Archive for the ‘Texas’ Category

Proposition I: Audit Austin

Monday, October 5th, 2026

Another election year means another batch of propositions for Austin citizens to vote on. Most are the usual mix of bonds and bad ideas, but Save Austin Now has managed to get Proposition I, a proposal to perform regular audits of the city budget, on the ballot.

One year after defeating a massive tax hike proposal, Austin voters will decide this November whether to lock in regular audits of city finances through a charter initiative that is facing opposition from a government employees’ union.

Proposition I resulted from a citizen petition organized by the Save Austin Now PAC, a group that successfully worked to defeat a proposed 20 percent tax rate hike in 2025. This year, the PAC’s petition effort collected more than 20,000 signatures to place the proposed “Independent Affordability & Efficiency Initiative” (IAEI) on the ballot to mandate hiring an independent and experienced audit firm through a competitive bid process.

Under the measure, the selected auditing agency would analyze the spending, performance, and outcomes of all city departments and contractors to identify opportunities to streamline and optimize staffing and management structure and identify fraud, waste, abuse, and conflicts of interest.

The IAEI analysis would also include an examination of how city policy, such as tax rates, affects resident affordability.

Attorney and former Travis County Judge Bill Aleshire, who drafted the charter amendment, told The Texan that voters sent a message to the city council last year in rejecting the property tax increase, but that Proposition I “would make the message permanent.”

“That message is ‘enough,’ and that their taxes are too high,” he said.

Aleshire noted that the ballot initiative differs from an ordinance approved by the city council in February 2026.

“The ordinance can be repealed the day after the election by the Austin City Council,” he said. “But the charter amendment is basically the people telling the city council that they must have this new audit process, and therefore it’s also enforceable by the voters, and it cannot be changed without another vote of the public.”

Under the charter amendment, the auditor must benchmark the cost of city government to measures of resident affordability, and audits must be completed every five years and within one year of any future tax rate increase elections.

While the city is not required to publish documentation supporting audits under its new ordinance, Aleshire also pointed out that the charter amendment would make all drafts and supporting materials available to the public.

The selected contractor would also have to identify annual and multi-year savings that exceed the cost of its own work.

Austin Mayor Kirk Watson has called the charter amendment a “political move” and argued that the mandate to identify the savings presents a conflict of interest for the auditing firm.

The charter amendment has also drawn opposition from the local chapter of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME). The union’s president, Brydan Summers, said in a statement that the proposition is “just the latest attempt from Save Austin Now to force its right-wing agenda on our city.”

Of course Democrats and unions hate the idea of audits, because that would show just how deep they’ve shoved their hands into the cookie jar:

  • Austin appears to use homeless program “consultants” as a conduit to donate money to Democrats.
  • That is, when they’re not using it to launder money into their own pockets.
  • Remember the entire “Reimaging Austin Police” lunacy? The entire purpose of that charade was to take money out of the hands of law enforcement and put it into the hands of radical leftwing organizations, almost all of which just happened to have members on the “reimaging” task force.
  • No wonder they don’t want audits. For every situation where leftwing activists are sticking their snouts into that giant trough of taxpayer money we’ve caught, there are probably dozens of instances we haven’t. So expect every social justice Democrat at every level of Austin government, and every left-leaning NGO in the city, to come out full bore to defeat Proposition I at all costs.

    LinkSwarm For October 2, 2026

    Friday, October 2nd, 2026

    A reminder not to get black-pilled, another Supreme Court win for deporting illegal alien felons, San Francisco’s government offers pedos a veritable buffet, Rockefeller money is going to the ChiComs, and another deeply technical video on semiconductor processes you won’t click on.

    It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • Kurt Schlichter reminds you not to get blackpilled.

    Yes, I want to believe, but there’s evidence supporting hope. There’s evidence supporting the idea that the polls are so substantially flawed that they do not accurately reflect what’s going to happen. Again, the caveat – this could be delusion. We could be seeing what we want to see. But then, what we’re seeing is there. There is evidence supporting what we want to happen, evidence worth considering.

    We’re seeing how polls have been missing big lately. Look at Abdul El-Sayed. He was supposed to win that Michigan primary in a walk. We’re talking five, 10, 15 points, according to the primary polls. And yet he barely squeaked past that squeaky woman he was competing with. We’ve seen lots of other polls that assured us of a Democrat victory. Just ask President Harris about that.

    If you’ve been around a while, you know that the polls always favor the Democrats. You almost never see a Democrat surprise us by exceeding his polling against a Republican. You just don’t. So, there’s that. And of course, there’s an interest in driving down Republican enthusiasm by telling people they can’t win.

    Then there’s the gut vibe. Don’t completely disregard that. In Texas, you must believe the Texans are going to support a blasphemous, anti-meat, anti-gun, anti-white, woke weirdo with a thing for trans kids. Does that sound like Texas to you? It sure doesn’t sound like Texas to me, and I’m in Texas. I’ve talked to a lot of Texan conservatives. Not one thinks this guy is going to win. Now, they agree it could theoretically happen, but they don’t think it’s going to. Ken Paxton has won three times in statewide races, and he’s done a lot of great conservative things. Are Texans really going to choose a bizarre homunculus to spend six years in Washington, D.C., voting like Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14) in their name? It just doesn’t fit. It’s weird. That’s not saying it couldn’t happen – there are lots of communists here along with other weirdos, losers, and mutations who would be thrilled to have this geebo as a Lone Star senator. But it just doesn’t feel like something that’s going to happen.

    Moreover, we’ve been told a lot of conservatives are going to sit this out. The bots on X are certainly pushing that coordinated message, as the semi-coherent comments on my Monday column about quitters demonstrate. Yes, there are probably some Republicans who are going to sit out this midterm, but I haven’t met any of them personally. Maybe you have. I just don’t think there are a lot of them, especially in light of how appalling the Democrats are. It doesn’t make sense, at least to people who aren’t idiots who blame everything on Epstein conspiracies and the Jews and blah blah blah, to be mad at Trump and the Republicans for not being conservative enough and showing them what-for by allowing the election of communists. As risky as it is, I’m not going all-in on the assumption that people are that stupid.

    Read the whole thing, and encourage all your sane friends to show up at the polls in November.

  • “Fauci diary reveals alarm that U.S. had aerosolized Ebola virus. Umm, isn’t this a violation of the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on their Destruction?

    Dr. Anthony Fauci privately sounded the alarm when he learned the U.S. Army had conducted an experiment a decade ago that aerosolized the lethal Ebola virus, which is not normally transmitted by air, and then shared the results publicly amid an ongoing outbreak in Africa, according to diary entries obtained by Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Rand Paul.

    The then-top scientist at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease was particularly concerned in 2016 that the Army medical research arm’s experiment seemed to show that exposure to aerosolized Ebola caused more damaging effects in subjects that had been vaccinated. This was almost four years before he championed shutting down the U.S. economy and social life over the COVID-19 virus outbreak.

    Fauci wrote he believed such research should be kept secret, preferably classified, so that it didn’t undermine public confidence in vaccination in the African countries suffering an outbreak of the virus.

    “What idiots those guys at USAMRIID [U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases] are,” Fauci wrote in a March 2016 diary entry. “This should have been a classified experiment that never should have been done in the first place.”

    Why yes, “undermining public confidence in vaccination” is a far bigger concern than the fact that the U.S. Army under Obama was committing an actual war crime.

  • “San Francisco’s Frat Houses for Pedophiles. California houses sex offenders right next to schools—on the taxpayers’ dime.”

    It’s Tuesday morning at Little Learners Daycare in downtown San Francisco. Teacher Wendy herds bright-eyed toddlers, amped up after playtime in the courtyard, back inside. They’re laughing and swatting at each other playfully, oblivious to the pack of pedophiles lurking nearby.

    Four hundred feet away, dozens of registered sex offenders live at 111 Taylor Street. Wendy knew that the Tenderloin, where she operates her Mandarin-immersion daycare, was dangerous. It’s a hotbed for illegal drug activity and homelessness. But she didn’t realize that sex offenders live so close to her daycare—or that taxpayers fund their housing.

    Pedophiles, illegal aliens; the only people Democrats don’t like paying for housing for is law-abiding American citizens.

    According to this City Journal investigation, more than 25 percent of sex offenders in San Francisco with addresses in the Megan’s Law database live in taxpayer-subsidized buildings. Many live near a park, school, or daycare, or reside in a neighborhood with a high concentration of children. They do all of this despite statewide efforts to ban concentrating pedophiles so close to children. Instead of listening to California voters, San Francisco has become a taxpayer-funded dumping ground for sex criminals.

    The Taylor Street Center is one of San Francisco’s most heavily populated sex-offender residences. Located in the Tenderloin, Taylor Street houses at least 31 registered sex offenders. The taxpayer-funded California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and the federal Bureau of Prisons contract the private GEO Group to run the facility.

    The reentry complex can house 240 people. It hosts specialized programs for residents like “cultural diversity education,” “gender-responsive groups,” and a “weekly meditation group.” The facility sits just 400 feet from a daycare center, 1,000 feet from a fourth-to-eighth-grade school, and five blocks away from a preschool.

    Any sex offender housed in the Tenderloin is bound to encounter children. Along with having a high concentration of immigrant and low-income households, the neighborhood also has the highest concentration of kids in the entire city.

    I’m sure the sex offenders call that “the buffet.”

  • “Trump Cancels $810M for Illegal Immigrants, Race-Based Programs.”

    President Trump invoked a rare and legally contested power Friday to cancel $810 million in congressionally approved spending, targeting programs for illegal immigrants and a slate of federal initiatives explicitly organized around race and DEI.

    The request hits 11 funding pools at seven departments and agencies. It also landed with just five days left in the fiscal year. That’s the point of the disputed “pocket rescission” maneuver: the money runs out before Congress gets its normal 45 days to consider the cuts.

    The biggest piece is $567 million at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for services to refugees, asylees, unaccompanied minors, and other non-citizens.

    The White House called them “pro-illegal immigration programs” and said the money is no longer needed because illegal border crossings have fallen sharply.

    But immigration spending was only part of the package.

    Several of the rescissions hit programs explicitly organized around race or ethnicity.

    The administration wants to rescind $10 million from the Commerce Department’s Minority Business Development Agency, which helps minority-owned businesses. The White House pointed to a 2024 federal court ruling that found the agency’s presumption of social disadvantage based on race or ethnicity unconstitutional.

    Another $5 million would come from HHS’s Office of Minority Health.

    The White House highlighted grants from that office addressing racial trauma among black youth, health disparities among black and Latino youth, a George Washington University fellowship promoting health equity and DEI, and a $1.5 million project addressing the effects of redlining and structural racism.

    HUD housing counseling takes a much larger hit, with $56 million targeted.

    The administration said the program had funded groups including UnidosUS, the National Urban League, and Housing Action Illinois, criticizing their work on structural racism, racial justice, and other DEI priorities.

    Then there is the Justice Department’s Community Relations Service, slated to lose $15 million.

    The office’s mission included “preventing and resolving racial and ethnic tensions” and restoring racial stability. The Trump administration shut it down earlier this year and now accuses the office of promoting critical race theory and gender ideology rather than carrying out that mission.

    The package goes beyond those programs.

    The administration identified $28 million in HHS research funding it wants canceled, pointing to grants involving transgender health care, racial disparities, and a $50,000 project to develop a research agenda addressing racism in emergency medicine. Another $70 million would be pulled from international education programs, including programs the White House said had funded research involving queer and transgender issues abroad.

    Other cuts include $25 million for migrant student programs, $25 million across two DHS programs providing services or legal assistance to non-citizens, and $9 million for a Treasury program providing debt relief to foreign countries in exchange for conservation commitments.

    Now we need to hand out pink slips to the people who were administering these programs.

  • “Ilsky Oil Refinery in Krasnodar Hit By Drones: Big Damage.”
  • Follow-up: “Satellite Imagery Shows Huge Damage to Azov Mechanical Plant.”
  • “Big Missile/Jet Drone Strike on Azov Mechanical Plant, Rostov: Makes Parts for Missiles.”
  • “L-39 Trainer Destroyed, Three Fast Patrol Boats Hit!” Plus some radar equipment hit.
  • “Over 40 Destroyed Russian Logistics Vehicles On One Stretch of Road in Southern Ukraine.”
  • Russian chemical explosives plant explodes. Possibly just the usual Russian incompetence.
  • Speaking of Russian incompetence: “Tu-95 Bear Crashes in Amur, Russia!” That’s in the Russian far east, so probably not taken out by Ukraine.
  • Turnabout is fair play: Ukraine uses its own turtle tanks to attack Russian positions.
  • Long overdue: “Education Dept. Officially Removes Biden’s Title IX Gender Identity Rules. In other words, the department is sticking to the literal interpretation of Title IX: sex-based discrimination.”

    The Education Department has officially rescinded the Biden Administration’s Title IX interpretation that extended protections to students based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

    In other words, the department is sticking to Title IX’s literal meaning: sex-based discrimination.

    “Today’s rulemaking clears the Biden Administration’s illegal rewrite of Title IX from the Code of Federal Regulations and restores the commonsense language promulgated in the first Trump Administration, which we have been enforcing since the first days of the Administration,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon. “Thanks to today’s action, the published Title IX regulations faithfully reflects court orders and Congressional intent—reducing confusion for parents, students, and educational institutions. We will continue to relentlessly champion equal opportunity for all Americans and hold accountable any school or college that violates the rights, privacy, or athletic opportunities of our women and girls.”

    Honestly, nothing changes because the department has been enforcing reality since January 2025: Title IX is based on sex. It’s not based on your sexual orientation or gender identity.

  • It looks like trying to gay the kids has backfired.

    Somehow, the people who tell us that they were “born this way” and that “sexuality is a spectrum” are now returning to normal. It’s almost like the whole “acceptance” movement was just a social contagion that spread because teens like being rebellious!

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • “Supreme Court Allows Rapid Third-Country Deportations to Continue.”

    The Supreme Court majority (6-3) has granted the DOJ request to put on hold a Boston-based US District Judge ruling that DHS policy to remove illegal aliens to so-called third countries is unlawful. The process of rapid deportation will continue while the matter is called before the Supreme Court for oral arguments in December (ruling in ’27).

    The Usual Suspects opposed deporting the Democrat Party’s precious illegal alien felons.

  • “Jack Smith Collected Thousands of Trump Donors’ Financial Info as Part of Election Probe.”

    Former Justice Department Special Counsel Jack Smith subpoenaed at least 4,782 political donations to President Donald Trump from Americans across the country between September 2019 and August 2023, Senator Chuck Grassley revealed during a Tuesday hearing featuring the former special counsel.

    The checks — which Smith’s team acquired as part of their election case against Trump, dubbed “Arctic Frost” — contained donors’ personal information, including their home addresses, bank account and routing numbers, and signatures. Some of the subpoenaed donations were for as little as $1. Grassley revealed the evidence while questioning Smith during Tuesday’s Senate Judiciary hearing and followed up with a press release containing further details.

    During former President Joe Biden’s administration, Smith brought two cases against Trump: The first accused him of conspiring to overturn the 2020 election, and the second involved him keeping classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate. Smith resigned from his position nine days before Trump was sworn in as president again; both cases against Trump have been dismissed.

    As part of the FBI’s investigation into the 2020 election, agents accessed toll records, which show who a given individual spoke with on the phone but not the contents of their calls, for 16 members of Congress. He also subpoenaed records from 87 Trump White House phones, which captured records from calls between government sources and dozen of news outlets.

    The political donations Grassley described were obtained as part of Smith’s investigation, which focused on whether Trump defrauded donors by raising money under the false pretext that the resulting donations would help Trump’s team overturn the results of the 2020 election.

    All the easier to compile an enemies list should Democrats retake power…

  • “Rockefeller Brothers Fund Sent Nearly $32 Million to China-Based Nonprofits, Watchdog Finds. ‘Dangerous partnership with Communist China.'”

    The Rockefeller Brothers Fund, a $1.4 billion U.S.-based charity with funding from the Rockefeller family and other donors, has forged a “dangerous partnership with Communist China” and is pouring millions of dollars into China-based nonprofits that are advancing the Chinese Communist Party’s foreign policy goals.

    That’s one of the findings in a new report, “The Rockefeller Network: How the Rockefeller Family Turned Their Oil Fortune into Extreme Climate Activism,” out today from Americans for Public Trust, a nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative watchdog organization. The report, an advance copy of which was obtained exclusively by the Washington Free Beacon, outlines how the billion-dollar fortune of Standard Oil founder John D. Rockefeller Sr., who died in 1937, is being used “to quietly bankroll numerous radical and leftist projects.”

    Snip.

    “An alarming amount—well into the millions—has found its way directly into the coffers of entities that are either official vestiges of the Chinese government, or directly and irrefutably administered by the CCP and its representatives,” the report says. “And many of these entities, while operating under the guise of ‘green’ and environmental research, are, instead, using these funds to help buttress China’s foreign influence programs around the globe, especially the CCP’s infamous ‘Belt and Road Initiative.'”

    Among the grants singled out in the report as most problematic:

    — $400,000 between 2020 and 2024 to the Foreign Environment Cooperation Center, “a division of the Chinese government’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment.”

    — Nearly $1.5 million to the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development, whose “direct ties to the Chinese government are undeniable.”

    — Nearly $200,000 to Tsinghua University, which announced in 2024 that the school’s office of the president had merged with the Chinese Communist Party to “form a new Party Committee Office that would run the school.”

    Groups that fund the ChiComs should have their non-profit status revoked and their assets seized.

  • “New York Democrat says the quiet part out loud: “My biggest goal … is I want to legalize 7 or 8 or 9 or 10 million people in our country.”

    Democrats are always saying the quiet part out loud nowadays.

    They aren’t even trying to hide their radical plans to totally replace America’s voters, workers, and people with a cheap labor underclass that disproportionately votes Democrat.

    [ U.S. Representative] Democrat Tom Suozzi says his biggest goal in politics is mass amnesty for criminal illegals:

    “My biggest goal of what I want to accomplish in politics right now is I want to legalize 7 or 8 or 9 or 10 million people in our country.”

    Amnesty was always the end goal for the illegal alien importation.

