Students get in through referrals, then instructor Justin Lewis-Weber personally whittles the candidates down to six men and six women.

Just 12 students. Ten weeks. Invitation only.

And what are these carefully selected Stanford students learning?

How power works.

How to find weaknesses in bureaucracies. How to maneuver around official channels. How to get what they want from systems — and the people inside them.

The unofficial seminar has a predictably chilling name:

So You Think You Can Rule the World?

But students just call it “Rule.”

Your Rundown for Monday, August 31, 2026...

Father Knows Best?

One of Rule’s former students might sound familiar: Phoebe Gates.

The 23-year-old daughter of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates graduated from Stanford in 2024. While there, she joined Rule’s exclusive ranks and later tapped the seminar’s network to recruit for her startup, Phia.

This summer, the fashion shopping app Phia came under scrutiny over a practice known as “cookie stuffing.”

Here’s an explanation.

When a website or app sends a shopper to an online store, it can earn a cut of the sale.

But Bloomberg found that Phia’s browser extension could insert its own tracking code just before a shopper made a purchase — making it look as though Phia deserved the commission.

In other words, Phia could get paid for a sale it didn’t generate.

After Phia disabled the features in July, according to Bloomberg, its average daily revenue dropped from about $80,000 to between $10,000 and $28,000.

Young Phoebe, of course, isn’t the only Gates who has figured out how to work the system.

Her father has just operated on a slightly larger scale.

In 2024, Bill Gates reportedly gave around $50 million to Future Forward USA Action, the nonprofit arm of the main super PAC supporting Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign.

As investments go, Gates has made better ones.

But the donation was striking for another reason. Gates spent years largely avoiding enormous partisan political contributions.

Today, the Democratic coalition Gates was trying to help elect in 2024 is home to a growing socialist movement — deeply suspicious of men exactly like him.

Bill Gates is practically Exhibit A for what’s wrong with American capitalism if you’re a democratic socialist.

He’s worth well north of $100 billion. He’s built one of the most influential public-health organizations on Earth. And when he personally decided the 2024 presidential election mattered, he reportedly dropped $50 million to back his candidate.

Democratic Socialists of America would look at all that wealth and power concentrated in one man and say: He’s the problem.

But for all their differences, America’s billionaire class and an energized socialist movement seem to share one enormous assumption.

Put enough power in the right hands… and the right people can “fix” things.

Gates wanted Harris in the White House. DSA wants Bill’s wealth redistributed.

Different “fixes.” Same confidence that they know best.

Which brings us back to Stanford’s seminar for sociopaths…

So You Think You Can Rule the World?

Maybe the most chilling word isn’t “Rule.”

Instead, put the emphasis on YOU.

[I’ll leave you with a question, reader. Who worries YOU more: billionaires or the politicians promising to protect you from billionaires?]

Market Rundown for Monday, August 31, 2026

S&P 500 futures are down 0.25% to 7,700.

Oil’s up 3.55% to $86.38 for a barrel of WTI.

Gold is down 0.50% to $4,506.60 per ounce.

And Bitcoin’s down 0.55% to $78,400.

That was the share of teens who initially opted into Instagram’s “Take a Break” feature, designed to encourage young users to stop scrolling after spending a set amount of time on the app.

The feature launched in 2021. But Instagram didn’t make it a default setting for teens until nearly three years later in September 2024.

Mosseri’s argument was essentially that the 1.8% figure didn’t tell the whole story. The states suing Meta saw it differently: Here was a company accused of designing products to keep kids engaged, defending a safety tool that almost no kid voluntarily used.

One day later, the trial was over. Meta agreed to pay about $17 billion over 10 years to settle claims that Facebook and Instagram were deliberately designed to addict children and that the company collected data from children under 13 without parental consent.

Of course, $17 billion is an enormous number.

But the more interesting number is 30%.

Because buried inside this child-safety settlement is something that looks an awful lot like a competitive advantage for Meta.

Your Rundown for Friday, August 28, 2026...

The Fine Print Favors Meta

Meta’s settlement resolves claims against Meta brought by 48 states, Washington, D.C. and several U.S. territories. (New Mexico already won a separate case against Meta earlier this year. Florida opted out, arguing the settlement didn’t go far enough.)

For teens, the changes are substantial.

Facebook and Instagram will default to a combined two-hour daily limit, block access from midnight to 6 a.m. and mute most notifications during school hours.

Meta will also strengthen age verification, parental controls and restrictions on “like” counts and harmful content.

