A measles outbreak that began in South Carolina at the start of October is showing no signs of slowing as officials on Tuesday reported 27 new cases since Friday. Those cases bring the outbreak total to 111.
The southern state’s outbreak now rivals outbreaks ongoing in Utah and Arizona, which have tallied 115 and 176 cases, respectively. The outbreaks are threatening to cost the country its measles elimination status, which was earned in 2000 after vaccination efforts stopped the virus from spreading continuously. If the current transmission of the virus isn’t halted by January, the virus will have circulated for 12 consecutive months, marking it once again as an endemic disease in the US.
In an update on Tuesday, South Carolina’s health department suggested the spread is far from over. Of the state’s 27 new cases, 16 were linked to exposure at a church, the Way of Truth Church in Inman. And amid the new cases, new exposures were identified at Inman Intermediate School. That’s on top of exposures announced Friday at four other schools in the region, which led to well over 100 students being quarantined.
Congress quietly removed provisions that would have let the U.S. military fix its own equipment without relying on contractors, despite bipartisan and Pentagon support. The Register reports: The House and Senate versions of the NDAA passed earlier both included provisions that would have extended common right-to-repair rules to US military branches, requiring defense contractors to provide access to technical data, information, and components that enabled military customers to quickly repair essential equipment. Both of those provisions were stripped from the final joint-chamber reconciled version of the bill, published Monday, right-to-repair advocates at the US Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) pointed out in a press release. [...]
According to PIRG's press release on the matter, elected officials have been targeted by an "intensive lobbying push" in recent weeks against the provisions. House Armed Services Committee chair Mike Rogers (R-AL) and ranking Democrat Adam Smith (D-WA), responsible for much of the final version of the bill, have received significant contributions from defense contractors in recent years, and while correlation doesn't equal causation, it sure looks fishy. [Isaac Bowers, PIRG's federal legislative director] did tell us that he was glad that the defense sector's preferred solution to the military right to repair fight -- a "data as a service" solution -- was also excluded, so the 2026 NDAA isn't a total loss for the repairability fight. "That provision would have mandated the Pentagon access repair data through separate vendor contracts rather than receiving it upfront at the time of procurement, maintaining the defense industry's near monopoly over essential repair information and keeping troops waiting for repairs they could do quicker and cheaper themselves," Bowers said in an email.
An aide to the Democratic side of the Committee told The Register the House and Senate committees did negotiate a degree of right-to-repair permissions in the NDAA. According to the aide and a review of the final version of the bill, measures were included that require the Defense Department to identify any instances where a lack of technical data hinders operation or maintenance of weapon systems, as well as aviation systems. The bill also includes a provision that would establish a "technical data system" that would "track, manage, and enable the assessment" of data related to system maintenance and repair. Unfortunately, the technical data system portion of the NDAA mentions "authorized repair contractors" as the parties carrying out repair work, and there's also no mention of parts availability or other repairability provisions in the sections the staffer flagged -- just access to technical data. That means the provisions are unlikely to move the armed forces toward a new repairability paradigm.
Michael Saylor's software company Strategy, formerly known as MicroStrategy, built a financial model that some observers called an "infinite-money machine" by stockpiling hundreds of thousands of bitcoins and issuing stock and debt to buy more, but that machine appears to be breaking down. The company's stock peaked above $450 in mid-July and ended November at $177.18, a 60% decline. Bitcoin fell only 25% over the same period. The gap between Strategy's market cap and the value of its bitcoin holdings has nearly vanished.
At one point last week, the company's market value dipped below the value of its bitcoins after accounting for debt. Strategy announced it had built a $1.4 billion dollar reserve by selling more stock to cover required dividend payments to preferred shareholders over the next twelve months. The company also disclosed it might sell some of its coins if its value continues to fall, a reversal from Saylor's February tweet declaring "Never sell your Bitcoin." Professional short seller Jim Chanos, who had questioned the strategy's sustainability, told Sherwood he made money by shorting the stock and buying bitcoins.
Of course it is. It's the GOP, so racism and white nationalism are assured.
The Trump administration released its “National Security Strategy” on Thursday night, but the document reads more like a manifesto advocating for white supremacy than a supposed national defense plan.
The document calls on Europe to restore its “Western identity” and “civilizational self-confidence,” echoing the language of white supremacist movements. It also advocates against migration to the United States and Europe, which has long been cited as a goal of supremacists seeking to purportedly preserve white culture.
The Trump strategy argues that Europe faces “civilizational erasure” and blames organizations like the European Union and other international groups that supposedly “undermine political liberty and sovereignty, migration policies that are transforming the continent and creating strife, censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition, cratering birthrates, and loss of national identities and self-confidence.”
White supremacists have historically argued that white civilization is under assault from non-white infiltrators who are undermining existing governments. The document gives a stamp of approval to the racist “great replacement” conspiracy theory, which Trump has previously endorsed while opposing the migration of non-white people to America.
Vice President JD Vance, shown in November.
This theory has inspired numerous acts of violence, including the 2022 mass shooting at a grocery store in New York, a 2015 mass shooting at a South Carolina church, and a 2018 mass shooting at a synagogue in Pennsylvania, among others.
The national security document also offers praise for the “growing influence of patriotic European parties,” which is clearly a reference to bigoted, nationalist parties like the Alternative for Germany party, or AfD. The German government has labeled AfD as a “proven right-wing extremist organization,” and AfD leaders have used Nazi slogans and engaged in Holocaust denialism.
Vice President JD Vance has complained about criticism of AfD, writing in May, “The AfD is the most popular party in Germany, and by far the most representative of East Germany. Now the bureaucrats try to destroy it.”
National security strategies do not typically offer wholesome endorsements of white nationalism.
