Secretary Wright Sees “Few More Weeks” Of High Gas Price As Memorial Day Travel Nears Energy Secretary Chris Wright appeared on Fox News on Tuesday morning and said, “Yes, we have gas prices today over $4 a gallon. That’s still a dollar less than they were during the Biden administration, and we’re ending the 47-year conflict with Iran.” Wright noted, “It does mean higher prices today. It probably means higher prices for a few more […]

USA Rare Earth Actively Pursuing Acquisition Opportunities Around The World At the Semafor World Economy forum, USA Rare Earth CEO Barbara Humpton explained that the company is actively pursuing acquisition opportunities worldwide across the entire critical minerals supply chain. This includes everything from extraction and refining to magnet production. Highlighting the company’s international strategy, she pointed to a recent […]

Global Oil Demand Growth Completely Wiped Out By Gulf Energy Shock The global demand destruction playbook we outlined last month, describing how the Gulf energy shock would spread across continents, is now materializing on a large scale. The International Energy Agency said in a Tuesday update that global oil demand will decline this year for the first time since 2020. “The Iran war has thoroughly upended the global outlook for oil […]

Appeals Court Terminates Criminal Contempt Proceedings Against Trump Admin Authored by Stacy Robinson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours), An appeals court has put a stop to criminal contempt proceedings initiated by a district judge against the Trump administration. District Judge James Boasberg, chief judge of the District Court for the District of Columbia, stands for a portrait at E. Barrett Prettyman Federal Courthouse in […]

Et Tu, Indonesia! As the squeeze continues on China’s energy supply (and Xi has started to lash out here and here), we suspect the next words out of the Chinese leader’s mouth (if he spoke Latin) will be “…et tu, Indonesia!” As Stephen Green writes at PJMedia, it might have seemed like one of those dry, bureaucratic, almost meaningless announcements on Monday, when War Secretary Pete Hegseth posted on X that the U.S. and […]

US Carrier Takes Long Route To Gulf To Avoid Bab el-Mandab Strait And Houthis By Mallory Shelbourne of USNI News Aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush (CVN-77) is operating off the coast of Namibia, as it sails around the African continent and is set to join a growing naval force in the Arabian Sea amid a U.S. blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, USNI News has learned. USS George H.W. Bush (CVN-77) transits the Atlantic Ocean, Feb. […]

US Says ‘No Ships Made It Past Blockade’ As Iran Mulls Hormuz Shipping Pause To Preserve Talks, Which Trump Says Could Happen In Two Days Summary CENTCOM: “During the first 24 hours, no ships made it past the U.S. blockade & 6 merchant vessels complied with direction from US forces to turn around to re-enter an Iranian port on the Gulf of Oman,” it said. Diplomacy is not yet dead, as Bloomberg reports Iran is mulling a […]

La Marxista: Mamdani Pledges To Open First City-Run Store With Projected $30 Million Initial Cost Authored by Jonathan Turley, Mayor Zohran Mamdani used his “First 100 Days” speech this week to announce that he has kept his promise to create a chain of city-run stores . . . by pledging to open one store sometime “next year.” According to the New York Post, the city is planning to make an East Harlem location the first […]

DEI Practices Reduce Productivity, Cost $94 Billion Annually: White House Economic Report Authored by Travis Gillmore via The Epoch Times, Diversity, equity, and inclusion practices negatively impacted the U.S. economy, according to the 2026 White House Economic Report released April 13.  Researchers calculated that DEI policies reduced output and lowered the country’s gross domestic product by about $94 billion each year, […]

China Rejects ‘Baseless Smear’ It’s Sending Weapons To Iran After Trump Warned Of ‘Big Problems’ China has dismissed reports that it supplied or plans to supply weapons to Iran as “baseless smears,” after multiple outlets cited US intelligence accusing Beijing of potentially entering the war indirectly. “China has always adopted a cautious and responsible attitude towards the export of military items, implementing strict controls […]

Treasury Rushes To Access Anthropic ‘Mythos’ AI After Warning It Can Hack “Every Major Operating System” The US Treasury Department’s technology team is actively seeking access to Anthropic PBC’s highly restricted Mythos AI model so it can begin hunting for software vulnerabilities, according to a person familiar with the situation cited by Bloomberg.  Illustration via WIRED Treasury Chief Information Officer Sam Corcos […]

With Private Credit We See The Credit Cycle Hasn’t Been Repealed Authored by Jay Rogers via RealClearMarkets.com, Something cracked in private credit this month, and the men who manage systemic risk for a living are saying so. Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon’s just-released 2025 annual shareholder letter warns that concerns about private credit – including “underwriting quality or exposure to software companies that may be […]