• But about 30% of Meta’s payout — roughly $5 billion by the company’s accounting — comes due only if YouTube and TikTok agree to comparable restrictions and payments.

• And the proposed restrictions on those rivals are tougher in one important respect: a one-hour daily limit.

In other words, billions of Meta’s potential payout depend on two of its biggest competitors agreeing to constrain their own products.

Meta didn’t escape unscathed, however. A payment north of $17 billion, pending court approval, is real money, even spread over a decade.

For some perspective, Meta generated nearly $201 billion in revenue last year and posted more than $60 billion in net profit.

The market’s initial reaction suggests the settlement was viewed as a favorable outcome for Meta.

Meta Platforms (META) finished Wednesday up about 1%. Alphabet (GOOGL), which owns YouTube, fell 1.4% — while Snap (SNAP) dropped 8.4%.

That doesn’t prove investors loved the terms of Meta’s settlement. But the stock moves suggest the settlement shifted some of the risk from Meta to its rivals.

None of this means the new protections are meaningless. A hard overnight block and enforceable time limits could materially change how teens use Instagram and Facebook.

But Meta is paying billions to settle a major legal fight, protect its core business, lock in a decade of rules for teen users and potentially saddle its rivals with similar penalties.

Market Rundown for Friday, August 28, 2026

S&P 500 futures are slightly up to 7,748.

Oil is down 0.85% to $89.20 for a barrel of WTI.

Gold’s down 0.45% to $4,643.70 per ounce.

And Bitcoin’s down 0.85% to $79,390.

Soon after, a U.S. diplomatic motorcade was spotted moving through the Russian capital.

The Kremlin later confirmed CIA Director John Ratcliffe made an unannounced trip to Moscow to meet with senior Russian intelligence officials.

This is the first known trip to Russia by a sitting CIA director since William Burns visited Moscow in November 2021 — just months before Russia invaded Ukraine.

So what was Ratcliffe doing there?

The official answer is: We don’t know.

But Paradigm’s macro authority Jim Rickards has a theory about what Washington ought to be discussing with Moscow right now.

Your Rundown for Wednesday, August 26, 2026...

The Road to Hormuz Runs Through Russia?

The U.S. and Russia are still deeply divided over Ukraine; U.S.-brokered peace talks have largely stalled.

In fact, Washington considered Ratcliffe’s trip sensitive enough that it notified Ukrainian officials beforehand and asked Kyiv to suspend strikes until the U.S. delegation left Russia.

At the same time, Washington now has a secondary Russia problem wrapped inside its Iran problem.

Jim highlighted this predicament for Strategic Intelligence subscribers on Monday: “One of the reasons for Iran’s resilience,” he wrote, “is Russia.”

Recent reports indicate more than two dozen Russian vessels delivered supplies to Iran’s Amirabad port, shipping Iran drone components, ammunition and TNT explosives across the Caspian Sea.

The shipments therefore give Tehran another source of military supplies even as U.S. and Israeli attacks degrade its domestic production capabilities.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration on Monday launched “Operation Economic Outcast,” a sweeping new effort to sever Iran’s remaining financial connections to the outside world.

“Of course, the U.S. could engage with Russia in a kind of détente 2.0 and relieve Russia of the economic sanctions [Russia] is currently under,” says Jim.

In return? “Russia could help the U.S. by applying pressure on Iran.”

That doesn’t mean Ratcliffe flew to Moscow to negotiate some grand Russia-for-Iran bargain.

But America’s top spy just spent roughly eight hours in Moscow meeting with his Russian counterparts, and Putin was personally briefed afterward.

Of course, there’s a financial angle here.

Oil prices are now falling as traders detect signs that diplomacy might be gaining ground. Brent crude dropped to about $86 per barrel this morning, while WTI fell near $80 as Iran and Oman discussed a temporary navigation corridor through Hormuz.

If Washington can persuade Moscow to stop supplying Iran — and instead pressure Tehran toward a settlement — the benefits could reach all the way to American consumers.

A durable reopening of Hormuz would reduce one of the biggest risk premiums embedded in global energy prices. More Russian energy reaching world markets could add another source of supply.

And that could mean cheaper crude, less pressure at the pump and a break for inflation.

Market Rundown for Wednesday, August 26, 2026

S&P 500 futures are down 0.15% to 7,680.

Oil’s down 2.55% to $80.25 for a barrel of WTI.

Gold is down 0.45% to $4,673.40 per ounce.

And Bitcoin’s pulled back 0.75% to $78,320.

