It seems like just yesterday (because it was) we were reporting that Democrats were trying to push Rep. Eric Swalwell out of the California Governor’s race to clear the way for Katie Porter by coordinated accusations that he was a sexual predator, up to and including rape. Then, before the day was done, he announced he was dropping out of the race to clear his name, much like O.J. Simpson looking for the “real killer.”
Representative Eric Swalwell (D., Calif.) on Monday announced his resignation from Congress after four women, including a former staffer, came forward with sexual misconduct allegations against him.
After the San Francisco Chronicle revealed Friday that a former staffer had come forward with allegations that Swalwell sexually assaulted her on two occasions while she was intoxicated, CNN contributed accounts from three other women who accused the representative of sexual misconduct, including sending them unsolicited explicit messages or nude photos.
The backlash was swift — he lost all 21 of the endorsements he had received from fellow Democratic members of Congress; GOP Representative Anna Paulina Luna said she would move to expel him from Congress; and the House Ethics Committee and Manhattan District Attorney’s Office are investigating allegations against him. He was left with no choice but to suspend his campaign for California governor. He was largely considered the frontrunner in a wide-open race to replace term-limited Governor Gavin Newsom.
Self-fluffing blather snipped.
He did not say when exactly he would exit Congress. With Swalwell’s resignation, California Governor Gavin Newsom can decide whether to call a special election this close to an already scheduled election. The state’s primary is on June 2. Swalwell was no running for reelection because of his now-shuttered campaign for governor.
In a congress full of sleazeballs and scumbags, Swalwell was somehow among the sleaziest and scummiest. And that was before we found out he should probably be on the sex offender registry. Whoever replaces him in congress will likely be a far left social justice whackjob, but will still be less slimy and repugnant than Swalwell.
Everyone by now has seen the claims that Rep. Eric Swalwell sexually harassed women and allegedly raped at least one of them.
Did he do it? I’m not going to pretend to be really surprised if he did it. Looking at a picture of Swalwell or watching him speak, he would probably be voted ‘Most Likely to Commit Drunken Rape’.
According to Steven Tavares of East Bay Insider, this was known all along…
I’ve covered Eric Swawell since he was a member of the Dublin City Council. Shortly after being elected to Congress in 2013, his behavior towards women was known by all levels of our local government and the Alameda County Democratic Party.
Good thing we were all told about it back in 2013 wasn’t it?
You would think that sexual assault allegations against a sitting U.S. congressmen would have engendered investigation from the press. But that assume the press is somehow separate from the Democratic Media Complex rather than a part of it.
But the alleged rape happened in 2024. It wasn’t reported and no one had a problem with Swalwell until he became the gubernatorial frontrunner in California. Some have pointed out that the allegations appear to have originated with political allies of former Rep. Katie Porter whose unlikability and unelectability run side by side, but who has a mean streak almost as wide as… well her.
There are two basic possibilities here.
1. Former Rep Porter’s allies are setting Swalwell up
2. Swalwell did it, but some of those same allies sat on this information until it was politically useful, creating a firestorm and manufacturing a demand for a female candidate. (Even though Porter is notorious for mistreating female staffers.)
As Greenfield points out, “When allegations emerge just in time to sideline a candidate, it doesn’t mean the party takes sexual harassment seriously. It means it covers up sexual harassment and even sexual assault until it’s politically useful.”
Here’s a Twitter/X user who makes the case that the allegations against Swalwell have been ginned up:
How ruthlessly effective is the Democrat machine?
Eric Swalwell is asked to drop out of the race because a Republicans may actually win.
He refuses.
Party operatives tap into their pool of white liberal feminists and just like that, he's hit with not one…not two, but FOUR…
— Pro-America | Politics & Markets (@Pro__Trading) April 11, 2026
How ruthlessly effective is the Democrat machine?
Eric Swalwell is asked to drop out of the race because a Republicans may actually win.
He refuses.
Party operatives tap into their pool of white liberal feminists and just like that, he’s hit with not one…not two, but FOUR sexual assault accusations.
Of course, none of the victims can remember any details, just that it happened. The exact Blasey-Ford and E. Jean Carrol playbook.
Within an hour, the victim is being interviewed on @CNN
.
The email goes out.
Almost immediately, the teacher’s union is condemning him and Schumer, Pelosi, Jeffries and every other Democrat on Twitter is calling for him to drop out of the race.
Keep in mind, when Tara Reade accused Biden of forcibly sexually abusing her, they called her a liar and nobody called for him to drop out.
This is all a coordinated attack because they’ve seen the internal polling that Steve Hilton may actually win this thing and they are sacrificing Swalwell because liberal idiots like him are a dime a dozen.
I suppose there’s a middle ground, where Swalwell (who’s been married to his second wife since 2016) did send out dick picks in addition to banging a foreign spy, but didn’t actually get all rapey.
A bigger question is why Democrat insiders have decided that Swalwell needs to drop out to help the chances of this woman:
Why not force Lumpy Gravy Batgirl to drop out instead? She’s already a one-time statewide race loser, have come in a distant 3rd behind Adam Schiff and Steve Garvey in the 2024 California senate race. Most polls have Porter running fifth in the race, behind Swalwell, Republicans Chad Bianco and Steve Hilton, and another 2020 Democrat presidential also-ran in Tom Steyer. But they can’t force Steyer to drop out, because he’s a billionaire.
Are those social justice intersectionality points just that much better for a white woman than a white man? Or do they think Porter will do a better job of keeping the welfare state fraud train running?
Update: And Swalwell’s out, but will allegedly still fight to “clear his name.” Somehow, I expect the accusations to magically go away without Smallwang having to resign his House seat…
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.”
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…
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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…
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.)
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.
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’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.
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.”
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 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.
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.
More proof of widespread Biden Administration abuse and fraud uncovered, more news from the Iran war, the Trump Administration fights welfare fraud, LA displays both welfare and voting fraud, more lefty sorts stealing funds to feather their own nests, Muslim EPIC City development runs into more roadblocks, and some weird video game news.
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Thanks for everyone who contributed to the Pay For Buddy’s Vet Bill Fund. He’s already doing so much better that you can’t tell he was hurt, though some of that is probably the pain pills.
Newly released records in the Senate investigation into the weaponization of government raise questions about whether the FBI went on a fishing expedition targeting Trump advisors who were never charged with crimes and whether Special Counsel Jack Smith’s prior testimony to Congress was truthful.
The documents were made public by Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, before a Senate Judiciary Committee subcommittee hearing into alleged abuses by the Biden-era FBI and Justice Department in their investigations into then ex-president Donald Trump before and during the 2024 presidential election during its probe code-named “Arctic Frost.” Just the News previously reported that Biden’s FBI paid anti-Trump ‘Sedition Hunters’ as informants in the Arctic Frost probes.
“If Watergate taught us anything, it is that even a single abuse of power carried out by a handful of individuals can shake the foundations of our Republic,” said Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Tex., Chairman of the Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Federal Courts, Oversight, Agency Action, and Federal Rights.
“What we confront today, the Biden administration’s Arctic Frost scheme, is not a single act,” he continued in his opening remarks. “It is a modern Watergate trading a break-in at one office for a digital sweep into approximately 100,000 private communications, more than a dozen senators and 1000s of individuals lives.”
Cruz said that ultimately, “just like Watergate,” the judges, FBI and Justice Department officials involved should be “investigated, tried, impeached, and brought to justice.”
The scope of Smith’s probe, which centered on Trump’s challenge to the 2020 election results and the events of January 6, 2021, was truly expansive. Grassley previously released records showing that Smith’s office issued nearly 200 subpoenas in his sweeping Arctic Frost-linked case, secretly seeking records on more than 400 Republican personalities and groups. This included more than 160 Republicans–many closely connected to Trump.
The Arctic Frost was one of four separate probes that targeted Trump and his allies stretching from summer 2016 to January 2025. The other probes were code-named Crossfire Hurricane, Round River, and Plasmic Echo, Just the News reported earlier this month.
As FBI Director, Patel has personally led the effort to review those probes, uncovering evidence of a far-reaching dragnet that in some cases may have been predicated on false, misleading or uncorroborated justifications, officials previously told Just the News.
The newly-disclosed records show that the FBI ordered two sweeping subpoenas of FBI Director Kash Patel’s phone records, while he was a private citizen in Trump’s orbit. Each subpoena covered an approximately two-year time frame.
The FBI’s requests for information included demands for highly personal data of Patel’s, including Patel’s addresses (“mailing addresses, residential addresses, business addresses, and e-mail addresses”), a “call detail record” which lists inbound and outbound calls, text messages and voicemail messages, as well as sources of payment for the phone service, including credit card and bank account numbers. The FBI also demanded expansive internet session data including exact IP addresses, the document shows.
The FBI also sought–and was granted–non-disclosure orders (NDOs) from federal judges, shielding the existence of the subpoenas from Patel and his lawyers on the grounds that revealing them could result in his “flight from prosecution, destruction of or tampering with evidence, intimidation of potential witnesses and serious jeopardy to the investigation.”
Susie Wiles, Donald Trump’s then campaign manager and future chief of staff, was also targeted in the probe. The Biden-era FBI reportedly even went so far as to record a private phone call between Wiles and her lawyer in 2023 while she was actively managing the campaign of President Joe Biden’s chief political rival, according to Reuters.
U.S. intelligence intercepted Ukrainian government communications discussing a plot to route hundreds of millions of American tax dollars earmarked for clean energy in the war-torn country and move them to the United States to enrich then-President Joe Biden’s 2024 re-election campaign and the Democratic National Committee, according to a declassified intelligence report summarizing the intercepts that was obtained by Just the News….
‘The Ukrainian Government and unspecified U.S. Government personnel, through USAID in Kyiv, reportedly developed a plan that would provide hundreds of millions of US taxpayer dollars to fund an infrastructure project for Ukraine that would be used as a cover to send approximately 90% of funds allocated to the DNC to fund Joe Biden’s reelection campaign,’ the declassified summary of the intercepts stated.
Every American involved in the scheme should be prosecuted. Still doesn’t justify taking Russia’s side in their illegal war of territorial aggression.
Long overdue: “Trump Administration Launches Whole-of-Government Effort to Fight Welfare Fraud.”
Vice President JD Vance and Federal Trade Chairman Andrew Ferguson convened members of the administration’s newly created anti-fraud task force on Friday to lay out the administration’s hopes for rooting out fraud in public programs across the country.
Established by President Trump via executive order earlier this month, the task force includes newly confirmed fraud-focused Assistant Attorney General Colin McDonald and spans multiple government agencies tasked with implementing new fraud detection and reporting protocols, investigating Biden-era policies regarding fraud prevention, proposing new legislative and regulatory tools to combat fraud, and prosecuting illegal behavior when necessary to recover as much in improperly obtained funds as possible.
According to a task force memo authored by Vance and Ferguson and shared with National Review, the White House will focus primarily on high-spend, low-verification programs that “pay out large sums of money with low confidence or limited information about the ultimate recipients and uses of those funds.” Key programs that fall into this category include benefits administered through Medicare, Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and Small Business Administration loans.
The task force divides fraud into four main categories, according to the memo. The first category is so-called “ghost” billing where there is no real beneficiary and no real service provided, a prime example being a fake business that applied for Paycheck Protection Program relief during the Covid-19 pandemic. The second category are low-quality services provided to real beneficiaries, such as substandard medical care provided to elderly patients at nursing homes or memory-care facilities.
The third category is “upcoding” or “overbilling,” where fraudsters hand patients manipulated bills. “When hospitals commit fraud, for example, there are often real patients receiving necessary hospitalizations but with exaggerated diagnoses purporting to justify more expensive services than the patient actually needed or received,” the memo reads.
And the final category outlined by the task force is “necessity” fraud, where a real service is provided to an unqualified beneficiary. “Medicare fraud, for example, often involves real doctors giving real people treatments they don’t need, such as a person who can walk getting a wheelchair or a patient getting a lab test they don’t need,” the memo adds.
During a brief news conference on Friday, the vice president spotlighted egregious practices by autism daycare programs in Minnesota, where earlier this month one defendant, a Somali man named Abdinajib Yussuf, pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud in a $6 million Medicaid reimbursement scheme.
“The first tragedy is that you have people who pay into the federal government, who pay into the IRS, who pay their taxes, expecting that those taxes will go to help their fellow citizens, and it’s not going to. It’s going to help fraudsters,” Vance said in remarks to the press before leading a closed-door strategy meeting with cabinet members and other senior administration officials working on the effort.
And the more important tragedy is that you have families who need these services who are unable to get them because people are getting rich off of fraud schemes, instead of making sure that autistic children and their families get access to these resources,” he added.
The task force has already cracked down on blue states and cities like Los Angeles, where the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid recently suspended 70 home-health providers and hospice centers identified as high-risk fraudulent medical programs.
Another target is also Minnesota, where federally funded nutrition-assistance fraud and state-agency-related mismanagement ran rampant during Democratic Governor Tim Walz’s tenure while somehow failing to disqualify him from Vice President Kamala Harris’s running-mate shortlist. The White House paused $259 million in federal Medicaid payments to Minnesota earlier this month as part of the administration’s response to the state’s baffling degree of fraud.