Fill ‘er Up: Record Armada Of Tankers Bound For US Gulf To Load Oil An unusually large number of crude oil tankers on the open seas has the American Gulf coast as a destination as the ships are redirected to load cargoes bound for markets around the world already experiencing shortages. As Alton Wallace writes at The Center Square, second-term Republican President Donald Trump said Saturday on social media that “massive […]

JPM Stock Fizzles Despite Blowout Quarter As Key Forecast Cut One day after Goldman Sachs reported its highest profit in 5 years (despite an ugly miss in FICC revenues), this morning JPMorgan impressed with just as solid results, when it reported that its Q1 profits rose 13% as the bank benefited from soaring market volatility and frantic trading amid the war with Iran and the US military operation in Venezuela. The largest US bank […]

United CEO Pitches Trump On American Tie-Up To Build Highly Competitive Global Carrier A Reuters report stated that United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby “pitched” a merger with American Airlines during a recent meeting with President Trump. Shares of both carriers rose in premarket trading in New York following the report. Two sources told the outlet that merger discussions took place during a February 25 White House meeting with Trump […]

Xi Says “Global Order Crumbling Into Disarray” As Trump Turns Up Pressure Campaign On China President Trump’s four-and-a-half-month crusade across the Western Hemisphere, and now into the Middle East, increasingly looks like a massive blitz to acquire – or control – energy assets and maritime chokepoints as part of a broader economic pressure campaign against China, which depends heavily on the Gulf and Venezuelan crude.  […]

US Producer Prices Cooler Than Expected In March Despite Surge In Energy Costs The month-over-month change in producer prices had accelerated for five straight months ahead of today’s March data, which is expected to surge thanks to Iran-war impacts on energy costs. Against expectations of a 1.1% MoM rise, March’s Headline PPI shocked everyone by rising only 0.5% MoM (equal to the revised lower 0.5% MoM rise in both of the last two […]

Futures Rise, Nasdaq Up 10 Days In A Row, On Iran De-escalation Optimism US equity futures, and global stocks rise while oil slides on a Reuters report that negotiating teams from the US and Iran could return to Pakistan later this week to resume negotiations to end the war in the Gulf, days after the first peace talks ended without a breakthrough, with chatter from Pakistani media that Trump is said to be in attendance. As of […]

Fearing Iranian Escalation In Red Sea, Saudis Push Trump To Call Off Hormuz Blockade Wary of Iranian escalation that shuts down Red Sea traffic, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is asking the Trump administration to back off from its newly-implemented blockade of Iranian-linked shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday evening. On Sunday, a senior advisor to Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei […]

The Iranian Regime’s Crypto Shadow Arsenal Authored by Tamuz Itai via The Epoch Times, In 2025, Iran’s crypto ecosystem swelled to more than $7.78 billion, according to Chainalysis, marking a notable acceleration from prior years amid economic collapse and geopolitical turmoil. For ordinary Iranians—roughly one in six of the population—crypto served as a vital lifeline. Facing relentless rial depreciation (down nearly 90 […]

Texas AG Probes Lululemon Leggings For “Forever Chemicals” Shares of Lululemon Athletica fell as much as 4.5% in late-morning New York trading after Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton launched an investigation into whether the company, known for its leggings, misled consumers about potential “forever chemicals” in its apparel. Paxton’s probe of Lululemon’s athletic apparel centers around leggings that may contain PFAS, or […]

First Humanoid Robot With Embodied Intelligence For High-Risk Jobs Enters Service Authored by Mriogakshi Dixit via Interesting Engineering, In the dizzying heights of a chemical storage facility, a new kind of worker is punching in. China has reportedly deployed its first “embodied” intelligent humanoid robot designed for high-risk industrial operations.  Embodied AI robot can be seen working on the wall of a large chemical […]

Irish Patriots Are Fighting Back Authored by J.B. Shurk via American Thinker, So you say you want a revolution?  Well, take a look at what’s happening in Ireland right now.  Tens of thousands of farmers, truckers, and other fed-up “normies” are taking to the streets of Dublin to protest fuel taxes, mass immigration, and poverty-inducing “climate change” policies.  For the most part, corporate news propagandists in […]

Latest Global Sportswear Supply Chain Read-Through Remains Bearish The S&P 500 Textiles, Apparel & Luxury Goods sub-industry index (S5TEXA Index), which includes names such as Nike, Lululemon, Deckers Outdoor, Ralph Lauren, and others, is down 15% year-to-date and roughly 65% from its late 2021 peak. With the index now hovering around Covid-era lows, Goldman analysts have published their latest read on textiles, apparel, and […]

ECB Backs Tokenized EU Capital Markets (With Strict Guardrails) Authored by Christina Comben via CoinTelegraph.com, The European Central Bank (ECB) set out a cautious path toward tokenizing Europe’s capital markets, saying the technology can deliver efficiency gains only if it remains anchored to central bank money, infrastructures remain interoperable, and regulation is “robust and supportive.”  In […]