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In the Age of Dumbing Down…
Author: HP McLovincraft
Seeker of rabbit holes. Pessimist. Libertine. Contrarian. Your huckleberry. Possibly true tales of sanity-blasting horror also known as abject reality. Prepare yourself. Veteran of a thousand psychic wars. I have seen the fnords. Deplatformed on Tumblr and Twitter.
Bernie Sanders’ AI Bill Turns Software Into a State Permission
A US senator who led the call to use the Department of Justice to prosecute those he decided were behind “illegal” misinformation about climate change is now proposing a new way to use the weight of the state to decide who may, or must not, develop software.
And this time the target is artificial intelligence (AI), and the proposed legislation is much more far-reaching and dangerous.
A US senator who led the call to use the Department of Justice to prosecute those he decided were behind “illegal” misinformation about climate change is now proposing a new way to use the weight of the state to decide who may, or must not, develop software.
And this time the target is artificial intelligence (AI), and the proposed legislation is much more far-reaching and dangerous.
More: How the AI “Safety” Push Creates New Gatekeepers
Senator Bernie Sanders, along with Representative Greg Casar, has introduced a bill that would give the federal government unprecedented power over the development of this technology, including deciding who may develop it, and how.
We obtained the text of the bill for you here.
According to the proposal, a new cabinet Department of Artificial Intelligence would be set up, with its secretary appointed by the president, and this official would have the power to decide which companies may, and which may not, develop such AI.
Those allowed to do so would be given a charter, but with that would come a number of obligations, including giving the secretary access to their systems, staff, and physical premises.
The bill, which has been compared to a licensing regime, and as such is anathema to most tech industry players and advocates of free and open source software, would also give the proposed AI department the power to cut a company’s systems off from the internet, or disable or destroy them, if the government decides they have crossed the line. This would be a deathblow to open source and open weight AI development.
The bill seeks to define superintelligence as a system that “exceeds human cognitive performance and capabilities across most domains or tasks” or one that “has sufficient capabilities to plan and execute the destruction or disempowerment of humanity, including by overthrowing or undermining the Federal Government.”
An advanced system, on the other hand, is defined as an artificial intelligence system that is trained on computing power greater than or equal to 10^25 integer (10 septillion) or floating point operations.
And one of the precursor characteristics is the ability to “automate or greatly accelerate” AI research and development.
However, the head of the National AI Association, Caleb Max, said that “some CEOs would say we have already crossed the threshold set out in the bill, meaning this is a de facto AI ban.”
The bill also has a provision that has been described as the “corporate death penalty” – in case of reckless violation of the proposed law, its executives could end up in prison for up to 20 years, and other employees could be banned from working in the industry for ten years. Once a company’s charter is revoked and the decision is upheld by the Federal Circuit, the government could seize its assets.
Sanders compared this to the penalty for “unlawfully building nuclear weapons.”
Fauci diary reveals alarm that U.S. had aerosolized Ebola virus: ‘Never should have been done’
Dr. Anthony Fauci privately sounded the alarm when he learned the U.S. Army had conducted an experiment a decade ago that aerosolized the lethal Ebola virus, which is not normally transmitted by air, and then shared the results publicly amid an ongoing outbreak in Africa, according to diary entries obtained by Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Rand Paul.
The then-top scientist at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease was particularly concerned in 2016 that the Army medical research arm’s experiment seemed to show that exposure to aerosolized Ebola caused more damaging effects in subjects that had been vaccinated. This was almost four years before he championed shutting down the U.S. economy and social life over the COVID-19 virus outbreak.
Fauci wrote he believed such research should be kept secret, preferably classified, so that it didn’t undermine public confidence in vaccination in the African countries suffering an outbreak of the virus.
“What idiots those guys at USAMRIID [U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases] are,” Fauci wrote in a March 2016 diary entry. “This should have been a classified experiment that never should have been done in the first place.”
