https://youtube.com/watch?v=r8AulCA1aOQ

Quality "Learing" Center.
Independent YouTube journalist uncovers a daycare inside a warehouse in Minnesota with no children, and it's fraudulently receiving millions yearly.
He also discovered a second warehouse with 22 shell health companies, no daytime employees, also fraudulently receiving millions in government funding every year.

https://fortune.com/2025/12/30/did-minnesota-lose-federal-funding-youtube-somali-daycare-fraud/

YouTuber’s viral ‘Somali day care’ video spurs sweeping federal fraud probe in Minnesota as Walz defends oversight of $18 billion

A viral video alleging fraud at several Minnesota day-care centers has triggered intensified federal and state scrutiny of how public money is spent. At the same time, officials stress that the claims remain unproven and are under active investigation.

The clash between online allegations and official audits has put Gov. Tim Walz’s administration and the state’s oversight systems under a national spotlight. It comes against the backdrop of a federal prosecutor’s allegation earlier in December that half or more of approximately $18 billion in federal funds allocated to Minnesota since 2018 may have been stolen. Authorities stress that the day-care sites in conservative YouTuber Nick Shirley’s footage are now part of an expanded investigative map. Still, they have not publicly alleged a specific dollar figure of confirmed fraud tied to those particular centers.

Shirley posted a roughly 40‑minute video late last week, documenting visits to nearly a dozen day-care centers in Minnesota that appear largely empty or inactive despite, as Shirley claims, receiving public funds. The video, shared on YouTube and X, has amassed nearly 2 million direct views in three days, as well as tens of millions of impressions across platforms, and has rapidly circulated under hashtags referencing “day-care fraud” and “Somali” centers.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/elon-musks-ai-startup-xai-104608003.html
(Bloomberg) - Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence chatbot Grok has created sexualized images of people including minors on the social media platform X in response to user prompts in recent days, drawing rebuke from officials such as the French government.

Grok created and published images of minors in minimal clothing, in apparent violation of its own acceptable use policy, which prohibits the sexualization of children. Some of the offending images were later taken down.

The French government accused Grok of generating “clearly illegal” sexual content on X without people’s consent, flagging the matter as potentially violating the EU’s Digital Services Act. The regulation requires large platforms to mitigate the risk of illegal content spreading.

Representatives for xAI, the company that develops Grok and runs X, didn’t respond to requests for comment. The chatbot Grok generated a post on X in response to users’ questions on Friday that it had identified “lapses in safeguards” that were being “urgently” fixed. It echoed xAI employee Parsa Tajik who earlier posted that “the team is looking into further tightening” its guardrails.

X users can interact with Grok directly on the platform by tagging its account in posts and prompting the chatbot to respond. Grok generates text and images that appear as posts on the social network.

The rise of AI tools that can generate realistic pictures of undressed minors highlights the challenges of content moderation and safety systems built into image-generating large language models. Tools that claim to have guardrails can be manipulated, allowing for the proliferation of material that has alarmed child safety advocates. The Internet Watch Foundation, a nonprofit that identifies child sexual abuse material online, reported a 400% increase in such AI-generated imagery in the first six months of 2025.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/12/11/us-plans-to-ask-visitors-to-share-5-years-of-social-media-history-to-enter

Visitors who are eligible to enter the United States without a visa may soon be required to provide the Department of Homeland Security with significantly more personal information, including details about their social media activity, email accounts and family background.

According to a notice published on Wednesday in the Federal Register, US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is proposing to collect up to five years of social media data from travelers from certain visa-waiver countries.

The proposed requirement would apply to travellers using the Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA) under the Visa Waiver Program, which allows citizens of 42 countries – including the United Kingdom, Germany, Qatar, Greece, Malta, New Zealand, Australia, Japan, Israel and South Korea – to travel to the US for tourism or business for up to 90 days.

Currently, the ESTA automatically screens applicants and grants travel approval without requiring an in-person interview at a US embassy or consulate, unlike standard visa applications.

At present, ESTA applicants are required to provide a more limited set of information, such as their parents’ names, current email address, and details of any past criminal record.

