Archive for the ‘Texas’ Category

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Houston: “We Absolutely, Positively Will Not Cooperate With ICE!” Texas: “Guess You Don’t Need This $110 Million, Then.” Houston: “Let’s Not Be Hasty.”

Wednesday, April 15th, 2026

It’s amazing how quickly post-Obama Democrats went from at least pretending to care about border security to absolutely opposing deporting any illegal alien felons for any reason. Evidently nothing will prevent Democrats from treating ICE agents as the enemy.

Well, almost nothing.

It turns out that Democrats can be brought back into compliance using the universal language of politics: Money.

Houston’s new ordinance prohibiting police from detaining suspects with administrative warrants from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) may cause the city to lose $110 million in state grants for public safety.

In a 12 to 5 vote last week, the Houston City Council approved a proposition submitted by Council Members Alejandra Salinas, Abbie Kamin, and Ed Pollard that rescinded a previous Houston Police Department policy under which officers could detain suspects with the administrative warrants for up to 30 minutes while waiting for ICE to respond.

On Monday, Gov. Greg Abbott’s office notified Houston Mayor John Whitmire that the city’s newly approved policy breached agreements with the state to receive certain grants for public safety purposes.

Should the governor’s office rescind the grants, the city will be required to repay $110 million already received. Earlier this month, City Controller Chris Hollins forecast that the city will face a budget deficit of $174 million by the end of the fiscal year.

Even for a city as big as Houston, $110 million is a lot of cheddar. And lo and behold, Houston City Council appears to be changing course.

Houston Mayor John Whitmire is calling for a repeal of a city ordinance limiting cooperation between the Houston Police Department and federal immigration authorities, just days after voting in favor of it himself, as Gov. Greg Abbott threatens to pull more than $110 million in state public safety grants.

The ordinance, passed by the city council in a 12-5 vote on April 8, eliminates a prior requirement that HPD officers hold individuals for up to 30 minutes to allow U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to respond to the scene. Under the new policy, a routine stop ends when the original lawful basis for the stop ends. The measure also adds a quarterly public reporting requirement for HPD detailing how often officers inquire about immigration status or contact federal authorities.

Snip.

Whitmire voted in favor of the ordinance last week, saying at the time it reflected existing HPD practices. By this week, his position had shifted. Speaking after a press conference about the 2026 FIFA World Cup, the mayor said the city had no choice but to act.

“We’ve got to correct that policy,” Whitmire said. “There’s only one opinion that matters, and that’s the governor’s. We can’t survive in a city that does not have public safety funding to the tune of losing $110 million.”

He also blamed the ordinance’s sponsors, saying three council members running for office decided to elevate the issue unnecessarily. Salinas is currently running for Harris County Attorney.

Whitmire has called a special city council meeting for Friday morning to vote on whether to repeal the ordinance. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has also opened an investigation into whether the new policy violates state law.

The ordinance drew criticism from the Houston Police Officers’ Union from the start. Union president Douglas Griffith argued that council members were overstepping into matters the department had already handled internally under Police Chief Noe Diaz, and warned that without a defined window for ICE to respond, individual officers could face personal liability.

The union also noted that only around 75 traffic stops last year resulted in someone with an immigration warrant being turned over to ICE, and framed the ordinance as a distraction from the city’s $170 million budget deficit.

The five council members who voted against the ordinance—Amy Peck, Willie Davis, Fred Flickinger, Twila Carter, and Mary Nan Huffman—issued a joint statement warning that the measure would make officers afraid to do their jobs and expose the city to potential lawsuits.

The dispute carries legal weight beyond the grant question. Senate Bill 4, signed by Abbott in 2017, requires local governments and law enforcement agencies to comply with federal immigration detainer requests and imposes penalties including removal from office, fines up to $25,000 per day, and criminal charges for officials who knowingly fail to comply.

Money talks. Democrats will do just about anything to pander to the open borders activists that increasingly make up the party’s woke mind virus-infected ideological core, but evidently all sorts of “immutable principles” turn out to be very mutable indeed when there’s real money involved.

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Posted in Border Control, Budget, Crime, Democrats, Social Justice Warriors, Texas | 13 Comments »

Two Slimeballs Depart Congress

Tuesday, April 14th, 2026

In a follow-up to two different stories we’ve been following, both Texas Republican Representative Tony Gonzalez and California Democratic Representative Eric Swalwell have resigned from congress.

Embattled Reps. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) and Tony Gonzales (R-TX) have resigned from Congress.

We all know Swalwell faces numerous sexual assault and misconduct allegations, including a woman who went on camera this morning.

Gonzales’s story has flown under the radar. He dropped out of the 2026 race after admitting to an affair with a former staffer who committed suicide in September 2025.

Self-serving Swalwell codswallop snipped.

Gonzales’s resignation letter is short:

The Honorable, the speaker House of Representatives, sir. Enclosed is my resignation letter to Texas Governor Greg Abbott, effective April 14, 2026, at 11:59pm, Eastern Standard Time. It has been my privilege to serve the residents of Texas’s 23rd congressional district. Signed sincerely, Tony Gonzales, member of Congress.

Both Rep. Eric Swalwell D-CA and Rep. Tony Gonzales R-TX have submitted their resignation letters to the Speaker. Swalwell’s resignation is effective immediately. Gonzales is done at midnight.

The thing both have in common is that they were adulterous scumbags, but at least Gonzales wasn’t accused of rape. As of this writing, Texas Governor Greg Abbott has yet to set a date for a special election to pick someone to fill out Gonzales’ term for TX-23, but Brandon Herrera has already secured the Republican nomination and will be running against Democrat Katy Padilla Stout in the general election in November.

Hopefully long before then, Eric Swalwell will have been indicted on multiple charges of rape and sexual assault.

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Posted in Crime, Democrats, Elections, Republicans, Texas | 3 Comments »

LinkSwarm For April 10, 2026

Friday, April 10th, 2026

An Iran ceasefire (sorta, kinda) holds, still more Californian welfare state fraud, Governor HairGel simply isn’t all there, Colorado steps up its war on the First Amendment, France’s aircraft carrier gets rumbled by a jogging ap, and William Shatner isn’t dying of cancer. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

Personally, this has been a damn busy week. I’ve pretty much recovered from my bout of stomach flu, I’m in the home stretch for doing my taxes, and a bunch of other urgencies press.

  • Rather than provide a specific link, I’m just going to describe what I’m seeing of the ceasefire in the Iranian war. Like cannibalism in the the Royal Navy in that Monty Python skit, when Iran says they’re not lobbing any missiles, the mean that there is a certain amount. Just today, hostile drones were flying over Kuwait. And ships are free to transit the Strait of Hormuz, for values of “free” that include paying Iran protection money. Despite these violation of President Trump’s ceasefire terms, Iran is complaining that it’s no fair that Israel gets to continues kicking Hezbollah’s ass in Lebanon.
  • Speaking of Lebanon, three days ago the IDF reissued an evacuation notice for all Lebanese residents south of the Zahrani River. Note that the Zahrani is north of the Litani River, Israel’s previous line for evacuation. At this rate, IDF will enter Beirut in a few months…
  • California hospice fraud arrest made.

    Gladwin Gill, a 66-year-old psychologist, and his wife, Amelou Gill, a 70-year-old registered nurse, both of Covina, were arrested today on a federal criminal complaint charging them with health care fraud.

    According to an affidavit filed with the complaint, the Gills owned and operated the Glendale-based 626 Hospice Inc., which did business as St. Francis Palliative Care.

    The Gills allegedly schemed to defraud Medicare by paying illegal kickbacks for the referral of patients who were not dying.

    The Gills’ business had a 97% survival rate … for hospice.

    The Gills also submitted more than $5.2 million in fraudulent claims to Medicare for hospice services that either were not medically necessary or were not provided. Medicare paid the Gills more than $4 million on these fraudulent claims.

    I’m sure the next part will be a huge surprise.

    Gill is originally from Pakistan, and he’s served jail time before.

    • In 2008, he was sentenced to a year in prison for fraudulent political donations.
    • In 1995, he served two years in prison for real estate fraud.
    • He also fired a gun at gas company employees who came to his property to collect an unpaid bill.

    Blue state officials can ignore any number of red flags as long as they expect to profit from the grift.

  • A succinct discussion of Cali’s homeless scam.

    The insiders in Sacramento, Salem, and Olympia have been using social service non-profits, NGOs, and questionable charitable groups as passthroughs for their friends and pet constituencies for years. Billions have been gifted to insiders and friends. And now — at long last — actual taxpayers have gotten wise to the grift. You can thank independent journalists for highlighting these absurd expenses in a much simpler and understandable way than thick books or endless PDFs filled with intentionally confusing stats, opaquely written conclusions, and puffed-up executive summaries that don’t reflect the data can ever do.

    And now people living on the West Coast, Messed Coast™ want to know one thing: Where’d all that money go?

