There are few events more satisfying that watching the hard fist of reality punching smug, naive, leftwing protestors square in their virtue-signaling face. This time it was “pro-Palestinian” sorts who thought they could blithely waltz into the Gaza warzone from Egypt, only to have disgusted Egyptians kick their asses.
A Gaza aid activist has said they were ‘violently dragged’ onto buses and ‘beaten’ as Egyptian authorities deported them.
Thousands have been arriving from more than 80 countries since Thursday to join the Global March to Gaza protest against Israel’s aid blockade on Gaza.
Yes, other countries just love it when self-aggrandizing “activist” drama queens show up in their country to cause trouble.
The some 4,000 volunteers landed in Cairo as planned, then taking buses to the city of Arish in the north of the country’s Sinai Peninsula.
From there, they hope to start their planned march, on a roughly 30-mile route, to the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing on the Gaza border.
But organisers said today that several dozen activists were stopped on the edge of Cairo as they attempted to reach the Suez Canal city of Ismailia, which is around a three-hour drive from Arish.
One posted a video to social media while on a bus heading there, saying: ‘This is an emergency.’
‘We have just been violently dragged into the buses here at the first checkpoint on the way to Ismailia.
Wait: Violence in the Middle East?
‘We were sitting quietly and not doing anything. We were debating that we would leave soon, in taxis back to Cairo because we did not break any law.’
So you naively jetted off to a Middle Eastern country and just blithely assumed that the rules governing “peaceful” protests that apply in western countries would apply there as well? It sounds like you’re exactly the sort of idiot that deserves and needs a beating. Maybe it will drive the stupid out of you. As Benjamin Franklin noted, “Experience keeps a dear school, yet Fools will learn in no other.”
‘And all of a sudden, several people stormed in and they started to push people and drag them violently outside.
‘They have beaten people. I have seen one woman that was beaten in her face in front of me. They didn’t leave time to grab the luggage or anything.
‘So, this is one of the Secret Service people that was just walking in here. I have to stop this livestream now – we are in danger. This is an emergency. We need to help.’
Most of the activists were ordered onto buses back to the capital after several hours of questioning – but some remain in custody today, organisers said.
‘We were blocked for six to seven hours before security forces violently dispersed our group,’ one organiser said.
At least one activist was expelled from Egypt, several sources said, adding to dozens more denied entry or expelled in the run-up to the march.
Egyptian authorities have not commented on the reported expulsions.
The foreign ministry had warned that while Egypt backs efforts to put ‘pressure on Israel’ to lift its Gaza blockade, any foreign delegations intending to visit the border area must obtain prior permission.
Yeah, just barge in without so much as a “by your leave.” Foreign countries just love when smug leftists do that.
Asmongold has some video on the incident:
The amazing thing is that it seems to be regular Egyptians (rather than any security forces) administering the beatdowns. “Egyptian children are helping remove the western terrorist sympathizers, some with whips of their own.” Welcome to the Middle East, morons.
“Go back to Reddit!”
He suggests that Middle Easterners view westerners as a destabilizing force after their involvement in so many regional wars. Maybe. But I think they’re just particularly incensed at these virtue signaling useful idiots blithely waltzing into their country to support the universally loathed Palestinians.
The lesson is a pretty fundamental one that these idiots should have learned long before reaching adulthood: Don’t stick your nose where it doesn’t belong And especially don’t travel halfway around the world to start shit in a foreign country due to your warped conception of “social justice” that the natives hold in contempt.
And if you haven’t learned that lesson by now, don’t be surprised when the fists and whips of the locals repeatedly beat that message into your overly soft noggin.
Israeli’s strike on Iran may be shocking to some, but I remember talking to co-workers about the possibility literally two decades ago. The Ayatollah Khomeini made the complete destruction of Israel a stated policy goal at the very outset of the Iranian revolution. Multiple Israeli PMs and American Presidents have made it clear to the Islamic Republic of Iran that they would not be allowed to produce nuclear weapons. Now the mullahs are reaping the whirlwind. And the strikes are still going on. As of this writing, there have been at least nine waves of Israeli strikes on Iran.
Other news: Trump racks up more legal victories, somebody SWATs the head of the FBI, more illegal alien felons deported from Houston, and a couple of callbacks to the 1970s. Plus a whole lot of bullet lists.
“It’s a complete embarrassment for the air defense here. Zero confirmed interceptions of missiles and aircraft so far.” Which is what you would expect after Israel took out Iran’s shitty Russian SAM systems. Not to mention the fact that Iran’s most capable fighter aircraft are pre-revolutionary F-14s…
WILD FOOTAGE! Mosaad had bulit an entire drone facility deep inside Iran, which was activated as the IAF struck with 200 aircraft. The drones took out many surface-to-air missile launchers and ballistic missiles aimed at Israel. The entire Iran now has zero air defenses left. pic.twitter.com/x9IxtfiO1V
If you’ve followed the Middle East at all over the past few decades, you’ve understood that the region was on a path to a conflict — the mullahs in Iran kept inching closer to a functioning nuclear weapon, and Israel — and multiple American presidents — kept declaring that that outcome was unacceptable and had to be prevented at all costs. On June 12, 2025, the Israeli military did something about it. Read on.
Last night’s Israeli air strike was surprising, but also inevitable.
Israel could not live in a world where the Iranian regime had nuclear weapons — or to put it another way, once the mullahs in Tehran had a nuclear weapon, Israel was certain to die, it was just a matter of when. It was just about inevitable that the world’s foremost sponsor of terrorism — the primary sponsor of Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Yemen’s Houthis, among others — would sooner or later use those weapons against Israel.
If America were hit by half-dozen nuclear bombs, the effects would be devastating, but America would still function and carry on. If Israel were hit by six nuclear bombs — say one each in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa, and three other targets of your choice — it would likely cease to exist as a state. Almost three-quarters of Israelis live in cities. Israel’s land area is smaller than New Hampshire.
Two months ago I gave Iran a 60 day ultimatum to “make a deal.” They should have done it! Today is day 61. I told them what to do, but they just couldn’t get there. Now they have, perhaps, a second chance!
Also:
Two Israeli officials claimed to Axios that Trump and his aides were only pretending to oppose an Israeli attack in public — and didn’t express opposition in private. “We had a clear U.S. green light,” one claimed.
The goal, they say, was to convince Iran that no attack was imminent and make sure Iranians on Israel’s target list wouldn’t move to new locations.
Netanyahu’s aides even briefed Israeli reporters that Trump had tried to put the brakes on an Israeli strike in a call on Monday, when in reality the call dealt with coordination ahead of the attack, Israeli officials now say.
While mainstream news outlets, cable networks and social media obsess over Elon Musk’s latest antics, they have neglected a far more important story — the Trump administration is accumulating a significant catalogue of appeals court and SCOTUS victories. Last Friday alone three more wins were added to the list. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the White House may exclude AP from its press pool while SCOTUS stayed a district court order requiring DOGE to heed a Freedom of Information Act request and ruled that it can access Social Security Administration records.
These rulings follow a spate of similar wins last month. On May 30, the Supreme Court stayed a district court ruling that DHS Secretary Kristi Noem couldn’t revoke former President Biden’s parole of 532,000 non-citizens. On May 29, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit stayed a U.S. Trade Court ruling that President Trump’s tariffs are somehow unlawful. On May 22, SCOTUS stayed a district court order reinstating two Biden administration officials fired by Trump. On May 19, SCOTUS stayed a district court ruling that Secretary Noem does not possess the legal authority to terminate the temporary protected status of 350,000 Venezuelan non-citizens.
The seven cases noted above do not exhaust the list of the Trump administration’s wins. During April the administration won three Supreme Court cases. On April 17, Justice Elena Kagan declined to stay a deportation order involving four Mexican nationals without referring the case to the full court. On April 8, SCOTUS stayed a district court order to reinstate 16,000 fired federal employees. On April 7, the Court vacated a district court order blocking deportations pursuant to the Alien Enemies Act. This particular ruling, combined with two others, led the editors of the Wall Street Journal to conclude that the Supreme Court was sending a message to the district courts:
President Trump is exercising executive power in aggressive and often novel ways, and opponents are suing to stop him. But in a trio of recent orders, the Supreme Court has sent lower-court judges an important reminder that they must still respect judicial rules and procedures. A 5-4 majority handed Mr. Trump a partial victory Monday by allowing his Administration to continue deporting Venezuelans believed to be members of the Tren de Aragua gang under the Alien Enemies Act.
The same radical leftists who love burning down cities during their “peaceful protests” are looking to do the same thing this Saturday.
The pro-open-borders riots that have set parts of Los Angeles on fire and have spread to other U.S. cities, including New York, Chicago, Dallas, Atlanta, were anticipated more than a year ago by Democratic Party operatives gaming out ways to destabilize a second Donald Trump administration. Press reports and war-game scenarios from early 2024 predicted domestic unrest caused by the Trump administration’s arrest and deportation of illegal aliens. Consequently, according to the forecasts, the president’s decision to use the military to quell the violence triggers a crisis at the Pentagon and threatens to split the leadership of the U.S. armed forces.
Whether those scenarios were simply Democratic Party fan fiction or early evidence of a genuine plot to destabilize the government in the event Trump was reelected is likely to become clearer this Saturday. Trump has scheduled a large military parade in the nation’s capital for June 14—the U.S. Army’s 250th anniversary, Flag Day, oh, and Trump’s birthday—while his adversaries have planned for a massive nationwide anti-deportation protest the same day. If the point is to overwhelm the capacities of local law enforcement agencies across the country, the administration may have no choice but to mobilize National Guard units and regular troops, like those now on the streets of Los Angeles. And it is the mass mobilization of the U.S. military in American cities, according to the 2024 scenarios, that prompts a crisis in the administration.
According to border czar Tom Homan, the ICE raid that sparked the mayhem in Los Angeles wasn’t detailed to catch illegal aliens, but to serve warrants for a cartel’s money-laundering operation. But to Americans left and right, the protests are about open borders. The Democratic Party base broadly supports the policy, or lack of one, with the radical left leading the violence, and relatively normal Democratic voters believing that it’s a betrayal of American values to refuse anyone a shot at the American dream. Trump voters, on the other hand, expect the president to fulfill his campaign promise to deport tens of millions of illegal aliens. Therefore, Trump couldn’t ignore the riots, even if they directly affected only those who oppose him on open borders, and virtually everything else.
Plans to destabilize the second Trump term have been in the works for at least a year and a half, and the Pentagon was virtually announced as home-base of the next anti-Trump plot.
