In a dramatic last-minute move, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) vetoed a total ban on recreational cannabis that had been backed by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R), causing a rare rift between the state’s top elected officials.
Abbott signed the veto of Senate Bill 3 on Sunday just one hour before its deadline, calling for a special legislative session in mid-July to address the state’s wild-west cannabis market.
The move came one day after Abbott signed House Bill 46, which dramatically expanded the state’s medical cannabis program to include a wide range of new conditions, put dispensaries across the state and allow the sale of new products such as vaporizers.
Senate Bill 3, which passed last month after a bitterly contested fight, represented what the Houston Chronicle has called a “civil war” between medical and recreational cannabis, in which medical — until Sunday — appeared to have won.
In a Sunday statement, Patrick blasted the veto — and Abbott. “His late-night veto, on an issue supported by 105 of 108 Republicans in the legislature, strongly backed by law enforcement, many in the medical and education communities, and the families who have seen their loved ones’ lives destroyed by these very dangerous drugs, leaves them feeling abandoned,” Patrick said.
Allowing Senate Bill 3 to become law — knowing that it faces a lengthy battle that will render it dead on arrival in court — would hinder rather than help us solve the public safety issues this bill seeks to contain. The current market is dangerously under-regulated, and children are paying the price. If Senate Bill 3 is swiftly enjoined by a court, our children will be no safer than if no law was passed, and the problems will only grow.
He further states that because SB3 bans any amount of THC, it falls below the federal threshold. “It therefore criminalizes what congress expressly legalized and puts federal and state law on a collision course.” He also notes the possibility of abusive private property seizures under the bill.
“Abbott urged lawmakers to consider an approach similar to the way alcohol is regulated, recommending potential rules including barring the sale and marketing of THC products to minors, requiring testing throughout the production and manufacturing process, allowing local governments to prohibit stores selling THC products and providing law enforcement with additional funding to enforce the restrictions.”
The 89th Texas Legislature will gavel back in for a special session on July 21 — called by Gov. Greg Abbott an hour after he vetoed the hotly-debated Senate Bill (SB) 3 banning THC-derived products on Sunday night.
Abbott specified five bills that he intends for the Legislature to address besides SB 3: SB 1758 by Sen. Brian Birdwell (R-Granbury), related to the operation of cement kilns;
SB 1253 by Sen. Charles Perry (R-Lubbock), regulating certain water projects;SB 1278 by Sen. Tan Parker (R-Flower Mound), on affirmative defense in cases of human trafficking;SB 2878 by Sen. Bryan Hughes (R-Mineola), concerning the operation of the state judicial branch; and SB 648 by Sen. Royce West (D-Dallas), related to recording requirements of real property.
“At this time, the Governor has identified several bills that were vetoed or filed without signature that will be placed on the upcoming Special Session agenda for further consideration,” his press release read.
“Working with the Texas Legislature, we delivered results that will benefit Texans for generations to come,” said Abbott in a press release shortly after midnight — the 20-day deadline for the governor to take action on bills passed during the regular session.
He noted that all seven of his emergency priorities passed during the regular 89th session, which spanned from January 13 to June 2 — property tax relief, generational investment in water, raising teacher pay, expanding career pay, school choice, bail reform, and creating the Texas Cyber Command.
The clash between Abbott and Patrick is interesting, because the state’s two highest elected officials rarely feud so publicly. (Privately is a different matter; those two are not best buds, but they have an effective working relationship.)
It’s also interesting because of the clash between conservative and libertarian impulses. Neither Texans nor the legislature have ever voted for full marijuana or THC legalization. It seems that Dan Patrick and the legislature are merely instructing localities to actually enforce existing state law. But, as Abbott notes, the threshold apparently clashes with federal law.
There’s a case to be made for marijuana legalization on the ground of personal autonomy, but both de facto and de jure marijuana legalization in other states have brought along with them considerable negative externalities, from sketchy potheads in broken RVs trashing formerly respectable neighborhoods to state and national forests trashed by illegal grow operations. Oklahoma has suffered from Chinese mob control of the marijuana trade. legalization seems to have made these problems notably worse, by making law enforcement disinclined to go after any grow operations.
In other states, the “medical marijuana” loophole has been expanded so far that you can drive several weed-filled 18-wheelers through it.
The Austin-area quasi-legal “three smoke shops in a half mile stretch” status quo (which SB3 would theoretically eliminate) probably isn’t socially healthy. But it’s entirely possibly that they’re less unhealthy than current full legalization regimes in other states.
On the other hand, marijuana prohibition at the federal level should be repealed because it violates the 10th Amendment, and the idea that the federal government can prohibit what someone can grow and consume on their own land is absurd, unconstitutional, and rests on the horrible precedent of Wickard vs. Filburn.
