We are all familiar with the surge in beef prices, driven by a U.S. cattle herd at more than a half-century low amid severe drought, elevated feed costs, higher financing expenses, and other inflationary factors, such as soaring diesel prices, squeezing ranchers.

$175 for beef?!🥩

$20.65 per pound … for one cut.

Herds are at generational lows after years of drought, rising feed costs, and pressure on ranchers.

Supply gets squeezed → prices explode → families get hit.

This was the Democrat push!

What are you paying for beef where… pic.twitter.com/c5HdnidaKA

— Sherri Unfiltered™ (@FFT1776) May 4, 2026

USDA data show average retail beef prices have been on a parabolic rise since the early days of the pandemic, with consumers facing sticker shock as soon as they step into any supermarket’s meat department.

A new Bloomberg report helps explain why beef prices are likely to remain sticky: the US cattle herd has fallen to its lowest level in 75 years. This supply shock has taken years to develop, and rebuilding will take years as well.

The Trump administration promised to tame beef prices, even considering a deal with Argentina to import cattle and alleviate the shortage. However, it appears the administration has shifted from potential supply maneuvers to asking the Justice Department to investigate possible antitrust violations among processors.

On Monday, Tyson Foods, the nation’s largest meat processor, reported another quarterly loss in its beef unit, highlighting that beef margins remain deeply negative even at the processing level. Tyson and other major meatpackers are being forced to pay premiums for scarce cattle, crushing margins that are being passed on to consumers.

“The reality behind expensive beef is complicated. There’s no quick fix for tight supplies, as the sticker shock in the grocery aisles didn’t happen overnight,” Bloomberg agricultural reporter Ilena Peng wrote in a note, adding, “It’s not just that the animals take a long time to grow. The complicated economics of cattle ranching also create pain points at key stages of production.”

Peng walked readers through a hypothetical example of one animal’s journey through the cattle supply chain, showing that the profit pool is heavily skewed toward the front end.

Cow-calf ranchers are currently seeing solid profits, but margins deteriorate further downstream – from stockers to feedyards and meatpackers – where operators remain under pressure. Grocers, meanwhile, have been able to pass higher costs on to consumers, particularly as beef demand remains robust.

Source: Bloomberg

Peng warned readers, “All this means there are few quick fixes for near-record beef prices.”

Source: Bloomberg

Monthly US Imports of Beef and Beef Products

Source: Bloomberg

January Cattle and Calves Count

Source: Bloomberg

“Pressures at every stage of the 18-month supply chain are expected to keep prices high at least through year-end,” Peng continued.

This means beef prices may have to rise even higher into summer and enter demand-destroying territory. This is bad news for consumers ahead of cookout season.

Authored by Kenin M. Spivak via RealClearPolitics,

The Trump administration is restoring the core value of equal opportunity to civil rights enforcement. It is eviscerating the race-baiting, intersectional policies of the Biden and Obama administrations, and giving substance to the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision in Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services (2025) that whites, men, and heterosexuals are not held to a higher standard in discrimination cases.

This is a time for rejoicing, tempered by concern that the administration will not have time to complete its work, and that its reliance on executive orders, rather than legislation and consent decrees, will allow the next Democratic president to rip asunder President Trump’s laudable accomplishments.

Despite more than a century of Supreme Court decisions forbidding discrimination on the basis of race, Democrats generally, and progressives specifically, have inverted President John F. Kennedy’s executive order establishing affirmative action. Intended to bring an end to discrimination because of race, creed, color, and national origin, progressives instead transformed affirmative action into a system of preferences based on melanin content, and absorbed this once hopeful construct into radical philosophies used to justify bias, including Critical Race Theory (CRT), intersectionality, disparate impact theory, and ultimately DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion).

They oppose Trump’s effort to dismantle their race-addled policies with every lever available to them. Ivy League universities have to be bludgeoned into enforcing equal rights. Blue city mayors continue their fight to sideline white males. Hollywood artists and programmers refuse to work for studios and tech companies that recognize political and legal realties. Liberal Supreme Court justices bemoan the majority’s refusal to rule based on the intersectional hierarchy of so-called “marginalized” minorities, and Obama- and Biden-appointed federal judges enjoin proper exercises of executive power.

CRT originated in the 1970s as a tortured rationale advocating that colorblind laws inevitably serve the interests of white people.

Intersectionality has become a cornerstone of CRT. Developed principally by Columbia Law Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw, it utilizes a hierarchy of social oppression to allocate benefits and burdens, providing the doctrinal basis for DEI policies, transgender activism, and antisemitism. The latter shows the bankruptcy of the dogma: Despite hundreds of years of oppression, pogroms and the Holocaust, as a result of educational and business achievements, Jews are seen as powerful oppressors, while Palestinians and other Muslims are seen as marginalized minorities.

Disparate impact is a central tenet of progressive litigation strategy. Its premise that marginalized communities must receive their proportionate share of opportunities is the progenitor of the “equity” prong of DEI. Liability is established if there is a shortfall, regardless of whether that shortfall is caused by discrimination.

DEI is the fusion of these philosophies, a malevolent form of affirmative action that allocates benefits based on race, sex, and gender identity. To ensure pre-determined outcomes, progressive decisionmakers and courts have tampered with and eliminated entry exams, waived criminal background checks, and watered down academic, disciplinary, admissions, graduation, employment, and promotion standards.

In 2024, the Biden administration took a bow for more than 650 actions that required federal, state, and local government agencies and contractors to award and allocate burdens, opportunities, and benefits based on race, sex, and gender identification.

