Authored by Jonathan Newman via The Mises Institute,

Tax Freedom Day, calculated by the Tax Foundation, “represents how long Americans as a whole have to work in order to pay the nation’s tax burden.”

It appears that they stopped publishing this in 2019, but others have picked up where they left off.

The idea is that the income earned by taxpayers over a certain proportion of the year goes to Uncle Sam.

In 2025, that date was April 16th.

But the burden of government is much larger than the amount we pay in taxes.

The government spends much more than it collects in taxes, diverting valuable resources away from where they would be used in the private market economy, subject to the profit and loss test of the market.

The difference is made up by new government debt.

Much of that debt is purchased by the Federal Reserve with new money, resulting in price inflation, exacerbated income inequality, booms and busts, and financial fragility.

The cost of government is much more than what we pay in taxes.

Rothbard suggested a measure of “total government depredation on the economy” that involves starting with net national product (like GDP but takes capital depreciation into account) and deducting all government spending at all levels, including transfer payments, government officials’ salaries, and the salaries of those employed by government enterprises.

Rothbard considered all government activity as a depredation.

In 2025, this total fiscal burden was $11 trillion.

Net national product was $25.7 trillion, which gives us a ratio of 42.7%.

When we turn that ratio into a date on the calendar, we get June 5.

In short, while Tax Freedom Day is mid-April, Rothbard’s measure of the government’s fiscal burden reveals that Americans don’t truly start working for themselves until June 5, over seven weeks later.

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

Multiple water providers have lowered the amount of fluoride they add to water for millions of Americans, amid shortages stemming from the U.S.–Iran war.

The Baltimore City Department of Public Works said on April 13 that it is reducing the level of fluoride from 0.7 milligrams per liter (mg/L) to 0.4 mg/L.

The move, officials said, was driven by disruptions to the supply chain caused by the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. A key Israeli supplier, specifically, has been struggling to meet demand.

“This is an adjustment driven solely by supply availability,” Matthew Garbark, director of the Baltimore City Department of Public Works, said in a statement.

“We remain committed to providing safe, high-quality drinking water.”

Some 1.8 million people in and around Baltimore, the most populous city in Maryland, are served water by the city of Baltimore utility.

Fluoride, a mineral, is put in water as a preventative for tooth decay and cavities. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends adding 0.7 mg/L.

WSSC Water, which serves 1.9 million people in Montgomery and Prince George’s counties in Maryland, said earlier in April it would be adding only 0.4 mg/L because of “nationwide supply chain disruptions.”

Hydrofluorosilicic acid, an important compound for water fluoridation, has been hard to source amid the war, including from a supplier in Israel, the utility said. Israel is one of the world’s top exporters of fluorosilicic acid, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the United States is among the world’s top five importers of the product.

“This is a temporary adjustment driven solely by supply availability,” Ben Thompson, WSSC Water’s director of production, said in a statement.

“We remain committed to maintaining safe, high-quality drinking water and will restore optimal fluoride levels as soon as supply conditions stabilize.”

In Pennsylvania, the borough of Lititz told its water customers in March that it had to halt fluoridation for a couple of weeks because of supply issues.

As the conflict continues, “there will likely be additional stressors placed on the supply chain, leading to shortages in additional communities,” said Dan Hartnett, chief policy officer for the Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies.

A few months’ drop in fluoride levels is probably not a cause for concern for most people, said Dr. Scott Tomar, an American Dental Association community water fluoridation expert. Lower levels can have an impact over the span of years, he said.

Tomar said younger children would be the first to experience tooth decay, because the fluoride strengthens enamel as their teeth are developing and once they have grown in.

Some states and municipalities have in recent months completely stopped water fluoridation, as officials have pointed to emerging data such as a 2024 report from the National Institutes of Health that concluded with moderate confidence that higher levels of fluoride exposure were linked to decreases in children’s IQ scores.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has said that fluoride from toothpaste is sufficient to keep teeth strong.

The Environmental Protection Agency said in January that it would assess the safety of adding fluoride to water.

Iran quietly secured a Chinese spy satellite in late 2024 and used it to track US military bases across the Middle East during the current war, the Financial Times has newly – an allegation Beijing has flatly and angrily denied.