  • Obvious: “UK Whistleblower: 99 percent of Asylum Claims Are Fake.”

    Only one in 100 asylum claims are genuine, according to a whistleblower who has revealed widespread fraud and dysfunction in the system.

    The Home Office official, who has worked for years as a decision-maker on asylum and has assessed thousands of claims, said asylum seekers from certain countries use the “same script” in what he and colleagues describe as “package claims”.

    He said he had encountered a large number of Iraqi Kurds claiming asylum who said they had been in a relationship with the daughter of the prime minister of the Kurdistan region. The official said it had become a “running joke” among colleagues that the number of Iraqi Kurds who said they were involved with the daughter was in the “hundreds”.

    He also said that “hundreds” of claims from Pakistanis were based on the assertion that they were in fear of their lives in their home country because of their gay relationship with the same man who had provided letters supporting their claims.

    The source also disclosed suspicions about large numbers of Bangladeshi claimants purporting to be dissidents of the former governing party, which is now banned, even though they were unable to provide basic information about the group.

  • “The Netherlands Also Has Islamic Grooming Gangs“; Dutch MP Warns After 18-Year-Old Girl Raped By 10 Men.”

    An 18-year-old woman has been gang raped and beaten by up to ten different men, many of them with a Syrian background, in the Dutch city of Dordrecht. Although the rape occurred in May 2025, the suspects are only now being arrested. In response to the rape, political leader Geert Wilders wrote that the Netherlands also has Islamic grooming gangs and called for all the perpetrators to be removed from the country along with their families.

    Six suspects have now been arrested, aged 20 to 23. During the incident, the girl, who lived in a residential group home, was driven to two different parking lots and raped by several men, some of whom filmed the assault and shared it on Snapchat. Police say the woman was humiliated and beaten.

    And somehow the leaders of UK’s Labour Party say “Yes, we need more of that.”

  • “Passengers subdue Arab co-pilot who tried to hijack flight to Israel.”

    A plane leaving Dubai and heading towards Tel Aviv almost saw a tragic end as the co-pilot of the plane turned hijacker mid-flight and attempted to take control and crash the plane….

    The co-pilot, an Omani national, stabbed the pilot multiple times in an attempt to kill him and hijack the flight. The co-pilot had worked for FlyDubai for around a year.

    The injured pilot was able to transmit a radio warning, Israel scrambled fighter jets, and the passengers and crew were able to subdue the attacker in midair.

    The plane made an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia to sort the entire mess out.

    Be prepared to fight for your life on a moment’s notice, because you might have to.

  • More long overdue. “Trump expands H-1B visa crackdown, will scrutinize layoffs.”

    The Trump administration on Thursday announced an executive order expanding the ongoing crackdown against H-1B visa abuse.

    The H-1B is a visa program designed to allow companies to bring in high-skilled workers when no qualified Americans are available. But the program has faced considerable scrutiny in recent years, due to widespread fraud. Critics have argued that major employers also use it as a way to undercut American wages.

    Trump’s Thursday order reaffirms the $100,000 application fee he imposed last year, but now mandates inter-agency coordination to consider an employers’s recent or planned layoffs when applying for H-1B visas.

    “Our message to corporate America is simple: We’re not going to let you lay off American workers so you can replace them with cheap foreign labor,” Vice President JD Vance said.

  • “ICE Arrests 121 During Summer Enforcement Initiative Near Dallas. The operation included the arrests of two alleged Tren de Aragua members.”

    U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested 121 individuals during a summer enforcement initiative around Lake Lewisville in Dallas.

    The operation, led by ICE’s Dallas field office, began June 27 and concluded over Labor Day weekend. It involved coordination with state and federal agencies, including the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, and focused on identifying individuals unlawfully present in the country, assisting with lake-related investigations, and allowing local officers to devote more resources to boating safety enforcement.

    According to ICE’s Friday release, individuals arrested during the initiative had criminal histories involving offenses such as assault, family violence, theft, burglary, sexual assault of a child, driving while intoxicated, and boating while intoxicated.

    Among those arrested were two men ICE identified as members of Tren de Aragua, a transnational criminal organization designated by the U.S. State Department as both a foreign terrorist organization and a specially designated global terrorist group.

    Willian Josue Ordonez Vasquez, 24, a Venezuelan national, and Edwin Josue Cabrera-Zelaya, 22, a Honduran national, were under investigation by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department for allegedly operating an illegal livery business on Lake Lewisville.

    I must say that I’ve never run into “illegal livery business” before, but it seems to involve not complying with Texas regulations on powered boat rental.

  • Man bites dog: “Too extreme for Newsom? California sanctuary bill for abortion, transgender procedures vetoed.”

    California Gov. Gavin Newsom used his veto pen to make out-of-state prosecutions theoretically possible for both “reproductive health care services” and “gender affirming health care services.”

    The term-limited Democrat with presidential ambitions, who recently said he won’t run if fellow Californian and former Democratic nominee Kamala Harris enters the 2028 presidential race, vetoed legislation (AB 2164) to codify an extradition ban for “legally protected health care activity” in California, claiming it infringed executive authority.

    Ignore the blather about Harris, Governor Hairgel is obviously running.

  • AI 1, Harvard 0.

    Researchers proved AI has deleted every reason universities exist.

    Harvard University ran a controlled experiment pitting a custom AI against their own top-tier classrooms.

    And the results are going to collapse the higher education bubble.

    They took 194 undergraduates and split them up.

    One group learned physics in one of Harvard’s best hands-on, active-learning physical classrooms. Group work. Instructor support. The premium university experience.

    The other group went home and learned the exact same material with an AI tutor.

    The AI didn’t just win. It embarrassed the institution.

    Students using the AI learned more than twice as much as the students in the elite Harvard classroom.

    They scored 30% higher on the final assessment.

    And they did it in less time.

    Let that sink in.

    A piece of software sitting on a laptop outperformed a world-class faculty in one of the most elite learning environments on Earth.

    Universities have always justified their exorbitant tuition with two things: access to elite knowledge and the physical classroom experience.

    This study just proved both of those moats are gone.

    When software can teach you complex physics twice as well as a $60,000-a-year institution, the math of higher education breaks permanently.

    Yeah, but can AI forge friendships with the spawn of rich people, the primary purpose of so many attending the Ivy League? (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

  • “Taxpayer Philanthropy: Detroit pastor paid $540K for part-time work.”

    A Detroit pastor who last year admonished a parishioner for her inadequate church donation of $1,235 was paid a salary of $538,955 that year by a taxpayer-funded nonprofit he leads that is separate from the church, according to federal records.

    That salary for Marvin Winans Sr. — the pastor of Perfecting Church and a Grammy-winning gospel singer — accounted for about 61% of what the nonprofit spent toward its stated mission of “community development,” its recent report to the Internal Revenue Service shows.

    His role as president for the nonprofit — Perfecting Community Development Corporation — is a half-time job, the report says, which means he was paid about $518 per hour.

    Nice work if you can get it.

    Winans’ salary has increased substantially in recent years and coincided with a $500,000 government grant the state awarded the nonprofit. Grant application guidance indicates the award was funded with federal pandemic relief money.

    Of course it was.

    Seems like Pastor Winans was far more concerned with fat stacks than flocks…

  • Another terror plot thwarted. “Suspect Arrested for Alleged Thwarted Capitol Attack Now in Federal Custody. Benny Caldera, Jr. was released from the Bexar County Jail into federal custody.”

    A man was arrested on suspicion of planning an attack on the Texas State Capitol in Austin early in the morning of Wednesday, September 30.

    The attack was allegedly set to occur on October 1.

    Forty-year-old Benny Caldera, Jr., of Converse, was arrested by a Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) SWAT team, according to reporting by NBC DFW.

    He was booked into the Bexar County Jail and charged with making a terroristic threat against a public servant, a third degree felony, and was held on a $75,000 bond. It was not immediately clear if Caldera has a lawyer or how he plans to plead in response to the charge.

    According to an arrest warrant affidavit, DPS was told by a friend of Caldera’s that he “had made verbal threats to assault the Texas State Capitol Building.” He is alleged to have said “I am going to the Capitol and I am going to shoot it up.”

    Arrest documents also allege that Caldera’s motive was anger at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a pro-Israel political lobbying group, of which he reportedly said “these people have to be exterminated.”

    Of course. Always The Joooooos!

    Possibly just a dumbass shooting off his mouth. But lots of similar dumbasses have racked up kill counts in recent decades.

  • Make New Mexico Texas again? “Texas House Weighs Annexation of New Mexican Counties. The unlikely proposal could benefit the Permian Basin, one state representative claimed.” The chances of New Mexico agreeing without receiving something ridiculous in return (like El Paso) are virtually zero.
  • “‘Y’all Street’ Welcomes Financial Giant Morgan Stanley to Dallas. The city of Dallas and the state of Texas both offered the company incentives for the new hub.”

    Gov. Greg Abbott announced the company’s decision, saying it is a $684 million capital investment that could create 3,800 jobs. The governor also announced that a Texas Enterprise Fund (TEF) grant totaling $43,849,500, paired with a Veteran Created Job Bonus of $40,000, was offered to the company.

    [Insert usual disapproval of TEF subsidies here.]

  • “Elon Musk Says The Boring Company Is Working on San Antonio-Austin Hyperloop.” “Working on” is a slippery concept, and it could just mean some preliminary feasibility studies. “Experts say Hyperloop projects face significant engineering and construction challenges.” You don’t say. Though I bet there’s a better chance of it being built than another proposed Austin to San Antonio high speed rail boondoggle.
  • “Paramount Warner Bros. Merger GREENLIT! Mark Ruffalo Most Affected!”
  • Tik Tok makes you stupid.
  • ASML wants larger EUV masks to support their High Numerical Aperture EUV stepper. “TSMC and ASML recently announced that the Taiwanese fab will adopt High-NA EUV for high volume manufacturer in 2030. In order to make this economical, the two giants will push the industry to adopt larger 6 in x 12in rectangular photo masks.” This is going to be a challenge for the entire industry ecosystem.
  • You know who else liked horses?
  • Retro-future noir. With aliens. Directed by Brad Bird. Mood: Cautious optimism.
  • BeardMeatsFood demolishes a 7 Deadly Sins challenge…and then promptly orders two more burgers and dessert. (OK, technically four more burgers, but it looks like he gave two to the cameraman.)
  • I just sent out my latest Lame Excuse Books catalog of SF/F/H books. Drop me a line if you’d like to receive a copy.
  • “Judge Rules That Trump Must Allow White House Access To Assassins.”
  • “Feminist Mad That The Men She Hates Won’t Date Her.” “I don’t get it. I’m aggressive, shrill, angry, and I talk online all the time about how much I hate men. Why won’t any of them ask me out?”
  • I would buy this so hard: “Mattel Confirms Hanukkah Barbie Comes Complete With Space Laser.”
  • A happy reunion:

  • I’m still between jobs. Feel free to hit the tip jar if you’re so inclined.





    Ken Paxton Takes On The Bar Association

    Thursday, October 1st, 2026

    Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton hasn’t been shy about taking on big entities breaking Texas law, be it Meta, ActBlue or MyChart. Now Paxton has taken aim at an association intertwined with the heart of America’s legal system, the American Bar Association.

    Texas is investigating the American Bar Association’s alleged anti-competitive law school accreditation practices.

    According to Attorney General Ken Paxton, the investigation will examine whether accreditation requirements set by the American Bar Association (ABA) “have unlawfully restricted competition or increased the cost of legal education, including through requirements affecting faculty compensation and law school operations.”

    Paxton alleged that the American Bar Association has “weaponized” its “significant influence over legal education” across the nation to “artificially inflate faculty salaries, exclude law schools who challenged the ABA’s view of ‘elite’ legal education, and impose costly, burdensome accreditation requirements.”

    Additionally, he alleged that the ABA uses its accreditation power to “impose unconstitutional racial and gender preference requirements on law schools’ admissions and hiring processes.”

    Paxton also argued in his Wednesday announcement that this anticompetitiveness has levied significant costs on both existing and potential law schools, which deprives “the market of innovative, lower-cost approaches to legal education.”

    “There must be competition and a fair playing field when it comes to law school accreditation, or else we risk inflated costs for students, unfair restrictions, and illegal discriminatory practices,” said Paxton. “My office will investigate whether the law school accreditation process has been used to unlawfully limit competition and burden students and institutions. No organization should be permitted to use its position of influence to violate our antitrust laws.”

    Earlier this year, the Texas Supreme Court issued an opinion that eliminates the requirement for law students to attend an ABA accredited law school before taking the state bar exam, which Paxton noted will open new avenues for students to attain a legal education.

    The court’s opinion highlighted that it intends to continue giving “approval to schools that satisfy a set of simple, objective, and ideologically neutral criteria using metrics no more onerous than those currently required by the ABA.”

    For the majority of America’s history, lawyers didn’t need either American Bar Association imprimatur (or even a law degree) to practice law. Abraham Lincoln and Clarence Darrow never went to law school. Parallel to the New Deal, the ABA and the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) sought to cartelize the legal profession to restrict access and raise rates. Previously, self-study and apprenticeship was the path to a legal career.

    Forcing law schools to implement quotas and cram social justice down student’s throats is a good reason to strip the ABA of its law school gatekeeper powers.

    LinkSwarm For September 25, 2026

    Friday, September 25th, 2026

    The Supreme Court green-lights verifying American citizenship for voting, fraud, fraud, and more fraud, Trump gets Greenland without having to buy it, Cruz looks at EPIC City terrorism ties, the Clancy holdout juror speaks, some horrifying child abuse cases, and completely different horrifying murder house, and a surprising amount of Norm Macdonald.

    It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • “Supreme Court Clears Trump Admin To Use Voter Citizenship Verification.”

    The Supreme Court on Sept. 25 said the Trump administration can use an updated immigration database to verify the citizenship of voters.

    A majority of justices agreed to stay pending the outcome of an appeal of a June order from a federal judge that barred the use of a revamped database called the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements system.

    U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan had found that federal officials were violating the privacy rights of American citizens by disclosing the citizenship status and Social Security numbers, among other data, in the restructured database. She vacated the 2025 update, which connected Social Security information to the system.

    A federal appeals court later upheld the decision.

    Trump administration officials then asked the Supreme Court to intervene, arguing in a Sept. 8 brief that the order “threatens the integrity of upcoming elections by vacating the federal government’s authority to internally use Social Security data when fulfilling its duty to respond to requests by states to verify the citizenship of individuals for voting and other purposes.”

    Six justices sided with the administration. In a per curiam opinion, they said that claims from the organizations that sued over the updated database “likely lack merit,” including the allegation that federal officials are violating federal laws, because Congress authorized the Department of Homeland Security to request and receive citizenship information and immigration status from other agencies, including the Social Security Administration, in a 1996 statute called the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act.

    The majority also said that keeping in place the prohibition “inhibits the Federal Government’s efforts to assist state and local agencies.”

    States regularly use the system. Texas Secretary of State Robert Howden recently said the state in the fall of 2025 ran the names of its 18 million registered voters through the database and identified 2,724 people who may be noncitizens.

    Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote a dissent that was joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

  • “USDA Targets 170 NYC Retailers in SNAP Fraud Sweep. ‘SNAP benefits should go to Americans, not fraudsters or illegal immigrants,’ White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud Executive Director Scott Brady said.”

    The Trump administration has stopped more than $5.8 billion in SNAP fraud since taking office, and its latest sweep just hit New York City, where hundreds of undercover investigations led to enforcement action against 170 retailers across all five boroughs.

    The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced “Operation SNAP Back” on Friday as part of a broader push against retailer fraud in the nearly $100 billion Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

    “This is just the latest action in the Trump Administration’s fight against fraud. The message is clear, if you accept any portion of an annual $100 billion taxpayer program, you must follow the rules or face the consequences,” Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said. “We owe it to every American taxpayer to safeguard their hard-earned dollars, and these latest enforcement actions are just a small part of the Food and Nutrition Administration’s efforts to remove criminals and bad actors from food stamps.”

    The cases involve SNAP trafficking, where benefits are exchanged for cash, along with retailers accused of allowing benefits to be used for alcohol and other ineligible non-food items. USDA says penalties can range from temporary suspension to permanent disqualification and monetary fines. Several cases were also referred to the USDA Office of Inspector General for possible criminal investigation and prosecution.

    Investigators used undercover purchases at stores suspected of violating SNAP rules. Some retailers were caught exchanging benefits for cash, while others allegedly processed transactions for prohibited products.

    “SNAP benefits should go to Americans, not fraudsters or illegal immigrants,” White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud Executive Director Scott Brady said. “And thanks to Secretary Rollins, such waste and abuse will stop.”

  • Funny how this keeps happening: “Reporter finds no kids at Somali-run daycares in Seattle.”

    Here’s your reminder that the fraud is still continuing – boldly, even! – after months of nonstop reporting about it.

    Katie Daviscourt of the Post Millennial did some looking into Somali-run daycares in the Seattle area, many of which receive tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars monthly, and you’ll never guess what she found.

    Most showed no signs of kids.

    Many neighbors say they’ve never seen anything that looks like a daycare in the area!

    These families get together, watch each other’s kids sometimes, incorporate as a “daycare,” and collect tens of thousands a month.

    Here’s the PM:

    In total, Daviscourt reported that in just two neighborhoods there were over $5 million in potential abuses of taxpayer funds, and they had gone to over 20 locations reporting to be daycare locations. Under Seattle’s Child Care Assistance Program, daycares can request government funding in order to back their businesses when they are caring for low-to-middle-income families.

  • “Trump Administration Removes 760,000 ACA Enrollees, Citing Fraud and Improper Enrollment.”

    Vice President JD Vance and the White House’s anti-fraud task force canceled Affordable Care Act policies covering more than 760,000 people, the administration announced Tuesday, citing suspected improper and fraudulent enrollments.

    The task force, along with the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, estimates the move will save taxpayers $2.2 billion.

    Following the cancellation of 315,000 enrollments, the vice president said officials are going to conduct “additional verification” on about 419,000 more enrollees, whom they suspect may be improperly enrolled or ineligible for the program. Similarly, the Trump administration is banning some insurance brokers who are thought to be complicit in the fraudulent enrollment.

