You would think Mexico would have enough crime problems of it’s own to deal with without meddling in American politics, but for some reason the Mexican government is funding a U.S. gun-grabbing group.
The Mexican government hired an American gun-control organization under an agreement making $300,000 available to lobby U.S. officials, pursue firearms lawsuits and train Mexican officials to advocate on American gun policy. Their goal? Gun control.
The organization, Global Action on Gun Violence, has documented connections to Democratic lawmakers. It featured Rep. Dan Goldman in a gun-trafficking discussion promoted in its May and June 2025 newsletters and endorsed legislation backed by prominent Senate Democrats.
A June 9, 2026 Justice Department filing confirms that the Washington-based nonprofit, registered as Mexico’s foreign agent, continued providing “legal, advisory, consultancy, and lobbying services” during the six months ending April 30.
Its work for Mexico overlapped with its support for changes to American firearms laws.
The group endorsed Sen. Dick Durbin’s Stop Arming Cartels Act, cosponsored by Adam Schiff, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker and other Democrats. The proposal would prohibit future nongovernmental manufacture and sale of .50-caliber rifles, require registration of existing rifles and create an exception to federal gun-industry liability protections for transactions prohibited under the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act.
Its advisory committee also lists former Democratic Rep. Michael Barnes and Democratic New York State Sen. Zellnor Myrie. The organization says committee membership does not indicate support for all its work.
Mexico’s May 2025 contract spelled out the American audiences it wanted to reach.
The 12-month agreement listed “awareness-raising efforts” directed at senators, House members, state legislators and U.S. security agencies. Those efforts included opposing legislation that would prohibit Mexico’s lawsuits and presenting research attributing gun trafficking and violence in Mexico to American firearms-industry practices.
Anything to distract from all the cartel corruption in the Mexican government.
Mexico had retained an organization with a much broader agenda than its own lawsuits.
Founder Jonathan Lowy spent 25 years directing litigation against the firearms industry for the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence.
Naturally.
Global Action on Gun Violence has urged the Supreme Court to overturn District of Columbia v. Heller and New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen and restore a militia-focused interpretation of the Second Amendment. The organization described its challenge as a “frontal attack.”
“The battle to overturn Heller and Bruen and reclaim Americans’ rights to public safety starts now,” Lowy declared in its August 2023 announcement.
Foreign pressure is an explicit part of the group’s strategy.
Its website argues that “misguided readings of the Second Amendment” constrain domestic solutions. It calls its international approach the “outside game” and says foreign governments can press Washington to enforce and enact stronger gun policies by “imposing costs in bilateral and international dealings.”
So they’re taking foreign money to promote stripping rights from law-abiding citizens.
You would think that Mexico would have enough problems with crime and cartel violence in its own country than to spend money meddling in the affairs of another.
The anti-Heller and anti-Bruen initiatives confirm what gun owners have long known: Social Justice-infected Democrats will never stop trying to strip the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding Americans, and if they get back in the White House, will try to made good on their promise of packing the courts to undo all the progress of the last decade plus.
Lots of Democrat/Blue State fraud of varying types (campaign financing, voting, welfare state), hot marine-drone-on-marine-drone action, one of Maduro’s scumbags pleads guilty, the feds investigate Governor Hairgel and his henchmen, corrupt or power-hungry police get slapped down in two different Texas locales, a breakdown of just who is funding the “AI will kill us all” panic, and a Hank Hill meme to represent my continued loathing of restaurant QR codes.
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Just as suspected: “Dem Fundraising Giant ActBlue Accepted Illegal Foreign Donations, Covered Up Evidence, House Report Says.”
ActBlue, the Democratic fundraising giant, may have accepted both fraudulent and illegal foreign contributions — and later concealed the relevant evidence from House Republicans investigating the matter, according to a new congressional report.
Congressional oversight “found that ActBlue, in its own words, decided to take ‘a more lenient approach’ to fraud prevention in 2024, weakening its fraud-prevention policies at least twice even though internal assessments showed that these changes would result in a measurable increase in fraudulent contributions,” according to the new report.
“Similarly, internal trainings directed ActBlue’s fraud prevention team to ‘look for reasons to accept contributions’ rather than to examine them closely for indicators of fraud — as required by federal regulation. ActBlue took this lax approach to fraud prevention even though it had detected at least 22 significant fraud campaigns on the platform in recent years, including several from foreign sources.”
The report — which is the third released by the Committee on House Administration, the House Judiciary Committee, and the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform regarding their investigation into ActBlue — accuses the platform of accepting “illegal foreign political donations” and later undertaking a cover-up.
ActBlue CEO Regina Wallace-Jones previously wrote in a letter to Committee on House Administration Chairman Bryan Steil (R., Wis.) in 2023, when the investigation began, explaining that donations made by people with addresses outside of the U.S. require a passport number for verification.
But the report argues the step does little to prevent fraud, as it “only ensures that the entered passport number contains a certain number of characters, not that it is a valid U.S. passport number.”
ActBlue’s previous law firm, Covington & Burling, told ActBlue in 2025 that Wallace-Jones may have misled Congress in her response because the steps for vetting foreign donations were not always followed, the New York Times reported earlier this year. ActBlue processed $990 million in donations in 2023, including $1.3 million from donors with foreign addresses, according to the Washington Post. ActBlue said it collected passport numbers for 93 percent of the donations with foreign addresses.
In the new report, the House committees cite internal communications in which ActBlue employees appear to downplay warnings of fraud. “Donor sometimes has an IP in Hong Kong, but none of their other signals raise any eyebrows,” employees wrote in one memo about a “great accept.”
In another message, an ActBlue supervisor says that a rejected foreign contribution “should have been accepted.”
“It is a foreign contribution, but the name/email match, the IP/billing match, a full address with the correct country code, and there were previously accepted and successful contributions,” the message says. “The donor uses an Arkansas state code, which isn’t great, but [the] system can be wonky with requiring state codes for foreign donors.”
On a separate occasion, an ActBlue supervisor said a contribution “set off a lot of” alarms, but suggested the donor should be given the “benefit of the doubt.”
Democrats always seem to give the “benefit of the doubt” to foreign money flowing into their pockets…
Townhall Media caught Sky McAdams, an organizing manager for Texas Majority PAC, admitting to a scheme involving paying people to influence others to vote for Democrats.
You know they desperately want Texas Democratic Senate nominee James Talerico to win.
You can’t pay someone to vote for a candidate, but apparently the PAC discovered a way around the rule.
From the video:
MCADAMS: We are paying people $25 to attend a one-hour Zoom class to learn why voting is important and why the Republicans are causing all of these bad things. So it’s like a roundabout way of paying people for their votes, essentially, which is interesting.
PERSON RECORDING THE VIDEO: What’s the – what’s this called?
MCADAMS: It’s called the Paid Relational Program. I think rally Texas is the official name. You can’t pay someone to vote for someone. You can’t be like, “Here’s $25, go vote for me.” You can say, “Attend a one-hour class and you can receive $25.” And then the class just talks about the importance of…it’s a little gray.
PERSON RECORDING THE VIDEO: But right now we could use all the help we can get.
MCADAMS: If I was a Republican, I would be pissed. I would be like, “That’s shady as f**k.”
You know, if I were a Soros-backed PAC that was already under investigation by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (AKA the Republican nominee running against Talarico in the 2026 Texas senate race), I’d want to be a lot more circumspect at breaking federal election law…
WOAH 🚨 An addiction recovery center in Minnesota accused of stealing millions with fake Medicaid billing has just been exposed to have another account with $25 MILLION
They’ve used our stolen tax money to buy:
– 3 Minnesota homes
– $10.4 million in charges
– $3.5 million on leather goods and luggage
– $380k jewelry and watches
– $150k clothing and shoes
– One month of LV charges alone was $440,000
June 2024 spending alone included
– $35k at Fendi
– $57k at LV
– $13k at Hermès
– $64k private jet
– $41k Airbnb
And now a $25 million CD has been discovered
Some of the craziest items they bought were
– 3 Minnesota homes
– Rolex Oyster Mickey Mouse edition that’s 18kt yellow gold with genuine Rolex crocodile band
– Louis Vuitton trunks and hard-side luggage including additional jewelry trunks
– Louis Vuitton black mink coat and other fur pieces
– Gents diamond cluster rings and fashion rings that were 14kt gold pieces with 7–59 diamonds, plus EFFY, Kabana, and Gabriel & Co. platinum diamond rings
– 18kt yellow gold and diamond Louis Vuitton pendant on an 18kt LV chain, plus other 14kt gold diamond heart pendants and Tiffany pearl and diamond pieces
– Louis Vuitton Tambour watches
Again, this is all with our stolen tax money with fake Medicaid billing in Minnesota
Tim Walz and Democrats allowed this and would have never did anything to stop them if it wasn’t for Trump getting elected
Twelve people are facing federal fraud charges after an investigation revealed that more than $10 million intended to help low-income families pay for childcare was instead funneled to bogus daycare providers.