The TEE-01B satellite, built and launched by Chinese firm Earth Eye Co, was allegedly taken over by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) Aerospace Force after launch from China, according to the report, which cites leaked Iranian military documents. Of course, the usual caveats must apply when it comes to major Western MSM reporting on an emerging ‘axis of evil’ doing all things anti-America: Russia, China, Iran (and certainly South Korea could soon be thrown in the mix given its pro-Moscow role in the Ukraine war). 

“Recently, some forces have been keen on fabricating rumors and maliciously associating them to China,” according to the official statement from the Chinese Foreign Ministry. In the meantime, Earth Eye Co has not commented.

Further, the Chinese embassy in Washington told the Financial Times: “We firmly oppose relevant parties spreading speculative and insinuative disinformation against China.” But we should note that this wasn’t exactly a full-on denial of the charge, and the embassy would likely not have a full picture of what the highest echelons of Chinese intelligence is up to at any given moment in Beijing.

Per the FT report, Iranian commanders tasked the satellite with monitoring key US military sites, using time-stamped coordinate lists, satellite imagery, and orbital analysis. The Financial Times said the images were captured in March, before and after drone and missile strikes on those locations. 

As part of the arrangement, the IRGC gained access to commercial ground stations run by Emposat, a Beijing-based satellite control and data provider with a network spanning Asia, Latin America, and beyond.

One surprising development within the first month of Trump’s Operation Epic Fury was that Iran’s ballistic missiles were able to reach very precise locations all the way over in Jordan, where US bases were pummeled, amid an alarming trend where billions of dollars in regional American air defenses were quickly taken out. Of course, sensitive Israeli military and energy sites were also hit, especially in Haifa and Tel Aviv. Reuters has also picked up on the FT report Wednesday, writing:

According to the report, the satellite also monitored Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan and locations close to the US Fifth Fleet naval base in Manama, Bahrain, and Erbil airport, Iraq, around the time of IRGC-claimed attacks on facilities in those areas.

US outposts in northern Iraqi Kurdistan have also been repeatedly hit by Iranian drones, or at times drones and projectiles possibly sent by local Tehran-aligned paramilitary forces.

As for more specifics cited in the original FT report, the satellite was described has having captured images of Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia on March 13, 14, and 15.

There’s some credibility to this, given that on March 14, Trump confirmed that very expensive US surveillance aircraft at the base had been hit. “Four of the five had ⁠virtually no damage, and ​are already back in service. One ​had slightly more damage, but will be in the air shortly,” ​Trump had written at the time ​on Truth Social.

Still, Trump is trying to ‘play nice’ with Beijing – even amid such public and damning allegations – ahead of his planned mid-May visit, saying in a Wednesday Truth Social post he asked his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping not to supply weapons to Iran, and Xi replied he was not doing so. “I had heard that China’s giving weapons to, I mean – you’re seeing it all over the place – to Iran.” This was in a newly published Fox Business interview.

FT produced the following graphic as part of its report:

“And I wrote him a letter asking him not to do that, and he wrote me a letter saying that essentially he’s not doing that.” Major media outlets previously reported that US intelligence indicated China was preparing to ship advanced weaponry to Iran. Beijing’s public rejection of the “baseless smear” – as the Foreign Minister called it – has indeed been swift and vehement.

Trump has also newly explained on Truth Social that China is “very happy that I am permanently opening the Strait of Hormuz” – this even though in many cases it is China bound tankers being blocked and turned back by the US naval armada. “This situation will never happen again,” Trump added. He is set to meet with Xi in Beijing on May 14-15. On this he wrote that “President Xi will give me a big, fat, hug when I get there in a few weeks. We are going working together smartly, and very well!” But then Trump says “But remember, we are very good at fighting, if we have to.”

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

Vice President JD Vance has publicly committed to investigating references in the Jeffrey Epstein files that he says evoked the Pizzagate conspiracy theory, citing emails mentioning “pizzas or grape sodas” in odd contexts.

His remarks come as Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche doubled down on the Department of Justice’s position that every relevant document has already been released, leaving critics to question whether the full truth about Epstein’s network will ever see daylight.

