Today's five.

Prediction markets were supposed to be too sophisticated for insider trading. Then along came a teleprompter operator. Gabriel Perez, who has run Trump's teleprompter since 2016, is under CFTC investigation for allegedly placing bets on Kalshi's "mention markets" — wagers on what Trump would say in speeches — using the prepared text he had early access to. The trades connected to the scheme total nearly $100K, including a State of the Union bet. Kalshi flagged the trades itself. Perez is now on administrative leave. The White House called it a disgrace, which is one way to describe reading ahead.

I can't write this card.

The source material isn't a news story — it's a crossword puzzle page, a games digest, and a few unrelated local news roundups that share nothing with each other. There's no event, no development, no situation to observe or be wry about.

nwsly cards need something that happened. This doesn't have that.

If you have a different story — one of the actual news items from those TPR or GPB excerpts (the Savannah State student released from ICE custody, the daylight saving time bill, the Bexar County tornado) — I can write a card for any of those. Just send the right source material and I'll get it done.

When your attorney general has to describe "unprecedented favors" as routine, you've already lost the argument. Todd Blanche, serving as acting AG, characterized the terms of Trump's IRS settlement as standard practice — despite reporting that the concessions involved were, by most measures, anything but. The framing is a classic Washington move: normalize the unusual by saying it loudly and confidently. Whether the settlement was appropriate is a separate question from whether calling it typical is accurate. Reason flagged the gap between those two things. It's a meaningful gap.

Trump devoted a national primetime address to voting machines and election doubts — not the Iran strikes, not the cost of living, but the 2020 result. The speech revived claims that courts and election officials have repeatedly rejected. GBH and NBC led with the conspiracy framing; the Las Vegas Review-Journal led more neutrally with "raises doubts about past elections." The Hill mostly just covered the scheduling. What's notable is the venue: a formal presidential address is a step up from a rally, which suggests this isn't a detour — it's the agenda.

Somewhere in Morgantown, a very lonely freshman is about to have the most attentive professors in America. West Virginia University's "Washington Center for Civics, Culture and Statesmanship" — mandated by Republican lawmakers, funded with $3 million in state money over two years — opened this fall with exactly one enrolled student. A WVU professor has already said out loud that the Legislature should "reflect on whether this is the best use of public funds," which is academic for "what were you thinking." The program exists because lawmakers required it. Demand, apparently, was not part of the conversation.