest-only 5-year mortgage on a Class A 283-unit 20-acre waterfront apartment property, "The Cove at Tiburon," across the Bay from San Francisco. The mortgage had been issued in 2020 to refinance the property at ultra-low interest rates. The mortgage was then securitized and sold to investors who thought that ultra-low interest rates would be a permanent feature.The interest-only mortgage became delinquent when it wasn't paid off in October, after having already been modified and extended in November 2025. It could not be refinanced at current interest rates because the declining rental income wasn't enough to cover operating expenses and the interest payments at today's interest rates. Now there are talks underway to extend it for another six months, according to Trepp, which analyzes and tracks CMBS. Extend and pretend forevermore.The multifamily CMBS delinquency rate rose to 8.1% in October, driven by this delinquency, the highest since 2016, when the $3 billion delinquent loan on the huge 11,250-apartment campus, Stuyvesant Town - Peter Cooper Village, in Manhattan, was paid off by the acquirers of the property.Back in 2024, Morningstar DBRS, which rated the CMBS, wrote about the problems lining up for the mortgage on The Cove at Tiburon:"At issuance [of the loan in 2020], Morningstar DBRS shadow-rated the loan investment grade given that the property benefits from a prime waterfront location, superior amenities, and limited competition within the submarket. However, despite these aspects, which Morningstar DBRS expected to contribute to cash flow stability over the loan term, the property's reported occupancy rate and cash flow trended downward shortly after issuance, primarily as a result of a slowdown in leasing activity...."As per the March 2024 rent roll, the property was 80.2% occupied at an average rental rate of $5,789 per unit, compared with June 2022 figures of 91.9% and $5,852 per unit, respectively."It appears that new leases are being signed at lower rental rates to curb increases in vacancy rates, resulting in lowered cash flows...."And now that property would have to be refinanced at much higher interest rates, and that just doesn't pencil out.Other lenders got hit too.Bridge Investment Group, an alternative investment manager owned by PE giant Apollo, is now stuck with the defaulted $360 million loan on The Beaudry, a new high-end 64-floor apartment tower in downtown Los Angeles, with 785 units and amenities such as floor-to-ceiling windows, saltwater pool, spa, rooftop lounge, 24/7 athletic club, a full-swing golf simulator, etc.The tower, which opened in 2023, was developed by giant real-estate developer and landlord Brookfield for about $600 million. Because the $360 million loan cannot be refinanced at today's interest rates without a massive capital infusion, Brookfield decided to hand over the keys, walk away from the property and the loan, and let the lender worry about the whole schmear, according to the WSJ today.Brookfield, which already defaulted on mortgages of numerous office towers in Los Angeles and around the country, has played a substantial role in the Office CRE meltdown.Bridge Investment Group is now trying to sell the Beaudry loan - and thereby the rights to the property.The Beaudry has lots of competition: Over 10,000 new apartments were built from 2017 to 2021 in downtown L.A., the most of any other downtown in the country, according to RentCafe, cited by the WSJ.Then came working from home, and proximity to now substantially vacant and defaulting office towers wasn't such a magnet anymore.At the Beaudry, rents start at $2,424 a month for a 539-square-foot studio on the sixth floor, according to its website. Up the scale, a two-bedroom 1,200 sf apartment on the eighth floor is listed at $4,905. The same floorplan on the 20th floor is listed at $5,730. A 3-bedroom 1,700 sf unit on the 49th floor is listed at $8,893. All of them with big views.Asking rents average around $4,200 a month at the Beaudry, according to CoStar, cited by the WSJ, far below what Brookfield had aimed for. "A lot of students live here," Max Xing, a student at the University of Southern California, told the WSJ. He moved into a studio in August. But the Beaudry was designed as high-end living for professionals working downtown, Andrew Parks, a lead designer on the Beaudry, told the WSJ. "We wanted to go for something that felt very sophisticated."In addition to the higher interest rates...There are other pieces to the multifamily meltdown, including:Growing supply: The Growth of the Vacant Housing Stock in the USAnd pressure on multifamily rents: Single-Family & Multifamily Rents in the US and 22 Large US Metros Tyler Durden Thu, 11/05/2026 - 18:25

— Ex-School Board President Indicted In Alleged $1.3 Million Kickback Over $2.7 Million COVID-Funded Air Purifier Deal

 

at 11/5/26 4:00pm

Ex-School Board President Indicted In Alleged $1.3 Million Kickback Over $2.7 Million COVID-Funded Air Purifier Deal A federal grand jury in Chicago has indicted Annette Johnson, the former president of the East Aurora School District 131 Board of Education, on charges that she entered the district into a $2.7 million air purifier purchase in 2021 in exchange for a $1.3 million payment. Johnson, 63, of Aurora, faces two counts of honest services mail fraud and one count of honest services wire fraud, each punishable by up to 20 years in federal prison, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Illinois said. She remains a member of the board. Annette Johnson, the former president and current board member of the East Aurora School District 131 Board of Education Prosecutors say that Johnson, then board president, voted for the purchase, and that the district paid for the purifiers with COVID-era federal grant money. Unbeknownst to the other board members, they say, Johnson and the vendor had agreed that the vendor would pay more than $1 million of the sale proceeds to a company owned by her boyfriend, where she served as chief financial officer.Within days of a board vote in which Johnson participated and approved payment, prosecutors say, the vendor mailed a $1.3 million check labeled "commission" to that company. Later, she allegedly pushed the board to approve a $201,077 payment to the vendor in 2023 for an "extended warranty" on the purifiers. The US Attorney's office does not name the vendor nor the company in the complaint, and Johnson was the only person indicted.The indictment also accuses Johnson of failing to list $7,500 paid to her in 2021 by a company involved in the deal on her statement of economic interests. Johnson said in a statement Monday that she recognizes the gravity of the allegations. "I maintain my innocence of the criminal charges brought against me, and I intend to vigorously defend myself through the judicial process," she said, according to the Sun-Times.Aurora Mayor John Laesch told the Sun-Times that a whistleblower approached him in 2024 and that district records show eight companies with purported ties to Johnson received $43.1 million from the district between 2018 and 2023, which he says he gave to prosecutors. He has called on her to resign, the paper reported. The $43.1 million figure is Laesch's claim, not an allegation in the indictment. $43M flowed from school district to firms linked to indicted board member, Aurora mayor says - Chicago Sun-Times The same report says Johnson's economic-interest statements were blank from 2012 to 2024 and that she first listed a company, DJ Payne Corporation, in 2025. A 2024 challenge to her candidacy over the filings was dismissed after the board ruled it lacked authority to review them.The district said Johnson, like any defendant, is entitled to a presumption of innocence. Officials told the Sun-Times it is working with investigators. An indictment is not evidence of guilt, and Johnson is presumed innocent. Her term on the board runs through April 2029, according to the district's website, and the Sun-Times reports she is due in court Nov. 9. Tyler Durden Thu, 11/05/2026 - 18:00