Copied link
The FBI is investigating “any and all monetary connections responsible for these riots.” But some of the funding streams are already evident—they’re the usual sources of left-wing activist groups and donors, like the Neville Roy Singham-funded Party for Socialism and Liberation—which is to say that money isn’t the crucial factor. For instance, Elon Musk’s shutdown of USAID, which former administrator Samantha Power had used as a slush fund to advance progressive causes here and abroad, emptied only the public sector’s progressive piggy bank. America is teeming with private-sector donors, from “disruptive” tech billionaires to the wan and loveless heiresses who are keen to spend their inheritance on violence that impoverishes others. In America, no leftist will ever go hungry.
The crucial issue is never money but leadership. That top figures and institutions of the Democratic Party have lined up behind the protests already suggests we’re not dealing simply with supposedly fringe elements on the far-left flank of the party. In fact, the operatives who in 2024 gamed out this latest anti-Trump effort are among the party bosses who ran the plot against the president during his first term. Among others, there’s Marc Elias, the Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer who paid for the dossier falsely alleging Trump’s ties to Russia; Mary McCord, a former Barack Obama Justice Department official who oversaw federal law enforcement’s unlawful investigation of the Trump circle; and Rosa Brooks, a former Obama Pentagon official who led the Transition Integrity Project, a 2020 war-game exercise forecasting how Trump was likely to contest the flagrant irregularities that would mark that year’s election and shape its aftermath. TIP was also a communications campaign, feeding press reports that outlined what the Democratic Party and allied institutions—including the court system and Congress—were preparing in order to stop the Republican leader and his supporters.
It seems the same Obama-led crew that’s been targeting Trump since 2015 is still running the same op.
DataRepublican has more info on those funding the protests (with your tax dollars):
🚨 JUST RELEASED: Follow the Money Behind the No Kings Rally 🚨
DataRepublican has launched an interactive, open-source map showing how your tax dollars flow to organizations involved in the No Kings rally.
The House Committee on Oversight and Reform is about to focus its investigative powers on Neville Roy Singham, the pro-China Marxist multimillionaire behind many of the destructive far-left demonstrations plaguing the United States in recent years.
The Committee is reportedly issuing a formal document request to Singham over his alleged financial support of the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL)—an extremist Marxist group that has been helping to organize violent anti-ICE riots in Los Angeles and elsewhere.
As the main funder of The People’s Forum, Singham, 71, has also bankrolled the “Free Palestine” protests that erupted after 1,400 innocent Israelis were slaughtered by Hamas on October 7, 2023. The People’s Forum works closely with other organizations in Singham’s network, including PSL and the ANSWER Coalition, all of which have been involved in the anti-Israel protests and anti-ICE riots.
PSL describes itself as a revolutionary socialist party that believes “only a revolution can end capitalism and establish socialism.”
The group supports the Communist Party of China (CCP) and argues that “militant political defense of the Chinese government” is necessary to stave off “counterrevolution, imperialist intervention and dismemberment.”
Trump has shifted the Overton window in the culture away from woke, and it’s hard to imagine it shifting all the way back.
Corporations aren’t going to play ball again the way they did after the death of George Floyd. Trump could well lose his legal battle with Harvard and other schools, but they’ve admitted that they need to change. DEI and other race-conscious policies may go subterranean under different rubrics, although that, in itself, is a sign of weakness. Black Lives Matter has been discredited by scandal, and “anti-racism” now feels more like a relic than the hot new thing.
Let’s hope so, but the left’s embrace of wokeness seems essentially religious (or “religious substitute”) in nature, and religions are notoriously hard to stamp out…
The Wagner Group is bugging out of Mali in favor of new Russian military backed “Africa Corps.”
The Russian Wagner Group formally withdrew from Mali, as the Kremlin continues to transition control of its military operations in Africa to the Ministry of Defense–backed Africa Corps. The shift to more overt Russian state military involvement in Africa creates myriad domestic and geopolitical risks for the Kremlin. Russia may accordingly adapt its engagement in Africa to the detriment of its current and prospective partnerships.
According to this Warfronts (AKA Simon Whistler) video, Wagner is leaving because the Jama’at Nusrat al Islam (JNIM) jihadis have been kicking their ass using motorcycle-based battleswarm tactics, which are well suited for sparsely inhabited, mostly desert environments like Mali.
Harris County gives up on its socialist guaranteed income program.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has deported 142 criminal aliens from the Houston area to Mexico.
Among them were eight known gang members, 11 convicted child predators, and one individual who had entered the country illegally 21 separate times.
Collectively, the group illegally entered the country 480 times and accumulated 473 criminal convictions for a wide range of serious crimes, including:
11 convictions for child sex crimes
76 convictions for driving while intoxicated (DWI)
43 convictions for aggravated assault and domestic violence
22 convictions for human smuggling
ICE Houston Field Office Director Bret Bradford said, “Unfortunately, this is not an anomaly. For the past few years, there has been virtually no deterrent to illegal entry into the country.”
As a result, millions of illegal aliens, including violent criminals, child predators, transnational gang members, and foreign fugitives, have poured into the U.S.
Among the most egregious cases:
Benito Charqueno Zavala, 60, was convicted of continuous sexual abuse of a child and is one of the 11 convicted child predators deported.
Johnny Urbina Carillo, 37, was convicted of sexually exploiting a minor and had prior convictions for cocaine possession and illegal reentry.
Luis Angel Garcia-Contreras, 40, a documented member of the Sureños 13 gang, had illegally entered the U.S. 21 times and had four convictions for illegal entry.
Aaron Reitz, a former deputy attorney general under Ken Paxton and recent Trump administration appointee, announced his campaign for the Republican nomination for Texas attorney general.
Reitz made the announcement Thursday, a day after resigning as assistant attorney general for legal policy under Pam Bondi in the Department of Justice. He previously served as Paxton’s deputy attorney general for legal strategy and as chief of staff to U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz.
“We are in a fight for the soul of Texas, our nation, and Western civilization itself,” said Reitz in a campaign statement. “This is no time for half-measures or untested cowards.”
“As Attorney General, I’ll use every ounce of legal firepower to defend President Trump, crush the radical Left, advance the America and Texas First agenda, and look out for everyday Texans,” he added.
State senator Mayes Middleton is already in the race.
Finally, an excuse to dig out this classic meme from the depths of time.
Forty electric busses burn in Philadelphia. “They were parked in such a way that there was NO chance for firefighters to do anything. They could[n’t] get close to the fire. The buses were parke[d] so close together that a fire in 1 bus was almost guaranteed to destroy a bunch of them. And with electric buses mixed in, whatever caused the fire, toxic fumes were going to be released.”
Richard Hammond drives the new Morgan Supersport. I’m not a candidate to spend £125,000 on a two seater sports car, even if it were available in the U.S., but that really is a nice looking car.”
Israel has announced again and again that they cannot accept an Islamic Republic of Iran, which has stated it desires the complete destruction of Israel, acquiring nuclear weapons. Right now they’re doing something about it.
The IDF has started to attack dozens of Iranian nuclear sites.
Warning sirens have been set off to get the public ready for potential Iranian counter attacks of ballistic missiles on Israel.
Iran has not yet fired ballistic missiles, but has thousands of them.
According to the IDF, Iran has enough uranium to weaponize it to nuclear levels to 15 nuclear weapons within days
In recent days, Iran developed a plan with Hezbollah and Hamas and other proxies to destroy the State of Israel, potentially including attempts to attack via all borders, including Egypt and Jordan.
This was the point of no return according to the IDF.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has entered the security cabinet.
The IDF targets also include commanders, bases as well as nuclear sites, though the main goal is nuclear sites.
Further, the IDF said in the last 20 minutes, Iran was taken by surprise and they were attacked in places they didn’t expect.
There are reports of multiple airstrikes in Tehran:
— Niyak Ghorbani (نیاک) (@GhorbaniiNiyak) June 13, 2025
For decades, the Islamic Republic of Iran has attacked Israel via terrorist proxies, and spent vast sums developing nuclear weapons over taking care of their own people or growing their economy. In the wake of Hamas’ terrorist attacks of October 7, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pursued a steadfast policy of neutralizing or destroying jihadist threats against his country. Now he’s eliminating the threat of a nuclear Iran.
Update 3: Trying to find footage of the strikes on YouTube, but all I’m finding is those crappy, non-embeddable “shorts.” This Hindustan Times live feed has some footage.
Initial reports suggest that Mossad, Israel’s national intelligence agency, conducted covert operations deep in Iran focused on its air defense and missile capabilities. Israel appears to have targeted Iranian military personnel and senior nuclear scientists with the strikes, including the chief of staff of the Iranian armed forces.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz declared an immediate state of emergency upon Israel’s launch of the attack, with the Jewish state preparing itself for an immediate Iranian missile response.
“Following the State of Israel’s preemptive strike against Iran, a missile and drone attack against the state of Israel and its civilian population is expected in the immediate future,” Katz said in a message blasted out to Israelis.
Explosions have been reported in Tehran and in areas where Iranian nuclear facilities are located. Images and footage of the explosions have circulated widely on social media. It is not yet known if there are any casualties.
The move comes after President Trump said earlier Thursday that he still believed in the possibility of a diplomatic solution to Iran’s nuclear buildup. Talks had been tentatively scheduled to resume in the coming days.
“We remain committed to a Diplomatic Resolution to the Iran Nuclear Issue! My entire Administration has been directed to negotiate with Iran. They could be a Great Country, but they first must completely give up hopes of obtaining a Nuclear Weapon. Thank you for your attention to this matter!” Trump posted on Truth Social on Thursday afternoon.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the U.S. had no involvement in the Israeli operation.
“Tonight, Israel took unilateral action against Iran. We are not involved in strikes against Iran and our top priority is protecting American forces in the region,” Rubio said in a statement.
“Israel advised us that they believe this action was necessary for its self-defense. President Trump and the Administration have taken all necessary steps to protect our forces and remain in close contact with our regional partners. Let me be clear: Iran should not target U.S. interests or personnel.”
On Thursday evening, the long-anticipated Israel strikes began, targeting the Islamic Republic of Iran’s nuclear sites and other key military facilities. The objective of Operation Strength of a Lion is to end the Iranian nuclear threat once and for all, as well as to destroy, as much as possible, the Islamic Republic’s ability to continue to wage war against the Jewish state via its proxies, Hamas, Hizballah, and the Houthis. The entire state of Israel was on emergency alert; the Israeli Home Front Command issued instructions to all Israeli citizens to comply with guidelines that would be issued as part of “preparations for a significant threat.”
Almost immediately after the air strikes began in Tehran, the propaganda war also entered a new phase. The Iranian military posted on X: “Remember, we didn’t initiate it.”