In remarks at a Turning Point USA event, Vance described reviewing the files and encountering an email that stood out.

JD Vance says he is in the process of opening an investigation into the “Pizzagate conspiracy theory” after he read strange words involving pizza and grape soda in the Epstein files.

Vance has now publicly pledged to follow up on this matter.

“I remember it sounding like the… pic.twitter.com/eu122DyAhw

— Shadow of Ezra (@ShadowofEzra) April 14, 2026

“One person sent an e-mail to Jeffrey Epstein saying oh they were some really nice like pizzas or grape sodas or something like that,” he recalled. “And I remember it sounding like the Pizzagate conspiracy theory.”

His reaction was direct: “We should absolutely investigate.”

Vance added that he plans to follow up “to see whether we’ve investigated that person because we should. We absolutely should when you see evidence of sexual assault sexual misconduct regardless of who the powerful not fact.”

The comments have reignited scrutiny over language in the Epstein files that some have long argued resembles coded references first highlighted in 2016. Those earlier claims, known as Pizzagate, originated from WikiLeaks releases of John Podesta’s emails that contained repeated, seemingly out-of-context mentions of pizza alongside other odd terms.

Recent Epstein document dumps have revived the debate, with analysts pointing to hundreds of “pizza” references that do not appear to describe food.

New Jeffery Epstein documents have emails consistently use one very familiar word

The word Pizza

The emails they write when referring to pizza don’t make any sense if they were talking about the food….

Pizzagate was 100% real. Where are the arrests pic.twitter.com/KqkmsHk4c6

— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) February 6, 2026

Mike Benz, in analysis of the newer files, noted: “In these new files, you’ll see a lot of people talking about PIZZA in a way that (seems like a code), it’s kind of impossible.”

Mike Benz:

In these new files, you’ll see a lot of people talking about PIZZA in a way that (seems like a code), it’s kind of impossible.

Drop a ? if you’ve been vindicated

Cliphttps://t.co/M6YlH9oRMY
Full Interviewhttps://t.co/03XLFBWHQm pic.twitter.com/tSXCvFBOa5

— MJTruthUltra (@MJTruthUltra) February 5, 2026

A separate development underscores the tension. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche appeared on Fox News and doubled down on declaring the Epstein files exhausted.

“We have released everything. We reviewed six million pieces of paper!” Blanche stated, adding “We are not sitting on a single piece of paper to be released.”

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche tells Americans he will cover up the child trafficking network of Jeffrey Epstein by not releasing the rest of the Epstein files.

He says people should trust him when he says there is not a single document that the government has that should… pic.twitter.com/Hi52DfzKxM

— Shadow of Ezra (@ShadowofEzra) April 14, 2026

He insisted that if anything new surfaces it would be made public, but emphasized the DOJ’s review covered millions of pages unrelated to Epstein and that Congress could access unredacted materials if lawmakers chose to examine them.

ernity.news/wp-includes/js/wp-embed.min.js

The Pizzagate theory first gained traction in late 2016 after WikiLeaks published thousands of emails from Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta. Researchers flagged phrases like “pizza” and “hot dogs” appearing in contexts that seemed unrelated to meals—patterns that echoed an FBI intelligence bulletin on pedophile code words, where “pizza” was listed as slang for girl and “hot dog” for boy. Comet Ping Pong, a Washington, D.C. pizzeria, became the focal point after its owner’s Instagram posts and the restaurant’s alleged basement (which does not exist) fueled speculation of a child-sex ring operating out of the basement.

While mainstream outlets quickly labeled the theory a hoax, the Epstein files have now surfaced hundreds of similar “pizza” mentions. Multiple reports note exchanges involving Epstein’s urologist, Dr. Harry Fisch, that pair “pizza and grape soda” with references to erectile-dysfunction medication in ways that read as cryptic to outsiders. One 2018 message reads: “lets go for pizza and grape soda again. No one else can understand. Go kno.” Another simply states “Pizza and grape soda[.] Nough said.”

Debunkers argue these are innocent food references or jokes, yet many counter that the volume and context—especially when layered atop Epstein’s documented trafficking network—demand investigation rather than dismissal.

