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Fri, Aug 14, 2026

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SNAP help for lottery winners

SNAP help for lottery winners

Topline: Maryland gave at least $319,000 in food stamps and other federally-funded benefits to prisoners, dead people, and a $2 million lottery winner.

A July report from the state's Office of Legislative Audits found Maryland has "no comprehensive process" to ensure only eligible recipients are approved for federal assistance. Even when computers flag questionable payments, the state takes months to investigate them.

Key facts: The audit found a person who won a $2 million lottery prize in July 2023 but was still receiving benefits as recently as this February.

Six others who had either won the lottery or died (the audit lumps them together) were still receiving benefits in February. Another seven people had their benefits cut off, but only three to six months after the state's automated computer system flagged an irregularity.

The state also gave benefits to 1,858

The world is writing the rules for digital assets

The world is writing the rules for digital assets

(Image by MichaelWuensch from Pixabay)

While Congress debates whether to regulate digital assets, the rest of the world has stopped debating and started building. In the last two years, nearly every major financial center has adopted, or is finalizing, a comprehensive framework for digital assets. The United States, which has long set the global standard in finance and innovation, is now the conspicuous holdout. Congress can close that gap by passing the CLARITY Act, and the time to do it is now.

The European Union's comprehensive crypto regime, called Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA), is fully in force this summer, and firms must be licensed to serve European customers. The United Kingdom finalized its rules this year, with a mandatory authorization regime taking effect in 2027. Japan just moved to reclassify digital assets as financial instruments, bringing them into a defined regulatory perimeter. Singapore's licensing regime for digital token service providers is already in effect. The United Arab Emirates has established a comprehensive framework, and Hong Kong and Australia have each advanced regimes of their own. Every one of these jurisdictions has

Republicans won not just election, but GDP majority

Republicans won not just election, but GDP majority

(Image by Vachagan Malkhasyan from Pixabay)

In addition to winning the presidency in 2024, Republicans also won America's economic majority. Becoming the economic majority happened quickly for Republicans, and the conditions driving it appear to be increasing. If continued, this trend will have great implications for America's economic and political future.

In 2024, Donald Trump won not only the popular vote and 312 electoral votes; the states he won also comprised an economic majority of America's Gross Domestic Product.

Late last year, Visual Capitalist released a review of each state's 2023 contribution to America's GDP. Tallying up Trump's 2024 states shows these accounted for 51.5% of America's GDP. Using these same GDP percentages, 2024 was a dramatic jump from Trump 2020 states' 38.3% of GDP and an even larger leap from 2012, when Republicans won only 33.4% of the GDP.

Dawn over the Donbas: Ukraine’s aeromedical air bridge

Dawn over the Donbas: Ukraine’s aeromedical air bridge

Dawn over the Donbas steppes arrives not as a clean sunrise, but as a slow thinning of artillery-scented fog clinging tightly to the scarred earth below. Six kilometers behind the volatile “zero line,” inside a damp, reinforced-concrete basement illuminated only by battery-powered LEDs, a frontline stabilization point operates at full capacity.

For hours, medical teams have worked feverishly to stabilize a young soldier suffering from severe, complex blast injuries caused by an explosive First-Person View (FPV) drone strike: a shredded artery, compound fractures, and extensive chest shrapnel. The “Golden Hour," the critical window in which immediate medical intervention yields the highest survival rate expired long before. Dense artillery barrages, relentless loitering munitions, and cratered, unnavigable roads make conventional ground transport impossible. Only this hardened underground position, and its dedicated personnel have managed to keep him alive this long.

Deeper in the rear, hidden beneath the dense canopy of a tree line adjacent to an improvised dirt airstrip, a twin-turbine Mil Mi-8 "Hip" helicopter whines to life. This rugged, Soviet-era workhorse serves as the indispensable anchor of Ukraine's high-stakes aeromedical air bridge.