    “We expect that most of these people are fraudulently enrolled,” Vance said. “We’re going to make sure that they’re, first of all, legal residents of the United States of America, and second of all, we’re going to make sure that they actually meet the income threshold requirements in order to receive these Obamacare benefits.”

    Snip.

    “This is what the fraud task force is all about,” the vice president said, alongside CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz and other senior administration officials at Tuesday’s press conference. “Saving the American taxpayers money, and on the other hand, ensuring that these programs that are very important” are not victim to waste and fraud.

    Oz noted that CMS has issued termination notices to hundreds of brokers, including 469 in late August, and has placed a moratorium on new agents and brokers while officials investigate the eligibility of the additional 419,000 enrollees.

    “There will be no new brokers for Obamacare in this country for the next six months, and we do not feel at all conflicted about that decision, because most of the fraud, a disproportionate amount of the fraud, is taking place from these individuals,” Oz said.

    The ACA — colloquially known as Obamacare — was passed in 2010 under former President Barack Obama.

    And its baleful effects on health care and the federal budget live on…

  • “California’s Shadow Welfare System for Illegal Immigrants.”

    California runs the nation’s largest welfare system, devoting more than $180 billion annually to food, health care, and other programs for the poor and downtrodden. To sustain the arrangement, the state imposes the nation’s highest tax rates.

    In theory, these programs are supposed to help struggling Californians. In reality, many serve large numbers of illegal immigrants. Today, California oversees a shadow welfare system that allows noncitizens to receive health care, rental assistance, college grants, tax credits, low-cost car insurance, and even smartphones on the taxpayers’ dime.

    We visited four public-services offices in Southern California, each of which admitted that illegal aliens can enroll in public-welfare programs or receive benefits on their children’s behalf. In total, California taxpayers spent at least $11 billion subsidizing illegal immigrants in the last fiscal year. The state’s shadow welfare system, it seems, shows no signs of slowing down.

    Local officials were remarkably transparent. In Glendale, we spoke to a welfare officer about California’s Cash Assistance Program for Immigrants (CAPI), a state-funded alternative to Supplemental Security Income that provides monthly cash assistance to low-income noncitizens who are elderly or disabled.

    “If [you are] a citizen, you cannot get CAPI,” he said. “I don’t care about legal or not. Not being [a] citizen [is the key].”

    In Los Angeles, we heard more of the same. We asked another welfare officer about the benefits available to illegal immigrants and their children. While some state programs are closed to illegals, we learned, they are open to those aliens’ U.S.-born children.

    “If you were born here and the child was born here, you get money for two,” the officer said of CalWORKs, the state’s version of the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. “Because she is not and the child is, she only gets money for the child, and not for her.”

    These benefits add up. In California, illegal immigrants can qualify for CAPI, public health insurance, and various tax credits. Their children qualify for others, including CalWORKs and, as in other states, Section 8 rental subsidies. All told, a family of five in California with two illegal-alien parents, two U.S.-born children, and one illegal-alien grandparent can receive public services worth more than $100,000 per year.

    State leaders are proud of it. In a recent podcast episode, Governor Gavin Newsom bragged about his “controversial” decision to extend Medi-Cal coverage to illegal immigrants. His wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, encouraged people to sign up for the California Earned Income Tax Credit, a program whose promotional materials assure applicants that “no Social Security number” is “no problem.”

    Snip.

    Federal law generally prohibits states from using federal dollars to serve illegal aliens. To dodge those restrictions, California created parallel state- and locally funded programs that allowed the state to extend benefits to illegal immigrants. Perhaps as a result, more than one in four California residents today is foreign-born.

    Medicaid is a good example. Federal law prohibits states from using federal dollars to provide wraparound coverage to illegal immigrants. So, California used a state-funding “bucket” within its Medi-Cal program to extend “full-scope” coverage to illegal aliens. The expansions enrolled some 1.7 million people, costing the state an estimated $10 billion annually—more than twice what the state legislative analyst originally projected.

    California also uses a distinct legal category that enables certain migrants to qualify for state programs. The state deems certain aliens to be “permanently residing under color of law”—living in California with the “knowledge and permission” of immigration enforcement—and allows them to use this designation to enroll in Medi-Cal, CAPI, and other government programs. In practice, because aged or disabled individuals are typically not deported, this means elderly foreign retirees can arrive in California and receive extensive benefits.

    Another way that California shuffles cash to illegal immigrants is through those aliens’ children. CalWORKs allows illegal-immigrant parents to receive benefits on behalf of their U.S.-born kids. BenefitsCal, the state’s welfare clearinghouse, even tells applicants that the program will accept a “statement” that the applicant “intend[s] to file or [is] taking steps to become federally eligible” to qualify for the program.

    This model—permissive rules and large loopholes—costs the state billions per year. As benefits and eligibility continue to expand, that figure will only increase in the years ahead.

    California shows no sign of paring back this largesse. In 2022, Newsom signed a bill into law that extended taxpayer-funded food benefits to illegal low-income residents. Beginning next October, qualified Californians 55 and older will become eligible for that program, regardless of immigration status. California’s Legislative Analyst estimates that it could cost up to an additional $400 million a year.

    Is there any doubt that California Democrats love illegal aliens far more than citizens? (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

  • “The Smell of Corruption at Karen Bass’ L.A. Homeless Authority.

    California Democrats pulled up the ladder to prevent the likes of Nick Shirley and local reporters like JJ Smith, Amy Reichert, and many others from finding out where millions upon millions of taxpayer dollars were fraudulently spent.

    In my story, Karen Bass Feels Heat From Feds Over Millions in Stolen and Laundered ‘Homeless’ Funds, we learned that Bill Essayli, who’s supposed to be the U.S. attorney in Central California (LA area) but isn’t because John Thune can’t do his job, this week announced the arrests and indictments of four individuals who had stolen millions upon millions of taxpayer dollars. They were supposed to house and help the homeless, but they helped themselves instead.

    After the indictments were announced and after the U.S. House Oversight Committee subpoenaed the Authority operators to please come to Washington to have a little chat — under oath — the homeless authority announced it no longer wanted to receive federal funding and, in fact, plans to get out of the homeless business entirely.

    Bass and the people in Los Angeles who have run this agency into the ground after bilking taxpayers for years are getting out of the homeless business.

    The California Post reports, “LAHSA will not seek to retain responsibility for the annual application for federal homelessness funding, the Homeless Management Information System, the annual point-in-time count or the coordinated-entry system.”

    The same federal funding that came from your pockets and mine. The same federal funding lost after these alleged California homeless advocates threw piles of cash in front of an industrial fan and pointed it in the general direction of people who deserve to be in prison.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • The enemy within: “Poll: 59% of Dems support military coup against Trump, 32% support assassination.”
  • “FP-7 Pelican Ballistic Missile Used to Strike Moscow! Oil Refinery & Warehouse Hit Hard!”
  • Follow-up: “Satellite imagery shows significant damage to Moscow Oil Refinery after Ukraine’s drone strike yesterday. Multiple strikes are recorded and oil tanks confirmed destroyed. Additionally, a Pantsir booster intercepted a car.”
  • “Big Drone Strike on Perm Oil Refinery! 1,500km from Ukraine!” Multiple strikes on a refinery they previously hit in March.
  • “Kuibyshev Oil Refinery Hit Hard by Drones.” Again.
  • “Ukraine Targets Russian Rail Logistics: Two Trains & Fuel Tank Cars Hit By Drones.”
  • More: “Operation Barrel: Multiple Russian Fuel Trains and Tank Cars Destroyed!”
  • “Multiple Aircraft Confirmed Destroyed at Rostov: An-12 & An-26 Transporters and X2 Mi-8 Helicopters.”
  • “Big JDAM Air Strike on Troop Concentration in Bilytske, Donetsk.” Early in the war, Ukraine couldn’t have carried out a JDAM strike, due to fears of Russian aircraft and SAM batteries, indicating serious Ukrainian degradation of those categories of Russian weapons.
  • “Huge Explosion as Ukraine Hits Fuel/Ammo Storage in Zaporizhzhia.”
  • “Ukraine Hits Warehouse Loaded with Ammunition Shells: Big Blast.” “This was in Huliaipole, Zaporizhzhia.”
  • More winning: “Cuba Hit With National Power Grid Collapse As Oil Sources Dry Up.”

    Cuba’s power grid collapsed once again this week, this time at a national level, leaving millions of people across the island without electricity. This is the sixth time since the US cut off fuel sources to the island since January that the national grid has collapsed and it’s the most utility shutdown events in the country’s recent history.

    Even when Cuba’s grid is in operation, only 30% of the population at most receives electricity at any given time. Many regions stay dark 20 to 30 hours at a stretch. Some provinces have reported 60–90 hours without power. Havana has gone from 4 hours a day early in the year to 18 hours after the fuel cutoff.

    “Protocols are now in place to begin ​the gradual restoration of the system,” said Felix Estrada, an ⁠official with Cuba’s National Electrical Union (UNE). Power had returned to a handful of ​scattered neighborhoods in Havana by late evening, primarily around hospitals, but much of ​the city remained completely dark.

    Many exhausted residents ​of the capital Havana were already without power when the national blackout hit.

    “Yesterday I’d gone without ‌power ⁠for 24 hours. They turned the lights on for an hour, and then the grid collapsed,” said Frank Lorenzo, a 23-year-old Havana resident.

  • The U.S. is spending $500 million on laser weapons, and some have already been deployed in theater.

    Iranian citizens have witnessed some dazzling laser shows recently — but they’re not the kind you’d see at a Metallica concert.

    The US military has been deploying lasers in the Strait of Hormuz to knock out regime hardware, taking out “drones and incoming cruise missiles at a much lower cost than using more expensive kinetic weapons like missiles,” the Department of War recently confirmed.

    The US project to harness laser power has been 50 years in the making and outstrips the capabilities of any other military on Earth.

    A linked story suggests it’s the High-Energy Laser with Integrated Optical Dazzler and Surveillance (HELIOS) system. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)

  • Greg Gutfeld is rightly upset that Austin’s commie twerp of a U.S. rep is more upset at an illegal alien getting shot than the murder of Andrew Wimsatt, an American citizen he theoretically represented.

  • How shadowy leftist NGOs pay to put their people into government positions.

    We often hear leftists accuse billionaires of buying government, and most times the accusations are at least partly off-base.

    But not always, and sometimes they are literally doing precisely that: putting privately funded leftists into government offices to run a parallel government that nobody ever voted for. It’s a technocrat’s wet dream.

    One such program, funded by billionaire Michael Bloomberg, placed and paid the salaries of “government employees” strategically inserted into Attorney General offices in Blue states, funding regulations and lawsuits aimed at targets that Bloomberg’s NYU-based NGO program identified as vulnerable to its pressure. The goal was, of course, fighting climate change.

    BREAKING: Bloomberg-Backed Climate Group Paying Salaries of Democratic State AG Officials Quietly Shuts Down Amid Congressional, Legal Scrutiny.

    “A group housed at the New York University School of Law and backed by billionaire climate activist Michael Bloomberg quietly closed its doors in late August amid congressional scrutiny into its funding and operations. The so-called State Energy and Environmental Impact Center’s signature initiative involved placing paid, climate-focused “fellows” in Democrat-controlled state attorney general offices nationwide as those offices sued the oil industry and other energy providers.”

    Think of it as a cousin to “Zuckerbucks,” where a private entity funds a program that places people in government offices as either quasi- or fully government employees, with a mandate to pursue the NGO’s agenda. The same sort of thing happens with grants to news organizations, where an outside group pays for employees or “coverage” of specific issues, and the stories are still technically the product of the news organization, but the content is directed at producing the results desired by the people who cut the checks.

    Snip.

    Bloomberg, cut a big check to NYU, which in turn established a program to place its people directly into the offices of State Attorneys General, where they proceeded to sue and harass businesses targeted by the organization.

    James Comer opened an investigation into the State Energy and Environmental Impact Center, and out of the blue, it closed. He sought documents from it, and “poof!” It’s gone.

    Pretty sus, bro. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • How Angela Merkel destroyed Germany’s political center.

    In my view, Angela Merkel bears a grave responsibility for the collapse of the centre and the growing ability of the political extremes to set the agenda.

    The almost one-third of voters who would support Alternative für Deutschland in a national election are not fascists or Nazis. A substantial proportion are disillusioned CDU voters.

    What has disappointed these voters? First, what I see as Merkel’s failures on so many fronts: immigration. Security. Energy. A sustainable strategy for business and economic growth. Digitalisation. Infrastructure maintenance. The list is almost endless.

    Second, the extraordinary denial of reality that, in my assessment, Merkel allowed to take hold when it came to immigrants’ responsibility for antisemitism, violence against women, terrorism and gang crime.

    Coming from Denmark, where we have reliable statistics on all these matters, I find it frankly shocking to listen to the nonsense coming from Germany’s political elite.

    But I would also trace back to Merkel the rise of what is often called “Islamo-leftism” – a tendency that has recently gained ground in Sweden and is also growing in Germany. In Sweden, polls have indicated that 85 per cent of Muslim voters support parties to the left of centre, with almost one in five supporting the Left Party, Vänsterpartiet – a party tainted by antisemitism and the glorification of terrorism. I see no compelling reason to assume that the pattern in Germany is fundamentally different.

    My argument, then, is that it is not only the rise in support for the AfD that can be traced back to Merkel. The same applies to the growing support for parties on the German left that promote the political and religious views of a significant proportion of the people, Merkel invited to Germany. Not least on the Gaza question.

    (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

  • Both Democrats and the international left has derided President Trump’s focus on Greenland, saying the U.S. controlling it was a fantasy. Now that he’s signed an agreement with Denmark, I doubt they’re laughing now.

    The US-Greenland-Denmark agreement has now been published. I haven’t read it, but Arnaud Bertrand has. This is his analysis of the terms, which appear very favorable to the United States, and well calculated to achieve the goal of preventing undue influence over the Arctic by any hostile power.

    Snip.

    To sum up:

    – The US secured a permanent military foothold that even an independent Greenland would inherit whether it likes it or not
    – The US now has veto power over any non-NATO military presence in Greenland, and over who can invest in its strategic infrastructure and resources (beyond NATO and the EU)
    – Denmark signed away its say over the principle of new US bases, with only the right to discuss the “implementation details”
    – Danish authorities no longer set the rules for US military movement across the island
    – And all of it is now justified by the defense of “the American continent”

  • Lindsay Clancy holdout juror Michael P. Desronvil speaks out.

    Michael is a Catholic from a Haitian immigrant family and moved to Massachusetts when he was a young child.

    The liberal women who so badly want to destroy him for refusing to acquit a child killer do not know how to handle that. Their woke brains simply cannot compute how to proceed.

    Several jurors who wanted to let Clancy off the hook have claimed that Michael did not follow the jury instructions, but they have incriminated themselves with statements indicating they had an ideological agenda in the courtroom. Michael says he “kept getting cut off” by these other jurors, who apparently knew his own thoughts better than him.

    This lines up with a statement from a fourth juror who says she was ultimately badgered into changing her vote.”

    A female 4th juror comes forward and says the other jurors were pushing to acquit on *DAY 1*

  • In fact, a whole lot of basic jury procedures seem to have been discarded in the Clancy trial. “Lindsay Clancy jurors broke cardinal rule and used phones to RESEARCH killer mom during deliberations, holdout claims.”
  • “Feds arrest, indict hundreds in Trump voter fraud crackdown: ‘Catching it all over the country.’ The Justice Department says its crackdown on noncitizen voting and election fraud has already produced more than 200 arrests and indictments, with that number possibly doubling soon and state election officials themselves now facing potential charges for looking the other way.”

    Since the Trump Justice Department warned state and local election officials that they could be charged with allowing fraudulent voting activities, more than 200 arrests and indictments have been secured in a crackdown on election fraud and noncitizen voting, and that number could double soon, a top official revealed to Just the News.

    “I think there are a lot of nervous election officials because I think some of them know that they’ve been looking the other way when this is happening, and we’re catching it all over the country,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said Monday night in an interview on the Just the News, No Noise television show.

    Dhillon also hinted at further developments in the coming weeks, suggesting her department has developed evidence calling into question New Jersey’s claim that a computer glitch allowed thousands of foreigners to register to vote in that state and about 400 to actually cast ballots in violation of law.

    “I’m not sure we have the correct numbers from New Jersey. They’re not really cooperating with us, and so we will get to the bottom of what happened there. And you know, New Jersey tried to blame a vendor for a mistake or a glitch, quote unquote. But you know, I think there’ll be another side to that story,” she said.

    Snip.

    Over the weekend, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin told Fox News that his agency is investigating 1,620 cases of voter fraud involving noncitizens and has made 151 arrests. He said his department is also looking into an additional 300,000 cases based on states’ voter rolls.

  • That thing that never happens keeps happening. “DOJ Charges 16 Noncitizens in Voter Fraud Cases.”
  • “More Canadians now die from government-assisted “suicide” than Americans die from gun homicides.”
  • Howard Dean speaks to the ChiComs: “DNC Chairman Emeritus Howard Dean delivered the American welcome address at a China dialogue involving the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, a think tank identified in congressional commission testimony as ‘run by Chinese intelligence.’ The Chinese People’s Association for Peace and Disarmament, which co-organized the event⁠, has an equally explicit allegiance. Its charter⁠ says it: ‘upholds the comprehensive leadership of the Chinese Communist Party.'” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Ted Cruz digs into EPIC City’s ties to CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood.

    Ties between the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the proposed EPIC City development in North Texas came under scrutiny during a recent U.S. Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing chaired by U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz.

    EPIC City, which has been criticized as an Islamic enclave and housing development exclusive to Muslims, is a proposal from the East Plano Islamic Center.

    The Wednesday hearing of the subcommittee on federal courts, oversight, agency action, and federal rights was titled “Hidden in Plain Sight: Confronting the Muslim Brotherhood Network in America.”

    Sen. Cruz addressed the fact that Democrat senators failed to attend the meeting, stating that “their campaign is now openly embracing terrorist organizations waging war on America.”

