Category: Blaze Media
Here’s every time Senate Democrats voted to keep the government shut down
Nearly a month into the shutdown, Senate Democrats have refused to reopen the government over a dozen times. Even still, Democrats are pointing the finger at Republicans.
Although Republicans hold a majority in both chambers of Congress, there’s been a hang-up in the Senate. Instead of a simple majority, the Senate actually needs 60 votes in order to pass the continuing resolution. Republicans do hold a 53-seat majority in the Senate, but they need the help of at least seven Democrats to reopen the government.
Senate Democrats have effectively voted to continue withholding paychecks from federal workers and critical benefits from the American people over a dozen times.
This is easier said than done. When the Senate voted on the GOP’s clean continuing resolution on September 30, only three Democrats crossed the aisle in an attempt to keep the government open: Sens. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, and Angus King of Maine.
Both Cortez Masto and King origianally voted against the bill on September 19 but flipped their votes ahead of the funding deadline. Notably, Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky has consistently voted with Democrats.
As a result, the government shut down and has remained closed ever since midnight of October 1.
RELATED: Democrat senator blocks vote to end shutdown to protest Trump’s ‘authoritarianism’ in drawn-out rant
Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
The Republicans’ funding bill is clean and entirely non-ideological, while the Democrats’ hyper-partisan alternative boasts a hefty $1.5 trillion price tag. Democrats have also insisted on renegotiating the Obamacare subsidies despite the fact that they won’t expire until the end of the year.
Now 28 days into the shutdown, Senate Democrats have effectively voted to continue withholding paychecks from federal workers and critical benefits from the American people over a dozen times. Here is a breakdown of every time Democrats voted to keep the government shut down.
RELATED: ‘These people are sick’: Trump admin slams top Dem for justifying shutdown suffering
Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
- Friday, September 19, 2025, Roll Call No. 528 (44-48)
- Tuesday, September 30, 2025, Roll Call No. 535 (55-45)
- Wednesday, October 1, 2025, Roll Call No. 537 (55-45)
- Friday, October 3, 2025, Roll Call No. 543 (54-44)
- Monday, October 6, 2025, Roll Call No. 545 (52-42)
- Wednesday, October 8, 2025, Roll Call No. 551 (54-45)
- Thursday, October 9, 2025, Roll Call No. 558 (54-45)
- Tuesday, October 14, 2025, Roll Call No. 571 (49-45)
- Wednesday, October 15, 2025, Roll Call No. 572 (51-44)
- Thursday, October 16, 2025, Roll Call No. 573 (51-45)
- Monday, October 20, 2025, Roll Call No. 576 (50-43)
- Wednesday, October 22, 2025, Roll Call No. 581 (54-46)
- Tuesday, October 28, 2025, Roll Call No. 590 (54-45)
Since the shutdown began, no Democrat votes have changed. The slight changes in vote tallies can be attributed to attendance.
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NJ’s blue wall may be cracking in governor race, new poll shows — GOP hopeful racks up Democrat endorsements
In the fiercely competitive race for New Jersey governor, just one point separates the Democratic and Republican candidates, a new poll shows.
Mikie Sherrill (D), a current U.S. representative, held a narrow lead against Jack Ciattarelli (R), a former New Jersey state representative, in an October 27 co/efficient poll. Males, individuals ages 55 and older, and those with no party affiliation preferred Ciattarelli, while females and those ages 18 to 54 favored Sherrill, according to the recent survey.
‘Why would anyone vote for New Jersey and Virginia Gubernatorial Candidates, Mikie Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger, when they want transgender for everybody, men playing in women’s sports, High Crime, and the most expensive Energy prices almost anywhere in the World?’
Separate poll results from Emerson College, dated September 25, gave Ciattarelli the best odds, showing the two candidates tied.
All other polls gave Sherrill a more substantial lead over Ciattarelli, ranging from one to seven points, with the RealClearPolitics poll average showing her 3.8 points ahead of her Republican rival.
