America has one of the world’s largest prison populations, with an estimated 1.7 million people in confinement.
Going further, America’s incarceration rate is the fourth-highest in the world. Despite being a developed economy, its prison population is more than double that of Russia, India, and Brazil combined.
This graphic, via Visual Capitalist’s Dorothy Neufeld, shows the countries with the most prisoners, based on data from the Prison Policy Initiative.
eset by soaring prices, an increasingly hostile regulatory climate, and growing public opposition in coastal communities, offshore wind faces a new challenge from a powerful public official and erstwhile booster of strict climate policies.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has ordered the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to investigate wind projects’ effects on the health and safety of commercial fishermen, Bloomberg News reports. Specifically, Kennedy in late summer quietly instructed CDC’s National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health to prepare such research. The office of the U.S. Surgeon General is also involved in the assessment.
Originally, the research was to be wrapped up within a couple of months, but its completion has been delayed by the government shutdown. “Work on this report has been halted solely due to the Democrat-led shutdown,” a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) told Reuters.
To date, research on the human health effects of offshore wind turbines has been spotty, with a 2011 literature review finding “no peer-reviewed articles demonstrate a direct causal link between people living in proximity to modern wind turbines, the noise they emit and resulting physiological health effects,” according to The Hill.
But a study released in January by the University of Portsmouth in the U.K. warned of potentially harmful levels of metals from turbine protection systems. “The materials used to protect wind turbines from corrosion leach into the surrounding water, which could pose risks to ecosystems, seafood safety, and human health,” the study found. “Offshore wind farms release thousands of [tons] of aluminum, zinc, and iridium each year.”
Professor Gordon Watson of the university’s School of the Environment and Life Sciences supports wind farms because of their role in reducing carbon emissions but adds, “There is limited data on how these metals affect the environment near operational offshore wind farms, so it’s hard to assess the full risks.”
Chinese companies preparing students for the American Law School Admission Test (LSAT) have gained unauthorized access to U.S.-based LSAT preparation companies and stolen information, according to the Law School Admissions Council (LSAC), the organization that administers the American LSAT.
After the COVID-19 pandemic, LSAC began permitting remote LSAT administration. In China, that shift fueled a lucrative market of firms exploiting loopholes in LSAC’s online security—enabling hired test-takers, armed with fake identification, to impersonate students and complete the exam from abroad.
LSAC announced in August that it had suspended online testing from mainland China. The suspension came amid concerns that Chinese actors compromised and penetrated remote testing systems and services.
New reports, including one by Dave Killoran, the CEO of PowerScore, an American LSAT prep company, reveal just how these Chinese companies are scamming the LSAT.
Killoran said that a Chinese whistleblower, told him last May that he had access to what appeared to be stolen LSAT questions. The whistleblower was frustrated how easy it was to gain access to cheat materials.
Killoran told The Washington Free Beacon that screenshots of the test questions are “compiled into PDFs and sold to students who can’t pay the high fees for a proxy test taker.”
Chinese companies have been charging up to $8,000 for the stolen information. These firms advertise “guaranteed results” through encrypted social media channels and claim to have access to upcoming LSAT questions weeks before the exam.
Actors reportedly stole this information through a variety of means, one of the most prominent being hiding high-definition cameras to photograph in-person and remote exam questions.
This is not the first time that Chinese influence has penetrated American higher education. The Hudson Institute conducted a report on Harvard University published in June, that highlighted how Harvard was training Chinese government officials.
The British government is facing growing backlash after a leaked Home Office document revealed that up to 14 additional sites across the country have been identified to house thousands of undocumented migrants, British media have reported.
The initiative forms part of Labour’s pledge to end the use of taxpayer-funded asylum hotels by 2029, which currently cost billions of pounds annually. Marked “official sensitive,” the memo, first cited by the Sunday Times, stated that the Home Office has drawn up plans to resettle as many as 10,000 asylum seekers across the UK.
Under the proposed plan, migrants would be accommodated at former military facilities that have been upgraded and could begin receiving arrivals immediately.
So far, two locations have been confirmed by British media: Cameron Barracks in Inverness and the Crowborough Army Training Camp in East Sussex.
Radical leftist and twice-failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams has officially shuttered her dark-money-funded nonprofit network, including the New Georgia Project and its affiliate, the New Georgia Project Action Fund, a pair of organizations used to drive voter registration and turnouts across the state.