    Cruz heard from witnesses that alleged ties between CAIR, the Muslim Brotherhood, and EPIC City.

    Arielle F. Klepach, senior litigation counsel for the National Jewish Advocacy Center, called attention to the connection in her written testimony.

    She likened the EPIC City development, later rebranded as “The Meadow” following significant backlash, to a pattern of “mega-mosque” building projects in Europe commonly motivated by “Islamist separatism.”

    This movement is a “deliberate attempt to cut Muslim communities off spiritually, intellectually, and culturally from the surrounding secular society,” with the building projects in particular “generally [containing] community-like features such as schools, libraries, and gyms,” according to Klepach.

    “The American version of this pattern is EPIC City,” Klepach said. “CAIR-Texas and CAIR-DFW have publicly defended EPIC City in the disputes, and CAIR’s national leadership has spoken at the EPIC mosque, reflecting an active advocacy relationship between CAIR and the EPIC religious community.”

    The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) was designated a foreign terrorist organization by Gov. Greg Abbott late last year, along with the Muslim Brotherhood.

    The hearing also revisited CAIR’s role as an unindicted co-conspirator to the Texas-based Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF). The foundation and five of its officials were convicted of “funneling more than $12 million to the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas” during a 2008 federal trial. CAIR was not charged in the case.

    Lara Burns, senior research fellow for the George Washington University Program on Extremism, drew the connection between CAIR and Hamas in her written testimony.

    “The United States Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee served as the original Hamas infrastructure in the United States, initially consisting of the HLF (the fundraising arm),” alongside others, according to Burns.

    “At the [2008] trial, still today the largest successful terrorism financing prosecution in American history, [various arms of the Muslim Brotherhood] were identified as unindicted co-conspirators/joint ventures as was [CAIR],” she added.

    (Previously.)

  • A father-and-son serial killer house of horror found in Pennsylvania.

    A Pennsylvania father and son have come under suspicion after the son was discovered to be traveling with a woman with a fake ID that used the name of a missing woman.

    Police searched the home of the man and his dad and found the most disturbing scene imaginable.

    he investigation is still unfolding but this is some seriously unsettling stuff going on.

    Here’s the latest from ABC 6 in Philly on the now 7 missing women connected to this case against Eugene Horsch and his deceased father RC:

    Blair Tonzelli was 35 years old when she went missing in 2023. She was the first woman named in this case.

    Police say when Horsch was arrested, he was with a woman in possession of an identification card with Tonzelli’s name on it. The woman allegedly told police Eugene Horsch gave her the ID.

    Amy McHale was 44 years old when she was last seen in 2016. Shortly after news broke of Horsch’s arrest, her family told Action she was last seen at the W. Chew Avenue house.

    McHale had previously been married to Ray Horsch, who has also become a central figure in this case.

    Gabrielle Amarando was 22 years old when she disappeared in 2012.

    A childhood friend of Amarando told Action News that loved ones grew increasingly concerned when they stopped hearing from her…

    Roughly 14 years later, her family got the confirmation they were looking for.

    In August, police said the women were seen in photos and videos recovered during the investigation, in which both are seen alive and then later appearing to be dead.

    ‘Based on the video and photo evidence — if the images in the video are real and not altered in any way, based on their review — the M.E. would believe the individuals depicted in the images are deceased,’ Philadelphia Police Inspector Ray Evers.

    Maribel Fresses was the other woman seen in the videos and photos. She [was] 27 when she disappeared in 2018.

    Police also saw photos and videos of two other unidentified women, both alive and then dead, as well as video of the elder Horsch strangling a woman to death.

    Five urns believed to have the unidentified remains of five women were found in the home.

    Millions of photos and videos have so far revealed that at least 7 women who went missing ultimately met their demise at the hands of the Horsches.

    Shades of H. H. Holmes…

  • UK functionaries go out of their way to protect their precious illegal aliens. “British government mobilizes HUNDREDS of police and defense units to protect migrant boat from British protesters.”

    Third World migrants are being led across the channel by French authorities, where British police then escort them into harbor, put them aboard taxpayer-funded coach buses, and give them a police escort with hundreds of officers.

    Snip.

    Earlier in the day, British protesters gathered by land and by sea to peacefully demonstrate against a group of 60 or so migrants that was set to land in southern England in Gosport.

    Because of the protesters gathered along the coast, authorities had to scramble to find a new landing spot for the “newcomers.” The buses were seen with a massive police escort.

    The reason for the escort was due to the fear that the British protesters would get “mostly peaceful” and attack the invaders or the masked bus drivers who are helping traffic them into the country:

    One GB News reporter summed up the massive taxpayer expenditure that was spent to assist the migrants:

    The whole thing from start to finish today, for this one boat of 60-odd or however many it turns out to be, to go all the way flanked by a massive French ship, then to our [Royal National Lifeboat Institution] boats, then all of those resources pumped into Gosport.

    And THEN, it looks as though because of the local reaction, they’ve decided to not to that, take them down either to Eastport or Dover or somewhere else anyway.

    So goodness knows what the resources are going to be like there.

    We are talking MILLIONS of Pounds today alone, for a group of 60 illegal migrants.

    Is there any doubt the Labour government prioritizes importing illegal aliens into the country over taking care of their own citizens?

  • “Texas Daycare Faces Lawsuit For Running ‘Toddler Fight Club.'”

    Forget about Somali daycare fraud for a moment – have you heard about toddler fight club? A daycare in Fort Worth, TX is facing investigations and litigation after evidence showed staff abusing young children and forcing them to fight each other.

    One mother, Heather Harris, knew something was wrong when she picked up her 4-year-old son at the Arka Montessori Academy of Risinger daycare. He was crying uncontrollably and was covered in bruises. Employees told the mother her son had fought with another child, but their explanations did not add up, according to a lawsuit filed this month by Harris and her husband, Richard Harris. She insisted on seeing the classroom’s surveillance footage.

    The disturbing footage shows staff at the daycare swing a child around like a rag-doll and trying to force him to fight another child.

    I’m skipping right past the obvious “First Rule of Toddler Fight Club” joke to point out that if my (theoretical) kid were forced into that, both daycare and the employees would be facing both a huge civil lawsuit and criminal charges.

  • More horrifying child abuse: “Transgender ICU nurse arrested on multiple counts of abusing NICU baby at Michigan hospital.”

    [Kieran Ansley], a now-former nurse at Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital has been charged with child abuse after a 4-month-old girl in his [sic] care was found with multiple broken bones and bruising.

    The injuries were noticed by the infant’s mother during an early morning visit in April, records show. Tests and a full skeletal survey found multiple fractures, including broken leg bones and multiple bruises, court records show. Bruising was found on the infant’s hands, arms, thigh, buttocks, abdomen and tongue, court records show.

    ‘The totality of the findings resulted in a diagnosis of pediatric physical abuse,’ court documents show.

    More horrifying details snipped. Hell’s too good for him.

  • “Texas Stock Exchange Sees First Listing Transfer. Wall Street is trading its loafers for a pair of cowboy boots.”

    Dallas’ “Y’all Street” continues to capitalize on momentum as the Texas Stock Exchange (TXSE) enters a new era of growth.

    North Texas has added a stock exchange alongside its iconic stockyards, and companies are beginning to flock to the TXSE’s transfer portal. TXSE opened in July, and September has seen the first corporate commitments and primary listing transfers.

    On September 16, Texas Capital’s Texas Equity Index exchange-traded fund (ETF) and Texas Oil Index ETF became the TXSE’s first primary listings. The company’s CEO, President, and Chairman, Rob Holmes, rang the bell on “Y’all Street” to celebrate the company’s primary listing transfer. Texas Capital was formerly listed on the Nasdaq.

    Holmes stated in a Bloomberg interview about the transfer, “Once this exchange came to fruition, it was our responsibility to look at the three exchanges and pick the best one for Texas Capital.”

    He praised the TXSE’s investor base as an affirmation of the exchange’s technological and strategic innovation. The TXSE saw over $275 million in total investment, with major investors including BlackRock, JP Morgan Chase, and Charles Schwab.

    Competing securities exchanges include the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq, both based in New York City.

    Holmes asserted that TXSE’s net present value (NPV) is “better” than its New York rivals.

    “On this exchange, instead of just paying a fee, we pay a fee, but at the end of the day we have a net cash position from the exchange,” he said.

    If someone can explain what that last sentence means, please do so in the comments…

  • “Democrat candidate caught crying in the back of cop car after DUI arrest. Washington state Democratic House candidate Krista Perez was seen crying, praying and sobbing in the back of a patrol car after her DUI arrest.” Washington state has a jungle primary, with two Democratic candidates for House of Representatives District 29-Position 1 (the state has 49 districts of two reps each) facing each other in November, so Republicans won’t be able to take advantage here.
  • Jay Leno’s Law, exempting classic cars from California’s draconian emissions regulations, was signed into law in a rare act of sanity from Governor Hairgel. But note it doesn’t take effect until January 1, 2028.
  • To break AIs, no need to ask it to calculate pi to the last digit. Asking how many “e”s in “seventeen” will do…
  • The many lighting tricks Stanley Kubrick used to shoot Barry Lyndon. (And if you haven’t seen Barry Lyndon, you should. I found it extremely funny…)
  • So Carrot Top tried to kill himself over attempted blackmail using a sex tape? Can’t say I’m a huge fan of his work, but he should avoid trying to off himself. And now, with that thin justification, here’s the classic Norm Macdonald bit on Carrot Top:

    (Hat tip: Dwight.)

  • Speaking of Norm Macdonald, if I had Netflix, I would watch this, though I suspect I’ve already seen 75% of it in YouTube clips.
  • “New Underground Railroad Established To Help Lone Black Juror Escape From Angry White Liberals In The North.”
  • “Canada Clarifies That By ‘Assisted Suicide’ They Mean ‘Totally Unsolicited Murder.‘”
  • “Husband In Critical Condition After Attempting Two Minutes Of Beginner’s Yoga.”
  • The Pittie who thinks he’s a cat:

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

  • I’m still between jobs. Feel free to hit the tip jar if you’re so inclined.





    Oopsie! Democrat Convicted Felon Drops Bid

    Tuesday, September 22nd, 2026

    One of the more difficult (and underappreciated) tasks in politics is recruiting candidates, especially in down-ballot races. Lots of people can be convinced to run for President, but recruiting for county-level races is a much tougher ask. State Representative races fall in-between: Pretty important, but not so high profile that recruiting solid candidates is a gimme. In 2024, there were over 20 races where no Democrat ran in the general election, and over 30 races where no Republican ran. You can’t beat somebody with nobody, and running candidates, even in longshot races, ties down resources on the other side that could be used elsewhere.

    Of course, the problem is that you have to find a candidate that’s actually qualified to run, and that seems to be where Democrats fell down in the Texas House District 93 race. There Ericka Lomick ran unopposed in the Democrat primary, and was slated to compete against Republican Alan Blaylock in November. Incumbent Republican Nate Schatzline decided not to run for reelection in after redistricting.

    Tiny problem: It turns out that Ericka Lomick is ineligible to serve because she’s a convicted felon.

    Democrat Texas House candidate Ericka Lomick has suspended her campaign following questions about whether her previous federal felony conviction makes her eligible to hold public office.

    Lomick announced Monday that she was ending her bid for the Tarrant County-based district 93 seat, saying the decision came “after careful consideration.”

    “Although this was not an easy decision, I am convinced that it was the right one for the people of HD 93,” said Lomick.

    The right decision to make would be not to run for an office you weren’t eligible to serve in. It’s called “due diligence.”

    Her campaign acknowledged that the decision followed questions about her eligibility to serve.

    “After questions arose about the candidate’s eligibility to serve as the district’s elected Representative, Ericka Lomick has chosen to step aside and allow the people of HD 93 to elect someone who can serve the district without the burden of defending against attacks that would threaten to derail the business of the people,” the campaign stated.

    Those questions emerged after the Protect and Serve Texas PAC resurfaced Lomick’s federal criminal history in the race.

    Federal court records show Lomick, known then as Ericka Flood, was charged in 2010 as part of a federal mortgage fraud investigation in North Carolina. Federal prosecutors identified Flood as both a mortgage broker and promoter involved in the scheme.

    If only she had run Medicaid fraud ring instead, she probably would have remained unindicted until this year…

    Lomick ultimately pleaded guilty in the case and was sentenced to 63 months in federal prison.

    She later attempted to have her sentence vacated, alleging, among other claims, ineffective assistance of counsel in connection with her plea and sentencing. A federal district judge denied the motion in 2012.

    The conviction raised questions about Lomick’s eligibility to seek state office in Texas.

    Under Texas law, a person who has been finally convicted of a felony is generally ineligible to be a candidate for public office unless they have been pardoned or “otherwise released from the resulting disabilities.” The Texas Secretary of State specifically notes that merely completing a felony sentence does not restore a person’s eligibility to run for office.

    The Texas Constitution also directs the Legislature to exclude from office individuals convicted of bribery, perjury, forgery, or other “high crimes.”

    Lomick had previously told the Fort Worth Report that she had never been convicted of a crime “in any state.”

    So she’s a damn liar as well as a felon.

    Her departure leaves Republican candidate Alan Blaylock, a former Fort Worth city councilman, as the likely winner of the seat, which was recently vacated by Nate Schatzline.

    This is a blow to Democrats, because Lomick actually received a few hundred more votes in the primary election than the two Republicans candidates, indicating the new district might possibly be competitive.

    A nice break for Republicans, and a self-inflicted wound for Democrats.

    Los Angeles: Dead Last In Housing Affordability

    Sunday, September 20th, 2026

    Los Angeles spends a lot of taxpayer money on affordable housing, $399,228,000 in state funding and $1,919,897,000 in federal money for the 2024-25 fiscal year. Given all that spending, how does Los Angeles rank nationwide in housing affordability? Dead last.

    Des Moines, Iowa, ranked first and Los Angeles ranked last in Realtor.com’s inaugural report grading the 100 largest U.S. metros on housing affordability and homebuilding activity.

    The results highlighted how local zoning and permitting can affect housing affordability in different areas.

    The real estate platform’s first Metro Affordability and Homebuilding Report Card, released on Sept. 16, showed that Des Moines received an “A+” grade with a score of 83.4, the highest among the 100 metros analyzed, reflecting its strong residential construction activity and affordability.

    The city has a median listing price of $349,903, with the monthly mortgage payment requiring 27.5 percent of a median-income household’s income, below the commonly cited threshold of 30 percent.

    The calculation assumed a 10 percent down payment and a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage with a 6.5 percent interest rate.

    At the other end of the list, Los Angeles received an “F” grade with a score of 12, leaving it at the bottom of the 100-metro ranking.

    The median listing price in the city stands at $1.129 million, requiring a household earning the median income to spend 84.4 percent of its income on the monthly mortgage payment on a typical home, according to the report.

    Meanwhile, the report said that local housing policies can help explain the gap between the highest- and lowest-performing metro areas in new home construction and affordability.

    “Beyond land availability, the biggest difference between the ‘A’ metros and the ‘F’ metros is local housing policy, especially related to zoning and permitting,” Realtor.com senior economist Joel Berner said in the report.

    “The ‘A’s share regulatory flexibility and streamlined approval processes, while the ‘F’s are locked in restrictive land-use frameworks.”

    The report noted that Des Moines had a permit-to-population ratio of 1.85, meaning the city was issuing permits for new homes at a rate 85 percent higher than the national average relative to its population.

    By contrast, Los Angeles’ ratio of 0.47 meant that the city was permitting less than half the national average relative to its population.

    “The combination of extreme affordability pressure and limited new supply placed it at the bottom of the class,” the report noted.

    Along with Los Angeles, New York City, Providence, Rhode Island, Honolulu, and Boston also had failing grades.

    For example, Berner said, Boston has four times as many pages of zoning law as Austin, Texas, and 79 percent of its land is zoned, compared with just 15 percent in Austin.

    Minimum parking mandates apply to 88 percent of land in Boston, while in Austin, the requirement is 37 percent.

    Boston also has less land that allows unrestricted accessory dwelling units, limiting the supply of smaller, more affordable homes.

    Thanks to gobs of government spending, armies of regulators, and the tireless efforts of Karen Bass and Gavin Newsom, Los Angeles has managed to make itself the least affordable city in America! A fine demonstration of what the Democrat Party can do to a city if they just run it long enough.

    But don’t worry! That same tax and regulatory climate is driving major movie studios out of Los Angeles, taking all those high-paying movie industry jobs with them to states like Texas and Tennessee. After that happens, expect lots of houses to hit the market right as LA’s economy starts contracting in earnest…

    LinkSwarm For September 18, 2026

    Friday, September 18th, 2026

    Lots of Democrat/Blue State fraud of varying types (campaign financing, voting, welfare state), hot marine-drone-on-marine-drone action, one of Maduro’s scumbags pleads guilty, the feds investigate Governor Hairgel and his henchmen, corrupt or power-hungry police get slapped down in two different Texas locales, a breakdown of just who is funding the “AI will kill us all” panic, and a Hank Hill meme to represent my continued loathing of restaurant QR codes.

    It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • Just as suspected: “Dem Fundraising Giant ActBlue Accepted Illegal Foreign Donations, Covered Up Evidence, House Report Says.”

    ActBlue, the Democratic fundraising giant, may have accepted both fraudulent and illegal foreign contributions — and later concealed the relevant evidence from House Republicans investigating the matter, according to a new congressional report.

    Congressional oversight “found that ActBlue, in its own words, decided to take ‘a more lenient approach’ to fraud prevention in 2024, weakening its fraud-prevention policies at least twice even though internal assessments showed that these changes would result in a measurable increase in fraudulent contributions,” according to the new report.

    “Similarly, internal trainings directed ActBlue’s fraud prevention team to ‘look for reasons to accept contributions’ rather than to examine them closely for indicators of fraud — as required by federal regulation. ActBlue took this lax approach to fraud prevention even though it had detected at least 22 significant fraud campaigns on the platform in recent years, including several from foreign sources.”

    The report — which is the third released by the Committee on House Administration, the House Judiciary Committee, and the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform regarding their investigation into ActBlue — accuses the platform of accepting “illegal foreign political donations” and later undertaking a cover-up.

