Democratic Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett’s Senate run is facing an icy reception from lawmakers in her own party, who appear to be distancing themselves from her entry into the race. More than a dozen Senate Democrats declined to comment or issue public support for Crockett’s Senate bid in brief interviews with the Daily Caller News Foundation […]

'He is such a supporter'

'If there are stupid bitches, we’ll toss them out'

'Thornton politicized a 10-year-old and punished him'

Kris Boyd, 29, was shot in the abdomen Nov. 16

“But where else would one expect to find a right whale with Irish connections if not off Boston?” They were the words of Padraig Whooley with the Irish Whale & Dolphin Group, spoken in reference to a never-before-seen migratory pattern in the Critically Endangered North Atlantic right whale, as he noticed how it mirrored in […] The post Endangered Whale That Turned up in Ireland, Shocking Scientists, Migrates to US Stunning More appeared first on Good News Network.

An immigration think tank is calling for Congress to consider mandating the use of a citizenship verification for voter registration after the Department of Homeland Security announced plans to make the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements more user-friendly for state and local election offices.   Last week, the DHS settled a case with four states–Florida, Indiana, Iowa, and Ohio—to overhaul the citizenship verification system. The report, which the Center for Immigration Studies published Monday, characterizes the 1993 National Voter Registration Act as “fatally flawed,” claiming that it “not only facilitates vote fraud but also results in legal aliens mistakenly voting and putting themselves at risk.” “Congress should revisit the NVRA’s prohibition against officials ‘mak[ing] any statement … or tak[ing] any action the purpose or effect of which is to discourage … applicant[s] from registering to vote’ to allow for discouraging non-citizens from registering,” CIS Senior Legal Fellow George Fishman writes in the report. “In addition, Congress should encourage, or to the extent possible mandate, states to utilize the SAVE program to verify the citizenship status of voters and applicants to register.” Settlement With States The new settlement requires the federal government to modernize the citizenship verification tools so every state and territory—not just the four litigants—can more easily prevent non-citizens from voting. “This agreement will continue U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ efforts to improve the SAVE program for states to combat voter fraud, protect election integrity, and verify immigration and citizenship status for state benefits and programs,” Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told The Daily Signal in a statement.  “The Department of Homeland Security urges all states to adopt SAVE and join us in enforcing the law and safeguarding the voting rights of American citizens,” McLaughlin added.   The DHS committed to making upgrades to SAVE that include free verification services for all state and local governments; allow for verification using full Social Security numbers or use the last four digits of Social Security numbers. The settlement allows for states to do bulk uploads to process verifications more efficiently, which eliminates the need for one-by-one manual entries. The four states entered into an information sharing agreement. The SAVE system was established in 1987 to help state and local governments to verify if someone was legally eligible for social service benefits using the alien identification numbers assigned by the federal government.  “It’s silly that the Left freaks out about data sharing about this. State government agencies interact with federal data all the time,” Logan Churchwell, research director at the Public Interest Legal Foundation,  told The Daily Signal. “They are more afraid of getting ripped off on welfare benefits but not afraid someone would steal votes and elect politicians that would vote on welfare policy.” In March, President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14248, “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections.” The order included a provision making SAVE data accessible for state and local governments using a Social Security number to crosscheck citizenship status—instead of only alien ID numbers—as a means to prevent illegal voting or illegal voter registration.  The system wasn’t easy to use, Churchwell noted. “Election officials would have to look at one name at a time. Trump got rid of the alien ID number requirement, and allowed [them] to run a search with Social Security numbers,” Churchwell said. “Now some states will be able to run just the last four digits of a Social Security number.” The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, which represents a coalition of liberal groups, has opposed the reforms. Alejandra Montoya-Boyer, the conference’s vice president for the Center for Civil Rights and Technology, opposes SAVE in a letter to the Department of Homeland Security. “Members of our coalition, including the ACLU and the Brennan Center for Justice, condemned SAVE,” says Montoya-Boyer’s letter to Homeland Security Chief Privacy Officer Roman Jankowski. “They recognized that it could disenfranchise voters by effectively ending online or mail voter registration and by pushing eligible voters off the voting rolls. Subsequently, privacy and civil society advocates filed a lawsuit in opposition to the SAVE system.”  ‘Obama … Showed It Could Be Done’ In 2011, the Obama administration’s Justice Department under then-Attorney General Eric Holder gave pre-clearance to SAVE under the Voting Rights Act.  North Carolina had approached the DHS saying it had noncitizens with driver’s licenses from the state DMV who were registered to vote.  The verification database for voting wasn’t controversial in the past, Churchwell said.  “The Holder DOJ gave pre-clearance to North Carolina to use the SAVE system. North Carolina was the first state to kick in the door,” Churchwell told The Daily Signal. “The Obama administration DOJ and DHS showed it could be done under the Voting Rights Act.”  In November, the Trump administration scored a preliminary court victory when Joe Biden-appointed Judge Sparkle Sooknanan declined to halt the citizenship verification database, and allowed it to remain continue to be accessible for states to cross-check voter registration data. The League of Women Voters was the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit filed in September alleging the database information was unreliable and could be used to purge legally eligible voters from the voter rolls. The post SAFEGUARDING THE VOTE: Trump Administration Further Modernizes Citizenship Verification appeared first on The Daily Signal.

