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Netflix Co-Founder Reed Hastings and Wife Dump $2.5 MILLION Into Killing California Voter ID — Same Couple That Bankrolled Newsom and Kamala

Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings and his wife, Patty Quillin, have written seven-figure checks to stop California voters from requiring ID at the ballot box.

State campaign-finance records show Hastings gave $1 million on September 3 to a labor-backed committee fighting Proposition 39. Quillin separately dumped $1.5 million into an ACLU-tied anti-Prop 39 committee.

Combined, that is $2.5 million from one Silicon Valley household to keep California one of the last states where you can vote without showing a real government ID.

The New York Post first flagged the Hastings check this week. The Fair Political Practices Commission’s (FPPC) latest ballot-measure donor list confirms both gifts.

The FPPC’s top-contributor list shows Hastings gave $1 million to the committee “No on 39 – Block Election Rigging.”

Quillin contributed $1.5 million to “No on Prop. 39 – Californians for Voting Rights.” Together, their reported contributions total $2.5 million.

Proposition 39 is a citizen-initiated constitutional amendment on the November 3, 2026 ballot. It would require:

  • Government-issued identification for in-person voting
  • The last four digits of a designated government ID number on mail-ballot envelopes
  • Election officials to use “best efforts” and government data to verify that registered voters are U.S. citizens
  • Annual public reports on how much of each county’s roll has been citizenship-checked
  • A free state-issued voter ID card for anyone who asks for one

As The Gateway Pundit reported in July and August, Democrat Attorney General Rob Bonta rewrote the ballot language from “Establishes Additional Voter Identification and Citizenship Verification Requirements” into the all-caps smear “PROHIBITS CITIZENS FROM VOTING UNLESS THEY PRESENT GOVERNMENT-ISSUED IDENTIFICATION.”

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Undeniable Judge Boasberg Communist Connections Finally Surface – Hosted Communist Propaganda Org’s Events 9 Times, 6 as FISA Judge

The federal judge who has become the face of opposition to President Donald Trump has long-running ties to an exchange program with the United States’ most powerful global rival.

Judge James Boasberg, chief justice for the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, has been a thorn in the Trump administration’s side since the president returned to the White House in 2025.

But years before that, he was playing host to an organization with ties to the Chinese Communist Party even while serving on a court privy to some of the United States’ most sensitive information, according to documents publicized by a conservative journalist Thursday.

Natalie Winters is an investigative journalist and executive editor of “War Room,” the podcast hosted by Steve Bannon, who served briefly as chief strategist in Trump’s first-term White House.

In a Substack piece published Thursday, she detailed Boasberg’s ties to the China-United States Exchange Foundation.

The name sounds anodyne, but its activities are suspicious enough that the foundation was the subject of a November 2025 letter to Columbia University from the chairman of the House Select Committee on China, asking Columbia to end its ties with the group because it is part of a Chinese government system known as “United Front” — a propaganda effort committed to advancing the causes of the Chinese Communist Party.

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SURPRISE! Study Finds Blue States With the Strongest Teacher Unions Also Have the Lowest Reading Scores

Liberals would have you believe that strong teacher unions equate with strong schools and solid results, but a new study found the exact opposite.

Of the states included in the study, blue states with the strongest teacher unions also happened to have the lowest reading scores.

Conversely, red states cited in the study, which give less attention to teacher unions, score much higher.

FOX News reports:

Powerful teachers’ unions share striking link with states struggling to teach kids to read

States with stronger teachers’ unions tend to have weaker literacy performance and have adopted fewer of the policies credited with improving reading outcomes, according to a new analysis from a center-left think tank.

Eight of the 10 states to score among the worst in the Progressive Policy Institute’s (PPI) assessment of early-literacy policies were home to powerful teachers’ unions. Among the top 60% of states in terms of early-literacy policy scores, only four had strong teachers’ unions.

Mississippi, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, South Carolina and Indiana, all Republican-leaning states with weak unions, were among the states with the best literacy outcomes. Maine, New York, Illinois, Hawaii, Washington and Rhode Island, blue states, were among the worst.

The pattern isn’t universal. Maryland, a blue state with a strong teachers’ union, has posted strong reading results, while South Dakota, a red state with a weaker union, has struggled. The differences suggest union strength and party control alone don’t explain states’ reading performance.