Ah, but it did. The Islamic Republic of Iran initiated this Israeli strike on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas operatives, funded and directed by the Islamic Republic of Iran, brutally tortured and murdered 1,200 Israelis. The Islamic Republic of Iran initiated this Israeli strike when its leaders regularly screamed “Death to Israel” (as well as “Death to America”) and repeatedly vowed to destroy Israel. As recently as May 17, the Islamic Republic’s Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah Khamenei, declared: “The Zionist regime, which is the dangerous and lethal cancerous tumor of this region, must undoubtedly be removed, and it will be.”
In fact, the Islamic Republic of Iran initiated it by regarding Israel as an enemy from its earliest days. The Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who founded the Islamic Republic in 1979, replaced the Israeli embassy in Tehran with an embassy of “Palestine.” He decreed that the last Friday of the Muslim fasting-and-feasting month of Ramadan would henceforth be known as Al-Quds Day. Al-Quds is the name that modern-day Arabs and Muslims use for Jerusalem, and Al-Quds Day from its inception was the occasion for an orgy of hatred for Israel, jihadist saber rattling, and declarations that the Jewish state would soon be completely destroyed and a new genocide of the Jews would begin.
Additional footage claimed to show the results of Israeli strikes tonight against the Natanz Nuclear Facility in Central Iran. pic.twitter.com/dmYoOOrs5K
Secondary explosions observed at the site of an Israeli strike earlier in the Northwestern Iranian city of Piranshahr, near the border with Iraq. pic.twitter.com/rv6NHY0tuf
This is a good time to remind people that just because someone has posted a video to Twitter doesn’t make it true, or current. Old videos get recycled as new war footage by the unscrupulous all the time…
Update 10: LiveMap: “Israeli military radio – Israel has carried out five waves of strikes against Iran so far. Channel 13 Israel, citing sources, reported: The Air Force has launched hundreds of raids inside Iran since the start of the military operation.”
Update 11: LiveMap: “Najaf base in Kermanshah” struck… “Armed Forces Commander Mohammad Bagheri” killed…”Revolutionary Guards camp in the western Iranian city of Borujerd” hit.
Update 12: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit:
🚨 Breaking: Ali Shamkhani, Supreme Leader Khamenei's right hand man, was eliminated pic.twitter.com/pvYzWwV498
Today’s the 81st anniversary of D-Day. Trump and Musk fight over the “big beautiful bill,” the Dutch government collapses, a whole lot of megacorps decide that “Pride Month” is over, hot Skynet on Skynet action, a fake Titanic, “nose ring theory” and a white Black Panther.
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Elon Musk is not a fan of the “big, beautiful bill.”
Elon Musk, the former head of the Department of Government Efficiency, on Tuesday dismissed President Trump’s “big, beautiful” spending bill as a “disgusting abomination.”
“This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination,” he said in a post on X.
“Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it,” he added.
Musk’s comments on Tuesday represent an even harsher reaction to the bill than his previous criticisms. Last month, he said he was “disappointed” by the House passage of the bill because it undermines the work he has done as the head of DOGE.
“The president already knows where Elon Musk stood on this bill,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Tuesday. “It doesn’t change the president’s opinion.”
While the bill aims to cut $1.5 trillion in government spending, it also increases the debt limit by $4 trillion. The U.S. government is more than $36 trillion in debt.
The bill would extend the 2017 tax cuts, introduce new tax cuts such as Trump’s signature “no tax on tips” policy, and add work requirements to Medicaid, among other provisions.
The measure passed 215 to 214 in the House, largely along party lines after Speaker Mike Johnson was able to overcome opposition from members of his caucus who argued the bill should include further spending cuts to offset tax cuts that will add to the country’s deficit.
Musk thoughts mirror my own. They should not have used reconciliation on a bill that doesn’t balance the budget.
Beyond entitlement reform, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget offers users an option in a fix-the-debt-yourself game. Among the options are medical-malpractice reform (saving the U.S. government $40 billion over ten years), allowing private plans to compete with Medicare ($360 billion over ten years), banning state Medicare matching gimmicks ($830 billion over ten years), rescinding Inflation Reduction Act climate tax credits ($780 billion over ten years), and repealing and replacing student-debt cancellation ($320 over ten years). Enact all of those, and that’s another $233 billion per year or so.
The administration of California Governor Gavin Newsom held closed-door talks on trade cooperation with Chinese officials on Monday, ahead of the anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party’s massacre at Tiananmen Square.
The meeting will take place on the sidelines of the China-California Business Forum, an annual summit hosted by the Chinese consulate general in Los Angeles at the city’s ritzy Biltmore Hotel. That annual gathering gives local and state politicians an opportunity to rub shoulders with their Chinese counterparts.
The Newsom administration’s participation in the meeting comes just ahead of the June 4 anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, which is commemorated by Chinese pro-democracy advocates and human rights advocates.
Should we be relieved that Newsom isn’t actually sleeping with any of them?
You know that illegal alien scumbag gangbanger Democrats were all outraged over his getting deported to El Salvador? Well, Kilmar Abrego Garcia is being returned to the U.S….to face charges on human trafficking.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador, has returned to the United States to face criminal charges for allegedly transporting illegal immigrants within the U.S., the Department of Justice said Friday.
Last month, a federal grand jury in Tennessee indicted Abrego Garcia, who was deported two months ago from Maryland to El Salvador.
Prosecutors say Abrego Garcia was involved in a nearly decade-long conspiracy to transport thousands of illegal immigrants from Texas to other areas around the country. The illegal immigrants, some of whom were members of the MS-13 gang, came from Mexico and Central America.
“The grand jury found that over the past nine years Abrego Garcia has played a significant role in an alien smuggling ring,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said Friday. “They found this was his full-time job. Not a contractor. He was a smuggler of humans and children and women. He made over 100 trips, the grand jury found, smuggling people throughout our country.”
While the allegations were not included in the May 21 indictment, Bondi said that Abrego Garcia also solicited nude images from a minor and was linked to the murder of a rival gang member’s mother. Co-conspirators also accused Abrego Garcia of assaulting women whom he transported across the country and claimed he was also involved in trafficking firearms and narcotics.
No wonder he’s a poster child for Democrats…
There’s not an Alanis Morissette joke big enough: “A once-prominent Harvard University professor was stripped of her tenure and fired this week for outright fabricating data on numerous academic studies of dishonesty and unethical behavior.”
Francesca Gino was regularly cited as an authority by prominent left-leaning outlets such as National Public Radio and the New York Times. Both outlets now admit that Gino’s research was likely fabricated. Disturbingly, the flaws in her research were exposed not by the allegedly robust university system of peer review, but by a series of posts by science bloggers.
No professor has had tenure revoked at Harvard since the 1940s, when the rules for doing so were formalized, according to the Harvard Crimson. This is the academic nuclear option.
Gino’s first retracted study showed evidence of data fabrication all the way back in 2021, and an investigation into her academic dishonesty lasted for the following two years.
“Paxton Smokes Cornyn 50-28 Percent in Latest 2026 GOP Primary Poll.” Only 600 Republican primary voters, which is on the small side for a poll sample.
Is wokeness dying? A whole lot of Fortune 500 companies have decided that they can now sit “Pride Month” out, including IBM, Microsoft, Cisco, Disney, Target, Starbucks, BMW, Bank of America, and even Google. I think most Americans were willing to let adult “LGBs” go off and do their own thing, but every single letter they’ve added to that acronym since (especially the “T”) has marked them as enemies of the people.
Despite the power-sharing cabal ruling the Texas House, a lot of conservative priorities did get get passed and sent to Abbott’s desk. Here’s a roundup.
The Texas Senate succeeded in pushing a majority of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s legislative priorities through both chambers during the regular legislative session. Patrick released a list of 40 pieces of priority legislation in the first three months of the year, covering a variety of issues.
Here is the status of the Senate priority bills in the 89th Legislative Session:
Senate Bill 1 – Senate’s Budget for Texas: Passed both chambers.
Senate Bill 2 – Providing School Choice: Signed into law.
Senate Bill 3 – Banning THC in Texas: Sent to Gov. Greg Abbott.
Senate Bill 4 – Increasing the Homestead Exemption to $140,000 ($150,000 for Seniors): Sent to Abbott.
Senate Bill 5 – Combatting Dementia and Alzheimer’s – Establishing DPRIT (Dementia Prevention and Research Institute of Texas): Signed into law.
Senate Bill 6 – Increasing Texas’ Electric Grid Reliability: Sent to Abbott.
Senate Bill 7 – Increasing Investments in Texas’ Water Supply: Sent to Abbott.
Senate Bill 8 – Requiring Local Law Enforcement to Assist the Federal Government’s Deportation Efforts: Passed both chambers.
Senate Bill 9 – Reforming Bail – Keeping Violent Criminals Off Our Streets: Sent to Abbott.
Senate Bill 10 – Placing the Ten Commandments in School: Sent to Abbott.
Senate Bill 11 – Protecting the Freedom to Pray in School: Sent to Abbott.
Senate Bill 12 – Establishing a Parental Bill of Rights in Public Education: Passed both chambers.
Senate Bill 13 – Guarding Against Inappropriate Books in Public Schools: Passed both chambers.
Senate Bill 14 – Texas DOGE – Improving Government Efficiency: Signed into law.
Senate Bill 15 – Removing Barriers to Housing Affordability: Passed both chambers.
Senate Bill 16 – Stopping Non-Citizens from Voting: Left in House Calendars Committee.
Senate Bill 17 – Stopping Foreign Adversary Land Grabs: Sent to Abbott.
Senate Bill 18 – Stopping Drag Time Story Hour: Left on House General State Calendar.
Senate Bill 19 – Stopping Taxpayer Dollars for Lobbyists: Left in the House State Affairs Committee.
Senate Bill 20 – Stopping AI-Generated Child Pornography: Sent to Abbott.
Senate Bill 21 – Establishing the Texas Bitcoin Reserve: Sent to Abbott.
Senate Bill 22 – Establishing Texas as America’s Film Capital: Sent to Abbott.
Senate Bill 23 – Removing the Cap on the Rainy Day Fund to Secure Texas’ Long-term Financial Future: Sent to Abbott.
Senate Bill 24 – Educating Texas Students on the Horrors of Communism: Sent to Abbott.
Senate Bill 25 – Making Texas Healthy Again: Sent to Abbott.
Senate Bill 26 – Increasing Teacher Pay: Left in the House Public Education Committee.
Senate Bill 27 – Establishing a Teacher Bill of Rights: Passed both chambers.
Senate Bill 28 – Banning Lottery Couriers: Left in House Licensing and Administrative Committee.
Senate Bill 29 – Texas: Open for Business: Signed into law.
Senate Bill 30 – Curbing Nuclear Verdicts: Conference committee appointed.
Senate Bill 31 – Life of the Mother Act: Sent to Abbott.
Senate Bill 32 – Business Tax Relief: Left in the House Ways and Means Committee.
