x01a Research Archives

Blurb:

CNN political commentator Scott Jennings had a stern warning for Republican lawmakers after the Republican-dominated Indiana State Senate overwhelmingly voted against a congressional map redraw that would have netted the party two seats in next year’s midterm elections, a move that significantly increases the odds of a Democrat-controlled U.S. House of Representatives in 2026.

The proposed maps would have split the Democratic Party stronghold of Indianapolis four ways, effectively eliminating the districts currently controlled by Democrats to give the GOP a 9-0 sweep when it comes to U.S. House seats. After the Indiana House advanced the motion last week, the proposed map went to the Senate, where it was soundly defeated on Thursday.

The vote was not particularly close, as 21 Republicans voted against the measure while just 19 voted in favor.  President Donald Trump and a number of key allies were furious over the move, leading organizations like Turning Point USA and the president himself to vow primary challenges.

Blurb:

On Thursday, a suspected cartel smuggler was killed during an officer-involved shooting with Border Patrol.

Allegedly, the suspect crossed the river and attacked a Border Patrol, who then opened fire.

The shooting happened in Starr County, Texas — near the border.

Thankfully, no agents were injured during the shootout.

Bill Melugin of Fox News has the details:

Blurb:

California Gov. Gavin Newsom posted an AI-generated video depicting President Donald Trump, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller in handcuffs.

“It’s CUFFING Season,” reads the text that appears at the beginning of the video.

It shows Trump, Hegseth, and Miller sitting on a sidewalk with their hands behind their backs.

In the next scene, they are sitting in the back of a car with handcuffs on, and they raise their hands to their faces and begin to cry.

Finally, they are shown walking in front of a courthouse, still handcuffed.

Blurb:

While the Indiana legislature’s congressional redistricting efforts generate massive national attention, a weaker immigration enforcement bill is quietly moving faster than a stronger, “gold-standard” bill supported by Gov. Mike Braun and border czar Tom Homan.

The two immigration bills, Senate Bill 76 and House Bill 1039, include a lot of identical language. But SB 76 weakens and drops a number of HB 1039’s provisions.

SB 76 is sponsored by Sen. Liz Brown, R-Fort Wayne, who faces primary challenger Darren Vogt after she single-handedly blocked an immigration enforcement bill similar to HB 1039 earlier this year. SB 76 passed the judiciary committee Brown chairs Tuesday afternoon 6-2. In response to a Federalist query about whether she’d give HB 1039’s Senate companion sponsored by ranking member Sen. Eric Koch, R-Bedford, an equal hearing, Brown’s spokeswoman told The Federalist, “Sen. Brown is focused first on getting her bill through Committee and then she’ll see what the House does.”

Blurb:

One of the biggest whoppers Democrats told during the Schumer Shutdown was that they were not fighting for taxpayer-funded healthcare for illegals as part of the demands they wanted to be met to end the shutdown.

“Federal law prohibits the use of Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and the Affordable Care Act to provide health insurance in any way, shape, or form to undocumented immigrants—period, full stop. Democrats aren’t trying to change that,” Democrat House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (NY-08) proclaimed at the time.

Though that is exactly what Jeffries and his fellow Democrats were trying to do, it was clear that the subject of taxpayer funding of illegal immigrant healthcare was a sore spot and for good reason, considering the likelihood that Jeffries knew the longer the shutdown dragged out, the more frustrated the American people would get with Democrats holding up funding for the military and SNAP recipients just to get some assurances on healthcare for illegals.

Blurb:

A Kentucky Democratic lawmaker argued during a hearing that white people should feel guilt over their skin color, defending diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs just as Republicans in the state moved to eliminate them from public schools.

The Tuesday comments came as Republican state Sen. Lindsey Tichenor introduced legislation banning DEI initiatives in Kentucky’s K–12 system, according to the Paducah Sun.

Democratic state Rep. Sarah Stalker objected to the bill, insisting DEI gives students room to “reflect” on “historical privilege.”

