The race to stop mirror organisms
If created, these versions of the building blocks of life could lead to environmental and ecological disaster
This year I witnessed something I never expected to see in my scientific career: more than 150 scientists, policymakers, science funders and ethicists came together at the Institut Pasteur in Paris seeking to prevent a global threat that does not yet exist.
Within the next few decades, scientists will probably be able to build mirror life — organisms built from molecular components that are mirror images of the versions used in nature.
I am a synthetic biologist. Engineering cells and bacteria is my trade. I was part of the team that, in 2010, created the world’s first living bacterial cell with a chemically synthesised genome. For decades, my colleagues and I have sought to scale the beneficial applications of this technology, helping to create vaccine strains, biofuels, pharmaceuticals and other molecules that could create new sources of clean energy, cure diseases and clean up the planet.
Mirror life represents a profound break from this work. It would be created using entirely different building blocks, not the same molecules that are found in all known life. The organism’s DNA would twist to the left where ours twists to the right; their ribonucleic acids, essential to biological functions, would loop and bulge in the opposite direction.
Research into mirror cells has only been a tiny part of synthetic biology. But efforts to build a mirror ribosome — the cell’s protein factory — are under way. Once it is possible to build a mirror cell, it would be comparatively easy to engineer many more kinds of mirror bacteria — the simplest form of mirror life.
If this is achieved and Pandora’s box opens it could pose extraordinary risks. Mirror bacteria could evade our immune systems, confound our medicines and escape many of nature’s checks and balances.
To the best of our knowledge, our immune systems produce very weak antibody responses against mirror molecules, if any. Having even one immune deficiency can cause a patient to die of overwhelming bacterial infections; a mirror bacterial infection might be like having many immune deficiencies at once.
In the environment, predators including viruses and amoebae control bacterial populations. Mirror bacteria would be resistant to many of these predators. With fewer constraints, they could spread across ecosystems, disrupt food chains and cause fatal infections across species. Contaminated areas could become irreversibly uninhabitable, compromising our agriculture and natural world. Huge numbers of people, animals and plants could be wiped out, with some driven to extinction.
We have realised these dangers well before the point of no return. The Paris conference was a historic gathering: the first time scientists, ethicists, science funders and experts from the WHO and the UN came together specifically to discuss the threat from mirror life.
Many argued that we need regulation and law to ensure that it is not created. I agree. This will require precision about what research can continue and what should cease. Some research could make it easier to create useful drugs, for example. Each major technological breakthrough offers a chance to assess whether going further increases the risks to people and the planet.
However, developing laws can require years of deliberation. Funding agencies can help create concrete barriers today. The Alfred P Sloan Foundation has already made clear that it will not support research with the goal of creating mirror organisms. Similar commitments from other funders would send a powerful message.
Over the next year, stakeholders will meet at the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, the University of Manchester, the National University of Singapore, Rikkyo University in Japan, Harvard University, Yale University and elsewhere to try to establish these boundaries. What technical milestones towards mirror life require red lines that protect people and planet, while preserving the benefits of synthetic biology that have nothing to do with mirror life?
This moment echoes the best of scientific responsibility, such as when researchers recognised the ozone crisis and united to ban chlorofluorocarbons. We have an even rarer opportunity now to prevent a global threat before it causes any harm. The solution is clear: we should choose not to build mirror life and pass laws to ensure nobody can. The question is not whether we are able to prevent this threat — it is whether we will act while we still can.
Gulf tourists flock to up-and-coming holiday destination: Russia
Saudis, Emiratis and Kuwaitis are enticed by TikTok campaigns and easy visas as airlines open new routes
Tourists from Gulf states are flocking to Russia as the country deepens its ties with the region after years of western sanctions, enticing visitors with easy visas, cultural riches and even “action packed” military tours.
Cut off from many western travellers and in need of foreign revenue streams to fund its war in Ukraine, Moscow has simplified its online visa process for many countries and Russia has sponsored trips for Arabic-language TikTok and Instagram influencers.
The moves have paid off, with Gulf citizens a growing target market for its tourist destinations as the region plays an ever greater role in the global economy.
Total visits from the Gulf more than quadrupled between 2019 and 2024, according to the Russian tour operators association. The number of Saudi visitors to Russia grew six-fold between 2023 and 2024, Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov said in July.
Tourism has become an important strand of Russian-Saudi efforts to deepen diplomatic ties, and the two were close to agreeing a visa waiver programme, the countries’ foreign ministers said.
Saudi budget airline Flynas began operating three direct flights per week from Riyadh to Moscow in August and state-owned Saudia is planning flights to Russia’s capital this autumn. The United Arab Emirates-based budget airline Air Arabia has also announced it would launch seasonal flights between Abu Dhabi and Yekaterinburg in October.
The two countries’ foreign ministers “spoke highly about the growth of our tourist exchanges” at a July meeting in Moscow, Lavrov said.
The Middle East, Egypt and Turkey are still the top destinations for Gulf tourists, followed by western Europe when escaping the region’s searing summer temperatures. But more and more are now going to Russia for the lower cost and novelty of visiting somewhere new, encouraged by a flood of social media posts from the influencers visiting the country.
“The prices and marketing made me decide to go,” said Aqeel al-Dejani, a 27-year-old Saudi. There was “a lot of promotion for Russian tourism on social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram”.
He spent 10 days in Moscow and Saint Petersburg in June and was particularly impressed by the architecture and history. “The Peterhof Palace with its huge gardens was magnificent,” he said.
Ostrovok, a Russian hotel booking website, said demand from Middle Eastern tourists grew by about a third in the first half of 2025 compared with the same period last year. Those tourists on average spent 30 per cent more per night than European counterparts, with nearly 80 per cent booking 4-star or 5-star hotels, said Daria Kochetkova, Ostrovok’s managing director.
Some are even braving the Russian winter for the thrill of something new.
“We were shocked by the weather,” said Hasan al-Qattan, a Saudi doctor who visited in February and said bundling up in temperatures of -10 Celsius was “part of the experience”.
“We knew it would be cold but we did not expect it to be that cold,” said the 28-year-old. “We come from a desert environment so we are not used to this kind of freezing cold weather.”
Inspired by videos of influencers marching in Russian army gear, Qattan booked a “military tour” that he said was the highlight of the trip. “The one we did is the ‘war experience’, where they give you a ride in a tank, do some light military drills, shoot a Kalashnikov and RPG. It was exciting and action packed.”
