President Trump does the impossible by bringing peace to the Middle East, France continues to circle the drain, Ukraine continues to wreck Russia’s oil infrastructure, a look at gamed crime statistics, another monthly budget surplus, and stories of various corrupt Americans taking Chinese money.
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
President Trump once again confounds his critics by doing the impossible. “All Living Israeli Hostages Return Home.”
Hamas finally released the remaining 20 living Israeli hostages on Monday, ending two years of captivity as part of a cease-fire deal that requires Israel to release hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.
The hostages, taken during the brutal October 7, 2023, attack against Israel, were reunited with their families. In Tel Aviv’s Hostage Square, a public square that became the focal point for protests and rallies over the last two years, thousands gathered to celebrate their return, cheering, waving flags, and holding up signs. Tens of thousands of Israelis also watched the return at public viewings across the country.
After the Israeli hostages, all men under 50, were freed, Israel began releasing 1,900 Palestinian prisoners, who were greeted by cheering crowds as they were bussed into the West Bank. Of the 1,900 prisoners, 250 were serving life sentences on murder and terrorism convictions, and 1,700 had been detained since October 7.
Israeli troops will be escorting four deceased hostages from the Gaza Strip back to Israel, according to Israeli military. The return of deceased hostages is part of the cease-fire deal. The timeline on when the remaining 24 deceased hostages will be returned back to Israel, however, is still unclear.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed that he was “committed to this peace” in a speech to the Knesset, the Israeli parliament.
Netanyahu was followed by President Trump, who received a standing ovation from Israeli lawmakers as he took the podium.
Weird how the Israeli Knesset gave standing ovation after standing ovation to Literally Hitler…
When your beat is the whole wide world, from Ukraine to Syria to Taiwan to India, the news is almost never as good as it is today. So, let’s savor today’s images of the Israeli hostages finally reunited with their families. The Israeli hostages were held 296 days longer than the Iranian regime held the American hostages in 1979-1981.
It’s understandable if you thought you would never see this headline: “Last 20 living hostages return to Israel.”
It is a spectacular breakthrough, and yet not every Israeli taken by Hamas is home yet, as our Jessica Hornik notes:
There are some two dozen hostages who are deceased. Among them are two American-Israelis, Itay Chen and Omer Neutra. Some of the dead were murdered by Hamas on October 7, their bodies taken into Gaza. Others were murdered in captivity. As part of the agreement, Hamas must return all their remains. The Chen and Neutra families, and all the families of the dead, may finally be able to bury their loved ones.
This is likely the greatest day of Trump’s second term, so far. The Israelis are thrilled and are effusively singing the president’s praises:
Addressing US President Donald Trump at the Knesset, Opposition Leader Yair Lapid lauds the American leader for saving “millions from the horrors of war,” stating that he has “done the unimaginable.”
“Mr. President, you have saved the lives of our hostages. But you saved so much more. You have saved the souls of the bereaved whose loved ones now will be brought home for burial, you have saved thousands of soldiers who will not fall in battle, and you have saved millions from the horrors of war. You have saved far more than one life, and each life is an entire world,” Lapid declares in the Knesset plenum ahead of Trump’s address to the body.
“When you were elected, you declared that you would be ‘the President of Peace.’ You have kept your word. The fact that you were not awarded the Nobel Peace Prize is a grave mistake by the committee — but they will have no choice, Mr. President. They will have to award it to you next year,” Lapid says.
So how did Democrats celebrate the ceasefire they’ve been demanding for so long? Obviously they didn’t.
Way back on October 11, 2023, New York City Council Member Tiffany Cabán called for a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas. Now, at that point, Hamas had just massacred civilians in 21 communities, killing 1,195 people including 38 children. The Israel Defense Force had barely begun its retaliation for the atrocity, but the answer in the mind of Cabán was clear: Everyone should stop shooting and accept a permanent cease-fire. To some of us, this sounded like allowing Hamas to get a free shot at Israelis and then preventing the Israelis from hitting Hamas back.
Two days later, on October 13, a then-little known state senator by the name of Zohran Mamdani joined the call for a cease-fire: “Now is the moment for all people of conscience to call for a ceasefire and no more military funding.” The same day, another Democratic socialist state senator, Julia Salazar concurred: “A ceasefire is urgent. Please implore your federal elected officials to take every action they can to stop this from continuing.”
On October 28, 2023, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez joined her call. “Some may dismiss a ceasefire as naïve or worse. Yet who has a plan for what follows this destruction? What do we call that?”
Mamdani offered a statement on Twitter yesterday that declared “Today’s scenes of Israelis and Palestinians are profoundly moving” but also said that “we have watched as our tax dollars have funded a genocide.” At least Mamdani acknowledged that the cease-fire occurred.
AOC’s X feed had nothing about the cease-fire in the past few days. Nor has Cabán’s. Nor Salazar’s.
For two years, prominent leftist Democrats have been screaming their heads off to get a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and now they’ve finally got one. But suddenly, it’s as if the issue just doesn’t interest them anymore. It’s like a Men in Black neuralyzer has wiped the issue of the Gaza Strip from their memories. It’s shameless, hilarious, and deeply revealing about how the Democratic Party perceives issues and America’s role in the world.
I’m not going to quote Jim Geraghty’s demonstration that Biden’s being “too pro-Israel” didn’t hurt Kamala Harris, because nobody outside the loony left believes that. Unfortunately for Democrats, the loony left is firmly in charge of their party’s foreign policy. Democrats can’t celebrate President Trump’s peace deal because they wanted Hamas to win.
Kurt Schlichter: “The Well-Deserved, Utter Humiliation of Palestinian Terrorists and Their Friends.”
There is a lot of rejoicing in America, Israel, and among normal people around the world about the peace deal in Gaza, but the Palestinian terrorist-huggers are heartbroken. And, of course, they should be. This isn’t really a peace deal. This is an utter capitulation, a total surrender by the losers of Hamas who have completely and utterly failed. They started a war and got their asses kicked, yet again. Their fight from the sewers, where they hid behind women and children, was not an example of brave resistance as they steadfastly endured victimhood. Every single misery that the Palestinians have suffered over the last two years was utterly deserved – in fact, they deserved much, much worse.
That’s why my beef with Israel is that it has been far too kind. Because of the unique aspects of Israeli politics and culture, and because Joe Biden’s puppet masters refused the total support America should’ve given, this absolutely necessary war has dragged on unnecessarily for two years. If I were in charge, this would’ve been over in November 2023, and the semi-human savages who started this war would use my name to scare children for the next hundred generations.
But I’m not in charge, nor are you, nor are any of us except the Palestinians and the Israelis. It’s those in charge who get to make the choices and bear the consequences. The Palestinians got here because they chose to continue a war they’ve been losing since 1948. The Israelis got here because they chose not to allow themselves to be murdered by the people who’ve been trying to kill them since 1948. But I’m not interested in history, not anymore. There’s a time to argue and there’s a time to fight, and it’s time to fight. But you can still see people, both smart and dumb, arguing about history all over the media, both mainstream and social, yet it doesn’t really matter. Certainly, the Israelis are right on the facts – it’s their land, both in terms of historical precedence and the more important fact of physical reality. The owner of the land is the guy who you can’t knock off it; that’s how history works. Here, history just happens to align with justice. The idea that Jews only turned up in the Holy Land in 1946 after Hitler failed to complete his Holocaust is utter nonsense, and people pushing it know that. They don’t care. History is just another weapon for them in their quest for actual genocide, like Kalashnikovs, flotillas of moronic Westerners, and suicide bombers. That it’s all a lie doesn’t matter to them in the least. Their idols are the people who invented Pallywood and made stars of the guys who would portray honor students, a doctors, and a future Nobel Prize winners who just happened to be murdered by the Israelis for no reason, and whose deaths – complete with subtle breathing by the ubiquitous thespians – just happened to be captured on video by their fake reporters.
The real weapon of Hamas, though, is the suffering of their own people. With it, and its documentation, both real and fraudulent, they hope to leverage the humanity of Westerners to get them to choose suicide rather than righteous resistance to Jihadi savagery. It doesn’t just work on millions of morally illiterate leftists – and some ridiculous idiots on the right – in America and Europe. It even works on some Israelis. The October 7 atrocities fell mostly on the leftist “peace” people in the Jewish state who were trying to show solidarity with the Palestinians by living adjacent to Gaza. They died at the hands of the people they wanted to be friends with, horribly, but that didn’t stop many on the Israeli left from trying to undermine the war. Some people will choose suicide over admitting they were wrong.
And what they were wrong about was considering the Palestinians a wonderful but misunderstood people. In reality, it is a broken and hideous culture, poisoned by radical Islam and the humiliation of being defeated again and again and again by the tiny Jewish outpost that would still be a barren desert if the Israelis had not made the desert bloom. The prosperity and freedom of Israel shame them in their squalor and despotism. It drives the hate that is central to their society. They train their little kids to be terrorists, and these little kids grow up to be terrorists. Mommy and daddy were so proud, delighted when their disgusting spawn called from the bloody kibbutzes to brag about killing unarmed Jews. As gruesome as the Hamas degenerates are, it wasn’t just Hamas. The Palestinians elected Hamas, and they still support Hamas. They got what they voted for.
You know who’s not pleased by President Trump’s Middle East peace success? The ChiComs.
One of the biggest losers in President Trump’s great, historic Middle East peace plan is Communist China.
Maybe that’s a reason for China’s petulant rare earths trade control circular it dropped on everyone last Friday, completely out of the blue.
Was that a Chinese temper tantrum heard around the world?
China wasn’t at the peace summit. Its horse lost.
For years, China was the biggest purchaser of Iranian oil, thereby financing the Iranian-backed terrorist war against Israel.
Iran was always the key — backed by China.
And that is why Israel’s Operation Rising Lion, the war with Iran in June, and the United States’s Operation Midnight Hammer on June 22, obliterating Iran’s nuclear facilities at Natanz, Fordow, and Esfahan — were so essential to the Trump peace plan.
Here’s what Mr. Trump said yesterday: “So we dropped 14 bombs on Iran’s key nuclear facilities. Totally, as I said originally, obliterating them.”
He added: “If we didn’t do that and assuming we made the same deal that we have today, there’d be a dark cloud over this deal.”
Mr. Trump concluded: “Some of the things I hated to do, I hated certain of the weapons. Because the level of power is so enormous. It’s so dangerous, it’s so bad. But we have to do what we have to do.”
So Iran was crushed. The use of American-Israel military force was crucial. Not Bidenesque appeasement, but Trumpian force.
Mr. Trump is working with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — the two great warriors saving democracy and freedom in the Middle East, in America, and around the world.
Yet China lost big also. Not only did it watch the judicious use of allied military force to decapitate Iran, but it’s also watching a new coalition of Middle East nations put together by Mr. Trump.
Out of this new coalition can come a Saudi-Israeli alliance, an expanded Abraham Accords, new business ventures to rebuild Gaza, and a whole new panoply of peaceful foreign policies, buttressed by new trade and investment.
China is not likely to be a player in all of this. Its influence is now almost at rock bottom — because its bet on Iran did not pay off.
No Nobel Prize for President Trump, theoretically because all his peace-making deeds fell after their previous deadline (that that that stopped them from ridiculously handing the award to Obama). Instead they gave it to Venezuelan dissident Maria Corina Machado…who promptly dedicated it to Trump.
A foreign-policy expert who had an advisory role with the State Department is being accused of stealing classified information and meeting with Chinese officials several times.
The Justice Department announced Tuesday the arrest of Ashley Tellis, a well-respected scholar specializing in Asia and India, for unlawfully possessing national defense information.
“We are fully focused on protecting the American people from all threats, foreign and domestic. The charges as alleged in this case represent a grave risk to the safety and security of our citizens,” said eastern Virginia U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan, an appointee of President Trump.
“The facts and the law in this case are clear, and we will continue following them to ensure that justice is served.”
Tellis was an unpaid adviser at the State Department and a contractor with the Department of War’s Office of Net Assessment, Fox News reported based on a Justice Department affidavit.
He is currently a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a prominent foreign-policy think tank that opposes the Trump administration. Tellis published analysis for the think tank as recently as last week.
Those looking for data on the US budget deficit contained in the Monthly Treasury Statement had to wait a few weeks because of the government shutdown, but better late than never, and today at 2pm, the Treasury unveiled the US income statement for the just concluded fiscal year 2025. It was ugly, but not as ugly as it could have been and the month of September was outright impressive.
Starting at the top with the month of September, the numbers were surprisingly sold: total tax revenue of $543 billion were the highest since April (which is tax-collections month), a 3.2% improvement from a year ago, and pushed the 6-month moving average to a record high $496 billion.
As usual, the vast majority of govt receipts was in the form of individual income taxes ($298BN out of $544BN), with Social Security contributing about a 3rd of the total receipts and Corporate Income Taxes accounting for 11% or $62 billion of the total.
On the outlays side, here too there were notable improvements, with the US government spending only $346 billion, a sharp from from the $689 billion in August, and down a whopping 25% from the $463 billion last September. Even more remarkable is that the six month moving average of govt spending suddenly slumped from $604 billion – the highest since covid – to $573 billion, the lowest since June 2024. Yes, the improvement may be small, but every little bit helps and whatever Trump is doing to shrink govt spending is starting to show.
