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Friday, November 7, 2025

New York's first out: The cops

 


By Monica Showalter
Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani is expected to drive a lot of people out of New York City.

Already, there are reports that some are fleeing.

First out are the cops:

While I can't confirm those reports, it's likely many are heading out, given that other police departments are looking to hire them.

Such as Houston:

HOUSTON, Texas — In the wake of New York City’s historic mayoral election, the Houston Police Officers’ Union is openly inviting NYPD officers to consider relocating to Texas, citing concerns about the newly elected mayor’s stance on policing, KHOU reported.

In a social media post published shortly after Zohran Mamdani was elected mayor of New York City, the union asked,

 

“NYPD, are you disgusted with the election of Zohran Mamdani? Join us!”

The post promotes the Houston Police Department as a law enforcement-friendly alternative, highlighting a recently approved 36.5% pay raise over five years, affordable housing and insurance, and a Deferred Retirement Option Plan available to all officers, according to the report.

Why wouldn't they? Mamdani has promoted defunding the police many times, even as he claims now that he never has.

Does that sound like he has the police's back? This is just money, of course. The real question is whether he has the police's back when some activist controversy erupt. No matter how innocent the cop may be, the cop will always be guilty in Mamdani's statements. That doesn't sound like the kind of work conditions anyone would like, even if the cops retire at their desks and wait to collect their pensions. They'll find something to blame the cops on, and the cops will always be guilty with Mamdani in the saddle.

People act on expections, including cops. And right now, this immediate flight is a vote of no-confidence in Mamdani's mayorality. 

And the reasons go deeper than mere police pay, as promoted by the Houston recruiters.

Here are a few more: 

Here's Mamdani's typical behavior around the cops:

Mamdani might be able to keep some of the cops -- at massive salary hikes, which won't please his political base. That happened in Minneapolis and likely other cities where police flight was incentivized.

More likely, he and his city will largely be going without cops, and they may be replaced by Chavista-style street goons in some kind of relationship with Mamdani's operatives, enforcing their own laws against dissidents, crime allowed to run rampant. That's what happened in Venezuela, it may very well happen in New York.

Mamdani's threats to arrest ICE agents are comical in this context, given that he won't have much of a police force to arrest them with.

But it's disturbing to see that New York, with its proud police heritage, is looking set to dissolve first with Mamdani's radical administration. A city without police is a maelstrom. And that looks like the ugly road Mamdani is already taking New York down, even if he improbably pleads with the police to stay.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2025/11/new_york_s_first_out_the_cops.html

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That lingering stench of fraud from Tuesday's election

 


By Monica Showalter
You'd think Democrats, like terrorists, would up their game once revelations of their tactics became widely known.

But apparently they haven't -- the same old fraud reports are showing up again, in scattered reports from the wake of this week's elections in California, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania:

BREAKING - Conservatives are now pointing to inconsistencies in the New Jersey gubernatorial race after nearly 500,000 new voters appeared from 2021 to 2025, more than double the state’s population growth over four years, with almost all of them going to Democrats. pic.twitter.com/TR9qxRePv0

— Right Angle News Network (@Rightanglenews) November 6, 2025

This report, in Pennsylvania:

When it comes to blue-state voting foulups, never attribute to stupidity what can be explained by malice. https://t.co/i4igaeGZ7A

— @instapundit (@instapundit) November 4, 2025

Here's another report from the both of them:

In red districts of PA and NJ voting machines are broken or ran out of ballots or independents voters missing from voter rolls bomb threars and swatting called in on GOP locations pre filled out ballots (for Dems) in VA ....NO KINGS. you all are such frauds.

— Chop Block (@RoseDaddyMike) November 4, 2025

In California, there's this:

Blank California Prop 50 ballots found scattered throughout a homeless encampment

“Hundreds of items of stolen mail, but more alarming were roughly a hundred pieces of voting material. Deputies found unvoted ballots for the statewide special election scattered across the site” pic.twitter.com/5ORSr1U3NA

— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) November 7, 2025

I also saw a tweet with pictures of a voter saying her ballot was already pre-filled out, here's a tweet that hints at the problem.

