German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on Saturday that an attempted drone attack on a German airport last month shows that Germany is facing a “profound rupture,” with far-reaching consequences that will only become clear in retrospect.
Merz, speaking at a party event near Hanover, said the German government’s attribution of the attack to Russia was “clear and legally sound,” and sent a clear warning to Russia not to continue this type of hybrid warfare.
https://english.alarabiya.net/News/world/2026/09/05/merz-says-russialinked-drone-attack-shows-germany-facing-profound-rupture-
Saturday, September 5, 2026
Young Americans need to learn communism’s true history
Socialism is gaining ground, particularly among younger adults. It is sometimes modified with the word “democratic,” as in the name Democratic Socialists of America, but the modification is lipstick on a pig. Socialism and communism spring from the same desire to elevate government over family.
That makes it important for students to understand where the militant ideology has led in practice. A new public school curriculum in Florida offers a model for doing that.
Public school students in Florida will take a course this year that was approved in November 2025 by the state Board of Education: History of Communism Standards.
“With the resurgence of communist ideologies across the United States and throughout the world, it is more important than ever for students to understand the catastrophic failures and human suffering caused by communist regimes,” Florida Commissioner of Education Anastasios Kamoutsas said.
Winston Churchill famously said that communism “is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy,” an ideology whose sole virtue “is the equal sharing of misery.”
Churchill predicted that communism, for all its pretensions to deliver a more equitable future, would prove ruinous. He was right, although that did not stop a generation of Western leftists and “fellow travelers” from whitewashing communism’s evils and advocating its superiority over capitalism.
It would be hard to overstate the mass suffering perpetrated by radical egalitarian ideology. Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin allegedly said that while “the death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is [but] a statistic.” Statistics offer a grim look at communism’s true cost.
Communism murdered no fewer than 100 million people, according to a reasonable 1997 estimate. That far exceeds the 70 million military personnel and civilians who perished in World War II, the deadliest war in history. Nor does it include millions more who have suffered or perished in the three decades since the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991.
Frank Dikotter, a historian of modern China, estimated that the Chinese Communist Party alone killed 45 million or more people over four years, from 1958 to 1962, as part of its doomed industrialization campaign known as the Great Leap Forward.
Communism’s staggering death toll is a testament to how deeply unnatural the system is. As historian Sean McMeekin has noted, it is no coincidence that communist regimes rely on violence and coercion to maintain their rule.
Yet it would be a grave mistake to think that communism was “but another sad, bizarre chapter in human history whose last pages are being written,” as President Ronald Reagan said in 1981.
Communism thrives on the sins of envy and ignorance, and there is no shortage of either. Regrettably, its obituary has yet to be written.
Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party have frequently paid tribute to Mao. More than 90% of the 130 monuments to Stalin in Russia have been built since Vladimir Putin took power in 2000.
Perhaps the greatest threat communism poses to America comes from within. A new generation has come of age, and to them, the Cold War and the Soviet Union are ancient history.
An August 2026 CNBC poll found that nearly half of 18-to 34-year-olds view “democratic” socialism, communism’s “human face,” positively. A 2025 survey by the Cato Institute found that 34% of respondents ages 18 to 29 had a “favorable view” of communism.
American schools rightly teach students about slavery because learning about its brutality is essential to understanding our history and ensuring its evils are not forgotten, minimized, or repeated. Communism deserves the same treatment. An ideology responsible for the deaths of scores of millions should not be relegated to a few paragraphs in a history textbook, particularly when growing numbers now view it favorably.
Candidates affiliated with the DSA have won races throughout the country, perhaps most notably in New York City. Hasan Piker, a popular left-wing streamer who has campaigned with many Democrats, has called Chinese Communist Party leader Mao Zedong “one of the great leaders of the world.”
Florida and its governor, Ron DeSantis, have been at the forefront of confronting this scourge. In 2024, DeSantis and the Florida legislature enacted Senate Bill 1264, which mandated that Florida’s public schools teach the history of communism.
The fight against communism must continue. It can still be lost. Public schools, which have long been captive to left-wing ideologies, are a crucial front in that battle. School choice and private schools are great options, but not everyone can take advantage of them.
