Anthropic President Daniela Amodei Created A Stuffed-Animal Advisory Council While At OpenAI
Before Anthropic existed, Daniela Amodei reportedly developed an unconventional method for sorting through difficult decisions at work: she and her husband created an imaginary group of advisers using plush toys, according to the NY Post.
The couple gave each toy a distinct temperament and point of view, then used those characters to consider how different kinds of managers might respond to the same problem, according to an account in The Atlantic drawn from journalist Kevin Roose’s forthcoming book, The AGI Chronicles.
The Post writes that one character, Jinji, was a laid-back cat whose instinct was to lighten Amodei’s workload and skip unnecessary meetings. A pink bear called Maura represented the opposite approach — organized, demanding and focused on details. Another, Beary Bonds, was a panda meant to bring compassion and generosity into the discussion.
Despite the playful setup, Amodei apparently found practical value in the exercise. She told Roose in 2023 that it was “very useful in analyzing different personality types.”
The practice was largely unknown inside OpenAI, where Amodei had been working since 2018. It also came during an increasingly difficult period for her and her brother Dario Amodei at the company.
Daniela had moved into management of technical teams and developed disagreements with several senior OpenAI figures, including Greg Brockman and Mira Murati. Her relationship with Brockman had previously been much warmer — he had even spoken at her wedding to Holden Karnofsky in 2017 — but their working relationship deteriorated over time.
Dario, meanwhile, had his own concerns about OpenAI’s leadership and the direction of its AI development. He became particularly wary of Sam Altman and Brockman and began organizing with researchers who wanted greater emphasis placed on the risks posed by increasingly powerful AI systems.
That faction communicated privately and held meetings outside the company’s usual structure. Some colleagues reportedly referred to it as “Dario’s clique.”
Eventually, the internal disagreements turned into plans for an entirely new company. In 2020, Dario began assembling a team willing to leave OpenAI and pursue advanced AI research under a different safety philosophy.
Daniela became a central figure in that departure, including negotiating with OpenAI as the group prepared to leave. Those involved reportedly referred to the split privately as “the divorce.”
The Amodeis exited OpenAI in December 2020 and helped establish Anthropic with Jack Clark, Sam McCandlish, Tom Brown, Chris Olah and Jared Kaplan. Ben Mann was subsequently recognized as another co-founder.
What began with ambitions of building a comparatively small research operation eventually became something much larger. Anthropic expanded to thousands of workers and developed into one of OpenAI’s most significant competitors.
Daniela today serves as Anthropic’s president and board chair, with authority extending across much of the company’s research, engineering, product and business operations. Karnofsky, who once sat on OpenAI’s nonprofit board, also eventually joined Anthropic.
The revelation about Amodei’s plush management advisers arrives as Anthropic has transformed from a small AI-safety startup into one of the industry’s most valuable companies, with reports suggesting a potential IPO could eventually carry a valuation approaching $2 trillion.
A California labor-and-delivery nurse says her Fresno hospital went from a handful of stillbirths a year to more than 20 in a single month once COVID shots were pushed on pregnant women, then answered the pile-up with an email on how to handle the dead.
The same product is now sitting in a federal file parents were told not to worry about. An analysis of the National Health Interview Survey, published yesterday, finds COVID-vaccinated children had higher odds of autism, ADHD, anxiety and special-education use than children who never received the shot, and the authors say the shots in children should stop.
Michelle Spencer has worked the antepartum, postpartum and labor-and-delivery floor at Community Regional Medical Center in Fresno since 2017. In interviews that Children’s Health Defense aired, she described the unit before the pregnancy rollout as a place that saw about four stillbirths a year. After the shots started going into pregnant women, she said, it became four a week, and it did not stop.
A California nurse says her hospital went from four stillbirths a year to 22 in a SINGLE MONTH after COVID shots were pushed on pregnant women.That’s more stillbirths in 30 days than the previous FIVE YEARS combined.The hospital sent an email, telling nurses to BRUSH UP ON HANDLING DEAD BABIES’ BODIES. But not a shred of concern about WHY they were dying.Stillbirths are up 6,500% in a single month, and the hospital doesn’t want to get to the bottom of it.Nurse Michelle Spencer questioned the COVID shots. Her colleagues? They figured it was GLOBAL WARMING.
A total of 22 stillborn babies in 30 days against a baseline of four a year is more than the previous five years combined, on the order of a 6,500 percent jump in a single month. Spencer’s July 30, 2025 complaint in Fresno County Superior Court used a baseline of one fetal death a month before spring 2021 and about 20 a month after, and calls the rise a statistically significant surge of more than 400 percent.
She has said she cannot pull the hospital’s full record, so the monthly figure is her estimate from the floor. The document that is not an estimate is the email.
In September 2022, nurse manager Julie Christopherson wrote to nursing and technical staff about what the hospital called “demise patients.”
“Well, it seems as though the increase of demise patients that we are seeing is going to continue,” she wrote. “There were 22 demises in August, which ties the record number of demises in July 2021, and so far in September there have been 7 and it’s only the 8th day of the month.”
She told the bedside nurses the work was burying her other patients. “I know of a few more that are scheduled to deliver in the week ahead, so unfortunately the process is going to be very familiar with all of you.” The note walked staff through handling remains after a dead fetus had been mishandled. It did not ask why the babies were dying.
