Welcome to the RedState Weekly Briefing  — where we take a quick look at the week’s most viewed stories in case you missed any of them. Grab a cup of coffee and sit down with this 21st Century version of the Weekend Edition of your favorite (online) publication!

#1 –  Fact Checking the Fact Checkers: Debunking AP’s “2000 Mules” Hit Piece – by Jennifer Van Laar

Of course, AP has no comment as to why one would be out in the middle of the night placing numerous ballots in the drop box. I’m sure they will claim that it’s simply a hard-working person who just got off their night shift job and are dutifully taking all of their elderly relatives’ ballots to the drop box. But, of course, that hard-working person also would have visited at least 10 other ballot drop boxes and made five visits to the identified nonprofit organizations alleged to have served as stash houses.

Sounds totally legit.

#2 – Tom Hanks’ Son Gives Absolutely Choice Answer After Being Accused of Cultural Appropriation – by Bonchie

Look, far be it from me to suggest there’s much to learn from a white rapper who appears on reality TV shows and feeds off his father’s fame. But in this case, I think his response is actually instructive. Do you want to drive the woke social-justice warriors nuts? All you have to do is tell them to pound sand. All their power is derived from being able to bring to heel others through outrage and pressure campaigns. When you ignore them and don’t apologize, you neuter their ability to do anything but whine into the void.

#3 – Netflix Goes Scorched Earth on Woke Employees – by Bonchie

When you go woke, you run the risk of going broke, and apparently, Netflix is pulling the ripcord before the streaming giant good and fully faceplants.

Following a financial report that saw its stock price plummet 37 percent in late April, Netflix is now moving to adjust its culture and reengage its frustrated audience. A new “culture memo” dealing with “artistic expression” has been sent out, and it’s clearly a shot at the woke staffers who have been sandbagging the company.

#4 – After 2000 Mules Premiere, True the Vote Promises to “Pull the Ripcord” and Release ALL the Data – by Jennifer Van Laar

The film’s findings are based a review of more than 4 million minutes of ballot drop box surveillance film obtained via public records requests and analysis of a large trove of cell phone geotracking data. True the Vote, a nonprofit organization focused on election integrity issues, obtained the data and retained an investigator, Gregg Phillips, to oversee the analysis. Likely knowing that the fact checkers were going to be out in force immediately to attack the credibility of the film and the data presented therein, Engelbrecht set up a plan to have investigator Phillips perform a massive data dump they’ve code-named “ripcord” so all of the information True the Vote has will be publicly accessible.

#5 – Russian Frigate Reported on Fire as the Intelligence Community Tries to Convince Us They Know What They Are Doing – by Streiff

The notion that you can provide intelligence on the movements of the Russian flagship and not think that at some point someone is going to do more than move pins on a map isn’t the least plausible.

Thursday, I posted on a New York Times story about US intelligence providing targeting information on Russian generals and how that has created Eastern Front levels of lethality for Russian flag officers (see Intelligence Community Claims Responsibility for Killing Russian Generals Because It Didn’t Happen Unless You Know They Did It). My overarching point was that even though Russia “knows” we are providing this sort of intelligence, to me, it seems dysfunctional to hoot-and-holler about how you are doing it. By way of analogy, I’ve known several couples where the husband was engaged in horndoggery, and his wife knew, but she could pretend she didn’t know and keep the marriage going. Where things broke down was when the adultery became known to others, and she could no longer avert her eyes. Then the nasty, vicious divorce lawyers got involved.

If you’re an audiophile and prefer a podcast highlighting some other great stories from this week, be sure to check out Kira Davis’s List Service on the VIP side.