He added, “Now I have to speak with the NSC [National Security Council] from the SKIF [sic] tomorrow to pick up the doo-doo and explain why this is an irrelevant experiment.” Fauci was likely referring to a “SCIF” which is a room designed to prevent leaked electronic communications.
The entry is the latest evidence to chronicle how widespread dangerous U.S. research on viruses has become, following revelations earlier this year from the Director of National Intelligence that the U.S. has funded scores of pathogen labs across the globe, including in war zones.
President Donald Trump recently signed an executive order mostly banning gain-of-function research that enhances viruses to make them more deadly to humans.
Paul told Just the News he believed the new diary entries reveal an effort by the federal government to hide dangerous research rather than stop it.
“These records show NIAID was funding risky research with the Defense Department, and when the results turned problematic, Dr. Fauci argued they should have been classified,” Paul said.”The email he sent demanding answers went to his longtime special assistant, who has since declined to answer the Committee’s questions.
“Americans deserve to know what kind of risky research their taxpayer dollars are funding. It is clear additional oversight is needed into what Dr. Fauci’s institute was paying for long before COVID,” he added. “This is exactly why Congress should pass the Risky Research Review Act. Under my bill, an independent board of outside scientists would have to review research like this before a single taxpayer dollar went out the door.“
At the time of the Ebola experiment, the United States was planning to deploy vaccines to West Africa to address the ongoing Ebola outbreaks there. Fauci noted that African officials from Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone were “going batshit” because they were concerned the U.S. would deploy ineffective vaccines in their countries.
Fauci’s diary and communications were obtained by Paul as part of his committee’s ongoing investigation into COVID-19 origins, dangerous viral research and alleged cover-ups. The latest memos, which the senator plans to release on Monday, were shared with Just the News.
You can read the latest release below:
Flock Cameras Are Moving From Roads to Watching as Drones From the Sky
A company that blanketed American roads with license-plate-reading cameras is now sending drones into the sky. Cities across America are grappling with their own debates about aid to law enforcement, coupled with concerns about privacy and surveillance.
Flock’s Drone-as-First-Responder system, or DFR, launches remotely operated drones from automated rooftop docks. A drone can be sent to a location generated by a 911 call, a license-plate-reader alert, or a gunshot-detection alert. It will then stream live video to dispatchers, officers in the field, and a real-time crime center.
The company entered the market through its 2024 acquisition of the drone firm Aerodome. They advertise high-definition video, as well as thermal imaging. Integration with the rest of its sensor network is also available.
Police have flown drones for years. However, a system that connects an emergency call to an automatically launched aircraft, a live video feed, and a crime center in one loop, tied to a company’s other data, is entirely new. Flock said drones are its fastest-growing business.
Military.com reached out to Flock Safety with questions about the program’s growth, its data policies, and the concerns raised in city debates. No response was received by publication.
28% of US Voter Verifications Have NO MATCH at Social Security Administration
Since 2004, the Social Security Administration has provided a simple process to help States with verifying voter applications. It’s called the HAVV System. States send in the name, DOB, and last four digits of the voter’s SSN. The SSA then notifies the State if that person is deceased, alive, matches SSA records, or No Match Found!
A whopping 13% of all HAVV verifications processed in 2025 came back as NO MATCH. That’s 318,217 of the 2.37 million submitted. Since 2011, an astounding 28.8% of all HAVV submissions have come back as NO MATCH. For the past 15 years, the federal government (SSA) has been unable to match 28.1 million voter submissions from States, to the information in its comprehensive computer systems. The Feds have every right to know what garbage is being processed at the State level for our Federal elections.
These alarming percentages most certainly are justification for the DOJ to have access to any State’s voter rolls, including the voter’s full SSN. Yet, activist Judges in MI, OR, and CA tossed out the DOJ cases for voter rolls. The HAVV program was created to process new voters who can’t provide a valid Driver’s License during registration.
