When Russia launched its illegal war of territorial aggression against Ukraine in February of 2022, Russia was thought to have as many as 10,000 tanks in it’s inventory, including vast numbers of older Soviet-era armor.
Covert Cabal has been regularly tracking the depletion of Russian tank reserves using satellite imagery. Four months ago, they put out a video counting tanks remaining in Russian depots:
Their initial satellite images showed a total of 6107 tanks in all depots in 2021, whereas their most recent count only shows 3,345. However: “Virtually every one of these tanks left is in absolutely horrible condition. Before the war it was probably closer to 50/50, but those good ones since have been the ones that were grabbed from storage first.” They also note that the initial number was almost certainly higher than the ones they could count, as they were probably better vehicles stored in garages. They estimate that pretty much all of those are now gone.
By at least one estimate, those 10,000 theoretical tanks have already been destroyed.
“Ukraine’s general staff claims that 9,760 Russian tanks have been destroyed.” Oryx says 3,690 have been destroyed, but those are only the ones they can visually confirm. And some of those tanks are very old indeed. (Russia even deployed World War II howitzer earlier this year. )
“The situation has gotten so bad as of January 2025 that many resort to attacking in any vehicle on which they can get their hands.”
Which brings us to today’s Suchomimus video of a recent Russian assault:
“Ukraine reported that Russian troops tried to break through using 18 motorcycles and 10 civilian cars.”
If Russia is launching assaults without a single military vehicle to provide firepower or protection, that suggests that they’re nearing the end of their stockpiles of tanks and BMPs. Sending such pathetically equipped troops into the teeth of drone-armed Ukrainians is tantamount to admitting their meatwave attacks are merely suicide missions.
This suggests that all usable Soviet-era tank stockpiles have finally been depleted.
To hit or not to hit Iran, that is the question, illegal alien friendly judges land themselves in hot water, some party switch shenanigans in Florida, the Texas Senate passes some bills (good and bad), and updates on the proceedings against several disgraced politicos. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Also, Texas residents should remember that the Sales tax Holiday starts tomorrow.
Tenacity is the most important virtue of national leaders at war, which allows them to press on with no assurance of victory, fending off tremendous political pressures to fold. Winston Churchill displayed this quality in 1940. In June of that year, Germany appeared unstoppable. Paris and the entirety of Western Europe had fallen. The Luftwaffe was grinding down the grossly outnumbered British pilots, and German invasion barges were being assembled in Belgian ports. Even then, with Britain desperate for U.S. support, the American national debate on interventionism, prompted by the outbreak of war in September 1939, continued to break decisively in favor of the isolationists.
Exploring an accommodation with Germany appeared as the eminently reasonable and prudent course of action because of Herr Hitler’s generous offer to leave Britain and its vast empire intact. When British parliamentarians pressed Churchill to explain his plan, he confessed to his intimates that he had no plan at all. He was determined to just keep buggering on.
Then the situation became bleaker still for the British and for Churchill personally. In June 1941, the German army smashed its way into Russia, advancing rapidly toward what looked like an imminent victory. Although the Wehrmacht’s swift conquests promised to wholly remedy Germany’s only weakness—its lack of petroleum—the isolationists in the U.S. Congress remained dominant. Meanwhile, at home, London was abuzz with talk of Churchill’s heavy drinking, his personal dependence on gifts from his Jewish friends to pay for his extravagant tastes and, above all, his utter lack of strategy—he had failed to offer any path at all that could conceivably lead to victory.
Things looked grim all around. In North Africa, the brilliant German tactician Erwin Rommel was outmaneuvering British forces with ease. Much worse were the first reports of Germany’s astonishing technological progress: the world’s first jet fighter that could easily outfly every single British and American fighter; the world’s first air-to-surface missile (Fritz X) that, in September 1943, would sink the Italian battleship Roma (to prevent it from surrendering to the Allies); and the Tiger tank that could crush British armor.
Nevertheless, the isolationists in Congress refused to fund even a prosaic piston-engine fighter project—the P-51 Mustang, the war’s best Allied fighter—which was developed with fast-dwindling British funds.
Churchill’s answer? Just keep buggering on.
Snip.
Whereas Churchill’s problem was an isolationist Congress that constrained a generally sympathetic president, Netanyahu enjoyed ample support on the Hill but faced an American administration determined to cut Israel down to size and to remove him from power.
As Israel fought a major, multifront war in October 2023, key U.S. officials encouraged domestic uproar against Netanyahu and worked to constrain him and even collapse his government.
That was not all the president’s doing, but Joe Biden’s administration was stacked with Barack Obama’s leftovers, who ran the gamut of pathological Israel haters, from Samantha Power to Robert Malley—the red-diaper baby of Stalinist Jewish parents in Paris whom I met in my youth when they were working for Algeria’s National Liberation Front, which was not merely fanatically anti-Israel but also declaredly anti-Jewish, much like Yemen’s Houthis today. With the CIA mostly very hostile (as it has been since it was established in 1947, as declassified documents fully reveal), only the Pentagon harbored some friends of Israel—although that hardly stopped the administration from using every trick in the book to delay mid-war weapons supplies to Israel.
Netanyahu faced a concerted campaign, directed from Washington, that brought together Israeli nonprofits and Netanyahu’s political opponents. Almost from the get-go, Netanyahu had to overcome calls and protests by well-educated—and some even well-meaning—Israelis and American Jews, as well as all the usual suspects in European capitals and almost every other world government incessantly demanding a cease-fire, not as a pause, but as an end to the war.
Worse still, several of Israel’s retired and barely retired generals threw their weight behind the cease-fire push. Some did so with the authority of true heroes, such as Yair Golan, the head of the unsubtly named The Democrats (a merger of the left-wing Labor and Meretz Parties) and former IDF deputy chief of staff no less. Golan jumped into his small car on Oct. 7 to successfully rescue people with his handgun, as did the former head of the IDF’s Operations Directorate Israel Ziv, now a very successful security contractor overseas after distinguished service, who became the guru of an entire cabal of retired generals, including some who served in Netanyahu’s government until they left it to oppose him. Then, inevitably, there were tawdry time-servers who somehow became generals without doing much other than talking, like Amos Gilead, who’s well known and much-favored in U.S. officialdom because of his hostility to Netanyahu.
All those former generals demanded the same thing, albeit at different times: to stop the war with no way of recovering the Israeli hostages and no way of forcing Hamas to accept supervised disarmament, therefore allowing it to use a cease-fire to reconstitute.
Furthermore, these generals offered no solution whatever to the Hezbollah dilemma in the north. The day after the Oct. 7 attack, Hezbollah started launching rockets against Israel. If Israel did not attack, Hezbollah forces, then assuredly the most powerful non-state army in the world, was certainly capable of burning every Jewish town and village north of Haifa with countless rockets (the number 110,000 that was widely circulated turned out to be simply invented) while targeting power stations, Ben Gurion Airport, port facilities, every chemical plant and refinery, and every air base with thousands of guided missiles. If Israel were to attack, those massive barrages would immediately begin.
As Netanyahu pondered this dilemma, he had to deal not only with his security establishment but also with unremitting pressure from Washington. A mere few days after Oct. 7, the Biden administration intervened and made clear its opposition to an Israeli preemptive strike against Hezbollah—a position it would maintain over the next year. In fact, when Israel finally eliminated Hassan Nasrallah in a strike on his bunker on Sept. 27, 2024, Biden’s reaction was an irate “Bibi, what the fuck?”
The Biden administration displayed a similar hands-off attitude toward Iran’s proxy in Yemen, allowing Tehran to pile more pressure on Israel. The Houthis joined the fight with their skirts, sandals, and Iranian supplied anti-ship missiles and drones that not only deprived Israel of its secondary Red Sea sea port access but also targeted commercial vessels, blocking navigation in the area and forcing shipping companies to find longer, more expensive routes, thereby augmenting U.S. and international pressure on Israel to end the war. Washington allowed Iran to stop maritime traffic in the Red Sea and Suez Canal without any retaliation against Tehran and its own maritime traffic, while Western disarray was compounded by the spectacle of very expensive European navies doing nothing much even as their Mediterranean ports lost all their Asian traffic.
This shameful passivity reinforced the Israeli conviction that France, Italy, and Spain, unable and unwilling to defend even their own direct material interests, would only yield to Muslim demographic and political pressure in other respects as well. Only the British joined the United States in eventually striking the Houthis, though mostly symbolically and nowhere near the sustained and targeted campaign required to destroy Houthi capabilities.
Between American permissiveness toward Iran’s multipronged campaign and Washington’s support for Netanyahu’s domestic opposition, calls for a Gaza cease-fire intensified and became the default position across the political landscape, from Israel’s left and even moderate center to most European governments, in addition to the Biden administration.
It is against this backdrop that Netanyahu’s pure resolve must be understood. With this remarkable array of forces, external and internal, bearing down on him, his tenacity was the only thing that mattered.
Read the whole thing.
The Houthis in Yemen are in the find out phase, as U.S. forces just blew up a vital oil port.
Fresh US airstrikes on Yemen Thursday marked the single-deadliest known attack under President Donald Trump’s new campaign targeting the Houthi rebels. The Pentagon has been intensely bombing Yemen since March 15, when the Gaza truce collapsed.
A Houthi spokesman announced Friday that the attacks killed 38 people and wounded 102 others. The death toll was hours later updated to at least 74 killed. The operation mainly targeted and destroyed the Ras Isa oil port, which sent massive fireballs shooting into the night sky.
