Mississippi can enforce a law prohibiting some diversity practices in schools, a federal appeals court ruled on Oct. 22 in a decision that also removed the judge overseeing the case over the use of artificial intelligence.
Mississippi State Capitol in Jackson, Miss., on June 28, 2020. Rory Doyle/AFP via Getty Images
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruling overturned a 2025 decision from U.S. District Judge Henry Wingate that blocked the state from enforcing a law restricting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) practices.
The law, H.B. 1193, bars schools and colleges from promoting DEI through classes and administrators from punishing students for their views on DEI.
Wingate said the law violated the constitutional rights of teachers and students, siding with plaintiffs such as the Jackson Federation of Teachers.
The Fifth Circuit disagreed.
Circuit judges said the orders blocking the law fell short because they cited only two cases to conclude the law violates First Amendment rights and brushed off a framework outlined by the Supreme Court in a decision known as Moody for future First Amendment cases.
“The district court brushes off the Moody framework as a ‘supposed’ formality that was satisfied merely because plaintiffs identified programs and books that, in their view, are ‘arguably on the chopping block,'” Circuit Judge Jeffrey Smith wrote for the unanimous Fifth Circuit panel.
“That does not come close to satisfying the inquiry demanded by Moody. It is egregious for the district court just to assume that plaintiffs’ assertions that certain materials are ‘on the chopping block’ must mean a constitutional violation has occurred, without any independent legal analysis whatsoever.”
Under the framework, a plaintiff must show a law’s unconstitutional applications “substantially outweigh” constitutional applications. The two-step process includes establishing the scope of the law and then comparing what would and would not be constitutional.
“The district court’s remaining substantive reasoning is poor at best,” Smith said. “Judge Wingate cites a couple of parents who were allegedly worried about the law’s impact; the fact that defendants are ‘loudly noncommittal,’ something bordering on paradoxical that has nothing to do with legal analysis; and, on vagueness, the passing thought that ‘if [H.B. 1193] lives down to the fears it has generated, has a mouthful of sharp teeth which could inflict deep bites.'”
The Mississippi Attorney General’s Office and the teacher’s union did not return requests for comment by publication time.
The Fifth Circuit vacated the preliminary injunction that Wingate had entered. It also remanded the case to the U.S. District Court for the District of Mississippi, but emphasized that a different judge must handle the case going forward.
It cited that Wingate’s original temporary restraining order included multiple purported facts with no basis in reality, including references to plaintiffs and defendants not named in the complaint and false quotations claimed to be from the law.
Wingate later replaced the order without explanation, but the updated order also cited a legal ruling that does not exist.
“The district court – or perhaps, being charitable, its AI agent – ignored and manipulated governing law, apparently to satisfy a policy agenda,” Smith said.
“Because of the extraordinarily grave errors by the district court, we vacate and remand for assignment to a different district judge.”
Wingate, who did not respond to a request for comment, acknowledged in a letter to the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts that a law clerk used artificial intelligence to help draft the restraining order and that the initial opinion was a draft that had not “gone through the standard review process.”
Wingate said he had taken steps to ensure the mistake would not happen again.
Data Center Alley Goes Dark: Amazon Abandons Data Centers In Loudoun County
Finishing a data center in America has become a logistical nightmare. Now just starting one is turning into a problem too, even in the one county that was supposed to say yes to everything.
And now the restless locals have claimed their biggest scalp yet.
According to the Washington Post, Amazon has scrapped a plan to build data centers on the site of George Washington University’s former campus in Ashburn, Northern Virginia, after reaching an agreement with local officials amid widespread opposition from residents. Under the deal announced Tuesday by Loudoun County Board of Supervisors Chair Phyllis J. Randall, Amazon will repurpose the majority of the 122-acre campus for mixed-use and residential development, and commit to never building data centers on the land. It will also donate 25 acres to the county for a community arts center and recreational facility, and hand $5 million to the county’s housing fund.
“By choosing dialogue over reflexive disagreement, Loudoun County and Amazon created an opportunity for the County,” Randall said in a statement. “This agreement provides new places for our Loudoun residents to gather, create, and play. And, most importantly to me, we will provide more attainable homes for working families.”
Some context on just how big a reversal this is: Amazon paid GWU $427 million for the campus earlier this year, roughly four times its assessed value, according to Supervisor Juli Briskman, because the zoning made data centers “a reasonable expectation.” It filed a site plan in late July for “Bridgefield Tech Center”: four two-story data center buildings totaling more than 800,000 square feet. Briskman promptly vowed to fight it “every step of the way,” and by September Randall was meeting with Amazon because a “likely disagreement” was emerging over what the land could legally be used for, per Bisnow. Amazon’s take was that it read the site’s legal potential differently than the county, but chose a “shared vision” over costly litigation. Translation: Amazon also agreed not to sue.
So instead of 800,000 square feet of servers, Loudoun gets an arts center, an indoor sports facility, housing, and roughly $70 million in land and cash (the 25 acres carry a stated fair market value of about $65 million). The rezoning alone is expected to take about a year, even on a fast-track schedule. Amazon, for its part, is left holding a very expensive future apartment complex.
Now for the punchline: according to Fortune, Loudoun’s ~233 data center buildings generated about $1.2 billion in property tax revenue in fiscal 2026, roughly 39% of the county’s entire budget. Amazon alone says it has invested more than $63 billion in the county since 2011. In other words, the county that arguably needs data centers more than any other in America just accepted a check to make sure one never gets built. If “Data Center Alley” is saying no to data centers, well, who exactly is left to say yes?
The timing was impeccable too. One day later, President Trump took to Truth Social to urge data center developers to “pay the community, and/or individuals within the community, a ‘dividend'” to win local support, adding “MAKE DEALS, and get them built!” Amazon did pay a dividend, and it did make a deal. It just forgot the “get them built” part.
