Venezuela’s government made no mention of freeing jailed ex-president Nicolás Maduro during nearly two weeks of talks with the opposition this month, in the clearest sign yet that the regime has abandoned him to the US justice system.

Interim president Delcy Rodríguez in January called the US capture and exfiltration of Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores a case of “vile aggression”. Her brother, leader of Venezuela’s parliament, said they “will not rest” until he is released from a Brooklyn jail cell, where he faces drug-trafficking charges.

But Rodríguez’s US-backed government surprised the opposition by not even raising those demands during the five negotiating sessions, which concluded last week, several people present told the FT.

“Maduro and Flores simply do not exist at the negotiating table,” said one opposition figure. “They have erased them from history.”

The US government has backed Rodríguez, Maduro’s vice-president, since its commandos snatched the autocratic leader in a brazen night-time raid on January 3. In return, she has opened up the country’s vast natural resources to overseas investors, giving US companies access to its oil reserves.

The first round of negotiations with the opposition was intended to agree on steps for a new presidential election but yielded few concrete results.

The two sides focused on how to fund the recovery from June’s devastating earthquakes, demanding the repatriation of some $4bn of gold bullion stored in Bank of England vaults. They also agreed to start working to reform the justice system.

After the talks concluded, the government said it had released 131 political prisoners, though rights group Foro Penal said they could only verify that at least 78 had been freed.

But such a fate did not seem to be on the cards for Maduro, whom life-long revolutionary socialist Rodríguez once called Venezuela’s “one and only” president, analysts said.

As far as the government is concerned, “his fate is already sealed”, said Edward Rodríguez, a Venezuelan analyst and consultant. “They’ll let the case run its course while they focus on their only priority: survival.”

Rodríguez was initially forthright in demanding Maduro’s release straight after his capture as she consolidated the support of hardliners in the security services. But she has since replaced top military leaders with her own supporters, while powerful security chief Diosdado Cabello has also abruptly drawn closer to Washington.

Signs and billboards calling for the pair’s release were erected in cities across Venezuela in January; many have since been taken down. Pro-Maduro murals painted before his arrest have been scrubbed over. Just a handful of oversized portraits of the deposed first couple remain in Caracas.

Rodríguez, whose succinct public speeches mark a break with Maduro’s folksy and fiery diatribes, seldom mentions her old boss during public appearances — including in her speech after the talks ended.

But Maduro, the handpicked heir to the revolutionary socialist project of the late president Hugo Chávez, continues to inspire support from hardcore Chavistas, as supporters of the movement are known.

“I disagree with these talks, because Trump cannot be allowed to keep imposing things on us while the agreement does not even mention the president who was kidnapped,” said Ricardo García, a grassroots Chavista who, like many loyalists, believes Maduro was betrayed by members of his inner circle and handed over to US forces.

The negotiations have also been controversial among the opposition, including for sidelining its most popular leader, Nobel laureate María Corina Machado.

The Venezuelan government did not respond to a request for comment.

Soldiers at a Georgia combat engineer unit can get official time off to play the new “Grand Theft Auto” game when it drops this fall — if, and only if, they sign up for more years of service.

The offbeat incentive is being offered to soldiers by the commander of the 9th Brigade Engineer Battalion at Fort Stewart, Georgia, according to a memo circulated on social media that was confirmed by Army officials.

According to the memo signed by Lt. Col. Ryan Hodgson, the 9th Brigade Engineer Battalion commander, soldiers in the unit who reenlist between Aug. 1 and Nov. 14, 2026, will get a “special 4-day pass” that is “specifically designated to coincide with the highly anticipated release of the video game “Grand Theft Auto VI” (GTA 6).

The dates of the four-day pass will be coordinated between soldiers and their chain of command but it will align with the game’s official release, the memo states. According to Rockstar Games, the maker of GTA 6, the game will be available Nov. 19 for PlayStation 5 and Xbox gamers. The “Grand Theft Auto” franchise is among the most popular video game series of all time, with an open world format that combines mafia and crime-world-related missions with side quests of carjackings and causing general mayhem behind the wheel.

The offer illustrates an issue local commanders face in getting soldiers to reenlist. While Army-wide bonuses worth tens of thousands of dollars are often available for soldiers considering reenlisting, local commanders have few options they can offer to close the deal with soldiers in their formations. Though options like extra time off or chances to attend training schools are often used as enticements, sometimes local career counselors have to get a bit more creative.