Progressives defended these manifestly unconstitutional and unlawful actions by claiming that while the words of the 14th Amendment, federal civil rights statutes, and President Johnson’s executive order on equal employment opportunity prohibit the use of race in government actions, their true meaning was the opposite – that race and other innate characteristics must be used to achieve outcomes based on these characteristics.

The Biden administration also targeted people of faith, with abuses ranging from FBI infiltration of Catholic churches to weaponizing the FACE Act against pro-life Americans. And it adopted rules requiring that universities treat biological males who identify as women as actual women, and ended due process for any grievances filed for allegedly violating their rights, or in sexual harassment cases. Respondents were denied notice, the right to examine the complainant, or a right of appeal. The university investigator was permitted to serve as the hearing officer.

Progressives justified the administration’s attack on religion, female athletes, and due process as necessary to protect the rights of marginalized minorities.

Underscoring the left’s situational ethics, as the Biden administration embarked on a whole-of-government censorship enterprise to silence its critics, the ACLU abandoned its 100-year commitment to free speech, declaring that speech that denigrates marginalized groups can “inflict serious harms and is intended to and often will impede progress toward equality.”

Upon taking office for his second term, President Trump revoked Biden’s executive orders impacting race, sex, and gender. He issued orders prohibiting DEI, other race-based programs, and disparate impact in federal government hiring, promotion, and contracting; terminated federal employees hired for the Biden administration’s massive DEI apparatus; and ordered “appropriate action” to pressure K-12 schools into abandoning race-based disciplinary policies. He rescinded an executive order that required federal contractors to utilize affirmative action in their hiring practices.

Rejecting intersectionality, Trump issued orders tying federal funding to elimination of extreme gender ideology, proclaiming, “It is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female. These sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality,” and protecting children from chemical and surgical mutilation – positions belatedly adopted by leading medical organizations. He also ordered the Department of Education to take all appropriate action to keep biological men out of women’s sports.

Trump directed federal agencies to improve security vetting for international students and to prioritize civil rights protections for Jewish students. He eliminated collection and publication of data used in a misguided effort to claim that environmental harms targeted minorities because manufacturing facilities are concentrated in lower-income neighborhoods, and he issued an order to pressure the Smithsonian Institution to restore balance to its depiction of American history.

The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division under Harmeet Dhillon and Education Department under Linda McMahon launched enforcement actions against Ivy league universities to protect Jewish students and restore viewpoint diversity. The Justice Department also commenced investigations, filed and intervened in lawsuits, and reached settlements with public and private institutions to protect Americans of all backgrounds and faiths – just last week forcing Colorado to abandon a law that favors AI algorithms that promote “diversity.” It investigated the Biden administration’s weaponization of the FACE Act, issued an 882-page report exposing the abuses, and eliminated them. The Education Department ordered universities to bring back due process in university grievance procedures.

The left is vigorously fighting back. Universities have slyly rebranded DEI offices, legal challenges have been filed against Trump’s executive orders and related regulations, Democrat-appointed judges have issued injunctions, and Democratic Party officials have doubled down on racial and gender politics. For the most part, the administration has prevailed in lower courts or secured stays of adverse rulings pending appeals.

Some progressives support intersectionality, disparate impact, and DEI to harm straight white Americans. Many are so caught up in innate characteristics that they believe individual opportunity and fairness is determined at a group level, while other progressives delude themselves into believing they can choose winners without creating losers. The administration must hold firm against the left’s vitriolic counterattacks. As Donald Trump restores the American dream of equal opportunity, his challenge with just eight months until the probable loss of the Republican legislative majority is to create enduring change, rather than an interregnum in progressive rule.

Kenin M. Spivak is founder and chairman of SMI Group LLC, an international consulting firm and investment bank. He is the author of fiction and non-fiction books and a frequent speaker and contributor to media, including RealClearPolitics, The American Mind, National Review, television, radio, and podcasts.

Authored by Kenin M. Spivak via RealClearPolitics,

The Trump administration is restoring the core value of equal opportunity to civil rights enforcement. It is eviscerating the race-baiting, intersectional policies of the Biden and Obama administrations, and giving substance to the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision in Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services (2025) that whites, men, and heterosexuals are not held to a higher standard in discrimination cases.

This is a time for rejoicing, tempered by concern that the administration will not have time to complete its work, and that its reliance on executive orders, rather than legislation and consent decrees, will allow the next Democratic president to rip asunder President Trump’s laudable accomplishments.

Despite more than a century of Supreme Court decisions forbidding discrimination on the basis of race, Democrats generally, and progressives specifically, have inverted President John F. Kennedy’s executive order establishing affirmative action. Intended to bring an end to discrimination because of race, creed, color, and national origin, progressives instead transformed affirmative action into a system of preferences based on melanin content, and absorbed this once hopeful construct into radical philosophies used to justify bias, including Critical Race Theory (CRT), intersectionality, disparate impact theory, and ultimately DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion).

They oppose Trump’s effort to dismantle their race-addled policies with every lever available to them. Ivy League universities have to be bludgeoned into enforcing equal rights. Blue city mayors continue their fight to sideline white males. Hollywood artists and programmers refuse to work for studios and tech companies that recognize political and legal realties. Liberal Supreme Court justices bemoan the majority’s refusal to rule based on the intersectional hierarchy of so-called “marginalized” minorities, and Obama- and Biden-appointed federal judges enjoin proper exercises of executive power.

CRT originated in the 1970s as a tortured rationale advocating that colorblind laws inevitably serve the interests of white people.

Intersectionality has become a cornerstone of CRT. Developed principally by Columbia Law Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw, it utilizes a hierarchy of social oppression to allocate benefits and burdens, providing the doctrinal basis for DEI policies, transgender activism, and antisemitism. The latter shows the bankruptcy of the dogma: Despite hundreds of years of oppression, pogroms and the Holocaust, as a result of educational and business achievements, Jews are seen as powerful oppressors, while Palestinians and other Muslims are seen as marginalized minorities.