This amount of “Non Matches” is why passing the SAVE Act, which requires voter ID, is simply imperative.
When a blue State receives a “NO MATCH” report from their own Federal Government, do you think they reject, or approve that voter application?
Is Putin Caught In An “Escalation Trap”? The Long War In Eastern Europe
Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism has flagged a recent interview that Professor Robert Pape did with Mario Nawfal. During the interview, Pape argued that Vladimir Putin is caught in an “escalation trap.” In his telling, Russia launched a preventive war in February 2022 to seize Kyiv and roughly 60 percent of Ukraine. That plan collapsed, and the fallback, betting that NATO would break, is now producing the European counterbalancing coalition Moscow most feared. It is a tidy theory. It also rests on a premise about Russian intentions that the record does not support, and once that premise goes, the trap goes with it.
What the force tells you about the objective
Start with arithmetic, the kind any planner of military operations does before anything else. Russia invaded with roughly 150,000 to 190,000 troops, including separatist forces. The standard rule of thumb for occupying a hostile population, from James Quinlivan’s RAND work, is about 20 troops per 1,000 inhabitants. For a country of more than 40 million, even occupying 60 percent of the territory would require several hundred thousand troops, several times what Russia sent. Moscow’s General Staff can do this arithmetic. A force that size is a coercive instrument, not an occupation army.
The pattern of the operation fits coercion. Russian forces approached Kyiv from the north but never attempted to assault or encircle a city of three million. The pressure was aimed at the government, not at taking the capital block by block. Talks began within days, in Belarus on February 28, and moved to Istanbul in March. Pape’s supporters point to the airborne assault on Hostomel as proof of a plan to seize the capital. But a failed coup de main against an airfield is not evidence of an intent to occupy 60 percent of a country.
Istanbul: the objective was achieved
The strongest evidence against Pape is that the coercion worked. By the end of March 2022, meetings in Belarus and Turkey, together with video conferences, had produced the Istanbul Communiqué, a framework for a settlement. Ukraine accepted permanent neutrality in exchange for security guarantees from the United States and its allies, with Russia also as a guarantor. Russia, for its part, agreed to a process to settle the Crimea dispute diplomatically.
That was the core of what Moscow wanted, and the Ukrainian side confirmed it. David Arakhamia, who led Ukraine’s delegation, later said Russia was prepared to end the war if Ukraine accepted Finland-style neutrality and committed not to join NATO. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov confirmed to me, Judge Napolitano and Mario Nawfal directly that the talks produced a tentative agreement, and that its terms were brought to the table by the Ukrainian delegation, not imposed by Moscow.
As a gesture of goodwill, Moscow withdrew its forces from north of Kyiv. Western commentary treats that as a retreat forced by battlefield failure. It is at least as consistent with the claim that the pressure had served its purpose.
How the deal died
Then the politics changed. Boris Johnson arrived unannounced in Kyiv on April 9, 2022, and according to Arakhamia told the Ukrainians not to sign anything with Russia and to “just fight.” Two days earlier, Lavrov had already complained publicly that Ukraine’s new draft departed sharply from the key provisions agreed at Istanbul on March 29. Washington and London had decided Russia was weaker than they had thought and that it could be bled. Ukraine walked away.
This is the point Pape’s framework cannot absorb. If Russia’s goal was a neutral Ukraine obtained through negotiation, the war did not go on because Moscow’s plan failed. It went on because Russia’s adversaries rejected the settlement.
No plan B, but a fast pivot and a new army
With hindsight, Russia clearly had not prepared a plan B for Ukraine walking away. That was a real planning failure. But the Russian military adjusted quickly. It concentrated on the Donbas and the land bridge to Crimea, and the fall of Mariupol in May gave it the first major result of that phase.