By Sunday, roughly 90,500 New Jersey residents had returned their early-voter ballots, according to Newsweek. Of those turned in, 38,039 were from registered Democrats, 35,512 were from Republicans, and another 16,895 ballots belonged to those with other party affiliations.
Only New Jersey and Virginia are holding gubernatorial races this year.
Mikie Sherrill. Photo by Matthew Hatcher/Getty Images
President Donald Trump has weighed in on these races, stating Sunday in a post on Truth Social, “Why would anyone vote for New Jersey and Virginia Gubernatorial Candidates, Mikie Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger, when they want transgender for everybody, men playing in women’s sports, High Crime, and the most expensive Energy prices almost anywhere in the World? VOTE REPUBLICAN for massive Energy Cost reductions, large scale Tax Cuts, and basic Common Sense!”
Trump endorsed Ciattarelli in May, calling him “a terrific America First Candidate.”
While New Jersey has traditionally been a blue stronghold, Ciattarelli has grabbed at least eight endorsements from local Democrats, according to the New York Post.
RELATED: Pressure mounts for New Jersey Democrat gubernatorial candidate as past catches up to her
Jack Ciattarelli. Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images
On Saturday, New Era Democrats President Celia Iervasi stated, “We are proud to endorse Jack Ciattarelli for Governor of New Jersey.”
“As life continues to become unaffordable for the working class and New Jersey continues to be one of the highest taxed states in the country, Jack is the right person that is needed to make life more affordable for the residents of the Garden State,” Iervasi said. “We look forward to joining a coalition of organizations that are supporting Jack in the upcoming election and know that he is the right person to lead New Jersey in the right direction.”
Other New Jersey Democrats to support Ciattarelli include North Bergen Mayor Nick Sacco, North Bergen Commissioner Allen Pascual, Dover Mayor Jim Dodd, Branchville Mayor Anthony Frato, Branchville Councilman Jeff Lewis, and former Hudson County Democratic Organization Chair Anthony Vainieri. Garfield Mayor Everett Garnto also endorsed Ciattarelli and, at the same time, announced he was leaving the Democratic Party to switch to the GOP.
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HUNGER GAMES in America: Glenn Beck exposes Democrats for weaponizing shutdown to spark revolution
As the government heads into its fifth week of a shutdown, critical programs are beginning to unravel. The military is now being funded by private dollars; air traffic controllers will stop receiving paychecks tomorrow; and SNAP food stamp benefits are next on the chopping block.
Democrats may claim to be the party of the people, but it’s they who are preventing Congress from passing a continuing resolution, Glenn Beck says.
“The party that purports to represent the weakest among us, the ones who are like, ‘They want your children to starve in the middle of the street!’ … are going to take the food out of their mouth,” he says.
Horrible as it is, it gives the country an honest picture of who the Democratic Party really is at its core: not the party of the people.
“Their inaction is truly a choice. … After they have enslaved people on these government programs, they’re just yanking the carpet out,” Glenn says.
SNAP currently feeds roughly 42 million people a month. “That’s 12% of all of the people that live here in the United States in fiscal year 2024.”
What we are witnessing right now, Glenn says, is the Democrats “weaponizing hunger,” even though “the SNAP program traces all of its roots back to the Democrats.”
While Glenn loves a good government shutdown, as it shows the nation exactly which federal employees are nonessential, he draws the line at genuine hunger.
“Now we have a shutdown that threatens to pull the food out from American children. I say this kind of with glee because they’ve always said we want to harm children. … It is their choice to pull funding they say is absolutely necessary to feed children in America, and they’re okay with it,” he scoffs. “This is the party of social compassion, remember.”
“Democrats are now leading us into the longest shutdown in our history, and they are knowingly using hungry children and babies to do it.”
But the most important question is, why are they doing it? Glenn says there are two reasons.
Number one: “Chuck Schumer is doing it so he is not primaried by the left wing of his own party.”
Reason number two is as sinister as it gets. They want revolution.