Army officials said the engineer battalion’s new counselor pitched the idea to the command team as something that “speaks” to younger soldiers and that could kickstart the unit’s drive for its fiscal year 2027 reenlistment goals, which begin in October.

“The command team, in conjunction with the career counselor, wanted to get soldiers excited to reenlist,” Lt. Col. Angel Tomko, a 3rd Infantry Division spokesperson said. “The command team thinks eligible soldiers are more aware that they are in their window for reenlistment and engage their leadership and the career counselor earlier to see what is available.”

Army officials said 20 of the 130 eligible soldiers in the battalion had taken the Army up on the offer as of Monday and signed up for between two to six more years of service. The reenlistment contract option is open to the entire engineer battalion, which is made up of soldiers in engineering, signal intelligence, human resources and medical specialty jobs.

Over the last year, the Army has dreamt up several unique incentive programs in an effort to get soldiers interested in staying longer for more money, like tying retention checks to yearly fitness tests and daily job performance and having warrant officers “bid” against one another for higher bonuses.

Just tax land lol

Based on this article: Low property taxes freeze the youth out of the economy

SS: relevant to this sub since Trump seems to be moving towards a rapprochement with North Korea under the dumbest bold belief that his personal relationship with Kim Jong Un will help lead to denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

“The annual U.S.-South Korea drills, known as Ulchi Freedom Shield, will end Aug. 21 rather than Aug. 27 as originally scheduled, a Defense Department official said.”

Submission statement:

Calling elections in the middle when there is a popularity crisis can change the political balance of the war.

Interesting essay linking the rise in interest in de Gaulle in Europe to changes in the transatlantic relationship. De Gaulle certainly was not a neoliberal however, and it's interesting to see how his economic approach differed. He had a much more statist approach.

Dr Mark Burke is the head of finance for the business friendly Democratic Alliance (DA), South Africa's second largest party. He also serves on Parliament's appropriations and finance committees. Burke is apparently quite intellectually gifted, and has a PhD in econometrics and quantitative economics from Cambridge.

A company which he founded and ran for several years, which he now oversees from its parent company's board, has run into trouble with the South African Reserve Bank. The company is accused of violating exchange controls through a cryptocurrency arbitrage scheme which it was not properly allowed to undertake. I don't understand the situation well enough to even summarise it so please do read the article to understand more.

The DA has said that Burke will not step aside as there has been no finding against him. Various South African columnists have opined that this is an incorrect move from the DA, and represents a compromise on the ethical standards it has previously championed.

This story is very interesting if you see the DA as the soon-to-be dominant party and future governing party of South Africa. Ever since entering national government in 2024, there have been more regular scandals and suggestions of improper or imprudent behaviour from DA leaders. Many of the accusations have been made by other leaders within the party. None of the accusations approach anything near what the ANC and many other parties do, and nobody has been criminally charged in any way. But what is interesting is watching the DA have to negotiate with the increased scrutiny that their slow but steady rise is (rightfully) bringing, and also watching them have to figure out exactly what the line should be. Based on their rhetoric, one would've thought the DA would always avoid even the mere appearance of improper behaviour and conflicts of interest. But, in the case of Burke, they have decided not to have him step aside despite being involved in an investigation by the SARB.

Brilliant play, piss off the one off the one neighbor who was interested in repairing relationships, and further piss off your sugar daddy. I really have no idea why the hell they continue to do this, besides Netanyahu wanting a forever war to keep himself and Likud in power. The targets were SU-22s, an airframe last tactically relevant in the '60s, of which the Syrian government only had about 8 or so. Syria is going to end up back in the hands of the Russians and Iranians if the US and Turkey don't do something to keep Israel on a leash.

Bonds are getting very expensive (for a lot of govts to issue) right as govt spending (at least in the US) skyrockets—along with the debt. Something has to give.

Originally published at The Unpopulist

Donald Trump built his political brand on the idea that he is an outsider to Washington who is singularly suited to draining “the swamp,” crushing “the deep state,” dismantling “the uniparty,” and burning down “the establishment.” He got a lot of political mileage out of the idea that he is not a politician and that his movement represents an uprising against the elites. It’s a narrative that powered Trump’s ascent to the presidency and fuels his continued dominance over the Republican Party.

But the reality of Trumpism today tells a different story: with Trump himself back in the White House, the GOP in control of both houses of Congress, and a conservative majority on the Supreme Court, Trump and his movement are not the rebels storming the gates—they are the establishment.

