Author: HP McLovincraft

Seeker of rabbit holes. Pessimist. Libertine. Contrarian. Your huckleberry. Possibly true tales of sanity-blasting horror also known as abject reality. Prepare yourself. Veteran of a thousand psychic wars. I have seen the fnords. Deplatformed on Tumblr and Twitter.

Appeals Court Upholds Hawaii’s Rules For Gun Buyers

Hawaii’s rules for gun buyers were upheld by a federal appeals court Tuesday in a ruling that reversed a lower court’s injunction.

The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a U.S. District Court for the District of Hawaii by a vote of 6 to 5.

In Todd Yukutake and David Kikukawa v. Anne Lopez and the City and County of Honolulu, the court found that the law imposing a list of rules on gun buyers is constitutional under the June 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen.

Writing for the majority of the Ninth Circuit’s en banc panel, Judge John B. Owens stated that a footnote in the Bruen decision holds that objective, “shall-issue” licensing standards comply with the Second Amendment.

A “shall-issue” standard means the state must grant a permit to a qualified applicant.

The dissenting judges say this is a misapplication of the Bruen standard.

The law in question requires a state-issued license to purchase a handgun. The licensing process requires applicants to submit fingerprints, a mental health check and their Social Security number. It also sets a 30-day limit for purchasing the gun once the license is issued. If the licensee fails to meet that deadline, the process must be restarted.

Once the firearm purchase is complete, the new gun owner is required to provide information about the gun to the police department. Under some circumstances the gun must be inspected by the police.

Under Bruen, a gun law is constitutional if it fits the plain text of the Second Amendment and has a historical analogue from the time of the Second Amendment’s ratification.

The majority wrote that footnote nine of the Bruen decision allows requiring a license to carry a handgun in public for protection as long as the licensing requirements are based on objective standards.

Owens wrote that the plaintiffs failed to show that the law effectively denied them their Second Amendment rights or impeded their ability to acquire firearms. He stated that, according to footnote nine, “non-abusive, shall-issue laws comport with the Second Amendment.”

Joining Owens in reversing the injunction were Chief Judge Mary H. Murguia and judges Kim McLane Wardlaw, Jacqueline H. Nguyen, Gabriel P. Sanchez, and Holly A. Thomas.

Judge Ryan Nelson joined Judges Daniel Bress, Lawrence VanDyke, Bridget Bade, and Danielle J. Forrest in dissenting in part.

The dissenters wrote that footnote nine does not apply since it covers the carrying of a firearm and not the acquisition of one. They also noted that the state did not identify a historical analog for the licensing requirement.

The lawsuit was filed on Oct. 21, 2021, by the Honolulu County residents. The pair said the licensing process was an unconstitutional infringement on their Second Amendment rights. In August 2021 the U.S. District Court for the District of Hawaii found in their favor.

Gun rights activists say this is not the end of the case. Brandon Combs, president of the Firearms Policy Council, called the decision a “roadmap for abusing gun owners.”

Alan Gottlieb, executive vice president of the Second Amendment Foundation, vowed to continue the legal fight.

“This case will be headed to the Supreme Court and I believe that the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals will be overturned,” Gottlieb stated in an email to The Epoch Times.

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Green Slush Fund won’t seek return of $34 million paid to ineligible projects

Sustainable Development Technology Canada will not try to recover approximately $34 million paid to five projects its own review found were ineligible for funding, according to a written response to Parliament.

The response, signed by Industry Minister Mélanie Joly, says the review examined 173 projects with help from three independent third parties. It found five projects ineligible under SDTC’s agreement with the Crown and a sixth that received funding for some ineligible costs. The five projects received about $34 million since 2017.

SDTC’s board decided against pursuing repayment after consulting legal counsel. It said the recipients had negotiated and carried out their funding agreements in good faith, and that recovery was unlikely to succeed or serve the public interest.

Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada issued SDTC a notice of breach over the ineligible projects, then sent a letter accepting the board’s approach.