Glenn explains that the loss of SNAP benefits means more than just hungry people. It also means stress will skyrocket. Suicide, sickness, and hospitalizations will increase. Food banks will be overrun. Theft and other crimes will surge. Public unrest will explode.
“Gee, now who would want that except all of those Democrats who are already sowing the seeds of revolution, pushing for chaos in the streets, and taking officers off the field while putting criminals back into the game?” Glenn asks.
“The seeds of desperation have been sown by this party. And what are they doing? They’re turning up the heat. And then what does this mean?” he continues.
“If the government doesn’t pay for it, that means the states have to pay for it, which will make all of our states more vulnerable because they’ll all have to dip into their rainy-day fund, which makes what? All of our states more vulnerable to collapse.”
Which is precisely the point: They want national collapse.
This is evident, Glenn says, in the fact that Democrats are trying to stop conservative billionaire Timothy Mellon from donating his personal money to help cover active-duty military pay during the ongoing government shutdown while simultaneously funding the No Kings protests to the tune of $300 million.
“You can’t rely on a party that refuses to pass a clean funding bill when they actually say out loud all the time that the ends justify the means,” Glenn says.
He then tells listeners how they can help struggling communities amid the shutdown and looming loss of food benefits. Watch the clip above for Glenn’s call to action.
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Bondi has bad news for Fauci, Milley, and other Biden pardonees: DOJ is actively reviewing Biden-era autopen use
The House Oversight Committee published a damning 100-page report on Tuesday deeming invalid those executive actions and pardons issued without proper authorization and with machine-generated signatures in former President Joe Biden’s name.
In a corresponding letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi, Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) noted that the committee had found “President Biden’s aides coordinated a cover-up of the president’s diminishing faculties” and “that these same aides utilized an ad hoc, inconsistent, and ineffective process to obtain President Biden’s assent to certain key decisions, which raises significant questions about whether President Biden knew — let alone provided a decision regarding — the ‘decisions’ that, often through the use of an autopen, ultimately bore his signature.”
Comer asked Bondi to investigate all executive actions taken during Biden’s time in office “to ascertain whether they were duly authorized by the president of the United States.”
Hours after the publication of the report and the committee’s assertion that Biden’s executive actions are “NULL and VOID,” Bondi revealed on X that her “team has already initiated a review of the Biden administration’s reported use of autopen for pardons.”
President Donald Trump signed a presidential memorandum on June 4 directing the White House Counsel’s Office to investigate, in consultation with Bondi and the head of any other relevant agency, “whether certain individuals conspired to deceive the public about Biden’s mental state and unconstitutionally exercise the authorities and responsibilities of the president.”
Trump specifically tasked the investigators with looking into the “circumstances surrounding Biden’s supposed execution of numerous executive actions” and reviewing the policy documents for which the autopen was used, including clemency grants and executive orders.
RELATED: House committee declares unauthorized Biden autopen pardons ‘void’ in damning new report
Photo by ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images
The Oversight Project, a government watchdog group, concluded in a Monday report that after reviewing approximately 1,597 enrolled copies of documents bearing Biden’s signature, 846 of 958 executive orders, pardons, commutations, and proclamations were signed with autopen.
Of the Biden-era documents analyzed, Oversight Project indicated that 75% of the pardons — including for Anthony Fauci, retired Gen. Mark Milley, members of the Biden clan, and former members of the House Jan. 6 select committee — and 51.8% of the commutations were signed with autopen.
‘The “Pardons” that Sleepy Joe Biden gave to the Unselect Committee of Political Thugs, and many others, are hereby declared VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT.’
Bondi noted that Comer’s “new information is extremely helpful, and his leadership on this issue is invaluable,” adding that the DOJ will continue working with the House Oversight Committee “to deliver accountability for the American people.”
Ed Martin, the DOJ’s pardon attorney who announced a similar investigation into the matter of Biden’s alleged pardons in May, responded to Bondi’s statement with emojis signifying police and the scales of justice. Martin also suggested that the Oversight Project’s statistics regarding autopen usage during the Biden administration warrant “closer review.”