Snip.
A big reason for the stellar September surplus is that tariff collections continued apace, and in September the US government collected a record $29.7 billion in tariffs, which translated in a record $195 billion for the fiscal year. And since Trump’s tariff regime was only active for 6 of the past 12 month, expect tariffs to deliver about $350 billion in annual revenue every year, unless they are canceled.
Still a long way to go to actually balance the budget.
Data from my new Centre for Heterodox Social Science report, ‘The Decline of Trans and Queer Identity among Young Americans’, shows that since 2023 both trans and queer identification have dropped sharply within Generation Z.
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), which conducts a large annual survey of US undergraduates, polled over 60,000 students in 2025. My analysis of the raw data shows that in that year, just 3.6% of respondents identified as a gender other than male or female. By comparison, the figure was 5.2% in 2024 and 6.8% in both 2022 and 2023. In other words, the share of trans-identified students has effectively halved in just two years.
“Two Suspects Indicted on First Antifa-Related Terrorism Charges in Texas ICE Attack…A federal grand jury indicted Cameron Arnold and Zachary Evetts on Wednesday. The pair are charged with providing material support for terrorism, attempting to murder federal officers and assisting officers, and discharging firearms during attempted murders, according to the indictment, which was unsealed Thursday.”
Fiscally bankrupt, France is trapped in economic stagnation.
The immediate issue is the 2026 budget. Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu resigned due to an inability to negotiate a budget for 2026. Still, President Emmanuel Macron and Lecornu insist that a path to a budget compromise remains possible. Time will tell. However, the political crisis is pushing up interest rates among the countries that make up the European Monetary Union. Through the European Central Bank, the Union backstops France’s sovereign debt. The crisis also weakened the euro relative to the United States dollar.
France’s major problem?
Any budget deal will be a fudge that fails to put France on a path to fiscal stability. France will continue to violate the fiscal deficit limits of the European Union. But France must reduce its annual fiscal deficit to 3% of GDP, or, at least, set a credible path to reaching that level. Next year, regardless of whatever budget agreement is reached, France’s fiscal deficit will exceed 5% of GDP. In addition, France is obligated by its EU membership to enact policies to reduce its total debt from the current 115% of GDP to 60% of GDP. Obviously, this will be impossible. So, expect fudges and more fudges for years to come.
The French left and populist right want to get rid of the 2023 reforms, which increased the national retirement age from 62 to 64. But repealing the pension reform legislation would increase the deficit by about $3.5 billion USD a year. At the same time, fewer people would be working, so tax collections would be lower. Fewer workers would mean slower economic growth. France is already experiencing an extended period of stagnation.
The other possible area of compromise is to implement a wealth tax on French citizens with a net worth of €100 million/$116 million USD or more. Again, proponents of a wealth tax say that the tax would raise to $23 billion USD a year, but mainstream economists say wealth taxes don’t work. The wealthy simply respond with legal tax avoidance strategies and migrate to lower tax jurisdictions.
The top line is that any budget deal will just delay the inevitable reckoning with financial markets and the ECB’s monetary authorities. At some point, the ECB will force France into austerity. Otherwise, France will drag down Europe’s economy, and France’s politics could actually jeopardize the European Monetary Union.
As France lurches from government to government in a political crisis engulfing President Emmanuel Macron, there has been one consistent beneficiary: Marine Le Pen and her far-right Rassemblement National party.
Hours after Macron’s third new prime minister resigned on Monday, Le Pen cast the RN not just as a party ready to govern but also capable of restoring stability to a nation in turmoil.
Snip.
The RN outflanks rivals from across the political spectrum in opinion polls and maintains a solid base of about a third of the electorate, though its lead has not grown exponentially even as it stands to gain from the chaos.
The populist party also has its own internal divides and problems — not least after Le Pen was barred from running for office for five years when she was convicted of embezzling EU funds. She is appealing against the verdict, with further proceedings scheduled for January.
Still, a series of errors by Macron, Le Pen’s opponent in the last two presidential run-offs, is helping her bolster the RN’s credibility, after a long-running effort to shed the racist and antisemitic legacy of her late father and party founder, Jean-Marie Le Pen.
Macron’s unexpected gamble to call a snap parliamentary vote last year in a bid to stem the RN’s rise backfired, leaving him well short of a majority, while the RN won its biggest ever haul of seats, 120 in the 577-strong lower house.
The French president’s subsequent attempts to break the deadlock by naming prime ministers from the centre-right or his own centrist camp — including Sébastien Lecornu, one of his closest allies — further amplified the crisis, with no premier able to stay in office for more than a few months and struggling to pass budgets.
France’s “centre-right” is probably to the left of Obama.
“It feeds the ongoing feeling that there’s a form of political elite that’s occupying positions of power, and in a totally disconnected way from the people, keep bringing back the same figures,” said Jean-Yves Camus, a political scientist at the Iris think-tank.
Snip.
The political damage from recent months is lasting.
Polling group Odoxa found last week that a third of those who voted against the RN in 2024 — heeding calls by Macron and French centrists to band together against the far-right — would not do so again.
“We found voters were really fed up with this idea of being told to vote against [the RN], they had a feeling they had been asked to do so to purely serve political interests,” Odoxa head Céline Bracq said.
Pollsters and analysts said the RN would at the very least do as well as last year in a new election, and would be one of the few parties set to increase its number of seats, even if the two-round voting system complicates predictions. Much would hinge on a left-wing bloc uniting or not.
Within the RN, however, party executives said they were readying for an outright majority if, as they hope, Macron is at some point forced to call another snap election. In that scenario, the president would have no other option than to appoint Le Pen’s right-hand man and party chief Jordan Bardella as prime minister.
“The RN has to get to Matignon,” said Edwige Diaz, an RN lawmaker, in reference to the prime minister’s official residence. “The people of France can’t take it anymore, they want change.”
Once again, gold and silver hit record highs. There is evidently a shortage of physical silver in London, which is helping drive prices.
They also hit Samara and Kstovo oil refineries, and a Samara substation near a railroad. “Kstovo was the first refinery targeted by Ukraine in the current campaign against Russian oil, hitting it on August the 2nd and again on October the 5th. So the third strike targeting this refinery…This is a big one, the fourth biggest in Russia with a 17 million ton capacity a year. This one alone represents 6% of Russia’s refining capacity overall.”
During last year’s presidential debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, Trump said violent crime was rising. ABC moderator David Muir immediately fact-checked him, claiming, “President Trump, as you know, the FBI says overall violent crime is coming down in this country…”
Nearly every major media outlet echoed that narrative. National Public Radio ran the headline, “Violent crime is dropping fast in the U.S. – even if Americans don’t believe it.” The Wall Street Journal declared, “Violent Crime Rate Falls Sharply After Pandemic Surge.” Vox insisted, “Violent crime is plummeting.” Axios reported, “New data shows violent crime dropping sharply in major U.S. cities.”
However, a new Bureau of Justice Statistics report, which includes data through 2024, shows that Trump was right during the debate when he said, “Crime here is up and through the roof.” The National Crime Victimization Survey shows violent crime surged 59%, with rape and sexual assault up 67%, robbery up 38%, and aggravated assault up 62%. That’s the largest four-year increase in the survey’s 52-year history.
The contrast with Trump’s first term is stark. The NCVS data shows that between 2017 and 2020, violent crime fell 15%, including a 6% drop in robbery and a 24% decline in aggravated assault. Although rape and sexual assault rose slightly, the increase was less than 10% of what occurred under Biden.
The federal government tracks crime in two main ways. The FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports count the number of offenses reported to police each year. The Bureau of Justice Statistics’ National Crime Victimization Survey, by contrast, annually asks about 240,000 people living in the United States whether they were crime victims. The latter method captures both reported and unreported incidents.
Last year, the media focused almost entirely on the FBI data.
Before 2020, the FBI and Bureau of Justice Statistics trends generally moved in tandem. Since then, they’ve diverged sharply: The FBI reports fewer crimes, while more Americans say they’ve been victimized. Unreported crime was always a factor – and the reasons for it vary. They range from people reluctant to report being victimized by loved ones to a simple aversion by undocumented people to involve themselves with the criminal justice system. In recent years, however, another factor appears to have skewed the FBI data: the breakdown of law enforcement in this country. When people believe police won’t catch or prosecutors won’t punish criminals, they’re simply less likely to report crimes. Between 2010 and 2019, victims reported 63.3% of violent crimes to police. In the last three years, that number plummeted to 48.8%. Arrests fell as well – from 26.5% before COVID-19 to just 16.6% afterward.
They’re slashing their payrolls in anticipation of spinning off basket-case MSNBC from also basket-case NBC “News…”
NBC News eliminated its teams dedicated to covering issues affecting Black, Asian American, Latino and LGBTQ+ groups as part of its layoffs of about 150 staffers on Wednesday, according to two sources familiar with the matter, a significant culling as the Peacock network separates from its sister news network, MSNBC.
The cuts mean that the verticals NBC BLK, NBC Asian America, NBC Latino and NBC OUT will no longer have dedicated teams bolstering their coverage. The verticals will continue to publish stories related to the specific groups and NBC News may ultimately retain up to five staffers who will contribute coverage on the verticals to the newsroom, according to one source, as the dedicated teams focused exclusively on these verticals are sunset.
The total reductions, which affected NBC News’ entire news operation, make up about 7% of NBC News’ newsroom of about 2,000 staffers and 2% of the wider NBCU News Group, which includes Telemundo and the network’s owned-and-operated local news stations. The cuts did not target specific teams and were driven by the network’s budget and the desire to streamline its editorial efforts, according to one source.
They should purge all DEI/social justice hires to help improve shareholder value.
That was quick. “Court Orders Immediate Halt to Loving County ‘Takeover’ Scheme.”
A state district judge has granted Attorney General Ken Paxton’s request for a temporary restraining order against Malcolm Tanner, the Indiana man accused of orchestrating an illegal plan to “take over” Loving County by importing out-of-state voters with promises of free housing.
The order immediately bars Tanner and anyone acting with him from allowing new residents onto the property or discharging sewage that could contaminate soil or groundwater.
A hearing on whether to extend the order or issue a temporary injunction is set for October 31.
“The show is over,” Paxton said in a statement. “A court has ordered that this illegal and deceptive political sham must come to an immediate end. Malcolm Tanner is a two-bit charlatan attempting to defraud people out of their money with false promises of free homes and unlawful government payouts. Texas is for Texans, not out-of-state grifters trying to steal political power from the people who live here.”
The judge found that Tanner and his associates “violated or are threatening to violate Texas Health and Safety Code § 341 by discharging or allowing the discharge of sewage or human excreta in a manner that could contaminate the soil, sub-surface drinking water, or create the potential for disease transmission.”
The court agreed that such contamination posed “immediate and irreparable injury” to public health and justified emergency relief.
The ruling follows Paxton’s earlier lawsuit accusing Tanner of violating public-health laws, running a public nuisance, and committing deceptive trade practices by luring followers—mostly women and children—to a remote site in West Texas with false promises of “free homes” and monthly cash payments.
Tanner, who has described his group as “Melanated People of Power,” claimed on social media he plans to rename Loving County and replace local officials in the 2026 elections.
I feel about Paxton the same way Abraham Lincoln felt about Ulysses S. Grant: “I cannot spare this man. He fights.” (Previously.)
Attorney General Ken Paxton has informed the Texas State Securities Board that his office has uncovered evidence showing entities connected to the East Plano Islamic Center and its controversial proposed EPIC City land development project violated both federal and state securities laws.
In a letter to Chairman E. Wally Kinney and Commissioner Travis J. Iles, Paxton said his office conducted an investigation into Community Capital Partners LP (CCP), the group raising funds for EPIC City, after receiving multiple complaints. The attorney general’s office requested extensive records from CCP and says it has now reviewed more than 750 documents related to the offering of securities tied to the project.
“In the course of the investigation, the OAG identified evidence that CCP violated federal and state securities laws and regulations, including both procedural violations and fraudulent conduct,” Paxton wrote. He invited the Securities Board to meet with his investigative team, review the evidence, and—if it agrees with his findings—refer the case back to the attorney general’s office so that legal action can proceed.
Paxton noted that the Texas Securities Act requires the commissioner and the attorney general to work together to “prevent or detect a violation of the law,” saying he looks forward to collaborating “to ensure that Texas law is being enforced and Texans are protected.”
“After a thorough investigation, it has become clear that the developers behind EPIC City flagrantly and undeniably violated the law,” said Paxton. “The bad actors behind this illegal scheme must be held accountable for ignoring state and federal regulations.”
The development marks a significant escalation in the state’s ongoing crackdown on EPIC City. Multiple state agencies have launched investigations into the project, including the Funeral Service Commission, the Commission on Environmental Quality, and the Workforce Commission.
Additionally, Gov. Greg Abbott has also recently signed legislation he said will effectively ban “Sharia compounds” like EPIC City in Texas. The measure removes certain religious exemptions from the Texas Fair Housing Act for organizations owning more than 25 acres and prevents them from limiting home sales based on religion.
Snip.
If the Securities Board agrees with his office’s conclusions and formally refers the case, the attorney general is expected to file suit against Community Capital Partners and other parties tied to EPIC City for violations of securities law.
