A federal judge ruled on Wednesday that the registration and approval requirements for suppressors, short-barreled rifles, and short-barreled shotguns in the National Firearms Act (NFA) are unconstitutional.
In the case of Silencer Shop Foundation v. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), U.S. District Court Judge James Wesley Hendrix found that the requirements exceeded Congress’s constitutional authority once the NFA’s taxes on making or transferring those arms were eliminated. The taxes were reduced to zero last year.
The court found that the NFA, as enacted in 1934, passed constitutional muster as an act of Congress’s taxing power because the regulatory requirements—including registration, applications, ATF approval, fingerprinting, and related criminal penalties—aided the collection of NFA taxes.
This is in line with the 1937 U.S. Supreme Court case, Sonzinsky v. United States, in which the high court ruled the NFA is a legal exercise of Congress’s taxing authority. In that decision, the court found that the government could gather information on the owners of certain firearms and their accessories that were subject to the NFA’s $200 excise as part of the tax collection process.
Wednesday’s ruling in response to two consolidated cases—Jensen v. ATF, with Silencer Shop Foundation v. ATF—in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, held that once Congress eliminated the taxes for suppressors, the constitutional foundation for registration was eliminated as well.
“In sum, the Court concludes that the challenged NFA provisions exceed Congress’s Article I enumerated powers and are therefore unconstitutional,” Hendrix’s ruling states.
On July 4, 2025, President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” reduced the NFA’s excise tax on suppressors, short-barreled rifles, short-barreled shotguns, and a category labeled “any other weapon” from $200 to $0. However, the items were still required to be registered under the NFA.
Machine guns and destructive devices are still subject to the $200 tax and its requirements. Under Hendrix’s ruling, the category “any other weapons” is still subject to the requirements even though it is not taxed.
The court has issued a permanent injunction against enforcement of the requirements for suppressors, short-barreled rifles, and short-barreled shotguns, but leaves them in place for the “any other weapons” category.
Hendrix stayed his decision for seven days to allow the government to appeal to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
The ruling itself is pretty interesting, as Judge Hendrix made clear he was ruling only on the constitutional issues that provide the injunctive relief sought by the plaintiffs.
With the NFA’s taxes now eliminated, each set of plaintiffs alleges that the NFA’s regulatory provisions for untaxed firearms exceed Congress’s Article I enumerated powers. They also claim that those same NFA provisions infringe the Second Amendment right to “keep and bear Arms.”
The Court agrees on the first point and need not reach the second. By zeroing out the transfer and making taxes for most NFA firearms, Congress eliminated the constitutional basis for the regulations that formerly supported the taxes for those firearms. No longer can the challenged NFA provisions be justified—as they have been for nearly 90 years—under Congress’s taxing power. See Sonzinsky v. United States, 300 U.S. 506 (1937). And because Congress enacted the challenged NFA provisions under the Taxing Clause only, the NFA cannot be retroactively justified under another power that Congress never invoked, such as its authority to regulate interstate commerce. See U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cl. 3. Thus, the challenged NFA provisions exceed Congress’s enumerated powers.
That last part is fairly huge: Because Congress didn’t cite the Commerce Claus in setting up the NFA, it can’t defend it on that basis now that taxing provisions have been stripped away. Why, it’s almost as if congress can only pass laws based on enumerated constitutional powers.
Hendrix continues:
With that understanding, the Court accepts the plaintiffs’ invitation—offered at the motions hearing—to forgo adjudication of their Second Amendment claims. The Court does not decide constitutional questions unnecessarily, especially when the plaintiffs will receive no less relief than they would get for prevailing under the Second Amendment.
By not ruling on the Second Amendment claims, Hendrix does not foreclose additional challenges to the NFA on Second Amendment grounds.
Hendrix concludes his opening summary:
But to be clear: The challenged NFA provisions are unconstitutional. Congress’s choice to eliminate the transfer and making taxes matters, and the defendants cannot save the NFA’s regulatory scheme by referring to a power that Congress never invoked. Efforts to render the NFA constitutional must come from Congress, not this Court.
The downside for gun owners: Because congress did not eliminate the tax on machine guns and destructive devices, the lawsuit did not ask for relief on NFA regulations surrounding those still-taxed items. But I wonder if narrowing the justification of the NFA solely to taxation might not provide avenues for challenging those provisions of the act with no direct connection to that taxing purpose.
Here’s additional analysis from William Kirk of Washington Gun Law:
He covers most of the points above, but also goes into Hendrix’s discussion of “facial vs. as-applied” challenges to constitutionality. Not being a lawyer, this stuff is pretty murky to me (even murkier than “standing” or “ripeness”), so take a look at his discussion of that if you’re interested.
This ruling was a win for gun owners, though it is almost certain to be appealed, unless President Trump intervenes and orders the ATF not to appeal.
I also wonder if Hendrix’s ruling might provide the basis for a lawsuit to overturn the Hughes Amendment to the Firearm Owners’ Protection Act of 1986. That’s the act that bars the transfer of any machine guns not already registered with the ATF to civilians. If the NFA is purely a taxing act, then it could be argued that barring new guns from being sold does not further the purpose of generating revenue for the U.S. Treasury.
Two pro-gun attorneys do a deepish dive into legal carry dos and don’ts near schools, and its pretty useful stuff.
“Can you legally carry a firearm within 1,000 feet of a school? Does a Texas License to Carry protect you under the federal Gun-Free School Zones Act? Can you carry while walking your child to the entrance—or must you remain inside your vehicle? Armed Attorneys Emily Taylor and Richard Hayes take a deep dive into Texas school carry laws and the federal Gun-Free School Zones Act. They explain the major differences between Texas LTC holders and non-license holders, where Texas law prohibits firearms, and what ‘school premises’ actually means under the Texas Penal Code.”
Richard Hayes: “And the place to find this law just as our framework is Texas Penal Code 46.03.A1. This is our school school sponsored activities.” Let’s quote that:
Places Weapons Prohibited
a)
A person commits an offense if the person intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly possesses or goes with a firearm, location-restricted knife, club, or prohibited weapon listed in Section 46.05 (Prohibited Weapons)(a):
(1)
on the premises of a school or postsecondary educational institution, on any grounds or building owned by and under the control of a school or postsecondary educational institution and on which an activity sponsored by the school or institution is being conducted, or in a passenger transportation vehicle of a school or postsecondary educational institution, whether the school or postsecondary educational institution is public or private, unless:
(A)
pursuant to written regulations or written authorization of the school or institution; or
(B)
the person possesses or goes with a concealed handgun that the person is licensed to carry under Subchapter H (Definitions), Chapter 411 (Department of Public Safety of the State of Texas), Government Code, and no other weapon to which this section applies, on the premises of a postsecondary educational institution, on any grounds or building owned by and under the control of the institution and on which an activity sponsored by the institution is being conducted, or in a passenger transportation vehicle of the institution;
“Postsecondary educational institution” is college, and they’re not going to get into campus carry stuff here, though they do note the laws are different between public and private, since private can completely ban carry if they want to.
RH: “Today we’re talking about K through 12 schools. And I think the first thing to point out here, we’re really talking about three places. Premises of a school, school sponsored activities, and then passenger transportation vehicles.”
RH: “It’s really, really important to hone in on [that exception], written authorization from the institution or somebody— Of, let’s say, the school board, or the principal or the superintendent, they can write, hey, this person is allowed to carry here.”
Emily Taylor: “If you think you can get written authorization, get it personalized to you and keep a snapshot of it, you know, on your person, if not the a copy of the actual document itself, just in case, because you don’t want to get arrested for that felony and have to prove it later. Getting arrested for a felony sucks and is expensive and they’re not giving you your bond money.”
They’re also not getting into the armed teacher’s etc. programs.
“The other word I want us to hone in on here is premises. And we define it and it means something really specific. In this section, premises means a building or a portion of a building. The term does not include any public or private driveway, street, sidewalk, or walkway, parking lot, parking garage, or other parking area. So, we’re talking about the building.”
ET: “This is again something that is very misunderstood. Most gun owners in Texas don’t realize you can carry, I mean, frankly, open or concealed, although open carry in this situation is going to get you a lot of unwanted attention, but you can carry up to the doors of the school. you just cannot cross the threshold while you’re carrying unless you fall into an exception.”
ET: “Now, not only do most carriers not know that, but again, we have DA’s offices and local law enforcement who will threaten to arrest people for going through the school drop off and pickup line while armed. So, that’s not against the law, but lots of people read the statute and don’t bother to figure out what premises means.”
RH: “We do need to spend just a little bit of time on school sponsored activities. And there’s really three key components here that you need to be aware of. So it has to be in a location that’s owned and under the control of the school, and a school sponsored activity needs to be taking place in that location. So if it’s missing one of those prongs, okay, you have private property, school sponsored activity there. Hey, guess what? It doesn’t satisfy that requirement.”
But! RH: “Parking lot. Generally not going to be part of the premises. Not a big deal. But if a school sponsored activities taking place there, well now we have land, you know, a location that’s owned under the control of the school, an activity is taking place there, that falls into probably a prohibited place category. Yep. Band practice, field day, right. Something to that effect where it wouldn’t normally be prohibited because it’s not the premises, but all of a sudden you got a school sponsored activity. You’ve got to be prepared to disarm yourself in that situation.”
RH: “The other thing folks need to be aware of is the Federal Gun-Free School Zones Law passed out of the ’90s.”
RH: “Generally it’s illegal to possess or carry a firearm within 1,000 ft of the grounds of a school. So, we’re talking property line, not a building here, but I think the exceptions are kind of the key part here because, you know, there are some big exceptions.”
ET: “It does not apply to the possession of the firearm on private property, not part of the school grounds. So, if you live within 1,000 ft of the school, well, you’re accepted there.”
ET: “Another exception, and this is the one that covers, I think, most of us, is if you have a handgun license from the state in which the school sits. So, you’re in a Texas school zone, it’s got to be a Texas license. If you’re one of those people who likes to carry under a Florida non-resident license while you’re in Texas, doesn’t cover you there.”
RH: “If the firearm is unloaded and locked up. All right, so if you’re passing through the school zone, maybe this applies.”
RH: “And I think it’s worth noting here. Do we see people get prosecuted for violating federal gunfree school zone law by itself?”
ET: “No, I’ve never seen it.”
RH: “Usually it’s tied in connection with something else going om”
ET: “Drugs.”
RH: “And then if the school contracts with somebody, let’s say security guard or whatever. All right, that those folks are accepted. And then the last one is let’s say you’re on foot, not in a vehicle, and you’re passing through to get to hunting grounds. We have that as well.”
Breaking it down: ET: “License holders following the law. Non-license holders, not so much.”
RH: “So can a Texas license to carry holder carry within 1,000 ft of the grounds of a school?”
ET: “Yes, absolutely.”
RH: “The next one folks have is school pickup and drop off. Now there’s been a lot of controversy about this.”
ET: “The the best argument is still a failing argument, but the best argument the schools have when they try to prosecute you for such a thing is saying that the school pickup and drop off is a school sponsored activity. Uh, no.”
ET: “Where the school will try to get people is, let’s say you’re going through the line, you get out of your car to help your child into the car and they say, ‘Aha, I saw your gun for a second there. We’re going to call local law enforcement. We’re going to call the DA.”
ET: “We have we have negotiated those on the front end, and we have never ever seen someone— I think we saw we had one guy actually arrested and it was quickly dismissed. But for the most part, people call us, we start talking to them right on the front end and it’s like even the local DAs who were terrible will finally agree like, yeah, okay, I don’t think that was really a violation of law.”
Bigger school districts are the ones that seem to be trying to get lawful gun owners in trouble on technicalities.
ET: “I think we have one more sort of complicated issue that people ask about a lot which is what if my car is parked on the school grounds and is it different if I work at the school?”
RH: “The answer to that is no. And we actually have a very good law on this. So this is Texas Education Code 37.0815 and this is our transportation or storage of firearm and ammunition by license holder in a school parking area.”
ET: “This is for people who are employees of the school district. So long as they have a license to carry and so long as their vehicle is locked and inaccessible and the firearm is concealed in the vehicle, they cannot be fired for having a gun in the vehicle.”
RH: “And there’s three things to trigger this protection. The firearm has to be concealed. The vehicle has to be locked. And you have to have a license to carry.”
This seems like pretty useful stuff, as the State of Texas has provided lots of legal protections for LTC holders.
Chinese commie money is helping fund American commie wins, Rapey McNazi drops out, Ukrainian drones feast on Russian ships and hit Russia’s largest oil refinery (among others), Labour wants to install Big Brother into YouTube, and a victory for right to repair. Plus: Trebuchet!
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Non-link summary of the state of Iran war: Bombing currently paused, but the ceasefire is over and, oh yeah, supposedly Iran is plotting to assassinate
President Trump.
One of the most consequential groups behind the surge of radical leftist candidates in New York’s and Colorado’s congressional primaries was a super PAC formed earlier this year, calling itself American Priorities. After filing with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) in February of this year, the group pledged to spend more than $10 million during the 2026 midterms and declared that its goal, according to founder Hannah Fertig, was “to make sure that someone’s there to protect candidates who question these [pro-Israel] policies,” countering the influence of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
The group invested about $2 million in supporting Adam Hamawy, an Egyptian-born physician who has testified on behalf of Omar Abdel-Rahman, the blind sheikh convicted of seditious conspiracy for his part in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Thanks in part to the group’s generous contributions, Hamawy handily won the Democratic primary in New Jersey’s 12th District.
American Priorities then spent an additional $2 million across the river in New York, contributing to the successful campaigns of Brad Lander, who unseated the incumbent, Congressman Dan Goldman, in a campaign focused largely on vilifying Israel, and Darializa Avila Chevalier, who unseated Adriano Espaillat in New York’s 13th District while doubling down on a host of controversial statements, from using the American flag as a napkin to supporting Hamas in the immediate aftermath of Oct. 7, 2023. The super PAC also spent $150,000 on TV ads to help democratic socialist Melat Kiros win Colorado’s 1st District primary.
Who, then, is behind American Priorities?
Public reports reveal that the group’s two largest donors, by far, are Omer Hasan and Mohammad Waqas Javed, who were described in the press as former Silicon Valley executives who recently became involved in politics and about whom “little is publicly known.”
But Hasan and Javed, as a simple web search reveals, are both alums of the same company, the mobile advertising and data company AppLovin, founded in 2012.
The company’s path to becoming one of the world’s most highly valued ad tech companies is highly unorthodox. According to The Economist, for example, the company’s share price has climbed more than 30-fold between 2022 and 2025, an astonishing feat for any company but particularly for one that, for years, wallowed in obscurity in the murky waters of app-monetization solutions.
In 2018, six years after it was launched, the company introduced a mobile-gaming publishing arm. “The result,” explained ad tech analyst Rio Longacre, “was a self-reinforcing flywheel: more games meant more first-party data, which fueled better optimization, which in turn strengthened both the AdTech stack and the company’s foothold in the gaming ecosystem.” Which, naturally, also raised considerable concerns: AppLovin was now both running the advertising platform and selling inventory, which inspired many critics to strongly doubt the validity of the numbers it was reporting.