A determination that some or all of the Biden-era pardons are invalid could prove consequential for many of the recipients, including Fauci, the fifth director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who received a “full and unconditional” pass for possible federal crimes going back to 2014, and for Milley, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff whom Trump has accused of committing “treason.”
However, Trump has made clear that he especially wishes to see consequence visited on the former members of the House Jan. 6 select committee.
Trump announced after the Oversight Project’s initial exposé about the liberal use of the presidential autopen during the Biden administration,
The “Pardons” that Sleepy Joe Biden gave to the Unselect Committee of Political Thugs, and many others, are hereby declared VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT, because of the fact that they were done by Autopen. In other words, Joe Biden did not sign them but, more importantly, he did not know anything about them! The necessary Pardoning Documents were not explained to, or approved by, Biden. He knew nothing about them, and the people that did may have committed a crime. Therefore, those on the Unselect Committee, who destroyed and deleted ALL evidence obtained during their two year Witch Hunt of me, and many other innocent people, should fully understand that they are subject to investigation at the highest level.
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LGBTQ champion Zohran Mamdani faces backlash over photo with ‘anti-homosexuality’ Ugandan lawmaker
With only a week left before the election in the contentious New York City mayoral race, socialist Zohran Mamdani is facing criticism for a photo with a Ugandan lawmaker who supported legislation restricting LGBTQ behavior.
The criticism stems from his July visit to Uganda, where he was born. During his visit, he met with Rebecca Kadaga, a well-known Ugandan lawmaker who served as speaker of the Parliament of Uganda from 2011 to 2021. She has been the first deputy prime minister since 2021, according to the New York Post.
Mamdani appeared at a ‘Gays for Zohran’ event, posing with two drag queens.
Mamdani and Kadaga appeared in a photo together during his return to Uganda.
“Delighted to meet with Zohran Mamdhani [sic] incoming Mayor of New York City. Good luck in the next phase of elections,” Kadaga said in a post on X at the end of July.
RELATED: Stop calling Zohran Mamdani a communist — he’s something worse
Photo by Mustafa Ciftci/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Act of 2014 features a variety of punishments for homosexual behavior, including seven years in prison for a variety of acts. A more recent expansion on the law includes the death penalty.
“Ugandans want that law as a Christmas gift. They have asked for it, and we’ll give them that gift,” Kadaga told Reuters in 2012, prior to the passage of the Anti-Homosexuality Act.
However, Mamdani has strongly advocated for LGBTQ issues.
One X user pointed out Mamdani appeared at a “Gays for Zohran” event, posing with two drag queens. According to one source, Mamdani joined the event for National Coming Out Day on October 11.
“Zohran Mamdani ran into the First Deputy Minister while he was at Entebbe airport waiting to board his flight back to New York City. She asked to take a photo,” Mamdani campaign spokesperson Dora Pekec told the Post about the photo with Kadaga.
“If he was aware she was the architect of this horrific attack on queer Ugandans, he would not have done so,” Pekec continued. “Zohran’s belief in universal human rights extends to all people, and he has put forward the most comprehensive plan of any candidate to protect LGBTQ+ New Yorkers.”
In July, Zohran Mamdani posted a video on X announcing that he would be heading to Uganda to celebrate his marriage to wife Rama Duwaji with family and friends. The video mocks the “thousands of messages” telling him to “go back to Africa.”
In late June, Kadaga extended her congratulations and greetings from Uganda after he won the Democratic nomination in the mayoral race.
Blaze News reached out to Zohran Mamdani’s campaign for comment but did not receive a response.
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Bill Gates does stunning about-face on climate ‘doomsday’ claims: ‘This view is wrong’
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates alleged in a 2021 work of climate alarmist agitprop that if humanity failed to eliminate so-called greenhouse gas emissions, “climate change will keep getting worse, and the impact on humans will in all likelihood be catastrophic.”