Over the coming months, task force members are also looking to highlight lax verification protocols at the state level that amplify this problem, particularly in states run by Democrats.
“I think that most citizens probably assume that there’s some verification process that takes place for the receipt of most federal benefits,” said White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller. “The reality is that there is not. This is particularly true in blue states — willfully true in blue states in which all of these programs are operating entirely on the honor system, no verification takes place before individuals are enrolled in or receive these benefits.”
“Vance’s Anti-Fraud Task Force Suspends 70 Hospices in Los Angeles. The Senate also confirmed federal prosecutor Colin McDonald to lead the DOJ’s anti-fraud division.”
Yesterday the Telegraph told us about a “sinister new power” pulling the strings in Iran: “Ahmad Vahidi is the key cog in the regime’s chain of command.”
Unlike [Mohammad Bagher] Ghalibaf, Vahidi has remained in the shadows since the war. This is not without reason: our analysis suggests he is likely to be operating as the key cog in the regime’s chain of command and his survival is essential to its continuity. Long before the war, Ali Khamenei had entrusted Vahidi to draw up plans to further militarise the regime. If he outlasts this conflict and the regime survives, he will finally be able to implement this vision – a design that will produce a far more radical and extremist Islamic Republic.
Vahidi has unmatched experience and influence across the regime’s military, intelligence, and bureaucracy. His career began in the 1980s in the IRGC’s Intelligence Bureau, made up of the regime’s most ideologically loyal operatives. As the IRGC’s deputy for intelligence, he was hand-picked to join a secretive cohort to accompany Khamenei to visit North Korea – a trip designed to acquire missile and nuclear technology.
During the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988), Vahidi was also one of the original members of the Ramadan Headquarters, a unit within the IRGC created to form Islamist terrorist groups globally and overseen by Khamenei.
Upon assuming the supreme leadership in 1989, Khamenei created the notorious Quds Force – the IRGC’s extraterritorial terror branch – and appointed Vahidi as its first commander. It was a testament to his loyalty. Vahidi demonstrated in that role that his vision to export terrorism was far more global than his notorious successor Qasem Soleimani.
Under Vahidi’s command, the IRGC orchestrated the bombing of a Jewish cultural centre in Argentina in 1994, the 1996 Khobar Towers attack in Saudi Arabia, and secretly dispatched operatives to Europe to train Islamist Mujahideen – including members of al-Qaeda – during the Bosnian war. This résumé would earn him a spot on Interpol’s wanted list in 2007.
Today:
🚨🇮🇷BREAKING: General Ahmad Vahidi who was appointed as commander-in-chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) on March 1, 2026, reporadaly has been ELIMINATED in U. S. & Israel strikes. pic.twitter.com/7wuxWVRV6X
US signals to allies no ground invasion coming, with thousands of troops still en route: Iran denies requesting Donald Trump’s 10-day halt; Israel attacks steel & industrial sites. Also, Khondab Heavy Water Research Reactor, part of the Arak Nuclear Complex, targeted. Yellow Cake factory in Yazd province hit.
Escalation on all fronts: IRGC HQ targeted by US-Israsel; Iran signals expansion by naming UAE targets, hitting Kuwait ports and sending drones on Riyadh. Iran newly warning it will hit Gulf industry.
Rubio tells G7 foreign ministers war will continue for another 2-4 weeks.
Israel doubles down amid reports of manpower strain: IDF chief warns of manpower pressure even as Defense Minister Katz vows to “intensify and expand” strikes.
Risk rises that Iran is holding back more advanced missiles for a prolonged war: WSJ writes “The US and Israel are pounding Iran’s missile-launching sites… But Tehran’s missiles keep flying.”
The last seems tinged with ZeroHedge’s usual Iran war pessimism. Ever fewer missiles have been flying as time goes on, and the places they’re manufactured have been hammered.
“Iranian Atomic Energy Organization: US and Israeli airstrikes target uranium processing plant.” Good. Bomb every nuclear-related facility twice-over, then make the rubble bounce.
A special House Ethics Committee found Representative Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick guilty of 25 total ethics violations, after a three-year investigation into allegations that the Florida Democrat stole millions in federal relief funds.
Following a seven-hour televised trial, members deliberated through the night before voting, finding Cherfilus-McCormick guilty of almost all the charges against her — 25 of the 27.
“I’m as pure as the driven snow!” denials snipped.
In November, a federal grand jury indicted Cherfilus-McCormick, alleging she stole $5 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Cherfilus-McCormick’s family operates a health care company, Trinity Healthcare Services, and received FEMA funds for a Covid vaccination contract.
According to the DOJ, the $5 million payment was an overpayment, and the congresswoman and her brother never paid back the funds to the government. Rather, the pair funneled the funds through various accounts and used the money to back Cherfilus-McCormick’s 2022 special election campaign, which she ultimately won.
Snip.
Cherfilus-McCormick and her siblings “funneled more than $500,000 originating from Trinity into various outside organizations that made expenditures on behalf of the campaign,” Sydney Bellwoar, the committee’s lawyer, said.
Further, Bellwoar said “the most egregious example” was when Cherfilus-McCormick received $2 million directly from Trinity Health into her campaign in July 2021, to forge the appearance of a robust campaign infrastructure.
Seize everything she owns to pay back and sentence her to extended prison time.
Sen Rand Paul offers up a simple, elegant solution that Democrats will fight tooth and claw against:
DataRepublican says that John Thune is trying to pull a sneaky maneuver to kill the SAVE Act.
Hello Senator Thune,
Let’s expose what you’re really doing with “reconciliation.”
You announced it yesterday, eleven months after the House passed the SAVE America Act. You’re not trying to pass this bill. You’re trying to kill it in a way you can blame on process.
Here’s how we know:
Reconciliation requires the Senate parliamentarian to rule that provisions are “budgetary.” Citizenship verification is not budgetary. Photo ID mandates are not budgetary. The parliamentarian will gut the bill. Then you’ll shrug and say “we tried.” We see through you.
Meanwhile, you WON’T use the tools that actually work:
Rule XIX limits each senator to two speeches per legislative day. Keep the Senate in continuous session, file cloture daily, and the filibuster exhausts in ~12-20 days. You dismissed it as “complicated.” Because if you tried and succeeded, you’d have to actually pass the bill.
Harry Reid nuked the filibuster in 2013 when he wanted results.
Mitch McConnell changed Senate rules THREE times and canceled the August recess.
Chuck Schumer used reconciliation within months on a 50-50 Senate.
You have 53 seats. You’ve changed nothing, canceled nothing, and waited eleven months.
Now let’s talk donors:
• Goldman Sachs: $150K to you – top H-1B user
• Google: $75K – lobbies against E-Verify
• Meta: $72.5K – Zuckerberg’s FWD[.]us pushes mass immigration
• Wells Fargo: $90K – banks undocumented immigrants
Same corporations sponsor Punchbowl News, where you sit for “Fly Out Days” which nobody watches except Congress staffers and K Street lobbyists who pays premium bucks for legislative intelligence. Their reporter then telegraphs to the audience the SAVE Act “will ultimately fail.”
Corporate money flows to you AND to the outlet that frames your inaction as inevitable.
We see the loop.
You called grassroots anger a “paid influencer ecosystem.” YOU are the paid influencer. You take the wrong side of a 80% issue because you are indistinguishable from a K Street mouthpiece, and an ineffective one to boot who won’t bend the rules to get anything passed.
What we want:
1. Force a real talking filibuster.
2. Stop hiding behind process.
3. Pass the SAVE America Act.
YOU will become the reason that we will have our butts kicked in midterms. Not Candace Owens, not Nick Fuentes, not anyone else. You and you alone, and all because you want to make the 200 or so viewers of Punchbowl Fly Out Days happy. You’re living in a K Street information bubble, addicted to the comforts and praises of lobbyists masquerading as journalists. You mistake the steak and martini dinners you get invited to as your own constituents.
You are not “moderate.” The SAVE America Act has 98% support among Republicans. Name one other thing that has 98% support. You are an extreme minority who prides himself on being a calm leader, when in reality you are well in the running for the most ineffective Majority leader of all time.
Prove me wrong. Do the bare modicum of effort. Not symbolic. Actual effort. Cancel the recess. Get SAVE America Act passed.
Paid activists in Los Angeles, California, have been caught on hidden camera paying homeless people on skid row to forge signatures of registered voters on ballot initiatives.
O’Keefe Media Group (OMG) released part Two of its undercover investigation into the Democrats’ blatant election fraud operation in L.A. on Tuesday.
California’s Republican gubernatorial frontrunner Steve Hilton commented on X: “They paid homeless people cash and drugs on Skid Row to forge your signature. Your name. Your vote. Stolen by a crackhead with a clipboard — while Gavin Newsom looked the other way.”
Hilton added: “This isn’t a conspiracy theory. It’s on tape. And not one Democrat is outraged. That’s because THEY DID IT ON PURPOSE.”
Part One showed petitioners offering cash to homeless people and drug addicts for their signatures. The shocking new video shows the activists, armed with printed lists of voter names and addresses, taking the scheme to another level.
“Fraudulent petitioners on Skid Row are now paying the homeless people to forge names, forge addresses and forge signatures of registered voters,” O’Keefe says at the beginning of Part Two.
Rather than registering the Skid Row denizens to vote, activists gave them $2–$3 in cash to commit forgery and election fraud in what OMG called “a coordinated system.”
O’Keefe stated that the operation was observed on nearly every street corner in downtown Los Angeles.
“The scheme appeared to be present in whatever direction we walked,” he noted.
The goal of the operation, according to OMG, is to “ensure the information matches official records so he signature passes verification.”
The workers handed out post-it notes with the names of a single voter written on them to each of the homeless dupes.
Lots of “activists” need to go to prison.
“‘Not a done deal‘: Democrats start to sweat over Virginia’s redistricting referendum. The unique nature of the April special election and the state’s recent redistricting history have presented challenges for Democrats, even as they hold a financial edge in the race.” “Some supporters of the Virginia referendum acknowledge the challenge of convincing voters to back a gerrymandered map when Democrats, who several years ago backed the formation of the state’s bipartisan redistricting commission, have criticized Republicans for similar moves.” Ya think? (Hat tip: Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit.)
Democrats have been hyping their wins in very specialized races. And the Left has been declaring that it’s going to finish devouring and digesting the Democrats.
On paper, it should be looking good. The public is dissatisfied. The Left’s program of socialism disguised as economic populism and antisemitism disguised as anti-Zionism should be selling. Except the Illinois wipeout suggests it’s not.
Again, on paper Obamaville, where the dead vote and the unions run everything, should have been a good choice. Plenty of leftists have been elected here. And the Democrat primaries in many urban areas are virtually owned by the Left.
But 6 potential Squaddies, including two Muslim candidates, lost Democrat congressional primary races.
The media and the Left (but I repeat myself) are blaming AIPAC and the newly combative pro-Israel lobby, which sees itself being NRA’d out of the Democrats, is happy to take credit, but its results were mostly mixed.
So what does explain the Left taking a beating in primaries it should have been able to dominate?
Despite all the anti-ICE hysteria, radicalism fatigue may be setting in. Enough Democrat primary voters showed no interest in voting for the ‘podcast class’, the Bernie Brats, Hamas fan girls and the rest of the radicals.
The Left was hoping that Mamdani’s victory was a bellwether, but just like Obama’s win what it really showed was that a smooth radical isn’t supposed to sound like one. Democrats didn’t want. The Bernie people, the Justice Dems and that ilk lost badly in Illinois because maybe radicalism isn’t what the Democrat voter wants right now.
They also hit the Ust-Luga oil terminal in the same general area, and it was still burning 24 hours later. They also hit two oil tankers in the same strike.
But that’s not all! They hit the same Ust-Luga oil terminal again less than a day later. “Russia has lost 40% of its oil export capacity.”
One of Russia’s newest warships, a Project 23550 icebreaker, is now damaged and listing heavily after drone strike.
“U. North Texas Cutting up to 70 Programs in Effort to Trim Deficit” including “women’s and gender studies, LGBTQ studies, Mexican American studies, Africana studies, Asian studies as well as dance, geology and special education.” Most of those sound like they should be killed, and the rest are unnecessary luxuries if no one is taking them.
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.
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.
More: “Hunt County Rejects Plans for Controversial EPIC City. Commissioners disapproved the Islamic development based on deficiencies in the plat application.”
“Monica Cannon-Grant, a Black Lives Matter activist who was named ‘Bostonian of the Year’ by the Boston Globe, was ordered to pay back every dime she stole from her nonprofit, unemployment benefits, and other fraudulent practices, amounting to almost $225,000. U.S. District Court Judge Angel Kelley sentenced Cannon-Grant to four years’ probation, six months of home detention, and 100 hours of community service. Federal prosecutors, however, recommended 18 months in prison. Although Cannon-Grant dodged time behind bars, she must return all of the money she managed to bilk from her nonprofit.” Kelley was appointed by Biden, and I bet if Cannon-Grant hadn’t been a leftwing political activist, she would have received prison time.