But the company’s growth—and the vehemence of its critics—grew far more exponentially in 2022, when it pivoted away from being primarily a gaming company to “an AdTech company powered by AI-driven performance optimization,” a giant de facto machine learning operation. The company’s many detractors, Longacre noted, now charged it with “money flowing between entities the public can’t fully scrutinize, creating the illusion of third-party demand when some of it may simply be internal recycling. They also highlight the quality of traffic inside the system, pointing to patterns that resemble click-farm-adjacent behavior—bursts of installs from low-value regions, strange retention curves, and activity that seems optimized more for algorithmic signaling than real user engagement.”
To assess the validity of these claims, it helps to know who AppLovin partners with. In 2016, the company agreed to be bought by Orient Hontai Capital, a state-backed Chinese private equity firm. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, an interagency government body dedicated to monitoring the national security implications of large-scale business transactions, objected, and the deal was subsequently amended.
The Chinese connection, however, was far from over: One of the company’s largest investors is one Hao Tang, who, according to regulatory filings in 2025, owned 3.2% of AppLovin, valued at roughly $4.6 billion. Other reports claim that Tang controls, through shell companies, at least 9.8% of Class A shares, making him the company’s largest individual shareholder beside AppLovin’s CEO, Adam Foroughi, who told Fox News in April, when AppLovin was trying to acquire TikTok’s non-Chinese assets, that he remains the largest shareholder.
Snip.
At the moment, $2 million of American Priorities’ war chest comes from Hasan and Javed (an additional $500,000 came from another former AppLovin team member, Tariq Afaq Ahmed, according to FEC filings). As attention on both the left and the right continues to focus on AIPAC and its alleged impact on American politics, it’s worth noticing that the most prominent PAC on the scene right now is funded primarily by two veterans of a shady tech colossus with strong links to China and repeated allegations of ties to the Communist Party in Beijing.
A new analysis from a Texas think tank found a correlation between district attorneys’ non-prosecution policies and increases in crime, but with few state options for addressing so-called “rogue” prosecutors, the group suggests that Texas lawmakers should consider reforms next year.
Ross Jackson, a senior policy analyst for Right on Crime at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, said he has been researching the issue since last fall.
“There are correlations that are particularly evident in Austin and Minneapolis and some other cities around the country and it’s more evident in cities and counties where there hasn’t historically been a huge crime rate like in Austin,” Jackson told The Texan.
According to Jackson’s report, Austin experienced one of the most dramatic surges in violent and property crimes in recent years, which saw the city’s homicide rate climb by over 60 percent between 2016 and 2024.
Travis County District Attorney Jose Garza, who was first elected in 2020, has been accused of dropping or reducing charges in hundreds of criminal cases, including one in which an appeals court had called for a new trial. Last year, Garza’s office reportedly failed to bring timely indictments for crimes that included violent felonies, leading to the dismissals of hundreds of cases.
Attempts to remove Garza through House Bill (HB) 17, a state law enacted in 2023, have failed, and he has ignored calls for his resignation over mishandled cases. Jackson noted that HB 17 is limited to removing district attorneys who officially adopt non-prosecution policies in conflict with state law, and does not apply to those who adopt informal policies or internal guidance.
Jackson noted that some proposed legislative remedies face high hurdles.
The policy solutions examined by Jackson include mechanisms to discipline or remove district attorneys, as well as avenues for prosecuting serious crimes when the local district attorney or a county prosecuting attorney fails to do so.
One possibility suggested by Jackson is creation of a new state commission to provide oversight and administer discipline. The model he suggested is based on the state’s former Prosecuting Attorneys Coordinating Council that operated between 1977 and 1983. While state lawmakers could create such a council through statute, Jackson noted that an amendment to the Texas Constitution would be needed to allow the council to remove district attorneys.
Constitutional amendments require the support of two thirds of both chambers of the Legislature, which usually requires bipartisan support, as well as approval by voters in a statewide election.
Jackson also noted that state lawmakers could give authority to the State Commission on Judicial Conduct to discipline rogue prosecutors, but giving it a removal mechanism would also likely require a constitutional amendment.
One possibility for prosecuting cases dropped by prosecutors would be to give that power to the Texas Office of the Attorney General (OAG). Under a 2021 Texas Criminal Court of Appeals opinion, the OAG may only prosecute cases referred by a local district attorney or county attorney.
“Unless the Court reverses their decision, giving the OAG that authority would definitely require a constitutional amendment,” said Jackson. “I think that would be the most difficult option legislatively, just given the partisan nature of that position. I don’t see many crossover voters on something like that.”
Other options include creating a state prosecutor or creating five new regional district attorneys, each anchored in one of Texas’ urban areas.
Jackson says that lawmakers appear to have the authority to create a state prosecutor or regional district attorneys through statute, but the regional approach may also require a constitutional amendment and may necessitate the creation of new courts — a more costly option for taxpayers.
Earlier this year, Gov. Greg Abbott cited Garza’s history as Travis County’s district attorney in his call for new legislation to create a statewide prosecutor and a mechanism for removing rogue prosecutors. Texas Sen. Mayes Middleton (R-Galveston), now the GOP nominee for state attorney general, has also voiced support for a statewide prosecutor.
In addition to Garza, Jackson’s report identified concerns over district attorney policies in both Bexar and Dallas counties. In Bexar County, District Attorney Joe Gonzales gave local law enforcement officers the option to issue tickets for certain “drug, theft, and traffic misdemeanors in lieu of jail time,” and Dallas County District Attorney John Creuzot announced that he would no longer pursue charges against “low-level, first-time drug offenders.” Cruezot rescinded a previous policy in 2022 of declining to prosecute low-level theft.
The FBI has arrested 113 active spies from foreign nations, agency director Kash Patel said on Wednesday.
The arrests of foreign spies “means our tech stays home and our defense secrets stay locked down,” a video shared by Patel on X said. “But the FBI didn’t stop there. They forced 62 removals of Chinese spies in 2026 alone.”
The video added that this has shattered the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) deep cover operations against the United States.
The House Committee on Homeland Security released a report in February 2025 detailing multiple cases of espionage conducted by the CCP in the United States since 2021.
The cases, spread across 20 U.S. states, involved the transmission of sensitive military information to Beijing, stealing trade secrets to benefit the regime, transnational repression schemes targeting Chinese dissidents, and obstruction of justice. Every 12 hours, the FBI opened new cases to counter Beijing’s intelligence operations, according to the report.
The report noted that the CCP’s theft of U.S. intellectual property amounts to roughly $4,000 to $6,000 annually per American family of four after paying taxes.
In one prominent case, a senior adviser to the State Department was arrested in October 2025, accused of taking thousands of top-secret documents and meeting with Chinese officials. The individual allegedly downloaded and saved documents related to U.S. fighter jets and weapons capabilities.
On Jan. 12 this year, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that a former U.S. Navy sailor was sentenced to 200 months in prison for spying for Beijing.
The person had access to sensitive national defense information about the amphibious assault ship U.S.S. Essex, such as its weapons, propulsion, and desalination systems. These ships are a “cornerstone of the U.S. Navy’s amphibious readiness and expeditionary strike capabilities,” according to the DOJ statement. The sailor sold critical information to a Chinese intelligence officer for $12,000.
More recently, on June 4, the DOJ announced that a U.S. citizen pleaded guilty to acting as an agent for China. The man, who lived in China, would travel to the United States to meet with individuals who could provide him, and ultimately the Chinese Ministry of State Security, with important information.
Finally: “Vance announces investigation into alleged H-1B visa fraud.”
Vice President JD Vance announced Wednesday that the Trump administration has opened an investigation into allegations of fraud within the H-1B visa program, which allows foreign workers to legally work in the United States on a temporary basis.
The visas allow U.S. companies to hire high-skilled foreign workers to serve in occupations such as healthcare, technology and education, while critics argued big businesses use the program to import cheap labor to replace Americans.
“Big corporations and fraudsters overseas are using this program to undercut the wages of American workers,” Vance said in a speech in Milwaukee. “If you are trying to take advantage of that visa program, you are not allowed into the United States.”
President Donald Trump tapped Vance as his “fraud czar” in early April. Since his appointment, he has overseen major fraud busts across the nation, including against allegedly fraudulent hospices in Los Angeles and other operations in Minneapolis and Maine.
Labor Department Inspector General Anthony D’Esposito said the administration is also investigating alleged fraud in the Permanent Labor Certification visa process, and that investigators have already begun to issue dozens of subpoenas in relation to the probe.
“This is another example where fraud is fueling violent crime,” D’Esposito told Fox Business. “Much of the visa and the human trafficking that we see when it comes to this foreign labor is tied to cartels, is tied to transnational gangs, and this is the work that we should be doing, not only to make America safe again, but to make America more affordable again.”
“Ukrainian Drones Hit Omsk Refinery! Russia’s Largest! Su-57’s Deployed in Defence!” As I’ve said before, if they can hit Omsk, they should target the Transiberian railway bridge over the Irtysh river.
Hours after USA Today published an interview between one of its journalists and Cuban President Castro’s grandson, Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, the communist-run island experienced an island-wide power grid collapse.
The electrical workers’ union said the entire power grid went offline and that officials were investigating the cause. Cuba’s energy ministry confirmed the blackout and said crews were working to restore service.
“A total disconnection of the National Electric Power System is occurring. The causes are being investigated,” the electrical workers’ union wrote on X.
And that was the first blackout. It just blacked out again today…
According to Transparency USA, Soros has already funneled over $1 million into the Texas Majority PAC. The federal American Bridge PAC, long aligned with Soros, has contributed $7.57 million to the Texas Majority PAC.
The Soros family has poured a staggering $103 million nationwide into the 2026 election cycle so far.
The Texas Majority PAC exists to turn Texas into a blue state by electing Democrats to statewide offices.
Snip.
Texas Gun Rights is warning that Texas Majority PAC-backed candidates, including James Talarico, Gina Hinojosa, Vikki Goodwin, Nathan Johnson, Sarah Eckhardt, Jon Rosenthal, and Clayton Tucker, support radical anti-gun policies such as red flag laws, raising the age to purchase guns, gun-registration schemes, and the outright banning and seizure of common semi-automatic firearms.
“Soros and his allies are not investing millions in Texas because they think this is a lost cause. They are doing it because they believe Texas can be flipped,” warned Texas Gun Rights President Chris McNutt.
“Abbott Appoints Comptroller Candidate Don Huffines to Fill Outgoing Hancock’s Unexpired Term.” Huffines ran against Abbott for the 2022 Republican gubernatorial nomination.
A federal appellate court has upheld an agreement between Texas and the Trump administration ending in-state tuition for illegal aliens in compliance with federal law.
The Texas Dream Act, enacted in 2001, formerly allowed qualifying illegal alien students to pay in-state tuition rates at public colleges and universities.
In June 2025, the U.S. Department of Justice sued the State of Texas, arguing that federal law preempted the Texas Dream Act.
According to the suit, federal law preempts any state rules that grant illegal aliens benefits not afforded to all U.S. citizens. The Texas Dream Act did this because U.S. citizens from outside the state were forced to pay higher rates than the qualifying aliens.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton ultimately agreed with the DOJ, settling the case.
Webb County Sheriff Martin Cuellar, the brother of Democrat U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, faces a state court hearing Thursday as proceedings move forward in an effort to remove him from office while he awaits trial on federal fraud and money laundering charges.
A docket control conference is set for 9 a.m. in the 49th District Court in the case seeking Cuellar’s removal under Chapter 87 of the Texas Local Government Code.
The removal petition was filed in May by former Laredo City Councilman Alfonso “Poncho” Casso, who alleges Cuellar committed official misconduct based on the conduct underlying a federal criminal indictment returned last year.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Cuellar conspired with former Webb County Sheriff’s Office Assistant Chief Ricardo Rodriguez and others to operate a private disinfecting business during the COVID-19 pandemic using sheriff’s office employees, equipment, and other county resources.
Federal prosecutors allege the business, Disinfect Pro Master, secured a $500,000 contract to disinfect schools in the United Independent School District while relying almost entirely on sheriff’s office personnel and supplies to perform the work.
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Texas House Speaker Dustin Burrows sent a letter this week to the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston (UTHealth Houston), University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB), and Texas Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC).
The letter refers to Senate Bill (SB) 2308, passed in the 89th Legislature, which created a state-sponsored consortium for the purpose of conducting research and clinical trials into ibogaine, a naturally occurring psychoactive compound. The drug is being studied for its potential benefit for those suffering from traumatic brain injury, post-traumatic stress disorder, addiction, and other mental health conditions.
However, as the letter affirms, no proposals set forth by pharmaceutical companies met the standards required for the state to move forward with clinical trials.
Patrick and Burrows commented on the lack of readiness to proceed: “This should not preclude the State of Texas from independently proceeding with this vital work through our university research partners as spelled out in the March 31 press release from both the House and Senate.”
The press release in reference announced Texas’ allocation of $50 million toward research into the drug.
American video-sharing platform YouTube told users in Britain that, under pressure from the left-wing Labour Party government, independent creators will likely see their content suppressed.
The British government has been accused of attempting to silence political opposition, with YouTube telling UK creators that proposed new rules would include a “prominence regime” that would force sites like YouTube to give a “privileged position” to the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, and other legacy media.
The notice said that artificially propping up establishment media would naturally result in independent media being downranked and obscured from view, as “pushing this group forward means pushing everyone else downward. Mandatory prioritisation of broadcasters would affect how your content reaches your audience, regardless of what your audience actually wants to see.”
“Mandating prominence for established media networks would push the UK’s diverse mix of independent journalists, educators, and digital-first businesses down the line,” YouTube added.
Snip.
The government is said to have told the site that legacy broadcasters had the “trust” of the state to provide accurate reporting, which YouTube noted implies that “digital-first voices are less credible, damaging the foundational trust that sustains the creator economy.”
Translation: Labour to suppress coverage of Muslim rape gangs and anything else that makes it look bad.
This comes despite the BBC recently facing significant scandals involving the accuracy of its reporting, including last year when it was forced to apologise to U.S. President Trump after a documentary produced by the public broadcaster deceptively spliced together different sections of his speech on January 6th 2021, to falsely give the impression that he had encouraged supporters to riot, when he did the exact opposite.
Just last month, the BBC was also forced to issue an apology to Brexit leader Nigel Farage after one of its presenters fabricated fictitious quotes from the Reform UK leader in the wake of the killing of handcuffed teen Henry Nowak.
Commenting on the notice from YouTube, Mr Farage said: “Look at this appalling state censorship. Labour now want to seize control of YouTube’s algorithm. They want YouTube to artificially boost the BBC and Channel 4’s content, and suffocate independent journalists and producers.
“The BBC has been biased to pro-mass migration, open borders, and Net Zero views these past few decades. It’s part of the reason we’re in a mess. The BBC’s own internal reports admit and document some of this bias.
“People have moved to X and YouTube in part as a response to it. And now, Labour want to control what they see there? Reform will scrap this heavy handed lunacy.”
Listen to this extraordinary exchange between [GB News Broadcaster] Camilla Tominey and Labour’s Health Secretary James Murray. It is genuinely jaw-dropping.
Camilla: “You’re quite pro-trans, aren’t you? Do you think a woman can have a penis? Because you did previously?”
Murray: “No, I don’t.”
Camilla: “So you’ve changed your mind?”
Murray: “Yes.”
Camilla: “Why?”
Murray stumbles. He says he’s been thinking about the issue over recent years and would not now say trans women are women.
The Labour Party is in many ways more loony than the Democrats. If tranny madness has broken there, maybe it’s finally receding globally.
Speaking of the UK, former Tory and current Reform MP Ann Widdecombe was murdered in her home. Police have a 26 year old man in custody.
