Michigan AG Releases Flint Water Crisis Report

Headline USA Editor
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Michigan AG Releases Flint Water Crisis Report

(Headline USA) Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said a report released Tuesday on the lead-water crisis in the city is the final step her office can take toward accountability, years after a state Supreme Court ruling shut down criminal cases against a former governor and eight other people.

Flint residents suffered through years of health concerns after lead from old pipes leached into the city’s drinking water once officials began drawing water from the Flint River to save money in 2014. 

Most of the 101-page report provides a history of the crisis, local and state officials’ slow response and the attempt to bring 42 felony and misdemeanor charges against nine people, including former Republican Gov. Rick Snyder.

Nessel, a Democrat in her final term, said the report is meant to be a thorough public account of the criminal investigation, and she regretted that the details were never presented in court to juries.

“I hope this offering revealing the inner workings of our dedicated investigators and prosecutors who helmed this yearslong effort and the facts and evidence which guided them may tell one part of the story of the Flint water crisis, and put the truth in the hands of the people of Flint who deserve it the most,” Nessel said.

After taking office in 2019, Nessel fired a special prosecutor who had brought criminal charges and assembled a new team of attorneys to determine whether crimes were committed. That team ultimately brought charges against Snyder and other key officials, presenting their evidence to a judge who acted as a one-person grand jury.

The state Supreme Court threw out those charges in 2022, saying the judge had no power to issue indictments under the grand jury law.

Nessel was not involved in the criminal cases, deciding instead to focus on settling lawsuits against the state and wall herself off from the criminal investigation. But on Tuesday she defended prosecutors’ decision to seek the charges directly from a judge, calling it “the smartest possible move” at the time. 

She also questioned the political implications of the ruling, noting two of the justices who joined the 6-0 decision were appointed by Snyder. A third member of the court he also appointed recused herself from the case.

“I think it’s impossible to separate those things,” Nessel said.

Nessel said it was frustrating that “justice has evaded the people of Flint” and they will not get their day in criminal court to see officials be held accountable for the water crisis.

The Associated Press sent an email Tuesday seeking comment from Snyder.

Prosecutors said in 2023 that a report would come out the following year summarizing their investigation. Nessel said it took more time to redact information from grand jury proceedings that must remain secret and summarize millions of other documents.

Cash-strapped Flint was under state financial control when it stopped getting its water from Detroit and began drawing it from the Flint River while waiting to connect to a new regional system. The move was made to save money. But chemicals used to treat the river water caused lead to leach from old pipes.

As state health officials said the water was safe, doctors started reporting high levels of lead in the blood of Flint children.

Snyder acknowledged the lead problem in September 2015 leading the state to provide water filters and testing of water in Flint schools. In early 2016, he declared a state of emergency in Flint. Congress eventually approved a bill authorizing water projects nationwide. About $170 million went to Flint to address lead in the drinking water.

In 2020, a judge approved a $626 million settlement for Flint residents and others who were exposed to lead-contaminated water. The Flint water crisis prompted other communities across the state and in other states to seek solutions to how drinking water was delivered to homes and businesses.

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press. 

Meta Reaches $18 Billion Settlement with States in Landmark Trial Over Teen Social Media Addiction

Headline USA Editor
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Meta Reaches $18 Billion Settlement with States in Landmark Trial Over Teen Social Media Addiction

(Headline USA) Meta agreed Wednesday to pay up to $18 billion and add stronger child-safety measures to its Facebook and Instagram platforms as part of a landmark legal settlement that ended a trial over teen social media addiction and settled claims filed by nearly every state.

The settlement resolved a pivotal case years in the making that sought to hold the tech giant accountable for the role its platforms played in undermining children’s mental health. The effort targeted features designed to hook young people’s attention.

The agreement “institutes real change, real transparency, real protections for children and teens across the country,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said.

If approved by the court, the deal will stop an avalanche of litigation by states against Meta, although the company still faces lawsuits from individuals and school districts throughout the U.S. For the states, the settlement delivers money for mental-health programs for kids, including after-school or summer activities and digital literacy counselors.

Advocates cheered the new protections, including default time limits and the disabling of features such as “like” counts.