In a coordinated takedown early Thursday morning, more than 250 federal, state and local law enforcement officials arrested all 12 defendants and executed 12 search warrants at homes in San Diego purported to be used as daycare facilities.
“These charges underscore a simple truth: anyone who steals from programs meant to support children will face swift and uncompromising accountability, said Assistant Attorney General Colin M. McDonald of the Justice Department’s National Fraud Enforcement Division. “Fraud against these programs is an attack on vulnerable families, and law enforcement will continue to dismantle schemes that exploit them. I want to thank the prosecutors and agents in the Southern District of California whose relentless work exposed this scheme and ensured that those responsible are being held accountable.”
“Programs that help families access childcare are intended to support children and working parents, not to enrich fraudsters,” said Homeland Security Investigations Assistant Director Michael Krol. “HSI is proud to stand with our federal, state, and local partners to identify and disrupt schemes that steal taxpayer-funded benefits from the communities they are meant to serve. These arrests reflect our commitment to protecting public programs, safeguarding children, and holding accountable those who exploit systems designed to help vulnerable families.”
“Today’s takedown exposes a sprawling fraud scheme that siphoned more than $10 million from programs designed to help low-income families who depend on subsidized childcare. By following the money, IRS Criminal Investigation uncovered patterns of deceit that revealed twelve ghost daycare operations billing for children who were never present. This was not a victimless crime. It deprived working parents of critical support and eroded trust in programs meant to protect the most vulnerable in our communities. We remain steadfast in our commitment to safeguarding federal funds and ensuring that those who exploit public programs for personal gain are held fully accountable,” said IRS Criminal Investigation Chief Jarod Koopman.
“Shameless attempts to steal taxpayer‑funded childcare funds for personal gain endanger support for some of our nation’s most vulnerable children,” said Special Agent in Charge Robb R. Breeden of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General (HHS-OIG). “Working alongside our law enforcement partners, HHS‑OIG will continue to pursue these schemes relentlessly to protect these funds and the families who depend on them.”
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services provides federal funding to California to help low-income families pay for childcare. In San Diego County, the County of San Diego, Child Development Associates (CDA), and the YMCA administer childcare subsidy programs.
When CDA or the YMCA determines that a family qualifies for subsidized childcare, the organizations pay the eligible childcare provider directly after the provider submits required monthly attendance records documenting the care provided. The records must be signed by both the provider and parent under penalty of perjury and include the dates and times children are in care.
California law also requires licensed childcare providers to be present and ensure that children are supervised at all times, except for limited temporary absences when a qualified substitute is present.
While the 12 federal complaints are unrelated, the scheme was essentially the same: Defendants obtained a California license to operate a home childcare facility and registered with Child Development Associates (CDA) and the YMCA to provide subsidized childcare to eligible families. To receive government-funded payments, the defendants were required to submit monthly attendance records accurately documenting the dates and times they provided care to each child.
Instead, the defendants knowingly submitted false attendance records claiming they provided childcare on dates and at times when they did not. They also falsely certified, under penalty of perjury, that the information was true and correct. CDA and the YMCA relied on those fraudulent records and issued payments with federal funds intended to pay for childcare actually provided to low-income families.
The complaints describe how surveillance recordings of the defendants’ licensed facilities conflicted with what the defendants claimed in their attendance records. For example, Abdulrahman Ayman Alawad submitted attendance records claiming to have provided childcare to 23 children in March 2026 and 25 children April 2026, and that he provided childcare every day of those two months.
My amazing psychic powers tell me that local media reports refer to Alawad as “San Diego Man.”
But surveillance recordings covering 57 days of those months showed children entering or exiting Alawad’s facility on just one day—coincidentally, the day a state inspector showed up for an unannounced inspection, when children and Alawad himself arrived at the facility after the inspector arrived.
Twenty-seven FBI field offices were working fraud cases that looked local. Then Washington finally put the data in the same room.
What emerged wasn’t dozens of unrelated problems. The FBI says investigators connected over 40 cases to the same strategic threat and the same group of overseas actors.
From the FBI:
Launched in August, the NFDC brings together the FBI, federal law enforcement agencies, Offices of Inspector General, and state partners in a first-of-its-kind effort to identify fraud across taxpayer-funded programs. Rather than evaluating investigations in isolation, the center combines cross-agency data and artificial intelligence to help investigators spot patterns, connect cases, and dismantle organized criminal networks.
The initiative stems from a broader “whole of government” approach mandated by Executive Order 14395, which established the White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud.
The discovery came through the new National Fraud Detection Center, launched in August. The center brings together information from the FBI, Homeland Security Investigations, IRS Criminal Investigation, Treasury, FinCEN, inspectors general, state agencies, and others.
Instead of examining one suspicious student loan, Medicare payment, or SBA loan at a time, investigators can search for connections across programs and jurisdictions. The center uses data analytics and AI to help spot patterns that individual offices might miss.
The student-loan investigation offers the clearest example. Individual cases appeared small enough that some might never have attracted major federal attention. Once the data was combined, investigators concluded they were looking at pieces of a much larger foreign-directed operation.
Fraudsters had figured out something the federal government has struggled with for years: agencies don’t always talk to each other.
The Government Accountability Office reported in June that agencies can use more than 100 federal data sources to verify whether people qualify for benefits or payments. GAO examined nine major sources and found data-quality problems in every one. It also found no government-wide rules ensuring those systems can efficiently share information.
The price of those weaknesses isn’t theoretical.
Federal agencies reported an estimated $186 billion in improper payments during fiscal 2025. Improper payments include errors and overpayments, so they shouldn’t automatically be called fraud. GAO separately estimates that actual fraud costs the federal government somewhere between $233 billion and $521 billion annually, based on data from 2018 through 2022.
Those numbers help explain why connecting databases matters.
“Syzran Oil Refinery Hit Hard By Drones: Supplies Russia’s Armed Forces.” I think that’s at least the fifth attack on the oil refinery we’ve reported here.
President Trump signs the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026
Peter Zeihan explains how Ukraine targets Russia’s shadow fleet in the Black Sea. “What the Ukrainians have done is they’ve contacted every shipping company in the world and said, “Hey, if you’re operating in the Black Sea, A, tell us the name of the ship. B, give us their transponder so we can follow them. C, tell give us their course and D, the ports you expect them to be at and when. And if we can confirm that information as part of our operations, we will not attack those ships. And so far, shipping company in the world is complying except the shadow fleet. Shadow fleet runs dark. Shadow fleet doesn’t report. And that’s the whole point. So, what the Ukrainians have basically done have mapped out the entire commercial world of shipping in the Black Sea and attacking the ships that don’t report.”
Evidently the left is the same everywhere: “Maduro Ally Pleads Guilty In Miami To Scheme That Stole Venezuelan Welfare Funds.”
The former minister of industry for Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro’s regime pleaded guilty on Tuesday to a global money laundering conspiracy that skimmed millions from a Venezuelan public welfare program.
According to a Department of Justice (DOJ) news release, Alex Saab, 54, who was extradited from Venezuela in May and charged days later, conducted a decade-long scheme that defrauded a Venezuelan welfare program for food and medicine, netting hundreds of millions of dollars for himself and associates.
Saab, a Colombian businessman, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to launder monetary instruments before federal district Judge Kathleen Williams in Miami. He faces a maximum sentence of 20 years.
“Criminals like Alex Saab who stole from the people of Venezuela and worked to exploit and misuse American financial institutions to fund illicit activities will be held accountable,” FBI Director Kash Patel said in the news release.