In addition to championing a radical upheaval of modern life — advocating for major changes to the way people travel, grow their food, and manufacture goods — in the interest of staving off some prophesied disaster, the billionaire backed the development of an aerosol technology that would dim the sun and trigger a global cooling effect.
‘Using more energy is a good thing.’
After spending years fear-mongering about the calamities that would supposedly visit humanity unless governments kneecapped certain industries, regulated into extinction certain behaviors, and redistributed wealth to the right places, Gates has acknowledged that climate change “will not lead to humanity’s demise.”
In a Monday memo titled “Three tough truths about climate,” Gates rejected the “doomsday view of climate change that goes like this: In a few decades, cataclysmic climate change will decimate civilization. The evidence is all around us — just look at all the heat waves and storms caused by rising global temperatures. Nothing matters more than limiting the rise in temperature.”
“Fortunately for all of us, this view is wrong,” Gates wrote just weeks ahead of the 2025 U.N. Climate Change Conference in Brazil, where participants will enjoy easy access to the venue thanks to the government’s decision to flatten over 8 miles of rainforest.
Gates suggested that if the world takes “moderate action” to curb climate change — doing what it’s presently doing or just slightly more — the Earth’s average temperature 75 years from now will be only 2-3 degrees higher than it was in 1850.
RELATED: Al Gore wrong again: Study delivers good news for Arctic ice trends, bad news for climate hucksters
Photo by BAY ISMOYO/AFP via Getty Images
During a 2021 online Harvard Science Book Talk, Gates spoke of dying corals, acidifying oceans, forest fires, and disappearing beaches. He further claimed that unless various changes in global practices were undertaken, “It’s going to be essentially unlivable at the Equator by the end of the century.”
He has since adopted a more optimistic outlook, suggesting that warming might make Iowa eventually feel more like Texas, and Texas more like northern Mexico, and that life in countries near the equator may require governments “to invest in cooling centers and better early warning systems for extreme heat and weather events” — but that “people will be able to live and thrive in most places on Earth for the foreseeable future.”
In addition to admitting that climate doomsday isn’t coming and that the global temperature that radicals frequently cite as a metric for universal well-being “doesn’t tell us anything about the quality of people’s lives,” the billionaire stated that “using more energy is a good thing,” as “more energy use is a key part of prosperity.”
Gates indicated that his newfound optimism about so-called climate change is the result, in part, of recent policy changes, innovation-driven emission cuts, and corresponding readjustments in emissions projections, but his change in tune appears to primarily come down to priorities.
“The doomsday outlook is causing much of the climate community to focus too much on near-term emissions goals, and it’s diverting resources from the most effective things we should be doing to improve life in a warming world,” Gates wrote, stressing later in the document that “the biggest problems are poverty and disease, just as they always have been.”
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Pelosi calls for arrest of ICE agents — and Trump’s DOJ fires back
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called for the arrest of federal ICE agents for doing their jobs — and it did not go unnoticed by the Trump administration.
Rep. Pelosi (D-Calif.) claimed in a statement earlier this week that local police could “arrest federal agents if they break California law.”
“Our state and local authorities may arrest federal agents if they break California law, and if they are convicted, the president cannot pardon them,” Pelosi said in a statement on October 23.
Pelosi also wrote in a post on X: “A mass deployment of federal agents in the Bay Area is an appalling abuse of law enforcement power. The people of San Francisco stand with our patriotic immigrants who are the constant reinvigoration of America. We will not be intimidated by politically motivated fear tactics.”
BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey’s father and BlazeTV contributor Ron Simmons could not be more thrilled with the response her comments inspired.
“That statement is so inappropriate and, in some ways, factually incorrect that it’s just appalling,” Simmons says, noting that Attorney General Pam Bondi did not let Pelosi’s comments slide.
Bondi responded to Pelosi’s nonsensical statements on Fox News, explaining that “Pelosi got a letter today from Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche. So did Brooke Jenkins, that DA in San Francisco.”
“We told them, ‘Preserve your emails. Preserve everything you have on this topic because if you are telling people to arrest our ICE officers, our federal agents, you cannot do that. You’re impeding an investigation. And we will charge them. If they think I won’t, they have not met me, because we will charge them if they are violating the law,” she added.
