Michigan First: Exposing America’s Islamists, State by State - Gregg Roman

 

by Gregg Roman

In their own words, on their own video, Michigan Islamist preachers curse America and pray for jihad. Their institutions took $47.4 million in public money.

 

Michigan Islamist preachers have cursed America and prayed for jihad on video their own institutions posted online.

“So my respected brothers and sisters, I request you, as Muslims living here in America, in the house of Shaitan, in the house of Firaun, do the part of Musa Alayhis Salatu Was Salaam. Reclaim the narrative.” That was said from the pulpit of the Islamic Center of Detroit in a sermon posted January 10, 2025. Shaitan is Satan; Firaun is Pharaoh. The country in question is ours.

It is not one pulpit. At Light of Guidance in Dearborn, a speaker declared in a video posted June 5, 2020: “Today, the fall of the great Satan has begun. All across the world, the empire crumbles. A new light is shining as the arrival of the promised leader manifests itself.” Another told parents in a video posted December 15, 2023: “How are you and I able to raise believing children in the belly of the beast so that they grow up warriors for the Mahdi? Right here, the belly of the beast.”

That is how these pulpits speak about America. Here is how they pray.

At the Islamic Center of Detroit, in a video posted May 9, 2025, a speaker prayed: “O Allah, deal with Netanyahu, his soldiers, and his minions, for they cannot escape You. O Allah, count them one by one and kill them individually, leaving none of them. O Allah, we place You against them and seek refuge in You from their evils, O Lord of the worlds.” At the Islamic Center of East Lansing, in a Ramadan night prayer posted March 27, 2025: “O Allah, deal with those who besieged them. O Allah, deal with the aggressor Jews. O Allah, count them in number and kill them dispersed, and leave not one of them.” At the American Moslem Society in Dearborn, in a video posted April 24, 2026, a speaker asked: “O Allah, grant victory to our brothers the mujahideen in Palestine, and grant victory to our brothers the mujahideen in every region of the regions of the earth, O Lord of the worlds. O Allah, let us live upon jihad in Your path and cause us to die upon martyrdom in Your path.” At the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn, in a video posted May 27, 2026, a speaker urged worshippers “to pray for the mujahideen for victory and steadfastness, for after God, the reliance is upon them, upon their arms, and upon their strike is our hope.”

Those are prayers for killing and for holy war, said aloud in Michigan and posted by the institutions themselves. The translations from Arabic are the Forum’s; the site shows the original beside each.

The Money

The Islamic Center of Detroit is where the words, the money, and the officials meet. It has taken $45,029,009 in public money across 26 items. Of that, $43,748,952 is school-meal reimbursement, reported by the Michigan Department of Education to the federal government; the largest single item is $31,006,670. The center also received two federal refugee subawards passed through the state, $500,000 in 2025 and $500,000 in 2026, and two Nonprofit Security Grant subawards from the Department of Homeland Security, also passed through the state: $150,000 in 2023 and $89,100 in 2020.

Those are prayers for killing and for holy war, said aloud in Michigan and posted by the institutions themselves.

The security grants deserve a second look. Congress built that program to protect houses of worship from terrorism. Jewish congregations in Michigan apply to it because of threats against them. Of the institutions whose words are on the site, eight took $2,080,350 from it: Islamic Association of Greater Detroit, $450,000; Islamic Organization of North America, $450,000; Flint Islamic Center, $300,000; Islamic Center of Detroit, $239,100; Muslim Unity Center, $195,000; Rayyan Center, $150,000; Masjid Umar bin Khattab, $150,000; Islamic Center of America, $146,250.

Across the state, the Middle East Forum found $47,357,044.59 in public money paid to 12 of these institutions across 49 items, not counting pandemic-era loans.

The Officials

Public officials have lent these institutions their offices. The Wayne County Commission took up a testimonial resolution honoring the Islamic Center of Detroit’s 25th anniversary on December 2, 2025. The East Lansing City Council passed its fourth resolution honoring Ramadan on March 5, 2024, in solidarity with the community the Islamic Center of East Lansing serves. The mayor of Warren cut the ribbon on the Islamic Organization of North America’s soup kitchen on August 24, 2022. The site lists 30 official acts at the Islamic House of Wisdom alone, including mayors at its iftar dinners. In all, 41 public officials and public bodies attended, spoke at, honored, or funded these institutions in 63 acts.

Why It Matters

This is not a story about one mosque or one bad Friday. It is a pattern of institutions that tell children they are being raised in “the belly of the beast,” pray for “the mujahideen,” and ask God to kill Jews one by one, while drawing on federal, state, and local money and the prestige of public office.

Americans may worship as they wish. The First Amendment protects the sermon, but it does not oblige the taxpayer to fund the institution, or the mayor to honor it, without knowing what is said there. Officials who hand out school-meal money, security grants, and testimonial resolutions have a duty to know whom they serve and whom they reward.

The First Amendment protects the sermon, but it does not oblige the taxpayer to fund the institution, or the mayor to honor it, without knowing what is said there.

The first victims of this preaching are Muslims who want no part of it: reformers shouted down at their own mosques, and parents who would rather their children hear about mercy than about martyrdom. Holding these pulpits to account takes their side.

The Plan

Michigan is first. It will not be the last.

The Forum has published 928 statements from 36 Michigan institutions at Michigan’s Islamist Pulpits. Every statement is linked to the original video at the moment it was said. Every translated passage shows the original Arabic or Urdu beside the English. Every dollar links to the paying agency’s data, so any reader can open the award. We asked each institution for comment before publication and publish replies on its page.

Next, we take the same method to every state where Islamist institutions take public money and host public officials. One state at a time, in their own words, on video.

But officials and agencies can act now:

• The Michigan Department of Education should publish the Islamic Center of Detroit’s current school-meal sponsor agreement and its most recent administrative review, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture should say whether it has reviewed the state’s oversight of that sponsor.
• The Michigan State Police should state whether its Nonprofit Security Grant review weighs an applicant’s own published calls for killing, and whether any institution on the site has an application pending.
• The state’s Office of Global Michigan should release the scope of work and performance reports for both refugee subawards to the Islamic Center of Detroit.
• Every mayor, council, and county commission that honored these institutions should watch the videos and say plainly whether these words speak for the people they serve.

The words are the institutions’ own. The money is the public’s. Both are now in one place: testimony.meforum.org. 

