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For several weeks, we've tracked the third-worlder caravan heading north towards the US southern border, made up largely of migrants from Honduras, and now tracking through southern Mexico. 

The migrants' departure coincided with last week's Democratic victory in the US midterms and hopes that a more left-leaning Congress will allow them to flood the US - just like the open-border days under the Biden administration. Also, many of these migrants probably have hopes of blue states welcoming them in and showering them with free money. 

But on Wednseday as the migrants tracked closer and closer to the border. Border Czar Tom Homan had a very unwelcoming message for the Democrats: 

Congress may be more blue. Texas may be more blue. But the White House is red, bright red. And again, President Trump created the most secure border in history. These caravans can come to the border all they want. They're not going to be released into the United States. They're going to be turned around or prosecuted then turned around because we will charge them with a crime so they can sit in jail, serve their sentence before they're deported. But we're not giving one inch on this border. This is the most secure border in history. We're going to keep it secure because we've got President Trump in the White House who's not going to let this border become chaotic again, and neither will I.

We're going to keep that border secure. So come all you want. But again, Mexico needs to step up like they did in Trump 45. They need to put troops on their southern border, northern border. It's against the law in Mexico to transit that country if you're from another country without a transit visa. So they're breaking Mexico's law, too. So Mexico needs to step up. But we're going to secure the border, most secure border ever. And no one's going to be released from that border. So come all you want. You're going to be highly disappointed.

The Democrats can't change that. 

Latest on the caravan:

• Caravan Of 600+ Migrants Making Its Way Through Mexico To The US Border
• "Absolutely Zero Chance": DHS Vows To Block Latest Migrant Caravan While State Dept Targets Organizers With Visa Restrictions
• New Migrant Caravan Heads North After Democrats Win Midterms

After the midterm elections, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin wrote on X that "deportations will continue."

White House reiterated the message as well ...

On Tuesday, Mullin told Fox News that the pace of deportations is around 3,600 illegal aliens per day, equivalent to roughly 1.3 million annually if sustained.

On Monday, following the midterms, President Trump said his deportation policy "might be too tough" and that he would "love to do something on immigration," with Democrats about to take over Congress.

Democrats have emerged from the midterms ready to battle Trump's deportation policies and have vowed to "rip ICE apart," as the open-border globalist party appears hell-bent on importing third-worlders with dreams of mass amnesty to secure a nation under one-party socialist rule.

Senate Republicans are making another push to pass the SAVE America Act, the voter ID and proof-of-citizenship bill, before the current Congress runs out of time. The effort comes days after the midterm elections and weeks before lawmakers leave Washington for the year.

"I've been fighting for over two years to get the SAVE/SAVE America Act passed in the Senate," Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) wrote Sunday on X. "We have two months to get it done. Every candidate for a leadership job must commit to passing it. Failure is not an option."

I've been fighting for over two years to get the SAVE/SAVE America Act, passed in the Senate.

We have two months to get it done. Every candidate for a leadership job must commit to passing it. Failure is not an option.

— Rick Scott (@SenRickScott) November 8, 2026

The formula remains the same:

(1) Put the SAVE America Act on the Senate floor.

(2) Require filibustering senators to speak, calling the vote at a simple-majority threshold when they stop speaking.

(3) Announce that debate will continue until it passes. https://t.co/lbtqlZRWsl

— Mike Lee (@BasedMikeLee) November 8, 2026

Senate Republicans trying to figure out what to do in the next 6 weeks? Here you go:
DEFUND Planned Parenthood
MORATORIUM on data centers
SUSPEND the gas tax 
FUND rural hospitals 
SAVE AMERICA ACT

— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) November 11, 2026

?? BREAKING: House Republicans just LAID OUT the path forward after Democrats won Congress and it involves ACTING FAST during the lame duck period

REP. KEITH SELF: "NO PACKING UP EARLY! Codify President Trump's border policies. Under no circumstances AMNESTY. Act fiscally... pic.twitter.com/YuQBto5Ft3

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) November 11, 2026

The House passed the SAVE America Act in February. The bill has sat stalled in the Senate ever since, blocked by the filibuster. Republicans still hold the chamber but lack the 60 votes needed to advance the measure, and a group of Republican holdouts refused to eliminate the filibuster earlier in this Congress.

Despite the current push, Senate Majority Leader John Thune says forcing a talking filibuster is off the table, even though Democrats are promising to eliminate the filibuster when they're back in the majority.