    It all starts with … Gavin

    Because your longtime West Coast, Messed Coast™ correspondent has been highlighting this stupidity for years and chronicled it here and in my other writings, radio shows, and podcasts, I’m going to insist you stipulate that the Homeless Industrial Complex exists and began in earnest from about 2005-2010, when leftist leaders saw that a buck could be made by declaring and funding programs to “End Homelessness in 10 Years.” Obviously, it was a smashing success — for grifting, I mean.

    In 2005, then-San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom harrumphed and gesticulated that he would, by dint of his own signature on a proclamation, “end homelessness” by 2015. Other cities followed. Billions went down the toilet as a result. And by toilet, I mean the streets of the Tenderloin and other Skid Rows along the West Coast, Messed Coast™.

    There then follows a chart of various attempts to “end homelessness.” I’m sure you’ll be shocked to find out none of them succeeded.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • Speaking of Blue Grift: “Democrat PAC ActBlue appears to have LIED TO CONGRESS about accepting foreign money in their effort to help Democrats win elections.” Try to contain your shock.

    Sen. Tom Cotton: “The New York Times just confirmed what we’ve long suspected: ActBlue knowingly let in fraudulent foreign donations to help Democrats win. Yet another example of the left’s embrace of fraud. Everyone involved must face the full weight of the law.”

    “The bombshell Times story comes after a law firm that formerly worked with ActBlue warned the group that they almost certainly lied to Congress about their process of vetting foreign donations.”

  • After interviewing Gavin Newsom, Adam Carolla thinks “Something’s wrong with him.” “He’s a sociopath. Like he doesn’t really understand anything.”
  • “Huge Drone Strike On .”
  • “Konkivskyi Bridge Destroyed in 60-Day Ukrainian Drone Operation Using Heavy-Lift Drones.” The weird thing is that this is in Oleshky, down from the already-destroyed Antonovsky Bridge, and evidently built up explosive material under the bridge over a period of time.
  • “Ukraine Attacks Admiral Grigorovich Frigate At Novorossiysk Port, Syvash Oil Platform and Be-12″ aircraft.
  • Crime in blue Portland is so organized that random people on the street protect criminals from justice.

    The moment I heard the smashing of glass, I knew exactly what it was. I had heard that sound dozens of times over the last month. Before I even looked up, I grabbed my phone, turned toward the noise, and started taking photos. Ten feet away, a black Expedition SUV sat with its rear window blown out. Within seconds, a man in a black shirt and backpack sprinted off carrying a laptop, a briefcase, and a gym bag. I ran over, saw the shattered glass, and knew exactly what I had just witnessed: a smash-and-grab. A smash-and-grab is a particular kind of burglary. A thief smashes a car window, grabs whatever looks valuable, and gets out fast. What defines it is not just the speed. It is the confidence. The noise, the alarms, the cameras, the witnesses, none of it matters anymore. The criminal is not trying to avoid attention because attention no longer means consequences.

    Without thinking, I took off after him. Just moments earlier, I had been across the street in Portland’s Pearl District with a few dozen volunteers doing a trash cleanup. We were on the sidewalk with gloves and garbage bags, doing what functioning cities are supposed to do: maintain public space, clean up disorder, and take pride in where they live. Then, right across the street, someone did what a broken city has learned to tolerate: smash a car window and steal from strangers in broad daylight. The contrast could not have been clearer. On one side were citizens trying to restore their city. On the other was someone actively tearing it down. Maybe it was that stark line between right and wrong that lit the fuse in me. Maybe I was just tired of watching decent people get victimized while everyone else acted like this was now normal.

    I caught up to him as he turned the corner at Northwest 14th and Couch and screamed, “Stop!” Then louder: “STOP!” He looked back, startled, and dropped the first bag. My friend grabbed it and held onto it while I kept running. We ended up in a full sprint. He was at least twenty years younger than me, but adrenaline kept me close. He weaved through traffic, jumped over a garbage can, and slid across the hood of a car like this was routine, like he had done it many times before. Several blocks later, he started to slow down. He ducked behind a parked car, and I chased him around it twice. He was breathing hard and begging me to stop chasing him. I finally caught him and cornered him in a doorway. He shoved me with his left arm. I grabbed his shirt and pushed him back into the door. “Leave me the f*ck alone, bro,” he screamed. I did not let go. I demanded everything back. He tried to pull away, then handed over what he had stolen while repeating, “I didn’t do anything,” over and over. He looked scared, but he also looked stunned. His expression said something I could not ignore: I think I was the first person who had ever chased him down.

    My friend called 911. We gave the operator a detailed description, and she told us it would take at least twenty minutes and that we needed to let him go. So we did and he took off running again. But we kept following from a distance so we could continue updating 911 with his location. And once I was no longer right on top of him, the thief stopped sprinting and started operating. That is the part most people do not understand. People imagine smash-and-grabs as chaotic, impulsive crimes, one desperate guy, one reckless decision, one lucky escape. What I witnessed was not chaos. It was choreography. He took off his shoes. Took off his shirt. Cut his jeans into shorts. Within thirty seconds, he looked like a different person. That is not panic. That is a practiced move. That is someone who has done this enough times to have a system.

    Then came protection. A middle-aged man in a “Just Do It” Nike hat rolled up on a beat-up bike and grabbed my shoulder. “Stop following,” he said. “I’ll make serious trouble for you.” A random passerby does not physically confront a stranger for following a thief. He does not show up at the perfect moment, get physical

    immediately, and start threatening people. That was not random. That was an enforcer, someone whose role was to discourage interference, someone who knew the routine. I knocked his arm off and stood my ground. Once he realized I was not going to back down, he backed off. A moment later, I watched two homeless individuals throw a blanket over the thief as if they were concealing contraband, then casually walk away. If I had not seen it happen, I would have walked right past him.

    We called 911 again and gave his updated description and location. Then chaos became a weapon. A woman in a black jacket and mini skirt lunged at me and tried to rip my phone out of my hands. She grabbed it hard, pulling like her life depended on it. Another man rolled up on a BMX bike and grabbed my arm. This was not about stealing my phone. It was about destroying the evidence. They were trying to remove the one thing that made them vulnerable: documentation.

    (Hat tip: Dwight.)

  • Europeans demonstrate they’re clueless about “leave no man behind.”
  • “Singham Network collaborators in China promote pro-Iran, pro-Putin, ‘MAGA Communist’ Jackson Hinkle.”

    Chinese propaganda outlets linked to the Singham Network have repeatedly sought to raise the profile of self-described “MAGA Communist” Jackson Hinkle as the social media influencer praises the Chinese Communist Party and critiques the Trump Administration and the West.

    The China-based propaganda partners of the Singham Network — most notably the pro-CCP Guancha outlet as well as the China Academy and its Wave Media video ecosystem — have repeatedly sought to elevate Hinkle, including hosting him for conferences in Shanghai, giving him favorable interviews, promoting his comments and appearances, and generally pushing his idea of so-called “MAGA Communism.”

    Hinkle is openly “Marxist-Leninist” and, despite his use of the “MAGA Communist” label, he has been a harsh critic of President Donald Trump, repeatedly labeling him a “war criminal” as Hinkle openly sides with U.S. adversaries such as Chinese leader Xi Jinping and the CCP, Russian strongman Vladimir Putin, the Iranian regime, and terrorist groups such as Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis.

    Hinkle has also been promoted in China by Chinese state media outlets, some of which are also linked to Singham’s influence efforts. Singham leads and funds a global financial and activist network that operates inside the U.S. and many other countries, and while he rarely grabs the spotlight for himself in public speeches, he did so in November through the Chinese release of a report that sought to denigrate U.S. and Allied Power contributions to WWII.

  • “DHS confirms ICE arrested Salah Sarsour today, the president of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee. DHS says he is a terrorist, a Jordanian national who was convicted of throwing Molotov cocktails at the homes of Israeli soldiers, then lied on his U.S. immigration applications and got a green card under President Clinton.” He should be denationalized and deported.
  • “Abbott Throws Cold Water on Gambling Push Ahead of Next Session.”

    Gov. Greg Abbott said he does not expect Texas to legalize gambling in the next legislative session, signaling a continued roadblock for casino interests that have spent millions trying to influence state elections.

    Abbott made the remarks during a press conference Tuesday focused on his property tax plan, held after Galveston County Commissioners Court joined the Lone Star Property Tax Reform Council in support of his proposal.

    The governor was asked about gambling, as well as a so-called “fuzzy animal” or “fuzzy bear” exception in Texas law—a colloquial term for a narrow provision allowing certain amusement machines to award low-value, non-cash prizes, which some “game room” operators have cited to justify machines critics say function as illegal gambling devices.

    “I don’t know how that works, and I’m not sure about fuzzy bears and things like that,” said Abbott. “We’ll look into the fuzzy bears. All I can tell you is what the law says, and that is, gambling is unconstitutional in the state of Texas, and I don’t see that changing in the next session.”

    Abbott’s comments come as casino interests, including groups tied to Las Vegas Sands and the Texas Defense PAC, have poured millions into Texas primary elections in recent cycles. Those efforts failed to unseat lawmakers who opposed expanding gambling.