The final pillar of the plan, calling to “confront long-term contributors to domestic terrorism,” is laden with potentially controversial social proposals.
This section identifies “ghost guns”—unregistered weapons without a serial number, often created via 3D printer—as one such contributor, and calls to “[r]ein in the proliferation” of such weapons, “encourage state adoption of extreme risk protection orders, and drive other executive and legislative action including banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.”
It also called for “advancing inclusion” as part of the response to the COVID-19 pandemic to “mitigate xenophobia and bias.”
This would be in order to “address hate crime reporting barriers faced by disadvantaged communities by promoting law enforcement training and resources to prevent and address bias-motivated crimes,” according to the SIP.
Additionally, the plan encouraged “teaching and learning of civics education that provides students with the skill to fully participate in civic life,” and promoting “literacy education for both children and adult learners and existing proven interventions to foster resiliency to disinformation.”
The change at the border between President Biden and President Trump is nothing short of staggering, and two numbers best tell that story: 189,604 and 20.
The first is the number of illegal immigrants Border Patrol agents caught and immediately released into the U.S. in December 2023, at the depths of the Biden border chaos.
The second is the number of illegal immigrants agents caught and released into the U.S. in February — roughly one-hundredth of 1% of the total in Mr. Biden’s worst month.
For years, Border Patrol agents have been telling anyone who would listen that catch-and-release was the driver of illegal immigration.
Migrants who had a reasonable sense that they could live and work in the U.S. would pay $10,000 or more to smugglers to reach the border. If their chances of release were slim, they wouldn’t pay or make the trip.
Mr. Trump’s policies have drastically cut the chances of catch-and-release from 778 per 1,000 border crossers in December 2023 to just 2 per 1,000 in February.
“New Mexico Judge Resigns After Housing Alleged Tren De Aragua Member. The resignation occurred a few days after law enforcement arrested illegal alien Cristhian Ortega-Lopez…Democrat Doña Ana County Magistrate Judge Joel Cano resigned after police arrested an alleged Tren De Aragua (TdA) gang member.”
FBI Director Kash Patel announced Friday that the bureau has arrested Judge Hannah Dugan out of Milwaukee, Wisconsin on charges of obstruction, accusing the Dugan of obstructing an arrest of illegal immigrants last week.
“We believe Judge Dugan intentionally misdirected federal agents away from the subject to be arrested in her courthouse, Eduardo Flores Ruiz, allowing the subject — an illegal alien — to evade arrest,” Patel said in a brief statement shared on X – which was subsequently deleted and re-posted. “Thankfully our agents chased down the perp on foot and he’s been in custody since, but the Judge’s obstruction created increased danger to the public.”
The days when Democrats can blithely ignore immigration laws are coming to a close.
Senator Dick Durbin (D., Ill.), the second most powerful Senate Democrat, announced Wednesday his decision not to run for another term after nearly three decades in the world’s greatest deliberative body.
Durbin, 80, is ending his Senate career after five terms, the longest tenure of any Senator in Illinois history. His retirement opens up a deep blue seat in 2026 and will create a leadership competition for Senate Democrats amid frustration with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) and generational turnover within the party.
Remember, in Minnesota, crimes aginst designed hate objects are perfectly legal. “Progressive Minnesota Prosecutor Lets State Employee Off with No Charges for Alleged Tesla Vandalism.”
The Hennepin County Attorney’s office is seeking diversion for Minnesota Department of Human Service employee Dylan Adams after he allegedly vandalized at least six Teslas in Minneapolis while walking his dog….
Progressive County Attorney Mary Moriarty took office in 2023 and has faced strong criticism for her soft-on-crime approach. On several occasions, Moriarty has shown leniency to violent criminals, including suspects charged with murder and sexual assault, leading to disputes with prosecutors and outrage among victims’s families.
Is she Soros-backed? You better believe it. I hope Elon Musk sues all of them for everything they own…
Well, this is disturbing. “Stunned cops allegedly find 180K rounds of ammo packed in minivan driven by two Mexican nationals.”
Two Mexican nationals pulled over in a routine traffic stop in Colorado were found with 180,000 illegal rounds of ammunition in the back of their van, according to federal prosecutors.
Caesar Ramon Martinez Solis, 41, and Humberto Ivan Amador Gavira, 24, were pulled over late last month for failing to dim their headlights and using a turn signal in Canon City, 35 miles southwest of Colorado Springs, according to the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Colorado.
Officers then found 180 boxes stacked in the back of the van — each labeled as having 1,000 rounds of ammo, mostly .308 but also 30 boxes of 7.62, the feds said.
Ammunition in back of minivan.
The federal government’s main website on COVID-19 information has been taken down and replaced with a new version discarding the natural-origin theory of the coronavirus that was pushed by the Biden administration.
Where the previous website pushed vaccine and testing information, the White House is now displaying scientific proof that the virus was man-made and leaked from a Chinese virus lab while calling out U.S. officials and agencies that it says “obstructed” the truth from the American people.
Dr. Anthony Fauci is named along with Dr. Peter Daszak, Dr. David Morens and other public officials who are accused of engaging in “a multi-year campaign of delay, confusion, and non-responsiveness in an attempt to obstruct the Select Subcommittee’s investigation” and to hide incriminating evidence.”
Now will Democrats finally accept the truth, or continue clinging to the “wet market” origins like they cling to all their other lockdown lies?
“Hegseth Denounces Journalists Who ‘Won’t Give Back Their Pulitzers for Discredited Stories as Pulitzer Board Facing String of Setbacks in Trump’s Lawsuit. He insists he is the subject of ‘hit pieces that ‘come out from the same media that peddled the Russia hoax.'” Soon the legacy media can be financially, as well as factually and morally, bankrupt.
So the Russians captured a Bradley in Ukraine. After analyzing how it compares to their own BMPs, they want one.
The Russians have gotten a closeup look at an M2A2 Bradley Fighting Vehicle and seem to like it better than their own armored vehicles.
The Bradley offers more protection and can fire more accurately than its Russian equivalent, the BMP-3, according to a Russian report that was leaked onto a Telegram channel earlier this month.
Experts told Task & Purpose that the report appears to be legitimate.
Priority legislation that would raise the homestead exemption for elderly and disabled homeowners by $50,000 passed the Texas Senate on Wednesday. With other planned exemption increases, elderly homeowners would receive a total of $200,000 in homestead exemptions.
Senate Bill (SB) 23 and Senate Joint Resolution (SJR) 85 raise the school tax homestead exemption — a reduction in the taxable value of a home — for age 65 and over homeowners from $10,000 to $60,000. The proposal is estimated to cost the state $1.2 billion through the next biennium.
Both passed by a 30 to 1 vote with the lone “no” coming from state Sen. Nathan Johnson (D-Dallas), which is the first “no” vote against a homestead exemption increase in the Senate in multiple sessions.
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick prefaced this proposal in an early-April press conference, during which he said he and Speaker Dustin Burrows (R-Lubbock) were working together on the item.
This is on top of the planned standard homestead exemption increase from $100,000 to $140,000.
Just in case you hadn’t heard: Pope Francis dead at 88. “The pope, who led the Catholic Church for twelve years, passed away just one day after Easter Sunday when the world’s 1.3 billion Catholics celebrated the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Despite his ongoing health problems, he made several appearances during Holy Week, including a trip to St. Peter’s Basilica and a visit with Vice President JD Vance on Sunday.” Sic transit gloria mundi.
Hijacking thwarted. “A U.S. man hijacked a small plane in Belize on Thursday, stabbing two passengers and a pilot, before one of the stabbed passengers fatally shot him, officials in Belize and the United States said. The plane then landed safely.”
Pizzo, considered a possible candidate for governor in 2026, said unaffiliated voters helped elect him to office. He added that the state party needed new leadership, but Democratic leaders didn’t want him to be it. The party that his late father volunteered for in the 1960s, he said, “is not the party today.”
“Here’s the issue: The Democratic Party in Florida is dead. But there are good people that can resuscitate it. But they don’t want it to be me,” he said.
Pizzo’s stunning announcement — which caught Democrats completely by surprise — of a switch to no party affiliation is just the latest blow for Florida’s beleaguered Democratic Party. The state currently has 1.2 million more registered Republicans than Democrats, and no Democrat holds statewide elected office — a far cry from Florida’s former status as the ultimate swing state.
It’s got to hurt to have the Minority leader of the third largest state in the union leave your party because it’s too radical. Especially since a quarter century ago Florida was still The Land of the Hanging Chad…
Florida party switch shenanigans the second: “David Jolly, a former Republican U.S. Congressman in Florida’s 13th Congressional District who left the GOP amid his distaste for President Donald Trump, has now registered as a Democrat. He’s also launched a political committee, Florida 2026, ahead of what many expect to be a gubernatorial bid.” I doubt someone who left office in 2017 is going to be at the top of anyone’s list, and Charlie Crist’s post-Republican career hardly offers a blueprint for success in Florida politics…
“Disgraced former Representative George Santos (R., N.Y.) was sentenced Friday to 87 months in federal prison for wire fraud and identity theft, completing his remarkable rise and fall from a newly elected swing-seat congressman to widely ridiculed conman whose colleagues expelled him from the House..”
The Federal Election Commission (FEC) has opened an investigation into Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) over donations made to her 2024 campaign by the Democratic fundraising organization Act Blue.