In 2022, when then-President Joe Biden released his strategy, he called for a more robust strategy on diplomatically confronting Russia and China, and for domestic investment to shore up American strength. He also focused on fighting climate change, an ongoing threat to national security.
The new Trump document is just the latest front in which this administration has chosen to embrace racism and white supremacy, and it adds to the litany of actions Trump has undertaken to support bigotry and to attack the existence of non-white people.
Not only does the document echo the racism of Trump, who has spent years publicly advocating bigotry, but it sounds very much like the handiwork of senior White House aide Stephen Miller, who is arguably the most virulently racist figure in Trump’s inner circle.
Now they want the world to share in their bigoted approach.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Earlier this year, home goods maker Kohler launched a smart camera called the Dekoda that attaches to your toilet bowl, takes pictures of it, and analyzes the images to advise you on your gut health. Anticipating privacy fears, Kohler said on its website that the Dekoda's sensors only see down into the toilet, and claimed that all data is secured with "end-to-end encryption." The company's use of the expression "end-to-end encryption" is, however, wrong, as security researcher Simon Fondrie-Teitler pointed out in a blog post on Tuesday. By reading Kohler's privacy policy, it's clear that the company is referring to the type of encryption that secures data as it travels over the internet, known as TLS encryption -- the same that powers HTTPS websites. [...] The security researcher also pointed out that given Kohler can access customers' data on its servers, it's possible Kohler is using customers' bowl pictures to train AI. Citing another response from the company representative, the researcher was told that Kohler's "algorithms are trained on de-identified data only." A "privacy contact" from Kohler said that user data is "encrypted at rest, when it's stored on the user's mobile phone, toilet attachment, and on our systems." The company also said that, "data in transit is also encrypted end-to-end, as it travels between the user's devices and our systems, where it is decrypted and processed to provide our service."
The GOP's only mission is to turn the entire planet into a playground for the ultra-wealthy. We're just pawns.
Associate Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito Jr., Clarence Thomas, and Brett Kavanaugh and Chief Justice John Roberts, on January 20, 2025 in Washington, DC. | Chip Somodevilla/Pool/AFP via Getty Images
There is a specter of inevitability hanging over much of the Supreme Court’s current term. It is unlikely that any legal argument could persuade the Court’s Republican majority to uphold bans on anti-LGBTQ+ conversion therapy, for example, or to preserve the Voting Rights Act. These are issues where Republican judges have wildly divergent views from Democratic jurists. And, on a 6-3 Republican Court, that means that the GOP’s view wins.
That specter looms particularly large over National Republican Senatorial Committee (“NRSC”) v. FEC, which the Supreme Court will hear on Tuesday, December 9. In that case, the GOP asks the justices to repeal a complicated campaign finance scheme limiting the amount of money big donors can funnel to candidates. And, given this Court’s history in campaign finance cases, it is all but certain that Republicans will win this case.
Few issues split the two parties more cleanly than campaign finance regulation. Broadly speaking, the Democratic justices believe that too much money in politics is inherently corrupting, because, as Justice Stephen Breyer wrote in a 2014 dissent, “a few large donations” can “drown out the voices of the many.”
Under this view, big campaign donations breed a government that is responsive only to a small group of very wealthy donors. In Breyer’s words, “where enough money calls the tune, the general public will not be heard.”
The Republican justices, meanwhile, tolerate campaign finance laws in only the narrowest of circumstances. As five Republicans concluded in Citizens United v. FEC (2010), money and politics may only be regulated to prevent “‘quid pro quo’ corruption,” such as when a donor explicitly promises to donate to a senator’s campaign in return for that senator’s vote on a particular bill.
Under the Republican view, laws that merely seek to limit the influence of the very wealthy, such as by preventing them from buying access to lawmakers, are constitutionally forbidden.
The specific law at issue in NRSC limits how much party organizations, such as the Democratic or Republican National Committees, may spend in coordination with individual candidates for federal office. The idea is to prevent donors from evading the cap on donations to candidates, which is currently $3,500 per federal election, by laundering a much larger donation through a party committee like the DNC or the RNC.
In theory, this law might even comply with the rigid limits on campaign finance law that Republican justices imposed in Citizens United. As the Democratic Party argues in a brief defending the law, “an unbroken line of precedent” stretching back to the 1970s “holds that Congress may impose reasonable contribution limits” on donations directly to candidates. And the law at issue in NRSC merely seeks to ensure that these limits aren’t easily evaded.
But, the Republican justices rejected a similar anti-money laundering argument in McCutcheon v. FEC, the 2014 case where Breyer dissented. So, it is unlikely that the spending limits at issue in NRSC will survive contact with this Supreme Court.
So, what does the law at issue in NRSC actually do?
With the exception of Justice Clarence Thomas, even the Republican justices accept that Congress may cap the amount of money donors may give directly to political candidates. The risk of a quid pro quo deal, where a candidate agrees to sell political favors for campaign donations, is particularly high when that donation goes to the candidate’s campaign.
The idea behind a $3,500 cap on donations directly to federal candidates is that this amount is too low to coax a lawmaker or presidential candidate into such a deal — and thus, the cap prevents quid pro quo corruption. According to the Brookings Institution, it cost over $2 million to win a US House race in 2018 and nearly $15 million to win a Senate race.
But a cap on donations directly to candidates means little if it can be easily circumvented. The law at issue in NRSC seeks to prevent donors from bypassing this limit by giving large donations to party committees, which the party can then pass on to individual candidates.
The details of how this scheme works are a little complicated. First, the law caps how much donors can give to party committees like the DNC or RNC at $44,300 per year. That cap is not at issue in NRSC.