  • “Colorado Doubles Down On New Assaults On The First Amendment.”

    Colorado is now arguably the most anti-free speech state in the union, pushing an array of measures attacking those with opposing social and political views. The irony is that the state has proved a bonanza for free speech with spectacular legal failures that reaffirmed rather than restricted the First Amendment. Now, the Democratic legislature and governor are back with new unconstitutional measures, including a requirement that lawyers not share information with federal immigration officials as a condition for filing with state courts.

    Colorado legislators and judges have spent years attacking core free speech and associational rights. In the last election, the state attempted to strip President Donald Trump from the ballot with the support of a majority of its Democratic-controlled state supreme court. (The effort was later declared unconstitutional in a unanimous decision by the Supreme Court. Colorado could not even get any of the liberal justices to support its actions).

    The state is responsible for the efforts to force business owners to create products celebrating same-sex marriages. That effort led to the Masterpiece Cake Shop case and then the 303 Creative case. Even after losing earlier efforts against Masterpiece Cake Shop owner Jack Phillips, the targeting of its owner continued for years. That litigation proved to be a tremendous victory for free speech.

    Colorado has also been leading the fight to limit the speech and associational rights of professionals and parents on “conversion therapy.” Recently, that effort led to another massive loss before the Supreme Court in Chiles v. Salazar, resulting in a resounding 8-1 rejection of Colorado’s position. It could only secure the vote of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.

    After that near-unanimous ruling against the state, Colorado responded by doubling down with legislation to expose any counselors engaged in conversion therapy to heightened legal liability, including waiving any statute of limitations. That case could also result in legal challenges as Colorado continues to spend a fortune on seeking to curtail free speech rights.

    Now, the state is defending a new public accommodation law, HB 25-1312, that defines “gender expression” to include “chosen name” and “how an individual chooses to be addressed.”

    As in past Colorado cases, the state secured favorable rulings from district court judges. President Biden-nominated U.S. District Judge Regina Rodriguez refused to grant a preliminary injunction against the Colorado public accommodation law.

    The Alliance Defending Freedom is appealing the matter to the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit on behalf of its clients, XX-XY Athletics and Born Again Used Books. Other appeals are also being brought in the matter.

    At the same time, the state has moved forward on Senate Bill 25-276, which imposes a threshold condition for state e-filings that requires lawyers to certify annually “under penalty of perjury,” that they will not use “personal identifying information” from the system to help federal immigration enforcement.

  • “After nearly a decade, the final charge against David Daleiden for his exposé of Planned Parenthood has been dropped.”
  • French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle’s operational security blown by someone using a fitness app on their smart phone.
  • California sheriff deputies try to serve an eviction notice, have the guy open fire on them for their troubles. Do they: A.) Taz him, B.) Shoot him, or C.) Roll over him in an armored vehicle? (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Important note: William Shatner is not dying of cancer.
  • Speaking of Shatner, he’s been warning people about crazy “Shippers” (people who imagine relationships between fictional characters) for a while now. Even crazier? When a crazy anime shipper sends a death threat to a voice actress for not agreeing with them that an animated character is crazy shipper’s “soulmate.”
  • Follow-up: Remember Hamideh Soleimani Afshar, age 47, and her daughter, Sarinasdat Hosseiny, the niece and grandniece of dirtnapped Iranian revolutionary Guard scumbag Qasem Soleimani?

    Important, totally relevant visual reminder.

    Turns out they’re actually being held at a South Texas detention center.

  • “So, all the animation studios are already using AI. They’re just not saying anything about it because they don’t want to get cancelled on BlueSky.”
  • Evidently a Ford GT Mk IV just set the third fastest Nürburgring Lap ring time ever, and the fastest internal-combustion time ever.
  • Tom Scott goes paragliding, which, to be honest, looks pretty damn cool.
  • Rick Beato has a pretty swell story that’s about playing golf, but not really.
  • Six unwritten rules for British pubs.
  • “World In Shock As Trump Takes Seemingly Extreme Position To Negotiate Best Possible Deal.”
  • “Battle-Hardened Drone Returning From Iran War Struggling To Re-Enter Life Of Delivering Amazon Orders.”
  • Sneaky.

    (hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

    • I’m still between jobs. Feel free to hit the tip jar if you’re so inclined. But I did have job interviews this week!





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    Posted in Budget, Crime, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Jihad, Military, Republicans, Social Justice Warriors, Technology, Texas, Waste and Fraud, Welfare State | 5 Comments »

    Musk’s Terafab To Have Intel Inside

    Thursday, April 9th, 2026

    After the initial report on Elon Musk’s planned Terafab project, there were a whole lot of questions about how Musk was going to get his ambitious semiconductor fab project up and running. Now a very, very big piece of the puzzle (like, 85%) has been solved: Intel is going to build it for him.

    In an unexpected turn of events, Intel on Tuesday said that it had joined Elon Musk’s TeraFab project. The announcement mentions Intel’s ability to develop, produce, and package advanced processors in high volumes, which could help Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI to get enough compute performance for next-generation AI and robotics applications. However, the announcement made in an X post you can expand below does not reveal how exactly Intel will help TeraFab.

    “Intel is proud to join the Terafab project with SpaceX, xAI, and Tesla to help refactor silicon fab technology,” a statement by Intel reads. “Our ability to design, fabricate, and package ultra-high-performance chips at scale will help accelerate Terafab’s aim to produce 1 TW/year of compute to power future advances in AI and robotics. It was fun hosting Elon Musk at Intel this past weekend!”

    The announcement is not accompanied by any press releases or SEC filings, which raises questions about the framework of the collaboration between Intel and TeraFab, as well as any possible legal bindings. In fact, the post in X is deliberately written in a way that barely reveals any concrete details about the structure of the partnership.

    Officially, TeraFab is positioned as the “most epic chip-building effort ever” that is to combine “logic, memory and advanced packaging under one roof,” which implies localized production in a massive facility. Furthermore, the company is hiring managers to build a greenfield semiconductor fabrication plant in Texas. By contrast, Intel’s wording rather implies a virtual semiconductor production ecosystem, or even a consortium that involves chip design, manufacturing, and packaging at Intel and demand from Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI. How such a consortium would differ from a typical wafer supply agreement that large companies tend to have with their suppliers is something that is unclear at this point.

    It makes perfect sense for one of only three global semiconductor manufacturers (and the only American company of the three) to help Musk realize his vision. Though nobody has spelled it out, my guess is it’s going to be very similar to the way Apple funds its manufacturer ecosystem through partner build-outs: Musk is going to pay Intel to build and run the fab, and Musk’s Telsa/SpaceX/xAI consortium is going to buy the dedicated output at a given price for x number of years, after which Intel can use the fab for other projects.

    This makes a great deal of sense for both parties, especially if Intel has its 18A process dialed in. This is not a given, as Intel’s process screwups at previous nodes let TSMC and Samsung lap them in the sub-10nm race. But Intel yields at that node are reportedly rising.

    And having Intel do all the heavy lifting means Musk’s new company doesn’t have to negotiate with Applied Materials, ASML, LAM, etc. Intel already has standing purchase agreements with all of them, and likely already knows what it wants and what the lead times will be to equip the new fab. Not to mention already knowing which contractors they’ll get to bid to build it.

    If that’s actually what’s happening, that clears up a whole lot of questions about the project. Now, it doesn’t make Musk’s crazy “2027 volume production of 1 million wafer starts a months” any more feasible, but a fully functional Intel fab up and running at full-tilt by 2029 pumping out chips for xAI/SpaceX/Telsa is entirely feasible.

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    Posted in Austin, Technology, Texas | 11 Comments »

    Russia Cracks Down On VPNs, Brings Down Banks

    Wednesday, April 8th, 2026

    Feeling that too much military information has been leaking out via such channels as Telegram (it only took them four years of war to figure this out), Russia officials decided to crack down on VPN use, leading to one of the greatest examples of unintended consequences in recent memory.

    Russian authorities are working hard to tighten control over the internet. Roskomnadzor recently began blocking Telegram, but users continue to access the platform via VPNs. The Kremlin is now attempting to censor VPNs as well, and this onion-layered approach to censorship is disrupting some critical domestic online services.

    According to Telegram CEO Pavel Durov, the Kremlin’s increasing efforts to control and censor the global internet are causing widespread problems for Russian users. The Russian-born entrepreneur confirmed that Telegram is now banned in the country, yet more than 50 million Russians continue to use it daily via VPNs.

    Moscow authorities have spent years attempting to control and block VPN platforms, Durov said. However, their latest efforts to restrict encrypted traffic and tunneling protocols have led to widespread failures in banking apps. Over the weekend, cash became the only reliable payment method across much of Russia.

    According to unnamed industry sources cited by Bloomberg, the crackdown on VPNs may have triggered significant connectivity issues for banking platforms. Roskomnadzor’s filtering system was reportedly overloaded, causing reliability and network stability problems across the Russian internet.