The FEC began its probe after receiving a complaint from the conservative Coolidge-Reagan Foundation in late March.
The complaint alleges that Crockett received 53 separate donations of $595 from a 73 year old supporter named Randy Best through the Act Blue portal.
However, when one of Crockett’s opponents for 2026 spoke to Best’s wife, she denied that the couple knew anything about donations, raising concerns that the Act Blue donations may have been made by others with donations being given under false names.
Crockett’s campaign received more than $870,000 in donations through Act Blue.
At this point, I think we have to assume that ActBlue was consciously constructed to enable fraud.
In the latest scandal to rock the state’s largest public school district, on Friday, a federal jury found Houston Independent School District’s (HISD) former chief operating officer, Brian Busby, and vendor Anthony Hutchison, guilty on 33 charges related to a long-running bribery scheme.
The scheme, which prosecutors say began as early as 2011, included kickbacks to Busby as well as cash payments to former HISD board president Rhonda Skillern-Jones and multiple other officials in exchange for lucrative contracts for construction, landscaping, mowing, and maintenance at district schools.
In some instances, Hutchison overbilled the district by $6 million through his exclusive contract to provide mowing and landscaping for the entire district. He also obtained contracts through Skillern-Jones to complete projects at several schools using funds derived from a 2012 voter-approved bond referendum.
After a trial that lasted nearly four weeks, both Busby and Hutchison were convicted on charges of conspiracy, bribery, filing false tax returns, and witness tampering. Hutchison was also convicted of wire fraud.
Skillern-Jones, who also later served as a Houston Community College trustee and worked for Harris County Commissioner Rodney Ellis (D-Pct. 1), entered a plea deal in 2021 and admitted that she had received $12,000 in cash from Busby in a Walmart parking lot.
Deadpool creator Rob Liefeld says that the people at the top of Marvel comics, Dan Buckley, David Bogart and David Gabriel, have done a horrible job, especially with X-Men, and have to be fired.
And speaking of people getting fired for being bad at their job, Alyssa Mercante fired from Kotaku. Asmongold: “Put the fries in the bag.”
Russia released a video showing what are probably intelligence officers overseeing FPV drone operations from what is obviously a high rise in Moscow.
This was hardly a shining moment in operational security, as the Internet quickly geolocated the office to the precise tower being used.
But wait! It gets better! It turns out that drone operations are being run from atop a school for psychics.
So now, not only can Ukraine hit the Russian drone intelligence office with their own drones the next time they hit Moscow, but ironically, the Russians will…
Brandon Herrera and the Ballistic High-Speed guys get together to answer the question: What happens when you fire a tank cannon at someone’s torso and head?
Well, not to answer it. We all know what the answer is. But they went out to demonstrate the answer in glorious ballistic gel color.
“It just turned him into a jelly-filled doughnut.”
Leftwing crooks attempt to cover their tracks, employment numbers are up, Trump’s tariffs already bring some quick action, Eric Three Phones beats the wrap, the criminal leftwing racketeers lined up against Telsa, and Tren de Aragua scumbags show up well the hell out in the countryside.
U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP) officials attempted to delete one terabyte of financial data to “cover their crimes,” Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) Chief Elon Musk alleged Monday.
After President Donald Trump signed an executive order last month targeting USIP for reductions, DOGE visited the organization’s Washington headquarters, prompting a dramatic standoff.
Prior to DOGE’s arrival, USIP employees reportedly barricaded themselves inside their offices and had to be physically removed by Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) officers. At some point, USIP employees allegedly attempted to scrub damning records, but, according to Musk, the DOGE engineers were able to recover the entire archive.
“They deleted a terabyte of financial data to cover their crimes, but they don’t understand technology, so we recovered it,” Musk posted on X.
The recovered data includes detailed financial transfers tied to individuals and groups in Afghanistan and Iraq.
USIP was receiving “$55M in congressional (taxpayer) funds” every year, the DOGE X account posted, adding that “prior management would sweep excess funds into its private Endowment” which has no congressional oversight.
“In the past 10 years, USIP has transferred ~$13M to its private Endowment, mainly used for private events and travel,” DOGE posted on X.
USIP contracts cancelled by the Trump administration, according to DOGE, include:
– $132,000 to Mohammad Qasem Halimi, an ex-Taliban member who was Afghanistan’s former Chief of Protocol.
– $2,232,500 to its outside Accountant, who attempted to delete over 1 terabyte of accounting data (now recovered) after new leadership entered the building
– $1,307,061 to the Al Tadhamun Iraqi League for Youth
– $675,000 for private aviation services
Mohammad Qasim Halimi is the former Minister of Hajj and Religious Affairs in Afghanistan, according to the Doha forum. He is currently a member of the National Council of Ulema, the highest religious authority in Afghanistan. The National Council of Ulema is responsible for ensuring that all Afghan policies conform to Sharia law.
The Al Tadhamun Iraqi League for Youth is a United Nations Democracy Fund (UNDEF) project that allegedly “works to strengthen youth participation in democratic processes” by “building a network of young activists to develop skills in leadership, negotiation and communication.”
According to Foundation For Freedom Online (FFO) director Mike Benz, USIP had been “bribing Afghan Taliban warlords to keep the drugs flowing.”
So graft, fraud, wire fraud, banking fraud, destruction of evidence, and supporting terrorism, all at the same time!
Trump’s tariffs are already bringing results. “Israel removes all remaining tariffs on US imports. Israel and the US signed a free trade agreement in 1985, and some 98% of goods are tax-free.”
When Collins pressed him on whether such escalation could turn into a full-fledged trade war, [Treasury Secretary Scott] Bessent dismissed the idea. “Not a trade war. Depends on the country,” he said, before explaining that history favors the United States in such disputes.
“Remember that the history of trade is, we are the deficit country. The deficit country has an advantage,” he explained. “[The others] are the surplus countries. The surplus countries traditionally always lose any kind of a trade escalation.”
His message to foreign governments was clear: Acting hastily would be a mistake. “As a student of economic history or a professor of economic history, I’d advise against it,” he said. When Collins sought further clarification, he reinforced the point: “I would say that doing anything rash would be unwise.”
Bessent’s remarks leave no doubt that Trump’s trade policies are rooted in historical precedent and strategic calculation. While globalists may panic, the Trump administration remains confident that America is in a stronger position than its trade partners. And history is on our side.
Bessent’s message is clear: Trump knows exactly what he’s doing.
We absolutely want a strong economic and security alliance. It’s not going to be the whole world because China is going to have its own sphere as well, but what we wanna have within our sphere is a few things in the past the United States didn’t exactly ask for.
We’re going to want balanced trade, where in the past we were happy to let the manufacturing go elsewhere. We’re going to want others to essentially own their own defense burdens … everybody take primary responsibility for their own defense.
Snip.
It’s not that Trump doesn’t want free trade, it’s that free trade doesn’t exist right now for the American people. It only exists in the starry-eyed fever dreams of Reaganite commentators who think that’s how the world actually works.
“Reaganite” is the wrong word here, since Reagan’s trade strategy was specifically geared to help win the Cold War, which it did. Nor was Reagan a zero tariff fundamentalist, as shown by his policies on automobiles and steel. Zero tariff fundamentalism is more of a libertarian policy, where it was postulated to be beneficial even if the other side (like China) didn’t remove tariffs on their end. Trump obviously operates under different imperatives, and employs (as I’ve noted before) tit-for-tat game theory strategy.
And if we’re talking about the Democratic Party’s theoretical conversion to post-Cold War free trade starting with Bill Clinton, then the proper term is probably neoliberalism, a word that bears a whole lot of additional baggage.
Exports made by Americans are taxed by other countries while we let them import their cheap products for essentially free, giving Americans price cuts but making it impossible for American companies to compete unless they outsource production elsewhere. That is exactly what has happened over the last few decades and it has destroyed countless American towns.
Trump’s whole schtick is to impose economic tit-for-tat in the hopes that other countries will drop their tariffs on U.S. goods. In that case, we actually get closer to free trade. It also allows us to invest in American manufacturing because we cannot rely on rising superpowers like China for all our industrial needs.
Whether or not that strategy works is up for debate.
“Sen. Mike Lee Introduces Legislation to Ditch the TSA: ‘Too Much Groping, Too Little Benefit.'”
The proposed measure would officially abolish the TSA three years after it is enacted into law and also would require the Departments of Homeland Security and Transportation to create and submit a reorganization plan to Congress.
Tuberville echoed the frustrations expressed by Lee, calling the TSA “a bloated agency—riddled with waste, fraud, and abuse of taxpayer dollars—that has led to unnecessary delays, invasive pat downs and bag checks, and frustration for travelers.”
As we first pointed out on Sunday morning, former Wall Street Journal journalist Asra Nomani unveiled one of the most comprehensive reports on the NGO network behind at least one Tesla Takedown protest.
Nomani’s investigative report, which focused on 24 groups, revealed that these protests were far from organic and likely fueled by rent-a-protesters.
Snip.
In an article for the @FairfaxTimes, I wrote about how the local protests in Tysons, are a window into how the protests are AstroTurf, not “grassroots.” What this case reveals is the way that a multi-million dollar professional protest industry manufactures outrage in top-down political theater, agitprop, or agitation propaganda, and now criminal offenses.