Data Center Alley, Unplugged
Amazon’s U-turn is the latest in a remarkable string of reversals in what was, until recently, the most data-center-friendly real estate on the planet. Regular readers will recall that the trouble started in Prince William County, next door, where the 2,100-acre “Digital Gateway” (up to 37 buildings, ~5GW of capacity and roughly $100 billion of planned spending) was hit by a court ruling that voided its rezoning. In April, Brookfield-backed Compass pulled out after spending “tens of millions” and years chasing approvals. Then came Blackstone’s sale on June 29… and two days later, we flagged the other shoe dropping:
*BLACKSTONE’S QTS ABANDONS MASSIVE DATA CENTER IN VIRGINIA
Then, last month, Loudoun’s board voted 7-1-1 to draft an up-to-12-month pause on new data center applications, which Randall insisted was “not a moratorium” (a 12-month pause being “the maximum allowed by Virginia law”). The final vote was due this week; instead, on the same day as the Amazon deal, it was pushed to November 17. Here is how 2026 has gone in Data Center Alley so far:
Note that none of this involves a sputtering hyperscaler running out of money: Amazon spent $427 million to buy the land and is now spending another $70 million to walk away from what it bought it for. The capital is there. The permission is not.
The 6% Problem
The most striking thing here is how fast “community opposition” went from footnote to deal-breaker. As recently as July, when Data Center Dynamics surveyed 88 industry respondents about their biggest delivery constraints over the next 12 months (a survey Bernstein highlighted in its modular-builds deep dive [MARKETDESK LINK]), “community opposition/political risk” ranked second to last, at just 6%, behind equipment lead times (24%), power and interconnection (23%), permitting (17%) and supply chains (17%).
Three months later, that 6% just killed an 800,000-square-foot Amazon campus in the friendliest zip code in America. Maybe the respondents should get out more: the Heatmap/Embold poll that tracks Americans’ views on a data center “being built near where you live” shows the share strongly opposed going from 24% in August 2025 to 61% in August 2026, while total support collapsed from 43% to below 20%.
And the backlash has gone institutional. In September, Wells Fargo flagged a fourfold jump in active local moratoriums, to 374 by the end of summer from 92 in June, with the average one lasting nearly a year. Its utilities analyst Shahriar Pourreza summed it up: “DCs are unpopular across the political spectrum.” Just how bipartisan? In Ohio, one of the top data center states, both leading candidates for governor are running on restricting the industry:
Ohio is one of the top data center states: AWS, META, GOOGL, MSFT and SB Energy are all building here. Both leading governor candidates, Democrat Amy Acton and Republican Vivek Ramaswamy, said they want new restrictions on the industry. Acton said she supports what she’s calling a “conditional moratorium” on new data center construction. Developers must cover 100% of their own utility costs, build exclusively with union labor, operate with full transparency and meet Ohio’s existing air and water quality standards Ramaswamy also laid out his data center policy, which he calls his “Ohioans-First Data Center Pledge.” His campaign describes the plan as resting on three “non-negotiable” requirements: nearby residents must receive free electricity from data center developers, new facilities must pay their full property taxes with no abatements, with that revenue used to fund property tax rebates for homeowners, and developers must meet strict air and water quality standards while prioritizing brownfield sites over farmland. “If a project fails to meet any one of these three requirements, it will not be built. Period,” Ramaswamy’s campaign states.
Morgan Stanley’s map of the November races that could tighten the screws further (from its “Following AI’s $1.6 trillion Money Trail” report shows 50.8GW of capacity, including 10.6GW already under construction, sitting in states where the elections “could lead to more restrictions on data center construction.” Texas alone accounts for 24GW, and its governor has already ordered a halt to new data centers pending an audit of 250-300 projects. Midterms are 11 days away.
To be fair, not everyone thinks the pitchforks matter. Last week SemiAnalysis did a project-by-project audit and concluded that of the ~21GW of capacity sitting in moratorium areas, only about 2.3GW (three projects) is likely to be delayed, which The Economist’s Archie Hall described as “much more bark than bite.”
Perhaps. But here is the thing: the Amazon campus was never under a moratorium. Loudoun’s pause hasn’t even been enacted. What killed it was a zoning fight, a threat of litigation and a negotiated “dividend,” none of which shows up in a moratorium tracker. Which is probably why Hall himself sees the bigger risk in deterrence: the projects that quietly never get proposed, or get “re-envisioned” into townhouses before anyone counts them.
Goldman’s Outlook Is “Largely Intact”… Assuming Half Of It Never Shows Up
What does Goldman make of all this? In its latest Power Tracker (available to pro subs) Goldman’s commodity team argues that “despite rising political push back against US data centers,” its capacity estimates “show the 2027 growth outlook is largely unchanged, with moderate revisions.” The bank raised its year-end 2026 US data center capacity forecast by 5GW to 64GW, while cutting its year-end 2027 forecast by 5GW to 90GW, and still sees US data center power demand growing 38% in both 2026 (+12GW) and 2027 (+17GW).
So far so bullish. But read the fine print under the chart:
Our GS data center capacity forecast assumes only 60/50% of currently scheduled additions are realized, which is derived from the historical relationship between scheduled and activated capacity.
In other words, Goldman’s “largely intact” outlook already assumes that 40% to 50% of what’s on the schedule never gets switched on. Which, if we recall, is precisely the “half” we wrote about in April (when Sightline Climate warned that 30-50% of the ~16GW slated for 2026 would be delayed, with only ~5GW actually under construction), and which SemiAnalysis spent an entire June post telling everyone to “stop saying.” Goldman, it turns out, never stopped saying it; it just put it in a footnote. And note which way the revision went: the near term got pulled forward, while 2027, the year the hyperscalers are spending like there is no tomorrow for, got cut.
Goldman also notes that “effective peak spare capacity tightened YoY across nearly every key region” this summer. That matters, because even the projects that do survive the zoning board walk straight into the next wall.