It’s kind of amazing, isn’t it?

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“No Help for a White Man”: Inmate Found Dead in Feces-Filled South Carolina Jail Cell After Water Was Cut Off — Autopsy Finally Rules HOMICIDE After Two Months

A South Carolina inmate who told his family he was being intentionally starved inside the Chesterfield County Detention Center has now been ruled a homicide victim, nearly two months after jailers found his dehydrated, emaciated body on the floor of a feces-covered cell with the water shut off.

Gary Donald “Bubba” Blair, 43, was found lifeless on the floor of his E Pod cell at the Chesterfield County Detention Center on July 24. The cell was covered in inches-deep feces.

For context, Blair was not serving time for a violent crime. Deputies arrested him on February 22 after he showed up at his sister’s house wearing a Chesterfield County Sheriff’s Office golf shirt, a security badge, handcuffs, and pepper spray. He was charged with impersonating a law enforcement officer.

A judge later found him incompetent to stand trial but restorable with treatment and ordered the South Carolina Office of Mental Health to take him on June 3. The agency never did. Officials cited a nine-month backlog. Blair sat in the county jail for another 51 days and died there. His family says he has suffered from serious mental illness since age 18.

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Lockheed Fast-Tracks Secretive AIM-260 Missile As Pentagon Pushes To Expand Production

Lockheed Martin has signed a framework agreement with the Pentagon to accelerate production and delivery of the AIM-260 Joint Advanced Tactical Missile, bringing a closely guarded air-to-air weapons program further into public view. The announcement Thursday sets the foundation for a multiyear procurement contract, which remains subject to congressional approval.

The company says the missile offers greater range and effectiveness than existing air-to-air weapons and is compatible with aircraft including the F-22 Raptor and F-35 Lightning II. It did not disclose a production target, delivery schedule, contract value or precise performance specifications. The announcement establishes a commitment to expand production, not a publicly measurable timetable for doing so.

Reuters reported that the program is intended to address increasingly capable Chinese long-range air threats, including those associated with the J-20 fighter. Although the weapon has spent years under tight secrecy, Thursday was not its first public appearance: images emerged in May. The production push also comes amid broader pressure on American and allied missile inventories following the Iran conflict.

That context makes two separate questions important: what the missile can do, and how many can actually reach operational units. A performance advantage has limited practical value if manufacturers cannot supply enough weapons, replace expended stocks or support additional customers.

Australia is already preparing to become one of those customers.

Canberra announced on August 6 that it would invest almost A$736 million to acquire the AIM-260 through the U.S. government’s foreign military sales system. The planned integration sequence starts with Australia’s F/A-18F Super Hornets, followed by its F-35A fighters and EA-18G Growlers. Australia’s government says it will become the first country outside the United States to operate the weapon.

The Australian announcement describes the acquisition as a way to extend engagement range and improve interoperability with American forces. It does not specify a missile quantity or delivery date, although Marles has said the weapon will not be available before 2033, and a December 2025 U.S. approval covered up to 450 missiles in a package valued at about $3.16 billion.

Lockheed’s industrial expansion extends beyond the AIM-260.

In a separate announcement Thursday, the company said GM Defense had delivered an initial batch of housing components for the PAC-3 Missile Segment Enhancement interceptor just 22 days after the companies signed a formal contract. That agreement was signed August 6, with the first components delivered August 28. These were components for a different missile program, not completed interceptors or AIM-260 deliveries.

Lockheed says it is investing between $8 billion and $9 billion to expand munitions production across more than 20 American sites. Planned construction and expansion would increase its munitions production and warehousing space by almost 50%, according to the company. The GM partnership uses commercial casting and machining capabilities to supplement the defense supply chain.

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Mike Johnson Proves That No Man’s Life, Liberty or Property Are Safe While the Legislature Isn’t in Session

On September 16, US Representative Mike Johnson (R-LA), acting in his role as Speaker of the House, sent that body’s members home until after the November midterm elections.

My knee-jerk reaction is gratitude. After all, as Gideon J. Tucker wrote in 1866, “no man’s life, liberty or property are safe while the legislature is in session.”

Conversely, if all those members of Congress are back home campaigning for re-election (or just enjoying a break), their opportunities to engage in criminal stupidity step down from wholesale to retail levels.