Second, current law draws a distinction between so-called “independent” political spending and “coordinated” political spending. Political parties can spend as much money as they want to try to influence a particular election, but only if that spending is not coordinated with any of the candidates in that race. With a few exceptions, the amount of money a party can spend in coordination with a candidate — think of a television ad that tracks the message and political strategy of the campaign but that is paid for by the party and not the campaign itself — is capped by federal law.
The amount of this cap varies depending on how many voters may vote in a particular race. In the smallest US House races, parties may only spend up to $63,600 in coordination with a campaign. In a California US Senate race, they may spend nearly $4 million. The GOP wants the Supreme Court to abolish these caps in NRSC.
About a quarter century ago, in FEC v. Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee (2001), the Supreme Court rejected a very similar challenge to an earlier version of these limits on coordinated spending. The Court reasoned that if a party can “make unlimited expenditures coordinated with a candidate,” that would cause donors to “give to the party in order to finance coordinated spending for a favored candidate beyond the contribution limits binding on them.” A donor might give $40,000 to the RNC, for example, knowing full well that this money will be spent on Sen. John Doe’s reelection campaign.
But a lot has changed since Colorado was decided in 2001. Liberal and moderate Republicans have disappeared from the Supreme Court. And the Court’s increasingly hardline Republican majority decided cases like Citizens United and McCutcheon, which cast a cloud of doubt over nearly all campaign finance laws.
So, it is unlikely that the anti-corruption scheme at issue in NRSC will be upheld by the current Court.
How the Republican justices view campaign finance
Although the Supreme Court has long held that Congress may regulate money in politics to prevent corruption or the “appearance of corruption,” the Republican justices define the word “corruption” very narrowly to include nothing other than quid pro quo arrangements. Under this approach, laws which prohibit donors from buying access to elected officials, or that simply seek to prevent donors from purchasing an official’s gratitude, are not allowed unless they fairly narrowly target explicit deals banning dollars for political favors.
Favoritism and influence are not…avoidable in representative politics. It is in the nature of an elected representative to favor certain policies, and, by necessary corollary, to favor the voters and contributors who support those policies. It is well understood that a substantial and legitimate reason, if not the only reason, to cast a vote for, or to make a contribution to, one candidate over another is that the candidate will respond by producing those political outcomes the supporter favors. Democracy is premised on responsiveness.
Thus, under the Republican Party’s version of the Constitution, the limits on coordinated spending at issue in NRSC cannot survive merely because they seek to limit the corrupting effect that large donations can have on government. The limits must target arrangements where donors seek to buy specific political favors from elected officials.
Given this framework, the best legal argument for the spending caps at issue in NRSC is that they prevent money laundering schemes where a donor who wants to give a large donation to a particular candidate may do so, so long as that money passes first through a party committee. If Congress can cap direct donations to candidates in order to prevent donors from buying political favors, then, surely, it should also be able to cap indirect donations that offer the same benefit to the same candidate.
But the five Republican justices who served on the Court in McCutcheonalready rejected a similar anti-money laundering argument. That case struck down a federal law that capped the total amount of money a donor could give to all of a party’s various political committees — the idea being that, if a donor could give huge sums to the party, then the party could easily redistribute that money to particular candidates.
McCutcheon deemed the idea that the Democratic or Republican Party’s various subentities “would willingly participate in a scheme to funnel money to another State’s candidates” to be too farfetched. Iowa’s Democratic Party, McCutcheon speculated, “has little reason to transfer money to the California Democratic Party.”
This conclusion is dubious. While Iowa Democrats may have little reason to give money to California Democrats, Democrats in the safe blue state of California certainly have good reason to redistribute their funds to swing states where that money may be most useful. California Democrats, after all, benefit if the Democratic Party is in the majority in Congress.
But, in any event, McCutcheon shows that the Republican justices are unlikely to defer to Congress when Congress believes that a particular law is necessary to prevent money laundering schemes. And, given this Court’s hostility to nearly all campaign finance laws since Citizens United, it’s hard to imagine the spending caps in NRSC surviving.
Indeed, the Roberts Court has made such Swiss cheese out of US campaign finance law that it is unclear whether a decision striking down these caps will really matter. One of the GOP’s strongest arguments in favor of its preferred outcome in NRSC is that donors who want to give massive donations to elect a particular candidate can already give as much as they want to a super PAC that supports that candidate, rather than to a party committee. So, they don’t really need to launder large donations through parties.
Super PACs, which grew out of the Court’s decision in Citizens United, may accept unlimited donations and spend unlimited money. The one limit on Super PACs is that they aren’t supposed to coordinate this spending with a candidate, but, as the GOP argues in its brief, this limit doesn’t really amount to much in practice.
Donors frequently “let it be known who they are helping, and in what amounts.” And elected officials can reward the most generous donors with favors or even plum job assignments — just ask Elon Musk. Citizens United and similar cases, in other words, have already turned campaign finance into the Wild West. There really isn’t much more the Supreme Court can do to increase the influence of wealthy donors in US politics.
Sure...but how effective is TOS when the product has no safeguards or enforcement mechanisms? insanity.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Facing five lawsuits alleging wrongful deaths, OpenAI lobbed its first defense Tuesday, denying in a court filing that ChatGPT caused a teen's suicide and instead arguing the teen violated terms that prohibit discussing suicide or self-harm with the chatbot. The earliest look at OpenAI's strategy to overcome the string of lawsuits came in a case where parents of 16-year-old Adam Raine accused OpenAI of relaxing safety guardrails that allowed ChatGPT to become the teen's "suicide coach." OpenAI deliberately designed the version their son used, ChatGPT 4o, to encourage and validate his suicidal ideation in its quest to build the world's most engaging chatbot, parents argued.