Important tip: “Ultra-pure copper” bought from China shouldn’t stick to a magnet. Plus, make sure the Chinese companies you’re buying materials from actually exists…
Just hours after Irish rappers Kneecap blasted the amps and turned a Havana concert into a rave for Code Pink activists chanting anti-blockade slogans, reports claim local hospital went dark and ventilator patients died.
Meanwhile, members of the communist flotilla stayed in 5-star hotels with the lights blazing and AC running.
No one cashes in on capitalism faster than the clowns preaching communism.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York has charged associates of an unidentified U.S. server maker with illegally diverting billions of dollars in Nvidia-powered servers to China.
The U.S. government has been trying to figure out how high-powered chips have reached China without authorization, as American artificial intelligence companies such as Anthropic and OpenAI face challenges from DeepSeek and other Chinese rivals.
In an indictment unsealed Thursday, the U.S. government alleged that Yih-Shyan “Wally” Liaw, Ruei-Tsan “Steven” Chang and Ting-Wei “Willy” Sun worked together to violate the Export Control Reform Act.
The server company’s products containing Nvidia chips “are subject to strict U.S. export controls barring their sale to China without a license,” the plaintiff said in the indictment. “Those controls are in place to protect U.S. national security and foreign policy interests, among other things.”
Artificial intelligence may well be the most important technological development of the coming decade-and that is exactly why the current capital surge around it warrants skepticism. History is littered with transformative innovations that were nonetheless disastrously overbuilt and mispriced in their early phases. Austrian Business Cycle Theory was never a children’s story in which every boom ends with clowns, ashes, and worthless machinery; its real claim is subtler and nastier. When the price of time is falsified-when interest rates are pushed below their natural rate-often proxied, however imperfectly, by modern estimates of the neutral rate-entrepreneurs are encouraged to undertake projects that are more roundabout, more capital-intensive, and more time-sensitive than underlying saving and final demand can actually support. The neutral rate is a policy construct; the natural rate is an economic reality. Some of those projects may still embody genuine innovation.
The problem is not that AI must be fake; it is that a very real technological advance can be financed, priced, and physically built in ways that are wildly uneconomic.
That distinction matters because AI is about as roundabout as modern capitalism gets. This is not a boom in apps and slogans alone; it is a boom in data centers, power, cooling, transformers, specialized semiconductors, fiber, land, and the commodities and construction needed to house and feed all of it. Reuters reports that Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft are expected to spend more than $630 billion combined on AI-related infrastructure in 2026, up sharply from 2025, while separate Reuters reporting says Amazon alone projects roughly $200 billion of 2026 capex. Analysts also expect the hyperscalers’ debt issuance to keep climbing, with BofA lifting its 2026 forecast to $175 billion after Amazon’s jumbo deal and Reuters noting that these firms issued $121 billion in bonds in 2025 versus a 2020–2024 annual average of just $28 billion. In Austrian terms, this is not consumption drunkenness; it is higher-order production marching deep into the structure of capital with a flamethrower and an Excel model.
Snip.
The most charitable case is that AI is a genuine general-purpose technology whose economics are merely messy in the early innings. OpenAI says ChatGPT had more than 900 million weekly users as of late February, and Bloomberg reports OpenAI’s annualized revenue topped $20 billion in 2025 while Anthropic is tracking near that level as well. There are also signs of real productivity gains in narrow use cases, especially coding and selected support tasks. But the bill is arriving much faster than the profits: Bain estimated the industry would need roughly $2 trillion in annual revenue by 2030 to support projected compute demand, yet expected a gap of about $800 billion. That is not a business model; that is a promissory note written in GPU ink.
The more worrying Austrian angle is not simply overvaluation in public equities, but miscoordination in the capital structure. If chips depreciate economically faster than accountants admit, if grid interconnections lag by years, if open models compress pricing power, and if customers love AI demos more than they love paying enterprise invoices, then the industry has a classic ABCT problem: complementary capital arrives in the wrong proportions and at the wrong times. And though not easily captured in formal models, technological history is clear: infrastructure-heavy systems rarely stay that way for long, and early capital often pays the price. The New York Fed warns that r-star is an estimate, not an oracle, but the larger point survives that caveat: if market rates were held too low relative to the economy’s true intertemporal balance, then the resulting investment pattern will look profitable only until bottlenecks, replacement cycles, and cost of capital reassert themselves. Bloomberg reports OpenAI has discussed infrastructure commitments above $1.4 trillion, while Anthropic has announced a $50 billion U.S. data-center push; meanwhile, the IEA has warned of grid-connection queues, transformer shortages, and permitting delays for the power build-out data centers require. A boom can survive many indignities, but not all of them at once.
So: does AI constitute malinvestment? The best answer is that AI almost certainly contains both real innovation and a large malinvestment component.
Barksdale Air Force Base (BAFB), a major U.S. strategic bomber installation in northwest Louisiana, has just experienced an unusually serious series of unauthorized drone incursions over its most sensitive areas.
More than a dozen unsanctioned drones repeatedly swarmed a US Air Force base that is home to a nuclear bomber fleet — and were able to resist efforts to bring them down via jamming technology, according to military officials.
The restricted airspace of Barksdale Air Force Base in Bossier City, Louisiana, was infiltrated by “multiple unauthorized drones” between March 9 and March 15, a base spokesperson told The Post.
The 22-acre installation located east of Shreveport, hosts a fleet of B-52 bombers which can carry out nuclear strikes with “worldwide precision,” according to the Air Force.
As an Air Force Global Strike Command base, Barksdale also plays a crucial role in the Air Force’s nuclear defense capabilities…
Military officials report that more than 12 to 15 unauthorized drones swarmed the base, which hosts the U.S. nuclear B-52 bomber fleet.
The drones resisted jamming efforts, with multiple waves detected.
Snip.
The briefing includes a determination that the drones were different than what the typical consumer could purchase off the shelf. They appeared to be custom built and required “advanced knowledge” of signal operations.
The analysts said “with high confidence” they expected unauthorized drones to continue to operate in and around Barksdale Air Force Base in the immediate future.
“The drone incursions at BAFB pose a significant threat to public safety and national security since they require the flight line to be shut down while also putting manned aircrafts already inflight in the area at risk,” the document said.
Maybe his hatred for the police will finally be his undoing. “Resignation Demands Mount for Travis County DA Garza over Prosecutorial Misconduct Allegations.”
Travis County District Attorney Jose Garza is facing calls for his resignation over accusations that he withheld evidence in prosecuting a police officer for actions taken during a 2020 Black Lives Matter protest in Austin.
“Jose Garza’s habitual misconduct and his lack of prosecutorial experience puts our entire community at risk,” said Austin Police Retired Officers Association (APROA) President Dennis Farris in a statement.
“Felony cases, when properly handled, present opportunities for the innocent to be absolved of serious allegations, for the guilty to be held accountable and for the residents of Travis County to have confidence in the judicial system. In order for these principles to be upheld, Travis County needs a new district attorney.”
Farris was responding to recent revelations about Garza’s prosecution of Austin police officer Chance Bretches.
In 2022, Garza charged Bretches with Aggravated Assault, two years after an anti-police demonstration spurred by the death of George Floyd. During the protest, Bretches fired a “less lethal” bean bag round, resulting in severe injury to a woman who said she was a volunteer providing medical assistance to protestors.
In 2024, Garza brought additional charges against Bretches for Aggravated Assault by a Public Servant, Deadly Conduct, and Assault.
Although prosecutors are required to provide the defense with exculpatory evidence in accordance with a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brady v. Maryland and Texas’ Michael Morton Act, Garza did not disclose alleged “secret” meetings in 2023 with city officials to discuss the possibility of charging the City of Austin.
Last week, attorney Doug O’Connell asked Travis County District Court Judge Karen Sage to dismiss the case on the grounds that Garza violated Bretches’ constitutional due process rights and violated the law by not disclosing the meetings or related communications. O’Connell also argued that Garza’s actions are part of a pattern of misconduct.
“This goes to the issue of why dismissing the case is the only solution, because how will the judge ever know whether they turned over all the evidence,” O’Connell told The Texan.
Courts previously sanctioned Garza for withholding evidence in the manslaughter prosecution of two Williamson County Sheriff’s deputies, and an investigator also accused the DA of hiding evidence in the trial of Daniel Perry.
Perry was convicted in 2023 of murdering Air Force veteran and Black Lives Matter protester Garrett Foster. Gov. Greg Abbott pardoned Perry in 2024.
In addition to APROA, the Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas (CLEAT) has also called for Garza’s resignation, and the incoming president of the nonprofit Central Texas Public Safety Commission, Jennifer Stevens, told CBS Austin that Garza’s prosecution of police officers instead of criminal defendants is contributing to division between the Travis County District Attorney’s Office (TCDAO) and law enforcement.
“There can be no worse violation of the oath taken by a district attorney than to intentionally deny a defendant a fair trial. It is a direct violation of their constitutional rights,” said CLEAT Executive Director Robert Leonard in a statement.
In December, a Texas appeals court overturned the conviction of Austin police officer Christopher Taylor, who had been prosecuted by Garza over the 2019 shooting death of Mauris DeSilva.
Abbott responded to the new allegations against Garza in a social media post.
“All of this will be taken into consideration when I have the final say on the fate of the police officer. This DA’s failure to prosecute murderers & repeatedly letting dangerous criminals go free, while prioritizing prosecuting police, will have consequences,” wrote Abbott.
The sooner Garza is gone, the sooner citizens can stop dying because he let criminal scumbags back on the street.
“Dallas and Williamson County GOPs to Return to Countywide Voting After Primary Election Day Confusion. At least 13,000 Dallas residents reportedly showed up to the wrong polling place on March 3.”
America’s most prolific serial killers now burns in hell. Kermit Gosnell dies in prison at 85.
A Philadelphia grand jury, in its investigation of Gosnell’s Women’s Medical Society abortion center, labeled it a ‘house of horrors’ and initially sought charges for hundreds of murders of babies born alive and then killed.
Charges were ultimately limited to seven murder counts ‘after pressure from senior political and law enforcement officials,’ according to accounts from those covering the case.
The facility functioned as a ‘pill mill by day and an ‘abortion mill’ by night,’ federal authorities noted….
Witnesses described shocking details: Baby A was large enough that employees took photos after the killing, with Gosnell joking the baby was ‘big enough to walk around with me or walk me to the bus stop.’
Other infants showed signs of life, including breathing and movement, before being killed.
Gosnell was also convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the 2009 death of 41-year-old patient Karnamaya Mongar, a Bhutanese refugee who died from an overdose of anesthesia during a botched abortion.
He faced more than 200 additional counts and was found guilty on most, including 21 felony counts of performing illegal abortions beyond Pennsylvania’s 24-week limit and violations of the state’s 24-hour informed-consent law.
Finally. “International Olympic Committee Bans Male Athletes from Women’s Sports.” Pretty soon the only place radical transsexism will still hold sway is among 2028 Democratic Presidential candidates…
The House Select Committee on Governmental Oversight will have over a dozen members, with state Rep. Cody Vasut (R-Angleton) serving as the chair and state Rep. Armando Walle (D-Houston) as co-chair.
The other representatives on it will be state Reps. Richard Hayes (R-Denton), Brooks Landgraf (R-Odessa), Mitch Little (R-Lewisville), AJ Louderback (R-Victoria), Christian Manuel (D-Beaumont), Eddie Morales (D-Eagle Pass), Richard Raymond (D-Laredo), Shelby Slawson (R-Stephenville), Carl Tepper (R-Lubbock), Ellen Troxclair (R-Lakeway, and Erin Zwiener (D-Driftwood).
“Meta to Pay $375 Million Penalty After Jury Finds Company Endangered Children in Landmark Case.”
A jury in New Mexico determined on Tuesday that Meta misled consumers about the safety of its platforms and put children in harm’s way by failing to protect them from sexual predators.
The jury ordered meta to pay a $375 million penalty, significantly lower than the $2.2 billion that New Mexico sought, based on the total number of violations and a $5,000 fine per violation. Meta was found to have violated New Mexico’s unfair-practices act
Adam Savage reorganizes his storage drawers. I’m not saying everyone should watch all 40 minutes of this, but if you have a workshop full of tiny components you have trouble organizing, you might find his method useful.
Tom Scott returns to YouTube after a two year absence. I’m not necessarily super excited for the particular shows he’s returning with (a tour through all of England’s counties, with something interesting in each), but I’ll probably dip into it because I liked his previous work, where he traveled around the world and explained interesting things.
Iran Strikes: Day 14, lots of counter-drone measures, more welfare state fraud in California and Pennsylvania, a bishop raids the children’s fund, a new refinery rises in Brownsville, Old Glory 1, dirty antifa commie 0, caffeine is good for your brain, BuzzardFeed, and the cutest hotel greeters. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
President Donald Trump said that he thinks new Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, whose father, the former supreme leader, was killed on the first day of the U.S. and Israel’s war on Iran, is alive but “damaged.”