At this point the whole project is deader than the last three leaders of Hamas…
Lonoke County, Arkansas: “Dad charged with killing his 14-year-old daughter’s rapist now running for sheriff.” “Aaron Spencer allegedly gunned down Michael Fosler, 67, after catching him driving off with his daughter, whom Fosler had already been charged with grooming and abusing, according to court docs.” “The monster who hurt our child was charged quickly, but released even faster on a $50k bond. He was awaiting court in December for several felonies in relation to what he did to our child.”
Among those charged include Kanaisha Middleton, a supervisor at the Garden City branch of the DMV, as well as her sister, Jamie Middleton, who is accused of taking at least 10 different permit tests for no-show drivers.
Surveillance images show Jamie Middleton wearing different disguises, even fake facial hair as she posed as a man who would be applying for a commercial driving permit, but she forgot to take off her fake nails.
A woman with prior convictions in several southeastern Texas counties and multiple pending felony charges is free on at least nine bonds despite allegations that she has frequently violated the terms of her probation.
Juanetta Solomon’s criminal history dates to at least 2015 with convictions in Brazoria, Fort Bend, Galveston, and Harris counties related to drugs, personal care fraud, and felony theft. She has served time in the state prison system and county jails.
While on probation, in 2023 Solomon was charged with two counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon in Harris County, and in 2024 for practicing dentistry without a license. According to Houston police records, she allegedly pretended to be a dentist with ISmilez Cosmetic Designz and injured a patient after using a dental drill, file, and chemicals.
Not Juanetta Solomon.
Last year Solomon was also charged with unlawfully carrying a weapon and prosecutors alleged she repeatedly violated the terms of her probation.
Despite Solomon’s record, 232nd Criminal District Court Judge Josh Hill declined to revoke her probation, and she is free on seven felony bonds out of Harris County.
Electing social justice Democrats means letting black criminals walk the streets so they can continue victimizing law-abiding black citizens.
“Men charged with sex crimes in three states get in girls’ locker rooms by invoking gender identity…Case High School Aquatic Center staff invoked Racine Unified School District’s gender-identity policy to justify letting 64-year-old Rohan de Silva use the girls’ locker room.” So thanks to social justice, high schools are now letting 64 year old perverts into girl’s locker rooms. Keep doing that, and you’re going to get a lot more Aaron Spencers…
“ICE Arrests Illinois Cop For Being Illegal Alien Who Arrived On Six-Month Tourist Visa.” Radule Bojovic of Montenegro came over on a tourist visa in 2015…
A Chinese businessman whose company has strong ties to the Chinese Communist Party has poured at least $65,000 into Rep. Mikie Sherrill’s bid for New Jersey governor, records show.
Pin Ni, the founder of Wanxiang America Corporation, cut at least two checks for a combined $60,000 this year for the One Giant Leap super PAC, which is backing Sherrill’s bid against Republican Jack Ciattarelli.
Pin also gave another $5,800 — the maximum allowable — directly to Sherrill’s campaign in June, records indicate.
Only American citizens or permanent legal residents are allowed to make donations to political campaigns. Pin’s status is not fully clear, though records indicate he has a Social Security number.
Remember Des Moines public schools chairman Jackie Norris, who hired an illegal alien superintendent? She just suspended her campaign for U.S. Senate. Do you think that maybe ordinary Iowa voters aren’t as gung ho about importing illegal aliens as the Democrat Party’s ideological core?
Louis Rossmann reports on an interesting story: Denver City council votes 12-0 not to purchase AI cameras. Denver mayor Mike Johnston buys them anyway. Seems like there’s a big push to install these in American cities over the wishes of voters. (Previously.)
Another attempt to “reinvent farming” goes awry. “A company known for its vertical farming is shutting down its North Texas facility and laying off more than 100 employees, according to a recent filing with the Texas Workforce Commission. Both of Eden Green Technology’s greenhouses at 1845 Sparks Dr. in Cleburne are set to close permanently on Dec. 13. The layoffs affect employees at every level—from executives, including the CEO, CFO and Chief Innovation Officer, to greenhouse managers, production and packing staff, and sanitation workers.” There are probably places were “vertical farming” might prove a viable option, like Alaska or Saudi Arabia, but there’s very little point to trying it in a place so well supplied with sun, water and soil as north central Texas… (Hat tip: Dwight.)
Iconic Corpus Christi building fails to attract a bidder. Downtown Corpus is weird. As so0meone once said, “it’s like they rebuilt the city after the monster attack but none of the people came back.” I heard someone that a small group of money Corpus families bought up all downtown with the express intention of not letting it be developed. of course, I was last there in 2000, so maybe things have changed…
“Tough Love” Level: Illegal. “Florida parents reportedly ditched 16-year-old son on roadside with sack of guns: ‘You are the chosen one… good luck.'”
An annoyingly awesome and well-thought out vanlife build. I say “annoying” because they evidently paid to have all the custom work done rather than laboriously building it up from bare metal themselves like most van life videos I watch…
The Trump Administration guts two lefty slop buckets of graft, Israel lights up the Houthis big time, crazy tranny shooter might have been in satanic cult too crazy for the Church of Satan, Ukraine bombs the snot out of Russia’s oil infrastructure (again), Scotland and Germany continue to favor unassimilated Muslim immigrants over their own citizens, a secret Spinal Tap concert, and the full weight of Plano ISD comes down on a nefarious…a choir booster club?
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Another court win for Trump47. “Supreme Court Rules 5-4 That Trump Can Slash $783 Million In DEI Research Funding.”
The Trump administration is free to eliminate hundreds of millions of dollars worth of research funding on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) following last week’s ruling by the United States Supreme Court.
In a 5-4 vote, the justices lifted an order from a federal court judge in Boston that blocked $783 million in cuts made by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) on health research grants that were being used to advance DEI efforts as well as “gender ideology extremism.”
The Supreme Court was split on the 5-4 decision which marks another win for President Trump and clears the way for his administration to move forward with canceling hundreds of grants after U.S. District Judge William Young ordered the health-related grants restored in June.
Chief Justice John Roberts was among the dissenters in the high court’s decision and Justice Amy Coney Barrett voted with conservative majority to let the administration stop the grant funding.
Roberts and Barrett did land on the side of the dissent and allowed to stand a portion of the lower judge’s order that voided a number of NIH policies that targeted DEI programs at the direction of the White House.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick canceled an Biden administration agreement Monday to distribute billions of dollars for semiconductor research through a nonprofit set up and staffed by former political appointees, according to a letter obtained by The Post.
The 2022 CHIPS and Science Act provided for $11 billion in semiconductor research and development funding to be given out by the Commerce Department’s National Semiconductor Technology Center.
“Rather than establishing these operations within the Department, however, Biden Administration officials spent significant time, effort, and resources creating an unaccountable, outside entity–Natcast–to administer taxpayer funds,” Lutnick wrote Natcast CEO Deirdre Hanford.
Four days before Biden left office on Jan. 20, Lutnick noted, the Commerce Department agreed to set aside $7.4 billion in “advance payments” to Natcast after spending nearly two years setting it up and tapping administration officials, advisers and allies to fill out positions.
That arrangement both effectively removed the incoming Trump administration from being involved in the process and provided “virtually all” of Natcast’s funding — prompting incoming Departments of Justice and Commerce officials to take another look at the Sunnyvale, Calif., nonprofit.
“These actions do not just give the appearance of impropriety; they flout federal law,” Lutnick told Hanford, pointing out that no provisions in the CHIPS Act authorized an outside entity like Natcast to distribute semiconductor research funds.
“The GCCA [Government Corporation Control Act] plainly prohibits agencies from establishing a corporation to act as an agency without specific authorization, and the January 16, 2025, agreement does nothing other than set forth the terms of the Biden Administration’s attempt to do just that.”
Natcast’s selection committee included Biden White House alums like Jason Matheny, former deputy director for national security in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy; and Kendra Wilkerson, the CEO of a nonprofit that “promotes greater equality for women and nonbinary professionals in technology fields,” according to the Biden Commerce Department.
Donna Dubinsky, another Natcast executive, worked as senior counselor to former Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and signed off on the nonprofit’s 501(c)(3) status.
Susan Feindt, the Biden Commerce Department’s vice chair of its CHIPS Act advisory committee, is now the senior vice president of ecosystem development at Natcast.
Jeremy Licht, the former chief counsel on semiconductor incentives at the Biden Commerce Department, is now the general counsel at Natcast.
They weren’t robbing Peter to pay Paul, they were robbing you to line their own pockets. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller told reporters Monday that the Trump administration has uncovered a “massive scandal” in Washington D.C. involving the doctoring of crime statistics.
He said the alleged corruption is currently under investigation and said details of the corruption will soon be brought to light.
“The results will stun you,” he said.
Miller made the remarks in the Oval Office after President Trump signed a slew of new executive orders to end cashless bail throughout the United States and in the District of Columbia, prosecute the burning of the American flag, and additional measures to address crime in Washington D.C.
Miller said D.C. already had the worst crime statistics in the United States when “honestly measured,” but those stats “dramatically understated how bad it was.”
The White House advisor told reporters that murders and homicides were allegedly being reported as accidents instead of murders.
“This is how severe the manipulation of the crime data has been in the city and it will all be uncovered and it will all be brought to light,” he said.
For the past two weeks—since the D.C. crime crackdown began—the city has not seen a single murder or homicide.
“No police officer working in the city can remember a time in their lives when there has been no murders,” Miller asserted.
He said police officers have told him that members of the public have been thanking them for making D.C safe again.
“For the first time in their lives, they can use the parks, they can walk on the streets, you have people who can walk freely at night without worrying about being ribbed or mugged,” he said. “They’re wearing their watch again, they’re wearing jewelry again, they’re carrying purses again.”
Miller explained that D.C. residents had been forced to “change their who lives for fear of being murdered, mugged or carjacked.”
He added that Trump had freed the 700,000 residents of the city from “the rule of criminals and thugs.”
Miller credited Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Administrator Terrance C. Cole with discovering that street criminals in Washington D.C. have been “doing business directly with the transnational criminal cartels,” which are foreign terrorist organizations.
“So not only was the city being run by these criminal thugs, but they were working with some of the most dangerous terrorist organizations on the planet to traffic weapons and drugs into this city,” he explained.
Israel’s military conducted airstrikes on Yemen’s Houthi-controlled capital, Sanaa, on Sunday, targeting high-profile sites in a significant escalation of hostilities.
The strikes hit areas near the presidential palace, the Asar and Hizaz power plants, and Houthi facilities suspected of housing artillery, including ballistic missiles, according to regional reports.
The operation was a direct response to recent Houthi attacks on Israel, including projectile launches on Friday, a military source told the Jerusalem Post. While Israel has previously targeted Houthi infrastructure, its strikes have largely focused on the strategic port city of Hodeida, a critical economic and military hub. The shift to Sanaa signals a broader and more aggressive approach to the conflict.
At least two people were killed and five others injured, Al Masirah, a Houthi-affiliated media outlet reported, according to Al Jazeera.
“The attacks were carried out in response to repeated attacks by the Houthi terrorist regime against the state of Israel and its citizens, including the launch of surface-to-surface missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles towards the country’s territory,” the Israeli military said in a statement.
There’s video:
The exact moment Israel vaporized the entire leadership of Yemeni Houthis 👇
“Westman’s videos, posted hours before the shootings, may only suggest he used ‘very similar to the symbolism used by violent global satanic cults called Order of 9 Angles and 764.'” I reached out to a “left-hand path” guy I knew from science fiction for background, and he offered the following:
Many years ago Dr. Anton LaVey asked Micheal Aquino to write two “Lovecraftain Pieces” for the _Satanic Rituals — “Th Cermony of the Nine Angles”and “The Call to Cthulhu”.
Then back in the 1990s a weirdo (named Myall back in the day) claimed that family knew the REAL SECRET of the nine angles. It was mainly Neo_Nazy stuff — “Kill a Jew for Satan” The guy claimed 100s of followers and had several Orders he was running –my favorite was the “lesbian: Order of the Sapphic Satanists. He tried to join Islam and run an atisemetic Islamic Runic brotherhood that worshipped Azathoth. It did not go well. The ONA shows occasionally with anti-Jewish slogans.
According to this piece last year, 764 is a global Satanic child predator network.
The likely next mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani, is, as President Donald Trump put it, a “100% Communist lunatic,” and so you won’t exactly be dumbfounded to learn that his advisors are a rogue’s gallery of political hacks and psychopaths the likes of which have not been seen since Chairman Mao sat down for a tete-a-tete with his fellow cultural revolutionaries. It’s clear that one way or another, once this clown moves into Gracie Mansion, New York City is in for it: skyrocketing crime, an inundation of illegal migrants, bankruptcy, the destruction of the city’s economic base — all that and more is on the table.
Fox News reported Thursday Mamdani’s “growing circle of influence is littered with activists who have espoused anti-Israel views and socialist principles as he attempts to dispel the narrative that he is too ‘radical’ to run the nation’s largest city.” Yeah, these advisors show that he is indeed far too radical to be mayor of New York, but that’s not likely to keep him from being elected.