Break Ground, Then Wait For The Grid
Because getting permission is merely step one. Step two is getting power, and that is where the timelines go from awkward to absurd. Per Berkeley Lab data compiled by Bernstein, the median time from interconnection request to commercial operation in the US has stretched to over five years, more than triple the 1.5 years it took in 2005.
Then there are the transformers, switchgear and generators that topped the Bernstein survey: Apollo’s Torsten Slok (who took his number from our June report) pegs transformer lead times at up to 26 months in his latest note, while Bloomberg reported earlier this year that delivery times for the large units data centers need had stretched to as much as five years. Throw in a chronic shortage of electricians (there is a reason why we told readers to learn to be oneback in January) and you get a pipeline where every link must arrive on time for any of it to matter…. which will never happen. As one TechRadar headline put it, “if one piece of your supply chain is delayed then your whole project can’t deliver.” Correct.
Add it all up and Morgan Stanley’s verdict is grim. Even after counting every “time to power” fix available (spare grid capacity, nuclear, announced turbines and engines, Bloom fuel cells), the bank projects that US data center developers face a 32GW power shortfall through 2028, a result of “intensifying challenges with respect to People, Power and Politics.” That is down from the 44GW shortfall MS warned about last November, which says more about how hard everyone is scrambling for turbines and fuel cells than about any improvement in the grid.
And, as a reminder, the “Politics” part of that triad just got a lot worse in Virginia, a lot worse in Ohio, and possibly a lot worse in Texas on November 3. Which is why we keep saying the only real solution is to make “behind the meter” mandatory: if the community won’t give you its grid, bring your own power plant… and then hope the zoning board lets you build that too.
Who Wins When Nothing Gets Built
So who benefits from a buildout that keeps getting pushed out? Torsten Slok had a timely answer this week in “Winners and Losers if the Data Center Buildout Is Delayed.” The winners are owners of operating data centers (“capacity that is already online can raise rents and fill every megawatt”), holders of powered land and grid access, long-lead equipment makers and on-site power producers. The losers: hyperscalers whose “revenue is capped by supply rather than demand, and committed capex keeps accruing while capacity sits idle,” developers and construction-stage investors whose “cash flows start later while interest and carrying costs continue,” and equity investors in the AI trade, whose “valuations that assume on-time delivery are exposed to earnings revisions and multiple compression.”
Slok draws a crucial distinction between delay and cancellation:
A delay hurts returns by pushing cash flows out, but the asset remains and may become more valuable. The real risk is that scarcity unwinds, for example, if supply catches up in a rush or demand softens, which would erode the premium on existing capacity.
The bulls will say this is one 800,000-square-foot campus in a county that already has 233 data center buildings, and that SemiAnalysis still sees 38GW of US capacity coming online in 2027 (good luck with that). Maybe. But the bull case has always rested on the assumption that the binding constraints were physical (chips, power, transformers) and that money could eventually buy its way through all of them. Loudoun just showed that money can’t buy permission. Amazon brought $427 million, a $70 million “dividend” and the threat of a lawsuit, and the best it could get was the right to build townhouses.
Despite all this, Goldman says the outlook is “largely intact.” We’d note that it is intact precisely because Goldman already assumes that half of it won’t happen, and that the one revision it did make cut 2027. Between Loudoun’s pause vote on November 17, the midterms two weeks before that, and turbine slots booked into the next decade, we suspect that haircut is the floor… and that the next revision (undoubtedly lower) won’t be confined to a footnote.
Then again, Amazon can always try again somewhere else in Loudoun… in 12 months, “the maximum allowed by Virginia law.”
A man who accused Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) of taking his wife is now in custody under suspicion of murdering her.
AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura, File
There have been some creative excuses to cover up murder, but this might be a first. Gurinder Gill – immigration status currently undisclosed – first told investigators that his wife went missing after September 30 because ICE detained her. Detectives subsequently uncovered inconsistencies in his story and dug deeper, coming to the conclusion that she was actually dead, and her husband is the likely guilty party. Jasmine and Gurinder were in a divorce dispute at the time she went missing.
The biggest tell that his story was bunk, as Fox News notes below, is that there had not actually been any ICE activity at the Gills’ home.
A Sacramento man allegedly told detectives ICE agents arrested his missing wife when she went to get the mail. Authorities contacted ICE, which confirmed no enforcement activity had occurred at the residence. Days before Gurinder Gill even made that claim, investigators in neighboring El Dorado County had already discovered burned and buried remains about 70 miles from the couple’s home. Those remains were later confirmed to belong to his wife, 30-year-old Jasmine Gill, an India-born registered nurse and mother of their 8-month-old child. Gill, 28, is now charged with murder. The couple had been going through a divorce and child custody dispute when Jasmine vanished on Sept. 30. Her cousin reported her missing on Oct. 4. Deputies arrested Gurinder on Oct. 14 and executed search warrants at two homes associated with him. He is ineligible for bail. Full story here https://t.co/jm72AA8H5u
As Fox also reported, investigators found burned and buried remains, which they have since confirmed as Jasmine Gill – what Gurinder allegedly left of her. Apparently, he tried to destroy her corpse about 70 miles from their home. Jasmine was born in India, but was a registered nurse in California and the mother of Gurinder’s 8-month-old baby. Part of the couple’s struggles was a child custody dispute. As usual, the child will end up suffering most from the craziness of the parent.
Jasmine’s family started a GoFundMe to deal with the financial aftermath of her death and help her baby. It describes her as “A Daughter, a Sister, a Nurse, and a Mother Who Deserved So Much More.” Apparently, the family needs money to send Jasmine’s body back to India, where her mother still lives. Fox News did not state whether Jasmine is a legal immigrant or not.
SFGate, which obtained the criminal complaint from the Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office, also mentioned that Gurinder claimed ICE arrested his wife while she was getting her mail outside, but that the agency confirmed it had not been to the residence. Apparently, Gurinder forgot to put out the fire he was using to try to burn his wife’s corpse, because authorities discovered her remains after spotting smoke and having to put out a minor forest fire. Jasmine’s jewelry was also in the burned area.
