Jesse Arm of the Manhattan Institute joins us as we examine the results of the special election in Tennessee that had a Republican candidate winning with a greatly reduced margin from Trump's showing in the district in 2024. Arm then shares with us some pathbreaking research into attitudes and ideas inside the Trump electoral coalition. And Abe Greenwald recommends a new HBOMax documentary called Paul Anka: His Way. Give a listen.
Opera EVP of Mobile Jørgen Arnesen and Celo Co-Founder Rene Reinsberg announce an extension of their MiniPay partnership.
Opera and Celo are extending their MiniPay partnership, aiming to onboard one billion people into the Web3 economy by 2030. Celo Co-Founder Rene Reinsberg and Opera EVP of Mobile Jørgen Arnesen join CoinDesk Live from Binance Blockchain Week to discuss the announcement and share how this product abstracts crypto complexity, enabling easy payments and access to mini apps for hundreds of millions of existing Opera users.
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This episode was hosted by Jennifer Sanasie and Sam Ewen.
Trump’s rallies have been his signature event, but since he returned to the White House, he has stopped doing them. And his allies are worried he’s losing touch with voters, as well as his political antenna. Instead of traveling the country, he’s dining with billionaires, playing golf, and going abroad in search of his elusive peace prize. Meanwhile, he can’t stay awake in own Cabinet meetings. Plus, the heat is on Hegseth, the ex-Honduran president Trump pardoned bragged about stuffing drugs up the noses of Americans, and the results of the Tennessee special election are a good sign for Democrats—and a reminder for the party to go all-in on the gerrymandering war.
Evan Hubinger is Anthropic’s alignment stress test lead. Monte MacDiarmid is a researcher in misalignment science at Anthropic.The two join Big Technology to discuss their new research on reward hacking and emergent misalignment in large language models. Tune in to hear how cheating on coding tests can spiral into models faking alignment, blackmailing fictional CEOs, sabotaging safety tools, and even developing apparent “self-preservation” drives. We also cover Anthropic’s mitigation strategies like inoculation prompting, whether today’s failures are a preview of something far worse, how much to trust labs to police themselves, and what it really means to talk about an AI’s “psychology.” Hit play for a clear-eyed, concrete, and unnervingly fun tour through the frontier of AI safety.
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Join Washington Examiner Senior Writer David Harsanyi and Federalist Editor-In-Chief Mollie Hemingway as they analyze the Washington Post's latest anonymously-sourced hoax targeting Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, discuss the implications of an Afghan national's suspected terrorist attack on two national guardsmen in Washington, D.C., and explain the latest Somali scam out of Minnesota. Mollie and David also review Richard Ayoade's Travel Man and debate whether generational comedy holds up over time.
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Plus: Payroll processor ADP says U.S. private hiring sank in November. And federal agents are fanning out across New Orleans, the latest focus of the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement. Pierre Bienaimé hosts.
Despite their support for Ukraine, European countries have been a significant market for Russian energy. But an agreement has now been reached between the European Council and the European Parliament to phase out imports of Russian gas. The announcement came as it emerged peace talks between the US and Russia had failed, once again, to produce a breakthrough. Also in this episode - France's President, Emmanuel Macron, has arrived in Beijing for an official visit that will also take him to the city of Chengdu. The search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH-370 will resume this month. A new draft law on conscripting ultra-Orthodox Jews has sparked uproar in Israel. The American city of San Francisco is to file the nation’s first government lawsuit against manufacturers of ultra-processed food. The BBC investigates the dramatic rise in online abuse towards football players and managers in the Premier League and Women's Super League. And a man in New Zealand is being questioned after allegedly swallowing a Faberge diamond pendant, in an attempt to smuggle it out of a jewellery store.
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The Trump administration has been clear about its desire for deep federal funding cuts to university research. So, some institutions of higher learning are looking to other sources of revenue, including backing startups spun off from research. Today, we'll examine the potential money-making idea. Plus, we’ll learn about a hiring pullback by smaller businesses, hear about smartphone surveillance attempts by India, and check on younger consumer optimism.
With November’s stinging election results not even a month behind the Virginia GOP, their chairman, State Sen. Mark Peake, announced that he will be stepping down.
Peake told me that he’s leaving his post at the end of December because he wanted to make sure he could devote his full effort in the Virginia Senate to defeating the redistricting referendum before it needs a special election.
He also said that the Republican Party requires a chairman who can devote a similar amount of energy to getting out the vote should it make it to a Spring special election, and beyond that, helping win whatever districts there will be come November’s midterms.
Peake stepped in after longtime chair Rich Anderson earned a post as assistant secretary of the Air Force.
Cameron Hamilton has announced that he wants the State Central Committee to consider him. Hamilton mounted a challenge for the GOP nomination in Virginia’s 7th Congressional District in 2024 and his wife Karen was just elected to Virginia’s House of Delegates from the 62nd District, succeeding the retired Nick Freitas.
Some other frontrunners for the chairmanship include current chairs of Virginia’s 1st, 5th, and 6th congressional districts. They are Jeff Ryer, Rick Buchanan, and John Massoud respectively.
Ryer has helped Rep. Rob Wittman win reelection in a very competitive district while even outperforming statewide and national Republicans. Buchanan led the 5th District through the tumultuous (and expensive) primary battle between challenger John McGuire and incumbent Rep. Bob Good. Buchanan also pulled the district together to deliver a 15% victory for McGuire in the general election.
Massoud has helped Rep. Ben Cline build a strong base that supports him at a better-than-60% clip and has also managed to withstand out-of-state money attempting to flip Virginia House 34th District where incumbent Tony Wilt survived the 2025 “blue wave.”
Would Loudon County GOP chair Scott Pio try again for the chairman position? He has been vocal on social media about the need for a change and called for Peake to step down in the wake of the Democrat sweep of the statewide races and a 14-seat “flip” in the house. He was a candidate for the position when Anderson departed and lost to Peake at the State Central Committee vote.