Saab is accused of bilking the welfare program known as Local Committee for Supply and Production, or CLAP (Comité Local de Abastecimiento y Producción).
The ex-minister admitted to using a system of bribes and illegal payments to public officials. Entities controlled by conspirators in the scheme would be rewarded with lucrative contracts from the Venezuelan government to import food and medicine under CLAP.
Saab and his conspirators did not fulfill the contracts and would instead use fake companies, false invoices and shipping records, and other fraudulent documents to unlawfully obtain millions while concealing their association with the scheme, the DOJ said.
Saab further admitted he used shell companies outside his country to launder the illegal proceeds around the world, including in the United States.
I wonder if there’s a book called How To Line Your Pockets With Welfare State Funds that leftists the world over all read…
Federal prosecutors have expanded their criminal investigation into Democrat California Gov. Gavin Newsom, issuing subpoenas for six years of records covering his international travel, outside funding, and personal expenses, including money spent on his residence and living costs. Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael D. Anderson signed the subpoenas, which concern a criminal investigation in the Eastern District of California.
The subpoenas, issued in early September, seek records from the California State Protocol Foundation, a nonprofit that has funded Newsom’s overseas travel through private donations. The subpoenas are expected to produce records for a federal grand jury.
Federal investigators also want communications involving Rebecca Prowda, Newsom’s chief protocol officer, who helps oversee his foreign travel and has staffed him at events ranging from the California Hall of Fame ceremony to meetings with foreign heads of government. Prowda is married to San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie. She declined to comment.
Investigators also sought communications involving Steve Kawa, Jim DeBoo, Jason Elliott and campaign counsel Tom Willis. All four have longstanding ties to Newsom.
Kawa, Newsom’s former San Francisco chief of staff, now chairs the California High-Speed Rail Authority and the Protocol Foundation. DeBoo, a former Newsom executive secretary, is the foundation’s secretary. Elliott, another former deputy chief of staff, sits on both the Protocol Foundation board and the rail authority. Willis sits on the board of the California Partners Project, the nonprofit co-founded by Jennifer Siebel Newsom. Records involving Siebel Newsom were also requested.
Sounds like a cozy influence-peddling cabal, doesn’t it?
Plenty of money is up for review. Newsom has directed more than $7.5 million in outside donations to the California State Protocol Foundation since taking office, with roughly $5.1 million coming from leftover inaugural funds. Behested payments are donations that public officials solicit on behalf of outside organizations. They are legal in California but must be disclosed. Newsom has directed roughly $349 million in such payments between 2019 and 2026. The foundation ended 2024 with just $7,790 in net funds after spending nearly $600,000 more than it took in over the previous two years.
Among its donors are CVS, a Blue Shield-linked foundation, and autonomous vehicle company Zoox, all of which do business in California or operate under state rules. Other contributors include the New Venture Fund and crypto billionaire Chris Larsen. Foundations tied to Democrat megadonors Susie Tompkins Buell and Lisa Stone Pritzker have also contributed. Both women have supported Newsom politically and backed nonprofits associated with Siebel Newsom. The foundation has helped pay for Newsom’s travel to Davos, Munich, London, and China.
What.The Fuck. “Dutch officials say first toddler euthanized under new state law was ‘handled well.'”
This child was born very prematurely, at only 26 weeks of gestation. It quickly became apparent that the child had suffered severe brain damage, resulting in severe cerebral palsy and a visual impairment. This was compounded by frequent and severe epileptic seizures, which were largely unresponsive to medication. This left the child restless and unable to sleep for long periods. They also had mucus in their lungs, which made breathing and swallowing very difficult.
Cerebral palsy and epilepsy are serious conditions that require focused care.
Doctors predicted that the child would not live to adulthood; therefore killing the two-year-old was the best choice for “care.”
‘Despite all medical and non-medical interventions, the parents and the doctor observed no improvement in the child’s condition and were convinced that the child was suffering unbearably and without prospect of relief.’
Neither the article, nor the medical committee described how the child’s life was ended.
Was the child removed from life support and allowed to die?
Was the child injected with lethal chemicals to stop the heart?
What is the mania on the left for killing children these days?
How senators John Kennedy (LA) and Ted Cruz derailed Biden judicial nominees with such trick questions as “What does Article II of the Constitution cover?”
“Federal Judge Overturned after Denying Jury Trial, Awarding Plaintiff $1 for Home Demolished by City. The appeals court called the Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial ‘fundamental.'”
A federal appeals court has ruled that U.S. District Court Judge Jeff Brown of the Southern District of Texas abused the discretion of the court when he denied a jury trial to a property owner who sued Texas City for demolishing his house without proper notice.
In an opinion issued earlier this month, a three-judge panel of the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals also threw out Brown’s determination that homeowner Michael Ramirez was only entitled to $1 in nominal damages for the destruction of his house, but the court’s ruling hinged on the right to a jury trial guaranteed in the Seventh Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
“Because ‘the right of jury trial is fundamental,’ federal courts must ‘indulge every reasonable presumption against waiver,’” Justice Leslie H. Southwick wrote in the decision.
“Indeed, a ‘motion for trial by jury under this rule should be favorably received unless there are persuasive reasons to deny it.’ Those reasons must be ‘strong and compelling’; otherwise, the motion should be granted, and it is an abuse of discretion not to do so.”
Ramirez’ clash with Texas City began after a fire in April 2022 damaged the home he bought for $90,000, which he planned to renovate and resell for an estimated $230,000.
Three days after the fire, the City sent a “Notice of Substandard Structure and of Abatement,” labeled the building a “clear and imminent danger,” and said it would be “abated without further notice.” But Ramirez hired an architect with experience in fire restoration who advised that the damage was primarily superficial and that the home was repairable.
Ramirez then contacted city officials to secure repair permits, but alleged that city employees gave him conflicting information. He also said City Attorney Kyle Dickson assured him the property would be demolished only with his approval. While awaiting approval, Ramirez said he stored tools and appliances in the house valued at $15,000.
Instead, the city demolished the home without further notice on May 9, 2023, more than one year after the fire.
An FBI agent pitched investigating Elon Musk for his work with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), according to an email released on Sept. 15.
FBI agent Kevin Gounaud wrote in the Feb. 22, 2025, missive to a supervisor that he wanted to recommend opening a criminal investigation into the person or people at the Office of Personnel Management who approved transmitting an email to government workers about what they had done the previous week.
That person was conspiring with Musk “to violate government-wide security policy and transmit sensitive government information outside of a strict need to know,” Gounaud said.
“Furthermore, Musk used a non-government system (Twitter) to relate information that allegedly was for official purposes,” he said.
“In doing so, because he is monetized … he likely generated income for himself based on Twitter’s monetization and/or advertising revenues.”
Gounaud compared Musk’s action to how former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used a private email server to conduct government business.
Yes, because running a private email server to facilitate foreign bribes is just like looking for patterns of government waste…
The mayor is a nonpartisan position, but we all know this kid is a future shining star of the Democratic Party. Stockbridge, Georgia’s youngest elected mayor has been shown the door less than a year into the job, the city confirms.
Here’s Breitbart:
[Jayden] Williams — who recently turned 23 — was initially stripped of certain privileges in July before the City Council impeached the mayor on grounds of malfeasance, misfeasance, and violation of his oath of office, then returned to executive session on Saturday to vote for his removal, Fox 5 Atlanta reported.
The former mayor — who took office in early January — was reportedly accused of using his city purchasing card for more than $4,000 in personal expenses such as dining at restaurants, buying clothes, getting haircuts, and watching a movie, in addition to spending $2,600 on gas.
Before 03/17/1973: “Police hunted today for a man in his early 20s seen leaving a burning home after a businessman, his wife and son were shot to death outside the hillside dwelling.” A neighbor saw the man leaving with a shotgun who rejected the neighbor’s poorly thought offer to help. “Go away,” was the response. Police found at least 22 shotgun shells.
At a subsequent trial of a man, 22, his defense attorney asserted that the murderer was paranoid schizophrenic and committed the murders because his friend, one of those murdered, “possessed supernatural powers which were bent of destroying [the murderer.” Also, “the Mafia was involved in his life and that Dan Shallock was involved and could not be killed, even by an H-Bomb.” “At one point he believed Dan Shallock was the devil, and to this day [the murderer] fear in his heart that Dan may come back.” The murderer had spent a month at Marin Community Mental Health Center, and in the days immediately prior to the slayings, his mother had been trying to persuade the youth to commit himself.”
