Independent News Drop

KELI From Inkwell, this is the Independent News Drop. I'm Keli, joined by Hast.

HAST We're leading with the ground desk on something the mainstream press walked past entirely. A power play that happened in plain sight, then a closed-door meeting with no readout. Let's go.

KELI From our Ground News desk: on September fourteenth, the president wrote in a post that he had tremendous criminal power over Anthropic and over its CEO Dario Amodei by name. The next day, Attorney General Todd Blanche stood at the Rose Garden and said — we're prosecutors, not regulators, so we won't regulate AI. But he also said this: there are a lot of criminal laws around AI, and if anybody associated with AI violates criminal law, we'll investigate that — and we already have.

HAST That's confirmation of investigation into the company the president named, wrapped inside a reassurance about something nobody claimed was happening. No reporter asked a follow-up. Then the calendar moved.

KELI September twenty-fourth: state dinner for Xi Jinping. Altman, Musk, Huang, Zuckerberg photographed there. Amodei — the one man named in the post — absent, scheduling conflict. Then the president personally invites him. September twenty-seventh, ten p.m., White House, one-on-one, no readout, nothing released about what was said.

HAST Anthropic is preparing an IPO. The company is now sending a co-founder to the AI summit, not Amodei. Here's the structural reality: whether the investigation is real or theater, the sequence tells a story about how pressure moves now. A named target, a public claim of criminal power, a closed door, a company's leadership suddenly unavailable at state events. The press reported the reassurance. Nobody reported the mechanism.

KELI The checkable part: watch whether Anthropic's IPO filing names any federal investigation or legal threat. Watch whether Amodei appears in public settings with the administration between now and November.

HAST Hard story next. An ICE raid on Representative Ilhan Omar's office in Minneapolis this week. The search was authorized by a federal magistrate, the agency says it was over campaign finance irregularities — payments to a consulting firm that may have violated the law. Omar's office says the raid was retribution. What's not in dispute: it happened, federal agents executed a warrant, and Omar is a named Trump target.

KELI Bill O'Reilly, on air this week, admitted Democrats are probably right that the raid was political retribution. He said if it's just a date problem on the filings, it won't go anywhere. The Intercept is framing this as a sign of what happens when Trump's popularity tanks and his grip on power grows tenuous — that checks are failing. Here's what we know: the warrant was issued, the raid was executed, and the naming matters. Whether it clears or charges, it's a use of federal law enforcement power against a sitting House member who opposes the president.

HAST Staying with federal power, but different scope. The Trump administration is advancing a plan to allow specialty pharmacies to produce peptide drugs — largely unregulated injections that have become popular with followers of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and wellness influencers. Kennedy's Department of Health and Human Services submitted an interim access policy to the White House this week. Peptides aren't currently allowed to be made by pharmacies — they're compounded, not manufactured at scale. This policy change would open that production.

KELI The structure: the health secretary pushes a policy that benefits a wellness market his followers are invested in, the department submits it through the formal process, and the White House reviews it. No lobbying scandal here, just how power and ideology move through the agency now.

HAST On a different front: Northern Ireland's former Democratic Unionist Party leader Jeffrey Donaldson was sentenced to fifteen years this week for child sex crimes spanning decades. The judge said Donaldson never apologized to his victims. He's seeking to appeal the convictions.

KELI International story next, but domestic threat: letters with suspicious substances have been sent to U.S. election offices in at least three states — Oklahoma, Ohio, Louisiana. The FBI is investigating. No injuries reported, but the targeting of election infrastructure, even at this level, signals someone willing to use the mail as a vector.

HAST Before we close, a history note.

KELI On this day in nineteen twenty-eight, the airship Graf Zeppelin completed its first trans-Atlantic flight, landing at Lakehurst, New Jersey.

HAST That's the Independent News Drop. For race night tools, racer.wiki. Lawz bodycam explainers on the channel. Cards and shirts at inkwell.wiki slash cards, bible-shirts, art-shirts. Full scripts at inkwell.wiki slash news. From Inkwell.

KELI Before we close, a word from Inkwell. If you've ever wondered what Gil's Intelligent Version actually is — a chronological retranslation of the Bible with its full scholarly workings left visible — there's now a plain overview.

HAST No author, only method. Start at inkwell dot wiki, slash giv, slash about.