Gregg Roman is the executive director of the Middle East Forum. In 2014, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency named him one of the “ten most inspiring global Jewish leaders,” and he previously served as the political advisor to Israel’s deputy foreign minister and worked for the Israeli Ministry of Defense. A frequent speaker on Middle East affairs, Mr. Roman has testified before Congress and the Knesset and appears on international news channels such as Fox News, i24NEWS, Al Jazeera, BBC World News, and Israel’s Channels 12 and 13. He studied national security and political communications at American University and the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya and has contributed to The Hill, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, the Miami Herald, and the Jerusalem Post.

Source: https://www.meforum.org/mef-online/michigan-first-exposing-americas-islamists-state-by-state

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Sovereignty or Submission? Poland’s Battle Against the Eurocrats - Roger Kimball

 

by Roger Kimball

What is a stake in this ongoing confrontation? Writ large, it is the choice between Polish sovereignty and Polish submission to the globalist agenda of the EU.

 

 

The governing question pertaining to the attempted coup d’état in Poland Friday night was neatly expressed in the title of John Fonte’s brilliant 2011 book: Sovereignty or Submission? Fonte was writing about America. Would Americans, he wanted to know, be ruled by themselves? Or would they be ruled by others? In other words, who governs? The people or the unelected bureaucrats? It is one of the central political questions of our times, as applicable to Europe, Australia, Canada, and South America as it is to the United States.

Increasingly, it seems, the answer is “the bureaucrats.” Just a week ago, Brazil went through an extremely dodgy election in which a last-minute, illegal extension of voting yielded the Communist Lula da Silva a victory over Flávio Bolsonaro. The EU was pleased by, and perhaps contributed to, the outcome. Or consider what happened in Hungary. In May, Péter Magyar defeated Viktor Orbán. Magyar moved quickly to ban his opponents from ever running again and even started legal proceedings against some. In Germany, the AfD is wildly popular with the people, but not with the ruling party or the commissars in the EU. Hence, it is subject to unending harassment and may be banned altogether. In France, Marine Le Pen was put under house arrest and required to wear an electronic ankle monitor. In Romania, when the “wrong” candidate ran, the election was cancelled, and the winner was banned from running. This is what Ursula von der Leyen, president of the EU, means by “democracy”: submission to the diktats of the European Union.

In Poland, the usual mold may be being broken. As I write, we are still in a fog-of-war situation. Many things have been tossed up into the air. It is not entirely clear where they all will land.

A little background. Poland is a parliamentary republic with a prime minister and a president. The former is head of the government and handles the day-to-day executive functions. The latter is head of state and handles foreign policy and higher-level executive functions and is commander-in-chief of the armed forces. He also has the power to veto legislation and appoint judges. The prime minister since 2023 has been Donald Tusk, an EU poodle and liberal authoritarian. The president since 2025 is Karol Nawrocki, an anti-EU, Poland-first populist who wants Poland to keep its own currency, have control of its borders, and sharply limit immigration.

Here’s what happened. On Friday night, Nawrocki departed on an official trip to Senegal. His plane was over Spain when he received word that Tusk had unilaterally suspended some duly appointed judges and other officials, elevated a judge loyal to him to the chief spot, and called in riot police to surround Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal. Here’s an abbreviated timeline put together by one knowledgeable observer:

1. The left-wing Prime Minister Donald Tusk attempted to appoint eight judges to the Constitutional Court, although he was only allowed to appoint three.

2. The right-conservative President Karol Nawrocki administered the oath of office only to three judges, as prescribed by law.

3. Tusk organized a parallel swearing-in for the other five by administering the oath to them himself, although the constitution stipulates that only the president may do this.

4. Nawrocki left the country for a scheduled trip to Senegal.

5. One of the judges illegally sworn in by Tusk ordered the removal of the President of the Court, the right-conservative Bogdan Święczkowski.

6. Tusk ordered the police to block access to the court and thus deny entry to the President of the Supreme Court.

7. Nawrocki interrupted his trip and returned to Poland in haste.

8. In the night to Friday, he personally positioned himself in front of the court building and struggled with the police to gain access.

9. Once he was in the court building, he removed the five judges illegally sworn in by Tusk and granted the President of the Supreme Court access to his office.

What is at stake in this ongoing confrontation? Writ large, it is the choice between Polish sovereignty and Polish submission to the globalist agenda of the EU. Dominik Tarczyński, a Polish Member of the European Parliament, summarized the situation and the stakes very well:

In Poland, we have a liberal-left government led by Donald Tusk, who is the Prime Minister. What is happening right now with the Constitutional Tribunal is that they want to take it over and fill it with their own people.

Why? Because they want to get rid of the Polish currency, bring us into the eurozone, and eliminate our secure borders. They are being pushed by the Germans, who want to spread the burden of illegal migration and send migrants to Poland.

First of all, the Polish złoty is our constitutionally protected currency. They have to change the Constitution to replace it, and without the Constitutional Tribunal, they cannot do that.

So, number one, they want to get rid of our currency and force us to adopt the euro and join the eurozone. Then they want to take our gold reserves, the largest in the European Union, to Frankfurt, to the European Central Bank, which is a German-based institution.

They also want to open our borders. And they want to make sure that when they lose the next elections, which are coming next year, the Constitutional Tribunal will be unable to do anything to stop their actions or reverse what they have done.

There are many more reasons, but I want you to understand one thing: they are under German influence. They are globalists, and we are fighting not just for Poland but for Europe.

A natural question is, why now? Why are we seeing all these anti-democratic initiatives being mounted under the guise of “saving democracy” just now? I think this chap got to the nub of the answer:

Because the globalist project is losing its grip. They lost the media war: people get their information elsewhere, compare, verify, and no longer trust the official line. They lost the trust of the people. And the countries that are bouncing back, the ones finding their energy, their birth rates, their pride again, are precisely the ones that understood that the Brussels machine, as it runs today, is not the cure but the disease. Poles elected Nawrocki against the system’s candidate. The message was clear.

Judging from a statement issued Saturday by President Nawrocki, order seems to be in the process of being restored. There are calls for an immediate vote of no confidence and the removal of the ruling apparat. Perhaps that will happen. As I say, the situation in Poland is fluid, and the authoritarian forces represented by people like Donald Tusk have been stymied but not yet defeated. Poland is lucky to have a strong, patriotic, and effective leader like Karol Nawrocki. But the battle there is but a single front in a much larger war for legitimacy.  

