In Michigan, we were told that we had a secure election system. Then we discovered that a CPP Foreign National had voted in the presidential election. Then we learned that 16 foreign nationals had voted. Last week, the count is not 80.
All Foreigners Want to Follow Rules – CCP Voter is MISSING
A bench warrant has been issued for a noncitizen accused of illegally voting in Michigan who failed to appear for a court date. This incident draws attention to concerns about noncitizens participating in US elections. Authorities are now seeking to locate the individual following their failure to appear before the court. The case underscores the ongoing scrutiny of voter rolls and election integrity issues in the state.
Specifically, the sources state that the decision to issue a bench warrant for Haoxiang Gao, a University of Michigan student accused of illegally voting despite not being a U.S. citizen, was made by Judge J. Cedric Simpson of District 14A Court. This decision occurred after a bench conference with Gao’s lawyer.
Haoxiang Gao, a Chinese national, is facing two felony charges for allegedly casting a ballot while ineligible and lying on the voter registration form. He failed to appear for a scheduled probable-cause hearing, which had been previously delayed. Federal law requires voters in U.S. elections to be citizens, and authorities allege Gao falsely claimed citizenship when registering.
If convicted, Gao could face up to nine years in prison and potential deportation. This case has drawn attention as it highlighted a loophole in Michigan’s same-day registration system, leading lawmakers and state officials to propose measures to prevent similar incidents in the future. Republicans in Michigan have used Gao’s case to advocate for stricter voting laws, including requiring proof of citizenship when registering and implementing continual citizenship checks for registered voters. Democrats have indicated they will propose legislation to stop noncitizen voting without requiring broad citizenship checks.
SoS Blunder Barbie – Does Not Comply with Subpoena
Republican lawmakers, including Matt Hall, Jay DeBoyer, and Rachelle Smit, are criticizing Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson for allegedly refusing to comply with a legislative subpoena. The subpoena is reportedly related to matters under the Secretary of State’s purview, though the specific details are not fully elaborated in this summary. Lawmakers are expressing frustration over what they perceive as a lack of cooperation and transparency from Benson’s office. This situation highlights ongoing political tensions and oversight efforts within Michigan state government. The article suggests a dispute over the extent of legislative authority in demanding information from executive branch offices.
- Michigan House representatives have stated that Democrat Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson is stonewalling the House’s requests for election information.
- Benson explicitly said she would not comply with subpoenas that were issued by the House Election Integrity Committee.
- These subpoenas were seeking training materials provided to clerks and election workers by Benson’s office in past elections. This is public record and segments of those materials have been used in lawsuits against Benson.
- Benson claimed she would not comply with the subpoenas due to “security concerns”. But what are those security concerns? We know who the county clerks are already!!
- Rep. Jay DeBoyer, who chairs the House Oversight Committee, and Rep. Rachelle Smit, who chairs the Election Integrity Committee, are the representatives seeking these materials. They noted their extensive background as county clerks provides them with unique qualifications to scrutinize the documents.
- DeBoyer believes that something is being hidden. He stated that his interest is in ensuring elections are run according to the law, not in jeopardizing security. He urged Benson to respond to the subpoenas to fulfill her public pledges for transparency.
- Speaker of the House Matt Hall also expressed frustration with Benson and obtained subpoena powers for his Oversight subcommittees to get information like training manuals to ensure clerks are being instructed correctly.
- Hall suspects Benson would seek prosecutions through the Attorney General’s office to keep this information silent if they tried to obtain it directly from clerks.
- The decision to issue the subpoenas was a result of persistent delays from Benson’s office, with Hall stating they had heard “I’ll get that to you tomorrow” for weeks.
- Hall predicts that Benson’s vow to not comply with the House subpoenas will result in legal action and will wind up in court. He anticipates that Benson will lose in court again, they will obtain the training materials, but it will come at a significant cost to taxpayers and be a distraction.