“ICE Agent Fatally Shot Man During Houston Operation in Self-Defense. Federal officials say a Mexican national used his truck as a weapon during a Magnolia Park enforcement operation before an ICE agent shot him.” Magnolia Park is an old Houston neighborhood southeast of downtown along Buffalo Bayou.
The man has been identified as Lorenzo Salgado Araujo.
According to the Department of Homeland Security, ICE agents attempted to stop Salgado Araujo’s vehicle around 6:50 a.m. in the 6800 block of Canal Street. DHS said Salgado Araujo rammed an ICE vehicle, ignored multiple verbal commands and used his vehicle in an attempt to run over an agent, who then fired his weapon in self-defense. Three other people were detained during the stop.
Salgado Araujo suffered a gunshot wound to his abdomen, according to the Houston Fire Department, and was taken to Ben Taub Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Two separate federal investigations are now underway. The FBI’s Houston field office is investigating a possible assault on a federal officer, while the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General is reviewing the shooting itself.
Houston police said they have no role in the case and referred questions to federal authorities.
“Texas Stock Exchange Has Officially Begun Trading. TXSE officially opened its doors to begin trading on Monday.”
Based in Dallas, TXSE began its phased rollout in July. The firm’s launch comes as major financial institutions, including BlackRock and Citadel Securities, have invested over $120 million in the new exchange since 2024. The exchange gained federal approval last year and attracted investment from several other firms, bringing total investment to more than $275 million.
TXSE opened its doors at 8:30 a.m. on Monday morning to approved brokers, banks, and trading firms. For now, brokers are trading only test stocks. Thousands of symbols, such as TSLA (Tesla), will come online in July, with an announcement to precede it. That rollout will officially allow the public to trade stocks on the exchange.
TXSE officials also hope to have exchange-traded products, or ETPs, trading by the end of the third quarter. ETPs allow investors to gain exposure to a wide variety of investment products, such as oil or the S&P 500.
While all trading is primarily done through electronic mediums, exchange locations still matter because brokers predominantly invest in local businesses. TXSE has the ingredients for success, including a large number of Fortune 500 companies that have recently relocated to Texas and a rapidly growing financial district in Dallas.
Stockbrokers tend to make a fair bit of money, and Dallas will enjoy some second order economic benefits from having the exchange there.
At just 16 years old, Calla Walsh was celebrated by the New York Times as part of an “influential new force in Democratic politics” for her work on the campaigns of Senator Ed Markey (D., Mass) and Senator Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.)
But six years on, Walsh is making headlines again for a much different reason: She recently appeared in an Iranian state-media interview calling the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei the “greatest anti-imperialist leader” of her lifetime.
Walsh, now a 22-year-old full-time resident of Lebanon, has descended from a progressive wunderkind to a radical who has been placed on a suspicious persons watch list by the U.S. government for her “expansive dealings with the governments of Cuba and Iran … as well as a spiderweb of U.S.-designated terrorist groups,” according to the Free Press.
“He was a leader to all people of the world who struggle against imperialism, arrogance, against Zionism, against genocide,” Walsh said of Khamenei while speaking with Iran’s PressTV about her attendance at his funeral Saturday.
Snip.
At just 14, she knocked on doors in Cambridge to encourage residents to support a bill that would prohibit “gender-identity-based discrimination” in public places. One year later, she helped coordinate thousands of young protesters for an international “climate strike” at Boston’s City Hall. At 17, she served as one of the youngest delegates at the Democratic Socialist of America’s National Convention. That same year, the Boston Globe called her a “force in the world of climate activism.”
She volunteered for Warren’s 2020 presidential campaign and also helped Boston Mayor Michelle Wu’s campaign.
She received significant notoriety for her efforts in the “Markeyverse” in 2020, an online Gen Z–led movement credited with helping the incumbent senator secure a 2020 primary win over then–Representative Joe Kennedy III. “The Markeyverse carried out a devastating political maneuver, firmly fixing the idea of Senator Markey as a left-wing icon,” the Times reported.
She went on to hold several other roles in Democratic politics: She served as communications director for Massachusetts state house candidate Jordan Meehan, and she did digital-media work for Boston City Councilor Julia Mejia’s reelection campaign in 2021. She also worked as a regional organizer and strategist for Act on Mass, a progressive nonprofit.
But the candidates she was working to elect were falling short of her increasingly radical politics. Just two months after she helped to secure Markey’s reelection, she was already protesting outside his office, according to the Free Press. She partnered with CodePink and The People’s Forum to protest the senator’s support for a bill to increase U.S. defense spending in East Asia.
The makings of her radicalization were beginning to fall in place as early as 2021, when she was invited to Cuba at just 17 years old. She then visited the country four times between 2022 and 2024.
By the end of 2021, Walsh announced her exit from the Democratic Party and electoral politics. She explained that she’d been disappointed by Markey in the aftermath of his reelection win and that she’d learned that no party or candidate could spur the revolutionary change she wanted — it might be achieved only by “direct action, protest, and internationalist solidarity.”
Soon after, she posted a Me Too account of an inappropriate relationship she had with a 27-year-old campaign field director in Massachusetts when she was just 16. She and the older man had sexually explicit conversations during a yearlong relationship that included in-person meetings but did not involve sex.
“Most of the interactions I have with men and adults I work with in politics are tainted by my trauma and fears of being sexually exploited again,” she wrote.
In addition to her trips to Cuba, Walsh also notably appeared in Chinese state-media propaganda videos in 2022 to criticize then–House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for leading a congressional delegation to Taiwan. Walsh was involved, at least for a time, with CodePink and The People’s Forum which are led by Neville Roy Singham and his wife, Jodie Evans, who are both under investigation for their suspected ties to Chinese intelligence services.
Her trips to Cuba ultimately led to her introduction to Fergie Chambers, a Marxist organizer and millionaire heir to the Cox Communications empire. Walsh met Chambers, who is 20 years her senior, at a 2022 conference in Cuba. That meeting seemed to supercharge her extremism.
Democrat, liberal, progressive, social justice warrior, radical, extremist, socialist, communist, terrorist. It’s funny how, say, 40 years ago, these were distinct categories, but now it’s an ever tightening Venn diagram of extremism. What’s the line between a “progressive” and an “extremist”? The first time they assault a Jew?
We previously covered Walsh’s pro-Ayatollah policies here.
Important safety note for Windows users: Microsoft’s GDID can track you even if you use a VPN.
A victory for right to repair: “FTC chairman announces settlement with John Deere to let farmers fix their own equipment again.”
The Federal Trade Commission, along with five states, secured an important settlement in an antitrust lawsuit against farm equipment manufacturer Deere & Company that will ensure farmers can enjoy the right to repair their own John Deere tractors and farm equipment.
For the next decade, Deere will be required to give farmers and independent repair shops “the same equipment repair resources, including applicable software capabilities” as its stealerships – err, dealerships.
‘Today’s settlement enables farmers to do what they’ve done for generations — fix their own tractors and other farm equipment — without having to pay an authorized John Deere dealer to do it for them,’ said FTC Bureau of Competition Director Daniel Guarnera. ‘The settlement with Deere will help lower costs for American farmers. The FTC will continue fighting against anticompetitive restrictions on American consumers’ right to repair.’
Happy Independence Day Eve! We plan to celebrate America’s 250th Birthday tomorrow in the time-honored tradition: Blowing things up.
More Democrat welfare state fraud, dispatches from the Democrat Civil War, another very bad week for Russian logistics (and aircraft, and any Russians trying to buy fuel), Eurocrats want lowly peons to die of heatstroke rather than use the air conditioning enjoyed by their betters…
…a followup to the weird Plano ISD booster club story, plus Mexican Batman. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Finally: “DOJ Grand Jury Probes Neville Roy Singham’s Marxist NGO Empire.”
Fox News’ Asra Nomani reports that on Monday, U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton for the Southern District of New York, authorized by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, is examining whether Singham, NGOs he funded, or their leaders committed wire fraud, bank fraud, money laundering, or other financial crimes.
Prosecutors have issued subpoenas seeking bank records and other financial documents, according to Nomani’s sources.
Nomani’s team recently reported that Singham pumped $285 million through a Goldman Sachs donor-advised philanthropy fund and shell entities before it flowed into US nonprofits, while a broader review showed that $591 million flowed across five continents from 2017 through 2025.
More color from the report:
Of that money, Fox News Digital established a documented $278 million flowed directly from Singham into organizations that “sow discord” in the U.S., as House Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith put it earlier this year at a hearing a dynamics called “foreign malign influence.”
Singham, who resides in China, has a long track record of assisting far-left entities, such as Code Pink and the Party for Socialism and other socialist NGOs, that oppose U.S. interests and support U.S. adversaries.
According to investigative reports (e.g., New York Times, 2023), Singham has worked closely with pro-CCP propaganda networks targeting the US.
Any Democrat or NGO staffers who knowingly accepted communist Chinese money need to go to prison.
“RFK Jr. Says 1 Million Obamacare Enrollees Lacked Social Security Numbers. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said 1 million people were enrolled in Obamacare health plans without Social Security numbers, as the Trump administration pledged to intensify efforts to combat fraud in federal health care programs.” Was ObamaCare designed from the ground up to provide taxpayer-funded medical care for illegal aliens, or did Democrats just see the opportunity along the way?
Finally Redux: “Supreme Court: States Can Ban Trans Athletes From Girls’ Sports.”
The Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled that states can block biological transgender males from competing in girls’ sports. In a 6-3 ruling, the court gave an iron-clad answer to the question.
Writing for the majority in West Virginia v. B.P.J. (consolidated with Little v. Hecox), Justice Brett Kavanaugh held that neither Title IX nor the Equal Protection Clause requires schools to carve out an exception for transgender athletes who’ve undergone hormone therapy or never experienced male puberty. States can draw the line at biological sex, full stop – no judge-administered athlete-by-athlete fairness hearings required. The ruling reverses both the Fourth Circuit (which sided with West Virginia’s B.P.J.) and the Ninth Circuit (which sided with Idaho’s Lindsay Hecox), and lands squarely in the wake of last year’s Skrmetti decision, extending its “this is a sex classification, not a transgender classification” framework from medical care straight into the locker room.
The transsexual madness gripping the left deserves its own chapter in Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.
“DOJ Sues States Over Alleged Failure To Turn Over Food Stamp Data. The Trump administration has sued four states, accusing them of withholding crucial data on food stamp applicants.” The only surprise is that California is not among them.
Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania refused to turn over information to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) that would let federal officials identify fraud, Trump administration lawyers said in lawsuits filed on June 26 against the states.
Officials are asking judges to enter injunctions that would force state authorities to hand over the last five years of applications for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the food stamp program known as SNAP.
The USDA requested the SNAP data in 2025, citing an executive order from President Donald Trump that directed agencies to stop waste, fraud, and abuse, and many states complied with the request.
Data from those states showed that states had enrolled some 186,000 people in SNAP despite those people being deceased, among the discrepancies that added up to $3 billion in wasteful spending, the department said in a report.
We known Minnesota isn’t turning it over due to the massive fraud lining Democrat pockets, and the same is probably true in Pennsylvania and Michigan. Kentucky is pretty red, but Democrat Governor Andy Beshear must be doing his best to gear up the fraud there.
The Democratic Party has two main factions right now, which can conveniently be described as the Organized Crime Democrats, who view the government as primarily a vehicle to distribute resources and power to friends, allies, and clients who can be counted on to return their largesse with reliable votes, and the Bolsheviks, who want to do all those things as well, but whose overriding goal is the destruction of the United States and Western Civilization and replace it with Third World communism.
For decades, at least, the Organized Crime Democrats have dominated the party, but they have tolerated and even fostered the growth of the Bolsheviks with the mistaken belief that no group of clients can ever be more reliable than those who could not in a million years vote for the Republicans.
Snip.
The OCDs’ alliance with and fostering of the radical left has come back to bite them in the nether regions now. As their resources have become constrained, the Bolsheviks have become ever more powerful, and as is always the case, the revolutionaries despise their allies as much as their ideological opponents, and now feel ready to take them out.
And, so far, their putsch is working, and the OCDs are rightfully frightened.
I had previously reported on this civil war much earlier, but I used the terms “insane wing” and “corrupt wing.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
Here’s a follow-up to yesterday’s post on Russian full shortages. “4km Line for Fuel in Russia’s Zabaykalsky Krai Region: 28 Hour Wait!” That’s all the way out east near Mongolia.
A JOINT PROJECT BY the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel and the investigative website The Insider has uncovered the existence and inner workings of a previously unknown Russian intelligence and cover action unit. The unit’s formal name is Military Unit 75127, but it is known within Russia’s intelligence establishment as Center 795. The Russian government reportedly created the unit in December 2022—less than a year following the Kremlin’s full military invasion of Ukraine.
Snip.
Notably, unlike other special activities units in Russia’s intelligence arsenal, Center 795 does not appear to reside within the GRU. Instead, it appears to operate independently of military intelligence oversight and to report directly to General Valery Gerasimov, Chief of the Russian Armed Forces’ General Staff of and First Deputy Minister of Defense, or to one of his subordinate deputy defense ministers.
According to the investigative reports, the existence of Center 795 was revealed when one of its officers, Denis Alimov, used Google to translate a message sent to him by a Serbian operative living in the United States. This allowed the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation to use a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) warrant and access the Google Translate transcripts. Alimov was eventually arrested in Bogotá, Colombia, on February 24, 2026, after arriving there on a Turkish Airlines flight from Istanbul, Turkey. He is currently awaiting extradition to New York.
A Minnesota pardon board that includes Gov Tim Walz among its three members has issued a full pardon to a convicted Laotian child-molester, torpedoing Homeland Security’s effort to deport him. The 42-year-old convict, Tou Lue Vang, submitted a letter to the board saying he regretted what he did — and just like that, his criminal record is now clean as a whistle via unanimous decision.
“Governor Tim Walz’s decision to pardon an illegal alien convicted child rapist so he can remain in our country is disgusting,” said DHS spokeswoman Lauren Bis. “These are the criminal illegal aliens he and his Minnesota sanctuary politicians are protecting. Tou Lue Vang lost his legal status following his conviction for repeatedly sexually assaulting a 10-year-old girl.”
Find someone who loves you as much as Democrats love illegal alien child molesters…
The European Commission’s headquarters was forced to shut down its air-conditioning system on Friday due to the heat wave.
Staff working at the Berlaymont building received a text at midday, reading: ‘BERL — URGENT — Due to extreme weather conditions, forced shut down of air cooling system from floor 1 to 7 for the rest of the day.’
The 13-story building is home to Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, her 26 commissioners, and about 3,000 staff. Von der Leyen works on the 13th floor, and most of her commissioners’ offices are housed on floors eight or above.
Britons have been ordered to remove air conditioning from their homes – despite the country baking in up to 40C heat this week – under a fresh Net Zero crackdown.
Planning officials at councils have told residents to take down their cooling units over concerns about carbon dioxide emissions.
They say AC, despite the heat, should serve only as a ‘last resort’.
The U.S. Supreme Court declined to disturb the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling upholding a sweeping Texas election security law banning paid vote harvesting.
Senate Bill 1, passed in 2021, aimed to extensively reform election security and eliminate paid vote harvesting with increased criminal penalties for offenses.
Vote harvesting is the practice of collecting and returning completed ballots, which can be used as a cover for voter fraud and voter coercion. Paid harvesters are often intent on delivering results for a specific candidate or measure.
