August 11, 2026

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A postseason track meet in California began Saturday with a “Save Girls’ Sports” rally, taking place outside of the gates. Unfortunately, the event concluded in the same fashion that we’ve seen before, with a transgender athlete absolutely dominating the competition in multiple jumping events. The situation only adds fuel to the fire of the concern regarding protection for girls and women in female sports.

A lot of attention was drawn to the Yorba Linda-based CIF Southern Section Division 3 preliminaries prior to competition beginning as a result of protestors going against the California policy of permitting trans athletes to participate in female sports.

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As Kamala Harris eyes a possible 2028 presidential bid, there is little outward enthusiasm among her biggest 2024 backers to fund a repeat performance, adding to uncertainty about the former vice president’s prospects in what is sure to be a crowded primary field.

The Times reached out to more than two dozen top donors to the biggest pro-Harris super PAC in 2024. Several of them said they do not plan to support her should she choose to run, or declined to talk about her. Others did not respond.

“I don’t think it’s a helpful narrative [for 2028] to start with the 2024 hangover,” said one fundraiser for Harris’ 2024 campaign, who requested anonymity to speak candidly. “There is an enormous appetite for new blood — something fresh, something that really represents the future, not the past.”

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Neuroscientists have identified a measurable brain difference between people with psychopathic traits and those with few or none. In a study published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research, researchers from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore), the University of Pennsylvania, and California State University found that a brain region involved in reward and motivation was larger in individuals with psychopathic traits.

Using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), the team found that the striatum was about 10 percent larger on average in psychopathic individuals compared with a control group. The striatum sits deep in the forebrain and plays a role in movement planning, decision-making, motivation, reinforcement, and how the brain responds to rewards.

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Last week, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) announced it had gathered more than 1.5 million signatures—nearly double what it needed—to put a sweeping new wealth tax on California’s November ballot. The initiative is called the 2026 Billionaire Tax Act.

The name is designed to make you stop reading. Don’t.

SEIU has spent months positioning itself as the champion of nurses, teachers and caregivers. What it has actually done is run a $24 million campaign to put a measure on the ballot that could eventually be used to tax virtually any Californian who owns assets—with no return trip to the ballot box required.

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South Carolina is the latest state that has moved to cancel their primary election, even though people are already voting:

South Carolina Republicans took the first step Friday to cancel the state’s June primary election — to give more time to potentially pass a new gerrymandered congressional map — as absentee voting is already underway.

A South Carolina House subcommittee voted 3-2 along party lines to advance a bill that would move the state’s June 9 primary election to August 11, with the expectation that the legislature would redraw the state’s congressional map to dismantle its lone Democratic district, represented by longtime Rep. Jim Clyburn.

The vote came after the committee heard hours of public testimony urging lawmakers to reject pressure to delay the state’s primaries and draw new congressional maps. In all, 23 South Carolina residents testified against redistricting and moving the state’s primaries. No one spoke in support of either measure.

More than 6,000 absentee ballots have already been sent out to military and overseas voters for the June primary — more than 200 of those ballots have since been returned, according to the South Carolina Election Commission (SCEC). Should the legislature approve the measure to delay the state’s primary, those ballots will be disqualified.

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The Trump administration has made artificial intelligence a centerpiece of its economic agenda, promising to retrain a workforce it says must be ready to compete in an AI-driven future. One early piece of that effort: a free text-message course from the Department of Labor (DOL) and private partner Arist called, “Make America AI-Ready”, is a useful start on the journey to AI literacy for all Americans. This seven-day long, 10-minute-per day course which frames itself as “your AI 101” is accessible, technically informative, and engaging (see below for the full contents). Here we analyze its strengths, lay out a few weaknesses we think should be addressed in the current version, and elaborate some stretch goals for an “AI 201” course that would build upon the original.

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Archaeologists working at an ancient site in central China have uncovered evidence that early humans may have become more inventive while living through a brutal ice age. The discovery comes from the Lingjing archaeological site, where researchers have spent more than 10 years excavating animal bones and sophisticated stone tools linked to an extinct human relative called Homo juluensis.