If you’re confused about the thunderclap of “AI will kill us all” doom forecasting this week, Director Blue has a visual breakdown.
Here’s the 9-second version: A 27-year-old quits AI frontier lab Anthropic. Fires off a post on X. Says AI could kill us all. The Wall Street Journal has the exclusive ready to drop. Ted Cruz freaks out and calls it “catastrophic”. Bernie Sanders drafts socialist-style regulations. The tweet gets 164 millions views. Elon responds with two words: psy-op. Let’s follow the money trail. It traces back ten years. This isn’t an AI scandal. It’s a clandestine operation designed to damage American interests.
Go over there for details, I’m just going to pull out the names of the people and orgs running the psy-op for future reference:
Anthopic series A investor Dustin Moskovitz and wife
Cari Tuna, who fund
Coefficient Giving, who gives money to
Redwood Research
Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI)
Center for AI Safety
AI Policy Institute
Open Philanthropy, run by
Holden Karnofsky, who is married to
Anthropic President Daniela Amodei, sister of
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei. More names:
Jacob Coxon
Evan Hubinger
Samuel Marks
Jaan Tallinn
China
Max Tegmark
Future of Life Institute
Alexander Berger
Hope you enjoy the bullet point summary of the visual summary…
“Texas police department shut down for failing to provide ‘public benefit’ after arresting mom over dirty water Facebook post.”
The Texas police department that arrested a mother for criticizing the town’s dirty drinking water on social media has been ordered to disband after the state ruled that it provided no “benefit to the community.”
The Texas Commission on Law Enforcement sent Trinidad Mayor Dennis Haws a letter on Sept. 9 revoking the city’s license to operate its own police department — determining the department had “failed to meet minimum standards” as a law enforcement entity, KETK reported.
The action followed an Aug. 5 investigation in which the department was found “unable to provide evidence that the agency provides public benefit to the community” and lacked 18 required policies, including ones on use of force, vehicle pursuit, professional conduct and active shooters, the commission said.
Texas has ordered the Trinidad Police Department to disband after it arrested Jennifer Combs for posting about the town’s dirty drinking water.
Police defended the arrest, claiming Combs’ post had created “fear, panic, or unnecessary emergency response within a community” — despite the city itself posting a notice urging residents to boil their water to “avoid harmful bacteria” on April 21, weeks before her arrest.
Despite the mounting contradictions, Trinidad Police Chief Charles Gregory doubled down — calling the case against Combs “cut and dry.”
Police also arrested a supporter of Combs, citizen journalist Winston Noles, for misdemeanor disorderly conduct after he displayed a “f–k bad cops” sign outside city hall, FOX 4 reported.
Combs’ arrest quickly drew national attention, prompting Gregory to drop the felony charge against her and the state to launch its investigation into the department.
Let’s hope other police departments get the message that their authoritah does not override the First Amendment. (Previously.)(Hat tip: Dwight.)
Fulshear Police Chief Kenny Seymour has been relieved of his duties effective immediately.
Fulshear is west of Houston and south of Katy.
At a Sept. 15 meeting, Fulshear City Council voted unanimously to dismiss Seymour after a third-party investigator found “overwhelming” evidence stemming from an alleged affair Seymour had with a subordinate within the police department.
The city will begin looking for an interim chief and, in the meantime, has appointed City Manager Zach Goodlander to oversee police department operations, while command-level oversight will be assigned to appropriate department leadership.
Although the proceedings could have been held in closed session, Seymour—who has served as police chief since 2011—requested they be held publicly.
Officials with the investigation said it showed Seymour “engaged in a prolonged pattern of deception, financial conflict of interest and direct insubordination.”
According to the investigator, sworn interrogatory responses from Seymour’s divorce case showed a prolonged sexual relationship with the subordinate. The investigator also said Seymour had a financial entanglement with the captain, including providing money for rent, plane tickets, and other expenses.
Including a refrigerator.
Good. “UT-Austin Eliminating Additional Grievance Studies Programs. University to cut Mexican American, African, women’s and gender studies majors.”
The University of Texas at Austin will liquidate several grievance studies programs that observers had previously thought it would keep.
KUT reports that the university will eliminate majors in African and African diaspora studies, Mexican American and Latina/o studies, women’s and gender studies, and race, indigeneity and migration.
The left-wing outlet received a leaked email outlining the changes.
In the email, Danielle Pilar Clealand, the interim chair of the newly formed Social and Cultural Analysis Department said that “the Provost’s office rejected our proposal to keep our majors.”
The provost is the chief academic officer at UT Austin. William Inboden currently serves in the position.
The Texas A&M University System has removed 350 course entries from core-curriculum eligibility, while the University of Texas at Austin provost’s office has proposed removing 113 “topic” courses from core-credit eligibility beginning in spring 2027, with most of the affected UT courses reportedly housed in the College of Liberal Arts.
In an Aug. 13 announcement from The University of Texas at Austin, the school has announced that it will be deploying a new core curriculum that is designed to specifically give students “a common learning experience built on rigorous, broad and balanced classes.”
The new curriculum comes after 22 faculty members, who made up a “Core Curriculum Task Force,” found that the school offered “more than 1,000 disconnected courses of inconsistent quality.”
As a result of the Task Force’s work, the new curriculum at UT Austin is stated to give students a foundation of courses on “three foundational domains of knowledge: Arts and Humanities, Social Sciences, and STEM.”
Additionally, UT Austin’s Core Curriculum Task Force’s Report found other suggestions to cut the catalog of more than 600 courses to prioritize courses that focus on Western civilization, U.S. History, “Great Questions of Human Life,” principles of American Politics, and others.
The report also ties the core curriculum overhaul to concerns that “narrow,” specialized courses fail to provide students with a shared academic foundation. It recommends incentives, including tuition discounts and honors status, to encourage students to complete the newly required courses and reduce the likelihood of students transferring to other institutions.
A curriculum overhaul is also set to take place within the Texas A&M University System as well, as S.B. 37 requires state-funded universities to review their course catalogs and make appropriate changes.
Golden Retrievers are great dogs, but they make poor watch dogs.
Nash, the golden retriever, had his big chance to be hailed the best guard dog when an intruder broke into his family’s home – but instead, the 4-year-old thought the man was a friend and brought him some toys to play with. https://t.co/6LROw5EcAn
— CBS Evening News with Tony Dokoupil (@CBSEveningNews) September 17, 2026
I’m still between jobs. Feel free to hit the tip jar if you’re so inclined.
New York Times seems very upset we might win in Iran, the economy adds more jobs (or, as I call it in my house, Passover), ActBlue employees keep invoking the Fifth, the left still wants to trans your kids, a mistrial for Murder Mom, and the unwritten rules of the Internet.
Conditions in the Strait of Hormuz are coming unstuck in ways that advance American interests, although the situation remains stalemated.
CNN reported late last week that “Iran is losing much of its control over the critical waterway” as the U.S. Navy quietly but effectively transits oil-laden tankers out of the strait under Iranian noses. In concert with the oil and petroleum products escaping the region via overland pipelines, Donald Trump’s energy secretary indicated that energy exports from the region are now approaching pre-war levels.
CNN couldn’t independently verify the administration’s figures. Nor could the Wall Street Journal. But to a certain extent, that is to be expected from a covert operation like the one the U.S. is engaged in. “Many ships are crossing the strait at night with their transponders off, making them hard to track by radio signal or satellite imagery,” the Journal reported Monday. The report’s headline warns that industry trackers “can’t find” the exports the White House touts, but the body of the article notes that some of those trackers’ estimates about what could be coming online run “closer to the administration’s numbers,” albeit only recently.
Even if it only backed into the policy of economic strangulation that it’s applying to the Islamic Republic, the Trump administration is finally seeing it produce some positive results. Naturally, then, it’s incumbent on the president to surrender to the Iranians while he still can. At least, that’s the argument Rosemary Kelanic brought to the pages of the New York Times.
Kelanic, the director of Defense Priorities’ Middle East program and a contributor to the Quincy Institute’s “Responsible Statecraft” blog, contends at the outset of her Monday op-ed that “defeat” is now America’s “least bad option.” The U.S. has little choice but to quit the field, allowing Iran to control and toll an international waterway. But it’s not clear why America must give up now.