Photo: A pin depicting Poland's President Karol Nawrocki is seen on a protester's jacket during a rally outside the headquarters of Poland's Constitutional Court in Warsaw on October 31, 2026, after police blocked access to the building. Poland's President Karol Nawrocki called off a visit to Africa in mid-flight as riot police deployed around the country's constitutional court on October 30 following the suspension of its chief justice in a battle between the centrist government and the nationalist right. Dozens of police guarded the entrance to the court as followers of the opposition right-wing Law and Justice party (PiS) protested the ousting of constitutional court president Bogdan Swieczkowski. (Photo by Sergei GAPON / AFP via Getty Images)

Roger Kimball is editor and publisher of The New Criterion and the president and publisher of Encounter Books. He is the author and editor of many books, including The Fortunes of Permanence: Culture and Anarchy in an Age of Amnesia (St. Augustine's Press), The Rape of the Masters (Encounter), Lives of the Mind: The Use and Abuse of Intelligence from Hegel to Wodehouse (Ivan R. Dee), and Art's Prospect: The Challenge of Tradition in an Age of Celebrity (Ivan R. Dee). Most recently, he edited and contributed to Where Next? Western Civilization at the Crossroads (Encounter) and contributed to Against the Great Reset: Eighteen Theses Contra the New World Order (Bombardier).

Source: https://amgreatness.com/2026/11/01/sovereignty-or-submission-polands-battle-against-the-eurocrats/

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The West Bank is the historic heartland of the Jewish people - Aliza Pilichowski

 

by Aliza Pilichowski

Jewish history and international legal instruments underpin Israel’s claim to Judea and Samaria, while past withdrawals raise questions about territorial concessions.

 

Jewish visitors walk near the separation barrier at Rachel’s Tomb, near the West Bank city of Bethlehem, ahead of the annual Hilula commemorating the death of the biblical matriarch Rachel, October 20, 2026.

(photo credit: YONATAN SINDEL/FLASH90)

 

I live in Mitzpe Yeriho in the Judean Desert, 20 minutes northeast of Jerusalem. From the windows of my home, I watch the sunset over the same hills that fill the pages of the Bible.

Jews have maintained a continuous presence and an unbroken claim on this land for more than 3,000 years. The names “Judea and Samaria” come from the Jewish kingdoms that rose and fell here. Archaeological layers, inscriptions, and ancient texts document Jewish towns, farms, and religious life across these hills long before the modern era.

The region formed the core of Jewish national life in antiquity, and Jewish communities returned to it whenever external rulers permitted.

The claim that Judea and Samaria constitute Palestinian land rests on a history assembled largely in the 20th century. Arab families lived here under Ottoman rule and later under the British Mandate, yet the notion of a distinct Palestinian nation holding exclusive title to these specific hills developed mainly after the 1948 War of Independence, and especially after the 1967 Six Day War.

Earlier Arab and Islamic sources described the area as part of broader provincial territories under successive empires. They did not treat it as the sovereign territory of a separate Palestinian people.

A general view of houses in the Israeli settlement of Maale Adumim in the West Bank (credit: AMMAR AWAD / REUTERS)

Jewish communities existed in Hebron, Gush Etzion, and other sites before the 1948 war, and Jewish legal and historical claims were recognized in the San Remo Conference and the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine. Treating the land as Palestinian by default ignores that longer record, and substitutes a recent political narrative for the documented past.

Critics of Jewish construction can point to political controversy. International organizations dispute the legal status of the territory. Diplomats and legal scholars debate the application of the Fourth Geneva Convention, the relevance of the British Mandate, and the effect of later resolutions.

Those debates are real, and they produce competing arguments about sovereignty and settlement policy. They do not convert the historical and legal record into exclusive Palestinian ownership. The strongest position available to opponents is that the status remains contested and that further construction complicates diplomacy.

That position leaves the underlying Jewish connection intact and does not establish that the land is Palestinian property as a matter of fact or settled law. The assumption that the area is definitively Palestinian land therefore lacks foundation in the continuous evidence of Jewish presence and in the international instruments that followed World War I.

Israel must state its connection to Judea and Samaria without apology or qualification, and every advocate for Israel must do the same. The region is the historic heartland of the Jewish people.

Acknowledging that fact does not dictate every future border arrangement or every negotiating tactic. It does prevent the gradual surrender of principle that begins when the center of the homeland is treated as optional.

Once public discourse accepts that the heartland can be conceded, later generations face mounting pressure to treat the coastal plain and the rest of the country as negotiable as well. Claims expand once the first concession is granted in principle, and the political cost of defending remaining territory rises with each successive retreat.

Israel's territorial succession in Gaza

The Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 supplies the clearest recent demonstration of what follows from territorial concessions. Israel removed every soldier and every civilian community. The territory was left without an Israeli presence. 

Hamas then governed the area, constructed tunnels and rocket infrastructure, and launched the October 7, 2023 attack that killed more than 1,200 people and took 251 as hostages. The land transferred in the name of peace became a platform for a larger massacre.

Earlier Israeli withdrawals, and the repeated rejection of partition proposals, produced similar results. Territory relinquished did not generate security or mutual recognition. It generated the conditions for further attacks.

The pattern is consistent enough that future decisions must account for it rather than assume that the next transfer of land will produce a different outcome.

I raise my children and grandchildren on these hills. I serve as mayor of a growing town that did not displace any prior residents. Archaeological evidence shows the site was uninhabited until the late 1970s.

Families here build homes, open businesses, and bring up children in a place the world often labels temporary. The daily life I observe does not match the narrative of an exclusively Palestinian territory whose Jewish residents exist only as obstacles.

The same hills contain ancient Jewish sites and modern Jewish communities side by side. That reality is visible to anyone who travels the roads between Jerusalem and the Jordan Valley.

Public discussion frequently treats Jewish construction as the primary obstacle to any future arrangement. That framing overlooks the repeated refusal of Palestinian leadership to accept Jewish sovereignty anywhere between the river and the sea, and it overlooks the concrete results of past withdrawals.

The October 7 massacre occurred years after Israel left Gaza. The lesson is not abstract. Land given away under the expectation of quiet became the base for the largest single-day killing of Jews since the Holocaust. Any advocate who softens the description of Judea and Samaria as Jewish land makes the next concession easier to demand and harder to resist.

The historical record, the legal instruments that recognized Jewish rights, and the practical outcomes of previous withdrawals all point in the same direction. Judea and Samaria is the historic Jewish heartland. Palestinian national claims to exclusive ownership of it were constructed after the fact.

Political and legal arguments against further Jewish building can be made, and they deserve a hearing. They do not establish that the land is Palestinian by right or by settled title. Israel and its supporters can state the connection clearly. Doing so protects the integrity of the argument for the rest of the country, and accounts for the evidence that concessions of territory have not produced peace.