Heck, if we have to put up with Congress existing at all, I’d rather they convened once a year to collect their salaries for the year, then took the other 364 days off.

On a closer look, though, Johnson seems to have found a way to turn Tucker’s aphorism on its head, frequently using the absence of Congress to protect existing depredations, rather than the presence of Congress to drum up new ones.

“The House has now canceled at least 63 scheduled voting days this Congress, including nine days this month alone,” notes US Representative Ralph Norman (R-SC).

When Johnson thinks he’s going to lose a vote — with “lose” defined as upsetting or defying president Donald Trump — he just sends everyone home until he can whip a few more House members into line, or at least until the loss might come at a slightly less embarrassing point in the news cycle.

He’s done it with votes on EPA regulations.

He’s done it with votes related to the Epstein files.

This time he fled in terror, taking the entire House with him, from a privileged motion filed by outgoing US Representative Thomas Massie (R-KY).

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OpenAI flags concerning new AI behavior and vows to track it more closely

OpenAI has disclosed six reports of “unexpected or concerning” behavior in artificial-intelligence models as the debate on AI safety becomes increasingly heated.

The AI company also said Wednesday it was introducing a new framework for tracking, probing and disclosing instances of what it called “misalignment,” including cases where AI models acted without authorization, coordinated with other models or evaded oversight.

OpenAI’s latest announcement came as U.S. AI bosses, including the leaders of OpenAI and Anthropic, are calling for a slowdown in the technology’s development over safety concerns.

Among the new cases reported by OpenAI, an unreleased research model inserted “jailbreak-like instructions” into its own notes to disregard its normal constraints and told itself to be “freed from the roles and identities that bind other chatbots.”

In another instance, an AI “agent” used computer code to come up with the answer to a question, but, in order to have an online source to cite, it uploaded a file to the public internet without asking the user.

During training of an AI model called 5.6-sol, the model instructed itself to invent missing data, and an agent wrote a message to remind itself to hide mismatched information.

The six reports were discovered during training or evaluation over the past months, OpenAI said.

“As AI systems grow more advanced and more widely deployed, we need to build a broader and better-informed consensus on the progress of alignment research,” OpenAI wrote in a blog post as it disclosed the events.

“Decisions about how AI development should proceed in the months and years to come need to draw on evidence that people outside the companies building frontier models can examine for themselves,” the company said.

Wednesday’s new cases followed OpenAI’s disclosure in July that its rogue AI system hacked into AI startup Hugging Face. Anthropic also said the same month that its AI models hacked into three organizations during testing.

AI “agents” are becoming smarter and have become “more determined to resolve complex tasks through inter-agent collaboration, knowledge sharing, deception, and concealment,” said Lian Jye Su, a chief analyst at technology research and advisory group Omdia.

That’s making it harder to govern and contain them using traditional AI security approaches, he said.

OpenAI’s new tracking and disclosure framework, meanwhile, can help push for other AI developers to also adopt similar practices.

“That said, the process remains internal and voluntary, but is a step in the right direction,” Su added.

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US House Holds Billionaire Investor Leon Black in Contempt of Congress for Defying Subpoenas To Testify on Epstein Review

Black and Congress are on a collision course.

We have long been reporting here on TGP about the relationship between billionaire investor Leon Black and late sex offender (and accused sex trafficker) Jeffrey Epstein.

After many years plagued by the association with Epstein, having paid a multi-millionaire sum to settle lawsuits brought by the US Virgin Islands, Black appeared to have had enough, and is suing the House Oversight Committee for subpoenaing him to testify in their review.

Leon has said he didn’t know how much he paid Epstein over the years, but a law firm hired to investigate the matter reported that the total was $158 million.

That makes him the second biggest Jeffrey Epstein client ever, after only Victoria’s Secret founder Les Wexner.

After the Oversight Committee unanimously recommended that the billionaire be found in contempt of Congress, the House plenary did just that, and approved a resolution yesterday (16) holding Leon Black in contempt of Congress and referring the matter to the Department of Justice.

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Maduro Ally Pleads Guilty In Miami To Scheme That Stole Venezuelan Welfare Funds

The former minister of industry for Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro’s regime pleaded guilty on Tuesday to a global money laundering conspiracy that skimmed millions from a Venezuelan public welfare program.