State laws that seek to protect children online could come under threat by continuing efforts in Washington to create an AI regulation moratorium on the state and local level. President Donald Trump announced on Monday that he would be signing an executive order to restrict individual state regulations of artificial intelligence, the latest development in an ongoing fight in Washington about how AI is regulated in the United States. Congress, at the urging of the White House, has considered adding an AI regulation moratorium in two massive legislative vehicles this year: the One Big Beautiful Bill and the yet-to-be-passed National Defense Authorization Act. “There must be only One Rulebook if we are going to continue to lead in AI,” the president said in a Truth Social post adding, “We are beating ALL COUNTRIES at this point in the race, but that won’t last long if we are going to have 50 States, many of them bad actors, involved in RULES and the APPROVAL PROCESS.” AI Provision Left Out of NDAA The executive order would likely be a stand in for future legislation after legislative efforts, most recently in the NDAA, have failed. According to a report from Axios, Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., were trying to add language into the NDAA that would preempt or override state-level AI regulations. Some of the bills that would come to regulate AI on the federal level would likely pass through Cruz’s Senate committee as the Texas senator eyes another White House bid in 2028. What Policy Experts Are Saying Policy experts and conservative activists remain divided on the moratorium, but its opponents are quick to point out that the moratorium could put state laws to protect children at risk. Several states have already sought to provide legal guardrails on how the emerging technology can be used, seeking to provide protections for consumers and prevent the abuse of American citizens through AI tools like synthetic pornography. Daniel Cochrane, a senior research associate at the Center for Technology and the Human Person at the Heritage Foundation, noted the importance of states in aiding Americans. “States are Americans’ first line of defense against Big Tech. While Congress dithers—failing year after year to enact common sense standards to protect kids from predatory social media platforms, secure privacy, and address emerging risks from generative AI—states are filling the void,” Cochrane told The Daily Signal. “From prohibiting AI generated child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and placing limits on AI ‘therapists’ and ‘companions,’ to safeguarding artists’ creative rights and building public sector capacity to deploy AI responsibly, states are aligning AI with Main Street American values,” Cochrane said. Cochrane recommended a cooperative approach when asked about the upcoming executive order. “To strike the right balance, both the federal government and states need to work together. That will require a transparent, deliberative process to ensure AI promotes flourishing for all Americans. The administration should use its convening power to bring state officials, parents, labor, privacy advocates, and other parties together to work toward a federal standard,” Cochrane continued. The president’s announcement regarding the AI executive order comes in the wake of a draft executive order on the topic was leaked last month. Some legal experts raised initial concerns about the leaked draft executive order, and it remains to be seen whether those issues will be addressed in the executive memorandum that is expected to be issued this week. Don’t Mess With Texas Texas has taken steps to protect kids while making the Lone Star State an attractive place for technology companies to do business. Texas has signed laws such as the Securing Children Online through Parental Empowerment (SCOPE) Act and Texas Responsible Artificial Intelligence Governance Act (TRAIGA). The SCOPE Act seeks to protect minors from content that “promotes, glorifies, or facilitates suicide, self-harm, eating disorders, substance abuse, stalking, bullying, harassment, grooming, trafficking, child pornography, or other sexual exploitation or abuse.” TRAIGA, meanwhile, prevents the development or distribution of AI systems that produce deepfake child or other pornographic content. The Daily Signal spoke with David Dunmoyer, the associate vice president of campaigns at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, who praised the regulatory approach of Texas on the issue of AI. “I worked very closely with a lawmaker who wrote [the Texas Responsible AI Governance Act], and we spent over two years,” Dunmoyer explained, adding “We had an AI council. We heard from government agencies and how they’re using AI. We had multiple hearings in the [state] house, in the [state] senate, hearing from the private sector, hearing from industry.” The policy expert elaborated on the efforts taken to accommodate the needs of AI companies. “And then on top of that, we had a year plus long stakeholder process, specifically for that one bill, where we brought in over 250 industry leaders to hash out and build consensus around what a responsible AI bill would look like,” he explained. What Role Could the Federal Government Play? Lance Christensen, the Vice President of Government Affairs and Education Policy at the California Policy Center, emphasized the need for the federal government to be involved with a baseline regulatory framework and clear standards. “This is one of the few areas where I say the Congress maybe should have a little more input about what’s actually going to happen and set a framework so the states can actually have good and applicable laws that don’t constrain other states,” Christensen told The Daily Signal. He expressed concern that major AI corporations could harness particular states’ regulations to crush their competition in other states.  “I think somebody in Congress needs to step up and say, we’re going to address this now. This is going to happen before the end of 2026 and not make threats about funding for other things until they have some sort of framework in place,” Christensen said referencing the broadband funding that states could have lost if they had not complied with the moratorium provision that was ultimately excluded from the One, Big Beautiful Bill.  Ted Bolema, a senior fellow with the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, which is located in Michigan, expressed support for a version of the moratorium. He expressed worry that regulating AI at the state level would make it difficult for businesses to operate across state lines. “The point of the moratorium is to avoid the patchwork problem and make it possible for AI innovators to innovate with a clearer set of rules that they are to follow,” Bolema told The Daily Signal. The post As Washington Looks for Way to Pass AI Regulation Moratorium, State Laws to Protect Children in Danger appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Read the original post "Perfect Cutout Gingerbread Cookies" on A Modern Homestead. This soft, yet firm, gingerbread cookie recipe has a delicious bite to it while still being sweet enough to enjoy even without icing! Learn how to make the perfect cutout gingerbread cookies that can be turned into gingerbread men, or any other cutout shape you want! Perfect for einkorn flour or any all-purpose wheat! While I normally... Read More The post "Perfect Cutout Gingerbread Cookies" appeared first on A Modern Homestead.