But in a blog, OpenAI claimed that parents selectively chose disturbing chat logs while supposedly ignoring "the full picture" revealed by the teen's chat history. Digging through the logs, OpenAI claimed the teen told ChatGPT that he'd begun experiencing suicidal ideation at age 11, long before he used the chatbot. "A full reading of his chat history shows that his death, while devastating, was not caused by ChatGPT," OpenAI's filing argued. [...] All the logs that OpenAI referenced in its filing are sealed, making it impossible to verify the broader context the AI firm claims the logs provide. In its blog, OpenAI said it was limiting the amount of "sensitive evidence" made available to the public, due to its intention to handle mental health-related cases with "care, transparency, and respect." The Raine family's lead lawyer called OpenAI's response "disturbing."
"They abjectly ignore all of the damning facts we have put forward: how GPT-4o was rushed to market without full testing. That OpenAI twice changed its Model Spec to require ChatGPT to engage in self-harm discussions. That ChatGPT counseled Adam away from telling his parents about his suicidal ideation and actively helped him plan a 'beautiful suicide.' And OpenAI and Sam Altman have no explanation for the last hours of Adam's life, when ChatGPT gave him a pep talk and then offered to write a suicide note."
OpenAI is leaning on its usage policies to defend against this case, emphasizing that "ChatGPT users acknowledge their use of ChatGPT is 'at your sole risk'" and that Raine should never have been allowed to use the chatbot without parental consent.
Look, consequences will happen. Better that they occur earlier than later. Some fucking standards are in order.
An anonymous reader shares a report: For the past several years, America has been using its young people as lab rats in a sweeping, if not exactly thought-out, education experiment. Schools across the country have been lowering standards and removing penalties for failure. The results are coming into focus.
Five years ago, about 30 incoming freshmen at UC San Diego arrived with math skills below high-school level. Now, according to a recent report from UC San Diego faculty and administrators, that number is more than 900 -- and most of those students don't fully meet middle-school math standards. Many students struggle with fractions and simple algebra problems. Last year, the university, which admits fewer than 30 percent of undergraduate applicants, launched a remedial-math course that focuses entirely on concepts taught in elementary and middle school. (According to the report, more than 60 percent of students who took the previous version of the course couldn't divide a fraction by two.) One of the course's tutors noted that students faced more issues with "logical thinking" than with math facts per se. They didn't know how to begin solving word problems.
The university's problems are extreme, but they are not unique. Over the past five years, all of the other University of California campuses, including UC Berkeley and UCLA, have seen the number of first-years who are unprepared for precalculus double or triple. George Mason University, in Virginia, revamped its remedial-math summer program in 2023 after students began arriving at their calculus course unable to do algebra, the math-department chair, Maria Emelianenko, told me.
"We call it quantitative literacy, just knowing which fraction is larger or smaller, that the slope is positive when it is going up," Janine Wilson, the chair of the undergraduate economics program at UC Davis, told me. "Things like that are just kind of in our bones when we are college ready. We are just seeing many folks without that capability."
Part of what's happening here is that as more students choose STEM majors, more of them are being funneled into introductory math courses during their freshman year. But the national trend is very clear: America's students are getting much worse at math. The decline started about a decade ago and sharply accelerated during the coronavirus pandemic. The average eighth grader's math skills, which rose steadily from 1990 to 2013, are now a full school year behind where they were in 2013, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the gold standard for tracking academic achievement. Students in the bottom tenth percentile have fallen even further behind. Only the top 10 percent have recovered to 2013 levels.
Congressional Republicans angered local government leaders with a plan for what local groups call an “unprecedented federal intrusion” into how municipalities issue permits for construction of broadband networks. The Republican plan drew rave reviews from cable lobby groups, however.
A House subcommittee moved ahead with the plan today despite the opposition from local leaders and criticism from congressional Democrats. Under the bills, some kinds of local telecom projects would be approved automatically if a city or town doesn’t rule within a deadline set by Congress.
“These bills represent an unprecedented federal intrusion into established local decision-making processes, favoring large broadband, telecommunications, wireless, and cable companies at the expense of residents and taxpayers,” four groups representing local leaders wrote in a letter to US lawmakers. “These bills strip local governments of the ability to effectively manage the infrastructure built on local streets and in neighborhoods, while imposing no reciprocal obligations on providers.”
Very few of the Trump hacks hired by he DOJ are actually competent attorneys.Occasionally that has consequences.
Protesters hold signs opposing proposed redistricting, immigration enforcement, and other Trump-backed legislation and proposed changes. | Aaron E. Martinez/Austin American-Statesman via Getty Images
In a decision that could potentially reshape the 2026 midterm elections and cement the Democratic Party’s future control of the US House, a federal court just struck down the gerrymandered Texas maps that President Donald Trump pressured that state to enact. If the decision holds, it could cost Republicans as many as five House seats.
As Judge Jeffrey Brown, a Trump appointee, explains in the court’s opinion, Texas lawmakers initially “didn’t have much appetite to redistrict on purely partisan grounds” — even as Trump urged them to do so. But Texas Republicans appear to have changed their mind after the Justice Department sent a letter last July to Texas’s top officials, which demanded that the state redraw several districts to change their racial makeup.
That letter, as I’ll explain in more detail below, misread a federal appeals court opinion to mean that the state was required to remake its maps. According to Judge Brown’s opinion, “it’s challenging to unpack the DOJ Letter because it contains so many factual, legal, and typographical errors.” He added that “even attorneys employed by the Texas Attorney General — who professes to be a political ally of the Trump Administration — describe the DOJ Letter as ‘legally[] unsound,’ ‘baseless,’ ‘erroneous,’ ‘ham-fisted,’ and ‘a mess.’”