Florida is lighting the way, and other states should follow suit. As George Orwell wrote, “Who controls the past controls the future.” A future shaped by those who celebrate Mao is a bleak one.
Livestreaming Trials Emboldens Lawyers Like Lindsay Clancy’s To Act Out For Clicks
The judge overseeing the Lindsay Clancy case declared a mistrial Friday after only a single juror prevented a unanimous verdict, purportedly because he was willing to convict the self-admitted baby killer. In a seeming bid to discredit the juror, Clancy’s defense attorney, Kevin Reddington, appeared to suggest the holdout juror might be bigoted against disabled persons.
“I further raise the issue of the American[s] with Disabilities Act. I believe that this is a situation where there is a clear and present danger that this individual, for some reason — what it is we don’t know — but is, is taking a position that’s intractable, regardless of proof beyond a reasonable doubt,” Reddington said.
To be clear, there is no evidence that the holdout has anything to do with the fact that Clancy is in a wheelchair (a result of her jumping out the window and paralyzing herself after slaughtering her kids). There is a good chance the juror is holding out because he finds murder wrong. But that matters naught. Reddington’s bizarre suggestion is the reality of livestreaming hearings.
Clancy is on trial for murdering her three children, Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months in 2023. Neither party disputes that she strangled the children with exercise bands before cutting herself and jumping out of a window. Her defense team has argued she should be let off the hook because she was suffering from postpartum psychosis.
The jury could not reach a unanimous decision after several days of deliberations, resulting in a mistrial. Reddington then seemingly tried to insinuate the holdout juror is bigoted toward disabled people. But this performative statement was only encouraged by the spectacle that cameras in the courtroom created. The trial was broadcast, and there were constant clips circulating on the internet. Those clips helped divide the internet into two camps: the Clancy is guilty camp and the Clancy is the victim camp. While attorneys once were only focused on appealing to the jury and judge, now it seems like attorneys had a third audience: social media and maybe Netflix true-crime producers.
Reddington himself seemed to relish in the celebrity-esque status that cameras in the courtroom gave him, having been seen in videos posing for photographs with supporters of Clancy outside the courthouse. Reddington also reportedly has “slammed a stack of papers” and “raised his voice” during the trial, according to the BBC. He also has a history of creating “courtroom spectacles,” as the BBC reported. Reddington reportedly once “threw a pair of ninja stars across the courtroom” during a 1989 case in which he defended a woman accused of killing her boyfriend.
And while lawyers are of course trying to zealously advocate for their client, livestreaming creates an incentive to say things that are outlandish but good for clipping purposes.
As The Federalist’s Shawn Fleetwood wrote, televised congressional hearings have turned what should be serious proceedings into “performative slugfests.”
“Representatives and senators alike aren’t focused on debating great matters of public policy so much as they are trying to one-up one another and grab coveted soundbites for cable news and social media,” Fleetwood wrote. “There is no reason to believe putting cameras in the courtroom would yield a different result.”
The dramatic outbursts of Lindsay Clancy’s defense attorney are further confirmation of this conclusion.
Note on a Mistrial
by Matt Taibbi
Nine years ago I was assigned to write a story about Donald Trump and the 25th Amendment. I was given the numbers of mental health professionals ready to say Trump was crazy. It was not to be quickie commentary; I was sent on the road to follow the president. As he was during the campaign, Trump was bombastic, paranoid, unpredictable, and occasionally even seemed to see or hear things that weren’t there. However, before filing, I spoke with lawyers, including a Fordham professor who’d help draft the original 25th Amendment bill. A president could only be removed, he said, for “inability,” not for “policy and political differences, unpopularity, poor judgment, incompetence, laziness or impeachable conduct.”
Weeks later, in an MSNBC green room, a Democratic aide complained about the article. I asked: if he were a juror judging Trump in a gas station robbery, would he vote not guilty by reason of insanity? “That’s different,” he said. This was at a time when it was widely expected that Trump would eventually be impeached for Russiagate. I told the man he couldn’t have it both ways, that Trump couldn’t be both criminally responsible and crazy. His answer: “If anyone can do it, it’s Trump.”