Among those advisors is Murad Awawdeh, president of the New York Immigration Coalition (NYIC), which advocates ending “state support for detention, deportation, and mass incarceration.” Awawdeh insists that illegal migrants “deserve” healthcare, presumably at the expense of the American taxpayer. He has also ranted: “NO LISTEN… SEEKING ASYLUM AT THE BORDER IS A LEGAL RIGHT. ASYLUM SEEKERS ARE FLEEING FOR THEIR LIVES FROM VIOLENCE, PERSECUTION, & IMPACTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE. THE U.S. HAS A LEGAL OBLIGATION TO PROVIDE REFUGE. #WelcomeWithDignity”
A legal obligation to provide refuge for anyone fleeing any kind of difficulty? Do tell. Anyway, NYIC has “taken in $175,000 from the sprawling George Soros nonprofit network,” and if that connection of Soros to Mamdani is too tenuous for you, there is plenty more. Fox News reported on Aug. 14 that “A former top executive for liberal billionaire George Soros’ Open Society Foundations (OSF) between 2017 and 2020 is back in the spotlight amid reports highlighting his involvement with Zohran Mamdani’s New York City mayoral campaign and connecting Obama world to the campaign.”
The Soros exec in question is Patrick Gaspard, an old political hand on the left; the first campaign he worked on was Jesse Jackson’s 1988 presidential run. Gaspard “has served in several high-profile political positions, including advising former President Barack Obama’s historic 2008 campaign, serving as the Democratic National Committee’s executive director, and being tapped as the Center for American Progress (CAP) president in 2021.”
Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, the co-founder of the Sinaloa cartel, is set to face the rest of his life behind bars as the Trump administration ramps up its efforts to dismantle cartels.
Zambada, 75, confessed in a Brooklyn, New York, courtroom Monday that he had coordinated with Mexican officials to smuggle drugs into the U.S. for decades — and ultimately pleaded guilty to serving as principal leader of a continuing criminal enterprise and racketeering conspiracy.
The Trump administration has pledged to take down the cartels — and experts predict Zambada’s guilty plea paves the way for the Justice Department to launch more indictments against high-profile cartel members moving forward and exerts additional pressure on Mexico to comply with U.S. requests.
Russia may not have an oil industry at all when this war is over. Ukraine just hit two more oil refineries, Kuybyshevskiy in Samara and Afipsky in Krasnodar. “Multiple swarms hit this refinery, which makes Russia’s air defense look even more incompetent than usual.” It was also 1,000km away.
They also hit the Ust-Luga gas processing terminal near St. Petersburg with ten drones. “This terminal is responsible for processing stable gas condenscent in naphtha jet fuel fuel oil and distillates.” The location makes me wonder if a goodly portion was intended for the export market.
The map of Russian refineries reveals a key strategic problem. The main processing capabilities are in the European part of the country, whilst fuel consumption is rising in the far east. Fuel logistic chains for eastern regions span thousands of kilometers, creating additional costs and risks. Kilometer-long queues in cities are a direct result of the imbalance between western production and eastern consumption.
Harris County’s District Attorney Sean Teare has charged Yunhai Li, a 35-year-old former MD Anderson Cancer Center researcher, with attempting to steal and take proprietary cancer-related research back to China. This comes after multiple warnings about research security in Texas higher education.
While the Department of Transportation has owned the historic station since the 1980s, it has allowed a nonprofit, the Union Station Redevelopment Corporation, more control over the station year after year.
Now, the Department of Transportation says it plans to use a new deal with Amtrak and USRC to fund improvements to elevators, lighting, security and other repairs to the roof and several major systems.
“Scottish Girl Arrested For Using Knife And Axe To Ward Off Migrant Stalker.” She was defending her 12-year old sister from unassimilated would-be Muslim statutory rapists, so of course the police had to arrest her…
Last week, a Houston resident foiled a home invasion attempt by a couple criminals trying to impersonate the police. According to the news article:
“Police said the men told the homeowner they were serving a warrant. They were wearing bullet-proof vests, had badges around their necks and were wearing ski masks.”
The homeowner ended up shooting and killing both offenders.
There are many more tips in the article, but police don’t wear ski masks while serving a warrant…
“Texas Teacher Arrested on Federal Child Porn Charge…Robert Jerome Custer, 56, was arrested on a federal charge of accessing child sexual abuse material, commonly called child pornography. Custer previously worked as an educator and counselor in Palestine, Barksdale, Kingsville, and Abilene, according to a statement from the Texas Department of Public Safety.”
The German welfare state is no longer financially sustainable, Friedrich Merz said on Saturday.
The chancellor argued for a fundamental reassessment of the benefits system as spending continues to soar past last year’s record of €47bn (£40bn).
In a state-level party conference meeting on Saturday, Mr Merz said: “The welfare state as we have it today can no longer be financed with what we can economically afford.”
Once the export champion of Europe, Germany’s economy has slowed dramatically since 2017, with GDP growing by only 1.6 per cent since then versus 9.5 per cent for the rest of the eurozone.
Germany’s economy shrank by 0.2 per cent last year following a 0.3 per cent dip in 2023 – the first time since the early 2000s the economy has retreated two years in a row.
Industrial production fell under the Left-leaning “traffic light” coalition of Olaf Scholz and continues to slide under the new government, with GDP declining by 0.3 per cent in the second quarter of 2025.
Meanwhile, spending on social welfare has exploded, and is set to increase further this year as Germany’s population ages and unemployment rises. Although the majority of benefit recipients are German, large numbers are non-German citizens.
German elites will do anything to support its welfare state…except stop importing unassimilated Muslim immigrants. Just like all the rest of Europe’s elites. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
A decade after the radical left first started shoving tranny bathrooms down the public’s throat without debate, Texas is finally limiting bathrooms to biological sex.
“Mark Teixeira, Longtime Major League Baseball Player, Launches Texas Congressional Bid.” He’s running as a Republican for the 21st Texas Congressional District, where incumbent Chip Roy is running for Attorney General.
Having a meth habit is going to be disqualifying for a lot of jobs. Like District Attorney for Mariposa County. Thus it’s no surprise that DA Mike McAfee resigned…
Another electric bus company goes bankrupt. “Quebec-based Lion Electric, which the Biden administration awarded $159 million ‘to manufacture 435 school buses between 2022 and 2024,’ has fallen into bankruptcy.” (Previously.)
This is a weird story. “Moms Arrested for Running North Texas Choir Booster Club. Cleared of charges, moms still lost choir booster club money to the school district.”
Local authorities in Collin County, including a school district, have harassed three moms in a quest to control a school booster club and its funds, even going so far as to arrest them.
Plano Independent School District targeted the Jasper High School Choir Booster Club for control of its bank account after the mothers charged with running the independent organization insisted that the district pay for Jasper High School’s stage—as was the district’s responsibility.
The district had the Plano police arrest the booster club’s founders—Laura Cervantes, Krisinda Lingenfelter, and Maria Luisa King. Yet, after a Collin County grand jury failed to find enough evidence to prosecute these moms, a Plano municipal judge recently awarded the club’s bank funds to Plano ISD.
Also this: “Oral arguments were held on May 30 before Judge Paul McNulty, chief judge for the Municipal Court of Plano. Texas Scorecard was in attendance. Recording devices were banned from the trial and the booster club was denied its request to bring a court reporter.” Also, another judge involved in the case, Lisa Bronchetti, evidently wrote a bad check to the club but still failed to excuse herself.
Like I said, weird…
Newark Airport sucks. Objectively. One major culprit? God.
Shortly after declaring that running for congress was “one of the worst nine-month experiences of my life,” gun YouTuber Brandon Herrera is rushing into the breach again.
He starts off by comparing his run to Rocky II, the movie in which Rocky actually wins the heavyweight championship.
His first run “was a terrifying jump into unfamiliar territory. But I did it because the congressman who represented me, Tony Gonzalez, even though a Republican, kept making bad votes that just made no sense to me, like voting for Biden’s gun control, opposing border security, selling out American interests on behalf of other countries, and a bunch of other things that shocked me to learn that a Texas Republican would vote for.”
“Statistically, replacing an incumbent that wants to run for reelection is very hard to do, but we gave it a shot. What followed was one of the craziest 10-month journeys of my life, running for office in Texas Congressional District 23, one of the biggest in the country, against one of the best funded members of Congress in the entire country.”
“We succeeded in our goal of taking him to a runoff.”
“What followed was a brutal two-month runoff where I had all of the guns and money of the establishment pointed directly at my forehead. over $10 million being spent against me. I got outspent like 10 to one.”
“I lost by like 400 votes, by 1%.”
Gonzales doesn’t seem to have gotten the message. “Like three days after the election was over in November, he was on CNN arguing against deportations.”
“When these people win, they feel untouchable. They will continue to do favors for the people who kept them in office and vote for garbage without any sense of accountability from the people who they hate and pretend to love when the cameras are on. The truth is, these people only understand one language. The only way to stop them, truly stop them, is to win.”
“I’m not going to lie, [the loss] started to eat at me. Those things that I didn’t like about DC, about my congressman, they didn’t change. The things that the voters in the district were upset about, the reason so many of them were sick of their fake conservative congressmen, they didn’t change.”
“People in the political world kept telling me, you know, nobody wins on their first try, even during my first try, which, I’ll be honest, kind of ticked me off, cuz I was, you know, gunning to prove them wrong.”
“Texas District 23 deserves a real conservative, not a cheap fake who plays one on TV.”
“Somebody who actually understands and respects the Constitution, not just as like a cheap line, but actually respects it. Someone who will vote not just to protect, but to enhance your gun rights. Not vote to throw them away when it gets inconvenient.”
“Someone who will actually vote to protect America’s borders, not just claim that they will on TV during election season.”
“Texas deserves better than Tony. I’m willing to put my life to the side to stand up and take that fight.”
He goes on to praise his donors. “The amount of you guys that were able to put together even just $5, $10, $20 blew away the DC professionals. I’m not even kidding. I had these conversations after the race with, you know, DC types who do political data for a living, and they were in literal disbelief of what we were able to put together. All with no big super PACs, no special interests, no foreign lobbyists, just me and you guys.”
“They literally didn’t believe me until I showed them the numbers. I mean, we were able to raise over a million without having to play the DC games and beg people who definitely don’t expect favors in return.”
“But this time, I want to make sure we give them a fight they’re not ready for. I’ll give you a war you won’t believe.”
Flogs his website: https://brandonherreraforcongress.com/ and says he’s going to personally match donations with his own money. “To start off strong, I’m going to be matching your donations in the month of August up to $100,000 personally.”
“I hate that money is such a pivotal part of politics, but last time I saw exactly what happens when you didn’t have enough. The establishment could barely handle us last cycle, and money and slander were the only two weapons they had. This time, if we keep the momentum up, they don’t stand a chance.”
“Unlike the DC types, I don’t need this. I already have my dream job. I’d be taking a pay cut to take this job, but I’m willing to do it because I truly feel like it’s the best way I can currently serve my country, cuz that’s what it should be.”
“When I’m in office, I will not be buying, selling, or trading a single stock. Hell, I support legislation to ban it while in office. Again, unlike the DC types, I don’t need insider trading to be successful. Although, if you’re looking for stock tips, I’d just recommend doing what Nancy Pelosi does. I hear that tends to work out for some reason.”
“I am tired of Republicans saying that they’re going to go in and they’re going to fight for us. And then when the time comes to fight for something specific, they cave, they capitulate, they say, ‘I had no choice.’ Most of them didn’t even bother to fight in the first place.”
Some of it is standard campaign boilerplate, but Herrera is striking all the right notes here.
As in 2024, unseating a sitting congressman is going to be an uphill struggle, especially since Gonzales has been careful to stand closer to President Trump (at least rhetorically) than he has in the past.
The Q3 fundraising numbers for the race should be very interesting…
The Houston Police Department has ordered approximately 1,200 officers to replace their SIG Sauer P320 service weapons following a lawsuit alleging the pistol’s potential for unintended discharges.
Under the new directive, officers have until the end of September to make the switch.
The decision follows a lawsuit filed by veteran HPD officer Richard Fernandez Jr., who alleges that his holstered P320 discharged without a trigger pull.
The $10 million lawsuit, filed against the pistol’s manufacturer, SIG Sauer, claims Fernandez now suffers permanent numbness in his foot as a result of the incident.
“I heard a pop, but it didn’t sound like a gunshot,” Fernandez recounted. “I looked down, saw a hole in my pant leg, and realized I was bleeding. My hand wasn’t anywhere near the gun.”
His legal team argues that SIG Sauer has long been aware of serious design flaws in the P320. The suit joins more than 100 similar claims filed nationwide since 2017, many alleging the pistols fired while holstered or after being dropped.
The P320 has a controversial track record with HPD. In 2017, tests done by HPD found the pistol can accidentally fire almost 10 percent of the time after being dropped.
I wonder if this was pre- or post-voluntary upgrade.
While it was adopted by the U.S. military in 2017 as the M17 and M18, the civilian version soon faced scrutiny following reports of “drop-fire” incidents. These concerns prompted SIG Sauer to launch a voluntary upgrade program in 2017 to address potential discharge risks.
Despite the upgrades, lawsuits have continued to emerge alleging that the P320 can still fire without the trigger being pulled.