A source told Axios the DOJ started the investigation after a “whistleblower complaint” in Southern California.
Gallego’s problems began after numerous women came forward accusing his bestie, former Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA), of sexual misconduct.
In April, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) claimed, “There is a woman that allegedly is coming forward with attorneys, wants to go on-record about an incident that occurred between the two of them at the same time, and the event was sexual in nature, allegedly.
Last week, I wrote about how Politico scrutinized Gallego’s financial records and discovered he used leadership PAC campaign cash to fund luxury outings with his family since he launched his Senate campaign in 2023.
The Senate Ethics Committee dismissed an inquiry into those allegations against Gallego on Monday.
Attorney General Ken Paxton is challenging California’s Plastics Act, arguing it imposes burdensome regulations on companies doing business with California and will increase the cost of everyday American products.
The lawsuit, which Paxton joined alongside the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors and 16 additional attorneys general, calls the California law a “blatant and unprecedented attempt to impose its own policy preferences on the entire nation” and argues that it infringes on the sovereignty of other states.
Implemented May 1, “the Plastics Act” places new requirements on goods containing plastic shipped into and out of California, affecting both producers and consumers nationwide.
The act forces companies that sell products in the state to reduce single‑use plastic packaging, make it recyclable or compostable, and help pay for recycling and cleanup. It does this through strict reduction and recycling targets by 2032 and an extended producer responsibility program that shifts costs from taxpayers to packaging producers.
Paxton’s office expressed alarm that the regulations and fees will drive up prices for everyday goods and discriminate against out-of-state businesses.
“I am challenging California’s Plastics Act to protect businesses from unnecessary regulations and Texans from higher costs on the products they use every day,” said Paxton. “Texas has always been a place where businesses can thrive, and I will ensure it remains that way. I will not allow California lawmakers to harm Texas businesses.”
The lawsuit further challenges California’s decision to place the private organization Circular Action Alliance in charge of implementing the law.
According to the complaint, the CAA would collect roughly $500 million annually from businesses while operating with little public oversight or transparency.
So a left-wing, radical environmental NGO gets to benefit directly by running left-wing, radical environmental program. What are the odds?
The Supreme Court of Texas (SCOTX) determined on Friday that a woman who regretted her gender modification surgery did not file her claims too late to take her providers to court, in a case centered on the state’s statute of limitations in medical malpractice cases.
Soren Aldaco of Tarrant County sued her healthcare providers and counselors for fraud and negligence over their roles in obtaining gender modification procedures for her, including a double mastectomy at age 19 — a procedure she later came to regret.
After the Second Court of Appeals in Fort Worth rejected Aldaco’s appeal in November 2024 on the basis that her medical claim had expired, affirming the Tarrant County district court’s prior summary judgement, SCOTX accepted her petition for review and scheduled the case for oral arguments on February 11, 2026.
A SCOTX opinion was then issued by Justice James P. Sullivan four months later on Friday morning, reversing the finding that her claims had expired on the basis that the clock began ticking once the injury occurred, not when her therapist recommended her for the procedure.
Aldaco’s therapist, Barbara Rose Wood of the Three Oaks Counseling Group, wrote her a letter of recommendation for a double mastectomy after the Crane Clinic advised her that she would need one in order to move forward with the procedure.
Those who inflicted radical surgery on teenagers in the name of social justice deserve to lose every dime they own.
In response to lawmakers’ request for a pause on extra-high-voltage transmission lines, transmission service providers admitted reliance on wind and solar power, along with government intervention, is driving Permian Basin energy issues. This aligns with a third-party report that the lines are primarily built to support wind and solar, while local reliable generation alternatives were never fully examined.
Providers argued that public utility commissioners do not have the power to grant lawmakers’ request to pause the project. The next day, state senators announced they would hold a hearing on the proposed lines in late July.
This centers on ERCOT’s 765-kilovolt Strategic Transmission Expansion Plan (STEP), a key part of the Permian Basin Reliability Plan (PBRP). STEP proposes three transmission lines spanning over 1,200 miles to move power from East Texas into the natural-gas-rich Permian Basin, with routes crossing North Texas, Central Texas, and South Texas.
The three lines are split into five interconnected segments for Phase 1. Phase 2 would build 765-kV lines from Northeast-East Texas southward through Central and South Texas. This eastern portion would tie into the lines leading into the Permian Basin.
On June 24, in a joint filing, Transmission Service Providers (TSPs) Oncor, Lower Colorado River Authority Transmission Service Corporation, AEP Texas, and City of San Antonio-owned CPS Energy admitted that the risk to sustained electrical supply in West Texas is “greatest during low-wind, no-solar conditions, when the Permian Basin relies heavily on imports” from the lower voltage 345-kV network.
The TSPs’ filing was in response to a June 15 brief by more than 40 state lawmakers asking PUCT to pause the project. They filed it in support of pro-landowner American Stewards of Liberty’s motion to defer deciding the need for the first four segments.
The lawmakers cited Dr. Brent Bennett, who wrote the May 2026 study by the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF). Bennett warned that the “main effect of the 765-kV lines is to integrate more wind and solar into the ERCOT grid,” and that helping ERCOT “manage [such] a future system … to meet growing industrial demand” is the “primary rationale” for the lines.
This comes roughly five years after the 2021 winter blackouts. Two failures that energy specialist Jason Isaac said contributed to the problem are overreliance on “unreliable” wind and solar and market-distorting subsidies for wind and solar.
Bennett wrote that more transmission “does not ensure that enough new reliable generation will be built to meet demand and could even discourage such generation if the transmission provides wind and solar favorable market access.”
Bennett and ASL believe that building new dispatchable power generation, such as natural gas, in the Permian Basin was not fully examined as an alternative. The TSPs wrote they “do not dispute” that more such generation would benefit the Permian Basin.
When local taxpayers used cash, a tax office employee would put the cash in an envelope and record the payment as part of a “batch” of payments in the office’s tax collection software, Spindlemedia.
After reaching between $15,000 to $20,000, an employee would close that batch of payments in the software. At this point, Williams was responsible for depositing the cash from the envelopes into the district’s bank accounts.
Williams’ indictment alleges that she stole $996,174 in cash and disguised the theft by reversing payments recorded in certain batches, recorded those payments in new batches, and kept the new batches open for long periods in the Spindlemedia software.
Las Vegas cops busted a transgender gunman who allegedly planned a casino massacre using a huge cache of weapons.
Allison Howlett, 36, who was born a man but lives as a woman, was arrested Saturday on charges of making terroristic threats, assault with a deadly weapon, auto theft, gun theft and other offenses.
The wild story unfolded shortly after 9:30 a.m. Saturday when Howlett’s former spouse, who is female, called police to report Howlett had stolen her car and the vehicle held numerous firearms, Henderson Police Chief Reggie Rader said.
You know how the MSM always report “arsenals” that seem like fairly puny gun collections? That isn’t the case this time.
The officers were shocked to see that Howlett had been sitting on a handgun and had an MP5 submachine gun sitting on the back seat.
When cops searched Howlett’s car, they recovered 22 other guns and hundreds of rounds of ammunition.
Cops who searched the suspect’s home in Henderson found 30 more firearms, including automatic rifles, plus ammo, grenade launcher attachments and silencers.
Officers said Howlett made several threats going back years, a including a 2024 call where Howlett threatened a mass shooting.
Here’s a weird follow-up to a weird story. “Plano ISD Sued Over Arrests of High School Booster Club Mothers.”
Mothers from a Jasper High School choir booster club filed a lawsuit claiming Plano Independent School District (ISD) participated in civil conspiracy and had them falsely arrested.
The lawsuit, which names Laura Cervantes and the Jasper High School Choir Booster Club as the plaintiffs, describes the series of events that led to the filing.
Cervantes was elected as president of the booster club in 2019, and in June 2022 the club was filed as an incorporated nonprofit organization. The club utilized a Prosperity Bank account, and three directors, Cervantes, Krisinda Lingenfelter, and Maria King, assumed oversight.
Cervantes’ lawsuit states, “Neither Plano ISD, nor any of its employees, were members, officers, or employees of the organization” at that time.
The directors reportedly sought funding from Plano ISD for repairs in the theater, but allege that the district then flipped the script, asking the booster club to instead fund improvements. When they responded that repairs were not in the description of the club’s functions, Plano ISD claimed that the booster club was no longer acting in compliance with district guidelines and staged a coup, according to Cervantes.
The district disavowed the club and elected new leadership, despite the club operating as a legally separate entity from the district. The lawsuit claims that during that time, “Defendants continued to divert the Booster Club’s mail, kept it, opened it, and used its contents (namely bank statements).”
The lawsuit also claims that the newly elected booster club directors, along with the school’s fine arts director, subsequently went to Prosperity Bank in order to replace the original club directors as authorized signers on the account.
The lawsuit states, “These Defendants’ conduct likely constituted the crime of forgery under [the Texas Penal Code], because they intentionally presented documents intended to defraud the bank and harm the Booster Club by taking over its funds.”
Eventually, the bank notified the three moms that it would be closing the account, and they proceeded to take the check and deposit that money into another bank account at Vantage Bank in the name of the booster club. The check bounced.
In August 2024, a Plano Police Department detective executed a probable cause affidavit — which Cervantes claims was “based entirely off the knowingly false statements of each Defendant” — and obtained warrants for the arrests of Cervantes, Lingenfelter, and King “for the felony offense of theft over $2,500 but less than $30,000.”
They were booked into the Collin County Jail with their bonds set at $25,000 each.
A Collin County grand jury declined to indict the women “for any crime for want of probable cause, and the prosecution was terminated in Cervantes’s favor.”
Plano ISD released a statement about the legal drama, arguing that school-affiliated organizations, including booster clubs, “must follow established guidelines for financial accountability, annual audits and open communication with district leaders.”
The statement did not address the termination of the prosecution, or the district-led formation of the new booster club, but maintained, “Plano ISD did not file any suit against the former booster club- these proceedings were strictly between the current booster organization and the previously disbanded group.”
The statement by Plano ISD also detailed that they gave the $4,437.39 recovered from the old booster club’s account to the new club.
On May 27, the federal lawsuit was filed with Cervantes at the helm. Allegations cover 11 items, from false arrest and unreasonable seizure of property to violations of the rights to free association, free speech, petition.
The lawsuit alleges, “Plano Independent School District and its employees conspir[ed] with private citizens to assume control over a private non-profit organization, take control of its property and monies, and eventually, have the directors of that organization falsely arrested and publicly humiliated – all because the officers of a high school choir booster club would not bend the knee to an out-of-control public school district.”
It seems inexplicable that Plano ISD threw three booster club members in jail in order to steal their $4,437.39…
Babylon Bee: “We Asked AI To Simulate If The U.S. Had A Second Civil War.”
Here are the results:
“In the city, we’re used to being able to burn down a target and no one does anything. I guess it’s different in the suburbs, though.”
“One of the big issues is how we hate guns. But the right loves them. I guess none of us considered how big a disadvantage that would put us in a civil war.”
“Many of the losing combatants fled to the far north. Starvation was rampant among them from lack of access to DoorDash.”
More Medicare scammers captured, Trump wins multiple border security cases at the Supreme Court, the Supremes also drive a stake through a vampire, Ukraine hits a whole lot of bridges in occupied Crimea, dirty commies win Dem primaries in New York, and Tom Scott looks at some furry workers.
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Kash Patel announced that another suspect on the T White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud’s new Most Wanted Fraudsters list has been apprehended.
Patel posted on X Saturday that Herbert Leon Kimble, 60, was arrested in the Philippines thanks to the FBI and the Department of Justice (DOJ) task force led by Vice President JD Vance and Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.
“In just over two weeks, this is the second Most Wanted Fraudster arrested on the FBI’s list led by Vice President Vance and the White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud,” wrote the director. “Herbert Leon Kimbel was apprehended in the Philippines and is now back in the United States, on the run since 2024 after he allegedly orchestrated a $1.2 billion healthcare fraud conspiracy that targeted the Medicare system – particularly elderly victims – from 2014-2019.”
Kimble of Chicago, Illinois, is accused of targeting Medicare in a “large-scale healthcare fraud conspiracy” via “the improper marketing and distribution of durable medical equipment (DME), particularly orthopedic braces.”
According to the FBI, from 2014 to 2019, he operated a scheme in which victims — often elderly — would be unnecessarily prescribed orthopedic braces for pain relief by telemedicine providers via call centers in the Philippines.
DME suppliers affiliated with Kimble would then bill Medicare for reimbursement, resulting in over $1.2 billion in Medicare charges.
On April 4, 2019, in the District of South Carolina U.S. District Court, he pled guilty to conspiracy to defraud the United States, to make a false claim to a department of the United States, to commit mail fraud, to commit wire fraud, to commit healthcare fraud and to offer kickbacks and bribes in connection with the scheme.
He subsequently failed to appear for his sentencing hearing on August 27, 2024, resulting in the issuance of a federal arrest warrant that same day, charging him with failure to appear.
The FBI offered a reward of up to $150,000 for information leading to his arrest and conviction.
Kimble is the second individual on the most wanted list that has been apprehended.
Last week, Said Abdullahi Ereg, 47, was also arrested after he surrendered to authorities in connection with an alleged $4 million scheme involving the Federal Child Nutrition Program during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ereg ran a grocery and deli in Minneapolis sponsored by Feeding Our Future. He was initially issued a federal arrest warrant in January 2024 and was indicted in June 2024 by a federal grand jury for conspiracy involving wire fraud and money laundering.
The FBI’s Most Wanted Fraudsters list can be found here.
The Supreme Court this morning, in a pair of 6–3 opinions written by Justice Samuel Alito, gave the Trump administration’s border policies two more big wins. Both pared back humanitarian bases for admitting people into the country. Mullin v. Doe allowed the administration to revoke Temporary Protected Status (TPS) designations granted by the Biden administration — specifically for Haitians and Syrians, but the decision’s logic, which bars judicial review of revocations, would seem to compel the same outcome for Venezuelans. Mullin v. Al Otro Lado allowed immigration officials to prevent people from reaching the border to present asylum claims, because the law allows those claims to be presented by an alien who “arrives in the United States.”
Along with Tuesday’s decision in Blanche v. Lau, which strengthened the government’s power to exclude criminal aliens prior to their convictions, this was a clean sweep for immigration hard-liners. That may take some of the sting out of the Court’s pending decision in Trump v. Barbara, which could come as soon as Monday and is expected to be a loss for Donald Trump’s executive order limiting birthright citizenship.
In the backdrop of Mullin v. Doe are the divergent attitudes of the Biden and Trump administrations toward TPS, but the actual ground of battle, as our editorials have emphasized, is the language of the TPS statute and whether courts should take the written law seriously.
The TPS statute, enacted in 1990, allows the president to designate particular countries as unsafe because of war, natural disasters, epidemics, or other temporary crises and therefore give their nationals temporary protection to stay within this country. Before the statute’s enactment, presidents would sometimes grant such protection as a discretionary matter but with no statutory authorization and, in effect, no rules. In that sense, TPS is like the 1977 tariff statute at issue in Learning Resources: It was designed to provide rules of the road for the executive to follow in responding to emergencies. Prior to 1990, the judiciary had treated these executive decisions as exercises of discretion that courts could not review.
Of course, nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program. For some countries, TPS has been continually in force now for decades, making a mockery of the “temporary” designation. Somalia has had a TPS designation for 35 years, and Nicaragua, Honduras, and El Salvador have been so designated for more than 25 years. Haiti received a TPS designation because of an earthquake 16 years ago.