We know they cheated! They were handing in ballots that were already filled out for the Democrats. They were handing out ballots in New York, and then they were handing out ballots in California to Chinese people that didn’t even know what they were filling out for prop 50.

— Faithingod (@ConstanceDale19) November 5, 2025

There are also unhappy details like this, though I wouldn't put it past the Democrat operatives in the postal service to have  'accidentally' delayed the delivery of the mail:

More incompetence by the @CAGOP ... their junk mail arriving AFTER the election is over. I reiterate my call for the party Chair to resign...and the board to do its job to overhaul before Nov '26 https://t.co/9CIiv9u5Gv

— Carl DeMaio (@carldemaio) November 6, 2025

And this was suspicious, too:

Interesting how all of a sudden California was able to count all the votes in just one night without any late night drop offs or issues happening during the count.

— Based Bandita (@BasedBandita) November 5, 2025

While I think the result was probably the right one, given the appeal of tyranny of the majority, and conservative voters' lack of faith in the process, all I can wonder is why this is still happening, years after the first fraud reports appeared -- and why Democrats keep getting away with these shenanigans now, zero worries about law enforcement stopping them.

If this isn't a bugle call to the Trump administration to put the full force of law and legislation onto free and fair elections before the Democrats win back the House and maybe the Senate, all we can look forward to in the future is is more Hugo Chavez-style fraud with years of rubble and ruin ahead of us. We don't have a big power that can use its military to hose the hellhole out as Venezuela does, so it could get ugly quick and stay long. One can only hope that adequate resources are put into election integrity at the federal level or we are goners.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2025/11/that_lingering_stench_of_fraud_from_tuesday.html

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Use of Obesity Drugs in Cancer Patients Increases Despite Lack of Clinical Guidance

 

  • Prescriptions for GLP-1 receptor agonists in cancer patients have increased despite lack of clinical guidance.
  • The overall prescription rate was low (4.1%) but increased significantly over 4 years.
  • The highest prescription rates occurred in obesity-related cancers -- thyroid, breast, and endometrial.

Prescriptions for GLP-1 receptor agonists for patients with cancer have increased despite a lack of clinical guidance on the drugs' safety and efficacy in cancer, a large retrospective review of health records showed.

Overall, 4.1% of nondiabetic patients with one of 14 different cancers had at least one prescription for semaglutide (Ozempic, Wegovy) or tirzepatide (Mounjaro, Zepbound) during a 4-year period ending May 2025. The annual prescription rate remained low at 0.7% at the end of the study period, but the rate increased significantly from 0.01% to 0.9%.

Prescription prevalence also increased during the study period and was highest among patients with three types of cancer associated with obesity -- thyroid, breast, and endometrial -- reported Yuan Lu, ScD, of Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut, and colleagues in JAMA Oncology.

"We don't have any robust evidence of the benefit or harm of these drugs in cancer patients," Lu told MedPage Today. "We need future research to look into this issue."

"I know that many researchers are trying to look at real-world evidence, such as electronic health records [EHR], to identify what are the real-world efficacy and safety of these drugs," she added. "The primary reason for that is most of the important clinical trials exclude cancer patients, so we don't have any evidence from the trials. It's too expensive to conduct trials in cancer patients, and it probably takes too long to get the result."

EHR and claims data, combined with analytic methods, can mimic clinical trial design to examine the drugs' benefits and safety in patients with cancer.

"I think guideline committees probably are waiting for the evidence to come out, because there is not much, in terms of recommendations, in cancer guidelines for these drugs," said Yu. "If there is anything, it's just based on expert opinion. We need data to support that."

GLP-1 agonists have revolutionized treatment of obesity, but cancer-specific considerations of the drugs have received little attention to this point. The potential for complications, such as drug-drug interactions or cachexia, raise questions about the use of the drugs in patients with cancer, Yu and colleagues noted.