It traded above $77,000 Friday and briefly approached $80,000. This morning, it’s still hovering near those levels.

The obvious temptation is to chalk this up to another round of crypto mania.

There’s some of that. President Trump has been pushing Congress for friendlier crypto legislation. A short squeeze added fuel to the rally.

But the bigger catalyst came from somewhere unexpected: the U.S. Treasury.

Last week, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced plans to at least double the amount of long-term Treasury debt the government can buy back at a time, from $2 billion to at least $4 billion.

The announcement came as long-term Treasury yields were surging and the national debt crossed $40 trillion for the first time.

That combination matters.

Investors are increasingly worried that Washington’s enormous debt load will make it harder to tolerate high interest rates. Buying back long-term bonds can help relieve pressure in the Treasury market. But it doesn’t solve the underlying problem.

Washington still spends more than it collects. It still has to borrow the difference.

That helps explain why gold and Bitcoin rallied together last week. Both can serve as alternatives to dollar-denominated financial assets when investors worry about deficits, debt and currency debasement.

Bitcoin is still volatile. It can fall just as violently as it rises. But this rally looks like more than another speculative sugar rush.

It’s also a vote on Washington’s fiscal credibility.

And right now, that vote isn’t especially flattering.

Your Rundown for Monday, August 24, 2026...

Canada Fires Back

Meanwhile, America’s trade tussle with Canada just got considerably more expensive.

Negotiations collapsed Friday after Canada rejected new U.S. demands. The U.S. then imposed 50% tariffs on roughly C$28 billion worth of Canadian goods.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney responded by promising dollar-for-dollar retaliation, with new tariffs scheduled to take effect Sept. 8.

So who pays?

A tariff is collected from the importer. That means American companies importing affected Canadian products face a 50% tax at the border. Some companies will absorb part of that cost. Others will find new suppliers.

And some — most? — will pass it along to customers.

That creates obvious upward pressure on prices for affected goods.

But there’s an important distinction between higher prices and inflation.

Tariffs can raise prices. But raising the price of certain goods isn’t the same thing as creating sustained inflation across the economy.

If Americans have to spend more on tariff-hit products, they have less to spend elsewhere. That tends to shift prices around rather than send all prices relentlessly higher.

But U.S. inflation is already running persistently above the Fed’s 2% target; consumer prices rose 3.4% over the 12 months through July.

Canada has its own problem. Its CPI rose 3.0% year over year in July, and Carney openly acknowledged that retaliatory tariffs will raise costs and reduce choices for Canadians.

In other words, nobody gets out of a trade war unscathed.

Tariffs may protect favored industries or serve larger strategic goals. But the bill eventually lands somewhere.

For American consumers, Canadian consumers or businesses caught in the middle, that somewhere is usually uncomfortably close to home.

Market Rundown for Monday, August 24, 2026

S&P 500 futures are down 0.15% to 7,680.

Oil is down 1.80% to $85.50 for a barrel of West Texas crude.

Gold’s up 0.75% to $4,715.20 per ounce.

And Bitcoin’s up 1.55% to $78,500.

About 6,000 people belonged to the organization in 2015.

As of July 4, 2026, DSA says its membership hit an all-time high of 120,000.

That means DSA’s ranks have grown roughly twentyfold in a decade.

One important distinction: DSA isn’t technically part of the Democratic Party. In fact, the organization explicitly says, “We are not a political party, but a non-profit activist organization.”

In practice, many DSA candidates run as Democrats, compete in Democratic primaries and, once elected, hold office as Democrats.

That unusual arrangement has allowed DSA to build influence inside the Democratic Party

And if you want to understand what DSA is doing with that influence, Chicago is a good place to start.

Last August, more than 1,300 DSA delegates and alternates descended on the city for the organization’s three-day national convention.

They came from chapters across the country. They argued over resolutions and elected national leaders.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib took the stage as the convention’s keynote speaker.

There were merchandise tables piled with DSA shirts and tote bags. One table displayed posters for Zohran Mamdani, then the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City.

Even the location carried a message.

Chicago was the site of the 1886 Haymarket Massacre, a seminal event in American labor history. DSA’s convention organizers explicitly invoked Haymarket while welcoming delegates to the city.

But the most important business in Chicago wasn’t happening at the merch tables.

Your Rundown for Friday, August 21, 2026...

The Party Hiding Inside the Party

Delegates approved a political strategy that went well beyond simply electing more socialists.

DSA adopted tougher standards for candidates seeking its endorsement.