Spencer’s complaint says she “was gaslit by management who continued to make unsubstantiated excuses such as ‘pesticides’ as a more likely cause of the record high dead babies.” The institution’s documented move was procedural, not investigative.
When she leaked the email, the hospital opened an investigation into her, denied her a $5,000 retention bonus in December 2022 on the grounds she was no longer in good standing, and reprimanded her for telling patients about vaccine risk. Children’s Health Defense is funding the suit.
Her lawyer, Greg Glaser, put the allegation in one line: “The hospital possessed vaccinated versus unvaccinated comparison data. The numbers proved the vaccines were causing miscarriages and more in the vaccinated group. We know hospital management analyzed the data because they said so, and we see they concealed it from regulators because that file requested by regulators is empty.”
The complaint says one managing nurse told a staff member that nearly all of the stillbirths were in vaccinated mothers, and that fetal deaths in mothers who did not get the shot stayed at the old rate of about one a month. Spencer told The New American: “Healthy moms and healthy babies were suddenly being replaced by babies born dead, and nobody seemed to care. I saw a pattern, clear as day, and I couldn’t stay silent.”
Nurse Sounds Alarm on Stillbirth SurgeMichelle Spencer, a labor & delivery nurse in California, says she witnessed a heartbreaking rise in stillbirths after the 2021 COVID vaccine rollout – and when she spoke up, the hospital retaliated.This isn’t just a lawsuit. It’s a moral reckoning.Read more on CHD’s The Defender https://t.co/mK3lS5ordc
The hospital has never accepted that framing. In 2022, after the email first leaked, Sarah Putman, then director of women and newborn health at Community Regional, said the memo was about policy, that fetal demise has many causes, and that “neither COVID-19 nor vaccines were mentioned.“
The California Department of Public Health said at the time it had seen no significant statewide rise in stillbirths since the shots arrived, and no stillbirth certificate naming vaccination.
The case is still open. What the email itself records is the count, and the decision to train nurses on the bodies rather than on the cause.
The full interview with Spencer:
A Nurse’s Moral Conviction00:00 – CHD Advocacy 06:43 – Doctors & Scientists 07:34 – Guest Introduction: Michelle Spencer, RN Whistleblower 08:57 – Michelle’s Background & Moment of Truth with Hepatitis B Vaccine 10:50 – Refusing Hep B Vaccines, Informed Consent, & Current Disciplinary Action 12:55 – Stillbirth Surge Post-COVID Vaccines (Data & Email Evidence) 15:59 – Blowing the Whistle: Email to RFK Jr., Media Appearances & Investigation 19:58 – Loss of Michelle’s Mother to Hospital Protocols 22:18 – Ongoing Retaliation, Lawsuit, & Continued Work at Hospital 25:27 – Michelle’s Remote Healing Work (NAET / Body Code) & Session with Host’s Son 29:59 – NAET Training, Vaccine Injury Experiences & Quantum Healing 35:41 – How to Contact Michelle (Healing Ground) & Closing ThanksHost of “Doctors & Scientists” Brian Hooker, Ph.D. asks his guest, Nurse Michelle Spencer, about her journey – including how her opinion on vaccination changed over the years, her experience with COVID hospital protocols and the way she utilizes alternative approaches to healing health conditions in family and friends. Don’t miss this interview!
— Children’s Health Defense (@ChildrensHD) July 3, 2026
As we have previously highlighted, a Nobel laureate warned Anthony Fauci in February 2021 that COVID shot contents were reaching the placenta and the fetus and provoking an immune response in the amniotic fluid. Fauci told the public there were no red flags.
Meanwhile, yesterday’s paper, posted on Zenodo by epidemiologist Nicolas Hulscher, cardiologist Peter McCullough and colleagues, pools the 2022-2024 National Health Interview Survey Sample Child files: 21,990 children aged 0-17 with a recorded COVID vaccination status, and 19,882 aged 2-17 for the autism, ADHD and learning-disability items. “Unvaccinated” here means no COVID shot. It does not mean the child skipped the routine schedule.
Set against children who never received a COVID shot, COVID-vaccinated children had 32 percent higher odds of current autism, 26 percent higher odds of a lifetime autism diagnosis, 33 percent higher odds of ADHD, 23 percent higher odds of any neurodevelopmental diagnosis, 19 percent higher odds of special-education use, 24 percent higher odds of asthma, 27 percent higher odds of daily or weekly anxiety, 57 percent higher odds of mental-health medication and 60 percent higher odds of mental-health therapy.
The odds climbed with the dose count. Against children who received none, current-autism odds were 3 percent higher after one dose, 25 percent higher after two, and 40 percent higher after three or more. Among children aged 5 to 7, three or more COVID shots were linked to 154 percent higher odds of current autism.
Hulscher told The Gateway Pundit the association “persisted across numerous adjustment strategies, strengthened with increasing dose count, and reached its largest estimate in some of the youngest multiply vaccinated children.”
He added: “This is a safety signal that must not be ignored. Endangering the developing brain is a red line. COVID-19 ‘vaccination’ of children should cease immediately.”