After the declaration of a mistrial in the horrifying Massachusetts murder case involving Lindsay Clancy, what is there to say, except to note how wildly inconsistent we’ve become in measuring concepts like “capacity” and “responsibility.” We’re a culture that doesn’t forgive, but quickly excuses. I don’t know what it means, nor do I understand how this case became a such a rallying cry for — something? What, exactly? How can “mental defect” have a lobby? What’s happening to people?
What Happens to MAGA When Trump Is Gone?
by Victor Davis Hanson
As the 78-year-old Donald Trump entered his second and last term as president on January 20, 2025, almost immediately his friends and enemies alike began asking what would happen to his signature Make America Great Again movement on January 20, 2029. After all, the returning but lame-duck Trump had just four years left as president. He would be 82 years old when he was scheduled to depart the White House.
Which led to a natural question: Will Trumpism outlast Trump? Will the movement that one man created 13 years ago—a movement that has fundamentally transformed the world in the years since—continue without its founder at the helm?
A post-Trump MAGA future involves several preliminary considerations. The first is the health, longevity, and political viability of Trump himself in retirement. No one can predict Trump’s future vigor and energy with certainty. Yet even his supporters accept that the whirlwind pace of the start of Trump’s second term is unsustainable for any 80-year-old man, especially one who reportedly scarcely sleeps, eats as he pleases, and wades into public crowds almost daily.
In addition, there is the question of whether Trump’s second term will be judged successful or will be overshadowed by the partisan hysterias of the first term and its aftermath—two impeachments, lawfare, hoaxes like Russian “collusion” and Hunter Biden laptop “disinformation”—or by crises such as the Covid-19 pandemic, yet another conflict in the volatile Middle East, and the post–George Floyd rioting. The next two years are also an open question: If there is an economic downturn, or if the ongoing war with Iran continues too long into the future, it could fundamentally imperil Trump’s legacy.
Finally, recent history is against Trump. No modern president emeritus—even the most popular—has ever been able to significantly affect the policies of his party or choose his successors. Barack Obama came the closest when he stayed put in Washington after his second term ended in 2017 and sought to help guide the flailing Joe Biden presidency between 2021 and 2025. Yet even despite Obama’s alleged surrogate role, his political capital diminished during the 2024 campaign in direct proportion to his visibility.
Similarly, Ronald Reagan left office after two successful terms and after moving his party markedly to the right. But instead of continuing Reaganism, his vice president, George H.W. Bush, almost immediately talked of a “kinder, gentler nation,” raised taxes, toned down Reagan’s cultural fights against liberal orthodoxies, and sought to expand supposedly insufficient social services with “a thousand points of light” of volunteer citizen participation. Bush was also more likely to use considerable military force abroad.
Harry Truman, who assumed the presidency after Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s death, also gradually drifted away from Roosevelt’s domestic and foreign policies. He inaugurated the Cold War against the Soviet Union, sought successfully to save South Korea from communist invasion, and was regarded as a far more centrist, realist, and hawkishly anti-communist commander in chief.
As a general rule, an administration’s unique political and personal brand is likely to erode under the next presidency, even if it is from the same party. Ex-presidents usually do not wish to, or cannot, imprint an agenda on their successors.
The question, then, is whether Trump will break the mold. Will J.D. Vance or another successor, if he wins the 2028 primaries and general election, successfully continue MAGA ideology and policy? History seemingly suggests not. But there is a qualifier to that generalization: Most earlier elected vice presidents had not so closely shared their president’s politics and personas. Alben Barkley, Lyndon Johnson, Spiro Agnew, and George H.W. Bush were all picked as vice president precisely because they contrasted or broadened their president’s particular brand of party politics.
Vance, by contrast, is the rare vice president who was handpicked on ideological grounds, as a force multiplier to reinforce and amplify Trump’s MAGA policies. Of course, Trump has also mentioned as a possible successor his secretary of state, Marco Rubio, age 55. Like the 42-year-old Vance, Rubio is a convert to the MAGA movement and has proven one of its most effective spokesmen. His combined 2025 role as both secretary of state and national security adviser gave him as much publicity as Vance’s vice presidency offered him. And there are apparently options even beyond these two alternatives. In May 2025, when asked by NBC’s Kristen Welker, “When you look to the future, Mr. President, do you think the MAGA movement can survive without you as its leader?” Trump answered unequivocally, “Yes, I do,” and then went on to state, “I could name 10, 15, 20 people right now just sitting here.”
