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⚡ Quick Take

• Pokémon is celebrating its 30th anniversary with an Adidas collaboration.
• From Pikachu to Gengar, plenty of Pokémon are represented in the collection.
• From very out-there designs to more subtle nods to character color schemes, the set of 12 new pairs has something for everyone.

Even 30 years after the brand’s inception, Pokémon cards are still a major market and point of interest for kids and adults alike. Over the past few years, especially, Pokémon has been a hot topic with a new mobile game and high-value cards to find in booster sets. Packs are flying off the shelves with buyers hoping to get their hands on a card with crazy value. In other words, Pokémon has still got it.

To celebrate the company’s 30th anniversary, Pokémon is partnering with Adidas to bring some brand new Pokémon kicks inspired by the characters. From Pikachu (obviously) to Gengar, one of your favorites is bound to be represented.

Pokémon / Adidas / Nintendo

The collection features a variety of Pokémon. Of course, Pikachu steals the spotlight with three pairs of Adidas Superstars. However, Charmander, Charizard, Gengar, and Mewtwo, among a handful of others, also make an appearance. And this is just the 12 pairs the company has revealed thus far.

The collection spans various styles of Adidas shoes, from Superstars to Megaride F50s. Some of the shoes have graphics of the creatures, but others are more subtle, simply following a character’s color scheme. For modern streetwear and casual Adidas fans, the Mewtwo Sambas in a light lilac are perfect. The only hint of the collaboration appears on the sneaker tongue.

Pokémon / Adidas

Quite a bit more “out there” are the Pikachu Superstar IIs, which are bright yellow, fluffy, and adorned with the character’s yellow and black ears on the sneaker tongue. The high-top Pikachu Superstar IIs are also fuzzy but with what appears to be a coarser fur, and have a silicone graphic of the Pokémon on the side.

Pokémon / Adidas

These fun textures continue across most of the line, with the Charizard and Charmeleon Superstars both bringing in something exciting. The Charmeleon shoe has dinosaur-looking stripes replacing the uniform straight Adidas stripes along the side, and a lizard-y texture. The Charizard pair has a wing on each shoe and a slightly different but still reptilian texture to it.

Pokémon / Adidas

The outliers to the texture game focus mostly on color scheme and graphics. The third Pikachu option, another Superstar II, features an all-over graphic of the character. The Charmander shoe replaces the classic stripes with flames. Both of the Mewtwo shoes are color-scheme-driven, though the ZX 9000 includes a raised silicone detail near the heel, mimicking the character’s ears. The Gastly shoe draws from the character’s color, an Adistar Control 5, black with purple and white accents. The Haunter shoe is an Adistar too, with a purple body and darker purple accents. The tongue is designed to look like the character’s outline.

Pokémon / Adidas

With 12 pairs to choose from, thus far, the collection has something for everyone. The Pokémon x Adidas collaboration is expected to drop sometime this September.

The post Pokémon Celebrates 30th Anniversary With Brand New Kicks appeared first on Nerdist.

After TV Time’s shutdown left millions of users searching for an alternative, one of the app’s original founders is back with Bingers, a new TV and movie tracker that revives the social features fans loved while adding support for importing their viewing history.

Eleven different U.S. cities are still trying to get paid what they’re owed by FIFA after hosting 2026 World Cup club matches.

FIFA President Gianni Infantino reportedly verbally promised Seattle, the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, Dallas, Houston, Kansas City, Atlanta, Philadelphia, New York/New Jersey, Miami, and Boston each $1 million for their hosting troubles, calling it a “legacy contribution.” While FIFA made no public statement about the payments, four executives at U.S. host city committees told The Athletic that FIFA management repeatedly reassured them about the payment.

Now, nearly a month after the World Cup ended—and after Infantino’s U-turn on his disastrous plan to sell stakes in the international competition—all of those cities are still waiting for their payouts.

“The absolute, utter stupidity of these host city executives for not getting this in writing,” said Pablo Iglesias Maurer, a soccer reporter for The Guardian. “I can’t even wrap my head around this—It’s FIFA, FFS. You’re taking Gianni Infantino’s word for it?”