Disparate impact is a central tenet of progressive litigation strategy. Its premise that marginalized communities must receive their proportionate share of opportunities is the progenitor of the “equity” prong of DEI. Liability is established if there is a shortfall, regardless of whether that shortfall is caused by discrimination.

DEI is the fusion of these philosophies, a malevolent form of affirmative action that allocates benefits based on race, sex, and gender identity. To ensure pre-determined outcomes, progressive decisionmakers and courts have tampered with and eliminated entry exams, waived criminal background checks, and watered down academic, disciplinary, admissions, graduation, employment, and promotion standards.

In 2024, the Biden administration took a bow for more than 650 actions that required federal, state, and local government agencies and contractors to award and allocate burdens, opportunities, and benefits based on race, sex, and gender identification.

Progressives defended these manifestly unconstitutional and unlawful actions by claiming that while the words of the 14th Amendment, federal civil rights statutes, and President Johnson’s executive order on equal employment opportunity prohibit the use of race in government actions, their true meaning was the opposite – that race and other innate characteristics must be used to achieve outcomes based on these characteristics.

The Biden administration also targeted people of faith, with abuses ranging from FBI infiltration of Catholic churches to weaponizing the FACE Act against pro-life Americans. And it adopted rules requiring that universities treat biological males who identify as women as actual women, and ended due process for any grievances filed for allegedly violating their rights, or in sexual harassment cases. Respondents were denied notice, the right to examine the complainant, or a right of appeal. The university investigator was permitted to serve as the hearing officer.

Progressives justified the administration’s attack on religion, female athletes, and due process as necessary to protect the rights of marginalized minorities.

Underscoring the left’s situational ethics, as the Biden administration embarked on a whole-of-government censorship enterprise to silence its critics, the ACLU abandoned its 100-year commitment to free speech, declaring that speech that denigrates marginalized groups can “inflict serious harms and is intended to and often will impede progress toward equality.”

Upon taking office for his second term, President Trump revoked Biden’s executive orders impacting race, sex, and gender. He issued orders prohibiting DEI, other race-based programs, and disparate impact in federal government hiring, promotion, and contracting; terminated federal employees hired for the Biden administration’s massive DEI apparatus; and ordered “appropriate action” to pressure K-12 schools into abandoning race-based disciplinary policies. He rescinded an executive order that required federal contractors to utilize affirmative action in their hiring practices.

Rejecting intersectionality, Trump issued orders tying federal funding to elimination of extreme gender ideology, proclaiming, “It is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female. These sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality,” and protecting children from chemical and surgical mutilation – positions belatedly adopted by leading medical organizations. He also ordered the Department of Education to take all appropriate action to keep biological men out of women’s sports.

Trump directed federal agencies to improve security vetting for international students and to prioritize civil rights protections for Jewish students. He eliminated collection and publication of data used in a misguided effort to claim that environmental harms targeted minorities because manufacturing facilities are concentrated in lower-income neighborhoods, and he issued an order to pressure the Smithsonian Institution to restore balance to its depiction of American history.

The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division under Harmeet Dhillon and Education Department under Linda McMahon launched enforcement actions against Ivy league universities to protect Jewish students and restore viewpoint diversity. The Justice Department also commenced investigations, filed and intervened in lawsuits, and reached settlements with public and private institutions to protect Americans of all backgrounds and faiths – just last week forcing Colorado to abandon a law that favors AI algorithms that promote “diversity.” It investigated the Biden administration’s weaponization of the FACE Act, issued an 882-page report exposing the abuses, and eliminated them. The Education Department ordered universities to bring back due process in university grievance procedures.

The left is vigorously fighting back. Universities have slyly rebranded DEI offices, legal challenges have been filed against Trump’s executive orders and related regulations, Democrat-appointed judges have issued injunctions, and Democratic Party officials have doubled down on racial and gender politics. For the most part, the administration has prevailed in lower courts or secured stays of adverse rulings pending appeals.

Some progressives support intersectionality, disparate impact, and DEI to harm straight white Americans. Many are so caught up in innate characteristics that they believe individual opportunity and fairness is determined at a group level, while other progressives delude themselves into believing they can choose winners without creating losers. The administration must hold firm against the left’s vitriolic counterattacks. As Donald Trump restores the American dream of equal opportunity, his challenge with just eight months until the probable loss of the Republican legislative majority is to create enduring change, rather than an interregnum in progressive rule.

Kenin M. Spivak is founder and chairman of SMI Group LLC, an international consulting firm and investment bank. He is the author of fiction and non-fiction books and a frequent speaker and contributor to media, including RealClearPolitics, The American Mind, National Review, television, radio, and podcasts.

A group pushing for Alberta to break free from Canada announced Monday that it has submitted nearly double the number of signatures required to force a referendum — which could come as early as October. While Alberta Premier Danielle Smith opposes independence, she has assured Albertans that she will not try to thwart a referendum if the signature hurdle were cleared.  

A signature in support of an independence referendum is collected atop a mountain in Alberta (via Stay Free Alberta)

Triggering a referendum requires 178,000 signatures, but the separatist organization Stay Free Alberta says it amassed more than 301,000. As in the United States, referendum organizers usually aim to far overshoot the required number so as to survive challenges on the validity of individual signatures.

On Monday, the group’s leader, Mitch Sylvestre descended on Alberta’s election offices in Edmonton with the petitions, aboard a convoy seven trucks strong. Celebrating the accomplishment, he likened it to Canada’s favorite sport. “This day is historic in Alberta history,” he said. “It’s the first step to the next step — we’ve gotten by Round 3 and now we’re in the Stanley Cup final.”