But “we cannot truly protect all children and teens until these protections are required on every platform and are permanent — that’s something only Congress can do,” said Sacha Haworth, executive director of The Tech Oversight Project.

The settlement will be paid out over 10 years. California will get the largest sum of at least $1.5 billion, but several other states will still collect hundreds of millions of dollars each over the decade.

The settlement “will put an end to these dangerous practices and deliver meaningful relief that will protect children from online harm,” Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones said.

Meta said in a blog post that it was “building on our longstanding efforts to empower parents and support teens.”

“Ensuring teens have a safe and productive experience on our platforms is an absolute imperative for Meta,” the company said. “We want to get this right for parents and teens, and that’s why we partnered with state attorneys general to set a new industry standard.”

The company urged competitors TikTok and YouTube to adopt similar safety measures.

The $18 billion settlement is a fraction of Meta’s 2025 revenue of $201 billion. Meta shares were up about 1.5% by midday Wednesday, hours after the deal was announced.

The agreement cuts short an ongoing court case involving California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey, which were among 29 states that sued Meta in 2023. The federal trial kicked off last week in Oakland, California, where Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg had been among the witnesses expected to take the stand.

The lawsuit accused Meta of contributing to the youth mental health crisis by deliberately designing features that addict children to its platforms and hiding them from the public. The case also argued that Meta violated federal laws by routinely collecting data on children under 13 without their parents’ consent.

The cases in other states had been expected to go to trial later, but are now resolved. 

The settlement covers 48 states, as well as Washington, D.C., and some U.S. territories. 

The only two states to be excluded are New Mexico, which went to trial in its case against Meta and won earlier this year, and Florida, where the attorney general said the settlement was not tough enough on Meta.

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier wrote on X that the “payouts are peanuts compared to the profound harms Meta’s profit-driven addictive features inflicted on kids.” He wrote in a separate post that his team “will hold them accountable in Florida.”

Under the proposed settlement, Meta agreed to adopt a series of safety features, including two-hour daily time limits that can only be disabled with a parent’s permission and pauses for children using Instagram and Facebook.

The company will eliminate push notifications during weekday school hours and bring in “robust” age-assurance measures and “age-appropriate” content controls to prevent bullying and harmful material about eating disorders and self-harm.

There will be stronger and more user-friendly parental controls and limits on social comparison features such as “like” counts.

An independent auditor will assess how Meta is implementing the safety features and how effective they are.

The company said 30% of the settlement amount — about $5.3 billion — will be released to states only if rivals YouTube and TikTok meet two conditions: implementing similar safety features, including a one-hour daily time limit, a nighttime block and age-assurance measures; and paying the same amount, split between the two companies.

Neither YouTube owner Google nor TikTok responded immediately to requests for comments.

Meta officials declined to comment on whether they had conversations with their competitors about those conditions, but said they intentionally designed the agreement with the states to incentivize the rest of the industry to follow suit.

Some of the safety measures Meta will implement, like disabling cosmetic surgery and extreme makeup filters, made sense regardless of whether competing platforms do the same, Meta said. Others, like its overnight block, will function better if they are established across the board, the company said.

If industry peers sign on to the agreement, Meta will implement stronger defaults for teens’ daily time limit and the length of time for its “night mode.”

The federal lawsuit was the result of an investigation led by a bipartisan coalition of attorneys general from California, Florida, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New Jersey, Tennessee, and Vermont. It followed newspaper reports, first by The Wall Street Journal in 2021, that found the company knew about the harm Instagram can cause teenagers — especially teen girls — when it comes to mental health and body image issues.

Meta has since added a host of safety features to Instagram, including separate accounts for teenagers with stronger protections around messaging and privacy, along with content restrictions.

But child-safety advocates and experts, along with some former Meta employees, have long contended that the features are little more than window dressing.

Victoria Hinks, mother of Alexandra “Owl” Hinks, who died by suicide at age 16, said she was satisfied with the terms of the settlement “as long as they enforce it properly.”

“It felt like today finally something was done,” she said Wednesday outside the Oakland courthouse where the trial was held. “I feel like justice is possible.”

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press. 