Khamenei has not been seen by Iranians since his selection on Sunday by a clerical assembly, and his first comments were read out by a television presenter on Thursday.
An Iranian official told Reuters on Wednesday that the newly appointed supreme leader was lightly injured but was continuing to operate, after state television described him as war-wounded.
“I think he probably is (alive). I think he is damaged, but I think he’s probably alive in some form, you know,” Trump said in an interview on Fox News’ “The Brian Kilmeade Show.” His remarks were published by Fox News late on Thursday.
Military targets on Iran’s Kharg Island – the loading site for most of the Islamic Republic’s oil exports – were “totally obliterated” by US airstrikes during a historic bombing raid in the Persian Gulf, President Trump announced Friday.
“Moments ago, at my direction, the United States Central Command executed one of the most powerful bombing raids in the History of the Middle East, and totally obliterated every MILITARY target in Iran’s crown jewel, Kharg Island,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
The island, located about 16 miles off the Iranian coast, is one-third the size of Manhattan and controls 90% of Iranian crude oil exports.
Trump said the island’s oil infrastructure was not targeted but may be hit in future strikes, if the Iranian regime doesn’t allow ships to pass through the Strait of Hormuz.
Most IRGC facilities have been bombed into oblivion, but the IRGC is still functioning as a Secret Police force, threatening Iranians with death if they take to the streets to protest or rise up against the regime.
Snip.
Iranian state media claim the overnight strikes on Basij checkpoints were meant to stir unrest inside the country.
“This is an attempt to undermine public confidence in Iran’s stable security apparatus. The enemy is trying to open a new internal front,” one outlet said.
Fars news agency reported that at least 10 security and Basij personnel were killed in attacks at several sites across Tehran.
At this point, the crucial war-winning strategy is to destroy the IRGC’s ability to intimidate a populace desperate to get rid of them.
loitering munition-type drones now appear to be operating over Tehran.
More than 10 checkpoints, as well as several mobile IRGC (IRGC) military vehicles in different areas of the city, are said to have been targeted and destroyed by drone strikes. (@etelaf10)
This type of weapon can patrol for a long time over an area, wait for targets to appear, and then strike. This is all the easier when enemy air defense systems are degraded or neutralized.
This could facilitate the emergence of a broader national uprising, by weakening the regime’s control at the street level.
Uncle Sam cues up more Whoop Ass: “The USS Tripoli, and the 2,500 Marines on the amphibious assault ship, are headed to the Middle East to bolster U.S. military power there as the war in Iran enters its third week.” Maybe they’ll be occupying Kharg Island in the near future, and we’ll let China beg us to sell them Iranian oil…
Iran also attacked a refinery in northern Iraq. Maybe Iran is trying to see if they can survive as a state that exports nothing but terror…
Communist China is facing a devastating energy crisis as massive gas lines stretch for miles across the country, with desperate Hong Kong residents rushing across the border to fill their tanks amid fears that escalating war with Iran could cripple global oil supplies.
The scenes coming out of China paint a picture of panic and desperation — exactly what happens when authoritarian regimes fail to secure reliable energy for their people. While President Trump’s America First energy policies have made us energy independent, China’s reliance on hostile nations like Iran has left them vulnerable and scrambling.
Hong Kong citizens, already suffering under Beijing’s iron fist, are now forced to join endless queues just to get basic fuel for their vehicles. The images are reminiscent of the Carter administration’s gas crisis — a stark reminder of what happens when nations don’t prioritize energy independence.
The Carter-era gas lines weren’t from a shortage of supply, they were from the federal government’s monkeying with allocation.
Medicare is federally administered, and hospices must be certified for reimbursements. But the state issues the licenses for hospices to operate.
Three years ago, California’s state auditor sounded the alarm that Los Angeles County had seen a 1,500% increase in hospice companies since 2010 – more than six times the national average relative to its elderly population.
Auditors estimated LA County hospices overbilled Medicare by $105 million in a single year.
The state revoked 280 hospice licenses, but things have only gotten worse since then.
The CBS News analysis reveals that over 700 of the roughly 1,800 hospices in LA County trigger multiple red flags for fraud as defined by the state.
It goes downhill from there:
There are about 1,800 licensed hospices in Los Angeles County, California, which is more than six times the national average for the county’s senior population.
Nearly 500 hospices are operating within a 3-mile radius, the densest concentration of agencies in the county.
89 companies are registered to a single building in Van Nuys.
The illegal alien voter fraud that Democrats swear up and down never happens happened again. “ICE arrests illegal migrant who allegedly fraudulently voted in seven federal elections.”
The Department of Homeland Security has announced the arrest of an illegal migrant who allegedly voted in seven federal elections since 2008, despite being deported over 20 years ago.
DHS said Mahady Sacko, who came to the United States illegally from the African country of Mauritania, was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and the FBI in Philadelphia. He has been charged with voter fraud.
“This criminal illegal alien committed a felony by voting in federal elections dating back to 2008.”
If you’re waiting in long lines at the airport, you can thank Democrats love of illegal aliens. “Democrats Block DHS Funding Despite Airport Delays, Rising Iranian Threat.”
Senate Democrats have blocked another test vote on Thursday, pushed by Republicans attempting to end the ongoing 27-day partial government shutdown impacting the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Republican leaders contend that Democrat lawmakers refuse to negotiate in good faith and are only interested in abolishing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a subagency under DHS.
Nairobi-based contractors have seen footage capturing bathroom visits, naked people, and intimate moments, according to an investigation from two Swedish newspapers.
That’s right. This report from the newspapers Svenska Dagbladet and Göteborgs-Posten claims Meta is outsourcing video to Sama, a tech firm in KENYA, where human workers pore over millions of hours of video to help train Meta’s A.I. assistant that is paired with the glasses.
See, A.I. isn’t really A.I. That’s just a marketing label. These programs are Large-Language Models (LLMs) that can search and summarize vast quantities of data in a split second, but they require an army of human input to train them so they can provide accurate answers to users. Once the programs run out of data provided by humans, they stall out.
Sama was also used by OpenAI to train its LLM. Why? Well, labor in Africa is CHEAP. If you can pay thousands of workers $2 an hour instead of $30 an hour to train your overhyped search bot, you save billions of dollars.
The other advantage is anonymity … for the companies, that is. If you were paying Americans to watch videos of fellow Americans undressing and having sex, they would probably report it to the media en masse.
What a shock that Facebook “smart glasses” are simply another way to invade your privacy…
“HUGE Storm Shadow Strike on Bryansk Electronics Factory.” Plus a look at the aftermath. “90-94% of its production goes into Russian weapons – semiconductors, circuit boards, power modules for missiles, radars, drones, aircraft and more.” And as we know, Russia has very little in the way of semiconductor production.
Russian planes can barely fly in the right direction. They are catching fire in midair. Technical failures are increasing. Emergency landings are happening one after another…There is a dramatic increase in both military and civilian plane crashes.
Hundreds of thousands of Russians are now afraid to even buy tickets. Flights are being postponed indefinitely. This is not a scene from a disaster movie. These images are from Russia.
And for millions of people, airports are now like giant open air prisons. The collapse of the system has reached such a terrifying scale that it can no longer be hidden.
A good bit of this was predicted when sanctions against Russian aviation came down in 2022.
Then there’s the story of civilians flown on an unheated military cargo plane in sub-zero temperatures…
Stephen Green: “I Have Seen the Future of Anti-Drone Warfare, and It’s Dirt-Cheap (Really!)”
Today’s news about Ukraine’s Sting counter-drone caught my eye, and what it might mean for U.S. and other Western forces going forward.
I vaguely remembered reading something about the Sting a year or more ago, but I just learned today that they’re both dirt-cheap and extremely effective — mostly at shooting down Russia’s Geran-2 one-way attack drones, which are licensed copies of Iran’s Shahed that have caused us considerable trouble in Operation Epic Fury.
Ukraine needs tons of these things, because Geran is essentially a terror weapon aimed in large numbers — currently 100 to 200 per attack — at Ukraine’s cities and infrastructure. Larger attack waves include anything from 300 up to just over 800 Geran-2s in one night.
So the concept behind Sting is simply enough: Make something cheap and fast to build, easy to use, yet still capable of knocking a Geran-2 out of the sky far enough out from its target for some degree of safety.
And a local startup firm called Wild Hornets delivered on all three counts.
A typical quadcopter design and just over a foot tall, Stings are made mostly from 3D-printed parts and can be assembled in about two minutes. Unlike some drones that must be launched into the air via catapult (really), Sting takes off vertically like a helicopter before tipping over and using its stubby wings to fly like a plane, with an intercept range of 15 miles or so. Vertical takeoff allows operators to deploy and launch in less than 15 minutes.
The Ukes designed themselves a mini Osprey. That goes boom. Nifty.
There’s a camera on board, which the operator then uses to fly into incoming Geran-2s. With a top speed of about 190 MPH, they’re fast enough to enjoy a reported 80-90% successful intercept rate — and better than 90% in more recent operations. There’s a faster — and presumably more difficult to intercept — jet-powered Geran-3, but they’re much more expensive to build, require more fuel, and have shorter range. Russia uses far fewer of those.
The best part of Sting? The basic model costs about $2,500 to manufacture, compared to an estimated $70k–$80k for each Russian-built Geran-2. The economics of mass drone warfare are brutal.
A federal jury in Philadelphia has delivered a resounding guilty verdict against two Pennsylvania brothers and a longtime associate, convicting them of masterminding one of the most elaborate and prolonged racketeering operations uncovered in recent years. The scheme, which prosecutors say drained more than $32 million from Pennsylvania’s Medicaid program while exploiting vulnerable foreign workers through the H-1B visa system, spanned over a decade and involved layers of deception across multiple states.
At the center of the criminal enterprise – self-dubbed the “Savani Group” – were brothers Bhaskar Savani, 60, a trained dentist from Ambler, Pennsylvania, and Arun Savani, 58, from Blue Bell, Pennsylvania. Bhaskar controlled the group’s extensive network of dental practices, while Arun oversaw finances and real estate holdings. Together, they built what U.S. Attorney David Metcalf described as a “complex web” of sham entities and fraudulent operations, amassing tens of millions through outright fraud “at every turn.”
A third defendant, Aleksandra “Ola” Radomiak, 48, of Lansdale, Pennsylvania—a longtime associate—was also convicted for her role, primarily in the healthcare fraud components.
The multi-faceted conspiracy encompassed several interlocking schemes:
Visa fraud and worker exploitation: The group filed numerous false H-1B visa petitions with the U.S. Department of Labor and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. These applications misrepresented job titles, duties, and other details to bring in foreign workers—most from India—who were dependent on the Savani Group for their legal status. Once employed, many were coerced into kicking back portions of their salaries and paying additional fees back to the enterprise, creating a captive, underpaid workforce.
Healthcare fraud against Medicaid: After the Savani Group’s legitimate dental practices lost their Medicaid contracts due to prior issues, the conspirators pivoted to using nominee-owned shell entities and sham dental practices. They fraudulently billed Pennsylvania Medicaid in the names of non-treating dentists for services that were either unnecessary, never performed, or grossly inflated. This alone resulted in over $32 million in improper payments, robbing taxpayers and depriving the healthcare system of vital resources.
Money laundering and tax evasion: Proceeds from the fraud were funneled through a sophisticated network of financial transactions, including concealment and transactional money laundering. The group also conspired to defraud the U.S. Treasury via wire fraud tied to false tax returns.
Obstruction of justice: When federal investigators closed in, the conspirators actively obstructed a grand jury probe.
Two cooperating government witnesses, Lynette Sharp and Seth Sikes, both pleaded guilty to one count of providing material support to terrorists and testified against [Benjamin] Song.
Sharp alleged Song admitted to shooting someone when she helped him evade law enforcement after the officer was shot.
Likewise, Sikes alleged that Song said, “Get to the rifles,” and testified he heard gunshots coming from behind him where Song was and turned to see a muzzle flash.
Sharp met Song in 2022, and Sikes met him in 2024 while Song was teaching martial arts at a Fort Worth community center.
Both witnesses testified that they became friends with the defendants.
“I love them,” Sharp said on the stand, after wiping tears.
Sikes testified he and others trusted Song, whom he described as a “very charismatic person” that people would follow.
Cameron Arnold (also known as Autumn Hill), Zachary Evetts, Bradford Morris (also known as Meagan Morris), Maricela Rueda, and Song face the most serious charges of attempted murder, discharging a firearm during a crime of violence, and providing material support to terrorists.
Other defendants facing lesser charges include Savanna Batten, Elizabeth Soto, Ines Soto, and Daniel Rolando Sanchez-Estrada.
All have pleaded not guilty.
Sharp and Sikes said group members considered themselves victims of society or those who wanted to protect “marginalized” people.
This ideology led them to become caught up in protest culture, offering a rare glimpse into the inner workings of protestors known as Antifa.
Antifa is modeled after a group that worked as the violent arm of the Communist Party in Germany in the 1930s. Some symbols from the original group are still used by the movement today, such as the logo and the raised-fist salute.