— Every GOP Strategist & Candidate Should Be Forced To Participate In This Role-Playing Exercise

 

at 11/5/26 3:40pm

Every GOP Strategist & Candidate Should Be Forced To Participate In This Role-Playing Exercise Authored by The Refined PopulistEvery GOP strategist, consultant, and candidate should be forced to participate in a role-playing exercise this morning...Your name is Bob. You’re a 49-year-old blue-collar worker in Ohio. You’ve always struggled to make ends meet. The good jobs were all shipped to China and the few remaining pay a pittance wage, undercut by endless illegal labor.You’re a 3x Trump voter because you believed he would finally make America great again. You put your son through Ohio State. He graduated cum laude in computer science. You couldn’t have been prouder.After months searching, he landed an entry-level job at Microsoft. Beneath his qualifications, but a good start for a smart kid. Then he got laid off. That same month, Microsoft applied for 150,000 more H-1B visas because it can’t find qualified Americans. Your son has spent six months back in his childhood bedroom, sending hundreds of applications without landing an interview. via Associated Press On TV, Trump boasts about the greatest economy in history and how many women and minorities are finding jobs. You decide a father-son steak night might cheer him up. Gas is $4.50 a gallon. Filling your truck costs over $100. At Kroger, ribeyes are $30/lb. You settle for hamburger, even though 70/30 ground beef still costs $10+. At checkout, a fat black woman is screaming at the cashier because her EBT will only cover most of the filet mignon and lobster in her cart.You think to yourself how the Iran war has made everything expensive, but at least we’re stopping their nuclear bomb. You weren’t even sure where Iran was before you googled it after we first bombed them in March.After dinner, you take your son to the county fair. Half the people aren’t speaking English. Virtually none of the crowd looks like you. You’re forced to leave early after a “teen takeover” turns violent. A foreign born judge pledges none of them will go to jail.Back home, you turn on the TV. Vivek Ramaswamy is lecturing the crowd about American mediocrity and why Ohio needs more foreign talent. Your son grows upset. You change the channel.Now a Republican surrogate, the daughter of a governor or wife of an elderly billionaire, explains that young White men are the REAL welfare queens. They’d rather play videogames in their parents’ basements than work.? Ramaswamy was booed off stage after saying: "The truth of the matter is, people in my generation have already made it. We're gonna be fine." The GOP is just embarrassing at this point. pic.twitter.com/4A39KPyaUz— Uncle Sam Hates Us (@TrumpsLostBalls) November 2, 2026 Your son says nothing. He just goes back to his childhood bedroom. You turn off the TV. Then your neighbor starts blasting reggaeton and cracking open Modelos. He brought his cousin’s family from Mexico to help with all the minority-business contracts his construction firm keeps winning. Tonight they’re celebrating his nephew’s birth, the family’s first birthright American citizen.You sit alone in your living room. You worked hard, paid taxes, obeyed the law, and raised your son to do everything right. You voted Republican again and again because you believed somebody in Washington would finally fight for you.Instead, your wages are stagnant. Groceries are unaffordable. Your community is unrecognizable. Your country is fighting another foreign war.And upstairs, the son you sacrificed everything for is lying awake in the bedroom he slept in at twelve, wondering what the heck he’s even supposed to do with his life now.Every time you turn on the TV, the Republicans you elected are either congratulating themselves or explaining why you and your son are the problem.For ten years, they told you America’s future depended on your vote. Now you aren’t even sure America has a future worth defending.The Republican Party needs to answer one simple question this morning: You’ve spent a decade demanding Bob’s loyalty. You’ve given him stagnant wages, unaffordable groceries, another foreign war, and a son who did everything right but can’t find work. And when they complain, you call them lazy, entitled, and racist.What possible reason have you given Bob and his son to vote Republican? Do you honestly think you deserve their vote?We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of ZeroHedge. Tyler Durden Thu, 11/05/2026 - 17:40

— UCLA Cops Stockpile Drones And Less-Lethal Munitions For 'Emergency Incidents'

 

at 11/5/26 3:20pm

UCLA Cops Stockpile Drones And Less-Lethal Munitions For 'Emergency Incidents' Authored by Bryan Hyde via American Greatness,The UCLA Police Department (UCPD) spent more than $220,000 on drones and less-than-lethal munitions in 2025 and is now seeking approval to expand its inventory further.An Oct. 19 military equipment report reveals that UCPD bought three Skydio X10s under a 10-year contract at a cost of $21,654 annually for the drones and their docking stations.According to the Daily Bruin, the drones are part of UCPD's new Drone as First Responder program.Richard Mejia, director of emergency communications and information for the Office of Campus and Community Safety, said in an emailed statement that the program aims to "improve situational awareness, reduce response times and provide valuable video evidence during emergency incidents."According to UCPD's report, the $220k expenditure covered a variety of specialized security equipment including drones, less-than-lethal munitions such as 40 millimeter sponge rounds and projectile launchers as well as long-range acoustic devices.The Daily Bruin reports the department also owns semiautomatic patrol rifles but categorizes them as "standard issue service weapons" rather than military equipment, per the report.The Skydio X10, launched in Sept. 2023, is a quadcopter with a folding design which, according to the manufacturer, can be made flight-ready from a backpack in 40 seconds.UCPD purchased 120 40 mm munitions in 2025 and owns 3,117 less-than-lethal munitions in total and the department is requesting 1,950 additional PepperBall rounds and 50 more 40 mm projectiles, according to the report.The report states:All additional equipment is necessary to support the department's growth and expansion due to UCLA's acquisition/construction of additional University-owned housing, medical, and administrative properties, as well as in preparation for the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games.According to the report, which must be published and submitted to the UC Board of Regents annually, UCPD did not use its military equipment outside of training purposes in 2025.The most recent disclosure has fueled significant debate across the University of California system.EdSource reports that faculty groups, student organizations, and civil liberties advocates have expressed deep concerns over the "militarization" of campus security, arguing that these stockpiles could be used to suppress peaceful student protests rather than protect the community.UCLA professor Michael Chwe launched a petition that has gathered hundreds of campus signatures demanding that police stop using 40mm launchers altogether, according to the NY Post.UCLA stockpiles huge arsenal of drones, ammo for emergencies https://t.co/JeflZMXiBK https://t.co/Uo4VxqeyDd— New York Post (@nypost) November 3, 2026 Tyler Durden Thu, 11/05/2026 - 17:20