Gulf states have taken a neutral stance on Russia’s war with Ukraine. Despite pressure from western allies, the region has continued co-ordinating with Russia on oil production, helping President Vladimir Putin bankroll his war economy while also playing the role of mediators to exchange prisoners and hosting peace talks.
While Gulf visitors said they felt safe due to visible police presence in tourism hotspots, war-related sanctions have required some changes to travel practices. Credit cards such as Visa and Mastercard no longer work in Russia, forcing tourists to carry large amounts of cash and spend carefully for fear of running out of money.
And as Moscow jams GPS signals to prevent drone attacks, apps such as Google Maps and Uber have become unusable in the centre of the capital. “You are dependent on taxis even if the distance is not that far,” said a Saudi tourist.
But the sanctions-enforced absence of global brands did not bother Qattan and his friends, who mainly wanted to buy traditional souvenirs and praised the wide availability of halal food and variety of chocolate.
“We tried the ‘Alyonka’ chocolate with the legendary little girl on the cover, it was delicious,” he said. “We also picked up some Russian matryoshka dolls.”
China tightens rare earth rules, extending controls to imported minerals
Under new guidelines, producers must report data on the flow of strategic materials, including those coming from abroad for refining
China on Friday announced tightened rules over the mining and processing of rare earths, extending controls to imported minerals and requiring enterprises to report the flow of the strategic materials monthly.
The rules were released as guidelines on the implementation of the country’s Rare Earth Management Regulations, which took effect in October. The rules specify that China’s quota system applies not only to domestically produced materials but also to those coming from abroad for refining – a change that some fear could put further pressure on global supply.
Rare earth production enterprises should, by the 10th day of each month, enter the previous month’s data on the flow of rare earth products into a newly established information system, according to the document issued by three departments led by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT).
The latest move came as China, the world’s largest rare earth producer and refiner, tightens control over the production and export of the critical materials, which are widely used in hi-tech products ranging from smartphones to electric vehicles.
The document, effective immediately, provides detailed guidelines on how government agencies should manage quotas for designated companies and make the flow of rare earth products traceable.
In an interpretation of the new rules, the MIIT noted that rare earths were important strategic mineral resources, and changes in the industry meant that earlier rules were no longer suitable for current needs.
Rare earth elements are considered a critical bargaining chip for Beijing in its trade talks with Washington.
As in past years, Beijing has allocated an initial set of quotas to two rare earth producers for this year. However, this time it did not disclose details about the decision – a move seen as a deliberate strategy amid the trade war, according to mainland media reports.
“Compared to the previous quota system, which only regulated domestic raw materials, the new measures explicitly regulate imported ones, further enhancing China’s control over the rare earth supply chain,” said Li Chao, chief analyst at Guojin Securities, in a research report in February when the measures were issued for public comment.
In the first half of 2025, China imported 38,600 tonnes of various rare earth smelting and separation products, a year-on-year decrease of more than 12 per cent, according to Chinese customs data.
Imports of rare earth permanent magnets – powerful permanent magnets made from rare earth element alloys that are widely used in mobile phones and robots – reached 1,056 tonnes in the first half of the year, up by 11 per cent year on year.
As the country with the most abundant rare earth resources, China’s rare earth mineral production accounted for over 60 per cent of the global total in 2023, according to data from the International Energy Agency.
The country has mastered key technologies in the rare earth industry over the past few decades, increasing the scale of rare earth raw material imports from abroad while exporting deeply processed products.
From January to June, China’s cumulative exports of rare earth smelting and separation products totalled 32,000 tonnes, a year-on-year increase of 11.3 per cent. Exports of rare earth permanent magnet materials reached 22,000 tonnes, down by 19 per cent from the same period last year.
AI Forces Silicon Valley to Confront a Moment of Ecstasy and Agony
The technology has sparked enormous excitement among CEOs, founders and investors—and tremendous fear that they could very quickly get left behind in an upended landscape.
Last fall, Howie Liu, CEO and co-founder of Airtable, arrived at a board meeting with an urgent realization: If Airtable, a maker of collaboration software, wanted to stay relevant, it needed to significantly rethink itself. “We started to feel like the incumbent instead of the disruptor and risked becoming one of the dinosaurs,” Liu said.
The board agreed, and Liu sprinted to put a plan into place. In June, Airtable launched its new product: an AI-powered software for making apps. He describes the motivating force behind his decision to alter his company’s direction as a profound sense of paranoia. “Maybe it’s not the most psychologically healthy way to live,” he conceded. Liu then offered a justification: He thinks he’s in wonderful company. “The founders I admire—even Zuck at the very top—are constantly paranoid.”
Almost no one in tech land seems to feel very at ease these days. Brexton Pham, CEO and co-founder of Ohara, has shifted the focus of his Kleiner Perkins–backed startup from HR and finance operations for startups to AI agents with a mindset that he sums up as “fast, ruthless and experimental.”
“Everybody around me is genuinely guessing: ‘Where do we think the future is going?’” Pham said. “It’s not just, ‘Where is the world going to be in five years?’ I don’t even know what the costs are going to be in six months.”
Even the old hands find themselves blinking in surprise. “The rules of these business models are just so different now,” said Box CEO Aaron Levie. “The speed at which companies are scaling—I’ve never seen anything like this.”
As summer comes to a close, and Silicon Valley prepares to hurtle through the final months of the third year in the great AI boom, the industry has arrived at a moment of strange reckoning, one defined by two emotions often impossible to separate: a sense of enormous excitement—and a feeling of immense anxiety, one that was fueled this week by a market selloff over a viral MIT study that purported to show that nearly all AI projects at U.S. businesses have flopped.
Fear is a familiar state in Silicon Valley. In the 1980s, Andy Grove, the former Intel CEO, expressed his philosophy that business leaders ought to be constantly dangling from tenterhooks in his best-selling book, “Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points That Challenge Every Company.” In the book, Grove described the existential moments that businesses face, which he dubbed strategic inflection points.
Right now, tech is acting like AI could be the mother of all strategic inflection points. It’s a peculiar attitude considering that in some ways, times have never been better.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq sits at an all-time high. The IPO market is finally showing signs of life for the first time since 2022. Eight of the top 10 most valuable companies in the world are from tech, led by Nvidia, a once unremarkable designer of graphics chips.
