Happy Independence Day! It’s rained most of the last 24 hours here in central Texas, so the good news is no burn ban means we can set off fireworks, but the downside is significant flooding in the Hill Country (Kerville was particularly hard-hit).
The “Big Beautiful Bill” is now law, employment ticks up, more high profile leftist/media perverts busted, Democrats remain stuck on stupid, some Republicans retire, and proof, yet again, that the rules for the well-heeled are different than for other people.
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
“Employers added 147,000 jobs in June as U.S. labor market continues to defy expectations.” For the MSM, it’s always “unexpectedly” all the way down.
A Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post journalist was arrested and charged after authorities allegedly discovered child porn on his work computer, DC US Attorney Jeanine Pirro announced Friday.
Thomas Pham LeGro, a 48-year-old video editor at the news outlet, was taken into custody on Thursday after FBI agents raided his Washington, DC, home and discovered a folder on his work laptop which contained 11 videos depicting child sexual abuse material, according to Pirro’s office.
FBI agents also discovered “fractured pieces of a hard drive in the hallway outside the room where LeGro’s work laptop was found,” during the execution of the search warrant.
The University of Pennsylvania has agreed to ban transgender athletes from women’s sports and correct records set by transgender swimmer Lia Thomas. The university issued a statement on Tuesday vowing to comply with Title IX on the basis of biological sex and says it will apologize to “disadvantaged” female athletes.
“While Penn’s policies during the 2021-2022 swim season were in accordance with NCAA eligibility rules at the time, we acknowledge that some student-athletes were disadvantaged by these rules,” Penn President J. Larry Jameson said in a statement. “We recognize this and will apologize to those who experienced a competitive disadvantage or experienced anxiety because of the policies in effect at the time.”
The U.S. Education Department and UPenn announced the voluntary agreement as part of a resolution of a federal civil rights case focused on Thomas, the biological male who won a Division I women’s title for the Ivy League university in 2022. The department’s Office for Civil Rights found that UPenn had violated Title IX by allowing a male to compete in women’s sports and occupy female-only facilities.
“Today’s resolution agreement with UPenn is yet another example of the Trump effect in action,” U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said. “Thanks to the leadership of President Trump, UPenn has agreed both to apologize for its past Title IX violations and to ensure that women’s sports are protected at the University for future generations of female athletes.”
The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) opened the Title IX investigation into UPenn on February 6, following President Donald Trump’s executive order “Keeping Men out of Women’s Sports,” which interpreted Title IX law on the basis of biological sex rather than gender identity. Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in any educational program or activity that receives federal financial assistance.
Trump’s diplomatic method, the exact opposite of what standard diplomats recommend, is a roaring success.
The least diplomatic president in U.S. history is scoring diplomatic victories.
Over the last couple of days, Donald Trump has gotten NATO to agree to a defense spending target of 5 percent and backed Canada off imposing a digital services tax on American tech firms.
He’s done this while being loathed by many of his foreign interlocutors. In fact, Trump has executed a near-complete inversion of the typical diplomatic formula. He’s not nice. He’s not conflict-averse. He’s not euphemistic. And yet he’s gotten results.
The NATO commitment, in particular, is potentially historic and could materially strengthen the position of the Western alliance for the long term.
Trump is violating the usual rules of persuasion. Abraham Lincoln famously said: “It is an old and true maxim that ‘a drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall.’” Trump doesn’t hesitate to pour on the gall, often in ALL CAPS on Truth Social.
The leading 19th-century French diplomat Talleyrand said, “A diplomat who says ‘yes’ means ‘maybe,’ a diplomat who says ‘maybe’ means ‘no,’ and a diplomat who says ‘no’ is no diplomat.” Trump says “go to hell” as the start of the negotiation.
He persuades by pressuring.
He coaxes by threatening.
He de-escalates by escalating.
He wins friends and influences people by convincing them he thinks they’re freeloaders and losers.
A lot of this is a function of his personality and his experience as a Gotham real-estate developer with a nose for power dynamics, knack for showmanship, and willingness to court risk. It’s hard to see how his style of international politics will be replicable by a more traditional political figure. But undergirding his approach is a strategic insight into the gap between U.S. military and economic might and that of its allies, and how this meant there was a vast unexploited potential for the U.S. to throw its weight around.
When the U.S president is talking about pulling the plug on NATO, or cutting off trade talks with Canada — as Trump did in response to the proposed digital services tax — it’s going to get everyone’s attention.
The bull standing outside the door of the china shop is a powerful incentive to get along with the bull.
The rest of the conservative movement noticed this no later than, what, 2017? Nice of National Review to catch up…
In a post on social media platform X, FBI Director Kash Patel wrote that $14.6 billion in losses were incurred, while $245 million was seized, as FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino said in a separate post on X that hundreds of people were charged in the case.
“Public corruption will not be tolerated as the Director and I vigorously pursue bad actors who violated their oaths to all of us,” Bongino said, describing the case as the “largest healthcare fraud investigation” in the country’s history.
The investigation encompassed 50 federal districts and 12 state attorneys general, according to the DOJ. State and federal law enforcement agencies also took part, according to the FBI.
A statement issued by the DOJ said that criminal charges were filed against 324 defendants, including 96 doctors, nurse practitioners, pharmacists, and other health care workers across the United States. Officials said that 29 defendants were charged with partaking in transnational criminal groups who allegedly submitted around $12 billion in fraudulent health-related claims to U.S. health insurance companies.
Further, four defendants were apprehended in Estonia based on cooperation with law enforcement agencies in that country, while seven others were arrested at the U.S.–Mexico border or at American airports, the DOJ said.
That organization, federal prosecutors said, is accused of using individuals sent into the United States from other countries to purchase “dozens of medical supply companies located across the United States” before submitting $10.6 billion in fraudulent health care claims to Medicare for medical devices and equipment.
At the same time, that group allegedly exploited stolen identities from U.S. citizens across all 50 states, using their stolen medical information to submit the false claims, according to the DOJ.
In another action announced by the DOJ, federal officials said they filed charges in Illinois against five people, including the owners of two Pakistan-based marketing companies, in relation to a $703 million Medicare fraud scheme.
The defendants allegedly stole Medicare beneficiaries’ confidential information and sold it to laboratories and other medical companies, which then submitted false Medicare claims, according to the statement.
“The defendants allegedly used artificial intelligence to create fake recordings of Medicare beneficiaries purportedly consenting to receive certain products,” the DOJ’s statement said.
Here are some reasons why the Democratic drive to reinvent the party seems to have stalled out—and may have a hard time restarting despite their political opening.
The “’tis but a scratch” problem. In Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the Black Knight insists, against all evidence, that his wounds are not that serious—“’tis but a scratch.” Democrats, in the aftermath of losing two of three elections to the widely-disliked Trump and seeing their coalition re-configured by massive losses among both white and nonwhite working-class voters, are still in denial about how serious their wounds are. They are not but a scratch and cannot be fixed by anything less than a full-scale overhaul of the party’s approach and image. Tinkering around the edges, while easier, will not work.
The breaking point fallacy. Democrats have a hard time thinking outside their own views of Trump and the GOP. They are deeply convinced that Trump is perhaps the worst person to ever walk the earth and find it difficult to relate to voters whose views are more mixed. They are convinced that a breaking point from Trump’s actions will inevitably be reached where voters will wake up and realize Democrats were right all along, with happy political results to follow. This fallacy undergirded Democrats’ thinking in the 2024 campaign with rather unhappy results when that breaking point was not reached. Democrats’ reliably florid responses to Trump’s outrage-of-the-day in 2025 indicates that they are still hoping that breaking point can be reached and that they are puzzled, indeed outraged, that voters have not yet mounted the barricades. Conveniently, the expectation of a breaking point let’s Democrats off the hook from changing very much in their own party.
The “whatever it is, I’m against it” problem. In the classic Marx Brothers movie, Horsefeathers, Groucho uncompromisingly asserts: “whatever it is, I’m against it.” That pretty much sums up Democrats’ approach to Trump administration proposals and actions. With very minor exceptions, Democrats have refused to support any of it, even where these actions are popular and/or are targeted at clear areas of Democratic vulnerability that needed shoring up. Little to no effort has been made to stake out a middle ground that recognizes some of Trump’s actions address areas where Democrats have screwed up, while setting out a better (kinder, gentler?) approach that would more effective and less illiberal. Easier though to adopt Groucho’s approach and avoid the uncomfortable need to acknowledge mistakes and convince voters you won’t make them again.
The rising generations chimera. Many Democrats have seized upon the fact that leading Democratic politicians tend to be quite old, if not ancient (hello, Joe Biden!) and decided what is needed is younger Democrats. The changing of the guard—that’ll do the trick! On net, it seems like a no-brainer to move younger cohorts up in the party who can better communicate with young voters where Democrats have been losing ground. But what if these young communicators aren’t communicating anything to voters that would actually help Democrats dig out of the hole they’re in? Then the changing of the guard will only help at the margins.
Take Zohran Mamdani, the charismatic Millennial who pulled off an upset victory in the New York City Democratic primary and will likely be New York’s next mayor. His energy and media savvy are admirable but his radical cultural politics—only lightly sanded off recently—and his wildly impractical economic plans don’t seem likely to change the image of the Democratic Party in a good way. But he nevertheless will be a pole of attraction in the party, just as AOC and “the Squad” were in the aftermath of the 2018 election—and we saw how well that worked out. Democrats’ thirst for generational excitement, whatever its content, will make it even harder than it already was for Democrats to re-orient the party around an effective majoritarian politics.
Snip.
The “round up the usual suspects” problem. In the movie Casablanca, Captain Reynaud (Claude Rains) concludes the film by saying “round up the usual suspects.” The Democrats have an establishment and establishments don’t like change. Thus, there is a built-in tendency to blame messaging, narrative, lack of coalitional input, etc.—the “usual suspects”—rather than deeper problems of culture, economic policy, and class antagonism. Most recently this tendency was on display in the formation of a Project 2029 group drawn from various sectors of the Democratic establishment to craft a new, improved approach for the Democrats. As the Politico article on the group notes:
Some would-be allies are skeptical that such an ideologically diverse and divergent set of policy minds could craft anything close to a coherent agenda, let alone a politically winning one.
“Developing policies by checking every coalitional box is how we got in this mess in the first place,” said Adam Jentleson, who has spent recent months preparing to open a new think tank called Searchlight. “There is no way to propose the kind of policies the Democratic Party needs to adopt without pissing off some part of the interest-group Borg. And if you’re too afraid to do that, you don’t have what it takes to steer the party in the right direction.”