Conservative MP Luc Berthold had asked how much of the $400 million in funding cited in his question had been recovered, who repaid it and what further recovery efforts were underway. The department’s answer provides no total recovered, no list of repayments and no recovery timetable. It also does not say that the entire $400 million was paid to projects later found ineligible.

The Auditor General’s 2024 audit found serious failures in SDTC’s handling of public money, including $59 million awarded to 10 ineligible projects among the 58 it examined.

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“DO THEY THINK WE’RE STUPID?”: Mitch McConnell’s Chief of Staff Remains Smug When Pressed About The Senator’s Ability To Do His Job.

Senator Mitch McConnell’s Chief of Staff, Terry Carmack, was pressed by The Gateway Pundit reporter, Myles Morell, on the Senator’s health status and his cognitive abilities to do his job in the Senate.

Upon spotting Carmack, Morell asked him if he believed that pushing the Senator around in a wheelchair is a good look for both him and Carmack. Morell received no response.

Morell was then joined by independent journalists Aulden Nance and Anthony Pellegrino, with Nance questioning Carmack if he is concerned over the Senator’s legacy.

Pellegrino then asked if McConnell is able to talk and communicate clearly with Carmack “behind closed doors.” He received no response.

Morell and Nance continued to press Carmack on McConnell’s failure to give any public video statements since his extended absence from the Senate starting in June, while Pellegrino asked about what closed-door communications are like once again.

Morell ended the interaction by asking Carmack if he would address public concerns about the Senator’s ability to do his job properly, resulting in nothing but crickets once again.

Carmack refused to answer a single question and had a smug look on his face the entire time.

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Dead Before Questioning: Another Epstein Recruiter Dies in Mysterious Circumstances

Ghislaine Maxwell is serving twenty years in federal prison for conspiring with Jeffrey Epstein to sexually abuse minors. Jean-Luc Brunel, the French modelling agent accused of supplying Epstein with young women, died in his cell in Paris in 2022 while awaiting trial on charges of raping minors. Epstein was found dead in a Manhattan jail in 2019. A fourth name emerged from the documents released by the United States Department of Justice. The 68-year-old man, whose name is featured 1,841 times in the DOJ files on Epstein, died before French investigators could question him. Daniel Amar Siad was found dead at his home in Colombes, northwest of Paris, on 20 July 2026.

On 18 February 2026, the Paris prosecutor’s office opened a framework investigation into organised human trafficking and criminal conspiracy in preparation for a crime. It entrusted the inquiry to France’s Central Office for the Repression of Human Trafficking, known as OCRTEH.  Five rape and trafficking complaints had been filed against him since 2022, but Siad had always denied the accusations and said he was ready to face his accusers.

Investigators were expected to interview him. A lawyer for several of the women said he was due to be questioned shortly; Le Parisien reported that some had been assured he would be taken into police custody before the summer. Neither happened.

His death ensured that investigators would never hear his account of the Epstein network with which the documents linked him for years. Ebba Karlsson, the Swedish former model who accused Siad of raping her after luring her to the Côte d’Azur with promises of modelling work, later said she believed he had been “eliminated” because “he had too many connections with powerful people.” The cause of his death had still not been established publicly when this article was completed.

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Florida AG James Uthmeier: Sarasota Teacher ‘Tried to Cancel’ Eighth Grader for His Conservative Views

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier said Sarasota teacher Liz Ballard “harassed, disparaged, and deliberately tried to cancel an eighth-grade student for his conservative views.” The AG blasted the teacher in a letter to the Satasota school district.

“I sent a letter to Sarasota Schools after a Pine View teacher allegedly labeled an 8th grader a ‘misogynist’ based on his political affiliation, ignored his parents’ wishes, and disparaged the child’s father,” Uthmeier wrote in a Monday X post, sharing the letter he sent.

“If true, she should be fired and never teach in Florida again,” the Florida Attorney General added.