In reality, the Supreme Court has long held that “if a legislature gives race a predominant role in redistricting decisions, the resulting map” is subject to the most skeptical level of constitutional review and “may be held unconstitutional.” When the Justice Department told Texas to redraw several of its congressional districts to change their racial makeup, it ordered Texas to give “race a predominant role.” Oops.
Notably, the Court has held that this restriction on maps that predominantly rely on race can be found in the Constitution itself, not in federal statutes like the Voting Rights Act. So, even if the Supreme Court guts the Voting Rights Act, as it is expected to do during its current term, that will not undermine the panel’s decision in LULAC.
Key Texas officials, moreover, appear to have embraced the DOJ’s call to redraw the state’s maps for racial reasons. As Brown writes, “though the Trump Administration’s plea to redistrict for political reasons failed to gain any immediate traction, the Administration’s demand that Texas redistrict for racial reasons achieved quick results.” Just two days after the DOJ sent its letter, “Governor Abbott issued a proclamation adding the following item to the agenda for the upcoming special legislative session: ‘Legislation that provides a revised congressional redistricting plan in light of constitutional concerns raised by the U.S. Department of Justice.’”
Abbott, in other words, specifically convened the state legislature to comply with the Justice Department’s demand for a racial gerrymander.
There’s also other evidence that race predominated the recent redistricting in Texas. Abbott told CNN’s Jake Tapper, for example, that the maps were being redrawn to eliminate districts where Black and Hispanic voters combined made up a majority, and to replace them with seats that “turned out to provide more seats for Hispanics.” Brown’s opinion also quotes state lawmakers who indicated that they shared the DOJ’s racial goals.
The irony of this decision is that, if Texas had enacted the exact same maps without bringing up the topic of race, then they would have been legal under current Supreme Court precedents. The Trump administration sabotaged its own redistricting effort by feeding Texas a racial justification for this gerrymander. And Texas officials further sabotaged the gerrymander by embracing the DOJ’s racial rhetoric.
The three-judge panel’s decision in LULAC will appeal directly to the Supreme Court, so it remains to be seen whether the justices will agree that the Texas maps are illegal. But there is a very real chance that even this Supreme Court will go along with the panel’s decision to strike them down. The Court reaffirmed that maps that give “race a predominant role” are constitutionally suspect as recently as 2024.
How did the Justice Department manage to screw up Texas’s gerrymander?
To understand the panel’s decision in LULAC, it’s helpful to first understand some of the history of voting rights law within the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which oversees most federal lawsuits arising out of Texas.
In Campos v. City of Baytown (1988), the Fifth Circuit held that the federal Voting Rights Act sometimes requires states to draw “coalition districts.” These are districts where a group of two or more non-white racial groups make up the majority, but no single group is in the majority. A district that is 30 percent Black, 30 percent Hispanic, and 40 percent white, for example, is a coalition district because the two groups of people of color combined add up to more than 50 percent of the district’s voters.
The Fifth Circuit recently overruled Campos, however, in Petteway v. Galveston County (2024), which held that the Voting Rights Act “does not authorize separately protected minority groups to aggregate their populations for purposes of a vote dilution claim.” In other words, after Petteway, Texas no longer has an affirmative obligation to draw coalition districts.
The Justice Department’s July letter, however, misread Petteway to hold that “‘coalition districts’ run afoul the [sic] Voting Rights Act and the Fourteenth Amendment.” Thus, under the DOJ’s misunderstanding of Petteway, Texas is forbidden from enacting any congressional map that includes a district where white people are in the minority, and where two or more non-white racial groups make up the majority.
But that’s wrong. As Judge Brown writes in the LULAC opinion, “even though federal courts in this Circuit can no longer force a legislative body to create a coalition district” after Petteway, “that doesn’t prohibit such a body from voluntarily creating a coalition district for political or other race-neutral reasons.” The law may forbid Texas from intentionally drawing coalition districts because the state wants to group certain racial groups together, but the law does not forbid any map that happens to include a district where two non-white racial groups make up the majority.
Crucially, moreover, Brown’s opinion finds that Texas did not create the coalition districts in its pre-2025 maps because it was trying to achieve some kind of racial goal. “[N]othing in the current record indicates that the Legislature drew the 2021 Map with an eye toward creating coalition districts,” Brown writes. The coalition districts that did appear in that map appear to be “coincidental by-products of the Legislature applying race-neutral redistricting criteria like partisanship.”
So, to summarize: The Justice Department misread Petteway to forbid any congressional map that includes a district where two or more non-white racial groups make up the majority. It then demanded that Texas redraw its maps to eliminate such districts, despite the Supreme Court’s longstanding command that states should not give “race a predominant role” when they draw legislative maps. And top Texas officials appear to have embraced the Justice Department’s misreading of the law to justify the new gerrymandered maps.
Again, it remains to be seen what will happen when this case reaches the Supreme Court. But there is a very real chance that Texas’s gerrymander will fall entirely because of inept lawyering by Trump’s Justice Department.
Microsoft's Copilot AI assistant in Windows 11 fails to replicate the capabilities shown in the company's TV advertisements. The Verge tested Copilot Vision over a week using the same prompts featured in ads airing during NFL games. When asked to identify a HyperX QuadCast 2S microphone visible in a YouTube video -- a task successfully completed in Microsoft's ad -- Copilot gave multiple incorrect answers. The assistant identified the microphone as a first-generation HyperX QuadCast, then as a Shure SM7b on two other occasions. Copilot couldn't identify the Saturn V rocket from a PowerPoint presentation despite the words "Saturn V" appearing on screen. When asked about a cave image from Microsoft's ad, Copilot gave inconsistent responses.