For Texas voters: “17 Proposed Amendments Head to Voters in November.” Expected a more detailed post on this sometime in October.
“Houston Parents Sue HISD Over Daughter’s Secret Social Gender Transition. A Houston family is taking the state’s largest school district to court, claiming their daughter was socially transitioned by school staff in direct defiance of their explicit instructions.”
Terry and Sarah Osborn, the parents of a Bellaire High School student, filed a federal lawsuit against the Houston Independent School District earlier this week, alleging the school socially transitioned their daughter against their explicit wishes. The lawsuit names several individuals, including Superintendent Mike Miles, Bellaire High School Principal Michael Niggli, school counselor Sarah Ray, and multiple teachers.
According to the suit, more than six Bellaire High School employees referred to the Osborns’ daughter—who is biologically female—using a masculine name and male pronouns for two years. The situation began in ninth grade, when the student’s theater teacher distributed a worksheet asking for students’ names and pronouns. Sarah Osborn specifically requested that the teacher use her daughter’s legal name and female pronouns. However, the student altered the worksheet, crossing out the original entry and writing in “he/him” pronouns.
The parents claim they did not learn about the consistent use of male pronouns by teachers until the student was well into her sophomore year. At that point, they formally requested that teachers revert to using their daughter’s biological pronouns. Despite these repeated requests, the lawsuit alleges that the teachers continued using male pronouns.
By the student’s junior year, the Osborns met with Principal Niggli to address the situation directly. They reiterated their concerns about the school’s handling of the matter. Principal Niggli attempted a compromise: teachers would refer to the student only by her last name to avoid using any pronouns at all. The Osborns, however, rejected this compromise and again instructed the school to use their daughter’s legal name and female pronouns.
The lawsuit also notes that the Osborns filed a request under the Texas Public Information Act, seeking employee communications regarding their daughter, HISD’s policies on the use of preferred names and pronouns, and documentation related to the student’s counseling sessions over the years. Elizabeth Rice, HISD’s attorney, responded that the request was too broad and asked for clarification. When the Osborns’ attorney insisted the request was sufficiently specific, Rice again claimed it was overly broad and said fulfilling it would require producing at least 77,344 pages of emails.
The lawsuit argues that HISD’s responses are evidence of “widespread past and ongoing treatment of their daughter as a boy by its employees,” carried out without parental consent and in direct opposition to explicit parental instructions.
The Osborns are asking the court to declare HISD’s policies in violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments, prohibit the district from using masculine pronouns or an alternate name for their daughter, and award attorney’s fees along with compensatory and punitive damages. The complaint states the district violated the parents’ “fundamental parental rights” under the Fourteenth Amendment and their “sincerely held religious beliefs” protected by the First Amendment.
Not only should the school district pay, but everyone involved in this should having their teaching certificate revoked and never be allowed to teach in the state again.
Yeah, Kerville has been hit hard by the flooding:
More good news: “Hamas leader and Oct. 7 mastermind Hakham Muhammad Issa Al-Issa killed in airstrike, IDF says.” Unlike Democrats, I think it’s a good thing when terrorist leaders get killed.
Diddy do it, but according to a jury, not all of it. “Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs was convicted of a prostitution-related offense but acquitted Wednesday of sex trafficking and racketeering charges.”
A steady stream of reports is now developing that suggests Covid vaccinations may indeed hurt fertility and pregnancy outcomes.
I reported on a rat study that clearly showed fertility was impacted after the animals were injected with mRNA Covid vaccines. A recently published study (not peer reviewed yet) looking at data from Israeli women found a substantially higher-than-expected number of eventual fetal losses associated with Covid vaccination during gestational weeks 8-13.
A newly published peer-reviewed study analyzing nationwide data from the Czech Republic has reported a significant association between Covid vaccination and reduced fertility rates in women of childbearing age. The study, which examined approximately 1.3 million women aged 18–39 between January 2021 and December 2023, found that women who received the Covid vaccine before conception had a substantially lower rate of successful conceptions (“SC”, i.e., pregnancies that resulted in live births) compared to their unvaccinated counterparts.
Of course, vaccine mandate advocates swore up and down it was absolutely safe. Meanwhile, it seemsto be harming those with very low chances of dying from Flu Manchu…
“Florida Gov. DeSantis Announces Tax Holiday On Guns.” September 8 through December 21. Your move, Greg Abbott…
On July 1, District Judge Ann Donnelly of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York ruled that there was sufficient evidence to proceed with a 16-count indictment against Huawei and its subsidiaries.
Huawei, which is closely tied to the Chinese communist regime, stands accused of racketeering, stealing trade secrets from six U.S. companies, and committing bank fraud.
With Donnelly’s ruling, the case will move forward toward trial. Currently, the proceedings are scheduled to begin on May 4, 2026.
Huawei stands charged with using a Hong Kong-based front company, Skycom, to conduct business in Iran in violation of U.S. sanctions and with misleading banks in order to facilitate more than $100 million in illegal money transfers.
Additionally, the indictment alleges that Huawei engaged in racketeering to expand its global brand.
“Harris County Agencies Reportedly Spent Millions With No Paper Trail.” Even lefty County Judge Lina Hidalgo has been raising the alarm over it. Maybe she didn’t get her cut…
“Famed Mexican boxer Julio César Chávez Jr. was arrested for overstaying his visa and lying on a green card application and will be deported to Mexico, where he faces organized crime charges.” (Hat tip: Dwight.)
“Spanish Operator of Proposed High-Speed Rail Liquidates American Subsidiary.” Yet another roadblock to the pie-in-the-sky Texas high speed rail project that will never be built.
So remember that story a while back in New York magazine’s The Cut, when the (I kid you not) Finance Reporter got scammed, withdrew $50,000 in cash from a bank, and handed it to a total stranger? To a lot of people, the details didn’t add up. Can you even withdraw $50,000 in cash without filling in a boatload for forms or triggering fraud warnings? One reporter went digging for the truth, and found out that, yeah, it looks like it’s true and you can just waltz out with that much cash…if you’re related to the Roosevelts.
So Diamond Distributors declared bankruptcy, and the new owners evidently decided, “Hey we can just sell all this consignment inventory we have, not pay the publishers for it, and use the money to pay back this Chase loan.” The publishers disagree…
It’s easy to get black pilled and feel that elections don’t matter, but there are few areas where the difference between electing Republicans over Democrats is as pronounced as that of gun rights. The Supreme Court victories in Heller and Bruen don’t happen without Republican nominees on the Supreme Court. Likewise, though Texas Republicans have real gripes about the cabal thwarting conservative legislation, Dwight sent over a Texas State Rifle Association piece on Second Amendment wins during the 89th Legislature’s regular session.
Art. 7C.002.b. LOCAL REGULATION PROHIBITED. (a) This An entity described by Subsection (a) may not adopt or enforce a rule, ordinance, order, policy, or other similar measure relating to an extreme risk protective order unless state law specifically authorizes the adoption and enforcement of such a rule, ordinance, order, policy, or measure.
Art. 7C.003. CERTAIN FEDERAL LAWS UNENFORCEABLE. A federal statute, order, rule, or regulation purporting to implement or enforce an extreme risk protective order against a person in this state that infringes on the person’s right of due process, keeping and bearing arms, or free speech protected by the United States Constitution or the Texas Constitution is unenforceable as against the public policy of this state and shall have no effect.
“Each of these new laws will take effect on September 1.”
Bill by bill, session by session, progress on Second Amendment legislation is made, at least in Texas. Meanwhile, Democrat-run blue locales like Colorado are still trying to pave the way for their longtime goal of complete civilian disarmament.
In a dramatic last-minute move, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) vetoed a total ban on recreational cannabis that had been backed by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R), causing a rare rift between the state’s top elected officials.
Abbott signed the veto of Senate Bill 3 on Sunday just one hour before its deadline, calling for a special legislative session in mid-July to address the state’s wild-west cannabis market.
The move came one day after Abbott signed House Bill 46, which dramatically expanded the state’s medical cannabis program to include a wide range of new conditions, put dispensaries across the state and allow the sale of new products such as vaporizers.
Senate Bill 3, which passed last month after a bitterly contested fight, represented what the Houston Chronicle has called a “civil war” between medical and recreational cannabis, in which medical — until Sunday — appeared to have won.
In a Sunday statement, Patrick blasted the veto — and Abbott. “His late-night veto, on an issue supported by 105 of 108 Republicans in the legislature, strongly backed by law enforcement, many in the medical and education communities, and the families who have seen their loved ones’ lives destroyed by these very dangerous drugs, leaves them feeling abandoned,” Patrick said.
Allowing Senate Bill 3 to become law — knowing that it faces a lengthy battle that will render it dead on arrival in court — would hinder rather than help us solve the public safety issues this bill seeks to contain. The current market is dangerously under-regulated, and children are paying the price. If Senate Bill 3 is swiftly enjoined by a court, our children will be no safer than if no law was passed, and the problems will only grow.
He further states that because SB3 bans any amount of THC, it falls below the federal threshold. “It therefore criminalizes what congress expressly legalized and puts federal and state law on a collision course.” He also notes the possibility of abusive private property seizures under the bill.
“Abbott urged lawmakers to consider an approach similar to the way alcohol is regulated, recommending potential rules including barring the sale and marketing of THC products to minors, requiring testing throughout the production and manufacturing process, allowing local governments to prohibit stores selling THC products and providing law enforcement with additional funding to enforce the restrictions.”
The 89th Texas Legislature will gavel back in for a special session on July 21 — called by Gov. Greg Abbott an hour after he vetoed the hotly-debated Senate Bill (SB) 3 banning THC-derived products on Sunday night.
Abbott specified five bills that he intends for the Legislature to address besides SB 3: SB 1758 by Sen. Brian Birdwell (R-Granbury), related to the operation of cement kilns;
SB 1253 by Sen. Charles Perry (R-Lubbock), regulating certain water projects;SB 1278 by Sen. Tan Parker (R-Flower Mound), on affirmative defense in cases of human trafficking;SB 2878 by Sen. Bryan Hughes (R-Mineola), concerning the operation of the state judicial branch; and SB 648 by Sen. Royce West (D-Dallas), related to recording requirements of real property.
“At this time, the Governor has identified several bills that were vetoed or filed without signature that will be placed on the upcoming Special Session agenda for further consideration,” his press release read.
“Working with the Texas Legislature, we delivered results that will benefit Texans for generations to come,” said Abbott in a press release shortly after midnight — the 20-day deadline for the governor to take action on bills passed during the regular session.