The authors say the autism signal held after controls for age, sex, race, income, parental education, insurance, region, healthcare access, wellness visits, emergency-room use, hospitalization, prescription use and influenza vaccination. Influenza and HPV shots, run as comparison exposures, did not reproduce it. Children who received a COVID shot but not a flu shot had 45 percent higher autism odds than children who received a flu shot but not a COVID shot.
The design is cross-sectional. It cannot put the shot before the diagnosis on a calendar, and the authors say so. That limit is real. It is also the comparison the CDC, the FDA and the manufacturers did not run on their own books while the product was being sold to pregnant women and then to toddlers as a routine precaution. Pediatric trials were never powered for autism, ADHD or a special-education placement.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had already put the wider denial in plain language in April 2025. “It’s clear that the rates are real. Year by year there is a steady, relentless increase,” he said. “This is a preventable disease. We know it’s an environmental exposure. It has to be. Genes do not cause epidemics.”
CDC surveillance now puts autism at 1 in 31 American 8-year-olds, 1 in 20 boys, and about 1 in 12.5 boys in California, the state where Spencer works. President Trump’s line at the same moment was shorter: “They pump so much stuff into those beautiful little babies, it’s a disgrace.”
Spencer is still on the Fresno floor. The complaint says the deaths have not gone back to the old rate. The federal survey says the children who made it out of those wards are carrying a dose-linked signal the agencies spent four years calling a conspiracy.
Former Sunrise Movement NGO Board Member Abdul El-Sayed Linked To Far-Left Group Whose Leader Now Urges…
Leaders of Sunrise Movement, a far-left climate nonprofit legally classified as a 501(c)(4) organization, said in a recent online meeting that they want to “engage in civil disobedience and get arrested.”
The video of the nonprofit’s far-left radical leaders was published on X by Karlyn Borysenko, who describes herself as an anti-communist analyst and observer of the far left.
The transcript of remarks by one of Sunrise Movement’s leaders is as follows:
What’s holding you back from getting involved, right? Like, I would assume that everyone on this call is here because they want to do something, but what’s holding you back, right? And what’s holding you back from getting more involved than you already are.
And I’ll share again for me, right? Like, one thing that’s structural for me is like, I really would love to do a direct action. I would love to get arrested doing some good trouble, some civil disobedience, as they say, but I can’t. Like structurally, that’s just something I can’t do. I would love to get arrested, but that would be a bad look.
SUNRISE MOVEMENT LEADER SAYS THEY WANT TO ENGAGE IN CIVIL DISOBEDIANCE AND GET ARRESTED FOLLOW @DrKarlynB ! https://t.co/W0vmFwlmXF
For Sunrise specifically, organizing riots and deliberate lawbreaking can jeopardize the nonprofit’s tax-exempt status in the Trump era, as a multi-agency task force led by the US Treasury has homed in on these nonprofits for their revolutionary Marxist work.
A New York Post report from late August detailed the Treasury task force that could soon strip tax-exempt status from George Soros’ far-left Open Society Foundations, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
One source said Treasury Department officials were “like a dog with a bone” and reckoned that many NGOs and their donor bases could be “on borrowed time.”
Publicly available records accessed through Sayari map show the organizational structure and linked entities surrounding Sunrise Movement.
Sunrise Movement Links To The Democratic Machine
The clearest connections are Becca Rast and Abdul El-Sayed.
Via Linkedin:
Scrutiny of NGOs, whether used as foreign subversion networks or to carry out the dirty work of left-wing billionaire foundations waging war against the West, has been in full force this summer.
That may help explain why there were no riots: billionaire foundations, such as the Gates Foundation, are likely afraid of losing their tax-exempt status.
Meanwhile…. Obama.
It is my honor and privilege to announce that President @BarackObama is joining us on the trail in Detroit on Saturday, October 24. Get. Ready. https://t.co/lEXRlxnu7P
Trump Outrages Dems & Republicans Alike With Garbled ‘Take Out Los Angeles’ Line
President Trump addressed a full house for his Monday night midterm campaign rally in Grand Island, Nebraska – but his comments on the Iran war, gas prices, and musings about a nuclear weapon taking out American cities created an avalanche of controversy.
Making the case for his launching Operation Epic Fury, Trump at one point in the speech said, “They could take out a city,” and then: “Let ’em take out Los Angeles. Let ’em take out San Diego.” The clip went viral on various social media platforms, especially ones that didn’t convey the full context. Though Trump’s rhetorical ordering of what he was trying to convey was clearly mangled and off, he was actually expressing a warning and not a wish.
Regardless, it wasn’t just prominent Democrats that expressed shock and outrage at what was widely construed as him suggesting he’d be okay with the Iranians nuking a couple California cities, but some Republicans too. For example a Trump-endorsed Republican who is seeking an open House seat in California, Jim Desmond, stated he “vehemently” disagreed with the comments.
“The first responsibility of our commander in chief is to protect the American people and our homeland,” he wrote online. “As a Navy veteran, I served to protect Americans, not write off American cities as an acceptable price of war. Our job is to keep Americans safe, stand up to our enemies, and make sure a threat like that never becomes reality. No American city is expendable, and no American family should ever be treated as collateral damage.”