It doesn’t make much sense that FIFA can’t make an $11 million total payment after the profit from ticketing, media rights, and private donations. The tournament made over $15 billion in revenue from 2023 through the end of the 2026 World Cup, and FIFA only had a tournament operation budget of $2.7 billion. Meanwhile, hosts like Kansas City have had to dip into state funding to cover the costs.

FIFA is one of the most historically corrupt organizations in all of sports, if not the entire world. And if Infantino’s been taking any cues from Trump, those cities won’t be seeing that money anytime soon.

As with countless courtroom proceedings that have been sensationalized, the agonizing testimony during the opening days of the murder trial of Lindsay Clancy, the former labor and delivery nurse accused of killing her three young children in Massachusetts, has produced a wave of public commentary debating the forces that might have driven a mother to kill her children.

The ruling theories go something like this: Clancy, as her defense team argues, should not be held criminally responsible because she had been overmedicated, with some of the medications worsening her later diagnosis of bipolar disorder. Prosecutors say the responsibility for the crime is entirely Clancy’s as she “deliberately and meticulously” killed her children. Online, criticism has even been directed at Clancy’s husband, Patrick, for supposedly leaving his wife to suffer in the throes of depression, while he got brunch with friends.

In the absence of a clear source to blame for this family’s catastrophe, it is the list of medications that had been prescribed to Clancy in the months leading up to the tragedy that has received outsized attention, often inspiring fierce judgment online. “Great opportunity to hold the antidepressant industry accountable for serious harm,” Alex Clark, the MAHA wellness influencer, wrote on social media, as courtroom filings revealed doctors had prescribed a range of medications— including antidepressants, sleep aids, and antipsychotics—to treat symptoms of severe postpartum depression after Clancy gave birth to her third child in 2022.

“Four months. Thirteen different medications,” the Boston Globe wrote in an Instagram post that featured a list of the medications with the full names of the doctors who prescribed them. As others, including Katie Miller and Jack Posobiec, expressed alarm over Clancy’s treatment plan, over on TikTok, clips concluding “textbook psych harm” were also going viral. Consider some of the responses to the Globe post:

“That literally will induce severe psychosis.”

“Pure malpractice. Those doctors should go to jail.”

“So sad. Way too many pills.”

Untreated mental health conditions are the leading cause of preventable pregnancy-related deaths in the United States.

The Globe later added an addendum to its post acknowledging that there was still much to learn about the prescribed medications. But in the hours between, I thought about the postpartum parents who may have seen the post, and wondered, as some true crime podcasts have: “Did Lindsay Clancy’s own medication make her worse?”

Experts caution against the intense public scrutiny of Clancy’s treatment, particularly posts that lack the critical context needed to understand providers’ decisions—such as what might have prompted dosage adjustments or how certain meds were added or removed—for they could unleash misinformation around postpartum conditions and the life-saving, effective measures used to treat them.

“My worry is that if [the Clancy case] makes folks more reticent to take medications to treat their mental illness, there’s potential harm there too,” Dr. Sunny Patel, a psychiatrist at Georgetown’s Thrive Center for Children, said, referring to the fact that untreated mental health conditions are the leading cause of preventable pregnancy-related deaths in the United States.

“My worry is that if [the Clancy case] makes folks more reticent to take medications to treat their mental illness, there’s potential harm there too.”

“It is difficult to understand the use of psychiatric medications out of context,” said Reid Mergler, a clinical psychiatrist and medical director of the Penn Center for Women’s Behavioral Wellness. “Although we are unable to comment in this specific case, in general, in the case of medication adjustments, it is common for patients to start medications and quickly want to try other options. This is especially true if a patient is suffering.”

When asked about the Globe‘s post, Mergler said the medications listed are often prescribed for different reasons, including insomnia, depression, and anxiety.

The Clancy trial arrives at a particularly fraught moment for antidepressants, which have long been a target of the nation’s most powerful public health official. In fact, in the two and a half years he has been health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has made it something of a personal mission to wean Americans off of SSRI’s, such as Zoloft and Prozac, claiming that the country is over-medicated and over-dependent on them. (Before his HHS post, Kennedy used to claim, without evidence, that psychiatric medicines lead to homicidal behavior like mass shootings.)