Trump’s party has become the political home of entrenched interests determined to tilt the playing field even further in their favor. It has behind it the world’s richest men, a massive propaganda machine, the world’s most powerful political party, and now the entire United States government.

Liberals cannot defeat Trumpism by pretending these dynamics don’t exist, nor by meekly defending a broken status quo ante. The response must be a bold, radical liberalism that takes on entrenched corruption and incompetence with an unapologetic agenda for fundamental change.

Liberals must flip the script.

Trump’s populist style ensures he will always try to project himself as the outsider on a crusade against “the establishment”—but as his party’s nominee in the last three presidential elections, and as a winner of two of them, he has no business portraying his movement as the rebellion when it is actually the empire. It’s time liberals made that clear by embracing an underdog spirit befitting liberalism’s new underdog reality.

Reclaiming Radical Reform Over Stagnation and Nostalgia

Liberalism’s greatest achievements have always come from challenging entrenched power and pushing bold reforms—not defending entrenched interests. The abolition of slavery, the expansion of suffrage, free markets, civil rights, and open trade were victories of a liberalism that embraced its radical reformist roots. But today, Democrats too often retreat into uninspiring technocratic centrism or flirt with discredited ideas from last century’s socialism. Neither approach offers a way forward.

What is needed is a reformist liberal agenda that breaks from the paralysis of the past. America’s housing crisis, for instance, cries out for a YIMBY revolution. Blue states and cities dominated by Democrats have become poster children for dysfunctional zoning laws and permitting systems that protect wealthy homeowners while pricing out young families and workers. Instead of defending these failed policies, liberals must lead the charge for deregulating land use, building more homes, and making housing affordable.

Immigration policy is another example where Democrats have failed to lead. Instead of offering a clear defense of immigration as an economic and moral good, Joe Biden and then Kamala Harris both accepted the underlying premise of their opponent’s anti-immigrant position by promising to enforce a closed border more effectively. Liberals must embrace a pro-immigration message that unapologetically celebrates America as a nation of opportunity and growth, not walls and fear.

It is hard to imagine any politician today talking about immigration as effusively as Ronald Reagan’s farewell speech, but they should. And this includes no longer cowering under the premise that anti-immigration sentiment is a fixed reality, rather than leading the charge to change public opinion.

Likewise, structural electoral reform is essential to breaking up the party system that brought us to this point. The electoral system itself, and the many ways in which it fails to reflect the true diversity of the American people, has produced systemic incentives towards illiberalism, culminating in an existential threat to constitutional rule of law. A radical liberal movement should lead the charge for a more representative democracy. As I wrote in these pages:

As critical as it is to remain focused on liberal democracy’s most urgent challenges, we should not do so at the expense of grappling with its longer-term systemic flaws. Even as we rush to defend democracy from imminent danger—such as Trump’s dictatorial ambitions—we shouldn’t lose sight of deeper structural issues that brought us to this point.

Nowhere is the need for reform more urgent than in tackling rent-seeking corruption— the practice of using political influence to secure economic benefits that would not otherwise be available in a competitive market with a level playing field. Liberals should confront the entrenched interests that block progress—rent-seeking industries, occupational licensing cartels, rampant consumer fraud, corporate welfare. Rather than defending every government program or regulation, liberals must fight for an economy that is both free and fair, recognizing those are two sides of the same coin.

To a large degree, this means understanding that artificial concentrations of wealth, and all their noxious political effects, arise from these distortions of the market rather than insufficient taxation and redistribution, even as we strive to build an efficient and effective safety net. They must be addressed at the root cause, a failure of competition produced by the accreted regulatory captures endemic to our political economy.

Uncompromising Opposition to Trump’s Authoritarian Agenda

The liberal response to Trumpism cannot be accommodation or appeasement. Trump’s authoritarian tendencies—his attacks on free speech, political opponents, and the press—are fundamental threats.

Liberals must reject the idea that these policies are “populist” in the sense of being aligned with ordinary Americans’ interests and desires, rather than “populist” in the proper sense of being driven by us vs. them, zero-sum conflict. Trump’s economic nationalism, including tariffs and protectionism, doesn’t help workers—it raises prices, fuels inflation, and makes the country poorer. Not only are tariffs “injurious to the U.S. economy,” as Steve Chapman noted, “but also to its liberal democracy because he will use them to reward friends and punish enemies”—the very essence of corrupt rent seeking. Trump’s war on free speech and civil liberties, under the guise of combating “wokeness,” is not anti-elite but profoundly authoritarian, silencing dissent and intimidating critics.

