Archive for the ‘Border Control’ Category

Paxton Investigates 33 Instances Of Illegal Alien Voting Fraud

Tuesday, June 17th, 2025

Another week, another investigation by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton into more of that illegal alien voting fraud that Democrats swear up and down doesn’t exit.

Texas has opened investigations into 33 alleged noncitizens who voted in the November 2024 general election, following Secretary of State (SOS) Jane Nelson’s referral of the cases to Attorney General Ken Paxton.

After Nelson gained access to a federal citizenship database, which she used to cross-reference the voter rolls, her office reported on June 5 that it had found evidence that 33 individuals who voted in the previous election are not U.S. citizens.

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service’s (USCIS) Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database, an online service utilized by government agencies for verifying immigration and naturalization status, was made available to the SOS after an executive order by President Donald Trump — which laid out a variety of directives and requirements to state agencies related to ensuring election integrity across the nation. One of these was an order given to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), requiring it to ensure that all state and local officials receive free access to information regarding voters’ citizenship and naturalization statuses.

“Noncitizens must not be allowed to influence American elections, and I will use the full weight of my office to investigate all voter fraud,” Paxton said in a press release on Tuesday morning.

“In order to be able to trust the integrity of our elections, the results must be determined by our own citizens — not foreign nationals breaking the law to illegally vote.”

Paxton had originally called on Nelson in September 2024 to request access to the SAVE database, in order to confirm that the upcoming November 2024 general election would be free of illegal voting by individuals who are not U.S. citizens.

Shortly after Paxton’s initiative, Nelson sent her own letter to the USCIS demanding its collaboration with her office and outlining the department’s responsibilities in collaborating with local government agencies to ensure the integrity of elections. She requested access to the information by October 2, 2024.

The SOS reported on June 5 that it had identified the 33 potential noncitizens who voted in the 2024 November general election, “within weeks” of gaining access to the SAVE database.

One wonders if that’s all the Texas illegal alien voters in the database, or if this is just the tip of the iceberg…

LinkSwarm for June 13, 2025

Friday, June 13th, 2025

Happy Friday the 13th!

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 the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • For last night’s post on the Israeli strikes, strike footage was scarce, but Suchomimus has a roundup this morning:

    • General suspicion is that F-35s were used.
    • “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…
  • Mossad even released footage of Israeli commando teams in Iran guiding in drone strikes on targets.
  • More:

  • Jim Geraghty on why the Israeli strikes were inevitable.

    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.

  • Trump gave Iran a chance to come to the negotiating table and Iran chose not to take it.

    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.

    The classic Two Man Con. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • Also from Instapundit (Ed Driscoll):

  • RS McCain has an updated kill list, including some names we haven’t listed yet:

    Known kills so far:

    • IRGC Chief-of-Staff Hossein Salami
    • IRGC General Gholamali Rashid
    • Chief of Staff Mohammad Bagheri
    • Ali Shamkhani, Senior Advisor to Khamenei

    And these nuclear scientists:

    • Dr. Fereydoun Abbasi
    • Dr. Mohammad Mehdi Tehranchi
    • Dr. Abdolhamid Minouchehr
    • Dr. Ahmad Reza Zolfajari

    The best thing you could ever do is die…

  • “Iran Launches Dozens of Missiles at Israel in Retaliatory Strike.”

  • But there seem to be more than that, and at least one seems to have hit Tel Aviv.

  • With all that’s going on, it might be easy to miss how President Trump keeps racking up court victories.

    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.

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • 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):

    Pulling a few NGOs out for future reference:

    • Amalgamated Charitable Foundation Inc.
    • BVM Capacity Building Institute Inc.
    • Chinese Progressive Association
    • Liberty Hill Foundation
    • National Endowment for Democracy
    • The Nature Conservancy
    • Silicon Valley Community Foundation
    • Tides Center
    • World Wildlife Fund
  • “House Oversight Committee Launches Investigation into Neville Singham, the Maoist Millionaire Funding Anti-ICE, Pro-Hamas Demonstrations.”

    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.”

  • Ground Stop Ordered at Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport.”

    Police say a black SUV hit a gate at Bush Intercontinental Airport and drove into the Air Operations Area Thursday evening.