Ballard, who teaches history at Pine View School in Osprey, Florida, is accused of singling out the boy as the “conservative perspective” in her classroom and later labeling him a “misogynist” — a slur she went on to spread around the school, Uthmeier said in his letter.

Moreover, the teacher engaged in this behavior despite the boy previously informing her that “his parents expressly forbid him to take part” in her debates, and even “openly questioned the suitability and influence of the student’s father,” the Florida AG added.

Uthmeier also noted that “multiple HR investigations initiated by multiple parents” against the teacher have nonetheless resulted in her continuing to teach at Pine View School.

“Ballard singled out this student and, in defiance of his parents’ express instructions, pressured him to defend political positions on demand in front of his class-mates. She made disparaging remarks about his father,” he said.

“By facilitating the spread of a damaging label throughout the school, she engaged in the reputational destruction of a child,” Uthmeier added, asserting that “Ballard’s deliberate bullying and harassment” puts her in violation of “Florida law, School Board policy, and at least six ethical principles.”

In his letter to Superintendent Terry Connor and School Board of Sarasota County members, the Florida Attorney General reminded them that “Florida law prohibits bullying or harassment of any student at any public K-12 educational institution.”

“Based on the foregoing allegations, if true, Ms. Ballard should be dismissed and her educator certificate revoked,” Uthmeier wrote, before calling on the superintendent and school board to inform his office “of the actions the district has taken, or will take” to address the matter by October 1, 2026.

On Tuesday, the superintendent acknowledged having received the letter, adding that members of the school board “take the concerns seriously and will respond to the Attorney General’s Office,” according to a report by WFLA.

“Every student deserves a classroom where they feel safe, respected, and free to learn,” Connor said. “No student should face harassment, humiliation, or retaliation because of their beliefs or their family’s views.”

“Respect for students and parents is fundamental to the trust our community places in our schools,” the superintendent continued, adding that “the allegations in the letter warrant careful attention.”

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One Hostage and One Million People Will Pay?

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz has now said something that should disturb anyone. According to The Jerusalem Post, Katz threatened to destroy what remains of Gaza City and forcibly evacuate around ONE MILLION Palestinians if Hamas takes a single Israeli hostage. Think about what is being said. One person is captured and a million people may be driven from their homes while what remains of their city is destroyed. The Jerusalem Post itself acknowledged that such a statement could make Israel’s defense against genocide and war crimes accusations at The Hague more difficult because international law requires proportionality.

This is precisely why international humanitarian law prohibits COLLECTIVE PUNISHMENT. Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states that no protected person may be punished for an offense he or she did not personally commit. Collective penalties and measures of intimidation are prohibited. This principle exists because humanity has already traveled down this road. Governments cannot punish an entire village, city, ethnic population, or civilian society because one person or armed organization committed an offense. Otherwise there is no law of war. There is merely vengeance.

There is also a serious distinction between hostage taking and the capture of an enemy combatant during warfare. Israel deems taken soldiers “hostages” rather than “prisoners of war.” The Geneva Conventions contain an entire framework governing prisoners of war and people detained during armed conflict. The ICRC makes clear that POWs and other wartime detainees are protected by international humanitarian law. Hostage taking is prohibited, but so is collective punishment.

If Hamas deliberately seizes a civilian to compel Israel to act, that can constitute hostage taking. If a combatant is captured during hostilities, the legal analysis is different and depends upon the nature of the conflict and the person’s status. Governments cannot simply erase the laws governing wartime detention by changing the vocabulary.

Consider the scale of what Katz has threatened. Gaza today contains roughly two million people. Katz threatened to extinguish roughly HALF of the entire population of Gaza. He did not say he would punish the people responsible. He threatened to destroy what remains of their city and remove approximately one million human beings.

People seem to misunderstand what genocide actually means under international law. You do not have to exterminate every member of an ethnic or national population before the word becomes legally relevant. The Genocide Convention covers acts committed with the specific intent to destroy a protected group “in whole or in part,” and international courts have interpreted that “part” as having to be substantial. Numbers matter, but so does the significance of the population being targeted and the evidence concerning intent.