The bigger adjustment came in September 2022. After a large number of contract soldiers left the army in August and the Kharkiv counteroffensive exposed how thin Russian lines were, Putin ordered the mobilization of 300,000 reservists. That was the start, not the end, of Russia’s response. From that point Moscow set about building a much larger army, as the Russian officers I have interviewed have described in detail, including Gen. Apti Alaudinov, Gen. Evgeny Buzhinsky, Gen. Andrei Gurulev and Col. Eduard Basurin.
The mobilization was followed by a sustained recruitment campaign and an expanded annual draft. By Medvedev’s count, more than 452,000 men signed military contracts in 2023. Roughly 450,000 followed in 2024, and more than 422,000 in 2025. Year after year, Russia has added at least 350,000 new soldiers. Putin’s decrees tell the same story: authorized military strength rose from about 1.15 million in 2022 to 1.32 million in December 2023, then to 1.5 million effective December 2024. By 2026, according to my sources, Russia’s army had reached that 1.5 million active-duty figure.
That is not the behavior of a state that expected a quick war and is now improvising its way out of a trap. It is the behavior of a state that decided in the autumn of 2022 to fight a long war, and built the force to do it.
Woke Grad School Teacher Programs Help Explain Why The Kids Can’t Read
The New York Times featured an in-depth essay from writer Nikole Hannah-Jones last week about the lamentable state of elementary and secondary education in the United States. The essay’s contents deserve (and are receiving) much criticism, thanks in part to Hannah-Jones sacrificing her daughter’s educational outcomes on the altar of wokeness and racism. But moral failings aside, the “1619 Project” author shines a spotlight on the failures plaguing American students not just in inner cities but across the map.
The recent release of results from last year’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests confirms on a macro level what Hannah-Jones described at length from a micro perspective. The international test of 15-year-olds showed that American youths continue to lag behind those in many other peer nations — which might have something to do with the woke ideology pervading the schools that educate the next generation of teachers.
Plummeting Reading Scores
The PISA results brought discouraging news regarding the global competitiveness of American students. The Wall Street Journal noted that since 2018, “math scores in China have improved by an impressive 21 points (equivalent to roughly one year of learning) while those in the U.S. have fallen by 15 (three quarters of a year of learning).” And whereas more than half (54 percent) of students in the four Chinese cities tested qualified as “top performers,” fewer than 1 in 10 (only 8 percent) American students did. This is not a positive development given the importance of engineering and computer science in the global economy.
If anything, the PISA reading test results proved even more worrisome. Americans’ reading scores plunged by 14 points since the last round of tests in 2022, and they now sit near their lowest point this century.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which organizes the PISA tests, noted that reading scores have declined generally since 2012. Perhaps unsurprisingly, some of the blame may point in the direction of smartphones and social media shortening attention spans. The OECD notes that “the share of ‘hasty readers’ — students who rush through texts and give quick but incorrect answers — almost doubled between 2018 and 2025.”
Education Schools’ Woke Obsession
But in the United States at least, another factor may help to explain students’ poor academic performance. A separate paper by researchers at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) illustrated the ideological obsessions within graduate schools of education, which train the next generation of teachers going into American classrooms.
The AEI study examined course reading materials and syllabi for master’s programs at 10 public graduate schools of education. As the paper notes, because many school districts pay higher wages to teachers with master’s degrees, these graduate schools have a ready-built pipeline of potential students.
Consider the titles of just some of the course readings in one school’s curriculum:
- “Is an Antiracist and Decolonizing Applied Linguistics Possible?”
- “Theorizing Linguistic Racisms from a Language Ideological Perspective”
- “Writing, Rioting, and Righting Como Negra: A Testimonio of Black Latinx Erasure in Bilingual Education”
- “Black Languaging [sic] as Anti-Racist Pedagogy in the World Language Classroom”
- “World Languages for Black Linguistic Reparations”
- “Toward an Anti-Racist Linguistic Anthropology: An Indigenous Response to White Supremacy.”
Note that these are all titles from syllabi at the University of Texas, a publicly funded institution in a purportedly conservative state.