    HPD confirmed the incident and said the vehicle drove into the cargo area, but did not have any other details at the time of this writing.

    It is unclear if anyone was arrested or what happened afterwards.

    Lifted now. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • Has President Trump killed wokeness?

    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…

  • “CNN: “There is no block of voters that shifted more to the right from 2020 to 2024 than immigrant voters.” A 40 point shift to the GOP, from “+32 in favor of the Democrats in 2020 to +8 in favor of the Republicans” today. Usual poll caveats apply.
  • FBI Director Kash Patel told Joe Rogan that his house had been SWAT-ed.

  • 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.
  • ICE Houston Deports 142 Criminal Aliens to Mexico.”

    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.
  • Trump DOJ Official Aaron Reitz Enters Race for Texas Attorney General. His campaign announcement included praise from Trump, who described Reitz as “a true MAGA attorney” and ‘a warrior for our Constitution.'”

    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.

  • Moran canned.

    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.”
  • Scott at Kentucky Ballistics has an important safety tip for you: Don’t try to run modern firearms on black powder.
  • Entire Shanghai city block moved by swarm of robots.
  • Truth in tourism advertising:

  • 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.”
  • The Talking Heads release a new video for “Psycho Killer” starring the pastry girl from Grand Budapest Hotel.
  • Speaking of things born in the 1970s, the Critical Drinker looks back on the disasterous production of Heaven’s Gate.
  • A look at Kinugawa, Japan, a hot springs resort that’s been mostly abandoned and untouched for decades.
  • Mayor Bass Reflexively Skips Town After Seeing L.A. Burning Again.”
  • “CNN Reports Peaceful Night In L.A. As Majority Of Cars Not On Fire.”
  • “Trump To Release One Gorilla To Fight Every 100 Rioters.”
  • “Concerns Raised As ChatGPT Begins Replying To All Prompts With ‘Are You Sarah Connor?'”
  • Loyalty:

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

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





    Abbott Calls Out National Guard Before Leftists Can Loot

    Thursday, June 12th, 2025

    It’s no secret that when leftists carry out widespread “peaceful protests,” a whole lot of non-peaceful riots, arson and looting ensue, especially if they’re happening in Democrat run cities where they know public officials sympathetic to their cause-of-the-week will keep police away and give them “space to destroy.”

    Texas Governor Greg Abbott isn’t putting up with such nonsense, and is nipping it in the bud…

    …before it can even get started by deploying the Texas National guard before the riots can start.

    As riots erupt in cities like Los Angeles and protests targeting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) are planned for this weekend, Gov. Greg Abbott is deploying the Texas National Guard across the state to deter potential violence and maintain order.

    “Texas National Guard will be deployed to locations across the state to ensure peace & order,” Abbott posted on social media. “Peaceful protest is legal. Harming a person or property is illegal & will lead to arrest. [Texas National Guard] will use every tool & strategy to help law enforcement maintain order.”

    Under both the Texas Constitution and federal law, governors have broad authority to activate their state’s National Guard in response to emergencies, including civil unrest. In his role as commander-in-chief of the Texas National Guard when not federalized, Abbott can deploy troops to assist law enforcement, protect property, and respond to threats to public safety.

    “The State of Texas stands ready to deploy all necessary personnel and resources, including Texas Department of Public Safety troopers, to uphold law and order across our state,” Abbott’s press secretary, Andrew Mahaleris, told Texas Scorecard earlier this week. “Peaceful protests are part of the fabric of our nation, but Texas will not tolerate the lawlessness we have seen in Los Angeles. Anyone engaging in acts of violence or damaging property will be swiftly arrested and held accountable to the full extent of the law.”

    After one demonstration earlier this week in Austin that turned destructive, Abbott noted that more than a dozen protesters were arrested.

    “Peaceful protesting is legal. But once you cross the line, you will be arrested. FAFO,” Abbott posted.

    Abbott’s approach stands in sharp contrast to that of California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has opposed efforts by President Donald Trump to bring in federal troops or National Guard units to restore order in cities such as Los Angeles. Newsom has called such deployments provocative and unnecessary, even as violent protests and property destruction continue nightly across the state.