From a spreadsheet linked in that article, here are the NGOs behind the attacks:
50501
ActionNetwork
Action Network Fund
ActUp New York Inc., ACT UP New York, the “AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power”
Climate Defenders
Climate Defenders Action Fund
Arizona – Coconino County Democratic Party
California – Aliso Niguel Democratic Club
California – California Democratic Party
California – Democratic Club Of Carlsbad
Florida – Broward County Democratic Party
Florida – Democratic Progressive Caucus of Palm Beach County Inc.
Florida – Osceola Young Dems
Florida – Rainbow Democrats of Central Florida
Illinois – Democratic Party of DuPage County
North Carolina – Durham County Democrats
Ohio – Eastside Cuyahoga Democratic Clubs
Texas – Harris County Democratic Party, Cypress-Tomball Democrats
Democratic Socialists of America
Disruption Project
Housing Works Inc., providing “assistance & expertise to homeless persons living with AIDS or HIV-related illnesses”
Indivisible Action
Indivisible Project
Mobilize.us, run by MobilizeAmerica Inc. – owned by EveryAction, the parent company of NGP VAN
MoveOnorg Civic Action
Not Above the Law Coalition — Coalition members as of 6/9/2023: American Oversight; Center for American Progress Action Fund; Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW); Common Cause; Congressional Integrity Project; Constitutional Accountability Center; The Criminalization of Poverty Project at the Institute for Policy Studies; Daily Kos; Defend Democracy Action Project; Defend the Vote Action Fund; DemCast USA; End Citizens United/Let America Vote; Fix Democracy First; Free Speech For People; Greenpeace USA; Indivisible; J Street; League of Conservation Voters; MoveOn; NextGen America; Our Revolution; People For the American Way; People Power United; Public Citizen; Public Wise; Secure Elections Network; Sierra Club; Stand Up America; Wisconsin Democracy Campaign; and The Workers Circle. SOURCE: press release
Planet Over Profit
Public Citizen Foundation
Public Citizen Inc.
Rise and Resist Inc.
Stand Up America Inc., established to “mobilize progressive Americans”
Swing Left, dedicated to “help Democrats win”
Tax Reformers LLC, running “TaxElon.us” (“an offshoot of TeslaTakedown.com”)
On Tuesday morning, former Biden administration “disinformation czar” Nina Jankowicz repeatedly refused to disclose who’s funding her new gig – the ‘American Sunlight Project’ – which cropped up after a stint at the USAID-funded UK-based Centre for Information Resilience (CIR) – for which she registered as a foreign agent while serving as their Vice President.
To review – Jankowicz, who previously served as a disinformation fellow at the Wilson Center, advised the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry as part of the Fulbright-Clinton Public Policy Fellowship, and was then selected to head the Biden DHS’s newly formed Disinformation Governance Board – which was quickly dismantled amid criticism over censorship under the guise of fighting disinformation.
Four months later, she launched “The Hypatia Project” for CIR – where she was the Vice President until April 2024, at which point she co-founded the American Sunlight Project.
Fast forward to this morning, Jankowicz was evasive when asked by Republicans during a congressional hearing on disinformation about her funding…
As it turns out, Jankowicz’s co-founder at the American Sunlight Project is Carlos Alvarez-Aranyos, a “communications professional” who worked for the Biden DoD, and is “one of the people who launched the call for a boycott of Tesla.”
Alvarez-Aranyos comes from a wealthy and prominent family in the Dominican Republic. His father, Luis Álvarez Renta, is a well-known Dominican financier. Carlos is a nephew of the renowned fashion designer Oscar de la Renta.
A mixed bag in April 1st elections. Republicans easily retained two congressional seats in Florida and won a voter ID ballot proposition in Wisconsin, but lost a Wisconsin Supreme Court race that Elon Musk and others had poured a lot of money into.
In a lawsuit against the Trump administration filed in Washington, D.C. federal court, the Democratic National Committee said Trump exceeded his authority in the March 25 order by requiring voters to prove they are U.S. citizens, preventing states from counting mail-in ballots received after Election Day, and threatening to take federal funding away from states that do not comply.
Snip.
‘The Executive Order seeks to impose radical changes on how Americans register to vote, cast a ballot, and participate in our democracy — all of which threaten to disenfranchise lawful voters and none of which is legal,’ according to the lawsuit, which was filed by longtime Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias and other lawyers at his firm.
U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer and U.S. Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the leaders of the Democratic minorities in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, respectively, are also plaintiffs in the case.
Democrats are still all in on transing your kids. “New Colorado bill would penalize ‘misgendering’ in public places, use it as justification to take your kids away.”
“Migrant influencer” who bragged about squatting in Americans’ homes is deported. “Leonel Moreno, who encouraged illegal migrants to ‘invade abandoned houses’ in sick TikToks, was sent back to the narco state [Venezuela] this week, after President Trump resumed deportation flights to the country.”
The economic policy of the Democratic Party is grifterism.
Like the Politburo of the former Soviet Union, the words of Democrats often bear little resemblance to the actions their words embody. “Equity” is an excellent example, as when Democrats say “equity,” they really mean highly inequitable policy solutions. Sometimes, however, Democrats deliberately fail to coherently describe the meaning of their actions, and then it becomes even harder to ascertain meaning. Such is the case with the basic economic policies of Democrats. Many on the right like to say that Democrats support socialism, but that’s not wholly true given how many capitalist components exist inside Democrat economic policies. Similarly, it is inaccurate to describe Democrat economics as being purely capitalistic because wealth redistribution is one of their core competencies. Some say that the Democrats enjoy government control of capitalist entities, rendering their economic persuasion fascist in nature. Yet, even that is inaccurate, given that fascist states view their economies as a source of nationalistic pride and strength, while Democrats tend to abhor nationalistic pride in the United States.
It’s not socialism. It’s not capitalism. It’s not fascism. What, then, is the overarching label that explains the economic policies and priorities of Democrats and their leadership?
It’s Grifterism. (I did not invent that word, or at least that’s what Google tells me. However, I believe I am the first author to ever use that term to describe a formal system of national economic governance, so I’m going to run with it.)
Grifterism is, as the name suggests, a system run by and for the benefit of grifters. Webster defines the verb “grift” as “to acquire money or property illicitly.” Grifters have always been a part of human society, but it took the 21st-century Democratic Party to turn the idea into a comprehensive economic system. The best way to understand this system is to analyze the four classes of citizens upon which Grifterism relies, and into which all American citizens are divided one way or another: Billionaires, Productives, Dependents and, of course, Grifters.
Snip.
4. The Grifters: Well, we’re finally here. By now, you probably have a pretty good idea of what the Grifters are up to, but let’s be clear that this class consists of more than just government workers. The Grifter class includes all of the intelligentsia: the university professors, the traditional journalists, the lobbyists, the Hollywood elite, the “BigLaw” attorneys, and, most of all, the NGO crowd. Further, not every government worker is a Grifter—the military, the police, the justice system, and many other government offices that provide what economists call “Public Goods” all house highly necessary government employees. (Those employees are not Grifters—they are Productives, but unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of government workers are in fact Grifters.)
But let’s get back to the NGOs (a term I use in this article interchangeably with non-profit entities), as they reveal the true level of perfidy perpetuated by the Grifters. If you have been paying attention for the last two months, you are probably aware that DOGE and brilliantly relentless and patriotic volunteer data analysts like Data Republican have uncovered the widespread prevalence of U.S. federal agencies taking your tax dollars and using them to fund dubious efforts by various NGOs. This wicked grift cycle goes like this: (1) Taxpayers pay taxes required because Grifters establish programs that require funding; (2) Congress approves such funding in the vaguest possible terms of intent and appropriates those funds to a federal agency run by Grifters; (3) the Grifters in that agency interpret Congress’ intent in the broadest manner possible and provide funds to NGOs that employ other Grifters with six-figure salaries; and (4) that NGO then engages in some sort of woke cause such as training transgender farmers—a cause very few taxpaying voters would vote for if they only knew about it.
The cycle of grifting prospers beyond just NGOs: the universities receive taxpayer funding to indoctrinate our youth; the lobbyists curry favor with the Grifters to improve their business opportunities; the journalists cycle in and out of government, spreading the Grifter ethos as truth; Hollywood pays homage to it all, infecting American brains with woke ideas that Grifterism is noble; the BigLaw attorneys become rich navigating the vast regulatory schemes that are the lifeblood of Grifterism, and the members of the Grifter class constantly cycle in and out of the various organizations that benefit most from their economic parasitism.
The Grifters are the only class of Grifterism that fully benefits from the corrupt system; in fact, the system exists by, for, and because of the Grifters—almost all of whom are voting for Democrat candidates who themselves wallow in the pig trough of Grifterism. “But wait!” you may say, “Government workers are not Billionaires, they are not wealthy. How is that a grift?” Grifters in government generally enjoy wages in excess of the national median income; they are entitled to retirement plans largely unheard of in the private sector; they have healthcare and other benefits that far exceed those of equivalent private workers; and, most of all, they enjoy job security that is unmatched by any other sector of American society. Most Grifters are unfirable—they have life tenure. Finally, they have the power to pull the strings of the entire Grifter class for their own benefit—back-scratching and beak-wetting are their secret ways of communication.
The Democrats are obviously struggling with coming to terms with the rejection they faced last November. They’re always bad at introspection and taking responsibility for anything, but this is like nothing I’ve seen in all of my years in politics. It’s gotten to the point where I have to read at least one or two of the 2024 post mortems in the mainstream media every day to get my fix. Yeah, it’s a blast watching them not get it. The real joy for me, however, is seeing the myriad ways that they are finding to not come to the proper conclusions about why they lost.