It was announced on Monday that ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel signed a one-year contract extension to remain at the network until at least May 2027, and when he took to the air that night, Kimmel made it obvious that a big reason why was to continue going after President Trump. After reading a Truth Social post from Trump where he blasted 60 Minutes’s interview with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Kimmel sarcastically retorted, “Well, I'm sorry you feel that way about 60 Minutes, and the last thing I want to do is upset you during this sensitive time, but I have one more bit of entertainment news to share, and that is I have decided to extend my contract here at ABC for another year.”     Kimmel had previously mused on multiple occasions about retirement. However, Kimmel and his wife, Molly McNearney, who also serves as a writer and executive producer on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, have an overinflated view of their own importance to the future of democracy. They view Kimmel as a free speech martyr who won the battle with the Trump Administration back in September after he was suspended for conspiracy theorizing about the political identity of Charlie Kirk’s assassin and view it as their civic duty to continue that fight and not make it seem as if Trump bullied him off the air. The fact that Kimmel believes CBS counterpart Stephen Colbert is also a free speech martyr who will be cancelled in May of next year likely only reinforces his belief. It is not the first time either. Back in 2017, the media was all about the idea that Kimmel was America’s “conscience” as he ripped Republicans and the first Trump Administration for not agreeing with him about the economics of health insurance, while choosing to portray the debate as between one side that cared about people and one that didn’t. Ironically, Kimmel’s contract renewal proves that all the hysterical warnings about fascism coming to America as Trump goes after his media critics are just that: hysteria. Here is a transcript for the December 8-taped show: ABC Jimmy Kimmel Live! 12/9/2025 12:45 AM ET JIMMY KIMMEL: Well, I'm sorry you feel that way about 60 Minutes, and the last thing I want to do is upset you during this sensitive time, but I have one more bit of entertainment news to share, and that is I have decided to extend my contract here at ABC for another year. Please, sit, sit, it's embarrassing, but our show has been renewed to May of 2027 or until the world ends, whichever comes first, but I thought about it. I decided and given a lot of thought and decided I would like to spend less time with my family and so to our audience here and at home I'm honored and humbled to be part of your routine whether it's in bed at time or during your morning toilet time, it means a lot to me to have your attention and work with this great group of people for another year.