Song, who received an “other than honorable” discharge from the Army, recruited Sharp and Sikes to train with the Socialist Rifle Association (SRA), often described as a left-wing alternative to counter the National Rifle Association (NRA).
Sharp and Sikes said they learned gun safety and practiced marksmanship. Various defendants in the Antifa case frequently trained with AR-style weapons, they said.
The First Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals lifted a block Wednesday on a lower court ruling that prevented the Trump administration from deporting illegal migrants to “third countries” that are willing to accept them.
The Trump administration had appealed U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy’s ruling last week, after he ruled in February that the Department of Homeland Security’s deportation policy was unlawful and violates due process protections under the U.S. Constitution.
The administration argued Murphy’s order violated two previous Supreme Court rulings and created an “unworkable scheme” that threatened to derail negotiations with other countries, along with thousands of deportations, per Fox News.
California’s climate-cult-driven political leaders assumed gasoline demand would fade quickly as electric vehicles took hold. Acting on that prediction, they created conditions that forced refineries to close, blocked new projects, and added regulations expecting everyone would share their disdain for fossil fuels and reliable internal combustion engines.
But reality didn’t match their models. Tens of millions of drivers still rely on gasoline every day, and by shrinking supply faster than demand declined, our eco-activist bureaucrats created a fragile, high‑risk system.
Californians are being warned to brace themselves for the FO phase of the FAFO cycle.
Gavin Newsom’s green agenda and global oil turmoil will risk sending California’s gas prices above a wallet-crushing $8 a gallon — potentially returning drivers to the desperate fuel rationing not seen since the 1970s, state lawmakers and industry experts warned.
With drivers in the Golden State already facing the highest gas prices in the US, Southern California state Sen. Suzette Valladares has urged the governor to scrap California’s cap-and-invest program that charges oil makers for carbon emissions. She dubbed Newsom’s program the “cap-and-tax” scheme, and warned that closing any further oil refineries in the state could trigger economic collapse.
“It’s not scaremongering at all,” Valladares told The California Post of a report from the USC Marshall School of Business that found gas prices could reach $8 a gallon by the end of 2026.
The way things are going, it wouldn’t shock me to see California gas prices hit $8 a gallon this month…
Things that make you go “Hmmmm“: “FBI secretly seizes election records from Arizona’s largest county as voting probe expands.”
The FBI is expanding its criminal probe into suspected election irregularities, secretly obtaining a large tranche of voting records from Arizona’s largest county with a recent grand jury subpoena, multiple people familiar with the probe told Just the News.
The sources, who spoke only on condition of anonymity because of the secrecy of the grand jury probe, said FBI agents are receiving terabytes of electronic election data from Maricopa County, about a month after the bureau first disclosed an investigation into election irregularities by raiding a warehouse near Atlanta and seizing ballots from the 2020 election conducted in Fulton County, Georgia’s largest metropolis.
The subpoena comes five years after the GOP-led Arizona state Senate conducted a lengthy investigation into the 2020 election and concluded there were significant irregularities.
“As Democrats make anti-ICE messaging a centerpiece of their midterm election strategy, a new NBC poll shows that the Democratic Party is more unpopular than ICE. Of the 14 subjects surveyed—a list that also included “AI, that is Artificial Intelligence”—only Iran had a lower approval rating than the Democratic Party.”
Chairman and CEO Darren Woods said about the decision, “Texas has made a noticeable effort to embrace the business community. In doing so, it has created a policy and regulatory environment that can allow the company to maximize shareholder value.”
Its attraction to the state, according to ExxonMobil, is due in part to its de facto status as the company’s home, with 30 percent of the company’s global employee base and 75 percent of its domestic employee base located in Texas. The company is already headquartered in Spring.
“Texas’ legal and regulatory environment, including its modernized business statutes” was also referenced as a strategic reason for the relocation, along with the presence of the Texas Business Court, which ExxonMobil praised as “designed to resolve complex disputes efficiently.”
Thanks to Democrats’ soft on crime policies in California, not even luxury apartments are immune from rampaging mobs.
A group linked to a late-night street takeover forced its way into a luxury downtown Los Angeles apartment tower early Sunday, fighting with staff and leaving shattered glass and overturned furniture behind, according to police and video of the incident, according to the NY Post.
The disturbance happened around 3 a.m. at the Circa LA Apartments on South Figueroa Street, the Los Angeles Police Department said.
Authorities told KTLA that a crowd involved in a nearby street takeover moved toward the upscale high-rise and began vandalizing the property.
Video shows a large group gathering outside the building before targeting the lobby. One person is seen throwing an object at a suited employee who appeared to be working near the front desk. The worker initially stood outside but retreated inside as other staff gathered in the lobby.
The crowd soon forced its way into the building. Outside, several people smashed glass doors and windows, while one individual used a metal barricade to ram the entrance.
The Post writes that once inside, members of the group knocked over furniture and ran through the lobby as the scene descended into chaos. At one point, a person appeared to grab a box from the front desk while others rummaged through it before the group dispersed as sirens approached.
This is your city on Democrats…
“Michigan rep not seeking reelection because she can’t “be a faithful follower of Jesus Christ while remaining a member of the Democratic Party.” “Michigan State Representative Karen Whitsett announced she will not seek re-election and will not run for public office again, saying the decision is faith-based and rooted in her commitment to Jesus Christ and the authority of Scripture.”
I have compromised my relationship with Jesus for too long, and I’m grateful God did not give up on me. He gave me time to repent, turn, and be fully devoted to Him
That conviction includes the issues I cannot reconcile with Scripture: abortion, the normalization of the gay lifestyle, and the push to redefine gender.
Pope Leo XIV accepts San Diego bishop’s resignation over embezzlement scandal. Bishop Emanuel Shaleta stepped down from his post at Saint Peter’s Chaldean last month, the Vatican said in a bulletin Tuesday. Bishop Saad Hanna Sirop has replaced him in the interim.”
Shaleta has been charged with eight counts of embezzlement, eight counts of money laundering, and an “aggravated white collar crime” enhancement related to $272,000 in missing funds from the church, according to NBC News, and pleaded not guilty to all charges during a court appearance Monday.
Authorities allege that Shaleta spent months pocketing $30,000 in monthly cash payments from a tenant and hid the crime by moving money from a church account that held funds to help the less fortunate into the church’s operations account.
“PM who ran New Zealand into the ground during Covid flees country for greener pastures.” Former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who locked down harder and longer than just about any other country, has emigrated to Australia. Hopefully a Bunyip or Drop Bear will eat her…
BlackRock is like a roach motel: Your money can check in, but it can never check out. “BlackRock (NYSE:BLK) is blocking investors from fully exiting its $26 billion HPS Corporate Lending Fund after redemption requests hit 9.3% of shares in Q1, well above the fund’s 5% quarterly cap. It marks the first time withdrawal requests have exceeded that limit.”
“Trump Set To Suspend Jones Act To Help Tame Oil Prices.” The century old Jones Act “that requires American-built ships to be used to transport goods between US ports.” I’m sure that right now Peter Zeihan is already working on a video to celebrate…
Unexpected South Carolina Democrat senate candidate Alvin Greene, RIP. They didn’t even mention his comic book…
Speaking of novelty candidates, Literally Anybody Else is running for mayor of North Richland Hills, a Metroplex city northeast of Fort Worth. That’s the name of the guy running: Literally Anybody Else. His cause for running against incumbent mayor Jack McCarty is “lying to the people about carport regulations.”
Ian McCollum examines whether force reset triggers will destroy the value of existing legal-to-own machine guns. The answer, from recent auction results, is probably not. Particularly eye-opening is two registered drop-in auto-sears, which allow conversion of certain modern sporting rifles to full-auto, went for $40,000 and $52,000. For what is essentially a stamped bit of metal.
Rick Beato has a theory that all those people building AI data centers are going to go bankrupt, because people can run AI tools and datasets on their own computers. He compares this to how recording studios who had borrowed money to buy expensive mixing boards circa 1999 went out of business when Napster crashed the music business. I think his larger point is correct, but I think a lot of musicians were already already into cheaper prosumer digital tools in the early 1990s.
Finally, my excessive Diet Dr Pepper habit is paying off! “Large Study Shows High Caffeine Intake Linked To Reduced Dementia Risk.”
BuzzFeed is buzzard feed. “BuzzFeed, the digital media empire that captured the attention of millennials in the mid-2010s through shareable listicles, viral video content and more, expressed ‘substantial doubt’ Thursday about its ability to continue operations.”
(Hat tip: Clownfish TV, from whom I’ve stolen the buzzard feed line.)
Critical Drinker is considerably less than impressed with The Bride! “Jesus Fuck Mothering Christ. I have seen a lot of crappy movies in my time, but I don’t think I’ve seen many that were so completely determined to waste such an insane amount of money and talent.”
Today’s Habitual Linecrosser:
“Aloha Snackbar.” I’m pretty sure I’ve heard that one before, but it’s still funny…
This news broke Friday, but I was too tunnel-visioned to include it in the LinkSwarm:
Embattled U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX-23) announced his decision not to seek re-election to his seat in Congress in a post on social media late Thursday night, adding that the decision came after “deep reflection and with the support of my loving family.”
Gonzales was also facing growing pressure on a national scale, with congressional leadership calling for him to drop out hours earlier.
He had been facing action by the U.S. House Committee on Ethics over his now-confessed sexual relationship with his former regional director, Regina Santos-Aviles — who later committed suicide by self-immolation — which violated House rules prohibiting members from having sexual relationships with their subordinate staff.
While Gonzales admitted to having the relationship, he has not addressed many of the salacious details of the accusations. Among them are text messages released by Regina’s widower, Adrien, which purport to show Gonzales using graphic language in making sexual advances towards his staffer. In multiple instances, Regina’s replies appear to show her resisting his advances and telling him to stop.
He has asserted that his relationship did not play any role in Regina’s suicide, which occurred roughly a year after the affair was discovered by the husband.
Gonzales’ response evolved during the course of the scandal, beginning with his denying the allegations when the news originally broke by Current Revolt in September 2025, and later accusing his Republican primary opponent, Brandon Herrera, of fabricating the claims for political purposes. He also accused Adrien Aviles of attempting to blackmail him.
An initial investigation by the Office of Congressional Conduct (OCC) later found “a substantial reason to believe” Gonzales had a sexual relationship with his aide in violation of House rules and referred the findings to the Ethics Committee.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA-04) issued a joint statement with GOP House leadership Thursday afternoon calling for Gonzales to drop his campaign.
This makes YouTuber and Second Amendment advocate Brandon Herrera the Republican nominee, and he’ll face Democratic nominee Katy Padilla Stout in November, where Herrera should be the overwhelming favorite in a solidly Republican-leaning district.
After so many horrible decisions, Gonzales finally got one thing right…
Jobs are down, more Minnesota fraud uncovered, a bunch of military action outside the Persian Gulf, an Austin jihad shooter, Noem gets the Old Yeller treatment, Bill Clinton remains Bill Clinton, and Microsoft, amazingly, manages to get even worse.
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Also consider this your “Iran Strikes: Day 7” update with a smattering of news as well. There are reports that Kurdish forces have entered Iran from Iraq, but I’m not seeing sufficient evidence for that yet.
Interesting chart showing Iran has likely “blown its wad” on missiles and drones, as day by day fewer and fewer are being launched.
Update Numbers as of Mar. 6, 12.00 AM The numbers are rounded and compiled from various media reports, with a margin of error of ±10% 15% **Corrected previous Post there was a Mistake https://t.co/eDlVfc3nzApic.twitter.com/UiHAU0yNHe
The Supreme Court upheld the standard for reviewing asylum cases, keeping it in the hands of immigration agencies.
Yes, even the leftist justices agreed. 9-0.
“We granted certiorari to determine whether the Court of Appeals applied the appropriate standard of review under the INA [Immigration and Nationality Act],” wrote Justice Ketanji Brown-Jackson. “We conclude that the statute requires application of the substantial evidence standard to the agency’s conclusion that a given set of undisputed facts does not constitute persecution.”
Top officials in Minnesota were made aware of fraud concerns surrounding government assistance programs as early as 2019 but failed to take action as billions of dollars were stolen and warnings piled up.
Former Minnesota state officials testified to the House Oversight Committee that Governor Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison were first informed that the state’s social services programs had been compromised by widespread fraud in 2019 and 2020, according to a new report from the committee.
“Testimony obtained by the Committee reveals that Governor Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison were aware of widespread fraud in social service programs, lied about their knowledge of the fraud, and retaliated against employees who dared to raise concerns. Instead of protecting vulnerable Americans, they handed over billions in taxpayer dollars to fraudsters and threw their own state employees under the bus,” said House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer (R., Ky.).
Several different entities and state-level programs are implicated in Minnesota’s fraud scandal. The most prominent program is Feeding Our Future, which fraudsters targeted during the Covid era to steal $300 million from the Minnesota Department of Education that had been designated to provide food to poor children. Feeding Our Future is now dissolved and dozens of defendants have been convicted in connection with the scheme since 2022.