They’ve been so reluctant to face their Pandora’s boxful of problems that they didn’t even start making attempts until just before the second Trump term was underway. In days of yore, the Democratic National Committee would have called an all-hands-on-deck meeting for around 6 AM on the morning after the election to begin plotting how to win the next one. Not only that, the Dems would have some plans in their back pockets and some viable candidates for the future on their bench. That Democratic Party and political machine no longer exist.
The reason for that is one that they will probably never admit to themselves. The decimation of its candidate bench and the party’s long-term planning ability can be laid squarely at the feet of the man who they worship above all others: His High Holiness the Lightbringer Barack Obama.
Democrats had long been invested in identity politics but went all-in to the exclusion of anything else after Barack Obama won in 2008. As my friend Stephen Green mentioned a few times last year, the Dems sold an idea in 2008 rather than a candidate with a record. Of course, that was because Obama had no record to speak of at the time.
They got kinda hooked on that.
The party higher-ups and their media mouthpieces spent the next eight years hero worshiping and not attending to the mundane nuts and bolts of keeping a successful political machine running. While they were “oohing and aahing” over the emperor’s new clothes, the emperor was sucking the life out of the party’s future. Who needed a bench when all they had to do was anoint a candidate who checked off a “historic first” diversity box on his or her résumé?
They were so invested in the diversity route that the DNC gamed the 2016 primary to make it nigh on impossible for anyone to beat Hillary Clinton — the candidate they’d unceremoniously thrown on the trash heap eight years earlier in favor of Obama because he checked off a higher-priority diversity box.
None of the Democratic Party rules applied in 2020. The Dems went with Joe Biden because he was essentially an emotional support stuffed toy who made them feel better because he had a connection to Obama. Biden immediately got them back in the identity politics game by promising to pick a Black female running mate.
We know the rest of this story.
The real problem for the Democrats in 2024 wasn’t Joe Biden’s late exit or Kamala Harris’s short campaign — no combination of circumstances was going to enable either of them to beat Donald Trump. The Dems’ real problem is what the party is now about. Things like biological males competing in girls sports and hanging around in their locker rooms. Things like drag queen story hours in first-grade classrooms. Things like “Free Palestine” lunatics attacking synagogues.
Things that they really haven’t backed off of after getting shellacked last year.
So more social justice victimhood identity politics and more Orange Man Bad. That, abortion and gun control are pretty much all they have… (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Bruen on the march: “Justice Dept. Investigates L.A. Sheriff Over Concealed Carry Permit Delays.”
The Justice Department said it was investigating whether the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department had violated the Second Amendment rights of residents through what it said was a pattern of long delays in issuing concealed carry permits.
The department said the investigation, announced in a news release on Thursday, was part of a larger push to protect gun rights across the United States. It added that it could open similar investigations in “any other states or localities that insist on unduly burdening, or effectively denying, the Second Amendment rights of their ordinary, law-abiding citizens.”
The Supreme Court has upheld Second Amendment rights in recent years, but, the Justice Department wrote in the announcement, some states “have resisted this recent pro-Second Amendment case law.”
The department called California “a particularly egregious offender,” saying it had passed laws restricting the right to bear arms. It said some areas of California had also imposed excessive fees and lengthy wait times on concealed carry permits.
The investigation follows a lawsuit filed in federal court in 2023 by gun rights advocates who claimed it had taken more than a year to obtain a concealed carry permit from the Los Angeles County Sheriff. Last year, a federal judge agreed that the Second Amendment rights of two individuals in the lawsuit had most likely been violated when the county made them wait 18 months before they received a decision on their permits. The Justice Department said it believed others had also experienced long delays in obtaining permits in the county.
The Sheriff’s Department wrote in a statement that it respected the Second Amendment and that it was committed to processing all concealed carry permits, but it added that it was facing a “staffing crisis” and had a backlog of cases. It said it had around 4,000 applications to process, with only 14 people to review them.
Last month, President Trump directed Attorney General Pam Bondi to assess “any ongoing infringements” on Second Amendment rights in federal agencies across the country.
“The Second Amendment is not a second-class right,” Ms. Bondi wrote in the news release announcing the investigation in Los Angeles, “and under my watch, the department will actively enforce the Second Amendment just like it actively enforces other fundamental constitutional rights.”
A victory in the war against lower court judicial overreach. “Supreme Court Shuts Down Activist Judge, Lets Trump Cut $250 Million In DEI Training For Teachers.”
The Supreme Court on Friday overruled an activist judge in Boston, allowing the Trump administration to slash $250 million for more than 100 teacher training grants for DEI and other woke programs.
In a 5-4 decision nine days after the request, the Supremes sided with the Trump administration’s emergency request to stay the court order by judge Myong J. Joun of the federal District of Massachusetts – who had ordered the Trump administration to “immediately restore” the “pre-existing status quo prior to the termination.”
According to the ruling – which is likely to narrow the ability of district courts to halt agency actions involving grant function, Joun lacked authority to order the Trump admin to restore the funding.
The Supreme Court upheld the Biden administration’s regulations on “ghost guns” Wednesday, finding that guns assembled using at-home kits are subject to the same rules as traditional firearms, including requirements that they carry a serial number and that purchasers undergo a federal background check before buying them.
The justices ruled 7-2 in Garland v. VanDerStok to preserve rules imposed by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms in 2022 to combat what the government called an explosion of “ghost gun” usage in criminal activity. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented.
Second Amendment issues aside, the Supreme Court missed an opportunity to par back some post-Chevron regulatory overreach.
He’s outa there: “South Korean court removes president from office, says he violated duties. The Constitutional Court upheld the impeachment of President Yoon Suk Yeol over his martial law gambit. South Korea will elect a new president within 60 days.”
A Manhattan judge on Wednesday dismissed the federal corruption charges levied against New York City Mayor Eric Adams last fall, partially granting the Trump-era Department of Justice’s request to drop the case.
U.S. District Judge Dale Ho, who presided over the Democratic mayor’s case in the Southern District of New York, permanently dismissed the charges in a highly anticipated decision.
In February, the DOJ ordered federal prosecutors to stop pursuing the case and subsequently asked the judge to dismiss the case without prejudice. That would have allowed prosecutors to refile charges against Adams in the future if the DOJ wanted to do so.
Ho dismissed the indictment with prejudice, meaning the prosecution cannot be revived based on the same evidence used in the original case.
The DOJ’s move, spearheaded by former acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, sparked accusations that the Trump administration and Adams were engaged in a “quid pro quo” agreement, in which the mayor’s charges would have been dropped as a way of ensuring his cooperation with enforcing the White House’s immigration agenda. Adams denied the allegations of a quid pro quo.
In his order, Ho wrote that dismissing the case without prejudice “would create the unavoidable perception that the Mayor’s freedom depends on his ability to carry out the immigration enforcement priorities of the administration, and that he might be more beholden to the demands of the federal government than to the wishes of his own constituents.”
The Biden-appointed judge described that perception as “inevitable” and concluded that “it counsels in favor of dismissal with prejudice.”
Adams requested a dismissal with prejudice, to which the DOJ did not object.
In September, Adams was indicted on five counts of corruption related to his alleged acceptance of benefits, such as free luxury travel from Turkish officials, in exchange for pressuring city inspectors to open a new Turkish consulate building in Manhattan without a proper fire inspection. Adams pleaded not guilty.
The New York City mayor has suggested his indictment was politically motivated because of his criticisms of the Biden administration’s lax immigration policies.
Given that Adams was a Democratic mayor of New York City, my working assumption is that he’s dirty as sin in general, but not necessarily for this particular case. And it’s entirely possibly that the Biden Administration did indict him for daring to question open borders. Also, even if guilty, dismissing his charges might be justified in the same way that a mobster who turns state evidence gets their charges dismissed. (Honestly, three different iPhones seems like overkill. One iPhone and two burner phones for different dirty deals seems sufficient, unless you’ve got so much dirty going down that you need to use the Stringer Bell SIM card swap to keep all the balls in the air. On the other hand, were the FBI to raid my house for some reason, they too might seize three iPhones: One working, and two old, mostly broken models…)
But wait! Adams says that, while he’s still a Democrat, he’s running for re-election as an Independent. Maybe he figures (correctly) that his heretical questioning of The Message means he has no chance to win a Democratic primary…
EuroElites are hoping that lawfare can succeed there even though it failed against Trump: “French Court Sentences Marine Le Pen to Jail, Bars Right-Wing Presidential Hopeful from Running in 2027.”
A French court on Monday sentenced right-wing leader Marine Le Pen to jail and barred her from seeking public office again for five years, preventing her from running in France’s 2027 presidential election after she was found guilty of embezzlement.
A member of the French Parliament, Le Pen and others were accused of misusing 4.4 million euros, or $4.8 million, in European Parliament funds to pay staff who were working for her National Rally party. In violation of European Union regulations, the alleged embezzlement occurred between 2004 and 2016. She was found guilty alongside eight members of Parliament and twelve assistants. The French right-wing leader has denied any wrongdoing.
Le Pen faces a prison sentence of four years, with two of those years suspended; a $108,000 fine; and ineligibility to run for office for five years, effective immediately. She is expected to appeal the ruling.
But even if she does appeal, the political ban will likely remain in place unless she is victorious. Meanwhile, her prison sentence will be suspended during the appeals process. The ban doesn’t affect her parliamentary position.