Despite Sylvestre’s triumphalism, the independence drive could hit a snag this week, as a judge may rule on a challenge of the referendum filed by a First Nations group. That term is used to describe indigenous people who are not Inuit or Métis. Their legal challenge centers on the claim that Albertan independence would deny them privileges afforded them by treaties. The verification of referendum-support signatures has been stayed pending the decision. However, Stay Free Alberta attorney Jeff Rath said these are mere speed bumps. “As far as we’re concerned, whatever the court does or whatever Elections Alberta does at this point is meaningless,” he told CBC, given the premier can’t ignore more than 300,000 signatures.  

Alberta has been on the wrong end of a Canadian policy called “Equalization” — a more palatable term than what it should be called: “Wealth Redistribution.” According to the Canadian government’s official description, Equalization “address[es] fiscal disparities among provinces.” It does so by distributing the fiscal fruits of federal taxation to provinces in such a way that poorer provinces get more money than more-prosperous ones. Alberta is easily Canada’s best-off province on a per-capita basis. 

Alberta (AB) is easily Canada’s wealthiest province, and sees its wealth redistributed throughout the country under the “Equalization” scheme (via Canadian government)

A victory for the “yes” side of the referendum won’t guarantee independence, as more legal challenges will certainly sprout up, to say nothing of the thorny negotiations with the Canadian government that would be required — negotiations that could be slow-walked by Albertan leaders who aren’t enthused about breaking away.  

For those and other reasons, some who support independence are wary of how the referendum will play out. For example, even if the pro-independence side prevails, the waters could be muddied by the results of concurrent referendum questions. Writing at the Brownstone Institute earlier this year, Bruce Pardy painted a picture: 

If voters support independence but also other constitutional changes, what do they mean? Which should be pursued first? Which is the last resort? What if voters support independence but also support Alberta having the right to opt out of federal programs while retaining federal funding? Both of those things cannot happen. One requires that Alberta be a province, and the other requires that it not be. Any referendum result that requires interpretation is not clear.

A pro-unity group called Forever Canadian has been active too, racking up more than 400,000 signatures on a petition that asked, “Do you agree that Alberta should remain within Canada?” Meanwhile, polls show an uphill climb for the separatists, with huge differences between United Conservative Party and New Democratic Party voters: 

A group pushing for Alberta to break free from Canada announced Monday that it has submitted nearly double the number of signatures required to force a referendum — which could come as early as October. While Alberta Premier Danielle Smith opposes independence, she has assured Albertans that she will not try to thwart a referendum if the signature hurdle were cleared.  

A signature in support of an independence referendum is collected atop a mountain in Alberta (via Stay Free Alberta)

Triggering a referendum requires 178,000 signatures, but the separatist organization Stay Free Alberta says it amassed more than 301,000. As in the United States, referendum organizers usually aim to far overshoot the required number so as to survive challenges on the validity of individual signatures.

On Monday, the group’s leader, Mitch Sylvestre descended on Alberta’s election offices in Edmonton with the petitions, aboard a convoy seven trucks strong. Celebrating the accomplishment, he likened it to Canada’s favorite sport. “This day is historic in Alberta history,” he said. “It’s the first step to the next step — we’ve gotten by Round 3 and now we’re in the Stanley Cup final.”

Despite Sylvestre’s triumphalism, the independence drive could hit a snag this week, as a judge may rule on a challenge of the referendum filed by a First Nations group. That term is used to describe indigenous people who are not Inuit or Métis. Their legal challenge centers on the claim that Albertan independence would deny them privileges afforded them by treaties. The verification of referendum-support signatures has been stayed pending the decision. However, Stay Free Alberta attorney Jeff Rath said these are mere speed bumps. “As far as we’re concerned, whatever the court does or whatever Elections Alberta does at this point is meaningless,” he told CBC, given the premier can’t ignore more than 300,000 signatures.  

Alberta has been on the wrong end of a Canadian policy called “Equalization” — a more palatable term than what it should be called: “Wealth Redistribution.” According to the Canadian government’s official description, Equalization “address[es] fiscal disparities among provinces.” It does so by distributing the fiscal fruits of federal taxation to provinces in such a way that poorer provinces get more money than more-prosperous ones. Alberta is easily Canada’s best-off province on a per-capita basis. 

Alberta (AB) is easily Canada’s wealthiest province, and sees its wealth redistributed throughout the country under the “Equalization” scheme (via Canadian government)

A victory for the “yes” side of the referendum won’t guarantee independence, as more legal challenges will certainly sprout up, to say nothing of the thorny negotiations with the Canadian government that would be required — negotiations that could be slow-walked by Albertan leaders who aren’t enthused about breaking away.  

For those and other reasons, some who support independence are wary of how the referendum will play out. For example, even if the pro-independence side prevails, the waters could be muddied by the results of concurrent referendum questions. Writing at the Brownstone Institute earlier this year, Bruce Pardy painted a picture: 

If voters support independence but also other constitutional changes, what do they mean? Which should be pursued first? Which is the last resort? What if voters support independence but also support Alberta having the right to opt out of federal programs while retaining federal funding? Both of those things cannot happen. One requires that Alberta be a province, and the other requires that it not be. Any referendum result that requires interpretation is not clear.