Last week, Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith (MO-08) released a statement that said the move to dissolve Stacey Abrams-founded New Georgia Project comes after the committee launched an investigation into whether the nonprofit illegally funneled millions into Abrams’s 2018 gubernatorial campaign. Smith urged the IRS to revoke its tax-exempt status.
Smith continued:
“The entire world watched Stacey Abrams turn her twice-failed gubernatorial campaign into a grift to enrich herself in the name of Democrat ‘Get Out the Vote’ and ‘Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion’ efforts. The New Georgia Project’s decision to dissolve further confirms the Ways and Means Committee and Georgia State Ethics Commission’s findings that the organization broke the law when it failed to disclose more than $7 million in illegal contributions and expenditures designed to prop up Abrams’s failed 2018 campaign.
“This decision also raises further questions about whether Abrams or other organizations she is linked to have engaged in illegal activity. The Department of Justice should take a close look at every Abrams-linked nonprofit, especially given recent discoveries that Joe Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency awarded $2 billion to a group with ties to Abrams.”
The rags-to-riches story of Abrams is fascinating. By 2023, amid the so-called climate crisis, Democrats used the Inflation Reduction Act, better known as the Green New Scam, to funnel billions in green subsidies into their dark web of nonprofits. Abrams, hired as senior counsel, helped secure nearly $2 billion in federal funding for Rewiring America.
Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy will be released from prison and placed under judicial supervision, a Paris appeals court ruled Monday, less than three weeks after he began serving a five-year sentence over a scheme to finance his 2007 election campaign with funds from Libya.
Sarkozy, 70, was expected to leave Paris’ La Santé prison in the afternoon.
He will be banned from leaving the French territory and from being in touch with key people including co-defendants and witnesses in the case, the court said. An appeals trial is expected to take place later, possibly in the spring.
Sarkozy became the first former French head of state in modern times to be sent behind bars after his conviction on Sept. 25. He denies wrongdoing. He was jailed on Oct. 21 pending appeal but immediately filed for early release.
The recent reactions by students of arguably the nation’s most prominent university to a report about grade inflation read like they came from the pages of The Babylon Bee, a satirical website. That they came instead from the Harvard Crimson speaks to the crises plaguing higher education.
The melodramatic wailing by Harvard students regarding the school’s grading policies does more than represent a parody of Ivy League education and woke “snowflakes.” It reinforces that taxpayers are propping up a sclerotic, dysfunctional educational system that has problems extending far beyond rampant antisemitism and radical leftist politics.
Unfortunately, the Harvard report that drew such harsh student condemnation remains hidden on the university’s intranet, but a Crimson article gives the gist. The study “found that more than 60 percent of grades awarded to Harvard undergraduates are A’s, compared to only a quarter of grades two decades ago. It concluded that Harvard’s current grading system is ‘damaging the academic culture of the College.’”
Cue the outrage from students, as documented in a separate Crimson story. One said the faculty’s desire to ensure consistently high academic standards undermined her struggles, saying:
The whole entire day, I was crying. … I skipped classes on Monday, and I was just sobbing in bed because I felt like I try so hard in my classes, and my grades aren’t even the best. … It just felt soul-crushing.
A glib commenter might point out that skipping an entire day’s worth of classes due to the report’s release appears slightly inconsistent with “try[ing] so hard” academically.
But from a more substantive and sympathetic viewpoint, these types of comments demonstrate the mental health challenges facing our nation’s youth. Another student made comments in a similar vein: “I killed myself all throughout high school to try and get into this school. I was looking forward to being fulfilled by my studies now, rather than being killed by them.”
Both sets of comments imply students’ belief that effort will necessarily equal results — that everyone who puts in X number of hours will automatically get A’s. But the world does not work that way, and neither should Harvard. That these students truly believe in this type of “bargain,” and react so harshly when someone questions it, speaks to how our culture has coddled many students into expecting that excellence will come easily, leaving them emotionally unprepared for any setbacks that arise.
Students wanting to be “fulfilled by my studies” seem not to understand the purpose of higher education. Most notably, the act of learning itself — of absorbing and applying knowledge — should serve as its own source of fulfillment and enjoyment, notwithstanding society’s bottom-line focus on grades.
Another student made a similar complaint, telling the Crimson, “What makes a Harvard student a Harvard student is their engagement in extracurriculars. … Now we have to throw all that away and pursue just academics. I believe that attacks the very notion of what Harvard is.”
At the risk of sounding like Ronald Reagan circa 1980, as a federal taxpayer, I am paying for the education of students like this, even if this particular student doesn’t receive federal student aid. And I have zero interest in subsidizing such students to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars per year just to see them spend most of their time playing Quidditch or joining Students for Justice in Palestine.