?? JUST NOW: Senate Leader John Thune says he has NO CLUE how to "force" the SAVE America Act to the floor, because a talking filibuster is OFF THE TABLE for him

Q: Should you have forced the SAVE America Act fight on the floor?

JOHN THUNE: "I don't know how we'd force that... pic.twitter.com/GnKOLujLGu

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) November 10, 2026

Democrats are set to take the Senate majority in the next Congress.

President Donald Trump pressed lawmakers to pass the SAVE America Act before the midterms. The legislation failed to advance before Election Day.

The bill would require proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote in federal elections. In May, a Rasmussen Reports survey found that 63% of likely US voters support the SAVE Act, including 45% who strongly support it. Thirty-one percent oppose the bill. It also found broader agreement on the underlying principle. Eighty-four percent of respondents said only US citizens should be allowed to vote in US elections, while 10% disagreed. Rasmussen also reported that 52% of likely voters believe noncitizens are likely illegally registered to vote in their state, including 31% who said it is very likely. Thirty-eight percent said they consider it unlikely.

Rasmussen found that 84% of Republicans back the SAVE Act, compared to 64% of unaffiliated voters and 42% of Democrats.

Support for voter ID requirements in general runs higher. CNN data analyst Harry Enten said earlier this year that voter ID is "not controversial," citing polling that showed 83% of Americans support it. Enten also noted that support crosses lines of political affiliation and race.

"The bottom line is this: Voter ID is not controversial in this country," Enten concluded. "A photo ID to vote is not controversial in this country. It is not controversial by party, and it is not controversial by race."

Americans agree with Nicki Minaj when it comes to voter id. 

83% of favor photo voter id to vote per Pew. This includes 70%+ of Democrats and Republicans, as well as 75%+ of Americans across races.... White, Black, and Latino. 

It's not controversial. pic.twitter.com/9Kocw85Uh8

— (((Harry Enten))) (@ForecasterEnten) February 3, 2026

Back in March, Florida passed its Voter ID law, and Oklahoma followed suit in August, approving a voter ID measure 54.6% to 45.4%, months ahead of the general election.

Even as Democrats rode a blue wave on Election Day, election integrity measures quietly racked up wins, often by lopsided margins.

In Nevada, Question 7, which requires photo ID for in-person voting and identification numbers on mail ballots, passed 62.2%-37.9%. North Carolina voters extended the photo ID requirement already in the state constitution to mail ballots, and Ohio wrote its existing voter ID rules into its own constitution, making them much harder for future legislatures or courts to undo.

The citizenship question was even more one-sided. Measures reinforcing that only citizens can vote passed in four states: Arkansas, Kansas, South Dakota, West Virginia. Alaska also approved a citizenship requirement as state law. The wins bring the number of states with explicit constitutional prohibitions on noncitizen voting to 22.

Despite these victories, not every state got on board. Voter ID measures failed in California (60.4%-39.6%), Colorado (63.3%-36.7%), and Arizona, where Proposition 144, which also would have reinforced citizenship requirements, lost 53.3%-46.7%.

Still, in a year when the political winds blew hard against Republicans, voters in red and purple states alike made clear that asking people to prove who they are, and that they're citizens, isn't a partisan idea.

G7 foreign ministers have been meeting in Paris this week, from where Secretary of State Marco Rubio has been issuing Iran-related comments to the press.

The G7 issued a joint statement Wednesday upon the conclusion of two days of meetings. Ministers from Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the US, along with the EU’s High Representative, condemned Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia, and also strongly condemned Iranian attacks on international shipping and its Gulf neighbors.

"Absent a diplomatic solution, we committed to continuing our coordination to economically and politically constrain the Iranian regime's ability to sow instability in the region and around the world," the ministers said.

This seems to back Washington's current playbook which has fallen into a 'status quo' (or defeat?) of tightening sanctions while seeking to decimate the Iranian economy, but importanly while holding off on a renewed bombing campaign.

Among the more interesting parts of the statement focused on alleged Iranian military support to the Houthis, who have been attacking Saudi territory on a near-daily basis with ballistic missiles and drones.

"The ministers urged Tehran to stop supporting nonstate armed groups across the Middle East, specifically calling for an end to Iranian weapons supplies and other assistance to Yemen's Houthis," one report says. According to a further summary:

• G7 statement: call on Iran to end its arming of and support for the Houthis in violation of united nations security council resolutions
• G7 statement: Iran’s actions risk undermining international trade, creating global economic instability
• G7 statement: condemn in the strongest terms unacceptable continued strikes carried out by the Houthis in Yemen and against Saudi Arabia 

And there was mention on Iranian 'plots' abroad, but no specifics were given: "We also expressed grave concern over Iranian involvement in violent plots against many of our citizens and territories," the statement added.