    ActBlue CEO Regina Wallace-Jones previously wrote in a letter to Committee on House Administration Chairman Bryan Steil (R., Wis.) in 2023, when the investigation began, explaining that donations made by people with addresses outside of the U.S. require a passport number for verification.

    But the report argues the step does little to prevent fraud, as it “only ensures that the entered passport number contains a certain number of characters, not that it is a valid U.S. passport number.”

    ActBlue’s previous law firm, Covington & Burling, told ActBlue in 2025 that Wallace-Jones may have misled Congress in her response because the steps for vetting foreign donations were not always followed, the New York Times reported earlier this year. ActBlue processed $990 million in donations in 2023, including $1.3 million from donors with foreign addresses, according to the Washington Post. ActBlue said it collected passport numbers for 93 percent of the donations with foreign addresses.

    In the new report, the House committees cite internal communications in which ActBlue employees appear to downplay warnings of fraud. “Donor sometimes has an IP in Hong Kong, but none of their other signals raise any eyebrows,” employees wrote in one memo about a “great accept.”

    In another message, an ActBlue supervisor says that a rejected foreign contribution “should have been accepted.”

    “It is a foreign contribution, but the name/email match, the IP/billing match, a full address with the correct country code, and there were previously accepted and successful contributions,” the message says. “The donor uses an Arkansas state code, which isn’t great, but [the] system can be wonky with requiring state codes for foreign donors.”

    On a separate occasion, an ActBlue supervisor said a contribution “set off a lot of” alarms, but suggested the donor should be given the “benefit of the doubt.”

    Democrats always seem to give the “benefit of the doubt” to foreign money flowing into their pockets…

  • “Texas Democrat Caught on Video Explaining $25 Program to Influence Voters.”

    Townhall Media caught Sky McAdams, an organizing manager for Texas Majority PAC, admitting to a scheme involving paying people to influence others to vote for Democrats.

    You know they desperately want Texas Democratic Senate nominee James Talerico to win.

    You can’t pay someone to vote for a candidate, but apparently the PAC discovered a way around the rule.

    From the video:

    MCADAMS: We are paying people $25 to attend a one-hour Zoom class to learn why voting is important and why the Republicans are causing all of these bad things. So it’s like a roundabout way of paying people for their votes, essentially, which is interesting.

    PERSON RECORDING THE VIDEO: What’s the – what’s this called?

    MCADAMS: It’s called the Paid Relational Program. I think rally Texas is the official name. You can’t pay someone to vote for someone. You can’t be like, “Here’s $25, go vote for me.” You can say, “Attend a one-hour class and you can receive $25.” And then the class just talks about the importance of…it’s a little gray.

    PERSON RECORDING THE VIDEO: But right now we could use all the help we can get.

    MCADAMS: If I was a Republican, I would be pissed. I would be like, “That’s shady as f**k.”

    You know, if I were a Soros-backed PAC that was already under investigation by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (AKA the Republican nominee running against Talarico in the 2026 Texas senate race), I’d want to be a lot more circumspect at breaking federal election law…

  • More Minnesota welfare fraud:

    WOAH 🚨 An addiction recovery center in Minnesota accused of stealing millions with fake Medicaid billing has just been exposed to have another account with $25 MILLION

    They’ve used our stolen tax money to buy:

    – 3 Minnesota homes
    – $10.4 million in charges
    – $3.5 million on leather goods and luggage
    – $380k jewelry and watches
    – $150k clothing and shoes
    – One month of LV charges alone was $440,000

    June 2024 spending alone included

    – $35k at Fendi
    – $57k at LV
    – $13k at Hermès
    – $64k private jet
    – $41k Airbnb

    And now a $25 million CD has been discovered

    Some of the craziest items they bought were

    – 3 Minnesota homes

    – Rolex Oyster Mickey Mouse edition that’s 18kt yellow gold with genuine Rolex crocodile band

    – Louis Vuitton trunks and hard-side luggage including additional jewelry trunks

    – Louis Vuitton black mink coat and other fur pieces

    – Gents diamond cluster rings and fashion rings that were 14kt gold pieces with 7–59 diamonds, plus EFFY, Kabana, and Gabriel & Co. platinum diamond rings

    – 18kt yellow gold and diamond Louis Vuitton pendant on an 18kt LV chain, plus other 14kt gold diamond heart pendants and Tiffany pearl and diamond pieces

    – Louis Vuitton Tambour watches

    Again, this is all with our stolen tax money with fake Medicaid billing in Minnesota

    Tim Walz and Democrats allowed this and would have never did anything to stop them if it wasn’t for Trump getting elected

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • More fraud in California. “Twelve People Charged in $10 Million Home Daycare Fraud Schemes.”

    Twelve people are facing federal fraud charges after an investigation revealed that more than $10 million intended to help low-income families pay for childcare was instead funneled to bogus daycare providers.

    In a coordinated takedown early Thursday morning, more than 250 federal, state and local law enforcement officials arrested all 12 defendants and executed 12 search warrants at homes in San Diego purported to be used as daycare facilities.

    “These charges underscore a simple truth: anyone who steals from programs meant to support children will face swift and uncompromising accountability, said Assistant Attorney General Colin M. McDonald of the Justice Department’s National Fraud Enforcement Division. “Fraud against these programs is an attack on vulnerable families, and law enforcement will continue to dismantle schemes that exploit them. I want to thank the prosecutors and agents in the Southern District of California whose relentless work exposed this scheme and ensured that those responsible are being held accountable.”

    “Programs that help families access childcare are intended to support children and working parents, not to enrich fraudsters,” said Homeland Security Investigations Assistant Director Michael Krol. “HSI is proud to stand with our federal, state, and local partners to identify and disrupt schemes that steal taxpayer-funded benefits from the communities they are meant to serve. These arrests reflect our commitment to protecting public programs, safeguarding children, and holding accountable those who exploit systems designed to help vulnerable families.”

    “Today’s takedown exposes a sprawling fraud scheme that siphoned more than $10 million from programs designed to help low-income families who depend on subsidized childcare. By following the money, IRS Criminal Investigation uncovered patterns of deceit that revealed twelve ghost daycare operations billing for children who were never present. This was not a victimless crime. It deprived working parents of critical support and eroded trust in programs meant to protect the most vulnerable in our communities. We remain steadfast in our commitment to safeguarding federal funds and ensuring that those who exploit public programs for personal gain are held fully accountable,” said IRS Criminal Investigation Chief Jarod Koopman.

    “Shameless attempts to steal taxpayer‑funded childcare funds for personal gain endanger support for some of our nation’s most vulnerable children,” said Special Agent in Charge Robb R. Breeden of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General (HHS-OIG). “Working alongside our law enforcement partners, HHS‑OIG will continue to pursue these schemes relentlessly to protect these funds and the families who depend on them.”

    The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services provides federal funding to California to help low-income families pay for childcare. In San Diego County, the County of San Diego, Child Development Associates (CDA), and the YMCA administer childcare subsidy programs.

    When CDA or the YMCA determines that a family qualifies for subsidized childcare, the organizations pay the eligible childcare provider directly after the provider submits required monthly attendance records documenting the care provided. The records must be signed by both the provider and parent under penalty of perjury and include the dates and times children are in care.

    California law also requires licensed childcare providers to be present and ensure that children are supervised at all times, except for limited temporary absences when a qualified substitute is present.

    While the 12 federal complaints are unrelated, the scheme was essentially the same: Defendants obtained a California license to operate a home childcare facility and registered with Child Development Associates (CDA) and the YMCA to provide subsidized childcare to eligible families. To receive government-funded payments, the defendants were required to submit monthly attendance records accurately documenting the dates and times they provided care to each child.

    Instead, the defendants knowingly submitted false attendance records claiming they provided childcare on dates and at times when they did not. They also falsely certified, under penalty of perjury, that the information was true and correct. CDA and the YMCA relied on those fraudulent records and issued payments with federal funds intended to pay for childcare actually provided to low-income families.

    The complaints describe how surveillance recordings of the defendants’ licensed facilities conflicted with what the defendants claimed in their attendance records. For example, Abdulrahman Ayman Alawad submitted attendance records claiming to have provided childcare to 23 children in March 2026 and 25 children April 2026, and that he provided childcare every day of those two months.

    My amazing psychic powers tell me that local media reports refer to Alawad as “San Diego Man.”

    But surveillance recordings covering 57 days of those months showed children entering or exiting Alawad’s facility on just one day—coincidentally, the day a state inspector showed up for an unannounced inspection, when children and Alawad himself arrived at the facility after the inspector arrived.

  • “Washington Finally Connected the Dots on Fraud Cases Across the Country.”

    Twenty-seven FBI field offices were working fraud cases that looked local. Then Washington finally put the data in the same room.

    What emerged wasn’t dozens of unrelated problems. The FBI says investigators connected over 40 cases to the same strategic threat and the same group of overseas actors.

    From the FBI:

    Launched in August, the NFDC brings together the FBI, federal law enforcement agencies, Offices of Inspector General, and state partners in a first-of-its-kind effort to identify fraud across taxpayer-funded programs. Rather than evaluating investigations in isolation, the center combines cross-agency data and artificial intelligence to help investigators spot patterns, connect cases, and dismantle organized criminal networks.

    The initiative stems from a broader “whole of government” approach mandated by Executive Order 14395, which established the White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud.

    The discovery came through the new National Fraud Detection Center, launched in August. The center brings together information from the FBI, Homeland Security Investigations, IRS Criminal Investigation, Treasury, FinCEN, inspectors general, state agencies, and others.

    Instead of examining one suspicious student loan, Medicare payment, or SBA loan at a time, investigators can search for connections across programs and jurisdictions. The center uses data analytics and AI to help spot patterns that individual offices might miss.

    The student-loan investigation offers the clearest example. Individual cases appeared small enough that some might never have attracted major federal attention. Once the data was combined, investigators concluded they were looking at pieces of a much larger foreign-directed operation.

    Fraudsters had figured out something the federal government has struggled with for years: agencies don’t always talk to each other.

    The Government Accountability Office reported in June that agencies can use more than 100 federal data sources to verify whether people qualify for benefits or payments. GAO examined nine major sources and found data-quality problems in every one. It also found no government-wide rules ensuring those systems can efficiently share information.

    The price of those weaknesses isn’t theoretical.

    Federal agencies reported an estimated $186 billion in improper payments during fiscal 2025. Improper payments include errors and overpayments, so they shouldn’t automatically be called fraud. GAO separately estimates that actual fraud costs the federal government somewhere between $233 billion and $521 billion annually, based on data from 2018 through 2022.

    Those numbers help explain why connecting databases matters.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • “Syzran Oil Refinery Hit Hard By Drones: Supplies Russia’s Armed Forces.” I think that’s at least the fifth attack on the oil refinery we’ve reported here.
  • “Big Drone Strikes on Taganrog Drone Factory and Chemical Plant in Tolyatti.”
  • Plus: “Ukrainian Missile Strike on Taganrog Beriev Repair Plant (Repairs A-50 AWACS) and Drone Factory.”
  • “Ukraine Badly Damaged Gepard-Class Frigate in the Caspian Sea! Big Hole in Deck/Hull!”
  • “Operation Vivaldi: Ukrainian Counterattack Near Lyman Liberates Serednie.”
  • “Russian General Confirmed KIA in Ukrainian Drone Strike.” “Russian Major General Anton Grunis was reportedly KIA in Horlivka.”
  • “First Ever Battle Between Marine Drones! Ukraine Wins!”
  • President Trump signs the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026
  • Peter Zeihan explains how Ukraine targets Russia’s shadow fleet in the Black Sea. “What the Ukrainians have done is they’ve contacted every shipping company in the world and said, “Hey, if you’re operating in the Black Sea, A, tell us the name of the ship. B, give us their transponder so we can follow them. C, tell give us their course and D, the ports you expect them to be at and when. And if we can confirm that information as part of our operations, we will not attack those ships. And so far, shipping company in the world is complying except the shadow fleet. Shadow fleet runs dark. Shadow fleet doesn’t report. And that’s the whole point. So, what the Ukrainians have basically done have mapped out the entire commercial world of shipping in the Black Sea and attacking the ships that don’t report.”
  • Evidently the left is the same everywhere: “Maduro Ally Pleads Guilty In Miami To Scheme That Stole Venezuelan Welfare Funds.”

    The former minister of industry for Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro’s regime pleaded guilty on Tuesday to a global money laundering conspiracy that skimmed millions from a Venezuelan public welfare program.

    According to a Department of Justice (DOJ) news release, Alex Saab, 54, who was extradited from Venezuela in May and charged days later, conducted a decade-long scheme that defrauded a Venezuelan welfare program for food and medicine, netting hundreds of millions of dollars for himself and associates.

    Saab, a Colombian businessman, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to launder monetary instruments before federal district Judge Kathleen Williams in Miami. He faces a maximum sentence of 20 years.

    “Criminals like Alex Saab who stole from the people of Venezuela and worked to exploit and misuse American financial institutions to fund illicit activities will be held accountable,” FBI Director Kash Patel said in the news release.

    Saab is accused of bilking the welfare program known as Local Committee for Supply and Production, or CLAP (Comité Local de Abastecimiento y Producción).

    The ex-minister admitted to using a system of bribes and illegal payments to public officials. Entities controlled by conspirators in the scheme would be rewarded with lucrative contracts from the Venezuelan government to import food and medicine under CLAP.

    Saab and his conspirators did not fulfill the contracts and would instead use fake companies, false invoices and shipping records, and other fraudulent documents to unlawfully obtain millions while concealing their association with the scheme, the DOJ said.

    Saab further admitted he used shell companies outside his country to launder the illegal proceeds around the world, including in the United States.

    I wonder if there’s a book called How To Line Your Pockets With Welfare State Funds that leftists the world over all read…

  • “AOC, Mamdani caught laughing together while names are read at 9/11 Memorial.”
  • “Feds Expand Criminal Probe Into Newsom Travel, Spending. The subpoenas… seek records from the California State Protocol Foundation, a nonprofit that’s funded Newsom and his overseas travel through private donations.”

    Federal prosecutors have expanded their criminal investigation into Democrat California Gov. Gavin Newsom, issuing subpoenas for six years of records covering his international travel, outside funding, and personal expenses, including money spent on his residence and living costs. Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael D. Anderson signed the subpoenas, which concern a criminal investigation in the Eastern District of California.

    The subpoenas, issued in early September, seek records from the California State Protocol Foundation, a nonprofit that has funded Newsom’s overseas travel through private donations. The subpoenas are expected to produce records for a federal grand jury.

    Federal investigators also want communications involving Rebecca Prowda, Newsom’s chief protocol officer, who helps oversee his foreign travel and has staffed him at events ranging from the California Hall of Fame ceremony to meetings with foreign heads of government. Prowda is married to San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie. She declined to comment.

    Investigators also sought communications involving Steve Kawa, Jim DeBoo, Jason Elliott and campaign counsel Tom Willis. All four have longstanding ties to Newsom.

    Kawa, Newsom’s former San Francisco chief of staff, now chairs the California High-Speed Rail Authority and the Protocol Foundation. DeBoo, a former Newsom executive secretary, is the foundation’s secretary. Elliott, another former deputy chief of staff, sits on both the Protocol Foundation board and the rail authority. Willis sits on the board of the California Partners Project, the nonprofit co-founded by Jennifer Siebel Newsom. Records involving Siebel Newsom were also requested.

    Sounds like a cozy influence-peddling cabal, doesn’t it?

    Plenty of money is up for review. Newsom has directed more than $7.5 million in outside donations to the California State Protocol Foundation since taking office, with roughly $5.1 million coming from leftover inaugural funds. Behested payments are donations that public officials solicit on behalf of outside organizations. They are legal in California but must be disclosed. Newsom has directed roughly $349 million in such payments between 2019 and 2026. The foundation ended 2024 with just $7,790 in net funds after spending nearly $600,000 more than it took in over the previous two years.

    Among its donors are CVS, a Blue Shield-linked foundation, and autonomous vehicle company Zoox, all of which do business in California or operate under state rules. Other contributors include the New Venture Fund and crypto billionaire Chris Larsen. Foundations tied to Democrat megadonors Susie Tompkins Buell and Lisa Stone Pritzker have also contributed. Both women have supported Newsom politically and backed nonprofits associated with Siebel Newsom. The foundation has helped pay for Newsom’s travel to Davos, Munich, London, and China.

  • Democrats pull support for NC House candidate Shelly Headen. Oddly enough, wishing you could shove your political opponents into the ovens at Dachau is still beyond the pale, even for Democrats…
  • What.The Fuck. “Dutch officials say first toddler euthanized under new state law was ‘handled well.'”

    This child was born very prematurely, at only 26 weeks of gestation. It quickly became apparent that the child had suffered severe brain damage, resulting in severe cerebral palsy and a visual impairment. This was compounded by frequent and severe epileptic seizures, which were largely unresponsive to medication. This left the child restless and unable to sleep for long periods. They also had mucus in their lungs, which made breathing and swallowing very difficult.

    Cerebral palsy and epilepsy are serious conditions that require focused care.

    Doctors predicted that the child would not live to adulthood; therefore killing the two-year-old was the best choice for “care.”

    ‘Despite all medical and non-medical interventions, the parents and the doctor observed no improvement in the child’s condition and were convinced that the child was suffering unbearably and without prospect of relief.’

    Neither the article, nor the medical committee described how the child’s life was ended.

    Was the child removed from life support and allowed to die?

    Was the child injected with lethal chemicals to stop the heart?

    What is the mania on the left for killing children these days?

  • “Roblox Refuses To Appear at Texas House Hearing on Child Safety. Roblox failed to appear before Texas lawmakers investigating concerns about violent and sexually explicit content on online gaming platforms.”
  • How senators John Kennedy (LA) and Ted Cruz derailed Biden judicial nominees with such trick questions as “What does Article II of the Constitution cover?”
  • “Federal Judge Overturned after Denying Jury Trial, Awarding Plaintiff $1 for Home Demolished by City. The appeals court called the Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial ‘fundamental.'”

    A federal appeals court has ruled that U.S. District Court Judge Jeff Brown of the Southern District of Texas abused the discretion of the court when he denied a jury trial to a property owner who sued Texas City for demolishing his house without proper notice.