The writer is a certified interfaith hospice chaplain in Jerusalem and the mayor of Mitzpe Yeriho. 

Aliza Pilichowski

Source: https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-913024

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Trump election integrity push aims to clean up midterms with poll watchers, other measures - Amanda Head

 

by Amanda Head

Who threatens democracy? Both parties claim the high ground, but shenanigans from both sides of the aisle, from opposition research to intentionally confusing names on ballots, Democrats and Republicans alike argue that a lot is at stake in these midterms.

 

With the midterm elections days away, the Justice Department is preparing what officials call the largest DOJ election observer effort in history. It caps an 18-month campaign by the Trump administration to put citizenship verification and ballot security at the center of how Americans vote.

The push has spanned executive orders, a revamped federal database, grant conditions and legislation. Officials say all of it aims at one goal: making sure only eligible citizens vote. Courts have hamstrung — or thwarted, depending on your point of view --  several of the measures, but others are already shaping how some states run their elections.

DOJ Election Monitors

The most visible pieces arrive on Election Day. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon announced in August that the Justice Department plans to send about 1,000 election monitors across the country in November. 

That is up sharply from roughly 289 in 2022 and 714 in 2024. Attorney General Todd Blanche has said the number could top 1,000, with monitors in every state.

Dhillon has said the Department of Justice has no plans to interfere with the process and that jurisdictions led by both parties have largely cooperated. Critics point out that monitors have historically focused on voting-rights violations, while this year's emphasis is election security. 

The department has said FBI and ICE employees will not serve as monitors.

Election Conditions on FEMA Grants

Earlier in the summer, the administration used federal grants to encourage states to adopt federally laid-out priorities. 

In June, FEMA tied more than $1 billion in Homeland Security grants were directed towards  election measures such as hand-marked paper ballots, 5% post-election audits and elements in the not-yet-passed SAVE citizenship checks of registered voters. Twenty percent of each award would be held back until a state complied. The agency said the requirements would preserve election integrity.

On September 28, Federal District Court Judge Amir Ali of the District of Columbia ruled that Congress had not authorized the conditions and vacated them along with the holdback. The ruling addressed only the grant conditions, not the reforms themselves, so states remain free to adopt them on their own. The DOJ appealed the ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. 

The administration continues to seek a stay pending appeal at the circuit level, arguing that FEMA maintains broad discretion over the Homeland Security Grant Program. However, Judge Ali's injunction blocking the rule remains fully in effect while the D.C. Circuit considers the matter.

The March 2026 Executive Order also enjoined

The administration's most ambitious move on voting by mail came on March 31, when Trump signed a second election order. It directs DHS and the Social Security Administration to give states lists of citizens eligible to vote, and tasks the Postal Service with writing rules for mail ballots. 

Under those rules, states would submit lists of mail voters and use ballot envelopes approved by the Postal Service.

The Postal Service finalized its rule in late August. However, a September 4 injunction blocks its mandatory sections through the November 3 election. 

The rule remains in place for later elections while the First Circuit weighs the case. The Supreme Court declined to lift the injunction.

The Push for the SAVE America Act

In Congress, the administration has championed the SAVE America Act, which would require photo ID to vote and proof of citizenship to register. The House passed the bill on February 11, 2026. Trump made it his top legislative priority and pressed Senate Republicans to scrap the filibuster to pass it.

The bill has stalled in the Senate. In April, an effort to attach it to the reconciliation package fell short, 48-50, with several Republicans voting no. 

Supporters say it will keep noncitizens from voting, while opponents argue it would restrict how Americans register and vote.

DOJ Demands for State Voter Rolls

The Justice Department has also tried to check state voter rolls directly. It asked nearly every state for complete, unredacted voter lists, including Social Security numbers and birth dates. Eighteen states, mostly Republican-led, agreed, and the department checked their data against the tenets of the SAVE Act.

DOJ sued the 30 states and D.C. that declined, but 27 of those cases have been dismissed. On October 9, a federal court ruled that the policy exceeded the department's authority and violated the Privacy Act, and vacated it nationwide. 

DOJ says it is reviewing that ruling.

Overhauling the SAVE Database

The administration's most overarching achievement may be its overhaul of the SAVE citizenship database. The March 2025 order directed DHS and the Social Security Administration to build a system for verifying the citizenship of both new registrants and existing voters. The upgraded SAVE lets election officials check voters in bulk.

A judge found in June that the system violated privacy laws. On September 25, the Supreme Court sided 6-3 with the administration and put that ruling on hold. States decide whether to use SAVE, and federal law bars systematic purges within 90 days of an election. Some states are already using it. Utah sent federal-only ballots to more than 4,000 flagged voters who didn't respond to notices, and about 47,000 Arizona voters are classified as federal-only.

It all began with Trump's executive order of March 25, 2025, which sought to require proof of citizenship to vote, mandate paper ballots and count only mail ballots arriving by Election Day. In October 2025, Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ruled the citizenship directive unconstitutional and permanently barred it from being added to the federal registration form. 

The high court, reversing Kollar-Kotelly's decision, said that the district court's decision blocking use of the expanded database, including for individualized inquiries, "inhibits the Federal Government's efforts to assist state and local agencies in the proper administration of the midterm elections." 

In January, she permanently blocked two more citizenship provisions, saying in part that agencies will not be allowed to "assess citizenship" before providing a federal voter registration form to people enrolling in public assistance programs. 

Separate lawsuits by Democratic attorneys general and by Oregon and Washington have blocked other parts. The White House says it expects to prevail in the end.

Amanda Head is White House Correspondent for Just the News. You can follow her here.

Source: https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/election-integrity-efforts-trump-admin-purify-midterms-poll-watchers

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FBI says North Korea behind theft of $6 billion in crypto assets from Binance - John Solomon

 

by John Solomon

The FBI said law enforcement has observed actors involved in the heist “converting stolen assets primarily into Ethereum.”

 

The FBI declared Saturday that North Korea carried out the heist of $6 billion in assets from the Binance cryptocurrency exchange, a security incident that has rocked the digital money world.

"The FBI is releasing information advising the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) was responsible for the theft of more than $6 billion USD in virtual assets from cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, on or about October 29, 2026," the bureau said. "The FBI refers to this specific North Korean malicious cyber activity as "TraderTraitor."

The FBI said law enforcement "has observed TraderTraitor actors converting stolen assets primarily into Ethereum (ETH).

"It is expected these assets will then be further laundered by converting them using DeFi and instant swap services as they prepare them for further laundering stages," it added.