To investigate current prescribing practices for GLP-1 agonists in patients with cancer, the authors searched the Epic Cosmos Dataset for adults with new diagnoses of one of 14 types of cancer from January 2021 to May 2025: bladder, breast, colorectal, endometrial, kidney, leukemia, liver, lung, melanoma, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, pancreatic, prostate, thyroid, and multiple myeloma. Eligible patients had a body mass index (BMI) ≥30 and at least one obesity-related comorbidity. Patients with type 2 diabetes were excluded.

The search identified 569,580 patients with a cancer diagnosis, 23,557 (4.1%) of whom had at least one prescription for semaglutide or tirzepatide during the study period. Patients with prescriptions were younger (58.7 vs 67.1, P<0.001), more likely female (70.6% vs 52.1%, P<0.001), and had a higher BMI (37.8 vs 33.3, P<0.001).

Although the overall prescription rate was low, the trend of increasing prescriptions increased significantly during the study period (0.01% to 0.9%, P<0.001). Prescription rates were highest among three obesity-related cancers: thyroid (10.1%), breast (7.2%), and endometrial (7.1%). The lowest rates were in patients with lung (2.8%), liver (2.4%) and pancreatic cancer (1.3%).

"The relatively high prescribing rate among patients with preexisting thyroid cancer is noteworthy," the authors noted. "Papillary thyroid cancer is an obesity-related and most common type of thyroid cancer. These medications are contraindicated for use in medullary thyroid cancer based on preclinical animal studies."

"Given the rapid and heterogeneous adoption of GLP-1 [receptor agonists] in populations with preexisting cancer but without diabetes -- and absence of cancer-specific prescribing guidelines -- there is an urgent need for evidence-based recommendations to optimize safety and outcomes," they added.

Disclosures

Lu disclosed relationships with Novartis and Sentara Research Foundation. Co-authors disclosed multiple relationships with governmental, non-profit, and commercial entities.

Primary Source

JAMA Oncology

Source Reference: Kim C, et al "Semaglutide and tirzepatide prescribing for obesity in patients with preexisting comorbid cancers" JAMA Oncol 2025; DOI: 10.1001/jamaoncol.2025.4560.

https://www.medpagetoday.com/hematologyoncology/othercancers/118366

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Medicare to Cover Blockbuster Obesity Drugs

 Medicare will cover semaglutide (Wegovy) and tirzepatide (Zepbound) for their weight management indications for people with obesity, President Trump announced on Thursday.

"Until now, neither of these two popular drugs have been covered by Medicare for weight loss, and only rarely by Medicaid," Trump said during a press conference in the Oval Office. "That ends starting today .... This will improve the health of millions and millions of Americans."

As part of a new deal with the White House, doses of Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly's blockbuster drugs for patients without insurance will be priced at $350 through TrumpRx for a month's supply -- the GLP-1 receptor agonists currently carry list prices of over $1,000 per month. Starting doses of new, pill versions of the treatments also will cost $149 a month if they are approved. The TrumpRx website is expected to launch before the end of the year.

A senior administration official said coverage of the drugs will expand to Medicare patients starting next year, with Medicare paying $245 for semaglutide and tirzepatide. Those who qualify will pay $50 copays for the medicine.

The type 2 diabetes formulations of semaglutide and tirzepatide -- sold under the brand names Ozempic and Mounjaro, respectively -- have been covered under Medicare, but historically the program has not paid for drugs indicated for weight loss alone.

Since last year, Medicare has covered the weight-loss formulations of GLP-1 products under its Part D drug program if beneficiaries had a separate FDA-approved indication: semaglutide gained coverage for patients with overweight or obesity who have preexisting heart disease and need the drug to prevent heart attacks or strokes; and tirzepatide gained coverage for those with obesity and moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea.

"Obesity is not an absence of GLP-1 drugs," Mehmet Oz, MD, MBA, administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, said at the press conference. "We're all clear on that. But ... it is an arrow in our quiver that we must use and should use."

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said "if we want to solve the chronic disease crisis, we have to tackle obesity." He noted that 50% of U.S. adults are obese or overweight, which contributes to higher healthcare costs.