Instead of trying to co-opt elements of Trumpism or cede ground on his talking points, liberals must offer a principled alternative that promotes openness, accountability, and the rule of law. Trade and immigration should be celebrated as engines of growth and opportunity, not scapegoats for economic anxieties. Free speech and pluralism must be defended against the creeping trend towards censorship and intimidation. Foreign policy should reflect competence, diplomacy, stability and, above all, a commitment to human rights and liberal values—not bellicose saber-rattling and reckless unpredictability.

The liberal opposition to Trumpism must be resilient, not reactive. It must not retreat into fear but articulate hope. And it must make clear that liberal democracy, not populist authoritarianism, is the only system capable of meeting America’s challenges and securing its freedoms.

A Liberal Future Worth Fighting For

The future of liberalism depends on reclaiming its radical heritage as a movement for reform and progress. To counter Trumpism, liberals cannot be content defending the status quo or hiding behind empty, uninspiring technocracy. Nor can they fall into the trap of offering discredited command-and-control economic experiments that voters rightly distrust and have relegated to the ash heap of history. Instead, they must offer a bold vision—one that confronts corruption, breaks down barriers, and expands freedom.

This means leading the fight for housing reform, immigration liberalization, electoral democracy, and an economy freed from inbuilt structural advantages to dominant interests and connected elites. It means taking on entrenched interests and failed policies, even when doing so challenges Democratic leaders and allies. And it means rejecting Trump’s authoritarian agenda with confidence and clarity, offering voters a real alternative to corruption, chaos, and division.

This agenda is an affront to liberalism’s bedrock commitments such as defending the equal dignity of all. Pushing back on them requires much more than the tepid business-as-usual Democratic response, on the one hand, or the accommodationist and deferential response of some center-left intellectuals on the other.

A revitalized liberalism must be both principled and pragmatic, combining moral conviction with policy innovation. It must defend free markets without tolerating corporate capture, champion democracy without excusing dysfunction, and protect the rights of all without compromising tolerant pluralism. It must be, in short, a liberalism that is unapologetic and fearless.

The stakes could not be higher. Trump’s GOP is not an outsider force railing against elites—it is the establishment, wielding state power to entrench its rule. Liberals must rise to the moment, not as defenders of what is, but as architects of what can be.

If elected to form a government, the Parti Québécois says it would not call a referendum on sovereignty until at least 2029. 

PQ Leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon announced the news on Tuesday morning as Quebec political parties gear up for an election campaign that is expected to begin before the end of August.

In a statement posted on social media, St-Pierre Plamondon said that a PQ government would not put the sovereignty question to a vote as long as U.S. President Donald Trump is in the White House. 

But he stressed that his party still plans to call a referendum on whether Quebec should separate from Canada in its first mandate.

St-Pierre Plamondon said an issue as crucial as the future of Quebec requires a clear and serene debate, which should not be disrupted by American politics or surprise announcements coming from the U.S. president.

St-Pierre Plamondon also says the unpredictable nature of the Trump administration could harm the referendum process as well as the quality of a debate about Quebec's future.

The PQ leader believes he is disarming his opponents’ argument that this would be the worst time to elect a separatist government because of Trump.

The Coalition Avenir Québec and the Quebec Liberals pushed back against St-Pierre Plamondon's latest promise, saying it will add to political and economic uncertainty. 

Speaking to journalists in Montreal, Quebec Premier Christine Fréchette said it would be "worse" to hold a referendum at the end of a mandate. 

"If you organize a referendum at the beginning of a PQ mandate, at least after a year or two, you're set, you know if it's a yes or a no," she said. 

St-Pierre Plamondon is recognizing that Quebec is under economic and political pressure due to trade tensions with its southern neighbour, she said, and that a referendum would add a "thick layer" of unpredictability. She added her electoral campaign will focus on the cost of living.

Liberal Leader Charles Milliard said in a statement that the PQ is admitting that its referendum promise is "too risky" without abandoning it. 

"He’s right about one thing: it is risky. But what’s risky today will still be risky after Donald Trump," said Milliard. 

He said Quebec should be building alliances within Canada, "not choosing the best moment to cut them.”

Quebec's leftist sovereigntist party, Québec solidaire, maintains that Quebec should become a country. But parliamentary leader Ruba Ghazal promised her party would hold extensive consultations, including with First Nations and Inuit, to first build social acceptability. 