The bureau made public the internet addresses of those involved in the alleged laundering and urged private players in the cryptocurrency to block their transactions. 

John Solomon

Source: https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/cybersecurity/fbi-says-north-korea-behind-theft-6-billion-crypto-assets-binance

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When religion becomes law: Iran’s warning before America votes - Elham Sataki

 

by Elham Sataki

Legislators will change come Nov. 3. That prompts the question: What limits must government respect, regardless of who wins?

 

A “Woman Life Freedom” sign in Paris during a demonstration in support of the Iranian uprising against the Islamic regime, Jan. 17, 2026. Photo by Daniel Perron/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images.

The most consequential political decision of my childhood was one I never had the chance to make. In 1979, I was a girl in Iran, watching a revolution reorder the country whose future would become my own. I had no vote, no influence over the men promising liberation, and no way to imagine how thoroughly their victory would shape the lives of women like me.

Forty-seven years later, as Americans prepare for the Nov. 3 midterm elections, I return to that childhood not to predict another Iran, but to explain a distinction no free society can afford to forget: the difference between protecting religion and allowing religion to govern the rights of others.

Iran’s revolution brought together liberals, nationalists, leftists, Islamists and ordinary citizens opposed to the monarchy. Their aspirations were not identical. Some wanted independence, others justice, others democracy. Yet from those competing ambitions emerged a system in which Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s interpretation of religious authority acquired supremacy over elected institutions. Under velayat-e faqih, the guardianship of the Islamic jurist, the state claimed an authority that ordinary citizens could neither meaningfully challenge nor freely reject.

The tragedy was not simply that political promises went unfulfilled. It was that the state acquired the power to define obedience as virtue and dissent as transgression. The language of faith became the machinery of government. Personal conscience, which should belong to every human being, became a matter for police, prosecutors and judges.

Americans sometimes speak of Sharia law as though it were a single rulebook embraced uniformly by the world’s Muslims. It is not. Islamic traditions encompass varied schools of jurisprudence, practices and political convictions. Countless Muslims defend secular government, equal citizenship and freedom of conscience. To confuse their faith with the coercive ideology of Iran’s rulers would be both inaccurate and unjust.

But acknowledging this diversity cannot excuse the laws the Islamic Republic actually enforces. Iran’s penal code assigns different evidentiary weight to male and female witnesses in specified proceedings. Its traditional rules on diya, financial compensation for death or injury, distinguish between men and women, even though later reforms have addressed some payment disparities. A woman’s legal standing should never depend upon an arithmetic of gender.

The code also prescribes 80 lashes for consuming alcohol, retains stoning as a statutory punishment for certain adultery convictions and imposes punishments that can include death for specified consensual sexual acts between men. Those who leave Islam face serious risks under laws and judicial interpretations used against religious dissent, although apostasy is not separately codified as an offense. These are not hypothetical controversies in a seminar on theology. They concern bodies, families, liberty and lives.

Freedom requires more than the exhilaration of a political victory.

For Iranian women, the most visible assertion of religious power has been the compulsory hijab. Enforcement has fluctuated, and many courageous women now publicly defy the mandate. Yet the legal requirement has not disappeared. A government that claims the right to decide how a woman must dress has crossed a boundary that cannot be defended merely by invoking tradition or religious conviction.

Consider the terror that gripped Isfahan in 2014. Acid attacks against women shocked the country and prompted public protests. The attackers’ motives were never conclusively established; the crimes must not be presented as proven enforcement of a religious rule. Yet the fear unfolded against a political climate in which officials had long treated women’s clothing as a public matter demanding state control. That context cannot be ignored.

This is why I insist upon separating Islam, a religion practiced by individuals, from political Islam, a spectrum of movements seeking to give religious ideas political authority. Those movements differ profoundly; participation in democratic politics is not equivalent to advocacy of theocracy. Nor does a Muslim candidate’s identity disclose anything reliable about that candidate’s constitutional commitments. Religious affiliation is not evidence of a political program.

The proper questions are about law and power. Does a candidate accept the Constitution as the supreme law of the United States? Will that candidate protect the equal citizenship of women and men, believers and nonbelievers, religious minorities and LGBTQ Americans? Will the right to criticize a religion, leave it or practice no religion remain protected? Will private consensual behavior be judged by civil law and constitutional rights, rather than an imposed theology?

These questions apply across religions and parties. A Christian officeholder who seeks to impose religious restrictions on other people’s liberties deserves the same scrutiny as a Muslim officeholder proposing comparable laws. The American promise is not that government privileges the right religion. It is that government protects the rights of people who believe differently.

Endorsements should not obscure that test. Whether a candidate is praised by former President Barack Obama, Republican leaders or another powerful public figure, voters deserve to know what the candidate has said, proposed and done. It is legislation, constitutional principle and public accountability—not slogans or insinuations about someone’s identity—that should guide serious scrutiny.

Israel’s Oct. 27 election has also brought questions of national security, religious influence and democratic governance into sharp public view. Israel and the United States have distinct histories, institutions and political disputes. Neither country should be treated as a replica of Iran. Yet each confronts the enduring challenge of ensuring that political authority remains accountable even when leaders invoke history, faith or national destiny.

On Nov. 3, Americans will elect a new U.S. House of Representatives, part of the Senate, and numerous state and local officials. They will disagree about immigration, taxes, national security, education and countless other issues. Such disagreements are the ordinary substance of democracy. Beneath them lies a more lasting question: What limits must government respect, regardless of who wins?

I think often of the children of 1979. The adults disputed ideology and power. The children inherited institutions they had not chosen and restrictions they could not vote away. I was one of them. That is why this subject is not an abstraction to me or an invitation to fear one’s Muslim neighbors. It is a plea to recognize that religious liberty includes freedom from religious compulsion.

The lesson of Iran is not that America is destined to repeat our history. It is that freedom requires more than the exhilaration of a political victory. It requires laws that protect conscience against those who claim a sacred exemption from accountability.

Democracy is not measured only by the ballots counted on election night. It is measured by the liberties that remain secure the morning after. 

Elham Sataki is an Iranian-American journalist and political analyst with more than two decades of experience in international media. Her work focuses on Iran, Middle Eastern affairs, human rights and geopolitics.

Source: https://www.jns.org/opinion/elham-sataki/when-religion-becomes-law-irans-warning-before-america-votes

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The Left’s Century of Moral Lectures, Failed Policies, and Manufactured Virtue - Spyridon Andrews

 

by Spyridon Andrews

There has never been a time in our history when so many of our people have literally hated their country and who now seem willing to abandon our basic foundational principles.