Meanwhile, OpenAI, which was a little-known research outfit less than five years ago, could quite shortly become the world’s most valuable private company. And these sorts of massive valuations allow the best minds in AI to command salaries that would inspire envy among the most highly compensated film stars.
Yet many of the industry’s leaders seem like they’re on the verge of throwing up in the garbage cans at their desks. Founders and investors are concerned they won’t be able to keep pace with existing competitors who figure out their place in AI—and any newcomers who might unexpectedly materialize. “You’re seeing almost every founder sit there and shiver in their boots that the next ChatGPT model is just gonna do what their entire company and app has done,” investor Adrian Aoun said in an appearance on The Information’s TITV.
“I have a really high sense of urgency,” acknowledged Nicolas Kopp, whose AI startup, Rillet, closed a Sequoia Capital–led $25 million round in May followed by an additional $70 million round two months later. “Every 15-minute slot has a certain price tag in my mind—like, everything’s fàcking urgent.”
The AI anxiety has spread beyond corner offices to the rank and file, too. Tech employers have laid off tens of thousands of staffers as their leaders look for savings to pay for massive spending on AI—or attempt to show customers how efficient AI can make their own businesses. At the same time, the giant paydays for AI researchers are establishing a new caste system that drastically favors anyone with experience in the field—and that is upending the daily rhythms of corporate life.
At Google, for instance, product managers are starting to be asked to vibe-code a prototype rather than just write a document outlining product requirements, according to a Google Cloud employee now in that situation.
At some companies, managers are breathing down the necks of employees to use AI to produce more, even though in practice the technology isn’t quite good enough yet. With the addition of AI coding tools, executives expect product development to be moving far faster—but much of the AI-written code is too buggy to deploy, and many other bottlenecks related to product reviews or other procedural elements can’t just be AI-generated away, according to a current LinkedIn employee.
And even when the riches do arrive, not everyone walks away buoyant. One Windsurf employee was plucked to join Google DeepMind as part of Google’s $2.4 billion deal with the startup, but their direct reports and interns were left behind. They described having mixed feelings when they heard the news. “It’s a weird situation because someone says, ‘Here’s a really good job for the next four years.’ What’s going to happen to all your friends? I don’t know. They’ll figure it out,” they said.
Reid Hoffman, the billionaire venture capitalist, sees the moment as nothing less than a “cognitive industrial revolution” that has forced his peers and colleagues to reconsider everything around them. As he put it: “Transformations are painful.”
Much has been said lately about the apparent decline in alcohol consumption among young people. Among some in Silicon Valley, boozing—along with pretty much any other form of recreation—seems to be now losing out to a relentless, AI-inflected grind.
“I live at the office—I probably work 100-hour weeks,” said Max Marchione, the 25-year-old co-founder and CEO of Superpower, a health startup that hopes to develop the equivalent of an AI-powered physician. “I will say no to more things. I won’t travel. I won’t take vacation.”
He went on. “The thing I say often is that I will sacrifice and give up more in the short term because there’s a sufficiently high chance AGI is here sooner than we think,” he said. “I feel more pressure in life than ever before.”
Masha Bucher, founder and general partner of Day One Ventures, has seen plenty of people acting just like Marchione. “Most of the best companies I’ve invested in work at least six days a week—and a half-day on Sunday. The founders sleep in the office. Some companies will have tents in the office,” she said. “It’s just that competition is so high and the pace is so high.”
While AI has become everyone’s preoccupation, it’s how many businesses are generating substantial, durable revenue from the technology—a paradox undoubtedly fueling additional worries: With so much capital invested in pursuit of commercializing the technology, companies will soon need to show those investors they can actually do so.
That’s been a more elusive goal than the surface-level excitement suggests. On that note, here’s an example of a number that sounds great but isn’t: Annualized revenue for “AI native” firms selling models or apps surpassed $15 billion in June, according to The Information’s Generative AI Database. The figure has surely increased since, but the reality undoubtedly remains that more than 85% of that sum flowed to just two companies: OpenAI and Anthropic.
Keith Rabois, the Khosla Ventures investor, has been wondering aloud lately how many of the businesses running pell-mell toward AI can come away with much—and that presents a challenge to the venture capital industry, which has largely come to focus on little else than AI.
“You have to isolate, if you’re a venture capitalist or an entrepreneur, where your differentiation is,” Rabois said while appearing on The Information’s TITV. “What’s durable? What’s sustainable? And with the rapidly emerging tech landscape, it’s not so obvious.”
Over at Airtable, Liu thinks the company’s altered focus on AI will lead to a more explosive level of growth than if the business had continued to concentrate on collaboration software. The move into AI is important enough that Liu is willing to trade some of the roughly 90% gross margins on his collaboration software in favor of an AI product he acknowledges will be far costlier to sell. “It could hurt our margins as we get more AI usage,” he said. “That’s a trade-off.”
Coca-Cola explores sale of Costa Coffee
UK chain hit by rising costs and competition from upmarket rivals
Coca-Cola is exploring a sale of Costa Coffee, according to two people familiar with the matter, after rising costs and competition from upscale competitors dented the company’s performance.
Coca-Cola bought Costa, the UK’s largest coffee chain, for £3.9bn in 2018 in an effort to diversify beyond its namesake fizzy drinks business. But soaring coffee bean prices have increased its costs.
Coca-Cola chief executive James Quincey told analysts in July that Costa had “not quite delivered” and was “not where we wanted it to be from an investment hypothesis point of view”.
He added that the drinks maker was “reflecting on what we’ve learned [and] thinking about how we might want to find new avenues to grow in the coffee category”.
Costa is the UK’s largest coffee chain but has faced competition from rivals, which have squeezed established chains with their artisanal offerings.
Coffee groups such as Costa, Starbucks and Caffè Nero were battered by lockdowns imposed during the Covid pandemic. Then rising inflation and a cost of living crisis hit the chains in the years that followed. In 2022, Costa launched a restructuring programme as a result of the “challenging economic environment and inflationary pressures”.
Coca-Cola said it did not comment on “market rumours or speculation”. News of the sale was first reported by Sky.