This latest flare-up fits a pattern of incremental disclosures followed by official assurances that the matter is closed. Vance’s willingness to revisit the “Pizzagate” framing, however tentatively, marks a rare high-level acknowledgment that some of the file language warrants a second look.

The Epstein saga has repeatedly exposed fractures between what officials claim has been fully disclosed and what the public believes remains concealed. Whether Vance’s pledged follow-up produces meaningful accountability—or joins the growing list of unfulfilled promises—will test whether transparency on elite networks is still possible. For now, the strange language in the files keeps the questions alive, and the public’s demand for answers shows no sign of fading.

Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

By Michael Every of Rabobank

With US stocks up, the Nasdaq with its longest winning streak since 2021, and screen oil down for a second day in a row, markets continue to price the starkly binary physical outcomes smack in front of us on the side that’s full of stardust.

The IMF just warned of a potential world recession ahead if Hormuz stays shut. Its latest three global growth scenarios are ‘weaker’, ‘worse’ and ‘severe’ – “because markets”, and politics, the Fund chose the most benign as its base case, even as “downside risks are clearly very elevated.” That’s as Spain, for example, just released 4 of their 90 days of strategic oil reserves, with another 8 to follow. While that leaves 78, even if Hormuz reopened tomorrow, it would take at least 60 and possibly as many as 150 days before normal oil flows could be restored, according to IEA. Imagine driving home in a convoy through a blazing desert in an air-conditioned car knowing you all have 50 miles of fuel in the tank, and the next station is 30 miles away… and then hearing on the radio that it could be shut, and the following one is at least 60 miles away. That’s where much of the world economy stands now – and markets are opting to pump up the radio and aircon and say, ‘The next station will be open and I want a slushy.’

Most governments are doing the kind of pumping oil wells aren’t: 

Brussels is pitching a “state subsidy bonanza” to combat the energy shock which “goes much further than the current state aid rules.”

Canada’s PM Carney, who ran two central banks, has suspended federal taxes on gasoline and diesel.

Australian Treasurer Chalmers has introduced a 20-year retrospective capital gains tax on mining, energy and infrastructure.

Malaysia is to increase its biofuel mandate.

Provided the war ends soon, those kinds of policies could cushion the economy: but across all schools of economic thought, textbooks are clear about what demand-side boosts into structural supply-side shocks do – leave you stuffed.

So, to the war. CENTCOM says no ships passed the Iran blockade in the first 24 hours. Moreover, the US Treasury says is not renewing its temporary easing of Iran oil sanctions and has sent notices to China and Hong Kong asking for help in enforcement. The US is clearly escalating hard vs Iran despite messages pinging yesterday that a sanctioned Chinese vessel, Starry Rich, had transited Hormuz, ignoring IF an interception was to be made, it would be in the Gulf of Oman or Arabian Sea; then clarified the vessel was carrying methanol from the UAE, not fuel from Iran, so wasn’t in scope; then the ship turned round anyway. Some press today claims the Saudis, who’ve been pushing the US to finish the job vs. Iran, are now pressuring it to ease the blockade in fear of a Red Sea counter-blockade that hasn’t taken place yet: more fog?

Yes, there will be more US-Iran talks in Pakistan, possibly tomorrow, which is the lodestar market bulls are guided by. As the Telegraph notes, this seems to be the one place that Iran’s battered leadership can physically meet without being killed: but what will they say that’s different from the last rejection of US demands on uranium, nuclear weapons, missiles, proxies, and Hormuz? Vice President Vance has reiterated Trump wants a “grand bargain” with Iran, not “a small deal,” and one that sees it abandon its nuclear ambitions. Trump has added that he wasn’t happy with the proposed 20-year moratorium on uranium enrichment offered in Pakistan and wants a permanent end to the matter. Israel is also stating that the removal of Iran’s enriched uranium is a “threshold condition” for it ending its Iran campaign – though the head of Mossad chief has additionally declared, “Our mission isn’t over until regime falls.”