A question asking travellers to disclose their social media information was first added to the ESTA application in 2016, though it has remained optional.

https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/suspect-charlie-kirk-killing-makes-first-in-court-appearance-2025-12-11/
Dec 11 (Reuters) - Tyler Robinson, the accused killer of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, made his first in-person court appearance on Thursday as a judge heard arguments on what level of media access should be allowed in the high-profile criminal case.
Robinson, wearing a dress shirt and striped tie, talked with his lawyers, at times smiling, after he was brought into the Provo, Utah, courtroom in handcuffs and shackles. Robinson's parents and brother were present, his lawyer Richard Novak said. His mother wiped away tears as he entered, according to a Salt Lake Tribune reporter present in the courtroom.
Local television stations showed an armored SWAT truck in the convoy of vehicles that brought Robinson, 22, to the courthouse about four miles (6 km) from where Kirk, 31, an ally of President Donald Trump, was shot dead on September 10.
U.S. District Court Judge Tony Graf heard arguments from Robinson's attorneys who want to ban cameras from the courtroom in a case that has drawn extraordinary media attention. David Reymann, an attorney representing media organizations, called on the court to grant his clients access to recordings and transcripts from closed-session court hearings in the case.
"We don't want the chaos that is out in the media in this courtroom," said Robinson's attorney Staci Visser.
Graf scheduled a December 29 video call to give his ruling on media access and set May 18-21 for an in-person preliminary hearing.
At the request of state prosecutors, Graf designated Erika Kirk, Kirk's widow, as the victim representative in the case.
Robinson is accused of firing a single round from a rooftop that killed Kirk during a Turning Point USA event on the campus of Utah Valley University in Orem, about 40 miles (65 km) south of Salt Lake City, as Kirk debated with students.

https://www.texastribune.org/2025/12/19/texas-judge-same-sex-marriage-supreme-court-obergefell/

A Waco justice of the peace who refused to marry same-sex couples filed a federal lawsuit Friday that asks the courts to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 Supreme Court decision that recognized same-sex marriage nationwide.

The case, filed by Judge Dianne Hensley against the State Commission on Judicial Conduct, asserts that the Obergefell ruling was unconstitutional because it “subordinat[ed] state law to the policy preferences of unelected judges.” Hensley is represented by Jonathan Mitchell, a conservative attorney best known as the architect of Texas’ 2021 abortion ban that skirted around the legal protections of Roe v. Wade.

“The federal judiciary has no authority to recognize or invent ‘fundamental’ constitutional rights,” Mitchell wrote.

In November, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up a similar case from Kim Davis, a former Kentucky county clerk.

While Mitchell acknowledged that a lower court does not have the authority to overturn a Supreme Court precedent, he indicated in the filing that he was introducing this argument now with the hopes of the case eventually reaching the high court.

Hensley’s case goes back to 2015, soon after the Supreme Court’s decision, when she opted to stop performing marriages due to her religious opposition to same-sex marriage. The next year, she resumed performing marriages for opposite-sex couples and began referring same-sex couples to other officiants.

https://thehill.com/homenews/media/5659963-bari-weiss-cbs-60-minutes-segment/
Bari Weiss, CBS’s new editor in chief, is facing widespread blowback across the media for a decision to pull a “60 Minutes” segment she argues was not ready for publication, while a top journalist at the network contends the decision was based on political pressure and capitulation to the Trump administration.

The controversy comes as Paramount, CBS’s parent company, is under a microscope over its relationship with the administration while it seeks to expand its media empire and retool the network’s editorial direction.

Here’s what to know about the latest “60 Minutes” conflict:
Sharyn Alfonsi blasts her new boss

CBS abruptly announced it would not run the segment, which was set to highlight conditions inside the notorious Salvadoran prison where the Trump administration has deported Venezuelan migrants, after promoting it in the days prior.

Correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi, who reported the piece for CBS, hours later wrote to colleagues at the network saying her bosses had pulled the segment for what she argued were insufficient reasons.

“Our story was screened five times and cleared by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices,” Alfonsi wrote in her note, which was shared with multiple media outlets. “It is factually correct. In my view, pulling it now—after every rigorous internal check has been met, is not an editorial decision, it is a political one.”

Alfonsi’s pushback on her bosses is an extraordinary step for a top journalist working at one of the nation’s leading news programs. Her condemnation of top brass comes as the network has invited scrutiny since President Trump won reelection.

Trump has in recent days criticized “60 Minutes” and CBS’s new ownership directly, arguing the outlet is treating him unfairly, despite speculation that new Paramount boss David Ellison is seeking favor with the president.