Under its national endorsement criteria, candidates should have a history of involvement with DSA, publicly identify as socialists, uphold the organization’s platform, recruit new members and caucus with other DSA officeholders.

It also approved experiments with “independent ballot lines” — ways for socialist candidates to appear before voters under their own political identity rather than relying exclusively on the Democratic Party label.

And it established a national “Socialists in Office” network designed to connect DSA-backed officeholders around the country and coordinate their political work after they’re elected.

Put those pieces together and the strategy becomes clearer.

DSA is trying to build some of the machinery of a political party — without first having to build a new political party.

But one line in DSA’s national endorsement criteria tells you more about the strategy than anything else.

Candidates should consider themselves “socialist organizers first, and legislators second.”

Read that one again. Because it gets to the heart of what DSA is building.

Political organizations endorse candidates all the time. They donate money, knock on doors and run ads. Then the candidate wins and heads to Washington, the statehouse or city hall.

DSA is experimenting with something different, and some local chapters make that relationship remarkably explicit.

Charleston DSA, for instance, requires endorsed candidates to agree to “co-govern with the chapter.”

Candidates are expected to meet with chapter representatives, coordinate campaign strategy and remain accountable to the organization.

Which brings us back to those 120,000 members — and the political program their organization is trying to advance.

DSA’s national program calls for aggressive wealth taxes, universal rent control and public ownership of the largest corporations and essential industries.

And none of this requires DSA to replace the Democratic Party.

Jim Rickards recently described the strategy this way: “The idea is that you don’t have to destroy institutions. With patience, you can take them over from the inside.”

Which puts the Chicago 2025 convention in a different light.

The candidate rules and Socialists in Office network weren’t just political housekeeping.

They were the machinery for turning an ideology into policy.

And when those policies concern your taxes, your property and your investments, it pays to know who’s operating the machine.

Market Rundown for Friday, August 21, 2026

S&P 500 futures are up 0.40% to 7,690.

Oil is up 0.35% to $87.15 for a barrel of WTI.

Gold’s up 1.75% to $4,650.80 per ounce.

And Bitcoin is up 5.60% to $76,755.

“NEW US TERRITORY.”

Hours later, Trump said there were “no talks or conversations” underway or scheduled with Iran.

Tehran, meanwhile, insists Hormuz remains closed. And on Tuesday, a commercial vessel transiting the strait was struck by a projectile, damaging its engine room and causing casualties.

In other words, the world’s most important oil chokepoint now has two countries effectively claiming control of it.

And the situation is getting hotter.

Send your opinions to, feedback@newsyoucanacton.com

Your Rundown for Monday, August 19, 2026...

Six Months Later…

The United Arab Emirates says two ballistic missiles launched from Iran targeted maritime traffic near its waters. Iran denies responsibility, calling the accusation “baseless.”

The UAE responded Wednesday by suspending all trade, commercial and financial transactions with Iran.

Meanwhile, hardly anybody wants to sail through the middle of this mess.

Only six commodity vessels passed through Hormuz Tuesday, according to ship-tracking data from Kpler. That’s down from nine Monday and a recent average of 11 per day.

Before the war, the strait handled roughly 20% of global crude oil and liquefied natural gas shipments.

And now we’re approaching six months of war.

Since Feb. 28, we’ve had missile attacks, drone attacks, battered shipping, negotiations, ceasefires and repeat predictions that the whole thing was finally winding down.

Instead, the 60-day negotiating window for a peace deal has expired without an agreement. Trump says there are no new talks planned. Iran says the ceasefire isn’t dead but “in a coma.”

That leaves us in a strange and potentially more dangerous place.

Washington says the strait is open. Tehran says it’s closed.

Markets are pretty good at pricing shocks. What’s much harder to price is uncertainty with no expiration date.

And yet, for all the chaos, the oil market has proved remarkably resilient.

Prices have spiked and retreated as traders react to every missile strike, ceasefire rumor and diplomatic headline. Alternative supply routes have helped. So have shifting trade flows and the market’s relentless search for available barrels.

Call it the invisible hand at work.

But there are limits to what even a remarkably adaptive global market can absorb.

On Monday alone, Brent and West Texas Intermediate jumped more than $2 as traders confronted another round of uncertainty.

That matters well beyond your next fill-up.

Higher crude and fuel costs eventually work their way through trucking, aviation, manufacturing, food and practically everything else that has to move from Point A to Point B.

And if those costs remain elevated, the inflation problem Washington has spent years trying to contain becomes considerably harder to kill.

And the longer this stalemate lasts, the more the rest of us will pay for it.