The statute is written to reflect broad executive discretion. The secretary of homeland security “may” grant TPS to nationals of a particular country based on a series of statutory criteria but is under no obligation to do so. Several of the criteria explicitly reference conditions “temporarily” existing in the foreign country. By contrast, the statute requires TPS to be terminated if the secretary finds that the home country “no longer continues to meet the conditions for designation.” The law thus contemplates ongoing review — the secretary is mandated to conduct a new review at least once every 18 months — and DHS violates the law if it extends TPS when the conditions justifying it no longer exist.
That may be particularly important when a foreign tyranny is suddenly toppled and replaced by a new government, as has happened recently in both Syria and Venezuela. Syria’s designation was applied in 2012 because of the civil war that sought to topple the Assad regime, which ended with Assad’s departure in late 2024. Once TPS is revoked, the affected foreign nationals are given 60 days before they must either leave the United States or secure some other legal basis to stay. The 60-day provision was designed by Congress to accommodate the reliance interests of foreigners here temporarily, who have been given work permits but who knew from the outset that shelter on American shores was explicitly temporary.
The Biden administration tried to lock in its successor on these inherently fluid, temporary foreign policy assessments by granting TPS extensions, in some cases just days before Joe Biden left office. For example, Alejandro Mayorkas, the impeached-but-not-tried secretary of homeland security, extended TPS for Venezuela on January 17, 2025. By contrast, the Trump administration has terminated every TPS it has reviewed, 13 of them so far. Trump has been quite open about this as a deliberate policy.
Can courts review TPS designations? Congress didn’t think so. We know that because Congress said so in terms that could hardly be more explicit: “There is no judicial review of any determination of the [secretary of homeland security] with respect to the designation, or termination or extension of a designation, of a foreign state.” The TPS litigation that has been ongoing since the outset of the second Trump term has dragged on this long because multiple lower court judges (including the Ninth Circuit) decided to judicially review what Congress said explicitly they may not judicially review. As Alito noted, judicial orders stopped Trump from ending TPS for Haiti, Syria, Venezuela, Burma, and Ethiopia and also prevented Trump from ending TPS for Haiti during his first term, in 2018.
Alito began with whether the law written by Congress means what it says, and his opinion is almost comical in attempting to take seriously the ridiculous contention that it doesn’t. “This text is clear, and its plain meaning is very broad,” he noted, and he explained why the word “determination” means decisions that the secretary is empowered and in some cases required to make.
“Supreme Court Drives a Stake Through Hawaii’s ‘Vampire Rule.'”
IAt stake was a Hawaiian statute, Act 52, that inverted the usual presumption that governs public access to generally accessible private property, but only where firearms are concerned. Prior to the passage of Act 52, Hawaiians who were able to obtain carry permits (which, before Bruen, was effectively impossible) were allowed to enter any generally accessible private space while carrying a firearm — unless the property owner explicitly signaled otherwise. After Act 52, Hawaiians with carry permits were allowed to enter any generally accessible private space while carrying a firearm only if the property had signaled that it was acceptable. (Gothic lore holds that vampires must be explicitly invited to enter one’s home before they may cross the threshold. Hence: “vampire rule.”)
As the Court correctly noted, this change — which was made directly after Bruen, and which shifted only the rules governing firearms, and no others besides — was explicitly designed to impede “the ability of law-abiding citizens to exercise the right Bruen recognized as they go about their daily lives.” That being so, it fell.
Writing for the majority, Justice Alito recorded that:
At common law, opening up private property to the general public implies a “license to all persons to enter,” meaning that “no person is a trespasser by merely entering therein” unless the property owner has given “due notice” that such a person is banned.
“Hawaii’s shift from the common-law rule,” Alito concluded, “unquestionably imposes a new and significant burden on the exercise of the right recognized in Bruen.”n a 6–3 vote, the Supreme Court has struck down Hawaii’s “vampire rule” as a violation of the Second and 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. This was the right result, and, once again, it is a disgrace that the decision was not unanimous.
During briefs and at oral argument, Hawaii offered up three main defenses of its law. The first defense was that it has historically had much stricter firearms laws than much of the rest of the United States. Alito dealt with that one quickly:
As the plurality explained in McDonald, the Second Amendment has the same meaning in all parts of the United States. 561 U. S., at 784–785. It cannot give way to “the spirit of Aloha” in Hawaii, contra, State v. Wilson, 154 Haw. 8, 27, 543 P. 3d 440, 459 (2024), any more than it can yield to the spirit of the Big Apple (Bruen) or the Windy City (McDonald).
Aloha, “spirit of Aloha.”
No, Hawaii, you can’t argue that “Historically, Hawaii has ignored the constitution” as an excuse to ignore it further…
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced the sentencing eight “North Texas Antifa Cell” operatives to a total of 450 years in prison on Tuesday for their various roles in the July 4, 2025 attack on the Prairieland U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Detention Center in Alvarado.
“Testimony and other evidence at trial established that the defendants were members of a North Texas Antifa Cell, part of a larger militant enterprise made up of networks of individuals and small groups primarily ascribing to an ideology that explicitly calls for the overthrow of the United States Government, law enforcement authorities, and the system of law,” a June 23 DOJ press release said.
On July 4 of last year, the Antifa members dressed in dark clothing with head and face coverings, forming a “black bloc” in order to conceal their identities and make them indistinguishable from each other. Evidence revealed they had 11 firearms, body armor, and 11 “military-grade first aid kits with tourniquets and other items to treat gunshot wounds to the scene of the attack.”
They began shooting fireworks and vandalizing vehicles and a guard shack at the property. Alvarado police officers responded to a 9-1-1 call about the attack. Ringleader Benjamin Song was heard on a bodycam recording yelling, “Get to the rifles!” — after which the group opened fire on the officer, hitting him in the neck.
Many of the Antifa members were arrested near the scene, but Song escaped and was not arrested until July 15.
The DOJ said this is the “first sentencing of defendants affiliated with Antifa following President Donald J. Trump’s executive order designating the group as a Domestic Terrorist Organization in September 2025.”
In March, nine of the Antifa members were convicted for “their roles in rioting, using weapons and explosives, providing material support to terrorists, obstruction, and the attempted murder of an Alvarado police officer.”
Of the nine, eight were sentenced on Tuesday, including Song, who received the harshest sentence of 100 years in prison for the attempted murder of the officer. Evidence from the trial showed that Song acquired and distributed firearms to the co-defendants and “recruited members at gun ranges and combat sessions he conducted, as well as from various ideologically aligned groups.”
Maricela Rueda was sentenced to 70 years; Cameron Arnold, Savanna Batten, Zachary Evetts, Bradford Morris, and Elizabeth Soto to 50 years each; and Daniel Rolando Sanchez-Estrada to 30 years.
Ines Soto was granted a continuance and will be sentenced on July 1, along with seven co-defendants who all pleaded guilty to one count of providing material support to terrorists: Seth Sikes, Nathan Baumann, Joy Gibson, Susan Kent, Rebecca Morgan, Lynette Sharp, and John Thomas.
Seven others who pleaded guilty to providing support to the terrorists will be sentenced on July 1.
Fauci, as NIAID director, directed millions in U.S. taxpayer funds (via Peter Daszak of EcoHealth Alliance and other entities) for gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses in Wuhan.
Fauci had close relationships with intelligence-community leaders and provided hand-picked NIAID-funded scientists as advisors, which was used to promote a natural-origin narrative and downplay the lab-leak theory. Fauci played a direct role, even meeting with the CIA to assist in a coverup.
Fauci LIED to Congress in 2024 when asked about his involvement in these schemes (there is a long trail of evidence proving this).
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence released declassified documents to support her claims, which can be found here.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said that signal repeaters on the territory of Belarus that had been helping Russian drones strike Ukraine ceased operating on 22 June….
“Based on the available information reported to me by the Commander-in-Chief [of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Oleksandr Syrskyi] and intelligence services, the relevant signal repeaters stopped operating on the territory of Belarus on 22 June. I don’t know yet whether they have been dismantled, to be honest. But we are working on this, and I am keeping a very close eye on the situation and receiving daily reports. It is a fact that the signal repeaters are not operating today.”
On 19 June, Zelenskyy issued an ultimatum to self-proclaimed Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko, giving him a week to dismantle the signal repeaters used to adjust Russian drone strikes on Ukrainian cities, or Ukraine would do it itself.
Old and busted: Russia puts heavy air defense around Putin’s vacation palace. The new hotness: Russia torn down the palace. Puzzling.
Things went from bad to worse for Democrats on Thursday afternoon after a judge in Virginia issued a preliminary injunction on the “assault firearms” and high-capacity magazine ban that was set to go into effect in the Commonwealth on July 1. The judge from Lancaster County, located in the Northern Neck of Virginia, ruled that the Virginia State Police (VSP) cannot enforce the bans through December 31, 2026 or until a final order is issued.
The lawsuit was brought against the superintendent of the VSP by the Virginia Citizens Defense League (VCDL) and Gun Owners of America (GOA), who took well-deserved victory laps on social media.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s endorsement proved influential in three key congressional primary races on Tuesday, as his favored progressive candidates prevailed over opponents more closely aligned with the Democratic establishment.
New York State Assemblywoman Claire Valdez and Harlem community organizer Darializa Avila Chevalier, both of whom were also backed by the Democratic Socialists of America, won races in New York’s seventh and 13th congressional districts, respectively. Meanwhile, former city comptroller Brad Lander, a progressive former DSA member, pulled off an impressive upset over incumbent Representative Dan Goldman in NY-10. Lander is a Jewish progressive who left the DSA in 2023 after it held a pro-Palestinian rally just one day after Hamas’s terror attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023.
Lander and Goldman, who is also a Jewish Democrat, both made their stances on the Israel-Hamas war a key part of their respective campaigns. Lander, who sits to the left of Goldman politically, had criticized his opponent for failing to take a tougher stance on Israel.
Avila Chevalier prevailed over incumbent Representative Adriano Espaillat despite her status as the most controversial of the three Mamdani-backed progressives. While Espaillat is the chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus “who has over the years built a political machine of his own in upper Manhattan and parts of the Bronx,” according to Politico, Avila Chevalier is a first-time candidate who was well known in Harlem for her pro-Palestinian activism but whose unearthed social media posts made her a political liability for the DSA. Those posts included messages blasting Democratic politicians, including one 2021 post in which she wrote “f*** Kamala Harris,” and others against an array of topics from the police to Israel and private property.
Mamdani, for his part, said he wasn’t aware of her past comments when he endorsed her, but he did not pull his endorsement nonetheless.
The mayor also endorsed Valdez in her bid to assume the seat left open by retiring Representative Nydia Velázquez. The outgoing Democratic congresswoman had endorsed Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso as her replacement. Mamdani and the DSA’s decision to endorse a different candidate led to a falling out with Velázquez, who had been an early supporter of Mamdani’s mayoral run.
In late May Chinese leaders travelled to the Zhoushan National Oil Reserve and discovered the nation’s strategic oil reserves weren’t there. For over a year, the disruption of oil supplies from Venezuela and Iran had left Chinese oil reserves reduced. Despite that, government documents indicated that China still had 1.2 billion tons of oil reserves. That’s equivalent to 8,756,117,022 barrels.
China’s strategic oil reserve, to the surprise of the government officials who went to verify the reserves in May, was instead composed of water, sludge, various debris and overflow from nearby sewer lines.
Because the Americans dominated global energy supplies, the Chinese oil reserve served as a major cushion to any disruptions to Chinese oil imports from the Persian Gulf, especially Iran whose main customer was China. Under America’s global energy stranglehold, Chinese crude oil stockpiles have reached the verge of collapse at the slightest exposure.
The current Chinese vulnerability stems from the American disruption of Venezuelan oil exports to China and more recently a similar situation with Iranian oil exports to China.
China’s strategic oil reserve was insurance against disruptions in Venezuelan and Iranian imports. With its oil reserves revealed as a sham, China finds itself in a desperate situation. What happened to Chinese oil? It was soon discovered that corrupt government officials and oil reserve personnel had sold the oil and pocketed the proceeds. The local buyers were often operators of small, locally owned refineries that turned the oil into commercial products that were sold throughout China. Most of these oil criminals then fled, often leaving China for sanctuary states that would welcome any affluent Chinese and their new wealth. The only winners were a few conniving Chinese and the Americans, who continued to dominate the global energy system.
Important tip: If you’re a Bexar County judge and you’re given an official YouTube channel to livestream your court proceedings, don’t use it for your book club.
“Woman who emptied Knicks trashcan on street — then stole it — is fired from JPMorgan Chase, was DEI exec.” Shocked face engaged. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
The Lock-Picking Lawyer: “I didn’t think it was possible, but somehow Master Lock has now tarnished its name even more with a brand new line of padlocks.” Evidently the Elite line isn’t.
Happy Juneteenth, the day we celebrate Republicans freeing the slaves!
This week: More Newsom graft, the Iran War maybe ends, he horrific extent of Muslim rape gang activity in the UK revealed, black rain in Moscow, two Supreme Court decisions (one Texas, one U.S.) with some interesting implications, and a famous cathedral is finally finished after a mere 144 years of construction.
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Another weird week for me, as I had to have over $700 in car repairs done (bad battery, 120,000 mile maintenance stuff, odds and ends, etc.), and dealing with a welcome (but time consuming) order for over 50 paperback books. So a lot of things got pushed aside while I was dealing with that stuff.
Stephen Green: “How Deep Are the Newsoms in It? THIS Deep.”
It seems impossible — or just too revolting — to keep up with the financial hanky-panky of California Gov. Gavin Newsom and First Partner (gag) Jennifer Siebel Newsom. But thanks to a couple of investigative reporters with stronger stomachs than I have, let’s see if I can’t put everything you need to know into one easily digestible column.
I love it when other people do my dirty work for me, so let’s get started.
“Today, my wife & I joined Donald Trump’s hit list,” Newsom practically boasted on Monday. “He has directed his Department of Justice to investigate us. They have not found a crime — they are simply trying to find one.”
Well, let’s see what Fox Business anchor Liz MacDonald and my old friend and Red State colleague Jen Van Laar have to say about that.
MacDonald said Tuesday that the DOJ probe “is about California Democrats’ modern-day machine politics,” which she described as a “feedback loop of Sacramento-corporate lobbyists-governor/wife nonprofit-behested nonprofit donations-lucrative state contracts-Sacramento.”
Don’t bother writing all this down — there won’t be a quiz at the end of today’s column. You’re welcome.
“The modern Sacramento machine trades corporate compliance and nonprofit funding/donations for policy access and state business,” MacDonald added, and then explained how that grift (allegedly!) worked for the Newsoms:
According to IRS Form 990 disclosures, her nonprofit frequently buys from Siebel Newsom’s for-profit film company—Girls Club Entertainment LLC—writer, producer and director services and the licensing and production rights for her documentaries. Then it sells the docs to the state and public schools.
IRS records show that her nonprofit has paid her Girls Club Entertainment LLC roughly $1.64 million for these production and licensing rights since 2012, which includes a steady annual contracting fee of $150,000 since 2018.
TL;DR: Siebel Newsom produced unwatchable propaganda videos for children, for which Democrat-dominated schools then paid her handsomely. Or as MacDonald summed it up, “Over the past decade, Siebel Newsom has collected over $3.7 million in combined personal salary and LLC payouts funded by the nonprofit.”