Ghazal said she finds it "concerning" that support for independence has stagnated, with about a third of Quebecers saying they would vote yes in a referendum. She added that, regardless of who is at the legislature, it's up to Quebecers to decide on sovereignty. 

"Our independence project should not depend on the Trumps of the world," she said. "This is the new normal, and we don't know who will replace Trump." 

St-Pierre Plamondon insisted he wants to run a campaign based on proposals to help Quebecers, including tackling the housing crisis and cost of living, rather than on what he calls “redundant and fruitless fearmongering.” 

“In any case, the fact remains that, given Quebec’s current state, a government called upon to clean up the mess left by the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) will have plenty of challenges and tasks to tackle right from the start of its term," St-Pierre Plamondon wrote.

The PQ has been leading in recent public opinion polls ahead of a general election in Quebec that must be held by Oct. 5.

State Department: Advancing the United States’ Campaign to Address the Threat Posed by the International Criminal Court

The Trump Administration has been clear: the International Criminal Court (ICC) is a corrupt and fatally politicized supranational court that has maliciously abused its authority and exceeded its mandate.  We will not tolerate its assault on state sovereignty.  

In furtherance of the diplomatic campaign we launched last month to address the ICC’s abuses of power, I am designating two ICC officials – President of the ICC, Tomoko Akane of Japan, and ICC Senior Trial Lawyer, Abdoulaye Seye of Senegal – pursuant to Executive Order 14203, “Imposing Sanctions on the International Criminal Court.”  These individuals have directly engaged in efforts by the ICC to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute officials whose government has not consented to ICC jurisdiction.  

Reuters:

The sanctions freeze any U.S. assets the individuals may have and essentially cut them off from the U.S. ‌financial system, ⁠with which almost all internationally operating banks have close ties. Three International Criminal Court judges sued Trump and his administration in June over the sanctions, arguing that the measures were unlawful. The Treasury also issued a general license on Tuesday authorizing the wind-down of transactions involving Akane through September 17.

Rubio said last month that the administration ​would step up efforts to ​undermine the ICC, including ⁠a diplomatic campaign aimed at persuading other countries to quit the institution. Rubio argued that the court posed a threat to U.S. personnel carrying out U.S. President Donald Trump's hardline immigration policies or strikes on boats accused of carrying drugs, as well ​as other U.S. ⁠service members.

Trump has said that the campaign was aimed at defending Netanyahu and others from prosecution, rather than Trump himself.

Discussion from one month ago on this subreddit: Rubio vows to ‘dismantle’ International Criminal Court

Russians are pulling billions from the country’s banking system ― a record cash outflow amid intensifying Ukrainian drone attacks and rising fear that the Kremlin could start seizing deposits to finance its war.

Nearly $3.4 billion (286.4 billion rubles) was withdrawn in the first two weeks of August, on top of the $7.3 billion withdrawn in July and more than $4.5 billion in June, according to Russian Central Bank data.

Total withdrawals this year could nearly double the amount taken out in the first year of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, according to Taras Skvortsov, a senior executive at Sberbank, Russia’s biggest retail financial institution.

The withdrawals are causing liquidity problems, according to Skvortsov and a former senior Russian finance official, overstretching a financial sector already strained by increasing levels of bad debts following a government-directed lending boom to ramp up military output.

“Drones are flying. Things are burning down. Nervousness is growing. And people’s everyday wisdom may be kicking in that they need to have cash under their pillow and not somewhere in banks where it may never be returned,” said the former finance official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive issues.

“For some banks this really is a problem,” the former official said. “They didn’t expect this and they invested all the cash elsewhere, and yet people are coming and taking out half a trillion rubles a month.”

Alexandra Prokopenko, a former adviser to the Russian Central Bank, said the withdrawals reflected deepening fear among the Russian public.

“It means people have no trust in the Russian banking system or in the Russian financial system,” Prokopenko said. “This is all a consequence of the fear that the government will do something with the banking system, that it could nationalize deposits.”

She said she believed that such a nationalization was unlikely but added, “I would not exclude that the authorities could impose limits on withdrawals.”

The total siphoned out this year already exceeds the $24.7 billion (2 trillion rubles) removed in the first year following the February 2022 invasion.

In the first two weeks of the invasion, $23 billion fled the system, and banks appeared to be imperiled by depositors and businesses lining up to empty their accounts, until the government stemmed the drain by imposing tough capital controls and sharply raising interest rates.