A pro-unity group called Forever Canadian has been active too, racking up more than 400,000 signatures on a petition that asked, “Do you agree that Alberta should remain within Canada?” Meanwhile, polls show an uphill climb for the separatists, with huge differences between United Conservative Party and New Democratic Party voters: 

Just wow…

AMD shares initially puked after results dropped showing top- and bottom-line beats:

EPS: $1.37 vs. $1.29 adjusted expected

Revenue: $10.25 billion vs. $9.89 billion expected

But now they are exploding higher after the second-largest AI chipmaker raised estimates:

For the second quarter, AMD said it expects about $11.2 billion in revenue, versus expectations of $10.52 billion, according to LSEG

That is a new record high…

Revenue jumped 38% from $7.44 billion a year ago, the company said in a release on Tuesday, beating in every segment…

Data center revenue $5.78 billion, +57% y/y, estimate $5.61 billion

Gaming revenue $720 million, +11% y/y, estimate $668.6 million

Client revenue $2.89 billion, +26% y/y, estimate $2.73 billion

Embedded revenue $873 million, +6.1% y/y, estimate $868.4 million

“Looking ahead, we expect server growth to accelerate meaningfully as we scale supply to meet demand,” Chief Executive Officer Lisa Su said in the statement.

“We delivered an outstanding first quarter, driven by accelerating demand for AI infrastructure, with data center now the primary driver of our revenue and earnings growth.”

Oh and in case you didn’t see enough beats…

Capital expenditure $389 million, +83% y/y, estimate $215.2 million

Adjusted operating income $2.54 billion, +43% y/y, estimate $2.41 billion

Adjusted operating margin 25% vs. 24% y/y, estimate 24.3%

Free cash flow $2.57 billion vs. $727 million y/y, estimate $2.35 billion

R&D expenses $2.40 billion, +39% y/y, estimate $2.26 billion

Tonight’s gains come AFTER AMD’s stock has more than tripled over the past year, including a 66% jump so far in 2026.

Just wow…

AMD shares initially puked after results dropped showing top- and bottom-line beats:

EPS: $1.37 vs. $1.29 adjusted expected

Revenue: $10.25 billion vs. $9.89 billion expected

But now they are exploding higher after the second-largest AI chipmaker raised estimates:

For the second quarter, AMD said it expects about $11.2 billion in revenue, versus expectations of $10.52 billion, according to LSEG

That is a new record high…

Revenue jumped 38% from $7.44 billion a year ago, the company said in a release on Tuesday, beating in every segment…

Data center revenue $5.78 billion, +57% y/y, estimate $5.61 billion

Gaming revenue $720 million, +11% y/y, estimate $668.6 million

Client revenue $2.89 billion, +26% y/y, estimate $2.73 billion

Embedded revenue $873 million, +6.1% y/y, estimate $868.4 million

“Looking ahead, we expect server growth to accelerate meaningfully as we scale supply to meet demand,” Chief Executive Officer Lisa Su said in the statement.

“We delivered an outstanding first quarter, driven by accelerating demand for AI infrastructure, with data center now the primary driver of our revenue and earnings growth.”

Oh and in case you didn’t see enough beats…

Capital expenditure $389 million, +83% y/y, estimate $215.2 million

Adjusted operating income $2.54 billion, +43% y/y, estimate $2.41 billion

Adjusted operating margin 25% vs. 24% y/y, estimate 24.3%

Free cash flow $2.57 billion vs. $727 million y/y, estimate $2.35 billion

R&D expenses $2.40 billion, +39% y/y, estimate $2.26 billion

Tonight’s gains come AFTER AMD’s stock has more than tripled over the past year, including a 66% jump so far in 2026.

Authored by Paul D. Thacker via The DisInformation Chronicle,

Since the COVID pandemic landed on American shores in early 2020, virologists and allied science writers have engaged in a vociferous propaganda campaign to deny the dangers of virus experiments. When Nature Magazine published a 2021 article minimizing a Wuhan lab accident as the pandemic’s cause, science writer Amy Maxmen quoted Vincent Munster, a virologist at the Rocky Mountain Laboratories, a division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), in Montana.

Munster told Nature’s Maxmen that there was nothing suspicious about a novel coronavirus popping up in the same city as the Wuhan Institute of Virology which was studying coronaviruses. Labs tend to specialize in the specific viruses found around them, Munster explained, and the Wuhan Institute of Virology focuses on coronaviruses because many circulate in China and neighboring countries.

“Nine out of ten times, when there’s a new outbreak, you’ll find a lab that will be working on these kinds of viruses nearby,” Munster told Nature.

Well, kind of. Sort of. But really not.

In fact, virologists regularly collect viruses from far away countries and bring them back to their own cities to study. And according to emails I have seen that are now circulating inside the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), one of those virologists is the NIH’s Vincent Munster.

“We are unable to comment as this is under investigation,” wrote HHS spokesperson, Andrew Nixon in an email. “So we will refer you to the FBI.”

When contacted about their investigation into Munster and his NIH researcher, the FBI press office replied by email, “We decline to comment.”

While on a trip back from the Democratic Republic of Congo earlier this year, Munster and a scientist in his NIH lab were pulled aside for an airport security inspection. Inside their luggage, one of the two had a hard-shelled protective case used to transport sensitive property such as electronics and firearms. When the protective case was opened, it was found to contain pathogen samples collected from patients.

However, the human pathogens, which included monkeypox virus, may have been inactivated by reagents and rendered no longer infectious.

Munster and his NIH research fellow Claude Kwe Yinda published a February study in a Lancet journal that cited monkeypox as a global threat. Without any hint of irony, they warned about “multiple travel-associated cases reported since 2024, including seven in the USA.” The Democratic Republic of Congo has been considered the global epicenter of monkeypox virus, with over 100,000 cases as of October last year.

HHS regulates monkeypox as a “select agent”—microorganisms and toxins that pose a severe threat to public safety. Federal programs control their possession and use, while Department of Transportation regulations manage their shipment and transport.