Cover:
-President Donald Trump's executive order has opened up a $12T market for retirement savings, benefiting private-asset firms like Apollo Global Management, KKR, Carlyle Group, and Blackstone. These firms are preparing new products for retirement accounts, as traditional endowment and pension-fund clients have slowed their commitments. Access to private markets could be one of the biggest changes since the invention of the target-date fund three decades ago. When private funds appear on 401(k) menus, savers will be told about their diversification from stocks and bonds and their higher average returns than the S&P 500 index. However, the performance of individual funds varies widely around the category average, making investors need to choose managers wisely. Shares of KKR have remained flat, while shares of Carlyle have risen 8% and Blackstone is up 3%. Private-asset managers can be expected to accelerate after Washington's green light, as they have been eager to break into the 401(k) market for years.
Interview:
-Tom Gayner, a seasoned CEO, runs a diversified holding company, Markel Group, which has an insurance operation and an investment portfolio. Gayner, a long-time disciple of Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway, has modeled Markel Group to a degree after that company. Gayner joined Markel in 1990, became co-CEO in 2016, and was named sole CEO in 2023. Markel Group has been around since 1930, insuring jitney transportation devices and taxi cabs. The company has been investors in public equity securities for about 20 years and has a collection of insurance, investment- and non-insurance businesses. Gayner's name may sound a bit like Berkshire Hathaway, but it is intentional. The Markel Group's origin story, holdings, and Berkshire's succession plan are discussed in an interview with Barron's.
Tech Trader:
-Intel's stock has experienced a one-day move of plus or minus 3% due to various market issues, including geopolitics, trade, artificial intelligence, U.S. industrial policy, and a micromanaging executive branch. The company's problems are rooted in manufacturing and have led to turnover in its executive suite, undermining a well-respected engineer, Pat Gelsinger. The new CEO, Lip-Bu Tan, has limited options and time to fix the situation. President Donald Trump initially criticized Intel's CEO, stating that there is no other solution to the problem. However, after Tan visited the White House to gain Trump's favor, Intel stock rose more than 3% that day. Intel agreed to a deal with the US government, which would grant the latter a 9.9% stake in the company in return for fulfilling its full payout under the US Chips Act, totaling $11.1B. The law passed by Congress and signed by President Joe Biden in 2022 never called for equity stakes for that funding, but political dynamics have shifted.
The Trader:
-Defense spending is expected to rise globally, but selecting defense-stock winners is challenging due to complex threats, changing global alliances, and the proliferation of artificial-intelligence-trained unmanned systems. Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics may be interesting contrarian plays. The Global X Defense Tech exchange-traded fund has seen a 63% increase in 2025, largely due to Palantir Technologies, its largest holding. The US defense budget is set to top $1T in fiscal year 2026, with European nations spending roughly half that. Defense spending commitments provide a policy floor, while geopolitical uncertainty supplies the premium, defining the transatlantic defense sector backdrop. Of the 50-plus stocks 22V Research looked at, 12 look technically strong, nine in the US and three in Europe. These stocks include GE Aerospace, RTX, Boeing, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, Taser maker Axon Enterprise, L3Harris Technologies, component supplier Curtiss-Wright, nuclear technology supplier BWX Technologies, jet engine makers Safran and Rolls-Royce Holdings, and Italian defense aerospace and defense company Leonardo.
-Railroads are now gaining interest again due to a sudden merger between Union Pacific, Norfolk Southern, and CSX. The merger could create a transcontinental railroad, a rare occurrence in the industry. The industry is relatively concentrated, and regulators are generally against additional consolidation. However, if the merger is allowed, CSX could be the next target for either a Canadian railroad or Berkshire Hathaway's BNSF, which Warren Buffett's company bought in 2010. The stock has already benefited from the speculation, with shares up about 8% since Semafor reported that Union Pacific was looking for a merger partner in mid-July. The merger could lead to further acquisitions in the railroad sector.
Features:
-US shoppers have been resilient against economic headwinds for years, but the true test of consumer strength and retail stocks is just beginning. Major retailers like Target, Lowe's, Walmart, Amazon.com, and TJMaxx’s parent company TJX have posted better sales than expected in the past quarter, indicating that Americans still have money and are willing to spend it. This resilience is partly due to a strong labor market, a historically low unemployment rate, consistent wage gains, and a record-breaking bull run on equities. Another reason for the persistence of consumer strength is that many retailers imported products ahead of spring and summer tariff implementations, allowing them to keep most of their prices unchanged and have been willing to eat some of the higher costs. However, the reaction to earnings suggests that doubts are seeping in, with Walmart stock dropping 4.5% on the day of its release, while BJ's Wholesale Club lost 6%, and Target, 6.3%, though the last had more to do with its choice of a new CEO than its business. These doubts largely stem from new tariffs as retailers restock inventories for the holiday season and companies are forced to pass on higher import costs to consumers to protect margins.
-The Covid-19 pandemic has ended, but the virus continues to kill up to 56,000 people in the US and sicken up to 18 million. Pfizer, Moderna, and Novavax plan to launch new versions of their Covid-19 vaccines this fall, updated to target JN.1 viruses. The eligibility of patients to receive these shots remains a significant question mark. The federal government's approach to vaccines has been skewed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s skepticism of vaccines, particularly the messenger RNA-based shots. The Food and Drug Administration is likely to approve the updated shots in the coming days, with approvals likely to be narrower this year than in previous years. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will convene outside vaccine experts in August or September to issue recommendations for insurers covering the shots. Despite low Covid-19 cases, the CDC estimates that infections are growing or likely to grow in 34 states and are stable in 14. Jennifer Nuzzo, professor of epidemiology at Brown University, believes that the chaos will make it harder for high-risk people to get vaccines.
Europe:
-The US and the European Union have announced a new trade deal, which includes 15% import tariffs on many European goods, including cars. The four-page framework expands on the previous agreement, which was struck last month. The US will apply a 15% tariff to nearly all other European goods, excluding aircraft and aircraft parts, generic pharmaceuticals, and some natural resources like cork that aren't available in the US. The US will maintain its 27.5% tariffs on automobiles from the European Union until the trading bloc eliminates its own levies on US goods, including industrials, seafood, and pork. Once the EU removes its tariffs, the US will cut its auto tariff to 15%. The EU is also planning to increase its purchases of American liquefied natural gas, oil, and nuclear energy products and spend at least $40B on US artificial-intelligence chips for its data centers. The EU's flagship Stoxx 600 index was down 0.3% in morning trading on Thursday.