And yet, Trump has also, on numerous occasions, equated the MAGA movement solely with his own person. At a March 2023 Conservative Political Action Conference convention in Maryland, Trump famously vowed, “In 2016, I declared: ‘I am your voice.’ Today, I add: ‘I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed: I am your retribution.’ ”
Prior to Trump, remember, the post-Reagan Republican Party’s brand had been fairly consistent for nearly 30 years. Republicans more or less agreed on the same principles: occasional interventionist use of force abroad; emphasis on income tax reductions and capital gains tax cuts; reform, if not privatization, of Social Security; de facto tolerance of mild illegal immigration; support for unrestricted free trade; and reluctant acceptance of hot-button liberal cultural orthodoxies.
During the 2015–2016 primaries, Trump blew up this model. He emphasized a closed border and an end to illegal immigration. He called China to account, damned globalism, and called for fair rather than free trade, even at the price of leveling high tariffs. This new party proved reluctant to use military force abroad, at least on the ground, loathed nation building, and waged a full-fledged culture war against the left, focusing on the causes, not just the symptoms, of the progressive ascendance.
Indeed, the key argument for the viability of the MAGA agenda without Trump is the continued mass appeal of the movement’s issues. One reason Trump won in 2024 was that key MAGA policies overwhelmingly resonated across racial and gender lines. Trump’s agenda, in short, polled even higher than Trump the candidate. But one key argument against the viability of the MAGA agenda without Trump is that the reason Trump succeeded where past right-wing populist movements—for example, the Tea Party—failed is that he created the MAGA movement in his own image.
Just look at the 2024 Republican primaries. From late 2023 to early 2024, Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who won an overwhelming reelection victory in 2022, occasionally polled ahead of the then-embattled Trump. He embraced almost all the same MAGA issues. Yet he was quickly defeated and left the race in early 2024.
In the abstract, voters may have preferred DeSantis’s cool and calm style of no-nonsense conservative governance. As a presidential candidate, however, they apparently found him wanting, in part because he was perceived as lacking Trump’s volatility, zest, charisma, and unpredictability—and the ex-president’s signature desire to say anything to anyone, anytime.
Trump has often been libeled a crank or serial conspiracy theorist—but almost never by his loyal MAGA supporters. His base almost alone understands that for all the president’s exaggerations and his often fast and loose facts, he is often eventually proven prescient and more right than wrong on the major controversies of his tenure.
In fact, paradoxically, Trump’s personal excesses seem key to his occasional moves to the center. His very polarizing nature, his swagger, his plans to build a massive Trumpian ballroom annex to the White House, his cruel postmortem assessment of the virulent Trump critic and movie director Rob Reiner, his eagerness to wage verbal wars against petty celebrities, second-tier politicians, and nondescript bureaucrats—apparently, in the eyes of his base, all cemented his image as tough enough to counteract the fears that, in fact, he was sometimes too moderate on abortion, too pro-union, too protective of a soon-to-be-insolvent Social Security, and too hesitant to use force abroad.
Trump, branded with a mug shot and a Queens accent, is seen, rightly or wrongly, as a tribune of the people. His money and status are more often used against than on behalf of those who shared them. And what has helped Trump pull off such a strange paradox is that by the first quarter of the 21st century, those Americans with the most money, and who were perceived as the most sanctimonious and pretentious, were more often identified with the left than with the right.
Which brings us to Trump’s opponents. The appeal of Trump and Trumpism can also be found inside the Democratic Party itself. A survey conducted after the 2024 election by Blueprint, a Democratic polling concern, found that, when asked whether Democrats were “more supportive of immigrants than of American citizens,” 73 percent of independent swing voters agreed that, yes, they were. Some 72 percent polled that Democrats wished to “promote transgender ideology.” And 67 percent concluded that the Democrats were “too focused on identity politics.” In other words, the Democratic Party had veered so far left that millions of Americans voted against it rather than for Trump.