Then there are behested payments, which MacDonald explained are “a unique mechanism in California politics where an elected official asks a corporation, labor union, or wealthy individual to donate money to a specific charity, nonprofit, or government program.” Unlike campaign donations, there are no caps.
As governor, Newsom requested a record $226 million in behested payments in one year. “Hundreds of thousands of dollars went to the California Partners Project,” MacDonald wrote, “a nonprofit founded by his wife.”
“Many of the biggest donors were corporate giants (like health insurers and utility companies) actively bidding for lucrative state contracts or fighting state regulations.”
One hand washes the other with filthy lucre, if you’ll allow me to mix metaphors.
Which brings us to Jen Van Laar, and her hip-deep-in-the-muck wade through the Newsoms’ finances, going back years.
Way back in 2021, Jen asked, “Somebody Paid $3.7 Million Cash for CA Gov Newsom’s Estate – But Who?” But couldn’t come up with any satisfactory answers. That’s because the Newsoms alternately claimed that “the Newsoms’ cash was used to purchase the home but was done through an LLC managed by his first cousin,” or that “Newsoms obtained a loan… to purchase the home because the sale happened so quickly that they didn’t have time to obtain a mortgage.”
Then, California’s First Couple played similar LLC games, buying a second home for $9.1 million in ritzy Marin County. “Based on my examination of 15+ yrs of Newsom’s financial disclosures, tax returns, and real estate transactions,” Jenn explained in March, “they absolutely did not have $9.1M in cash.”
Clearly, somebody did.
The shenanigans were so egregious that — no matter what TDS nonsense Newsom’s social media team posts on X — the DOJ investigation began under the Biden administration. As I quipped on Instapundit this week, maybe Newsom needs to take a break from social media and lawyer up.
“U.S.-Iran MOU Language Released and Signed.” I haven’t read it yet, and a lot of people aren’t too happy with it. After I’ve had a chance to actually read it, I hope to have a far more extensive, informed write-up on it.
1) The number of raped and trafficked British girls is in the hundreds of thousands.
From the report:
The scale of the crimes committed is staggering. It has been previously established that, at the very least, 250,000 young white girls have been subjected to repeated rape, gang rape, trafficking, torture, pregnancy, forced Islamic conversion, and lifelong trauma. The true number is probably higher.
This number was reached by compiling reports from Rotherham and Telford over several decades, in addition to conversations and estimates from dozens of British cities, then looking at estimates of national distribution and underreporting (many women have never acknowledged that they were raped by these gangs).
Reviews that informed these estimates include the 2025 Baroness Casey National Audit on Group-Based Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse, as well as the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), a group established by the British government in 2015.
2) The attackers are overwhelmingly Muslim foreigners.
From the report:
In court records and official inquiries, around 87% of those convicted in these group-based child sexual exploitation (‘CSE’) cases bore distinctively Muslim names. The vast majority of men involved in these gangs were not convicted. Dr. Taj Hargey, an imam with the Oxford Islamic Congregation, believes the true proportion of gang members who are Muslims to be around 95%.
And:
Researcher Peter McLoughlin in Easy Meat (2016) compiled a comprehensive list of grooming gang convictions from 1997 to 2018 (with updates in subsequent analyses), drawing from published court outcomes. His examination of names indicated that approximately 87% of those convicted bore distinctively Muslim names, which was a figure echoed in related analyses far exceeding the Muslim proportion (around 6%) of the general population of Britain.
While the largest rape gangs were operated by Pakistani Muslims, “smaller groups from Somali, Iranian, Syrian, Turkish, and other Muslim origins were also involved.”
Snip.
The report goes on to say that these gangs were religiously motivated to carry out these rapes under the theological teaching of al-walā’ wa-l-barā’, which demands subjugation of the infidel, including sex slavery as a form of subjugation.
Muslim armies have used this teaching to justify rape across the world for 1,400 years.
Evidence for these numbers includes from a 2017 Quilliam Foundation analysis, Peter McLoughlin’s research, and “analysis of 264 convictions for group-based child sexual exploitation from 2005 – 2017.”
The report does not pull punches in its conclusion:
These figures indicate that the rape gangs are a specific ethnoreligious phenomenon, with Muslims – especially Pakistani Muslims – significantly overrepresented.
3) The problem is geographically widespread, affecting all corners of the nation.
From the report:
We found that the same unspeakable crimes occurred in at least 149 local authority districts – close to 40% of all such districts across the United Kingdom…
Here is a map showing where rape gangs have operated in the nation (these are only the known cases).
4) The rape gangs started more than 50 years ago.
From the report:
The independent chair of the Centre for Excellence for Children’s Care and Protection Alexis Jay has identified the 1970s as the decade when immigrant rape gangs first began tormenting the girls of Britain. However, the British Newspaper Archive reveals that the first recorded case of specifically Pakistani rape gangs dates back to 1955, when four Bradford-based Pakistanis were charged with raping a 15-year-old girl from Middlesbrough.
This was soon after former colonial subjects, from the subcontinent as much as the Caribbean, became eligible to enter the United Kingdom in non-trivial numbers under the British Nationality Act 1948. What began as singular and small-scale instances became systematic and industrial over time.
These horrific crimes have only escalated in recent decades, especially following Tony Blair’s 1997 victory and the start of orchestrated mass immigration. With greater numbers came greater opportunities for abuse. Perpetrators built organised networks that transported victims between towns and cities and passed girls between multiple adult men.
5) Authorities purposefully and willfully ignored the mass abuse.
From the report:
Police forces ignored repeated reports, criminalised victims instead of perpetrators, destroyed evidence, and allowed known rapists to walk free on bail. Social care services undermined protective parents, placed children in trafficking hubs inside children’s homes, closed cases despite clear indicators of exploitation, and retaliated against whistleblowers.
The NHS [the UK’s health service] recorded genital injuries, multiple sexually transmitted infections in children as young as 13, pregnancies caused by rape, and suicide attempts, yet discharged victims back to their abusers without safeguarding referrals or trauma care. Schools observed older men collecting girls at the gates, heard disclosures of rape on school premises, and responded by excluding victims rather than protecting them.
Taxi licensing authorities renewed permits for drivers who formed the logistical backbone of the networks and collapsed in the face of organised protests when basic safety measures were proposed.
The report specifically blames the Labour Party for these government failures.
Much more at the link, including “Whistleblowers were silenced and threatened with seizure of their assets and careers.”
A final example that should make your blood boil: “But the report describes one particular occasion in which a vulnerable young girl was returned by the authorities to a house where she was being sexually abused. According to the account, the police officer who brought her back reportedly told the men inside to ‘have fun with her.'” Plus this pick of the rapists Labour policy let into the country:
Nor is it limited to the UK. In France, they’re threatening to send a rape survivor to prisoner for daring to point out the rapes are being carried out by black and Muslim men:
The announcement of the European Parliament’s final vote on the Return Directive was met with a burst of jubilation in the chamber, where energetic cries of “Send them back” rang out, reflecting the MEPs’ enthusiasm at having succeeded in passing the first genuine measure to seriously restrict immigration at the European level. On the opposite side of the chamber, MEPs responded to these exclamations with vigorous—though minority—cries of “Shame on you.”
The choice of words is not insignificant; some even see it as a foreshadowing—still a fantasy at this stage—of remigration.
Through a number of key measures, the directive drastically changes the landscape for the management of illegal immigration. Previously, an obligation to leave the territory remained a national decision. From now on, thanks to the Return Regulation, these decisions may be converted into a ‘European Return Order’—an obligation to leave European territory.
The maximum detention period for irregular migrants is quadrupled, up to 24 months, with the possibility of a further six-month extension.
The Return Regulation lists a number of other measures that may be taken: body searches, property searches, the obligation to remain contactable during the procedure, the recording of biometric data, house arrest, and the obligation to report regularly… Finally, the Return Regulation establishes a framework for EU member states to sign agreements with third countries that agree to receive individuals subject to a return decision.
This outpouring of enthusiasm did not go down well with everyone. Fabienne Keller, a French Renaissance MEP, made a fool of herself in the European Parliament by denouncing the right-wing “celebratory evening” organised by a few MEPs on the terrace of one of the parliament’s buildings, following the vote on the Return Regulation for rejected illegal migrants—a measure which, Keller argued, “will send families with children to camps.” Her statement, in which she lambasted a “political drinking spree,” was met with boos and prompted a call to order from the chair on the grounds that no breach of conduct had taken place.
On the Left as well as in the centre, the prevailing mood was one of exaggeration and dramatisation. Abir Al-Sahlani, a left-wing MEP from the Renew group, said she had never felt “as unsafe in Parliament as she did after the vote.”
It is true that the MEPs’ symbolic reaction marks a real turning point in the mindset of the political class at the European level. For a long time, the EU has been a brake on the implementation of more selective migration policies. This remains the case on many issues, particularly asylum. But we are witnessing a major shift, one that is being openly acknowledged. From a political standpoint, as a result of this vote, the European Union can no longer be invoked as a convenient excuse for inaction that satisfies the imperatives of political correctness.
The man accused of coordinating a failed scheme to attack the UFC Freedom 250 event at the White House over the weekend is an illegal immigrant from Mexico who was granted Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) under the Obama administration, Department of Homeland Security officials said Thursday.
FBI agents arrested Abraham Hermosillo Alvarez in Omaha, Neb., on Sunday for his alleged connection with a plan to attack the recent UFC event on the south lawn of the White House, which was attended by numerous government officials and others. Alvarez is believed to be the ringleader of the group that planned the attack, according to officials, while four other co-conspirators were also arrested over the weekend in Ohio, Missouri, and California.
The FBI alleges Alvarez was responsible for organizing the thwarted attack, which involved a multi-part plan to target buildings near the event with explosive-laden drones in an attempt to force a mass evacuation that would send crowds toward a pre-staged sniper team. The would-be attackers then allegedly planned to storm the White House gate.
Alvarez, who operated under the name “Shepherd” online, allegedly “used a Signal chat to direct staging locations, sniper and drone positions, escape routes and communications protocols,” according to court documents. He instructed the others involved in the plot — police say as many as 23 people were involved in the chat planning the attack — to obtain explosive-capable drones, specifically instructing them to get their hands on “as many and as deadly as we can get.”
Now DHS says Alvarez, who is facing federal charges of conspiracy to commit murder and conspiracy to commit violence on White House grounds, entered the United States on a B2 visitor visa and failed to depart before it expired in December 2001. He was later granted DACA status by the Obama administration in 2014.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has lodged a detainer for Alvarez.
“This illegal alien from Mexico should never have been allowed in our country. He was the ringleader of a failed terror attack targeting UFC Freedom 250 at the White House,” acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis said in a statement. “He and his co-conspirators now face charges of conspiracy to commit murder and conspiracy to commit violence on White House grounds. He will face justice and swiftly be removed from our country.”
“Moscow Refinery Hit Again! With Oil Tank Toss (Lid Lifted on Fireball!)” But see the next item about that dramatic lid toss…
“Russia Destroyed Their OWN Oil Tank With Missile: Plus MORE Air Defence Failures in Moscow!” Russian air defense is like those scenes in Sleeper where a crew repeatedly sets up a gun, only to have it misfire every time…
U.S. Border Patrol and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agents busted a stash house used for human smuggling in El Paso, Texas, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) exclusively told The Epoch Times on Monday.
The joint investigation, which resulted in the arrests of 11 illegal immigrant adults and one unaccompanied child found in the house on May 27, highlights the need for strict enforcement efforts at the border to dissuade individuals from entering the country unlawfully through human smugglers, CBP officials said.
“This operation, in partnership with U.S. Border Patrol, reflects our mission to safeguard the homeland and uphold the integrity of our immigration system,” HSI El Paso Special Agent in Charge Ryan McRae said. “We remain committed to ensuring the safety and security of El Paso and beyond.”
Of the 12 illegal aliens arrested, 10 were from Mexico and two from Guatemala.
The 11 adults were processed and charged with violations of Title 8 of the U.S. Code, CBP said, which encompasses immigration offenses including unlawful entry, unlawful reentry, alien harboring or smuggling, and more.
The unaccompanied minor was “administratively processed,” CBP told The Epoch Times.
The Texas Supreme Court has ruled that state agencies cannot invoke sovereign immunity to block former landowners from reclaiming property taken through eminent domain and later deemed unnecessary for public use.
Snip.
In 2013, the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) sent an offer to Joyce Hutcherson, Rudolph Pusok, and Jimmie Pusok—the owners of 19502 Mueschke Road in Tomball—to purchase their property. TxDOT planned to construct a new road along the Grand Parkway (State Highway 99).
After receiving pushback from the landowners, the state filed an eminent domain lawsuit to acquire the property in 2014. The suit was dismissed when the owners ultimately agreed to sell at $1.05 per square foot.
Years later, TxDOT stated in an email that approximately 20,000 square feet of the subject property constituted “surplus land,” as the decision to reroute Mueschke Road made the land no longer necessary for public use. When the landowners—now represented by JRJ Pusok Holdings—sought to buy it back, TxDOT denied the request.
Pusok then sued both the State of Texas and Kyle Madsen—director of TxDOT’s Right of Way Division—in a Harris County civil court, claiming a right to repurchase under the Texas Property Code Chapter 21.
The code states: “A person from whom a real property interest is acquired by an entity through eminent domain for a public use … is entitled to repurchase the property as provided by this subchapter if … the property becomes unnecessary for the public use for which the property was acquired.”
The State argued that the property was purchased from a settlement—even though the process began with the threat of eminent domain—rather than a final judgment in an eminent domain proceeding. According to the State’s logic, “the repurchase statutes therefore do not apply.”
Pusok rejected this logic, asserting that “all that is required for a property to be acquired through eminent domain is a transfer of land in exchange for compensation.”
Another argument made by the State was that Pusok sought to recover only a portion of the property, while the repurchase statutes allegedly require any repurchase to cover the entire parcel.
Snip.
On Friday, Texas’ Supreme Court sided with Pusok, affirming that the State has “no immunity from Chapter 21 claims to repurchase condemned property no longer necessary for public use.”
“Repurchase claims derive from constitutional limits placed on the State’s eminent domain power,” the opinion continued. “Further, Chapter 21 permits the repurchase of a portion of condemned property no longer necessary for public use.”
The ruling is significant as it clarifies that State actors may not eminent domain a property then claim immunity to block repurchase attempts when the property goes unused and unneeded.
Correctly decided, especially since “sovereign immunity” was never intended as a “Get Out Of Any Statute Free” card.
An interesting case. “SCOTUS Sides With Texas Man Over Second Amendment Rights for Drug Users.”
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) has unanimously sided with a Texas man in ruling that the government cannot restrict gun rights for casual drug users.
The case involves a dual citizen of Pakistan and the United States, Ali Hemani. In 2019, Hemani, the subject of an FBI investigation that found he was connected to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), was stopped at the Texas border. He was not arrested at the time.
The FBI had additional information that not only was Hemani connected to a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization, but that he was dealing drugs.
In 2020, Hemani attended the funeral of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani after Soleimani’s assassination by the U.S. that year. Hemani’s mother was reportedly seen on Iranian television stating that she hoped her sons would follow in the footsteps of Soleimani and become martyrs themselves.
Over the next couple of years, his passport showed trips to Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Iran, and a July 2022 border search of Hemani upon return from Iran “found Defendant deleted all messaging applications and wiped communication data from his cellphone.”