SFGate also reported:
Detectives obtained an arrest warrant for Gurinder Gill, who was taken into custody Oct. 14. Investigators also executed search warrants at two residences associated with him, although authorities have not disclosed what evidence, if any, was recovered. The criminal complaint, filed Oct. 16 in Sacramento County Superior Court, alleges that Gill killed his wife “with malice aforethought” on or about Sept. 30. He faces one felony count of murder.
Gurinder Gill is not only evil but also stupid. He seems to have expected that California authorities would just take him at his word if he accused ICE of kidnapping. He also apparently set his wife’s body on fire and then left without bothering to see what would happen. The whole situation would be humorous if a young mother were not dead.
Canvassers registering voters for groups backing Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs’s re-election told undercover Muckraker journalists posing as a non-citizen and as a felon on probation that they could go ahead and register to vote, hidden-camera footage shows.
With the midterm elections weeks away, Muckraker visited voter registration drives run by three Democrat-aligned organizations: Stand Indivisible Arizona, Worker Power, and the Democratic National Committee’s When We Count program. At each, a Muckraker journalist told the canvasser they were not eligible to vote. Muckraker also attended an AFL-CIO phone bank mobilizing voters for Hobbs, where a journalist volunteering to make calls asked whether voters’ citizenship mattered.
Muckraker stopped every exercise before any voter registration form was submitted.
BREAKING: Katie Hobbs-Aligned Canvassers Caught Willing to Allow Non-Citizens and a Felon to Vote Muckraker went undercover in Arizona to investigate the groups working to re-elect Gov. Katie Hobbs @katiehobbs and other Democrats. Here’s what we found: Stand Indivisible Arizona (endorsed Gov. Hobbs in their 2026 ballot guide) — Our journalist posed as a Canadian citizen and asked to register to vote. The canvasser not only agreed to help the alleged non-citizen register, but when asked whether other Canadians could register too, she said, “Tell them to do it online.” Worker Power (working to re-elect Gov. Hobbs) — Our journalist told a canvasser they were not a U.S. citizen. Despite this, at our journalist’s request, the canvasser marked “yes” on the citizenship question of the voter registration form. When We Count (the DNC’s own registration program) — Our journalist posed as a felon on probation and asked to register to vote. The canvassers looked up the law and saw that a felon on probation is ineligible. Even so, they encouraged our journalist to register: “You should just do it.” AFL-CIO (phone bank mobilizing voters for Gov. Hobbs) — Our undercover journalist asked a phone bank trainer whether to ask the people being called if they’re citizens. The trainer’s answer: “We don’t care.” Our journalists stopped every exercise before any voter registration form was submitted. We also asked Gov. Katie Hobbs about these findings. Watch this report and share it with the world.
Stand Indivisible Arizona: “Take this and tell them to do it online”
Stand Indivisible Arizona, a nonprofit that has endorsed Hobbs and other Democrats running in 2026, was running a voter registration drive at Paradise Valley Community College. A Muckraker journalist, posing as a Canadian student in the U.S. on an F-1 visa, approached a canvasser.
When the canvasser was told that the journalist was a Canadian on a student visa, she first said, “We can’t do it.” But when the journalist asked, “Can I just fill it out, submit it with you, and then forget it?” she answered: “Yeah, I guess. The other thing you could do is you could go online, but I’d rather do it with you.”
Asked whether the journalist’s Canadian friends could register to vote too, she said: “Take this [a business card with a QR code linking to an online voter registration form] and tell them to do it online.”
When Muckraker’s Anthony Rubin returned to ask about the exchange, she said, “I told you, I can’t stop you from putting it online,” and declined further comment.
Worker Power: “Okay, if you want to”
Worker Power is a Phoenix-based nonprofit that raised nearly $10 million in the 2024 election cycle and says it runs the largest electoral field program in Arizona. This year it is working to re-elect Hobbs and other Democrats. Muckraker found a canvasser registering voters at the Phoenix Public Library and again posed as a non-citizen.
“Are you a USA citizen?” the canvasser asked.
“Not yet,” the journalist said.
“You have to be a USA citizen to vote,” she replied. The journalist said they were a resident and asked to “just send it.” She asked, “Are you sure you want to try it?” then said, “Okay, if you want to,” and marked “yes” for U.S. citizenship on the Arizona voter registration form.
“Yes, and then you need to sign there,” she said.
Approached afterward, she declined to say how often non-citizens are registered.
When We Count: “You should just do it”
When We Count is the DNC’s own voter registration program, the largest in the party’s history. It launched in Arizona in 2026 and pays young fellows to register new Democratic voters. Muckraker found its canvassers at Mesa Community College, where journalist Anthony Rubin posed as a felon on probation.
Under Arizona law, a felony conviction suspends the right to vote (A.R.S. § 13-904). The canvassers looked it up. “You’re restored to vote when probation has been completed,” one said.
Asked whether they cared if the journalist registered anyway, one said, “You should just do it. Just do it.”
When Rubin returned to ask how often the group helps ineligible people register, the canvassers declined to comment and left.
AFL-CIO phone bank: “Not our business”
Muckraker also attended an AFL-CIO phone bank at a union hall in central Phoenix, where volunteers were phone banking to mobilize voters to support Katie Hobbs.
A Muckraker journalist asked the phone bank trainer whether to ask the people being called if they were citizens. “No, we don’t get into any of that,” the trainer said. “We don’t care.”
“If he’s not a U.S. citizen, why should I proceed?” the journalist asked. “Not our business,” the trainer said.
Gov. Hobbs: no comment
Katie Hobbs later spoke in the same building as the AFL-CIO phone bank at an event hosted by AFSCME, one of the unions endorsing her re-election. Anthony Rubin asked her about non-citizens being registered to vote and about the groups working for her re-election. She did not respond
What the law says
No Arizona law requires voter registration drives to verify citizenship; county recorders check eligibility after forms are submitted. But Arizona law makes it a class 6 felony for anyone who “knowingly causes or procures another person to be registered” while “knowing that such other person is not entitled to such registration” (A.R.S. § 16-182).