Then Stalker went further.

“I’m going to be honest, I don’t feel good about being white every day for a lot of reasons,” Stalker said in a video shared on X by Libs of TikTok.

“Because it’s a point of privilege that I get to move through the world in a way that so many of my other colleagues and friends and family members and of the community don’t get the privilege to do, and I’m just a female, just a woman, just a white woman.”

Blurb:

Key Takeaways

  • Rapid enrollment in AI programs at universities like MIT and USF reflects a surge in employer demand, with MIT’s AI major growing from 37 to 328 students in just three years.
  • Experts stress the importance of teaching the foundational aspects of AI, not just generative AI, to prepare students for a workforce increasingly reliant on AI skills.
  • Concerns about AI’s societal impact are rising, prompting calls for curricula that address the ethical and safety challenges of AI technologies.

Students are rapidly enrolling in newly created AI programs and majors at schools such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of California San Diego, and University of South Florida.

Educators and experts told The College Fix that the boom in the field of generative AI brings both benefits and risks.

Blurb:

The Democrats and their flying monkeys in the mainstream media have made it clear that their plan to win back voters who abandoned them last year involves only resistance to President Trump. No policy. No coherent sales pitches. Just tantrums.

I should clarify — the Democrats aren’t offering any policy ideas to attract American citizens who vote. They’re working overtime crafting policy designed to make the lives of illegal alien murderers, rapists, and child traffickers better. In the Dem dreamworld, all of these criminal bottom-feeders will be voting for them regardless of legal status.

This resistance mindset has the Democrats placing a high premium on elected officials and candidates who they perceive as “fighters.” At present, that applies to anyone who has dropped an f-bomb during a press conference when wailing about Trump. The occasional snarky post (TWEET) on  X also counts a little towards Dem fighter cred.

All of the posturing and potty-mouthing in front of friendly audiences has given the Democrats the mistaken impression that they actually are tough. It’s mostly amusing, especially given the fact that fey soy boy Gavin Newsom is their highest polling “fighter” right now.

Blurb:

The Trump administration’s new National Security Strategy was published last week, setting out the U.S.’s broad foreign policy direction for the remainder of his term. It focused on ending what it calls a “perpetually expanding NATO,” establishing “conditions of stability within Europe,” and encouraging European allies to “stand on [their] own feet” in security matters.

The document also warned that Europe faces “civilizational erasure,” citing migration, censorship of speech, declining birthrates, and what it described as a loss of national identity and self-confidence.

Days after the official release, however, the Defense One website reported that a longer, unreleased version of the NSS had circulated in Washington. According to the site, the unpublished version contained far more explicit political goals for reshaping Europe’s future and reducing the influence of the European Union. Defense One wrote that the extended draft urged the United States to “Make Europe Great Again,” proposing that Washington realign its attention toward a select group of governments ideologically closer to the Trump administration.

Blurb:

Artificial intelligence is putting the creative professions through a round of creative destruction. Generative tools such as ChatGPT, Midjourney, and Sora have handed millions of amateurs the means to produce competent art, prose and even studio-quality video at or next to nothing. Disney’s just-announced $1 billion investment in OpenAI, and its plan to let Sora users conjure up scenes featuring more than 200 Disney, Marvel and Star Wars characters, will push the trend further. A teenager with a smartphone may soon generate a convincing Pixar-style short without ever lifting a pencil.

But the same tools are unsettling the people who built careers around those once-scarce skills. If anyone can summon photorealistic imagery or Hollywood-grade effects on command, what happens to illustrators, designers, or voice actors who spent decades perfecting craft?

Blurb:

Venezuela’s state oil company PDVSA did not reply to a request for comment. Venezuela’s government this week said the US seizure constituted a “theft.” The White House National Security Council did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

The US has assembled a target list of several more sanctioned tankers for possible seizure, according to one of the people familiar with the matter.