As Kelanic admits, the war has shown that, even if the U.S. “cannot completely open” the strait, Iran “cannot completely close” it either. Why should they be bequeathed an unprecedented level of sovereignty over an international maritime chokepoint that they could not capture on their own? Kelanic doesn’t say. She does, however, dwell on America’s challenges.
The geography of the strait ensures that it is “impossible to decisively defeat” Iranian harassment initiatives. Modern technology, like cheap missiles and drones, creates “endemic risk of crossing Hormuz that even a negotiated deal with Tehran would not eliminate.” That sounds like a rationale for abandoning the negotiations that will, by Kelanic’s own admission, fail to produce a durable (much less desirable) outcome.
Indeed, the author doesn’t even attempt to strike a more-in-sorrow tone when arguing for America’s capitulation. The United States is struggling with an irreparable shortage of munitions, she suggests. And even if America’s ordnance stocks were brimming, its people have no stomach for a long-duration mission to “sneak oil through Hormuz.” In fact, the voting public may even resent the political class’s resistance to an Iranian tolling regime that extracts funds primarily from foreign pockets. After all, “those countries could pay their own way.”
The U.S., Kelanic adds, has little slack in its economy — quite unlike the less “oil-intensive” economies of China and Russia. That’s a kick that Kelanic has been on for some time. And she has a point when it comes to China, albeit one that was overstated at the outset of Operation Epic Fury; China’s energy position today is sustained by its consumption restrictions, its oil reserves, and its “shift toward coal.” By contrast, the argument that Russia can easily absorb a fuel shock is betrayed by the evidence of your own eyes.
At no point does Kelanic acknowledge the buffers in the American economy. The “shale revolution,” the Journal’s Greg Ip observed, “has turned the U.S. into a net exporter of petroleum and major exporter of liquefied natural gas.” That might account for some of “the recent resilience of world oil markets,” which Kelanic admits “surprised many.”onditions in the Strait of Hormuz are coming unstuck in ways that advance American interests, although the situation remains stalemated.
CNN reported late last week that “Iran is losing much of its control over the critical waterway” as the U.S. Navy quietly but effectively transits oil-laden tankers out of the strait under Iranian noses. In concert with the oil and petroleum products escaping the region via overland pipelines, Donald Trump’s energy secretary indicated that energy exports from the region are now approaching pre-war levels.
CNN couldn’t independently verify the administration’s figures. Nor could the Wall Street Journal. But to a certain extent, that is to be expected from a covert operation like the one the U.S. is engaged in. “Many ships are crossing the strait at night with their transponders off, making them hard to track by radio signal or satellite imagery,” the Journal reported Monday. The report’s headline warns that industry trackers “can’t find” the exports the White House touts, but the body of the article notes that some of those trackers’ estimates about what could be coming online run “closer to the administration’s numbers,” albeit only recently.
Even if it only backed into the policy of economic strangulation that it’s applying to the Islamic Republic, the Trump administration is finally seeing it produce some positive results. Naturally, then, it’s incumbent on the president to surrender to the Iranians while he still can. At least, that’s the argument Rosemary Kelanic brought to the pages of the New York Times.
We can’t let American win in Iran because that might help Trump.
Good news! “Economy Adds 162,000 Jobs in August 2026.”
The August 2026 jobs report blew all expectations out of the water.
Economists expected the economy to add only 53,000 jobs.
Well…the report shows the economy added 162,000 jobs:
Food services and drinking places: +59,000
Local government education: +42,000
Manufacturing: +16,000
Health care: +13,000
Information: -23,000
Construction: +22,000
The bad news for me personally: My sector (information) was the only one of those with job losses. AI continues to suck up all the VC funding…
More countries are reconsidering their support agreements with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, a senior State Department official confirmed to Just the News.
Following Just the News reporting that the United States’ Agency for International Development’s Inspector General’s office found more than 100 UNRWA employees had participated in the Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7, 2023, Finland’s minister for foreign trade and development announced on Thursday that the country would not extend its support for UNRWA.
Several more countries have since indicated that they are reconsidering their own support for UNRWA as well, a senior State Department official briefed on the USAID IG’s investigation told Just the News.
It’s a bribe and terrorism organization with a debating society attached.
Hmmmm. “Another ActBlue Official Pleads Fifth In House Probe of Alleged Foreign Donations.” Why, it’s almost like they’re guilty.
Kimberly Peeler-Allen, a member of ActBlue’s board of directors, invoked her constitutional right against self-incrimination while appearing before the House Administration, Judiciary and Oversight committees, according to sources familiar with her testimony.
ActBlue co-founder Matt DeBergalis invoked the Fifth during a closed-door deposition Aug. 20, while CEO Regina Wallace-Jones asserted the same right during congressional questioning in June.
The House Administration Committee began investigating ActBlue in 2023 following concerns that the fundraising platform’s fraud-prevention procedures were inadequate to prevent illegal foreign donations.
German police have opened a terror investigation after two attacks on power stations, and a bombing at a railway station, within 24 hours.
Officials are investigating the possibility that the power plant attacks were carried out by a hostile foreign state, such as Russia, or home-grown Left-wing terrorists.
California has bicoastal company in its efforts to drastically reinterpret a Supreme Court precedent that reinstated a permanent injunction against the Golden State’s so-called gender secrecy policies in public schools, with the majority citing a century of parental rights precedents that it said lower courts were ignoring.
Moms for Liberty is suing a New York City suburb on behalf of unnamed members with children there, seeking to force New Jersey’s Chathams School District to notify and give parents veto power over their children’s “asserted ‘gender transition'” and “social transition-related accommodations,” arguing a trio of related policies violate the Mirabelli precedent.
School Board President Ann Ciccarelli argued at a June 15 public meeting that the high court’s March 2 emergency order was “not binding” on New Jersey public schools, in response to demands from parents to eliminate a policy requiring schools to “accept a student’s asserted gender identity regardless of parent consent or involvement.”
SCOTUS scolded the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Mirabelli for having “brushed aside” its 2025 precedent Mahmoud, which required school districts to notify and get consent from parents before exposing their children to LGBTQ “storybooks,” by wrongly limiting it to curricular decisions.
“The Chathams Board of Education’s open defiance of the Supreme Court’s clear rulings in Mirabelli and Mahmoud is an assault on the constitutional rights of every family in that district,” Moms for Liberty CEO Tina Descovich said.
In a Federal Election Commission filing made on Wednesday night, America PAC disclosed $800,475 in total spending in August.
The expenditure data showed that the billionaire’s PAC primarily poured resources into competitive Senate races in Texas, Maine, Ohio, New Hampshire, Michigan and a few other states.
The Texas Senate race between Democrat James Talarico and Republican Ken Paxton received the largest share of spending—around $248,000.
The Maine Senate race, which Democrats view as a key pickup opportunity, received the next largest tranche of spending at around $170,000.
In total, the PAC spent around $712,000 on seven Senate races—around 90% of the total disclosed expenses—and only around $88,000 on a small number of House races.
(Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
“80% of drug traffickers arrested in Portland in the last 3 years have been illegal aliens.
The US Attorney’s Office for the District of Oregon announced on Tuesday that more than 80 percent of the roughly 100 defendants federally charged with trafficking fentanyl in Portland are illegal aliens from Honduras and Mexico. The apprehensions began in 2023 and remain ongoing as federal and local authorities work to rid the sanctuary city of drug-related criminal activity.
As a result of the crackdown on open-air drug markets, authorities have seized more than 100 kilograms of fentanyl, 40 guns, and $1.3 million in proceeds. ‘That is enough fentanyl to kill 50 million people, or Oregon’s population, 11 times,’ the US Attorney’s Office said in a press release.
Illegal alien drug cartels + Woke Portland allowing open drug use = Americans dead.
What a tremendous scheme here from the Democrats.
They’re just selling the dope that Americans won’t…
After cattle country stresses over President Donald Trump’s plan to flood the market with cheaper foreign ground-beef trimmings, the 47th president posted that four giant processors have made life “miserable” for American ranchers and that he is authorizing farmers to process their own food if desired or necessary.
“Trump wants to remove some of the red tape and costs associated with setting up USDA inspected facilities for small producers or areas of the country that don’t have USDA processors to be able to sell their protein to consumers in a legal way,” grazier Derek Lange told Just The News last week.