People with authority who seek to use Clancy’s trial to push an anti-medication agenda can potentially persuade suffering people who might need and benefit from help to avoid it

Postpartum depression is not uncommon, affecting roughly 10 percent of new birthing people. But postpartum psychosis, the clinical condition Clancy’s lawyers say she had been suffering when she killed her three children in January 2023, is far rarer, affecting less than one percent of 1,000 people.

“People start perceiving reality in a way that’s not accurate,” Allison Horan, a psychotherapist and psychopharmacologist in San Francisco, said. Common symptoms of psychosis include “false fixed beliefs or delusions, hallucinations, and paranoia.”

“Sleep sometimes gets extraordinarily disrupted, more so than is naturally the case in a postpartum period,” Horan continued. “People can at times develop suicidal thoughts or homicidal thoughts. It’s a psychiatric emergency.”

But postpartum conditions, Horan stressed, have high rates of recovery.

“They’re some of the most treatable conditions I treat as a psychiatrist, and people get better all the time,” she said, adding that it was important for people who suspect that something like depression or psychosis might be affecting themselves or a loved one to know that help, including prescription medication and close monitoring, is critical to seek.

None of which is to suggest that something may not have gone wrong with Clancy’s treatment; each expert I spoke to emphasized that they couldn’t comment on the specifics of her medications because they were not privy to the essential context within which they were prescribed. More broadly, communication gaps, whether it’s between prescribing doctors or outpatient services, persist throughout the medical system. And medical schools, Reid said, don’t spend much time educating students about postpartum psychosis despite the devastating consequences that can unfold if the condition is not treated properly.

It’s hardly surprising that social media commentators do not exercise the restraint of medical experts, but authority figures who seek to use Clancy’s trial to push an anti-medication agenda potentially can persuade suffering people who might need and benefit from help to avoid it. That’s especially the case for those who have just given birth, many of whom report feeling pressure to present an Instagram-worthy image of glowing new parenthood.

For the medical community, context-less scrutiny over Clancy’s medications, as well as decisions like the Globe’s to publish the names of Clancy’s doctors, could jeopardize legally protected processes that are in place to assess what may have gone wrong medically.

“Generally, anytime you look at a bad outcome, only one thing is rarely to blame,” Patel said. He noted that the job of medicine is to examine all the factors that were at play and determine the facts of what happened. Using a kind of “fishbone diagram,” clinicians then map the events along a timeline “to figure out what happened at each one of them. We really get granular to [determine] what the potential failure points were, and then what interventions we could implement that would prevent this bad outcome from happening.”

The more extreme the event, the greater the desire to identify potential failures and improve on existing systems, which may be what is happening as the Clancy family’s ordeal unwinds in court. “The way a system improves,” Patel said, “is you need to be able to talk about bad things that happen.”