    Russia is attempting to push its citizens toward a domestic “super-app” called Max, designed to provide access to social media and mobile payment services – similar to how China’s WeChat app, Weixin, operates. Beijing authorities have unrestricted access to all traffic on Weixin, and the Kremlin appears to be aiming for the same level of control with Max.

    Here’s another example of the “new” Russia acting a whole lot like the old Soviet Union. Mere individuals will not be allowed to keep secrets from the glorious state, comrade.

    But the Soviet Union barely lasted into the Internet age. Its communications infrastructure was built from the ground-up to spy on citizens, with entire floors dedicated to KGB agents constructed above telephone exchanges. It’s quite a different task to try to tap today’s vast array of encrypted digital communication channels. Ordinary companies frequently have a tough time locking down their own digital infrastructure, because it’s hard to tell just what systems are communicating with other systems on which ports.

    Now scale up the problem to an entire nation that’s been cut out of the world financial system for waging an illegal war of territorial aggression, and a tyrannical government blocking vast swathes of what Internet is left in the name of information control like Hans Gruber’s minion chainsawing through the Nakatomi Tower’s trunk cables in Die Hard. All sorts of things you want to keep working are going to break.

    I also suspect the attempt to be a futile one, at least for VPN users. I suspect the technical minds behind those are far more adept than the government censors trying to block them.

    Russia citizens are getting a lose/lose/lose scenario. They’re losing a war, basic civilizational functions are breaking, and Vlad’s Big Adventure has Russia slipping back into totalitarianism.

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    Posted in Communism, Military, Technology, Texas | 11 Comments »

    How Texas Kicks Europe’s Ass

    Saturday, April 4th, 2026

    Back when I was doing regular Texas vs. California updates, this is the sort of video I would feature. It covers why Texas is doing so much better than Europe, though the framing misses a few things I’ve tried to highlight below.

    Caveat: I don’t know who “The Economic Matrix” is, but what they’re saying is generally right, but a bit incomplete.

  • “This is Texas. To most of the world, it’s just one of 50 American states. But if you pulled it off the US map and dropped it into the global rankings as its own nation, it would sit eighth in the world, sandwiched directly between France and Italy, with a staggering GDP of $2.77 trillion. But that’s just the start. In 2025, the Texas economy was bigger than the equivalent of the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, and Austria combined.”
  • “Texas and Europe are separated by more than an ocean. They’re separated by two completely different ideas of how a state should operate. And right now, one of those ideas is winning by a distance that gets harder to close every year. In 2024, the Texas economy grew by nearly 4%. The entire European Union managed 1%, and the gap is only getting wider.”
  • “The EU spent most of the last 15 years in crisis mode. A sovereign debt collapse left Greece, Spain, and Portugal on the edge of ruin.” I covered the European Debt Crisis (especially among the PIIGS (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, Spain)) as it was happening, and the thing to remember is that it was (and is) a deficit spending crisis. Like the federal government, European governments insist on spending more than they take in. Real austerity, i.e. cutting outlays until they match receipts, hasn’t failed, it’s been declared difficult and left untried.
  • “Years of near zero growth followed. The in 2022, Russia cut off the gas and sent inflation across the Euro zone spiking to 9.2%.” Here the video also avoids noting that another big inflation driver was the effects of the Flu Manchu lockdown across most EU economies.
  • “Through all of that, the Texas economy just kept climbing. The productivity gap tells the same story. Between late 2019 and mid 2024, labor productivity per hour in the Euro zone rose by 0.9%. In the US, it rose by 6.7%. Texas led that charge.”
  • “Look at the Permian Basin. Oil production nearly tripled in a decade while the rig count was cut almost in half because horizontal drilling and AI-guided extraction meant fewer rigs producing more oil. Same workforce, three times the output.” Oil industry-specific AI has very little do with the current general AI build-out bubble.
  • “There’s a mathematical reality that makes this trajectory almost impossible to reverse. At 1.5% annual growth, the EU takes roughly 47 years to double in size. At the 3.5% rate Texas usually averages, it takes 20. By the time the EU doubles once, Texas will have doubled twice. That gap compounds and it means every year the distance between these two economic models doesn’t just persist, it accelerates.”
  • “Mario Draghi, the former head of the European Central Bank, released a landmark report warning that without serious reform, the EU is heading toward what he called a slow agony. Leaders held a retreat to discuss it. Then they went back to their committees.” Future pain is abstract, while the electoral pain of trying to reform things is far more immediate.
  • “Since 2020, more than 200 companies have moved their headquarters to Texas. Tesla relocated to Austin in 2021. Chevron, one of the largest energy companies on Earth, announced its move to Houston in 2024. Charles Schwab, CBRE, SpaceX. More than half of these relocations came from California alone.”
  • “These are not satellite offices or mailbox moves. The reason they gave was simple. The regulatory environment in California made expansion too slow and too expensive. Texas made it fast, cheap, and permanent.”
  • “Spotify was founded in Stockholm, but listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Skype was built in Estonia and Luxembourg, then bought by Microsoft and absorbed into Redmond. ARM was designed in Cambridge, England, then acquired by a Japanese conglomerate and listed in New York. Europe keeps building the talent. America keeps cashing the check.”
  • “Beneath the growth stats and the corporate migrations, there’s one factor that explains this gap better than anything else: Energy. Texas produces more energy than almost any country on Earth. Not other American states, actual nations. Between 2007 and 2023, while the rest of the United States saw energy consumption drop by about 5%, Texas went in the other direction. Energy use in the state climbed by 21% and the industrial sector alone saw a 28% jump in demand. This was not a state focused on conservation or cutting back. Texas was building oil rigs, refineries, chemical plants, and massive wind installations, all at the same time.” Those wind farm installations were the result of subsidies, and they’re not really building new ones anymore.
  • “The reason Texas could pull this off comes down to one decision made decades ago. Texas built its own power grid, specifically to escape the slow motion gears of federal regulation. The result, solar capacity that grew 32% in just 2024, wind generation that leads every other American state, and a massive natural gas fleet running underneath it all to keep the lights on when the sun goes down, cheap, abundant, predictable, and fast to build.” Again, the solar build-out was aided by subsidies.
  • “For decades, the European energy models rested on one assumption. Buy cheap gas from Russia, build out renewables slowly, and keep industrial costs manageable. When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, that assumption collapsed overnight. Wholesale energy prices went vertical. Industrial electricity costs in Germany suddenly hit three to four times what businesses in Texas were paying for the exact same power.”
  • “Look at what happened to BASF, the largest chemical company in the world. For over 150 years, their home was Ludwigshafen, Germany, a sprawling industrial complex on the Rhine that employed tens of thousands. After 2022, they announced billions in cuts to that site. Plants shuttered, thousands of jobs gone. But BASF didn’t disappear. At the exact same time, they were breaking ground on new facilities in Freeport, Texas. Same company, same products, two completely different decisions driven entirely by the price of electricity.” Probably not just electricity. Union work rules in Germany are considerably less flexible than those in right-to-work Texas.
  • “France tried to escape this trap by leaning into nuclear power, which once covered 75% of French electricity needs. But that infrastructure is aging. New reactor projects like Flamenville have run tens of billions over budget and more than a decade behind schedule, and the political will to build more has been stuck in debate for a generation. The old Russian gas model is dead. The nuclear renaissance has not arrived. And permitting a single wind farm in the EU can take 7 to 10 years.”
  • “In Texas, the same process often takes a few months. Energy prices act like a hidden tax on everything from manufacturing steel to running a server farm to heating a bakery. European businesses pay that tax every single day. And Europe does not have the gas, does not have the grid independence, and does not have the permitting speed to change that.” Actually, Europe does have oil and gas reserves it refuses to develop.
  • “Cheap energy is a huge piece of the puzzle. But the real accelerant for the Texas economy has been something even harder for Europe to copy. And it starts with one number. The average top personal income tax rate across 35 European countries is 38.5%. In Denmark, that number hits a staggering 60.5%. In Germany, France, and Italy, high earners face rates between 45 and 50%.”
  • “In Texas, the state income tax rate is zero. It’s always been zero, and the Texas Constitution actually makes it illegal for the state to introduce one without a direct vote from the public. This is not a temporary policy that a new government can reverse after the next election. It’s locked into the foundation of the state.”
  • “Texas still has high property taxes, so the total burden on a normal resident is not as dramatic as that 0% headline suggests. But for the people these economies are competing over, the math is brutal. A senior software engineer in Munich earns roughly €75,000 and takes home about $45,000 after income tax and social contributions. The same engineer in Austin earns $140,000 and takes home over $105,000. same skills, same screen, more than double the money in their pocket at the end of the year. Between 2020 and 2024, Texas startups pulled in over $46 billion in venture capital. In Q1 2025 alone, Texas tech companies raised nearly $3 billion, the biggest single quarter the state had seen in over 2 years, with massive deals in cyber security, defense tech, and biotech.”
  • “Compare that to the other side of the Atlantic. The entire European Union raised about $17.5 billion for AI funding in all of 2025. The US raised nearly $70 billion for generative AI alone by midyear. Not total tech, not all venture capital, generative AI alone. These two regions are not competing in the same category.”
  • “The EU’s regulatory framework was designed to protect consumers and level the playing field. GDPR [General Data Protection Regulation], the AI Act, 27 different national compliance regimes stacked on top of each other. The intentions were sound, but the unintended result is that the compliance costs favor massive American companies like Google and Microsoft, who can absorb them easily over smaller European rivals who can’t.”
  • “None of this means Texas has it all figured out, because the truth is it hasn’t. The most visible problem is housing. In 2019, a median Texas family earned 62% more than they needed to buy a median home. By 2023, that cushion had collapsed to just 7%. Not 62%, 7%. Over a third of Texas households now spend more than 30% of their income on housing.” That’s a national problem, partially engendered by the Flu Manchu shutdowns, partially by restrictive local building codes. “Affordable housing” blather snipped, since this is just more unnecessary government subsidy and intervention.
  • “The workers who actually build the Texas economy, the Tesla line workers, the nurses, the warehouse staff, can’t afford to live in the cities their labor is building anymore. They commute in from further and further out, and the roads, the housing, and the services all fall behind.” Partially true, partially false. Austin housing prices exploded, but have come down dramatically. Dallas and San Antonio prices spiked, then plateaued. Houston prices have continued climbing, but gradually.
  • “When a place grows this fast, the infrastructure simply can’t keep up.” True of Austin, less true of Houston, though having to rebuild certain interchanges is making things a nightmare for certain commuters.
  • Discussion of energy grid problems and the 2021 ice storm snipped, since I think we’ve covered those enough here.
  • “The problems in Texas are the problems of a place growing too fast. The problems in Europe are the problems of a place that is barely growing at all. In that sense, Texas and Europe have something in common. Both are stuck. The difference is that Texas is gridlocked because too many people are trying to get to work. Europe is gridlocked because too many committees are still deciding whether to build the road. Right now, Texas has its sights set on overtaking France, a G7 nation. At current growth rates, that gap closes faster than most people realize. And France’s response, like the rest of Europe’s, has been to wait and see.”
  • “The real question isn’t whether Europe can change. It’s whether it actually wants to change badly enough to feel the pain that comes with it. Because while Brussels is still writing the rule book, the game is already over for the economies Texas has already passed. The ones still in its path just haven’t checked the scoreboard yet.”