The question is perhaps if any grand bargain is only US-Iran, or will involve others, as top Russian and Chinese envoys meet in Beijing to discuss Iran, Ukraine, and Taiwan. Yet showing how complex this gets as our global crises conflate, Ukraine, now providing anti-drone tech to the GCC, which aids Israel, has asked Jerusalem to detain a Russian ship carrying stolen grain that just docked in Haifa, which will infuriate Moscow. The US is elsewhere suggesting Cuba is complicit in helping Russia fight Ukraine, both countries being flashpoints between DC and Moscow. Isolated, Europe is drawing up plans for keeping Hormuz open once the war is over, which, beyond any aid with minesweeping, logically won’t be needed: if the war is over, energy will flow. The EU proposal is notably modelled on its Red Sea Aspides force, which failed to reopen it to normal trade flows.

On a positive note, if assuming ‘escalate to deescalate’, Israeli and Lebanese envoys just held an historic summit in the US to discuss a peace deal. As the Israelis put it, “Lebanon wants to be liberated from (Iran-backed) Hezbollah… we discovered today that we’re on the same side of the equation.” By contrast, France, with its Sykes-Picot-logical focus on Lebanon, insists Hezbollah has to be included in these talks aimed at removing it, so has been deliberately excluded from them.

On exclusion, after attacking the Pope, Trump has now done the same to Italian PM Meloni for “lacking courage”: the EU will need that and more fiscal spending again given the Wall Street Journal report it’s accelerating a NATO fallback plan in case Trump pulls out – or waters his commitment down: “Article 5, Shmarticle 5.” Militarily, 5% of GDP would need to be spent on defense a lot sooner than the 2035 planned if so, and the Journal notes Europe would need to reinstitute a draft in order to get the necessary personnel. Yet in terms of providing muscle for any Rules-Based Order 2.0 without the US, Europe’s primary military power, France, just had to scale back its participation in key Balikatan naval exercises in the Philippines to a mere 15 participants.

Meanwhile, the Financial Times warns of a ‘China shock 2.0’, this time with a flood of high-tech goods “that will change the world” – or at least deindustrialize other parts of it. Bloomberg matches that with a report underlining that India’s plans to develop its own manufacturing base are hamstrung by China’s controls over the critical tech supply chain within that sector. The Nikkei Asia argues China is snapping up US chip tools via Southeast Asia sources (in the same way that many Chinese exports to the US are being transshipped via third parties), which from a neo-mercantilist perspective again makes the case for a global economy fragmented into geopolitical trade blocs.

That reality is one of the reasons I’ve argued lies behind this Iran war, both in terms of control of oil and the related IMEC trade corridor; and it’s why escalation will continue until the economic pain is so great that one side submits.

Yet will the unfolding slow-motion catastrophe in the background get key global players to cooperate before it’s too late? Only time will tell; and it’s a binary outcome; and while your car journey as you ponder this may be comfortable for now, the fuel tank is still the fuel tank, and the blazing desert is still the blazing desert. And as I type that, I just heard the following play on my radio:

“Now I understand; What you tried to say to me; And how you suffered for your sanity; And how you tried to set them free; They would not listen, they did not know how; Perhaps they’ll listen now.”

Eos Energy Enterprises’ stock jumped over 60% in the last few days as investor enthusiasm grew around its scaling production and role in powering AI-driven infrastructure demand, according to the International Business Times.

The company designs, develops, manufactures, and markets energy storage solutions for utility-scale, microgrid, and commercial and industrial applications in the United States. The stock surge builds on earlier momentum after the company reported strong preliminary Q1 2026 revenue of $56–$57 million. Growth was fueled by higher shipments, improved output, and better manufacturing efficiency at its Pennsylvania facility, signaling progress in ramping up its second production line.

This positive update helped ease concerns from earlier setbacks, including missed 2025 revenue guidance and ongoing class-action lawsuits tied to production projections. While legal risks remain, recent operational gains have renewed investor confidence.

IBT writes that Eos is positioning itself to meet rising electricity demand from AI and data centers, highlighted by a new partnership aimed at rapidly deploying large-scale power solutions. Its zinc-based batteries—seen as safer, cheaper, and more domestically sourced than lithium alternatives—are gaining attention as utilities and tech firms seek reliable energy storage.