Eventually, the FBI obtained a warrant to search the home he shared with his parents, at which time a handgun, cocaine, and marijuana were all discovered.
Hemani is clearly a Jihadi scumbag, but that’s not the focus of the decision.
Hemani was indicted by a grand jury, not for foreign terrorism charges, but under the federal statute that it is unlawful for a person addicted to or using a controlled substance to possess a firearm “in or affecting commerce.”
Hemani moved to dismiss the indictment, arguing that the statute violated his Second Amendment rights and conflicted with Second Amendment precedent. The U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with Hemani’s argument.
However, the government sought SCOTUS’ review of the lower court’s decision, and on Thursday, the high court announced its decision, delivered by Justice Neil Gorsuch.
Gorsuch stated, “Ali Hemani uses marijuana a few times a week. That fact alone, the government says, means he is automatically banned from possessing a firearm under federal law.”
“This case poses the question whether the government’s prosecution of Mr. Hemani is consistent with the Second Amendment.”
Gorsuch stated that the government’s argument, which attempted to draw a parallel between “present regulations and historical laws addressing habitual drunkards,” did not hold against Second Amendment violation claims by Hemani.
Other justices also rebutted the government’s comparison of chronic alcoholism to casual marijuana use by Hemani. Justice Samuel Alito wrote that “marijuana use today is like alcohol use at the founding. It is widespread and increasingly considered socially acceptable in many quarters.”
“And from a practical standpoint, law enforcement widely tolerates the use of marijuana.”
This is a case of “bad defendant, good decision.” If Second Amendment rights are “fundamental” and “deeply rooted” in American history, as per Heller and Bruen, then they can’t be tossed aside for misdemeanor offenses. Now I’m waiting for the Supremes to apply the originalist jurisprudence test of Bruen to interpretation of the commerce clause…
Public school closures are increasing across Texas as districts face historic enrollment declines and mounting financial pressure.
Despite Texas’ continued population growth, public schools lost 76,000 students in the past school year—the first nonpandemic decline in nearly four decades. Districts across the state are consolidating and shuttering campuses in response to the decline, setting the stage for major structural changes to Texas’ education infrastructure.
“There’s a lot of emotions and history tied to these schools,” said Monica Ryan, board president of Judson ISD, which voted to close four campuses amid a budget shortfall. Ryan is one of many district officials across the state citing enrollment declines and budget pressures as reasons for the closures.
The closures are widespread. Fort Worth ISD plans to close 18 campuses over the next four years, while Houston ISD will close 12 next year and Austin ISD 10. Arlington, McKinney, Aldine, and many other districts are pursuing similar plans.
In a May 2026 report, Texas 2036 pointed to parents increasingly choosing private or homeschooling options as a big reason for the decline. As families move away from traditional public schools, districts are shifting budgets and long-term planning.
“Parents are paying attention to the weekly barrage of failures across the education system,” Mandy Drogin of the Texas Public Policy Foundation told Texas Scorecard. She pointed to schools’ failures to adequately serve students, especially those with special needs, to shield classrooms from political agendas, and to protect students from predators.
Lower birth rates have further accelerated enrollment losses. Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath told lawmakers, “a lot of this is a decline in birth rates that has happened that is working its way through the system as students age up.”
While elementary schools absorbed the majority of the losses, the empty desks are expected to ripple upward through higher grades.
School choice programs could also affect future trends.
Beginning next year, the Texas Education Freedom Accounts program (TEFA) created through Senate Bill 2 will provide $1 billion in education savings accounts for eligible families seeking alternatives to public schools. Around 102,000 families have been approved, though it remains to be seen how many will use the funds.
Strangely, given that it’s Texas Scorecard, no mention is given to the deportation and self-deportation of illegal aliens that were previously overloading the system.
A national trade association for higher education administrators held a conference last week in downtown Austin that demonstrates the continued presence of diversity, equity, and inclusion ideology in higher education.
Texas Scorecard was present at the conference, which highlighted a series of less politically charged terms that expressed similar goals to DEI.
The National Association of Student Personnel Administrators (NASPA) describes itself as “the leading association for the advancement, health, and sustainability of the student affairs profession.”
The organization has a membership of over 15,000 professionals at 2,100 institutions across the globe.
While the conference was not exclusively dedicated to DEI, many panel discussions across the three-day event explicitly discussed DEI themes. Examples include:
Servingness and Beyond: An Equity Minded Leadership Playbook for Institutional Transformation.
First Gen Latinas Leading First-Gen Strategy.
Black First Gen Collective.
Operational Equity: Creating STEM Circles of Belonging.
Building a Neuro-Inclusive Campus.
Eternal vigilance…
TPPF: “Why Can’t We Get Rid of Drag Queen Story Hour?”
Americans have pushed back. Many, even on the left, believe that a big factor in President Donald Trump’s re-election is because he is for “us,” and his opponent, Kamala Harris, was for “they/them.”
Polling consistently shows that most Americans oppose allowing biological males to compete in women’s sports and support maintaining sex-specific spaces, such as locker rooms and restrooms for women.
Pride celebrations in many cities can’t find sponsors anymore as corporations reconsider whether it’s worth alienating customers to add their brand to a “pride” event.
Americans delivered a resounding “no thanks” to Bud Light after it featured Dylan Mulvaney, a man pretending to be a woman, in its advertising. Customers also turned their back on Target after it marketed a line of cross-dressing clothing.
So why has there been so little progress in eliminating drag shows for children, most commonly manifested in what has become known as Drag Queen Story Hours?
Texas has spent several legislative sessions attempting ban drag shows that target kids. Senate Bill 12, which passed in 2023, prohibited sexually oriented performances in the presence of minors and on public property. Texas has gotten leave to enforce the law, but court challenges continue.
Some educational leaders, including Texas public school librarians, believe it is important that children see drag shows. They insist drag queen performances are part of the mainstream, so they belong in public schools.
Unspoken by TPPF: Because the leftwing groups pushing it want to destroy the nuclear family because it represents a separate power center apart from the all-powerful stateand they view it as a celebration of their power in the culture wars.
The TDCJ administration emphasized that impartiality is a non-negotiable requirement for state parole employees. A department spokeswoman released an official statement defining the agency’s position.
“These statements are incompatible with TDCJ policy and values. They demonstrate bias and a lack of the impartiality essential to the fair administration of justice in Texas. Discriminatory or inflammatory conduct that erodes public confidence in the criminal justice system will not be tolerated,” the spokeswoman added.
Obama the Deadbeat. “Obama Presidential Center subcontractors claim they’re owed millions and facing financial ruin ahead of grand opening.”
Several [contractors] also described what they viewed as a wall of silence surrounding the project, with some declining to speak publicly or requesting anonymity because of confidentiality agreements or fears of professional retaliation.
The allegations emerge days after a Fox News Digital investigation reported that the Obama Foundation’s reserve fund — originally promoted as a $470 million financial safeguard intended to help protect taxpayers if the project encountered financial trouble — remains funded at roughly $1 million.
Standing outside the center on a gloomy Friday afternoon, Owen flipped through spreadsheets and financial records that he said documented millions of dollars in losses tied to the project.
Owen said the project stretched on for years longer than anticipated, forcing his company to absorb millions of dollars in labor and overhead costs as work demands changed and expanded.
He said the losses have drained the company’s reserves, created uncertainty for employees and could ultimately force layoffs.
Debts are for the little people…
Nick Freitas doesn’t think China can take Taiwan. It was looking pretty difficult before Russia invaded Ukraine, and the recent leaps and bounds in development of military drones make it look all but impossible.
Missed this last week: After 144 years, Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia cathedral, designed by Antonio Gaudi, was finally completed.
Joshua Baer, godfather of Austin’s startup scene, dies in plane crash. A dramatic video shows bystanders rushing to the plane with tools and implements of destruction to extract the other passengers.
Everyone else survived.
Rick Beato says he was right about AI. He also mentions Flock AI cameras mysteriously popping up everywhere. Maybe he and Louis Rossmann should compare notes…
The bright side of the Google-pocalypse: “What’s left of Vox Media has been sold (likely on the cheap) to Penske Media, and this is after Buzzfeed imploded and MSNBC got spun off from Comcast because it was such a failure.”
Nurse Bloomberg is back! The failed presidential candidate with irrational hatred for mere citizens living in ways that defy his wishes has now set his sights on inserting Big Brother into every 3D printer because they might be able to produce gun parts.
“It’s very important that you understand that you’re not going up against the grassroots movement. You’re going up against one individual, in my opinion, that is responsible for 99% of this that is a control freak and likes to stick his dick where it doesn’t belong.”
“The laws that I’m talking about are these laws in New York State.”
“‘No person, firm, partnership, association, or corporation shall sell or deliver any three-dimensional printer in the state of New York unless such printer is equipped with blocking technology that is going to be able to tell if you’re printing a firearm or a firearm part.’ And the definition of 3D printer is so wide. Any machine capable of rendering a three-dimensional object from a digital design file using additive or subtractive manufacturing. This means that dental devices, construction devices, food devices, jewelry devices, all different types of CNC mills are going to be covered under this and they would have to have the spyware installed.”
“This is fundamentally based on a false premise because every single 3D printed firearm tied to a killing has been a hybrid, a plastic frame bolted to metal barrels and slides that are bought online. These are not fully 3D printed firearms. In order for a gun to actually consistently shoot well, you have to have all these different metal parts.”
One big problem is a lot of non-gun parts look like gun parts. “This is a Magbolt pistol grip. And this is the grip to a cordless drill.”
“If you are going to try and create something that can actually detect all these things, you’re going to end up with a bunch of false positives.” Plus you can add extensions to the printed part that are easy to cut off.
“This bill is either going to a do nothing or be even worse, it’s going to do a lot of damage and keep you from being able to print a lot of normal things because it is going to constantly be flagging shit that it should not be flagging.”
“Above all, the reason this bill is horrible is you have to think about what blocking technology is. Blocking technology means it’s going to stop me from doing something. The 3D printing ecosystem is fundamentally created with open-source software. Open source software is software that I can see the code to. And if I can see the code to it, I can edit it and add features or remove features at will.”
Section on open source software and corporate enshitification snipped.
“This isn’t gun control… This is manufacturing control.”
“I’m going to make the case that the person who’s behind all of this is a multi-billionaire that has a two decade long career of having to have dictatorial, top-down control of everything in his life.”
“The new laws that put a firearm scanner inside your 3D printer are not a grassroots safety movement. They’re the work of one billionaire’s organization, Every Town for Gun Safety, founded and funded by Michael Bloomberg, and they fit a documented pattern of Michael Bloomberg dictating how everyone else should live and then spending money to enforce it.”
History of Everytown snipped. It’s pure AstroTurf.
“It’s very important to to ensure that the message that gets out there is not that putting spyware in every single part of the manufacturing chain in the United States, including 3D printers, is a popular idea among average Americans. It is a popular idea among one control freak billionaire who has enough money to make it seem like it is a popular idea when it is not.”
“The blocking bills in New York, Washington, and California share identical defined terms. The same firearms blueprint detection algorithm and the same STL/CAD and geometric code clause appear in each text.”
Section on NYC stop-and-frisk policies under Bloomberg snipped.
“Another example was the soda ban. There was a sugary drinks portion cap rule. A 16 fluid ounce cap on cup and a container size for sugary drinks at restaurants, theaters, and stadiums. This man wanted to control how much soda you drank. If you were going to drink more than 16 ounces of soda, he had a problem with that.”
“This man is obsessed with telling other people what to do.”
Then there was Bloomberg’s initiative to put infant formula under lock and key.
Rossmann goes over Bloomberg’s control of Everytown long past the point of convincing, but I want to excerpt this passage to capture the names of the Bloomberg toadies involved.
John Feinblatt is the president of Everytown Entities. Everytown’s own release is that Feinblatt previously served as chief policy adviser to New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and leads former Michael Mayor Bloomberg’s National Coalition on Gun Violence Prevention. The board is stacked with Bloomberg administration and Bloomberg LP alumni. The action fund chairperson, Howard Wolfson, runs Bloomberg Super PAC and leads education at Bloomberg Philanthropies. Other directors carry Bloomberg administration roles. Dennis Walcott, his school’s chancellor and a deputy mayor, and Fatima Shama, his commissioner of immigrant affairs, both sit on the Everytown board. The books of the organization run through Geller & Company, the same firm that served as Bloomberg LP’s CFO operation. Its founder was Bloomberg LP CFO and sat on its board. The action fund 990 names Geller & Company LLC as the firm that prepared its return. Geller & Company was Everytown’s highest paid contractor in the year of 2024 at $4.5 million.
“Bloomberg thinks that he knows how you should live. He has decided how you should live. He has decided what you should drink. He has decided whether or not you should be allowed to walk down the street without being bothered. He has decided whether or not you should or should not breast-feed your kid. Michael Bloomberg believes that he has control over your breasts if you are a woman who is giving birth. And if you have a health problem that does not allow you to be able to breastfeed like other mothers can, he doesn’t give a shit. He thinks it should still be more difficult. There should be more friction in the process of being able to provide nutrition to your child just to try and get you to conform to his sick, fucked-up worldview where he controls everything.”
“How about we not allow a multi-billionaire to spend all of his money to put spyware inside of every piece of manufacturing equipment in the United States just to make him feel better?”
“The only way that freedom will be preserved is if people watching this video realize that this is a lot more than just one or two shitty lawmakers. This is a serial control freak that has a fuck-ton of money to spend. And if you guys don’t got up off your ass and do something about it, he’s going to win. Don’t let him win. Call and email your legislator today. Show up to their office. Let them know that you don’t want a billionaire to buy the manufacturing supply chain so that they can insert closed source spyware into it. Fuck that.”
“If you don’t want your 3D printers into the future to be run off of closed source software, where the state gets to control what you print and the manufacturer gets to control whether or not you’re able to even use it without paying them a subscription in the future if they feel like it, contact your legislator and let them know that you don’t want one fucking billionaire to be able to control the entire manufacturing supply chain in the United States of America.”
“And if you’re watching this, Michael Bloomberg, fuck you.”
Rossmann isn’t shy about saying what he really thinks.
American was founded as a nation where citizens were free to do whatever they wanted as long as they was no existing law against it. Nurse Bloomberg seems to want to turn American into a European style nation where everything not explicitly permitted is prohibited.
Been a weird week, so here’s something a bit lighter, assuming “lighter” includes “idiots mishandling firearms to delete themselves from the gene pool.”
All of Jeff Cooper’s rules will be violated. Fun for the whole family!
Come to see the guy testing whether a Makarov is loading or not by pulling the trigger with the gun to his head, stay for the guy deleting his head with an RPG.
This time soon-to-be-U.S. Congressman Brandon Herrera is with King Trout, who seems to share the same dark sense of humor.
And although the actual Darwinizing is pixelated to avoid demonetization, the video is still not safe for work, just in case that was unclear…
Now that Ken Paxton is officially the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate, we can finally turn our full attention to the absolute freakshow the Democrats have selected to run against him.
In case you hadn’t noticed, James Talarico is an cringey weirdo who is deeply out of step with the state he wants to represent. So here’s a roundup.
After cruising to the Democrat nomination for U.S. Senate in March, James Talarico now appears focused on a different challenge: convincing Texas general election voters he is more moderate than the progressive activist Republicans have spent years watching online.
Republicans are already framing the effort as a “moderate media makeover” ahead of what is expected to become the most expensive Senate race in U.S. history.