Customer service snub could turn out to be illegal discrimination

Customer service snub could turn out to be illegal discrimination

It seems that a customer service snub could end up actually being illegal discrimination.

Such is the claim being made in a legal action against Southwest Airlines in a case brought by Pacific Justice Institute.

The filing charges that one of PJI’s staff members “was subjected to religious discrimination after a ticket agent allegedly refused to provide a printed board pass following a respectful question about a Pride Month display at John Wayne Airport,” the legal team explains.

What happened, the complaint said, is that the staff member approached the Southwest Airlines ticket counter with a request to print a boarding pass before a flight.

“The counter featured LGBT Pride decorations, including a rainbow-decorated sign stating, ‘Everyone is Welcome Here,'” PJI confirmed.

But, the court papers reveal, “After the staff member politely asked what the airline meant by the word ‘Pride’ displayed

Cops raid wrong home, now have to face courtroom complaint

Cops raid wrong home, now have to face courtroom complaint

Police officers near Wilmington, North Carolina, raided the wrong house.

Avery Marshall and Alisa Carr are innocent residents who live in the targeted home, and suffered through the cop’s “heavily-armed midnight raid” with armed officers “terrorizing a sleeping family, smashing windows and doors, throwing a flashbang grenade into the home, reinjuring Avery's recently operated on back, causing Alisa heart palpitations, and holding the couple's 9-and-16-year-old children at gun point.”

Police didn’t find the suspect they were seeking since he hadn’t been at, and wasn’t at, the home. But they left behind “shambles.”

Now they’ll face accountability in court.

A decision by the United States District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina has denied qualified immunity for officers who inflicted the raid. They were sued by Marshall, Carr and the Institute for Justice.

"This decision is a massive first step toward

The vulnerability of autonomous warfare systems

The vulnerability of autonomous warfare systems

(Image by Sebastian Gößl from Pixabay)

The Joint Force Is Buying Autonomy Faster Than It Can Measure Whether It Can Fight Without It

Every automated system the joint force fields is a system an adversary will try to switch off. The neglected question is not whether anyone can still fight when it goes dark, but whether the force knows, unit by unit and service by service, who can.

Earlier this year, in an expansive training area, soldiers from one brigade loaded an autonomous ground vehicle and watched it move supplies forward without a driver. It worked.

Across the joint force, the same story is repeating with different hardware: autonomous resupply, AI-assisted targeting, machine-speed sensor fusion, uncrewed systems threaded through nearly every warfighting function. The Air Force is developing collaborative combat aircraft to fly alongside crewed fighters, and the Navy is teaching uncrewed surface vessels to cross oceans. The American military is fielding autonomy at a pace that would have seemed fantastical a decade ago, and much of it works as advertised.

That success

Ex-clerk accused of buying puppies with public funds

Ex-clerk accused of buying puppies with public funds

Topline: Susan Noel, the former clerk and treasurer of the Town of Washington, Oklahoma, allegedly used public funds to buy a puppy, sofa, vacuum cleaner, electric dog clippers, and much more.

Nearly a third of the small town's spending in a four-year period was “fraudulent or unauthorized," according to a new report by State Auditor Cindy Byrd, who called the scandal "the worst example of board oversight I have seen in my 29 years of government auditing experience."

Key facts: The audit alleges that Noel stole $676,368 from the town from 2020 to 2024. That included $267,160 used to pay off her and her husband's personal Bank of America credit cards, $191,777 worth of PayPal payments, and purchases at Lowe's and Amazon.

Noel also used her town debit card for almost $30,000 of "payments for the purchase, grooming,

Obama judge called on to dismiss J6 case against Oath Keepers complains of being ‘pained’

Obama judge called on to dismiss J6 case against Oath Keepers complains of being ‘pained’

Police fire at protesters outside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (Video screenshot)
Police fire at protesters outside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

The New York Times has lamented the distressing duty fulfilled by an anti-Trump judge appointed by Barack Obama who had to, as part of his judicial duties, dismiss the Jan. 6 protest cases against members of the Oath Keepers.