Iryna Zarutska’s Family Files Lawsuit over Horrific Charlotte Train Stabbing

Ken Silva
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Iryna Zarutska’s Family Files Lawsuit over Horrific Charlotte Train Stabbing

(Ken Silva, Headline USA) The family of Iryna Zarutska, the Ukrainian refugee who was stabbed to death on a Charlotte train last year, has filed a lawsuit over the matter.

In a lawsuit filed Friday in Mecklenburg County, Zarutska’s uncle, Frank Haskell, blamed the city of Charlotte and the security firm for the Charlotte Area Transit System (CATS), Professional Security Services, for his niece’s murder.

According to the lawsuit, no guards from Professional Security Services were on the train at the time Zarutska was stabbed by homeless man DeCarlos Brown. That’s despite the fact that Professional Security Services has an $18.4 million contract with CATS.

“A guard on the light rail train … would have deterred and prevented the death of Iryna Zarutska,” the lawsuit says.

The lawsuit says that Professional Security Services employs 219 security personnel, of which only 39 are armed, to protect the entire CATS system 24/7.

“This number of armed personnel is not sufficient to have an armed officer or guard on all its 48 light rail train cars at once,” the lawsuit says.

Zarutska’s family seeks over $25,000, as well as compensatory damages and other costs. Neither Charlotte nor the security firm have responded to the lawsuit as of this article’s publication.

Zarutska’s August 22, 2025, death shocked and horrified much of the country, especially when the full video was finally released by this outlet on Sept. 9. The footage showed a homeless man, DeCarlos Brown, stabbing Zarutska in the neck before sauntering off—leaving her to blead out and die within seconds.

Brown was arrested shortly later and taken to the hospital with cuts on his own hand. He was charged with murder. He’s since been deemed  “incapable of proceeding” in the federal and state cases against him. The determination for Brown does not mean he’s being let out of custody. However, it may spare him from the death penalty.

Now, Brown is undergoing medical treatment in a federal facility to restore his competency, according to the Justice Department.

The DOJ has said Brown’s prognosis to become competent to proceed is “good.” But even if he can’t be restored to competency, he still wouldn’t be released. He’d be subject to civil commitment proceedings.

Brown was found incompetent to proceed because he has a mental illness. “He experiences delusions that center around his belief that he was exposed to a Material and it ‘control[s] his every movement,’” his attorneys said in a court filing. “He refers to it as his Body Emergency. The delusions are constant and persistent.”

Ken Silva is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/jd_cashless.

Testimony Concludes in Lindsay Clancy’s Murder Trial. Jury to Hear Closing Arguments Thursday

Headline USA Editor
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Testimony Concludes in Lindsay Clancy’s Murder Trial. Jury to Hear Closing Arguments Thursday

(Headline USA) Testimony concluded Wednesday in the murder trial of Lindsay Clancy, a mother accused of strangling her three young children in a case that has drawn attention to postpartum mental health.

Closing arguments are expected to begin Thursday, before the jury begins deliberating.

Clancy, 36, has pleaded not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility, with her lawyers arguing she was experiencing postpartum psychosis when she killed 5-year-old Cora, 3-year-old Dawson and 8-month-old Callan Clancy at the family’s home in coastal Duxbury, Massachusetts, in January 2023. The rare mental illness is linked to the stress, sleep deprivation and hormonal changes that follow childbirth.

Prosecutors say Clancy planned the killings and understood her actions were wrong.

Clancy did not testify during the trial, which is in its fifth week. The defense called 10 witnesses, including some of Clancy’s friends and relatives, while prosecutors called more than 70 witnesses, including her then-husband.

Testifying as the final rebuttal witness for the prosecution, a forensic psychiatrist at the University of Virginia and a senior psychiatrist for the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit said Wednesday that he did not believe Clancy’s account that a voice ordered her to kill the children.

Prosecutor Jennifer Sprague asked Dr. Gregory Saathoff a series of questions about Clancy’s account: Did the voice tell her where to kill the children? How to kill them? What to use? In what order? Saathoff answered no each time.

“Having no instructions as to how to do it, but being able to execute those decisions … that is surprising that she’s able to accomplish all of this without any other kind of direction or plan,” he said.