- Hall also mentioned past difficulties with Benson’s office, citing an instance during the 2020 election where she allegedly stonewalled a request to testify before a committee until the legislative term ended.
Using AI to Draft Legislation
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/ai-robotics-combo-will-all-employees-be-replaced
The United Arab Emirates (UAE), a small autocratic country in the Middle East, is already way “ahead” of this slow “democratic” transition to AI.In a world first, the UAE is using AI to both track the effects of existing legislation and write drafts of new legislation. Presumably, the president of the UAE will review the legislation prior to enacting it. Let’s hope so, as there would then be at least one human in the loop.
The UAE considers using AI to write legislation to be 70 percent more efficient than relying on human legislators to write laws. How that remarkably round number was arrived at is unclear. But as UAE citizens cannot vote, they could essentially become forced laborers working not only for the president of the UAE but also for AI, given that nobody understands exactly how AI comes up with its recommendations.
Handing over so much power, up to and including “AI communism,” whether in the form of political power to legislate or industrial power that replaces trillions of dollars worth of human labor, is an immense concentration of power in the hands of whoever controls AI. That could be a dictator, an oligarchy, an elected official who accrues too much power, or a hacker. It could even be AI itself, if it goes rogue or is irretrievably granted that power at some point in the future.
Communists have long promoted the idea of full mechanization to “free” humans of the need to labor. In their “utopian” schemes, full mechanization would allow humans the free time to pursue whatever they want, including leisure, art, and family. With the rise of mechanization, automation, robots, and AI, a new utopianism is coming that will appeal to the “Silicon Valley proletariat” of coders, programmers, and other tech workers.
With AI, this coming “tech vanguard” can seek an AI communism, in which humans frolic in nature while being watched over by the machine. It sounds dystopian and easily manipulable by Leninists if not Stalinists. But its rosy-glassed adherents will see it the other way around. They have likely read Richard Brautigan’s 1967 poem envisioning a “cybernetic ecology”:
where we are free of our labors and joined back to nature, returned to our mammal brothers and sisters, and all watched over by machines of loving grace.
AI Wrote Bar Exam Questions
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/24/california-bar-exam-ai
The state bar of California has disclosed that some multiple-choice questions in a problem-plagued bar exam were developed with the aid of artificial intelligence.
Katie Moran, an associate professor at the University of San Francisco School of Law who specializes in bar exam preparation, told the newspaper: “It’s a staggering admission.
“The State Bar has admitted they employed a company to have a non-lawyer use AI to draft questions that were given on the actual bar exam,” she said. “They then paid that same company to assess and ultimately approve of the questions on the exam, including the questions the company authored.”
Andrew Perlman, dean of Suffolk University Law School and an advisory council member of the American Bar Association taskforce on the law and artificial intelligence, said he had not heard of AI being used to develop bar exam questions or standards being put in place governing such uses.
AI Exec Order – K-12 and ALL Subject Matters
President Trump issued an executive order focused on advancing Artificial Intelligence education for American youth. The order aims to equip students with the skills and knowledge necessary to understand and contribute to the field of AI. It emphasizes the importance of AI literacy and training for the future workforce. The initiative seeks to promote federal investment and coordination in AI education programs across the country. This executive action underscores the government’s focus on preparing the next generation for an increasingly AI-driven world.
Enhancing Training for Educators on Artificial Intelligence . (a) Within 120 days of the date of this order, the Secretary of Education shall take steps to prioritize the use of AI in discretionary grant programs for teacher training authorized by the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (Public Law 89-10), as amended, and Title II of the Higher Education Act of 1965 (Public Law 89-329), as amended, including for: (i) reducing time-intensive administrative tasks; (ii) improving teacher training and evaluation; (iii) providing professional development for all educators, so they can integrate the fundamentals of AI into all subject areas; and (iv) providing professional development in foundational computer science and AI, preparing educators to effectively teach AI in stand-alone computer science and other relevant courses. (b) Within 120 days of the date of this order, the Director of the NSF shall take steps to prioritize research on the use of AI in education. The Director of the NSF shall also utilize existing programs to create teacher training opportunities that help educators effectively integrate AI-based tools and modalities in classrooms. (c) Within 120 days of the date of this order, the Secretary of Agriculture shall take steps to prioritize research, extension, and education on the use of AI in formal and non-formal education through 4-H and the Cooperative Extension System.