— House Democrats Eye Their Own Crypto Market Structure Bill With A Bigger SEC Role After Sweep

 

at 11/5/26 3:00pm

House Democrats Eye Their Own Crypto Market Structure Bill With A Bigger SEC Role After Sweep Authored by Micah Zimmerman via Bitcoin Magazine,House Democrats are discussing a plan to turn Rep. Maxine Waters' Crypto Investor and Consumer Bill of Rights into their own crypto market structure bill next Congress, with ideas that include a bigger role for the SEC and a smaller one for the CFTC, Eleanor Terrett reported Wednesday.?SCOOP: House Democrats are discussing plans to expand the Crypto Investor and Consumer Bill of Rights, @RepMaxineWaters' amendment to the Clarity Act in 2025, into a broader crypto "market structure" bill next Congress.The proposal would fold in Democratic Clarity Act...— Eleanor Terrett (@EleanorTerrett) November 4, 2026The proposal would fold in the Democratic Clarity Act provisions Waters offered in the House, which were not adopted, plus the provisions Senate Democrats were able to agree on with Republicans before September's failed cloture vote. Terrett cited three industry sources who have spoken with Democratic staffers.Further ethics provisions restricting the crypto activities of President Donald Trump and other federal officials are also likely, she wrote. Republicans are calling it a "messaging bill."No text for the crypto market structure bill has been released, and the details so far come from industry sources rather than from lawmakers.JUST IN: ?? House Democrats reportedly want to revive their Clarity Act provisions in a broader crypto market structure bill next Congress, Eleanor Terrett reports. ? pic.twitter.com/8twokppjHz— Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) November 4, 2026The talks follow Tuesday's Democratic sweep of Congress. Waters, the top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, is in line to take the gavel in January from Chairman French Hill, the Clarity Act's sponsor.Bloomberg Law reported Wednesday that the new majorities give Democrats leverage over the Clarity Act, the industry's top legislative priority, starting with tougher ethics rules aimed at Trump's ventures.What the Waters amendment would do for cryptoWaters offered the bill of rights as amendment #31 to H.R. 3633 in July 2025. The House Rules Committee blocked it 4-8 along party lines, on a motion from Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon of Pennsylvania. Making an amendment "in order" lets the full House debate and vote on it, so the result kept the package off the floor.The committee's record lists what it would have required: 24/7 customer service, insurance or SIPC-like coverage, fiduciary and best-execution rules, anti-front-running rules, bankruptcy-remote custody with 24-hour withdrawals and monthly auditor-attested proof of reserves. It would also have sent more funding to the SEC and CFTC.The committee rejected a second Democratic amendment by the same 4-8 margin. That one, from Rep. Joe Neguse of Colorado, would have barred members of Congress, presidents and vice presidents from issuing or endorsing digital assets. The ethics fight it previewed later followed the bill to the Senate.SEC versus CFTCThe agency split is where a Democratic crypto market structure bill would break most sharply from the Republican one. The House-passed Clarity Act directs the CFTC to regulate most digital commodity trading, including exchanges, brokers and dealers, and exempts tokens on mature blockchains from SEC registration under certain conditions.That design is the one the industry backed. A crypto market structure bill that moves supervision back toward the SEC would reverse it.The Clarity Act passed the House 294-134 in July 2025 and failed a Senate cloture vote 49-50 on Sept. 15. Sen. Thom Tillis entered a motion to reconsider, which preserves the option of another vote, but the bill dies when this Congress ends on Jan. 3 unless the lame-duck session revives it.Democrats now hold the leverage. "The industry and the Republicans screwed up. That was the best bill they were going to get," Sen. Ruben Gallego of Arizona, a Senate Banking Committee member, said in comments reported by Bloomberg Law.TD Cowen's Jaret Seiberg wrote Wednesday that the sweep closes the door on Clarity for two years, and that Democratic investigations of the Trump family's crypto ventures "may make it impossible to advance a version of Clarity that the crypto sector could back."A Democratic crypto market structure bill would still need Trump's signature to become law. Whether one built around the SEC can draw enough Republican votes to get there, or remains the messaging bill Republicans say it is, is the question the next Congress opens with. Tyler Durden Thu, 11/05/2026 - 17:00

— Mapped: Socialists Just Captured America's Two Biggest Cities - As 'Blue Wave' Knocks The Market's Teeth In

 