All three children were strangled with exercise bands in the family’s basement before Clancy tried to kill herself while her husband was getting takeout and at a pharmacy on Jan. 24, 2023. Saathoff said her ability to accomplish everything she did without direction indicated Clancy “had control, control of the sequence of what she was doing throughout.”

“In the small amount of time that Miss Clancy had in the home without her husband, it was important, in order to carry this out, as well as her suicide, to do this quickly, methodically, and alike,” he said.

On Tuesday, Saathoff said he found it unusual that Clancy said the voice stopped once she was done strangling the children, that the voice was constant rather than intermittent and that she never previously reported hearing a voice to her medical providers. She also gave a different timeline to other evaluators about when she first heard the voice that day, he said.

“Committing the act is not curative of the voice,” Saathoff said of the voice stopping abruptly. “I’ve not ever seen that.”

Defense attorney Kevin Reddington began his cross-examination of Saathoff on Wednesday by trying to cast doubt on Saathoff’s expertise in postpartum psychosis and portray him as someone closely aligned with law enforcement, questioning him about his work with prisons, the Justice Department and the Virginia attorney general’s office.

Saathoff testified that he treated women with postpartum psychosis while working at a state hospital in the 1980s and 1990s, while much of his more recent research has focused on such subjects as extremist violence, national security and political radicalization.

Reddington also asked Saathoff about Clancy’s attempts to search online for information about postpartum depression, her visits to multiple maternal and mental health providers, disclosures to her mother and then-husband that she was suicidal and feared that she would harm her children, and calls to a suicide hotline — all attempts that Reddington contended establish Clancy realized something was seriously wrong and made a sincere effort over time to get help.

Reddington asked whether Saathoff believes that Clancy decided to kill her children because she “no longer liked the life she thought she wanted” and was making “a selfish choice” to “manipulate her providers, seek out a quick and easy fix when she was feeling depressed and anxious.”

“I think that statement that you read really minimizes what she was going through,” Saathoff responded.

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press. 

Appeals Court Backs Right To Film Police

Jose Nino
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Appeals Court Backs Right To Film Police

(José Niño, Headline USA) A federal appellate court has delivered a split verdict for civil liberties supporters, confirming a constitutional protection while leaving the man who pursued it empty handed, according to a report from Reclaim The Net. 

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals now stands as the ninth federal appellate body to conclude that the First Amendment covers the public’s right to film police carrying out their work in open settings, a finding that now governs Connecticut, New York, and Vermont.

Yet the very same decision, released Monday, preserved qualified immunity protections for the officers who made the arrest, meaning plaintiff Keith Massimino walks away without compensation despite the court validating his core argument.

The dispute began on October 30, 2018, when Massimino recorded footage of the Waterbury Police Department’s exterior while positioned on a public sidewalk. This was consistent with his usual practice, as he identifies himself, per the ACLU of Connecticut, as a “First Amendment auditing hobbyist.”

During that encounter, officers Matthew Benoit and Frank Laone questioned him. Massimino offered noncommittal replies and refused to hand over identification after the officers characterized their request as a “lawful order.” Authorities then arrested him for obstructing a peace officer under a Connecticut statute, holding him for several hours before his release. The case against him was ultimately dropped in May 2021.

He subsequently filed a lawsuit against both officers in August 2021, bringing three distinct claims, a First Amendment argument centered on his right to film police, a Fourth Amendment argument alleging wrongful detention and arrest lacking probable cause, and a malicious prosecution claim.

While the appellate judges acknowledged the First Amendment applied to his actions, they nevertheless affirmed the lower court’s ruling awarding qualified immunity to the officers, explaining that the right in question had not been clearly established within the Second Circuit when the arrest took place. The right now carries clear legal standing in that jurisdiction, though this recognition offers Massimino no personal remedy because it only applies to future cases.

Judges further rejected his Fourth Amendment and malicious prosecution claims, concluding the officers possessed adequate reasonable suspicion to initiate the stop and probable cause to arrest him once he declined to identify himself.

Judge Myrna Pérez, authoring the panel’s opinion, stated that constitutional coverage “encompasses Massimino’s recording of the exterior of a police station from a public sidewalk.” She also delivered a pointed remark on government transparency, writing, “When the government wants to preserve its privacy, it may build a fence or close a door, but not ban speech.”