But this was clearly a reference to Britain's allegation of Iranian involvement in a September 27 incident at RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire, which is known to host US bombers.

On getting greater allied support for the US Hormuz mission, there are still no takers...

The G7 also repeated the Trump line that Iran "must never be allowed to develop or acquire a nuclear weapon" while demanding Tehran's full cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency. But Tehran has continued to reject that it will negotiate away its nuclear program, and that this is not up for discussion especially so long as the war persists.

Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times,

Meta Platforms is expanding its AI-powered age-estimation technology to identify Instagram users suspected of being teenagers, even if they registered with an adult birthdate, and automatically apply stricter safety settings to their accounts.

Meta said in a Nov. 9 statement that the expansion will mean millions more teenagers worldwide will receive Teen Account protections, offering built-in safeguards that automatically limit the content they see, time spent on the app, and who can contact them.

We're expanding the AI technology we use to help ensure teens are in the right experiences for their age globally. https://t.co/G97qdcqJOO

— Meta Newsroom (@MetaNewsroom) November 9, 2026

Starting this month, U.S. parents on Instagram will receive a notification explaining how Meta will apply the age-appropriate protections for teens and how they can help ensure that their teenage child is logged in with the correct age, Meta said.

Meta uses AI and other signals to estimate a user's age, including information from profiles, comments, posts, captions, and bios, such as references to school grades or birthdays, Larry Magid, CEO of nonprofit ConnectSafely, wrote in a Nov. 6 post on Meta's website.

The company can also analyze photo and video visual patterns to determine a person's age.

"This visual analysis is not facial recognition. The idea is to look for general visual characteristics that suggest someone who is underage that may help estimate an age range, not to identify the person," Magid said. "Meta deactivates suspected under-13 accounts and requires proof of age to prevent deletion."

Teens aged 13 to 15 require parental permission to make some of their account protections less restrictive. Those aged 16 and 17 will have more freedom to update certain settings but will still face restrictions, such as content limitations, that cannot be changed without parental permission.

Meta said it is continuing to roll out the technology on Facebook and later this year will begin launching similar measures globally on Threads.

The company said it has also started using Apple's age-range signal in Australia as an additional method to help determine users' ages.

"When a parent sets up a smartphone for their teen, they have the option for the app store to confirm the age of the person using the device and assign them an age range," the company said. "Then, each time the teen downloads an app, Apple passes that age range to the developer - Meta, for example - confirming whether the teen meets the app's age requirement."

The expansion of protections for teenage Instagram users comes after Meta reached a roughly $18.1 billion settlement with multiple U.S. jurisdictions in August over allegations of endangering children.

The agreement settles a series of lawsuits brought against Meta, accusing the company of intentionally designing its platforms to be addictive, knowingly exposing children to mental harms, and misleading people about the safety of its offerings.

As part of the settlement, Meta agreed to institute age-verification protocols and content controls, as well as time limits for children.

Meta agreed to pay $17.1 billion to settle lawsuits brought by 47 U.S. states, territories, and the District of Columbia, and $1 billion to settle a lawsuit from Texas.

California Lawsuit

Meta recently filed a lawsuit seeking to block California from enforcing a new state law that aims to protect children under 16 from the negative effects of social media exposure.

Assembly Bill 1709 prohibits online platforms from offering underage children features deemed to be psychologically exploitative that could result in compulsive use. This includes sending videos through autoplay features and offering personal recommendations. Platforms are obligated to delete the accounts of children with such features.

Meta, Google, and TikTok filed separate lawsuits on Nov. 4, seeking to stop the bill's implementation and alleging that the measure violates First Amendment free speech protections.

Advocacy group Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) welcomed the bill in a Sept. 1 statement, saying it strongly supports social media regulations aimed at keeping children safe online.

"With AB 1709, California takes the right approach to protecting kids online," said Megan Iorio, director of EPIC's platform governance and accountability program.

"Design features that manipulate kids are the problem. Prohibiting these features, as AB 1709 does, provides a solution that is effective and does not infringe on kids' rights to access digital spaces."

David Sacks, who stepped down as President Trump's AI and crypto czar in March, says it's "100%" that the Democrats who just won Congress will make a major push for AI legislation, and that the end state is "a surveillance and censorship state that's turbocharged by superintelligence."