Trump’s appeal to disillusioned Democratic constituencies was not confined to the issues alone. His glitzy celebrity status, his long television career, his attacks on elites, and his past Democratic allegiances all allowed him to expand his MAGA base by including erstwhile Democrats, such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard, and winning over apolitical cultural icons, such as Elon Musk, Joe Rogan, and Dana White. A traditional Republican would not have been able, either politically or psychologically, to extend outreach to such a strange and diverse cast of culture celebrities and Democratic misfits. Nor would a Bush or Mitt Romney have sent the left into such self-destructive and nihilistic hatred.
In particular, Trump’s critics never quite fathomed that the elements they most detested in Trump’s character—his egotism, his braggadocio, his crude takedowns of critics, his unpredictability, his very loudness, his stubbornness, and his omnipresence—were precisely what allowed his movement to resonate with the white working class and, increasingly, with the Hispanic community and black males. All these groups saw Trump’s off-putting candor and occasional venom as their own surrogate revenge on “the system” that they felt had not just ignored but also alienated and insulted them. Whereas leftist candidates often sanitized or recanted their past controversial social media postings in synthetic efforts to appear momentarily moderate in statewide and general elections, Trump rarely did. He preferred to be damned as characteristically crass or extremist rather than faulted as hypocritical and inauthentic.
Even more tellingly, the elite left proved so often incapable of self-reflection. For a majority of Americans, despite the occasional cringeworthy nature of Trump’s ad hominem outbursts, his verbosity and stream-of-consciousness proved a welcome comeuppance and antidote to the left’s extremism and shrill, self-righteous, and intrusive preachiness.
Trump’s opponents somehow never understood that the multibillionaire Manhattanite was a classic populist waging war against left-wing, often bicoastal elites whose boutique climate-change, transgender, open-borders, and soft-on-crime tenets all turned off the working class, white and non-white alike.
So, what can we conclude about MAGA’s future without its founder and 13-year standard-bearer in control?
First, we must emphasize that the post-Trump Republican Party, even without Trump’s involvement, will likely not revert to Bush-era orthodoxies. There is no populist support for earlier Republican-branded nation building abroad, privatization of Social Security, porous borders, and free rather than fair trade. Nor is the moderate, bipartisan demeanor of a Bob Dole, John McCain, or Mitt Romney missed by the contemporary Republican Party. Just ask Jeb Bush, John Kasich, Nikki Haley, and Mike Pence.
In addition, the MAGA agenda could easily stay popular with 51 percent of the electorate (of course, if it does not become compromised by the extreme and antisemitic right). Still, even majority support in polls for issues, policies, and agendas does not always ensure success for a presidential ticket or a presidency. Most voters had deep suspicions about the “fundamental transformation” and “share the wealth” plans of Barack Obama. But Obama the candidate tamped down such doubts and won majorities through the novelty of being the first black president, his own charisma and rhetorical skills, and his team’s adroit masking of his hard-left agendas.
Thus, whether Vance, Rubio, DeSantis, or any other putative Republican candidate could win an election in 2028 would likely hinge as much on their personal charisma and rhetorical skills as on their lockstep adherence to MAGA ideology. Of course, their success also depends on how successfully the MAGA agenda is executed by the second Trump administration.
Importantly, Trump himself remains something of an enigma. He is the second president in history to win two interrupted elections. But he also lost two out of three popular presidential votes. His supporters polled historic loyalty never matched in the modern era; his enemies showed unprecedented hatred for him as a person. He is the only ex-president to have been the target of some 91 local, state, and federal criminal charges, the only ex-president to have his home raided by the FBI, the only ex-president to have been targeted for ballot removal by some 25 states, the only ex-president to have been impeached twice, and the only ex-president to have been tried in the Senate as a private citizen. Yet only Trump could have avoided the vast majority of convictions and escaped all jail time, overcome four years of daily political obituaries and as an elderly septuagenarian, out-campaigned and outworked presidents and candidates 30 years younger.
No Republican has ever been so caught up in melodramas—and so successfully survived them and turned them to his political advantage. No Republican president or ex-president could routinely fill a 50,000-person stadium with rabid supporters—let alone do so repeatedly. Few would even try. No Republican president polled so dismally on matters of character, behavior, and comportment—while winning almost fanatical support from his base. No other presidential candidate survived multiple near-miss assassination attempts—or incurred the irrational hatred from his enemies that leads to such unhinged violence. No other president so vehemently attacked his opponents ad hominem—and none received even greater levels of ad hominem vitriol in exchange.