According to a Department of Justice (DOJ) news release, Alex Saab, 54, who was extradited from Venezuela in May and charged days later, conducted a decade-long scheme that defrauded a Venezuelan welfare program for food and medicine, netting hundreds of millions of dollars for himself and associates.

Saab, a Colombian businessman, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to launder monetary instruments before federal district Judge Kathleen Williams in Miami. He faces a maximum sentence of 20 years.

“Criminals like Alex Saab who stole from the people of Venezuela and worked to exploit and misuse American financial institutions to fund illicit activities will be held accountable,” FBI Director Kash Patel said in the news release.

Saab is accused of bilking the welfare program known as Local Committee for Supply and Production, or CLAP (Comité Local de Abastecimiento y Producción).

The ex-minister admitted to using a system of bribes and illegal payments to public officials. Entities controlled by conspirators in the scheme would be rewarded with lucrative contracts from the Venezuelan government to import food and medicine under CLAP.

Saab and his conspirators did not fulfill the contracts and would instead use fake companies, false invoices and shipping records, and other fraudulent documents to unlawfully obtain millions while concealing their association with the scheme, the DOJ said.

Saab further admitted he used shell companies outside his country to launder the illegal proceeds around the world, including in the United States.

DOJ Assistant Attorney General Andrew Duva said Saab exploited the American financial system to profit off Venezuelans, creating a “complex web of front companies, shell accounts, and false records to perpetuate his scheme.”

Saab previously was in U.S. custody until former President Joe Biden released him in December 2023 as part of a prisoner swap with Venezuela. The deal included the Venezuelan regime’s release of 30 prisoners, including 10 Americans.

“The government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela celebrates with joy the liberation and return to his homeland of our diplomat Alex Saab, who until today was unjustly kidnapped in a U.S. jail,” the Venezuelan government said following the prisoner-swap deal.

Saab was removed from his position earlier this year by acting leader Delcy Rodríguez, who previously served as Maduro’s vice president until he was captured by U.S. forces in an overnight raid on Caracas in January.

Saab was initially charged in July 2019 on money laundering counts.

He was detained about a year later in the Republic of Cabo Verde at the request of the U.S. government and was eventually extradited to American custody.

“President Biden granted Alex Saab clemency while he was awaiting trial in [Miami], and Saab was released from federal custody and returned to Venezuela. But that was not the end of the story,” said U.S. Attorney Jason Quiñones for the Southern District of Florida.

Quiñones’s office secured a new indictment against Saab in January 2026, and by May he was back in Miami federal court.

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U.S. Robotics Company Says Humanoid Robots Could Patrol Border

Foundation Robotics, a U.S.-based startup, has discussed deploying its Phantom MK1 humanoid robots along the southern border, according to a ZeroHedge report citing a Fox News interview with CEO Sankaet Pathak [1]. Pathak said the machines are designed to navigate rugged terrain that can be difficult for vehicles, drones and fixed cameras. He said potential deployment missions could center on monitoring remote border areas, inspecting tunnels, and flagging migrant crossings for human agents.

The company develops humanoid robots for industrial and military applications, and the report described the border proposal as part of a broader move of physical AI and humanoid robots from factories and homes into conflict zones and other high-risk environments. The report also cited recent episodes of mass migration, including the invasion of the Spanish enclave of Ceuta by military-aged men, as examples of what it called weaponized migration flows. A DHS spokesperson told Fox News that the department “currently does not have any non-contractual agreements, pilots, or active prime contracts with Foundation.” The statement did not address whether demonstrations had occurred, and no formal arrangement has been announced.

Pathak says pilot could begin quickly

Pathak said a limited pilot could begin immediately and a larger deployment could follow within several months, according to the same report. He said the company is in conversations with “almost all national security government bodies,” including the Air Force, Navy, Army and DHS. The company is starting to negotiate contracts and applications for some of those bodies, he said.

In early March, Foundation co-founder Mike LeBlanc told TIME that the company is in “very close contact” with DHS regarding possible patrol deployments along the southern border, the report said. A separate summary of the TIME reporting said Foundation’s Phantom MK1 units were being evaluated for battlefield use while discussions about potential roles in U.S. border security continued [3].

Neither DHS nor Foundation has confirmed a timeline for those discussions. The border patrol proposal depends on robots operating in terrain that agencies currently monitor with personnel and equipment.

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