Naturally, Gov. Gavin Newsom of California also blasted the president’s remarks. “After sending the National Guard and Marines to occupy California,” he stated, “Donald Trump is now saying our foreign enemies should ‘take out’ Los Angeles and San Diego.“
Mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles said she was “just shocked” at Trump’s remarks and called for an immediate retraction and apology. “It would really be helpful to our city if you would apologize and say, of course, you would never stand for a foreign power attacking a U.S. city,” she said. “That is the appropriate response the day after from the president of the United States.” She has of course frequently been on the receiving end of Trump’s attacks.
The White House issued official response on Tuesday, pointing out that intent matters and implying that Trump’s off-the-cuff, hyperbolic, and rambling style are being willfully misinterpreted. Here’s the explanation by White House’s communications director, Steven Cheung:
“The media freakout over President Trump’s comments is not rooted in reality. He was clearly stating U.S. cities would have been threatened if a nuclear Iran hadn’t been stopped. America is safer because of the president. Iran has no nuclear, no navy, no air force, and no money.”
Not helping matters was that the crowd loudly cheered at the moment he mentioned “let them take out Las Angeles… San Diego…”.
Trump on Iran: Let ’em take out Los Angeles and San Diego, it’s a small price to pay https://t.co/Fc4BcjVDKj
What follows is an exact transcript of what Trump said:
I want to see a tremendous victory. You want to see a tremendous victory because it verifies all the things we did. And again, remember, with the war, it’s just artificial. It’s a little bit high. It’s a small price to pay for keeping the world safe, keeping our country safe.
They can take out a city. Let them take, let them take out Los Angeles; let them take out San Diego. That’s — this is a very small price to pay, and it’s going to be over with very soon. It’s essentially almost over with.
And they might keep going a little long. You know, they always say they have a big threshold for pain. They need it. Let me tell you, they need it. But it’s going to end very soon. And it’ll end one way or the other. And your gas and your gasoline and all of the things.
And don’t forget, we also took on a country known as Venezuela. They never talk about that. They never talk about Venezuela. And we’re taking in hundreds of millions of barrels of oil every week. We’re pouring oil. We’re pouring oil into this country like nobody’s ever seen before.
Deleted post griping about what Trump said about Los Angeles and San Diego being nuked by Iran. Now that I’ve seen the clip, it was clear that he simply wasn’t speaking clearly, that he was WARNING that this could happen, not wishing for it. I apologize.
With all of the above having been laid out, it remains that even what Trump was trying to say is bad enough. He’s engaging in a pattern of classic fearmongering which seems to borrow straight from the NeoCon Bush-era playbook on the Iraq war.
He just days prior did the same in Alabama, though it was much more coherent.
TRUMP SAYS HIGH OIL PRICES A SMALL PRICE TO PAY, IRAN WOULD HAVE NUKED ALABAMA *** https://t.co/MH17sEhNZp
New Report Confirms Biden’s DOJ Did Target Parents Who Spoke Out At School Board Meetings
The Justice Department’s Weaponization Working Group released a report Monday concluding that former Attorney General Merrick Garland’s Oct. 4, 2021 school board memo grew out of pressure from the Biden White House and turned the department’s law enforcement powers on parents.
The report describes how DOJ officials under President Joe Biden looked for ways to bring federal cases against parents and protesters who addressed school boards and school officials during the COVID-19 pandemic. It also contains the Working Group’s formal acknowledgment that the prior administration’s actions “chilled the exercise of parental and free speech rights, parents who lawfully exercised their parental rights and freedom of speech were often targeted by members of the educational establishment.”
Garland addressed the memo to the FBI director, the assistant attorney general for the Criminal Division, the director of the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys, and U.S. attorneys nationwide. The memo told its recipients that “in recent months, there has been a disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence,” even though, according to the report, he had seen very little evidence of actual violence or violent threats against school administrators or at school board meetings when he signed it.
The Working Group traces the memo’s ideological origin to a letter the National School Boards Association sent to Biden on Sept. 29, 2021, five days before Garland acted. That letter asked the federal government to consider that “these heinous actions” “could be equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.”
Records cited in the report show that leadership at the Biden White House and the DOJ pressed for a memo that would locate a federal “hook” for prosecuting parents and charging protesters with federal crimes.
“Among the most egregious findings, exhibits show that individuals in the Biden White House and Attorney General Garland’s advisors wanted to involve federal law enforcement and prosecutors in matters involving parents and school boards,” a DOJ press release explains.
Further, the Memo established a task force to find federal enforcement options for investigating and prosecuting parents, and the FBI opened 25 “Guardian assessments” on parents. One FBI whistleblower disclosed that a mother was investigated because she “is a gun owner” and belonged to a “right-wing mom’s group.”
Internal communications and investigative records show that more than a dozen DOJ and FBI personnel raised concerns about the memo and its directive. “Stupid, stupid, stupid,” one employee wrote. Another wrote that “they might as well rename the damn thing the Anti-MAGA Task Force.” Several of the objections centered on the law. One staffer warned that the directive was “challenging from a First Amendment perspective,” and another said it placed the department on “potentially dangerous ground.” Other employees focused on how the directive would reflect on the department. One wrote that the memo “look[s] political.” Another called it “a partisan exercise aimed at those who do not support the Administration,” and a third cautioned that it would “tarnish reputation as an apolitical law enforcer.” One described the effort as “very messy and political.” Shorter reactions in the record include “ridiculous,” “horrible,” and “confusing.”