 

Everyone has at least a couple of friends or family members like this. They go into rants about Donald Trump and throw anything they can against the wall—usually without evidence—and then elevate themselves to some kind of higher moral ground from which they look down on you as a war criminal or someone who uses grape jam instead of raspberry preserves or something worse. Then comes the usual line about how disappointed they are, or how you are the only one in their circle who voted for Trump. “How could you?” Then they get in their BMW 9000 and drive off in a huff.

In fact, the Left has spent over a century portraying itself as the paradigm of virtue and sophistication, progress, and all that is right and good in the world. “Tolerance” used to be a word they threw around until they stopped being tolerant and moved on to their latest moral crusade. The Left has adopted politics as its new religion, along with a strange form of “scientism,” which consists largely of selectively choosing which facts to emphasize and which to ignore. There probably are not more than a handful of leftists who understand that science developed out of wonder about the universe and that the first “science,” as it were, was cosmology. God was never viewed as antithetical to science, and many early Enlightenment scientists were pastors. But I digress. I am here to talk about the Left’s obnoxious addiction to moral preening and the distortion of facts that serves that purpose.

We could go back to Karl Marx or even the Jacobins—that tolerant and incredibly moral bunch that sent thousands of innocents to the guillotine. But for today we are going to begin with Democratic President Woodrow Wilson. One fun fact about Wilson is that during the final phase of his presidency, he was operating much like President Biden. In October 1919, after agreeing to the disastrous Treaty of Versailles that helped pave the way for another world war, he suffered a massive stroke. Wilson was partially paralyzed and significantly impaired for the remainder of his presidency.

If this sounds familiar, the next part will sound even more familiar. His staff and his wife did not bother to mention this to the American public. Edith Wilson became a kind of shadow president—the first Jill Biden, if you will. She controlled access to the President, determined which documents he could see, who could meet with him, and which matters she would simply handle herself. Even cabinet members and senators had no clear understanding of the President’s actual condition. The Vice President was effectively sidelined because there was no constitutional mechanism at the time to deal with the situation.

The “liberal” and “tolerant” Wilson administration also set an early standard for concealment and manipulation within the administrative state—the willingness to hide material facts from the public “for the good of the nation.”

Unfortunately, by the time Wilson had his stroke, he had already done most of his damage. The Princeton progressive promoted eugenics, segregated parts of the federal government, and supported a treaty that punished Germany so severely that even John Maynard Keynes resigned in protest over the terms. Wilson distinguished himself in the way many intellectuals do—by confusing abstraction with wisdom and listening too carefully to the French.

In addition to entering a war that many Americans believed the United States should never have entered, Wilson moved quickly to suppress criticism of the war effort. He set the precedent for Presidents claiming reluctance to enter foreign conflicts while steadily moving the nation toward them anyway. Later versions of this would appear with LBJ in Vietnam, Bush and “nation building,” Obama promising quick withdrawal, and our current political class promising no more endless wars. Wilson was the trendsetter.

Even in a time before Merrick Garland, Wilson showed he could imprison dissidents with the best of them. The Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918 resulted in the prosecution and imprisonment of activists, journalists, and ordinary citizens under wartime speech laws. Newspapers were shut down, critics were targeted, and citizens were encouraged to report one another for “insufficient patriotism.” The cherry on top was the imprisonment of socialist labor leader and former presidential candidate Eugene Debs, who was sentenced to ten years in prison for speaking against the administration’s policies. Wilson even established a Committee on Public Information—essentially a government propaganda bureau designed to shape public opinion and mobilize support for the war. The advantage was that the public could be brainwashed for free instead of paying $60,000 a year at an Ivy League school.

Since that time, the modern Left has combined moral absolutism with a strange relativism. On the one hand, they insist there is no such thing as objective truth. On the other hand, they display extraordinary intolerance toward anyone who disagrees with them. To sustain this contradiction, they have built entire classes of government-funded bureaucrats, administrators, credentialed experts, and ideological managers whose job is to give fashionable opinions the appearance of moral authority. Yet behind the polished rhetoric there has always existed a deeply authoritarian mindset—one marked by shifting standards, selective outrage, and an endless appetite for control. Even committed leftists often find themselves sprinting to keep up with whatever the newest orthodoxy happens to be.

The net effect of many of these policies has been the dismantling of the moral and social institutions that once protected children, families, religion, public order, borders, and even basic restraint—without offering anything durable in their place beyond bureaucracy, slogans, and moral vanity. One of the strangest developments has been the way modern ideology has encouraged women to view motherhood, family, and even aspects of their own biology as obstacles to “autonomy,” as though maturity itself were some form of oppression. What has been sold to both men and women is essentially a false fountain of youth built on prolonged adolescence.

At the national level, permissive policies have coincided with over 100,000 drug deaths a year—nearly twice the number of Americans killed during the Vietnam War, which the Left once bitterly protested. For all the rhetoric about protecting children, abortion on demand has become morally normalized on a staggering scale. Meanwhile, amid all the outrage surrounding the Epstein files and exploitation scandals, open border policies have resulted in hundreds of thousands of unaccompanied migrant children becoming effectively untraceable after entering the country. It is difficult to believe all of them are safely at Disneyland.

Then there is modern left-wing policing and law enforcement. Everyone now knows the story of Merrick Garland’s FBI raid on the home of Mark Houck, a Catholic pro-life activist accused in a local dispute outside an abortion clinic. Garland deployed a tactical response that looked wildly disproportionate to the allegations involved, while many violent repeat offenders in major cities cycled in and out of the system with little consequence.

The Obama administration’s IRS targeted conservative organizations—something confirmed by the Inspector General. Under Biden, internal memos surfaced linking certain Catholic groups to extremism concerns, while the FISA process used during investigations connected to the Trump campaign exposed serious surveillance and oversight failures within the intelligence apparatus. Hardly a shining example of moral superiority.

But perhaps the Left’s greatest betrayal has been what it did to its own historic voter base—the working class. Once the Democratic Party realized it could maintain power through bureaucratic institutions, affluent suburbs, corporate alliances, and credentialed elites, it gradually abandoned the industrial middle class that once formed its backbone.

The real unraveling accelerated during the Clinton years. Clinton aligned the Democratic Party with global finance, multinational corporations, and technocratic elites. After NAFTA, factories across the Midwest and industrial Northeast closed or moved overseas. Stable blue-collar jobs that once allowed ordinary Americans to support families, buy homes, and participate in civic life disappeared so corporations could squeeze out another few points of profit and executives could add another Bentley to the garage.