Munster and his lab scientist did not have paperwork required by law to transport deadly pathogens from Africa to his NIH lab in Montana. Both NIH scientists were placed on leave. Contact information for both Vincent Munster and Claude Kwe Yinda have been removed from the HHS employment directory.

Last year, the Department of Justice charged two Chinese nationals with criminal conspiracy for smuggling a dangerous plant fungus through a Detroit airport so they could study it in a lab at the University of Michigan.

Munster did not return repeated requests for comment sent to his NIH email asking him to explain if the monkeypox and potentially other viruses he was transporting had been inactivated or were still infectious. According to his bio at NIH’s Rocky Mountain Labs in Montana, Munster has field study sites in the Republic of the Congo to study Ebola virus with collaborators at the Wildlife Conservation Society and the Laboratoire National de Santé Publique in Brazzaville.

Rocky Mountain Labs is an integral part of the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), the institute once led by Tony Fauci. The Montana facility has a BSL-4 lab where virologists study the world’s most deadly viruses including Ebola, Marburg, and Lassa Fever.

Andrea Marzi, the Acting Chief of Virology at Rocky Mountain Labs, did not return emails asking if the monkeypox and other possible viruses Munster was transporting had been inactivated or were still infectious. Nor did she reply to requests asking if Munster’s lab had been secured.

Senator Rand Paul sent the NIAID director a letter two years ago regarding Munster, who was listed as a partner for a project called DEFUSE that was submitted in 2018 to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). As part of DEFUSE proposal to DARPA, virologists planned to engineer novel viruses by taking the backbone of a bat virus and inserting a spike protein with a furin cleavage site. A furin cleavage site allows viruses to infect the cells of human lungs.

DARPA denied funding for DEFUSE, but the following year, a novel bat virus with a furin cleavage site began infecting humans in Wuhan. No other virus closely related to the COVID virus has this furin cleavage site.

Shortly after the COVID virus began infecting Americans, Columbia University virologist Vincent Racaniello sent Munster an alarming February 2020 email, saying he had heard that the new COVID virus had a furin cleavage site “that might have been engineered.”

“If true this is very bad for all of virology research,” Racaniell wrote to Munster.

“And the fun begins,” replied Munster.

The news about Munster hits during an especially hard media cycle for virologists. I reported last week for RealClearInvestigations that the federal government had quietly removed University of North Carolina virologist Ralph Baric from all his NIH grants; UNC also placed Baric on leave. A senior HHS official, who reviewed the government’s classified material, told me that UNC is terrified the public will learn that they were complicit in starting the COVID pandemic.

“Baric designed the gun,” he said. “But the Chinese built it, and then they pulled the trigger.”

That same day, the Department of Justice indicted Tony Fauci’s senior advisor, David Morens, for concealing federal records concerning funding for virus research during the COVID pandemic. The indictment listed Peter Daszak of EcoHealth Alliance as “CO-CONSPIRATOR 1” and Boston University virologist Gerald Keusch as “CO-CONSPIRATOR 2.”

Last month, I reported on newly unearthed emails that show Morens, Daszak, and Keusch plotted against me for writing a 2021 investigation for the BMJ that concluded virologists had conspired in a misinformation campaign to cover up a possible Wuhan lab accident as the COVID pandemic’s cause.

In emails discussing me and my 2021 article, Keusch asked Morens and Daszak if they knew how to get in contact with former BMJ editor Peter Smith to complain. Daszak emailed back that contacting the BMJ about me was “a really good move” as my reporting was “pretty offensive stuff.”

Authored by Julie Kelly via RealClearInvestigations,

One of the beneficiaries of Virginia’s aggressive attempt to gerrymander the state for Democratic advantage could be a former federal prosecutor whose campaign for Congress hinges on his efforts to use the law to target President Trump and his supporters.

When a slim majority of Virginia voters gave the legislature authority last month to create congressional districts that could give Democrats a 10-1 advantage, J.P. Cooney cheered the outcome in a message on social media, boasting that the new district he was running in had been drawn “expressly for the purpose of standing up to Donald Trump’s and MAGA’s corruption.”

Although the fate of Virginia’s 7th Congressional District remains unclear – a state judge immediately blocked the measure, and the issue is expected to end up before the Supreme Court – Cooney’s candidacy represents a small but growing wave of former prosecutors who are running on their anti-Trump bona fides. So far, at least two other former Justice Department officials are seeking office by touting their work against the president, his supporters, and his current administration. All are running as Democrats.

J.P. Cooney is hoping to ride the anti-Trump credentials he accrued as a federal prosecutor to Congress. LinkedIn

To their supporters, these candidates represent a principled stand against what they see as the lawless excesses of the Trump administration. To many Republicans, the entry of supposedly neutral federal prosecutors into the brass knuckle world of politics confirms their suspicions that the DOJ is filled with partisans who used their power to target the president and the MAGA movement in general. 

Ryan Crosswell, who is running for Congress as a Democrat in Pennsylvania’s 7th Congressional District, resigned from his position as an assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York last year, after the Justice Department sought to drop the indictment against then New York City Mayor Eric Adams on corruption charges. Crosswell’s superiors decided the case should be dropped over evidence suggesting the Biden DOJ had targeted the mayor because he was a vocal critic of the administration’s immigration policies.

In what has become a popular tactic by anti-Trump DOJ lawyers, Crosswell issued a public resignation letter: “I cannot fathom how anyone would do this to the public servants he is supposed to be leading. And the damage done was not limited to two offices – it appalled prosecutors throughout the Department and our alumni.”

In his video announcement, Crosswell showed a clip of Trump walking into a courthouse (followed by now acting Attorney General Todd Blanche) and denounced the president for forcing prosecutors to “drop a case against one of his friends.” (It is unclear whether Adams is actually a “friend” of Trump’s.)