Look at Srebrenica. More than 7,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were murdered while the wider Muslim population was forcibly removed from the enclave. International tribunals concluded that genocide had occurred even though the victims represented only a fraction of Bosnia’s entire Muslim population. The courts looked at the targeted community, the killings, the expulsions and what those actions demonstrated about the intent to destroy that community.

Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states that people cannot be punished for offenses they did not personally commit and expressly prohibits collective penalties. Article 49 prohibits mass forcible transfers from occupied territory except under narrow circumstances involving civilian security or imperative military necessity, with additional protections and an obligation to return evacuees when hostilities cease.

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Regulators Find Their Situational Awareness: Fed, BoE Probe Bank Exposure To Jane Street After AI Fund Meltdown

Better late than never…

Nearly two months after Leopold Aschenbrenner’s Situational Awareness went from a $45 billion AI juggernaut to a Citadel block trade after it dumped its entire public book on Ken Griffen’s doorstep at a 10% discount and six weeks after we learned that Jane Street lost $15 billion in July, its first down month in a decade, central bankers on both sides of the Atlantic have noticed that something may have happened.

According to the FT, the Bank of England’s Prudential Regulation Authority and the Federal Reserve have “stepped up scrutiny” of banks’ exposure to large trading firms and market makers. They are asking global lenders how much they have lent to Jane Street and Ken Griffin’s Citadel Securities, and presumably also to such HFT money makers as Susquehanna and Hudson River Trading.

Regulators want to know three things: the firms’ risk appetite, how banks’ exposure to them “evolved during the day,” and how risk controls held up. That’s a polite way of asking whether anyone at the prime brokers was actually watching intraday margin as the AI trade fell apart in July.

While the PRA, the Fed and Jane Street all declined to comment, Jane’s silence is the least surprising. Its last public word on the subject came from partner Turner Batty, who told investors, in the understatement of the year, that “July was a bad month.”

A brief history of a very bad month

For anyone who missed it (i.e., all the regulators), here’s the recap.

Situational Awareness is the fund Aschenbrenner, a former OpenAI researcher, launched in 2024 under the name of his viral essay. It had eight employees and ran long AI infrastructure / short software, with about 4x leverage through Goldman total return swaps. We described that leverage as “batshit insane”, but it was also extremely profitable, if only to Goldman. In a separate piece, the FT today reported that Goldman earned more than $200 million in fees this year from lending to Situational Awareness, the most of any client in its prime brokerage business financing hedge funds. 

As long as the market was going, up it was a party: the extremely levered momentum-chasing fund was was up 439% net through June, reached $45 billion in AUM, and counted Jane Street among its investors.

Then July happened. AI stocks rolled over, software rallied, and both legs of the pair trade lost money at once. Nebius, Sandisk and SharonAI each fell roughly half, and SK Hynix dropped nearly 50%. As the margin calls came in, the fund went looking for fresh capital. It failed to find willing “widows and orphans” and so within days it had exited all of its public equity trades. Citadel bought the whole book in under 24 hours at about a 10% discount, beating Millennium and, fittingly, Jane Street. The fund ended the month down about 78%, with roughly $10 billion of private holdings left, including a large stake in Anthropic.

Griffin did well out of it. Citadel’s Wellington fund rose 5.94% in July, its best month since 2022, and about half of its year-to-date gains came from the Situational Awareness trade. Over the next three weeks, Citadel flipped more than 80% of Leopold’s portfolio to dumb money through roughly 100 block trades worth more than $4 billion. When Griffin later described the unwind, he thanked “the trading and prime brokerage teams at the banks serving both firms” for their “extraordinary cooperation.”

Regulators are now asking those same prime brokerage teams some questions of their own.