at 11/5/26 2:40pm

Mapped: Socialists Just Captured America's Two Biggest Cities - As 'Blue Wave' Knocks The Market's Teeth In If Nithya Raman's lead in Los Angeles holds, about 14.4 million Americans will live under a socialist mayor, up from 9.4 million before Tuesday, and the country's two largest cities will both be run by members of the Democratic Socialists of America. Decision Desk HQ projected Wednesday that Raman, a DSA member on the City Council, unseated Mayor Karen Bass, as we reported. The AP has not called the race.Tuesday also sent eight DSA members to the House: six newcomers plus Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib, who were re-elected. Washington, D.C., Providence and Ann Arbor elected socialist mayors, and socialists won or lead in a dozen city council races from Burbank to Providence.Socialist Wins, From City Hall To CongressRaces won or led by DSA members, DSA-endorsed candidates and self-described democratic socialists in the Nov. 3, 2026 election. Count as of Nov. 5.                                                  3Portland Richmond8L.A. area Denver3Detroit area9Northeast House seat City office, won Projected or leading Group, with countNortheast (9)D.C.: mayor, Ward 1 councilProvidence: mayor, 2 councilHouse: NY-7, NY-13, NY-14, PA-3L.A. area (8)L.A.: mayor (projected)House: CA-34Santa Ana 3, Burbank 2, Irvine 1 council (leading)Detroit area (3)Ann Arbor: mayorHouse: MI-12, MI-13Also: Denver, House CO-1; Richmond, mayor (leading); Portland, 3 council (leading)Source: AP, Decision Desk HQ, state and county returns.   The newcomers are Claire Valdez (NY-7), Darializa Avila Chevalier (NY-13), Chris Rabb (PA-3), Donavan McKinney (MI-13), Melat Kiros (CO-1) and Angela Gonzales-Torres (CA-34). Four of the six unseated sitting Democrats: Avila Chevalier beat Rep. Adriano Espaillat, McKinney beat Rep. Shri Thanedar and Kiros ousted 15-term Rep. Diana DeGette in primaries, while Gonzales-Torres beat Rep. Jimmy Gomez 59% to 41% on Tuesday, according to LAist.In the mayors' races, Janeese Lewis George, a DSA member on the D.C. Council, won the race to succeed Muriel Bowser. David Morales, a self-described democratic socialist who ousted Providence Mayor Brett Smiley in September, took 80.6% of the vote. Yousef Rabhi had no opponent in Ann Arbor after beating 12-year Mayor Christopher Taylor in August. In Richmond, Calif., East Bay DSA member Claudia Jiménez leads with about 53%.Americans Under A Socialist MayorCity population, Census Bureau estimates for July 1, 2025. In office or won Projected or leadingNew YorkMamdani, since Jan. 1 8.58MLos AngelesRaman, projected 3.87MSeattleWilson, since Jan. 785KWashington, D.C.Lewis George, won 694KProvidenceMorales, won 195KAnn ArborRabhi, won 122KRichmond, Calif.Jiménez, leading 115K14.4 million if L.A. and Richmond hold, about 1 in 24 Americans, up from 9.4 million before Tuesday.Source: Census Bureau; Decision Desk HQ; local returns. Seattle's Wilson is a self-described democratic socialist; the others are DSA members.   The Ceiling In WashingtonThe new members arrive in a Democratic House and Senate, but keep in mind that nothing they pass becomes law thanks to President Trump's veto threat. Dems won at least 54 Senate seats - short of the 60 needed to break a filibuster and the two-thirds needed to override a veto. CBS News projects a House majority of 251 to 268 seats, which makes eight socialists about 3% of the caucus; leadership could lose more than 30 votes and still pass a bill.Losing the House also killed a Republican plan to keep Avila Chevalier and Valdez away from intelligence. Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.), calling them "dangerous," had urged Speaker Mike Johnson to limit which committees they could join if the GOP kept its majority.The Tax-The-Rich ScorecardWhile the spread of socialism is alive and well, voters split on taxing the rich. California's one-time 5% tax on billionaires' net worth was failing, with just over 56% voting no in Tuesday night's count, after billionaires poured a record $612 million into the state's elections to fight it. A measure to make the state's top income-tax brackets permanent passed with about 59%, and Prop. 42, which would ban new taxes on financial assets and most other wealth, was ahead with more than 54%.In Washington state, voters refused to repeal a new 9.9% tax on income over $1 million, 58% to 42%, keeping a levy expected to raise more than $11 billion over five years, with revenue starting in 2028. Starbucks founder Howard Schultz announced he had moved to Miami hours after the tax cleared the state House in March, as we reported.The Tax-The-Rich ScorecardWhere the biggest proposals stand after Nov. 3. California counts are unofficial and not yet called.California Prop. 40One-time 5% tax on net worth of $1 billion or moreFailing, 56% noCalifornia Prop. 3Top income-tax brackets, above about $360,000, made permanentPassed, 59%Washington I-645Repeal of the new 9.9% tax on income over $1 millionTax survives, 58%New York CityPied-à-terre surcharge on second homes, about $500 million next yearIn courtLos Angeles ULA4% to 5.5% tax on property sales over $5 million; Raman sought a 15-year exemption for new buildingIn committeeWashington, D.C.Lewis George's $500 million "loophole" planNo detailsFederal wealth taxAny version from the new Democratic CongressVeto till 2029Source: CalMatters, Spokesman-Review, NYS Focus, CalMatters/CoStar, WJLA.   Mayor Zohran Mamdani asked Albany for $5.5 billion in new taxes on the wealthy and big corporations and came away with a surcharge on expensive second homes worth about $500 million next year, NYS Focus reported, after he dropped his threat to raise property taxes. The surcharge has been tied up in court since August.In Los Angeles, Raman tried in January to shrink the city's "mansion tax." She proposed exempting new apartments and commercial projects for 15 years from Measure ULA, the city's 4% to 5.5% tax on property sales over $5 million, arguing that construction had slowed and lenders were pulling back. The council sent it back to committee, and any change needs voters' approval. ULA has raised more than $1 billion, according to CalMatters.In D.C., Lewis George says closing "a loophole that benefits Maryland and Virginia" could raise $500 million, without saying how. The Home Rule Act bars the District from taxing commuters' income, and a House Republican bill requiring Congress to approve D.C. tax or fee increases cleared committee in July. It would need 60 votes in a Senate that Democrats take over in January.Where Mayors Move FastHousing is where a socialist mayor has moved fastest so far, through a board the mayor appoints. New York's Rent Guidelines Board, where Mamdani had appointed six members, voted 7-1 in June to freeze rents on about 1 million stabilized apartments, six months into his term.Providence's council passed a 4% annual cap on rent increases 9-6, but Smiley's veto stood. Morales has pledged to work with the council to enact it and set up a board to enforce it. In Los Angeles, California's Costa-Hawkins Act exempts newer buildings and single-family homes from rent control and bars caps on rents between tenants. Raman will, however, appoint the commissions that run the Port of Los Angeles, LAX and the Department of Water and Power, the largest city-owned utility in the country.Getting Blue Wave'd...The first market casualty of Tuesday's vote was the AI power trade: on Wednesday Vistra fell 13.8% and Vertiv 12.9%, while the S&P 500 ETF rose 1.7%. Constellation Energy fell 6.7% and Nvidia 3.2%, while DTE Energy, Michigan's regulated utility, rose 2.4%.Day One: AI Power Names Sank As The Market RoseFirst session after the election: change from the Nov. 3 close to the Nov. 4 close. Fell Rose -15%-10%-5%0+5% Vistra VST      -13.8%Vertiv VRT      -12.9%Constellation CEG      -6.7%Nvidia NVDA      -3.2%Oracle ORCL      -1.9%Utilities XLU      +0.4%Nasdaq-100 QQQ      +1.0%S&P 500 SPY      +1.7%DTE Energy DTE      +2.4%Microsoft MSFT      +6.7%Source: Alpha Vantage daily closes. XLU: Utilities Select Sector SPDR; QQQ: Invesco QQQ; SPY: SPDR S&P 500.   Analysts tied the selloff to the broader Democratic sweep rather than to the socialists. Texas Gov.-elect Gina Hinojosa, a Democrat who unseated Greg Abbott, campaigned on a moratorium on new data centers, and KeyBanc cut Vistra to Sector Weight over the policy risk. Texas holds about 27% of U.S. data center capacity, according to a Wells Fargo estimate cited by CNBC, and the Democratic wave there also hit Tesla. Democrats also took control of Georgia's Public Service Commission.On Thursday the selloff spread to chips and then to the whole market: by late morning the S&P 500 was down 3.2% and the Nasdaq 5%, with the S&P on track for its worst drop since President Trump shook markets in April 2025. AMD fell 15.9%, CoreWeave 14.9%, GE Vernova 9.1% and Nvidia 8.3%.Day Two: The Selloff SpreadIntraday change at about 11:40 a.m. ET, Nov. 5. Closing figures will differ. -15%-10%-5%0 AMD     -15.9%CoreWeave CRWV     -14.9%GE Vernova GEV     -9.1%Nvidia NVDA     -8.3%Nasdaq Comp.     -5.0%S&P 500     -3.2%Dow     -2.1%Source: Spectrum News, 11:39 a.m. ET update.   Goldman Sachs economist Alec Phillips estimated that moratoriums could touch about 45% of planned U.S. data center capacity expansion, though he expects them to be brief, and Goldman's Ismail Abbas said the new backdrop is "good for those who own compute (hyperscalers) and bad for those who have to build out." UBS warned that "Data center pauses will slow the pace of buildout into 2028." Qualcomm also sank about 10% before the open on a weak forecast, and South Korea's Kospi fell 5.8% overnight, triggering a trading halt, as Samsung and SK Hynix tumbled.The AI Data Center Moratorium Act from Sen. Bernie Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez would halt new data centers nationwide until federal protections for workers, consumers and the environment are in place. The House version has 15 Democratic sponsors, Tlaib among them, and dies when this Congress ends on Jan. 3, so it would have to be reintroduced. Most lawmakers in both parties have rejected a moratorium, and Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) wrote, "I refuse to help hand the lead in AI to China."Before the vote, Wells Fargo warned of a fourfold jump in active data center moratoriums, as we reported. Denver Mayor Mike Johnston, who is not a socialist, proposed a pause on new data centers in February in what is now Kiros's district. Outside Ann Arbor, OpenAI, Oracle and Related Digital are building a 250-acre campus in Saline Township, beyond the new mayor's reach, and the city's voters rejected a plan to replace DTE with a city-owned utility by 951 votes.A Brooklyn appeals court is due to rule by Tuesday on whether New York can keep rolling out its second-home surcharge, after a Staten Island judge ordered the rollout scrapped in September over how the city flagged homeowners. The appeals court has let the city proceed in the meantime. Tyler Durden Thu, 11/05/2026 - 16:40

