MAGA influencer Laura Loomer faced backlash online after she concluded that Gov. Kathy Hochul's (D-NY) cashmere scarf with a houndstooth pattern was an Islamic threat.

"Another thing the media didn’t catch during @ZohranKMamdani’s swearing in ceremony yesterday," Loomer wrote in a Friday post on X. "Why did New York Governor @GovKathyHochul wear a Palestinian keffiyeh to Mamdani’s ceremony, where he took his oath of office on a Quran?"

"Is Kathy Hochul converting to Islam?" she asked.

Commenters quickly pointed out that Loomer was mistaken.

"It's called houndstooth," one person observed.

"Or, much more likely, it's a houndstooth scarf. Here's one from Amazon that's pretty similar," Tirah Att wrote. "You need to get some serious help - you're out of control."

"I hate Hochul as much as anybody, but that’s just a houndstooth pattern," a commenter said.

"It’s a houndstooth scarf you moron," another person noted.

President Donald Trump has bet big on an agenda to expand artificial intelligence investment in the United States — but this year, some analysts think it could come back to haunt him, as a long-suspected AI investment bubble bursts and the public turns against the technology for its increasingly apparent downsides.

That's the prediction from AI researcher Gary Marcus, which was included in a Politico Magazine piece that laid out 15 potential "black swan events" that could shape the coming year and "stun the world."

"By the end of 2026, President Trump will have begun to distance himself from the aggressively pro-AI industry policies that characterized his AI strategy in 2025," wrote retired New York University professor and AI entrepreneur Gary Marcus. "The giant AI infrastructure plays (like Project Stargate) that he championed after his inauguration will look like an unprofitable and underused mistake. So will his utter failure to meaningfully regulate AI, against the will of voters and political leaders both left and right."

"As a result, Trump will, rightly, take heat for every downside from AI (from deepfakes to chatbot-induced delusions and suicides to massive AI-induced cyberattacks)," wrote Marcus. "Public backlash against data centers, rising energy prices and rapacious AI companies will grow. AI stocks may tank. Generative AI, once Silicon Valley’s golden child, will start to look like a fad, a solution in search of a problem with economics that don’t add up."

And when this happens, he concluded, "Trump will bolt for the door. 'Coffee chatbot, we hardly knew ye,' Trump will be overheard to say."

Already there are signs America is headed in that direction. Polling shows intense public skepticism of AI expansion, with protests popping up around the country against the construction of AI data centers. Meanwhile, as Trump has attempted to curtail state regulation of AI, members of his own party, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, have pushed back.

The White House's insistence that Americans not believe reporters or their own eyes didn't go over well from observers on Friday.

In a Facebook post, the White House repeated a familiar refrain: "Don't believe the fake news lies. The administration is driving positive change for AMERICAN workers."

Underneath the post, the administration included a graphic claiming that 2.5 million native-born Americans gained employment over the last year, while bragging that 670,000 foreign-born workers lost employment in that same time.

The same claim was included in a White House article from Nov. 20. Experts have smacked down the claim, with Jed Kolko, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute and senior advisor at the JPMC Institute, writing on his Substack that the claims are a "multiple-count data felony."

The figures are derived from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Current Population Survey counts of native‑born and foreign‑born employment over roughly a one‑year window.

Kolko’s analysis notes that about 1.2 million of the reported increase in native‑born employment comes purely from a January 2025 population adjustment, not actual job gains. He concluded that “native‑born employment has not soared” as the raw CPS suggests.

To boot, commenters on the White House page were similarly dubious, and flooded the post with mockery and derision.

"Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain," chided Scott Carroll.

"Does this include hospitality, field work, or home construction jobs?" qusetioned Marcel Hickman.

"Including Melania?" wrote Daniel Urban.

"Let’s focus on results, not slogans," retorted Misikir Kebede Witness.