If you work inside an organization involved in the electoral process and have information that should be reported, contact Muckraker at support@muckraker.com or muckraker.com/contact.
Ex-FBI “Shadow Government” Official Among Two Charged With Lying To Congress Over Hunter Biden Laptop
Two former senior FBI officials who ran the bureau’s now-defunct Foreign Influence Task Force during the 2020 election were charged Friday with lying to Congress about their roles in the FBI’s Hunter Biden investigations.
Nikki Cole Floris, 46, and Bradley Benavides, 56, each face one count of lying to Congress in a criminal complaint, D.C. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro announced in a post on X. Both surrendered Friday and made their first appearance in federal court in Washington, according to the AP.
Floris led the task force as a deputy assistant director from mid-2019 through mid-2022, while Benavides was its section chief through the 2020 election, FBI Director Kash Patel said. Both testified that the FITF was not involved in the Hunter Biden investigations. “Documentary evidence, contemporaneous communications, and witness accounts contradict their testimony,” Patel wrote, crediting the bureau’s Kansas City field office alongside the Justice Department and Pirro.
Two former senior FBI officials, Nikki Cole Floris and Bradley Benavides, were taken into custody today on charges of allegedly lying to Congress about their involvement in the FBI’s investigations into Hunter Biden. The charges stem from an ongoing investigation into the since-dissolved FBI Foreign Influence Task Force. Floris led the FITF as a Deputy Assistant Director from mid-2019 through mid-2022. Benavides was the FITF Section Chief from mid-2019 through the 2020 election. Both testified that the FITF was not involved in the Hunter Biden investigations. Documentary evidence, contemporaneous communications, and witness accounts contradict their testimony. Floris is also on record privately claiming to be “running a shadow government” during the 2020 election in her role on the FITF. Lying to Congress by senior FBI officials strikes at the heart of our system. No one is above the law. The FBI has already dismantled the corrupt CR-15 squad that engaged in political weaponization targeting their opponents, including President Trump. Thanks to @TheJusticeDept @FBIKansasCity and @USAttyPirro . -DKP
Benavides told Congress he learned about the laptop story from Wikipedia, but the Justice Department says it has evidence he discussed it with others inside the FBI, Fox News reports. Prosecutors also say Floris discussed Hunter Biden with members of the task force despite testifying otherwise. Pirro said the evidence showed “their involvement in helping shape the public narrative about Hunter Biden’s laptop right before the election.”
Floris’ lawyers called her “a patriot” who served as an FBI intelligence officer for nearly 20 years and said the Justice Department accused her “on the say-so of politicians, not on the facts.” “It’s no coincidence the government is filing these nonsense charges now, years later, on the eve of an election,” they said in a statement. Benavides has not publicly commented.
The case lands less than two weeks before the Nov. 3 midterms, the latest in a series of politically charged Justice Department actions in the run-up to the vote, the AP noted.
What The Task Force Knew
Christopher Wray set up the task force in 2017 to counter foreign influence operations, and it served as the bureau’s line to social media companies ahead of the 2020 election. The task force knew the laptop was real when the New York Post began publishing its contents in October 2020, Laura Dehmlow, then the FITF’s section chief, told House Judiciary investigators in July 2023, the Free Beacon reported.
The FBI nonetheless refused to answer social media companies’ questions about the laptop, including from a Twitter employee who asked task force representatives about its authenticity at a previously scheduled meeting the day the Post story ran, according to the committee.
Benavides also crossed paths with the two Republican senators then digging into the Biden family’s foreign money. On Aug. 6, 2020, he briefed Sens. Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson in a session that, according to a June 2023 letter from House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, hampered their investigation into Hunter Biden’s financial connections. Grassley called the briefing “unnecessary and completely irrelevant to the substance of our investigation.” Jordan’s letter asked Benavides, by then a senior risk manager at Amazon, to sit for a transcribed interview.
The Shadow Government Line
Patel’s post also invoked a private message Floris sent during an unrelated episode. Floris wrote she was “basically running a shadow government” in September 2020, as the bureau recalled a report alleging Chinese election interference, according to FBI messages declassified in July and reported by the Washington Examiner.
Wray named Floris in 2022 to run the Washington Field Office’s intelligence division, and Patel forced her out of the FBI in May 2025, the Examiner reported. Attorney General Pam Bondi had already disbanded the task force in February 2025, one of her first acts in office.
The CR-15 squad Patel cited at the end of his post was a Washington Field Office public corruption unit that worked Arctic Frost, the probe that fed into Jack Smith’s election case against Trump. Patel abolished it last October after disclosures that Arctic Frost had tracked Republican senators’ phone records.
The alleged lies date to 2023, according to Patel, which keeps them inside the five-year statute of limitations that generally governs federal false-statement charges until 2028. Anything the pair did during the 2020 campaign itself fell outside that window last fall.
Melania Trump ‘Brokers’ Oleshky Ceasefire – But The White House And Russia Give Different Start Dates
The White House said Friday that First Lady Melania Trump brokered a localized ceasefire in Oleshky, a Russian-occupied city in Ukraine’s Kherson region, to let aid in and civilians out. The White House says it starts October 29, but Gen. Valery Gerasimov said Russian forces would stop firing October 27.
(Credit: Matt McClain/Getty Images)
In its statement, the White House said “both nations agreed to temporarily stop all military action in Oleshky to allow for humanitarian aid to enter and to prepare a civilian evacuation through a designated safe passageway.” Melania Trump called Oleshky “a front-line war city on the brink of disaster” and said she anticipates “some will want to go to Russia, and some to Ukraine.” Civilian leaders from both countries are to visit residents in their homes, and an “impartial American media organization” will document the work. Reuters reported that Newsmax said its cameras would get “exclusive access to document the effort.”