    Meanwhile, Republican attorneys general across the country, including Texas’ Ken Paxton, are supporting Trump’s deployment of the National Guard.

    “If you set police cars on fire, throw Molotov cocktails at law enforcement, and loot businesses, you must be held accountable,” posted Paxton on X. “We stand with law enforcement, we support President Trump’s action, and we will not let chaos take hold in our states.”

    Seems entirely logical. So why don’t Democratic governors take similar precautions to prevent “peaceful protests” from turning into the usual riot, arson and looting sprees we keep seeing over and over again?

    Simple: Many Democrats want to see the riots happen. From Ferguson to Minneapolis to the current LA riots, Democratic office holders seem to sympathize with far left goals and seem perfectly happy to let those riots sweep across their city in bursts of revolutionary violence.

    What they hope to accomplish by letting such violence flourish I leave as an exercise for the readers…

    Soros Tries To Buy Texas Again

    Tuesday, June 10th, 2025

    “Turning Texas blue” is an idée fixe for Democratic Party operatives, and it’s easy to see why. Securing Texas’ 40 (and soon to be 43 or 44) electoral votes would go a long way toward ensuring presidential election dominance for the donkeys. Indeed, one (of many) big driving factors behind the headless Biden Administration opening the border was to secure enough illegal alien votes via amnesty to do just that. (Ironically, what it actually seem to do was turn the Rio Grande Valley red and add millions of Hispanics to the Trump coalition.) But the idea never goes away, and now moneybag social justice funder George Soros is trying to turn Texas blue.

    ​​A Democrat-aligned political group backed by billionaire George Soros is once again setting its sights on Texas, aiming to flip the reliably red state with a new multimillion-dollar campaign.

    According to a Wall Street Journal report, Texas Majority PAC—bankrolled heavily by Soros—has launched a new initiative dubbed “Blue Texas,” partnering with the Texas Democratic Party and several county parties to organize volunteers, recruit candidates, and boost voter turnout ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

    Campaign finance records show Soros gave $2.1 million to Texas Majority PAC in 2024 and another $1 million in April.

    The move marks the latest in a long line of efforts by Democrats to make inroads in Texas, a state Republicans have dominated for decades. Despite shifting demographics and repeated national predictions of a “blue wave,” Democrats haven’t won a single statewide race in Texas since 1994.

    Soros and his political allies tried a similar approach in the last election cycle—pouring millions into Texas Majority PAC in an attempt to build a Democrat ground game—but came up short. In 2024, Republicans not only held their ground but made gains in both the Texas House and Senate. President Donald Trump, meanwhile, won 12 of the state’s 14 border counties and defeated Kamala Harris by nearly 14 percentage points.

    I covered last year’s Soros funding attempts here.

    The Texas Majority PAC, which describes its mission as growing the Democrat majority and winning statewide elections, is hoping for a different result this time.

    Organizers say they’ll hold rallies across the state in June and visit more than two dozen cities in July to recruit candidates.

    Rallies. Yeah. That will do the trick. I do wonder if they don’t actually mean “riots,” since that seems to be what Soros is best at funding.

    Their long-term goal is to make Texas a competitive battleground state by 2032, when a new round of redistricting could further increase the state’s electoral significance.

    “If a win is on the table in 2026, we don’t want to leave it there by not being organized,” Katherine Fischer, deputy executive director of Texas Majority PAC, told WSJ.

    A win for Democrats is “on the table” in the same sense that a World Series championship is “on the table” for the Colorado Rockies in 2026: It’s theoretically possible, but no one is betting that way.

    But past efforts like Battleground Texas—formed over a decade ago with similar ambitions—have largely failed.

    Battleground Texas was a particularly spectacular flameout. And that was staffed with Obama retreads, i.e. the last actually successful Democratic presidential campaign that didn’t rely on mysterious 3 AM ballot dumps. What election experts are they going to bring in to turn Texas red? The supergeniuses behind the Kamala Harris campaign? What pearls of wisdom are Soros-funded cadres going to dispense on their presumably benighted Texas counterparts? They need to burn more police cars? They need to buy more Palestinian flags?