In Minneapolis, former Assistant U.S. Attorney Julie Le is using her opposition to Trump’s immigration policies in her bid to replace another fierce Trump critic, Rep. Ilhan Omar, in the Democratic primary. Le gained national attention in February when she had a meltdown before the judge. “What do you want me to do? The system sucks. This job sucks. And I am trying every breath that I have so that I can get you what you need,” Le said, referring to the DOJ’s overwhelming caseload. Le also told the judge, “We have no guidance or direction on what we need to do.”

Impeccable Anti-Trump Credentials

Le was quickly fired. She told the Washington Post that “she had never voted for Trump and opposed his brash enforcement style.” While Croswell and Le are hoping their anti-Trump credentials will help usher them into office, their record of resistance pales in comparison to Cooney’s, whose record of anti-Trump activity goes back a decade. 

Cooney – a Notre Dame grad where he served as the president of the College Democrats club before earning a law degree at the University of Virginia – launched his campaign in a crowded field by boasting about his key role in several anti-Trump prosecutions pursued by Attorney General Merrick Garland and Special Counsel Jack Smith between 2021 and 2025. After Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Smith as special counsel in November 2022, Cooney became his top deputy in the DOJ’s Jan. 6, 2021-related indictment against the president in Washington. They pushed for a quick trial before Election Day. Cooney also successfully sought a gag order against the president one year before the 2024 presidential election, banning the president from making any public statements about potential witnesses in the case, which included former administration officials such as Vice President Mike Pence and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, who were at the time criticizing Trump’s plan to again run for office.

Special Counsel Jack Smith, who sought ot prosecute Trump on multiple fronts, has endorsed Cooney. AP

Cooney, then chief of the fraud and public corruption section of the U.S. Attorney’s office in Washington, drafted the initial plan for how the DOJ could pursue Trump, as well as several figures and organizations who had participated in the events of Jan. 6. But Cooney’s plan was so aggressive, according to a 2023 Washington Post article, that it alarmed top FBI and DOJ officials and was immediately scuttled.

Trump fired Cooney shortly after Inauguration Day.

The J6 case against the president was dropped after Trump won the 2024 election, but Cooney wants to finish the job. “We have the evidence to convict this president,” Cooney said, pointing to the White House, in one social media post. “That justice can still come.” Cooney also insists that if Trump hadn’t “escaped trials by winning the election,” the president right now “would be in prison.”

“Cooney was the mastermind of the J6 case against the president,” John Lauro, the president’s trial counsel in the J6 case in Washington, told RealClearInvestigations. “Smith and Cooney used the sacred powers of the DOJ against Trump and political movement. Now we see the ultimate fruition of that with Cooney running for office as a far left Democrat and to use his experience as a persecutor against Trump to get an advantage in the far left wing of the Democratic party.” 

Jack Smith Endorsement

Jack Smith is endorsing his longtime colleague – the pair worked together at the Obama DOJ’s public integrity unit – calling Cooney “a man of integrity who has committed his career to upholding the rule of law, and he’s the model of who our country needs in public service.”

The president and congressional Republicans disagree. Cooney is currently the subject of both House and Senate investigations for allegedly abusing his authority at the DOJ to pursue Trump and his allies. During an April 21 hearing, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley accused Cooney and other former Biden DOJ officials of “literally trying to destroy” the country; Grassley, an Iowa Republican, released an extensive trove of text messages and emails between Cooney and Molly Gaston, his co-counsel in the J6 case against Trump.

Sen. Chuck Grassley has accused Cooney and other former Biden DOJ officials of “literally trying to destroy” the country. AP

Immediately following the events of Jan. 6, Cooney worked with Gaston to also investigate a handful of Republican House members for allegedly conducting “reconnaissance tours” on Jan. 5. That accusation was made by then Democratic Congresswoman Mikie Sherill, now the governor of New Jersey. Sherill claimed groups of individuals, some perhaps tied to Republican lawmakers, were walking inside the Capitol the day before the protest in an effort to scope out the building.

In a Jan. 16, 2021, text to Gaston, Cooney said he believed the “tour/map thing has legs.” He stated that Sherill’s allegations “made perfect sense” to him. “I am fairly confident that we are going to put a map or some other information relevant to coordinated activity in the hands of an extremist group and trace it back to a congressional office.”

Gaston replied, “yep.” A week later, the FBI Washington field office opened “Operation Rampart Twelve” to investigate Sherill’s accusations; the inquiry initially focused on Reps. Lauren Boebert and Paul Gosar based on groups of individuals walking near each representative on Jan. 5, 2021. (Sherril also made a similar allegation against Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.), who was cleared by Capitol Police after a separate investigation.)

FBI headquarters closed “Operation Rampart Twelve” a year later, after finding no evidence to support Cooney’s claims.

Cooney’s anti-Trump fingerprints stretch from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation to “Arctic Frost,” the Biden DOJ’s investigation into Trump and hundreds of Republican organizations, donors, and officeholders for the so-called “fake electors” plan. Emails released last year by Grassley’s committee showed Cooney’s central role in obtaining the toll records of several Republican members of Congress related to the probe.

Cooney’s team prosecuted Roger Stone for lies and obstruction in connection with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russiagate probe. AP

“It’s impossible to buy Democrats’ claim that Arctic Frost was a nonpartisan, by-the-book investigation when Jack Smith’s top henchman is now openly campaigning as a Democrat and running on a platform of impeaching President Trump,” a spokesperson for the Senate Judiciary Committee told RCI. “Cooney’s campaign is saying the quiet part out loud. Arctic Frost was never about justice – it was always about using the federal justice system to take down President Trump and the Republican Party. Thanks to Chairman Grassley’s oversight, which has exposed the Biden administration’s internal records, Americans are seeing the dark reality of the weaponized Arctic Frost investigation.”