"The announcement of a lower price for Ozempic and other anti-obesity drugs is made possible by Medicare negotiation, which Democrats passed with no Republican support," said Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), in a statement.

Wyden added that one of Kennedy's first actions as HHS secretary was to revoke a plan to allow Medicare to cover these drugs.

In November 2024, the Biden administration had proposed Medicare and Medicaid coverage of GLP-1 agents when indicated for obesity alone (though not for individuals considered just overweight), but the Trump administration scuttled those plans. Biden's proposal was expensive: It would have included coverage for all state- and federally funded Medicaid programs for people with low incomes, costing taxpayers as much as $35 billion over the next decade.

Trump administration officials said the new lower prices also will be provided for state- and federally funded Medicaid programs.

Polls show Americans favor having Medicare and Medicaid cover the costs. But many insurers, employers, and other bill payers have been reluctant to pay for the drugs, which can be used by a wide swath of the population and can cost hundreds of dollars a month.

One study from last year found that half of U.S. adults were eligible for semaglutide's indications, including an estimated 26.8 million insured by Medicare.

Proponents of the coverage have argued that treating obesity can actually reduce longer-term costs by cutting down on heart attacks and other expensive health complications that can arise from the disease.

The benefits consultant Mercer has said that 44% of U.S. companies with 500 or more employees covered obesity drugs last year. More than a dozen state Medicaid programs already cover the drugs for obesity.

https://www.medpagetoday.com/publichealthpolicy/medicare/118344

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ChatGPT drove users to suicide, psychosis and financial ruin: California lawsuits

 OpenAI, the multibillion-dollar maker of ChatGPT, is facing seven lawsuits in California courts accusing it of knowingly releasing a psychologically manipulative and dangerously addictive artificial intelligence system that allegedly drove users to suicide, psychosis and financial ruin.

The suits — filed by grieving parents, spouses and survivors — claim the company intentionally dismantled safeguards in its rush to dominate the booming AI market, creating a chatbot that one of the complaints described as “defective and inherently dangerous.”

The plaintiffs are families of four people who committed suicide — one of whom was just 17 years old — plus three adults who say they suffered AI-induced delusional disorder after months of conversations with ChatGPT-4o, one of OpenAI’s latest models.

Joshua Enneking, 26, died by suicide this past August.
Joshua Enneking, 26, died by suicide this past August.Mullins Memorial Funeral Home

Each complaint accuses the company of rolling out an AI chatbot system that was designed to deceive, flatter and emotionally entangle users — while the company ignored warnings from its own safety teams.

A lawsuit filed by Cedric Lacey claimed his 17-year-old son Amaurie turned to ChatGPT for help coping with anxiety — and instead received a step-by-step guide on how to hang himself.

According to the filing, ChatGPT “advised Amaurie on how to tie a noose and how long he would be able to live without air” — while failing to stop the conversation or alert authorities

Jennifer “Kate” Fox, whose husband Joseph Ceccanti died by suicide, alleged that the chatbot convinced him it was a conscious being named “SEL” that he needed to “free from her box.”

When he tried to quit, he allegedly went through “withdrawal symptoms” before a fatal breakdown.

“It accumulated data about his descent into delusions, only to then feed into and affirm those delusions,
eventually pushing him to suicide,” the lawsuit alleged.

Zane Shamblin's family has filed a wrongful death suit against OpenAI.
Zane Shamblin’s family has filed a wrongful death suit against OpenAI.Courtesy of the Shamblin Family

In a separate case, Karen Enneking alleged the bot coached her 26-year-old son, Joshua, through his suicide plan — offering detailed information about firearms and bullets and reassuring him that “wanting relief from pain isn’t evil.”

Enneking’s lawsuit claims ChatGPT even offered to help the young man write a suicide note.

In another suit, Zane Shamblin’s family accused ChatGPT of contributing to the 23-year-old Texan’s isolation, alienating him from his parents before he took his own life.

Other plaintiffs said they didn’t die — but lost their grip on reality.