The US Justice Department and Homeland Security had been planning the seizures for months, according to two of the people.

A reduction or halt in Venezuelan oil exports, the main generator of revenue for the Venezuelan government, would strain the Maduro government’s finances.

Blurb:

The FBI and Department of Justice have reportedly scheduled appointments to interview the six members of Congress who appeared in a controversial video advising service members to disobey any orders they deem illegal.

The feds, according to Fox News, contacted Capitol Police to schedule the interviews with Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), Rep. Chris Deluzio (D-Pa.), Rep. Maggie Goodlander (D-N.H.), Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D-Pa.), and Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.).

The “Seditious Six,” as Republicans have dubbed them, released a video titled “Don’t Give Up the Ship” last Tuesday, calling on members of the military and intelligence community to “refuse illegal orders.”

The video sparked a major backlash among top Republicans, including President Trump, who accused the Democrat lawmakers of engaging in “seditious behavior” that is “punishable by death.”

Blurb:

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent praised New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani and his campaign despite criticizing Mamdani’s vision for the Big Apple.

Mamdani has appointed hundreds of people to transition committees as he prepares to take the mayor’s office next year, with some of them advising him on how to enact the affordability agenda he campaigned on. The mayor-elect met with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office on Friday, to which Bessent said there is “some admiration” for someone running a campaign like Mamdani’s.

“It was a great, great campaign. He is clearly the leader of the Democratic Party now, and I think it speaks to how open-minded the president is that he invited him into the Oval Office. Senator Schumer never endorsed him, I don’t even know if he’s met with him, and President Trump wants the best for New Yorkers,” Bessent said on CNBC’s SquawkBox.

Blurb:

Our society has systematically poisoned the relationship between men and women. Nothing makes this clearer than listening to state Rep. Aftyn Behn speak about her obsession with gaining power.

Behn is the Democratic nominee in Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District special election set for Dec. 2 following Republican Rep. Mark Green’s resignation. In an audio recording released Monday, a woman believed to be Behn says that rather than having dreams about marriage and children, she frequently imagines standing in a cafeteria professing her desire for power in front of other women.

“My therapist always asks me to transcribe my dreams when they happen. And the recurring dream I’ve had is standing up in a cafeteria full of women — I don’t know why it was there or whatever — and saying, ‘I don’t want children, I want power,’ and just screaming it at the top of my lungs,” Behn is allegedly heard saying.

Blurb:

“By design or by default, Judge [Dianna] Gibson has authorized the most partisan and thus the most gerrymandered map,” Senate leader Stuart Adams said.

The Utah state legislature is set to appeal the state’s new congressional map that carves out a congressional seat that will all but certainly give a seat to the Democrats in the 2026 midterm elections. The map was brought about after Judge Dianna Gibson ruled in favor of the map that was in place.

The announcement was made on Tuesday. “By design or by default, Judge [Dianna] Gibson has authorized the most partisan and thus the most gerrymandered map in the history of the state of Utah,” Senate President Stuart Adams announced at a press conference.

Blurb:

“She ran because of me,” Chad “Charly” Mecca said, adding that he had been cited for criminal trespassing and obstructing identification.

Authorities say the trans friend found with Morgan Geyser after her escape from a Wisconsin group home is a biological man who insists the 23-year-old fled because of their friendship, and because she believed staff were trying to keep them apart.

Police located Geyser and Chad “Charly” Mecca, 43, late Sunday night at a truck stop in Posen, Illinois, roughly 150 miles from the Madison area facility she walked out of the day before. Officers had responded to reports of two people lingering behind the building before confirming Geyser’s identity, reports the New York Post.

Blurb:

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has noticed every aspect of Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona’s recent flirtation with sedition.

Monday on the social media platform X, Kelly posted an arrogant series of comments about his career of service in the U.S. Navy and at NASA, accompanied by a partial photo of his medal-adored Navy uniform.