A new bombshell thread from investigative reporter DataRepublican on X exposes a disturbing glimpse inside what appears to be a State Department-led color revolution operating through USAID, foreign NGOs, and left-wing organizations funded by billionaire George Soros.
According to newly surfaced recordings shared by DataRepublican on X, former USAID employees openly discussed moving internal groups off federal systems into encrypted Signal chats ahead of the presidential inauguration, and then linking up with international partners to ‘mobilize against authoritarianism.’
The recordings themselves, taken from what appears to be a USAID virtual meeting, capture staff boasting about building “coordination structures” with Johns Hopkins University, international “democracy and conflict mitigation spaces,” and “colleagues from around the world” who had “dealt with this directly.”
In one clip, a USAID staff member named Van(she/her) describe how, prior to January 20, they migrated internal communications away from government servers and onto encrypted Signal chats, linking with “transition initiative” programs designed for foreign regime-change operations.
She describes moving internal communication channels away from USAID’s main systems “into Signal chats to protect our community,” citing fears of reprisal from the incoming Trump administration.
After the inauguration, Van confirmed that contractors immediately set up “Stop Work Order” websites and private communication groups to coordinate messaging, claiming it was a “response to disinformation.”
Within weeks, hundreds of staff reportedly joined these encrypted groups as the agency’s leadership was decapitated and “administrative leave” orders were issued.
President Donald Trump has pardoned a number of prominent figures involved in his effort to challenge the 2020 election outcome, according to U.S. Pardon Attorney Ed Martin on Nov. 9.
A proclamation document shared by Martin on social media named more than 70 individuals, including former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, and attorneys Sidney Powell and John Eastman, all accused of involvement in Trump’s bid to challenge the 2020 election results.
The pardons apply to conduct tied to the individuals’ involvement in activities surrounding the 2020 presidential election, as well as any conduct related to “their efforts to expose voting fraud and vulnerabilities in the 2020 Presidential Election,” according to the document.
“This proclamation ends a grave national injustice perpetrated upon the American people following the 2020 Presidential Election and continues the process of national reconciliation,” the document states.
The pardon would only cover federal charges brought against those listed. The proclamation also explicitly states that the pardon does not apply to Trump.
Neither Trump nor the White House released a statement regarding the pardons. The proclamation was signed by the president on Nov. 7, according to the document.
Nearly four months after U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced sweeping reforms aimed at achieving “drone domain dominance” by 2027, including a Pentagon-wide procurement overhaul led by the DOGE, Reuters reports that the U.S. Army is preparing to acquire at least one million drones over the next few years, marking one of the largest drone procurement cycles in the military service’s history.
Learning from the modern battlefield in Ukraine, the Army plans a massive ramp-up in drones: purchasing at least a million drones over the next 2-3 years, with potential purchases of half a million or more per year thereafter.
This is a significant jump from today’s 50,000 drones per year procurement cycle, and comes as Russia and China have ramped up production of their own.
U.S. Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll told Reuters that this new drone acquisition plan is a “big lift. But it is a lift we’re very capable of doing.”
Here’s more from the report:
He spoke by phone during a visit to Picatinny Arsenal, where he described learning about experimentation with “net rounds,” defenses that capture a drone in nets, as well as new explosives and electromagnetic tools synched into weapon systems.
Driscoll and Picatinny’s top commander, Major General John Reim, spoke to Reuters about how the United States was taking lessons from Russia’s war in Ukraine, which has been characterized by drone deployments on an unprecedented scale.
Tiny, inexpensive drones have proven to be one of the most potent weapons in the Russia-Ukraine war, where conventional warplanes are relatively rare because of a dense concentration of anti-aircraft systems near front lines.
Ukraine and Russia each produce roughly 4 million drones a year, but China is probably able to produce more than double that number, Driscoll said.
Driscoll said his priority is getting the United States into a position where it can produce enough drones for any future war, stimulating domestic production of everything from brushless motors and sensors to batteries and circuit boards.
. . .
“We expect to purchase at least a million drones within the next two to three years,” Driscoll said.
President Trump’s June executive order to “unleash American drone dominance” calls for scaling up domestic production. However, the challenge lies in the fact that supply chains for critical components, such as brushless motors, sensors, batteries, and chips, remain concentrated in China and other Southeast Asian countries.
“Drones are the future of warfare and America will come from behind to lead the way,” Sequoia partner Shaun Maguire stated over the summer on X.
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