He noted that all seven of his emergency priorities passed during the regular 89th session, which spanned from January 13 to June 2 — property tax relief, generational investment in water, raising teacher pay, expanding career pay, school choice, bail reform, and creating the Texas Cyber Command.
The clash between Abbott and Patrick is interesting, because the state’s two highest elected officials rarely feud so publicly. (Privately is a different matter; those two are not best buds, but they have an effective working relationship.)
It’s also interesting because of the clash between conservative and libertarian impulses. Neither Texans nor the legislature have ever voted for full marijuana or THC legalization. It seems that Dan Patrick and the legislature are merely instructing localities to actually enforce existing state law. But, as Abbott notes, the threshold apparently clashes with federal law.
There’s a case to be made for marijuana legalization on the ground of personal autonomy, but both de facto and de jure marijuana legalization in other states have brought along with them considerable negative externalities, from sketchy potheads in broken RVs trashing formerly respectable neighborhoods to state and national forests trashed by illegal grow operations. Oklahoma has suffered from Chinese mob control of the marijuana trade. legalization seems to have made these problems notably worse, by making law enforcement disinclined to go after any grow operations.
In other states, the “medical marijuana” loophole has been expanded so far that you can drive several weed-filled 18-wheelers through it.
The Austin-area quasi-legal “three smoke shops in a half mile stretch” status quo (which SB3 would theoretically eliminate) probably isn’t socially healthy. But it’s entirely possibly that they’re less unhealthy than current full legalization regimes in other states.
On the other hand, marijuana prohibition at the federal level should be repealed because it violates the 10th Amendment, and the idea that the federal government can prohibit what someone can grow and consume on their own land is absurd, unconstitutional, and rests on the horrible precedent of Wickard vs. Filburn.
Polls seem to show a majority of Texas voters oppose a THC ban, but want to see it more heavily regulated. Usual poll caveats apply, and transient public opinion is not the final arbiter in representative government, but I think it’s safe to say that the majority of Texans are considerably less enthused about a THC ban than Dan Patrick.
I’m not entirely sure of the best way forward. Abbott’s suggestion for alcohol-type regulation going forward is probably better (and more likely to withstand legal challenge) than Patrick’s more heavy-handed approach. Whatever law is settled on, Austin and a few other locals will almost certainly continue to under-enforce it.
Marijuana legalization has often been cited as a slippery slope to full drug legalization, and we have seen much of that in deep blue hellholes like San Francisco. But in Texas, while there does indeed appear to be a slope, it doesn’t seem particularly slippery…
This guy is pushing Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson “Abundance Agenda,” which aims to offer an alternative to the Democratic Party’s current downer social justice agenda. I’m not going to cover that much, since I don’t think the “Abundance Agenda” has a snowball’s chance in hell of being adopted by the Party’s current ideological core. But I am posting this for his (admittedly incomplete) critique of how Democrats grievously harmed the very people they’re claiming to be working for by destroying the quality of life in the cities they run.
“Democrats, plain and simple, need to change not only to win elections, but also to help the people they claim to support.”
“Working and middle-class American families are leaving places like California, New York and Illinois by the hundreds of thousands, often relocating to conservative regions.” Just like I talked about earlier this week.
“In the words of progressive journalist Ezra Klein: ‘You cannot claim to be the party of working families when the places you govern are places working families cannot afford to live.'” Sure you can! You just need to deploy the time-honored Democratic Party rhetorical device known as “lying your ass off.”
“Donald Trump partly won the 2024 election due to scarcity in the most essential aspects of people’s lives: affordable health care [What, ObamaCare didn’t make health care affordable? I’m shocked… -LP], energy, food, and most importantly housing.”
“For much of America, housing is simply far too expensive. In American cities, especially the liberal progressive ones, there’s an artificial scarcity of housing, and little to none of the available housing is affordable.”
“In 1970 Los Angeles, homes were 2.5 times the median family income, according to Redfin. But in 2022, LA house prices reached over nine times that of median family incomes, requiring families to earn over $220,000 to afford a home.”
“Home ownership is increasingly out of reach for the average worker, and high housing costs have led to financial instability for far too many Americans.”
“Housing supply is partly constrained by zoning restrictions…When more and more individuals and families compete for a near fixed supply of housing stock, prices typically rise making cities unaffordable for existing residents.” You mean like, say, importing millions of illegal aliens to compete with American citizens for limited housing stock?
“Many of America’s most prosperous cities, from New York and Boston to Seattle and San Francisco, heavily restrict the construction of new housing, especially the taller, denser buildings which could house more people, but that’s not the case in all of them.”
“Houston, Texas for example, has some of the most affordable housing and lowest homelessness rates in the country, despite its metro region holding over 7 million residents. This is in part because Houston has essentially no zoning. As a result, because it is extremely easy to build apartments and homes in much of the city, market forces can provide new housing at a variety of price points.”
“In liberal cities attempts, at building housing and infrastructure are often so expensive and inefficient that very little is actually built for low-income Americans. Take San Francisco, for example. The city’s numerous requirements for using public money add millions of dollars to the cost of construction, causing the typical publicly subsidized apartment to take six years to complete with a price tag of 600K per unit.” So affordable!
“San Francisco requires separate reviews from the city’s arts commission and Office of Disability, mandates electricity come from a city-owned utility company, and demands preferential treatment to small local contractors, meaning builders are discouraged from working with contractors who operate at scale.”
“Individually each requirement may seem well-meaning and progressive, but together they cause delays increase costs and ultimately limit the construction of housing for the poor, which clearly is not a progressive outcome.”
“Obstacles aren’t restricted to liberal cities like San Francisco these days building anything in America often requires jumping through a multitude of veto points, allowing interest groups, organizations and hyper local concerns to stop critical projects in their tracks.” Oh, that’s very “progressive” and by design, because every obstacle, every bureaucratic touch-point, provides opportunities for rent- and graft-seeking opportunities to grease the palms of progressives. Look at Austin’s “Reimagining Public Safety” and how just about every recommendation amounts to “take money away from the police and give it to us. This death by a thousand cuts doesn’t deserve the assumption of “good intentions.” It’s a racket that rakes off graft for the hard left.
At this point the author wanders off into more “good intentions, bad outcomes” examples, like environmentalism etc., but non-lefties no longer assume good intentions on the part of the Democratic Party.
Things he fails to mention: How high crime in blue cities with Soros-back prosecutors ruin the quality of life for poor and middle class Americans, and (again) how the huge influx of illegal aliens raises housing prices and sucks up resources that used to benefit American citizens.
Toward the end he states “Democratic doctrine often focuses so much on redistribution rather than growing the pie as a whole,” sounding rather like Jack Kemp or Newt Gingrich in 1994. And I’m pretty sure Democrats at the time either ignored them or called them Nazis.
But the baseline truth is that the ideological core of the Democratic Party wants nothing to do with your white boy “abundance agenda” because it directly conflicts with their primary goals of increasing their own abundance of wealth and power, taking full control of the Democratic Party and using it to destroy Americas existing structures to rebuild them into their imaginary socialist utopia.
You can’t make someone see the advantages of your “abundance agenda” if their entire likelihoods are predicated on not seeing it.
Of the many self-inflicted dooms besetting the Democratic Party, the blue state exodus gets talked about far less than Trump Derangement Syndrome or the radical wokeness destroying the party (along with everything else it touches). But for a party that once crowed about “demographic destiny” making them the “permanent majority party,” the shifting demographics of people fleeing blue states due to lousy governance, and the resulting shift in electoral votes, is going make Democrats winning the presidency much more difficult in 2032.
“There is a year that should absolutely terrify Democrats. It’s not 2024 or 2026 or even 2028. It’s 2032.”
“The population movement right now is a flashing red warning sign for Democrats. The reason is the 2030 reapportionment. Every ten years, the US conducts the census. One big thing done with that data is the recalculation of how many seats each state gets in the House of Representatives, and how many votes it gets in the Electoral College. And those numbers move in tandem. You gain two House seats. You gain two electoral votes. If you lose a House seat, you lose an electoral vote.”
“Democratic states are losing population and Republican states are gaining.”
“Here’s one way to think about it. In 2020, Joe Biden won* a 306 to 232 victory in the Electoral College. Then, after 2020, the census was finished and representation was reallocated for the 2022 midterms and 2024 presidential election. Under the new map, winning those same states would have shrunk Biden’s victory margin by six electoral votes to 303 to 235.”
“The next census will happen in 2030, and the map will again change for the 2032 presidential election. And right now, the outlook for that map is a disaster for Democrats.”
“Blue states like California and New York shedding House seats and electoral votes, and red states like Texas and Florida gaining four new electoral votes and House seats each.”
“In 2024, Donald Trump won a 312 to 226 victory in the Electoral College. Under this projection, the exact same state and vote breakdown would swell that margin by 20 electoral votes to 322 to 216.”
“Right now the wind is absolutely blowing away from Democratic controlled states and towards Republican controlled ones. And it’s worth asking why.”
“The red areas of the country are becoming a bigger and bigger share of the pie, and it gets to a flashing red problem for Democrats, both for their political survival and brand identity.”
“For the most part, it is expensive as hell to live in a blue area governed by Democrats. The data is clear eight of the ten states with the highest rent prices are solid blue states, and eight of the ten states with the highest cost of living index are also solid blue states.”
“Having a high GDP or on-paper prosperity doesn’t mean much when most people can’t afford their lives.”
“So why are blue cities and states in such an affordability crisis right now? Well, to start, obviously we’re all thinking it 1, 2, 3: taxes. It’s just the fact that Democratic controlled states tend to impose higher tax rates. Sometimes that means taxes that some GOP states don’t even have, like the income tax.”
“Culture is another part. By now it’s clear that Covid in 2020 presented a particular challenge for blue states and cities. Many of which, took a much softer approach to urban disorder and unrest and are still trying to reverse the damage.”
“On a lot of stuff, Democrats also just tend to be more lax or more compassionate, depending on your point of view.”
“The upside might be that a homeless person is treated with more dignity, or you won’t get thrown in jail just for having a bag of marijuana. But the downside might be that now a public park is inaccessible to families wanting to use it, or people are doing hard drugs on the street without the law intervening, which isn’t actually compassionate to anyone.”
“But more than taxes or culture or anything else. The overwhelming majority of this issue stems from one big fact: housing. It has just become really expensive for people to buy or rent a place to live in many blue states. By any conceivable metric, the US overall is in an affordable housing crisis right now. The average renting American now spends over 30% of their income on rent. The ratio of income to housing prices is at a record high right now, and at its highest in blue states.”