Emails cited in the report show that Garland issued the memo over those objections and that White House officials influenced his decision.
The department announced a series of remedial steps alongside the findings. Parents and other school board meeting participants who became subjects or targets of a Guardian assessment because of the memo will have the opportunity to review their assessment. The FBI has closed or discontinued most of those files, and each one will now carry a disclaimer stating that the memo raised serious constitutional concerns and that readers should treat the assessment with caution.
The DOJ will also review the file of every person investigated under the memo. Where reviewers identify a constitutional violation, the department will issue a formal apology and adopt internal controls intended to prevent a recurrence.
Leaders of the DOJ and the Department of Education sent letters on parental rights to the attorneys general of all 50 states. The department said Attorney General Todd Blanche and the Trump administration have made securing parental and First Amendment rights a top priority.
Massive Smoke Plume As Tanker Erupts In Flames, Spills Oil Off Russia’s Sochi Coast
The Black Sea tanker wars have continued Tuesday. In the latest tit-for-tat episode, a large so-called ‘shadow fleet’ tanker is ablaze close to the Russian Black Sea port of Sochi.
The vessel, identified in reports as likely being the Aframax Rio, which was previously sanctioned by Ukraine for alleged involvement in Russian oil exports, is producing a massive smoke plume and has been photographed and filmed by shocked onlookers at Sochi’s shores. Images like the below are widely circulating on Russian Telegram channels.
Russian regional authorities in nearby Sirius have since confirmed in a public announcement that a tanker had caught fire in the Black Sea.
Reuters writes that “The beaches in the settlement in Russia’s south Krasnodar region are closed to the public, the authorities said, without giving any details of the cause of the fire.”
Some open source media accounts have described that the Liberian-flagged oil tanker was “loaded almost to the brim” transporting crude oil from Russia to India.
Speculation is growing that it was hit by uncrewed surface vessels while carrying its crude cargo.
An Oil Tanker “loaded almost to the brim” carrying crude oil from Russia to India 🇮🇳 is seen completely on fire 🔥 off the coast of Sochi An estimated $70 million of oil, or 760,000 barrels of oil, was loaded into the Shadow Fleet tanker This is massive https://t.co/TLEJGBMoGq
Maritime Executive says that the fire is so extensive likely due to significant oil spillage.
Another image circulating…
“The vessel is readily visible from shore, and multiple videos depicting the fire have appeared on Russian social media channels,” the maritime publication writes.
“The bystander-image sequence begins with a substantial fire centered on cargo tanks amidships, followed by obvious signs of burning oil spreading aft down the starboard side,” it adds. “Later videos and photos show a large pool of burning oil on the water aft of the vessel and a towering column of smoke.”
The top Kremlin spokesman sought to tamp down “various rumors and speculation” about reports of a possible plague outbreak in Siberia and said that Russians should only monitor statements from government sources.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov in Moscow on Feb. 18, 2022. Sergey Guneev/Sputnik/Kremlin via Reuters
“The leading agency with authority in this area is Rospotrebnadzor,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday, according to Russian media outlet TASS, referring to Russia’s national public health agency. “And it is Rospotrebnadzor’s official statements that should be relied upon, without listening to various rumors and speculation.”
“Rospotrebnadzor is home to highly qualified professionals in this field. Let’s listen to their official statements,” Peskov added.
The statement comes as Russian health authorities said they took preventative actions after the death of a laboratory worker at the Anti-Plague Research Institute of Siberia and the Far East near Irkutsk, Russian news agency Interfax reported on Oct. 4.
The worker was diagnosed with pneumonia of unknown origin, Rospotrebnadzor said, although officials haven’t yet confirmed the cause of her death. It’s also not clear when the worker died.
“Due to the patient’s professional activities, upon receiving information, a comprehensive set of anti-epidemic measures was immediately and fully implemented in accordance with sanitary legislation,” Rospotrebnadzor said over the past weekend.
That included finding “the widest possible circle of people who had been in contact with the patient,” the health agency said.
The hospital has been placed under quarantine, Mayor Maxim Modin said on Oct. 2, no longer admitting or discharging patients, and its laboratory halted carrying out routine tests. The hospital’s outpatient clinic kept operating as usual, he said.
On Monday, Igor Kobzev, the regional governor of the Irkutsk region, issued a statement on social media platform Telegram that testing has shown “no microorganisms related to her professional activities were found in the woman’s biopsy specimens.”
“The cause of her death was pneumonia of unknown etiology,” Kobzev added. “Importantly, no new cases of Anti-Plague Institute employees seeking medical attention have been identified in the past few days.”
The official described the “sanitary and epidemiological situation” in his region as “currently stable,” without elaborating, before he thanked the chief of Rospotrebnadzor and its staff.
An independent Russian media outlet, Lyudi Baikala, reported that as many as 200 people in the area who came in contact with the laboratory worker have been placed under quarantine. Neither Rospotrebnadzor officials and Kobzev have commented on the number of people who were placed under quarantine.