Emerging Markets:
-Kyivstar Group, Ukraine's largest mobile operator, has gone public on the NASDAQ through a merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC). The SPAC has been in the works since the beginning of the year, when VEON, Kyivstar's Dubai-based parent company, signed a letter of intent with Cohen Circle Acquisition to list the company indirectly. The company provides mobile services to nearly 23M customers and also has internet, healthcare, entertainment, ride-hailing, and enterprise-technology operations. In late 2018, it signed an agreement to offer direct-to-cell connectivity through Elon Musk's Starlink, with service expected to launch by the end of 2025. The stock, which trades under the ticker KYIV, is climbing 20% on Monday. However, talk of Ukraine's reconstruction might be premature, as Ukraine remains mired in war more than three-and-a-half years after Russia invaded it. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and a delegation of European leaders arrived at the White House to discuss the conflict.
Commodities:
-Copper prices have been volatile this year due to uncertainty surrounding the Trump administration's trade policies. Prices for US-based Comex copper surged over 25% in the first half of the year due to President Donald Trump's threatened tariffs, prompting traders to stockpile the metal in the US. However, the actual policy was unveiled last month, and the imperative to build up stateside copper inventories vanished. On July 30, copper fell 20%, its worst single-day decline on record, and hasn't recovered. The most active Comex copper contract settled at $4.44/lbs, up 0.1%. In the short term, copper may have further to fall as the market works through the hoard that U.S. traders imported during the first months of the year.
Streetwise:
-The stock charts of Verizon and AT&T reveal a Trading Places pattern, similar to the 1983 movie where Dan Aykroyd plays a commodities trader and Eddie Murphy is a street hustler. Verizon has fallen out of favor, and longtime competitor AT&T has suddenly shot ahead. The next outcome could involve a gorilla suit, a prostitute with a heart of gold, and orange-juice futures. AT&T, which was a streamlined company paying down debt and rolling out fiber for broadband, has led the group, returning 87%, compared to 62% for T-Mobile US and 26% for Verizon. The S&P 500 has returned 27%. If dividends are stripped out, Verizon looks worse, lagged behind the stock market by 10 points and is the only one of the big three telecoms to fall in price by 24% over the past five years.
FINANCIAL TIMES
-Jay Powell has suggested a Federal Reserve rate cut in September due to a softening US labor market, which could offset risks of Donald Trump's tariffs worsening inflation. Powell's remarks put him in the camp of doves on the Federal Open Market Committee and signaled he could support a quarter-point cut at the central bank's next meeting in September. US government debt rallied after his speech, with the yield on the two-year Treasury note dropping 0.1 percentage points to 3.69%. The speech comes amid a pivotal time for the Fed, as the US president and his allies have launched a campaign against Powell and other top Fed officials, insisting the central bank should drastically cut rates. The Fed has held its main rate at a 4.25-4.5% range this year, following 1 percentage point of cuts in 2024, as some officials worry Trump's tariffs on US trading partners will ignite a fresh surge in inflation.
-The Trump administration is threatening to fire Federal Reserve Chairman, Alan Powell, and other top Fed officials to curb central banking independence, which has underpinned America's economic foundations for over half a century. This comes amid a White House putsch at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which has shaken confidence in the sanctity of economic data. The meetings in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, have become synonymous with central bankers' power and prestige, but economists are aware that the ascendancy of technocrats is in danger of being thrown dramatically into reverse. Glenn Hubbard, a chair of the White House's Council of Economic Advisers under George W. Bush, cites the broad discontent among Americans with experts and fears that if they don't pick up the thread, the populist frenzy will only get worse. Powell stated that he and his colleagues would make their decisions "solely" on the basis of economic evidence, as he teed up the possibility of further interest rate cuts.
-US President Donald Trump's administration is planning to take a 10% stake in struggling chipmaker Intel, as part of a corporate intervention to strengthen America's semiconductor industry. The US government will make an $8.9B equity investment, funded by federal grants under the 2022 Chips Act. This will give Washington a roughly 9.9% stake in the group. The deal is part of Trump's move towards a more interventionist approach to corporate America, edging closer to 1960s European state capitalism than US free-market orthodoxy. The US will also receive a five-year warrant, allowing it to purchase an additional 5% of the group at $20 a share, provided Intel divests majority ownership of its foundry business.
-Boston Consulting Group (BCG) has faced backlash and disappointment within its Middle Eastern business after revelations that the firm helped set up an Israeli-backed aid scheme for Gaza and modeled plans to relocate Palestinians from the enclave. The revelations have widened fissures within the firm, which has been triggered by Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack and Israel's military campaign in Gaza. A US BCG team worked for seven months to establish the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, an aid distribution scheme condemned by humanitarian groups. The team also produced a financial model of postwar Gaza for Israeli businessmen backing GHF, including the economic impact of incentives for Palestinians to relocate abroad.
-Revolution Wind, a US offshore wind project developed by Orsted and Skyborn Renewables, is 80% complete, with foundations and 45 of 65 planned turbines installed. The project, which was set to start operations next year, was due to supply power for 350,000 homes in Rhode Island and Connecticut under 20-year contracts. The Trump administration intervened in the project for the second time, after paused Equinor's Empire Wind project. Ørsted has obtained necessary permits and is evaluating its options, including legal action. The potential delay or loss of revenues puts pressure on the company, which launched a $9.4B emergency rights issue.
-The Congressional Budget Office has reported that Donald Trump's tariff drive will reduce US deficits by $4T over the next decade, addressing concerns that the president's tax bill will worsen public finances. The tariffs announced so far this year will reduce primary deficits by $3.3T over the period to 2035, while interest payments will fall by an additional $700B. The overall effect of the levies on debt levels is about a third higher than the $3T estimated by the CBO based on measures announced between January and mid-May. The impact of tariff revenue is expected to dull the fiscal hit from Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which is projected to increase debt levels by $4.1T over the period.
-Canada has lifted billions of dollars' worth of retaliatory tariffs on US goods to reduce economic tensions with the US. Prime Minister Mark Carney announced that Ottawa would remove the 25% tariff it has imposed on many US goods since March, but reciprocal steel and aluminum duties would remain in place. The measures will come into effect on September 1, marking the latest episode in a months-long trade battle between the US and Canada, which was strained in March when Trump imposed duties as steep as 25% on Canadian exports.