Market Rundown for Monday, August 19, 2026

S&P 500 futures are slightly up to 53,445.

Oil is up 0.70% to $85.55 for a barrel of WTI.

Gold’s slightly in the green at $4,422.20 per ounce.

And Bitcoin’s down 0.35% to $64,430.

If you’ve traveled this summer, you might have noticed that air travel is crazy expensive.

There’s a reason for that. And according to my colleague Byron King, it’s creating an intriguing opportunity for investors.

So we’re skipping the usual market notes and handing things over to Byron today. He’ll explain what’s happening — and share six ways you can potentially profit from this supply squeeze.]

The next time you book a flight, brace yourself. Because airline sticker shock is not going away.

In July, U.S. airfares were 25.5% higher year-over-year. And travelers can expect higher fares, thinner schedules and fewer flights on routes that no longer make economic sense.

The reason is simple: Across the globe, jet fuel volumes are tight and getting tighter, and upward price pressure is now built into the entire aviation system. It’s bad news for passengers and marginal airlines.

My point is the world needs more jet fuel, but the refining system is stretched too thin. So companies that can turn crude oil into high-value jet fuel gain leverage.

In other words, this is not just another oil story. It’s a refining story.

And even if the Iran conflict ended tomorrow and the Strait of Hormuz reopened fully, jet fuel would not return to normal.

Every day, refineries around the world take crude and turn it into gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, petrochemicals and other products. But when refineries are maxed out, more crude oil does not automatically mean more jet fuel.

So the price of refined products can tighten even when crude supplies look adequate on paper. (Not that crude supplies are “adequate” right now.)

Along these lines, Shell plc CEO Wael Sawan recently stated that the world faces a crude deficit of about 1.2 billion barrels related to the Iran conflict. Barrels have been locked in the Persian Gulf, stranded or never produced.

That supply deficit will not be cured for a long time to come.

Your Rundown for Monday, August 17, 2026...

When the Schedule Gets the Knife

Now consider that despite the Iran mess, underlying demand for air travel has remained resilient. Thus, jet fuel remains a key pressure point.

Industry data point in the same direction.

The International Air Transport Association has described jet fuel as disproportionately affected by refinery constraints and logistics bottlenecks, with available supply down significantly and regional spot prices far above crude-oil-based benchmarks.

Airlines can hedge fuel and renegotiate supply contracts. But none of those tactics creates new refining capacity.

The first thing that happens is that air carriers pass their higher costs through to ticket buyers via higher fares, fuel surcharges and extra fees.

Then the schedule gets the knife.

Flight frequencies fall or city pairs are trimmed, which means smaller markets lose options. And low-cost carriers, which rely on high aircraft utilization and thin margins, feel the squeeze first.

Meanwhile, legacy carriers are turning this situation into a competitive advantage. When high fuel costs knock weaker low-cost competitors out of certain routes, the large carriers gain pricing power.

That’s not great for travelers, but it’s exactly how tight fuel markets ripple through the airline business.

For investors, my view is to avoid airlines that inevitably face higher fuel bills. The better angle is companies that sit at the bottleneck, namely refiners and integrated oil companies with major downstream capacity.

If jet fuel stays tight, refiners don’t need the whole economy to boom. They just need the spread between crude inputs and finished fuel to remain elevated. In a world of scarcity, that’s exactly where the leverage is.

Five Refiners and a Fund

Here are five U.S. refining-oriented energy plays that belong on your watch list as the jet fuel squeeze works through airline schedules and passenger fares:

1. ExxonMobil (XOM) — A global integrated major with deep refining, logistics and downstream reach. Exxon gives investors exposure not merely to crude oil, but to the system that upgrades crude into the fuels the world actually burns. Its integrated model offers exposure from production through refining and distribution, while its balance-sheet strength helps it ride through volatile energy cycles.

2. Chevron (CVX) — Another integrated heavyweight, with major downstream capacity along the Gulf Coast and West Coast. Chevron offers scale, balance-sheet strength and refining exposure in a market where product availability matters. Its downstream assets provide leverage to tight gasoline, diesel and jet fuel markets.

3. Marathon Petroleum (MPC) — One of the clearest pure refining plays in the group. Marathon operates one of the largest U.S. refining systems, giving it direct exposure to crack spreads and tight refined-product markets. Its large U.S. network positions it well if product shortages persist.

4. Phillips 66 (PSX) — A downstream and midstream name with refining assets, product logistics and chemicals exposure. In a constrained product market, that integrated footprint can matter. Its midstream and logistics businesses also support the movement of product to market, reducing reliance on any single fuel stream.