— Why Are We Being Warned That Our "Window To Prepare" Is Closing?

 

at 11/5/26 2:20pm

Why Are We Being Warned That Our "Window To Prepare" Is Closing? Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse,There is growing anticipation that something really big is about to happen. Social media is buzzing about the fact that so many governments around the world are urging their citizens to stockpile food, water and other essential supplies right now. Why have all of those governments suddenly developed such a sense of urgency? I wish that I knew, but without a doubt global events have begun to spiral out of control.Our world is facing crisis after crisis, and most of them have erupted in the last 12 months. The U.S. and Israel are preparing to bomb the living daylights out of Iran after the midterm elections, and the Iranians are making all sorts of apocalyptic threats in response. The Russians and the Ukrainians are absolutely pummeling one another with missiles and drones, and European leaders are being encouraged to consider sending troops into Ukraine. Cyberattacks have become much more sophisticated and much more frequent, and AI agents are infiltrating financial systems worldwide. Meanwhile, we are facing a global energy crisis, a global fertilizer crisis and a global food crisis simultaneously. On top of everything else, the most powerful Super El Niño ever recorded is causing monster storms, epic droughts and horrific wildfires all over the planet.Unfortunately, many are warning that things could soon get far worse.A former Defense Intelligence Agency official named Farijah "Doc" St. Clair has ominously warned that our "window to prepare" is rapidly closing...A former Defense Intelligence Agency staffer is warning Americans that time is running out to prepare for a crisis. His post has been viewed more than 1.7 million times."Your window to prepare, even with the basics, is closing," wrote Farijah "Doc" St. Clair on X. "For those tracking the indicators that an event is increasingly likely, you know that it is now undeniable that something is brewing."This is not just some random former DIA employee.He is currently the head of technology and intelligence at a firm that produces "an AI-driven intelligence product built with Palantir that gives corporate executives a daily briefing modeled on the President's Daily Brief"...St. Clair is head of technology and intelligence at Crisis24, a GardaWorld-owned risk firm. There he leads AiiA, an AI-driven intelligence product built with Palantir that gives corporate executives a daily briefing modeled on the President's Daily Brief. A combat-wounded Army veteran, he says he spent more than a decade in the Army and the "Defense Intelligence Enterprise," including a stint at DIA around 2015 and 2016. His company bio says he supported efforts to counter Russian influence and deployed to multiple combat theaters.In his post, St. Clair wrote that during his intelligence career he worked on "counterintelligence threats to Continuity of Government (COG) and Continuity of Operations (COOP)."It is literally his job to know the risks that are ahead.Corporate executives trust him to provide the key intelligence that they need to make wise decisions, and so the fact that St. Clair is officially freaking out is a very big deal..."Something I can say for absolute certain is that once governments signal that their citizens need to prepare, those preparations have already been conducted for national leadership," he wrote.He pointed to European governments urging citizens to keep supplies on hand. He also cited reports that the Pentagon wants U.S. military bases to be able to sustain themselves for 90 days, which he called "the loudest signal concerning how significant the situation is.""The gravity of this can't be understated," he wrote. "The calls for preparedness will escalate in their time frames. 3 days will turn into a week. A week will turn in to a few weeks. A few weeks into a couple months."I wrote about Project FORTRESS yesterday.For some reason, our leaders suddenly feel a very strong sense of urgency to make sure that the U.S. military will be able to continue to operate normally if all civilian infrastructure were to go down for a period of 90 days...Every major military base in the continental US would be expected to maintain essential operations, including independent access to electricity, water, fuel and communications for 90 days.The plan envisions portable nuclear reactors, large battery systems and independent local power grids to keep bases running during blackouts.Civilian factories would also be prepared to switch to defense production, backed by stockpiles of ammunition, fuel, critical minerals, electronics, spare parts and medical supplies.To me, it sounds like they are preparing for a grid down scenario.There are several ways that the U.S. power grid could be taken down for an extended period of time.A "kill shot" from the Sun similar to the Carrington Event of 1859 could do it.Nuclear explosions in the atmosphere above the United States could also fry our grid.And there is also one possibility that I don't think is talked about nearly enough.Simultaneous terror attacks on a relatively small number of key extra high voltage substations could cause a widespread blackout lasting 18 months or longer.Most Americans do not realize this.I asked Grok to tell me what would happen if the United States had no power for 6 months.This is what I was told...Wow.Robert James Woolsey was one of the leading experts in this field before he passed away earlier this year.What he once told the U.S. Senate about what would occur if the U.S. power grid went down for an extended period of time is extremely chilling...When a large electromagnetic pulse (EMP) or geomagnetic disturbance (GMD) event occurs - which, according to Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), there is "100% certainty" will happen at some time in the future - as many as 9 out of 10 people in the U.S. could die.Johnson, chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs, posed questions to witnesses testifying on Capitol Hill before his committee. He asked R. James Woolsey, chairman of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, what would happen to society if the electrical grid were to be down for an extended period of time, such as a year or two, following an EMP event?Woolsey responded, "It's briefly dealt with in the commission report of [2008]. There are essentially two estimates on how many people would die from hunger, from starvation, from lack of water, and from social disruption. One estimate is that within a year or so, two-thirds of the United States population would die. The other estimate is that within a year or so, 90% of the U.S. population would die. We're talking about total devastation. We're not talking about just a regular catastrophe."We are far more vulnerable than most people realize.Personally, I am entirely convinced that someday the U.S. will be facing a long-term grid down scenario.What will you do when that day suddenly arrives?Our enemies know that taking down the power grid would be one of the fastest ways to get our society to collapse.A successful attack that takes down our grid for an extended period of time would make 9/11 look like a Sunday picnic.If you are not prepared for such a scenario, you need to start taking action immediately. Tyler Durden Thu, 11/05/2026 - 16:20