As the entire security industry descends on Las Vegas this week for Hacker Summer Camp – not one, but three conferences – attendees can count on two hot topics dominating the discussion. First, a literal hot topic: the triple-digit August heat. Second, and to no one’s surprise: agentic AI – how to govern and secure agents so they don’t go rogue and hack into other organizations’ servers (*cough* OpenAI *cough* Anthropic *cough*); what role, if any, lawmakers should play in regulating models, including open-weight and Chinese LLMs; and how the baddies are using agents for autonomous hacking operations. Plus, at one of the three (Black Hat), we expect to hear how all of the vendors' shiny new agents can solve all security woes, finding and defending against threats at machine speed and all of that. Starting with BSides Las Vegas (August 3-5): This is the smallest, most relaxed, and most community-driven event of the three. BSides is a good starter con for those just dipping their toes into Hacker Summer Camp. Its technical talks and training sessions skew hands-on and useful for practitioners – not vendors selling their wares–- and it even has a Hire Ground career-focused track centered on job hunting, interviewing, career-building, networking, and yes, using AI to remain relevant as a security professional. Black Hat (August 1-6) is the largest and most corporate of the Vegas infosec events this week, complete with a massive expo floor, a US government-heavy opening session, two keynotes, 11 mainstage presentations, and a handful of industry- and topic-specific summits, ranging from healthcare to financial threats and AI. Training days – these are the hands-on, technical courses – run through Tuesday, with all of the specialized summits also occurring on Tuesday. And while the main conference occurs Wednesday and Thursday, the opening session on Tuesday should be considered a keynote. And yes, this and the actual two official Black Hat keynotes this year, all center on AI. After the FBI, NSA, and CISA speakers and panelists all cancelled their RSAC appearances earlier this year, the feds will be out in force at the infosec industry’s other big event, beginning with Tuesday’s opening session: Cyber Power in the Age of AI. This one features the White House National Cyber Director Sean Cairncross discussing President Trump's cyber and AI strategy, joined by CISA acting director Nick Anderson, FBI cyber division assistant director Brett Leatherman, and assistant secretary of defense for cyber policy Katherine Sutton. Later, the Wednesday and Thursday keynotes tackle a mounting challenge for security teams, patch managers, and sysadmins: AI-powered vulnerability research and discovery, plus exploit generation, and how defenders can evolve and keep pace. Plus, this year’s Black Hat hosts the world-premier screening of cyberwar documentary Midnight in the War Room on Wednesday. It focuses on the psychological toll on defenders. And it features interviews with former attackers, some of whom served prison sentences, alongside high-ranking cyber officials like Chris Inglis, the first US National Cyber Director, and former CISA director Jen Easterly, who is now CEO of RSAC. Finally, camp closes with DEF CON (August 6-9), which serves up plenty of hacks and hijinx, under this year’s theme of “agency,” or self-determination. As Jake Braun, one of the creators of the first-ever Voting Machine Hacking Village at DEF CON in 2017, told us earlier this year, agency involves the human-rights community and the hacker community needing to “sit down and look at what technologies are out there today that support the preservation of human rights around the world, figuring out what we don't have, and then building those missing pieces.” Keeping with this theme, Braun, who also serves as DEF CON Franklin’s Executive Director, will also update the hacker community about this critical infrastructure security program. The Franklin project, which launched at DEF CON in 2024, enlists hackers to secure critical infrastructure. Hundreds of volunteers have helped 21 different water utilities in seven states so far. This is especially timely as attacks against US water facilities increase. With nearly 30 Villages this year, covering everything from AI to car hacking and lockpicking, there will be plenty of high-quality talks and good fun for attendees. As always, your humble vulture will be making the rounds and reporting from the events, so send tips our way, stay safe, and leave your pervert glasses at home. ®

Senate Judiciary Democrats used their final moments ahead of Todd Blanche’s nomination vote Tuesday to remind the committee of numerous reasons why the acting attorney general should not be permanently promoted—but apparently all Republicans heard was a bunch of “whining.”

Missouri Senator Eric Schmitt was quick to mock his Democratic committee colleagues, sharing a derogatory note on X that he penned during the proceedings.

​​”So much whining!” the note read.

Schmitt’s language is an interesting choice, considering that the “whining” was an explicit exploration of why Donald Trump’s personal attorney should not have the keys to the Justice Department.

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse referred to Blanche’s botched rollout of the Epstein files as just one reason why he should be disqualified from consideration. Whitehouse reminded the committee that even other Trump officials—notably, former Attorney General Pam Bondi—said Blanche was responsible for the bungled release.

Senator Dick Durbin effectively accused Blanche of violating his oath of office by having “aided and abetted the most corrupt administration in the history of the United States” rather than “serving the American people and upholding the rule of law and the Constitution.”

Durbin further accused Blanche—who is, again, in the running to be America’s preeminent lawyer—of lying under oath about statements relating to Trump’s $1.8 billion slush fund “to avoid offending President Trump.”

Other damning details cited by Democrats involved Blanche’s personal role in crafting the collusive settlement between the DOJ, Trump’s personal attorneys, and the IRS that laid the groundwork for the taxpayer-funded honeypot. Liberal lawmakers also chided Blanche’s utilization of the Justice Department within his current limited capacity to target Trump’s perceived political enemies with bogus criminal cases.

Democrats noted that Blanche still had not walked back a deal to protect Trump, a convicted tax fraudster, against future IRS investigations.

But perhaps most scathing were the repeat references to Blanche’s bad lawyering. Democrats pointed to a petition signed by hundreds of Blanche’s former colleagues that claimed Blanche was simply unfit to be America’s top law enforcement official. The New York City Bar Association also protested Blanche’s nomination, accusing Blanche of having dubious ethical standards that failed to meet the standard required by the office.

Schmitt’s dismissive tone could only suggest that he either didn’t listen to the complaints, or he simply doesn’t care.