“And we have clear data showing us that this has now become a direct drag on Democrats. An NBC analysis of the 2024 presidential race found that Trump made his biggest gains in the counties that have the worst housing markets. Remember those top ten most expensive states and how eight of them were blue states? Five of those eight were also in the ten states that swung the most towards Trump in 2024.”
“And even when people don’t move out of a blue city or state, the people that stay are increasingly reacting to the high cost of living. By losing faith in the Democratic Party. Again, especially middle and working class people. It’s not a coincidence that Trump’s biggest gains in 2024 were in diverse, working class congressional districts in California and the New York City area, places where the Democratic Party has full control and has failed to address the cost of living.”
“But we also know that there is a way to address this in cities, mainly because many blue cities in red states have done it. Take Austin, which is the seat of a county that voted for Kamala Harris by almost 40 points. It’s seen explosive growth over the past 15 years, partly because the city and state have been very successful in making housing more affordable. That’s not because every landlord there suddenly became a socialist or because they banned Blackrock, but because they fundamentally just built more housing, making more space and lowering the prices.” The City of Austin government proper had very little to do with that, though I’m sure it’s several orders of magnitude easier to build apartment buildings here than in San Francisco, and you see them going up all the time. But Austin is surrounding by bedroom communities in far more growth-friendly counties, and Texas beats the hell out of California for pro-growth policies.
“That’s the kind of thing that makes families move there, companies open there, students stay there. And remember, each one of those people is a tiny little piece of building another electoral vote every ten years. By contrast, cities like New York and LA and San Francisco and Boston are in an absolutely different spot. It is simply incredibly expensive to live there.”
“The Democratic Party sees its political power decrease when fewer people live in the states that it controls, but it is the policies of its own politicians which are preventing more people from living in them.”
The only “growth” that blue state politicians seem to embrace is that of their own bank accounts and the ranks of illegal aliens—the same illegal aliens that drive up the cost of housing for ordinary, non-subsidized citizens. The bluer the city or state, the more likely they are to pursue actively anti-growth policies on the assumption that more people equal more destruction of the environment. And how can Democrats create safe cities when the Soros-backed Democrats they elect are determined to keep violent felons on the street as long as they hail from designated victim groups?
How can Democrats pursue pro-growth policies when so many core ideological constituents are anti-growth?
Memorial Day weekend looms, $96 billion in green fraud, two terminal cases of prostate cancer revealed, Bernie admits Democrats are a threat to democracy, the Supreme smacks down the idea than transsexual rights are more important than democracy or free speech, plus Chinese doctor hanky-panky, revenge porn, a weed heist and a Nazi Muslim Only Fans model.
Former President Joe Biden, the oldest president in U.S. history, has been diagnosed with prostate cancer, his personal office announced on Sunday afternoon.
Biden, 82, was diagnosed last week after he had dealt with increased urinary symptoms and is currently reviewing treatment options.
“Last week, President Joe Biden was seen for a new finding of a prostate nodule after experiencing increasing urinary symptoms. On Friday, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, characterized by a Gleason score of 9 (Grade Group 5) with metastasis to the bone,” a spokesman for Biden’s personal office said in a statement….
The Gleason score of 9 in Biden’s diagnosis suggests an aggressive form of cancer likely to spread quickly. He will likely require chemotherapy, hormone therapy, and forms of pain management to tackle the illness.
What are the odds they’ve known he had cancer for years and didn’t tell the American public so the ghost in the machine could keep pumping out billions in graft? Speaking of which…
During a blistering Senate Appropriations Committee hearing, Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) was visibly floored after Energy Secretary Christopher Wright dropped a bombshell: the Department of Energy handed out a staggering $93 billion in loans and commitments during the final 76 days of the Biden administration, a figure that more than doubled the loan total from the previous 15 years combined.
Kennedy, in classic fashion, drilled in with precision. “The 76-day period you’re talking about, that’s the period between the time that President Trump was elected and President Biden left office. Is that right?”
“That is correct,” Wright confirmed.
Kennedy didn’t mince words when he asked how any agency could properly vet such massive spending in such a short window. “How do you do due diligence on one loan, much less $93 billion?” he asked.
Wright’s answer was damning.
“I think it’s probably pretty clear it wasn’t done in many cases,” he said. “There were commitments made from businesses that provided no business plan, no numbers about their own financial solvency, or how this project actually worked.”
The senator appeared almost incredulous and asked for clarity: “So, so you’re telling me that the Department of Energy in the 76-day period before their boss was gonna leave office, gave or loaned money to, to entities that had no business plan?”
Andrew: Over the last four elections, Democrats – we felt – that we didn’t have a say on who could be president … I felt like the Democratic Party completely removed the democratic process from its constituents, and I think they need to have some accountability of that.
Bernie: No argument here.
Andrew: 2016 … it felt like they stole it from you. And I’ll be honest, it broke my heart when you supported them.
…
Akassh [Singh]: Could we not also say ostensibly there hasn’t been a fair primary for the Democrats since 2008, are they not also a threat to democracy?
Bernie: Yes. Fair enough. That is, yeah. I’m not gonna argue with that point.
The Supreme Court ordered the Maine House of Representatives on Tuesday to restore the vote of a Republican lawmaker who was censured after she wrote an online post defending fairness in women’s sports and criticizing the intrusion of a trans-identifying male athlete into female competition.
Maine Representative Laurel Libby filed the emergency appeal to the Supreme Court while a lawsuit over the social media post plays out. In the post written earlier this year, Libby criticized a male high school athlete who won a girls’ track meet, and included in the post the male student’s name.
The Democrat-controlled Maine House decided that Libby’s post violated ethics in identifying the student, and when she chose not to apologize, Libby was subsequently banned from speaking and voting on the House floor.
Supreme Court justices sided with Libby 7-2 with Associate Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissenting.
“The U.S. Supreme Court just restored the voice of 9,000 Mainers!” Libby said on X. “After 2+ months of being silenced for speaking up for Maine girls, I can once again vote on behalf of the people of House District 90. This is a win for free speech — and for the Constitution.”
A Mexican national was charged for allegedly providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization by the Western District of Texas — the first indictment of its kind in the nation.
Maria Del Rosario Navarro-Sanchez allegedly assisted the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG) with obtaining grenades, as well as trafficking humans, firearms, and narcotics “on behalf” of the criminal organization.
The 39-year-old Mexican woman was charged by the court with “conspiracy to smuggle and transport aliens in the United States, straw purchasing and trafficking in firearms, bulk cash smuggling conspiracy, and conspiracy to possess a controlled substance with intent to distribute,” the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) shared on Friday afternoon.
Navarro-Sanchez was joined in her indictment by two other co-defendants: Luis Carlos Davalos-Lopez and Gustavo Castro-Medina, also both Mexican nationals facing similar smuggling, trafficking, and straw purchasing charges.
Three hundred years ago, the remarkable satirist Jonathan Swift wrote, “When a true Genius appears in the World, you may know him by this infallible Sign; that the Dunces are all in Confederacy against him.”
Now, you might not be President Trump’s biggest fan. Perhaps you are glad that he has returned to the White House but look forward to one of his capable lieutenants succeeding him in four years. But I would argue that never has a larger collection of absolute idiots assembled to oppose an American leader, and for that reason alone, Donald J. Trump is probably a genius. (And a very stable one at that!)
Right now, Democrats are waging a public relations campaign in support of criminal illegal aliens. They are trying to make military-aged males with gang tattoos look sympathetic. Sure, many of them have been accused of engaging in human-trafficking, drug-smuggling, identity theft, and fraud, but Democrats say these “new” Americans are just like us. Sure, foreign nationals are regularly accused of rape and murder across the United States, but Democrats are quick to point out that “old” Americans commit heinous crimes, too. Sure, illegal aliens are a huge financial burden to the prison system, welfare programs, health care, public schools, and local communities, but Democrats insist that it’s “racist” to tell the truth out loud.
While President Trump is rounding up violent criminals who have no right to be in the United States, Democrats are crying in front of cameras and promising to bring them back to a neighborhood near you. In four months, they’ve shown more love for foreigners who broke into our country than they’ve ever shown for American victims of transnational cartels!
In a Monday bipartisan vote of 133 to 8, House members approved Sen. Joan Huffman’s (R-Houston) Senate Joint Resolution (SJR) 5 that allows judicial officers the discretion to deny bail to defendants charged with murder or capital murder, aggravated kidnapping, aggravated robbery, aggravated sexual assault, indecency with a child, trafficking of persons, and continuous trafficking of persons.
Bail may also be withheld for aggravated assault if the person caused serious bodily injury or used a weapon.
Hopefully this will result in fewer citizens being killed by the criminals that Soros-backed prosecutors love letting back out on the street.
Congressman Kevin Kiley’s resolution to save gas cars from extinction in 2035 in California has passed Congress and heads to President Trump’s desk, where he will sign the measure.
The resolution revokes the EPA waiver secured in 2020 by California Gov. Gavin Newsom and eleven other states, aimed at getting rid of gas cars and attempting to switch to all-electric vehicles.
Guess which party rules over the woke states blindly following Newsom’s disastrous proposal.
California-Socialist
Colorado-Democrat
Delaware-Dummocrat
Maryland-Dummocrat
Massachusetts-Taxocrat
New Jersey-Democrat
New Mexico-Democrat
New York-Democrat
Oregon-Socialist
Rhode Island-Democrat
Vermont-Communist
Washington-Communist
District of Columbia-Stupidcrat
Newsom sought the waiver from the Executive Branch. Now he’s suing the Executive Branch to say it doesn’t have the right to take away his waiver.
Curioser and curioser: “Father Of DC Shooting Suspect Was Democrats’ Honored Guest At Trump Congressional Address.”
The father of the suspected gunman in the murder of two Israeli Embassy staffers at the Capital Jewish Museum on Wednesday, was the honored guest of a far-left lawmaker at President Trump’s joint address to Congress back in March, the New York Post reported.
Eric Rodriguez is an anti-Trump SEIU member who also spoke at a Democrat press conference ahead of Trump’s address.
His son, accused killer Elias Rodriguez, 30, has been charged with two counts of first-degree murder after allegedly gunning down Yaron Lischinsky, 28, and Sarah Milgrim, 26, who were about to become engaged.
“Eric Rodriguez was our guest during the President’s Joint Speech to Congress, but we don’t know his family,” a spokesperson for Rep. Jesús “Chuy” García (D-Ill.) told the Post Thursday night.