Watchdog Says Trump Control of $400 Million Political War Chest a ‘Clear-Cut Violation of Campaign Finance Law’
An election spending watchdog on Friday accused President Donald Trump of committing a “clear-cut violation of campaign finance law” through his stated control over spending decisions made by the MAGA Inc. super political action committee.
Citing decades of legal precedent, the Campaign Legal Center (CLC) argued that federal office holders are prohibited from directing spending for super PACs, which raise money outside the scope of federal campaign laws.
Saurav Ghosh, director of federal campaign finance reform at CLC, noted that Trump has stated publicly on multiple occasions that he will decide where MAGA Inc.’s $400 million war chest will be deployed in the 2026 elections—which Ghosh said would be flatly illegal.
“Our laws are clear: No federal officeholder or candidate is allowed to direct the money raised or spent by a super PAC,” said Ghosh. “President Trump, MAGA Inc., and anyone else who breaks campaign finance laws must be held accountable to help ensure that our political system is free of corruption.”
Last week, CLC filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) that cited statements Trump made to reporters, whom he told funds raised by MAGA Inc. were “my money that I control.”
This statement alone, the group said, was “a remarkable admission of a serious campaign finance violation.”
The complaint then asked the FEC to seek “appropriate sanctions for any and all violations” of campaign finance law committed by Trump and MAGA Inc., “including civil penalties sufficient to deter future violations and an injunction prohibiting the respondents from any and all violations in the future.”
While MAGA Inc. has a formidable stash of campaign cash at its disposal, it is unclear how much of an impact it will have on the 2026 midterms given that polls show the president and his party are in a deep hole with voters.
A report from The New Republic published last week revealed that the pro-Trump super PAC is plugging significant money into at least 17 districts that the president won by more than five points in 2024, and six districts that he won by more than 10 points.
David Wasserman, elections analyst for Cook Political Report, told The New Republic that this spending in pro-Trump districts is “an acknowledgment that things have shifted in a huge way since 2024.”
“Republicans have hemorrhaged support among independent voters, they’ve got a real enthusiasm problem,” said Wasserman, “and as a result, districts that ordinarily would vote handily for Trump and Republicans are now in play.”
A Friday report in The Washington Post examined the states where Trump is preparing to campaign in the coming days, and found the president is being deployed in deep-red states such as Alabama and Oklahoma.
“Oklahoma is a state Trump won in 2024 with 66% of the vote—and won all 77 counties,” the Post reported. “In Alabama, Trump won with 65%.”
The Democrat Plan to Redistribute Wealth to the Wealthier
Two hypothetical college graduates who are married now have a combined annual income of $240,000; they each earn $120,000 per year.
Should an American who graduated from high school but never went to college—and who now works as a delivery truck driver, earning $43,950 per year (the median annual earnings for that job) be forced to help pay off the federal student loans of these two college graduates who make $240,000?
If former President Joe Biden had gotten his way, that truck driver and other hardworking American taxpayers would indeed have seen their tax dollars help pay off those loans.
When Biden was running for president in April 2020, he announced his plan for “forgiving student debt.”
“I propose to forgive all undergraduate tuition-related federal student debt from two- and four-year public colleges and universities for debt-holders earning up to $125,000,” Biden said.
His plan, he said, would also “[i]mmediately cancel a minimum of $10,000 of student debt per person.”
After he was elected president, Biden did not get Congress to enact new legislation to implement this plan. Instead, he took unilateral executive action in an attempt to do so—and his administration claimed this action was justified under a law that had been enacted under former President George W. Bush.
In 2003, Bush signed the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act, aka the HEROES Act.
This act, said its official summary, “[a]uthorizes the Secretary of Education to waive or modify any requirement or regulation applicable to the student financial assistance programs under title IV of the Higher Education Act of 1965 as deemed necessary with respect to an affected individual who: (1) is serving on active duty during a war or other military operation or national emergency; (2) is performing National Guard duty during a war, operation, or emergency; (3) resides or is employed in an area that is declared a disaster area by any Federal, State, or local official in connection with a national emergency; or (4) suffered direct economic hardship as a direct result of a war or other military operation or national emergency.”