Senate Bill 33 – Stopping Taxpayer-Funded Abortion Travel: Sent to Abbott.
Senate Bill 34 – Wildfire Response: Sent to Abbott.
Senate Bill 35 – Competing for Quality Roads: Left on House General State Calendar.
Senate Bill 36 – Establishing a Homeland Security Division within [the Department of Public Safety]: Sent to Abbott.
Senate Bill 37 – Reforming Faculty Senates: Passed both chambers.
Senate Bill 38 – Stopping Squatters: Sent to Abbott.
Senate Bill 39 – Protecting Texas Trucking: Left in the House Judiciary and Civil Jurisprudence Committee.
Senate Bill 40 – Stopping Taxpayer-Funded Bail: Sent to Abbott.
Not every conservative priority passed, and I don’t agree with every bill (much less every part of every bill), but a lot of progress was made this legislative session. Dan Patrick’s senate seems much better at delivering conservative results than David Dewhurst’s senate ever was.
Columbia U finally gets to the “find out” stage: “Columbia University Failed to Meet Accreditation Standards, Department of Education Finds.”
Columbia University failed to meet accreditation standards due to its inability to uphold civil rights law and punish harassment against Jewish students, the Department of Education announced Wednesday.
Office of Civil Rights (OCR) officials have notified the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, the body that sets Columbia’s accreditation standards, that the university is “in violation of federal antidiscrimination laws and therefore fails to meet standards.” Administrators’ unwillingness to address months of anti-Israel activism on Columbia’s campus created an unsafe environment for Jewish students, the department added, putting the university in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
“The Dutch government collapsed on Tuesday after the Party for Freedom led by Geert Wilders pulled out of the coalition over the government’s asylum policy. Wilders had been adamant leading up to the collapse that without strict restrictions on immigration, his party would leave the coalition government. Wilders made good on those threats Tuesday.” Europe’s political elites evidently love unassimilated Muslim immigration more than they love life itself.
Marcos Lopez, the Democratic sheriff of Osceola County, Florida decided that, instead of busting an illegal gambling operations, it was a lot more profitable to run it.
Someone asked me why UK Labour PM Keir Starmer was suddenly sounding like an uberhawk, talking about expanding UK’s nuclear submarine building program, etc. Actually, this is nothing particularly new, as he made similar points in February, and even last year. But I think the release of the 2025 Strategic Defence Review is driving much of the current chatter. A lot of it just the usual high-minded blather and buzzwords you find in any such doc, but there’s some meat here. Such as this “list of technologies redefining warfare” on page 27:
Artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and data science, improving the quality and speed of decision-making, the resilience of
digital networks, and operational effectiveness. Forecasts of when Artificial General Intelligence (Where AI matches or surpasses humans’ ability to understand, learn, and apply knowledge across a range of situations unaided) will occur are uncertain but shortening, with profound implications for Defence.
Robotics and autonomy, with armed forces increasingly using uncrewed and autonomous capabilities to generate mass and lethality.
Enhanced precision weapons that mean targets can be struck with greater accuracy from ever
greater ranges.
Directed energy weapons, such as the UK’s DragonFire, which have the potential to reduce collateral damage and reliance on expensive ammunition.
Hypersonic missiles, which, travelling at over five times the speed of sound, may offer greater range and greater ability to evade defences.
Space-based capabilities that enable all aspects of modern operations. States are rapidly developing ways to disrupt military and civilian assets in and from space.
Quantum. Advances in quantum computing offer the potential to break encryption, making secure communications much more difficult. Quantum technologies have the
potential to reduce dependence on satellite-based GPS, which may be vulnerable to interference.
Cyber threats that will become harder to mitigate as technology evolves, with AI, quantum technology, and the increasing dependence on satellite communications likely driving the most disruptive changes to the cyber threat landscape.
Engineering biology that creates the potential to enhance the capacity of the armed forces through advances in medicine, healthcare, and wellbeing, possibilities for new energetic and explosive materials, as well as avenues for enormous harm in the shape of new pathogens and other weapons of mass destruction.
A nice list of science fiction story ideas, some even with near-term defense applications.
They’re also buying more subs and planes…
Speaking of future warfare, Lockheed Martin has launched AI “fight club” to test AIs against each other. This is a god idea, if they have their little Forbin Projects properly sandboxed, and if they remember that the map is not the territory. There are always radical surprises in warfare… (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Ono, who curiously was the only finalist advanced by the search committee for the job, came with their unanimous recommendation on May 4 and was unanimously approved by the university’s Board of Trustees on May 27. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who has pledged that Florida is “where woke goes to die,” remained oddly reticent about Ono—stating first that he trusted the process, and later that the governors (15 of the 17 governors were appointed by DeSantis), should follow their consciences in deciding Ono’s fate.
Other Florida conservatives, including Senator Rick Scott and Congressmen Greg Steube, Byron Donalds, and Jimmy Patronis, denounced the appointment and outright called for a negative vote.
Ono’s rejection by the Florida Board of Governors is an unprecedented, but legally and procedurally correct, use of its powers. Ono’s demise followed a polite but charged meeting in Orlando on the campus of Central Florida University. Public comments included scathing denunciations and trenchant questions about his candidacy based on his well-documented record for supporting DEI, critical race theory, and radical gender ideology, among other leftist shibboleths.
DeSantis should have done more to nip this candidacy in the bud.
The New Harbor Bridge in Corpus Christi is about to open after years of delay. It has numerous innovative features, and I’m including it here for the blog’s bridge and infrastructure enthusiasts (you know who you are).
Speaking of which: “‘Andor’ Creator Says Disney Spent ‘$650 Million for 24 Episodes’ and ‘We Fought Hard’ for Money After Being Told in Season 2: ‘Streaming Is Dead. We Don’t Have the Money We Had Before.’”
This week brought not one, but gully washers to the Austin area, so now I’m fighting a war against a zillion millipedes climbing the walls to invade every nook and crevice of my home, so I’ve been spraying a lot of pesticide around windows. A Supreme Court win for Trump, lots of budget wrangles, a look at the burgeoning Democrat Party civil war, antifa finally gets investigated, and more Harvard-bashing from the Babylon Bee.
The Supreme Court on Friday sided with the Trump administration – allowing them to revoke temporary legal status granted to over 500,000 immigrants by the Biden administration.
In a 7-2 vote, the court granted an emergency application filed by DHS Secretary Kristi Noem that ends the Biden program which granted 532,000 people from Cuba, Venezuela, Haiti and Nicaragua permission to temporarily live and work in the United States.
This Part 1 report will focus on the George Soros-funded NEO Philanthropy which is funding and orchestrating a massive, nationwide illegal immigration scheme through NEO’s the Four Freedoms Fund.
In the 2024 election, NEO Philanthropy’s Four Freedom Fund sought to raise $5 million to help illegal immigrants stay in the country in the event of a victory by Donald Trump.
A Capital Research report shows NEO Philanthropy and its advocacy sibling received $21 million from the Soros Network to support “advocacy on Latinx rights and empowerment,” change policy in North Carolina, register voters and fund get-out-the-vote efforts among “historically disenfranchised voters” (read: likely Democrats), and boost the Movement for Black Lives.
The Four Freedoms Fund is a donor collaborative of NEO Philanthropy. The Fund primarily focuses on pushing left-of-center immigration policies, including “legalization of undocumented immigrants” through a path to citizenship and comprehensive immigration reform legislation. The Fund is critical of what it calls “anti-immigrant ordinances” created by conservative legislators, including deportations by U.S. Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE).
NEO Philanthropy (formerly Public Interest Projects) is a New York-based nonprofit that serves as a fiscal clearinghouse for left-of-center causes. The group serves as a vehicle for left-of-center foundations to pool resources, hosts donor-advised funds, and sponsors various advocacy projects.
The organization is the fiscal sponsor of left-of-center entities, including the Funders Committee on Civic Participation, a voter mobilization group. Disbursing grant money remains one of NEO’s primary functions; NEO Philanthropy gave close to 60 percent of its total expenditures as grants.
Inside Philanthropy described NEO as “an intermediary that doesn’t have its own resources for grantmaking.” The group receives funding from major left-of-center donors institutions including the Atlantic Philanthropies, George Soros’s Open Society Foundations, the Ford Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the Gill Foundation, the Pew Trusts and the Carnegie Corporation, among others. The organization and similar left-of-center groups that engage in “nonpartisan” voter registration have received criticism for appearing to favor the registration of voters exceptionally likely to vote for Democrat candidates.
According to a 2016 report, an Obama administration appointee managed a fund that George Soros used to bankroll election-related activities likely increasing the number of “voters of color” and “improving odds” of electing preferred candidates.
Karen Narasaki, a commissioner of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, managed the Soros-backed NEO-linked Shelby Response Fund. Narasaki worked as a corporate attorney at Russia Collusion hoax conspirator Perkins Coie in Seattle.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis slammed Congressional Republicans on Tuesday over their lack of action on cutting the government waste and abuse identified by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Back in March, Congress passed the Full-Year Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, 2025, which maintained funding for USAID at the FY 2024 level, effectively extending existing funding for the purportedly “rogue agency” through September 30, 2025.
The “Big Beautiful Bill,” which narrowly passed in the House of Representatives last week, reportedly includes $1.5 trillion in spending cuts, including the largest-ever welfare reform.
But because it is a reconciliation bill, Senate rules limit the cuts to “mandatory” spending only, such as Medicaid and Food Stamps, White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller explained on X. The DOGE cuts are overwhelmingly discretionary, not mandatory, so they are not addressed in the Big Beautiful Bill.
Many conservatives have expressed disappointment that Republicans have failed to codify any meaningful cuts in wasteful discretionary spending, as identified by DOGE, in separate bills. Meanwhile, the director of the National Economic Council promised last week that “way more spending cuts” are coming later this year.
In a post on X, DeSantis put the heat on Republicans to do just that, pointing out that DOGE Chief Elon Musk “took massive incoming,” which included “attacks on his companies” and “personal smears” while leading the DOGE effort. “He became public enemy #1 of legacy media around the world,” DeSantis wrote. “To see Republicans in Congress cast aside any meaningful spending reductions (and, in fact, fully fund things like USAID) is demoralizing and represents a betrayal of the voters who elected them,” the governor added.
“House Republicans plan to tee up its first Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) cut bill next week targeting foreign aid, National Public Radio (NPR) and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) revealed on Wednesday.” Call me thick, but I just don’t see how Republicans can beat a Democratic filibuster without reconciliation, and I don’t think they can use that for this bill.
Hispanic moderates increasingly resemble white moderates politically. They are voting their ideology and political views not their group identity. This is further illustrated by examining Hispanic moderates’ more specific political views.