    • Left out of this coverage: Texas has a constitutionally mandated balanced budget, while the overwhelming majority of European nations keep running budget deficits to keep their cradle-to-grave welfare states afloat.

    Not to mention a government run by Republicans rather than unstable coalitions including the Greens…

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    Posted in Austin, Regulation, Technology, Texas, unions, video | 4 Comments »

    LinkSwarm For April 3, 2026

    Friday, April 3rd, 2026

    Happy Good Friday! More Democrat voting fraud, Iran manages to shoot down a couple of planes, more California fraud under Governor Hairgel, Commies gonna commie, Microsoft behaving (and performing) badly, Pakistan’s nefarious actions backfire (yet again), the best rifle for a militia, and a list of bad actors in the job market.

    Also: We’re going back to the freaking moon!

    It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • More of that Democrat voting fraud Democrats claim doesn’t exist.

    A hidden-camera 🔥🔥 bombshell:

    This is Democrat Joel Caldwell of the “Coalition for the People’s Agenda,” a Fulton County ballot-harvesting NGO chief—caught on tape admitting it all.

    Democrats are stuffing ballot drop boxes with fraudulent votes, and it’s all caught on videotape. He also admits this is how they rigged the 2020 election and why Democrats fight to the death against voter ID.

    • They pay people to illegally ballot-harvest.
    • They bribe ballot counters and election officials.
    • They forge and falsify ballots.

    And the Atlanta mayor straight-up stole the election.

    He says it all himself—on tape.

    Joel Caldwell:
    “That’s what happened in 2020, ’cause that’s when the ballots—they started stuffing them ballots and people stuffing them ballots, and they got videotape of them, but nobody talks about it. That’s why Trump was making that big deal about it, because you see it on videotape. It’s like, come on. We see the man pull up and put a hundred ballots in this box. You know? You can’t do that sh*t.

    So groups were paying people to do just that—drop off ballots.”

    He continues: That’s why Democrats fight to the death against voter ID laws.

    Joel Caldwell:
    “That’s why the Republicans are always trying to fight the ballot—you know, that’s the whole argument, because Republicans are the ones who put out that kind of stuff, so they want voter IDs and stuff. Democrats are fighting voter ID laws. It’s a two-sided thing. That’s what they’re fighting over. Republicans are trying to say, ‘Hey, look, we got proof of this sh*t.’

    And the Democrats are like, well, we don’t want voter ID laws, and we want to make it where you can just drop your ballot off—online voting and different things they try to come up with.”

    (Hat tip: Small Dead Animals.)

  • Iran manages to shoot down both an F-15 and an A-10 on the same day. Two of the three downed airmen have already been rescued. It’s worth noting that neither of those planes are remotely stealthy.
  • “Fetterman Blasts Democrats After Illegal Immigrant Murders College Freshman.”

    Earlier this week, Jose Medina-Medina, an illegal immigrant whom the Biden administration caught and released at the border, murdered Loyola University freshman Sheridan Gorman. Medina-Medina had previously been arrested at least twice in Chicago, yet was released by local authorities, thanks to their sanctuary policies. According to reports, he approached her, raised a gun, and opened fire as she tried to flee. She was pronounced dead at the scene.

    The Democratic Party’s response has been nothing short of horrific.

    Snip.

    The reaction from Democrats to Gorman’s death has been so despicable that Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) unloaded on his own party over it.

    “Why can’t we just talk about that life lost?” Fetterman told Fox News’s Bill Hemmer. “Why can’t we just acknowledge that this is serious, serious failure?”

    Fetterman also invoked the Laken Riley Act, the legislation requiring the detention and deportation of illegal immigrants who commit crimes. Fetterman was one of only a handful of Democrats to vote for it — a fact he’s clearly not going to let his colleagues forget.

    “I think only seven or eight Democrats even voted for [the] Laken Riley [Act],” he said. “Why can’t you just agree that if you’re breaking the law and you’re already here illegally, deport them? I just don’t understand.”

    He continued, “Tragedies like what happened to that young woman, they are gonna continue to happen,” he said. “That’s beyond common sense.”

    Hemmer pressed him on why Democrats can’t seem to get there, and Fetterman gave an honest, if uncomfortable, answer.

    “I guess they’re afraid of the base,” he replied.

  • “Singham uses extensive CCP-aligned network in China as he finances global Marxist influence efforts.”

    A Just the News investigation has detailed how a wealthy Marxist activist best known for the funding of a global financial network both inside the U.S. and around the world has extensive ties to Chinese Communist Party-linked organizations inside of China.

    China-based entrepreneur Neville Roy Singham lives and works in Shanghai, — which the American businessman now calls home — where he runs his network of pro-CCP news sites and other China-linked endeavors. Singham, who sold his ThoughtWorks tech company in 2017, has used the money to fund openly communist endeavors worldwide. Just the News can show that inside of China, Singham and his network collaborate with an array of Chinese propaganda sites, Chinese universities, and other Chinese groups committed to advancing the CCP.

    Singham leads and funds a global financial and activist network that operates inside the U.S. and many other countries, and while he rarely grabs the spotlight for himself in public speeches, he did so in November through the Chinese release of a report that sought to denigrate U.S. and Allied Power contributions to WWII.
    Helping the CCP and its longtime strongman Xi Jinping to create a “new world order”

    Singham admitted during a CCP-backed forum in Shanghai in November that he had written the 174-page report to combat the U.S.-backed “international rules-based order” — which he called a “lie” — and to help the CCP and its longtime strongman Xi Jinping achieve a “new world order” more favorable to China. This report and the conference where it was introduced helped expose the extensive CCP-linked network in which Singham is ensconced within China.

    Just the News reviewed hundreds of pages of Chinese business documents and U.S. tax records, English and Chinese language news sites, Chinese government websites, and more in an effort to provide the most comprehensive look yet at Singham’s operations from his perch in Shanghai.

  • Also: “Singham colludes with CCP to rewrite history of WWII to advance Xi Jinping’s ‘new world order.'”

    The wealthy Marxist businessman behind a sprawling far-left network is collaborating with the Chinese Communist Party to denigrate the Allied actions in World War II in an effort to upend the U.S.-led international system and to advance Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s “new world order.”

    China-based businessman Neville Roy Singham leads and funds a global financial and activist network that operates inside the U.S. and many other countries, and while he rarely grabs the spotlight for himself in public speeches, he did so in November through the release of a report that denigrates U.S. and Allied Power contributions to WWII.

    Singham directly admitted during a CCP-backed forum in Shanghai in November that he had written the 174-page report to combat the U.S.-backed “international rules-based order” — which he called a “lie” — and to help the CCP and its longtime strongman Xi achieve a “new world order” more favorable to China.