“Consumers want to buy beef from ranchers and be a part of their story.”
Jeanine John Taele, 38, had more than 200 pages of writings that included schedules for the first lady and members of the president’s USSS detail, The Associated Press reported, citing information revealed during a Los Angeles County court hearing Wednesday.
The New York Post reported that prosecutors said Taele had seven notebooks containing 208 pages of drawings and sketches of Trump National Golf Club Los Angeles in Rancho Palos Verdes, lists of USSS schedules, details about individual security personnel and copies of Melania Trump’s schedule.
Yet somehow Teale has been declared mentally unfit to stand trial…
Austin’s one woman crime spree. “Austin Woman Arrested After Police Find Hundreds Of Suspected Stolen Bank Cards, Keys And Mail.”
A routine arrest in North Austin developed into a much broader investigation after police said they discovered a large collection of mail, payment cards, checks and postal keys believed to have been stolen, according to Yahoo.
Austin police arrested 42-year-old Elizabeth Rozo on Aug. 25 after officers tracked her to an apartment complex near Tech Ridge Boulevard. Authorities were looking for Rozo because she was wanted on a warrant stemming from a credit or bank card abuse investigation.
Officers with the department’s North Metro Tactical Unit reportedly watched Rozo leave the apartment complex and enter a vehicle. They followed her before initiating a traffic stop.
The investigation expanded significantly when officers searched the vehicle. Police said they recovered roughly 400 bank cards believed to have been stolen, along with nearly 300 gift cards. Investigators suspect at least some of the gift cards had been purchased using compromised bank cards.
Officers also discovered two counterfeit Arrow Keys, a type of master key associated with U.S. Postal Service mail equipment. Such keys can potentially be used to open certain shared mailboxes and other postal receptacles, making them particularly valuable to people seeking access to mail belonging to multiple households.
Evidence from the vehicle led investigators to secure a warrant for Rozo’s apartment. The second search produced considerably more material, according to police.
By the time officers finished searching the vehicle and residence, authorities said they had collected thousands of pieces of suspected stolen mail and hundreds of checks. They also recovered about two dozen identification documents that police believe were either stolen or fraudulently produced.
Investigators reported finding 17 stolen postal keys in addition to the two counterfeit keys discovered during the investigation. Authorities have not publicly explained how the postal keys were allegedly obtained or identified how many mailboxes could have been accessed with them. Police also have not announced an estimate of how many people may ultimately be connected to the recovered mail and financial documents.
Not The Bee imitates the Babylon Bee: “Canadian PM says he will resume trade talks ‘when the Americans stop doing memes.'” This went over exactly as you imagined it would.
Some measure of justice: “Former Houston Police Officer Pleads Guilty to Falsifying Affidavit That Led to Deadly 2019 Drug Raid.”
A former Houston police officer pleaded guilty to abusing his authority as law enforcement in his falsification of information used to obtain a search warrant that resulted in a no-knock raid and two murders for which the officer is already serving time.
Gerald M. Goines pleaded guilty to making false claims, including that a resident had sold illicit drugs to a confidential informant and that additional other customers had bought drugs from the resident in prior weeks, in an affidavit that was necessary to obtain a search warrant — known as a “color of law” violation.
Goines was a senior narcotics officer with the Houston Police Department (HPD).
The no-knock warrant was executed in January 2019 and became known as the Harding Street Raid when officers shot and killed a couple in their home. The raid added fuel to the fire in regards to particular scrutiny of HPD, with activists and some Houston City Council members calling for the department to be defunded or similarly financially impacted. This occurred amid anti-police protests that followed the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020.
Due to his role in leading the raid, Goines was charged with the murders of Dennis Tuttle and Rhogena Nicholas, who were shot and killed alongside their dog during the drug bust. He was indicted in 2019 on two counts of murder and found guilty at trial, and is currently serving a 60-year prison sentence as a result.
Goines did not fire the fatal shots. The U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in the summer of 2026 that the officer who did so, Felipe Gallegos, was protected from a civil rights lawsuit under qualified immunity after he was previously indicted for Tuttle’s killing, a charge that was ultimately dismissed due to alleged prosecutorial misconduct.
Two middle schools in Austin Independent School District (ISD) received their fifth failing A–F accountability rating from the Texas Education Agency (TEA) last week.
Under the Texas Education Code (TEC), “If a campus is considered to have an unacceptable performance rating for five consecutive school years, the commissioner shall order: (1) appointment of a board of managers to govern the school district; or (2) closure of the campus.”
The district originally had three middle schools with four consecutive failing ratings: Burnet, Dobie, and Webb. While Burnet and Webb earned F ratings, Dobie earned a D rating for this year.
According to TEA, a D rating does not break a consecutive failing streak — only an A, B, or C rating will stop the count. A D rating instead pauses the count until there are three D ratings in the chain, at which point the failing streak resumes.
Over the past school year, Austin ISD has made headlines for numerous challenges. In November, the district approved 10 school closures and 24 state-mandated turnaround plans for struggling campuses. After a projected $181 million budget deficit, the district was forced to make $205 million in cuts.
The district also announced the last-minute closure of Paredes Middle School on July 30, shortly before the start of the school year.
Austin ISD applied for Senate Bill 1882 partnerships for Burnet, Dobie, and Webb, which would have allowed the district to partner with an open-enrollment charter school or institutions of higher education approved by the TEA. These partnerships can receive increases in state funding and are exempt from certain accountability measures for two years.
Segura told KXAN News that the accountability pause was “not the driving factor” for the partnership, but rather the resources the partnership made available.
The TEA denied Austin ISD’s request in May, but said that the district could continue the partnerships, just without the state incentives. Austin ISD announced the dissolution of the partnerships for the three middle schools in July.
In an August 13 letter to parents, Austin ISD Superintendent Matias Segura addressed the possible state takeover, saying that “challenges remain.”
One failing grade for a school should be a wakeup call. Two demands heads should roll and get AISD to make whatever changes are necessary to fix the problem. Five is educational malpractice.
Microstamping cartridges isn’t just unconstitutional, it’s Ineffective.
Ohio Democratic congressional candidate Brian Poindexter was arrested for allegedly swallowing a rock of crack cocaine at a traffic stop after he was stopped by police and for slapping a man at a baseball game according to police records obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
Poindexter, a city councilman and former union organizer running against the embattled Republican congressman Max Miller in Ohio’s Seventh Congressional District, has a criminal rap sheet dating back to the late 1990s, the records show.
On Jan. 23, 1998, Poindexter, then 18, was pulled over by police officers at a street corner known for heavy drug activity in Cleveland, according to the police report. Poindexter allegedly pulled out “some small objects from his coat pocket and put them into his mouth” and “began to swallow them.” The officer tried to retrieve the objects from Poindexter’s mouth, and the two men fell to the ground in a scuffle. The officer eventually recovered a “rock of suspected crack cocaine,” according to the records.
Another towering intellectual genius batting for Team Blue. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
NVIDIA has agreed to acquire open source AI company Hugging Face for $12,930,300,000.
Justice for Tupac? “Duane ‘Keffe D’ Davis convicted of masterminding Tupac Shakur’s murder 30 years after rapper gunned down in Vegas.”
The man accused of orchestrating the murder of legendary rapper Tupac Shakur — one of the entertainment industry’s most captivating crimes — was found guilty by a Nevada jury.
Duane “Keffe D” Davis, 63, learned his fate in a Las Vegas courtroom on Monday after about two weeks of trial, as Shakur’s emotional family members passed tissues around and embraced, the New York Times reported.
The conviction of Davis, a former high-ranking “shot caller” in a Los Angeles chapter of the Crips gang, marked the first person to face justice for Shakur’s murder, which went down on a Las Vegas street on the night of Sept. 7, 1996.
Shakur, a pioneer of the burgeoning rap scene, was driving in a car when another pulled up alongside and blasted him with a hail of bullets. He died days later at 25.
Davis was not accused of shooting the gun which killed Shakur, but prosecutors argued he gave it to the gunman — long presumed to be his nephew Orlando Anderson, who died in a gang shootout two years after the murder — and orchestrated the entire attack.