From there, the social collapse accelerated. As jobs disappeared, towns deteriorated. Addiction spread like wildfire, churches closed, and marriage rates plummeted. Crime and generational hopelessness were everywhere. When working-class Americans—Black, white, and Hispanic—complained about rising crime and disorder, many progressive politicians sided not with law-abiding citizens but with theories about “root causes,” decarceration, and endless excuses for criminal behavior. Bail was reduced, repeat offenders cycled through the system, and ordinary neighborhoods paid the price, fading into oblivion.

Then came the economic disaster of the post-COVID years. Massive spending, easy-money policies, and endless deficits fueled inflation that devastated working Americans living on wages while asset-owning elites became even wealthier. The rhetoric was all about “infrastructure” and “rebuilding,” but we all know the spending was political patronage, not national renewal—consultants, activist groups, subsidized bureaucracies, and projects that somehow didn’t seem to materialize.

The result has been catastrophic for younger Americans. Homeownership—once the cornerstone of middle-class stability—has become almost unreachable for millions of people who simply want to work, marry, raise children, and live responsibly. Meanwhile, giant financial firms bought up single-family homes and transformed themselves into corporate landlords, often with little criticism from the same politicians who lecture everyone else about inequality.

And finally comes the insult layered on top of the injury. When working Americans complained about all of this, figures like Hillary Clinton dismissed them as “deplorables,” while Barack Obama often spoke about them with barely concealed contempt. At least someone like Michael Moore occasionally admits why the working class abandoned the Democratic Party in droves. That doesn’t mean he is going to do anything about it. He, like many progressive elites, would rather watch the country burn than reconsider the ideological assumptions that helped create the crisis. Tear it all down, we hear, as if that will lead to something better.

So yes, everyday people are tired of it. We do not want more lectures from the Left about morality. They long ago abandoned any stable concept of truth while continuing to claim exclusive ownership over virtue. For those of us who still believe in responsibility, restraint, family, community, and reality itself, the wreckage is difficult to ignore. We know how we got here, and their stewardship makes Thelma and Louise look like responsible drivers.

Donald Trump has not fulfilled every promise he made, and Republicans will ultimately have to answer for their own failures as well. But a political movement that celebrates abortion without limits, tolerates disorder, runs deficits that future generations cannot repay, destroys the middle class, and leaves young people without hope has very little reason to lecture the rest of the country about morality.

At some point, they should do everyone a favor and simply keep quiet.

Not to be a Debbie Downer, but the Left won the culture war they started in the 1960s. They control pretty near everything in this country—including the military. Sure, there are still substantial numbers of normal people at every level of society, but the Left sets the agenda and controls the narrative.

Maybe there’ll be a snapback, but we live in a country populated by a huge number of citizens who were propagandized by left-wing teachers and who have internalized what they were taught. There are plenty of examples of “man-on-the-street” interviews illustrating the absolutely abysmal knowledge of history and civics so widespread among our citizens today. It’s astounding that out-and-out communists are being elected to office at local, state, and national levels.

There has never been a time in our history when so many of our people have literally hated their country and now seem willing to abandon our basic foundational principles. Republics only live an average of 250-300 years before they fall victim to their own success, although I fervently hope we’re the exception and that we have a critical mass of citizens who succeed in taking this country back.

* * *

This content originally appeared on Abstract Truth Substack. 

Spyridon (Don) Andrews is a Greek American writer, lawyer, and lifelong jazz musician. In his writing, he draws on his Hellenic roots, as well as his love of Renaissance Humanism. A graduate of Harvard, he writes works that blend history, travel, philosophy, and comedy. Most recently, he wrote Manuel and Me: Looking for the Soul of America in the Heart of Italy.

Source: https://amgreatness.com/2026/11/01/the-lefts-century-of-moral-lectures-failed-policies-and-manufactured-virtue/

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Former Mossad agent assisted Flavio Bolsonaro's escape from Brazil via Argentina - report - Eli Leon

 

by Eli Leon

The escape followed Bolsonaro's defeat to incumbent President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in the second round of elections on October 25.

 

Brazilian Senator Flavio Bolsonaro disembarks from a plane after arriving at Opa-locka Executive Airport near Miami, Florida, US, October 28, 2026.

(photo credit: EVA MARIE UZCATEGUI/ REUTERS)

 

A former Mossad agent who became a naturalized US citizen assisted Brazilian Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, in escaping Brazil in violation of a judicial order barring him from leaving the country.

CNN Brazil revealed the operation on Friday, citing findings from a security agency investigation in Brazil.

According to the report, the operation was planned prior to the second round of the presidential election and involved assistance from figures in Argentina and the United States.

Former Mossad agent arrived prior to elections

According to the investigation, the former Israeli intelligence officer, whose identity has not been disclosed, arrived in Brazil on October 19, six days before the second round of the presidential election. He accompanied Bolsonaro from the capital, Brasília, to the border with Argentina and remained in the vehicle with him during the border crossing.

Brazilian investigators identified two commercial vans that crossed the Tancredo Neves Bridge connecting Foz do Iguaçu in Brazil to Puerto Iguazú in Argentina via security camera footage on Tuesday.

Brazilian presidential candidate Flavio Bolsonaro of the Liberal Party (PL) speaks after losing the presidential runoff election, in Brasilia, Brazil October 25, 2026. (credit: REUTERS/ADRIANO MACHADO)

Bolsonaro and the former Mossad agent traveled in one of the vehicles, while his wife and two daughters traveled in the second. One driver was identified as a former municipal council member from Foz do Iguaçu, and the second driver was his son.

Private jet and Argentine assistance

After crossing the border, the family boarded a Gulfstream G400 executive jet operated by the Argentine airline Baires Fly. The aircraft took off for the United States, refueled in Guayaquil, Ecuador, and landed Wednesday morning at Opa-locka Executive Airport near Miami.

According to a report in The New York Times, Jason Miller, a political strategist close to US President Donald Trump, helped arrange the aircraft.

Concurrently, the Argentine newspaper Clarín reported that Santiago Caputo, a top advisor to Argentine President Javier Milei, arrived in the border area to oversee the operation and prevent documentation of the crossing.

Election defeat and judicial order

The escape followed Bolsonaro's defeat to incumbent President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in the second round of elections on October 25.

Following the election, Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered the confiscation of Bolsonaro's passports and barred him from leaving the country. The senator is under investigation for suspected money laundering, including a case involving gambling platforms and another regarding the funding of a film about his father. The allegations have not been proven in court.