According to the committee report, Minnesota Department of Education officials first received allegations of fraud against Feeding Our Future from the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 2019. The USDA alleged Feeding Our Future was created with forged signatures and misled sponsored food distribution sites about certain federal requirements. Minnesota officials dismissed the allegations at the time. By April 2020, Walz and Ellison’s offices were briefed about the Minnesota Department of Education’s concerns regarding Feeding Our Future, Assistant Commissioner Daron Korte testified to the committee. State officials contacted the USDA about Feeding Our Future in late 2020, but the agency’s inspector general did not act, a failure that emboldened the scammers at Feeding Our Future.
The Oversight Committee report asserts that Minnesota officials could have suspended payments to Feeding Our Future but chose not to because of potential litigation and racism accusations. Minnesota officials blamed the USDA and Feeding Our Future for perpetuating the large-scale fraud. In March 2021, the Minnesota Department of Education stopped payments to Feeding Our Future, but resumed payments voluntarily the following month after a court hearing on the matter. A court order was never issued requiring the payments, contradicting Walz’s 2022 assertion to the contrary. The lack of a court order was confirmed during the course of the Oversight Committee’s investigation.
In early 2019, Walz’s administration became aware of fraud tied to two programs administered by Minnesota’s Department of Human Services, former agency commissioner Tony Lourey testified. Another former commissioner, Jodi Harpstead, testified that Walz’s administration believed fraud connected to a child care program run out of the Department of Human Services had already been resolved. But the Oversight Committee report references two auditor reports showing otherwise, both of which were issued in 2019. The Department of Human Services lacked fraud mitigation mechanisms and felt pressure to get money out the door to justify state appropriations, the committee found. Despite credible allegations of fraud, the agency failed to act on the warnings and unilaterally stop making payments to the social services programs in question.
The Oversight Committee’s report is based on testimony from nine top current and former state officials, documents and communications, and briefings with federal and state officials. The Minnesota U.S. Attorney’s office recently speculated that the interwoven fraud schemes totaled nearly $9 billion in misallocated funds. Of the fraud defendants, 85 percent of them come from Minnesota’s Somali-American immigrant community. Social services programs that provide food, child care, housing, and special education have all come under scrutiny as federal investigators unravel the fraud scheme.
I know it’s been easy to overlook in all the other military news this week, but Afghanistan and Pakistan have been going at it as well, though only at a border skirmish level rather than a full-scale conflict. Since the Pakistani ISI helped create the Taliban, this is what’s known as “blowback.”
Rene Campos, a registered sex offender, is seeking elected office in California – launching a campaign for Fresno City Council amid fierce backlash and renewed questions about whether someone with his record should hold public office.
Campos was arrested in 2018 following a cyber tip to the Central California Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force. He was found in possession of child sex abuse material, according to court records. In 2021 he entered a no-contest plea to a single misdemeanor charge of possessing and controlling child pornography/child sex abuse material (likely under California Penal Code § 311.11). He served only one month in prison and a two year probation period.
Campos describes himself as a gay man who is running for office on the platform of “reduced crime and rehabilitation.”
Possession of child pornography is typically treated as a felony, even in a woke haven like California. How the Fresno candidate was able to make a deal for a misdemeanor charge and spend only one month in prison is a mystery, but this does help to confirm ongoing suspicions that California’s legal system is falling into steep decline.
California is notoriously soft on child sex abusers. Recently, a Sacramento parole board released Daniel Allen Funston, who was convicted in 1999 of sixteen counts of kidnapping and child molestation after a horrific crime spree in Sacramento County, during which he kidnapped, raped, and beat eight children ages 3 to 7.
Funston was originally sentenced to three consecutive life terms plus 20 years, but was set free at age 64 due to a California elderly inmate program (maybe he’ll run for office, too).
Data from 2022 shows that the Golden State released over 7000 child sex offenders after less than one year of incarceration. Interestingly, “digital blocks” were added to the Megan’s Law website that prevent more recent analysis.
Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger is demanding that Immigration and Customs Enforcement provide warrants before violent illegal criminals are turned over to federal authorities, following the stabbing of a Virginia woman by an illegal immigrant with a long and violent criminal history.
Abdul Jalloh was charged with second-degree murder after Stephanie Minter was brutally stabbed in the neck at a Virginia bus stop. Jalloh had previously been charged more than 40 times, including for egregious crimes such as aggravated assault, malicious wounding, and rape. Prosecutors dropped 20 of the 43 charges against Jalloh. The Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney’s office said the charges were dropped because Jalloh often chose victims who did not have permanent addresses, making the proceedings more difficult.
The Department of Homeland Security said Jalloh is an illegal immigrant from Sierra Leone. He entered the United States in 2012.
“ICE previously lodged a detainer against Jalloh in 2020, and he was granted a final order of removal by a judge who found he could be removed to any country other than Sierra Leone,” DHS said in a statement. “This case illustrated the importance of third country removals to get criminal illegal aliens out of the U.S.”
Spanberger insists that in order for Virginia to work with federal authorities, ICE must provide a signed judicial warrant, regardless of the alien’s criminal history. DHS requested cooperation with Virginia and Spanberger to deport Jalloh following his alleged involvement in the fatal stabbing.
“We are calling on Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger and Virginia’s sanctuary politicians to commit to not releasing this murderer and violent career criminal from their jail without notifying ICE,” Deputy Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis said in a statement. “This illegal alien’s murder of an innocent, beautiful American woman came less than 24 hours before Governor Spanberger’s demonization of ICE law enforcement. This heinous criminal is a perfect example of why we need cooperation from sanctuary jurisdictions and the importance of third country removals for the safety of the American people.”
What the Trump administration has done on the DEI front represents the beginning of a general reorientation of our politics away from wokeness. One need only survey what prominent leaders of the Left are saying about the political price the Democratic Party has paid on that score. What they are saying indicates a large political change, even if the Dems prove incapable of unmooring themselves from woke politics for the near future.
The first sign of this reorientation is a general shift in the popular mindset: the spell of woke politics has broken. This matters because it was always the way in which woke politics commanded assent in the citizens’ hearts and minds that was crucial. That assent has been questioned or denied now in a broad way, with the backing of public authority (Supreme Court decisions, executive orders, agency directives), and with widespread public support. Wokeness’s public hectoring, punitiveness, and censoriousness, and the extremism of many of its positions on the issues, is unpopular at the level of 70–30 or 80–20 opinion poll divides.
We ought to be confident, therefore, that the broken spell of wokeness augurs a permanent shift in our public life. What that means precisely, however, depends very much on how we understand wokeness and what is done going forward to ensure that woke excess does not return. Now, if, as many say, wokeness was the product of cultural Marxism (Christopher Rufo and a host of followers) or postmodernism (Jordan Peterson and another host of followers), then all that needs to be done is to combat bad ideas. On these interpretations, our universities in particular, and other cultural institutions where the influence of such ideas holds sway, need our attention. Certainly, cultural Marxism and postmodernism represent bad ideas, and the world would be a better place without their influence.
But if what wokeness represents above all is the explosive power of the civil rights revolution and the influence of an aggressive leftist interpretation of anti-discrimination politics, as another band of interpreters claims (I among them), then the task ahead is much bigger and much more difficult.
Trump’s anti-DEI measures, on this view, would represent only the first step in a broader campaign of civil rights reform. One could look long and hard without seeing much in the way of evidence for any such thing so far. Are these current efforts against DEI an illusion, a brief moment of political opportunism that will recede as public hatred of wokeness recedes—only to return in a few years when the next wave of anti-discriminatory passion rises up?
I don’t think that worry is justified. The anti-DEI campaign to date will have enduring consequences because even if it is not yet clear that what is at stake in DEI is civil rights politics, the current reorientation can only have the effect of raising our awareness of the role of anti-discrimination in our public life. This has begun on the all-important moral plane of civil rights politics. Precisely by breaking the spell of its puritanical commands, our anti-woke moment is reworking something essential to civil rights politics. Because public morality is the crucial filter of the human mind, a shift at this level will change what we see, what we think, and what we think we can say. Anti-woke sentiment, backed by changes in the law, is providing a moment of political, cultural, and mental freedom that will necessarily lead, after many decades during which this was not possible, to a general reappraisal of the moral power and the meaning of the civil rights revolution.
Sources have identified the alleged gunman as 53-year-old Ndiaga Diagne to Nexstar’s KXAN and The Associated Press…
Diagne is originally from Senegal, according to multiple people briefed on the investigation. One of the people told the AP that Diagne came to the U.S. in 2006 and was a naturalized U.S. citizen…
Austin mass killer captured on video wearing ‘Property of Allah’ hoodie during rampage.
“Dallas Democrats Decide To Let DA Creuzot Go. With no Republican in the race, Democrat primary winner Amber Givens will become Dallas County’s next district attorney.” Creuzot was yet another Soros-backed DA, so maybe Dallas Democrats are ever so slowly moving back to sanity.
I’m just going to embed this Asmongold clip of Bill Clinton’s Jeffrey Epstein deposition without comment.
President Trump announced Thursday that Senator Markwayne Mullin (R., Okla.) will replace Kristi Noem as Homeland Security Secretary.
The announcement comes after Noem struggled to stand up to a public grilling by members of the Senate Judiciary Committee who pressed the former South Dakota governor on Tuesday about a $220 million ad campaign contract that was subcontracted to one of her longtime allies. Trump was furious at Noem for insisting during the hearing that he had personally approved the contract and began floating Mullin’s name as a potential replacement, National Review first reported early Thursday.
Mullin will replace Noem effective March 31. It’s unclear whether Trump plans to nominate Mullin to serve in the position permanently or whether he will serve in an acting capacity, sparing him the necessity of Senate confirmation.
“I am pleased to announce that the Highly Respected United States Senator from the Great State of Oklahoma, Markwayne Mullin, will become the United States Secretary of Homeland Security (DHS), effective March 31, 2026,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “The current Secretary, Kristi Noem, who has served us well, and has had numerous and spectacular results (especially on the Border!), will be moving to be Special Envoy for The Shield of the Americas, our new Security Initiative in the Western Hemisphere we are announcing on Saturday in Doral, Florida. I thank Kristi for her service at ‘Homeland.’”
Already under significant scrutiny due to bipartisan criticism of her handling of Trump’s deportation agenda, Noem ran into further trouble this week during a series of hearings in which multiple lawmakers, most notably Republican Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana, asked her to explain why the agency had awarded a $220 million contract to a firm that was founded just days before, without ever opening up the bid to a competitive process. Kennedy also pointed out that part of that ad campaign was subcontracted to a strategy firm owned by Ben Yoho, the husband of former DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin.
A $220 million no-bid ad contract isn’t just wasteful, it’s actively criminal.
More defeats for the gambling lobby: “Two House Chairs Defeated by Challengers. State Reps. Cecil Bell and Stan Kitzman were ousted by Kristen Plaisance and Dennis Geesaman respectively.”
Plaisance ran on a platform of fiscal responsibility, securing Texas’ elections, and defending state sovereignty.
Bell’s campaign and allied groups—including the Las Vegas Sands–backed casino lobby and Texans for Lawsuit Reform—reportedly spent more than $1 million attempting to defend the incumbent.
Bell, who chairs the Intergovernmental Affairs Committee, had been censured by the Montgomery County Republican Party last year.
Incumbent State Rep. Stan Kitzman of Brookshire has been defeated by Dennis “Goose” Geesaman for the GOP nomination for House District 85. Kitzman served as chair of one of the House’s subcommittees on appropriations.
Geesaman, a pilot and Air Force Academy graduate, retired as a Lt. Colonel. He served five terms on the Flatonia City Council and later served as mayor.
While Texans for Lawsuit Reform and casino-funded PACs backed Kitzman’s reelection campaign, Geesaman ran on a platform of ending magnets for illegal immigration, DOGE-ing Texas, and supporting parental rights.
Kitzman also recently came under investigation for his paid work for a local governmental entity while serving in the Legislature.
Kitzman also voted to impeach Paxton, so I think we’re well rid of both of them.
The war against tranny madness continues. “Paxton Opinion Targets Therapists Behind Child ‘Psychological Transitioning.’ Psychiatric providers who help facilitate prohibited treatments may be barred from receiving public funds and could risk losing their licenses.”
Samsung Electronics America Inc. is one of five companies that have been accused by Attorney General Ken Paxton of collecting and monetizing consumers’ viewing data on smart TVs.
Following the agreement, Samsung will now make changes to not only halt the collection of viewing data without consent, but also update their TVs to include disclosures and consent screens.
Heard from some state agency people that this was coming: “Texas Dismantles DEI-Oriented HUB Network. The comptroller’s office has ended race- and sex-based preferences in state contracting.” Good.
“Former Warren Campaign Worker Says the U.S. Must Be ‘Abolished’ to Atone for Death of Ayatollah Khamenei…Calla Walsh, the communist activist who campaigned for Elizabeth Warren, Ed Markey, Bernie Sanders, and others, said the only way to exact “justice” is the complete deconstruction of the U.S. and Israel.” What percentage of the ideological core of the Democrat Party are actively communist?