    The wealthy communist activist summed up the crux of his WWII argument thusly: “As we commemorate the 80th anniversary of the victory in the World Anti-Fascist War (WAFW), the Western powers spin their familiar tale: U.S. industrial might and British resolve saved the world from fascism. This is a lie. The truth burns in the numbers: while the Western powers calculated their economic advantage, the Soviet and Chinese peoples paid in blood. Fascism was defeated not by Anglo-American capital but by socialist leadership and mass heroism – a brilliant strategy from Moscow and Yan’an, unbreakable resilience from workers and peasants who refused to surrender, and a sacrifice that saved humanity from slavery.”

    Commies gonna commie…

  • “California has lost 25% of state budget to fraud under Gavin Newsom.”

    Multiple senior HHS officials estimate that, under Gavin Newsom, California’s state Medicaid program has lost 25 percent of its budget to fraud. This would mean it is currently losing $50 billion a year to scammers, fraudsters, and organized crime rings.

    Snip.

    We conducted interviews with public officials, fraud experts, and political figures, and reviewed hundreds of pages of government reports, state audits, criminal indictments, and other public records on California fraud. From unemployment insurance and Medicaid to failed homeless initiatives and welfare programs, seemingly every state program has been compromised by criminals. The best estimates suggest that, on the governor’s watch, fraudsters, scammers, and organized crime rings have stolen at least $180 billion from taxpayers.

  • In this firehose torrent of news, less attention than is proper has been paid to the fact that we’re finally going back to the moon. Or, technically, around it, since they’re doing the figure flyby of the dark side. They’re already halfway there…
  • “Scenes of Communist Flags, Riots, and Violent Clashes With DHS During ‘No Kings’ Protests.”

    Though the mainstream media will undoubtedly portray them as “mostly peaceful,” much of what we saw at the “No Kings” protests Saturday was anything but, whether through actions or symbols used during the demonstrations.

    We’ll start off with New York City, where the Communist flags were in full effect:

    BREAKING: Leftists in NYC chant “There is only one solution, Communist revolution” at the No Kings rally.

    They’re really going mask off. pic.twitter.com/JY3yvFXzf2

    — Eyal Yakoby (@EYakoby) March 28, 2026

    Communist flags at the NYC ‘No Kings’ protest pic.twitter.com/bIh2UiwkDI

    — NJEG Media (@NJEGmedia) March 28, 2026

    Snip.

    Meanwhile, in Minnesota, Gov. Tim Walz (D) was pledging solidarity with the Somali community:

    “We will never leave the side of our Somali Minnesotans. Here’s our pledge to you, our Somali Minnesotans, your grandchildren will still be here when that orange clown is in the dustbin of history.”

    I guess its too much to ask a Democrat governor to stand with actual Americans. Plus rioting in Denver.

  • “Democrat Mail-In Ballot Strategy At Risk From SCOTUS Election Day Case.”

    Earlier this week the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument in a case challenging a Mississippi statute allowing mail-in ballot received up to five days after Election Day to be counted.

    The law appears to defy three federal laws that require that federal elections be held the first Tuesday after the first Monday of November. The question is what did Congress mean by Election Day. Was it a day, five days later, a month later. Does Election Day mean election season.

    The 5th Circuit ruled against Mississippi, which brought the case to SCOTUS. It could have profound impact on Democrats’ mail-in ballot strategy if ballots must be received by election official by Election Day.

    I discussed the case and oral argument, plus redistricting and the Equal Protection Projects challenge to discriminatory NY State education practices, with Jesse Kelly, who tweeted out the portion regarding NY State: “It appears Kathy Hochul is defying the Supreme Court.”

    If they can’t cheat they can’t win…

  • “Trump Fires Attorney General Pam Bondi.”

    Pam Bondi is out as attorney general, President Trump announced Thursday, and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche will serve as acting attorney general.

    “Pam Bondi is a Great American Patriot and a loyal friend, who faithfully served as my Attorney General over the past year,” Trump said in a statement on Truth Social. “Pam did a tremendous job overseeing a massive crackdown in Crime across our Country, with Murders plummeting to their lowest level since 1900.”

    “We love Pam, and she will be transitioning to a much needed and important new job in the private sector, to be announced at a date in the near future, and our Deputy Attorney General, and a very talented and respected Legal Mind, Todd Blanche, will step in to serve as Acting Attorney General,” he added.

    The announcement came just one day after Bondi was at the White House to attend Trump’s address to the nation on the Iran war. She had also accompanied Trump to the Supreme Court to watch oral arguments in a birthright citizenship case.

    The handling of the Epstein files and the lack of progress on indicting anti-Trump conspirators like James Comey were suggested as reasons for Trump letting her go.

  • Behold the sub-$100, 3D printed manpad.

  • Target has gone from pushing the radical transsexual agenda to being boycotted by Randi Weingarten for not condemning ICE. I haven’t shopped there once since they started boosting the tranny agenda, but maybe it’s time to go back again…
  • “As Chicago and other blue cities move toward reparations for African Americans, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D, Wa.) wants reparations for illegal immigrants for the trauma caused by immigration enforcement.” because of course she does.
  • In a blast from the past, I missed this news that Gavin Newsom admitted to an adulterous affair with his chief of staff’s wife.
  • Pakistani is enjoying a nice, rich dinner of blowback.

    For decades, the Islamabad establishment has played a dangerous game, nurturing the Taliban as a strategic depth agent against India. Today, this plan backfires, and the resulting explosion of violence threatens to send a fresh wave of illegal immigration toward the already strained borders of the European Union.

    The “open war” declared by Defence Minister Khawaja Asif marks the end of a thirty-year illusion. The apprentice has not only left the master. He has now turned openly against him. The March 16 strike on Kabul was the moment masks fell. When Pakistani warplanes hammered a rehabilitation centre in the heart of the Afghan capital, the “Islamic brotherhood” of the two neighbours officially ceased to be.

    Islamabad claims it is hunting the TTP — the Pakistani Taliban who find sanctuary under the wings of their Afghan cousins. Kabul denies it. The result is a cycle of diplomacy-in-name-only, where the only language spoken is the language of the air strike, the AK-47 and the suicide vest. This is the reality of the post-American vacuum.

    Critics of the Biden presidency, watching from America and Europe, see the vindication of their most cynical instincts. They warned that the vacuum left by the 2021 withdrawal would be filled by chaos. They were right. Just look at Bagram Airfield. It once was the crown jewel of American power. It has now become a trophy in a war between two states the West can no longer control.

    While the world’s eyes are fixed on the Iranian plateau, South Asia is burning. The region’s most volatile border is no longer Kashmir. It is the frontier where the Taliban’s jihadist agenda meets Pakistani nuclear-armed desperation. How safe is the world when a nuclear power goes to war with a ghost? The answer is terrifying. Pakistan’s military capacity dwarfs that of the Taliban, yet the Taliban have time, resolve and a complete lack of accountability.

    While the Pakistani economy teeters and its domestic security implodes with a second insurgency front up against Baloch separatists in the south, the Afghan Taliban are playing the long game. They see a Pakistan that is overextended and a West that is exhausted. They are not interested in ceasefires brokered by Qatar or Turkey. They are interested in survival and the expansion of their ideological reach.

    Almost nobody talks about it, but we are witnessing the “Gaza-fication” of the Durand Line. The same knowhow of displacement and grazing the land is being applied to the tribal areas. Millions of thousands of people have already been displaced. But the humanitarian cost is only a footnote in a larger, more brutal calculation.

    For Islamabad, this is an existential fight against the TTP thorn in its side. For Kabul, it is about defending the sovereignty they fought for twenty years to reclaim. Neither side can afford to blink. The light of the old order is fading. The era where the Pakistani military could manage Afghanistan like a colonial fiefdom is over. The trust is dead.

    Trump’s “America First” doctrine means that if Pakistan wants to fight this war, it will do so without a blank check from the Pentagon. The bitter truth for the region is that old security guarantees are gone. We are entering an era of fluidity, where borders are written in fire. The “special relationship” between Islamabad and Kabul has become hatred. The Taliban have proven they can survive an American occupation. Surviving Pakistan’s aggression should not be that hard.

    And then there are all of those “refugees” Euroelites seem bound and determined to import. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • A recap of last week’s Ukraine strikes on Russia’s Primorsk and Ust-Luga oil terminals.

    The attack involved a sophisticated mix of long-range unmanned systems, likely between eight and fifteen primary strike drones supported by smaller decoys designed to saturate Russian air defenses. These drones traveled approximately one thousand kilometers from Ukrainian territory, penetrating deep into Russian airspace and reaching the Gulf of Finland near the Estonian border. Evidence suggests the use of fixed-wing kamikaze drones optimized for endurance and precision. Ukrainians also utilized small prop-planes modified to fly as unmanned aircraft, mounting droppable Fab bombs on the bottom, which could be dropped on target, in addition to the craft being used as a kamikaze platform.