Simmons couldn’t be happier with Bondi’s response.
“I say hooray. Thank goodness. Thank goodness that they’re willing to do that,” he says, pointing out that Blanche went on in his letter to write, “Any attempts to arrest or interfere with federal agents is illegal and futile.”
“So, I hope that they’ll enforce that to the fullest extent of the law. All these men and women are trying to do is carry out their responsibilities that are passed down from the leaders of the executive branch,” Simmons says.
“And again, they’re not deporting U.S. citizens, and they’re focusing primarily on those that have committed crimes here in the U.S. or at home,” he continues.
“So … it’s just sickening,” he says, adding, “and almost, in my opinion, what some of these people are trying to do is on the border of treasonous. When you’re trying to impede federal law being upheld, I don’t know what else there could be. I mean, you become almost an enemy of the state.”
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Major shake-up reportedly under way at DHS as Trump administration works to increase deportations
The Department of Homeland Security appears to be shifting tactics in order to drastically increase the number of daily arrests of illegal aliens by changing leadership at field offices across the country.
First reported by the Washington Examiner, DHS is set to replace directors at field offices that are normally staffed with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents with U.S. Border Patrol agents. While both agencies fall under DHS and carry out similar immigration enforcement duties, they have been employing different tactics to target illegal aliens.
Because of the shock-and-awe tactics … the White House favors Border Patrol to lead operations.
As previously reported by Blaze News during a ride-along near Miami, ICE agents mainly do targeted enforcement of illegal aliens who have gone on to commit more crimes while in the United States. Intelligence is gathered to determine a target’s behavior before making arrests. If they have the ability to take in other illegal aliens near the target or targets, agents can do so now under the Trump administration.
Border Patrol, on the other hand, has been let loose by the Trump administration to conduct sweeps in sanctuary cities across the country, employing daytime raids to arrest illegal aliens and to send a message that things are different than they were under the Biden-Harris administration. Border Patrol agents are eager to do missions in the interior after being forced to allow illegal immigrants into the United States during the Biden border crisis.
Border Patrol’s random sweeps at job sites worked by illegal immigrants have resulted in the arrest of people with serious criminal backgrounds.
RELATED: Border Patrol arrest at Home Depot punches hole in Democrats’ narrative
Julio Rosas/Blaze Media
Because of the shock-and-awe tactics, which have increasingly resulted in mobs forming to attack the agents, the White House favors Border Patrol to lead operations in order to get more illegal aliens out of the country.
DHS posted video on Tuesday showing an anti-Border Patrol crowd in the Little Village neighborhood of Chicago attacking agents. Tear gas had to be used after some in the angry crowd threw objects at agents.
Fox News reporter Bill Melugin said the leadership changes are happening in cities such as:
- Los Angeles
- Phoenix
- Philadelphia
- Denver
- El Paso
- San Diego
- Seattle
- Portland
- New Orleans
The different tactics have reportedly caused tensions between the two agencies and their allies in the White House and DHS. One DHS official told Melugin the department has “lost” its way trying to solely focus on increasing arrests, while a Border Patrol official reportedly said, “What did everyone think mass deportations meant? Only the worst? Tom Homan has said it himself, anyone in the U.S. illegally is on the table.”
Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin said on X that the DHS has “no personnel changes to announce right now.”
Addressing tensions between the two sides, McLaughlin noted, “This is one team, one fight. President Trump has a brilliant, tenacious team led by [Secretary Kristi Noem] to deliver on the American people’s mandate to remove criminal illegal aliens from this country.”
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A new study hints what happens when superintelligence gets brain rot — just like us
AI and LLMs appear to be in a bit of a slump, with the latest revelatory scandal coming out of a major study showing that large language models, the closest we’ve come yet to so-called artificial general intelligence, are degraded in their capacities when they are subjected to lo-fi, low-quality, and “junk” content.