iPhone Moment For Robotics
https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/iphone-moment-nears-humanoid-robots
The article posits that humanoid robots are approaching a breakthrough moment analogous to the impact of the iPhone on mobile technology. It suggests that recent advancements in AI, machine learning, and physical engineering are making these robots more capable and potentially viable for widespread use. This could lead to them becoming increasingly integrated into various aspects of daily life and work. The “iPhone moment” implies a point where the technology becomes sufficiently practical, user-friendly, and versatile to see rapid adoption and disrupt existing paradigms. The piece speculates on the potential applications and future trajectory of humanoid robotics.
Brett Adcock, the founder of Figure AI, a company developing humanoid robots, uses the term “iPhone moment” to characterize what he sees happening in the robotics field.
Adcock views humanoid robots as the “ultimate ‘deployment vector’ for AGI (Artificial General Intelligence)”. He believes that giving AGI a physical body through humanoids is crucial and allows the AI to learn and act through transfer learning and multitasking.
The “iPhone moment” signifies a point where these robots become affordable and suitable for widespread adoption in both the workplace and potentially the home. Adcock forecasts Figure AI’s robots could be priced around $20,000 to $30,000, possibly leased for about $300/month, which could allow for multiple robots per home doing chores.
While commercial applications in manufacturing, logistics, and healthcare are seen as booming with massive demand, home deployment is considered harder but is accelerating.
Achieving this “iPhone moment” for humanoid robots requires solving difficult problems, including building ultra-reliable hardware, teaching robots using neural networks (rather than hand-coded controls), and enabling them to generalize actions to unfamiliar tasks via language instructions. Figure AI, for example, built its own AI model called Helix to enable generalization
Will AI Really Bring Expertise
Absurd. pic.twitter.com/XsmHkmqlsx
— Josh Whiton (@joshwhiton) April 28, 2025
Flawed Study Says Smart Phones Are Good For Children
https://www.afterbabel.com/p/flawed-absolution-for-smartphones
“A Flawed Absolution for Smartphones – by David Stein” is a critique of an opinion piece titled “Kids having smartphones is likely fine and may even be beneficial”. The authors of the opinion piece, Professor Justin D. Martin and graduate student Logan Rance from the USF Department of Journalism and Digital Communication, based their claims on findings from the new Life in Media survey. This survey included 1,510 Florida tweens aged 11 to 13.
Martin and Rance’s opinion piece specifically criticized the views of Jonathan Haidt, who recommends delaying smartphones until age 14 and social media until 16. Martin and Rance concluded that there is “nothing wrong with limiting smartphone use among kids”, but parents shouldn’t feel guilty about giving a smartphone to a child as young as 8 or 9, because it is “likely fine, perhaps even beneficial”. They based this on their finding that children who own their own smartphones fared “significantly better, or at least no worse,” than kids who do not own smartphones on “almost every health and wellness measure” they fielded in the survey.
The author of this critique, David Stein, argues that the claims in the opinion piece are “repeatedly undermined by findings in the survey report”. He identifies three fundamental flaws in Martin and Rance’s methodology:
1. Their argument ignores the actual usage of smartphones and similar devices, especially tablets. The survey found that smartphone use among kids aged 11 to 13 is nearly universal (over 90%), and a majority owns a tablet (56%) with a vast majority using a tablet (85%). The critique argues that comparing kids who own a smartphone with those who don’t own one but frequently use a smartphone or tablet (owned by someone else) is not a reliable method to evaluate the harms of smartphone use. Haidt’s concern is about smartphone usage, not mere ownership.