Moscow’s account is looser. Gerasimov said fire would cease on the Kherson axis at 4 a.m. Moscow time on Tuesday, and that Russia would first carry out “engineering reconnaissance” and secure a humanitarian convoy’s route into the city, AP reported. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the sides were still working out a ceasefire so residents could leave, according to the Kyiv Independent. Peskov did not say whether evacuees would go to Russian- or Ukrainian-held territory, and said the evacuation would likely take several days.
The talks themselves ran through human rights officials. Dmytro Lubinets, Ukraine’s ombudsman, said he led negotiations for Ukraine and that Russia’s rights commissioner, Yana Lantratova, led them for Russia. Lubinets said the operation would be gradual and “extremely challenging to implement.” The White House release casts Melania Trump as “Exclusive Intermediary” who “initiated discussions with both nations,” but what she did in the room is not spelled out. The Daily Beast noted this week that her role in the Oleshky crisis was unclear. Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters Putin asked envoy Steve Witkoff in St. Petersburg to pass on his “gratitude,” and Peskov said the matter came up in a recent Putin-Trump call.
Oleshky sits on the Dnipro across from Kherson. About 24,000 people lived there before the war; the White House puts the remaining population at 1,700 to 2,000, mostly elderly, with about 50 children. AP described a city with no electricity, heat or running water, scarce food and medicine for months, and mined roads out. The Kyiv Independent adds that the roads would need demining before buses could reach it. Russian forces took the city on the first day of the 2022 invasion, and the June 2023 Kakhovka Dam collapse, which an AP investigation found was likely caused by the Russian military, flooded it and killed hundreds.
Pressure had been building for weeks. The Kyiv Independent says the blockade drew appeals from Pope Leo XIV, and Ukrainian negotiator David Arakhamia thanked both the pope and Melania Trump. Ukraine has repeatedly asked for a local ceasefire to organize evacuations; as the occupying power, Russia is obligated under international law to see that civilians under its control have what they need to survive, AP noted.
Local truces in this war have often been poorly implemented, the Kyiv Independent notes, and the last one Washington announced is a warning. When Trump declared an energy ceasefire on Truth Social earlier this month, Zelensky said it was “news to me.” Zelensky said Russia hit at least six energy targets overnight after the announcement, and Trump then said both sides had violated the deal and that they agreed “because I said: ‘you agree.'”
The announcement lands amid strain between Washington and Kyiv. Trump recently waived new Russian sanctions and agreed with Russia to import diesel, AP reported, while Kyiv faces restrictions on its use of Starshield satellite internet. Zelensky, speaking at the Hudson Institute, did not mention Oleshky; he said U.S. Patriot interceptors were still on hold. Witkoff met Zelensky in Oslo before traveling to see Putin.
Melania Trump has made children caught in the war her signature issue. Last October she said she and Putin had an open channel of communication on the subject, after the president hand-delivered her letter to Putin in Alaska. Her top aide, Marc Beckman, has claimed she facilitated the reunification of 34 children with their parents, the Daily Beast reported.
Skeptics are not waiting for the paperwork. Stefan Vorontsov, a volunteer coordinator at the NGO Humanity, told the Kyiv Independent he worried about “provocations, blackmail, a route through the Russian Federation.” “I have little faith,” he said. Russia’s October 27 date arrives Tuesday; the White House’s is two days after that.
Rare Earth Stocks Hit 52-Week Low As William Blair Says China Supply Optimism Is “Incorrect”
Our “Great Rare Earth Disconnect” note earlier this week highlighted the widening gap between elevated rare earth prices and tumbling junior miners and producers. William Blair rare-earths analyst Neal Dingmann has also weighed in on the forces driving the selloff.
“Revived rate-hike fears, hot CPI, and other macro concerns along with rare earth headline and company-specific concerns have notably hurt the largely high-beta rare earth group in recent weeks,” Dingmann wrote.
The VanEck Rare Earth and Strategic Metals ETF (REMX) has lost more than half its value since peaking in May, even as commodity prices remain strong and demand for conflict-free Chinese supplies continues. That divergence raises one key question: how much of the selloff reflects deteriorating fundamentals, and how much reflects misplaced expectations of easing supply constraints?
Dingmann wrote that investors may be overestimating the relief a thaw in US-China relations would bring.
“Specifically, many investors anticipate (incorrectly, in our opinion) cooling rare earth supply-scarcity with improved U.S./China relations ahead of the next Trump/Xi meetings in November (in China) and December (G20 in Florida),” he said.
He continued:
Further, investors appear to have increased liquidity concerns given heavy spending requirements against minimal near-term revenue and milestone-based government funding that for many companies has yet to be collected.
While we continue to point to strong REE prices and potential long-term volumes, many companies are not yet benefiting from the high levels given limited current output at the mine or processing, alloy, and magnet facilities.
While we continue to believe the insatiable demand for REE provides a strong long-term backdrop for much of the group, driving many of our Outperform ratings, we remain cautious in the near term over much of the group given the large stock price declines in many REE companies, as it adds to near-term liquidity concerns.
We continue to favor MP Materials and Lynas Rare Earths most in the near term given the former’s attractive offtake agreements and price floors along with the latter’s limited funding needs and long-term track record.
The firm’s basket of seven miner stocks (MP, LYSDY, AREC, IPX, NB, UAMY, and TMCR) has tumbled about 30% on average over the previous month at the time of the report. He said interest rate concerns, inflation pressures and expectations of improving US-China relations have compounded worries about spending requirements and delayed government funding.
Lower share prices are fueling another major concern for these miners: equity financing is more costly for companies building capital-intensive mines, processing plants and magnet facilities. He warned that some of these miners could hit a “debt wall,” substantial shareholder dilution or material project delays.
What changed with investors?
Investors appear to continue to shift their focus from upside driven by government support and strategic value toward actual production and cash flow, causing growing concerns about how capital-intensive projects will be funded at lower equity values.
With equity prices significantly lower, raising the capital needed to fund these projects becomes increasingly dilutive, leaving companies that still require significant external funding with fewer options.