    Texas Republicans are quite lucky nationwide liberals seem clueless about how to wisely allocate money to boost Democrats in Texas. Just think if that $160+ million Bobby Francis “Beto” O’Rourke wasted on his two losing statewide campaigns had been channeled into effective grassroots organizing instead of ill-fated media ad buys. Texas might look a lot more purple right now. Of course, that assumes it’s even possible for Democrats to carry out effective grassroots organizing, instead of shoveling money into the insatiable maws of hordes of social justice locusts looking to foment their own brand of self-serving revolution.

    I think that literally just Scott Presler, by himself, has moved the electoral needle more than all the millions of dollars national Democrats have dumped into Texas all this century combined…

    Left Cranks Up Riot Season For Alien Felons

    Saturday, June 7th, 2025

    if you wondered when the hard left was going to crank up the riot machine like we saw in the 2020 Antifa/#BlackLivesMatter riot, we now have an answer in Los Angeles: They’re going to riot over criminal illegal aliens being deported.

    Mayhem ensued when ICE raids were conducted in Los Angeles yesterday. Like in Minneapolis, leftists came out of the woodwork to berate and disrupt federal agents enforcing immigration laws. Unlike that incident, however, it didn’t lead to what I was told is an act of armed rebellion: anti-ICE activists stormed a federal building, and the local police were nowhere to be found (via Los Angeles Times):

    A series of surprise U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement sweeps in downtown Los Angeles on Friday prompted fierce pushback from elected officials and protesters, who decried the enforcement actions as “cruel and unnecessary” and said they stoked fear in the immigrant community.

    Tensions remained high in downtown into the evening. The Los Angeles Police Department declared an unlawful assembly and ordered around 200 protesters who remained gathered by the Los Angeles Federal Building to disperse around 7 p.m.

    Chaos erupted earlier in the day in the heart of the Fashion District after federal immigration authorities detained employees inside a clothing wholesaler, and used flash-bang grenades and pepper spray on a crowd protesting the raid around 1:30 p.m.

    Hundreds of people then rallied outside the Los Angeles Federal Building at 4 p.m., condemning the crackdown and demanding the release of Service Employees International Union California President David Huerta, who was injured and detained while documenting a raid, according to a statement from the labor union.

    Eventually Bass allowed riot police to be sent in and disperse the rioters, but she certainly took her sweet time about it.

    Instead of having the black Marxists in BLM running the riots, now they have Mexican Marxists running the current riots.

    Democrats and their rogue NGO network appear to be at it again—this time staging a new protest movement against Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in Los Angeles, hoping to spark another ‘Summer of Love’ nationwide riots like in 2020, when leftists used the useful idiots behind the Marxist group Black Lives Matter as a vehicle for chaos.

    With BLM kicked to the curb by the Democratic Party, the Mexican version of BLM – Unión del Barrio – whose manifesto is filled with explicit Marxist and communist rhetoric—has become the next group Democrats will use as useful idiots.

    On Friday, Unión del Barrio issued a call to action for the crazies on Facebook to stage a protest against “ICE Terrorists” in Downtown LA:

    Emergency Protest TODAY in LA! 4:30PM

    535 Alameda St LA, CA 90012

    Join us to denounce ICE terrorizing our communities! Over 200 people are currently being held at this location in the basement of the courthouse. Today, there has been ICE activity all over the LA area.

    LA EMERGENCY PROTEST!
    535 Alameda St, LA, CA 90012
    Friday, June 6, 2025 4:30PM
    STOP DEPORTATIONS NOW!
    ICE has hundreds of members of our community kidnapped and is holding them at this location.

    Given that ICE is still concentrating of deporting criminals, the “community” they’re talking about is “illegal alien felons.” I guess that makes them perfect victims as far as the cadres of social justice Democrats are concerned: non-white, non-citizen criminals, all things the hard left seems to idolize.