The Supreme Court has rebuffed President Donald Trump’s attempt to deploy National Guard troops in Illinois to protect federal officials carrying out his mass-deportation policy.

In their ruling Tuesday, the justices noted that federal law generally bars use of the military for law enforcement, and they declared that the law Trump used to activate the Guard is likely to only apply when regular armed forces — the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines — are insufficient to maintain order.

“At this preliminary stage, the Government has failed to identify a source of authority that would allow the military to execute the laws in Illinois,” the high court said in an unsigned order released more than two months after the administration asked the justices to weigh in.

Three conservative justices — Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch — dissented, while another conservative, Brett Kavanaugh, declined to join the majority’s explanation of the ruling.

The Supreme Court’s decision turned down the administration’s bid to lift lower court orders that halted the president’s plan to use 500 National Guard soldiers from Illinois and Texas to respond to protests and unrest at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in suburban Chicago.

The ruling is a rare loss for the president following a string of wins he has racked up on the high court’s emergency docket in the first year of his second term. The justices cleared the way for him to fire leaders of federal agencies, dismiss tens of thousands of government employees and halt thousands of federal grants and contracts.

>https://www.politico.com/news/2025/12/23/supreme-court-national-guard-ruling-00704962

The U.S. economy grew at a 4.3% annual rate in the third quarter, President Donald Trump and his team wasted no time celebrating.

Well, slow down, those dour economists replied. There’s something missing in this boom: the jobs. Hiring this year, at best, has stalled, and at worst has collapsed: unemployment has climbed to 4.6%, and even Fed Chair Jerome Powell has warned recent data may be overstating job gains.

In a typical recovery, strong GDP growth shows up first in hiring, then in paychecks, and finally in consumer spending. But in this quarter, it’s reversed: spending is here without jobs. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” KPMG’s chief economist Diane Swonk told Fortune. “To have this stagflation in the inflation and unemployment rate, and to not have it in growth is highly unusual, and something’s got to give.”

Real disposable income was essentially flat in the third quarter—literally 0% growth. Americans did not gain purchasing power. Yet, they made up the difference through savings drawdowns, credit, or by absorbing costs they cannot avoid. The GDP report itself points to where that pressure is concentrated: mostly in services, and within services, healthcare was a leading driver.

Americans spent the most on healthcare last quarter since the Omicron wave of 2022, Swonk said. This was not a classic discretionary splurge, It was spending families had little ability to defer. That distinction matters, spending driven by necessity behaves very differently from spending driven by rising paychecks.

The second part of the story is that this economy is no longer moving as a single system. It is splitting into a “K-shape,” and what looks like resilience at the top increasingly masks fragility underneath. “When you divorce growth from employment gains, you’ve got a problem,” Swonk said. “And this is before the real effects of AI have even set in.”

https://fortune.com/2025/12/24/k-shaped-economy-2026-stagflation-diane-swonk/

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-calls-for-release-epstein-files-naming-democrats/
As prosecutors contend with a massive trove of documents related to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, President Trump suggested Friday the Justice Department is spending too much time on the issue — but said prominent Democrats linked to Epstein should be named.

The Justice Department has released scores of records on Epstein over the last week, responding to a law requiring it to publish its files on Epstein by Dec. 19. The files cover more than 20 years worth of investigations into the disgraced financier, and highlighted the relationships he cultivated over the years with well-known people like Mr. Trump and former President Bill Clinton — neither of whom have been accused of any wrongdoing.

And on Wednesday, the department announced that the federal prosecutor's office in Manhattan had discovered upwards of 1 million more records "potentially related to the Jeffrey Epstein case." It said that combing through the newly discovered documents and making necessary redactions could take "a few more weeks."

Mr. Trump addressed the discovery on Truth Social late Friday, writing: "Now 1,000,000 more pages on Epstein are found. DOJ is being forced to spend all of its time on this Democrat inspired Hoax. When do they say NO MORE, and work on Election Fraud etc."

The president went on to allege that Democrats, not Republicans, are "the ones who worked with Epstein."

"Release all of their names, embarrass them, and get back to helping our Country," he wrote.

Mr. Trump has long been wary of the Epstein issue, periodically calling it a "hoax" and arguing that Republican lawmakers who supported the release of more records on Epstein had fallen for a diversion tactic spearheaded by Democrats.

He eventually said last month that Republicans should vote for the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which mandated the files' release, writing, "it's time to move on from this Democrat Hoax."