— Rubio Discussed Exit With White House As Quiet Loyalist Trump "Loves" Emerges As Possible Replacement: Report

 

at 11/5/26 1:45pm

Rubio Discussed Exit With White House As Quiet Loyalist Trump "Loves" Emerges As Possible Replacement: Report Secretary of State Marco Rubio is considering leaving the Trump administration following Republicans' devastating midterm election defeat, Bloomberg reports.Rubio and his advisers are weighing his future, with the nation's top diplomat, who also serves as national security adviser, having already discussed the possibility of stepping down with White House officials. Those officials urged Rubio to stay, but it's anyone's guess what the top Trump official will decide, the report cautioned.The State Department denied the report, dismissing it as "complete and total fake news" based on anonymous sources. "This is complete and total fake news based on the word of anonymous sources, befitting a tabloid," said Dylan Johnson, who serves as assistant secretary of State for global public affairs, told Bloomberg. "The secretary has not discussed leaving his role and he will continue to proudly serve in President Trump's administration long after this fake news is revealed as yet another baseless hoax."Meanwhile, The Washington Sun reports that U.S. Ambassador to India Sergio Gor is emerging as a possible replacement for Rubio amid speculation about a sweeping administration reshuffle. Sergio Gor and President Donald Trump Gor, a longtime Trump confidant, has been discussed for several powerful positions, including secretary of state and White House chief of staff.Trump "loves the guy," one presidential adviser told the outlet, praising Gor's loyalty and behind-the-scenes work during Trump's years outside the White House. However, Gor emphatically denied seeking another position and described Rubio as "irreplaceable."The speculation comes as another senior Trump official heads for the exits.Harmeet Dhillon resigned Thursday as head of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, becoming the first senior DOJ official to depart following Democrats' election sweep. Dhillon said she decided to leave weeks before the election and was asked to delay her resignation until afterward."My decision, my choice," Dhillon told Fox News. "It's time." Tyler Durden Thu, 11/05/2026 - 15:45

— Intel's China Problem Just Got A Lot Worse

 

at 11/5/26 1:15pm

Intel's China Problem Just Got A Lot Worse Huawei unveiled its first desktop computer running its own HarmonyOS operating system on Thursday, a machine with no Intel or Qualcomm chip and no Windows, which the South China Morning Post reported is 100% domestically made.The Qingyun HM650 made its debut at the HarmonyOS Office Industry Summit in Wuhan, where Zhu Dongdong, president of Huawei's tablet and PC product line, laid out the specs. It runs on Huawei's Kirin X90, a 10-core, 20-thread processor rated at 40 watts, well under the 65 to 125 watts typical of desktop processors, with Huawei's Maleoon 910 graphics, and carries what the company calls a "100% localization certification." Huawei said tighter integration of its hardware and software lifts overall system performance by 15%.The machine ships with an enterprise edition of HarmonyOS and a dedicated key for Huawei's Celia AI assistant. Huawei is pitching it to finance, enterprise and energy customers, and gave no price or sale date.No Intel, no Qualcomm: Huawei unveils desktop built entirely with China-made components: SCMP.Goodbye China market— zerohedge (@zerohedge) November 5, 2026Huawei said at the summit that cumulative shipments of HarmonyOS computers have passed one million units. The company shipped 141,000 HarmonyOS PCs in all of 2025, according to figures cited by TechRadar in March.Forced Out Of WintelIn May 2024, Washington revoked the export licenses that let Intel and Qualcomm sell chips to Huawei, which had used Intel's Core processors in most of its consumer laptops. Huawei's license to put Microsoft Windows on its PCs expired in March 2025.Huawei launched its first HarmonyOS laptops two months later. At a July briefing in Beijing, Zhu said the lineup now runs from the MateBook 14 to the 18-inch MateBook Fold, with the Qingyun line for government and business, and that native HarmonyOS PC apps had grown from about 1,000 at launch to more than 19,000.Huawei had sold desktops without Intel inside before. Its earlier Qingyun machines ran Kirin chips on Chinese Linux distributions, as Tom's Hardware reported. The HM650 is the first to run Huawei's own operating system, which passed a Level II "secure and reliable" certification from China's national information security evaluation center when Huawei showed the desktop in September, IT Home reported.When TechInsights tore down the Kirin X90 in last year's MateBook Fold, it found the chip was built on SMIC's 7nm (N+2) process, the same node that first appeared in the Mate 60 Pro in August 2023, rather than the rumored 5nm. The firm said SMIC's 5nm process remained elusive and that a Huawei stuck at 7nm is "multiple generations behind" the leading chipmakers.As we noted in May, Huawei's answer is what it calls a Tau scaling law: its semiconductor chief, He Tingbo, laid out a "LogicFolding" architecture meant to cut signal delay and raise transistor density, with 1.4nm chips targeted by 2031. SMIC shares jumped more than 18% to a record on the news.'Safe and Reliable'Beijing has ordered government agencies and party organs above the township level to buy "safe and reliable" processors and operating systems, as we reported seemingly eons and epochs ago in March 2024, steering them away from Intel, AMD and Windows. The approved list, all Chinese, is kept by the China Information Technology Security Evaluation Center, which certified the Kirin X90 in March 2025. State-owned enterprises were reportedly told to finish switching to domestic suppliers by 2027.China was Intel's largest market in 2023, accounting for 27% of its $54 billion in sales. Qualcomm says in its fiscal 2025 annual report that it derives "a significant portion" of its revenue from Chinese device makers, that it expects no further product revenue from Huawei, and that some of its Chinese customers have developed their own chips.Huawei is working on the machines that make the chips, too. As we reported in September, it has taken the coordinating role in China's push to build its own DUV lithography tools, funding lens and light-source suppliers through its venture arms, while China's two biggest memory makers, CXMT and YMTC, stockpiled enough ASML equipment to cover about three years of expansion. Tyler Durden Thu, 11/05/2026 - 15:15