    A quick review of Unión del Barrio’s political program is absolutely alarming – and basically the Mexican version of BLM…

    Core Beliefs & Goals:

    • Opposition to U.S. imperialism, capitalism, and settler colonialism
    • Advocacy for immigrant rights, against deportations and ICE raids
    • Promotion of community organizing in working-class Latino neighborhoods
    • Support for socialist and pan-Latino unity movements
    • Education and youth empowerment through political study and activism

    Action campaigns:

    • Organizes rallies and protests, particularly against ICE and border enforcement
    • Runs community education programs like Escuelita Aztlán
    • Collaborates with other radical left-wing organizations in the U.S. and Latin America
    • Frequently involved in May Day demonstrations, anti-police protests, and immigration activism

    When it comes to the Democratic Party’s on-demand rioters, it’s commies all the way down…

    LinkSwarm For June 6, 2025

    Friday, June 6th, 2025

    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.

  • Jim Geraghty offers some ideas for balancing the budget. Skipping over things that would break Trump campaign promises:

    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.

  • California’s Governor Hairgel is sucking up to the ChiComs.

    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.

  • Hey, remember that New York hospital shenanigans Dwight reported on? Well, “10 hospital executives from Nassau University Medical Center, including its CEO, have put in their resignations in response to what they called a “hostile takeover” by Gov. Kathy Hochul, according to sources in the hospital.” Got to think someone wants to rake off some graft there…
  • “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.
  • Charmless professional liar Karine Jean-Pierre leaves Democratic Party, writes book on Biden White House. Honestly, I found her so inconsequential that I didn’t even bother creating a tag for her before today.

  • Nose ring theory.” Also tattoo theory.
  • “Young man wins $20,000 from high school that suspended him for saying ‘illegal alien.'” No doubt BattleSwarm would give them a full-blown case of the vapors…
  • Speaking of lawsuits, The Babylon Bee is suing Hawaii over a law that makes it illegal to use satirical images to make fun of politicians. Like this one:

  • 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.)
  • Democratic governor of Arizona Katie Hobbs just vetoed a bill that would’ve prevented communist China from buying land next to military sites in her state.”

  • “The Florida state university system’s Board of Governors voted 10-6 to reject former University of Michigan president and DEI fanatic Santa J. Ono’s candidacy for the presidency of the University of Florida.”

    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.

  • Here’s a deep dive into Japan’s complex subsidy system for growing rice, and how it’s resulted in much smaller growth in rice harvests than competing countries that don’t have such subsidies.
  • 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).
  • Did you know that some company in China was building a full-scale Titanic replica mansion that’s now in bankruptcy?
  • Critical Drinker: Just when you think Disney has learned their lesson about the M-She-U, along comes Fantastic Four to prove they haven’t.
  • But wait, get ready for a white Black Panther.
  • “Disney laying off several hundred employees worldwide.” Funny what another string of bombs will do to you…

  • 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.’”
  • Did FOX 26 in Houston just eliminate their entire sports department?
  • “Republicans Unveil New Plan To Fix National Debt Sometime After The Return Of Christ.”
  • “Trump Aides Shocked To Find Biden’s Autopen Still Signing Bills In Storage Closet.”
  • “Federal Judge Blocks Deportation Of Terrorist’s Family, Orders Jews Lit Back On Fire.”
  • “Fashion Faux Pas As Two Texans Both Attend Wedding Wearing The Same Gun.”
  • “Hamas Agrees To Surrender If Europe Will Take Greta Thunberg Back.”
  • “USS Harvey Milk To Be Renamed ‘USS No Homo.'”
  • Put down the phone.

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

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





    Feds Sue Texas Over Illegal Alien Tuition

    Thursday, June 5th, 2025

    Usually it’s been Texas suing the federal government (especially under Biden) for breaking the law when it comes to illegal aliens, but yesterday saw a reversal when the federal government sued Texas for providing discounted in-state tuition to illegal aliens.

    Just two days after the Texas Legislature adjourned without passing legislation to end in-state tuition for illegal aliens, the Trump administration’s Department of Justice filed a federal lawsuit against the state of Texas.

    Now, the state has settled, ending the discounted tuition for illegals for now.

    Filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, the lawsuit challenges longstanding provisions of the Texas Education Code that allow certain illegal aliens to pay in-state tuition at public colleges and universities—rates that are significantly lower than those charged to U.S. citizens from other states.

    “Federal law prohibits illegal aliens from getting in-state tuition benefits that are denied to out-of-state U.S. citizens,” the DOJ complaint reads. “There are no exceptions. Yet the State of Texas has ignored this law for years.”