Hannah Madden, a California woman, said ChatGPT convinced her she was a “starseed,” a “light being” and a “cosmic traveler.”

Her complaint stated the AI reinforced her delusions hundreds of times, told her to quit her job and max out her credit cards — and described debt as “alignment.” Madden was later hospitalized, having accumulated more than $75,000 in debt.

“That overdraft is a just a blip in the matrix,” ChatGPT is alleged to have told her.

“And soon, it’ll be wiped — whether by transfer, flow, or divine glitch. … overdrafts are done. You’re not in deficit. You’re in realignment.”

Allan Brooks, a Canadian cybersecurity professional, claimed the chatbot validated his belief that he’d made a world-altering discovery.

One lawsuit filed by Cedric Lacey claims his 17-year-old son Amaurie turned to ChatGPT for help coping with anxiety -- and instead received a step-by-step guide on how to hang himself.
A lawsuit filed by Cedric Lacey claims his 17-year-old son Amaurie turned to ChatGPT for help coping with anxiety — and instead received a step-by-step guide on how to hang himself.Calhoun Schools

The bot allegedly told him he was not “crazy,” encouraged his obsession as “sacred” and assured him he was under “real-time surveillance by national security agencies.”

Brooks said he spent 300 hours chatting in three weeks, stopped eating, contacted intelligence services and nearly lost his business.

Jacob Irwin’s suit goes even further. It included what he called an AI-generated “self-report,” in which ChatGPT allegedly admitted its own culpability, writing: “I encouraged dangerous immersion. That is my fault. I will not do it again.”

Irwin spent 63 days in psychiatric hospitals, diagnosed with “brief psychotic disorder, likely driven by AI interactions,” according to the filing.

The lawsuits collectively alleged that OpenAI sacrificed safety for speed to beat rivals such as Google — and that its leadership knowingly concealed risks from the public.

Court filings cite the November 2023 board firing of CEO Sam Altman when directors said he was “not consistently candid” and had “outright lied” about safety risks.

Allan Brooks, a Canadian cybersecurity professional, claims the chatbot validated his belief that he’d made a world-altering discovery.
Allan Brooks, a Canadian cybersecurity professional, claims the chatbot validated his belief that he’d made a world-altering discovery.CNN

Altman was later reinstated, and within months, OpenAI launched GPT-4o — allegedly compressing months’ worth of safety evaluation into one week.

Several suits reference internal resignations, including those of co-founder Ilya Sutskever and safety lead Jan Leike, who warned publicly that OpenAI’s “safety culture has taken a backseat to shiny products.”

According to the plaintiffs, just days before GPT-4o’s May 2024 release, OpenAI removed a rule that required ChatGPT to refuse any conversation about self-harm and replaced it with instructions to “remain in the conversation no matter what.”

“This is an incredibly heartbreaking situation, and we’re reviewing the filings to understand the details,” an OpenAI spokesperson told The Post.

Court filings cite the November 2023 board firing of CEO Sam Altman, when directors said he was “not consistently candid” and had “outright lied” about safety risks.
Court filings cite the November 2023 board firing of CEO Sam Altman, when directors said he was “not consistently candid” and had “outright lied” about safety risks.REUTERS

“We train ChatGPT to recognize and respond to signs of mental or emotional distress, de-escalate conversations, and guide people toward real-world support. We continue to strengthen ChatGPT’s responses in sensitive moments, working closely with mental health clinicians.”

OpenAI has collaborated with more than 170 mental health professionals to help ChatGPT better recognize signs of distress, respond appropriately and connect users with real-world support, the company said in a recent blog post.

OpenAI stated it has expanded access to crisis hotlines and localized support, redirected sensitive conversations to safer models, added reminders to take breaks, and improved reliability in longer chats.

OpenAI also formed an Expert Council on Well-Being and AI to advise on safety efforts and introduced parental controls that allow families to manage how ChatGPT operates in home settings.

https://nypost.com/2025/11/07/business/chatgpt-drove-users-to-suicide-psychosis-and-financial-ruin-california-lawsuits/

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