2. Their argument ignores the substantial influence of demographics such as parental income and education. The report reveals that smartphone ownership is less common among kids from higher-income families (30% of kids from higher-income families don’t own one vs. 16% from lower-income families). Simultaneously, kids from higher-income families and those with more educated parents were far more likely to agree that life feels meaningless (e.g., 31% in households making $150,000+ vs. 10% under $50,000). The critique suggests that because the “non-owners” group is disproportionately from higher-income families, these demographic factors could easily explain the poorer wellbeing outcomes observed in that group, potentially flipping the relationship between smartphones and wellbeing if properly adjusted.
3. Their argument ignores reverse causation as a partial explanation of the results. Martin and Rance note that kids without their own smartphones were much more likely to report being cyberbullied. The critique, aligning with the Life in Media report authors’ commentary, argues that the more plausible explanation is that parents of kids who have been bullied, or are vulnerable to it, delay giving them a smartphone to protect them from further exposure. This means that already poor wellbeing (being bullied) could lead to not owning a smartphone, rather than smartphone ownership protecting against bullying. The report authors explicitly label this theory as “reverse causation”. This reverse causation explanation may also apply to other wellbeing outcomes that Martin and Rance interpret as evidence that smartphones are safe.
Stein points out that the survey results actually show “no substantial differences” between smartphone owners and non-owners in the degree to which they report technology impairing their lives, such as difficulty stopping use, losing sleep, or neglecting tasks due to technology. The Life in Media report itself calls these results “alarming”, which Stein finds contradictory to Martin and Rance’s conclusion that smartphones are harmless.
The critique also notes that Martin and Rance suggest public posting on social media is the main culprit for ill-being, not smartphones. However, Stein highlights that Jonathan Haidt also warns against public posting on social media, and the Life in Media survey report includes a recommendation consistent with Haidt’s views on social media age limits
No More Dollar Store
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/chinese-sellers-us-market-begin-hiking-prices
Bloomberg reports that Shein raised the prices of all goods for the U.S. market, with markups much higher in some categories than others.
Data showed the average prices for the top 100 products in the beauty and health category jumped 51% at the end of last week. For home and kitchen products and toys, prices rose by 30%, led by a massive 377% increase for a 10-piece set of kitchen towels. Women’s clothing grew by 8%.
Keep in mind these are the same cheap Chinese goods that have flooded the U.S. market over the past decade, crippling American manufacturers.
Severed Conscience Activated: Will Be Violence OK Next?
New York Times opinion piece from David Brooks that defends a judge who refused to detain an illegal immigrant accused of domestic violence. It argues that the NYT columnist attempts to justify the judge’s actions by framing them as a form of “civil disobedience.” The author takes issue with this characterization, suggesting it normalizes or excuses judicial overreach and potential disregard for the law in favor of personal political beliefs. The piece implies a bias in mainstream media coverage regarding immigration and judicial matters. It suggests a concerning trend where established legal processes are undermined under the guise of activism or conscience.
Owosso Barber’s Fines Never Vacated
Karl Manke, an Owosso barber, is still facing significant fines imposed during the COVID-19 lockdowns under Governor Gretchen Whitmer. Despite court rulings that invalidated the executive orders used to fine him, the state is reportedly still pursuing the collection of approximately $9,000 in penalties. This ongoing legal battle highlights the lingering disputes over government authority and individual rights during the pandemic response. Manke famously reopened his shop in defiance of lockdown orders, becoming a symbol of resistance.
Details:
- He is a 77-year-old Owosso barber.
- He is still battling $9,000 in fines from the COVID-19 lockdown period.
- He was one of six hairdressers the state fined for cutting hair in 2020 after Governor Whitmer declared barbers and hairdressers “nonessential”.
- Manke defied the lockdown orders and was criminally charged for cutting hair at the Michigan Capitol on May 20, 2020. This was part of a protest called Operation Haircut.
- During the lockdown, when he reopened his shop, state government entities temporarily suspended his barbershop and occupational license. Manke testified that he was never notified about this loss of license.
