Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul pressed the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) Wednesday on why the agency is weaponizing watchlists to spy on political dissidents as terrorists.

In a letter to TSA Administrator David Pekoske, Paul cited recent whistleblower reports disclosing the transportation agency’s surveillance of former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, and the wife of a federal air marshal through the Quiet Skies program.

“Taken together, these incidents seem to be part of a broader pattern in which TSA has repurposed Quiet Skies to surveil individuals based on their political activities, even when there is no evidence of wrongdoing,” Paul wrote.

The whistleblower protection group, Empower Oversight, sent letters to the inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security earlier this month detailing the accusations of misconduct. According to a protected disclosure from a whistleblower whose own wife was “improperly labeled a ‘domestic terrorist,’” the U.S. Federal Air Marshals Service (FAMS) “was improperly targeting individuals for enhanced surveillance” including Gabbard. The whistleblower’s wife was investigated under FAMS “Special Mission Coverage” because “she attended President Donald Trump’s January 6, 2021 speech at the ellipse in Washington D.C.”

“She was nowhere near the U.S. Capitol complex that day, yet her FAMS file falsely stated she ‘unlawfully entered the United States Capitol Building on [Jan. 6, 2021],’” the recent letter read.

“Ultimately, the whistleblower was able to work with the FBI to have his wife’s name removed from the terror watchlist in the spring of 2023,” the letter continued. “Yet clearing his own

President Joe Biden announced four years ago that then-Sen. Kamala Harris was put on the ticket because she’s a black woman. So naturally, the first female vice president now running to accomplish what Hillary Clinton couldn’t in 2016 is eager to capitalize on the stardom that comes with being a “first.”

While Democrats court minority voters with segregated outreach sessions at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Chicago this week, former President Donald Trump is on a swing-state tour campaigning through the most competitive battleground regions of the Midwest. On Tuesday, the Republican nominee made a stop in the Detroit suburb of Howell, Michigan, a city in a reliably red county surrounded by blue votes that Republicans obviously hope to flip in November.

Trump’s event on “crime and safety,” however, according to the Harris campaign, isn’t just a “dog whistle” from the Republican, but a “bullhorn.”

Alyssa Bradley, the Harris campaign’s Michigan communications director, condemned Trump for “choosing to rally in a town that was historically known as ‘the KKK capital of Michigan.’” Trump was asked about the charge of white supremacy related to the presence of area extremists at the tail end of Tuesday’s event. The former president responded by asking the reporter a question of his own.

“Who was here in 2021?” Trump said.

“Joe Biden,” she answered.

“Thank you,” Trump responded before walking off.

Reporter: Kamala attacked you for being in Howell, Michigan because it’s associated with white supremacy.

Trump: “Who was here in

If you were to watch “Moneyball” today, you might find it quaint. You may recall the premise: In a world before “data-driven decisions” was a cliché, a likable nerd played by Jonah Hill helps craft a baseball roster from a spreadsheet, beating out better-funded teams who still rely on traditional scouts. These old-school baseball types are stuck in the past – more concerned with a player’s jawline and how the ball “explodes off his bat” rather than on-base percentage and hard statistics.

Fifteen years later, algorithms have taken over everything from baseball to politics to research, and the shortcomings of “software eating the world” are becoming more obvious. Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign is built on vibes and being “brat,” instead of well-articulated policies. Despite our access to information and powerful modeling software, there is an ongoing replication crisis for scientific studies. Our social media feeds are targeted and addictive, but ultimately immiserating.

Enter Nate Silver, the statistician, political forecaster, and poker player. His new book, On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything, is much more nuanced than “Moneyball,” eschewing the worship of data geeks and their denigration of human cognition. Instead, he uses poker to illustrate how to live in a modern, complex world. Statistical models have raised the game, but the best players combine these probabilities with their own human intuition to make the optimal play.

The River and The Village

To most people, Nate Silver builds election models. He came to prominence for predicting all 50 states