    In an opinion issued earlier this month, a three-judge panel of the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals also threw out Brown’s determination that homeowner Michael Ramirez was only entitled to $1 in nominal damages for the destruction of his house, but the court’s ruling hinged on the right to a jury trial guaranteed in the Seventh Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

    “Because ‘the right of jury trial is fundamental,’ federal courts must ‘indulge every reasonable presumption against waiver,’” Justice Leslie H. Southwick wrote in the decision.

    “Indeed, a ‘motion for trial by jury under this rule should be favorably received unless there are persuasive reasons to deny it.’ Those reasons must be ‘strong and compelling’; otherwise, the motion should be granted, and it is an abuse of discretion not to do so.”

    Ramirez’ clash with Texas City began after a fire in April 2022 damaged the home he bought for $90,000, which he planned to renovate and resell for an estimated $230,000.

    Three days after the fire, the City sent a “Notice of Substandard Structure and of Abatement,” labeled the building a “clear and imminent danger,” and said it would be “abated without further notice.” But Ramirez hired an architect with experience in fire restoration who advised that the damage was primarily superficial and that the home was repairable.

    Ramirez then contacted city officials to secure repair permits, but alleged that city employees gave him conflicting information. He also said City Attorney Kyle Dickson assured him the property would be demolished only with his approval. While awaiting approval, Ramirez said he stored tools and appliances in the house valued at $15,000.

    Instead, the city demolished the home without further notice on May 9, 2023, more than one year after the fire.

  • Louis Rossmann offers an update to a previous story he did, where Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is going after Taylor for taking land deeded to them to use as parkland and instead using it for a commercial data center.
  • “FBI Agent Wanted To Criminally Investigate Elon Musk.”

    An FBI agent pitched investigating Elon Musk for his work with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), according to an email released on Sept. 15.

    FBI agent Kevin Gounaud wrote in the Feb. 22, 2025, missive to a supervisor that he wanted to recommend opening a criminal investigation into the person or people at the Office of Personnel Management who approved transmitting an email to government workers about what they had done the previous week.

    That person was conspiring with Musk “to violate government-wide security policy and transmit sensitive government information outside of a strict need to know,” Gounaud said.

    “Furthermore, Musk used a non-government system (Twitter) to relate information that allegedly was for official purposes,” he said.

    “In doing so, because he is monetized … he likely generated income for himself based on Twitter’s monetization and/or advertising revenues.”

    Gounaud compared Musk’s action to how former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used a private email server to conduct government business.

    Yes, because running a private email server to facilitate foreign bribes is just like looking for patterns of government waste…

  • “Georgia’s youngest mayor makes history again by getting impeached in just 10 months.”

    The mayor is a nonpartisan position, but we all know this kid is a future shining star of the Democratic Party. Stockbridge, Georgia’s youngest elected mayor has been shown the door less than a year into the job, the city confirms.

    Here’s Breitbart:

    [Jayden] Williams — who recently turned 23 — was initially stripped of certain privileges in July before the City Council impeached the mayor on grounds of malfeasance, misfeasance, and violation of his oath of office, then returned to executive session on Saturday to vote for his removal, Fox 5 Atlanta reported.

    The former mayor — who took office in early January — was reportedly accused of using his city purchasing card for more than $4,000 in personal expenses such as dining at restaurants, buying clothes, getting haircuts, and watching a movie, in addition to spending $2,600 on gas.

  • Clayton Cramer on Why Deinstitutionalization of the Mentally Ill Matters.

    Before 03/17/1973: “Police hunted today for a man in his early 20s seen leaving a burning home after a businessman, his wife and son were shot to death outside the hillside dwelling.” A neighbor saw the man leaving with a shotgun who rejected the neighbor’s poorly thought offer to help. “Go away,” was the response. Police found at least 22 shotgun shells.

    At a subsequent trial of a man, 22, his defense attorney asserted that the murderer was paranoid schizophrenic and committed the murders because his friend, one of those murdered, “possessed supernatural powers which were bent of destroying [the murderer.” Also, “the Mafia was involved in his life and that Dan Shallock was involved and could not be killed, even by an H-Bomb.” “At one point he believed Dan Shallock was the devil, and to this day [the murderer] fear in his heart that Dan may come back.” The murderer had spent a month at Marin Community Mental Health Center, and in the days immediately prior to the slayings, his mother had been trying to persuade the youth to commit himself.”

  • If you’re confused about the thunderclap of “AI will kill us all” doom forecasting this week, Director Blue has a visual breakdown.

    Here’s the 9-second version: A 27-year-old quits AI frontier lab Anthropic. Fires off a post on X. Says AI could kill us all. The Wall Street Journal has the exclusive ready to drop. Ted Cruz freaks out and calls it “catastrophic”. Bernie Sanders drafts socialist-style regulations. The tweet gets 164 millions views. Elon responds with two words: psy-op. Let’s follow the money trail. It traces back ten years. This isn’t an AI scandal. It’s a clandestine operation designed to damage American interests.

    Go over there for details, I’m just going to pull out the names of the people and orgs running the psy-op for future reference:

    • Anthopic series A investor Dustin Moskovitz and wife
    • Cari Tuna, who fund
    • Coefficient Giving, who gives money to
    • Redwood Research
    • Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI)
    • Center for AI Safety
    • AI Policy Institute
    • Open Philanthropy, run by
    • Holden Karnofsky, who is married to
    • Anthropic President Daniela Amodei, sister of
    • Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei. More names:
    • Jacob Coxon
    • Evan Hubinger
    • Samuel Marks
    • Jaan Tallinn
    • China
    • Max Tegmark
    • Future of Life Institute
    • Alexander Berger

    Hope you enjoy the bullet point summary of the visual summary…

  • Speaking of AI drama, here’s the story of a century-old math puzzle being solved, and suspicions that OpenAI stole the work of two math guys.
  • “Texas police department shut down for failing to provide ‘public benefit’ after arresting mom over dirty water Facebook post.”

    The Texas police department that arrested a mother for criticizing the town’s dirty drinking water on social media has been ordered to disband after the state ruled that it provided no “benefit to the community.”

    The Texas Commission on Law Enforcement sent Trinidad Mayor Dennis Haws a letter on Sept. 9 revoking the city’s license to operate its own police department — determining the department had “failed to meet minimum standards” as a law enforcement entity, KETK reported.

    The action followed an Aug. 5 investigation in which the department was found “unable to provide evidence that the agency provides public benefit to the community” and lacked 18 required policies, including ones on use of force, vehicle pursuit, professional conduct and active shooters, the commission said.

    Texas has ordered the Trinidad Police Department to disband after it arrested Jennifer Combs for posting about the town’s dirty drinking water.

    Police defended the arrest, claiming Combs’ post had created “fear, panic, or unnecessary emergency response within a community” — despite the city itself posting a notice urging residents to boil their water to “avoid harmful bacteria” on April 21, weeks before her arrest.

    Despite the mounting contradictions, Trinidad Police Chief Charles Gregory doubled down — calling the case against Combs “cut and dry.”

    Police also arrested a supporter of Combs, citizen journalist Winston Noles, for misdemeanor disorderly conduct after he displayed a “f–k bad cops” sign outside city hall, FOX 4 reported.

    Combs’ arrest quickly drew national attention, prompting Gregory to drop the felony charge against her and the state to launch its investigation into the department.

    Let’s hope other police departments get the message that their authoritah does not override the First Amendment. (Previously.)(Hat tip: Dwight.)

  • “City of Fulshear dismisses chief of police.”

    Fulshear Police Chief Kenny Seymour has been relieved of his duties effective immediately.

    Fulshear is west of Houston and south of Katy.

    At a Sept. 15 meeting, Fulshear City Council voted unanimously to dismiss Seymour after a third-party investigator found “overwhelming” evidence stemming from an alleged affair Seymour had with a subordinate within the police department.

    The city will begin looking for an interim chief and, in the meantime, has appointed City Manager Zach Goodlander to oversee police department operations, while command-level oversight will be assigned to appropriate department leadership.

    Although the proceedings could have been held in closed session, Seymour—who has served as police chief since 2011—requested they be held publicly.

    Officials with the investigation said it showed Seymour “engaged in a prolonged pattern of deception, financial conflict of interest and direct insubordination.”

    Dwight unearthed more details.

    According to the investigator, sworn interrogatory responses from Seymour’s divorce case showed a prolonged sexual relationship with the subordinate. The investigator also said Seymour had a financial entanglement with the captain, including providing money for rent, plane tickets, and other expenses.

    Including a refrigerator.

  • Good. “UT-Austin Eliminating Additional Grievance Studies Programs. University to cut Mexican American, African, women’s and gender studies majors.”

    The University of Texas at Austin will liquidate several grievance studies programs that observers had previously thought it would keep.

    KUT reports that the university will eliminate majors in African and African diaspora studies, Mexican American and Latina/o studies, women’s and gender studies, and race, indigeneity and migration.

    The left-wing outlet received a leaked email outlining the changes.

    In the email, Danielle Pilar Clealand, the interim chair of the newly formed Social and Cultural Analysis Department said that “the Provost’s office rejected our proposal to keep our majors.”

    The provost is the chief academic officer at UT Austin. William Inboden currently serves in the position.

  • It’s not just UT! A&M is also killing courses.

    The Texas A&M University System has removed 350 course entries from core-curriculum eligibility, while the University of Texas at Austin provost’s office has proposed removing 113 “topic” courses from core-credit eligibility beginning in spring 2027, with most of the affected UT courses reportedly housed in the College of Liberal Arts.

    In an Aug. 13 announcement from The University of Texas at Austin, the school has announced that it will be deploying a new core curriculum that is designed to specifically give students “a common learning experience built on rigorous, broad and balanced classes.”

    The new curriculum comes after 22 faculty members, who made up a “Core Curriculum Task Force,” found that the school offered “more than 1,000 disconnected courses of inconsistent quality.”

    As a result of the Task Force’s work, the new curriculum at UT Austin is stated to give students a foundation of courses on “three foundational domains of knowledge: Arts and Humanities, Social Sciences, and STEM.”

    Additionally, UT Austin’s Core Curriculum Task Force’s Report found other suggestions to cut the catalog of more than 600 courses to prioritize courses that focus on Western civilization, U.S. History, “Great Questions of Human Life,” principles of American Politics, and others.

    The report also ties the core curriculum overhaul to concerns that “narrow,” specialized courses fail to provide students with a shared academic foundation. It recommends incentives, including tuition discounts and honors status, to encourage students to complete the newly required courses and reduce the likelihood of students transferring to other institutions.

    A curriculum overhaul is also set to take place within the Texas A&M University System as well, as S.B. 37 requires state-funded universities to review their course catalogs and make appropriate changes.

    (Hat tip: Instapundit.)

  • Dwight has a report up of his trip to the Smith and Wesson Collectors Association Symposium in Springfield Missouri, which I commend to your attention if that sort of thing appeals to you.
  • This:

  • “Anthropic Boasts They Will Kill Off Humanity Way Before OpenAI.”
  • “Travis Kelce Victimized By Criminal Ring That Forces People To Dress Like Idiots.”

  • Golden Retrievers are great dogs, but they make poor watch dogs.

  • I’m still between jobs. Feel free to hit the tip jar if you’re so inclined.





    Remembering Andrew Wimsatt: “The Coolest Dude Ever”

    Sunday, September 13th, 2026

    When I originally posted about the random senseless murder of my friend Andrew Wimsatt, I did so out of a sense of obligation. He was a close friend, and I’m a writer with a blog, so if I wasn’t going to write about him, who would?

    But I’ve been stunned by how quickly the story blew up. Andrew’s murder has become national or even international news, from Fox News to the New York Post to even The Daily Mail in the UK.

    Given that explosion of publicity, and Andrew’s family’s dismay over so many articles dwelling on the murder rather than the man, I felt the need to do another, longer post celebrating Andrew’s life and re-post some of the many tributes to him. He was a man of many parts, in the best possible sense.

    The good thing, the heat-warming silver-lining in a very dark cloud thing, is the legions of people who knew Andrew coming from all walks of life, all different enthusiasms, to share what a great guy he was. Here’s one tribute:

    I suspect being described as “the coolest dude ever” would have come as a great surprise to Andrew. As an engineer, Andrew was a geeky, goofy, affable, genial guy, and, with the sole exception of playing guitar, had none of the attributes the media use to label someone as “cool.” Our nickname for him (I think bestowed long before we met him) was “Goober,” or simply “The Goob.” And yet in a deeper, more meaningful way, he was a cool guy: A sturdy presence always looking to help out his friends, try new restaurants, listen to new bands. He was a quiet pillar of strength holding up part of the world, a vital cohort in numerous little platoons, each blithely unaware of how much he meant to others.

    I knew Andrew for over 35 years, so long ago that my initial meeting with him is lost in the dim mists of time. For the last 30 of those years, he was a member of the Saturday Dining Conspiracy, a loose affiliation of myself, Dwight Brown, and a rotating cast of friends and family who go out to a different restaurant for dinner every week, everything from hot dog and taco places to high end steak joints. Andrew was one of our core members, and BBQ and sushi seemed among his particular favorites. So I’ve seen Andrew most Saturdays for three decades. We probably demolished 100 plates of nachos between us.

    And it wasn’t just for food! A quarter century or so ago, we started watching movies every night after dinner, with Andrew usually joining us for that as well. We’ve watched everything from All That Jazz to Suspira to Zulu to any number of Godzilla films. (We have eclectic tastes.) After I bought my house in 2004, it became the de facto movie viewing venue, despite not then having a large TV. Andrew had a video protector he used for teaching classes, and for the first year or two, we projected movies up on a white sheet.

    Andrew wasn’t just friends to us, he was a friend to my dogs as well. He would race my Great Pyrenees Buddy up and down the stairs (“Go up! Go up! Go up!”) to burn off some of his energy, and my Lab/Pit mix Avery frequently found her way under the upraised legrest of the battered brown Lay-Z-Boy Andrew always sat in.

    One thing missing from all the praise flowing in over Andrew is the dark sense of humor he shared with most of our group. When it came time to divvy up the dining bill, Andrew would often joke “In the end, we will all pay.” He was a fan of The Simpsons back when it was good (which, I know, really narrows it down to “every single person in my generation”), and especially liked the 1996 Treehouse of Horror episode where Bill Clinton and Bob Dole are replaced by space aliens, often quoting the line “It doesn’t matter which one of us you vote for, either way your planet is doomed! DOOMED!”

    And he loved a good Hitler joke. “You know who else loved to paint?” And after Dolly Parton died, he showed us an AI generated picture of famous singers (Kenny Rogers, Johnny Cash, Elvis, etc.) welcoming her into heaven, only some wag had swapped out Elvis for Hitler. We laughed.

    We grew up in the 1980s. Dark humor is just how we roll.

    Long before I knew him, Andrew was a big music fan, and had collaborated with Karl Rehn on various musical projects in high school and college. We shared interests in Peter Gabriel, King Crimson, Yes, Laurie Anderson, Philip Glass and Slowdive, among many others. But Andrew’s tastes ran far afield and quite eclectic, championing such odd or obscure bands as Mr. Bungle, Tilts, Tobacco, Torche, and probably dozens I never even knew about. He was a regular attendee of Psych Fest and Levitation, the latter (which Andrew had tickets to attend) being this weekend.

    He got into world music before I did, especially artists on Gabriel’s Realworld label. He was such a fan that he flew to England to work as a volunteer on the WOMAD festival. He picked up Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, all 300+ pounds of him, at an airport in a compact car, which must have been a sight to see. He complained to festival management about some of the ways he thought the artists were being treated, and received a snide, condescending letter for his troubles saying that he was being “disingenuous” and had a “hidden agenda.”

    That inspired Andrew and Karl to form the band Hidden Agenda (now variously known as Hidden Agenda (of Evil) or Hidden Agenda (TX), depending on the music service, due to multiple other bands with the same name), which I would later join for (some) lyrics and vocals. The whole point of the band was to annoy people. We did a song called “Kill Yourself for Satan” and put Christian back-masking in, just so we could piss off everyone. See the FAQ (and ignore the security warning) for more details of what tremendous smartasses we were in our 20s. More recently Andrew had been playing with transforming Hidden Agenda songs into even more mutated forms via AI tools like Suno.

    Apart from his myriad interests, Andrew spent his working life as a civil engineer for the Texas Department of Transportation and associated institutes. He seemed particularly proud of the Mobile Load Simulator, a giant machine he worked on to help test pavement to destruction. He was also a certified bridge inspector, and used to joke about closing bridges, setting them on fire, and then reopening them to see cars race through the flames. Here’s a video of Andrew giving a lecture on pavement fatigue.

    Since so many in our group read science fiction, and Andrew came from a literary academic family, it was natural that we got him reading SF as well, and he subscribed to Nova Express, the SF critical fanzine I used to edit. He became a big fan of Howard Waldrop, another close friend of mine. I sold Andrew several of Howard’s books (among others) over the years.

    Karl got Andrew into guns and shooting. He would go out on our group’s occasional trips to the range, see our various guns, and go “Ooo, I want that!” He eventually acquired quite a collection. We all greatly admired his ridiculously powerful (and loud) Desert Eagle.

    Andrew had been following Iowahawk on Twitter for a while, and we went to a meetup when he moved to Austin. Andrew joined his orbit as a car enthusiast, frequently attending the Hot Rod Meetups at Top Notch Hamburgers, and other classic car events. Here’s a tribute from Iowahawk:

    I won’t belabor the terrible circumstances of his death, which have been discussed in depth online recently. I am as angry and upset about his murder as anyone, but my car ID threads are designed as a sanctuary from the woes of the contemporary world. I would rather spare that anger for a different forum and choose here to focus on Andrew Wimsatt, the human being. He was a relentlessly cheerful and positive soul, I hope you will respect his spirit in your replies.

    I think our mutual friend @AnnaZ perfectly summed up Andrew as “everybody’s biggest fan.” His various fandoms include countless bands, visual artists, podcasters, @wethefifth, @reason, @uaustinorg, and @TheFIREorg. And I am humbled that one of his fandoms was Dave’s Car ID Service.