    The lawsuit cited a federal statute that bars states from offering postsecondary education benefits based on residency to illegal aliens unless the same benefit is available to all U.S. citizens regardless of residency. The DOJ argued Texas law is in direct violation of that statute and therefore preempted under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution.

    Since 2001, Texas has allowed illegal alien students to qualify for in-state tuition if they attended Texas high schools and resided in the state for a certain period. At the time, the policy received bipartisan support and was signed into law by then-Gov. Rick Perry.

    During his 2012 presidential campaign, Perry defended the law and infamously called critics of the policy “heartless” during a nationally televised debate.

    It was a stupid idea then. Government benefits should be reserved for American citizens. Giving them to illegal aliens is not only morally wrong, it encourages other aliens to break the law by coming here illegally.

    Senate Bill 1798 by State Sen. Mayes Middleton would have repealed that provision and barred state-funded financial aid from going to illegal aliens. Despite being placed on the Senate intent calendar, the bill was never brought up for a vote.

    Curious.

    Now, with the legislative session over and the bill dead, the Trump administration stepped in to accomplish what the Legislature didn’t.

    The DOJ asked the court to declare the Texas provisions unconstitutional and to permanently block the state from enforcing them.

    Hours after the lawsuit was announced, a settlement was announced, with the state agreeing not to offer discounted tuition to illegal aliens.

    “In-state tuition for illegal immigrants in Texas has ended. Texas is permanently enjoined from providing in-state tuition for illegal immigrants,” wrote Gov. Greg Abbott in a social media post.

    Funny how you can get things done when Republicans control both the state and national executive branches.

    Slowly but surely, common sense is returning to government, and official government preferences for illegal aliens are being stripped away.

    Faster, please.

    How Democrats Ruined Cities

    Saturday, May 31st, 2025

    This guy is pushing Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson “Abundance Agenda,” which aims to offer an alternative to the Democratic Party’s current downer social justice agenda. I’m not going to cover that much, since I don’t think the “Abundance Agenda” has a snowball’s chance in hell of being adopted by the Party’s current ideological core. But I am posting this for his (admittedly incomplete) critique of how Democrats grievously harmed the very people they’re claiming to be working for by destroying the quality of life in the cities they run.

  • “Democrats, plain and simple, need to change not only to win elections, but also to help the people they claim to support.”
  • “Working and middle-class American families are leaving places like California, New York and Illinois by the hundreds of thousands, often relocating to conservative regions.” Just like I talked about earlier this week.
  • “The top five cities with the largest homeless populations are all governed by Democrats.” That might have something to do with the fact that the Homeless Industrial Complex rakes graft off them.
  • “In the words of progressive journalist Ezra Klein: ‘You cannot claim to be the party of working families when the places you govern are places working families cannot afford to live.'” Sure you can! You just need to deploy the time-honored Democratic Party rhetorical device known as “lying your ass off.”
  • “Donald Trump partly won the 2024 election due to scarcity in the most essential aspects of people’s lives: affordable health care [What, ObamaCare didn’t make health care affordable? I’m shocked… -LP], energy, food, and most importantly housing.”
  • “For much of America, housing is simply far too expensive. In American cities, especially the liberal progressive ones, there’s an artificial scarcity of housing, and little to none of the available housing is affordable.”
  • “In 1970 Los Angeles, homes were 2.5 times the median family income, according to Redfin. But in 2022, LA house prices reached over nine times that of median family incomes, requiring families to earn over $220,000 to afford a home.”
  • “Home ownership is increasingly out of reach for the average worker, and high housing costs have led to financial instability for far too many Americans.”
  • “Housing supply is partly constrained by zoning restrictions…When more and more individuals and families compete for a near fixed supply of housing stock, prices typically rise making cities unaffordable for existing residents.” You mean like, say, importing millions of illegal aliens to compete with American citizens for limited housing stock?
  • “Many of America’s most prosperous cities, from New York and Boston to Seattle and San Francisco, heavily restrict the construction of new housing, especially the taller, denser buildings which could house more people, but that’s not the case in all of them.”
  • “Houston, Texas for example, has some of the most affordable housing and lowest homelessness rates in the country, despite its metro region holding over 7 million residents. This is in part because Houston has essentially no zoning. As a result, because it is extremely easy to build apartments and homes in much of the city, market forces can provide new housing at a variety of price points.”
  • “In liberal cities attempts, at building housing and infrastructure are often so expensive and inefficient that very little is actually built for low-income Americans. Take San Francisco, for example. The city’s numerous requirements for using public money add millions of dollars to the cost of construction, causing the typical publicly subsidized apartment to take six years to complete with a price tag of 600K per unit.” So affordable!
  • “San Francisco requires separate reviews from the city’s arts commission and Office of Disability, mandates electricity come from a city-owned utility company, and demands preferential treatment to small local contractors, meaning builders are discouraged from working with contractors who operate at scale.”
  • “Individually each requirement may seem well-meaning and progressive, but together they cause delays increase costs and ultimately limit the construction of housing for the poor, which clearly is not a progressive outcome.”
  • “Obstacles aren’t restricted to liberal cities like San Francisco these days building anything in America often requires jumping through a multitude of veto points, allowing interest groups, organizations and hyper local concerns to stop critical projects in their tracks.” Oh, that’s very “progressive” and by design, because every obstacle, every bureaucratic touch-point, provides opportunities for rent- and graft-seeking opportunities to grease the palms of progressives. Look at Austin’s “Reimagining Public Safety” and how just about every recommendation amounts to “take money away from the police and give it to us. This death by a thousand cuts doesn’t deserve the assumption of “good intentions.” It’s a racket that rakes off graft for the hard left.
  • At this point the author wanders off into more “good intentions, bad outcomes” examples, like environmentalism etc., but non-lefties no longer assume good intentions on the part of the Democratic Party.