— Hedge Fund Walleye Returns Capital, Fires Head Of Equities After Worst Month Since COVID: Read The Full Letter

 

at 11/5/26 1:03pm

Hedge Fund Walleye Returns Capital, Fires Head Of Equities After Worst Month Since COVID: Read The Full Letter One week ago, when Nomura's Charlie McElligott told clients that the October "pod purge" was the multi-strat model simply "cleansing" itself, we were less sanguine: "we suspect the next round of stop-outs is probably just a matter of time." Well, Charlie was wrong, we were right: it took about a week. And this time it's an entire fund.Moments ago, Bloomberg reported that Walleye Capital, the $17 billion multistrategy hedge fund run by CIO Will England, is returning a portion of its capital to investors and gutting its internal equities business after its worst month since March 2020. Walleye lost 5.9% in October, bringing its 2026 losses through last month to 6.8%, according to people familiar. Anil Gondi, the firm's head of equities, has been let go along with a "substantial" portion of the internal long/short teams, according to a letter sent to investors on Thursday, which we have obtained and post in full below.Here is the math: if October's 5.9% loss took Walleye to -6.8% YTD, the fund was down roughly 1% for the year going into the month. That's the "already challenging 2026" England references in his first paragraph. Then October turned a mediocre year into a bad one."Not Going To Be Trying To Replicate" MillenniumThe letter is short, and unusually blunt for a hedge fund letter. England opens with "discipline, humility, and self-awareness" and then gets right to the point:Following our worst month since March 2020, in an already challenging 2026, we have taken a hard look at every aspect of our firm. With that in mind, we are simplifying our internal equity long/short business. This decision includes parting ways with our long/short leadership and a substantial portion of our internal long/short investment teams. We are also going to lean into the businesses where we have a proven and differentiated right to win, including our Volatility, Quant and external businesses. Related, we have evaluated the optimal size of the Fund and plan to return a portion of our capital.Investors will hear later about "the quantum, timing, and mechanics" of the capital return. As for why, England writes that internal equity L/S has been Walleye's weakest strategy since 2023 and "substantially underperformed" the firm's external long/short business (i.e., the outside managers Walleye allocates to). Several years and a new leadership team later:Those efforts did not produce the results we expected, and the opportunity cost and resources consumed have been too high relative to the return. It did, however, reinforce an important lesson: our competitive advantage is not going to be trying to replicate the traditional multi-manager equity long/short model.In other words, a $17 billion fund just admitted it can't out-pod the pod shops, at least not in single-stock long/short, where Millennium, Citadel, Balyasny and Point72 are all bidding for the same PMs and crowding into the same trades.The irony is that Walleye spent the past 18 months trying to do exactly that. Gondi, a former Balyasny PM, was hired in 2025 to lead the equities unit, in the same overhaul in which Walleye dismissed its credit and commodities teams to focus on volatility, quant and fundamental long/short. As recently as mid-October, trade press reported Walleye was still building out its equities business under Gondi, adding Balyasny's chief equities strategist and a Millennium recruiter. Meanwhile, the equity unit's COO had already left in September to return to Citadel, per Hedgeweek. Three weeks is a long time in pod land.Walleye isn't quitting stocks entirely. It will keep allocating to external long/short managers "as we have for over 10 years," keep its day-one seeding of new managers (with a nod to the "natural strategic alignment" with Dockside, the platform it launched in 2023 to connect investors with smaller managers), and keep its "highest conviction" internal PMs, who will now report directly to England. Partners Tom and Chris "will step back into the management of this external long/short business, reporting to me as they did before in 2024 and most of 2025." Translation: the old org chart is back, minus the people hired to replace it.From "No New Cash" To "Here's Some Cash Back"The more interesting line is the one about size. Back in July 2025, Walleye stopped taking money from new investors after a capital raise, with England writing that the strategies needed time to "settle at their new size." At the time, the fund managed a little over $8 billion. Today it manages more than $17 billion. So assets more than doubled in about 16 months, and the fund has now decided the "optimal size" is smaller than what it has.That's precisely the dynamic McElligott described in his "CLEANSING" note (available to pro subs), which we covered in "The Pod Purge Will Pass" last week: asset growth in multi-strats, "the near pervasive demand for bodies to fill seats to manage that money (potentially 'talent dilutive')," and the leverage the model requires create "'Perpetual Crowding'-risk" and "periods of rolling stop-outs." Walleye just ran that diagnosis on itself: too much money, chasing too few good stock-pickers, in the most crowded corner of the market.And England's letter has one more tell. The volatility business, he writes, had its strongest month on record in October and is on track for its best year ever in dollar P&L. If the vol book had a record month and the whole fund still lost 5.9%, then the rest of the book lost a lot more than 5.9%.Not all of that was the stock pickers. England concedes quant had "a softer 2026," which is putting it gently given what happened to systematic funds last month. As we reported on Tuesday, Goldman's Prime Brokerage "October 2026: First Look on Hedge Fund Performance and Positioning" (available to pro subs) showed Systematic L/S funds lost 3.6% in October, "the first down month since Jul '25 and the worst monthly drawdown in six years," with quant alpha a staggering -5.06%. The light blue line on the left shows the quants' entire YTD lead evaporating in the last two weeks of the month:Nowhere To HideWalleye was hardly alone. As we detailed in "Nowhere To Hide" on Tuesday, global Fundamental L/S funds lost 3.49% in October while quants lost 3.6%, the first time on Goldman's record (going back to 2016) that both cohorts lost 3% or more in the same month:Fundamental long/short funds lost 3.49% last month while Systematic L/S funds (quants) lost 3.6%, the first time on the bank's record, going back to 2016, that both cohorts fell by 3% or more in the same monthQuants had the first down month since Jul '25 and the worst monthly… https://t.co/YObjWdKKoI— zerohedge (@zerohedge) November 3, 2026 Goldman's other observation now looks prescient: the asset-weighted return (-3.49%) was far worse than the median (-1.69%), "suggesting large managers underperformed." Ten months into the year, the median fundamental L/S fund was up just 1.16% vs 10.89% for the MSCI World, and the bottom quartile was down 9.88%. Walleye, at -6.8%, sits a lot closer to the bottom quartile than to the median:Bloomberg's tally of the big names tells the same story. Millennium lost 2.3% in October, ExodusPoint 2.4%, Marshall Wace's Eureka 5.4%, and credit fund Arini was on track for its worst month ever, down 12.1% through Oct 23. And just this afternoon, Bloomberg reported that Greg Coffey's Kirkoswald had its worst month ever, losing about 6.4% on the back of Brazil's election whiplash and breaking a 16-month winning streak. The lone giant in the green was, naturally, Citadel, up 1.7% in its flagship Wellington fund. Which is also where Walleye's equity COO went back to in September. Funny how that works.As JPMorgan's positioning intelligence team put it, "October is a month that most hedge funds will probably want to forget." Walleye apparently decided forgetting wasn't enough....And November Isn't HelpingThe timing of the letter (Thursday, with the market in freefall) is probably not entirely a coincidence either. As we noted earlier today, UBS trader Torsten Sippel said hedge funds opened the session 23/75 buy/sell, with the "clearest sign of capitulation" in neoclouds and semis, while Goldman's John Flood reported that "our phones are exploding" with requests for color, and "we are not seeing buyers step in to defend anything just yet."Most relevant for Walleye's peers, Goldman's Prime Brokerage (Marco Laicini) had this snapshot as of mid-morning:U.S. markets sell-off and global momentum down. Fundamentals down with US-focused funds hit harder. TMT severely down. Systematics are positive, and multi-strategy funds down significantly on their equity exposure.So that's two bad days in a row for the pods' equity books, right as allocators read Walleye's letter and start asking their own managers some uncomfortable questions about "optimal size."GREG COFFEY’S HEDGE FUND HAD WORST EVER MONTH, BREAKING STREAK— zerohedge (@zerohedge) November 5, 2026 Recall that by headhunters' count, roughly 100 PMs were already out of a job in October (vs. ~40 in September and ~20 before that), per eFinancialCareers, with one PM complaining that "hedge funds hired too many morons." Walleye's cuts will add to that tally, though for once the purge came from the top of the org chart rather than the bottom.The First To Hand Back The Money, Probably Not The LastEngland frames the move as "proactive," noting that "several of our largest partners" encouraged the simplification, and that investor demand for Walleye's vol, quant and external strategies remains strong. Maybe. But a fund that closed its doors to new money 16 months ago to let its strategies "settle at their new size" is now shrinking after its worst month since the COVID crash, and that's hard to spin as anything other than a retreat.McElligott's view last week was that this "too shall pass," the model "cleansing the excess Positioning and Leverage out of the system." We remain skeptical: with gross leverage in the 97th percentile on Goldman's five-year lookback, nets near one-year lows, the median fund barely positive for the year and the year-end clock ticking, the cleansing has so far come from PMs being stopped out, while gross has barely moved. Walleye returning capital is the first sign that allocators, and the platforms themselves, are starting to shrink the capital base too. That's the part of the cycle where "get smaller" finally happens, and it's rarely orderly.Or, as England himself put it, "our competitive advantage is not going to be trying to replicate the traditional multi-manager equity long/short model." A lot of mid-sized multi-strats which spent the past three years trying to do just that may soon be reaching the same conclusion... and writing similar letters.The Full Walleye LetterBelow is the full letter Walleye sent to investors on Thursday: Tyler Durden Thu, 11/05/2026 - 15:03