Moving forward, law enforcement agencies across Connecticut, New York, and Vermont can no longer rely on qualified immunity as protection if they detain someone strictly for recording them in a public location, even as this landmark clarification does nothing to alter the result of Massimino’s own legal battle.

José Niño is the deputy editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/JoseAlNino 

 

DHS Proposes New H-1B Fee Structure

Jose Nino
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DHS Proposes New H-1B Fee Structure

(José Niño, Headline USA) Homeland Security officials unveiled a revised plan Monday requiring a $103,265 payment from employers pursuing H-1B visas for candidates counted against the annual numerical cap, according to a report from The Hill.

The official notice outlining the rule states that the collected funds would offset federal expenses associated with operating the legal immigration framework, covering activities handled by DHS alongside the Departments of Justice, State, and Labor.

USCIS spokesperson Zach Kahler justified the charge in a statement, explaining that “the proposed H-1B fee is intended to recover the costs incurred across the federal government to adjudicate, vet, and support lawful immigration programs that otherwise must be funded by taxpayers.”

This revised approach arrives months after a federal judge blocked a prior version of the policy in June, one that would have set a flat $100,000 fee on H-1B applications. U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin found that charging such a fee amounted to an unauthorized tax, since only Congress possesses the constitutional authority to shape immigration law and taxation policy.

Where the earlier plan swept in universities, hospitals, and research institutions, the new rule specifically exempts those categories of employers from the fee altogether.

Federal law currently caps new H-1B issuances at 85,000 per year, split between a base allocation of 65,000 and an extra 20,000 reserved for applicants who earned a master’s degree or higher from a U.S. institution. Of the 65,000 baseline visas, 6,800 remain permanently reserved for nationals of Chile and Singapore.

The program has repeatedly become a flashpoint in debates over the tech industry’s reliance on foreign labor, since it permits U.S. companies to hire skilled workers from abroad for specialized positions. Research from the Bipartisan Policy Center indicates that roughly two thirds of all H-1B approvals go toward computer focused fields such as software engineering, data science, and IT support.

José Niño is the deputy editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/JoseAlNino 

Bessent’s Bond Market Intervention Juices Debasement Trade, Boosts Gold

Money Metals News Service
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Bessent’s Bond Market Intervention Juices Debasement Trade, Boosts Gold

(Mike Maharrey, Money Metals News Service) Opps. That didn’t go as planned.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent wanted to drive down interest rates at the long end of the yield curve, so he intervened in the market.

It worked.

For about one day.

The 30-year Treasury yield closed at 5.31 percent on Tuesday (Aug. 18). Intraday, it hit 5.34 percent, the highest yield since 2007. By close on Wednesday, after the announcement, it dipped to 5.19 percent.

Two days later, it was back to 5.27 percent.

Instead of stabilizing the bond market and pushing long-term Treasury rates lower, the move appears to have juiced the debasement trade.

According to the announcement, the Treasury Department will increase buybacks of Treasury securities in the 10-20 and 20-30-year maturity sectors from a maximum of $2 billion to $4 billion per operation.

A Business Times report revealed the move’s fecklessness,

“U.S Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s bid to tame U.S. borrowing costs knocked down long-term yields for barely a day. The more lasting market signal: the dollar weakened while gold and Bitcoin rallied, reinforcing a debasement trade fueled by swelling U.S. deficits and concerns over the direction of U.S. economic policy.”

Keep in mind, the Treasury hasn’t started the bond buyback yet. According to the announcement, the expanded buyback operations will begin September 9 and run through November 4.

Nevertheless, the announcement didn’t have the impact Bessent hoped for. In fact, it appears to have exacerbated the situation and reignited the debasement trade – an investment strategy emphasizing holding tangible assets such as gold, silver, and other commodities to protect against the decline of fiat currencies caused by monetary debasement.

Treasuries have been selling off because many countries are increasingly wary of holding U.S. debt. With the national debt eclipsing $40 trillion last week, and with U.S. policymakers giving no hint that they intend to address the borrowing and spending, America’s fiscal situation doesn’t inspire confidence.