    You may have noticed from reading the various tributes to him over the past few days his adjectives: kind, generous, warm, positive, never had an unkind word about anyone. All true. But he seldom spoke about himself, despite having a very distinguished career as a civil engineer in road materials research. He was far more interested in talking about you, with zero expectation of anything in return. He was the least transactional person in a hyper-transactional world.

    If you were lucky enough to have Andrew as a fan he was generous with his time and support, and in my case, that support included loads of his old family photos with mystery cars.

    I can’t fully repay my debt to him for that. But I’d like to dedicate this episode of Dave’s Car ID Service to him, and use those photos to illustrate the life a genuine mensch.

    “Least transactional person” seems right. I know if I were friends with important media personalities, the urge to blurt out “Put me on! Put me on! I’m smart and funny and well-spoken and ever so cleeeever!” would be overwhelming.

    Andrew was firmly on the conservative-to-libertarian spectrum. He was a fan of this blog (and my Twitter account, before the ancien regime suspended it (which I never managed to get lifted)). I hold small election night gatherings at my house every two years where we eat pizza and watch returns roll in, and Andrew was a regular attendee. He was here in 2020, where we called it a night just before 3 AM, convinced President Trump had been reelected only to wake up to those mysterious 4:30 AM ballot drops.

    He was a big fan of Gutfeld! and The Five. Such a fan that he started working behind the scenes compiling music and clips for them. Greg Gutfeld offered up a tribute to him on The Five:

    More:

    He was also a big fan of the libertarian We the Fifth podcast, and Matt Walsh put up this tribute.

    We come here to remember and celebrate and express gratitude toward our friend Andrew, whose name will be etched permanently on our under-construction sixth floor recording studio, probably within the area where Never Fly Coachers will be invited to watch us podcast live. Busty, after all, probably witnessed us recording more than any other fan—coming to all the live shows except one, raising his hand on every damned Second Sunday, pouring drinks around the (very!) Stupid Table for Special Dispatch #34, post-gaming an episode or three back when we recorded at the DIY Paloma Media studio.

    Andrew first buzzed across my radar in December 2013 when, over the course of a few days, three things happened for the first time: 1) The Independents television show, starring MTV’s Kennedy, Kmele, and myself, debuted on the Fox Business Network; 2) Wimsatt started following me on Twitter, and 3) he gave a four-figure donation to the Reason Foundation during our annual Webathon. It makes sense that these were related: Andrew l-o-v-e-d music, he adored the anarchic energy of Fox’s legendary late-nite show Red Eye (his pinned tweet for the past decade has been a celebration/compilation of Greg Gutfeld’s chosen outro music on The Five), and he was long attracted to the no-nonsense, structural-engineering ethos of Reason Foundation transportation-policy stalwart Bob Poole, whose annual highway report Andrew suggested improvements for.

    We hung out for the first time in Austin back in September 2018, after which he started doing what Andrew Wimsatt does, which is send us (or just tweet out) clips of all us + others in the extended Fifth Column/Red Eye multiverse whenever we’d appear on other media. He was famously much quicker on the draw publicizing a new Fifth Column episode than any of the drunk co-hosts, and at some early point we just gave him the keys to our Facebook page. And oh yeah, did I know he actually saved most of the entire run of The Independents? (You can watch a few over at the Paloma Media YouTube page, which was chiefly the fruit of his labors.) When we started doing Patreon in November 2019, and created what we thought was an absurd, no-one-will-ever-go-there level of $50-a-month subscriptions, Andrew became one of the first few to Never Fly Coach. He would come to New York several times a year, including the last couple during our annual sojourns to the Hall of Fame induction ceremony in Cooperstown. I took calling him “Busty,” for the very stupid reason that a funny British friend of mine back in the ‘90s would always refer to Kate Winslet as “Busty Winslet,” and this very accomplished transportation engineer not only took it in stride, he kind of beamed a bit when the nickname caught on in the community.

    So that’s where the “Busty” nickname came, which I swear I never heard before he died.

    Here’s one from Nancy Rommelmann, who Andrew brought as a guest to an SDC many moons ago.

    Do you know those friends who seem to always have been around and you don’t recall when you first met? Andrew was like that, though the not-remembering could be because Andrew was so unprepossessing, mild and kind and never wanting to intrude, while in fact being both whip-smart and the person so many, many, many of us relied on to spread the word about our work. The Fifth Column, of which there was no bigger fan, had just about zero visibility, in terms of clips, until Andrew started to create them, quietly tugging the pod onto a bigger and bigger stage. Matt wrote yesterday about some of Andrew’s quiet, steady work on behalf of others.

    Since Andrew’s absolutely senseless murder, we have learned that he did not just signal boost the Fifth, as he had for more than a decade for Red Eye and Greg Gutfield and anything involving Kat Timpf, all of whom have posted their shock and remembrance, but for others, some I have never heard of.

    It is exactly like Andrew not to shine any spotlight on himself. He saw people whose work he liked, probably chortled to himself (he had a good deep chortle) that they could use a little help archiving that work, then did it and them the clips. I literally have a score of these clips from him, as well as twice as many SOSs.

    Snip.

    I can almost guarantee you that Matt and I would have been texting Andrew that Thursday morning about the frozen computer, and that no matter where he was or what he was doing, Andrew would have responded immediately to tell us how to fix it or that he’d be on it as soon as he was by his laptop.

    Snip.

    He was also – and I learning this more and more as the days go by and we touch base with people Andrew knew – a Zelig of sorts, appearing wherever you were gathered, at a Fifth live show in LA, at a Cuckoo’s Nest remembrance in Tulsa, at a meet-up in Chicago. As his friend Karl Rehn told me last week, “You’d say to Andrew, ‘I’m going to such and such music show in New Jersey,’ or Las Vegas, and he’d say, ‘Great, I’ll meet you there.’” Andrew always showed up.

    More tributes:

    Andrew Wimsatt spent his life figuring out how to make things last longer.

    Roads, bridges, tunnels, pavement, friendships.

    He held three civil engineering degrees from the University of Texas at Austin, spent 18 years at TxDOT, ten of them as Fort Worth District Pavement Engineer, and in 2006 joined the Texas A&M Transportation Institute, where he eventually ran the Materials and Pavements Division and its $9 million annual research program. He worked on ground-penetrating radar, nondestructive testing, asset management.

    Describing the work once, he said the real challenge wasn’t building new things; it was making what we already have last longer.

    Andrew made what we already have last longer.

    He was an obsessive live-music fan who would fly across the country to see a band. He loved Slowdive. In 2023 he was recommending “Souvlaki” and “everything is alive” to anyone who’d listen, singled out their cover of Syd Barrett’s “Golden Hair,” and admitted that when he heard them play it at FYF in 2014, he teared up. In 2016, when bad weather killed Levitation and Slowdive threw together a surprise show at the Scoot Inn, Andrew happened to be sitting at his computer and grabbed two $7.50 tickets in the roughly two minutes before it sold out. Then he recorded the entire set on his iPhone for a friend.

    I was the one who used the other ticket. And Andrew got to know at least two members of Slowdive (and possible all of them), one of whom, Simon Scott, helped engineer an album with him.

    He made music too. He’d been in bands with Karl Rehn since high school, engineered their home cassette recordings in the early 1980s, and in 1990 released “Reflections” under the name the Andrew Wimsatt Ensemble, cut at Sixth Street Studio. He and Rehn made music videos that ran for years on Austin’s ACTV, and contributed to the score of a 1994 documentary about Barton Springs.

    And more tributes:

    I could have posted dozens if not hundreds more tributes. It seems both overwhelming and strangely inadequate.

    I didn’t anticipate how big the story of Andrew’s murder would be, though I probably should have. The parallels with Iryna Zarutska’s murder are painfully obvious. My initial post may or may not have been the first pebble that started that avalanche, but when your friend’s murder in Texas is news in England and India, many including the tuxedo photo I took of Andrew at A.T. and Carol Campbell’s wedding that accompanied my initial blog post, it tends to give you pause.

    And now politicians, including some I support, are coming out of the woodwork to talk about his murder.

    I’m pretty sure Dustin Burrows couldn’t have picked Andrew out of a lineup with a gun to his head.

    It’s weird to see someone you knew transformed from a man into a martyr for a cause less than a week after his death. Even if it’s a cause you believe in. Even if it’s done by your side. Unsettling. And maybe a little unseemly.

    Politics has been played as a blood sport for a long, long time, and I’ve delivered my fair share of rhetorical blows. But the flood of stories had me going “Wait, that detail is not quite right,” and made me wonder how many errors I’ve unwittingly spread here reposting “hot takes” on different stories.

    It’s the modern condition. Or the post-modern condition. For a long time, Americans naively believed we had a news media that at least tried to report objectively, but the rise of the alternate news sources on the Internet proved that wasn’t so. But it’s particularly hard watching the sausage being made when it’s someone you know being fed into the machine. (Probably the wrong metaphor to use here.)

    As the pitted olive on top of this shit sandwich, Nancy Rommelmann sent me a note pointing out that some scumbag scammer is raising money in Andrew’s name. Losing someone is bad enough without the human cockroaches shuffling out of the shadows to feed. Here’s a form to complain to. Update: In a tiny bit of good news, the scam fundraiser for Andrew has been “unpublished.”

    I’m in touch with Andrew’s family, and once they get together any sort of fundraiser (and an obituary and memorial website, etc.), I’ll let you know here.

    It still feels a bit overwhelming. This post is pretty long already, but I fear I haven’t adequately captured the smart, goofy friend I knew. But it will have to do.

    Feel free to share memories of Andrew in the comments below.

    Updates On The Murder Of Andrew Wimsatt

    Saturday, September 12th, 2026

    In my original post on my friend Andrew Wimsatt’s murder, I was relying on early accounts of the crime, and thus said a few things that turned out to be wrong.

    Here’s the high level summary of corrections:

    1. In the original post, I said Andrew was a CHL/LTC holder who “likely would have survived his assault had he been carrying that day.” The early reports I was relying on didn’t make clear that he was sitting on a park bench when his assailant snuck up behind him and stabbed him in the neck.* I had the impression he was still walking when the attack occurred. Obviously, in such a situation Andrew wouldn’t have had time to draw his weapon to stave off the attack.
    2. I originally wrote that Benedict Ogbodiegwu, Andrew’s alleged attacker, “does not appear to have been released on bail for previous offenses in Travis County.” This may technically be true, but I didn’t think to search the Williamson County judicial database, where it shows he has had one felony and multiple misdemeanors dismissed.
    3. But evidence has emerged that his attacker wasn’t just known as a crime risk, but a mental health risk as well:

      Many are quick to blame revolving-door justice, but the Benedict Ogbodiegwu case—the man charged with murdering Andrew Wimsatt—is a criminal justice failure of a slightly-different sort. He wasn’t a violent repeat offender.

      Ogbodiegwu was ruled incompetent for trial last Feb and sent to restoration. Then, his competency hearing scheduled for May was cancelled, and in April his theft charge was dropped.

      Was he sane enough to walk free, like nothing ever happened? Obviously not. So, what did the system miss? How does mental health treatment, ordered specifically to restore competency for trial, lead to zero accountability instead of that trial?

      A good question.

    More complete details of the (be forewarned) grisly crime have emerged:

    The affidavit says that a woman had reported finding Wimsatt’s body at around 11:15 a.m. Sept. 7 in a park in the 2400 block of Chandler Creek Boulevard, near Double File Trail Elementary. The woman told law enforcement she had found him near a park bench with significant injuries and called 911.

    Video footage obtained from the neighborhood HOA showed a white man in a button-down shirt and dark shorts sitting on the bench at about 10:55 a.m. that morning.

    A couple of minutes later, a black man with a knife in his hand is seen coming up behind the other man, later identified as Wimsatt, and beginning to stab him in the neck while wrapping his other arm around him. Wimsatt is seen on video attempting to push the man off, but is unable to.

    Wimsatt was stabbed several more times and left on the ground when the suspect wiped the blade on his shift and ran from the scene towards the pool area. More video footage showed the suspect running north of the pool and towards N AW Grimes Boulevard.

    Video from before the attack led investigators to a water fountain near the basketball court where they were able to lift a palm print.

    The suspect was in a black shirt with red writing, grey sweatpants and dark shoes and had medium-length braids with light-colored tips and a dark goatee.

    A canvass of local businesses and homes revealed that the suspect had visited a McDonald’s on E. Palm Valley Boulevard hours after the attack in a different set of clothes. Video footage from the restaurant also showed the man getting into a red SUV in the parking lot.

    Detectives identified the SUV as belonging to Ogbodiegwu’s family and registered at a home less than a mile on foot from the park.

    Another canvass around the home uncovered surveillance footage showing a black man walking west in the same clothes as the man in the HOA footage at about 10:22 a.m. He also appeared to have an object in his left pocket. He is then seen returning eastbound at about 11:05 a.m.

    Snip.

    A search of the area did not uncover any new evidence, but a residential search warrant did, with detectives finding a white trash bag inside an outdoor garbage can containing the black shirt, grey sweatpants and black shoes the man in the video was wearing and a 5.5 inch knife with a wooden handle. The sweatpants had red stains on them and the blade tested presumptive positive for blood, says the affidavit.

    Despite Ogbodiegwu’s prior history of possible mental illness, he seemed to be cognizant enough to ditch his blood-stained clothes and murder weapon and then enjoy a meal at McDonald’s after his violent murder of a complete stranger.

    One thing I have not found in local news reports is that Ogbodiegwu attempted to “behead” Andrew, as some farther flung outlets have reported. This appears to be a too-many-steps removed exaggeration of an already horrific crime. (Edited to Add: A correction to the correction: Though it doesn’t mention “beheading,” the Statesman article does mention the perp “sawing” at Andrew’s neck. It sucks to have to add graphic details in the name of accuracy.)

    I felt the need to post this update because many people used the original post as a source, and I fear the original mistakes have already been fed into numerous AI databases, possibly beyond the reach of human correction.

    Barring some major new revelation, I hope this is the last post I have to write on the murder itself. Tomorrow I hope to have a post up celebrating Andrew’s life and posting some of the many tributes that have poured in from people who knew him.


    *I originally ended this sentence with “like a cowardly little bitch,” but I fear this would have marred the objective tone were media outlets to use this post as a source. Though I still feel this description is totally accurate.

    LinkSwarm For September 11, 2026

    Friday, September 11th, 2026

    The 25th Anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, GOP midterm convention, Iran and Yemen both get spicy again, AfD shocks Germany, Ukraine’s longest drone strike yet, more welfare state fraud, more money for Paxton,

    It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

    More information about the murder of my friend Andrew Wimsatt has come out, and some of my original post needs to be corrected. I’m going to put that in a Saturday post, and there will be another for remembering Andrew on Sunday.

  • Your obligatory 9/11 remembrance post.

    On a perfectly clear morning 25 years ago, America changed forever.

    At 8:46 a.m. on that day, a team of Islamic terrorists crashed American Airlines Flight 11, carrying 76 passengers and eleven crew members, into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. It was followed 17 minutes later by United Airlines Flight 175, carrying 51 passengers and nine crew members, which terrorists steered into the South Tower. Less than 90 minutes later, both of those towers had collapsed into a massive pile of rubble.

    Meanwhile, as Americans’ televisions were tuned to live footage of the burning buildings, American Airlines Flight 77, carrying 53 passengers and six crew members, was slammed into the Pentagon. And shortly after, United Airlines Flight 93, with 33 passengers and seven crew members, crashed in a field in Shanksville, Pa.

    Today, we remember the 2,977 innocent victims who were the first casualties in what would become known as the War on Terror. We also remember the extraordinary heroism displayed that day, without which the horrific losses would have been far worse.

    One of the most miraculous facts about that day was that at the World Trade Center, which may have had an occupancy of 19,000 people between the two buildings at the time, 99 percent of those who were below the point of impact of the planes survived. This achievement is owed to the extraordinary evacuation efforts of first responders, who ran into burning buildings, no doubt knowing that there was a good chance they wouldn’t make it out. In the end, 441 firefighters, police officers, and paramedics did not.

    Then there was the civilian heroism displayed by the passengers on Flight 93, who had heard about what happened at the World Trade Center, overtook the plane, and ensured that it crashed in an empty field rather than into the U.S. Capitol or White House, one of which was believed to be the potential target. Passenger Todd Beamer’s remark to his fellow passengers, “Let’s roll,” overheard from a phone call, became a rallying cry as the nation fought back.

    I have no dramatic, notable 9/11 stories to tell. I was driving to my job at Applied Materials when NPR (yes, I sometimes listened to them in the morning, back in the day) broke into regular coverage to report the first tower impact. I heard a rumor that the layoff that came next week (as the depths of the Dotcom Bust were just being felt) was actually scheduled for that day, but they decided to hold off due to the attacks. Ironically, one of the people in one of the planes was an Israeli Applied employee, who survived a country beset by terrorism only to be killed on an American flight.

    See also my review of United 93.

  • The Republican Party held their first ever Midterm Convention in Dallas.

    President Donald Trump delivered the convention’s closing remarks following a keynote address from Vice President J.D. Vance.Before they took the stage, though, Texas Republicans used their appearances to focus on the November elections, public safety, immigration, and the direction of the Democrat Party.

    Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick invoked Texas history and the Alamo before turning to the November election, portraying the contest as a broader fight over the country’s values.

    “This election coming up is not about politics,” said Patrick. “It’s about darkness, and it’s about light.”

    He accused Democrats of embracing socialism and communism and argued that Texas’ economic growth has been driven by conservative policies including low taxes and no state income tax.

    He also singled out Democrat Senate nominee James Talarico, saying Republicans would put “the Democratic Party and James Talarico and his ilk on the dust heap of history.”

    Patrick closed his remarks by urging Republicans to view the election as a fight for their families and the country. “You started a fight, and the Republicans are going to finish it in November.”

    Eric Flores and Tano Tijerina, two Republican candidates challenging Democrats in South Texas, also addressed the convention. Their appearances highlighted Republicans’ continued focus on South Texas, where the president made significant gains in 2024.