About a third of the time it provided directions to find the photo in File Explorer. On two occasions it explained how to launch Google Chrome. Four times it offered advice about booking flights to Belize. The cave is Rio Secreto in Playa del Carmen, Mexico. Microsoft spokesperson Blake Manfre said "Copilot Actions on Windows, which can take actions on local files, is not yet available." He described it as "an opt-in experimental feature that will be coming soon to Windows Insiders in Copilot Labs, starting with a narrow set of use cases while we optimize model performance and learn." Copilot cannot toggle basic Windows settings like dark mode. When asked to analyze a benchmark table in Google Sheets, it "constantly misread clear-as-day scores both in the spreadsheet and in the on-page review."
Microsoft has rolled out a new preview build for Windows 11 Insiders in the Dev and Beta Channel this week that introduces a new toggle called 'experimental agentic features' that can be enabled or disabled in the Windows Settings app. From a report: According to Microsoft, this new toggle is designed to "allow agents to use new Windows agentic features." The company says the feature will work with AI-powered apps, which "help you automate everyday tasks -- like organizing files, scheduling meetings, or sending emails -- so you can spend less time on busy work and more time on what matters most. One powerful way apps are implementing AI today is by interacting with your apps and your files, using vision and advanced reasoning to click, type and scroll like a human would."
The setting in the Windows Setting says "When this setting is on, agents can use Windows agentic features." Features such as the recently announced Copilot Actions for Windows feature are going to take advantage of this new experimental agentic feature capability.
The GOP continues to experience more fallout over its affiliation with the antisemitic, Holocaust-denying podcaster Nick Fuentes.
On Monday, Heritage Foundation Board of Trustees member Robert P. George announced that he was stepping down after President Kevin Roberts defended right-wing pundit Tucker Carlson for interviewing Fuentes.
White supremacist Nick Fuentes is seen during a rally in 2020.
“I have resigned from the board of the Heritage Foundation. I could not remain without a full retraction of the video released by Kevin Roberts, speaking for and in the name of Heritage, on October 30th,” George wrote on Facebook.
Roberts initially defended Carlson’s decision to interview Fuentes, complaining that a “venomous coalition” of people had condemned Carlson for giving the white supremacist a platform. Fuentes has spent years spewing open bigotry of Jewish and Black people. But to be fair, Carlson is no stranger to racist rhetoric himself.
A few days later, Roberts pulled back on his support during a Heritage Foundation town hall, which was leaked.
“I made a mistake and I let you down, and I let down this institution,” he said.
In addition to George, at least seven other Heritage employees and fellows have left the organization over the Fuentes interview.
But one major Republican figure is perfectly fine with the controversial interview: President Donald Trump.
Donald Trump appears on Tucker Carlson’s tour ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
Speaking with reporters Sunday, Trump backed Carlson—who has campaigned with him—and his decision to platform an antisemite.
“You can’t tell him who to interview. If he wants to interview Nick Fuentes, I don’t know much about him, but if he wants to do it, get the word out,” Trump said. “People have to decide.”
In response, Fuentes shared a video of Trump’s comments, writing, “Thank you Mr. President!”
Trump hosted Fuentes for dinner at Mar-a-Lago in 2022, along with rapper Kanye West—who has fully embraced antisemitic conspiracy theories and bigotry.
An anonymous reader shared this report from Electrek:
Solar and wind are growing fast enough to meet all new electricity demand worldwide for the first three quarters of 2025, according to new data from energy think tank Ember.
The group now expects fossil power to stay flat for the full year, marking the first time since the pandemic that fossil generation won't increase. Solar and wind aren't just expanding; they're outpacing global electricity demand itself. Solar generation jumped 498 TWh (+31%) compared to the same period last year, already topping all the solar power produced in 2024. Wind added another 137 TWh (+7.6%). Together, they supplied 635 TWh of new clean electricity, beating out the 603 TWh rise in global demand (+2.7%). That lifted solar and wind to 17.6% of global electricity in the first three quarters of the year, up from 15.2% year-over-year. That brought the total share of renewables in global electricity -solar, wind, hydro, bioenergy, and geothermal — to 43%. Fossil fuels slid to 57.1%, down from 58.7%.
For the first time in 2025, renewables collectively generated more electricity than coal. And fossil generation as a whole has stalled. Fossil output slipped slightly by 0.1% (-17 TWh) through the end of Q3. Ember expects no fossil-fuel growth for the full year, driven by clean power growth outpacing demand.
"wins the fight" = waited til CFPB was taken over by nihilists
According to CNBC, JPMorgan Chase has secured deals ensuring it will get paid by the fintech firms responsible for nearly all the data requests made by third-party apps connected to customer bank accounts. From the report: The bank has signed updated contracts with the fintech middlemen that make up more than 95% of the data pulls on its systems, including Plaid, Yodlee, Morningstar and Akoya, according to JPMorgan spokesman Drew Pusateri. "We've come to agreements that will make the open banking ecosystem safer and more sustainable and allow customers to continue reliably and securely accessing their favorite financial products," Pusateri said in a statement. "The free market worked."
The milestone is the latest twist in a long-running dispute between traditional banks and the fintech industry over access to customer accounts. For years, middlemen like Plaid paid nothing to tap bank systems when a customer wanted to use a fintech app like Robinhood to draw funds or check balances. [...] After weeks of negotiations between JPMorgan and the middlemen, the bank agreed to lower pricing than it originally proposed, and the fintech middlemen won concessions regarding the servicing of data requests, according to people with knowledge of the talks.
Fintech firms preferred the certainty of locking in data-sharing rates because it is unclear whether the current CFPB, which is in the process of revising the open-banking rule, will favor banks or fintech companies, according to a venture capital investor who asked for anonymity to discuss his portfolio companies. The bank and the fintech firms declined to disclose details about their contracts, including how much the middlemen agreed to pay and how long the deals are in force.