⚡ Quick Take

• David Harbour’s killer Santa has to prove he doesn’t belong on the Naughty List by killing even more people in the newest Violent Night 2 trailer.

August is when stores start stocking their Halloween wares, but the real sickos know that August is also when Hollywood starts promoting its upcoming Christmas slate. And this year’s looks like it will be a bloody good time. David Harbour’s killer Santa is back in the newest trailer for Violent Night 2. Why will this slaying sleigh master be back for more seasonal fun? He’s got to prove he doesn’t belong on the Naughty List….by killing even more people.

Uh, this is an amazing cast. And we don’t mean for a Christmas horror-comedy. It would be amazing for any movie. We know from the original film that David Harbour makes for a fantastic killer Kris Kringle. This time around he’s also joined by Jared Harris, Joe Pantoliano, Daniela Melchior, Andrew Bachelor, and Kristen Bell as Mrs. Claus.

What exactly is going on for the jolly old elf this time? Here’s the film’s official synopsis from Universal Pictures:

In 2022’s bare-knuckle holiday sensation, Violent Night, an embittered Santa, armed with lethal combat skills, took out a team of mercenaries to rescue a girl and her family. Now, not-so-jolly Saint Nick suits up again to take on a ruthless gangster (Harris) terrorizing the merchants of the Silver Bell Mall. But when Santa forgets the true meaning of Christmas, he finds himself in the heart of a lively mall community in desperate need of his help. Sapped of his magic, he’ll need another way to take on the goons threatening the mall, and time is running out. Santa has to rediscover his faith in goodness and call in some last-minute reinforcements from the one person no baddie wants to tangle with: Mrs. Claus (Bell).  

Universal Pictures

Tommy Wirkola is back to direct with another script from returning writers Pat Casey and Josh Miller. We’ll get to see this bloody affair long after the Halloween season ends and the most wonderful time of the year is in full swing. Violent Night 2 slashes its way into theaters on December 4.

The post David Harbour’s Killer Santa Returns in Star-Studded VIOLENT NIGHT 2 Trailer appeared first on Nerdist.

A blue Texas in 2026 is looking less and less like a pipe dream, after four consecutive polls released in the last week have shown Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico ahead of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. On Tuesday, a poll conducted by Texas Southern University found Talarico leading Paxton 47% to 45%. That followed a Wedgewood Polls survey from Monday showing Talarico with a 48%

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A cartoon by Clay Bennett. Related | Trump team keeps coming up empty in Comey shenanigans…

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A security vulnerability in the cryptocurrency hardware wallet Coldcard is allowing hackers to drain the crypto from victims’ wallets. The total losses amount to more than $130 million, according to blockchain monitoring firms.

It’s been only a few days since federal prosecutors moved to dismiss criminal charges against former Olympian David Hearn, and the Department of Justice’s remaining vandalism cases have already fallen apart like cheap pool lining. 

The DOJ indicated Monday night that it would not prosecute the remaining two defendants accused of vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, Cameron Thiers and Sophie Dennison-Gibby.

In a filing Friday, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia acknowledged that damage to the Reflecting Pool was caused by the contractor’s flawed installation of the pool lining, and blamed the Department of the Interior for initially claiming that the damage was “entirely caused by vandals.” 

The government also quietly dismissed charges against defendant Justin Carreno on Friday.  

G. Allen Dale, an attorney representing Thiers, told NPR News that, after the filing about Hearn, there was no way to keep the rest of the government’s cases afloat. 

“Anyone who’s read the pleading that was filed in Mr. Hearn’s case would understand exactly why they would have to dismiss against the remainder of those charged,” Dale said. 

The move to dismiss charges against Hearn sparked major backlash from President Donald Trump, who’d hand-picked Atlantic Industrial Coating for the project and spent weeks blaming vandals for the contractor’s apparently shoddy workmanship. 

He railed against U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro for dropping the Hearn case, saying Monday she “choked.”

Spotify says Merlin, which represents more than 30,000 independent labels and distributors, has joined Universal Music Group in backing its upcoming AI-powered remix and covers product. The paid tool will let fans create AI-generated covers and remixes of participating artists’ music while ensuring artists opt in, receive credit, and are compensated.