1. Hispanic moderates think the Democrats have moved too far left. In a 2024 YouGov survey for The Liberal Patriot and Blueprint, three in five Hispanic moderates agreed the Democratic Party had moved too far left on economic issues and about the same felt they’d moved too far left on “cultural and social issues.”
2. Hispanic moderates are hawkish on illegal immigration. In the same survey, more of these voters thought “America needs to close its borders to outsiders and reduce all levels of immigration” than believed “people around the world have the right to claim asylum and America should welcome more immigrants into the country.” Most Hispanic moderates endorsed a combination of border security and more legal immigration.
Also in that survey, net support (support minus oppose) among Hispanic moderates for a proposal to “use existing presidential powers to stop illegal migrant crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border” was 59 points (63 percent to 4 percent). Similarly, Hispanic moderates supported by 36 points restricting “the ability of migrants who illegally cross the U.S.-Mexico border to seek asylum.” And they backed deputizing “the National Guard and local law enforcement to assist with rapidly removing gang members and criminals living illegally in the United States” by 34 points.
3. Hispanic moderates are tough on crime and supportive of law enforcement. Hispanic moderates supported by 53 points a proposal to “increase funding for police and strengthen criminal penalties for assaulting cops.” These voters even supported by 17 points a draconian proposal to “change federal law so that drug traffickers can receive the death penalty.”
4. Hispanic moderates are opposed to Democrats’ stance on transgender issues. In a 2023 YouGov survey for The Liberal Patriot, voters were offered the following three choices:
States should protect all transgender youth by providing access to puberty blockers and transition surgeries if desired, and allowing them to participate fully in all activities and sports as the gender of their choice;
States should protect the rights of transgender adults to live as they want but implement stronger regulations on puberty blockers, transition surgeries, and sports participation for transgender minors; or
States should ban all gender transition treatments for minors and stop discussion of gender ideology in all public schools.
The first position here, emphasizing availability of medical treatments for trans-identifying children (euphemistically referred to as “gender-affirming” care) and sports participation dictated by gender self-identification, is unquestionably the default position of the Democratic Party. Indeed, to dissent in any way from this position in Democratic circles is still enough to earn one the sobriquet of “hateful bigot”—or worse. Yet less than a fifth of Hispanic moderates (19 percent) endorse this position. Nearly twice as many of these voters endorse the strictest position: that medical treatments for transgender children should simply be banned, as should discussion of gender ideology in public schools. And 45 percent favor the second position, advocating stronger regulation on puberty blockers, transition surgeries, and sports participation for transgender minors. Together, the latter two positions make it four-to-one among Hispanic moderates against the Democratic position.
5. Hispanic moderates want cheap, reliable energy not a renewables revolution. Cost and reliability is what Hispanic moderates really care about when it comes to energy. Given four choices of their energy policy priorities in a 2024 YouGov climate issues survey for AEI’s Center for Technology, Science and Energy, 49 percent of these voters said the cost of the energy they use was most important to them. Another 25 percent said the availability of power when they need it was most important. Together that’s 74 percent of Hispanic moderates prioritizing the cost or reliability of energy. In contrast, just 21 percent thought the effect on climate of their energy consumption was most important. (Another 4 percent selected the effect on U.S. energy security).
Unsurprisingly given this pattern, it turns out that Hispanic moderates just don’t care very much about the climate change issue. In the survey, voters were asked to assess their priorities for the government to address in the coming year. Among 18 options, climate change ranked 14th, beating out only global trade, drug addiction, racial issues, and the problems of poor people.
In terms of general energy strategy, when presented with a choice among three options—a rapid green energy transition, an “all of the above” energy policy, and emphasizing fossil fuels—Hispanic moderates strongly prefer an “all of the above” approach to energy policy including oil, gas, renewables, and nuclear. Only a fifth support a rapid transition to renewables—actually less than support flat-out stopping the renewables push. Hispanic moderates’ preference for an “all of the above” energy strategy is reinforced by their answers to a binary question asking if they preferred using a mix of energy sources versus phasing out fossil fuels. The overwhelming judgement: 71 to 29 percent against eliminating fossil fuels.
So Democratic Party policy falls into two categories for moderate Hispanics: The ones that are low priority, and the ones they actively hate.
The Democratic Party is indeed in trouble, and once Jeffrey Blehar gets past the requisite NRO anti-Trump sneers, he correctly fingers the social justice culprits.
The Democratic Party is being pulled apart by horses: On one hand, the party is increasingly held in contempt by once reliable voter demographics (Hispanics, African Americans, working-class men) as out-of-touch elitists taking orders from the Ivy League and the progressive ultra-left. On the other hand — and just as relevantly — the party is crippled from within by that same hard-left faction, which has held the ideological whip-hand over Democrats’ social agenda for a decade now.
These people are the problem. The inflexibly ratcheting social demands of the progressive activist/academic elite are the reason Democrats are in enormous trouble and will be even after Trump is forgotten. And these people are both practically and (more importantly for Democratic politics) morally entrenched within the party at all levels except the top strategic layer. They will not concede power easily, if at all. A civil war thus brews in the Democratic Party’s intellectual/activist wing against its reform-minded moderates. (Grab your popcorn.)
I’m not sure that the entire cadre of “reform-minded moderates” with any appreciable role within the party itself could fill a high school basketball arena. Within the ranks of the DNC itself, I doubt they could fill a Denny’s. But the corrupt wing of the party has indeed come to the realization that the policies of the insane wing are so unpopular that the corrupt wing is in danger of longer being able to rake off its usual graft, hence the crisis. Too bad for them that they’ve essentially ceded the Party’s entire ideological apparatus to the insane wing, and the predominately over-60 corrupt wing has no viable way to change course or purge their own institutions.
Another obvious example beckons: The hilarious plight of David Hogg, the whippet-faced punk set to be voted out of his newly acquired vice chairmanship at the Democratic National Committee next month for being a mutinous weasel, is emblematic of how the Democratic Party is currently consuming itself in internecine war. Hogg, recall, was essentially given the gig by a bunch of older, clueless Democratic Party grandees who voted for him in the hopes he would help bring disaffected young progressives back into the fold. Instead Hogg understands himself to be working not for the Democratic Party, but rather for the progressive movement — hence his announcement that he would use his position and powers to support primary challengers to insufficiently woke Democratic incumbents.
The future looks even more grim for the Democrats for structural reasons. The 2030 census is expected to subtract a swath of House seats (and thus electoral votes) from California and New York, in favor of red states like Florida and Texas. While this bodes ill for remaining Republican incumbents in those states (who can expect to be brutally redistricted away by 2032), it bodes in many ways even worse for the remaining Democrats, who will be left fighting over the division of a shrinking pie.
Understand: A significant number of those currently angry with the Democrats are angry at them for their failure to resist Donald Trump volubly enough, not for being too far to the left. These are the people Democrats absolutely must carry reliably as part of any victorious national coalition, given their preponderance within the party electorate. They will make demands accordingly. If anything, expect the progressive wing of the Democratic Party in its biggest states to lean even more progressive in years ahead as the moderates lose internal battles for position.
There are no Democrat moderates, only Zuul. Assuming Zuul is a 400-pound, purple-haired tranny screaming about Gaza…
After five years of letting Antifa run wild in the Pacific northwest, the FBI is finally investigating.
The FBI has indicated it will investigate the attack on a Christian group and the cops who came to intervene after a Memorial Day weekend melee in Seattle.
After the attack and outrageous response by Seattle’s Mayor Bruce Harrell, FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino issued this statement: “We have asked our team to fully investigate allegations of targeted violence against religious groups at the Seattle concert. Freedom of religion isn’t a suggestion.”
I claimed in this must-read background story, Seattle Attack Offers More Proof That Antifa Thugs Are Just Democrat Anti-Christian Shock Troops, exactly what the title says, and that these anti-Christian attacks are nothing new. Further, after watching these groups for years, I can attest that the Seattle and Portland Antifa groups intermingle and help each other out, as Andy Ngo points out above.
Hopefully the current investigation will also target their finding sources and start bringing RICO charges against the entire terrorist network. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
“[Texas] House Passes Immigration Enforcement Bill Mandating Local ICE Cooperation. Lawmakers approved legislation requiring counties with jails to enter into immigration enforcement agreements with the federal government.”
President Donald Trump signed a series of executive orders designed to fast-track the development and deployment of advanced nuclear reactors on Friday culminating a dramatic policy shift aimed at revitalizing the U.S. nuclear energy sector.
Flanked in the Oval Office by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, Trump declared nuclear power “a hot industry” and praised it as “very safe and environmental.”
Burgum called it “a huge day for the nuclear industry,” and added, “Mark this day on your calendar. This is going to turn the clock back on over 50 years of over regulation of an industry.”
These orders aim to strip away what the administration describes as decades of regulatory overreach that have stifled innovation and stagnated the industry. “America’s greatness has always come from innovation,” Burgum said. “We led post-World War Two in all things nuclear. But then we’ve been stagnated. We’ve choked it with over regulation.”
The first of Trump’s executive orders directs the Department of Energy (DOE) to accelerate research and development, speed up reactor testing at national labs, and initiate a two-year pilot program for reactor construction.
A second order clears regulatory hurdles for the DOE and the Department of Defense (DOD) to build reactors on federal land — efforts that will bypass the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) entirely by using the agencies’ own regulatory authority.
The Trump administration has intensified the U.S.-China trade war by suspending exports of critical American technologies to China, including jet engine parts, semiconductor design software, specialized chemicals, and industrial machinery. The move follows Beijing’s recent decision to restrict shipments of rare earth minerals to U.S. firms. In a further escalation, Washington also announced plans to begin revoking visas for Chinese students in sensitive research fields.
Snip.
Adding to the trade tensions, sources familiar with the matter told The New York Times overnight that the U.S. Commerce Department had suspended certain export licenses allowing U.S. companies to supply engine parts and technology to China’s state-owned aircraft manufacturer, Comac (Commercial Aircraft Corp of China).
Comac has stockpiled engines and parts in anticipation of potential trade restrictions. Still, over time, the move could significantly undermine China’s aviation. The company’s C919 passenger jet—its flagship jet to challenge rival Boeing and Airbus—relies heavily on GE Aerospace–Safran’s LEAP engines.
Keep in mind that certain semiconductor parts had already been embargoed under Biden. A complete embargo of semiconductor parts is going to screw China’s semiconductor industry, as some of those parts simply can’t be sourced locally, to say nothing of losing access to trained maintenance techs, software upgrades, etc.
Ukraine claimed credit for two explosions in Vladivostok, which is on Russia’s Pacific coast and is a whopping 6,800km from Ukraine.