5. Valero Energy (VLO) — A large independent refiner with major U.S. capacity and strong leverage to refined-product margins. If jet fuel and diesel stay tight, Valero is exactly the kind of downstream operator to watch. Its pure-play refining exposure gives it strong sensitivity to crack spreads.

Among these five names, the common thread is leverage via refining.

Of course, these companies are not identical, and none is immune to politics, recession risk, maintenance outages or swings in crude prices. But if the world is short of finished fuels, the real leverage shifts downstream to the refiners.

For a broader basket approach, there’s also an ETF focused on the refining sector:

VanEck Oil Refiners ETF (CRAK) — This fund is designed to track global companies involved in crude oil refining, offering diversified exposure to the same bottleneck discussed above.

The Toll Collectors of Global Aviation

Higher jet fuel prices don’t just make tickets more expensive. They force airlines to rethink where they fly, how often they fly and which routes are worth keeping.

That’s painful for travelers and bad news for marginal carriers. But it can mean wider margins and stronger cash flow for the refiners supplying the fuel.

The world needs more crude oil, yes…

But even more, it needs barrels refined into usable fuel today, tomorrow, next week.

And when jet fuel is scarce, refiners stop looking like sleepy cyclicals in a dead-end industry and start looking like cash-flowing toll collectors.

That’s all for now. Thank you for subscribing and reading.

That’s not my interpretation. It’s pretty close to what the New York congresswoman herself is saying.

Asked Sunday on ABC’s This Week about controversial positions embraced by some progressives in 2020, AOC laughed it off and borrowed a phrase now making the rounds on the left.

“Woke 1 was crazy.”

“Woke 1” is shorthand for the first wave of modern progressive politics — the era of “defund the police,” cancel culture and increasingly aggressive identity politics.

AOC’s argument is simple: Don’t judge today’s progressive candidates by the politics of 2020.

She isn’t abandoning democratic socialism. Far from it. She’s trying to separate the movement from some of that era’s most polarizing baggage.

There’s a reason for the makeover.

AOC is openly considering her political options for 2028, including a possible presidential run or a challenge to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

And democratic socialism is having a moment.

Candidates from the party’s far-left flank have scored notable victories this year, including Abdul El-Sayed’s Democratic Senate primary win in Michigan last week.

In Wisconsin on Tuesday, democratic socialist Francesca Hong came within half a percentage point of winning the Democratic nomination for governor.

The package is changing. The movement isn’t going anywhere.

Your Rundown for Friday, August 14, 2026...

What AOC 2.0 Means for Your Money

We took a close look at AOC’s biography at The Rundown last September.

The caricatures from both sides miss something.

She was born in the Bronx but grew up in suburban Yorktown Heights, where her family achieved a measure of middle-class stability. Then her father died of lung cancer in 2008.

Her mother struggled to fend off foreclosure and AOC says she worked multiple jobs while attending Boston University. After graduating, she worked as a bartender before her stunning 2018 primary victory propelled her into Congress.

In other words, her politics didn’t materialize out of nowhere. Her family experienced genuine financial insecurity.

And that matters because AOC’s next act appears increasingly focused on household finances.

The congresswoman supports Medicare for All, a federal jobs guarantee, expanded union power and other government programs.

She also co-sponsored the Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act this year, which would impose an annual tax on household net worth above $50 million.

In May, she went further.

“You can’t earn a billion dollars,” AOC said during a podcast appearance.

Period.

Which brings us from politics to your money.

This week, Jim Rickards addressed the implications for his Situation Report subscribers:

“The rise of socialism inside the Democratic Party is an enormously important political story on its own. But it also has huge investment implications that could affect your portfolio.”

Consider the wealth tax. Unlike an income tax, a wealth tax targets what you own: stocks, bonds, businesses and other accumulated assets.

Axios reported in March that progressive activists are attempting to make a wealth tax an early litmus test for presidential hopefuls.

That’s the part investors shouldn’t miss.

A wealth tax doesn’t simply tax what you earn. It taxes what you’ve already accumulated.

As Jim puts it: “Depending on how such a tax were structured, investors could find themselves selling retirement assets just to pay the new wealth tax.”

That’s the financial story hiding behind AOC’s makeover.

She understands that some of the slogans of 2020 became political liabilities.

So just forget “defund the police.” That’s so 2020!

The slogans may be changing. The economic agenda isn’t.

And if democratic socialism keeps gaining ground through the midterms and beyond, the question for investors won’t simply be whether AOC can win.