-California Governor Gavin Newsom has taken his criticism of US President Donald Trump to a new level by using his all-caps, idiosyncratic style to troll him on social media. Newsom's aggressive campaign, including posts declaring "DONALD IS FINISHED — HE IS NO LONGER 'HOT'" and artificially-generated images of himself carrying an American flag, is generating buzz and drawing critical commentary from Fox News presenters and conservatives. This aggressive campaign is energizing some Democrats concerned about the party's failure to mount an effective pushback against Trump. Veteran Democratic strategist Bob Shrum believes Newsom's approach is born out of frustration with the president and a determination to find new ways to fight back.
-Meta, a social media company, is set to license technology from artificial intelligence start-up Midjourney to improve its products and services. The move follows Meta's shift towards third-party collaborations to stay competitive. The technology will be used in the development of multimedia AI generation features for its apps, as CEO Mark Zuckerberg expects AI-generated content to become more prominent on the platform. The collaboration will involve world-class talent and collaboration with industry leaders.
-China has refused to disclose details of its plans for a "mega" embassy in London after the UK demanded more information about greyed-out areas in its drawings. The Chinese government argued that the request was not appropriate and that the level of detail provided was sufficient for understanding what was permitted. The Chinese government also opposed a request for a wall around a paved area in front of the building to ensure safe access. The UK's deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner, has demanded unredacted drawings or a comprehensive identification of withheld parts.
-The FBI has conducted a raid on John Bolton's home in Bethesda, Maryland, following his criticism of Donald Trump. Bolton, who served as Trump's national security adviser during his first term, has become a vocal critic of the US president. The search was related to "classified documents" and the FBI had a "broad concern" about Bolton. Vice-president JD Vance stated that the raid was related to "classified documents." Trump, who had previously expressed his disapproval of Bolton, said he did not know about the raid. The raid follows Trump's repeated vows during his 2024 campaign to seek retribution against his political opponents. The relationship between Trump and Bolton, who served as US ambassador to the UN under George W Bush, fell out after Bolton left his post in September 2019. Trump has also been criticizing Bolton for criticizing Trump's approach to brokering a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine.
NEW YORK TIMES
-Corporate America has developed defenses against corporate raiders like Carl Icahn and Nelson Peltz, but now faces a new investor: the US president. President Trump has inserted the government into US companies, taking stakes in US Steel and pushing for a cut of Nvidia's and Advanced Micro Devices' revenue from China. The Pentagon has also taken a 15% stake in MP Materials and Intel agreed to allow the US government to take a 10% stake in its business, worth $8.9 billion.
-Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is set to meet with Vice President JD Vance in the Oval Office. Vance warned Zelensky to "behave" and not to say anything, which the Ukrainian leader chuckled at. This is not the first time Vance has addressed Zelensky during a diplomatic summit. In February, Vance criticized Zelensky for disrespecting the US and not thanking Ukraine for military assistance. The jovial tone of the meeting highlights the importance of Zelensky's actions in influencing Trump's approval.
-California Governor Gavin Newsom has signed two redistricting bills, a response to the Republican-led map passed by Texas at the request of President Trump. The move will put California in a national campaign as Democrats and Republicans vie for control of the House of Representatives. Newsom, a potential presidential candidate, will be at the forefront of a partisan fight against President Trump. He emphasized neutralizing the situation in Texas and giving the American people a fair chance.
-A federal judge has ordered the removal of immigrant detainees from a Florida Everglades facility, Alligator Alcatraz, and the dismantling of much of the facility. The ruling rebuked the state and federal governments for not considering environmental harms before building the facility. The judge gave both branches 60 days to move out detainees and remove fencing, lighting, and power generators. The decision is a major legal setback for the facility, the nation's first state-run facility for federal immigration detainees, which has faced numerous lawsuits and complaints.
-Lisa Cook, a former Federal Reserve chair, has consistently voted with Jerome H. Powell, the chair, on interest rate cuts last year and this year. However, she is often viewed as a "dove" by some observers. In a November speech, Cook suggested that the Fed should continue to lower interest rates, but the pace of cuts would depend on economic data. In June, she warned that high inflation after the pandemic could make firms more willing to raise prices and consumers more likely to expect high inflation to persist. Cook, a daughter of a hospital chaplain and nursing professor, grew up in Georgia and earned an undergraduate degree from Spelman College and another at Oxford University.
-President Trump has been aggressively expanding his power since taking office, asserting the right to override spending decisions by Congress, dismiss leaders of independent agencies, and push through legal and constitutional barriers on issues like immigration and birthright citizenship. He has also used the government to pursue his campaign of retribution against political and personal foes, instigating criminal investigations, demanding large payments, revoking security clearances, and dismissing federal employees. However, when Trump called for the resignation of a Federal Reserve governor, it marked the merging of these two defining features of his second term. The move came after Bill Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, found that Cook appeared to have falsified bank documents to obtain favorable mortgage loan terms.
- Thailand's former prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, has won a significant legal victory after a court dismissed a case accusing him of insulting the nation's monarchy. The case, which was indicted last year, was the most high-profile to be charged with violating the royal defamation law, which is one of the world's harshest and has long been used to quash dissent. Thaksin faced a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison. The charges were seen as politicized and the latest salvo in a decades-long clash between Thaksin and Thailand's royalist-military establishment. The Criminal Court in Bangkok ruled that Thaksin's interview could have been edited in a way that did not fully represent his remarks and that he did not specifically mention the monarch at the time.
NEW YORK POST
-Ghislaine Maxwell, a British socialite and now federal prisoner, has shared her relationship with convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein in an interview with President Trump's Department of Justice. Maxwell, 63, described her connection to Epstein as romantically strung-along while serving as "general manager" of the late millionaire pedophile's real estate portfolio. In her two-day interviews last month with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche in Tallahassee, Fla., she revealed that the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks were when she realized they would never have a romantic future.
-The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) director, Air Force Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse, was fired after a classified assessment of US strikes on Iran was leaked to the media. The assessment suggested that US strikes on Iran only set back the rogue nation's nuclear program by a few months. The DIA's classified, "low confidence" estimation of the effectiveness of the June 21 airstrikes on Iran's Fordow, Isfahan, and Natanz nuclear facilities was leaked to CNN three days after American B-2 stealth bombers and cruise missiles bombarded the sites. The document, based on limited intelligence gathered the day after the strike, reportedly indicated that the Iranian regime could bring its nuclear program back online as quickly as one to two months. The preliminary assessment also suggested that Iran's stockpile of enriched uranium was not destroyed by the airstrikes. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reportedly fired Kruse over a "loss of confidence" in the lieutenant general.