Responding to the reports, a U.S. State Department spokesman told The Epoch Times on Monday that Trump administration officials are aware of reports of “a fatal case of suspected pneumonic plague” and is monitoring the situation.
“Many details have not been confirmed. We encourage Russian authorities to share accurate information quickly and openly,” the State Department spokesman said.
The United Nations’ World Health Organization (WHO) describes pneumonic plague as a less common but severe form of the infection caused by the bacteria Yersinia pestis, which is generally found in rodents, small mammals, and fleas.
“Plague can be a very severe disease in people, with a case-fatality ratio of 30 percent to 60 percent for the bubonic type, and it is always fatal for the pneumonic and septicaemic kinds when left untreated,” WHO says on its website, referring to other forms of the disease.
The tiles are not subtle. Countering racism and anti-Blackness. Countering islamophobia. Celebrate LGBTQ+ families, “proud every day of the year.” A GLSEN guide to combating “LGBTQIA+ discrimination.” Gun violence. The Capitol attack. Vocabulary on “equity and race.”
Nickelodeon’s parent site hosts the guides, under a banner that reads “PARENT RESOURCES” and the line “We may not have all the answers…but we know some folks who might.”
The folks, it turns out, are far left activist partners.
One tile points parents to “Talk & Take Action: A Guide to Countering Racism and Anti-Blackness,” produced with The Conscious Kid. “Dismantling anti-Blackness begins with education,” the educator version says, further noting “Teachers we’re calling on you!”
A companion page, “How Kids Can Be Allies,” opens with “No one is ever too young to learn how to be an ally.” The Conscious Kid, Nickelodeon writes, “developed a list of actions to guide kids on how to be an ally to BIPOC. Share these actions with your children and continue the fight against racism and bias.”
The list tells children to “take on issues of racial injustice as your own,” to understand “systemic racism,” and to “commit to doing the work” as “a daily, lifelong practice.”
It’s absolute indoctrination designed to make kids believe anti-black racism is rampant and out of control.
The roundup goes further. It points families to Ground Control Parenting, including posts Nickelodeon itself describes as “Talking to Your Children About George Floyd and Tips on Bringing Your Child to a Protest.”
Showing Up for Racial Justice is recommended for “how to support protesters.” A Nick News special, Kids, Race and Unity, hosted by Alicia Keys, comes with a discussion guide that states “children start receiving explicit and implicit messages about race from birth and begin to show racial bias by age 3.”
Believe it or not, toddlers are not racist because Alicia Keys says so.
That is not a cartoon network explaining why sharing is nice. It is a Cartoon Network handing parents a protest manual and a claim that toddlers are already racially biased.
Next to the race guide sits “Talk and Take Action: Parents’, Caregivers’ and Educators’ Guide to Countering Islamophobia,” again written with The Conscious Kid.
The guide says it is “designed to provide parents and caregivers with the tools, tips, and language needed to talk about Islamophobia” and “simple, but empowering, action steps families can take together.”
One of those steps is blunt: “The single most powerful thing you can do to combat Islamophobia is to learn about the Islamic faith.”
Good lord.
The same document steers families toward “small acts of activism” and names political figures in its discussion material. A children’s network is instructing households on how to police speech about a religion, under a clinical label that treats scepticism as a pathology.
Parents who have watched Islamist terror, grooming-gang scandals, and campus intimidation do not need a slime brand to redefine their concerns as a phobia.
The LGBTQ tiles are just as direct. “Celebrate LGBTQ+ Families” promises parents can be “proud every day of the year.” The GLSEN tile is an educators’ guide to “combating LGBTQIA+ discrimination.”
Nickelodeon’s caregiver version says the network is “proud to present this parent resource,” packed with “key terms, conversation starters, a reading list, and a reflection journal, provided by Nickelodeon’s partners at GLSEN.”
GLSEN is not a neutral literacy charity. It is an advocacy group whose business is school gender policy. Nickelodeon has put that group’s vocabulary in front of the people raising the audience.
The same grid offers “Discussing Gun Violence with Kids” and “How to Talk About the Capitol Attack.” That’s one thing for the likes of CNN. A preschool-to-tween channel packaging race ideology, religious-speech rules, gender doctrine, guns and January 6 as a parental product is quite something else.
None of this arrived in a vacuum. We’ve previously highlighted how Nickelodeon put a drag performer in front of children for Pride.
The clip, first pushed years earlier and still circulating, features drag performer Nina West singing through the colours of the Pride flag. Fox News quoted the lyric: “Baby blue, pink and white represent transgender people because every letter in LGBTQ plus is equal. And Black and Brown represent the queer and trans people of color.”
Nickelodeon’s own YouTube description calls it an original song “about the meaning of the rainbow Pride flag” and tells viewers “June is Pride Month, so let’s celebrate by lifting up voices in the LGBTQIA+ community!”
This is a real video by Nickelodeon aimed at toddlers and preschoolers: https://t.co/FH5VJzu4T9
The same performer fronted a Blue’s Clues Pride parade sing-along. Yahoo reported the lyric “Ace, bi and pan grown-ups you see can love each other so proudly,” and quoted the team calling it “the queerest thing I’ve ever seen happen in the preschool space.”