- Despite racking up $9,000 in fines, Manke kept working to pay bills. He believed that Whitmer’s executive orders violated his rights.
- The Michigan Supreme Court ultimately agreed with him in October 2020. When the Michigan Supreme Court ruled in September 2020 that Whitmer’s orders were unconstitutional, the criminal charges against Manke were dropped. However, the state refused to drop the fines.
- His fines included $1,500 for having hair and neck strips on his barbershop floor and having a comb in his pocket during a televised media interview, which a state representative noted was unusual. He was also fined $6,000 for cutting hair without a license at the Michigan Capitol during Operation Haircut.
Five years later, Manke is awaiting a ruling in the Shiawassee County Circuit Court to drop the fines. Manke testified about his experience at a House Weaponization of State Government hearing on April 23, where other business owners targeted by the Whitmer administration and Attorney General Dana Nessel also spoke.
More MEDC Failure: RV Failed Despite 1 Million Funding
Sturgis RV facility closing, laying off 121 after Gretchen Whitmer gave over $1M from taxpayers
The Elkhart, Ind., company inked a deal with the Michigan Economic Development Corporation in July 2021 to invest $35.9 million in its Sturgis facilities and create 450 jobs in exchange for over $1 million in taxpayer subsidies, Crain’s Grand Rapids Business reports.
“The Michigan Economic Development Corp. in July 2021 approved a $700,000 performance-based Michigan Business Development Program grant to support the investment,” according to the business publication. “The Michigan Department of Transportation also kicked in a $307,000 Transportation Economic Development Fund grant for the project.”
The 144,000-square-foot Heartland RV facility officially opened in Sturgis in November 2023 with 34 assembly line stations set up to produce up to 5,000 RVs per year. It’s unclear whether the company fulfilled its grant requirements to pocket the taxpayer cash.
🚨 LAYOFF ALERT - Michigan 🇺🇸
— The Layoff Tracker 🚨 (@WhatLayoff) April 23, 2025
Heartland Recreational Vehicles, LLC is shutting down and will lay off 121 employees at 1500 Haines Blvd. Sturgis, MI on June 20, 2025, as indicated in a WARN. pic.twitter.com/VWnJ3E10Ve
Maybe Subsidies Are A Bad Thing – Changing Their Tune
Michigan has provided over $1 billion in state subsidies to companies under Governor Whitmer’s administration. However, the article highlights that these companies have collectively fallen short of their job creation promises. This raises questions about the effectiveness and return on investment of large state incentive packages. Critics argue that the promised economic benefits, particularly job growth, have not fully materialized despite the significant public expenditure. The report analyzes the gap between the number of jobs pledged by companies receiving subsidies and the actual number created.
God Made Us Not Trim Trees
A Michigan power company executive testified that tree trimming was not completed in certain areas because “God makes the trees grow.” This testimony occurred during a hearing about power outages following a significant ice storm. The executive’s comments suggested that the utility was not solely responsible for the widespread outages, implicitly blaming natural growth for contributing to downed lines. Critics argue this statement attempts to deflect responsibility from the company’s maintenance practices. The incident highlights the ongoing debate about utility accountability and infrastructure resilience during severe weather events.
Specifically, the sources state that two affected utilities aren’t regulated by the state and don’t plan to offer credits. These utilities are identified as Presque Isle Electric and Gas Co-op and Cloverland Electric Cooperative. A spokesperson for Presque Isle confirmed they have no plans to credit customers, although they will waive late fees. State law requiring compensation of $40 a day for outages lasting four days or more (if at least 10% of customers are without power) does not apply to these unregulated electric cooperatives.
This decision not to offer credits contrasts with Alpena Power Co., which is regulated by the state and is seeking a waiver from the requirement to credit customers, arguing the storm was beyond their control. It also contrasts with Consumers Energy, which plans to pay credits to its customers affected by the storm. The March ice storm caused thousands of residents to lose power for days or even weeks