One thing that reportedly helped kill Netflix’s acquisition of Warner Brothers: GOP congressmen visiting Netflix headquarters and discovering tampons in the men’s room.
Microsoft seems to be going from bad to worse: “Microsoft Copilot to hijack your browser… for your own convenience, embeds Edge into AI assistant, ignores questions about opt-in.”
Microsoft is rolling out a Copilot update to Windows Insiders that embeds web browsing directly into the assistant, opening links in a side panel rather than launching your default browser.
The plan is that users of the Copilot app in Windows will show content in the assistant’s window “so you don’t lose context.”
Copilot will also (with permission) have access to the context of tabs opened in that conversation, so the assistant can look across them when responding to user prompts. Opened tabs will be saved with the conversation so that they can be returned to, and, if a user chooses to enable it, passwords and form data can be synchronized.
Enabling password and form data synchronization might give some users pause for thought, particularly after the Windows Recall fiasco, but users worried about Redmond slurping data should probably consider an alternative to Windows anyway.
At first glance, it looks like embedding Edge into Copilot via the WebView2 control is an attempt to steer the user away from their default browser. Convenient, yes. Good for competition, possibly not. We asked Microsoft whether this would be an opt-in experience and which browser was being used, but, other than acknowledging receipt of our questions, the company did not respond.
It looks like this is going to be limited to corporate users for now, but launching web links without user control strikes me as a huge attack vector for malicious code. (Previously.)
New Zealand “Lesbian Navy Captain Faces Court Martial After $100M Ship Ran Aground, Caught Fire, Sank.” Since that happened all the way back in 2024, they’re certainly not rushing to justice…
Apple has some new computers out, so here’s M5 Pro vs. M5 Max benchmarks. My trailing edge consumer ass is still on an Intel-based MacBook Pro…
“Japanese companies are paying older workers to sit by a window and do nothing—while Western CEOs demand super-AI productivity just to keep your job.” Seems like there should be a happy medium between those two extremes…
Endorsements issued by President Donald Trump in recent days for Texas statewide races displayed a split between Gov. Greg Abbott and the president, as the two put support behind different candidates in a handful of contests.
These include one of the more fiery Republican primaries — the race for Texas Agriculture Commissioner. President Donald Trump threw his support behind incumbent Sid Miller, breaking from Abbott’s selection of Nate Sheets as his favored candidate.
Abbott endorsed Sheets in January, with strong words about his capability to lead the Texas Department of Agriculture and Miller’s alleged inability to do so. Abbott and Miller have repeatedly clashed over issues throughout both their tenures in office, spanning back to 2020 when Miller joined a lawsuit against the governor regarding the extension of the early voting period during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In Trump’s endorsement on Friday night, he described Miller as a “MAGA Warrior who has been with me from the very beginning,” and “is doing a terrific job as Agriculture Commissioner for the Great State of Texas…”
“An Eighth Generation Farmer and Rancher, Sid is an incredibly effective Voice for Texas Agriculture, and our amazing Farmers and Ranchers,” Trump added.
Leading up to this, Abbott has been traveling across the state alongside Sheets for several “Get Out The Vote” rallies, emphasizing his support for the challenger.
Trump also endorsed former state senator Don Huffines for Texas Comptroller, over Abbott’s pick: former state Sen. Kelly Hancock and current Acting Comptroller, after he joined the agency as an employee to avoid a constitutional issue.
Huffines has been a frequent critic of Abbott’s, particularly over his response to COVID-19, also challenging him in the GOP gubernatorial primary in 2022.
Trump similarly described Huffines as a “MAGA warrior” in his endorsement issued via a Truth Social post, adding that “as a successful Businessman, Don knows the America First Policies required to Grow our Economy, Create GREAT Jobs, Cut Taxes and Regulations, Promote MADE IN THE U.S.A., and Unleash American Energy DOMINANCE.”
The President also issued a number of key congressional candidate endorsements earlier in the week, splitting from Abbott in two distinct primaries: one for Congressional District (CD) 9, and another in CD 35.
Trump threw his support behind Republican candidate Alex Mealer in her bid for Congressional District (CD) 9, against state Rep. Briscoe Cain (R-Deer Park), who is endorsed by Abbott.
Cain and Mealer are running in the district currently held by U.S. Rep. Al Green (D-TX-9), which was heavily impacted by the GOP-favored redistricting map that passed the Texas Legislature during the summer of 2025 — legislation initiated at the White House’s request and voted for by Cain in the Texas House.
Trump also endorsed one of the Republican primary opponents to State Rep. John Lujan (R-San Antonio) — Carlos De La Cruz, brother of Congresswoman Monica De La Cruz (R-TX-15), in his bid for CD 35. Lujan was endorsed by Abbott for CD 35 in January.
Super PAC “Forge The Future,” founded by California-based tech giant Meta, reported $1.3 million in Texas expenditures ahead of the upcoming March 3 primary.
Formed earlier this year, Forge The Future is one of four super PACs controlled by Meta. The PAC’s Texas site states an objective of supporting “conservative candidates” with favorable stances on tech policy issues.
Three specific focuses listed are support for domestic tech companies, advocacy for an AI-friendly regulatory environment, and increased parental control over children’s online activities.
Of Forge The Future’s Texas contributions, $800,000 went to a slate of three Texas Senate and eight Texas House candidates, including Rep. Trent Ashby (R-Lufkin) and Rep. David Cook (R-Mansfield) for Senate Districts 3 and 22, respectively.
Those districts’ proximity to the greater Dallas-Fort Worth area makes them a key early target for placement of AI-friendly legislators, as the area has been a long-time hotbed of Texas technology interests and currently hosts several ongoing data center developments.
The remaining $500,000 was spent on digital advertising campaigns supporting former state senator and now Acting Comptroller Kelly Hancock’s bid for a full term as Texas comptroller. The ads focus on Hancock’s efforts to lower taxes and improve education, making no specific mention of tech-related issues.
Forge The Future is one of two super PACs formed by Meta this year, alongside Making Our Tomorrow, which is dedicated to similar technology issues but instead supports Democratic candidates. Making Our Tomorrow has initially focused on contributing to candidates in Illinois, another key state for Meta’s infrastructure.
Meta’s super PACs, all formed within the last year, represent an overall $65 million investment in political activity and mark a distinct shift from the company’s previous, mostly neutral stance on political spending. This new investment from the tech giant comes at a time of increased scrutiny from legislators and the general public alike on many tech policy issues, including social media, artificial intelligence, and data centers.
Aside from AI, social media regulation could also pose a problem for Meta. The Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp parent company has been in and out of court in relation to child safety concerns on its platforms; CEO Mark Zuckerberg was most recently called to testify in a landmark tech addiction lawsuit in California court on February 18.
Meta isn’t the only large tech company ramping up its political spending. Last August saw the formation of Leading The Future, an AI-focused super PAC boasting Silicon Valley backing, which includes names from OpenAI, Perplexity, and Palantir Technologies.
Lots of outside money is being poured into Texas races, but Texans are the ones with the power in their hands. Go vote!
Another would-be Trump assassin dirtnapped, Mexico burns, more leftwing fraud uncovered, disturbing news of taxpayer-funded child mutilation here and horrific rape overlooked in the UK, and some financial heavyweights are shedding their irrational social justice policies. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
I went out and early voted today, and voting was very heavy. (I was planning on going Thursday, but that the day the guy dropped off my new (used) dryer.) Because of redistricting, no voter registration cards were sent out, so just vote using one of several forms of official ID. (Gee, what an easy system! Just think how easy things could be if congressional Republicans made that their top priority!)
An armed man was shot and killed by the Secret Service in the early hours of the morning after unlawfully entering the secure perimeter at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago in Florida.
Austin Tucker Martin, 21, was holding a shotgun and a fuel can as he tried to enter Trump’s Palm Beach residence near the north side around 1.30am on Sunday, the Secret Service said.
President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump were in Washington, DC, last night attending the Governors’ Dinner.
Two Secret Service agents and one deputy from the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office ordered him to drop his weapons.
Things got pretty spicy in Mexico. “Mexico Kills a Drug Kingpin, and the Cartels Set the Country Ablaze.”
The good news is the cartel kingpin, Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, a.k.a. “El Mencho,” is no longer with us. From the New York Times:
Mexican security forces on Sunday captured Mr. Oseguera in Tapalpa, a town of about 20,000, in the western coastal state of Jalisco, where his cartel was founded and based, the government said in a statement. Mr. Oseguera was injured in the operation and died while in transport to Mexico City for medical attention, according to the government. At least nine other cartel members were killed.
Reuters reports the raid was a result of combining U.S. intelligence-gathering with Mexican law enforcement:
The U.S. official, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity, did not offer further details on any information that the U.S.-military-led task force may have offered Mexican authorities. The official stressed the raid itself was a Mexican military operation.
A former U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity without referring specifically to the task force, said the U.S. compiled a detailed target package for El Mencho and provided it to the Mexican government for its operation.
This detailed dossier included information provided by U.S. law enforcement and U.S. intelligence, the former official said.
The former official added El Mencho was very high, if not at the top, of a list of U.S. targets in Mexico.
Virginia Democrats are advancing two bills to extend deadlines for receiving and counting mail-in absentee ballots several days after Election Day.
Delegate Adele McClure and State Senator Barbara Favola, who represent Arlington, have introduced companion bills, HB 82 and SB 58, which will extend the deadline for counting absentee ballots in Virginia from noon to 5 p.m. on the third day after Election Day, reported ARL Now.
These bills are being presented as the White House seeks to curb voter fraud in Democrat-run states, particularly in regard to mail-in voting, which President Donald Trump claims is prone to widespread fraud.
Trump has vowed to sign an executive order to eliminate mail-in ballots and electronic voting machines ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, allowing absentee ballots only for the seriously ill and military personnel overseas to restore election integrity.
“Mail-in ballots are corrupt. You can never have a real democracy with mail-in ballots,” Trump said on social media.
McClure and Favola said that their legislation to allow mail-in ballots to be counted well after the election will address delays caused by the U.S. Postal Service.
In June, a Pennsylvania woman appeared in federal court in connection with a $1 million-plus home care fraud scheme. Hemal Patel was charged with wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, and conspiracy to violate the federal anti-kickback statute. The 59-year-old Bucks County resident, according to the U.S Attorney’s Office for Pennsylvania’s Eastern District, pocketed payments for referring patients to home care agencies. Patel and others schemed to fraudulently bill Medicaid for ghost home care services.
The scam targeted Pennsylvania’s Community HealthChoices, which uses Medicaid funds to pay for home- and community-based personal assistance services for individuals with disabilities to help keep them out of nursing homes, according to court filings. Patel was one of hundreds of people charged in the Department of Justice’s National Health Care Fraud Takedown, the largest sweep of its kind covering some $14.6 billion in intended Medicaid losses.
Payouts to personal assistance services have ballooned nationally. Between 2018 and 2024, Medicaid cash in the category grew by 144 percent, from $9.6 billion to almost $23.5 billion. But payments have absolutely exploded in Pennsylvania — by more than 10,000 percent over the period, according to an analysis of new data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). The massive data dump, reviewed by public spending tracker Open the Books, shows Medicaid-funded payments to Pennsylvania’s personal assistance services shot up from $5.6 million in 2018 to $583 million in 2024.
More homeless industrial complex fraud: “S.F. Homeless Nonprofit CEO Charged with Nine Felonies for Allegedly Misappropriating over $1M in Public Funds.”
The former CEO of a San Francisco-based homelessness nonprofit was charged Monday with nine felony counts after allegedly misappropriating more than $1.2 million in public funds.
Gwendolyn Westbrook, 71, is the former CEO of the United Council of Human Services. Charges against Westbrook include misappropriation of public funds, grand theft, and filing four years of false tax returns.
According to prosecutors, Westbrook misappropriated the $1.2 million through unauthorized payments to herself, improper cash withdrawals, and fraudulent reimbursements from 2019 to 2023. Prosecutors also claim Westbrook directly stole $91,000 from the United Council of Human Services.
Things that make you go “Hmmmm“: “FBI Raids Los Angeles School District Headquarters, Home of Superintendent.”
Federal agents executed search warrants Wednesday at the headquarters of the Los Angeles Unified School District and the home of Superintendent Albert Carvalho, significantly escalating the Trump administration’s fight against the nation’s second-largest school district.
The FBI conducted the raids on the 24th floor of LAUSD’s headquarters and Carvalho’s home in LA’s San Pedro neighborhood, a vibrant waterfront area, according to Fox 11. The nature of the investigation is currently unclear. LAUSD and Carvalho have yet to address the situation.
FBI agents could be seen going in and out of Carvalho’s home carrying items in boxes. Carvalho has been LAUSD superintendent since 2022 and was re-appointed to the role this past September. The affidavit for the search warrants are currently under seal, so it is unknown if Carvalho is personally a target of the investigation.
Last week, the Trump administration moved to intervene in a civil rights lawsuit against LAUSD for alleged racial discrimination tied to a program that prioritized funding for schools with lower amounts of white students. The lawsuit was brought by the 1776 Foundation, a conservative group active in K-12 education policy and school board races.