A jury found the SIG P320 “defectively designed” in a Massachusetts police lawsuit last month.
Steve Crowder devoted a show to P320 problems, including collecting videos of uncommanded discharges:
Crowder shows four videos of police P320s going off in the holster with no one’s fingers anywhere near the trigger. In two of those instances an officer was shot. And those are just the instance where the discharge was actually captured on film, so it seems reasonable to assume that there are a whole lot more that weren’t filmed.
Crowder also notes a very significant change in the language of Sig’s denials: “Newest email. The P320 cannot, under any circumstances, discharge without the trigger first being moved to the rear. Cool. “Trigger pull” versus “moved to the rear.” You know that change had to have come straight from their legal department in a CYA memo.
Crowder also had on Brandon Herrera (who previously covered the issue) to talk about the P320:
Brandon Herrera: “ICE has released a report. Basically they were talking about all the accidental discharges that have happened with all of their service weapons. And you have multiple columns. One of them is which pistol it was. Vast majority were the P320s. Then in the other column whether or not that incident included injury. So they not only said that these things were going off, but there were multiple occasions where they were injuring people that were actively working for ICE.”
BH: “if if they admit there is a problem with the civilian side stuff, then they have to maybe go in and [do] a very expensive upgrade to all their their military contract [P320s].”
BH: “Hopefully this is a big enough deal with this airman unfortunately losing his life that Sig can no longer look the other way and pretend there isn’t a problem.”
Steve Crowder: “How do you think [Sig] scored such a big contract with at that point a relatively new pistol?
BH: “That’s an excellent question.” [long pause]
BH: “It seems like Sig has gotten a lot of these contracts. And the question is whether that was based on merit, or some other thing that I won’t say in a public setting.”
BH: “I’m frankly shocked I haven’t gotten a cease and deceased yet. A cease and desist yet. I think it might be coming soon because I think they’re at the point where they, especially this this most recent wave, they’re losing control of the narrative. Before it was easy to just say, ‘Oh, it’s a couple of grifters, you know, don’t pay any attention to them. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.’ But now, I mean, hell, it’s everybody. The the conversation is completely shifted. Very few people are defending Sig anymore on this.”
SC: “My hunch is because of the military doesn’t want to admit that they screwed up either.”
Off the topic of Sig, Herrera says he’s not eager to run for office again. “Running the first time was probably one of the worst nine-month experiences of my life. And I would love to not repeat that again, but at the same time, they’re not voting any better.”
At this point its hard to see Sig gets out of this jam short of completely withdrawing the P320 from the market. Their potential liability is huge, and replacing all military and police service arms may be ruinous, as, presumably, any sort of recall to fix the problem, even assuming that they could find a fix and provide a solution that works.
Trump’s first hundred days, a Ukraine mineral deal at last, Democrats choose rapists over women (again), employment numbers are up (unexpectedly!), Josh Hawley names and shames PELOSI, Reform UK wins big, Spain blacks out (and not from Sangria), a sneaky local Williamson County election tomorrow, and the return of the Worst Gun of All Time.
After President Trump’s first 100 days, what stands out to me is his straightforward trademark phrase — “promises made, promises kept.”
He was elected on November 5 to transform the country in a completely different direction from the failed presidency of Joe Biden.
And that is precisely what Mr. Trump has done.
He is a disruptor. He is a change agent. He is fighting the entrenched elites and their institutions. He’s not afraid to use shock and awe. He is also a master dealmaker. He is also a man chockful of common sense.
None of this is going to be easy, nor will it come without glitches. But the political reality of his first 100 days is that Mr. Trump has kept his word to the American people.
So, 142 executive orders later, Mr. Trump has secured the border, restored safety, and is making great progress on the deportation of criminal illegal aliens.
For every one new regulation, Mr. Trump is abolishing ten others.
He is cutting taxes across the board to launch a blue-collar boom, while reducing prices with the production of more goods.
He has reopened the energy spigots, and will profitably deploy America’s abundant resources.
He is eliminating federal waste, fraud, and abuse. He is shrinking the size of the federal government.
And he has launched a reciprocal fair-trade initiative.
So, pulling all of this together, in his first 100 days Mr. Trump has fundamentally restored hope for faster growth and greater affordability.
And, as tough as it may be, he is working to restore peace in Ukraine, Gaza, and Iran.
Culturally, he has stopped the Democratic woke march to DEI — diversity, equity, and inclusion.
He has fought hard for religious freedom, an end to government censorship, and has stopped the weaponization of justice.
Mr. Trump has gone after the elite universities for their failure to stop antisemitism.
And, indeed, for all of Mr. Trump’s pro-growth economic initiatives, and his ‘peace through strength’ foreign policy, his determination to restore a more traditional, cultural, and spiritual country is one of his greatest accomplishments in the first 100 days.
#Winning.
Finally: “U.S., Ukraine Sign Minerals Deal in Major Breakthrough for Peace Talks.”
U.S. and Ukrainian officials have signed a long-anticipated deal that gives the U.S. access to Ukraine’s rare earth minerals in exchange for a promised security guarantee to protect Kyiv from future Russian aggression, signaling President Donald Trump’s commitment to ending the war.
The deal was signed Wednesday afternoon on Trump’s 100th day in office by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Ukrainian Economy Minister Yulia Svyrydenko, as the latter visited Washington, D.C., to finalize the details. The Treasury Department confirmed the signed deal, called the United States-Ukraine Reconstruction Investment Fund.
“This agreement signals clearly to Russia that the Trump Administration is committed to a peace process centered on a free, sovereign, and prosperous Ukraine over the long term. President Trump envisioned this partnership between the American people and the Ukrainian people to show both sides’ commitment to lasting peace and prosperity in Ukraine,” Bessent said in a statement. “And to be clear, no state or person who financed or supplied the Russian war machine will be allowed to benefit from the reconstruction of Ukraine.”
The minerals deal grants the U.S. access to Ukraine’s natural resources, including aluminum, graphite, oil, and natural gas, according to Bloomberg. It also lays out details about the economic partnership between the U.S. and Ukraine.
With that deal finally done, Trump finally has the excuse he needs to keep supporting Ukraine, especially if Russia refuses Trump’s demands to come to the negotiating table.
More proof that the Democrat Party is objectively pro-rape: ‘California Dems Vote To Keep Male Sex Offenders In Female Prisons.”
Democrats on the California Senate Public Safety Committee shot down a bill on Tuesday that would have kept male sex criminals out of female prisons.
The committee, which includes far-Left Senator Scott Wiener, voted down a proposal from Republican Senator Shannon Grove to protect women from males who are registered sex offenders from being able to be housed in women’s prisons. The bill also would have given women privacy in sleeping arrangements and showers, meaning that they would be protected from males who have taken advantage of California’s lax laws that allow men to be placed in women’s prisons.
“Today I am here on behalf of incarcerated women in California prisons who are dealing with the unintended consequences of allowing transgender inmates to be housed in women’s correction facilities,” Grove said at the committee hearing. “Everyone agrees that we need to keep inmates safe and provide additional protections.”
She noted that she had received a letter from a female inmate discussing how males were being housed in her prison. The letter included a condom that had been distributed by prison staff.
“Why is the state of California paying for condoms in women’s prisons?” Grove asked the committee.
The only lawmaker to support the bill was Senator Kelly Seyarto, the lone Republican on the committee.
Grove’s bill is seeking to address problems created by SB 132, a bill sponsored by Wiener that said that inmates should be housed according to their “gender identity.” Her legislation would “establish a secure facility at each women’s prison to house transgender women, in order to protect the security needs of biological women at birth in sleeping and other intimate areas” and prohibit male sex offenders from being eligible to be assigned to female prisons.
“SB 132 created a preference for transgender individuals. If you are a woman serving in the women’s prison and a transgender self-identified check-the-box person comes in and goes, ‘I want to house with you,’ the woman in that cell has no recourse. They can’t say no because that’s considered discriminatory,” Grove told The Daily Wire on Monday.
Grove said that she was told before the hearing that the committee planned to kill the bill. She said that the California Democrat supermajority had a “preference for predators versus victims.”
Democrats are at war with biology, reality, and basic human decency.
Along the same lines, Maine Democrats have censured state Republican Rep. Laurel Libby for standing against men in women’s athletics, including stripping her right to vote on bills. Boy, Democrats sure seem unclear on this whole “democracy” thing…
“Trump signs order ending taxpayer funding for NPR and PBS.” Good. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Up until yesterday, Matthew Bruderman was the chairman of Nassau University Medical Center. A couple of weeks ago, Mr. Bruderman announced he was cooperating with the FBI and Department of Justice in an investigation. Specifically, Mr. Bruderman claims that New York state and Long Island have stolen at least $1 billion from the organization.
Bruderman said he believes the officials’ ultimate goal was to financially strangle the public hospital, paving the way for state and local leaders to shut it down, take over the land currently owned by the public-benefit corporation that runs it and have it redeveloped for profit.
Wednesday night, Mr. Bruderman’s house was burglarized. However, the only thing allegedly taken was…documents tied to the investigation.
Bruderman wasn’t home at the time of the robbery and only found out after police called to inform him they had recovered a binder with his name on it in a car driven by an unidentified couple, he said.
“I was confused because that was the binder I had on my desk when I left,” he said.
Bruderman said he later found his backdoor pried wide open.
The binder, he said, contained “sensitive” materials related to the ongoing federal investigation, including documents and records tied to the financial misconduct he claims to have uncovered while reviewing hospital finances and state reimbursements.
Snip.
At the heart of the alleged scheme is a little-known federal program called the Disproportionate Share Hospital Fund — meant to help keep afloat struggling hospitals such as NUMC, which treat large numbers of low-income patients on Medicaid and Medicare.
Under the program, the federal government agrees to give hospitals tens of millions of dollars in funding as long as their state matches the investment.
According to [Bruderman’s] review of internal financial records, previous hospital leadership allegedly “borrowed” what was supposed to be the state’s matching share from an offshore account tied to a Cayman Islands trust, originally set up to cover the medical center’s legal bills.
That money would be temporarily transferred into the hospital’s general fund just long enough to fool the feds into thinking New York had paid its share — unlocking the federal portion of the funding, he claimed.
But once the federal funds cleared, the state’s contribution would allegedly be moved right back offshore.
That would mean those matching funds vanished into the shadows in a conspiracy that could’ve included top officials.
Seems plausible to me. Oh, also: “Mr. Bruderman was fired on Thursday.”
Blue state governance in action: “Washington state now gives $120,000 ‘forgivable loans’ for new homebuyers. But only if they’re not white.”
As part of the covenant homeownership program, the department shall contract with the commission to design, develop, implement and evaluate one or more special purpose credit programs to reduce racial disparities in ownership in the state by providing down payment and closing cost assistance… The contract must authorize the commission to use up to one percent of the contract to provide targeted education, homeownership counseling, and outreach about special purpose credit programs created under this section to black, indigenous, and people of color and other historically marginalized communities in Washington state.
Forgivable means they’re giving your tax dollars to other people to buy a home based on their skin color. I think this violates all sorts of civil rights and equal protection causes, and Pam Bondi’s DOJ should sue.
Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) has reintroduced the “Preventing Elected Leaders from Owning Securities and Investments” (PELOSI) Act that would prohibit members of Congress and their families from trading stocks while in office.
The name of the act is a direct nod in the direction of 20 term Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) whose net worth has soared from $160,000 when she was first elected in 1987 to more than $140 million in 2024.
A dozen of the White House’s (WH) newly-published list of 100 of “the worst of the worst criminal illegal immigrants” arrested since President Donald Trump took office in January were apprehended by Texas branches of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
In a news release titled “In the First 100 Days, the Trump Administration Has Taken Killers Rapists Off Our Streets,” images of the 100 detainees were listed online in chronological order by the date of their arrests — as well as displayed on the White House lawn — prior to a press conference held by White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt and Border Czar Tom Homan.
Six of the illegal immigrants included in the “worst of the worst” list were arrested by Houston ICE authorities, five by Dallas ICE, and one by Austin ICE.
One of the arrests made by Houston ICE was of a 70-year-old Indian national, Raju Varughese Vayechaparampil, convicted of “aggravated sexual assault of a child” in Harris County. With a similar conviction also in Harris County for “indecency with child sexual contact,” Che Xol Norberto was arrested on March 18. Osvaldo Diaz, a Cuban national, was arrested by the same ICE branch for convictions of “Trespassing and Sexual Assault Child/Battery Child” while in Florida.
Another arrest made by ICE Houston was a 64-year-old citizen of Honduras, Eduardo Garcia-Cortez, convicted of murder in California.
“God bless the men and women of ICE who strap a gun to their hip every day … To not only secure our border and protect our national security but … they’re removing public safety threats and national security threats every day,” Homan said during the presser.
“While you’re all sleeping, at two or three in the morning, there are men and women out there, enforcing the law, making this country safe again. And we’re going to keep doing that, full speed ahead,” he addressed the WH press pool.
ICE Austin’s arrest was of Humberto Ruiz-Zapata, who has convictions of murder and Driving While Intoxicated. He is a citizen of Mexico, with a prior “final removal date” of May 12, 2017.