    U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz used his speech to warn about what he described as an emerging red-green alliance between communists and Islamists. He received one of the strongest reactions from the crowd when he declared that Sharia law is incompatible with the U.S. Constitution.

    “Sharia law has no place in America,” said Cruz. “Sharia law is fundamentally inconsistent with the Constitution, and we need to stand together and stop it now.”

    Gov. Greg Abbott focused much of his speech on Texas Democrats running statewide in November, contrasting their legislative records with policies he has signed into law.

    Abbott pointed to the GOP’s success on a variety of issues including border security, policing, property taxes, oil and gas, election laws, parental rights, and school choice.

    “All the Democrats running statewide in the state of Texas, they had a chance to vote on those policies, and they voted against those policies,” said Abbott. “They voted against common sense.”

    Abbott highlighted legislation he signed prohibiting cities that reduce police funding from receiving certain state tax revenue, restricting some purchases of Texas property by citizens and entities tied to China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea, and prohibiting gender mutilation procedures for minors.

    Snip.

    Vice President J.D. Vance delivered the night’s keynote address, reflecting on the administration’s first 19 months back in office and making the case for Republicans in November.

    Vance also paid tribute to Charlie Kirk on the anniversary of his assassination, recalling that Kirk had been in the front row when Vance addressed the Republican National Convention as the party’s vice presidential nominee in 2024.

    Turning to Texas politics, Vance took aim at Democrat U.S. Senate nominee James Talarico over his previous comments on gender and Christianity.

    “This Talarico guy—he will not shut up about how there are six genders. He will not shut up about how, ‘God is non-binary,’” said Vance.

    “I gotta say, a guy that age who is so obsessed and focused on transgender children-I don’t know about you, but I never want to see that guy’s web browser.”

  • On the AfD’s shocking election win in Germany.

    Last night Germany’s much-maligned AfD party won a crushing and historic victory. The victory is already being downplayed by many, owing to the fact that Saxony-Anhalt is technically one of Germany’s smallest and least consequential states. But there is far more to it than sheer numbers, as the win defines a turning point not only in German but European politics, and cements the gradual downfall of the globalist ruling class that has tried desperately for decades to keep populist movements from gaining power, in particular utilizing the “Brandmauer” or “firewall” to suppress the so-called far-right.

    The destruction of this firewall is an historic occasion, even if it should come by way of such a seemingly inconsequential state.

    Of course, there are other criticisms as well. AfD is seen by many as a kind of Trojan horse, a German “MAGA” party led by a lesbian woman in Alice Weidel. Even so, it represents a striking loss of power for the elites and a turning point which breaks a kind of psychological barrier that will only energize other anti-establishment, “far-right”, or populist parties throughout Europe.

    Another secondary effect of the victory is that it has caused the ruling German establishment to go back to the drawing board and review its most unpopular policies, like on immigration, in order to bend with the clearly changing winds.

    Merz expressed his “deep shock” at the election result, foreseeing it having major repercussions on Germany as a whole:

    The AfD, however, fell just three seats short of an ‘absolute majority’ which would have allowed it to govern the state alone. Some commentators have pointed out some major ‘anomalies’ in regard to mail-in versus in-person votes. Just like in the highly irregular American 2020 election, every party but AfD was allegedly boosted by disproportionate numbers of mail-in votes:

    More analysis at the link. Just think if Germany’s elites hadn’t decided to import millions of unassimilated Muslims into their country, they wouldn’t have empowered the AfD. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • Iran: The Islamic regime has been targeting U.S. bases, with a few hits on aircraft, we’ve launched retaliatory strikes on Iranian forces, and we’ve disabled three Iranian tankers in retaliation for unsuccessful strikes against U.S. ships. So: Same old, same old.
  • Yemen has also been getting spicy, with the Iranian-backed Houthis driving for the coast, successfully attacking a Saudi pipeline, and the official anti-Houthi government of Yemen making gains in the interior. More from Preston Stewart. If this week hadn’t been so insane, I might have done a separate post on this…
  • Maybe this is why I’m still unemployed. “Women Filled 98 Percent of Jobs Created in August.”

    Women accounted for 158,000, or 98 percent, of the 162,000 nonfarm payroll jobs created in August, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ establishment data. Compared to this time last year, there are 870,000 more women employed in the U.S., according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and 1.5 million fewer employed men.

    So there were only 4,000 men hired in August.

    Accounting for the new data, the gap between male and female employment reached its highest level since 1990, when men were overrepresented in the workforce.

    Dramatic month-to-month swings in employment gains between the sexes are relatively common, and labor economists warn that sharp shifts don’t necessarily indicate lasting changes in the market. However, the August jobs report is in keeping with existing trends that have obtained for decades, namely a substantial increase in employment among women and a linear decline in employment among men.

    There has been a “multi-decade decline in male labor force participation” and a “multi-decade increase in female labor force participation,” Kirk Doran, a professor specializing in labor economics at Notre Dame University, told National Review.

    Part of this shift can be explained by the evolution of American industries. The sectors that grew at the highest rate in August — health care and public education — are female-dominated. Meanwhile, the industries that shrank — computing, data processing, and finance — are male-heavy.

    Sound like illegal discrimination by sex to me…

  • Ace of Spades HQ makes the case for Trump47 being a tremendous success already.

    We have every reason to be excited to go to the polls to ensure an ongoing Congressional Republican majority, and to keep the DSA-influenced Democrats away from any levers of power.

    The 20 months since President Trump’s inauguration in early 2025 have had the most significant conservative victories of my lifetime, far exceeding President Reagan’s accomplishments. Here are just a few of the things President Trump and his team have done:

    • Closed the border to illegal invaders.
    • Deported hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens, and caused millions more to self-deport.
    • Slashed the federal workforce.
    • Eliminated DEI and wokeness from the military and federal agencies.
    • Eliminated EV mandates and green energy subsidies.
    • Effectively terminated corporate average fuel economy requirements for auto manufacturers.
    • Engaged the military to eliminate narco-terrorists.
    • Engaged the DOJ to target corporations engaged in illegal racial discrimination in hiring.

    There are so many more milestone accomplishments beyond those.

    For decades the conservative base has clamored for the above victories. President Trump finally delivered. Amidst all this, there are many “conservative” influencers who are promoting doom. For many of them, that is their job – being paid to blackpill conservative voters to stay home, so as to elect a Democrat Congress. The resumption of Democrat lawfare against the Trump administration is their goal.

    Despite razor-thin congressional majorities, Trump47 has delivered numerous policy wins, and conservatives (and anyone else who wants to stop the insane, jihad-friendly, socialism- and social justice-infected Democrats from reclaiming power) should head to the polls in November to ensure Republican control through 2028.

  • “Ukraine’s Longest Range Drone Strike Yet! Nearly 3,000km! Plus Strikes on Sochi and Dagestan.” “Ukrainian drones carried out their longest range drone strike to date, hitting Russia’s Novy Urengoy and Purovsky gas processing plants in Yamalo-Nenets.” Yamalo-Nenets is an “autonomous okrug” on the Arctic Circle just east of the Urals.
  • “Ukraine Attacks Novorossiysk Fuel & Grain Terminal.” Again.
  • “Ozon Warehouse in Saratov Attacked and Burning Heavily! Plus Saratov Oil Refinery.”
  • “Frigate Admiral Essen & Buyan-M Corvette Confirmed Badly Damaged by Neptune and Drone Strike!”
  • “Two Russian Su-35S Fighters Collide in Kursk.”
  • Seems like a trend: “Nine Russian Aircraft Destroyed in One Week: X2 Su-35 Crash, x5 Helicopers, Su-24 and Su-33.”
  • More: “Satellite Imagery Confirms THREE Russian Helicopters Destroyed, x2 S-300 and a Pantsir at Sochi!”
  • “Su-33 Confirmed Destroyed at Anapa Air Base.”
  • “Ukraine Bombards Russian Cargo Ship in Mediterranean Sea With Bomber Drone.”
  • “Russian Ice Breaker Admital Makarov Sets Itself On Fire at Kronstadt, St. Petersburg.”
  • Autism fraud ring in Maine?

    Quality Care Access, LLC was chartered in July 2020 by Jovin Bayingana, and the Portland-based company rapidly became one of the most lucrative new MaineCare businesses in New England.

    According to Medicaid payment records obtained via a Freedom of Access Act request, the company billed the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) for $1.2 million in 2021, $5.3 million in 2022, $7.4 million in 2023, $6.7 million in 2024, and $7.2 million in 2025 — for a lifetime cost of $27.8 million.

    The more detailed federal Medicaid dataset shows that throughout this time frame QCA had fewer than 16 patients in most years.

  • Finally: “Republican Reinforcements Arrive for Paxton in Senate Race. The Senate Leadership Fund is pouring millions into Texas after questions over whether the Cornyn-aligned group would back Paxton.”

    Republican reinforcements are finally arriving for Attorney General Ken Paxton in his U.S. Senate race, months after the party’s biggest Senate-focused outside group backed his primary opponent.

    The Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC aligned with Senate Majority Leader John Thune, has purchased $32 million in television advertisements across Texas and is reportedly preparing to spend more than $50 million to support Paxton against Democrat James Talarico.

    The group announced Friday it created a new Texas PAC dedicated to the race, with ads promoting Paxton and contrasting his record with Talarico expected to run continuously through Election Day.

    The investment ends months of uncertainty over whether the Senate Leadership Fund would support Paxton after backing Sen. John Cornyn in the Republican primary.

    It also comes as other major Republican groups have already begun pouring money into the race.

    MAGA Inc., the super PAC aligned with President Donald Trump, recently announced $10 million in advertising supporting Paxton. America PAC, the political group backed by Elon Musk, is also supporting Paxton and has begun door-knocking operations to register and get out the vote.

    This is good, if overdue news, but media ad spends are the fools gold of politics. The same group spending zillions for Cornyn didn’t move the needle, so the efficacy of their political efforts seems debatable. But maybe they’re better at convincing squishy moderates than Republican primary voters…

  • “South Texas Democrat House Candidate Sponsored March With Socialists. The Rio Grande Valley DSA has celebrated Zohran Mamdani, depicted a Border Patrol vehicle in flames, and promoted LGBT causes.

    Democrat Texas House candidate Oziel Ochoa’s campaign sponsored a May Day event co-hosted by the Rio Grande Valley chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America.

    Ochoa is challenging Republican State Rep. Janie Lopez for House District 37, a South Texas district covering Willacy County and portions of Cameron County.

    Campaign finance records show Ochoa’s campaign made three $259 payments to La Union del Pueblo Entero, or LUPE, on May 4. The expenditures, totaling $777, were listed as advertising expenses for the first annual May Day Marcha del Pueblo (March of the People).

    May Day, also known as International Workers’ Day, is an annual labor observance that has long been embraced by socialist and communist movements around the world.

    The event took place two days earlier, on May 2, in Edinburg.

    Organizers included LUPE, Texas Rising, the Rio Grande Valley American Federation of Teachers, the Rio Grande Valley Central Labor Council, South Texans for Reproductive Justice, Poder Latinx, and the Rio Grande Valley Democratic Socialists of America.

    Ochoa was publicly recognized for his financial support, while RGV DSA was listed among the event’s organizers.

  • “Muslim police chief of Detroit suburb told his subordinates that wife-beating isn’t a “formal” criminal offense.”

    The former police chief of Hamtramck, Michigan, is in hot water after investigators have dug into allegations against the Muslim chief for how he ran his department.

    Court records show that Hamtramck Police Chief Jamiel Altaheri personally engaged in a “pattern” of domestic violence in his own household, and told officers that wife-beating isn’t a “formal” crime.

    The primary effects of Democrats importing unassimilated Muslims for political advantage seems to be more wife-beating and more rape.

  • “Criminal Illegal Alien Arrested in Texas, Ordered Deported 26 Years Ago. A Cuban national who evaded deportation for 26 years is now behind bars.” “According to ICE, Cuban national Emiliano Martinez Perez entered the United States around 1998 and was convicted of cocaine possession shortly afterward. He was ordered to leave the U.S. in early 2000, but remained in the country and was later convicted of drug trafficking in 2007.”
  • Speaking of immigration fraud: “Houston Immigration Attorney Arrested for Fraud. Nowowiejski allegedly committed mail fraud and made false statements related to immigration cases.”

    A Houston immigration attorney was arrested Wednesday after a federal grand jury indicted her on charges of mail fraud and making false statements related to her work on behalf of immigrants seeking work-related legal status in the United States.

    Alla Nowowiejski is a naturalized citizen from Russia and has practiced law in Texas since 2009 and specialized in business immigration assistance, but she allegedly never submitted, or only partially submitted, paperwork for clients seeking to obtain work status or work visas.

    The indictment also alleges that Nowowiejski provided clients with false documents or reference numbers tied to active immigration cases unrelated to her own clients to make them believe their applications were being processed.

    In 2023, Audubon Engineering Operations sued Nowowiejski for gross negligence and legal malpractice in Harris County. The company alleged that although she had charged them more than $109,000 for immigration work on behalf of five employees, she never filed paperwork with federal immigration agencies.

  • When your entire life amounts to a bad meme: “Gays for Gaza’ activist killed by Muslim immigrant in Arizona.”
  • Gavin Newsom brags about giving welfare to illegal aliens.
  • “Chaos ensues in Democratic Party after Arab reporter calls black congressman ‘AIPAC monkey.'” Arab reporter is Rula Jebreal (who, I guess, is most famous for dating Roger Waters) and the black congressman is Hakeem Jeffries. Hakeem Jeffries should never be called a monkey, only “TEMU Obama.”
  • “South Korea is eyeing Texas for a new $22.6 billion investment in a natural gas-burning power plant.”

    The deal would mark the first chunk of change the nation will provide to the U.S. under South Korea’s new $350 billion commitment.

    Last year, tariff talks between the U.S. and South Korea led to a 10 percent decrease in tariffs imposed on South Korea — a drop from 25 to 15 percent — provided the country invests $350 billion in the U.S. in exchange.

    The power project would be set in Encinal, Texas, a small city in La Salle County.

    According to The Korea Herald, talks initially began with South Korea proposing $19.8 billion for the project, and the U.S. countering with $25 billion. Negotiations will now proceed in the $22.6 billion range, although the exact amount will not be determined until the project is finalized.

    The proposed gas combined-cycle project plant would total 6.3 gigawatts (GW) of power, built in stages. The first stage will consist of a 1.4-GW gas turbine power facility. Once the first stage passes inspection, the second stage, a 4.9-GW combined-cycle facility, will be built.

    Though unconfirmed, the plant is expected to help meet the state’s booming demands for artificial intelligence (AI) computing capacity, data center development, and semiconductor development.

    Sort of an odd location, but maybe it has to do with this proposed data center near Laredo.

  • “Microsoft Plugs Nearly 1,000 Security Holes.

    Microsoft Corp. today issued updates to plug at least 974 security holes in its Windows operating systems and other software, by far its biggest single patch batch ever. Microsoft says artificial intelligence is helping to speed the discovery of vulnerabilities, but security experts warn that many organizations already are struggling to prioritize the more human-intensive endeavor of testing and deploying so many fixes each month.

    This month’s patch bundle obliterates the software giant’s previous record set in July, when it released updates for at least 570 security vulnerabilities. September’s Patch Tuesday brings this year’s total to more than 2,600, more than twice Microsoft’s previous record-setting patch year in 2020 (1,245) and with three more months to go.

    There are two “zero-day” flaws fixed this month that are being actively exploited: both CVE-2026-81963 and CVE-2026-85880 allow an attacker to elevate their privileges on Windows system.

    Fully 113 of the bugs addressed today earned Microsoft’s “critical” rating, meaning they could be abused by malware or miscreants to seize control over a vulnerable Windows machine with little or no help from the user.

    Among the more serious critical flaws this month is CVE-2026-69730, a DNS weakness present in Windows Server 2012 onward and on Windows 10. Microsoft warns that an unauthenticated attacker could leverage this weakness simply by sending a specially crafted packet to an affected system, and that it is likely to be exploited.

    Also scary is CVE-2026-69829, a critical, remote code execution flaw in the Windows Shell. This vulnerability has a CVSS base score of 9.8 (10 is the most severe), and can be exploited with low attack complexity, no privileges, and no user interaction.

    Whatever else AI is or isn’t good at, it seems to be great at finding security flaws in Microsoft products…

  • Mac vs. PC, 2026 edition.
  • Rick Beato on why you need to own physical media.

    It’s incredibly important to own physical media, because you do not know what people are going to do that work for these massive tech companies. Once they get a hold of the data and they put it into those AI [slop] machines, because that’s what they are, they can change anything. Half the stuff that people, when they Google things or whatever, that just comes out with some AI thing that’s based on something that somebody wrote on Reddit six years ago that’s probably not even true. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. Who actually knows whether it’s true? It’s kind of like if you listen to a record on Spotify that says remastered in 2018, remastered in 2022, remastered in 2012, that’s not the original version. What they’ve done is they’ve either taken the original version, the mastered version, and just remastered it and made it sound worse, or you don’t know what they’ve actually done to it.

  • Another weird blog tidbit that may only be of interest to myself: Starting October 6, 2025 and running through February 9th, 2026, the Internet Archive took multiple daily snapshots of my blog after a long period of snapshotting it on a somewhat random basis, sometimes several time a week, and sometimes only a few times a month. I would say the optimal periodicity would be once a day, but I have no idea how the process works.
  • “Mamdani: Women Attending 9/11 Memorial Will Be Required To Wear Hijab.”
  • “Nation’s Murderers Excited To Learn Killing Legal If You Say You Were Sad.”
  • “Women Honor Gloria Steinem By Leaving Kids At Daycare And Working 9 Hours At Jobs They Hate.”
  • “Hollywood Colorist Fired After Accidentally Leaving Color In Film.”
  • “Breakthrough As Scientists At University Of Michigan Develop Ability To Travel Back In Time One Second.”
  • “Moses Threatens Pharaoh With Plague Of Unskippable YouTube Ads.”
  • “‘Oh, Your Intelligent Creations Are Trying To Kill You? That’s Interesting,’ Says Jesus.”
  • Dog + balloon = happiness.

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

  • I’m still between jobs. Feel free to hit the tip jar if you’re so inclined.