It’ll be what happens to your money if her ideas do.

Market Rundown for Friday, August 14, 2026

S&P 500 futures are up slightly to 7,825.

Oil’s up 0.90% to $82 for a barrel of WTI.

Gold is up 0.25% to $4,433.80 per ounce.

But Bitcoin’s down 0.90% to $62,785.

Paradigm editor Sean Ring wrote that line two years ago.

He was referring to the Houthis in Yemen, who were attacking commercial shipping in the Red Sea with drones costing roughly $100,000.

A relatively unsophisticated fighting force had found a way to threaten global shipping — and force the most powerful navy on Earth into an extraordinarily expensive game of defense.

The U.S. Navy’s answer? Fire missiles costing $1–4 million to shoot them down.

That was asymmetric warfare in its purest form: Make your enemy spend millions defeating something that costs you thousands.

And looking back through the Paradigm archives this week, our editors have been following the drone revolution for years.

Around the same time Sean wrote the words up top, Paradigm’s Byron King — retired Navy officer and trained geologist — was watching the same transformation unfold in Ukraine.

Byron described the fighting there as a modern “Battle of the Somme, except [with] drones.”

He’d read accounts of Russian drone swarms numbering “hundreds and even thousands at a time, whizzing across the sky like a flock of passenger pigeons of old.”

In August 2024, we asked Rundown readers to imagine a warehouse somewhere in America containing more than one million military-grade drones, ready to deploy against an enemy at a moment’s notice.

“Put simply,” we wrote, “defense is the new offense.”

Your Rundown for Wednesday, August 12, 2026...

Six Seconds to War

By fall 2025, Money & Power editor Buck Sexton — a former CIA officer — was seeing the evolution firsthand.

Buck traveled to Taiwan, where he received access to government officials, military installations and defense manufacturers.

Inside a shipyard prototype lab, he encountered Taiwan’s “Black Tide” unmanned vessels.

These weren’t billion-dollar warships.

They were 26-foot “ghost ships” carrying more than a ton of explosives, capable of navigating despite GPS jamming and designed to hunt in packs.

Buck summed them up in three words: “Inexpensive. Unstoppable. Disposable.”

The point wasn’t necessarily to defeat an invading Chinese fleet outright. It was to make the price of invasion unbearable.

Then came Iran.

Although America possesses vastly more sophisticated weapons, those weapons are incredibly expensive.

Iran has been playing a different game. “Drones are inexpensive, scalable and relatively easy to manufacture,” Jim says.

Cheap drones force an adversary to burn through scarce, expensive interceptors simply to destroy them.

Suddenly, the drone revolution isn’t merely a technology story.

It’s a manufacturing, supply-chain and industrial-capacity story.

And today, Byron believes the transformation is essentially complete. “Drones are now the latest — and likely decisive — military technology,” he emphasizes.

If something can “fly, float, roll, crawl, loiter, listen, jam, scout, strike or blow itself up,” Byron says, it belongs in the new unmanned order of battle.

Which creates the next problem: How do you stop these weapons?

Last week, Jim Rickards’ chief analyst Dan Amoss highlighted a counter-drone system whose maker says it can give operators 18 minutes to detect and respond to an incoming threat.

Some competing systems with much shorter detection ranges?

As little as six seconds of response time.

“You tell me the system you want to be guarded by,” said the company’s CEO.

From $100,000 Houthi drones over the Red Sea… to autonomous ghost ships… to massive swarms over Ukraine and the Strait of Hormuz…

The trajectory is hard to miss.

Paradigm’s editors have been following this modern-warfare trend for years.

Now Washington is preparing to spend extraordinary sums catching up.

Market Rundown for Wednesday, August 12, 2026

S&P 500 futures are up 0.45% to 7,785.

Oil is up 0.45% to $83.55 for a barrel of WTI.

Gold’s up 1% to $4,486.10 per ounce.

And Bitcoin is up 1%, just under $64K.

Then again, maybe he should have been.

The Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback appeared on The Pat McAfee Show Monday and unloaded on the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).

“You got a pardon and you pleaded over 100 times?” Rodgers asked. “What are you scared of, Tony?”

There’s some history here.

Rodgers famously refused the COVID-19 vaccine during the 2021 NFL season. He initially told reporters he was “immunized,” later acknowledging he was unvaccinated and had misled people about his status.

At the time, unvaccinated NFL players faced daily testing and additional masking and distancing requirements. Rodgers eventually tested positive, missed a game and was fined $14,650 for violating league protocols.