During the pandemic, in June 2020, as riots spread after the death of George Floyd, ViacomCBS cable channels, including Nickelodeon, went dark for 8 minutes and 46 seconds.
Newsweek reported the on-screen line: “Nickelodeon is going off the air for 8 minutes and 46 seconds in support of justice, equality and human rights.” CNN reported that the spot flashed “I can’t breathe” over the sound of gasping, and that chief executive Bob Bakish described the purpose as to “honor George Floyd and pay tribute to other victims of racial violence.”
Parents filmed children asking for the channel to be turned off. The Independent reported Nickelodeon’s reply to the complaints: “Unfortunately, some kids live in fear everyday. It is our job to use our platform to make sure that their voices are heard and their stories are told.”
The network then aired a “Declaration of Kids’ Rights,” which Newsweek and CNN both quoted in part: “You have the right to be seen, heard and respected as a citizen of the world… You have the right to be treated with equality, regardless of the color of your skin… You have the right to an education that prepares you to run the world.”
A kids’ channel appointed itself the ministry of fear, then scolded parents for noticing their children were scared.
The programming has matched the pamphlets. In 2014, The Legend of Korra ended with its lead in a same-sex relationship, a first for a Western children’s cartoon of that profile.
In June 2020, Nickelodeon’s official account posted “Celebrating #Pride with the LGBTQ+ community and their allies this month and every month,” with graphics of Korra, transgender actor Michael D. Cohen, and SpongeBob.
Creator Stephen Hillenburg had long described SpongeBob as asexual and had said he never intended to write sexuality into the series. The corporate account folded the character into the campaign anyway.
Parents are not confused about what this is. A channel that wants to sell them cartoons has spent years selling them a politics: race as original sin, dissent about Islamic extremism as a phobia, gender ideology as a family craft project, and the living room as an organising cell.
Anyone still sitting their kids in front of this is directly complicit in fostering the next generation of mentally deranged far left radicals.
Trump To Unveil Anduril Deal, Bringing Submarine Parts Factory To Baltimore
Bethlehem Steel’s Sparrows Point complex near crime-ridden Baltimore City was once the largest steelmaking facility in the US and viewed by some as once the world’s largest steel mill.
Decades of deindustrialization led to the mill’s closure in 2012. By 2014, the 3,300-acre site entered a redevelopment phase and was transformed into a giant logistics and industrial complex under new ownership called Tradepoint Atlantic.
Tradepoint Atlantic is set to enter a new chapter, with Anduril Industries having won a $2.9 billion US Navy contract to manufacture components for Virginia-class nuclear-powered attack submarines there.
According to The New York Times, Palmer Luckey’s defense company plans to invest $3.7 billion in the project and directly create more than 3,000 jobs. The new shipyard is expected to open in 2030.
“We need to grow the maritime industrial base, the submarine industrial base, so that we can produce more submarines,” Anduril Chief Strategy Officer Christian Brose was quoted as saying.
Left-wing Maryland Governor Wes Moore and other state Democrats are expected to attend the announcement following lengthy negotiations over the redevelopment plans. Maryland and Baltimore County are expected to provide hundreds of millions of dollars in tax subsidies.
The former Bethlehem Steel site has undergone a total transformation. It combines warehouses, distribution centers, industrial facilities, deepwater shipping terminals and rail connections to CSX and Norfolk Southern. Tenants include Amazon, FedEx, Under Armor, Home Depot, Volkswagen, BMW and others.
“President Trump knows a self-sustaining domestic shipbuilding sector is critical for national and economic security,” said Anna Kelly, a White House spokeswoman.
Luckey commented on The Wall Street Journal’s report on Monday, which said the site would manufacture drone boats, calling the reporting “false.”
FYI, this “Exclusive” story is false. We told the reporter it was false, but they decided to trust their sources instead.
Brose said manufacturing drone boats or unmanned weapons of war was not part of the site’s initial plans.
Hopefully, Tradepoint Atlantic brings stable, goods-producing jobs to the metro area, which has experienced decades of deindustrialization under Democratic control, leaving the crime-ridden city whose population has collapsed to a 100-year low.
The dictum morphs from “Survive till ’25” (when low interest rates were supposed to return) to “Sell at today’s price, or the lender will.”
The delinquency rate of office mortgages that have been securitized into commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) re-spiked in recent months and in September hit 12.2%, the second highest ever, behind only January 2026 (12.3%), and 1.5 percentage point above the worst moments of the Financial Crisis, according to data by Trepp, which tracks and analyzes CMBS.
The biggest driver of the increase in September was a $1.1 billion maturity default on a loan that had matured in August, and was not paid off. That loan was securitized in 2021 and the different slices of CMBS were sold to institutional investors around the world at the time. The banks that originated the loan are off the hook.
The loan is backed by eight office and film-studio properties of 2.2 million square feet in Hollywood, whose largest tenants are Netflix and 20th Century Fox. But two of the Netflix leases and the 20th Century Fox lease, representing 30% of the net rentable area, are expiring soon, and renewals are still up in the air.
Extend and pretend forevermore?