ICE Dallas arrested Tay Myint, a citizen of Burma, on March 3. Myint was sentenced to prison for 12 years due to “aggravated sexual assault of a child” in the City of Cactus.
ICE Denver officers arrested Joel Matos-Nieto, 23, a criminal alien from Venezuela and member of the international gang Tren de Aragua with a final order of removal April 23. Matos has convictions for motor vehicle theft, obstructing a police officer and criminal mischief. pic.twitter.com/ZcaavP8A72
As Michael Shellenberger writes at PUBLIC, this wasn’t just a Spanish blackout. It shook the entire European grid.
…none of this should have been a surprise. The underlying physics had been understood for years, and the specific vulnerabilities had been spelled out repeatedly in technical warnings that policymakers ignored.
…
As countries replaced heavy, spinning plants with lightweight, inverter-based generation, the grid became faster, lighter, and far more sensitive to disruptions. That basic physical reality was spelled out in public warnings as far back as 2017.
…
Although political leaders promised that renewable energy would provide stable, affordable power, in practice, Spain grew more reliant on the remaining nuclear and natural gas plants to sustain inertia — even as the government pushes them to close.
…
Despite all these warnings, political and regulatory energy in Europe remained focused on accelerating renewable deployment, not upgrading the grid’s basic stability. In Spain, solar generation continued to climb rapidly through 2023 and early 2024.
Coal plants closed. Nuclear units retired.
On many spring days by 2025, Spain’s midday solar generation exceeded its total afternoon demand, leading to frequent negative electricity prices.
The system was being pushed to the limit.
And today, at 12:35 pm, it broke.
…
Spain’s blackout wasn’t just a technical failure. It was a political and strategic failure.
…
Unless Spain rapidly invests in synthetic inertia, maintains and expands its nuclear fleet, or adds some other new form of heavy rotating generation, the risk of future blackouts will only grow worse.
Nigel Farage’s Reform Party racked up big gains in UK local elections.
It has won over 630 council seats from around 1,500 declared so far, with results from a further 100 or so still to come in.
Reform has seized control of six authorities from the Conservatives after elections on Thursday, including Tory heartlands such as Kent and Staffordshire.
The party has also won control of Doncaster council from Labour, and taken control in Durham, where Labour was the largest party.
At least the UK isn’t trying to ban a suddenly popular, outsider party. Unlike Germany. ” Germany’s Intel Agency Designates AfD Party as ‘Extremist,’ Paves Way for Possible Ban. AfD officials made “xenophobic, anti-minority, Islamophobic and anti-Muslim statements,” spy agency cites as reason for the ‘extremist’ designation.” Eveidently the powers that be in Germany feel that notcing the baleful effects of unlimited, unassimilated Muslim immigration is “extremism.”
Germany has designated the country’s leading opposition party, Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), as ‘extremist,’ paving the way for a possible ban. The decision to classify the party was taken by Germany’s domestic intelligence agency Verfassungschutz, which operates under the country’s Interior Ministry.
“Germany’s domestic intelligence agency has designated the Alternative for Germany, the country’s second-largest political party, as a right-wing extremist group, a controversial step that could lead to the organisation being banned altogether,” the Belgian news website Euroactiv reported.
Good thing Germany banning political parties has never had any negative effects in the past…
Palmdale to Gilroy is about 300 miles. In 20 years. Or about 15 miles of track a year. Or, counting 260 work days a year, that’s an astonishing .0587 miles of track a day, or a whopping 300 feet a day. By the way, the 1,911 mile transcontinental railroad was built in six years, largely by hand. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
This was unexpected: “Donald Trump Endorses Speaker Dustin Burrows, All Pro-School Choice Texas House Republicans
The endorsement was relayed by Abbott in a closed-door meeting on Tuesday.”
President Donald Trump has endorsed Speaker Dustin Burrows (R-Lubbock) and every House Republican who voted for education savings account legislation earlier this month, according to Gov. Greg Abbott.
Abbott relayed the news to a meeting of House Republicans on Tuesday morning before the chamber gaveled in for the day’s business, The Texan reported.
The endorsement goes to the 86 House Republicans who voted for Senate Bill (SB) 2 on April 16. It comes for the 2026 midterms, and for Burrows himself, it’s also an endorsement for re-election as speaker. Trump told the caucus the morning of April 16 in a closed-door meeting that he would endorse them if they voted for SB 2. All but two Republicans, former Speaker Dade Phelan (R-Beaumont) and state Rep. Gary VanDeaver (R-New Boston), voted for it.
Passing school choice was indeed an accomplishment, but Burrows is still the latest in the Straus-Bonnin-Phelan cabal who have kept Democrats in a power-sharing agreement and thwarted conservative priorities for over a decade. burrows himself has presided over a House that has slow-walked conservative bills long after they sailed through the senate. This may be case of President Trump seeing things at a very high level and not being aware of the details. And speaking of Republican dissatisfaction with the Burrows Speakership…
With just over a month remaining in the 2025 legislative session, a group of conservative Texas House members gathered for a press conference to issue a stark warning to their leadership: time is almost up to deliver on Republican priorities.
“Today is day 107 of our 140-day legislative session,” said State Rep. Tony Tinderholt (R–Arlington). “In 12 days, every House bill that is going to pass must be reported by its committee. The clock is ticking, and our Republican voters are looking for the Republican majority they elected to the Texas House to deliver.”
Immigration and Border Security
State Rep. Mike Olcott (R–Aledo) said border security remains the number one priority for both the Texas GOP and voters across the state. He outlined four key policy targets: mandatory use of E-Verify, ending in-state tuition for illegal aliens, requiring local law enforcement cooperation with ICE, and addressing Colony Ridge.
On E-Verify, Olcott noted that “Senate Bill 324 was approved on second reading just yesterday, and we anticipate it will pass over to the House this week.” But in the House, he warned, progress has been sluggish.
“So far in the Texas House, the only legislation that’s been heard in committee on E-Verify is House Bill 323 … which only requires E-Verify for new local government employees, which is noble, but does not come close to turning off the employment magnet driving illegal immigration into this state.”
Snip.
Banning Social Transitioning of Minors
State Rep. Steve Toth (R–Conroe) focused on protecting children from social transitioning in schools. He said that while Texas banned gender mutilation surgeries in the last session, the House still hasn’t acted on legislation to prevent social transitioning.
“The good news is that we now have a great bill, House Bill 2258, to protect these kids,” Toth said. “Even better news is, it’s on its way to the governor’s desk … Bad news is, it’s not the governor of Texas. It’s the governor of Arkansas.”
Despite support from some members in the State Affairs Committee, the bill remains stuck.
“Chairman King won’t give it a hearing,” Toth said. “Texans will not forgive our massive Republican majority if we fail to protect children from groomers.”
Williamson County has local elections tomorrow. I’m not in a locale that’s having an election, but Michelle Evans of the Wilco GOP wrote to say they’re endorsing Mike Snyder for Hutto Mayor, Shannon Quicksall for Taylor City Council District 4, Cyndi Hauser for Liberty Hill ISD Trustee Place 7 and Ben Butler for Georgetown City Council District 3.
Brandon Herrara has a roundup of exciting changes sweeping the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives, AKA ATF, AKA BATFE:
“Today we’re talking about some major shakeups that are happening at the ATF right now.”
“A lot of shit’s on the chopping block right now, and heads are rolling at the ATF.”
“The ATF under Kash Patel [Amusingly, YouTube autotranscript renders his name as “Cash Pat Mattel.” -LP] has just reversed a huge pain in the ass in the gun industry and the gun community. He’s doing great things. I hope he sticks around. We’ll get to that.”
“The zero tolerance policy is one of the most egregious ways that the Biden administration weaponized the ATF.”
“They realized they couldn’t go after the individual right to keep and bear arms (I know, crazy. It’s almost like it’s in the fucking constitution). They would go after the people who were selling and manufacturing the guns, which is where they started weaponizing audits on mom and pop FFLs.”
“The ATF had a history of doing audits on FFLs, where basically they’ll they’ll come in they’ll make sure that you’ve got all the guns on the books that you’re supposed to have. And basically, they’re just making sure that you’re not hawking guns out the back of your gun store to the fucking cartel, because only the ATF can do that.”
“But instead of using these audits to actually catch people who are committing real crimes and selling to people they’re legally not supposed to, they started going after every little minor clerical error they possibly could. People who weren’t dotting their “i”s, crossing their “T”s. Maybe you use the acronym for the state that you live in instead of the full name of the state written out. Any little thing to say that paperwork wasn’t filled out correctly, so that they could revoke your FFL.”
“So instead of going after people who were actually committing real crimes and selling to people that they weren’t supposed to, they were going after every little clerical error that they could to shut down local gun stores. Mom and pop places. Anybody who basically couldn’t afford to fight the federal government in court.”
“In the first few months, when the Biden administration rolled this out: FFL revocations, people losing their business, losing their livelihood; FFL revocation was up over 500%. They couldn’t ban the guns, so they got fucking shady about it.”
His congressional testimony covering the same ground snipped.
“But now if you have an FFL, you can breathe a small sigh of relief, because the zero tolerance policy has now been removed, which is huge.”
“Local small businesses no longer have to live in fear of the big green weenie of the federal government casting a mushroom-shaped shadow over their entire existence.”
“I am super stoked that under Kash Patel’s leadership the ATF has been making moves to reverse stupid rules.”
“I am very excited to see under Kash Patel’s leadership where the ATF is going to go on, and he’s gone. Yeah, Kash got fired.”
“Kash Patel was wearing two hats, where he was the acting director of the ATF while also being the confirmed director of the Federal Bureau of Investigations.”
“We do have a new acting director. Ladies and gentlemen welcome stage left, Dan Driscoll the new acting director of the ATF. Once again we have another guy who is wearing two hats. He is the current US Secretary of the Army, as well as the newly appointed acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives.”
“He was a combat veteran in Iraq, but aside from that, he was also a Republican candidate for congress, specifically in North Carolina’s 11th district, where he lost in the Republican primary. I get it. Aside from that his actual stance on gun policy and things like that, I really wish I had better news. I don’t know.”
“If you have some concerns, don’t worry, because I’m about to give you some weapons-grade copium.”
“I have reason to believe we all will be received in Graceland that the ATF is still gaining momentum in the right direction, because just recently the deputy director of the ATF has been fired. Shit-canned. Excommunicado. Fuckaty bye-bye. Marvin Richardson was the deputy director of the ATF, but he was also a long-standing ATF employee, having a career spanning 35 years. He was the deputy director since 2019, and was also the acting director from 2021 to 2022. Let’s go back to that 35 years at the ATF bit. Do the mental math. What happened in the last 35 years at the ATF? Yeah, Old Marvin was awarded medals for his involvement at the siege of Waco. Fucker had the burning women and children alive merit badge.”
“On top of that, he was largely toted as the father of the arm brace restrictions, as well as a whole host of other unconstitutional shit that the ATF has been pushing for the last 10 years or so, and he is fucking out of there. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. Fuck you. I hope you have a hangail every day for the rest of your life.”
“This guy had bragged in the past about how much they’ve been able to do at the ATF to circumvent having to get laws passed by Congress.”
“He’s talking about how many extra rules they’re able to put on law-abiding citizens without using the legal system, circumventing Schoolhouse Rock and just putting in whatever he thinks should be the rules, not what the Constitution says has to happen. Fucker bragged about it.”
“Rest in piss, you won’t be missed.”
“Some big moves happening in the ATF. I don’t know how this is all going to shake out, but I’m liking what I’m seeing so far.”
“So the deputy director of the ATF got fired. That’s fucking great. We’ve now been informed on who the new one will be. Introducing your new deputy director Robert Cekada.”
“Now I have been pretty optimistic of all of the changes over at the ATF since Trump took office. This is the first one, I’ll be honest with you, throws up a little bit of a yellow flag for me. I do not know much about this man’s views on the Second Amendment. However, I do know he’s a career ATF guy. Nothing in his resume that I’ve been able to find is particularly egregious, but being a lifelong Fed naturally makes the hair in the back of my neck stand up.”
“Is there anything obvious that means he will be bad. No. Am I worried he might be a speed bump to the dismantlement of the bullshit regulations of the ATF in the future? Absolutely. Only time will tell.”
“A lot of shit’s happening very quickly.”
So there’s your ATF update. Mostly good news, mostly things moving in the right direction.
It’s great to have a President keeping his campaign promises…
Brandon Herrera and the Ballistic High-Speed guys get together to answer the question: What happens when you fire a tank cannon at someone’s torso and head?
Well, not to answer it. We all know what the answer is. But they went out to demonstrate the answer in glorious ballistic gel color.
“It just turned him into a jelly-filled doughnut.”
More DOGE revelations, more leftwing violence, more pervert school teachers arrested, Baltimore builds a ghost city, astronauts get rescued, DVDs rot, and a bunch of fierce togers with a gentle mom.
Muslim charity with links to Hamas was awarded more than $7.2 million in taxpayer cash, which has now disappeared, according to a watchdog group.
An “immediate investigation” needs to be launched into The Council on American-Islamic Relations’ (CAIR) California chapter’s use of funds, according to the watchdog, who sent a complaint to the Department of Justice Thursday.
According to the Intelligent Advocacy Network (IAN), a California-based, non-partisan advocacy group, the money was given to the chapter to help re-settle impoverished immigrants in California between 2022 and 2024.