On top of the fiscal problems, the U.S. has weaponized the dollar as a foreign policy tool. This has made some countries even warrier about holding greenbacks.

The AI boom is exacerbating Uncle Sam’s funding problem. Financing for AI expansion has eaten into the broader bond market.

Bessent tried to frame the bond buyback as a “liquidity intervention” to maintain “market plumbing.” However, we don’t have a “plumbing” problem, and the Treasury Department intervention doesn’t solve the fundamental issue. That’s clear by the quick rebound in yields after the announcement.

Nomura macro strategist Charlie McElligott said the move showed the Treasury Department is reaching its pain threshold for higher yields, and he described the “gold-up, dollar-down move” as a “pressure-release valve” as the U.S. intervened to stabilize long-term rates.

Billionaire investor Ray Dalio was even more emphatic, urging investors to cut bond exposure and hold gold, along with some Bitcoin as protection against a potential U.S. “debt crisis.”

The market’s tepid reaction to Treasury’s announcement reveals an ugly reality. Try as he might, Bessent can’t control the market. The government can intervene and move the needle temporarily, but it can’t override the underlying market dynamics, as Manulife Investment Management senior portfolio manager Nathan Thooft told Business Times.

“The Treasury can influence liquidity and sentiment, but it can’t sustainably override growth, inflation, deficits and supply.”

The other problem is that the Treasury Department is limited in its ability to intervene. It can’t print money, so it must borrow to fund its buyback. In practice, it will have to issue more shorter-term bonds to raise cash so it can intervene on the long end of the curve. It’s a little like rearranging the chairs on the deck of the Titanic.

Enter the Federal Reserve.

Warsh & Company will face increasing pressure to intervene on behalf of the Treasury. Through quantitative easing operations (QE), the Fed can buy bonds using money created out of thin air. This decreases the total number of bonds on the market instead of simply shifting supply toward shorter-term notes.

In fact, the Fed is already running small-scale QE operations (although Fed people will never use the term) as evidenced by the expanding balance sheet.

However, that newly created money gets injected into the financial system. This is, by definition, inflation.

Historically, the Fed has held interest rates higher to battle inflation. In other words, the operation necessary to lower the federal government’s borrowing costs creates an effect that necessitates raising its borrowing costs.

This is why I point out over and over that the Fed is in a Catch-22.

The bottom line is the U.S. government is losing control of the bond market and yields. Investors are no longer just reacting because yields go up. They are reacting to the reasons behind yields going up. That means transparent U.S. intervention isn’t going to soothe the market.

This is a big problem for a country already shelling out over $1 trillion per year to service its debt.

Mike Maharrey is a journalist and market analyst for Money Metals with over a decade of experience in precious metals. He holds a BS in accounting from the University of Kentucky and a BA in journalism from the University of South Florida.

Fidelity International Doubles Gold Holdings as a Lack of Faith in the Fed Grows

Money Metals News Service
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Fidelity International Doubles Gold Holdings as a Lack of Faith in the Fed Grows

(Mike Maharrey, Money Metals News Service) As the bond market continues to melt down and faith in the Federal Reserve’s willingness and ability to tackle inflation grows, it appears at least some institutional investors in the West are turning back toward gold.

In a recent interview, Fidelity International portfolio manager George Efstathopoulos said he has doubled the fund’s gold holdings, pushing them to a self-imposed maximum of 5 percent. Efstathopoulos also said he would consider raising the limit if the dollar’s safe-haven status continues to decline.

London-based Fidelity International (not to be confused with Fidelity Investments in the U.S.) has $565.7 billion in client assets under management and serves around 2.5 million customers.

Fidelity International trimmed its gold holdings earlier this year as the yellow metal corrected and traded sideways after the onset of the U.S.-Iran conflict.

According to Bloomberg, Fidelity funded its recent gold accumulation with cash on hand and by selling high-yield bonds, including gilts (UK government bonds).

Efstathopoulos said the fund began accumulating gold after the bond selloff following that July Federal Reserve meeting.

While Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh and his colleagues continued to talk tough about fighting inflation, they once again held rates steady.