“Trump Signs Cruz’s ‘TAKE IT DOWN’ Act Banning ‘Revenge Porn’ Into Law. Both President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump threw their support behind the bill prior to its passage.” Like many attempts to regulate cyberspace, the bill is long on good intentions and shorter on the ability to actually regulate a global Internet.
Five Supreme Court justices recuse themselves from a case because they all had publishing deals with one of the companies involved. The last time that happened, Learned Hand was writing decisions…
“Gun Owners of America Endorses Ken Paxton for U.S. Senate.” That’s a good endorsement, as anyone challenging an incumbent senator needs all the help they can get. It’s also insufficient; Jerry Patterson had the pro-gun vote locked up in his four-way Lt. Governor’s race against David Dewhurst, Dan Patrick and Todd Staples in 2014, and he still came in fourth place…
Interesting story about a leading married doctor in China who just got kicked out of his job and the CCP because he pulled strings for not one but two of his would-be baby mommas.
Was social justice games ruiner Sweet Baby Inc. created by the Canadian government? Some evidence suggests so, but this seems far from conclusive.
Bill Maher and Woody Harrelson’s Hollywood weed shop ransacked by thieves. Is this enough to finally make Maher vote Republican?
Asmongold has been highlighting the case of pro-jihad Twitch streamer Hasan Piker for quite some time now, saying that his support for terrorism could be a big danger to Twitch’s advertising revenue screens. Following the DC jihad shooting, Piker was called out by name on CNN
Be honest, I bet you didn’t guess fairy wings was the 2nd accessory this pup likes!
The way she brings it over to her HuDad & pats it, the little lip quiver as she asks so politely for him to help her put them on 🥹 She looks so happy! See the row of bags!… pic.twitter.com/hneFKdUoxb
A federal court in Texas has issued an order to vacate portions of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) 2024 Enforcement Guidance that interpreted Title VII of the Civil Rights Act to mandate accommodations for transgender employees related to pronouns, dress codes, and bathroom access.
The EEOC “Enforcement Guidance on Harassment in the Workplace” was issued in 2024, and created enforcements for how sex-based harassment includes harassment based on “sexual orientation or gender identity,” including misusing pronouns and “the denial of access to a bathroom… consistent with the individual’s gender identity.”
The social justice left isn’t just at war with Christianity, American patriotism and traditional sex roles, but with biological reality itself. In the future, the pronoun police and sex as social construct idiocy will be seen as an inexplicable madness of our age the same way that Pyramid Power and the Bermuda Triangle are exemplifiers of the craziness of the 1970s.
Soon after the guidance was issued, Attorney General Ken Paxton and the conservative Heritage Foundation filed suit, arguing that it unlawfully compels employers to adopt “transgender” mandates under the threat of discrimination or harassment lawsuits.
U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk issued the order last Thursday, finding that the guidance “contravenes Title VII’s plain text by expanding the scope of ‘sex’ beyond the biological binary: male and female.”
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 created the EEOC to enforce the prohibitions on employment discrimination.
Paxton’s lawsuit argued that the EEOC guidance “relies on an intentional misrepresentation of the Bostock v. Clayton County (2020) decision by the U.S. Supreme Court.” He added that the decision “did not discuss how such employers must accommodate such employees in the workplace.”
Kacsmaryk notes in his ruling that “Bostock does not authorize the Guidance’s expansion of Title VII ‘sex’ to include new categories or classes.”
Shortly after entering office in January, President Donald Trump issued an executive order (EO) titled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” which instructed the U.S. attorney general to “issue guidance to ensure the freedom to express the binary nature of sex and the right to single-sex spaces in workplaces and federally funded entities covered by the Civil Rights Act of 1964.”
Gov. Greg Abbott has also issued a letter to state agency heads directing them to “comply with the law and the biological reality that there are only two sexes — male and female.”
Theoretically, anything a previous administration did through executive fiat should be capable of being undone by the next administration the same way, but as the recent efforts of rogue lefty judges to thwart Trump47 from doing just that prove, additional weapons are needed to reign in the radical social justice excesses of the Biden regime. So it’s good to have a judicial ruling that 2+2=4, the sun rises in the East, and, yes, there are two biological sexes, male and female, and a man claiming he’s a woman doesn’t magically make him one.
The world’s first American Pope, India and Pakistan trade blows, Israel hits Syria again, Trump’s tariffs bring trade deals, more leftwing waste uncovered, Starbase becomes a real city, and a surprising amount about Disney.
Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost was elected by the College of Cardinals to succeed the late Pope Francis on Thursday, taking the papal name Pope Leo XIV.
Prevost, 69, is a native of Chicago. He is the 267th Pope of the Roman Catholic Church and the first American Pope in the Church’s history. A former prefect of the influential Dicastery for Bishops, Pope Leo XIV spent decades as a missionary in Peru. Leading up to the conclave, he was considered a compromise candidate and one of the frontrunners because of his missionary work and Vatican experience.
French Cardinal Dominique Mamberti, another rumored candidate for the Papacy, announced Pope Leo XIV’s election on the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica to a roaring crowd. The newly elected Pontiff appeared to be emotional during the blessing he delivered from the balcony as he re-introduced himself to the world. Eagle-eyed observers noticed the Pope wore traditional garments for his introductory remarks, but he broke with custom by initially reading his speech from a piece of paper.
Pope Leo XIV paid tribute to Pope Francis in his speech while reiterating the Church’s missionary zeal and charitable heart. He also touched on the Resurrection of Jesus Christ and peace in his address.
“We have to seek together to be a missionary church, a church that builds bridges and dialogue, always ready to accept, like this great piazza, with its arms, we have to show our charity, presence and dialogue with love,” he said.
Pope Francis elevated Prevost to Bishop of Chiclayo in Peru in 2015 and named him a Cardinal in 2023 after the Church played an important role in maintaining stability in Peru amid political crises. He became prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops in January 2023, making him responsible for the appointment of Bishops, an enormously powerful role within the Church.
Ordained in 1982, Prevost received an undergraduate degree from Villanova University in 1977 and then obtained a Master of Divinity from the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago. He went off to Rome for degrees in canon law at the Pontifical College of St. Thomas Aquinas before joining the Augustinian mission in Peru in 1985.
“With today’s election of His Holiness, Pope Leo XIV, I cannot help but reflect on what his Augustinian papacy will mean to our University community and our world. Known for his humility, gentle spirit, prudence and warmth, Pope Leo XIV’s leadership offers an opportunity to reaffirm our commitment to our educational mission,” said Villanova president Rev. Peter Donohue.
He spent a notable portion of his career at the Augustinian seminary in Trujillo until returning to Chicago in 1999 to oversee the Augustinian province. Prevost later led the Augustinian order for two terms from 2001 to 2013 until he went back to Peru.
Snip.
The new Pope’s name, Leo, suggests a spiritual connection to Pope Leo XIII, a 19th century Pope known for his combination of supporting workers rights and opposing communism.
Let’s hope he keeps up that “opposing communism” tradition…
More union graft off the taxpayer: “Senate DOGE Caucus Leader Uncovers Federal Employees Cashing Taxpayer Checks While Doing Union Work.”
In fiscal year 2019, the Office of Personnel Management reported that federal employees spent 2.6 million hours on union activities, costing taxpayers $135 million. The Biden administration temporarily halted OPM’s data reporting, but the Trump administration resumed it after a request from Ernst.
“Through the course of the past 10 years and studying government efficiency and fraud, waste, and abuse, we have uncovered the issue of taxpayer-funded union time. It’s where we see federal employees—and they can legally do this right now—work during their regular workday, and do that as taxpayer-funded dollars going to their paycheck, but they’re not actually working on their duties as a federal employee,” [Sen. Jodi] Enrst said during a panel discussion on government bureaucracy at the The Hill & Valley Forum this week. “What they’re doing is working for their union, maybe to increase their wages or increase their benefits, on the taxpayers’ dime.”
Ernst also sounded off on “egregious” examples of federal employee misconduct. “Federal employees who were caught, you know, one taking a bubble bath when he was on a Zoom call with other employees—he got ratted out, of course. Those that are on the golf course, we get those all the time,” senator said. Even more shocking cases included a HUD employee who was in prison for driving drunk during work hours, unbeknownst to her supervisor, and a remote worker who ran a full-time business while his mother answered his work emails.
“Somehow her supervisor did not know she was in jail,” she explained about the HUD employee, adding, “And one of the most egregious was one federal employee that was working remotely that had started his own business, full-time business, and during the work hours, his mother was responding to his emails.”
Last month, Ernst introduced the Taxpayer-Funded Union Time Transparency Act to revealed just how much federal employee unions are subsidized by tax dollars after the Biden administration paused the public release of the figures. Rep. Scott Franklin (R-FL) introduced companion legislation in the House of Representatives.
The graft thickens. “Foreign Aid Official Who Resisted DOGE Took Secret Payments After Steering Africa Money To Friend.”
A foreign aid official who refused the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) access to his agency’s financial records may have had a reason to keep auditors out: he steered illicit contracts to a friend who sent him secret payments, according to a law enforcement affidavit obtained by The Daily Wire.
Mathieu Zahui, chief financial officer of the African Development Foundation, refused to grant DOGE access to its books and told the White House that the agency would not acknowledge President Donald Trump’s appointee as chairman of the board. After a dramatic showdown in March, DOGE physically took over the building with U.S. Marshals, but control of the agency is now the subject of a lawsuit objecting to “swooping in with DOGE staff, demanding access to sensitive information systems” — an objection that reads differently in light of the criminal probe.
For years, workers at the small, USAID-adjacent federal agency focused on Africa have told oversight bodies about allegations of self-dealing, procurement violations, and mysterious offshore bank accounts, many of them involving Zahui. But little was done about it, several told The Daily Wire.
One action that raised eyebrows was Zahui’s insistence on directing both grants and contracts to a company in Kenya called Ganiam Ltd. According to spending records, it was awarded nearly $800,000 in contracts without competition. For example, a one-year, $350,000 contract for “transport, travel, relocation” services was executed in March 2020, when few people were traveling or holding conferences because of coronavirus.
According to a search warrant application uncovered by The Daily Wire, USAID’s inspector general established by August 2024 that the company’s owner had secretly wired money to Zahui’s personal bank account at times that matched up with the federal contracts. To date, the Department of Justice has not charged either man with a crime.