No standards for the GOP, but every democrat must be beyond pristine, and even then still unacceptable.
Former right-wing podcaster and longtime conspiracy theorist Dan Bongino reportedly did not receive a traditional background check before securing his current role as second-in-command at the FBI.
According to ProPublica, FBI Director Kash Patel gave Bongino a waiver at the time of his hiring—along with at least two other FBI officials installed by President Donald Trump—allowing him to skip the polygraph test that’s usually required. Experts told the outlet that the decision to give Bongino a pass in this way goes against FBI precedent.
In addition to access to classified materials, Bongino also now has the power to conduct surveillance operations, interact with federal intelligence agencies, and manage day-to-day operations of the country’s biggest law enforcement agency—all without being vetted for the job.
FBI Director Kash Patel
“I don’t know of anybody in my time that were in those senior roles that failed polygraphs, and most of us had taken multiple polygraphs,” former FBI executive Bob Anderson told ProPublica.
The FBI’s congressional liaison Marshall Yates and Patel’s assistant Nicole Rucker were also given the same waiver as Bongino. An FBI Security Division employee has reportedly filed a formal complaint alleging that the waivers are a violation of agency policy.
Bongino was picked to be deputy director of the FBI after years as a conservative podcaster, a job he picked up after losing multiple congressional campaigns. Bongino also worked for a time as a host on Fox News, where he likely caught Trump’s attention.
Bongino used his show to push absurd conspiracy theories, including tall tales about the investigation into Trump’s collusion with Russia. Bongino was so devoted to this false narrative that he wrote a book called “Follow the Money: The Shocking Deep State Connections of the Anti-Trump Cabal.”
Bongino’s conspiracy portfolio also includes the 2020 election, which he characterized as a “comping coup” against Trump.
Bongino is also an aficionado of the public meltdown. During one of his failed congressional runs in 2016, he called a reporter to scream, “Go fuck yourself, you piece of shit!”
Healso called yours truly “human filth” during a diatribe on the defunct NRA TV in 2018.
The revelation that unvetted people at the highest levels of law enforcement now have access to sensitive intelligence material adds to the growing pile of scandals involving Patel, who’s been caught ferrying himself and his girlfriend on the public’s dime and has been inept in presenting criminal cases.
Bongino brought trouble with him to the FBI—Patel’s response was to give him more power.
Sawyer
Lee is an illustrated middle grade novel starring an unadventurous kid
who'd rather dig a deep dent in the couch than make a mark on the world,
as many in his illustrious family of astronauts, scientists, spies,
champion athletes... blah blah blah... have. He has decided that after
generations of effort, itâs time to spend one lifetime relaxing.
The
problem is that Sawyer keeps getting caught up in the exhausting
expectations of his wicked aunt Celia, his complex relationship with his
ambitious other friend, Angela, and the shenanigans of every else
in town hoping to win the yearly Gourd Thump festival celebrating
natureâs dullest vegetable.
In this tale of mystery, treachery,
conspiracy, plant husbandry, and an imaginary love triangle, Sawyer
knows it will take a regrettable amount of energy to escape these
entanglements and find a way back to his happy place on Garyâs couch,
with a cozy throw blanket, a steaming mug of chamomile tea, and an empty
schedule.
Right-wing host Megyn Kelly is tossing around some strange, new hot takes in defense of Jeffrey Epstein. The former Fox News host seemingly gave a pass to the late sex offender’s esapades with young girls since they were young teens and not pre-pubescent children.
“This person has told me from the start years and years ago that Jeffrey Epstein, in this person’s view, was not a pedophile,” she said in a conversation with journalist Batya Ungar-Sargo. "This is this person's view, who was there for a lot of this, but that he was into the barely legal type. Like, he liked 15-year-old girls.”
A cartoon by Clay Bennett
Kelly added that she wasn’t making an “excuse” for Epstein’s actions. However, she wanted to make it abundantly clear that the late sexual predator wasn’t having sex with “8-year-olds.”
Then again, her point was that he “liked the very young teen types that could pass for even younger than they were, but would look legal to a passerby.”
Don’t worry, though. Kelly makes sure to emphasize that it’s not her perspective, just her anonymous friend who is very knowledgeable about the case. Then again, giving that perspective a platform at all without objection speaks volumes.
The softened approach to Epstein’s sex trafficking past comes as a treasure trove of new documents has beenreleased by the House Oversight Committee, including damning information linking the young girls to President Donald Trump.
And to add more excitement to the mix, House Speaker Mike Johnson announced that the long-awaited vote to release the Epstein files will take place next week. This announcement came following Arizona Democrat Adelita Grijalva’s swearing in to Congress, which came after a seven-week delay. However, now that Grijalva is in the mix, Democrats have their218th vote to bring the files to light.
With Trump’s name being tossed around by Epstein in newly released emails, the administration has been privately meeting with the likes of Rep. Lauren Boebert—who has vocally supported releasing the files—ahead of the vote.
As for Kelly, the rape apologist seems to be doing her part to normalize grown men having sex with young teens ahead of any potential damning information coming forward. The MAGA talking head has voiced opinions that placed men at the forefront of victimhood in rape cases and blamed women for making the decision to sleep with someone, so this is on brand.
President Donald Trump gave a rather candid glimpse into his famously thin skin when he called into the popular sports show “The Pat McAfee Show” on Tuesday.
“I'm only joining you because I hear you say such nice things about me from your very large audience,” Trump told the former NFL punter. “I've always heard you've said such nice things. So when people say nice about me, I join.”
Back in 2005 I was mostly writing about the housing bubble - and the coming housing bust. But I also mentioned the possibility of a financial crisis. In early 2007, I started forecasting a recession, and by the end of 2007 the housing bust causing a financial crisis was becoming obvious.