From here, we could see a rebound if Chinese restrictions are renewed, government funding, or company-specific production milestones restore urgency to the ex-China buildout. On the flip side, another trade extension, company project delays, or funding delays could keep valuations under pressure and further increase funding risk, dilution risk, and overall company finance risk
Canaccord’s critical minerals team, led by Reg Spencer, also questioned the scale of the selloff, highlighting the disconnect between elevated rare earth prices and sharp declines across junior miner and established producer stocks.
Potential catalysts for renewed investor interest across the space include tighter Chinese export restrictions, government funding commitments and production milestones that demonstrate commercial progress. Until then, balance-sheet strength and execution remain key differentiators. Producers with operating assets and robust liquidity to fund their growth plans appear better positioned to weather the shakeout and participate in a recovery once bears are down and dragging the space down.
As the measles outbreak in Pennsylvania grows larger, state officials have issued a warning regarding the impact of measles during pregnancy.
“Measles in pregnancy can lead to serious adverse maternal and fetal outcomes. The measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine is safe and highly effective,” the Pennsylvania Department of Health said in an Oct. 19 health alert. “Getting vaccinated BEFORE pregnancy is the best way to prevent measles and congenital measles.”
More cases of measles have been recorded recently during pregnancy, and there are “rising concerns” about congenital measles, or measles transmitted to infants from pregnant mothers, the department said.
Women and teenagers in outbreak areas should receive two doses of the MMR vaccine, separated by 28 days, according to the department. Other women should be offered one dose.
Women should take care not to become pregnant for at least 28 days after receiving a shot.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that pregnant women should not receive the MMR vaccine. Pennsylvania’s guidance says the vaccine should not be administered during pregnancy.
Infants born to women who had measles are at risk for symptomatic and transmissible measles infection, Pennsylvania officials said. Infants should be isolated, monitored, and provided with immune globulin, which could prevent measles or reduce symptoms.
Infants showing symptoms within 10 days of birth, such as rash, should be tested, and treatment should include vitamin A, since vitamin A deficiency has been linked with poorer outcomes from measles, they said.
Cases Jump in State
After the alert, Pennsylvania officials said the outbreak’s case count rose to 1,317.
Thirty-one of those cases were new, according to the Oct. 21 update.
All but four of those individuals had not received a vaccine, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Health.
Five people who contracted measles have died. That includes at least one death that a coroner deemed unrelated to measles.
A one-year-old is held by his mother while he receives a measles vaccine at a clinic in Lubbock, Texas, on March 1, 2025. Jan Sonnenmair/Getty Images
The CDC lists three of the deaths on its website. The CDC said the number may change as it reviews information it has received.
The CDC is also working with a group of epidemiologists to develop a case definition for deaths due to measles.
Nationwide, there have been 4,410 measles cases this year, 96 percent of which have occurred in people who are unvaccinated or have unknown vaccination status. Ten percent of the patients have been hospitalized.
Vaccination Effort
About 300 state workers are teaming up with community organizations and health care providers to combat the outbreak by providing factual information and access to the MMR vaccine, the Pennsylvania Department of Health said.
State workers have administered more than 6,300 shots across hundreds of pop-up clinics since the outbreak started in April. They’ve administered more than 3,700 shots in other venues this year.
Healthcare workers are reporting increased interest in the vaccine.
They usually administered about 25,000 doses a month. In September, more than 56,000 doses were injected, and through the first three weeks of October, 39,000 doses have been administered.
The vaccine is estimated to provide 97 percent protection after two doses. Side effects include fever and rash.
Left-leaning Boomers (born 1946-1964) and Gen Xers (born 1965-1980) view any criticism of 21st century mass immigration through a particular cultural and psychological lens that is outdated and a barrier to having a constructive debate about extremist mass immigration policies in the here and now.
Left-liberal ‘progressives’ who grew up or were young adults between the 1960s and 1990s were socially and culturally conditioned to believe that any criticism of immigration policies is synonymous with racial hatred. This is because in the eras when they grew up many of the people who opposed the much more limited immigration of those decades were openly racist. This is why it’s almost impossible to have a nuanced discussion with ‘progressive’ Boomers or Gen X about the issue of mass immigration and get them to address the reality of resource constraints caused by excessively high numbers, or how certain immigrant groups like Indian Sikhs or Middle Eastern Christians are a better cultural fit with British and European people than say an Afghan Taliban supporter or an Islamic supremacist from Somalia who openly promotes Female Genital Mutilation as beneficial to society.
The moment a Boomer or Gen X Leftist open borders advocate is faced with anyone critical of 21st century mass immigration policies (which are radically more open than the immigration policies of the 1950s-1980s) all they see and hear in their mind’s eye is some frothing at the mouth National Front extremist skinhead from the 1970s or 1980s who believes there shouldn’t be a single brown or black face on the island of Britain. Unless you can break through that cultural and psychological conditioning regarding the issue of immigration, it’s impossible to have a constructive debate with ‘progressive’ Gen Xers and Boomers on the issue. While you’re trying to have a nuanced discussion on the issue of mass immigration, Left-liberal Boomers and Gen Xers are having a Pavlovian response.
In order to understand the psychology of Gen X and Boomer British ‘progressives’ further, it’s important to understand that we are the generations who grew up listening to music that transcended cultural and racial lines. We grew up listening to Motown and Philly Soul from black America along with black musical giants like Prince, Michael Jackson or James Brown, while even all-white bands like the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, the Who and later U2 paid homage to the black R&B artists who inspired them. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the 2-Tone music label fused white British Punk Rock with Jamaican Ska and Reggae and the label’s multi-ethnic bands such as the Specials topped the charts. It was the norm for us to see black, brown and white musicians in bands together. For those who love football, many black footballers born and bred in England and even Ireland were viewed as belonging to the country as much as any white player. This inclusive ethos that was prevalent in the 1970s and 1980s that emphasised black, white and brown kids uniting in a love of music, fashion and football was all very laudable and it helped foster a cultural norm where genuine racism came to be viewed as anathema by most of the public.