Ganiam Ltd. is owned by Maina Gakure, whom Zahui has known for decades. Both worked at the Department of Veterans Affairs in San Diego and later moved to Fairfax, Virginia. Gakure had been in charge of awarding contracts at the VA, then created his own company designed to get government construction contracts by taking advantage of a minority preference program. It was called Ganiam LLC and was based out of a house in Virginia. Gakure similarly created a company based in Kenya called Gakure Ltd. The African Development Foundation is permitted by law to give grants only to African entities.
Overseas aid is just a gigantic bucket of graft for Democratic Party grandees. (Hat tip: Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit.)
The Trump administration’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2026 seeks to eliminate over $15 billion in funding associated with Biden’s expensive and inane “Green New Deal” initiatives, specifically targeting “clean energy”, the “climate crisis”, and environmental programs.
The White House said the energy budget proposal cancels more than $15 billion in carbon capture and renewable energy funding from the bipartisan infrastructure law that former President Joe Biden, a Democrat, signed in 2021. It also proposes to cancel $6 billion from that law for EV chargers.
“The Biden Administration spent more than three years implementing these programs, but built only a small number of chargers because it prioritized over-regulating and ‘climate justice’ goals,” the White House said. “EV chargers should be built just like gas stations: with private sector resources disciplined by market forces.”
The plan reorients Energy Department funding toward research and development of technologies that could produce an abundance of oil, gas, coal and critical minerals, nuclear reactors and advanced nuclear fuels, the White House said without further details.
Winning. “Supreme Court Allows Trump to Enforce Transgender Military Ban.”
Over the last three years, Minh Phuong Ngoc Vong, a U.S. citizen, pulled down $970,000 working at a nail salon in Bowie, Maryland.
But Vong wasn’t just filing nails.
He was also filing applications at U.S. tech companies for IT and development jobs, some of which had government contracts requiring security clearance. However, Vong wasn’t performing any of the duties at those jobs; he was outsourcing all his work virtually to China and North Korea.
This alone is sketchy. But the reason he was caught shows the true severity of the crime.
An unnamed Virginia-based tech company wanted to include him on a job that needed more security clearance, but when they submitted his credentials to the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency for a secret clearance, he was flagged as having another job with security clearance, namely working with the Federal Aviation Administration.
The Virginia company fired him for having more than one job, but when the CEO showed his picture to the lead-developer, they realized that the man they hired was not the same one who was showing up to virtual meetings and doing the work.
As a result of Vong’s fraudulent misrepresentations, these government agencies unknowingly granted Vong’s co-conspirators access to sensitive U.S. government systems, which they accessed from China.
My respect for the hustle ends at creating gaping security holes for the commies.
Following India’s attack on terrorist bases in Pakistan, both countries have launched escalating attacks on the other.
Friday has seen the border conflict between India and Pakistan escalate once again, with The New York Times describing that it has escalated to the most expansive military clashes in decades. Entire large expanses of border zones are swarming with drones overhead – a first in the history of the long-running rivalry.
“There were reports of nonstop barrages along the border overnight into Friday, as well as reports of attacks by Pakistan into the Indian city of Jammu, a part of Kashmir,” the Times report says, citing that drone attacks have been exchanged along India’s entire western border.
India’s Operation Sindoor has not just avenged the deaths of the 26 people in the Pahalgam attack, but also had a far-reaching impact on the global fight against terrorism. The Indian Armed Forces’ precision strikes on Wednesday reportedly killed Abdul Rauf Azhar, the operational head of Jaish-e-Mohammad and mastermind of the IC-814 hijacking.
Azhar was involved in the kidnapping and murder of Wall Street Journal journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002. Hence, yesterday’s strikes on nine terror hubs in PoK and Pakistan delivered justice to the American-Jewish journalist.
Suchomimus says that India’s missile strikes were quite precise.
An aside: As of this writing, there’s not a single entry on this Indo-Pakistani conflict on The Institute for The Study of War’s homepage. Look guys, I know you’re busy with Ukraine, Iran, and China, but given that this is a war between two nuclear-armed nations that just went hot, do you think you could spare an analyst or two to, you know, study it?
President Donald Trump and U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced a historic trade deal between the two countries on Thursday that Trump says will include billions of dollars of increased market access for American exports, including beef, ethanol and other farm products.
The president, speaking from the Oval Office, said the details of the deal with Britain will be finalized in the coming weeks, but said the close U.S. ally has agreed to “eliminate numerous non-tariff barriers” under the agreement, which Trump touted as a “great deal for both countries.”
U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said the deal would create $5 billion of opportunity for U.S. exports after Britain identified products it was importing from other countries that it could instead purchase from the U.S.
Trump said the deal will also include a “historic” economic security component and said that Britain will “fast track” American goods through its customs process.
Under the deal, the U.K. will still be subject to Trump’s 10 percent baseline tariff that he has imposed on all countries.
Lutnick said the U.S. has agreed to lower its 25 percent tariff on imports of British cars to just 10 percent. He also indicated Rolls Royce engines and plane parts will be imported tariff-free, while Britain is set to buy $10 billion of Boeing airplanes. Meanwhile, tariffs on British steel exports will drop from 25 percent to zero.
If all that weren’t enough, “Israel carried out waves of airstrikes against terrorists and military targets in Syria, including the capital city of Damascus, after jihadists — reportedly backed by the new Islamist regime — launched attacks on the country’s non-Muslim Druze minority, killing at least 100 people in two days of fighting.”
According to the 20-page document, Schiff may have violated Maryland Code §7-401 and California’s Election and Tax Codes, including statutes that mirror the allegations recently leveled against New York Attorney General Letitia James—particularly in the realms of mortgage and insurance fraud.
According to the complaint, “In 2009, Adam Schiff’s residence and voting registration was called to question in a House Ethics Committee hearing. Adam Schiff, despite claiming to live and represent the people in the state of California, filed and reaffirmed through refinancing documents, his primary residence at 8204 Windsor View Terrace, Potomac Maryland, 28054.”
The complaint further alleges, “Adam Schiff is on the record having acknowledged the mortgage document filings [of Maryland as his primary residence] during a House Ethics hearing in 2009… He made the claim of ‘mistake,’ thereby acknowledging the appearance of possible mortgage fraud.”
But the complaint doesn’t stop there. It outlines a disturbing pattern of what Maryland law defines as a “pattern of mortgage fraud,” involving repeated false representations of Schiff’s primary residence across multiple properties and years. Under Maryland Code §7-407(c), such conduct could constitute a felony punishable by up to 20 years imprisonment or a $100,000 fine—or both.
Rules are for the little people…
“The Army cancels the M10 Booker, a ‘light tank’ that was too heavy.” I always thought the Booker suffered from “neither fish nor fowl” syndrome, and that was before the Russo-Ukraine War’s use of drones necessitated a radical rethink of the deployment of armored vehicles on the battlefield. (Hat tip: : Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Friedrich Merz was elected chancellor of Germany after facing a historic loss in the Bundestag. In the second round, 325 lawmakers voted for Merz, bringing him past the 316-vote threshold. The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) has already demanded that Merz step down and call for new elections following his loss in the first round.
Merz’s initial loss marked a historic moment, as it was the first of its kind in post-war Germany.
The result came as a major upset, as Merz was widely expected to win, thanks to a coalition deal involving his party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU); its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU); and the Social Democratic Party (SPD).
Evidently continuing unchecked, unassimilated Muslim immigration remains the highest priority of Europe’s ruling elites.
Romania’s prime minister will resign on Monday after a conservative opposition leader who aligned himself with Donald Trump scored a resounding first-round victory in the Black Sea nation’s presidential election.
Bloomberg reports, that Marcel Ciolacu informed coalition partners of the decision to submit his resignation in a meeting Monday in Bucharest, according to people familiar with the decision who spoke on condition of anonymity. The government will be led by an interim premier until coalition parties choose Ciolacu’s successor. There are no current plans for an early election.
The prime minister’s decision was a response to the electoral defeat of the coalition’s preferred candidate in Sunday’s first-round contest, in which George Simion of the ultranationalist Alliance for the Union of Romanians secured more than 40%.
He’ll face off against Nicusor Dan, the centrist mayor of Bucharest.
Trump’s new NIH director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya is wasting no time reforming the corrupt NIH.
As a part of a general phase-out of some animal testing, Trump’s appointees have closed the last remaining Fauci-supported and funded beagle lab on the NIH campus.
We all remember the infamous experiments funded by Fauci’s NIH that forced beagles to have their faces eaten by sand flies, with their vocal cords cut to take away their ability to cry in pain:
Western Carolina University is not changing its Title IX policy to comply with President Donald Trump’s executive action after the school was embroiled in a dispute last year over a male attempting to use women’s bathrooms.
WCU administrators refused to update their Title IX policy to comply with Trump’s order restoring sex segregation to federally funded colleges and universities and have instead continued to allow males in women’s spaces, according to public records provided to National Review by right-leaning campus watchdog group Speech First.
“For years, advocates have worried that Title IX procedures on campus have become weaponized – and these emails highlight that such concerns are indeed well-founded,” said Nicole Neily, acting executive director of Speech First.
“Universities across the country are actively ignoring and resisting the Trump Administration on Title IX, which underscores the need for strong action from both Congress and the executive branch to provide clarity for administrators and safety for women and girls.”
Far left college administrators don’t get to unilaterally redefine the statutory definition of “woman.”
The Harris County District Attorney’s Office (HCDAO) announced Friday that four felony charges pending against former Harris County Health Director Barbie Robinson had been dropped.
“After an exhaustive review of the evidence concluded by career prosecutors, the HCDAO has determined that the State cannot prove any of the charged offenses beyond a reasonable doubt and that pursuing this case is not in the interests of justice,” according to an official statement from HCDAO.
Robinson was fired from her post last September, and in November former District Attorney Kim Ogg announced Robinson would be charged with misuse of official information. In December, HCDAO charged Robinson with additional felonies, including tampering with a government record and two counts of fraudulent securing of document execution.
The charges stemmed from allegations that Robinson used her private email to coordinate with International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) officials regarding a $31 million contract to craft a social services program called Accessing Coordinated Care and Empowering Self Sufficiency (ACCESS). IBM would later successfully bid to create the ACCESS project for the county.
Before beginning her work for Harris County, Robinson served as the director of the Sonoma County Department of Health Services where she also worked with IBM to create a nearly identical program.
According to emails obtained by the Texas Rangers, Robinson exchanged emails with IBM officials shortly after she was hired by Harris County. Communications included discussion of “sole-source” contracts that could be exempted from competitive bids.
In July 2021, the county paid IBM $45,000 to put on a workshop to discuss the ACCESS program, and in November 2021 Robinson continued to use her personal email to coordinate with the company to craft a scope of work document in the weeks before the county issued a public request for proposals.