Hedge fund redemption requests edge higher in August
Hedge fund redemptions ticked up in August, according to the latest SS&C GlobeOp Forward Redemption Indicator, which rose to 2.03% from 1.56% in July. The figure, however, remains below the 2.59% recorded in August 2024 and is in line with longer-term averages.
Bill Stone, Chairman and CEO of SS&C Technologies, said the data reflected seasonal patterns but noted that “weakening consumer sentiment, rising fiscal deficits, and higher tariff rates” are continuing to fuel volatility. He added that hedge funds’ “strong risk-adjusted returns” are helping investors navigate the uncertain environment.
The Forward Redemption Indicator measures the total redemption notices received from investors in hedge funds administered by SS&C GlobeOp, expressed as a percentage of assets under administration at the start of the month. Redemption requests have trended significantly lower since peaking at 19.27% in November 2008, SS&C said.
The next update will be published on 22 September 2025.
Quick Resume and Thoughts :
- The new “Make Our Children Healthy Again” plan has almost no concrete nutrition policy—so little federal push to curb ultra-processed foods; prevention stays on individuals, not the food environment.
- Cuts to NIH nutrition/chronic-disease research and ending USDA farm-to-school/local-procurement programs weaken upstream obesity prevention (less evidence, fewer healthy options in schools).
- Small “wins” (removing some food dyes; state SNAP limits on soda/candy) are marginal and unlikely to dent obesity rates without broader food-system reforms.
- Deregulatory moves on pesticides/“forever chemicals” prioritize industry and don’t improve diet quality or marketing—no relief to the obesogenic environment.
- The movement’s pharma-skeptic tilt implies limited enthusiasm for expanding access/coverage to evidence-based obesity treatments (medications, clinical programs), with rhetoric favoring “clean eating” over medical care.
Full Artilce below :
A leaked draft of a White House report on how to “Make Our Children Healthy Again” suggests that the Administration will do little to address food safety or nutrition.
Earlier this month, the wellness entrepreneur Calley Means delivered opening remarks at a symposium called “The Future of Farming: Exploring a Pro-Health, Pro-Farmer Agenda,” held in Washington, D.C., at the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank. Means is prominent in Make America Healthy Again, the clean-eating, vaccine-skeptical movement that opposes corruption in the food, pharmaceutical, and agricultural industries. He is also a top adviser to MAHA’s patron saint, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., now the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Means gave a brief, somewhat flustered speech that barely touched on farming. Instead, he rehashed various MAHA talking points: that the United States is “the sickest country in the world,” that we spend more money on worse health outcomes than any other developed nation, and that most of the diseases plaguing Americans are caused by the terrible ultra-processed food we eat.
Means also noted some “initial wins” on the food front during Kennedy’s first six months of leading H.H.S. A growing number of Big Food corporations are voluntarily removing artificial dyes from their products, for example. And a dozen states and counting have placed various restrictions on Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits to prohibit the purchase of soda, other sweetened beverages, and candy.
What Means didn’t address is how these relatively minor changes balance out against other, far more sweeping and consequential anti-MAHA measures taken by the ostensibly pro-MAHA Trump Administration. The Environmental Protection Agency, for instance, is seeking reapproval for banned pesticides and has lowered standards on forever chemicals in air, water, and soil. The Department of Agriculture ended two programs, totalling almost a billion dollars in funding, that helped schools and food banks make purchases from local and organic farms. And although Means—who has no medical, nutrition, or public-health credentials—has said that he’d like to “fire every single nutrition scientist in the government,” some of the more moderate MAHA rank and file may also blanch at the DOGE-driven purging of U.S.D.A. scientists and food-safety inspectors, or at the National Institutes of Health cancelling hundreds of millions of dollars in research grants related to MAHA priorities such as nutrition, chronic disease, and mental health.
Means acknowledged that some MAHA adherents may be dismayed by the “pace of political change” thus far under the second Trump Administration. “I would suggest, as we’re frustrated, we don’t attack Secretary Kennedy and President Trump,” he advised. “They are fighting against a deep state that is unimaginable and entrenched economic interests and entrenched dysfunction that is impossible to comprehend, and they are our warriors here.” And yet, despite the shadowy forces aligned against the nation’s top health official and the President of the United States, the underdogs, he insisted, are winning: “We have achieved—the Trump Administration—I believe, the most significant food-policy reform in America.”
Critics of the MAHA movement, and of wellness culture writ large, often compare it to a cult, and this kind of rhetoric suggests why. The leader should not be criticized; a vast conspiracy threatens the movement; triumph is ongoing, even if the movement’s crusade against dangerous pesticides and heavy metals in the soil and drinking water has culminated in the election of a President who apparently loves all that stuff. The “MAHA moms,” who helped return Trump to the White House and lifted Kennedy into a Cabinet position, see a kind of messianic power in the Secretary—for some of them, he is, quite literally, their faith healer. “If Kennedy is able to do what he wants to do as the head of the H.H.S., we won’t even need health care,” Zen Honeycutt, the founder of the nonprofit Moms Across America, said in December. “I’m saying we won’t be going to the doctor’s because we won’t be sick.”
In recent weeks, however, the MAHA flock has experienced rapidly intensifying cognitive dissonance. On a recent episode of the podcast “Why Should I Trust You?,” Honeycutt, discussing the rollbacks on regulations concerning pesticides and heavy metals, said, “I’m horrified as a mother who is working constantly to try to reduce the toxic exposure to my children and to the children all across the country.” On another podcast, “Culture Apothecary,” its host, Alex Clark, an influencer who is affiliated with the conservative nonprofit Turning Point USA, asked, “Did President Trump just hand legal immunity to pesticide companies?” She was referring to Republican-backed legislation, currently pending in the House, that would shield pesticide manufacturers from lawsuits; Clark’s guest, the clean-farming advocate Kelly Ryerson, called the bill “the most enormous slap in the face to MAHA.”