Republican Senator Thom Tillis doesn’t think highly of acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, but he voted to confirm him anyway.

Tillis, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, gave a long-winded defense of his support for Blanche on the Senate floor Tuesday, even as he admitted that this Justice Department seems particularly bad.

“Everybody has this view that they are as pure as the driven snow and it’s the other side that has a problem. I think we both have a problem, folks. If you want to talk about weaponization, take a look at the Biden administration, take a look at the Obama administration,” Tillis said.

“The bottom line is, nobody is clean here, and until we start recognizing this behavior as bad, we’re just going to one-up it. Maybe it’s a little bit more intense in this administration than the last one, and that a little bit more intense the prior administration, and so on and so forth, but folks, we’ve got to end this stuff. We do,” Tillis continued. “I’m gonna support Mr. Blanche’s nomination, but what I hope I see out of him is a bending of the curve of this absurdity.”

Tillis: "Everybody has this view that they are as pure as the driven snow and it's the other side that has a problem. I think we both have a problem, folks. If you want to talk about weaponization, take a look at the Biden administration, take a look at the Obama administration,… pic.twitter.com/bnBhpjfsBg

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 4, 2026

Tillis’s excuse doesn’t hold up very well. Tillis was one of two Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee withholding his vote to support Blanche over President Trump’s settlement with the IRS, which created a $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” and gave Trump and his family immunity from IRS audits.

But over the weekend, Tillis, along with Republican Senator John Cornyn, changed his mind following a written statement from the Department of Justice in which Blanche purportedly agreed to end the Anti-Weaponization Fund. However, that memo still left open the preservation of the fund, as well as Trump’s immunity from IRS audits, as Democrats quickly pointed out.

Tillis seems to know all of this, based on his statement Tuesday. But even though he’ll be out of the Senate next year, he’s putting politics over principle.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott has paused new data center development until an audit has been completed.

The acquisition, which was first announced in June, brings Vibe.co into Walmart Connect, Walmart's connected TV advertising platform.

The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has added an exploited N-able vulnerability to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, giving federal agencies three days to patch a flaw that could let attackers reach managed service provider (MSP) customers. Attackers exploiting the flaw can gain "full administrative access to an N-central console," Tracked as CVE-2026-18577 (8.2 CVSSv4), N-able disclosed the vulnerability affecting N-central on Sunday, noting that it was exploited as of July 31. MSPs use N-central to manage customer systems from a single dashboard, and successful exploitation can hand an attacker administrative access to the console. Based on the limited set of partner logs it reviewed, security firm Huntress said successful attacks led to pivots into managed endpoints and the creation of Cloudflare-based tunnels for persistent access to victim networks. "From an MSP perspective, exploitation of this flaw can grant an attacker full administrative access to an N-central console – the same level of control normally reserved for trusted NOC and engineering staff," wrote Huntress's Ben Bernstein and John Hammond. Attackers can then open remote control sessions on critical systems and modify roles, accounts, and policies to support follow-on attacks. The vulnerability affects N-central releases earlier than version 2026.3 when the server is exposed to the internet or reachable from an untrusted network. Huntress advised customers unable to apply N-able's hotfix immediately to disable N-central until they could do so. Authorities elsewhere have also urged users to patch. NHS England's advisory mentioned that its National Cybersecurity Operations Centre assessed that "further exploitation is likely," while Belgium's Centre for Cybersecurity urged fast action due to the "potential for significant impact." CVE-2026-18577 is related to an earlier flaw, CVE-2026-18556, patched in N-central 2026.2. According to N-able, that fix left another route to exploitation, which attackers began abusing late last month. CISA gave Federal Civilian Executive Branch agencies until August 6 to remediate the flaw. Under Binding Operational Directive 26-04, CISA can impose a three-day deadline on vulnerabilities it considers an urgent risk rather than allowing the usual 14 days. According to Huntress's data, affected customers have leapt into action. By August 3, nearly all cloud-hosted N-central instances had been patched, although 28.6 percent of observed self-hosted servers remained vulnerable and exposed to the internet. ®

Poor Mike Lindell. All the pillow salesman wants to do is become governor to save Minnesota from the scourge of being overrun by hordes of undocumented immigrants committing voter fraud, but he’s essentially nothing but a sentient collection of election problems. President Donald Trump sure does know how to pick ‘em. In the latest challenge for the hapless and deeply in-debt pillow magnate…

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Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche went mask off last week, promising behind closed doors to roll back abortion access even further, and telling religious pro-life hardliners that he wanted the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision overturning the right to abortion to become “permanent in every single state.”