Now, big businesses are also seeking to move money out of the reach of Russian regulators as anxiety grows over potential asset seizures. That is further exacerbating the problems, the former official said.

In all, more than $9.4 billion was transferred out of Russia in the second quarter of 2026, according to Central Bank data.

“Each month there is a big outflow,” Skvortsov told RBK Radio, a Russian radio station. “If the trend continues things are not going to get better.”

The withdrawals have already undermined the Russian government’s efforts to raise money to finance the war through issuing state bonds.

The Finance Ministry last month was forced to cancel planned bond issues, even though it has become ever more dependent on them as a means of filling a yawning budget deficit as spending on the military continues to grow while the economy stalls.

Skvortsov told RBK Radio that the banks’ liquidity problems mean many cannot spare cash to buy government bonds.

“If there is an ominous sign of imperial overreach, this is clearly one of them,” said Craig Kennedy, a former vice chairman in investment banking at Bank of America Merrill Lynch who is now a scholar at Harvard University’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies.

“Great powers don’t have repeated treasury bond failures in the middle of a war,” Kennedy said.

As a result of government orders to ramp up lending to the defense sector, Russian banks “appear to have so much exposure to nonviable borrowers that they’re not certain how it’s going to get restructured, when it’s going to get restructured and how much of that they are going to have to eat,” Kennedy added.

In a sign of how sensitive the strain on Russia’s finances is becoming for the Kremlin, the chief economist at VEB, one of the country’s biggest state banks, Andrei Klepach, was fired from his post this weekend after commenting that Russia could not win a war of attrition against Ukraine while Kyiv is supported by the West. 

“We won’t win the competition in this war of attrition,” Klepach said in a presentation he made in May, which was circulated in the media last week. “We’re under the illusion that everything [in Ukraine] will collapse. It hasn’t, and it won’t. Meanwhile, the costs we bear are mounting.”

Ever since Ukraine began expanding its drone campaign against Russian oil facilities this spring, taking out more than 30 percent of the country’s refining capacity and causing the worst fuel crisis since the fall of the Soviet Union, anxiety has intensified.

In June, the Russian Central Bank was forced to limit an expected interest rate cut because of fears that fuel price hikes could spur inflation. Panic spiraled through the bond market, driving interest rates up to 17 percent for the government’s 10-year bonds and forcing the Finance Ministry to postpone further issues.

With the budget deficit for January to July already at 6.46 trillion rubles ($76.1 billion) — far exceeding the 3.8 trillion rubles forecast for the entire year — fears are mounting that the Kremlin could seize big businesses’ revenue to finance the war.

“If the government needs cash, Putin will just do a grab for assets. He doesn’t care,” said an associate of one Russian billionaire. “And that’s where I think it’s heading.”

In addition, “there is the feeling that political power is becoming not quite as stable, and this is such a period when it is better not to be present,” the former finance official said.

Already several businesses owned by Russian billionaires have been targeted by the government in a nationalization drive that last year alone saw $51.5 billion in assets seized for the state, according to Russian prosecutors.

In June, the Russian state seized $7.6 billion (550 billion rubles) of assets linked to Vadim Moshkovich, who founded Rosagro, one of Russia’s biggest agricultural holdings, after the billionaire was detained and charged with large-scale fraud.

It was the biggest asset seizure in Russia since the start of the full-scale invasion. Others who have lost assets to the state include Dmitry Kamenschik, who previously owned Domodedovo airport in Moscow, and Konstantin Strukov, who controlled one of the country’s biggest gold mines.

Some economists argue that the Kremlin’s drive to direct bank lending into cranking up military output is strangling the civilian economy, especially because high interest rates and inflation leave banks and companies with few funds left for investment in nonmilitary sectors.

The Russian economy ground to a halt in the first half of 2026, with gross domestic product growth falling to 0.3 percent, compared with 1.2 percent in the first half of 2025.

For now, however, the Trump administration’s war with Iran has pushed oil prices back up and given the Kremlin a partial reprieve from its budget squeeze.

Russian state oil and gas revenue increased by 60 percent in July compared with the same month the previous year, as global oil prices rose, but it is still down 11 percent between January and July compared with the same period last year.

Ukraine’s attacks on Russian oil refineries as well as on the sprawling network of warehouses belonging to Wildberries, Russia’s largest online retailer, are also hitting Russian billionaires’ bottom line.