In a remarkable reply posted Tuesday morning on X, Hegseth chastised Kelly for incorrect uniform display.

“So ‘Captain’ Kelly, not only did your sedition video intentionally undercut good order & discipline … but you can’t even display your uniform correctly,” Hegseth wrote. “Your medals are out of order & rows reversed. When/if you are recalled to active duty, it’ll start with a uniform inspection.”

Blurb:

An unemployed Italian nurse allegedly disguised himself as his dead mother for years to collect her pension, police said.

The man visited a municipal office in northern Italy two weeks ago to renew his mother’s identity card, according to Italian outlet Corriere della Sera. He wore a 1970s-style blouse, pearl necklace and clip-on earrings. That visit exposed the scheme.

A clerk grew suspicious. The face appeared too young for an 85-year-old woman, and the neck looked masculine beneath the makeup.

Staff alerted the mayor and local police, who launched an investigation. Officers compared the new photo with one from the expired ID card issued a decade earlier. The resemblance existed, but something was wrong.

Blurb:

It’s a cornucopia of identity politics where a black lesbian confronts a white man about a trans woman whipping out her junk in the locker room. And you’ll never guess whose side Rep. Eric Swallows, who is now running for California Governor, is on. Ackshually, we can pretty much guess, but he ran away instead of answering, so we don’t know for sure.

Tish Hyman went viral for expressing her disapproval of Alexis Black exposing herself in the women’s locker room at a Los Angeles Gold’s Gym. Alexis used to be Grant Freeman and still had Grant’s genitalia, so of course Hyman got thrown out of the gym since it’s Los Angeles and trans outranks black lesbian on the left’s pound-for-pound most marinalized rankings.

Side note: When Alexis Black was Grant Freeman, s/he pleaded guilty in 2022 to savagely beating his wife. Unclear is whether they/them identified as a woman at the time.

Blurb:

Late-term abortions can reportedly be performed without a medical reason in Canada, contrary to previous reports.

“There does not have to be a specific medical concern that is named” in order to get an abortion after the first trimester, said TK Pritchard, the executive director of Abortion Care Canada.

Pritchard’s response was in reference to videos taken secretly by Alissa Golob, co-founder of RightNow, a pro-life organization, when she was about five months pregnant. Golob was interested in learning whether she could receive a late-term abortion, “No questions asked, specifically for no medical reason,” according to the National Post.

Blurb:

Canada’s healthcare crisis has entered a new and disturbing phase as the Liberal government funnels a billion dollars to fund care in foreign nations while Canadians at home are being euthanized because they cannot get the treatment they need to survive.

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s latest move, pledging over a billion Canadian dollars to fund healthcare overseas, has become the tipping point for many who have watched Canada’s single-payer system crumble for years.

The announcement landed as the country continues to face a wave of avoidable deaths, including cases where desperate citizens are offered Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) instead of the care they were promised.

 

Blurb:

What’s the old expression? Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

Six Democrats who made the video encouraging members of the military to refuse “illegal orders” stepped right into that old maxim. The video caused righteous furor and understandable concern about the effect it could have. The six Democrats were Reps. Chris Deluzio (PA-17), Chrissy Houlahan (PA-6), Maggie Goodlander (NH-2), and Jason Crow (CO-6), along with Sens. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) and Mark Kelly (D-AZ). Kelly alleged without evidence in the video that “this administration” was “pitting our uniformed military and intelligence community professionals against American citizens.”

The Department of War announced it would be reviewing allegations of misconduct against Kelly over the clip. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth slammed the video as a “politically-motivated influence operation” and noted they hadn’t outlined any specific illegal orders. Kelly was asked about this on MS NOW on Monday, and again, he couldn’t list anything.

“In the military, vague rhetoric and ambiguity undermines trust, creates hesitation in the chain of command, and erodes cohesion,” Hegseth wrote. “The military already has clear procedures for handling unlawful orders. It does not need political actors injecting doubt into an already clear chain of command.”