Sacks was answering co-host Jason Calacanis on the All-In podcast released Nov. 7. Calacanis asked for odds on a scenario co-host David Friedberg had laid out, in which only the government can use the tools. Sacks said he didn't think it would go that far, then laid out the road map he does expect: "You create a department, a federal department of AI. You require that all the so-called frontier models have to be reviewed and approved by that."

"The regulators give their notes on it. You can't get a model released unless you address their concerns," Sacks said. Those concerns, in his telling, would be "disinformation and misinformation and dissonant thought" - "all the things that the government was pressuring the social media companies to crack down on and censor during COVID."

"They're going to basically reenact that whole regime again using AI. And it's going to be infinitely more powerful because we're talking about superintelligence here," Sacks said. "So I do believe that that is the regime that we're headed towards."

David Sacks predicts Democrats will use AI legislation and frontier-model approvals to create a surveillance and censorship state 'turbocharged by superintelligence'

"It's 100% that Democrats are going to make a major push for AI legislation in the next Congress. The question is... https://t.co/QQ0aASM7gX pic.twitter.com/x1WJMipb4i

— Fireside Alpha (@firesidealpha) November 7, 2026

The warning came four days after Democrats swept the midterms. According to Reuters, Democrats plan a wave of AI and data-center bills when they take control in January, among them a push by Rep. Lori Trahan (D-Mass.) to have independent experts test leading AI models against safety standards and rules on when AI companies can be held liable for harm. Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) has promised hearings and "reasonable guardrails on AI," accusing Trump and congressional Republicans of a "conscious decision" to "let the AI industry run wild."

Michigan's Senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed ran on something close to the department Sacks describes. His campaign's "AI Under Control" plan calls for "A Cabinet-Level, Independent AI Safety Agency," which it sums up as "One agency with the power to inspect labs, block releases, and order a pause or command a shutdown." When he released it in October, El-Sayed said, "At an absolute minimum, I'm calling for a pause in AI frontier development."

Before the election, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) were already negotiating a bipartisan bill, as we reported in September. Negotiators aim to give the US government "the power to block the release of certain AI models that are deemed unsafe," Reuters reported, with companies able to challenge that decision in federal court. In the House, Lieu and Rep. Nathaniel Moran (R-Texas) filed an AI Kill Switch Act that would let the Homeland Security secretary order AI products throttled, suspended or shut down, as we noted in July.

Trump's own Commerce Department knocked two frontier models offline in June. A national-security directive from Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick's office cut off foreign nationals' access to Anthropic's Fable 5 and Mythos 5 on June 12; unable to check users' citizenship, the company blocked everyone, after what it says was about 90 minutes' warning and no specifics, as we reported. Sacks made the administration's case the next day, saying "the ball is in Anthropic's court."

I've had a number of conversations with folks inside and outside government about the current situation with Anthropic, and here is what I believe to be true: 

- As we know, Anthropic publicly released its Mythos class models earlier this week under the commercial name Fable....

— David Sacks (@DavidSacks) June 13, 2026

Access came back about three weeks later, after Lutnick said Commerce had "worked closely with Anthropic to analyze and approve Fable 5 to ensure alignment across the US Government," as we reported. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had also helped develop a plan for a FINRA-style regulator, reporting to the SEC, that would "vet the safety" of AI models, according to a July report.

Sacks has accused Democrats before of plotting to push "woke AI" through state laws. As czar, he told Fox Business last December, "We don't like seeing blue states trying to insert their woke ideology in AI models, and we really want to try and stop that," and said Colorado's ban on "algorithmic discrimination," which makes AI developers liable for a model's "disparate impact," "raises very serious First Amendment concerns."

Alphabet put the COVID pressure he points to on the record in September 2025, calling the Biden administration's pressure over content "unacceptable and wrong" in a letter to House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, according to the committee, and offering creators banned over COVID and election speech a way back onto YouTube, as we reported.

Trump can veto whatever the new Congress sends him, and overriding him takes two-thirds of both chambers. "The probability of legislation is much higher than people anticipate," Raymond James analyst Ed Mills told Reuters, noting that Democrats could try to attach AI rules to routine must-pass bills.

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

The most difficult part of my framework to grasp is the keystone: our system has reached its limits. The difficulty is that this is impossible to understand if one is embedded in the system's beliefs of how the world works and wedded to the system's sclerosis via self-interest.

