DML News Morning Briefing, April 24th

Today is April 24. Below are some of the stories grabbing headlines this morning. I hope you share this briefing as doing so will make you the smartest person in the room.

1. Jan 6 protester Ray Epps reveals he’s forced to live in RV in hiding after death threats over FBI informant conspiracy: Feds confirm he’s NEVER worked for them as he slams right-wing theorists using him as scapegoat
DailyMail–A former Marine whose actions on January 6 led conspiracy theorists to claim he was an FBI infiltrator said Sunday that the right-wing rumor ruined his life – forcing him to sell his Arizona home and live in an RV.

Ray Epps, 61, traveled to Washington, D.C. to back former president Donald Trump in his claims that the results of the 2020 election were fraudulent – but he soon became entwined in the events at the Capitol on January 6.

Epps on Sunday spoke publicly for the first time, telling ’60 Minutes’ the idea of him being an FBI informant was ‘a lie’.

Ryan Lynch: What do you think? Do you trust the FBI? I don’t.

FoxNews–The student government at Whitworth University denied a Republican group’s request to invite Xi Van Fleet, a survivor of Maoist China, to speak on campus, citing her criticism of “woke culture” and her comparisons of the ideology to her experience under communist rule.

The student government at Whitworth University, a private Christian university in Spokane, Washington, voted 9-4 to reject the Turning Point USA chapter’s request to host Van Fleet during a meeting on April 12, arguing that her positions, represented by her tweets critical of woke culture, could be deemed “hurtful or offensive,” Campus Reform reported.

The Virginia mother, who endured Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution before immigrating to the U.S., has emerged as an outspoken opponent of critical race theory and frequently warns about similarities she sees between the “woke revolution” and her experience living under Mayo Zedong’s Chinese Cultural Revolution, including the suppression of opposing viewpoints.

Ryan Lynch: If the university doesn’t teach the dangers of communism, then they aren’t a university in my book. When did our schooling fall so far off the edge? It’s concerning. I wonder how far these schools will go in their woke agendas before something is done.

3. Russia’s Sberbank releases ChatGPT rival GigaChat
Reuters–April 24 (Reuters) – Russian lender Sberbank (SBER.MM) said on Monday it had released technology called GigaChat as a rival to ChatGPT, initially in an invite-only testing mode, joining the artificial intelligence chatbot race.

The release last year of ChatGPT, a chatbot from the Microsoft-backed (MSFT.O) startup OpenAI, has caused a sprint in the technology sector to put AI into more users’ hands. The hope is to reshape how people work and win business in the process.

Sberbank said what sets GigaChat apart was its ability to communicate more intelligently in Russian than other foreign neural networks.

Ryan Lynch: Artificial Intelligence is already a concern on what it’ll do to human civilization. But now, another thing we are going to have to deal with is our enemies and communist countries like Russia and China will be developing their own AI systems.

4. Global Military Spending at Record High with Europe Leading the Way
Breitbart–The world has never spent so much on military muscle. Figures released Monday show $2.24 trillion was outlaid globally in 2022 with Europe leading the way due to Ukraine’s demands for continued supplies of battlefield hardware.

Spending overall rose for the eighth consecutive year, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said in its annual report on global military expenditure.

There was a 13 percent rise in Europe, the steepest in at least 30 years, coming on the back of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and broader insecurity around the world.

Some of the sharpest increases were seen in Finland (+36 percent), Lithuania (+27 percent), Sweden (+12 percent) and Poland (+11 percent).

Ryan Lynch: The world is losing faith in peace, and countries are clearly preparing themselves for an all-out conflict. This is what happens when the leader of the Free World can’t form complete sentences and hires based on skin color and sexuality instead of character and intelligence.

5. VP Harris credits nonexistent federal agency with approving mifepristone: watch
FoxNews–Vice President Kamala Harris mistakenly said last week that a government agency called the “Federal Drug Administration” approved the abortion pill mifepristone 20 years ago.

While the Federal Drug Administration may seem to be the likely breakdown of the acronym for FDA, the correct agency is the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Harris sat down for an interview with Noticias Telemundo’s Vanessa Hauc, which aired Friday evening, where the vice president spoke about abortion and the changes taking place in the U.S.

Ryan Lynch: What a joke.