— Tuttle Files For New Credit Default Swap ETFs To Bet Against AI Debt

 

at 11/5/26 1:00pm

Tuttle Files For New Credit Default Swap ETFs To Bet Against AI Debt Tuttle Capital Management has filed with the SEC to launch five new ETFs that would give everyday investors exposure to a growing concern on Wall Street: the massive amounts of debt being taken on to finance the AI boom, according to the SEC Prospectus. The proposed funds would target Oracle (ORCL), CoreWeave (CRWV), the Magnificent Seven tech giants, semiconductor companies, and hyperscalers building large-scale computing infrastructure. The filings come as investors increasingly question whether the hundreds of billions being spent on AI data centers, chips, and cloud infrastructure will generate enough revenue to justify the investment.Unlike traditional ETFs that aim to profit from rising stock prices, these funds would use credit default swaps (CDS), financial contracts that work like insurance against corporate debt defaults. When investors become more concerned about a company's ability to repay its debt, the cost of that insurance typically rises. Tuttle's ETFs would aim to profit from that increase, even if the underlying companies never actually default. The proposed funds would also use leverage of 5 to 10 times their assets to amplify exposure to changes in credit risk, making them particularly risky investments. Essentially, they would allow investors to bet that the market is underestimating the financial risks behind the AI buildout.We previously predicted that CDS trader could be the best job of 2027, as the AI investment boom creates growing demand for ways to insure and trade risky corporate debt. Tuttle's filing is another sign that this market could expand beyond specialized Wall Street trading desks and become accessible to everyday investors. While the products have yet to launch, their proposed introduction suggests that asset managers see an opportunity in growing concerns about AI financing. For years, the biggest AI trade was betting on the companies that would benefit from the technology. As we have often joked (kind of...) the next big opportunity may be betting on the rising cost of insuring the debt used to build it. Tyler Durden Thu, 11/05/2026 - 15:00

As of 11/5/26 10:20pm. Last new 11/5/26 9:46pm.