Once self-interest dominates, it locks the system into its current configuration because attempting to change anything rouses resistance from whatever interests depend on that part of the status quo for their piece of the pie.

The sustainability of the entire system is of no concern because the only thing that matters is keeping our piece of the pie intact as-is. Nothing can change because that threatens somebody's share of the pie, i.e. how the system distributes income, gains, power and risk.

Everyone from the super-wealthy to low-income households fears any change that might reduce their security. Beneath our everyday awareness, a balance has been struck: if we just keep this exact arrangement as-is, everyone accepts the status quo.

This rigidity leads to sclerosis: the system has lost the flexibility and nimbleness needed to adapt. Any proposal that actually changes the socio-economic system is immediately struck off by those whose interests are threatened.

This leads to the substitution of artifice for authenticity - the other core concept that is impossible to understand if one is wedded to the status quo by self-interest and the fear of losing what we have.

Once a system has reached the point where authentic change becomes impossible because it disrupts the delicate balance of self-interest, it has reached its limits, and is set on run to failure, for a system that has lost its adaptive flexibility is doomed once conditions change.

Rather than face this disruptive reality, everyone wedded to the existing balance becomes dependent on expediencies that keep the system glued together, but at the cost of system stability. As self-interest and sclerosis dominate, the focus narrows to doing whatever it takes to maintain the increasingly unsustainable balance of interests.

This is how we've reached the point where the federal government borrows $2 trillion a year - 27% of its entire outlays - to maintain the precarious balance of every interest group. That this is unsustainable is obvious, but since real change is impossible because of the system's limits, everyone approves of expediencies that only add to the destabilizing momentum of run to failure.

The system no longer considers truly new ideas, as these threaten the delicate balance of self-interests. Just as expediencies are artifice, so too are the cover stories masking the unsustainability of expediencies. To avoid facing the impossibility of the status quo continuing unchanged, all public dialog is reduced to cliches, delusions and fantasies.

These artifices create an illusion of stability and sustainability that I call The Big Con, a mindset in which everything is fake but this is all that's acceptable. So the tired cliches of capitalism and socialism are deployed as rallying cries or cudgels, with no actual understanding of what they mean because that would get in the way of the "message:" what's needed are fake facades and fantasies, not understanding.

This dependence on parodies, cliches, delusions and fantasies to maintain the illusion of sustainability is also called hyper-normalization: we accept the unsustainable as permanent because this is what the system incentivizes and rewards.

The system has reached its limits on every level: institutional, conceptual and structural. The incentives to maintain the facades that everything is working just fine and policy tweaks / technology wil fix whatever's broken and the disincentives to tell the truth are kept firmly in place by self-interest, even though these lock the system as a whole in run to failure.

This leads to extremes that destabilize the system from inside: extremes of wealth-power inequality, extremes of fantasy (technology and finance can fix all problems) and artifice that lead to where we are today, with absurdly transparent parodies and self-parodies being presented as serious solutions proposed by serious people.

Scholar / author Ray Huang (no relation to Jensen) summed this up in his book 1587, A Year of No Significance: The Ming Dynasty in Decline that traced how the Ming Dynasty reaching its internal limits led to its inevitable collapse:

"The year 1587 may seem to be insignificant; nevertheless, it is evident by that time the limit for the Ming dynasty had already been reached. It no longer mattered whether the ruler was conscientious or irresponsible, whether his chief counselor was enterprising or conformist, whether the generals were resourceful or incompetent, whether the civil officials were honest or corrupt, or whether the leading thinkers were radicals or conservatives - in the end they all failed to reach fulfillment."

But why can't the system regain control of these runaway forces? The answer is that any reform that will be acceptable to the system's precariously balanced dependents will leave its structure and incentives untouched.

"Innovations" and "solutions" will necessarily be superficial and for show because that preserves a system that has reached its limits, a system defined by choiceless choices that create an illusion of autonomy: Democrat / Republican, Apple / Android, a choiceless healthcare system, a choiceless higher education system, and so on.

Given its limits, the entire system has only one option: decline to the point that a seemingly modest crisis disrupts the last shreds of coherence in a system that is now dependent on the destabilizing expediencies of ever-expanding borrowing and credit-asset bubbles, and the parodies, PR, delusions and fantasies of The Big Con. The inevitable result is the system collapses under its own weight of self-serving sclerosis and artifice.

The incentives are to repeat what everyone wants to hear, which is the system is working fine and is sustainable because technology and finance will fix everything without changing anything. This describes a system that has reached its limits.