The study, from a triad of college computer science departments including University of Texas, set out to determine relationships between data quality and performance in LLMs. The scientists trained their LLMs on viral X.com/Twitter data, emphasizing high-engagement posts, and observed more than 20% reduction in reasoning capacity, 30% falloffs in contextual memory tasks, and — perhaps most ominously, since the study tested for measurable personality traits like agreeableness, extraversion, etc.— the scientists saw a leap in output that can technically be characterized as narcissistic and psychopathic.
Sound familiar?
The paper analogizes the function of the LLM performance with human cognitive performance and refers to this degradation in both humans and LLMs as “brain rot,” a “shorthand for how endless, low-effort, engagement-bait content can dull human cognition — eroding focus, memory discipline, and social judgment through compulsive online consumption.”
The whole project reeks of hubris, reeks of avarice and power.
There is no great or agreed-upon utility in cognition-driven analogies made between human and computer performance. The temptation persists for computer scientists and builders to read in too much, making categorical errors with respect to cognitive capacities, definitions of intelligence, and so forth. The temptation is to imagine that our creative capacities ‘out there’ are somehow reliable mirrors of the totality of our beings ‘in here,’ within our experience as humans.
We’ve seen something similar this year with the prevalence of so-called LLM psychosis, which — in yet another example of confusing terminology applied to already confused problems — seeks to describe neither psychosis embedded into LLMs nor that measured in their “behavior,” but rather the severe mental illness reported by many people after applying themselves, their attention, and their belief into computer-contained AI “personages” such as Claude or Grok. Why do they need names anyways? LLM 12-V1, for example, would be fine …
The “brain rot” study rather proves, if anything, that the project of creating AI is getting a little discombobulated within the metaphysical hall of mirrors its creators, backers, and believers have, so far, barged their way into, heedless of old-school measures like maps, armor, transport, a genuine plan. The whole project reeks of hubris, reeks of avarice and power. Yet, on the other hand, the inevitability of the integration of AI into society, into the project of terraforming the living earth, isn’t really being approached by a politically, or even financially, authoritative and responsible body — one which might perform the machine-yoking, human-compassion measures required if we’re to imagine ourselves marching together into and through that hall of mirrors to a hyper-advanced, technologically stable, and human-populated civilization.
RELATED: Intelligence agency funding research to merge AI with human brain cells
Photo by VCG / Contributor via Getty Images
So, when it’s observed here that AI seems to be in a bit of a slump — perhaps even a feedback loop of idiocy, greed, and uncertainty coupled, literally wired-in now, with the immediate survival demands of the human species — it’s not a thing we just ignore. A signal suggesting as much erupted last week from a broad coalition of high-profile media, business, faith, and arts voices brought under the aegis of the Statement on Superintelligence, which called for “a prohibition on the development of superintelligence, not lifted before there is 1. broad scientific consensus that it will be done safely and controllably, and 2. strong public buy-in.”
There’s a balance, there are competing interests, and we’re all still living under a veil of commercial and mediated fifth-generation warfare. There’s a sort of adults-in-the-room quality we are desperately lacking at the moment. But the way the generational influences lay on the timeline isn’t helping. With boomers largely tech-illiterate but still hanging on, with Xers tech-literate but stuck in the middle (as ever), with huge populations of highly tech-saturated Millennials, Zoomers, and so-called generation Alpha waiting for their promised piece of the social contract, the friction heat is gathering. We would do well to recognize the stakes and thus honor the input of those future humans who shouldn’t have to be born into or navigate a hall of mirrors their predecessors failed to escape.
House committee declares unauthorized Biden autopen pardons ‘void’ in damning new report
The House Oversight Committee released a nearly 100-page report on Tuesday deeming invalid those executive actions and pardons issued without proper authorization and with machine-generated signatures in former President Joe Biden’s name.
“Barring evidence of executive actions taken during the Biden presidency showing that President Biden indeed took a particular executive action, the Committee deems those actions taken through use of the autopen as void,” said the report.