However, the inclusiveness of the 1970s and 1980s led many of the people who adopted this mindset to adopt a very simplistic and shallow minded approach to the issue of immigration which is now influencing how we discuss the very different phenomenon of mass immigration in the 21st century. The Gen X or Boomer ‘progressive’ erroneously conflates criticism of any non-white, non-European culture with racism which in turn has led to the idea that to oppose unrestricted flows of people with darker skin from all of the world’s non-white cultures is synonymous with white supremacy. This is the mindset that has dominated most of the British media and cultural establishment for decades. It shapes everything from how certain news items are reported (or not reported). It explains why TV dramas include the over representation of ethnic minorities even in periods and locations in British history where everyone was white along with the incongruous shoe-horning of radical-Leftist dogma into so much modern entertainment.
It must be infuriating for decent, law-abiding Caribbeans, African Christians and Indians who came to the British Isles many decades ago and are patriotic and well-integrated to be lumped in with Islamic supremacists coming from Afghanistan or Somalia just because they’re all non-white. Leftists are so obsessed with skin colour and viewing 21st century mass immigration through the racial politics of the 1970s and 1980s that it blinds them to genuine cultural incompatibilities of certain immigrant groups as well as security threats and resource constraints that result from the 21st century open borders fiasco.
One aspect of the current debate about what it means to be British that needs to be acknowledged is that it was only possible for Caribbean or Indian migrants who came to Britain in the 1950s and 1960s to become culturally British because there was a majority white British population and culture with which to integrate. If you make whole areas of cities non-native British, and especially if those areas become dominated by Islamic supremacists, then there is no native culture for people to integrate with. Civic nationalism can only work when the indigenous people remain the dominant majority and immigrant groups come from compatible cultures who aspire to integrate with the host population.
Boomer and Gen X ‘progressives’ need to wake up to the fact that it’s not the mid to late 20th century anymore. They need to have debates on mass immigration in the 21st century on the conditions and terms of the 21st century. Today’s mass immigration is not comparable to the limited migration of the 1950s through to the 1980s. Those of us with centrist or small c conservative views on immigration, including many patriotic ethnic minority citizens, agree with ‘progressives’ that racism is wrong. Where we disagree with them is how they’ve extended that term and redefined it beyond its original meaning to the point of utter absurdity.
There is nothing racist about effective border controls or wanting manageable levels of immigration that consider resource constraints and security risks. There is nothing far Right about believing that the native peoples of the British Isles (the English, Scottish, Welsh, Irish and Northern Irish) should remain the majority in these islands and that only cultures that are compatible with ours should be invited to live amongst us. If we forget that, then the national and regional cultures that have shaped the British Isles will disappear.
Andrew Devine is a 2010 Orwell Prize winning blogger and author of Generation F (under the pseudonym Winston Smith). Former radical Leftist. Fully recovered. He blogs on his Substack page, the Devine Message, where this article first appeared.
We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of ZeroHedge.
The Supreme Court sided with New Hampshire Republicans, allowing officials to stop accepting student ID cards as valid proof of identity for voting.
The high court cited the Purcell principle, which guards against changes to election rules close to Election Day.
The court’s decision took the form of an unsigned opinion issued late on Oct. 22.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.
The Supreme Court here applied the so-called Purcell principle against last-minute judicially ordered changes to election rules.
A state law known as HB 323 forbids the use of student IDs as valid proof of identity when voting. New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan issued guidance directing election clerks not to accept student IDs as a backup form of identification.
A group called the Coalition for Open Democracy challenged both the state law and the directive in federal court. The group’s attorneys argued that the law ran afoul of both the U.S. and New Hampshire constitutions and discriminated against young voters on the basis of age. They also argued Scanlan exceeded his lawful powers as secretary of state.
Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Joseph Laplante denied the group’s request to bar enforcement of HB 323, but temporarily blocked Scanlan from advising election clerks that student IDs were never acceptable. Days later, the judge extended his order to cover public statements to that effect made by Scanlan. Together, the two orders meant clerks had to keep treating a student ID card as possible backup proof.
In its emergency application to the Supreme Court, the state argued that the district court’s order came a mere 32 days before the general election, and that this goes against the Supreme Court’s rulings, which have repeatedly held that lower federal courts should not “intervene in state election procedures in the lead up to an election.”
The justices stayed Laplante’s orders.
“This Court has repeatedly emphasized that lower federal courts should ordinarily not alter the election rules on the eve of an election,” the justices wrote, citing a 2020 precedent. “Here, the District Court did not point to anything that would justify deviating from that principle.”
In her dissent, Jackson said Laplante had determined that it was necessary to correct Scanlan’s “publicized misstatement about what New Hampshire’s election rules require.”
The injunction issued by the district court, Jackson said, “was reasonably designed to address alleged misinformation, not to change the law.”
“An injunction to prohibit that conduct does not contribute to public confusion, it prevents that very problem,” she said. “I would not disturb a clearly justifiable federal-court order issued to ensure that the public receives accurate information about a State’s electoral processes.”
New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella hailed the Supreme Court’s ruling.
“New Hampshire has a responsibility to protect the integrity of its elections and ensure that election laws are applied as written,” he said in a statement.
“The Supreme Court’s decision is an important victory for our efforts to defend those laws and prevent last-minute court orders from creating uncertainty for voters and election officials.“
The Coalition for Open Democracy criticized the high court’s new ruling, calling it “wrong” and a misinterpretation of the Purcell principle.
“We applaud Justice Jackson for her dissent, in which she stands for the Constitution, the right to vote, and a rational application of Purcell,” the group said in a statement.
“We will continue to vigorously litigate this case in the defense of the fundamental right to vote of young voters across New Hampshire.”
The Supreme Court’s order remains in effect through the Nov. 3 general election, while the case continues on appeal in the lower courts.