A new study found that the site dates back about 146,000 years, placing it squarely within a cold glacial period rather than a warmer era as scientists once believed. The findings challenge the long-standing idea that creativity and technological advances mainly developed during times of environmental stability and abundance.

“People often imagine creativity as something that flourishes in good times,” says Yuchao Zhao, the assistant curator of East Asian archaeology at the Field Museum in Chicago and the lead author of a paper describing the findings in the Journal of Human Evolution. “Finding out that these stone tools were made during a harsh ice age tells a different story. Hard times can force us to adapt.”

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When an itch strikes, scratching usually brings relief after a few moments. Scientists have now uncovered part of the biological system that tells the brain when enough scratching has occurred. The discovery reveals how the nervous system naturally limits scratching and may help explain why this process breaks down in people with chronic itch disorders. The findings were presented at the 70th Biophysical Society Annual Meeting.

Researchers from the laboratory of Roberta Gualdani at the University of Louvain in Brussels identified an unexpected role for a molecule known as TRPV4 in itch triggered by mechanical stimulation, such as scratching.

“We were initially studying TRPV4 in the context of pain,” Gualdani explained. “But instead of a pain phenotype, what emerged very clearly was a disruption of itch, specifically, how scratching behavior is regulated.”

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Democrat Gov. Tim Walz is facing mounting scrutiny after Vice President JD Vance confirmed that federal authorities are investigating whether Minnesota officials failed to properly respond to massive fraud allegations tied to taxpayer-funded programs across the state.

The investigation follows a sweeping federal operation carried out across the Minneapolis area late last month.

FBI agents and federal investigators executed more than 20 search warrants targeting businesses connected to child care services, autism treatment programs, and other publicly funded operations.

Federal officials say the probe centers on allegations involving fraudulent Medicaid reimbursements, abuse of state and federal child care assistance programs, and broader misuse of taxpayer dollars.

Trump administration officials have suggested the total amount under investigation could ultimately reach into the billions.

“[Minnesota is] under investigation by our great vice president,” President Donald Trump said Wednesday.

“They’re finding a lot.”

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Just days after a recent Supreme Court ruling against unconstitutional race-based gerrymandering, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) has announced that it will enforce the decision nationwide.

Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division Harmeet Dhillon told Just the News, “This is the law of the land now, and eventually every jurisdiction in the United States is going to have to comply with race-free line-drawing.”

Last week, Supreme Court justices ruled 6–3 in Louisiana v. Callais that the state’s newly redrawn congressional map relied “too heavily on race” in creating a second majority-black district in the state.

That decision is expected to affect states with maps drawn to heavily favor Democrats, including California, New York, Colorado, Illinois, Connecticut, Maryland, Minnesota, Oregon, Washington, and Virginia.

Many of these states have enacted their own Voting Rights Acts, which explicitly use race as a predominant factor in determining districts.

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The Department of Justice is still searching for answers about what happened in the 2020 presidential election.

The DOJ has filed a subpoena seeking the names of every election worker involved in the 2020 presidential election.

The subpoena also requests information about all volunteers who assisted Fulton County election staffers.

NBC News had the full scoop on the DOJ’s move and covered the Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections’ response:

The Justice Department is seeking the names and contact information of election workers in Fulton County, Georgia, who worked during the 2020 presidential election, according to legal filings.

The Justice Department filed a subpoena in April to try to force the Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections to release the names, addresses and contact information for 2020 election staff members and volunteers. The grand jury subpoena was made public Monday as the Fulton County board urged a judge to quash it. The New York Times was first to report the subpoena.

The subpoena marks an expanded effort by the Justice Department to investigate the 2020 election, which President Donald Trump has continued to focus on since he lost there.

Reached for comment, Fulton County Chairman Robb Pitts said that “the federal government once again is attempting to misuse criminal process.”