There’s widespread belief that “embezzlement” charges like this would never be employed against politicians that hew the EU line.
Earlier this month, President Trump wrote to Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei saying he wanted to negotiate an end to Iran’s nuclear weapons program, emphasizing “I would prefer to make a deal, because I’m not looking to hurt Iran. . . . I’m not sure that everybody agrees with me, but we can make a deal that would be just as good as if you won militarily.” This weekend, the Iranians rejected direct negotiations but left the door open to indirect negotiations. This is all occurring as a quarter of the U.S. Air Force’s B-2 bombers are at the joint U.S.-United Kingdom military base at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. A U.S. military conflict with Iran feels increasingly plausible.
Snip.
Northrop B-2 Spirits are what the U.S. Air Force uses when it needs to drop very powerful bombs in a very stealthy manner. Among those very powerful bombs is the Massive Ordinance Penetrator (MOP) Bunker-Buster, a 30,000 pound bomb that is described as “the most powerful and deeply burrowing non-nuclear bunker buster on earth.” In fact, the B-2 is the only plane that can carry a MOP.
The MOP is exactly the sort of weapon you would use if you wanted to hit Iran’s underground nuclear facilities. On March 25, Iranian state media “showed Iranian Armed Forces Chief of Staff General Mohammad Baqeri and Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Aerospace Force commander, showing off what Iranian media said was an ‘underground missile city.’”
(Howard Altman of The War Zone noted that from what viewers could see in the video, “The munitions are stored out in the open in long continuous tunnels and large caverns with no, or at least limited, blast doors or separated revetments. That could result in devastating consequences should the facility be breached in an attack. The lack of these protective measures could lead to an absolutely massive chain reaction of secondary explosions.”)
As of May 2024, Iran has 42 declared facilities and at least 8 suspected facilities in its nuclear program.
Texas Department of Public Safety officers arrested over three dozen individuals—including suspected members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua—near Dripping Springs, a small town a half-hour west of Austin.
Law enforcement also seized narcotics during the Tuesday raid and took nine minors into custody.
Texas continues to cement itself as a hub for capital investment with the opening of a new Lone Star State-based stock exchange on Monday.
The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) announced plans to establish its own exchange in Dallas back in February — which came on the heels of the Texas Stock Exchange being founded in June last year.
“As the state with the largest number of NYSE listings, representing over $3.7 trillion in market value for our community, Texas is a market leader in fostering a pro-business atmosphere,” NYSE Group President Lynn Martin said in a press release at the time.
Now, March 31 is opening day for the Texas-based New York Stock Exchange, which Martin said will “allow companies to capitalize on the pro-business dynamics in Texas.”
The NYSE also announced that the first security to be listed on the Texas exchange will be the Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG).
TMTG describes itself as a “social media and technology focused company” where its goal is to “end Big Tech’s assault on free speech by opening up the Internet and giving people their voices back.” Its most well known product offering is the social media platform TruthSocial.
Headquartered in Florida, the company debuted on the NYSE in March 2024 under the ticker “DJT” and skyrocketed to a market valuation of at least $8.4 billion on an undiluted share basis during its first day of business; it currently sits around $4.37 billion in market capitalization.
“We’re honored to become the initial listing for NYSE Texas, which is a great fit for TMTG as we diversify into financial services and other realms,” said TMTG CEO and Chairman Devin Nunes.
“Texas provides a fantastic climate for business and entrepreneurship that aligns with TMTG’s mission. This listing, alongside our plans to reincorporate in Florida, shows we’re part of a growing movement to take our business to states that value free enterprise and personal freedom.”
After attending a “transgender conference” at the University of Texas at Austin, State Rep. Brian Harrison is demanding an end to the school’s Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Department.
Harrison (R-Midlothian) is calling for the university to be defunded unless it terminates the department, along with its diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.
“The Texas government has failed Texans, by weaponizing their tax dollars against them, their values, and their children, and I won’t stand for it, especially in light of what I recently discovered on my undercover visit to the University of Texas campus yesterday as they were hosting a transgender conference,” Harrison stated.
He warned that if the programs are not immediately dismantled, he will attempt to strip UT Austin of taxpayer funding in the upcoming state budget.
On Tuesday, Harrison shared photos captured at the 32nd Annual Emerging Scholarship in Women’s and Gender Studies Graduate Student Conference.
One featured a banner promoting an art exhibit called “TRANSCENDENCE: A Century of Black Queer Ecstasy.” The banner shows two black men standing in front of a cross.
The event agenda for day one of the conference included a lecture titled “Keeping Time: Queer-Crip Temporal Attunement Through Tarot.”
Pamphlets and flyers throughout the library advertised “Resources for Trans Folks,” which primarily focused on the use of cross-sex hormones or mutilating surgeries used to appear like the opposite sex.
One flyer directed students to UT’s University Health Services for medical transition procedures and to the UT School of Law’s Gender Affirmation Project for legal name and gender changes.
The flyer was created by The Queer and Trans Student Alliance, which is an agency of the UT student government.
In some under-reported news, “Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said Tuesday that the intelligence community maintains its assessment from prior years that Iran is not currently actively pursuing a nuclear weapon, but that open discussion of nuclearization has increased inside the regime.”
“The IC continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamanei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003,” Gabbard said in her opening remarks at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing.
But, Gabbard added, “In the past year, we have seen an erosion of a decades-long taboo in Iran on discussing nuclear weapons in public, likely emboldening nuclear weapons advocates within Iran’s decision-making apparatus. Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile is at its highest levels and is unprecedented for a state without nuclear weapons.”
Gabbard also said that the full impacts of renewed sanctions on Iran are not yet in effect, but that the “message … is certainly heard.”
The intelligence community’s annual threat assessment, released in conjunction with the hearing, predicts that Iran will continue efforts to threaten U.S. citizens globally and develop networks and conduct operations inside the United States.
It also describes Iran’s military capabilities and proxy armies as an ongoing threat to the U.S. and its allies, despite Israeli successes in degrading those capabilities.
“The IC assesses Iran’s prospects for reconstituting force losses and posing a credible deterrent, particularly to Israeli actions, are dim in the near-term,” the report continues.
Color me skeptical on Iran not developing nukes, for a number of reasons:
The Trump Administration has only been in office a hair over two months, and Tulsi Gabbard, confirmed February 12, a bit less than that, meaning that there has not been enough time for an effective screening and purge of the national security apparatus. I’m sure vast swathes of deadwood left over from the Obama and Biden Administrations, including the careerists still in place from official efforts to sell the infamous Obama Iran deal to a properly skeptical public. As such, their judgment can’t be trusted.
We have no way of knowing just how much Uranium Iran has enriched, or how many enrichment sites Iran actually has, and there’s no reason to believe that same deadwood was terribly motivated under Obama to uncover them, given how desperately he wanted the Iran deal. Given the revelations that continue to come out from DOGE’s deep dive into government finances, it seems only reasonable to assume that untold amounts of that Iran deal cash found its way back into Democratic grandee pockets.
The entire existence of the Islamic Republic of Iran is predicated on the theocratic theories of Ayatollah Khomeini, who hated the United States, Israel and democracy long before the current ideological core of the Democratic Party did. Given its theocratic roots, Iran’s current leaders would have no compunction to lying the officials of any non-Islamic state that dwells in dar al-harb (the house of war), which it considers (along with the Sunni states) to be its enemies.
Moreover, typical Shia Twelver eschatology believes in an apocalyptic Day of Judgment when the 12th (occluded) imam, AKA the Mahdi, will reveal himself and help purify the world. Indeed, one of Khomeini’s honorifics was Na’eb-e Imam (Deputy to the Twelfth Imam). Therefore, there is little reason to believe the mullahs currently running the Islamic Republic of Iran would balk at unleashing nuclear weapons on its enemies, especially if they thought it would bring about the return of the Mahdi. And remember that Iranian catspaw Hamas believes the mere existence of Israel is an affront to God, and that destroying it is their holy duty.
So I would still take any intelligence claims about knowing the precise state of Iran’s nuclear program with several grains of salt.
For all his talk about bringing peace, Donald Trump (in both 45 and 47 incarnations) has proven more than willing to bring the wood when it comes to whacking jihadis that have attacked American interests.
On Thursday, U.S. Central Command forces, in cooperation with Iraqi Intelligence and Security Forces, conducted a precision airstrike in Al Anbar Province, Iraq, that killed Abu Khadijah, according to a statement from CENTCOM.
“As the Emir of ISIS most senior decision-making body, Abu Khadijah maintained responsibility for operations, logistics, and planning conducted by ISIS globally, and directs a significant portion of finance for the groups global organization,” officials said.
After the strike, CENTCOM and Iraqi forces moved to the strike site and found the two dead bodies, both of whom were wearing unexploded “suicide vests” and had multiple weapons, CENTCOM said.
CENTCOM and Iraqi forces were able to identify Abu Khadijah through a DNA match from DNA collected on a previous raid where Abu Khadijah narrowly escaped, officials confirmed.
President Donald Trump on Saturday ordered “decisive and powerful” U.S. airstrikes on Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen and issued a new warning in response to the group’s attacks on shipping in the Red Sea.
The strikes mark the largest U.S. military operation in the Middle East since Trump’s return to the White House for a second term.
Trump warned the Houthis in a social media post that “HELL WILL RAIN DOWN UPON YOU LIKE NOTHING YOU HAVE EVER SEEN BEFORE” if they don’t cease their attacks on ships in the Red Sea.