Saudi Arab wants you to know that he stands with Israel because Palestinians suck:
An Arab man from Saudi Arabia in a message to Palestinians:
"Who are you trying to fool? You have no land and no case. This land belongs to Israel for the people of Israel. You Palestinians are evil in any country you set foot on!"
California starts backing away from letting boys compete in girls events. Timidly and halfheartedly, to be sure, but something vaguely resembling progress. Gavin Newsom’s secret 2028 presidential race polling must show that tranny pandering is killing him in any general matchup…
A bill to make Daylight Savings Time permanent has passed both the Texas house and senate and heads to Governor Greg Abbott’s desk to be signed, but can’t take effect until federal law changes to accommodate it.
MSNBC’s new prime time lineup, which debuted on May 5th, failed to connect with viewers in its first three weeks as the network saw its audience decline to near record lows – especially in the key 25-54 age demographic.
Overall for May, MSNBC dropped 41% in the primetime demo and 34% in the total day demo compared to May of 2024. In total viewers, the network was down 33% across total day and 24% in prime time. MSNBC’s total day demo viewership sank to 49,000 average viewers and 73,000 in prime time – its second worst ever showing for a month behind January of 2025.
Fox News was the only of the big three networks to see year-over-year gains for May, up 21% in total viewers and 22% in total day demo viewers compared to 2024. In prime time, Fox gained 23% in total viewers and was up 32% in the demo.
CNN was down 24% in total day viewers and 27% in the daytime demo, while in prime time the network dropped 18% in total viewers and 21% in the demo. CNN’s prime time average came in at only 426,000 total viewers, compared to Fox News’s 2.5 million viewers and MSNBC’s average of 877,000 viewers.
Why would you even bother to advertise on MSNBC? 79,000 is less people than fill a big college football stadium on a Saturday…
Speaking of CNN, the red-pilling of Jake Tapper continues apace. His son is a gamer and high school football player who wants to be a policeman, so naturally lefty sorts immediately assumed he was a racist.
And despite his book tour, Tapper’s ratings are down as well. Why, it’s like viewers believe Tapper will continue to lie to protect Democrats in the future…
100% of studio headed by woman who won’t hire white people laid off.
The city of Austin wants to spend $5.8 million on art about hybrid plant women for an airport expansion.
The Austin City Council is set to vote again on art for the airport expansion. After postponing the vote because of outrage for using out of town artist. Well they're back at it. 🧵 1/5 Item 1 the biggest chunk: Saya Woolfalk not to exceed $5.8 million is out of NYC pic.twitter.com/SiApWQVc4P
In 2018, Liangbing Hu, a materials scientist at the University of Maryland, devised a way to turn ordinary wood into a material stronger than steel. It seemed like yet another headline-grabbing discovery that wouldn’t make it out of the lab.
“All these people came to him,” said Alex Lau, CEO of InventWood, “He’s like, OK, this is amazing, but I’m a university professor. I don’t know quite what to do about it.”
Rather than give up, Hu spent the next few years refining the technology, reducing the time it took to make the material from more than a week to a few hours. Soon, it was ready to commercialize, and he licensed the technology to InventWood.
Now, the startup’s first batches of Superwood will be produced starting this summer.
“Right now, coming out of this first-of-a-kind commercial plant — so it’s a smaller plant — we’re focused on skin applications,” Lau said. “Eventually we want to get to the bones of the building. Ninety percent of the carbon impact from buildings is concrete and steel in the construction of the building.”
To build the factory, InventWood has raised $15 million in the first close of a Series A round. The round was led by the Grantham Foundation with participation from Baruch Future Ventures, Builders Vision, and Muus Climate Partners, the company exclusively told TechCrunch.
InventWood’s Superwood product starts with regular timber, which is mostly composed of two compounds, cellulose and lignin. The goal is to strengthen the cellulose already present in the wood. “The cellulose nanocrystal is actually stronger than a carbon fiber,” Lau said.
The company treats it with “food industry” chemicals to modify the molecular structure of the wood, he said, and then compresses the result to increase the hydrogen bonds between cellulose molecules.
“We might densify the material by 4x and you might think, ‘Oh, it’ll be four times strong, because it has four times the fiber.’ But it’s actually more like 10 times stronger because of all these extra bonds that get created,” Lau said.
The result is a material that has 50% more tensile strength than steel with a strength-to-weight ratio that’s 10 times better.
Some grains of salt are probably in order here, as this sounds just a little too good to be true, and there are always concerns about material longevity. But materials science is constantly advancing, so maybe this actually will pan out.
“Elon Musk Leaves Job Of Making Government More Efficient For Much Easier Job Of Sending Humans To Mars.”
More Biden jobs number fakery, more green graft exposed, everyone knew about Slow Joe, the DNC butchers David Hogg, Gun Jesus weighs in on Sig Saur, and Shoeless Joe gets a shot at redemption.
The Biden administration’s phony jobs boom just went up in smoke. For months, it paraded numbers around like everything was fine, telling Americans the economy was roaring back, that job creation was on fire, and that “Bidenomics” was working. But the truth, long suspected by anyone trying to pay the bills, is now confirmed by the government’s own data: those jobs never existed.
According to new figures released this week, the 399,000 jobs the Biden team claimed were created between July and September of last year have completely vanished. Not only did the economy not add those jobs, but it also lost 1,000 private-sector jobs during that period.
“This more accurate dataset was just released by the BLS for the third quarter of last year,” EJ Antoni, a research fellow and the Richard Aster Fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Grover M. Hermann Center for the Federal Budget, explains over at Townhall. “In stark contrast to the monthly job reports showing an increase of 399,000 jobs during the third quarter, these new numbers show a decline of 1,000 private-sector jobs.”
Nearly 400,000 phantom jobs were quietly wiped off the books. And this isn’t just a one-time discrepancy. Month after month during Joe Biden’s term, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) published inflated job estimates, only to revise them downward later, long after the headlines had already done their PR damage for the White House.
Antoni breaks it down further: “Under Biden, these revisions were abnormal in magnitude and direction, being revised down with unusual frequency.” No kidding. In fact, the BLS’s more comprehensive annual benchmark, released earlier this year, revised down Biden’s job numbers from March 2023 to March 2024 by a jaw-dropping 598,000 jobs.
That’s not just bad math; that’s deception on a national scale.
The Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GRF), passed as part of the “Inflation Reduction Act” in 2022, has proved to be a cornucopia of graft for Biden’s Democratic Party favorites and green non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
The GRF rushed $20 billion in grants out the door in the waning days of the Biden administration to just six organizations. As The Free Press reports, the EPA employees charged with vetting the NGOs who were to receive that $20 billion raised numerous objections to the grants. Despite their concerns, the money was doled out.
We’re just now finding out how corrupt the process of throwing $20 billion to the Democratic Party’s friends actually was.
I’ve written extensively about former Georgia candidate for governor Stacey Abrams’ ties to one NGO that received $2 billion from the GRF despite having only $100 in the bank when they applied for the grant. The $20 billion fund became a one-stop shop for climate graft as hundreds of smaller non-profits joined coalitions of grifters to get millions of dollars despite many having no experience handling that kind of money.
The Free Press obtained documents that include the reviews of the applications for grants from the organizations requesting money from the GRF. Some of them are eye-openers.
One of the reasons for the grant review is for the grantee to justify expenses, including the salaries of top executives. The federal employee who reviewed the application for Power Forward Communities, the Stacey Abrams-linked NGO that was selected to receive $2 billion, questioned the salaries and estimated expenses in the grant application.
“For such an important section, it was pithy, though not always in a good way. Many of the costs were just presented, but little or no explanation as to why they are reasonable. I would have preferred they omitted the travel discussion and explained why they need to pay the CEO $800,000, growing to $948,000 in year 7. And chief operation officer $455,000 per year.”
Anyone who has ever completed an application for a government grant knows that this is a slipshod job that wouldn’t pass muster with any number of federal agencies. But Biden’s EPA just handed $2 billion taxpayer dollars to these incompetent bozos.
Another nonprofit, Appalachian Community Capital, applied for $1 billion from the fund, even though it had never managed anywhere near that much money. In 2023, the latest year for which it has filed tax forms, it spent less than $4.5 million. Two reviewers noted this lack of experience in their comments, saying “The amount of money managed under previous agreements was much less than what is being proposed under this grant opportunity.”
A reviewer also noted that Appalachian Community Capital planned to use $215 million to finance 600 zero-emission vehicles and $105 million to finance 700 charging stations. “This is $358,333 per EV vehicle,” the reviewer wrote, adding that $150,000 per charging station “seems too high.”
Appalachian Community Capital was ultimately granted $500 million from the EPA.
The reviewers were from several different agencies, including the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of the Treasury, and the EPA. A panel of judges based their recommendations for grant approval on the written application and a 40-minute interview.
Not surprisingly, the criteria for receiving the funds included “equity and environmental justice” and “labor and equitable workforce.” They could have been groups of serial killers and still gotten a grant if they were woke enough.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has vowed to recover the $20 billion after a secretly recorded video made by Project Veritas showed a former EPA employee likening the deployment of the funds to “throwing gold bars” off the Titanic. He added that the goal was to “get the money out as fast as possible” before the Trump administration took over.
Meanwhile, the litigation over the $20 billion continues. Late last month, Politico obtained government emails in which an EPA lawyer noted the Trump administration could be on the hook for billions of dollars in damages if the court finds that the EPA has no legal grounds to recoup the grant money or block it from being disbursed to the nonprofits.
“We gave them everything they needed to provide for their independence,” Biden said of Ukraine, “and we were prepared to respond more aggressively if Putin moved again.”
Hogwash.
It was only in late February of last year — just about two years to the day from the outset of Russia’s second invasion of Ukraine — that the Biden administration reluctantly dropped its objection to providing Kyiv with long-range ordnance for use in Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS). Biden wouldn’t authorize the use of that ordnance against Russian targets outside the Ukrainian theater for another nine months. Indeed, the former president didn’t consent to providing Ukraine with ATACMS at all until September 2023, even though Ukraine had requested access to those platforms from the start of Russia’s campaign of conquest.
That story — one defined by the Biden administration’s persistent self-doubt and halting, qualified, often insufficient support for Ukraine’s cause, only to be abruptly reversed after the damage had already been done — repeated throughout the war. The same sequence of events describes the administration’s withholding and eventual reluctant provision of High-Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), heavy artillery, tanks, fixed-wing aircraft, cluster munitions, antipersonnel mines, and so on.
The administration’s first thought was always about how the Russians would respond to America’s furnishment of weapons platforms and ordnance that Moscow was already using on Ukraine’s battlefields. The Biden administration’s concern wasn’t irrational, but the president and his subordinates refused to revisit their assumptions. Moscow would draw a red line, Washington would observe that red line, and when that red line was crossed without broader incident, the White House would move on to obsess over the next illusory red line. Biden declined to revise this doctrine even when it became obvious that Russia’s table-pounding objections to America’s support for Ukraine would amount to just that.