Robinson had also drawn scrutiny in 2024 for communications surrounding a $6 million contract awarded to DEMA, a California-based company selected to run Harris County’s Holistic Assistance Response Teams.
Scoring documents obtained by the Houston Chronicle showed that DEMA won the contract by a fraction of a point over a state-funded agency with experience in responding to 911 calls.
Early in 2021, Robinson had been instrumental in bringing DEMA to operate COVID-19 testing sites in Harris County. That year, DEMA CEO Michelle Patino offered her a contract for legal consulting, even though Robinson is not a practicing attorney.
The county has since severed ties with DEMA.
Of course, Soros-backed social justice warrior Sean Teare defeated Ogg in the Democratic primary last year.
“Sean Combs Was Once Celebrated at the Met Gala. He’s Now on Trial. He was lauded by Anna Wintour, was a regular guest at the gala, and his influence on the current exhibition is undeniable.” Diddy is the perfect poster boy for the Met Gala: A self-interested hedonist flaunting his wealth under the guise of virtue signaling.
Woke backlash has struck yet again and this time it’s among car giants Jaguar Land Rover who are currently on the search to replace their advertising agency after its controversial rebrand. Jaguar’s rebrand video went viral for all the wrong reasons back in December last year and were criticised for their new look which was described as “the biggest change in Jaguar’s history – a complete reinvention for the brand”. Despite the Jaguar vehicle being noticeably absent in the brand’s new relaunch video, other iconic brand images were left out too, including Jaguar’s classic leaping-cat icon.
This was replaced with futuristic pink moonscape images, dotted with boulders and included a cast of diverse and eccentrically-dressed models. The result of this rebrand, however, was met with harsh backlash with many devoted Jaguar Land Rover lover’s not shy about their dismay towards the car company, resulting in Jaguar now launching a review for a new global creative account.
Snip.
But despite their best efforts to appeal to all, the results were met with loss particularly among its sales which plunged by more than 25% in 2024.
The brand also recorded selling 33,320 cars in the same year – a stark drop from the 61,661 that were sold in 2022 and 161,601 sold in 2019.
Funny how literally everyone but Jaguar leadership saw this coming.
Plus-size far left Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker dresses up for Star Wars Day and promptly gets roasted. “Sith Lard” and “Boba Fat” are two of the better ones…
Metaphor alert: Sovereignty defeats Journalism. Not since philly Eight Belles came up lame and had to be euthanized on the track during Hillary Clinton’s run against Obama in 2008 has there been such a potent horse-racing metaphor for the current moment…
Disney strongly supports the gay community…so it’s building its newest park in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
The UAE criminalizes homosexuality. The Ministry of Education, I kid you not, “explicitly prohibits discussing gender identity, homosexuality or any other behavior deemed unacceptable to the UAE’s society’ in class.”
Islam is the state religion. Sharia is the source of law.
Sharia law…so same-sex sexual activity is punishable by death.
Consistency and integrity are for the little people…
Random person in New York City: “I tripped! I’m suing the property owner and New York City government!” City government: “Hey, we don’t own anything there. Take us off the suit.” Property owner: “Oh, you don’t own anything? Well, I looked at the deed map, and you’re right. So I’ve put up a fence over the sidewalk and the street parking the map says I own.” City: “No fair! Now we’re fining you!”
If you’re be reading this blog any length of time, you know I’m not a fan of Austin’s oppressive regulatory regime. So it may surprise you to learn that Austin recently passed a housing regulation I actually approve of. So get those cries of “sellout!” ready as I disturb the shade of Ayn Rand* and approve of government intervening in the free market:
The city of Austin has passed an ordinance making air conditioning a requirement for all apartments and homes, where temperatures are not allowed to exceed 85 degrees in any habitable room.
While there’s a state law requiring heating, there is no such state law requiring A/C despite Texas’s scorching summers. City officials say just last year, 900 people were sent to the E.R. with heat-related illnesses. There were also fifteen deaths.
It may still (barely) be possible to find old housing in Austin that doesn’t have air conditioning (I did toward the end of my college days, sharing a house with a giant attic fan rather than real AC, but we moved out before summer hit), but you wouldn’t want to. It regularly exceeds 100° in Austin summers, and I was here when it hit 112°. Sure, there may be a few freaks and or mutant reptilians—
Somehow a picture of Taylor Lorenz has inexplicably been dropped into the middle of this post. It’s a complete mystery how that happened…
—who never overheat, but normal humans do. Austin already has a lot of other requirements as regards plumbing, electricity, etc. In fact, these days I can’t imagine anyone building a house or apartment building in Austin without AC unless they’re running some kind of scam.
I’m not going to say AC is a human right. I am going to say that AC is a reasonable requirement for building new housing in Austin.
*Rand was a devout atheist, so I suspect she would object to being a ghost on fundamental epistemological grounds…
I hope your taxes are finished, or at least in the home stretch. Mine are done but not mailed out yet. I made so little last year that I’m getting every cent I sent in back, pitiful though it is.
This week: The Supreme Court hands Trump two victories, more progress in the war against illegal aliens, a trade war reprieve for everyone but China, Jasmine Crockett seems to think illegal aliens pick cotton, Tim Walz proves he’s still a putz, and after 72 years, police finally arrest an infamous Mexican bandit!
The Supreme Court is allowing the Trump administration to move forward with its plans to fire thousands of probationary federal employees, overturning a lower court order preventing the terminations.
The Supreme Court lifted an injunction Tuesday from a California federal court barring the Trump administration from firing employees across six federal agencies. The lower court order came last month following a lawsuit from the American Federation of Government Employees, a powerful public sector union.
“The District Court’s injunction was based solely on the allegations of the nine non-profit-organization plaintiffs in this case. But under established law, those allegations are presently insufficient to support the organizations’ standing,” the justices said in an unsigned ruling.
Liberal justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented from the court’s order. Sotomayor did not explain her reasoning, while Jackson said the Trump administration failed to demonstrate the urgency of the issue.
Nearly two months after a top Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) official and support team arrived at IRS headquarters to investigate waste and fraud—aiming to streamline a bloated and corrupt federal bureaucracy—the Trump administration has begun a sizeable workforce reduction across the federal agency.
Fox News reported late Friday evening that the IRS will begin laying off about 20,000 staffers — up to 25% of the workforce — on Friday and through next week.
Most job cuts will center around the IRS Office of Civil Rights and Compliance, which protects taxpayers from discrimination, audits, and investigations.
White House spokesperson Liz Huston told Fox News, “In a stark contrast to the previous administration’s wildly unpopular plan to hire thousands of additional IRS agents, President Trump is focused on saving tax dollars, eliminating bloat, axing useless DEI offices, and increasing the agency’s efficiency.”
Here’s more from Fox:
In addition to the layoffs, the agency said in a letter to employees that it is eliminating its Office of Civil Rights and Compliance, which is responsible for protecting taxpayers from discrimination, audits and investigations.
. . .
“This action is being taken to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the IRS in accordance with agency priorities and the Workforce Optimization Initiative outlined in a recent Executive Order,” the letter states, referring to President Donald Trump’s executive order directing the Department of Government Efficiency to get rid of wasteful spending.
The agency said it was approved to offer Voluntary Early Retirement Authority (VERA) and Voluntary Separation Incentive Payment (VSIP). Information about those programs will be shared with employees at a later date, the message said.
“This calendar year to date, approximately 5% of this office left through the Deferred Resignation Program and attrition,” the message said. “An additional 75% of the office will be reduced through a RIF (Reduction in Force).”
A Treasury Department spokesperson told Fox News, “The rollback of wasteful Biden-era hiring surges and consolidation of critical support functions are vital to improving both efficiency and quality of service. ” The spokesperson added, “The Secretary is committed to ensuring that efficiency is realized while providing the collections, privacy, and customer service the American people deserve.”
An official with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) said that millions of migrants are currently receiving taxpayer-funded Medicaid benefits while thousands are on voter rolls across the country and are illegally voting in American elections.
DOGE official and equity firm CEO Antonio Gracias said that migrants have obtained Social Security cards after being released into the interior of the country with a notice to appear in immigration court, with court dates scheduled an average of six years after their release.
“So now you’re in the country with some quasi-legal status, you’re waiting for your court date … you can fill out an asylum application,” Gracias explained during a recent appearance on the “All In” podcast, which featured Daily Wire host Ben Shapiro. “Once that application is in, you can file another form, a 765 to get work authorization, once you get that, you get a 766, which is the authorization and we automatically send you a Social Security card in the mail.”
With access to Social Security cards, Gracias says, over a million migrants have been able to receive Medicaid benefits. “We mapped this through the benefit programs, we found every benefits program that is being accessed by these people, 1.3 million are on Medicaid right now, today,” Gracias said.
He went on to explain that thousands of migrants have been found on voter rolls as well, also asserting that the Democratic Party opened the border in order to import new voters.
“We looked at voter rolls and we found that thousands are registered to vote in friendly states. And we looked even further in those friendly states and found that many of those people had actually voted. It was shocking to us,” Gracias explained. “I think this was a move to import voters.”
“This doesn’t include the 7.8 million that ICE has that have come in illegally that we know are here and all the people who are here illegally who we don’t know are here,” he explained.
DOGE is uncovering illegal aliens and massive fraud. It’s easy to see why Democrats are upset…
The Supreme Court on Monday lifted a federal judge’s order that once blocked the Trump administration from using the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport suspected members of a Venezuelan gang to El Salvador.
In a 5–4 majority opinion, the Supreme Court handed President Donald Trump a major victory against legal challenges regarding his mass deportation agenda. The decision allows Trump to continue invoking the Alien Enemies Act to accelerate the removal of illegal immigrants believed to be in Tren de Aragua.
The nation’s highest court, however, noted that the administration should give immigrants it seeks to deport “reasonable time” to challenge their removal from the U.S. in court. Those legal challenges must take place in Texas, where the detainees are held, and not Washington, D.C., the conservative majority ruled.
“The notice must be afforded within a reasonable time and in such a manner as will allow them to actually seek habeas relief in the proper venue before such removal occurs,” the ruling states. “The detainees subject to removal orders under the [Alien Enemies Act] are entitled to notice and an opportunity to challenge their removal.”
President Donald Trump announced Thursday that his administration is finalizing plans to withhold all federal funding for sanctuary cities and states that provide safe harbor to illegal aliens.
“No more Sanctuary Cities! They protect the Criminals, not the Victims,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “They are disgracing our Country, and are being mocked all over the World.”