‘Hold those who orchestrated this coup d’etat accountable.’
In hopes that real consequence might be dished out following their damning report — a report that suggests the country was effectively run in recent years by unelected Biden staffers — the Republican-led committee has also asked the Department of Justice to both review the validity of every executive action taken during the previous administration and to “determine whether legal action is necessary to ameliorate consequences of any illegitimate pardons granted, or executive actions implemented, throughout the Biden Autopen Presidency.”
The Oversight Project got the ball rolling in March by revealing that Biden’s signature on numerous executive orders, pardons, and other documents of national consequence was machine generated.
While other presidents have made extensive use of the so-called autopen, there is cause besides Biden’s mental deterioration to doubt the validity of many of the documents issued in his name.
For starters, there are reports of staffers and family members making decisions on his behalf; Biden allegedly admitted to having no memory of signing a greatly impactful order that bore an autopen signature; Biden’s signature appeared on documents while he was absent and in at least one case on vacation; and internal emails from the Justice Department show that there was a high-level understanding in the Biden administration that many of the commutations autopenned in the former president’s name were legally flawed.
Following a review of approximately 1,597 enrolled copies of documents bearing Biden’s signature — including pardon warrants and executive orders — the Oversight Project concluded in a Monday report that 846 of 958 executive orders, pardons, commutations, and proclamations were signed with autopen.
RELATED: Biden freed killers with a pen he didn’t even hold
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Broken down further by category, the Oversight Project indicated that of the Biden-era documents reviewed, 59.2% of the executive orders; 96.3% of the presidential proclamations; 75% of the pardons, including the pardons for Anthony Fauci, retired Gen. Mark Milley, members of the Biden clan, and former members of the House Jan. 6 select committee; and 51.8% of the commutations were signed with autopen.
Biden apparently signed all but one bill into law by hand.
“We, as a nation, operated for years without a functioning president and instead ceded executive power to a politburo of unelected bureaucrats who exercised presidential power via autopen,” the watchdog group stated. “These statistics are alarming. The time is now for the administration and Congress to hold those who orchestrated this coup d’etat accountable.”
The Oversight Project’s bombshell exposé earlier this year paved the way for additional investigations into the legitimacy of autopen-signed Biden-era documents, namely those launched by DOJ pardon attorney Ed Martin, the Trump White House Counsel, and the House Oversight Committee.
The Oversight Committee’s Tuesday report, the product of a five-month probe, indicates that Biden aides made liberal use of the autopen to carry out official actions without evidence of the former president’s approval.
The committee — echoing a finding of the Oversight Project — found, for instance, that 32 of 51 clemency warrants were signed with digital copies of Biden’s signature but without any contemporaneous paperwork linking Biden to the decisions.
Former Idaho Solicitor General Theo Wold testified during a U.S. Senate hearing in June that with regard to the clemency warrants, the “president actually has to make the decision — that cannot be delegated to a staffer or an adviser,” but there was no indication “that anyone other than staff were making these decisions.”
In addition to highlighting apparent evidence that senior Biden White House aides exercised the authority of the former president, the committee asked the DOJ to investigate three top Biden White House aides who previously refused to testify to the committee: Biden White House physician Kevin O’Connor and aides Anthony Bernal and Annie Tomasini.
Blaze News has reached out to the DOJ for comment.
Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) said in a statement obtained by CNN, “Our report reveals how key aides colluded to mislead the public and the extraordinary measures they took to sustain the appearance of presidential authority as Biden’s capacity to function independently diminished. Executive actions performed by Biden White House staff and signed by autopen are null and void.”
A Biden spokesperson stated, “This investigation into baseless claims has confirmed what has been clear from the start: President Biden made the decisions of his presidency.”
“There was no conspiracy, no cover-up, and no wrongdoing. Congressional Republicans should stop focusing on political retribution and instead work to end the government shutdown,” added the spokesperson.
Biden told news outlets in June, “I made the decisions during my presidency. I made the decisions about the pardons, executive orders, legislation, and proclamations.”
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