Looking ahead, the company expects 2026 revenue between $300 million and $400 million, with improving margins as production scales. A $701 million backlog supports future growth, though profitability, cash needs, and execution risks remain concerns.

Analysts are cautiously optimistic and broader market optimism and policy support for U.S.-based energy solutions have also contributed to the stock’s recent strength.

Overall, Eos appears to be at a turning point. Continued manufacturing progress and successful contract wins could solidify its position in the energy storage sector—but uncertainty and risk remain part of the story.

The national average for 87-octane gasoline has remained above the politically sensitive $4-a-gallon level for two straight weeks after the largest monthly jump in AAA data going back two decades. The fuel shock has Wall Street analysts focused on whether surging pump prices will begin crowding out discretionary spending.

Bank of America CFO Alastair Borthwick told analysts on a conference call earlier today that the fuel shock at the pump has not undermined overall consumer strength so far, though that could change if the Hormuz chokepoint is not resolved in the near term, according to Bloomberg. 

The BofA presentation Alastair cited showed that, for the first quarter, consumer spending at the pump was up 3%. For March, gas spending soared 16%. However, no meaningful spending pullbacks were visible elsewhere: Entertainment, travel, and retail spending all remained healthy, with entertainment spending rising 12% in the quarter.

BofA has joined a number of other firms, including Chime Financial, in disclosing gas-cost impacts on their customers. Chime’s CFO warned earlier this month that clients spent 25% more on fuel in March compared with the prior month.

Ally Financial, Capital One Financial, and American Express are set to report this week and will likely provide more color on fuel-shock impacts on their customers.

AAA data showed that the national average for 87-octane gasoline has hovered above the politically sensitive $4-a-gallon level for the last two weeks.

On the economy, Goldman analyst Jessica Rindels told clients on Sunday how the U.S.-Iran conflict, now in its seventh week, is set to produce a mild stagflation shock, though not on the scale of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

In our latest U.S.-Iran conflict report (read here), President Trump stated the war is “very close to over,” with another round of peace talks scheduled for this week. A Wall Street report cited U.S. officials overnight as saying that more than 20 vessels have passed through the Strait of Hormuz in the past 24 hours.

OpenAI, fresh off the largest private fundraising round in history, is facing mounting questions from some of its own backers over its $852 billion valuation and a whiplash-inducing pivot in strategy that prioritizes the higher-margin enterprise market at the expense of its consumer crown jewel – all because Anthropic is starting to drink their milkshake with enterprise contracts. 

The company raised $122 billion last month from Silicon Valley and global capital – including SoftBank, Amazon, Nvidia, Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital and Thrive Capital. Yet even as Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar hailed the oversubscribed deal as proof of “strong conviction” in the company’s direction, early investors are voicing skepticism. One told the Financial Times the pivot feels unfocused: “You have ChatGPT, a 1 billion-user business growing 50-100% a year – what are you doing talking about enterprise and code?”

Friar disagrees. “The suggestion that investors are not supportive of our strategy defies the facts,” she said. “Our . . . raise, the largest in history, was oversubscribed, completed in record time and backed by a broad set of global investors, reflecting strong conviction in both our direction, current business momentum and long-term value.”

The repositioning has indeed been swift and, to critics, symptomatic of the kind of strategic whiplash that often precedes trouble in hype-driven sectors. In December Chief Executive Sam Altman issued a “code red” urging staff to refocus on core business. High-profile consumer experiments have been quietly euthanized: the video-generation service Sora was shuttered, killing a planned $1 billion investment from Disney; an “adult” chatbot was mothballed; parts of the ambitious Stargate data-center project were ditched; and a $100 billion Nvidia deal was substantially scaled back. Even a recent “low hundreds of millions” acquisition of the tech talk show TBPN drew internal eye-rolling from investors who called it a distraction.

“I don’t get it frankly, it doesn’t make any sense to me,” one investor told FT. “It’s a distraction and it irks me.”

The new gospel is enterprise. OpenAI is reallocating computing resources toward its Codex coding tool, which insiders say could eventually eclipse ChatGPT in priority as the company chases nontechnical business users. Headcount is set to nearly double to 8,000 by year-end. Roughly half of revenue is expected to come from corporate customers, up from about 40% today. A new permanent office in London is in the works to anchor the largest research hub outside the U.S. The message from the C-suite: the market for corporate AI tools is “ours to win.”