The markets seem to be paying more attention to what the Fed does than what Warsh & Company says. They are looking for action. Having gotten none, the long end of the Treasury yield spiked yet again after the Fed’s (non) policy announcement last month.

This indicates that investors have little faith in the central bank’s willingness or ability to anchor price inflation at 2 percent. As a CNBC report put it, “We think you’re going to keep short-term policy rates in check, and it’s going to create a ton of inflation later.”

This was exactly the point Efstathopoulos made in his interview:

“My translation of [the post-meeting bond selloff] is the lack of Fed credibility and more policy uncertainty.”

Gold has rallied since that Fed meeting, with the latest leg up driven by a failed attempt by the U.S. Treasury Department to intervene and prop up the bond market with a more aggressive buyback of long-term Treasuries.

Efstathopoulos said this buyback looked like “an attempt to manipulate the yields, rather than dealing with the source of why yields are moving higher.”

“Gold now is less focused on yields rising, but why yields are rising.”

Gold is up nearly 14.8 percent since the beginning of August and is trading at a 3-month high. It has also climbed above the technically significant 200-day moving average.

Mike Maharrey is a journalist and market analyst for Money Metals with over a decade of experience in precious metals. He holds a BS in accounting from the University of Kentucky and a BA in journalism from the University of South Florida.

CIA Director Goes to Russia for Secretive Visit

Headline USA Editor
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CIA Director Goes to Russia for Secretive Visit

(Headline USA) The Kremlin said Wednesday that CIA Director John Ratcliffe held talks in Moscow with his intelligence counterparts, a rare and secretive visit at a time when relations with Washington remain strained over Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Ratcliffe did not meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who was informed of the contacts that were “on the intelligence agencies’ level.”

“Of course, President Putin is immediately informed of everything,” Peskov added, refusing to say what was discussed.

The CIA declined to comment, and there was no immediate comment from the White House.

Russian state news agencies reported that a U.S. military plane landed in Moscow’s Vnukovo airport on Tuesday and departed later that day.

A senior Ukrainian official told The Associated Press that Washington informed Kyiv a delegation would be traveling to the Russian capital and asked it to suspend strikes until it left. The official said the request did not apply to all Russian territory, but specifically to Moscow, St. Petersburg and some northern regions. Strikes on other parts of Russia continued, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to talk publicly.

CBS News first reported on the visit.

Kremlin says US-Russia relations are in a ‘profound crisis’

Peskov said that “contacts between intelligence agencies are, in and of themselves, a positive phenomenon, a positive process,” but he stressed that Russia-U.S. relations remain in a “profound crisis.”

He added that it was “too early to say” what impact Ratcliffe’s visit would have on the ties between the two countries.

Andrei Soldatov, an expert on Russia’s security services, told AP that visits like the one by Ratcliffe do not “happen every year.”

Official channels of communication between Moscow and Washington have been kept alive since the 1980s and exist so both sides can talk if American or Russian lives are in danger or for other reasons, Soldatov said.

In 2021, Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of Putin’s Security Council, met CIA Director William Burns in Moscow months before Russian forces invaded Ukraine. Burns later met Sergei Naryshkin, the head of Russia’s foreign intelligence agency, in Turkey in November 2022 to warn Russia not to deploy a nuclear weapon in Ukraine.

Details of Tuesday’s discussions have not been revealed but such meetings normally take place only when there is a matter of pressing national security and when it is in “American national interests,” Soldatov said.

Russia-U.S. relations sank to Cold War lows after Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, but appeared to warm after President Donald Trump returned to office. He had promised to end the war swiftly, holding multiple phone calls with Putin and even hosting him in Alaska a year ago.

The efforts to negotiate a peace deal have largely stalled since then, however, with U.S. attention turning to its war with Iran and both Moscow and Kyiv stepping up their long-range attacks on each other. Putin has rejected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s push for an immediate ceasefire, arguing that Russia wants a comprehensive settlement, not a temporary truce.

Russia has proposed to mediate in the U.S. and Israel’s war with Iran, Moscow’s important ally in the Middle East.

Russia and Iran have a partnership treaty

After Putin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022, Tehran provided Russia with Shahed drones and later licensed their production in Russia. In January 2025, Moscow and Tehran signed a “comprehensive strategic partnership” treaty. But even as it has built ties with Iran, Russia also has remained friendly with Israel, and analysts have described its relations with Iran as complex and challenging.