When starry-eyed Republican grandees and pundits wistfully dream of a candidate with a Trumpian agenda, backbone, and energy but without the downsides of his impulsive, raw coarseness, they should ask themselves why such dream candidates ran so poorly against Trump, and would likely have lost against either Hillary Clinton or Kamala Harris.
I once asked a friend and fanatic Trump supporter, a 50ish-year-old Mexican American male, why he voted three times for Donald Trump and had expressed a desire to do so four and five times. His answer? “He doesn’t give a damn about what they think of him. He does what he says. Nothing they say or do will ever stop him. They deserve everything they get from him.” The key word in his diatribe was the pronoun they—a reference to a system, an elite, a class of censors who have no idea how much they are disliked.
In the end, perhaps the most consequential assessment of MAGA’s future without Trump comes not from Trump’s supporters but from his enemies. In Trump’s second term, Democrats have been reduced to smutty videos, pseudo-filibuster stunts, f-bomb outbursts, racial hysterics, petty street violence, infantile screaming on the congressional floor, and cutting videos asking 1.3 million service members to disobey any order they deem “illegal.” They are still bewildered, but in denial, that his growing appeal to minorities and the working class is in direct proportion to the left’s mounting charges that he is a racist. They have redefined themselves as against anything and everything Trump does or represents, even when it is widely acknowledged as beneficial to the country. Their “big tent” strategy has become a euphemism for bringing into the fold the very renegade socialists who despise them.
Privately, Democrats know that they must change and return to the center. They even whisper that their own ascendant unhinged radicals—like the House members of the “Squad,” New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani, and Rep. Jasmine Crockett—scare them as much as the MAGA faithful do. Yet they prefer losing politically with their own radicals rather than the alternative of confessing—and acting on—the true causes of their maladies. So great is their eternal hatred of Trump, the undying venom that he incites in his left-wing opponents, that they are convinced that, without Trump, they can defeat MAGA.
In the ultimate Trumpian irony, well after Trump is gone from the political stage, his legacy will still haunt and obsess Democrats. Their ecstasy when at last free of Hitler-Mussolini-Stalin Trump may well blind them to the reality that their descent into radicalism and neo-socialism has made the Democratic brand unpalatable. In a nihilist frenzy, they have abandoned their once-liberal, middle-class policies and disrupted their institutional monopolies, all out of hatred for the president.
Ultimately, Democrats embraced an anti-Trump extremist agenda that any competent successor MAGA candidate might well defeat. The very erosion of the current Democratic Party was induced by Donald J. Trump. It may become another of his lasting heritages.
In other words, by enraging, warping, and thereby emasculating the Democratic Party, Trump made it possible for Trumpism to outlast himself.
https://www.thefp.com/p/victor-davis-hanson-after-trump-maga-vance-movement
Pentagon taps Howard Lutnick to screen Pentagon deals linked to Cerberus
A US official says the Defense Department assigned Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to review any Pentagon transactions tied to Cerberus Capital Management.
Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg founded Cerberus and later placed four former Cerberus executives in the Pentagon; two of those appointees now run offices tasked with reinforcing supply chains for critical resources.
Cerberus-owned firms have landed recent awards: M1 Support Services disclosed a 26-year training contract with a $10 billion cap, and Stratolaunch won a $90 million Pentagon deal a year earlier; Cerberus took a controlling stake in M1 in 2024.
Why this oversight role matters now
A US official says Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has been tasked with reviewing Pentagon transactions involving Cerberus Capital Management. Cerberus, a private-equity outfit created by Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg, has seen its portfolio companies win Defense Department work during his tenure. The official, who requested anonymity to discuss internal policy, described Lutnick's assignment as an added safeguard on top of Pentagon ethics rules, including those from the Standards of Conduct office.
There are procedural guardrails: Cerberus alumni working inside the department must recuse from any matters touching Cerberus assets, the official said, and that any business within the agency linked to Cerberus is routed to Lutnick for sign-off. Whether Lutnick reviewed the M1 and Stratolaunch deals is unknown, and how far his authority reaches also remains unclear.