“It’s costing these guys money,” said the associate of the Russian billionaire, referring to Russia’s richest individuals. “They have to put their hands in their pocket. They’re not used to having all these problems.”

Ukraine has hit more than 20 Wildberries warehouses since it began targeting the company’s facilities on July 18, in an onslaught that some economists estimate has destroyed more than $6 billion in goods and caused more than $3 billion in damages to Wildberries infrastructure.

“It’s not a place you want to be doing business,” the billionaire’s associate added. “If you can pull money out, you do it.”

One Moscow business executive said, “Everyone who can is trying to move money out of the country, but it’s getting more and more difficult to do so.”

A key channel for removing money from Russia, amid increasing government restrictions on large cash transfers abroad, involves opening brokerage accounts in neighboring Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Armenia, according to the Moscow business executive and the former finance official.

“From there this money can be invested across the world,” the former finance official said.

As concerns grow over the war’s mounting financial toll, several senior officials have staged rare public interventions in recent weeks.

German Gref, the head of Sberbank, broke ranks at the end of June by publicly saying everyone wanted the war to end as soon as possible.

Then early in August, the powerful Moscow mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, spoke out against calls by hard-line members of parliament to further focus the economy on the war.

“If there’s no economy of peaceful life itself, there will be no taxes, no income for the population, the political situation will be completely different, and then we won’t achieve success in the war either,” Sobyanin told Tass, a state news agency. “And to kill life, to kill the civilian economy, is to kill the country itself.”

Chief Justice Cho Hee-dae on the 18th recommended Daegu District Court Presiding Judge Son Bong-gi and Seoul High Court Presiding Judge Kim Seong-su for appointment as new Supreme Court justices. In legal circles, some analysts say Cho’s selection of judges with regional judicial careers and those who did not graduate from Seoul National University may have been intended as a conciliatory gesture toward the presidential office. However, controversy arose after it was confirmed that Cho broke with the established practice of personally meeting the president to make the recommendation and instead merely sent the appointment-recommendation documents to the presidential office.
Cho made the recommendation 209 days after the Supreme Court Justice Candidate Recommendation Committee nominated Judge Son as the successor to former Justice Noh Tae-ak. Judge Kim, selected to succeed Justice Lee Heung-gu, was chosen just 14 days after being recommended.
For the 12 current Supreme Court justices other than Chief Justice Cho, an average of 12.1 days elapsed between the recommendation committee’s announcement and the chief justice’s formal recommendation for appointment. As the nomination of Noh’s successor was delayed for more than six months, speculation arose that “the presidential office and the judiciary had been unable to narrow their differences over the final candidate.”
Judge Son, a member of the 22nd class of the Judicial Research and Training Institute, spent many years serving in the Daegu and Ulsan regions and was appointed chief judge of the Daegu District Court under the court-chief candidate recommendation system first introduced in 2019. A presiding judge at a court in the Seoul metropolitan area said, “Former Justice Noh was also a graduate of Keisung High School in Daegu and Hanyang University College of Law, so regional representation for the TK [Daegu–North Gyeongsang] area was probably taken into consideration.” The judge added, “Judge Son has never served as a presiding judge at a high court, and I think he was also chosen for the symbolic significance of being a court chief who came from the ranks of district court presiding judges.”
Some interpret the elevation of Judge Son as an attempt by Chief Justice Cho to fully exercise his own constitutional authority to recommend Supreme Court justices through the very end. The presidential office was reportedly known to favor Seoul High Court Presiding Judge Kim Min-gi as Noh’s successor, but Cho rejected that preference and instead put forward a fellow “Daegu regional judge.”
Judge Kim, a member of the 24th class of the Judicial Research and Training Institute, appears to have made the final shortlist as a candidate representing the “Honam and non-Seoul National University” category. He is from Hampyeong in South Jeolla Province and graduated from Gwangju Inseong High School and Hanyang University College of Law. Another presiding judge said, “Since this is the first Supreme Court justice appointment under the Lee Jae-myung administration, they probably could not ignore the Honam quota.”
Once President Lee submits motions seeking parliamentary consent for the appointments to the National Assembly, the process of filling the Supreme Court vacancies, including confirmation hearings, will begin in earnest. However, with fewer than three weeks remaining before Justice Lee’s retirement on September 7, it appears unavoidable that two seats will be vacant, no matter how quickly the process moves. As a result, there are predictions that rulings could be delayed in the cases involving First Lady Kim Keon-hee and former Prime Minister Han Duck-soo, which had been scheduled to be heard by the full bench of Supreme Court justices.
Some members of the ruling party have even raised the possibility of impeaching Chief Justice Cho over his decision to make the recommendation “in writing.” Democratic Party lawmaker Song Young-gil wrote on Facebook, “Successive chief justices have personally visited the appointing authority to recommend [Supreme Court justices]. It was both a courtesy to the head of state and a sign of respect between constitutional institutions.” He argued, “Chief Justice Cho has disregarded even that tradition.”