In March, AP reported that Russia provided Iran with information that could help Tehran strike American warships, aircraft and other assets in the region, according to two officials familiar with U.S. intelligence on the matter. The officials, who were not authorized to comment publicly on the sensitive matter and spoke on the condition of anonymity, cautioned that the U.S. intelligence has not uncovered that Russia is directing Iran on what to do with the information.

Asked at the time whether Russia would go beyond political support and offer military assistance to Iran, Peskov said there has been no such request from Tehran. Pressed on whether Moscow provided any military or intelligence assistance to Tehran since the Iran war’s start, he refrained from comment.

Soldatov said it’s possible Tuesday’s meeting involved discussion of protecting U.S. personnel, bases or facilities in the Middle East that have been targeted by Iran. Ratcliffe could have traveled to Moscow to try to influence this relationship, he added.

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press

Massive Fentanyl Bust Rattles New Jersey Gang

Jose Nino
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Massive Fentanyl Bust Rattles New Jersey Gang

(José Niño, Headline USA) A raid carried out last month in Newark, New Jersey turned up a fentanyl cache large enough to theoretically claim roughly 8 million lives, according to a report from Breitbart News. Homeland Security Investigations linked the narcotics to the Trinitarios, a gang whose ranks are largely made up of Dominican-American members.

HSI’s Newark office executed the search warrants that ultimately produced two arrests. Prosecutors have since charged both men with conspiring to distribute controlled substances, possessing fentanyl and cocaine with intent to distribute, and running a property used for drug operations.

Government officials briefed Breitbart on the specifics of what agents recovered, listing 16 kilograms of fentanyl, over a kilogram of heroin cut with fentanyl, close to 900 grams of cocaine, and a firearm equipped with a 51 round extended magazine. Considering that a single kilogram of fentanyl is potent enough to kill as many as 500,000 people, the haul represented a mass casualty event narrowly avoided.

According to investigators, much of the supply had been stashed inside a concealed cabinet that opened only via a remote key fob, evidence of the lengths traffickers go to hide their product from law enforcement.

DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin marked the occasion, which fell on National Fentanyl Prevention and Awareness Day, by praising the agents behind the operation. “I want to thank the brave men and women of the Department of Homeland Security who work so hard to hunt down fentanyl traffickers and smugglers, get them out of our communities, and get their poison off of our streets,” Mullin said.

He tied the success to the administration’s broader enforcement posture, contrasting it with prior border policy. “We have lost too many American lives to fentanyl, especially after years of disastrous open border policies that made it even easier for the cartels to bring their drugs to our country,” Mullin said. “Thanks to President Donald J. Trump’s strong leadership, we are bringing the hammer down on drug traffickers and smugglers, putting them out of business and behind bars.”

Breitbart’s reporting also covered a wider investigation into a Mexico-based trafficking ring that pushed narcotics through more than a dozen cities across California, Georgia, Florida, Ohio, Louisiana, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Illinois. That inquiry netted 53 kilograms of drugs, fentanyl pills among them, and investigators believe the organization has funneled over 2,200 kilograms of narcotics into American neighborhoods over time.

HSI Executive Associate Director John Condon highlighted his agency’s continuing role in combating these networks. “HSI special agents stand on the front lines of the fight against fentanyl, working tirelessly with our Homeland Security Task Force partners to disrupt the criminal networks that traffic this deadly poison into our communities,” Condon said. “Their dedication, skill, and courage are putting dangerous drug dealers behind bars while saving American lives. Every seizure, every arrest, and every investigation reflects HSI’s unwavering commitment to taking deadly drugs off our streets.”

A separate operation involving HSI, the Homeland Security Task Force, and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service revealed close to 80 pounds of methamphetamine along with another kilogram of fentanyl obtained through undercover buys. Federal agents teamed up with Iowa’s Division of Narcotics Enforcement this month to arrest those tied to the purchases, seizing nearly 1.4 million dollars in suspected drug proceeds during the operation.

José Niño is the deputy editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/JoseAlNino

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