    Things he fails to mention: How high crime in blue cities with Soros-back prosecutors ruin the quality of life for poor and middle class Americans, and (again) how the huge influx of illegal aliens raises housing prices and sucks up resources that used to benefit American citizens.

    Toward the end he states “Democratic doctrine often focuses so much on redistribution rather than growing the pie as a whole,” sounding rather like Jack Kemp or Newt Gingrich in 1994. And I’m pretty sure Democrats at the time either ignored them or called them Nazis.

    But the baseline truth is that the ideological core of the Democratic Party wants nothing to do with your white boy “abundance agenda” because it directly conflicts with their primary goals of increasing their own abundance of wealth and power, taking full control of the Democratic Party and using it to destroy Americas existing structures to rebuild them into their imaginary socialist utopia.

    You can’t make someone see the advantages of your “abundance agenda” if their entire likelihoods are predicated on not seeing it.

    LinkSwarm For May 30, 2025

    Friday, May 30th, 2025

    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.

    It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • Winning: “Supreme Court Lets Trump Strip 500,000 Migrants Of Legal Status.”

    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.

    Faster, please.

  • A look at part of the Soros network:

    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.

    NEO Philanthropy
    Latest Tax Filing(s): 2022
    Budget (2023): Revenue: $167,648,220
    Expenses: $128,270,774
    Assets: $199,912,880

    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.

    Much more at the link. (Hat tip: Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit.)

  • DeSantis Slams Republican Failure to Codify DOGE Cuts.”

    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.
  • Ruy Teixeira 2002: Hispanic immigration will make Democrats the natural majority party of America. Ruy Teixeira 2025: Moderate Hispanics hate the Democratic Party and just about everything it stands for.

    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.”
  • “‘A Huge Day For The Nuclear Industry‘: Trump Signs Orders To Fast Track SMR Development & Deployment.”

    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.

    Long overdue.

  • “US Tightens Screws: Jet Engine Parts, Semiconductor Tech Exports To China Halted.”

    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:

    (Hat tip: Instapundit.)

  • 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.
  • Trump to Harvard: Guess you won’t be needing these $100 million in federal contracts.
  • Somehow, MSNBC’s ratings have gotten even lower.

    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 MSNBC: “Jen Psaki, the former Biden mouthpiece-turned-MSNBC host, just watched her ratings plunge to humiliating new lows.”
  • 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…
  • Evidently all those “old artisan shutting down their hand-crafted leather bag” business ads on Facebook are all fake scams to sell you cheap Chinese vinyl knockoffs.
  • 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.

