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WHAT WE'RE WATCHING
💸 Vance froze $260 million in Medicaid funding to Minnesota. In his first major action as fraud czar, Vice President JD Vance announced the Trump administration would withhold Medicaid reimbursements until the state addresses rampant fraud. Dr. Mehmet Oz warned that Minnesota could rack up $1 billion in deferred payments this year if Governor Tim Walz (D) fails to clean up fraud-linked programs.
🇨🇺 Cuba's coast guard killed four aboard a US speedboat. Cuban forces shot four people dead and wounded six others on a Florida-registered vessel after an exchange of gunfire off the island's coast Wednesday. Havana claims the boat's crew fired first, wounding a Cuban patrol captain, though Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the US would "independently verify" the regime's account before responding.
🚫 Pentagon moves toward blacklisting AI company Anthropic. War Secretary Pete Hegseth asked Boeing and Lockheed Martin to assess their reliance on Anthropic's Claude AI model, a first step toward declaring the company a "supply chain risk" — a penalty typically reserved for adversarial nations like China. Anthropic has refused to lift safeguards blocking Claude's use for mass surveillance or autonomous weapons, despite the model currently being the only AI running in classified military systems.
⚖️ SCOTUS ruled 9-0 against a private prison contractor. The Supreme Court rejected The GEO Group's claim of sovereign immunity, allowing detained illegal migrants to continue suing over $1-per-day forced labor policies. The ruling, stemming from a 2014 class action, could expose other private prisons that contract with ICE to similar litigation.
WORLD NEWS
Nicaraguan communists crack down on Catholics
Behind the paywall: India’s Modi addresses the Israeli Knesset, Ukraine’s Zelensky on upcoming peace talks, and Germany’s Merz meets with Xi Jinping.
MEDIA BIAS SPOTTER
The biggest stories underreported on the left and right
Behind the paywall: Four major stories that were overlooked by both left and right news outlets.
TODAY’S DEBATE
POLL RESULTS FROM YESTERDAY
What do you make of Trump’s State of the Union speech?
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 👍 I liked it (1,510)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 👎 I disliked it (42)
🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🤷♂️ I didn't watch/no opinion (434)
👍 I liked it: “Powerful and impactful, kept my attention throughout the entire speech.” — Jim
👎 I disliked it: “He could have been a uniter but chose to be a divider. He should have modeled it after Marco Rubio's recent speech in Munich.” — Kate
🤷♂️ I didn't watch/no opinion: “I feel that the speeches of both Republicans and Democrats are just a lot of hot air.” — Mary
WE WANT YOUR QUESTIONS
Have a question you want somebody on the team to answer? Submit it here.
POP QUIZ
Thanks for joining us today. We scoured 100s of sources to bring you stories and insights you won’t find in the mainstream media—Ariel David and Brandon Goldman.