The district has also clashed with the Trump administration over immigration enforcement efforts in the area.
The defining issue of our country, powerfully visualized in 20 seconds:
“If you agree with this statement, then stand up and show your support: The first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens not illegal aliens."
Our inquiry panel has heard extensive and deeply distressing testimony from a survivor detailing prolonged and extreme abuse, exploitation, and trafficking beginning in childhood and continuing over a number of years across multiple locations in the United Kingdom.
The panel wishes to place on record that we regard this testimony with the utmost seriousness. The survivor has provided detailed, consistent, and specific evidence over an extended period of engagement with our inquiry. She will remain anonymous and she is safe. She has made it abundantly clear that she wants the country to know her story. This is her decision, and her decision alone. Elements of her account have been independently corroborated through presented documentation and vast evidence.
The panel is also aware of additional material and supporting information that strengthens the credibility of the survivor’s account and warrants urgent and comprehensive investigation by the relevant statutory authorities.
Given the gravity of the allegations, we have thought long and hard about whether to release the following information. We believe, as does she, that the public deserves to know the truth about the rape gangs.
The survivor’s violent gang rape and abuse began at the age of 12, she was raped multiple times per day over many years. The rapes were filmed and were used as blackmail. The survivor has stated that multiple police officers were active perpetrators – money was exchanged openly and this destroyed her ability and willingness to seek help. Police vehicles were used to traffic her and some of the abuse events were called “cop nights.”
The extreme pain she suffered included filmed torture in places called ‘red rooms’.
The torture included waterboarding and strangulation by rope. Distressingly, she was raped by a dog, filmed, and forced to rewatch the footage as the men placed bets.
The co-ordination of this specific type of abuse was predominantly perpetrated by Pakistani-heritage men.
Also this:
Our rape gang inquiry is only just starting to scratch the surface – there is so very much evil among us.
Do not kid yourselves. This is happening, now. Today. All over Britain. It is an organised criminal network of rape and slavery.
China’s fishing fleets are clearing the sea out. “The People’s Republic of China (PRC), having drained as much as she can from nearby seas, has decided to strip-mine life from the most remote corners of our shared oceans.”
So scared of your own population and your inability to keep them fed and employed ashore—today—that you will knowingly strip mine life from the world’s oceans, regardless of its impact on everyone—tomorrow.
Once an ecosystem is ripped out from its foundation, there is no guarantee it can recover. They don’t care. That will be someone else’s problem. No one will do anything, as they either lack the will, or they have been bought off.
How remote and how far down the food chain is the PRC willing to go? The wholesale harvest of krill in the Antartic is as difficult to imagine as it is to see, and as such is hard to get people’s attention. It is a foundation species. If you harvest it below a certain level, the entire ecosystem will collapse.
What they are doing in South American, though?
Here’s your video.
The red are Chinese fishing boats crossing to the other side of the Pacific, rushing right up to Peru’s EEZ, before switching off their AIS and entering Peru’s territorial waters. They are doing the same off the Galapagos and Argentina.
Sounds like China is the actual existential threat to global life greens liked to claim global warming was. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
How many fingers, Winston? “Canadian tribunal fines man $750,000 for believing there are only two genders.”
“Deep penetration: Ukrainians spearhead Russian defenses in Huliaipole.”
The Ukrainian offensive near Huliaipole has developed a second axis, retaking still more territory from the Russian invaders.
This is a glorious story: Ukrainian covert cyber units set up a sting to secretly restore Starlink access to Russian units…as long as they “submit detailed information, including personal data, terminal identifiers, and geolocation coordinates.” Results: 2420 Russian control points droned and bombed.
I suppose I need to cover the weirdness of the 31st Texas congressional district race. “Congressman John Carter Faces Valentina Gomez, ‘ShamWow Guy’ in Crowded GOP Primary.” Carter was formerly my congressman until the 2020 redistricting.
Congressman John Carter (R-TX-31) is facing nine Republican challengers in the 2026 primary election for his seat, which he has held for 23 years.
Some of the contenders in the Republican primary have entered the race with unique backgrounds — including Offer Vince Shlomi, also known as the “Shamwow Guy” infomercial pitchman from the early 2000s, and social media sensation Valentina Gomez Noriega, formerly a candidate for Missouri secretary of state and best known for her unfiltered, brash tone in short videos posted online.
Other candidates in the crowded running include U.S. Army veterans William Abel, Steve Dowell, and Elvis Lossa; physician David Berry; Ed Ewald; entrepreneur and millionaire Abhiram Garapati; and businessman Raymond Hamden.
Shlomi has garnered nationwide attention after announcing his bid for CD 31, due to his familiar infomercial branding and signature voice. His campaign motto is “make America grow some balls again,” matching similar branding as seen from Gomez.
Carter is Texas’ third longest-serving member of the U.S. House of Representatives, having been the first member elected to the seat following the district’s creation through redistricting after the 2000 census. Carter cites the September 11 terrorist attacks as an event that encouraged him to run for Congress in 2002, thus leaving his prior role as district judge for the 277th District Court in Williamson County.
Carter currently serves as a member of the U.S. House Committee on Appropriations while also serving on both the Military Construction and Veterans Affairs Subcommittee and the Defense Subcommittee.
He’s been endorsed for re-election by both President Donald Trump and Gov. Greg Abbott.
The top three fundraisers per the end-of-year campaign fiscal reports in the Republican primary were Carter, Gomez, and Garapati. Carter came in with $114,252 raised and reported $462,022 in cash on hand (COH). Gomez followed the incumbent with $56,175 in receipts and $22,196 in COH, while Garapti touted raising $30,000 with $39,000 in COH.
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has admitted he had two affairs with Russian women while married to his now-ex-wife, Melinda French Gates, and issued a groveling apology for his links with convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
Gates, 70, told staffers at his foundation on Tuesday that he flew on a private plane with the disgraced financier and spent time with him in the US and abroad, but didn’t participate in any crime, according to the Wall Street Journal.
“I did nothing illicit. I saw nothing illicit,” Gates said in the town hall meeting. “To be clear, I never spent any time with the victims, the women around him.”
He lied about one thing. How do we know he’s not lying about all of it?
Speaking of Epstein: “World Economic Forum boss quits after review of Epstein links.”
The president and CEO of the World Economic Forum (WEF), Borge Brende, has resigned after a review into his links to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The forum ordered an independent review into Brende over his ties to the disgraced financier following the release of Epstein files by the US Department of Justice.
Brende has acknowledged he dined with Epstein three times between 2018 and 2019 and communicated with him by email and text, but said he was “completely unaware” of his past criminal activity.
“Illinois official got more than $300K from trucking industry while his agency gave illegal licenses…Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias, a Democrat who is reportedly considering a run for Chicago mayor, is facing scrutiny over his role in improperly issuing CDL licenses after a series of high profile big rig crashes across the country.”
There were also fireworks after Middleton accused Roy of undermining a bill that would have imposed a national ban on transgender surgery for minors.
“Chip Roy had an amendment that would have allowed it to continue,” said Middleton. “It would have rewarded the transgender lobby; it would have rewarded Gavin Newsom and allowed these private transgender surgeries to continue in those blue states.”
Roy pushed back, saying the legislation was dead anyway but that his proposed amendment was to facilitate passage.
Days after the firm announced that they were scrapping DEI requirements for new board members, and six years after the death of George Floyd that ushered in institutionalized virtue-signaling, the bank’s head of DEI is leaving.
Megan Hogan, who’s been at the firm 12 years, is taking her shtick to Morgan Stanley according to Business Insider, which Hogan confirmed via email, telling the outlet that Morgan Stanley had extended “an amazing opportunity” to her in talent development.
She will report to Morgan’s head of talent development, Susan Reid, the firm’s global head of talent, and will begin in April.
The move comes after Goldman’s hard pivot away from DEI following Donald Trump’s second term – retooling its diversity program, known as One Million Black Women (oh god), a multibillion-dollar commitment to invest in black businesswomen and nonprofit leaders.
The bank also ended its requirement that companies it takes public have diverse boards, and stopped highlighting specific DEI targets in annual reports.
Hogan is being replaced by Lauren Uranker, another managing director who has been with the firm for 14 years who will become the new sole head of talent, development, engagement and management, according to the report.
But it’s not all good news.
Her mandate will be to concentrate on the transition to AI-supported work, team growth, and finding ways to keep top talent from fleeing.
Meet Karl Jacobson, the now-former police chief of New Haven, Connecticut. For virtually his entire career in police administration, he’s been a dedicated crusader against the pesky Second Amendment we mere mortals dare to exercise.
For years, this guy was a face of “gun violence” prevention, cozying up to anti-gun groups like Connecticut Against Gun Violence. He preached about treating gun ownership like a public health crisis, all while pushing programs to disarm the little people under the guise of safety. Because guns are icky and he has his.
But lo and behold, safety crusader Karl has been slapped with first-degree larceny charges for (allegedly) swiping almost a hundred grand in police department funds. Some of the money was for earmarked for…wait for it…youth programs for “at risk” kids. Thanks, Karl.
As with many of these big theft cases, there’s usually sex, drugs, or gambling behind the embezzlement. In this case, our fearless police chief was funding a gambling habit, racking up literally millions in wagers. Now the gun control crusader has been arrested, has resigned in disgrace and is facing prison.
Netflix isn’t getting Warner Brothers, as the Paramount Skydance offer was deemed superior. This is probably good news from both political and artistic standpoints, and may give movie theaters chances to survive longer.
Attorney General Ken Paxton announced Thursday that his office has reached a settlement with investment giant Vanguard, resolving part of Texas’ multistate lawsuit accusing major asset managers of manipulating the coal market through environmental investment strategies.
The agreement marks the first settlement in the case Paxton filed in 2024 against BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street, in which he alleged the firms conspired to suppress coal production in pursuit of environmental goals—actions he argued drove up electricity costs for consumers.
Under the deal, Vanguard will pay $29.5 million to the participating states and adopt new restrictions on how it uses its shareholder influence. Paxton’s office said Vanguard agreed not to pressure companies to adopt environmental, social, or governance (ESG) policies that could reduce profitability, and pledged not to direct corporate strategy or threaten to divest holdings to force policy changes.
A win for investors and energy sanity.
Here’s a case like Breaking Bad if Walter White were a Texas Tech supply chain professor dealing fentanyl. “Daniel Taylor, age 50, has been charged with federal crimes and is no longer employed by the university.”
Rural Texas residents claim that a Muslim city is being built in their backyard and accuse local officials of being very secretive about the deal.
Kaufman, Texas, residents didn’t think much of it when Kaufman Solar LLC bought a massive parcel of land in 2022. However, now that a mysterious buyer from the Middle East is looking to purchase an estimated 2,000 acres of land right next door to the planned solar farm to establish a sustainable city, they are worried about the impact.
Snip.
The Kaufman County Commissioner Court meeting Jan. 20 confirms that a buyer, through a Dallas, Texas, law firm, is seeking to purchase the land, contingent on the county approving three new municipal water districts for a potential sustainable city. The lawyer verified that the potential developer is SEE Holding, a UAE-based, privately held global holding group headquartered in Dubai, apparently focused on sustainability and spearheading a net-zero emissions future.
Republican Rep. Lance Gooden also told the Daily Caller that the buyer is based in Dubai, which he says raises serious concerns that need to be addressed before any approval for the city is potentially granted.
Right now the “Islamic City” aspect is all hearsay, but it does look, at the very least, a little funny…
Given the Epstein-based charges against Prince Andrew, Mark Felton examines his service in the Falklands campaign to determine if he actually came under fire and served honorably. The answer to both seems to be yes.
Good: Richard Hammond drives a 3,000 horsepower electric hypercar. Bad: It’s made in China. Ball’s in your court, Elon…
When a sitting Texas Republican Senator endorses the primary opponent of a sitting Texas Republican congressman, that’s news, and Ted Cruz has endorsed Steve Toth over incumbent Dan Crenshaw in the Texas Second Congressional primary race:
I am proud to endorse @SteveTothTX for Congress in Texas’s 2nd Congressional District.
Steve faithfully served the people of Texas in the Texas House of Representatives, championing our Texas values of liberty, limited government, and constitutional governance.
I am proud to endorse @SteveTothTX for Congress in Texas’s 2nd Congressional District.
Steve faithfully served the people of Texas in the Texas House of Representatives, championing our Texas values of liberty, limited government, and constitutional governance.
Steve is an unwavering fighter for school choice, fiscal responsibility, and the next generation of Americans. Washington needs bold leadership and representatives who will stand up for Texans at every turn.
Steve has the experience, the courage, and the conviction to do just that. I’m honored to support his campaign and urge voters in Texas’s 2nd Congressional District to join me in electing Steve Toth to Congress.
Though his voting record has generally been conservative, there’s been an increasing amount of conservative dissatisfaction with Crenshaw over the years, much of it centered over accusations of enriching himself while in office, including accusations of insider stock trading.
Toth has a very conservative record in the Texas House, but Cruz supporting him over Crenshaw suggests that there may be some fire behind all that smoke.