Biden failed to deter Russia’s war. Indeed, it responded to months of provocative indications that Putin was ready to attack by rewarding the Russian despot with bilateral summitry. And when Putin’s forces poured over the Ukrainian border anyway, the former president didn’t just fail to hand over “everything they needed to provide for their independence.” Rather, the administration provided Ukraine with just enough to prevent it from being wholly subsumed into the Russian Federation — and that only after losing an unnecessarily public argument with itself.
In fact, we can safely conclude that the Biden administration never trusted the Ukrainians to provide for their own defense. Instead, the president signaled to the Kremlin that the U.S. would not respond to a “minor incursion” into Ukrainian territory, and his instinct in response to Moscow’s full-scale invasion was to establish a Ukrainian government in exile. “The fight is here,” Volodymyr Zelensky said in his famous rejection of Biden’s pusillanimity. “I need ammunition, not a ride.”
Mass delusion gripped the entire Democratic Party, and they talked themselves into believing they could carry a senile president over the reelection finish line, Weekend at Bernie’s–style, if everyone just tried hard enough to gaslight the public. And as far as we can tell, at no point did any of them pause to contemplate the potential consequences for the country.
There’s something grimly satisfying about the bitter recriminations laid out in the concluding pages of Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes’s new book Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House, as the Democrats grapple with the fact that their own leaders misled them about the reality of the 2024 presidential race every step of the way.
Three weeks after Election Day, top Kamala Harris campaign staffers appeared on Pod Save America and contended their internal polling always showed the vice president trailing. “It was hard for Democratic voters to tell what was real,” Allen and Parnes write. “They had been led to believe that Joe Biden was in fighting shape. But he wasn’t. They had been led to believe he was locked in a dead-heat race with Trump. But he wasn’t. They had been led to believe that [Kamala] Harris was in a position to win. But she wasn’t. And now they were being led to believe she never had a chance. That wasn’t really true, either.”
And in the preceding 287 pages, we keep getting anecdotes indicating things had gone terribly, glaringly, obviously wrong in the Democrats’ world, but no one wanted to admit it and confront the problems.
After his disastrous debate performance, President Biden attempted to reassure a group of unnerved Democratic governors by telling them he would no longer plan to appear at events past 8 in the evening. Allen and Parnes say one governor later quipped, “Somebody better tell the Chinese when they can attack us, because I don’t want them to wake him up.”
If the president can’t physically or mentally function well in the evening hours, why is he still president? How would he handle a sustained emergency like the Cuban Missile Crisis, where he’d need to make tough decisions after long days?
Allen and Parnes describe Biden aides calling up doubtful Democratic donors before his withdrawal and threatening them, “You want her? Look at her polling. No one wants her. Forget it.” One donor tells the authors, “They were aggressively saying that we would wind up with the vice president and that would be a mistake.” The argument that Harris is a self-evident disaster was characterized by Biden staffers as their “ace in the hole.”
If nominating Harris was such an obvious catastrophe . . . why was she vice president? At any moment, the 82-year-old Biden could keel over or have an aneurysm, and she would be the nominee anyway. For that matter, didn’t anybody on the president’s staff foresee any potential downside to trashing the veep?
If, as Allen and Parnes report, in the weeks leading up to the debate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz was so nervous that he couldn’t sleep at night and his aides had to remind him to eat, wasn’t that a glaring sign that this guy wasn’t ready to be a heartbeat away from the presidency? The duties of the vice-presidency include tasks even more intimidating than debating JD Vance.
No one in any position of leadership in the Democratic Party in 2024 should have been there. None of them were up to the task before them.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Monday aimed at lowering prescription drug prices, instituting a “most favored nation’s policy” that would push drug companies to charge Americans the same price other nations pay.
Trump signed a similar measure during his first term to institute price controls for fifty drugs paid for with Medicare Part B, but a court blocked its implementation, ruling that the administration had skipped key administrative steps in trying to institute the proposal.
Monday’s executive order is broader in scope, focusing on all prescriptions drugs where the price disparities between the U.S. and foreign nations are the widest. But according to the White House, this executive order is not focused on a particular class of pharmaceutical drugs.
The order — which is likely to run into legal challenges as well — is in keeping with the administration’s broader trade war strategy, which relies on a suite of policy tools to address what officials say is an uneven global economic playing field.
“What’s been happening is we’ve been subsidizing other countries throughout the world,” Trump said on Monday morning before signing the executive action. “Our country is the highest drug prices anywhere in the world, by sometimes a factor of five, six, seven, eight times.”
I have no idea what the ramifications of this may be, but it will be fun to watch Democrats try to explain why driving down Big Pharma prices is bad…
She’s now in the “find out” phase: “Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan was indicted by a federal grand jury earlier this week on charges of obstruction and and concealing a person of arrest, for which she faces up to six years in prison if convicted.’
Another week, another Trump win in court. “Federal Judge Rules IRS May Share Illegal Alien Data With DHS.”
The order by U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich came amid a lawsuit by Centro de Trabajadores Unidos, an immigrant-rights aid group, against Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
“At its core, this case presents a narrow legal issue: Does the Memorandum of Understanding between the IRS and DHS violate the Internal Revenue Code? It does not,” Friedrich wrote in his order.
“(Note: Friedrich, a Trump appointee, is a woman, so that would be her order.)” (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
Trump ends sanctions on Syria. We’ll see if the new government can respond to carrots and put their jihadi past behind them. They probably won’t, but nothing else has worked in Syria (except backing the Kurds), so the risk is pretty low.
Illegal aliens admitted across the border in April 2024: 68,000. In 2025: Four.
More good news: “ICE Arrests 422 in Houston Sweep, Including Murder and Arson Suspects.”
The felonious, anti-democratic Democratic National Committee has decided to purge the odious, gun-grabbing fetus David Hogg from his vice-chairmanship, and National Review‘s Jeffrey Blehar is here to chortle.
The Parkland shooting survivor bootstrapped his way from anti-gun youth activist to recent election as one of the vice-chairs of the Democratic National Committee — and all this despite having forearms that look like they were carved out of balsa wood. But instead of being the easily controlled patsy the DNC’s grandees and voters expected, Hogg promptly began using the DNC’s fundraising lists and prestige to raise money for his own outside super PAC — one designed to take down “asleep-at-the-wheel” Democratic incumbents. Keep in mind that most Democratic incumbents sleep (and sometimes at the wheel) in a perpetual cold sweat about being primaried by the next wave of “Squad”-like radical lefties; now their own vice-chairman is promising to help unseat them. (The calls to get them out of the House are coming from inside the house.)
Snip.
The DNC has instead approved a resolution challenging the validity of Hogg’s election on pretextual grounds and is set to nullify the race later this month and bounce the little chiseler out of office altogether. He got too greedy with his power too fast. As both farmers and politicos will tell you: Pigs get fed, but hogs and Hoggs alike get slaughtered.
As much as I enjoy making jokes about the Democratic Party nullifying its own democratic internal processes because democracy elected the wrong person, I speak as an adult when I say Hogg had it coming, and then some. His pitch to “firewall” himself away from races where he is fundraising for enemy insurgents was the sort of farcical fantasy-world pitch that could only come from a spectacularly self-centered youth, one who believes his personal project is more important than the corporate enterprise he has joined. As another current vice-chair says in the piece, “it is not the DNC’s job to create a firewall for one officer — it is the officer’s responsibility to create a firewall.”
And the way the Democratic National Committee is doing it is so splendidly pathetic that I can barely believe my good fortune. Remember: The DNC voted for Hogg as vice-chair a mere three months ago. Upon what grounds do they propose to undo that vote? (“Behaving like a traitorous weasel” was apparently insufficient under current DNC bylaws.) Upon grounds of wokeness, as it turns out.
It’s always nice to have a splendid reminder of the sort of work the NRO crew used to be able to do before their terminal case of Trump Derangement Syndrome made so much of it unreadable.
House Republicans took major step on Wednesday afternoon towards codifying President Donald Trump’s efforts to protect children from transgender procedures during a marathon markup session for the “one, big, beautiful bill” working its way through Congress.
After a 26-hour budget hearing, the House Energy and Commerce Committee passed a provision from Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) that would block federal dollars funding transgender procedures. This means that Medicaid, Affordable Care Act, and Children’s Health Insurance Program money will no longer be allowed to fund procedures like removing the breasts of girls who identify as boys or putting children on cross-sex hormones, if the provision makes it through the rest of the reconciliation process.
Crenshaw receives a lot of criticism from conservatives, some of it justified, but he’s done well here.
Chris Rufo unearths documented evidence that Harvard, as a policy, systemically and illegally discriminated against white men in hiring. This is no longer a “cutting off aid” concern, this is a “people need to good to jail for violating people’s civil rights” matter.
More protections for lawful gun owners. ‘Texas senators have approved a measure strengthening the state’s protections for justified use of force or deadly force in self-defense situations. Senate Bill 1730, filed by State Sen. Bob Hall (R–Edgewood), passed 26-3-2 on Monday. The measure would prevent a claimant from recovering civil damages for personal injury or death if a grand jury has declined to pursue, thrown out, or acquitted the defendant of criminal charges. In addition, if the claimant is found to be prohibited from seeking civil action, the proposal would require them to pay court costs and the defendant’s attorney fees.”
“Texas House Approves Bill Expanding State Medical Cannabis Program. The bill expands the medical conditions that allow access to the Texas’ medical cannabis program.”
The Texas Compassionate Use Act, enacted in 2015, allows physicians to prescribe low-dose THC for patients with specific medical conditions such as incurable neurodegenerative diseases, cancer, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
With HB 46, TCUP will be expanded to new qualifying medical conditions, including glaucoma, traumatic brain injuries, Crohn’s disease, or any terminal illness or condition where a patient is receiving hospice or palliative care. The bill will also allow for “medication” that is “aerosolized” or “vaporized,” and the TCUP program will be expanded to include veterans “who would benefit from medical use to address a medical condition.”
The legislation also expands access by increasing the number of dispensing licenses, authorizing satellite locations across all public health regions.
[Rep. Ken] King adopted a perfecting amendment that would “grandfather” in existing satellite TCUP locations, revise the THC content limits to exceed the “one percent by weight” provision, and establish timelines for approving medical inhalation devices.
Rep. Tom Oliverson (R-Cypress) also had his amendment adopted, which will require physicians prescribing low-THC cannabis to report prescription data to the Texas State Board of Pharmacy.