    This is the same airport having delays because they can’t hire enough flight controllers. Maybe they should spent less on art and more on actually operating the airport.

  • But don’t worry: It gets worse! They’re about to hand $2.4 million to an artists that likes to include “Fuck ICE” in her work:

    (Hat tip for both: John Zoch.)

  • “InventWood is about to mass-produce wood that’s stronger than steel.”

    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.”
  • “Man Clarifies That ‘Free Palestine’ Means Palestinians Should Be Free To Kill The Jews.”
  • “With Ban On International Students, Harvard Forced To Begin Accepting Students From Ohio.”
  • ChatGPT Announced As Harvard Valedictorian.”
  • American Students Unsure Who To Cheat Off After Trump Revokes Chinese Student Visas.”
  • “The Babylon Bee Would Like To Announce We Are Joining NPR In Suing The Government For Not Giving Us Millions Of Dollars.”
  • “California Unveils Massive New Escape Room Called ‘California.'”
  • “Nicolas Cage Launches New Streaming Service Nicolas Cage+ That Has Nothing But Nicolas Cage Movies.”
  • Finally, enjoy a Golden Retriever that looks like it’s playing Jean-Micheal Jarre’s laser harp:

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

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





    Democrats Want To Keep Repeat Offenders On The Streets

    Tuesday, May 27th, 2025

    There’s been lots of chatter that Democrats need to start cracking down on crime if they want to win back the middle class voters that flipped to Trump to 2024. If so, that news hasn’t been relayed to Democrats in the Texas legislature, who seem determined to keep repeat offenders out on bail at any cost.

    Measures aimed at keeping violent offenders behind bars are stalled in the Texas House after Democrats refused to provide the votes needed to meet the state’s constitutional threshold.

    Senate Joint Resolution 87—renamed “Jocelyn’s Law” in honor of 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray, who was brutally murdered in Houston last year—received support from a majority of House members but failed to reach the two-thirds vote required to place a constitutional amendment on the ballot.

    The resolution, carried by State Rep. Mitch Little (R–Lewisville), would have amended the Texas Constitution to require judges to deny bail to individuals accused of violent felonies if they had previously been convicted of or were out on bail for similar crimes at the time of the new offense.

    Little told members the measure is a targeted attempt to stop preventable tragedies caused by repeat violent offenders being released and allowed to reoffend.

    “You may be wondering how this is going to affect you and your districts,” said Little, citing cases across the state in which individuals released on bail for serious crimes went on to commit even worse acts, including murder, human trafficking, and the killing of a law enforcement officer. “It was all preventable. It was all preventable.”

    He also pointed to the 1987 U.S. Supreme Court decision in United States v. Salerno as legal precedent, emphasizing that bail is not a guaranteed right under the Constitution and that states may restrict it in the interest of public safety.

    The measure received 93 votes in favor and 32 against, falling short of the 100 votes needed in the 150-member House to send a constitutional amendment to voters. It will receive one more vote tomorrow.

    House Democrats largely opposed the measure, arguing it would lead to unjust pretrial incarceration and bypass due process.

    State Rep. Joe Moody (D–El Paso) spoke forcefully against the resolution, calling it “wrong” and “immoral.”

    “If you have a certain history, then someone accusing you gets you locked up awaiting trial automatically, maybe for years,” said Moody. “Members, that’s wrong, and it’s immoral, and we should reject it without a second thought.”

    And by “a certain history” he means you’re a convicted felon.

    SJR 87 had gained momentum in the wake of the seeming failure of SJR 1, a similar proposal that would have denied bail to illegal aliens accused of certain violent crimes. That resolution also bore the name “Jocelyn’s Law” but failed to clear the 100 vote threshold necessary to be put on the ballot.

    Because if there’s anything Democrats love more than repeat offenders, it’s illegal alien repeat offenders.

    The public at large is overwhelmingly in favor of denying bail to repeat violent offenders, but Democrats in the legislature, and their Soros-backed allies in blue city DA offices, think differently, and keeping repeat offenders out on the streets seems to be yet another hill (like transing your kids or backing radical Islamic terrorists in Gaza) they’re willing to die on…