In what appears to be a sleight of hand, the money – $7,217,968.44 — was sent to CAIR-Greater Los Angeles and not to CAIR-CA, which was the only group eligible to receive it, according to the complaint.
The Greater Los Angeles chapter of the Muslim organization, which is not a registered non-profit and not eligible to handle charitable donations, received the entire pot of money according to the complaint, viewed by The Post.
I think we all know where that money went: Leftwing pockets and murdering Jews.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday shuttering the Department of Education, fulfilling a long-standing conservative wish to do away with the agency.
Trump’s order directs Education Secretary Linda McMahon to take the “necessary steps” to close the $268 billion agency and transfer its authority back to the states. The order does not immediately shutter the agency, and it will require programs and services to continue uninterrupted.
“Everybody knows it’s right,” Trump said moments before signing the order, which he said was 45 years in the making. “We have to get our children educated.”
The long-expected executive order will likely face significant legal challenges over whether Trump has the authority to dismantle the agency. Fully closing down the Department of Education will require congressional approval.
Since the days of President Ronald Reagan, Republicans have sought to eliminate the Department of Education, created in 1979 under former President Jimmy Carter, for its role in promoting left-wing ideology and encroaching on state authority. The Education Department’s responsibilities primarily consist of allocating grant money, administering student loans, and enforcing federal civil rights laws
Trump has long promised to terminate the agency and empower states to run their own education systems without federal interference. Shuttering the Education Department was a bullet point on the 2024 GOP platform.
National Review seems to think Trump’s plan is more flawed than the previous Republican Presidential attempts to shutter the Department of Education by not doing a goddamn thing…
The Department of Education has a budget of about $280 billion dollars per year. Less than 25% goes to educating our students.
It goes to a bureaucracy. It goes to a consultant. And that consultant then donates money back to the Democrats. And then it goes to a different consultant. And then it goes to an NGO. It is money laundering and money churning at its absolute best.
It appears that the entire point of both the Biden and Obama Administrations was to turn the entirety of the federal government into a giant graft machine for the radical left.
“Paxton Opinion States District Courts Cannot Order Sex Changes on Government ID.” State district courts can no longer direct state agencies to change a person’s sex on government documents.”
For years, the left has advanced utter untruths for cheap partisan purposes that it knew at the time were all false. And now when caught, they just shrug and say they were lying all along.
Once it was known that the first COVID-19 case originated in or near a Chinese communist virology lab engineering gain-in-function deadly viruses—with help from Western agencies—the left went into full persecution mode.
They damned as incompetent, racist, and conspiratorial any who dared follow logic and evidence to point out that the Chinese government and its military were both culpable for the virus and lying.
A million Americans died of COVID. Millions more suffered long-term injuries. Still, the left-wing media and Biden administration demonized any who dared speak the truth about a lab origin of the deadly virus.
The lies were designed to protect the guilty who had helped fund the virus’s origins, such as Doctors Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins.
The Biden government also tried to use the lab theory to ridicule a supposedly pro-Trump “conspiracy.”
Western corporate interests deeply invested in China did not want their partner held responsible for veritably killing and maiming hundreds of millions worldwide.
Almost as soon as Joe Biden was inaugurated, the left knew that he was physically and mentally unable to serve as president.
Indeed, that was the point.
Biden’s role was designed as a waxen figurine for hard-left agendas that, without the “old Joe Biden from Scranton” pseudo-moderate veneer, could never have been advanced.
His handlers operated a nightmare administration: the destruction of deterrence abroad, two theater wars, 12 million illegal aliens, a weaponized justice system, hyperinflation, and $7 trillion more in debt.
By 2017, the public knew three truths about the so-called Christopher Steele dossier.
One, it was completely fallacious—fabricated by a has-been, ex-British spy Christopher Steele. He childishly had cobbled together lurid sex stories, James Bond spy fictions, and Russian-fed disinformation to destroy the Trump candidacy and later presidency.
Two, it was paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign. She hid her checks behind the Democratic National Committee, the Perkins Coie law firm, and Fusion GSP paywalls.
Three, the FBI under James Comey hired Steele as an informant. It helped disseminate his concocted files and was also instrumental in trying to subvert the Trump campaign and later administration.
No sane person ever believed that Hunter Biden’s laptop was the work of “Russian disinformation.” Its contents a year before the 2020 election were verified by the FBI, but it kept mum about its confirmation.
The pornographic pictures, the evidence of prostitution and drug use, the electronic communications implicating Joe Biden in his family’s illicit shake-down operation of foreign governments—all were never challenged by anyone who was associated with the laptop’s contents.
Yet future Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, along with former interim CIA Director Mike Morrell, sought to fabricate a colossal lie to arm their candidate, Joe Biden, with plausible denial in the last presidential debate before the 2020 election.
They rounded up a rogue’s gallery of 51 now utterly discredited former intelligence authorities to lie to the nation that the laptop was likely fake.
All knew the FBI had verified the laptop. But they also knew that their titles would empower their lies that the Russians likely invented the laptop to aid the sinister Trump.
The question of whether federal judges can review alien deportation orders under the Alien Enemy Act has already been decided in Ludecke v. Watkins. “The Alien Enemy Act precludes judicial review of the removal order.” Pp. 163-166. (Hat tip: Grim’s Hall.)
Sanity: ” New York’s Highest Court Blocks NYC Law Allowing Noncitizens to Vote. ‘Instead, it is plain from the language and restrictions contained in Article II that “citizen” is not meant as a floor, but as a condition of voter eligibility.'”
You may not have heard in another packed news week, but once again Recep Tayyip Erdogan is doing Erdogan things in Turkey.
Ekrem Imamoglu, Istanbul’s mayor and a high-profile member of the opposition to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was arrested along with dozens of others Wednesday, state-run media reported, in what critics said was a significant escalation of the government’s crackdown on dissent.
Get concise answers to your questions. Try Ask The Post AI.
The chief public prosecutor’s office ordered the arrest of about 100 people Wednesday, saying Imamoglu and others faced allegations including membership in criminal organization, bribery, aggravated fraud and unlawful acquisition of personal data. More than 80 people had been detained so far, according to local media reports.
Imamoglu, a popular politician and member of the opposition Republican People’s Party, or CHP, became mayor of Turkey’s largest city in 2019 and won reelection last year in high-profile races where he defeated candidates from Erdogan’s ruling party. He was expected to be selected as the CHP’s candidate for president in the party’s primary elections scheduled for this weekend. The mayorship of Istanbul is seen as a political stepping stone: Erdogan once held the role.
Over two decades in power, Erdogan has tightened his control over state institutions and deepened restrictions on speech and expression, including within the judiciary, bringing charges against and imprisoning opponents. He has also exerted widespread control over the media, universities and other institutions.
US Attorney General Pam Bondi released a statement overnight, calling the “violent attacks” on Tesla showrooms, service centers, Supercharger networks, and vehicles “nothing short of domestic terrorism.”
“The swarm of violent attacks on Tesla property is nothing short of domestic terrorism. The Department of Justice has already charged several perpetrators with that in mind, including in cases that involve charges with five-year mandatory minimum sentences,” Bondi stated in a press release.
She continued: “We will continue investigations that impose severe consequences on those involved in these attacks, including those operating behind the scenes to coordinate and fund these crimes.”
The latest domestic terrorism attack on Tesla occurred at a service center in Las Vegas early Tuesday morning.
ver the next few days you’re going to see an organized progressional protest effort at Tesla stores put together by a group called Indivisible.
George Soros foundation has given Indivisible nearly $8 million dollars for their “activism”.
They’re calling these “Tesla takedown” events and they’re doing it in the midst of a domestic terror spree targeting Tesla and Tesla owners. They have these planned across the entire country. These images are just six examples.
How can this not be seen as encouraging more violence and terrorism? I personally think that any violence occurring near locations they’ve chosen should result in Soros, his foundation, Indivisible and their founders being held criminally accountable as co-conspirators.
The indivisible founders are Ezra Levin and his wife Leah Greenberg. They became “resistance” figures during Trump’s first term and their work is celebrated by elected Democrats. So yeah, it’s clear to me that the Democrats and their typical thugs are organizing this insanity.
There’s reportedly even a form protest leaders can fill out to receive “reimbursement” payments for their protests.
Meanwhile, Musk’s SpaceX Dragon crew compartment was busy returning stranded astronauts to earth, a path I’m assuming the Biden Administration didn’t pursue because there was no way to rake off leftwing graft from the rescue mission…
Plus Trump says they’ll get overtime, even if has pay it out of his own pocket:
🚨 BREAKING: Trump says he will pay the astronauts who were stranded in outer space overtime out of his own pocket.
DOOCY: They didn't get any over time. $5 per day per diem, that's $1,430 in extra pay. Can the administration fix this?
People called up North Carolina Republican Sen. Thom Tillis’ office to express polite disagreement with his policies. Ha, just kidding! They threatened to kill him and his family.
“Two Texas Universities Investigated by U.S. Department of Education for ‘Race-Exclusionary Practices.'” That would be Rice University and North Texas University.
New York Times is now saying that lab leak theory is now plausible, after years of attacking anyone who mentioned it as “conspiracy theorists.” And yes, Not The Bee used the Hot Dog Guy meme.
“Federal Prosecutors Secure Convictions for 2022 Human Smuggling Event that Killed 53.”
Federal prosecutors announced the convictions of two of the human smugglers responsible for the horrific 2022 mass casualty event wherein 53 people were killed and 11 injured after being locked into a tractor-trailer and left in the Texas heat.
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) described the tragedy as the single deadliest human smuggling case in U.S. history at the time. Four men, all Mexican nationals, were charged in connection with the crime: 30-year-old Riley Covarrubias-Ponce, 28-year-old Felipe Orduna-Torres, 37-year-old Luis Rivera-Leal, and 53-year-old Armando Gonzales-Ortega.
Fast forward, and the DOJ confirmed in a press statement that Orduna-Torres and Gonzalez-Ortega were convicted for their roles in the alien smuggling conspiracy that led to the deaths.
Japan’s “evaporated people,” who completely abandon their previous life, family and friends to move to slums anonymously. Some similarities with American homeless or China’s “lie flat” movement, but I get the impression a big difference is that evaporated people are primarily motivated by shame of failure.
Baltimore offers tax incentives to inner harbor development project, only to create a ghost city.
Kotaku gets a defamation lawsuit by former Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick. Some people are calling it “Gawker 2.0.”
A music bigwig who helped launch Nipsey Hussle’s career and was lauded as rap’s “godfather” has been accused of running a “Mafia-like” criminal enterprise involving murder, human trafficking, robbery and extortion on the streets of Los Angeles.
Eugene Henley Jr. — known as “Big U” in the entertainment world — was one of 18 members of the Rollin’ 60s Neighborhood Crips street gang charged in a sprawling federal racketeering complaint, the US Attorney’s Office said Wednesday.
Henley has “maintained the image of an entertainment industry entrepreneur running a music label and of somebody who gives back to the community here in Los Angeles,” US Attorney Joseph T. McNally said while announcing the indictment.
Amazon driver goes ballistic, cussing out woman’s doorbell camera for “buying all this shit.” Turns out the woman is in a wheelchair. Pink slip ensues.
New Yorker art critic Jackson Arn fired for “making ‘inappropriate overtures’ at some of the party guests and appeared to be drunk.” I hold no water for Arn (a lefty who used to write for The Nation) or Conde Naste (Teen Vogue), but “getting drunk and making a pass” at a holiday party used to be a forgivable sin in corporate American, but the woke religion of social justice is incapable of offering forgiveness or redemption. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
A simplified description of how your brain actually operates. I wouldn’t take it as gospel, but I’m regretting that I never actually read Marvin Minsky’s The Society of Mind…
Rick Beato interviews Hans Zimmer. “The job is not to listen to the director telling you what the music is he wants, because if if he knows what music he wants, then he can do it himself. My job is to sort of listen to him tell me the story and then do the thing that he can’t even imagine.”
As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t have a use case for owning a Cybertruck (or any electric car or truck), but for a supposedly unpopular vehicle, I actually see a lot of them on the road. (Of course, I’m only a mile from a Tesla sales office, so your mileage may vary.) But one of the the Cybertruck’s selling features is that it’s bulletproof. Well, Brandon Herrera (who owns a Cybertruck) decided to see how bullet-proof, though he’s using a detached Cybertruck door rather than his own vehicle.
Spoilers: It seems pretty bulletproof to handgun ammo up the .45 ACP, but once he stepped up to the .44 Magnum Desert Eagle (“the Cybertruck’s only known natural predator”) and the bigger rifle rounds (including 5.56 NATO and even, for grins, a .50 BMG round out of his very own AK-50), it was bulletproof no more.
Greetings, and welcome to a LinkSwarm so large I had to start working on it Wednesday! Unemployment rises too much to rig it away, home sales crash to Carter levels, Europe’s voters rise up to throw out the left, Hunter is guilty guilty guilty, another blow to the Biden Administration’s tranny Title IX rewrite, Israel rescues some hostages and smokes a Hezbolli terror master, and California continues to do California things.