Jane Street was the collateral damage: on top of its direct stake in Situational Awareness, its own book, which tends to, cough, be just ahead of whale and retail orders, leaned into the same momentum names: Sandisk, Micron, CoreWeave, Broadcom, SMCI, Dell and Bloom Energy, all the names that defined the momentum trade trough July. And when the AI trade reversed, it lost $15 billion in a month. Most firms wouldn’t survive a hit like that. At Jane Street it barely dented the year: by early August the firm had generated $40 billion in net trading revenue, already more than its record $39.6 billion for all of 2025.

That is also what worries regulators. As the FT puts it, the size of the loss “indicated that Jane Street… appeared to take far more risk than a typical market maker.”

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When Everything Becomes a National Security Threat

“The word ‘security’ is a broad, vague generality whose contours should not be invoked to abrogate the fundamental law embodied in the First Amendment.” ~ Justice Hugo Black, New York Times Co. v. United States (1971)

“National security” has become the government’s all-purpose permission slip to behave badly.

They have become the magic words that can make constitutional restraints disappear – especially when the courts defer to claims of national security. Courts have historically been reluctant to second-guess the executive branch when government officials invoke military necessity, classified information, foreign affairs or national security.

Given the judiciary’s longstanding reluctance to second-guess presidential power grabs involving national security, the national-security state has repeatedly used that deference to expand both its own reach and the power of the presidency.

Call something a matter of national security and the normal rules start disappearing: Courts defer. Congress retreats. Secrecy expands. Executive power grows.

“National security” has been used as the justification for surveillance, secret courts, classification, warrantless spying, military intervention, watchlists, detention, border searches, censorship claims and the concealment of government misconduct.

That game is hardly new.

Nixon played it. Bush played it. Obama played it. Biden played it.

Trump may not have invented the national-security dodge, but he has taken it to increasingly absurd extremes.

Under Trump 2.0, almost everything gets branded a matter of national security in order for the president to sidestep as many parts of the Constitution as he finds inconvenient.

At one point, the government even invoked national security to justify proposed tariffs on trumpets, trombones and tubas because the instruments depend on foreign copper alloys.

This would almost be laughable if the consequences were not so serious.

Trump wants greater control over the U.S economy? Declare a national emergency and seize the power to levy tariffs in the name of national security.

Trump is disgruntled over relations with Canada? Declare a national security threat and claim executive authority to levy tariffs without going through Congress.

Trump wants to build a lavish ballroom? Stick a bunker below it and a droneport on top, and call it national security.

Trump wants to erect a massive ceremonial arch? Turn it into a military installation, complete with drones, snipers and ammunition, and chalk it up to national security.

Trump doesn’t like unfavorable press coverage? Ban reporters from the White House and characterize the press as a national-security threat.

This is not merely another Trump deflection.

It is the logical culmination of decades spent allowing presidents of both parties to invoke national security whenever they want more power, more secrecy and less accountability.

Trump is demonstrating just how much damage can be done once a president decides that virtually anything he wants can be recast as necessary for national security.

Consider how far down the road we have already traveled under the Trump administration.

Tariffs on allies have been justified as national security. Annexing Greenland has been characterized as vital to national security. Offshore wind projects have been halted on national-security grounds.

Coal plants have been kept operating longer in the name of national security.

Artificial-intelligence infrastructure and massive data centers have been elevated to matters of national security.

Even federal workers’ collective-bargaining protections have been stripped away after agencies were classified as performing national-security work.

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Two-tiered justice: Local DAs shield noncitizens from immigration consequences

District attorneys across the country are accused of providing illegal immigrants preferential treatment when they commit crimes, allowing them to remain free in the country and put U.S. citizens’ lives at risk. The related reports seem to indicate that when the arrested person is a U.S. citizen, they are denied much of the leniency shown to illegal immigrants accused of the same crime. 

The House Judiciary Committee and its Immigration Subcommittee released a report this week detailing how Arlington County, Virginia’s Commonwealth’s Attorney, Parisa Dehghani-Tafti, “obstructs the enforcement of federal immigration law and shields foreign national criminals from accountability.” Dehghani-Tafti’s campaign received $515,000 from George Soros-affiliated political entities, Fox News reported last October.

