Source: Beat the Press
by Dean Baker

“The Republicans have been so successful at hyping the fraud around the Feeding Our Future child nutrition program in Minnesota that even liberal Democrats reflexively all say ‘fraud’ when they discuss Minnesota. Apparently, it is news to even well-informed types that Trump and his sycophants lie about liberal politicians, especially successful ones like Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. Rather than wallow in contrition over the fraud that took place, it would be worth spending more time in Reality Land. No one should ever apologize for fraud. It is a serious crime, especially when the money was designated for a nutrition program designed to help children from low- and moderate-income families. But we need a sense of proportion. Fraud in government programs will never be zero.” (10/19/26)

https://cepr.net/publications/trumpian-corruption-and-minnesota-fraud/

Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone

“Politico has a new article out titled ‘Anthropic quietly pitches its own AI safety bill to lawmakers’, revealing the contents of a leaked confidential draft on regulations the tech giant would be willing to accept in the name of public safety. Buried in paragraph four of the article, we come to the real story in these revelations: ‘The bill would let the government block a model’s release or use only if it poses a foreseeable, imminent risk of more than $1 billion in damages, or of killing or seriously injuring more than 50 people.'” (10/19/26)

https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2026/10/19/anthropic-would-kill-50-humans-to-roll-out-the-next-ai-model/

Source: Noahpinion
by Ramez Naam

“In my previous post, we asked whether AIs could improve themselves all the way to absurdly high levels of superintelligence. My conclusion: today’s feedback loop is probably too weak, because improving AI faces diminishing returns at every step. Even fully autonomous AIs doing all the research and coding don’t make those diminishing returns disappear. We should keep updating that conclusion as real-world parameters and data change. But we didn’t look closely at another possibility: running millions or billions of AI minds in parallel. How much do they help? That’s what we’ll look at here.” (10/19/26)

https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/can-a-million-ai-agents-create-superintelligence

Source: Persuasion
by “Balance ton Claude”

“What if people care only about the quality of the words, not the production mechanism? What if they are very happy to read AI-generated novels? Then two points would be worth noting. First, although one of my conclusions falls (humanity doesn’t stop reading), human writing does cease with profound consequences. Second, the doubt over watermarks should in theory go away—if readers care only about the quality of the output, AI watermarks would not be detrimental to those who publish AI-generated content. But that scenario suggests a weakness in the position of those who most strenuously advocate for AI writing. The vehemence with which they oppose watermarks (or the use of Pangram) suggests that they do not believe this. They know that what they sell depends on the readers not knowing the source. They are fighting to prevent people from acting on their preferences.” (10/19/26)

https://www.persuasion.community/p/why-i-broke-the-orelien-story

Source: The Hill
by William S Becker

“For many obvious reasons, America needs an aggressive Congress to emerge from the November elections ready to restore the government’s balance of power. If the Iran War is still underway, one of the new Congress’s first jobs should be to end it. President Trump says he won’t resume strikes against Iran before the elections. It is not clear what he plans for afterward. But in addition to usurping Congress’s war powers, hurting the economy and costing U.S. and Iranian lives, this war of choice violates a sacred contract between commanders-in-chief and American families: the assurance that our sons and daughters will be sent to war only when there is a clear and present danger to national security and no other option but the military. Instead, Trump’s greed, personal grievances, ego and failure to learn from history all appear to play a role in this war.” (10/19/26)

https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/6155154-congress-must-end-iran-war/

Source: OtherWords
by Sonali Kolhatkar

“Journalism is experiencing one of its worst crises when it’s needed the most. Overall, news consumption is dropping. And it’s worse among young people, who largely get their news through social media, not news outlets. People under 30, more than any other age group, trust social media sources of news. The problem is that it’s hard to tell if your favorite social media source is a citizen journalist or a paid promoter. In a recent in-depth report, The New York Times revealed that social media platforms are rife with accounts that are paid to promote campaigns parading as personal opinion. Rather than hire well-known influencers with huge followings, politicians and organizations are now hiring huge numbers of accounts with smaller followings.” (10/19/26)

https://otherwords.org/worried-about-american-democracy-save-journalism/