Every so-called “strong” jobs report has been a disaster if one puts in even a little work to dig below the pristine, if fake, surface. And while we expected this charade to continue indefinitely, and certainly at least until the November election, at which point suddenly all the truth about the ugly labor market would be revealed to usher in the new president amid an economic crisis, we were shocked when none other than the Fed chair admitted today that the Biden admin was rigging jobs data.
In response to a question from a Bloomberg journalist during the post-FOMC presser, asking the Fed chair to comment on the state of the labor market, the Fed Chair said that two years ago the labor market was “overheated” and has since gotten back to “normal”, largely thanks to “supply from to immigration” – translation: illegal aliens have been the main reasons for the increase in employment and the drop in wages and thus, overall inflation, which as we discussed recently, is the narrative that is being pushed out to mitigate demands by most Americans to halt illegal immigration.
Where things got very interesting, however, is when Powell was discussing the demand-side of the labor market: here, he addressed the dropping quits level, the decline in job openings and wages, but more importantly, the rising unemployment rate – from 3.4% to 4.0% which clearly goes against the narrative of red hot payrolls – all of which the Fed chair summarized as strong job creation, yet caveated by saying that “there is an argument that [payrolls] may be a bit overstated.”
Note: he didn’t say “understated” because the “-stating” always goes in just one direction: the one that makes the resident of the White House look good.
In other words, the jobs – like so many things about this Potemkin economy – are a lie, and while Powell immediately realized what he had said, and tried to couch it by adding that payrolls are “still strong”, suddenly the entire narrative of a strong labor market imploded in front of our eyes, because if the Biden admin will lie about a “bit” of the jobs report, it will lie about any part of it.
And, as we have shown above and every month this year, lie is precisely what the Biden administration has been doing, month after month, year after year.
And the biggest stunner, as Edward Snowden put it so eloquently, is that he’s “not sure I’ve ever seen the chairman of the Federal Reserve publicly accuse the White House of cooking the books on employment numbers, but here we are.”
Speaking of which: “Initial Claims Surge To 10-Month Highs As California Joblessness Soars.” “Did we suddenly get a peek at economic reality? The number of Americans applying for jobless benefits for the first time surged last week to 242k (up from 229k and well above the 225k exp). That is the highest since August 2023.” And California, which just happened to implement a minimum wage hike, led far and away with the most claims…
Home sales have dropped so far during the Biden Recession that they’re now back to 1978 levels.
The recession in the U.S. existing home sales market has been so deep that we’re back to late ‘70s levels—despite us now living in a much bigger country:
April 1978: 4.09 million U.S. existing home sales print
April 2024: 4.14 million U.S. existing home sales print*
1978: 223 million U.S. population
2024: 341 million U.S. population
The reason, of course, is that housing affordability has deteriorated so much that many buyers and sellers alike have pulled back from the market. Many homeowners who would otherwise like to sell and buy something else are staying put rather than trading in their 3% mortgage rate for a 7% mortgage rate.
The bad news?
According to a forecast published this week by Goldman Sachs, the recovery for existing home sales could be a slog.
1978: Jimmy Carter was still President, the Bee Gees dominated the music charts thanks to Saturday Night Fever, and a brand new comic strip about a lasagna-loving cat named Garfield debuted. And the average price of a home was somewhere around $56,000. (Yet, somehow, home sales were still stronger during the 1981-82 interest rate hikes than under Carter in 1978…)
A jury of Hunter Biden’s peers found him guilty on all three felony charges on Tuesday after a six-day trial that demonstrated that the first son lied on a federal gun-purchase background-check form when he claimed not to be a drug addict.
The verdict was reached after the jury deliberated for three hours, beginning Monday afternoon with the conclusion of closing arguments. Hunter was surrounded by family members, including wife Melissa Cohen Biden and his uncle James Biden, as the verdict was read. First lady Jill Biden missed the verdict announcement and rushed to greet Hunter afterward.
Hunter was found guilty on two charges for lying about his crack-cocaine addiction on federal gun paperwork when he bought a Colt Cobra revolver at a sporting-goods store in Wilmington in October 2018. He was also found guilty on a third charge for possessing the firearm while he was using crack cocaine.
The first son faces up to 25 years in prison, though he’ll likely receive a lighter sentence as a first-time, nonviolent offender. Judge Noreika, who presided over the trial, said that a sentencing hearing will be held in September.
Though Hunter Biden still has a pending tax trial, don’t hold your breath about him going to trial for his role as the Biden crime family’s bagman…
I’ve pointed out time and again (including yesterday) that Biden Justice Department AG Merrick Garland’s “special counsel” appointment of Biden Justice Department Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss in the Hunter Biden case is a fraud on the public.
In a pretrial ruling denying the younger Biden’s motion to dismiss the case, Judge Maryellen Noreika has confirmed that Garland’s appointment of Weiss did not comply with federal regulations for appointing special counsels. That, however, was not a basis to dismiss the case — particularly with Garland and Weiss quietly citing the last special-counsel regulation, §600.10 (of Title 28, Code of Federal Regulations), which provides that no one may hold the Justice Department accountable for flouting its own regulations.
To be clear, I have never contended that Garland lacked the authority to assign Weiss, or whoever he wanted to assign, to investigate the Biden case. As Judge Noreika correctly explained, federal statutory law — in particular, §§509, 510, 515, and 533 — vest attorneys general with sweeping power to run the Justice Department as they see fit, including power to designate any DOJ lawyers they choose to run investigations anywhere in the country.
Weiss, for example, is now prosecuting Hunter Biden in Los Angeles, on the tax case scheduled to begin trial on September 5, in addition to the gun case in Weiss’s own Delaware district. That’s because Garland doubled-down in assigning the investigation of the president’s son to the same prosecutor — Weiss — who had just schemed with defense lawyers on a failed sweetheart plea deal that was designed to make all conceivable cases against said son disappear (and only after Weiss had consciously dithered as the statute of limitations steadily eviscerated serious criminal offenses).
Garland is the attorney general, and he has that power. It is power he wields with no fear that Congress will slash the DOJ’s budget, censure him, impeach him, or do anything else but caterwaul over how he abuses it. My point is that Garland has been engaged in a nearly four-year fraud — trying to con the country into believing the Justice Department is neither protecting its boss nor trying, to the extent politically feasible, to protect the president’s son.
The AG refused to appoint a special counsel for the Biden investigation, despite the president’s (and other Biden family members’) being implicated in Hunter’s malfeasance, particularly crimes arising out of his peddling of his father’s political influence for huge pay days from agents of corrupt and anti-American regimes.
Europe’s ruling center left just got smashed in European elections.
Early projections of the EU-election results show that the continent’s right-wing parties have made significant advances as voters signal their dissatisfaction with illegal immigration and inflation. Formerly powerful left-wing parties seem to have been routed, while centrists stayed the course.
This antiestablishment sentiment was expressed most strongly in Germany and France, two of the European bloc’s most powerful countries.
The French results prompted President Emmanuel Macron to dissolve the French parliament in preparation for snap elections on June 30 and July 7, as his party lost badly to Marine Le Pen’s National Rally, which is part of the Identity and Democracy coalition in the European Parliament.
Before crowds in Paris, Le Pen responded to Macron’s announcement: “This historic vote shows that when people vote, people win. . . . We are ready to exercise power, to end mass migration, to prioritize purchasing power, ready to make France live again.”
In Germany, Chancellor Olaf Scholz and his Social Democrats were trounced by a combination of support for the right-wing CDU/CSU and Alternative for Germany (AfD). The left-wing Social Democratic Party (14.6 percent) and the Greens (12 percent) underperformed. Katarina Barley, speaking for the Social Democrats, called it “a bitter evening.” “I am very disappointed.” The AfD, having won 14 percent as of this reporting, is intent on carrying its EU wins to the national elections in October 2025.
Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni was the only leader of a European power to see success, with the right-wing politician’s allied faction, European Conservatives and Reformists, placing first in Italy.
In Spain, the conservative People’s Party took 34.2 percent of the vote, a rejection of socialist prime minister Pedro Sánchez and his Socialist Workers’ Party, which received 30.2 percent. Two other right-wing parties, Vox and Se Acabó La Fiesta (The Party’s Over), received another 14.2 percent between them.
The Greens ceded more ground than any other party in the EU, losing more than a quarter of their seats.
For decades, the ruling Euroelite have insisted that there is no alternative to their high tax, high spending, high debt, high regulation, high immigration, environmental leftist EU superstate. Voters seem to have finally grown tired enough of it that they’re willing to embrace Marine Le Pen if that’s what it takes to make their voices heard.
In his opinion, Thomas wrote that, though a bump stock does increase a rifle’s rate of fire, it does not turn it into an automatic weapon.
“A bump stock does not convert a semiautomatic rifle into a machinegun any more than a shooter with a lightning-fast trigger finger does,” Thomas wrote. “Even with a bump stock, a semiautomatic rifle will only fire one shot for every ‘function of the trigger.’”
Justice Samuel Alito wrote in his concurrence that, while the ATF’s interpretation of the Firearm Owners’ Protection Act was an incorrect reading of the statute, there are legislative remedies for the issue of bump stocks.
“The horrible shooting spree in Las Vegas in 2017 did not change the statutory text or its meaning,” Alito wrote. “That event demonstrated that a semiautomatic rifle with a bump stock can have the same lethal effect as a machinegun, and it thus strengthened the case for amending §5845(b). But an event that highlights the need to amend a law does not itself change the law’s meaning.”
“The Lies and Fall of Ibram X. Kendi.” “This man gave America the simplest, most easily applicable binary solution to all of our racial problems. It didn’t matter that it was stupid, at least not from the perspective of his personal enrichment. For a while, it sold…What we lived through in 2020, during the Floyd meltdown and its aftermath, was a onetime necrotic bloom during which the first carrion-feeders on the scene were able to fatten themselves up to spectacular proportions on the collapsed body of American progressive racial and political angst.”
The US has broadened its sanctions on Russia, including a fresh crackdown on banks dealing with sanctioned entities.
It expands a December programme to target foreign banks deemed to be aiding Russia’s war effort in Ukraine.
The US also placed sanctions on the Moscow stock exchange, leading to it halting trading in dollars and euros.
It also moved to try to restrict Russia’s use of technology, including chips and software.
US President Joe Biden signed an executive order in December that imposed sanctions on banks dealing with about 1,200 individuals and companies deemed to be helping Russia’s war machine.
Those measures, which expose banks to the risk of being cut off from the US financial system, have now been expanded to about 4,500 entities.
The US will also target gold-laundering.
Peter Harrell, a former White House senior director for international economics, told the Reuters news agency that the US “is shifting towards something that begins to look like an effort to set up a global financial embargo on Russia”.
As part of this effort, the US Treasury announced that it would impose sanctions on parts of Russia’s financial system, including the Moscow Exchange, which is one of Russia’s main stock exchanges.
The stock exchange, which is Russia’s largest foreign exchange market, said the sanctions had forced it to stop trading in dollars and euros.
The US also focused on technology. Chips and other technology made in the US have been found in downed Russian equipment on Ukraine battlefields, including drones, radios, missiles and armoured vehicles.
The sanctions aim to make it more difficult for companies to supply that tech.
The US will target shell firms in Hong Kong selling chips to Russia.
There are YouTubers saying “Russian economy is crippled” etc., but I remain skeptical. The chips going into Russian drones aren’t anything special, they’re COTS stuff and EPROMs you can get almost anywhere.
“Israeli Military Rescues Four Hostages from Gaza.” Naturally this is good news for decent human beings everywhere and a tragedy for the radical left.
“Lebanon: Israeli Airstrike Kills One Of Hezbollah’s Most Senior Terror Commanders. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on Tuesday night eliminated one of Hezbollah’s senior-most terror commanders operating in Lebanon. Sami Taleb Abdullah, who headed Hezbollah’s Nasr terrorist force, and three other Hezbollah commanders were killed in an Israeli airstrikes on a terrorist base located in southern Lebanon.” Good. Remember how commentators have repeatedly opined on the possibility of Hezbollah opening up a “second front” while Israel settles Hamas’ hash? They seem to have done very little but the usual pinprick terror attacks. With all the terror money Iran is sloshing around to Hamas and the Houthi’s, one wonders if they’re stretched to thin to send much Hezbollah’s way…
Western District of Louisiana Chief Judge Terry Doughty in an order Thursday declared that Title IX, a federal education law that bars sex-based discrimination, “was written and intended to protect biological women from discrimination.”
“Such purpose makes it difficult to sincerely argue that, at the time of enactment, ‘discrimination on the basis of sex’ included gender identity, sex stereotypes, sexual orientation, or sex characteristics,” Doughty, a Trump appointee, wrote. “Enacting the changes in the Final Rule would subvert the original purpose of Title IX.”
Of course the U.S. Women’s basketball has left Caitlyn Clark off the team. Because we all know queer identity trumps winning a medal for your country…
On the upside, also not competing: “Lia” Thomas. Turns out the Olympics don’t want men competing in women’s swimming. Who could have possibly seen that coming?
“In Hindsight Fans Realize They Were Too Quick To Call The Holiday Special The Worst Star Wars Project Ever…After watching the latest Disney Star Wars offering The Acolyte, however, many fans admit they might have been too harsh to call the holiday show the worst thing to come out of the franchise.”
