WASHINGTON, March 19, 2025 – After the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) initiated a Title IX compliance review regarding federal funding, the University of Maine System (UMaine) has clearly communicated its compliance with Title IX’s requirement to protect equal opportunities for women and girls to compete in safe and fair sports, as articulated in President Donald J. Trump’s Executive Order. Any false claim by the UMaine can, and will, result in onerous and even potentially criminal financial liability.
UMaine’s decision to side with sanity is a win for women and girls in Maine.
USDA provides substantial federal funding to recipients in Maine, including the University of Maine System and its components. Last month, USDA initiated an investigation regarding UMaine policies to assess compliance with Title IX and the President’s Executive Order after concerns arose regarding Maine’s compliance. By February 26, 2025, UMaine responded to USDA’s questions by representing to the government that UMaine does not permit males to participate in women’s sports, and that UMaine does not have males participating in women’s sports. Specifically, UMaine confirmed that they:
Do not permit a male student-athlete to identify as a female student-athlete to establish individual eligibility for NCAA-sanctioned women’s sports.
Do not permit a male to participate in individual or team contact sports with females.
Comply with NCAA regulations and do not permit a male student athlete to participate in NCAA-sanctioned women’s sports.
EXC: The daughter of Anti-DOGE judge Beryl Howell works at a British nonprofit belonging to a USAID-funded group.
She’s worked with organization receiving over $1.3 billion from USAID.
She also attended the 2017 Women’s March with her sister.
Alina Rosenfeld is a Principal Consultant for Social Development Direct, a “provider of innovative gender equality and social inclusion consultancy and research.”
It’s part of the Inclusive Futures consortium which states it was “previously funded by USAID until January 2025.”
I posted this video this morning (several posts below) along with an essay on the dangers of an advanced AI surveillance state. I commented on that essay before watching the video because a totalitarian surveillance state is a very real and dangerous possibility and many of us are talking about it. Now that I have watched Vance’s talk, I am posting it alone. In my view it’s a good talk and I agree with the policy directives Vance outlines. As a Buddhist, I am fundamentally an optimist and do not worry too much about things I have no control over. In many comments I have said our best defense against totalitarianism is free speech and platforms that host thriving free speech. Free speech can be thought of as a kind of biological technology that always sifts through the data and eventually finds the best stuff. This process must needs always be ongoing because everything is always changing. ABN
John Roberts didn’t just go out of his way yesterday to trash Trump on a purely political matter—impeachment of corrupt judges—over which Roberts has no authority.
He did it by selectively leaking his statement to left-wing corporate media outlets, lying about its nature (claiming it was only in response to press inquiries rather than a general statement), and then refusing to provide the full statement to conservative media outlets when requested, including @FDRLST.
To date, no one knows the full extent of what Roberts and his taxpayer-funded PR agents have said, because no record of any statement from the court can be found anywhere on the Supreme Court website, a shocking breach of protocol and transparency.
Did the left-wing corporate media outlets hand-picked by Roberts to receive his political rant print it in full, or did they selectively quote it? It is impossible to know, because the Chief Justice is refusing to be transparent about what he said and who he said it to.
When Vice-President JD Vance delivers prepared remarks about Artificial Intelligence, pay attention.
JD Vance is the 2028 presidential candidate of choice for the Technocrats; the current goal is to envelop the MAGA populist movement for the intents and purposes of the collective network of Technocrats.
This motive and intent baseline will not change as Vance positions to replace President Donald Trump.
During a speech to the American Dynamism Summit, JD Vance outlines his optimism for the future of the U.S. economy, as boosted by the technological advances in artificial intelligence.
Within his remarks, Vance correctly notes some voices are saying there is going to be a major fracture between the “Techno-optimists” and the “populists.” However, Vance defines that chasm, and then refutes that fear/concern around jobs, advanced AI, automation, innovation and the economy. He misses what will be the root cause of the fracture completely.
Vice-President Vance notes there is nothing to fear from innovation, artificial intelligence, robotics and advanced industrial application of emerging technology. Indeed, all facets of economic growth through the use of all the aforementioned enterprises are correctly framed by the vice president.
There is nothing to fear on the economic front from the technological advancements currently underway.
Let me repeat, before I get misinterpreted….
Everything JD Vance says about the economic future of the United States, against the backdrop of innovation and AI is accurate. JD Vance is 100% correct. However, that’s not the predictable root cause of the upcoming fracture between the Techno-Optimists (his term) and the MAGA populists.
The fracture is going to come as an outcome of how AI networks with government and then destroys privacy, liberty and ultimately freedom for Americans.
It is not the economic side of the AI system Vance supports on behalf of his benefactors that is problematic; it’s the creation of a compliant surveillance state that flows as a natural outcome of advanced and automated AI systems within a highly weaponized government. That’s the problem. That where the fracture will occur.
Techno-optimists are not paying any attention to how their beloved AI networking can be weaponized in a surveillance state. When you combine fully automated AI data processing with ‘Real ID’, facial recognition software, digital identities created for each American and the motives of govt, you can easily predict what comes next.
The U.S. surveillance system can then be fine-tuned (depending on who is in charge of it) to use the real-time digital and physical identity to control access to systems. Write a Facebook post critical of government, get blocked from your bank account. Do something defined by government as against their interests, lose your access to travel etc.
The problem for Americans is how advanced AI will be deployed under the guise of efficiency to create a comprehensive DHS surveillance state.
The predictable system will automate, connecting every aspect of our lives to our compliance in living that life in the manner approved by those who control the system.
Privacy, freedom and liberty, core fundamental principles of our American system, are replaced with surveillance and defined citizen compliance. These are the pesky issues JD Vance and his Techno-Optimists (Thiel, Sacks, Musk, Ellison, et al) do not want to consider when they think about those pesky ‘proles’ they call “populists.”
Vice-President JD Vance has been constructed as the palatable messenger to calm the fears of MAGA. To calm those AI fears, Vance focuses attention to the well-discussed AI issues around jobs, labor and employment as outlined in his speech.
Listen carefully. However, the issue is not economics, it’s about privacy and liberty.
Reposted in full with permission from Sundance. I definitely see the problem but do not see any way out of it, save we the people having enough free speech to communicate our shared dissatisfaction and thus influence the powers that be. We the plebs have already allowed our civilization to be inundated with incompatible mass immigration, and we have even paid for it. Who is to blame? Not AI.
The Buddhist tradition has long been a ‘render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s’ one. I am black-pilled on our technological future when viewed in terms of the past and assessed with values formed in the past.
My white-pilled, optimistic side envisions digital babies with super-high IQs; AI so good and so well networked, everyone is wealthy and no one needs to be greedy. If everyone is super smart, healthy, and has all they need, the ancient human values of violence, dominance and might makes right, may wither away. All of us are capable of murder but very few ever do it. Several generations of digital babies will produce the finest human beings possible. In their hands AI surveillance will also have the capacity to prevent fraud, group parasitism, evil cabals. Bad as it looks today, I see lots of room for optimism and no matter what, Buddhist practice works in all worlds. ABN
I know very little about this but it is interesting and there has been a lot of new information on the pyramids recently, much of it indicating very old dates preceding a massive flood that inundated most of the the surface of the earth. ABN
American Buddhist Net 