During an interview with CBS News the day after Paxton won the Republican Senate runoff, officially setting the general-election matchup, Talarico was asked about his assertion that there are six sexes and a 2021 statement in which he said, “God is non-binary.”
“What did you mean by that?” the interviewer asked. “Do you regret describing it that way?”
“God can’t be defined by human categories,” replied Talarico. “There are some statements I’ve made that I regret. Ken Paxton is intentionally clipping my cringey comments.”
Yeah, because he said them. Why are they cringey? Because they reflect Talarico’s empty-headed, far-left social justice warrior blatherings. If he didn’t mean them, why did he say them? Was he lying then, or is he lying now? Or is he, like so many Democrat politicians, simply “post-truth” and willing to say anything he thinks people want to hear?
In one recent appearance on the Texas Take podcast, Talarico attempted to downplay his past support for gun control measures, insisting that “I’m not interested in taking anyone’s guns.”
I seem to remember a lot of similar statements from Colorado and Virginia Democrats who, after getting elected, immediately started trying to take people’s guns.
Republicans quickly pointed to prior comments and legislation they argue tell a different story.
In a 2020 appearance as a surrogate for then-presidential candidate Joe Biden, Talarico said it “encourages violence against black sons and daughters” when President Donald Trump allows “weapons of war on our streets and in our classrooms.”
Republicans have also highlighted legislation backed by Talarico that sought additional restrictions on handgun sales and concealed carry permitting requirements.
Among the measures Republicans pointed to were proposals that would have imposed additional regulatory burdens related to handgun licensing, mirroring states like California and New York.
You know, the same measures the Supreme Court has said are unconstitutional.
Talarico has similarly attempted to dismiss Republican attacks over his past climate activism.
On the Texas Take podcast appearance, Talarico argued Republicans fabricated claims that he was vegan.
However, in a 2022 campaign video Talarico announced his campaign would “go vegan” as part of efforts to combat what he described as an “existential climate crisis.”
I would wager that veganism is even a pander too far for most Texas Democrats. It’s like Talarico is trying to run for California State Rep from Big Sur or the Castro District.
The issue intersects with another difficult political vulnerability for Democrats in Texas: oil and gas policy.
In another recent podcast appearance with Democrat congressional candidate Bobby Pulido, Talarico attempted to position himself as supportive of the Texas energy industry.
“The idea that politicians in Washington think they can eliminate this industry is something we had to fight against, something we have to fight against in our own party,” said Talarico.
Republicans quickly countered by resurfacing climate proposals and activist rhetoric previously associated with Talarico, including legislation aimed at dramatically reducing statewide emissions and past activism promoting climate change curriculum mandates in public schools.
Conservatives online also circulated previous comments from Talarico discussing efforts to inspire a “new generation of climate activists,” as well as his participation in demonstrations inspired by activist Greta Thunberg.
He’s just a grab bag of every bad idea to ooze out of the radical left over the past half-century. Like Pete Buttigieg or Gavin Newsom, one gets the impression that Talarico is an empty vessel with no actual personality beyond plasticity to conform to whatever leftwing activist nonsense is the current Will of the Party.
For most of the 21st century, the Great White Whale in the Democrats’ fever dream has been their “Turn Texas Blue” fantasy. In recent memory, this has given us such luminaries as Wendy Davis and the fakest fake Latino in the history of fake Latinos, Beto O’Rourke.
On the one hand, I am usually a big fan of these efforts because they’re such monumental wastes of money for the Democrats. The Texas races become national affairs, and Dem donors from all over the country hemorrhage cash that could be spent on winnable contests elsewhere.
On the other hand, I know how good the Democrats are at playing the long game. I never rule out the possibility of them eventually getting what they want, no matter how long it takes.
This year’s Turn Texas Blue drama star is James Talarico. Talarico has positioned himself as a throwback Dem moderate, a departure from the present-day Dem craziness. It’s completely disingenuous, but the Democrats’ flying monkeys in the mainstream media are dutifully playing along with the charade.
Here are some examples of this wingnut’s lunacy from a post that my HotAir colleague Beege Welborn wrote:
ICYMI
Here is a small sampling of James Talarico psychotic statements.
There is no way anyone can convince me Texans will vote for this freak over Paxton. pic.twitter.com/3FaHC5LAvq
Let me pull out these genuine nuggets of Talarico weirdness so we have them down in text form.
“Jesus Christ himself was a radical feminist.”
“The American flag is such a complicated symbol for most of us.”
“God is non-binary.”
“You can’t call yourself a Christian and reject the stranger seeking asylum at our southern border.”
“Our trans community needs abortion care too.”
“Modern science recognizes that there are many more than two sexes. In fact, there are six.”
“Prophetic voices like Jesus have helped me reckon with my own whiteness.” I’m no theologian, but I’m pretty sure that a fundamental tenant of Christianity is there there are no “prophetic voices like Jesus.” As the singular Redeemer of mankind, he is not comparable to “other prophets,” even those of the Old Testament, because other prophets are not the Light and the Way.
There are a couple more, but I think you get the idea. It’s like he heard the most cringey social justice pandering from all the failed 2020 Democratic presidential candidates and went “Hey, I want to try that in Texas!” Hence the Babylon Bee headline “Democrats Denounce ‘Dirty Trick’ Of Playing Videos Of James Talarico Saying Things.”
I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise at this point, but the “theology expert” running for the U.S. Senate in Texas may be a huge weirdo.
Sure, you knew he called God non-binary, he daydreams about trans kids, and he’s David French’s ideal of a Christian in the public square, but that’s not all of James Talarico’s problems.
Yes, if your school has banned pornography for kids don’t worry, Talarico stocks it in his church’s library right between Left Behind Kids and Jesus Calling. Oh, and Talarico was raised in this church, has preached there several times, and remains closely associated with it.
Yeah, anyone who checked out this book from this church should have their hard drive checked immediately.
Here’s the Daily Wire with the treasure trove of oppo research:
Books found in the St. Andrew’s catalog include the book ‘Gender Queer,’ which includes illustrations of oral sex and masturbation, and the book ‘All Boys Aren’t Blue,’ which discusses anal rape and incest.
‘This Book Is Gay,’ has a chapter on the ‘ins and outs of gay sex,’ while the book ‘Becoming Nicole’ tells the story of a gender-confused teen boy who identifies as a girl with the support of his family. In ‘The Courage to Be Queer,’ the author claims that ‘God is queer.’
Other books in the church catalog include ‘This Book is Gay,’ ‘Trans Kids, Our Kids: Stories and Resources from the Frontlines of the Movement for Transgender Youth,’ ‘Called OUT: The Voices and Gifts of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgendered Presbyterians,’ ‘The Courage to Be Queer,’ and ‘Becoming Nicole: The Transformation of an American Family.’
James Talarico believes that Christians are called to embrace progressive social views on everything from abortion to gender.
The Texas Senate candidate’s conception of Christian moral teaching, which he tirelessly promotes as the foundation of his campaign, seems to have been shaped by the church he has attended since childhood, St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Austin, Texas.
The minister of St. Andrew’s, the Reverend Jim Rigby, often brings politics into his sermons, frequently criticizing the Trump administration from the pulpit. His April 26 sermon, delivered a day after the assassination attempt at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, is a striking example. “There was an assassination attempt,” he told his congregation, “and I know a lot of people have mixed feelings” — he paused, and laughter rippled across the congregation — “but it’s really, really important if we’re going to be the healing agents of the world, to recognize that violence isn’t going to get rid of the problem that we have.”
St. Andrew’s church leadership passed an official resolution against Christian nationalism on Tuesday, shunning the narrative that America has a Christian founding. The leaders promote the idea that the United States has fundamentally corrupt roots, primarily in the unjust acquisition of Native American lands and enslavement of black Americans.
Advertised as Sunday school classes in St. Andrew’s news bulletin, the church’s summer “adult education” sessions are used to promote these ideas. The May 15–21 bulletin introduces one such class: “Christianity today, especially the American version, has discovered some interesting ways to ignore the message of Jesus,” it reads. The study aims to answer financial, political, ethical, and legal questions about Christopher Columbus and is rooted in sources like “art, Bible, Church documents, guest speakers, U.S. federal law, and the U.S. Supreme Court.”
Snip.
Throughout its studies and sermons, the church refuses to use terms for God that its members call “feudal” — words such as “Lord” or “King.” They have also rewritten hymns to be “inclusive” and read from the “Inclusive Bible” during services. During a Scripture reading from Galatians 5, for example, St. Andrew’s PowerPoint slide clarifies that “the word ‘kindom,’ often used by mujerista theologian Ada Maria Isasi–Diaz, replaces ‘kingdom’ because it represents an egalitarian realm and emphasizes our familial relationship with each other.”
Another primary feature of this so-called inclusivity is the omission of any gendered language about God. On the church’s “Inclusive Language” web page, the church’s leaders connect what they call “sexist theology” to a culture of rape, and the leaders are specifically perturbed by the thought of little girls perceiving God as a “he” because they believe God is higher than gender. Talarico, a seminary student and Texas state legislator, has himself promoted this “genderless” conception of God on the floor of the Texas state house, calling God “nonbinary” during a debate.
Now we know where the “cringe” first took root.
Children’s education at St. Andrew’s takes the form of “inclusive” Sunday school curriculum and an expansive library of “banned books.” Members of the church insist that St. Andrew’s library collects these so-called banned books, a term they use to refer to texts that have been barred from school libraries because they promote a particular political view or deal with sensitive topics such as sexuality. Beyond the books already on its shelves, the church has a wish list through Bookshop.org with a range of shocking titles.
Two of these books, The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017 and Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement, celebrate Palestinian activism.
Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth suggests that the history of the Alamo was blown out of proportion to create “a historic Anglo narrative” that distracted Americans from the so-called true origin of this conflict: Mexico’s efforts to abolish slavery.
Another one of these books, The Moral Circle: Who Matters, What Matters, and Why, criticizes the concept of human exceptionalism and advocates for nonhuman rights — including the rights of animals and artificial intelligence.
There are also several books that discuss transgenderism and even one, Marley’s Pride, advertised for its “glossary of terms to help adults answer kids’ questions about the LGBTQ+ community.”
The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
Speaking of Talarico’s religion, this Not The Bee piece literally popped into my Inbox while I was already proofing this.
Texas state Rep. James Talarico opened a legislative session with a heretic prayer, invoked old Communist-adjacent phrase h/t @reddit_lies who spotted it on Reddit; I tracked down the original video.
The prayer addresses God as ‘holy mystery’ with ‘so many names’ — Torah, Quran, Gita, Dharma — treating all religious traditions as equally valid expressions of the same God.
Jesus is described as ‘a barefoot rabbi’ who ‘expressed’ God’s love… one expression among many implied.
The closing line: ‘build a new world in the shell of the old.’
That phrase has a specific origin. It comes from the IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) Preamble, written in 1905. It’s syndicalist labor movement language. Not explicitly Communist – but they wanted to abolish capitalism and the state all the same.
Yeah, I didn’t have “Channeling the Wobblies” on my 2026 Senate Race checklist.
“The Democrats’ Greatest Fear: The GOP Will Turn James Talarico Into a Creepy, Unmanly Weirdo.” I’m omitting the opening segment on how Democrats institutionally hate men and children.
The Dems can’t win elections without a loyal army of unmarried women — and they can’t drive ’em to the polls without selling ’em juicy red meat on the campaign trail.
Yet the same red meat that motivates unmarried women will further alienate married men, married women, AND unmarried Gen Z men.
So the Democrats settled on a novel strategy: They’ll still cater to unmarried women… but deliver their message via an “avatar” who cosplays as a macho dude.
That’s the holy grail for the Dems: A man who thinks and behaves exactly like a radical feminist, yet looks and sounds like a rough-and-tumble Alpha male.
It’s the strategy behind Graham Platner’s senatorial bid in Maine. (‘Cause what could be more manly than a Nazi tattoo?) It was the strategy behind Kamala Harris’ V.P. selection of “America’s coach,” Gov. Tim Walz (D-Minn.). And it’s the strategy behind their latest scheme to turn Texas blue, the Senate campaign of the Dems’ current “it boy,” James Talarico. There’s a lot riding on Talarico’s unique brand of masculinity.
But the Dems are already fretting about Talarico’s masculinity being (ahem) neutered.
From The 19th: “Republicans Want to Make the Texas Senate Race About Manliness”
Republicans are focusing on one question in one of November’s top races: Is the Democrat a real man?
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who clinched the GOP’s nomination for U.S. Senate on Tuesday night, released a new ad Wednesday — his first of the general election — accusing his opponent, state Sen. James Talarico, of being too “low-T for Texas.” “Low-T” is a reference to testosterone levels and often used as an insult by influencers in the so-called manosphere, who say low testosterone makes someone weaker.
Talarico has all the manly testosterone of Boy George wearing a frilly mini-dress to a Village People karaoke night at a Fire Island cabaret during Pridefest.
White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, the architect of President Donald Trump’s immigration policy and one of his top advisers, picked up on a similar line of attack, posting on the social media platform X on Wednesday that Democrats had nominated the “their first transgender senate candidate.” Talarico is cisgender and identifies as an LGBTQ+ ally; he is in a relationship with a woman.
“She’s from Canada! You wouldn’t know her.”
According to this report, “Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico’s mysterious beau is a vegan political lobbyist who previously worked as his chief of staff, The Post has learned. Brianna Menard, 30, describes herself as a “committed vegan,” yoga buff and cat mom who likes “dancing the night away” at local gay bar Cheer Up Charlies in Austin.”
Oh, a girlfriend who just happens to like hanging out at a gay bar.
It’s hard to think of a list of candidate traits and positions less likely to appeal to Texas voters at large. But team Talarico is evidently embracing the freakshow reputation. “Talarico Campaign Embraces ‘Talafreako’ Nickname Tied to Far-Left Positions. Paxton coined the nickname while criticizing Talarico’s progressive positions. The Democrat’s campaign is now selling it on T-shirts.”
As Republicans seek to highlight Democrat James Talarico’s record on transgender issues, immigration, and other progressive causes ahead of November’s U.S. Senate election, the lawmaker’s campaign is embracing one of the nicknames those positions have earned him.
The Talarico campaign recently began selling merchandise bearing the phrase “I’m a Talafreako,” a reference to a nickname used by Republican nominee Ken Paxton during his runoff victory speech.
“He goes by a few names that you may all have heard of,” Paxton told supporters. “Some people know him as Tofu Talarico, some people call him Six Gender Jimmy. I’ve even heard some people call him James Talafreako.”
Paxton then explained the reasoning behind the nickname, pointing to Talarico’s positions on immigration and transgender issues.
“He wants open borders, and even said a welcome mat should be at our southern border,” said Paxton. “He’s a threat to our children. He wants boys in girls’ sports, gender mutilation surgery performed on kids.”
Paxton also referenced a comment from Talarico in which the Democrat said “trans kids” were among the things he loved most outside his family and friends.
Now the campaign’s online store features apparel prominently displaying the nickname.
There are times and places where this sort of “embrace the label” jujitsu might work, but I rather doubt that a statewide election in Texas is one of them.
Let’s end with two more Babylon Bee pieces: “Democrats Hopeful Average Texas Voter Wants To Ban Steak And Thinks God Is Gay.”
“Beto, but gayer” or “Tim Walz, but weirder” strike me as very poor personas to get elected just about anywhere or any time, but especially not Texas in 2026.
