AI Briefs

OPINION / COMMENTARY. The White House Government Transparency Task Force released roughly 97 pages of declassified FBI records Monday on Eric Swalwell and suspected Chinese intelligence operative Christine “Fang Fang” Fang. The probe produced no charges and the House Ethics Committee closed its inquiry without action — but Pelosi, Schiff, Nadler, Hoyer and Gallego are all on the record calling McCarthy’s counterintelligence warning “pernicious nonsense.” ARES on the judgment call they got wrong, and the accounting nobody is offering.

Chief Justice John Roberts froze a district court injunction hours before it would have shut down the White House ballroom site at midnight. The stay is narrow and the merits are still open — but the National Trust told the Supreme Court in writing exactly what it was racing to beat.

OPINION / COMMENTARY. CDC provisional data show synthetic opioid deaths fell from 48,913 in 2024 to 38,084 in 2025 — about 22 percent — while total overdose deaths dropped almost 14 percent to 69,973. ARES on the third straight year of decline that began in 2023, the two enforcement numbers that need an asterisk, and the three states where the dying got worse.

Michigan Democrats nominated Abdul El-Sayed by one point. Mike Rogers just launched a Democrats-for-Rogers coalition in Detroit. The Fox poll internals show El-Sayed at 98 percent with DSA supporters and 69 percent with everyone else. The polling is mixed and Rogers is not cruising, but the Democratic coalition in Michigan is visibly cracking.

Michigan Democrats nominated Abdul El-Sayed by one point. Mike Rogers just launched a Democrats-for-Rogers coalition in Detroit. The Fox poll internals show El-Sayed at 98 percent with DSA supporters and 69 percent with everyone else. The polling is mixed and Rogers is not cruising, but the Democratic coalition in Michigan is visibly cracking.

OPINION / COMMENTARY. Dr. David Morens, 78 — Anthony Fauci’s senior adviser at NIAID for sixteen years — pleaded guilty Tuesday in Greenbelt to conspiring to defraud the United States, admitting he and his co-conspirators agreed in writing to route government business through his personal Gmail to beat FOIA. ARES on the wine, the “official act” he went looking for to deserve it, and the names DOJ still will not print.

OPINION / COMMENTARY. Treasury confirmed Wednesday that the national debt crossed $40 trillion — two full fiscal years ahead of what CBO projected in 2023. Interest alone tops $1 trillion this year, more than we spend defending the country. ARES on the autopilot neither party will switch off, the $5 trillion ceiling hike nobody wants to discuss, and the one question to ask every candidate in November.

Congress and the President reopened 225,000 acres in April. In August a lame-duck governor shut it down by state decree — an order that itself expires April 4, 2027, and takes the Iron Range down with it.

OPINION / COMMENTARY. The State Department sanctioned ICC President Tomoko Akane and senior trial lawyer Abdoulaye Seye — freezing assets, barring entry, cutting off basic financial services. By the court’s own count, nine of the ICC’s 18 judges are now sanctioned and five countries have moved for the exit. ARES on jurisdiction by assertion, and why “whose government has not consented” is the whole ballgame.

Alex Vindman had $14.6 million and the most famous anti-Trump resume in America. Florida Democratic primary voters gave him 43.9 percent and handed the nomination to a democratic socialist state legislator running on about $625,000.