Back in the U.S., the Calculated Risk blog sidestepped the colorful language and went straight for the big number: “The losses for the lenders and investors might well be over $1 trillion.”
Many people thought I was crazy. But losses for lenders and financial institutions ended up over $1 trillion.
Then in 2013 I wrote that there will be another crisis someday: "Each new generation of Wall Street wizards figures out a new way to turn lead into gold, and to become wealthy while damaging the financial system. Some of these wizards are probably perfecting their financial alchemy right now."
The key for the "wizards" was to find a way around the regulatory system, and if they could use leverage, the fool's gold would eventually lead to a crisis.
By 2013 the seeds were planted, not by Wall Street wizards, but by Tech Wizards. Now the seeds have taken root (Of course, I'm talking about cryptocurrency, what Charlie Munger called financial "rat poison").
Last year, researchers at the NY Fed looked at the impact of crypto on the financial system: The Financial Stability Implications of Digital Assets. And they concluded: "that, to date, the contribution of digital assets to systemic risk has been limited, given that the digital ecosystem is relatively small and not a major provider of financing and payment services to the real economy."
The key to preventing a financial crisis is to keep the non-regulated (or poorly regulated) areas of finance out of the financial system. A good example is the Tulip Bubble in the 1600s. Some people got rich, others were wiped out, but it had no impact on the financial system.
Unfortunately the current administration has embraced crypto. They are allowing it to creep into the financial system, and allowing 401K plans to hold crypto (aka future bagholders). There has been some discussion of allowing financial institutions to lend against crypto holdings - like for a mortgage. This is mistake and increases the possibility that crypto will be the source of the next financial crisis.
A final note: CNBC should be embarrassed to have crypto prices on their website.
There are some fascinating unwinds coming for several houses of cards in the chinese market
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Atlantic: In China, you can buy a heavily discounted "used" electric car that has never, in fact, been used. Chinese automakers, desperate to meet their sales targets in a bitterly competitive market, sell cars to dealerships, which register them as "sold," even though no actual customer has bought them. Dealers, stuck with officially sold cars, then offload them as "used," often at low prices. The practice has become so prevalent that the Chinese Communist Party is trying to stop it. Its main newspaper, The People's Daily, complained earlier this year that this sales-inflating tactic "disrupts normal market order," and criticized companies for their "data worship."
This sign of serious problems in China's electric-vehicle industry may come as a surprise to many Americans. The Chinese electric car has become a symbol of the country's seemingly unstoppable rise on the world stage. Many observers point to their growing popularity as evidence that China is winning the race to dominate new technologies. But in China, these electric cars represent something entirely different: the profound threats that Beijing's meddling in markets poses to both China and the world.
Bloated by excessive investment, distorted by government intervention, and plagued by heavy losses, China's EV industry appears destined for a crash. EV companies are locked in a cutthroat struggle for survival. Wei Jianjun, the chairman of the Chinese automaker Great Wall Motor, warned in May that China's car industry could tumble into a financial crisis; it "just hasn't erupted yet." To bypass government censorship of bad economic news, market analysts have opted for a seemingly anodyne term to describe the Chinese car industry's downward spiral: involution, which connotes falling in on oneself.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: It appears that Neom -- Saudi Arabia's hugely expensive, architecturally bizarre urban development project -- is floundering and close to collapse. A new report from the Financial Times cites high-level sources within the project to paint a picture of dysfunction and failure at the heart of the quixotic effort. Neom was envisioned as a vast series of fantastical urban developments spread across the coast of the Red Sea. At the center of the project is The Line -- a proposed 105-mile-long city which developers had initially projected could house as many as 9 million people by the year 2030.
The Line is defined by bizarre architectural flourishes that, as the story notes, have seemed impossible even to the execs tasked with making them a reality. One such addition is an upside-down building, dubbed "the chandelier," that is supposed to hang over a "gateway" marina to the city: "As architects worked through the plans, the chandelier began to seem implausible. One recalled warning Tarek Qaddumi, The Line's executive director, of the difficulty of suspending a 30-story building upside down from a bridge hundreds of metres in the air. 'You do realize the earth is spinning? And that tall towers sway?' he said. The chandelier, the architect explained, could 'start to move like a pendulum,' then 'pick up speed,' and eventually 'break off,' crashing into the marina below."
Yes, that doesn't sound great. Now, according to those sources the FT talked to, the project is looking more and more like a hugely expensive pipe dream that will never come to pass: "Today, with at least $50 billion spent, the desert is pock-marked with piling, and deep trenches stretch across the landscape. But Prince Mohammed, who chairs Neom, has dramatically scaled back the first phase of the plans. Neom told the FT that The Line remained 'a strategic priority' that would ultimately 'provide a new blueprint for humanity by changing the way people live.' But they described it as a 'multi-generational development of unprecedented scale and complexity.'"
The outlet interviewed workers on the project who seem to feel that it's only a matter of time before the project is declared DOA: "While Neom employees say that much of The Line might still be technically buildable, they are not convinced anyone is ready to pay for it. Construction work across Neom has slowed, with the desert ski resort Trojena, the intended venue for the 2029 Asian Winter Games, one of the few sites still moving ahead at pace ... one former employee has said that everyone knows the project won't work; it is now just a matter of letting MBS down gently."
Chief among the project's problems is the fact that, as Neom's bizarre developments have failed to materialize, it has become increasingly difficult to encourage investors to put up money for the absurdly expensive project. FT notes: "Senior executives were constantly asking for more money, but The Line was competing with other Neom projects. Some wealthy Saudi families put modest sums into the project, but the large investments Riyadh hoped to lure from foreign backers never materialized." The lack of adequate funding coming in has led a senior construction manager to tell FT that he feels the Line will never be built.