The $1.1 billion Hollywood loan that went into maturity default in September had been transferred to special servicing in July 2026. The loan is backed by five Class A office towers built between 2008 and 2021 and three film-studio properties, totaling 2.2 million square feet, all located within a mile of each other in Hollywood. The borrowers are the mega-landlords Blackstone Property Partners and Hudson Pacific Properties.
The special servicer that is now managing the loan, representing the CMBS holders, is SitusAMC, the largest special servicer by unpaid principal balance ($111 billion as of January), according to SitusAMC.
Netflix is the largest tenant, leasing 57.8% of the net rentable area (NRA). One of its leases expires in January 2027 (7.0% of the NRA) and another lease expires in June 2028 (17.2% of the NRA), totaling 24.2%. Discussions with Netflix about lease renewals are ongoing, according to SitusAMC, cited by Fitch Ratings, which rates the CMBS.
20th Century Fox is the second largest tenant. Its lease, accounting for 6.4% of the NRA, expires in December 2026. The decision to renew the lease is awaiting confirmation on whether studio productions will be renewed for additional seasons, and the “outcome will determine if the leases will be extended,” according to Fitch, citing the special servicer.
Here is the extend and pretend: The loan was recently modified, and the borrowers, Blackstone Property Partners and Hudson Pacific Properties, were granted a 14-month maturity extension through November 9, 2027, at the current (far below market) fixed interest rate of 4.435%, according to Fitch, citing the special servicer. To get the extension, Blackstone and Hudson Pacific agreed to fund a leasing reserve with $20 million from sources other than property cash flow. Fitch noted that the loan would remain subject to a “full cash trap” until full repayment, with all excess cash flow being directed to the leasing reserve.
Citing the risk that the Netflix and 20th Century Fox leases will not be renewed, Fitch changed its rating outlook to “negative,” putting the CMBS in line for a downgrade “if market conditions, valuations, and/or actual portfolio performance deteriorate beyond Fitch’s current expectations of sustainable performance, particularly if the borrower is unable to address upcoming lease rollover risk.”
The properties were 84.9% occupied in July, down from 91% in September 2025. But the upcoming lease expirations of 30% of the NRA, if not rolled over, would leave nearly half of the space in the properties vacant.
A $470 million loan on office properties in downtown Houston was the second largest driver behind the increase in the default rate as it missed the maturity payoff earlier, according to Trepp.
The loan, originated and securitized into a single-borrower CMBS in 2021, is backed by the 34-story 1.0 million sq. ft. One Allen Center, completed in 1972; the 50-story 1.2 million sq. ft. Three Allen Center, completed in 1980; and an adjacent 6-story parking garage with a health club on top. Brookfield Properties is the landlord.
The interest-only loan comes with a floating rate of SOFR plus 3.08%. After the Fed’s most recent rate hike, SOFR has been about 3.88%, which would move the current rate on the loan to 6.96%. Another rate hike by the Fed will move the loan’s interest rate to about 7.2%. The loan was originated when SOFR was near 0%.
The property is 71% occupied. The largest tenants include Freeport LNG, Motiva, and Plains Marketing, according to Trepp.
S&P Global, which rates the CMBS, noted in March that it was concerned Brookfield Properties would not pay off the loan at the “final extended maturity date” in April. And that maturity date came and went without payoff.
Trepp said that the loan’s move to non-performing status in September could reflect the ongoing loan negotiations.
The idea is to extend and pretend some more until interest rates come back down to 2% or whatever, which might allow for the loan to get refinanced.
Extend-and-Pretend Not Forevermore.
This extend and pretend, or the end thereof, was the theme in today’s First Draft, a note that CRE publication Bisnow sent to subscribers. The note would be hilarious if it weren’t so serious, or both:
“One of this industry’s favored pastimes is the slogan, and for years it reprised one Rialto’s Joe Bachkosky recalled onstage: ‘Survive until ’25.’ But when 2025 failed to deliver, it turned into ‘bliss in ’26.’ Lately, a few idealists have floated ‘heaven in ’27,’ which sounds less like a prophecy every week and more like a prayer.”
Mark Bonner, Bisnow’s editor-in-chief and author of the note, continued:
“AEW’s Lauren O’Neil called the moment ‘a shift back to fundamentals,’ which is industry speak for when the spreadsheet voodoo stops working.
“KBS’ Sondra Wenger said today’s distress ‘is in the structure,’ a murky way of saying the building is fine, but the price paid for it isn’t.
“Poverni Sheikh Group’s Eugene Poverni said the risk curve has ‘slid one to the right,’ meaning buyers want value-add returns for core-plus risk. Translate that once, and buyers want more for less, but translate it twice, and prices start to tumble.
“Meanwhile, refinancing is all but dead.
“That could mean an apartment building that runs smoothly day to day is in trouble anyway because someone paid a 3-cap for it in 2021. At the time, the price made sense. On Sept. 30 of that year, the 10-year closed at 1.52%, with the Fed’s benchmark rate near zero. Five years later to the day, as many of those loans come due, the 10-year closed at 5.29%.“
And Bonner concluded:
“But last week, the people holding the capital stopped pretending, and it seems like ‘survive until 25’ finally has a successor. It does not rhyme, and nobody will put it on a panel slide: Sell at today’s price, or the lender will.”