So when Fauci returned to Capitol Hill on July 29, Rodgers was paying attention.

And Fauci’s attorney wasn’t impressed.

“Aaron Rodgers doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” attorney David Schertler told The Athletic. “He should stick to football.”

Your Rundown for Monday, August 10, 2026...

The Multi-Million-Dollar Footnote

Contributing editor Emily Clancy previewed Fauci’s testimony for The Rundown the morning he appeared before Congress, explaining why the hearing could be different from his previous appearances before Congress.

Turns out, it was.

Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment 111 times, declining to answer questions from the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee about COVID’s origins, federal research funding and his pandemic-era conduct.

His position was straightforward: Despite former President Biden’s sweeping pardon, Fauci and his attorneys argued that answering questions could expose him to legal jeopardy outside the pardon’s protection.

Fauci has denied wrongdoing and characterized the proceeding as an attempt to maneuver him into committing a new offense.

Then things got stranger.

One of Fauci’s attorneys, Schertler, repeatedly attempted to interject during questioning. Committee Chairman Rand Paul told him he wasn’t recognized and ultimately directed security to remove him from the hearing room.

Yes, Fauci’s lawyer was really escorted out.

Fauci wasn’t left without representation. Paul noted that several other attorneys accompanying him remained in the room.

And Paul warned that Fauci’s refusal to answer would have consequences.

Last Thursday, he followed through.

The Homeland Security Committee voted 8–5 along party lines to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress and refer the matter to the Justice Department, with all eight Republicans backing the resolution and all five Democrats opposing it.

Fauci’s lawyers countered that the pardon doesn’t eliminate every conceivable source of criminal exposure — including potential state charges — and therefore doesn’t necessarily extinguish his constitutional privilege.

That dispute is far from settled.

The contempt referral itself is unusual. As The Wall Street Journal notes, the committee is attempting to send the matter directly to the Justice Department rather than first securing a contempt vote from the full Senate.

Whether the DOJ prosecutes Fauci — and whether such a prosecution survives the inevitable legal challenges — remains to be seen.

But while Fauci said very little at the hearing, documents released around it have done plenty of talking.

“Fauci’s diary entries, in fact, reveal that he was more concerned with receiving cash awards and becoming a media personality than he was with saving lives,” says Paradigm’s macro expert Jim Rickards.

Take the $1 million Dan David Prize.

In 2020, immunologist Charles Dinarello nominated Fauci for the award. Emails released by Paul’s committee indicate Fauci’s own staff helped prepare the nomination materials. After submitting them, Dinarello thanked Fauci and his chief of staff for doing “most of the work.”

Fauci won.

Dinarello later received roughly $1.8 million in NIAID research funding, according to federal grant records cited by the Washington Examiner. But the relationship went back decades: Dinarello had received NIAID funding long before the prize nomination.

Another scientist, Duke immunologist Barton Haynes, nominated Fauci for major prizes after years of receiving NIAID support.

Emails show Fauci suggesting awards for which Haynes might nominate him and offering to supply the necessary materials. Haynes subsequently received substantial NIAID research funding — but again, he had been an NIAID grantee long before those nominations.

The records do not prove Fauci traded federal grants for personal awards. There’s no documented agreement saying, in effect, you nominate me and I’ll fund you.

But they reveal a remarkably cozy ecosystem.

The director of one of America’s most powerful research-funding agencies sought lucrative prizes with help from scientists whose work depended, in part, on funding from that same agency.

Federal ethics officials apparently recognized some of the danger. In other cases involving Vanderbilt and Georgia Tech awards, NIAID ethics counsel determined Fauci could accept the honors but not their cash prizes because the sponsoring institutions were NIAID grantees.

And the scrutiny is expanding.

What started as another Rand Paul–Anthony Fauci confrontation has now produced a contempt referral, new questions about Fauci’s financial relationships and continuing disputes over the reach of Biden’s pardon.

Rodgers called Fauci a criminal. Fauci’s defenders call the congressional investigation political persecution.

Neither side gets to decide the legal question.

That belongs to the Justice Department — and, potentially, the courts.

But after 111 invocations of the Fifth Amendment, one thing is certain:

Anthony Fauci’s congressional testimony didn’t end the story. It opened another chapter.

Market Rundown for Monday, August 10, 2026

S&P 500 futures are at 7,780.

Oil is up 1.60% to $79.45 for a barrel of WTI.

Gold’s down 0.25% to $4,387.50 per ounce.

And Bitcoin is down 0.25% to $64,990.