    Also:

    Ukraine has delivered a decisive strategic blow just as Russia expected to capitalize on soaring oil prices driven by the Iran war, but got its export system crippled instead. With unimaginable 40% of its oil export capacity wiped out, ports burning for days, and follow-up strikes continuing, the question is no longer whether Russia can recover quickly, but whether Ukraine will strike again before Russia has the chance to do so.

  • Ukraine is testing exoskeletons in actual combat.

    After over four years of war, Ukraine’s military says it’s testing an exoskeleton in the field that can help soldiers more easily load artillery and run at speeds of up to 12 mph over sustained periods. The tests would mark one of the first known examples of exoskeletons used on the front lines of an active military operation.

    A Facebook video shared late last week by Ukraine’s 7th Air Assault Corps shows a handful of soldiers putting on the device while inside of a muddy artillery trench. The device itself wraps around a soldier’s waist and legs and is supported by a back brace. The military claims that it can reduce overall load on leg muscles by 30 percent. In practice, that means the devices should make it easier for soldiers to pick up and load heavy artillery rounds. Each round can weigh upwards of 100 pounds, depending on the particular caliber used. Since a soldier on the battlefield may load several dozen of those runs every day, all of that weight adds up and can increase the odds of injury or fatigue.

    Not quite Heinlein’s powered armor, but we’re getting there…

  • “Paxton Unveils Rules To Enforce Texas Ban on Hostile Foreign Land Ownership. The new law targets countries such as China, Iran, Russia, and North Korea.”

    Paxton’s office has now proposed detailed rules to implement the statute. The proposal was submitted to the Secretary of State on March 16 and published in the Texas Register on March 27, triggering a public comment period before the rules can be finalized.

    The draft rules flesh out how SB 17 will work in practice, with the Office of the Attorney General as the central enforcement hub for the ban.

    One of the most significant features is a new duty to report suspected violations.

    Under the proposal, anyone involved in facilitating a real estate transaction—such as mortgage lenders, title insurance companies, property insurers, appraisers, and licensed real estate professionals—would be required to report any suspected SB 17 violations to the attorney general.

    Complaints would have to be submitted either through an online complaint form on the OAG’s website or by mail to a designated address. Failure to report may subject entities to enforcement action once the rules are in place, potentially deputizing the real estate industry to help police foreign adversary land deals.

    The rules would also place a tight lid on information that reaches Paxton’s office.

    All complaints, civil investigative demands, and related materials submitted to or issued by the OAG would be treated as confidential and not subject to public disclosure, except when disclosure is required by law. That means Texans may see enforcement actions and lawsuits, but not necessarily the complaints and background investigation files that triggered them.

  • “Seniors who eat more meat have lower risk of developing dementia.” Between this and the caffeine news, I’m evidently going to live forever…
  • Wither Canada? “The 177,000 signature threshold has now been passed, officially clearing the requirement for an Alberta independence referendum on October 19th.”
  • John Cleese: “The British do not like the kind of diversity that intends to take over Britain and kill any infidel who does not convert to Islam.”
  • “Apple pulls the plug on its high-priced, oft-neglected Mac Pro desktop.”
  • Some TVs now require a Walmart account for all smart features to work.
  • Microsoft screws up a Windows 11 update yet again, pulling it after users encounter install errors.
  • Weirdly, Microsoft is also saying that “Microsoft says Copilot is for entertainment purposes only, not serious use — firm pushing AI hard to consumers and businesses tells users not to rely on it for important advice.” Which is ironic, since right now its website touts Copilot as “AI built for work.”
  • Stephen Green: And the first piece of software to break on the moon mission? Microsoft Outlook.
  • And speaking of Microsoft woes, “Microsoft closes worst quarter on Wall Street since 2008 on AI concerns.”
  • Speaking of AI follies, “Anthropic on Tuesday confirmed that internal code for its popular artificial intelligence (AI) coding assistant, Claude Code, had been inadvertently released due to a human error.” Oh sure, Clankers, blame the humans…
  • Bad actors in the job market.
  • Speaking of bad actors in the job market: “Outrage as Oracle makes thousands of foreign-worker requests amid layoff bloodbath.”

    As thousands of Oracle employees awoke on Tuesday to an email informing them they were being laid off, the workers likely didn’t know the tech company had been busy trying to hire foreign staff.

    According to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services data, Oracle filed for roughly 3,126 petitions to employ H-1B workers in fiscal years 2025 and 2026. Employers must submit the paperwork when seeking to hire foreign workers in specialty occupations like technology. Some 436 of those petitions were filed this year alone.

    Amazon, which in January said it would axe 16,000 corporate employees, has filed for some 2,675 H-1B petitions during the same two-year fiscal period. That came on top of news in October that the retail giant was axing 14,000 corporate workers.

  • What’s the best gun for a militia? No surprise that three different gun experts (including Ian McCollum) all pick the AK-47.
  • Bush Intercontinental Airport’s $4 billion expansion project.
  • Critical Drinker finally watches Mr. Inbetween, and really likes it. It’s been on my radar for a while, but there doesn’t seem to be a US DVD or Blu-Ray release of it, and I don’t have any streaming service. 
  • Talk about narrow-cast April 1st humor: The Chieftain reviews Warhammer 40K vehicles.
  • “Trump Begins Negotiating With Iranian Leadership Via Ouija Board.”
  • “49 States Enact Legislation Banning Immigrants From California.”
  • “‘Good News, You’re Finally Useful,’ Says Trump As He Sends Aquaman To Strait Of Hormuz.”
  • “‘AI Will Kill Us All! We’re Doomed! DOOMED!‘ Says AI Company CEO In Latest Pitch To Investors.”
  • “Get in mah belly!” “I’m not dead yet!”

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

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





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    Posted in Border Control, Communism, Crime, Democrats, Elections, Foreign Policy, Guns, Jihad, Military, Social Justice Warriors, Supreme Court, Technology, Texas, Waste and Fraud, Welfare State | 7 Comments »

    CVLT Member Pleads Guilty To Horrific Crimes

    Wednesday, April 1st, 2026

    Remember that roundup of Satanic tranny deathcults, the ones so evil they sound like lurid creations out of 1970s horror paperbacks? This week brings a follow-up in the form of a member of CVLT pleading guilty to horrific crimes.

    A Texas man has pleaded guilty to his participation in an expansive child sexual abuse network, after being named in a federal indictment while already serving out a sentence for child rape.

    Twenty-six-year-old Kaleb Christopher Merritt from Spring pleaded guilty to a count regarding his involvement from 2019 to 2022 in CVLT, pronounced “cult,” which operates digitally to seduce children into creating sexual content — specifically, child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and sadistic material.

    The organization’s methods include exposing minors, particularly young girls, to ideologies such as “neo-Nazism, nihilism, pedophilia, and anarchy,” the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) alleged, then manipulating the children through various methods to produce CSAM.

    Per an article published by Dr. Marc-Andre Argentino, Senior Research Advisor for Public Safety Canada’s Canada Centre for Community Engagement and Prevention of Violence, CVLT first began on the Kik Messenger platform and later expanded to Instagram, Discord, and Telegram. Merritt, known as “eTerror” or “o9a.evil” online, was described as having risen to the rank of an administrator.

    The DOJ alleged that the “purpose of CVLT’s child exploitation” was to establish “an army of sadist followers.”

    “CVLT espoused neo-Nazism, nihilism, and pedophilia as its core principles, among others, and exposed children to material depicting and promoting these principles.”

    The child victims were allegedly exposed to “bondage, discipline, sadist, and masochistic (BDSM) and gore CSAM.”

    Multiple other defendants, who were also in leadership roles within CVLT, have already pleaded guilty and remain in federal custody as they await their final sentencing.

    “At least” five minors combined are believed to have been harmed by Merritt and other CVLT members.

    Hell is too good for them.

    Consider this a warning that there are some real sickos out there out and about in the real world, as well as online. Keep a close eye on your kids and what they do to keep them from falling into some sicko’s clutches.

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    Posted in Crime, Texas | No Comments »

    Epic Stupidity (Or, Another Nail In EPIC City’s Coffin)

    Tuesday, March 31st, 2026

    Last week brought two developments in the EPIC City saga of attempts to build an “sharia city” west of Dallas. They were touched on in Friday’s LinkSwarm, but I’m going to recap them here as well, since they set the stage for today’s news.

    First: “Judge Freezes Utility District Tied to Islamic EPIC City Development.”

    Attorney General Ken Paxton has obtained a court order halting actions by an EPIC City-linked municipal utility district.

    The case centers on allegations that the Double R Municipal Utility District No. 2A has been used to advance a controversial development project organized by the East Plano Islamic Center by skirting state oversight and standard MUD-creation procedures. The project, originally known as EPIC City, has been rebranded as the Meadow.

    Judge Christine Nowak’s order blocks the district and its board from taking further steps to support the development while the litigation continues.

    The state’s lawsuit focuses on a 2025 special meeting where the Double R MUD board allegedly resigned en masse, installed new directors at a remote roadside location identified only by GPS coordinates, and then quickly voted to annex more than 400 acres tied to the EPIC project.