Blanche made the comments in a “prayer call” last Thursday hosted by the White House Faith Office and attended by various faith leaders. The call was not open to press and not on the record, although the entirety of the call is now up on YouTube.  

“We don’t have complete victory yet, but we will have victory, and victory will be soon, and and and it will be permanent,” Blanche said. “If states have said, ‘We are going to protect the unborn and we’re going to protect every life from the moment of conception,’ we’re putting practices and policies in place so that other states and other organizations can’t attack that.”

“They can’t do things like they’re doing with mailing in mail-order drugs,” Blanche added, singling out abortion pills.

This is a far cry from the answer he offered at his confirmation hearing, when he claimed he would “carefully evaluate every lawful action available to ensure the faithful enforcement of the Comstock Act,” the 150-year-old law that bans the mailing of contraceptives and other things considered to be “obscene.”  

He also noted that the Trump administration is “putting practices and policies in place” to block abortion pills mifepristone and misoprostol from being sent to states that have banned abortion, a process that would require the Justice Department to invoke the Comstock Act—something President Trump specifically said he wouldn’t do back in 2024 while campaigning.  

“A vote to confirm Todd Blanche is a vote ‘so that the Dobbs decision becomes permanent in every single state,’” Senator Patty Murray wrote Tuesday on X. “Those were his own words to anti-abortion extremists. Senators who vote for Blanche are voting for an Attorney General who will attack abortion rights in EVERY state.”

Over the weekend, right-wing media, including the Post Millennial and the Gateway Pundit, resurfaced a 2023 interview featuring Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong, wherein Hong opened up about a hospitalization for a mental breakdown as a teenager and a previous bipolar disorder diagnosis.

“Wisconsin Dem candidate for governor Francesca Hong admitted to being diagnosed as mentally ill,” read the Post Millennial headline.

“In typical liberal fashion, Hong tried to paint herself as a victim in the interview, blaming the crisis on feeling like an outsider as the daughter of Korean immigrants,” blogger Patty McMurray wrote on the Gateway Pundit’s site.

Hong, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, is arguably the frontrunner to win the Democratic primary for the Wisconsin gubernatorial election, which will take place on August 11. Hong’s campaign includes mental health policies that would coordinate social workers, nurses, community health workers, and peer counselors in more neighborhoods throughout Wisconsin.

“My own mental health journey has given me a much deeper sense of empathy and compassion,” Hong said in a statement to Mother Jones. “I’m a stronger leader because of the times that I struggled, and it’s important to talk openly so that others aren’t isolated and can take that first step to get help.”

“Mental healthcare is a basic need, and we have to invest in community resources, training, accessibility, and culturally-relevant care,” Hong continued in her statement.

Hong is currently in treatment for depression and takes antidepressants, Hong’s team said.

The current right-wing attacks on Hong’s mental health history—at a time when Republicans outlined their support for Rep. Tom Kean (R-N.J.)’s months-long, opaque absence for depression treatment—seem particularly cruel and partisan.

“Even if the authors of the articles disagree with Ms. Hong’s politics, the inclusion of her mental health history is a blatant attempt to ignite fear in readers by fanning the flames of stigma,” said California-based therapist Andrea B. Vassilev, who has bipolar disorder.

Hong’s statements about her mental health were incredibly vulnerable, particularly for someone already in public office at the time of the interview. But the remarks likely struck a relatable chord for many people who have struggled with mental illness.

In the 2023 interview, Hong also talked about how, with her immigrant parents, they “never talked about processing emotion and feelings,” an issue that can be rooted in immigrant families’ focus on survival in a new country.

“I just felt like nothing had meaning anymore. It was a numbness that took over, and a pain that I couldn’t describe,” Hong, a member of the Wisconsin State Assembly at the time, reflected in the 2023 interview. “I couldn’t feel anymore, and that scared the hell out of me.”

An analysis of the last seven years of Tesla earnings calls shows just little attention Musk pays to Tesla's car business.