The Federal Police stated that no official record was found of the senator's departure through Brazilian border control checkpoints.

Diplomatic crisis between nations

Brazilian government officials described the event as a planned international rescue mission, internally dubbed Operation Alba. According to officials, spreading misleading information about Bolsonaro's whereabouts was part of the preparation. The Brazilian Foreign Ministry summoned Argentina's representative to demand clarifications regarding potential involvement by the Milei administration.

Simultaneously, 25 Democratic lawmakers in the United States demanded that the Trump administration explain whether US diplomatic resources were used to assist in the escape.

The Federal Police in Brazil is considering applying to the Supreme Court to freeze Bolsonaro's assets and bank accounts. At this stage, allegations of foreign government involvement and assistance from the former Mossad agent are based on investigation findings published in the media, not a final judicial ruling. 

Eli Leon

Source: https://www.jpost.com/international/article-913423

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Prediction markets missed Brazil, U.S. midterms are the big test - Brett Rowland

 

by Brett Rowland

Democratic control of the Senate was trading at 70 cents on Kalshi on Friday morning, which is meant to say the event is about 70% likely. Kalshi alone has taken more than $114 million in trading volume on the question.

 

(The Center Square) -

Prediction markets spent three weeks heavily favoring Flávio Bolsonaro to be Brazil's next president. That collapsed Sunday night. Tuesday, the same markets take on the U.S. Senate.

Kalshi and Polymarket put Democratic control of the Senate at 70% and 73% as of Friday morning. Forecaster Nate Silver's model put it near 75% as of Oct. 29.

The Cook Political Report rates seven Senate races as toss-ups but said Friday it sees Democrats as "the slight favorites," citing what Senate editor Jessica Taylor called a "dismal national political environment for Republicans."

In September, the forecasters were further apart: a paper published Oct. 15 in "PS: Political Science & Politics" found the Iowa Electronic Markets and Kalshi pointing to opposite parties taking the chamber.

Kalshi is a federally regulated exchange, designated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the agency that oversees futures and derivatives trading. Traders buy shares in an outcome. Each share pays a fixed $1 if the outcome happens and nothing if it doesn't, so the price of a share reads as a probability.

Democratic control of the Senate was trading at 70 cents on Kalshi on Friday morning, which is meant to say the event is about 70% likely. Kalshi alone has taken more than $114 million in trading volume on the question.

The Iowa Electronic Markets works the same way at a fraction of the size. Run by University of Iowa faculty since 1988 as a teaching and research tool, it caps what any trader can put in at $500.

A price on Kalshi or Polymarket looks like a probability, but the researchers who study these markets say that is not quite what it is.

Thomas Gruca, the George Daly Professor in Marketing at the University of Iowa and director of the Iowa Electronic Markets, has been comparing his own market with Kalshi. In a July working paper with Thomas Rietz, a finance professor at Iowa, the two found that Kalshi contracts priced to win one time in five actually won less than 1.5% of the time.

Across 44 Iowa election markets, prices tracked outcomes closely regardless of how big or active the market was. Gruca said the data stops where the paper's collection stopped, and he cannot say what Kalshi's prices have done since.

Gruca said the difference is in what moves the price. Momentum, he said, means traders buying because a price has been rising, "not because there’s a change in the underlying fundamentals of what’s going to happen on election day."

Looking at Kalshi's daily price charts, he told The Center Square, "these things are kind of jumping all over the place. They're vibrating all the time. There's really not that much happening day to day."

Thomas Rietz, Gruca's co-author, said the Senate is hard for a reason that has nothing to do with how the markets are built. He compares it to a weather forecast. A 25% chance of rain in Fairfax, Washington, Baltimore and Annapolis on the same day does not mean it rains in one city and stays dry in the other three. A band of showers goes through and hits all of them or none.

Senate races work the same way, Rietz said. Most of the competitive ones are inside the margin of error, and the candidates and the voters resemble each other from state to state. If Republicans beat expectations in one place, they are likely to beat them across the board, or fall short across the board.

"That uncertainty hasn’t gone away," he told The Center Square.

Others go further. Christopher Wlezien, the Hogg Professor of Government at the University of Texas at Austin, has argued for years that prediction markets add less than their defenders claim.

In a 2012 paper with Robert Erikson of Columbia, he compared election-eve betting prices with final polls across 30 presidential elections going back to 1880. The polls were the better predictor, and when the two were tested together, the market prices added nothing the polls had not already captured.

Wlezien said he has not updated that analysis and cannot say whether poll-based predictions still beat market prices today.

"I'm not anti-market," Wlezien told The Center Square. "I'm just pro data."

Thomas Miller, faculty director of the data science master's program at Northwestern University, agrees that a market price is not a probability and draws the opposite conclusion from it.

His NowCasting model takes prices from Kalshi and Polymarket, adjusts them so the contracts in each race sum to 100%, and runs them through a statistical model. On Oct. 27, it put Republican chances of holding the Senate at 23.4%, against about 36% on Kalshi the same day.

"Prediction markets provide event contract prices, not probabilities," Miller said in written answers. "Traders are guessing. We are not."

Kalshi's own post-election analysis says the market had Flávio Bolsonaro near 80% when polls closed Oct. 25, and that the final Brazilian polls leaned the same way. Lula won 51.79% to 48.21%. By Kalshi's accounting, the market missed the margin by about 7 points and the polls missed by about 5.6.

Kalshi's published analysis offers a theory. Three weeks earlier, in the first round, polls had underestimated Bolsonaro. Traders adjusted for that going into the runoff, pushing the market further toward him than the polls were.

In the runoff, the polls were wrong in the other direction, and Lula won. The company noted that an 80% chance should be wrong about one time in five, and that Bolsonaro's loss was one of those times.

In Wisconsin's Democratic primary for governor on Aug. 11, Kalshi had state Rep. Francesca Hong at 95.49% on the day of the vote, where she had sat for most of the preceding week. Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley won by 3,673 votes out of 792,290 cast, less than half a percentage point, according to official results certified by the Wisconsin Elections Commission. Traders moved more than $16 million on the race.

Kalshi did not respond to questions from The Center Square about the Brazil pricing or the Wisconsin primary.

Wlezien said that is the part he keeps coming back to. A market price is supposed to be a probability already. If someone has to adjust it before it means anything, something has gone wrong with the number itself.

"You can just go look online and say, hey, 65," he said. "That means like a two out of three chance, right?" 

Brett Rowland

Source: https://justthenews.com/nation/states/center-square/prediction-markets-missed-brazil-us-midterms-are-big-test

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