He was “pained,” the publication complained.

The judge, Amit Mehta, also lashed out at the Trump administration’s request to dismiss the case because he said it was “unearned grace” for the defendants by “wiping their records clean.”

Mehta complained that the events of that day, a protest turned into a riot at the Capitol, which sustained vandalism damage, caused immense damage to the people there as well as politics.

The Times confirmed the

Report confirms Dem lawfare against Trump resorted to debunked ‘facts’

Report confirms Dem lawfare against Trump resorted to debunked ‘facts’

President Donald J. Trump and First Lady Melania Trump attend the FIFA World Cup Final between Spain and Argentina, Sunday, July 19, 2026, at MetLife Stadium in Rutherford, New Jersey. (Official White House photo by Andrea Hanks)
President Donald J. Trump and First Lady Melania Trump attend the FIFA World Cup Final between Spain and Argentina, Sunday, July 19, 2026, at MetLife Stadium in Rutherford, New Jersey. (Official White House photo by Andrea Hanks)

Democrats’ lawfare against President Donald Trump multiple times was based on “facts” that had the patina of possible truth, that is, they were allegations made and while unlikely, had not yet been disproven.

Like the claims in Russiagate that he conspired with Russia during the 2016 election, claims that later were debunked entirely.

Now a new report from the Federalist reveals the leftist party’s agenda to attack Trump became so virulent that members even used claims that were known to be false to base a new investigation.

The report said it involved a “subcomponent investigation” of Crossfire Hurricane, the Russian collusion hoax.

‘Who told Trump to endorse this guy?’ Republican who dropped out of race crushes president’s pick with Muslim-sounding name

‘Who told Trump to endorse this guy?’ Republican who dropped out of race crushes president’s pick with Muslim-sounding name

President Donald J. Trump delivers remarks on Trump Accounts, Wednesday, July 22, 2026, at Wheeler High School in Marietta, Georgia. (Official White House photo by Molly Riley)
President Donald J. Trump delivers remarks on Trump Accounts, Wednesday, July 22, 2026, at Wheeler High School in Marietta, Georgia. (Official White House photo by Molly Riley)

While an endorsement from Donald Trump is usually election gold for Republicans, a little-known candidate for a swing House seat crushed the president’s pick despite having dropped out of the race a month ago and barely campaigning.

In the Republican primary for Michigan’s Eighth Congressional District, retired engineer Tom Smith, who reportedly spent less than $2,000 campaigning, collected 50.4% of the vote compared to Trump-backed Navy veteran Amir Hassan who had 33.2%.

Tom Smith (Video screenshot)
Tom Smith

“I fell short last night,” Hassan said Wednesday in a video recorded in his car. “I make no excuse. It was a tough race.”

“I know what God has in store for me is something greater,

WATCH: ‘Brutal’ Republican ad drops minutes after El-Sayed declared Democrat primary victor

WATCH: ‘Brutal’ Republican ad drops minutes after El-Sayed declared Democrat primary victor

Abdul El-Sayed and Hasan Piker shown campaigning together in Republican ad (Video screenshot)
Abdul El-Sayed and Hasan Piker shown campaigning together in Republican ad

President Donald Trump says the Democrat primary win by Abdulrahman Mohammad El-Sayed for the Michigan U.S. Senate race is a good thing.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee dropped an ad describing him as a terrorist-supporting activist whose friends believe America “deserved” 9/11 and who wants to tax waitresses and delivery drivers only minutes after the announcement.

And one of El-Sayed’s endorsers, his “bestie boo, streamer and nepo-nephew Hasan Piker,” dropped a foul-mouth rant in which he seemed unable to complete a sentence without multiple uses of the F-word, calling those who didn’t support El-Sayed “unbelievably Islamophobic pieces of s***.'”

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