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“To Iran: Support for the Houthi terrorists must end IMMEDIATELY!” Trump wrote on Truth Social. He told the Iranians if they continue to back Houthi attacks on shipping then “America will hold you fully accountable and, we won’t be nice about it!”
The strikes resulted in the initial deaths of at least nine civilians and nine injured in Sanaa, the largest city in Yemen, according to the Houthi-run health ministry.
Residents in Sanaa said the strikes hit a building in a Houthi stronghold. “The explosions were violent and shook the neighborhood like an earthquake. They terrified our women and children,” one of the residents, who gave his name as Abdullah Yahia, told Reuters.
Will this stop the Houthis from attacking shipping? Maybe. For a while. Maybe a longer while if followed up by targeted special forces assassinations of sundry Houthi leaders and their Iranian enablers. But only bankrupting or deposing the Mullah’s regime in Iran will effect a real end to their shenanigans.
Destroying the Assad regime has eliminated that particular Iranian catspaw from backing terrorist activities outside Syria (though at the cost of some continuing low-level genocide within it). Hopefully we can fund elements in Yemen to destroy the Houthis for us without a side-order of slaughtering innocents.
I usually catalog book acquisitions on my other blog, but both of these touch on subjects covered here.
Morris, Edmund. Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan. Random House, 1999. First edition hardback (with “First Edition” states and “24689753” numberline (yes, Random House first printing numberlines of the period started with “2”; don’t ask me why)), a Fine- copy with a touch of a crease at head in a Fine- dust jacket with a slight bit of pull at head and top front edge, inscribed by Morris: “To Wade/With regards.” Massive 874 page authorized biography of Reagan that was quite controversial when released because it added fictional characters for dramatic effect. Bought from Recycled Reads, the Austin Public Library resale shop, for $1.85.
Neville, Leigh. Technicals: Non-Standard Tactical Vehicles from the Great Toyota War to modern Special Forces. Osprey, 2018. Fourth printing of the first trade paperback original edition, a Fine copy. Just what is says, a history of technicals, civilian vehicles (frequently Toyota pickup trucks) modified to mount military weapons like machine guns, anti-tank guns and rocket launchers. Usually an insurgent weapon, American Special Forces used them in some theaters in the 1980s and 90s. Given to me as a late Christmas present by Dwight.
Government leftists at USAID call to break the law to cover their tracks, DOGE uncovers still more outrageous examples of government waste, Democratic bagman john Podesta showered billions on newly created NGOs, billions in LA homeless funds are unaccounted for, Syrian jihadis slaughter civilians, more pedo teachers get caught, lobbyists rake in big bucks, and the heart-stopping thrills of a man…baking.
A senior USAID official on Tuesday ordered the agency’s remaining staff to report to their now-former headquarters in Washington DC for an “all day” group effort to destroy documents, many of which contain sensitive information, Politico reports.
The materials marked for destruction include “classified safes and personnel documents” at the Ronald Reagan Building, according to an email sent by USAID’s acting executive director, Erica Carr.
“Shred as many documents first, and reserve the burn bags for when the shredder becomes unavailable or needs a break,” read the email instructing staff to label the burn bags with “SECRET” and “USAID/B/IO” (which stands for “bureau or independent office”) in dark sharpie.
Again, how is this not breaking the The Federal Records Act and other laws against destroying evidence?
Legal Insurrection readers may recall that late last year, Brent Efron, an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) special advisor implementing Biden’s climate agenda, made many controversial statements during an undercover video about the agency’s actions in anticipation of a potential Trump administration.
Efron reportedly told Project Veritas that the EPA was rapidly distributing billions of dollars in grants to nonprofits as an “insurance policy” against Trump winning the election. He described the situation as “throwing gold bars off the Titanic,” referring to the urgency with which the agency allocates funds.
Now the Trump Administration has followed those gold bars. An exclusive report by the New York Post indicates the trail of those bars led back to Deep State Obama/Biden minion, John Podesta.
The story began in September 2022, when Biden named Podesta to helm the $375 billion climate fund, which resulted from the Inflation Reduction Act, a 2022 law that was basically “Green New Deal” poison hidden beneath a wrapper of sweet economic promises.
Here is how The New York Times announced the 2022 fund creation:
As a senior adviser to Mr. Biden on clean energy innovation, Mr. Podesta will shape how the government disburses billions of dollars in tax credits and incentives to industries that are developing wind and solar energy, as well as to consumers who want to install solar panels, heat and cool their homes with electric heat pumps or buy electric vehicles.
..In an interview, Mr. Podesta described his new job as “throwing the weight of federal government policy behind a cycle of investment and innovation that we haven’t seen before in the United States, and that is almost unique in the world.”
There was absolutely no questioning by The New York Times as to where these monies would go, or how the funds would be used to help either our climate or energy industry.
On the other hand, the New York Post has a map of the gold bar trail. Apparently, billions went to “Non-Governmental Organizations” that were founded after the fund was created.
The Biden administration funneled at least $20 billion dollars into environmental groups, most of which had only recently been founded, The Post has discovered.
In one case, former Vice President Kamala Harris handed over a check for nearly $7 billion to Bethesda, Maryland, based group Climate United Fund, which does not appear in the IRS’s charities database, and has no federal filings.
The non-profit fund had only been incorporated in Delaware on November 30, 2023, according to public records, five months before Harris handed over the cash in April 2024.
The Climate United Fund then announced “the historic investment” in a press release, noting the group’s work “delivers benefits like cleaner air…and increased energy security.”’
However, because the company is so new, there is no publicly published accounting of how it plans to spend the $7 billion.
Climate Fund, which received nearly $7 billion in Biden Climate Gold, was just one of eight similarly set-up entities. Others are:
Coalition for Green Capital: Received $5 billion
Power Forward Communities: Received $2 billion
Opportunity Finance Network: Received $2.29 billion
Inclusiv: Received $1.87 billion
Justice Climate Fund: Received $940 million
Appalachian Community Capital: Received $500 million
“Exposed: Secret Pact Between 14 Blue States, Left-Wing Groups, and NYC Law Firms.”
Well, well, well. It’s hardly a surprise to discover that the wave of lawsuits against Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is no coincidence. The Oversight Project at the Heritage Foundation has obtained a copy of a secret agreement outlining a coordinated legal offensive—an alliance between 14 blue states, left-wing activist groups, and prominent NYC law firms—all targeting DOGE and Musk himself.
What is surprising, however, is that they actually formalized their nefarious intentions.
Signed less than a month after DOGE began operations, this agreement is yet another example of the Democrats’ “whatever it takes” brand of political warfare.
The document begins:
This Common Interest Agreement (“Agreement) is made and entered into by and between the States of New Mexico, Arizona, Michigan, Califomia [sic], Connecticut, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington and State Democracy Defenders Fund (the “Parties”). The Parties have agreed that they have a common interest in developing legal strategies to challenge the creation and actions of the Department of Government Efficiency (“DOGE) and the actions of Elon Musk as a special government employee and a common interest in existing or future investigative, regulatory, administrative, and judicial actions or inactions, including but not limited to any administrative or judicial proceedings related to or arising from those legal strategies (“Matters of Common Interest”).
“The Democrats are on the wrong end of an 80-20 issue, fighting tooth and nail to block a federal government audit that has already uncovered more than $105 billion in fraud, waste, and abuse. A recent Harvard/Harris poll shows that 76% of voters support DOGE’s efforts, yet Democrats—whose job is to represent the interests of their constituents—have gone to extraordinary lengths to obstruct it, even putting their opposition in writing.”
1. Billions in “Dark Money” Outpacing Political Parties
Arabella’s network raised $2.4 billion in the 2020 election cycle, dwarfing the combined fundraising of the Democratic and Republican National Committees. This tax-exempt cash, hidden from public scrutiny, fueled anti-Trump campaigns and progressive agendas, all while average Americans had no clue their tax system enabled it. It’s a shadow operation that makes traditional political spending look like pocket change.
2. Fake Grassroots “Pop-Ups” Everywhere
The Sixteen Thirty Fund, an Arabella spoke, spins up temporary “pop-up” groups like Floridians for a Fair Shake or Opportunity Wisconsin, which vanish after their mission—say, attacking a senator or pushing a ballot measure—is done. These tax-exempt fronts, funded by anonymous donors, masquerade as local movements while redirecting millions to sway elections, leaving taxpayers blind to the manipulation. It’s a conveyor belt of synthetic activism, exploiting 501(c) loopholes.
3. Funding Supreme Court Protests
Demand Justice, birthed by the Sixteen Thirty Fund, spent millions opposing Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation, complete with costumed activists and aggressive ad blitzes. This tax-exempt war chest didn’t just influence public opinion—it tried to bully the judiciary, all subsidized by a tax code Americans fund. Most folks never connected the dots to Arabella’s puppet strings behind the chaos.
4. Zuck Bucks’ Election Meddling
Arabella’s New Venture Fund funneled $25 million to the Center for Tech and Civic Life, which then got $350 million from Mark Zuckerberg to “administer” 2020 elections—read: juice Democratic turnout in swing states. Tax-exempt dollars turned local election offices into partisan tools, and the public was none the wiser about this backdoor power grab. It’s a masterclass in using charity status to rig the game.