The NBA on Wednesday announced severe punishments for the LA Clippers — including the loss of five future first-round draft picks, a fine of $30 million and a yearlong suspension of owner Steve Ballmer — for violating salary cap circumvention rules in a case involving star Kawhi Leonard.
In a statement, the NBA said a near-yearlong investigation “found a pattern of misconduct and multiple significant rules violations by the Clippers organization, a prior offender of the salary cap circumvention rules.”
As a result, the Clippers must forfeit first-round draft picks in 2029, 2030, 2031, 2032 and 2033. In addition to the $30 million fine, Ballmer is suspended from all league and team activities for one year “for knowingly seeking to help Mr. Leonard obtain off-court income opportunities,” among other issues. President of business operations Gillian Zucker is suspended without pay for one year, and president of basketball operations Lawrence Frank is suspended without pay for six months.
Huge Supreme Court win, Ukraine switches from Wildberries to Ozon warehouses, yes, DSA are damn dirty commies, more Second Amendment progress, Ted Cruz’s book on Clarence Thomas is out, Aussie gets 15 years for shooting a carnival air gun, remembering Dolly, and the NFL finally takes the Pro-Bowl to a farm in the country.
The Supreme Court just handed President Trump a massive victory in the fight to secure America’s elections. The justices cleared the way for his executive order restricting mail-in voting to move forward, and after months of Democrat officials trying to bury the policy in court, the administration finally has room to breathe.
This is a big deal.
The SAVE America Act is still stalled in the Senate, blocked by Democrats who aren’t even hiding the fact they have zero interest in verifying that voters are who they say they are. Trump’s executive order just got a green light from the nation’s highest court anyway. Election integrity doesn’t have to die in the legislative graveyard to make progress.
Trump signed the executive order, called “Ensuring Citizenship Verification And Integrity In Federal Elections,” in March 2026. It directs his administration to build lists of eligible voters and orders the U.S. Postal Service to deliver mail ballots only to people on those lists. The Postal Service laid out its implementation plan last week, but the clock is ticking. Some states start sending mail ballots in just a few weeks, leaving the administration little time to get this right before the midterms. More court challenges remain possible.
The victory is real, but it’s not the finish line.
Mail balloting has been a target of Trump’s for years, and for good reason. The Heritage Foundation has long argued that mail-in ballots are more susceptible to fraud, coercion, and chain-of-custody problems than in-person voting. Anyone who lived through the 2020 presidential election, one of the most disputed elections in history, watched that vulnerability play out in real time.
It’s official: California just criminalized publicly exposing fraud.
our tax dollars are paying for fraud, and if someone like Nick Shirley exposes this fraud he, not the fraudster, could get in trouble.
More from Nick:
These politicians need the fraud to continue and they sadly use immigrants to do so often. They fund nonprofits and NGOs with hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars every year for immigration services, including free healthcare, and have now made ‘immigration support service providers’ essentially a protected class in California.
For example, if I film a hospice or a ‘learning center’ with no patients receiving millions through Medicaid and the owner gives me a paper saying I cannot publish the video, I cannot publish it. If I publish it to expose them and they claim it caused them ‘fear’ or a third party threatens them, I face a minimum $4,000 civil fine plus the legal fees of the individual or group suing me.
This bill was created by the Attorney General’s wife and co-sponsored by CHIRLA, a nonprofit that has received over $80,000,000 in taxpayer dollars for ‘immigrant support services.’ Do you understand how this works yet? When the fraud is exposed, they create new laws to protect the fraudsters and penalize those who expose it.
By signing this bill, the Governor and California politicians expose themselves as the corrupt politicians they are. This is not the end; the fight has just begun. More to come soon; this is far from over.
An unconstitutional prior restraint First Amendment violation that will be struck down instantly the first time California tries to enforce it.
If it weren’t for voter fraud, welfare state fraud, crazy trannies, violent criminals and pandering to radical Islamic anti-Semites, the Democrat Party wouldn’t have any business model at all…
“Our goal is Communism,” David Jenkins, a member of DSA’s National Political Committee, said in 2023.
DSA member Cea Weaver is New York City’s tenant tsarina. She posted via X in December 2017, “Elect more communists.” The next year, she demanded: “Seize private property.”
Weaver’s boss is Mayor Zohran Mamdani. In his Jan. 1 inaugural address, he stated: “I was elected as a democratic socialist, and I will govern as a democratic socialist.” He told a DSA Zoom call in 2021: The “end goal” should be “seizing the means of production.” Mamdani also said, “The abolition of private property … is preferable to what is going on right now.” These comments loudly echo Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’ cornerstone collectivist text “The Communist Manifesto.”
The magnificently named Darializa Avila Chevalier rode Mamdani’s endorsement all the way to the Democrat nomination for New York’s 13th Congressional District.
“I’m a democratic socialist,” she boasted June 29 on MS Now. She also wants to “seize the means of production,” as she advised in a not-quite-deleted September 2019 X post. She confessed that December: “I forgot to get napkins so I just wiped my hand on the American flag.” In April 2020, she wrote: “Most of the theory I have read is communism but the pyromania associated with anarchism is very intriguing to me.” The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine preserved 3,657 such messages that Chevalier thought she had erased.
For months, the assumption that the Strait of Hormuz was Tehran’s ultimate card dominated commentary on the war.
As a narrow waterway through which roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil and a substantial share of liquefied natural gas had historically passed, it appeared to be a chokepoint Iran could close or severely disrupt at will. It did not need to destroy every tanker. Hitting a small percentage with drones, cruise missiles, speedboats, or mines would spike insurance rates, deter crews and companies, and effectively shut the strait without continuous physical control.
This idea was not new for 2026. It had long been a feature of the Iranian strategic posture, treated as both a military instrument and a political myth-proof that even under pressure Tehran retained a decisive lever over the global energy system. Parts of the Western media and independent analysts amplified the same narrative.
Relying on incomplete open-source shipping data, especially once vessels began sailing dark, many concluded that the United States had been caught unprepared and lacked a realistic path to reopen the waterway. Hormuz, they argued, was effectively closed or closable at Iran’s discretion. That framing was powerful, but also incomplete.
The assumption that Iran’s detection and targeting system could not be dismantled without dramatic escalation proved wrong. Under the U.S. Central Command, also known as CENTCOM, and with significant involvement from the Fifth Fleet and Air Force components, the United States ran a sustained effort to degrade the sensors Iran needed to find and hit ships.
Iran relied on mobile truck-mounted radars, drones, cruise missiles, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) speedboats, and naval mines. Inside the narrow strait, ships move in relatively predictable lanes. Iran combined active radars with passive electro-optical and infrared cameras on elevated terrain and islands such as Qeshm, Larak, and Abu Musa.
Mobile radars would radiate briefly to locate shipping, then shut down and move before anti-radiation missiles could arrive. Once a ship’s approximate position was known, strike systems could be sent to search.
The vulnerability was that every radar emission could be detected. American aircraft responded systematically with anti-radiation missiles while visual and intelligence efforts located the passive sensors. This was the core of what some involved called “draining the swamp.”
Iran had redundancy, but the number of sensors was finite. Hundreds of precision strikes gradually reduced Iran’s ability to see traffic in the strait. As the detection layer thinned, the effectiveness of the strike systems declined with it.
Parallel efforts neutralized mines with unmanned vessels and declared the southern lane near Oman largely clear. Convoys moved under escort, often at night with the automated information system (AIS) off. Arleigh Burke-class destroyers with Aegis radars and standard missile (SM)-family interceptors formed the backbone; drones and Apache helicopters armed with laser-guided rockets provided additional cover. American ships also engaged IRGC speedboats that closed on the convoys.
On the commercial side, the United States addressed insurance barriers. In early March, President Donald Trump directed the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) to provide political risk insurance and guarantees for maritime trade.
The DFC, working with the Treasury and CENTCOM, established a revolving reinsurance facility of roughly $20 billion-later expanded with private partners including Chubb-focused on hull, machinery, and cargo cover. Early uptake was limited. As Iranian success rates fell, more vessels joined.
Results have been significant. CENTCOM has reported assisting well over a thousand commercial vessels and moving hundreds of millions of barrels since the spring. Independent trackers often showed lower numbers because much of the traffic sailed dark. Pre-war throughput was 20 million to 21 million barrels per day.