The states that have experimented with uncontrolled complete legalization of marijuana seemed to have suffered a lot of harmful effects, from sketchy potheads in broken RVs trashing formerly respectable neighborhoods to state and national forests trashed by illegal grow operations, maybe because a lot are also one-party Democratic soft-on-crime blue states and deep blue cities. Oklahoma, which isn’t, has suffered from Chinese mob control of the marijuana trade. Whatever it’s flaws, Texas extremely slow medical marijuana legalization program seems to have at least avoided those problems.
Patrick McGee has a new book out, Apple in China, that’s getting a lot of attention. “The two numbers that really stick out at me are that the number of people they have trained in China since 2008 is 28 million.” I think there’s a real story there, but i also think those numbers are grossly inflated. Apple wasn’t the only company shifting contract manufacturing to China, and that 28 million only makes sense if you count every employee at every company in China that had any role in producing any part for Apple, which is (to put it mildly) an extremely tendentious claim.
“In a historic, sweeping decision, baseball commissioner Rob Manfred on Tuesday removed Pete Rose, “Shoeless” Joe Jackson and other deceased players from Major League Baseball’s permanently ineligible list…Manfred ruled that MLB’s punishment of banned individuals ends upon their deaths.” (Hat Tip: Dwight.)
Remember way back in the dim mists of time known as last week when India and Pakistan traded an escalating series of of attacks against each other following a Jaish-e-Mohammad terrorist attack in Pahalgam and India launching Operation Sindoor by bombing Jaish-e-Mohammad occupied buildings in Pakistan? It looked like there was a good chance the conflict would spiral out of control.
Instead, President Trump evidently said “Hey, you two, cut it out,” and the war stopped in its tracks like Drederick Tatum halting a prison riot.
The question I have is: Who won?
I’m inclined to think that India won, because they successfully hit their targets and dirtnapped a lot of jihadis, and Pakistan doesn’t seem to have successfully struck anything of import. But I don’t know for sure, since the never-entirely-trustworthy American media has a done a poor job reporting the conflict (evidently it’s really hard to blame Donald Trump for a sectarian conflict over a century old), and the local media on both sides seem entirely too biased to trust. And as for this Reuters report that Trump says disputes are “settled,” that’s either the usual MSM incompetence or “figuratively, not literally” at work. The Indo-Pakistan dispute over Kashmir will probably continue as long as those two nations still exist.
So I’m at a loss to say definitively who won this most recent flareup. If you have a better idea, feel free to share it in the comments below.
Here’s an under-reported aspect of Operation Rough Rider (i.e., the Trump Administration beating the Houthis with a very large stick): The deployment of A-10 Warthogs to teach the Houthis the error of their ways.
The successful missions displayed some interesting capabilities.
“After three years without a major combat deployment, America’s most rugged aircraft is back in theater, and this time, it’s not just covering troops; it’s striking mobile launcher teams before they escape.”
“On March 29, 2025, several A-10 Warthogs from the 124th Fighter Wing and 300 ground crew from the 190th Fighter Squadron deployed to the Middle East. This deployment marks the largest such deployment of this infamous aircraft in three years and it’s for more than just showing the flag. Operating out of Al Dhafra Air Base in the UAE, these aircraft are giving a big helping hand to the Navy as they battle a foe with ever revolving tactics.” Namely learning to shoot-and-scoot after launching their attacks on shipping.
The missiles Houthis fire are “are typically C-802s that carry a 165-kilogram armor-piercing payload and can reach targets up to 180 kilometers away.”
“The first confirmed strike came on April 1. After taking off from their air base, the Warthogs were on station within 18 minutes. Thanks to its 11,000-pound fuel tank captivity, the A-10s can loiter over target areas for up to 90 minutes before having to head back to base.”
Details of the formidable GAU-8/A Avenger rotary cannon snipped, because I think all of my readers are familiar with it by now.
“On that day, a circling RC-135 Rivet Joint intercepted Houthi radio signals that they were going to launch a strike soon. Because the US has destroyed practically every secure communications method the Houthis had, enemy commanders in the field have to rely on regular civilian cell phones to talk to each other, which makes finding these guys that much easier.”
“The attack was supposed to go down in less than 20 minutes, so the two A-10s punched it at full power to get there. With a max speed of about 420 miles per hour, it would take roughly 18 minutes to get there, with not a second to spare.” Yeah, this channel loves to make things overly dramatic.
“As the A-10s flew across the mountains and desert of central Yemen, the pilots are using this device to scan for the targets. This is called the AAN/AAQ-28 Litening pod [Yeah, that’s the way it’s spelled. -LP], and is how the pilot ensures that the A-10’s payloads make it on target.”
“The pod measures 87 inches long and is 16 inches in diameter. Inside this roughly 440-pound pod are a series of high-resolution forward-looking infrared sensors, laser designators, and CCTV cameras; the pilots can spot man-sized targets up to 28 miles away.”
“With no enemy radars up due to US forces knocking them out in prior strikes, the A-10s came in low and slow. At a distance of 6,500 meters away, they let loose with their cannons and gave ‘em the BRRT the aircraft is so famous for.”
“In those two seconds, the A-10s fired about 260 baseball-sized rounds, each going at 3,500 feet per second. As one can probably guess, the launcher was neutralized.”
“On April 2, an ISR satellite detected unusual heat signatures northeast of Sa’dah. Since very few people in Yemen own a car, much less a 5-ton truck, intelligence flagged it as a probable mobile launcher and passed it along to the Air Force for a closer look.”
“With the Houthis now fully aware the A-10s ere in theater, the call went out far and wide, and soon every Houthi radar left was scanning the skies, looking for an easy victory. Thankfully, these aircraft were not gonna let them. These planes are called EA-18G Growlers. If you think they look like F-18s, that’s because they kind of are. Built on the same body, these aircraft are specially modified with sensors and weapons specially designed for a mission called suppression of enemy air defenses or SEAD.”
“The Growlers’ main mission is taking out Houthi radars with systems with this. This system here on this Growler is called the Next Generation Jammer…As Houthi gunners turn on their radars, they send out a particular frequency. Since the Next Gen Jammers in service operate in the mid-band of frequencies around the 2–6 Gigahertz range, any radar pulsing in that range can get picked up. This is because the US maintains a mission library of every adversary search, surface, fire control, and missile radar in the world. When the system picks up these signals, it automatically knows what kind of system it is and uses basic geometry to figure out where the enemy radar is located.”
“The pilot then sends a continuous burst of about 270 kilowatts of power towards the Houthi radar. Because radars know the time when every radar wave is sent out and know what time it arrives, the radar uses that data to help figure out the position. However, when blasted with such a strong energy pulse, the radar can’t see any of its own emissions because this jammer is just overloading the system with a continuous stream of energy. Although some modern radars are jam-resistant, most Houthi ones are based on legacy Soviet or Iranian models that get fried.”
“Within 15 minutes, the Growlers from the USS Eisenhower had knocked out three Houthi radar installations.”
Using their Litening targeting pods, [the A-10s] picked up movement—three launchers, including one where the Houthis were putting a camouflaged tarp on to hide it again. The lead pilot fired a laser-guided AGM-65 Maverick from 26 miles away to prevent them from getting away. With its 125-pound-shaped charge, the Maverick struck the first launcher center mass. The secondary detonation from the missile on board was huge. Shrapnel tore through the other two nearby launchers and knocked fist-sized holes in them.”
“Their teams attempted to flee in a Toyota pickup, but they didn’t make it far. The trailing Warthog rolled in low. At just under 250 knots, the pilot squeezed the trigger. A half-second burst of the GAU-8 sent 50 rounds slamming into the truck and neutralized four more operators.”
“By April 10, Houthi activity had visibly shifted. Launch points previously active went cold.”
The Houthis grew even more cautious, but the A-10s sensors can even detect heat signatures coming from underground bunkers.
“On April 13, operating out of Jawf province, [Houthis] wheeled out a launcher preloaded with a C-802, set up near an irrigation berm, and awaited GPS lock from their Iranian handlers. Unfortunately for them, a US drone had spotted the movement 40 minutes earlier. A Warthog was already on station and soon inbound. At 3,000 feet, flying just over the mountain tops, the pilot waited just until he reached the Maverick’s ideal release range of around seven nautical miles. With the ability to carry six of these missiles, with three under each wing, the pilot let loose with two of them to neutralize thelauncher and its accompanying radar. Upon seeing the Warthog, the Houthi gunners abandoned their launchers and tried to run but the last thing they heard was a BRRT, and it was all over.”
“Strategically, the A-10’s success has reignited debates over close air support. While the Air Force still plans to retire the fleet by 2029, Marine and Navy commanders have petitioned for extended deployment rotations. This is because the numbers speak for themselves. From April 2 through April 17, the A-10s flew 218 sorties without a single US loss. According to CENTCOM, 47 confirmed missile systems have been knocked out, along with nine senior Houthi commanders neutralized. Because of this, the A-10 has proven itself a valuable asset in what many have considered a Navy-centric fight.”
Remember, the A-10 is the weapon the air force tried multiple times to kill, yet it’s still flying vital missions a quarter of the way through the 21st Century. The latest deployment may indicate there’s still some life left in the old hog yet…
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!”
A massive explosion at Iran’s largest commercial port killed several people and destroyed shiploads of ballistic missile fuel from China, news reports suggest. “A huge blast probably caused by the explosion of chemical materials killed at least 18 people and injured more than 700 on Saturday at Iran’s biggest port, Bandar Abbas,” Reuters reported, citing Iranian regime-run media.
The exploding rocket fuel sent out a huge plume, unleashing a shock wave spanning several miles. “Iran’s official news channels aired footage of a vast black and orange cloud of smoke billowing up above the port in the aftermath of the blast,” the news agency added. “The blast shattered windows within a radius of several kilometres and was heard in Qeshm, an island 26 kilometres (16 miles) south of the port, Iranian media said.”
The shipment was reportedly carrying sodium perchlorate, which is indeed pretty spicy stuff if handled improperly.
Now we have footage of the blast and, holy crap, was it massive and devastating:
At 36 seconds in, you get footage of the start of the fire. It doesn’t look like an explosive or a drone strike, just a fire that got out of control, so I doubt the U.S. or Israel was behind this one. Neither China nor Iran is known for their painstaking attention to detail.
On top of the rogering Iran’s missile program has already received from Israel, the explosion will make it that much more difficult for Iran to reconstitute their missile program anytime soon.
Wikipedia, the source of all vaguely accurate knowledge, tells us “Shahid Rajaee Port is responsible for 85% of the total loading and unloading carried out at the Iranian ports. By 2011, Shahid Rajaee port ranked 44th among the 3500 major ports of the world.” With Iran’s inflation rate already creeping toward 40%, damage to their main container port is going to weaken their economy further, giving President Trump additional leverage in talks over their nuclear program.