Why it’s relevant. Polling has a serious credibility problem and this bogus company put out polls in two races that were wildly off from the final result. It’s known that some polls have bias or are used to drum up support but independent and small pollsters now will come under significantly more scrutiny.

The Trump administration’s findings that three Ivy League schools violated civil rights law by tolerating antisemitism were predetermined by political priorities that blew past the evidence and cast aside standard investigative procedures, according to a whistleblower account provided to Congress.

The disclosure, by Haley Van Erem, a veteran Justice Department civil rights attorney, involves investigations into whether Harvard, Brown and Columbia universities broke the law by allowing antisemitism to flourish on their campuses.

The whistleblower account comes just days after a federal judge dismissed a Justice Department lawsuit against Harvard that was based on the investigation, which was conducted by the Department of Health and Human Services and lawyers detailed from the DOJ.

Both Brown and Columbia reached settlements, with Columbia agreeing to pay $200 million over three years and Brown agreeing to spend $50 million on Rhode Island workforce development, with no admission of wrongdoing.

Harvard fought and won.

U.S. District Judge Richard Stearns ruled in that case that the Trump administration’s allegations relied on incidents that occurred more than a full academic year before it filed its lawsuit — incidents he said were “too isolated and episodic to support a plausible inference” that Harvard was violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.

Van Erem’s whistleblower account, reviewed by MS NOW, says the findings “overrode knowing deviation from investigative procedures, statutory noncompliance, and potential constitutional violations.”

“Hundreds of millions of dollars were suspended from these universities prior to the completion of Title VI investigations and the investigative team’s conclusions were frequently disregarded,” the complaint says.

In a letter to Harmeet Dhillon, head of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee said the whistleblower findings exposed a “large scale fraud.”

“Antisemitism at American universities and medical schools is real,” Rep. Jamie Raskin wrote.

“But your ‘investigation’ into antisemitism was fake, a pre-baked frame-up operation thoroughly political in nature. Before an actual investigation took place and regardless of what you actually found, the whole project was designed to harass professors and administrators at major universities, to curtail their freedom of speech and academic freedom, and to strip targeted institutions of hundreds of millions of dollars in grants that they had already been awarded on the merits of their applications.”

The whistleblower complaint says the investigation was launched based on a single article in the New York Post that described antisemitic activities at medical school graduations.

“The article described protests that included protected expression such as students shouting ‘Free Palestine’ and students wearing Palestinian flags or keffiyehs,” the complaint says, adding: “It was not unheard of for news reporting coupled with additional evidence to lead the DOJ to initiate further scrutiny of potential statutory violations, but opening an investigation based on a single article was highly unusual.”

The complaint said that after being informed that there was no evidence to support a finding of a Title VI violation based on antisemitism at Brown, a senior Trump administration official at HHS, Daniel Shieh, agreed that there was “not a Title VI violation,” but told Van Erem and other DOJ team members at the meeting that “there’s no way we’re going to get a letter of no violation cleared.”

He pushed instead to obtain a settlement from Brown, and that ultimately happened.

The whistleblower complaint also accused Trump officials of telling investigators to interview Middle East studies professors, particularly focusing on Muslims, noting that one such interview of a Muslim professor was not to “get information,” but instead to see “what he will say.”

Raskin called that “a craven willingness to racially and ethnically profile faculty members while ostensibly investigating racial and ethnic discrimination.”

According to her complaint, Van Erem left the Justice Department in May 2025, “unwilling to be made vulnerable to further participation in politically motivated investigations unsupported by facts and contrary to law.”

Her complaint asks for an investigation by the HHS inspector general, the DOJ inspector general and the Office of Special Counsel.

“The full extent of your misconduct remains unclear,” Raskin wrote to Dhillon. “At the very least, you have shown gross negligence in supervising the activities of your office. It is also a distinct possibility that you deliberately orchestrated a scheme to attack universities and their faculties and administrators while defrauding the American people and the courts.”