“Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson announced that she and the city would back the Seattle School Board’s unanimous vote to begin legal action to block enforcement of Initiative 638, which requires separating boys and girls in K-12 sports in Washington state. Voters overwhelmingly approved the initiative in 36 of the state’s 39 counties. Critics have charged that Wilson and other Seattle Democrats are seeking to negate the popular vote after campaigning on ‘saving democracy’. The greater challenge, however, is the legal basis for such an action in light of recent Supreme Court rulings.” (11/12/26)
“Alberta joins 17 U.S. states that have given trained optometrists the green light to perform certain advanced procedures, giving patients more eye care options.” (11/12/26)
“For years, states have been joining the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC). The compact commits these states to award all their Electoral College presidential votes to the winner of the popular vote nationwide, even if a majority of their own state voters choose a different candidate. It kicks in once enough states sign up to equal the 270 Electoral College votes required to win the presidency. … Once we elect the president purely on the total vote nationally, will sanctuary state California give the nearly five million non-citizens living there the vote for president? Those additional voters would constitute about two percent of the electorate in the entire country.” (11/12/26)
“AI pessimists’ most powerful debating point is that, unlike normies, they foresaw the future. Back when AI was embarrassingly dumb, AI pessimists warned that it would rapidly improve. And rapidly improve it did. … Given the pessimists’ foresight and my confessed lack thereof, there is a strong reason to consider them to be more reliable than yours truly on the subject of AI. I freely concede that. But AI pessimists plus Bryan Caplan are not the only people in world. Most notably, there have long been AI optimists. They too foresaw the future back when AI was embarrassingly dumb.” (11/12/26)
“You may remember stories of bitter unionization battles at places like Starbucks, but AI workers can probably route around that. The toughest labor disputes happen in fields where the employer could easily fire all the organized workers and replace them from a bottomless pool of faceless scabs: although this is illegal, everyone needs to be maximally lawyered-up to prevent it. But there are so few skilled AI researchers that these laws are hardly necessary; if a dozen top AI researchers threaten to walk, it doesn’t matter whether Section P Sub-Section Q forces the AI company to negotiate – the AI company will want to negotiate.” (11/12/26)
“You may have thought it was a headline from the Babylon Bee: Hunter Biden Honored for ‘Outstanding Contribution to Public Discourse’ from prestigious Trinity College Dublin. But it was true. Hunter Biden, the 56-year-old reformed crack and prostitute connoisseur of ‘Laptop from Hell’ fame, visited his ancestral land to be so honored on Tuesday, accompanied by his suddenly compos mentis father, Joe, the former president. A Secret Service cavalcade of seven vehicles chauffeured Hunter and Joe to the university from Dublin’s finest five-star luxury Merrion hotel. We were told that Joe wiped tears from his eyes as his son, fully dressed, accepted Trinity’s gold medal for contributions to society amid glowing accolades from Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin, who posted photos of their meeting on social media.” (11/11/26)
“The administration sent a threatening letter to Representative Robert Garcia, a California Democrat, over public comments he made about holding the administration accountable. Garcia shared the full contents of the letter publicly and said he would not be deterred. In relating the above I am not talking about the events of this week. I am talking about February of last year, when then interim U.S. Attorney for D.C. Ed Martin sent a letter to Garcia over the latter’s statements on CNN about opposing Elon Musk and DOGE …. Garcia was not intimidated at that time …. Garcia was even less impressed by White House counsel Will Scharf’s threatening letter this week, coming as it does when Garcia is preparing to step into leadership of the House Oversight Committee after a historic crushing of the Republican Party at the ballot box last week.” (11/12/26)
“‘Scrapping the cap’ sounds like an easy fix for Social Security. The economics tell a different story: less work, lower investment, and lost tax revenue elsewhere.” (11/12/26)
“The belief that Democrats will dismantle a system designed to serve the rapacious greed of the war machine and the ruling billionaire class is a mirage.” (11/12/26)
“Democrats have been deliriously giddy since the midterm elections. Their party, rudderless and defeated for two years, appeared to come roaring back into relevance with a House and Senate majority. The once-defunct political careers of establishment Democrats like Chuck Schumer roared back to life, as even traditionally safe Republican seats faced the wrath of a disgruntled electorate. But as Democrats celebrated their candidates’ wins in campaign offices across the country, dozens of conservative [sic] victories went largely unnoticed in the very same states Democrats claimed were now solidly blue. The Democrats’ victories were a backlash against broken Republican promises. They were not a mandate to usher in a vast liberal [sic] policy platform.” (11/12/26)