Flows through Hormuz remain below that, but combined with the Abu Dhabi-Fujairah pipeline and Saudi Arabia’s pipeline to Yanbu in the Red Sea, volumes recovered enough to keep oil prices in the $85 to $95 range-elevated, but far from the predicted catastrophe.
Followup: “Satellite Imagery of Multiple Ozon Warehouses Destroyed by Ukraine.”
“Big Blast as Drone Storage is Hit By Drone & Project 05060 Patrol Boat Destroyed in Crimea.”
“Ukraine Destroys Rare Su-33 (First Destroyed), MiG-29 and Orion Attack Drone At Anapa Airport.” This was just the other side of the Kerch Straight Bridge. The Su-33 is normally a carrier based aircraft, but since Russia’s only aircraft carrier has been out of service since 2017, they’re doing much desk landing these days.
The surprise visit by the director of the Central Intelligence Agency to Moscow this week was to deliver a warning to Russia not to attack NATO countries, according to people briefed on the visit.
The trip was spy-agency chief John Ratcliffe’s first publicly known visit to the Russian capital. It followed new U.S. intelligence assessments, reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal, that Russian President Vladimir Putin could try to test the resolve of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization with a limited assault on an allied country in the next few years.
U.S. officials are concerned that Putin, squeezed in Ukraine and under pressure at home, could launch an assault ranging from a cyberattack to a small-scale land incursion, likely on a Baltic nation, the Journal reported.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Justice conceded that Americans are allowed to carry in Postal Service buildings.
Snip.
On August 18, a federal judge ruled against Biden’s “ghost gun” ban, saying it violates multiple parts of the Constitution….Judge Reed O’Connor ruled Biden’s “Ghost Gun” rule violates the 2nd and 5th Amendments,
Decision by decision, the Second Amendment is being upheld and gun rights expanded.
More progress: “CDC restores info showing how many good guys with guns stop bad guys after Biden removed it.”
Concerning: “Maryland felony cases against Zizian trans death cult members abruptly suspended. After 18 months of prosecution, Maryland abruptly put its cases against three Zizian trans cult members on indefinite hold. Officials have not publicly explained why.”
The cases against cult leader Jack “Ziz” LaSota and subordinates Michelle “Jamie” “Alex” Zajko and Daniel “Hastur” Blank were made inactive on Aug. 14; All scheduled future trial dates were canceled.
LaSota, Zajko and Blank were arrested together following a national manhunt on Feb. 16, 2025 in rural western Maryland. They were found with a cache of weapons in their two box trucks. They had spent years moving around the country as members of the Zizians, a radical transgender cult who has been linked to at least eight violent deaths.
The three initially faced only misdemeanor trespassing, firearms and obstruction charges after an elderly Frostburg-area property owner reported that they had arrived in box trucks and asked to camp on his property.
Authorities later added charges involving the alleged illegal possession and carrying of concealed and loaded firearms.
LaSota, a biological male who identifies as a woman and uses the name “Ziz,” is the founder and ideological leader of the Zizians. The group is made up of transgender vegan extremists, several of whom have elite educational backgrounds in science and mathematics. Members embraced an esoteric ideology combining leftist transgender politics, anarchism, rationalism and veganism.
Snip.
Though the state charges have been suspended, LaSota is being held on a federal detainer request on a federal indictment of being a fugitive from justice in possession of firearms and ammunition. On Tuesday, he was transferred into federal custody at the Federal Detention Center in Philadelphia.
Zajko, meanwhile, is awaiting extradition to Pennsylvania. She was charged in June with murdering her adoptive parents, Richard and Rita Zajko, on New Year’s Eve 2022. The case had gone cold for years before the surprise announcement by prosecutors in Delaware County, Pennsylvania.
Authorities allege Zajko traveled from Vermont to her childhood home in Chester Heights on the night of her 30th birthday and participated in the execution-style killings.
Bad news for justice in Colorado: “Former Colorado Bureau of Investigation DNA analyst Yvonne Missy Woods pleaded guilty to four felonies — cybercrime, perjury, attempting to influence a public official, and forgery, after facing 102 felony charges tied to misconduct in 58 cases dating back to 2008. Woods worked at CBI for 29 years, from January 1994 to November 2023, and was qualified as an expert witness more than 500 times. A routine audit in late 2023 uncovered anomalies in her work; an internal investigation found she purposefully deleted DNA data to skip required testing steps. Retesting of roughly 3,000 affected cases cost the state an estimated $11 million. Among the high-profile cases she handled was the 2003 Kobe Bryant sexual assault investigation. ”
“ICE Arrests 1,328 Illegal Aliens in DC, Virginia, Maryland in 14 Days. Of those arrested, almost 400 illegal immigrants had criminal convictions or pending criminal charges, including a Salvadoran national wanted in Richmond, Virginia, on a murder warrant.”
“Other crimes included rape, sexual assault, kidnapping, DUI, robbery and attempted murder.” Also: “They also arrested members of MS-13, 18th Street Gang, and Tren de Aragua gangs.” MS-13 and Tren de Aragua we’ve covered here before. According to Wikipedia, “The 18th Street Gang, also known as Eighteen St, Barrio 18, Mara 18, or simply 18 in North America, is a multi-ethnic (largely Mexican and Central American), street gang from Los Angeles, California. It is one of the largest street gangs in Los Angeles, with 30,000–50,000 members between the United States, Mexico, and Central America.” Evidently they’re enemies with MS-13.
“Lottery Boss Appears in Court over $95 Million Scandal. Former Texas Lottery Executive Director Gary Grief faces a first-degree felony charge of abuse of official capacity tied to the controversial 2023 jackpot.”
Former Texas Lottery Executive Director Gary Grief appeared in a Travis County courtroom Friday morning as the criminal case stemming from the controversial 2023 Lotto Texas jackpot moves forward.
Grief appeared alongside his attorney before District Judge Dayna Blazey in the 167th District Court. Prosecutors and attorneys representing the entity formerly known as the Texas Lottery Commission were also present.
Court records show Grief waived formal magistration Friday. Another hearing concerning his personal-recognizance bond was set for October 16.
Shortly after Friday’s proceedings, Travis County District Attorney José Garza formally announced that a grand jury had indicted both Grief and the now-defunct Texas Lottery Commission for abuse of official capacity.
The indictments were handed down April 21.
According to Garza’s office, the charges stem from the April 22, 2023, Lotto Texas drawing and allege that the commission, along with high-level management officials Ed Rogers and Clay Kidd, intentionally and knowingly misused government resources.
The DA’s office alleges the conduct was authorized by Grief, who was serving as the commission’s executive director at the time.
The indictment concerns the drawing in which a New Jersey-based lottery purchasing operation acquired nearly every possible number combination and won a $95 million jackpot.
Grief faces a first-degree felony charge of abuse of official capacity involving $300,000 or more.
The whole affair stinks to high heaven, and I have to think at least some Lotto Commission employees were in on it.
“Judges Recommend Regulators Reject Proposed 765-kV Line. The Public Utility Commission must now decide whether to accept the judges’ recommendation to reject the proposed multibillion-dollar transmission line projects.” “The judges concluded the utilities [Oncor and the Lower Colorado River Authority Transmission Services Corporation] did not establish that the projects are necessary and failed to comply with notice requirements designed to give affected landowners a chance to participate before the application was filed.”
The plot thickens. “Iowa Attorney General Says She’s Taking California to the Supreme Court Over Paramount-Warner Bros.”
Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird wrote in an op-ed for The Daily Wire that she is suing California for leading the charge in the lawsuit against the Paramount–Warner Bros. merger.
“California is once again trying to be the country’s regulator. And once again California is defying common sense to raise costs around the country,” Bird wrote. “That makes this a dispute between states, and the Constitution says those can only be heard in the U.S. Supreme Court.”
“Australian man faces 15 years in prison for using toy gun to win carnival prize for daughter.” He was an ex-felony prohibited from using guns, but getting busted for a carnival air rifle seems way, way excessive.
How Simon Whistler runs his YouTube channels. He outsources everything except direction and presentation, expands his winners and ruthlessly culls his losers. It’s smart business, but largely antithetical to what I watch YouTube for. (Previously.)
Weirdly enough, the animated film Lesbian Space Princess seems to be hated by everyone. See, a film with that title could be highly profitable in porn…
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.