5. Foreign Billionaires Pulling Levers
Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss has pumped at least $208 million into the Sixteen Thirty Fund since 2016, exploiting tax laws that let foreigners bankroll U.S. political causes through “dark pools.” This foreign cash—untouchable by direct campaign finance rules—shapes American policy, yet taxpayers footing the system’s bill don’t even know his name. It’s a loophole so big you could drive a Swiss bank vault through it.
he report painted a grim picture of Los Angeles’ homeless program managed by Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA), which was established in 1993.
“Repetitive information gaps, coupled with a lack of accurate and complete data and documentation, posed significant obstacles to this assessment,” the report states.
“Insufficient financial accountability led to an inability to trace substantial funds allocated to the City Programs. Fragmented data systems across LAHSA, the City, and the County and inconsistent reporting formats made it challenging to verify spending and the number of beds or units reported by the City and LAHSA, track participant outcomes, and align financial data with performance metrics.”
The report also cites a paucity of uniform data standards and real-time oversight, which limited the ability of the auditor to fully assess the true impact of homeless programs and raised concerns of resource misallocation.
A&M found that key stakeholders failed to monitor homelessness programs, and that LAHSA was unable to identify relevant service provider contracts and expenses. It also found gaps in documentation.
Of course there are gaps in documentation. That’s to hide the graft disappearing into leftwing pockets…
Crimea, Sevastopol, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk, Luhansk — these are regions of Russia. They are written into the constitution. This is a given fact,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. That amounts to one-fifth of Ukraine’s legitimate, internationally recognized pre-war territory. Putin demands that Ukraine permanently renounce any claim to these territories.
Ukraine must disarm itself of any NATO weapons. Of course, the top suppliers of the Ukrainian military are the United States with $69.7 billion worth of weapons systems and ammunition since the start of the war, Germany with $13.7 billion worth, the United Kingdom at $10.8 billion worth, Denmark at $8.1 billion worth, Sweden at $5.1 billion worth, Poland at $3.9 billion worth, France at $3.8 billion worth, and Canada at $2.8 billion worth. (All figures from the Kiel Institute’s Ukraine support tracker, converted from Euros to dollars, and as of December 31, 2024.) All those countries are NATO members, and thus, under the Russian demands, Ukraine would have to give up all weapons systems received from those countries. This amounts to a unilateral disarming of the Ukrainian military, in exchange for a promise from a former KGB lieutenant colonel that he will not start the war again.
Putin also demanded that Ukraine cap its military size. Previously, Putin had demanded Ukraine limit the size of its army to 50,000 troops. As of January, the Ukrainian army is 880,000 troops, meaning that Russia wants the Ukrainian army to be reduced to less than 6 percent of its current size.
According to CNN, “Putin also suggested that Ukraine halt mobilization and any training of its troops, and that other nations stop supplying weapons to Kyiv during the ceasefire.” Halt any training of troops.
Putin insisted no foreign peacekeepers can enter Ukrainian territory.
Ukraine must abandon the idea of NATO membership. While the Trump administration had already made this concession before negotiations began, note that Putin is establishing a system where he gets a veto over which countries NATO can accept.
The U.S. must return six diplomatic compounds that Russia contends were seized illegally by the United States between 2016 and 2018.
All Western economic sanctions upon Russia are illegal and must be lifted.
Bob [Robert B.] Laughlin, who’s a physics professor at Stanford, he got a Nobel Prize in Physics 1998. And he suffered from the extreme delusion that once he got a Nobel Prize in Physics, he’d be free to look at anything he wanted to. And the area of science that he went after was: he was convinced that most scientists, even at a place like Stanford, weren’t really doing very much work, weren’t doing very much science, were stealing money from taxpayers…This was a more this was a more taboo question, more taboo topic, than just going narrowly after climate science, or, you know, or any of these things. And obviously, he got promptly defunded and his grad students couldn’t get PhDs anymore. [My] sort of hermeneutic of suspicion is that if there’s a topic you can’t discuss, if there ideas you aren’t allowed to articulate, my shortcut is they’re just true.
Remember all the way back in 1986, when the New York Times blithely asserted as fact that evangelicals are “more easily led than other kinds of voters?” Well, just last we they asserted that “a majority of gun owners are white, conservative, male and from rural areas.” The first three are probably true, and the fourth definitely not, and no one who was even passingly familiar with gun culture would make that mistake…
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz pinned the massacre on the country’s new leader, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, the leader of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) terrorist group, which was an offshoot of Al-Qaeda and was close to ISIS.
“Al-Julani took off his [robe], put on a suit, and presented a moderate facade,” Katz wrote in a post on X that included a video of scores of people who had been massacred. “Now, he has removed the mask, revealing his true face: a jihadist terrorist from the Al-Qaeda school, committing atrocities against the Alawite civilian population.”
Murdering members of other religions is never far from the average jihadi mind.
Just a day after the rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) had seized Damascus, and Bashar Assad had fled to Moscow, Assad’s army crumbled into dust, with soldiers ripping off their uniforms so as to avoid being killed by vengeful, and now triumphant, rebels. Those soldiers left largely unattended huge quantities of weaponry. The IDF seized the occasion to improve its defensive posture against Syria. There was a brief window of just a few days, between the fall of Assad and the regime in Damascus stabilizing and taking control of those abandoned weapons, during which the IDF did two things. First, it moved Israeli soldiers into Syria, where they established two new military outposts, one on the Syrian side of Mt. Hermon, and one extending further into Syria from the pre-existing buffer zone separating Israeli and Syrian troops on the Golan. Now the IDF controls the commanding heights that extend into Syria; the Israelis have a clear unimpeded view of Damascus — now literally in their sights — far below.
The second undertaking, which began just as soon as Assad had left for Russia, was the IDF’s systematic destruction of the Syrian army’s weaponry. The Israelis knew exactly where the weapons were located; they had long been preparing for a possible war against Assad, and had their target bank ready.
The IDF announced on December 10 that its air force and navy had conducted over 480 strikes in Syria in the span of 48 hours, 350 of which targeted airfields, anti-aircraft batteries, missiles, drones, fighter jets, tanks, and weapon production sites, destroying between 70% and 80% of Syria’s strategic weapons. It also sank Syria’s navy. And there was nothing that Ahmed al-Sharaa and the men of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham could do about it. Now Israel has not only made itself much safer, having removed Syria as a viable military threat to the Jewish state, but also has “demilitarized” the Jihadists in Damascus.
We have just seen that after al-Sharaa’s repeated promise that Syria’s minorities had nothing to worry about, decently, the jihadist “security services” — as they call themselves — entered Latakia to capture or kill Alawite members of Assad’s army. They were apparently ambushed by Alawite veterans of Assad’s army, and suffered a loss of 125 men. At that point, they decided to take revenge on the civilian population, killing more than 1,000 Alawite civilians — some reports claim up to 4,000 civilians have now been killed, and they also have been killing Christians — mostly Greek Orthodox but including some Melkites — because, of course, that’s what jihadists like to do. More than a thousand civilians, possibly as many as 4,000 according to some Alawite sources, have been killed in the space of two days.
The Texas Association of School Boards is a lobbying organization that is funded almost exclusively by Texas taxpayer dollars through school district dues.
According to TASB’s most recent 990 form, at least 16 of its employees make more than the governor of Texas, who earns just over $153,000 each year.
TASB paid a combined total of $927,644 to just two of its employees during fiscal year 2023.
Executive Director Dan Troxell was paid $412,101 in direct compensation by TASB. Another $64,154 is listed as “other compensation from the organization and related organizations.”
Similarly, TASB paid First Public Managing Director William Mastrodicasa $351,224 in direct reportable income. He was also paid an additional $100,165.
Nice work, if you can get it…
Mess with the bull, get the horns. “Trump admin cancels $400 million in grants to Columbia University.” How’s that pro-Hamas antisemitism working out for you?
“US House Members Push for Ban on Student Visas for Chinese Nationals.” “U.S. Rep. Riley Moore (R-WV) is spearheading the push to secure higher education institutions against espionage and intellectual theft.” I’m sure universities will panic over having to give up all that sweet commie dough…
“X Takes Down Network Of Chinese Accounts Amplifying NYT Attacks On Dissident Arts Group. The accounts, which exhibited inauthentic activity, had been used to boost articles published by The New York Times that targeted a religious group persecuted in China. One of the articles, a Chinese-language version of an attack piece on Shen Yun Performing Arts, was boosted so much it became the most shared New York Times article on X in more than a year, according to data from BuzzSumo, a social media analytics tool.” The question is, why was the NYT so eager to carry the CCP’s water attacking Falun Gong?
“Texas Awards SpaceX Over $17 Million Grant for Semiconductor R&D.” My opposition to the CHIPS Act has been noted before, but this may be already allocated money that the state is contractually obligated to award. Why would SpaceX need semiconductor research? My guess would be for advances in space radiation hardened (“rad hard”) chips. This was traditionally property of Gallium Arsenide (GaAs) rather than silicon-based chips. GaAs chips are generally orders of magnitude more radiation resistant than consumer grade chips, but GaAs is extremely brittle and difficult to work with, so much so that 6″ (150mm) wafers are the largest size for GaAs, and there still a number of older 4″ (100m) fab lines running GaAs out there. GaAs is such a pain that a lot of different substrates have been explored over the years, but I’m not sure any match GaAs’ extreme rad hard properties.
During a tornado warning, a Florida news station broadcasting the warning is hit by a tornado.
Critical Drinker didn’t care for Micky 17. “We’ll just make it dumb as fuck and hammer home the messaging with as much subtlety as a dump truck full of retarded sledgehammers.”
(@AMAZlNGNATURE)