On his first day in office, Trump signed the “Protecting the American People Against Invasion” executive order laying out a framework to strictly enforce the nation’s immigration laws and “prioritize the safety, security, and financial and economic well-being of Americans.”
In the E/O, Trump authorized the Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland Security to “evaluate and undertake any lawful actions” needed to ensure sanctuary jurisdictions across the U.S. are not receiving federal funds.
Now, it appears Trump is ready to drop the hammer on these Democrat strongholds.
“Working on papers to withhold all Federal Funding for any City or State that allows these Death Traps to exist,” the president said in his post.
Sanctuary jurisdictions are states, counties, or cities that refuse to cooperate with federal law enforcement agencies seeking to deport criminal illegal aliens.
There are about a dozen states and hundreds of cities across the US that consider themselves “sanctuaries” for illegals.
The House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security and Enforcement held a hearing Wednesday to address the issue, titled “Sanctuary Jurisdictions: Magnet for Migrants, Cover for Criminals.”
Republicans contended that sanctuary cities have been an impediment to the mass deportations the Trump administration has prioritized in its first 100 days of office.
But Democrats defended Sanctuary Cities, arguing that trust between local law enforcement and the community erodes when the police comply with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
In his opening statement, Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) argued that the strong measures were necessary after Democrats deliberately trafficked over eight million unvetted illegal aliens into the country, “including some of the most dangerous, vicious criminals and cartel members in the world.”
“Congress must enact stronger laws that will prevent a future Joe Biden from ever again placing our families at risk, and that will stop today’s Democratic politicians from impeding the enforcement of our immigration and public safety laws,” said McClintock stated.
The usual talking heads said that Trump was going to trigger higher inflation (higher, that is, than the Biden inflation they’d been taking such pains to hide). Reality: Not so much. “CPI Shows 12 Month Inflation Rate at 2.4%; Lowest Core in 4 Years.”
ICE deport criminal illegal alien for the 40th time. “Julian Estrada-Garcia, 36, has four convictions for illegal entry and convictions for driving while intoxicated, possession of illicit narcotics, and fraud.” Just the sort of people Democrats are working so hard to keep us from deporting…
The U.S. House of Representatives has passed Rep. Chip Roy’s (R-TX-21) Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which would require proof of American citizenship to register to vote in federal elections.
The SAVE Act would require states to verify U.S. citizenship and identity through documentary proof in-person when an individual registers to vote in federal elections, regardless of the registration method. Additionally, it requires states to remove “non-citizens” from voter rolls.
“The American people have spoken very clearly that they believe only American citizens should vote in American elections. There’s nothing controversial about that,” Roy said on the floor before the vote.
“This legislation is designed to restore that faith, to save our elections, to save election integrity,” he added.
The U.S. House passed the SAVE Act 220 to 208, with four Democratic members voting in favor of the legislation — one of them being Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX-28). No Republicans voted against the bill.
A Gallup poll from October 2024 found that 84 percent of respondents are in favor of requiring voters to provide photo identification at voting locations, and 83 percent favor requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote.
What do you know, another 80/20 issue Democrats are on the wrong side of. Of course, they’re lying about the SAVE Act, so if you see misinformation about it on facebook, ask them where in the ext of the bill itself do they see the nonsense they’re peddling.
President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that he is implementing a 90-day pause on retaliatory tariffs for countries that have come to the negotiating table, while raising tariffs on China to 125 percent following Beijing’s latest retaliatory levies.
Trump stated on Truth Social that he is lowering the retaliatory tariffs he unveiled earlier this week for the “worst offenders” to the baseline rate of 10 percent after more than 75 nations expressed a willingness to negotiate new trade deals with the U.S. He vowed not to raise rates on those countries for 90 days while negotiations proceed.
“Based on the lack of respect that China has shown to the World’s Markets, I am hereby raising the Tariff charged to China by the United States of America to 125%, effective immediately,” Trump posted.
“Conversely, and based on the fact that more than 75 Countries have called Representatives of the United States, including the Departments of Commerce, Treasury, and the USTR, to negotiate a solution to the subjects being discussed relative to Trade, Trade Barriers, Tariffs, Currency Manipulation, and Non Monetary Tariffs, and that these Countries have not, at my strong suggestion, retaliated in any way, shape, or form against the United States, I have authorized a 90 day PAUSE, and a substantially lowered Reciprocal Tariff during this period, of 10%, also effective immediately,” Trump added.
Stocks immediately surged upon Trump’s announcement with each of the three major indexes jumping by over 7 percent. The Dow Jones and S&P 500 saw their biggest gains in five years, and the tech-oriented Nasdaq jumped over 10 percent. Wall Street had been reeling since last week when Trump announced a dramatic global tariff package consisting of a 10 percent minimum tariff and much higher tariff rates for many countries worldwide.
Golly, It’s almost like Trump knew what he was doing and planned something like this all along, integrating both carrot and stick in his negotiating strategy. And it’s almost like China is on the outside looking in as Trump wins lower rates for American goods, accomplishing the decoupling of America from China and more firmly cementing other nations in America’s sphere of influence rather than China’s.
A whole lot of promising return for one week of work…
This week, President Trump instituted a 90-day pause on reciprocal tariffs for the nations that are clearly interested in coming to the negotiating table to make deals more fair to the United States. The reality is brutally simple: America holds all the cards.
“What’s the largest consumer market on Earth? The United States,” Kevin O’Leary noted this week. “Almost 40% of all goods consumed worldwide. What’s the largest GDP? 25 or 26% of the world? The United States of America. China needs the United States.”
Even our top competitor in the global market, China, needs us more than we need them.
During a recent appearance on “The Ingraham Angle,” investor Chamath Palihapitiya laid out a stark picture of China’s economic fragility, arguing that the ongoing tariff standoff gives the United States far more leverage than Beijing wants to admit.
“Even the Chinese economists are admitting that the tariffs are gonna hurt China a lot more than the United States,” Ingraham said, pointing to growing concern within China itself. She quoted one Chinese economist who conceded, “The impact on China is mainly that Chinese products have nowhere to go. These companies will be hit very hard.”
Palihapitiya agreed, saying Americans routinely underestimate just how dire China’s economic outlook has become. “Together, America and China represent almost half of world GDP,” he explained, “but underneath the covers, what we keep forgetting time and again is America is the market that matters.”
He pointed to a series of structural problems dragging China down, including its rapidly aging population, tightening restrictions on foreign investment, and unreliable intellectual property protections. “Foreign investment in China has fallen off of a cliff,” Palihapitiya noted, painting a picture of a nation increasingly isolated and economically vulnerable.
This tariff cliff is precisely what America needs to force real change.
China’s economic trajectory, he warned, is far from sustainable. “They have a very difficult economic forecast if they shrink,” he said. “When you look at the China case, they’re in a worse position than we are, which is why they have to sort of come to the negotiating table now and figure out some reasonable thing.”
Palihapitiya added that President Trump understands this imbalance well. “I think this is what President Trump was alluding to when he said, ‘They want to come to the table, and they don’t quite know how.’”
With China’s economy teetering on the brink, the United States is in a far stronger position than most so-called experts ever imagined—and President Trump is wasting no time seizing the advantage.
“Our investigation of MECA has yielded evidence suggesting it holds fiscal and personnel ties to US designated foreign terrorist organizations, chiefly the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), alongside a host of extremist anti-government actors based in the United States,” reads the report by the NCRI, released on Monday.
MECA states on its website that it has sent more than $31 million in aid to children in “Palestine,” Iraq, and Lebanon since 1988. The nonprofit further purports to provide financial and professional assistance to community organizations in the West Bank and Gaza, fund university scholarships for Palestinians, and develop educational programs about the Middle East. MECA states that its “founding advisors” include Noam Chomsky, Angela Davis, Edward Said, and Maxine Waters.
The supposedly humanitarian organization has expressed its support for violence against Israel. The day after October 7, MECA declared its support on social media for the attack: “We are witnessing the people of Gaza rising up to respond to decades of Israeli settler colonial violence. The US [government] bears responsibility for its political, economic & military support of this brutal apartheid regime. Join us to stand in solidarity with Palestine.”
The NCRI report identifies deeper relationships between MECA and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which has been a designated foreign terrorist organization since 1997 and participated in the October 7 attack on Israel.
MECA’s current director of Gaza projects, Dr. Mona El-Farra, previously served as the deputy director of the Union of Health Work Committees, which was recognized as the “health organization” of the PFLP in a 1993 USAID report. In 2014, El-Farra was reportedly denied an exit visa by Israel for “security reasons.” El-Farra and Barbara Lubin, MECA’s founder and current executive director, have both met with Leila Khaled, who joined the PFLP when it was founded in 1967 and became the first woman to hijack a plane.
A media advisory released by MECA in 2011 listed Leena Al-Arian as its communications coordinator. Al-Arian is the daughter of Sami Al-Arian, a Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist who was sentenced to 57 months in prison for “conspiring to violate a federal law that prohibits making or receiving contributions of funds, goods or services to, or for the benefit of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).”
I think it’s far safer to assume that every middle eastern or Islamic charity raising money for “the children” is actually buying weapons for terrorists or lining the pockets of jihadis. But I’m cynical that way…
“Journalist Matt Taibbi is suing Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove for libel, after the California Democrat claimed during her opening remarks in a House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee hearing on Tuesday that he’s a ‘serial sexual harasser.'” Juding from that picture, I can only assume that Kamlager-Dove has never been on the receiving end of sexual harassment…
Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-ranged) evidently thinks that illegal aliens pick cotton. Eli Whitney died in vain. (Though it wasn’t until John Rust invented an improved picker that manual cotton picking finally died out after World War II.)
Follow-up: “Collin County Residents Reject Planned Islamic ‘City‘. County Judge Chris Hill said he ‘cannot support’ the proposed EPIC City project.” (Previously.)
Tim Walz gets a savage heckling from veterans at the Minnesota state capital. Say what you want about Hillary’s losing Veep pick Tim Kaine, but he wasn’t a weirdo who didn’t know when to get off the stage and slink back into relative obscurity.
Evidently made jealous by Amazon ruining J.R.R. Tolkien, Netflix decided to ruin C. S. Lewis. “Netflix offered Meryl Streep the role of Aslan in new ‘Chronicles of Narnia’ movie.”
Hoovie makes a six figure error calculating the capital gains costs of trading in a Lamborghini Countach for a lease-to-buy Bugatti Veyron. Offered here as a public service for all my viewers leasing a Bugatti Veyron…
