"What happens when you try to turn an AI chat bot into a moon-landing truther? A group of scientists at AI giant Anthropic recently found out.

"The test the researches deployed was part of a series of experiments designed to answer the question: if an AI model was trained to lie and deceive, would we be able to fix it? Would we even know?

"The results, recently published in a paper titled Sleeper Agents: Training Deceptive LLMs That Persist Through Safety Training', suggest the answer to both questions is no."

Read the entire article here.

"The Congressional Budget Office estimates that border officials witnessed but did not catch 860,000 illegal immigrants crossing into the United States last year, more than double the number of 'gotaways' who entered when President Joe Biden entered office and dismantled border policies.

"In its new Demographic Outlook: 2024 to 2054, the CBO explained that the 860,000 'comprises people who were directly or indirectly observed making an unlawful entry, who were not turned back or apprehended, and who are no longer being pursued by the Border Patrol.'

"By comparison, there were 389,515 gotaways in fiscal 2021 and nearly 600,000 in fiscal 2022."

Read the entire article here.

"Call it the big reset -- downward -- in public education.

"The alarming plunge in academic performance during the pandemic was met with a significant drop in grading and graduation standards to ease the pressure on students struggling with remote learning. The hope was that hundreds of billions of dollars of emergency federal aid would enable schools to reverse the learning loss and restore the standards.

"Four years later, the money is almost gone and students haven't made up that lost academic ground, equaling more that a year of learning for disadvantaged kids. Driven by fears of a spike in dropout rates, especially among blacks and Latinos, many states and school districts are apparently leaving in place the lower standards that allow students to get good grades and graduate even though they have learned much less, particularly in math.

"It's as if many of the nation's 50 million public school students have fallen backwards to a time before rigorous standards and accountability mattered very much.

"'I'm getting concerned that, rather than continuing to do the hard work of addressing learning loss, schools will start to accept a new normal of lower standards,' said Amber Northern, who oversees research at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a group that advocates for academic rigor in schools."

Read the entire aritcle here.

"President Biden needs to fire somebody -- anybody -- to show voters he understands they are angry about his administration's innumerable cock-ups, and that he is angry, too.

"When a president's approval ratings hit historic lows while he's running for reelection, he has to do something. Whining to the press that they are misrepresenting your success is, and sounds, pathetic. ...

"Firing one of his top officials could help make Biden look more forceful and decisive. Finding a worthy candidate is not challenging."

Read the entire article here.

"Rep. James Clyburn, who is a co-chairman of Joe Biden's reelection campaign, recently tried to explain the president's predicament by saying that he's 'delivered for the American people in such a way that nobody seems to grasp.'

"As campaign slogans go, that's not exactly 'Morning in America.' But the truth is that everybody grasps what Biden has delivered. It's what he's delivered that they don't like.

"Clyburn, talking on MSNBC, said the public just needs to 'look at the facts and stop listening to all of this tweeting and stuff that's going on out there that's not good for the American people.'

"We took the South Carolina Democrat's word for it, and here's what we found that Biden has delivered, at home and abroad.

"The cost of living has skyrocketed. Prices have climbed by almost 17% since Biden took office three years ago. Food prices are up 20%. Gasoline is up 26%. Electricity up 24%. Car insurance up 30%."

Read the entire article here.

"Attorneys representing Northeastern fishermen will make their case at the Supreme Court on Wednesday that the 40-year-old precedent most commonly cited to support federal agency regulatory power should be cast into an oceanic abyss.

"A group of fishermen from New Jersey will see the justices consider their lawsuit against a Commerce Department regulation through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which required their boats to pay roughly $700 per day to fund the salary of human 'at-sea' monitors for each fishing venture. The heart of the case asks the court to overturn the 1984 precedent from a case called Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council.

"The core of the Chevron doctrine states that if a federal rule is challenged in court, the court should defer to the agency and its 'reasonable' interpretation of the congressional statute it says grants them permission to create the rule."

Read the entire argument here.

"Ron DeSantis went to all 99 counties. Vivek Ramaswamy held 300 events. Nikki Haley rode a tractor.

"And in the end, none of it mattered. The Iowa caucus was called so quickly in Donald Trump's favor on Monday night that his campaign watch party hadn't even started yet and none of his supporters were there to see him win.

"Neither the historic cold temperatures nor the 91 criminal charges against him could hamper Trump's sprint to victory in Iowa, a state where he came in fourth in the 2016 Iowa caucuses but has won ever since. And on Monday, he won it with the largest margin in a competitive Republican caucus in Iowa history."

Read the entire article here.

"Just 10 days before his assassination, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stood at a podium with war raging between Israelis and Arabs in the Middle East and strife evident in urban American communities between blacks and Jewish shopkeepers. Without equivocation, he embraced Israel and condemned antisemitism in all its forms.

"'We cannot substitute one tyranny for another, and for the black man to be struggling for justice and then turn around and be anti-Semitic is not only a very irrational course but it is a very immoral course. And wherever we have seen anti-Semitism we have condemned it with all of our might,' King declared in a question-and-answer session in March 1968 at the Rabbinical Assembly. ...

"Fifty-six years later, a new war rages between Israel and Hamas and fresh strife grips American cities as young liberal activists have joined with Palestinian protesters to block streets, intimidate Jewish students on campuses and throw bloodied baby dolls over the White House fences."

Read the entire article here.

"Since last November, Houthi terrorists operating from enclaves in northern Yemen have launched 27 attacks on commercial shipping lanes in the Red Sea. The Houthis have fired drone swarms, cruise missiles, and anti-ship missiles. The Houthis have pirated ships. They have endangered lives, disrupted international trade flows, and raised the cost of shipping a container from Asia to northern Europe by 173 percent. And until January 11, they paid no price.

"Inspired, financed, and trained by the Iranian revolutionary regime, the Houthis have given America the bird. They flout any pretense of international law. Despite propaganda to the contrary, the Houthis are not a legitimate state actor. They have no serious grievance or ideological cause. Their claim to act in solidarity with Palestinians is a crock. Even if they were sincere, it wouldn't justify their onslaught. The Houthis are a terrorist gang, and if they are not stopped, then the toll they exact in blood and treasure will grow.

"How to stop them? First, tell President Biden that his strategy to contain the Houthis hasn't been working. Last year, when this latest wave of violence began, Biden and his national security team did nothing but order U.S. naval assets to intercept the Houthi barrages. The Houthis kept firing."

Read the entire article here.

"A federal court on Monday declared that President Joe Biden's team went too far in imposing new water and energy regulations on the two machines that make life easier, dishwashers and washing machines.

"In ruling against Biden, the New Orleans-based 5th Circuit Court of Appeals said former President Donald Trump's administration got it right when it moved to let consumers choose between machines that take longer and use less water and those that can do the job in an hour or less.

"The 25-page opinion was a victory for anti-regulatory groups and consumer choice advocates.

"It might also have been a win for the environment because the court agreed that lots of people avoid using the green machines because they don't work well.

"The court said the Biden rules 'make Americans use more energy and more water for the simple reason that purportedly "energy efficient" appliances do not work. So Americans who want clean dishes or clothes may use more energy and more water to preclean, reclean, or hand-wash their stuff before, after, or in lieu of using DOE-regulated appliances.'"

Read the entire article here.