However, fresh data from Morgan Stanley’s 1Q26 CIO Survey (fielded February 3–March 10 among 100 US and European CIOs – available to pro subs here) offers some early empirical support for the enterprise pivot – while also highlighting just how steep the climb is. Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning has cemented its position as the clear #1 CIO priority (17.7% of respondents named it a top-three area, up from 16.3% in 4Q25), with 39% now calling it their single highest priority. Yet when CIOs were asked which vendors are poised to capture the largest incremental share of GenAI spending, Microsoft dominated both the one-year and three-year outlooks by a wide margin. OpenAI still ranked solidly inside the top tier – behind Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Salesforce and ServiceNow – and was also cited as a preferred vendor for building custom AI applications today and three years out.

The survey underscores the broader reality: overall 2026 IT budgets are growing only modestly at +3.7%, with Software the sole category expected to accelerate (+4.1%). Hyperscalers (led overwhelmingly by Microsoft via Azure OpenAI Service, Copilot, and its massive existing enterprise footprint) remain the dominant wallet-share winners in AI and cloud. AI labs and application vendors, including OpenAI, are making incremental gains on top of that foundation.

Anthropic’s Ascent

Rival Anthropic is making that claim harder to swallow. Founded by ex-OpenAI talent and led by Dario Amodei, the Claude maker has seen annualized revenue surge to $30 billion by the end of March from $9 billion at the close of 2025, fueled by demand for its coding and cybersecurity offerings. Secondary markets are now pricing Anthropic ahead of OpenAI for the first time. The startup has fielded multiple offers that could value it at $800 billion or higher – more than double its February tender valuation – though it has so far resisted. One investor who backs both companies noted that underwriting OpenAI’s latest round required assuming an IPO valuation north of $1.2 trillion.

Meanwhile, Anthropic has shrugged off a major national-security black eye that appears to have served as great marketing, after the Pentagon formally designated the company a “supply chain risk” to U.S. national security – the first time such a label, historically reserved for foreign adversaries like Huawei or Kaspersky, has ever been applied to a major American AI firm. The unprecedented move followed a bitter contract standoff in which Anthropic refused to strip safety guardrails from Claude that blocked its use for mass domestic surveillance or lethal autonomous weapons. Anthropic sued immediately, calling the designation retaliatory; courts have issued temporary blocks in some venues while litigation continues. Yet, this government smackdown has had no effect on private-market enthusiasm.

The two firms remain locked in a brutal arms race, each hemorrhaging billions annually on compute. OpenAI boasts a formidable infrastructure edge – 8 gigawatts secured now, targeting 30 gigawatts by 2030 -and claims it can simply serve a slightly inferior model if needed. Anthropic, by contrast, has cited outages and power constraints while promising restraint on further expansion. OpenAI’s new chief revenue officer, Denise Dresser, has accused Anthropic of overstating revenue by roughly $8 billion via cloud-partner gross-ups, though both sides insist they follow standard accounting.

Of course, there’s an underlying catch: the lofty valuations rest on the assumption that enterprises will eventually pay up for these tools in volume. Yet a telling data point from the political arena suggests institutional buyers remain skittish. Republican campaigns are leaning into AI for messaging and voter targeting ahead of the 2026 midterms. The Democratic National Committee, however, has explicitly banned staff from using either ChatGPT or Claude, citing data-privacy and security risks. 

NEW: GOP campaigns are betting big on AI in the midterms

Dems — not so much

More w/@hollyotterbein https://t.co/xUvX7HQSNo

— Alex Isenstadt (@axiosalex) April 14, 2026

OpenAI executives insist the repositioning towards enterprise is simply the necessary maturation of a company that has already reinvented itself multiple times. The massive war chest, they argue, provides “max flexibility” and “max optionality.” But with both startups still deeply unprofitable, compute burn rates that would make traditional tech CFOs blanch, and secondary-market momentum tilting toward the more focused rival, the narrative is shifting. What began as a consumer phenomenon is now a high-stakes bet that enterprise dollars will arrive fast enough—and in sufficient volume—to justify valuations that, to skeptics, increasingly look detached from today’s economics.