It was probably not the last. On August 15th, the Times obtained a draft of a forthcoming White House report on children’s health, “Make Our Children Healthy Again Strategy,” later published in full by Politico. The paper—a follow-up to a MAHA “assessment,” released in May, that was later found to have numerous made-up or garbled citations—mentions the scourge of ultra-processed foods only once, specifies virtually no concrete action on improving food safety and nutrition, and calls the E.P.A.’s existing regulatory process “robust.” The draft reads like a castration-by-bureaucracy of the MAHA revolution—multiple instances of “task force,” “initiative,” “framework,” “collaboration,” and, best of all, “harmonizing authorization processes.” Again and again, it proposes that more research is needed—just not the research that was under way before Kennedy came to H.H.S. (The new MAHA report repeats Kennedy’s vow that he will soon find the “root causes of autism”; according to ProPublica, the N.I.H. has terminated some forty million dollars in grants for autism-related research, including studies on the possible links between autism and exposure to pollution and forever chemicals.)
But the appeal of Kennedy was that he’d already done his own research, and that his conclusions were beyond doubt. “Pesticides, food additives, pharmaceutical drugs, and toxic waste permeate every cell of our bodies,” he said last year. “This assault on our children’s cells and hormones is unrelenting.” He promised a counter-assault, and the MAHA strategy report resembles an instrument of surrender.
During the 2024 election cycle, the top five PACs affiliated with agribusiness companies made more than seventy-one million dollars in campaign donations, almost all of which went to Republican candidates and groups. Trump’s 2024 reëlection PAC received ten million dollars from the multinational conglomerate British American Tobacco, which farms an especially polluting, soil-depleting, and pesticide-intensive crop, and which has been sued for profiting from child labor. (The case is pending trial.)
The simple political fact is that these corporate donors are more important to Trump than MAHA moms are. “If the Trump Administration went after agriculture and food companies, the ripple effects throughout Republican House districts, in particular, will be pretty major,” Christopher Bosso, a professor of public policy and political science at Northeastern University, told me. Republicans, he added, will likely have to wage their midterm campaigns without the support of a newly irate and activated MAHA coalition. “I doubt that MAHA has staying power within the Trump ecosystem,” Bosso said. “Unless Trump wants to expend serious political capital against one of his most loyal constituencies, I can’t see reforming the food system getting very far beyond the on-the-margins, performative kind of stuff.”
The most prominent of these marginal reforms has been the removal of some dyes from mass-produced foods, a development that Honeycutt, Ryerson, and other MAHA influencers have loudly celebrated. But “even if a Nutri-Grain bar doesn’t have food dyes, it’s still a Nutri-Grain bar,” Juliana Cohen, a professor of nutrition and director of the Center for Health Innovation, Research, and Policy at Merrimack College, told me. “It’s not like it’s no longer ultra-processed because they took out the Red 40.” (And, in any case, no self-respecting MAHA mom would let her kid anywhere near a Nutri-Grain bar in the first place.)
Swapping out one dye for another, Cohen went on, “is akin to placing a filter on a cigarette, when we should be thinking about policies that prevent kids from smoking in the first place. We have to think strategically about how to reduce ultra-processed foods and make nutritious foods more accessible and affordable for everyone.” One way not to do that—to take yet another example from this Administration—would be to end the Patrick Leahy Farm to School Grant Program, which started during President Barack Obama’s second term and came to a close in March, when the U.S.D.A. abolished it.
On “Culture Apothecary,” Ryerson speculated that Republican indifference to MAHA will hurt them in the 2026 midterm elections. “They are completely underestimating what this bloc of young conservatives want and expect out of our elected officials,” she said. But it may be more accurate to say that MAHA grossly overestimated the potential transformative power of Kennedy’s appointment to H.H.S.
If MAHA influencers are finally waking up to elected Republicans’ contempt for much of their project, they are also emphatic that they do not see Kennedy as complicit or culpable in how Congress, Trump, or other Cabinet officials have betrayed their promises to the movement. It’s as if Kennedy alone had been vaccinated against the corrupting virus that infects everyone around him. (Kennedy has undeniably delivered on behalf of MAHA’s anti-vaccine constituency, through acts such as dismissing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s entire vaccine-safety panel and scrapping half a billion dollars in funding for mRNA vaccine development.)
The moral firewall around Kennedy is illustrated by the case of glyphosate, an herbicide so singularly reviled by MAHA that, on social media, Ryerson goes by the Glyphosate Girl. Glyphosate is often categorized as carcinogenic and as an endocrine-disrupting chemical; for years, Kennedy contended that it causes non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and, in 2018, he was part of the legal team that won a two-hundred-and-eighty-nine-million-dollar settlement from Monsanto on behalf of a terminally ill man who was exposed to glyphosate in one of its products. Yet, in May, Kennedy indicated that the Administration would not move to restrict glyphosate in the U.S. “One hundred per cent of corn in this country relies on glyphosate,” he said. “We are not going to do anything to jeopardize that business model.” Few in MAHA appeared to raise any strong objections.
Of course, it’s the E.P.A. that decides how pesticides are regulated; it’s the U.S.D.A., now overseen by the self-proclaimed MAHA mom Brooke Rollins, that administers farm-to-school grants, soil-health initiatives, and other MAHA-friendly programs that have been pulverized during her brief tenure at the agency. These distinctions did not seem to matter much at the time Kennedy was nominated to lead H.H.S.—back when leading supporters, such as Vani Hari, a.k.a. the Food Babe, were suggesting that Kennedy could single-handedly reform and purify America’s food systems—but they appear to matter now. On “Why Should I Trust You?,” when Honeycutt expressed horror at MAHA’s fate under Trump, she took pains not to project that horror at Kennedy. Her belief in what she calls “the magic of Bobby Kennedy” is undimmed: “He is compassionate, he’s brilliant, he’s humble, and he’s collaborative.”
He is also, within the current MAHA narrative, surprisingly powerless on many issues. On August 16th, the nonprofit MAHA Action posted an upbeat news roundup to Instagram with the caption “Maha had some huge wins this week and we’re here to break it all down.” One of these supposed victories—that the government is “no longer bribing hospitals” to vaccinate their staff—appeared to be misstated; in fact, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services simply revoked a rule requiring hospitals to track COVID-19 vaccination rates among their workers. Among the other “wins,” according to MAHA Action: U.S. Customs officials seized three tons of suspicious meat from China, and Secretary Kennedy went to the gym.