But three ongoing federal criminal investigations into the president, a year before the 2024 election, were not enough for Cooney. A few months before Smith handed down his first indictment against the president in Florida for allegedly taking classified documents with him to Mar-a-Lago after leaving the White House, Cooney wanted to open yet another line of inquiry into Trump’s involvement in a song produced by the so-called “J6 Prison Choir,” a group of inmates detained at a special prison in Washington. Cooney wanted to know whether Trump was profiting from sales of the song. “Can we do some work on this to nail down Trump’s role in this?” Cooney wrote to his colleagues at the special counsel’s office in March 2023, referring to a Forbes article about the project.

“The special counsel’s team was filled with inbred ideologues,” Lauro said 

Excessive Sentences, False Rumors

After longtime Trump confidant Steve Bannon was found guilty by a D.C. jury in 2022 on two counts of contempt of Congress, Cooney sought excessive prison time for Bannon’s refusal to cooperate with the Select January 6 Committee. He filed a 24-page sentencing memo for two misdemeanors that are rarely, if ever, prosecuted in the nation’s capital; he asked Judge Carl Nichols to send Bannon to prison for six months and pay a $200,000 fine. “The rioters who overran the Capitol on January 6 did not just attack a building – they assaulted the rule of law upon which this country was built and through which it endures. By flouting the Select Committee’s subpoena and its authority, [Bannon] exacerbated that assault,” Cooney wrote.

Nichols sentenced Bannon to four months in prison and imposed a $6,500 fine.

It was another sentencing request in a separate Trump-related case that offended both the DOJ’s inspector general and House Republicans. Cooney was part of the government’s team prosecuting Roger Stone, a longtime Trump associate, for allegedly interfering in the bogus Russia collusion investigation. Just like Bannon, Stone was found guilty by a D.C. jury of all charges, including obstruction and making false statements.

Cooney attempted to throw the book at Stone, asking for a sentence of between seven and nine years in prison. But the following day, Cooney’s boss at the office, who had already sparred with Cooney over what he saw as an excessive sentencing request, filed a separate sentencing recommendation, informing Judge Amy Berman Jackson that the initial memo “does not accurately reflect the Department of Justice’s position on what would be a reasonable sentence in this matter.” 

That prompted Cooney, according to then-DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz, to start rumors claiming President Trump and Attorney General Bill Barr had intervened to help Stone obtain a lower sentence. A report issued in 2024 by Horowitz, following an extensive investigation into the Stone sentencing controversy, “did not identify documentary or testimonial evidence that the actions and decisions of those involved in the preparation and filing of the first and second sentencing memoranda were affected by improper political considerations or influence.” House Judiciary Chairman James Jordan subsequently opened a congressional investigation into Cooney’s false claims of political interference in the matter.

While serving as the DOJ’s Inspector General, Michael Horowitz found that Cooney had spread false rumors about Trump and former Attorney General Bill Barr. AP

Attempts to reach Cooney’s and Crosswell’s campaigns were unsuccessful. Despite repeated requests, a DOJ spokeswoman declined to comment on their candidacies.

Cooney’s years-long pursuit of the president and everyone around him, Lauro insists, helped Trump get elected in 2024. “Because of [Cooney’s] efforts, President Trump won the presidency. So he was terrific for the president and the MAGA movement in that regard.”

Still, Cooney’s anti-Trump legacy may not be finished yet. If Cooney wins his Virginia race and Democrats retake the House in the fall midterm elections, the former prosecutor could play a central role amid reports that his party is already planning to impeach Trump.

Brookfield announced that it has formed a partnership with The Nuclear Company (TNC), to create a new company for developing Westinghouse reactor technology.

This new company, which remains unnamed, is being positioned as a world-leading nuclear project execution company. 

A few weeks ago, we covered how Bloomberg anticipated an announcement for new AP1000s. But it appears TNC is focusing the JV’s efforts, in the near term, on the possible restart and completion of the two AP1000 reactors at VC Summer in South Carolina. 

Westinghouse originally attempted to construct the two large reactors in 2017, but eventually canceled the project after costs spiraled out of control. Brookfield is now performing the studies necessary to make a Final Investment Decision by 2027, which would mean purchasing the partially-completed assets from Santee Cooper for $2.7 billion. 

The new company will also offer execution capabilities for deploying Westinghouse’s smaller AP300 design with “end-to-end project management, licensing support, and oversight of engineering, procurement, construction and commissioning activity.”

TNC’s Chief Nuclear Officer, Joe Klecha, frames the announcement as finally addressing what the nuclear industry has been lacking in order to truly unleash the nuclear renaissance build out phase, “We know what it takes to deliver nuclear. What’s been missing is a model that brings together the people, the capabilities, and the capital to do it at speed and scale. That’s what this partnership creates.”

The timelines are still relatively disappointing. Every month China seems to be adding another reactor to their “under construction” stack, with India gaining speed as well. As the months go on, it becomes harder and harder to take the nuclear renaissance seriously in the United States, given the lack of nuclear energy being added to the grid.

It’s also bewildering that Brookfield and Cameco are still leaving money on the table with the previously announced $80 billion worth of support from the US government.

These massive amounts of money remain untouched since they were announced in October of last year.  

The progress being made under programs like the DOE Reactor Pilot Program are promising. But the program’s wins, with being close to taking kilowatt-scale reactors critical for the first time in decades, struggle to stand out when China is adding over 1,000 megawatts of energy to their grid every month or two.