    We covered that bit of shady MUD shenanigans here.

    State lawyers say that maneuver effectively transformed the MUD into a vehicle for EPIC City’s backers, allowing them to expand taxing authority and infrastructure support without going through the process of forming a new district.

    After the annexation, regulators requested documents to confirm that the new board members met legal requirements to hold public office and levy taxes on residents inside the district.

    According to the suit, records submitted by Double R MUD showed the individuals did not meet statutory qualifications—a finding the attorney general’s office said casts doubt on every action the board took, including the EPIC City annexation.

    The state is asking the court to remove the disputed board members, unwind the 402.5-acre annexation tied to EPIC City, and restore what Paxton describes as lawful governance of the utility district.

    And then Hunt County rejected the plan.

    Hunt County officials unanimously rejected plans for a controversial Muslim community originally known as EPIC City and rebranded as The Meadow, citing technical, regulatory, and legal deficiencies in the plat application.

    Other than that, I’m sure it was fine…

    During a meeting on Tuesday, Hunt County commissioners adopted a resolution “disapproving” the plat application submitted by developers of the subdivision, which was planned as an expansion of the East Plano Islamic Center (EPIC).

    Plans include up to 1,000 residences plus a mosque, school, and other amenities catering to Muslim families, located on more than 400 acres in unincorporated areas of Hunt and Collin counties.

    Residents in both counties—and across Texas—have objected to communities like the proposed EPIC development, which Gov. Greg Abbott and other elected officials have referred to as “sharia cities.”

    In addition, Attorney General Ken Paxton sent letters urging Collin and Hunt officials to reject EPIC’s plat applications while he sues the developers and related entities over alleged fraudulent activities surrounding the project.

    Now comes news that another court order has blocked the utility district hard:

    A state court judge in Collin County has temporarily blocked further actions by a utility district slated to service the controversial planned community known as EPIC City or The Meadow.

    The court previously issued a temporary restraining order against the Double R Municipal Utility District No. 2A of Hunt and Collin Counties, which the state says appointed ineligible directors who then annexed the proposed Islamic development into the MUD.

    Annexation into an existing MUD allowed developers to skirt new state regulations surrounding the creation of new utility districts.

    On Monday, Judge Christine Nowak of the 493rd District Court in Collin County granted the state’s request for a temporary injunction after all parties agreed that the MUD’s current directors are not eligible to serve.

    The question now is who will make decisions on behalf of the utility district going forward, and how that will affect the EPIC development.

    “The state is just asking for a pause until we can figure out what’s going on,” Wesley Williams with the Texas attorney general’s office told Judge Nowak. “There’s a lot of secrecy surrounding this board.”

    Texas Water Code authorizes the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) to oversee MUDs, which are special districts granted power to issue bonds and levy property taxes for the purpose of providing water, wastewater, and other services to subdivisions in unincorporated areas of the state.

    Snip.

    Preliminary development applications have been rejected by Collin and Hunt officials for being incomplete. In both cases, EPIC developers’ submissions included “will serve” letters from Double R.

    Such letters are required commitments from service providers that ensure proposed developments will be successful, Collin County’s Director of Engineering Clarence Daugherty testified Monday.

    It was Daugherty who notified TCEQ that newly appointed Double R MUD directors might not be eligible, after his office reviewed EPIC’s initial application submitted late last year.

    He testified that subsequent filings have continued to include Double R MUD as a service provider.

    Due to the acknowledged ineligibility of the MUD’s current directors, the validity of those service commitments is now in question, which may delay development approvals needed for the EPIC City project to proceed.

    “Delay” or completely destroy.

    Williams explained to the court that the state’s Water Code establishes eligibility requirements for MUD directors.

    Five new Double R directors—Yaneli Molina, Hatim Mahmoud Yusuf, Nadeem Ashraf Khan, Asim Hussain Khan, and Faisal Abbas—were purportedly appointed during a September 12, 2025, meeting in which the previous board members resigned.

    What do you think the odds are that particular slate wins an actual MUD election in exurban/rural Texas?

    Molina’s attorney said Monday his client had resigned on March 19, and she signed an agreement in court to abide by the terms of the injunction.

    Williams argued that none of the new directors met the eligibility requirements and concluded they thus had no authority to accept the resignations of the previous directors or to approve annexing the EPIC City property into the utility district.

    I’m going to guess that none of those “directors” actually live within the boundaries of the MUD.

    He asked the court to “freeze the status quo to just prior to the September 12 meeting.”

    The order granting a temporary injunction states that “Double R MUD shall immediately cease all operations and activities until such time qualified directors are appointed by the TCEQ pursuant to Texas Water Code 49.105(c).”

    TCEQ Districts Section Manager Justin Taack testified Monday that MUD board vacancies can be filled by the board or by his agency.

    Defense attorney Jerry Hall with Mayer LLP said he agreed his three clients, Abbas and the Kahns, were not eligible to serve as Double R MUD directors.

    Sounds like pretty much everything about that shady midnight MUD board switch was illegal, wasn’t it?

    There are probably times and places you could probably have gotten away with pulling a fast one for a land development deal in Texas, especially if people weren’t paying attention and/or a powerful, well-connected figure wanted the deal to go through. H. Ross Perot Jr. sort of got away with pulling several fast ones in his late 80s-early 90s “Perotville” development north of Fort Worth. The arcana of plats, MUD boards and regulatory filings are very far indeed from the consciousness of most Texans.

    But there’s a big difference between getting away with a little land deal hanky panky when you’ve got billions backing you and few people are paying attention, and trying to pull a fast one when the very highest levels of state government, including the Governor and Attorney General, have put your illegal “Sharia City” idea in their crosshairs. (And they had the bad luck of their deal coming to light after the Colony Ridge fiasco raised awareness of questionable land developments run by shady operatives.)

    Trying to pull a fast one when every local and state regulatory agency already has you under a microscope is simply epic stupidity. If the people running the East Plano Islamic Center had simply cooled their heels and bided their time, dotted the Is and crossed the Ts on every part of their regulatory paperwork, and sworn up and down that, no sir, we’re not illegally limiting our highly speculative land development to Muslims, they might eventually have gotten the thing across the finish line.

    Now they’ll be lucky if some of them don’t end up in prison.

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    Posted in Crime, Jihad, Regulation, Texas | 3 Comments »

    Followup: Fort Bend Democrat KP George Convicted Of Money Laundering

    Sunday, March 29th, 2026

    Remember KP George, the Fort Bend county judge who previously faked hate crimes against himself and was indicted for using campaign funds for personal finances? He just got convicted of money laundering.

    Last week, a jury found George guilty on felony counts of money laundering and tampering with his campaign finance reports, but his sentencing will not take place until June 16, leaving his status as the chief executive officer of Fort Bend County in limbo.

    I’m reversing the first and second paragraphs here to better tell the story.

    Following the felony conviction of Fort Bend County Judge KP George, the county commissioners court re-assigned the judge’s signing authority and voted to designate Commissioner Grady Prestage (D-Pct. 2) as the presiding officer should George be found ineligible to serve.

    County officials convicted of a felony must be removed from office under Texas Law, but the charges are not final until sentencing.

    Gov. Greg Abbott’s office has notified the county auditor that 27 state grants — which include funds for a victim services program, law enforcement, and cybersecurity — have been paused since George’s authority to serve as the official signing agent for the county is uncertain.

    “PSO has 27 active grant awards with Fort Bend County. Upon acceptance of those awards, Fort Bend County agreed to ‘immediately notify the Office of the Governor (OOG) in writing if a project or project personnel become involved in any litigation, whether civil or criminal,’ and ‘immediately forward a copy of any demand, notices, subpoenas, lawsuits, or indictments to OOG,’” wrote the governor’s office. “The OOG has identified Judge KP George as the current Authorized Official on all 27 active awards.”

    The OOG also requested verification that none of the grant funds awarded to Fort Bend County were “involved in criminal acts.”

    George did not attend the regular commissioners court meeting Thursday, but all four county commissioners voted to designate Prestage as authorized the county’s signing agent.

    The court also voted unanimously to order the county’s auditor to conduct a financial review and “investigate, identify, research, and provide the Commissioner Court any exposures or risks that said events surrounding the county judge have exposed or potentially exposed the county.”

    You never know what other hanky panky a crooked man might get up to, so a thorough audit is probably in order.

    Both Commissioners Vincent Morales (R-Pct. 1) and Dexter McCoy (D-Pct. 4) have called for George to resign.

    Snip. “If his conviction stands, George could face up to 20 years in prison.” The hate crime hoax charges are still pending.

    Whenever Democrats get their hands on taxpayer money, they just can’t seem to keep themselves from handing out grants to hard left NGOs to launder the money into Democrat pockets. I wonder if George is the same, or if the presence of Republicans in county government thwarted his sticky fingers from penetrating more taxpayer pies…

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    Posted in Crime, Democrats, Texas | 1 Comment »

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