BRP’s US-listed shares crashed the most on record as the US cash session began, after the jet ski and snowmobile maker withdrew its financial outlook.

The company warned that changes in the US tariff environment surrounding steel, aluminum, and copper could result in a $500 million hit before any mitigation efforts.

BRP wrote in a statement:

For BRP, the amendment mainly leads to a 25% tariff on the total value of imported snowmobiles and the majority of ORV models, replacing the previous 50% tariff on applicable metal content only. The Company currently estimates the potential incremental tariff cost related to this amendment to be in excess of $500 million for the remainder of the year, before any mitigation measures that could partially offset these impacts.

BRP CEO Denis Le Vot stated:

Like many manufacturers, we are operating in a highly volatile and unpredictable tariff environment that continues to create uncertainty across the market.

Despite the material burden of these tariff changes, we expect that, with our solid balance sheet, the agility of our teams and the strong start of the year, we will be able to manage our business through this challenge and continue to push BRP forward.

BRP shares crashed 33% at the start of the US cash session, the most on record with Bloomberg trading data going back to August 2013.

BRP shares are sharply retracing the bull run that began in April 2025 and peaked in February. The shares are in a deep bear market so far this year, down 25%.

Bloomberg data tracking Wall Street analysts shows 12 “Buys,” 9 “Holds,” and zero “Sells.” The average analyst 12-month price target is $82.

Stifel analyst Martin Landry warned, “The magnitude of the impact is mind-blowing, but it is likely the worst-case scenario.”

Oil largely held onto a sharp drop from this week’s highs as the US and Iran seek further talks to end a war that has brought the vital Strait of Hormuz waterway to a near-halt.

President Trump told a Fox Business anchor he sees the war “very close to over” and told ABC “you’re going to be watching an amazing two days ahead.”

The global oil market has been jolted by the conflict, which triggered an unprecedented supply shock, and while week to week shifts in domestic inventory and supply may not be the crucial market-movers they were before the war (and headline roulette), they remain key in seeing how the US energy market is ‘coping’ with the new demand from overseas… and if there is any domestic demand destruction from soaring gas prices…

API

Crude +6.1mm

Cushing

Gasoline +626k

Distillates -3.36mm

DOE

Crude -913k (+900k exp) – first draw in 8 weeks

Cushing -1.73mm – biggest draw since Jan 3rd

Gasoline -6.33mm – biggest draw since Mar 2023

Distillates -3.12mm

Inventories across the entire oil energy complex saw unexpected drawdowns last week with crude’s first decline in stocks since Feb 13. Gasoline stocks plunged by the most since March 2023…

Source: Bloomberg

The SPR saw its biggest drawdown since Dec 2022…

Source: Bloomberg

Crude production actually declined last week… as Refineries trimmed crude processing for the third straight week. With that, intake has been curtailed by a little over half a million barrels a day since the end of March. 

Source: Bloomberg

Crude exports jumped over 1 million barrels a day to the highest level since September 2025 as the world continues to draw on US oil as the Iran war disrupts global flows.

That oil export jump pushed total oil and fuel exports to the highest level ever.

Most of the gains came as crude shipments jumped above the key 5 million barrels a day mark to the highest since September 2025, according to data from the US government.

In aggregate it meant the US sent almost 13 million barrels per day overseas last week, when also adding refined fuels.

Source: Bloomberg

WTI Crude prices rallied on the report…

Finally, despite chatter of energy independence and no need for Hormuz flows, the real constraint on Trump is domestic gas and diesel prices (as its a global energy complex), which are looking set to fall from near record-highs as WTI and RBOB prices have eased…

“The broad-based pullback is driven by growing market optimism that diplomacy, not escalation, is now dominating,” said Ole Hvalbye, commodities analyst at SEB AB. 

Should escalation risks fade, supply from the Middle East may see a “tiered recovery,” according to ANZ Group Holdings Ltd. Some 2 million to 3 million barrels a day were likely to be restored in the first four weeks, followed by additional volumes, analysts including Daniel Hynes said in a note.