Congressional committee says policy ensures that certain foreign nationals are never convicted of DWI

“Democrats’ open-borders policies and sanctuary jurisdictions have had devastating consequences for U.S. citizens. Even after the American people resoundingly rejected Democrats’ pro-illegal alien policies in November 2024, Democrats across the country reinforced sanctuary policies to ensure that the millions of illegal aliens who entered the U.S. are never removed from the country,” the Committee wrote in its announcement of the report.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) data contained within the report showed that sanctuary jurisdictions – cities that have vowed not to work with ICE – have declined at least 41,085 detainers between Oct. 2022 and early 2026.

The Judiciary Committee’s report included testimony from Dehghani-Tafti about her office’s policy to shift outcomes for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients charged with Driving While Intoxicated (DWI) to ensure they don’t lose their DACA status. “This policy ensures that certain foreign nationals are never convicted of DWI in Arlington County, [Virginia] solely due to their status as non-U.S. citizens,” the Committee wrote.

“Arlington County treats illegal aliens differently than similarly situated American citizens. Immigration-specific considerations, and the potential for a different prosecutorial outcome based on those immigration considerations, are not available to American citizens charged with similar crimes,” the Committee added.

Arlington County’s refusal to work with ICE also extends to cases involving felons and terrorists, the Committee found.

Lax treatment, tracking of illegal immigrants leads to deaths of American citizens

In neighboring Fairfax County, the situation is largely the same with Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano, who is under investigation by the Department of Justice (DOJ) for possible discrimination against American citizens. “This investigation will uncover whether this prosecutor is putting the community at risk in offering sweetheart deals to illegal immigrants charged with serious crimes,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said in May.

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Flock And Other Tech Firms Decline Senate Testimony On Mass Surveillance

Flock Safety CEO Garrett Langley and the heads of Axon Enterprise, Motorola Solutions and Verkada all declined invitations to testify before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee on Wednesday, as senators from both parties pressed on the surveillance networks their cameras feed. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who chairs the Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism, called the no-shows “so typical.”

Democrats weren’t any happier. “For the Flock CEOs, obviously they’re nervous about being on camera,” said Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.). Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) went further: “Their refusal to come forward and answer questions is a sign that they have something to hide, and they are refusing to be accountable.”

Instead, the panel heard from Lindsey Isaacs, a Florida woman who spent 13 days in jail after Flock’s system wrongly flagged her car as involved in a fatal crash. She was charged with three counts of vehicular homicide. The charges have since been dropped.

As The Epoch Times notes further, While the license plate-reading cameras developed by Flock have gotten the most airtime in recent weeks – prompting nationwide, viral moments of activist vigilantes destroying or disabling the cameras amid public opposition to the technology – competitors at Axon Enterprise and Motorola offer similar options for police and local governments.

The Los Angeles Police Department is currently planning to roll out a 10-year contract with Axon, a $235 million arrangement that would equip America’s second-largest metropolis with more than 1,600 license plate readers.

For municipalities, companies like Flock, Axon, and Motorola offer a potential melding of technology and traditional surveillance tech to reduce crime and make roadways safer. But the cameras they operate have boosted a growing artificial intelligence-powered surveillance network accessible by thousands of U.S. law enforcement agencies, which critics say runs afoul of the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable search and seizure.

Hawley warned during the hearing that, if not addressed, this would have troubling implications for Americans.

“This is still the United States of America, and it shouldn’t be that when you walk out your door in the morning, you just have to agree in assent and accept the fact that you’re going to be on camera morning, noon, and night,” Hawley said.

“You’ll be tracked by anybody and everybody in the world. You’ll have no privacy whatsoever. You’ll be tracked when you take your kids to school and tracked when you go to church and tracked when you go to the grocery store.”

Some high-profile abuses of the data collected from these cameras have made headlines.

In one recent case, Indianapolis authorities announced that five police officers had been charged with misusing data from Flock.

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