As the nation headed into the 2022 midterm elections, Biden announced his student loan forgiveness plan. “On August 24, 2022,” explained the Congressional Research Service, “the Biden Administration announced it would invoke the Higher Education Relief Opportunities Act of 2003 (HEROES Act) to carry out a ‘one-time student loan debt relief policy’ to ‘address the financial harms of the [COVID-19] pandemic for low- and middle-income borrowers.’ Under the one-time student debt relief policy (HEROES Act policy), ED (Education Department) would have cancelled up to $10,000 in qualifying HEA Title IV federal student loan debt for borrowers with an adjusted gross income (AGI) in 2020 or 2021 of less than $125,000 (for individuals or married borrowers who filed federal income taxes separately) or $250,000 (for married couples filing jointly and certain other individuals).”
So, under Biden’s plan, a law that had been designed to help individuals “serving on active duty during a war or other military operation or national emergency” or had “suffered direct economic hardship as a direct result of a war or other military operation or national emergency” could be used to grant general federal student loan forgiveness in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
On Sept. 26, 2022, the Congressional Budget Office sent a letter to Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., and Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., that estimated the cost of the Biden plan. “As of June 30, 2022, 43 million borrowers held $1.6 trillion in federal student loans,” said this letter. “About $430 billion of that debt will be canceled, CBO estimates.”
FDA Commissioner Nominee Says Every Vaccine On US Market Is Safe, Effective
The doctor nominated by President Trump to lead the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) told senators this week that vaccines available in the United States are safe and effective.
Dr. Heidi Overton, the nominee, said that if confirmed, she could use her scientific training and clinical background to describe to the American public what is currently known about products that fall under Food and Drug Administration oversight.
“And what is currently known is that the vaccines that have been approved by the FDA meet the standards for safety and efficacy,” she said.
Overton, 37, also endorsed the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine, saying it is not lethal and that it is the best tool in the public health response to measles outbreaks that are ongoing in the United States.
She said that mifepristone, an abortion pill, was safe and effective because it had been approved by the FDA. Overton wrote in a 2023 article that chemical abortion through products such as mifepristone was “dangerous to women,” drawing criticism from Democrats in the Senate.
As Zachary Stieber reports further for The Epoch Times, Overton would take the helm of an agency that has been under acting leadership since Dr. Marty Makary stepped down in May.
While signing an executive order in August that encouraged breaking up the measles combination vaccine, Trump told reporters that the vaccine is possibly “quite lethal” and that separate shots for measles, mumps, and rubella appeared to be “not at all lethal but just very effective.”
When asked after the signing, the White House declined to provide any citations for Trump’s description of the vaccine.
Leaders in the Make America Healthy Again movement recently called for removing vaccines containing messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) technology.
Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), an outspoken vaccine proponent, has been asking people whom Trump nominated to serve in high-level health positions about Trump’s comments, as well as other questions about vaccines, during their confirmation hearings before the Senate Health Committee, the panel he chairs. Chris Klomp, selected to be the top deputy to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., recently voiced support for vaccines in response to Cassidy, as did Dr. Nicole Saphier, tabbed to become surgeon general.
Cassidy said on Sept. 24 that Kennedy, whom he voted for, made him guarantees but later backtracked on those promises, citing directives from the president.
Kennedy’s department did not return a request for comment.
Cassidy asked Overton how she would handle it if she made guarantees and the president then directed her to go against them.
“I’ve had robust discussions with the president,” said Overton, who was part of Trump’s first administration.
“I would give him my best advice, and I would follow the statutory requirements for the role of FDA commissioner regarding individual product determinations for safety and efficacy, and that would be what would guide every decision if confirmed to this role.”
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