The web between Lutnick, Cantor, and Cerberus
Lutnick is now vetting transactions connected to a firm that for years worked with the investment bank he led, up until he entered the Trump administration last year. According to public filings, Cantor Fitzgerald - run by Lutnick prior to his becoming commerce secretary - has backed Cerberus's investment vehicles since at least 2012. Cantor, now led by Lutnick's adult sons, serves as prime broker for several Cerberus funds.
Their overlap extends into real estate. Cantor and its subsidiary Newmark partnered with Cerberus on big-ticket financings for a Los Angeles office tower, a Prime Data Centers project, and distribution centers serving Albertsons supermarkets. Just last month, Newmark also arranged a new headquarters lease for Cerberus at 875 Third Ave. in Manhattan.
Cerberus inside the Pentagon
Feinberg has brought four former Cerberus executives into the Defense Department. Two now lead the Office of Strategic Capital and the Economic Defense Unit, and their remit is to bolster supply chains for vital resources. Under Feinberg, the Pentagon has not only extended loans but also taken equity stakes in companies it considers critical to national security.
When he entered government, Feinberg placed his business holdings into trusts benefiting his adult children.
Contracts, controversy, and the money angle
Cerberus-owned defense contractors have continued to win work while Feinberg has served. Last month, M1 Support Services said it secured a 26-year Army helicopter training contract with a $10 billion ceiling. A year earlier, Stratolaunch, a Cerberus-owned hypersonic test company, landed a $90 million Pentagon award.
Cerberus bought a controlling stake in M1 in 2024. M1 is among the Pentagon's 100 largest contractors, according to General Services Administration data. Figures for 2025 have not yet been released, and Bloomberg previously reported that Cerberus's purchase of M1 could push it back into those ranks.
The M1 deal drew fire from Laura Loomer, a right-wing provocateur and an ally of President Donald Trump, who wrote that "the scale and timing of the award has now left the process open to public skepticism." Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell responded, saying, "There are no conflicts of interest between Deputy Secretary of War Steve Feinberg and Cerberus."
Democratic senators have also questioned Lutnick's potential conflicts. In February, three senators sought information on an agreement the Commerce Department made to invest $1.6 billion in USA Rare Earth, Inc. That same day, the company said it joined forces with Lutnick's former firm to secure private funding. The Commerce Department, Cerberus and Cantor did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
https://www.briefs.co/news/pentagon-taps-howard-lutnick-to-screen-pentagon-deals-linked/
Eli Lilly Stock (LLY) Gets a Bullish Note from JPMorgan Chase
JPMorgan Chase JPM -0.94% ▼ is pounding the table on the stock of pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly LLY -0.88% ▼ as sales of its weight-loss drugs accelerate. Chris Schott, a top four-star rated analyst with a 60% success rate, reiterated a Buy-equivalent overweight rating and $1,400.00 price target on LLY stock. The JPMorgan analyst says that Eli Lilly remains positioned for significant upside over the next several years driven by favorable trends in its obesity drug business.
Schott wrote in a note to clients that he expects sales of Eli Lilly’s weight-loss drugs to outperform expectations over the next several years as the obesity market outside the U.S. ramps up. The full global launch of Eli Lilly’s new weight-loss pill Foundayo should further expand the market with a lower cost and popularity among consumers. The note from JPMorgan comes after Eli Lilly delivered strong financial results in August, fueled by surging obesity drug sales.
Eli Lilly’s earnings per share. Source: The Fly
In the U.S. market, Schott sees upside for Eli Lilly from the growing coverage of weight-loss drugs by Medicare. The analyst also expects Eli Lilly products to account for the vast majority of weight-loss drug prescriptions issued through the Medicare channel. The $1,400.00 price target that JPMorgan has on LLY stock is 20% higher than where the shares currently trade.
Lastly, Schott notes that Eli Lilly recently launched its weight-loss pill Foundayo in the United Kingdom, marking the first European country to offer the medication. Plus, Eli Lilly continues to grow its pipeline of new medications through acquisitions, recently purchasing Merida Biosciences for $2.88 billion in cash. The acquisition boosts Eli Lilly’s treatments for autoimmune diseases.
https://www.tipranks.com/news/eli-lilly-stock-lly-gets-a-bullish-note-from-jpmorgan-chase
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