Polls seem to show a majority of Texas voters oppose a THC ban, but want to see it more heavily regulated. Usual poll caveats apply, and transient public opinion is not the final arbiter in representative government, but I think it’s safe to say that the majority of Texans are considerably less enthused about a THC ban than Dan Patrick.
I’m not entirely sure of the best way forward. Abbott’s suggestion for alcohol-type regulation going forward is probably better (and more likely to withstand legal challenge) than Patrick’s more heavy-handed approach. Whatever law is settled on, Austin and a few other locals will almost certainly continue to under-enforce it.
Marijuana legalization has often been cited as a slippery slope to full drug legalization, and we have seen much of that in deep blue hellholes like San Francisco. But in Texas, while there does indeed appear to be a slope, it doesn’t seem particularly slippery…
Israel continues to pummel Iran’s nuclear program, President Trump sets a deadline, illegal alien border crossings are down radically, Democrats are bankrupt (financially, not just morally), more horrifying sex offenders, and a new face for the Texas Democrat Party.
The big news of Wednesday, reported in the Wall Street Journal and elsewhere: “President Trump told senior aides late Tuesday that he approved of attack plans for Iran, but was holding off to see if Tehran would abandon its nuclear program, people familiar with the deliberations said.” This feels like a strategic leak to reinforce to the Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that he faces the choice of giving up his country’s nuclear weapons program or war with the
There’s an important distinction between approving the attack plan and ordering the attack plan. Our military forces are poised to strike, but at least as of Tuesday, no U.S. fighters are in Iranian airspace, according to Pentagon officials.
“I don’t know how much longer it’s going to go on,” Trump said. “They’re totally defenseless. They have no air defense whatsoever, totally captured. We totally captured the air.”
There’s that “we” again. One of the reasons people keep wondering if the U.S. is covertly helping Israel in an offensive manner as well as the revealed defensive manner (helping shoot down incoming ballistic missiles) is that Trump keeps using “we” to describe Israel’s actions in the war. “We now have complete and total control of the skies over Iran.” “We are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now.”
I know, I know, everybody’s obsessed with which pronouns you use these days.
Yesterday at the White House, Trump continued:
Q: What does unconditional surrender mean?
Donald Trump: Well, you know what it means, unconditional—
Q: Can you explain—
Donald Trump: Two very simple words, very simple: unconditional surrender. That means I’ve had it. Okay, I’ve had it, I give up, no more. Then we go blow up all the nuclear stuff that’s all over the place there. They had bad intentions. For 40 years, they’ve been saying death to America, death to Israel, death to anybody else that they didn’t like. They were bullies. They were schoolyard bullies and now they’re not bullies anymore, but we’ll see what happens. Look, nothing’s finished until it’s finished. War is very complex, a lot of bad things can happen, a lot of turns are made. So, I don’t know. I wouldn’t say that we won anything yet. I would say that we sure as hell made a lot of progress and we’ll see. The next week is going to be very big, maybe less than a week, maybe less.
Snip.
The Economist has a scoop about the Israeli intelligence that spurred its decision to launch this military operation:
We understand that the information presented by Israel includes a detailed account of a recent, more urgent, push by Iranian scientists towards “weaponization”, or the creation of an explosive nuclear device. The dossier provides two key pieces of reported evidence for this claim. The first is that an Iranian scientific team has squirrelled away a quantity of nuclear material, of unclear enrichment status, that is unknown to the monitors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), a UN watchdog (on June 9th the IAEA assessed Iran had official stockpiles of over 400kg of highly enriched uranium). The second piece of reported evidence is that the scientists have accelerated their work and were about to meet commanders of Iran’s missile corps, apparently to prepare for the future “mating” of a nuclear warhead with a missile. . . .
In a report published on May 31st, the IAEA noted that in 2003 Iran had planned to conduct what the Institute for Science and International Security, a think-tank, calls a “cold test” — a simulated nuclear weapon which uses natural or depleted uranium rather than weapons-grade uranium. . . .
The Israeli intelligence dossiers also contain information that, if correct, is genuinely new. They suggest that roughly six years ago the scientists formed a secret “Special Progress Group”, under the auspices of the former AMAD director, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. This group’s aim was to prepare the way for a much quicker weaponisation process, if and when a decision was made by Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, to rush for a bomb. Mr Fakhrizadeh was assassinated by Israel in November 2020. On June 13th in the first hours of the war, the Israeli government published slides describing this backstory. But we have been told that it also shared further assessments with allies that suggest the Special Progress Group stepped up its research at the end of last year. Iran had a new incentive to advance to a bomb. It was reeling from the limited impact of its missile attacks on Israel, and the depletion of its air defenses by Israeli strikes in October 2024. And it was facing the collapse of its proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah, in Gaza and Lebanon.
Bonus:
Israel secret services used a fake phone call to trick the top commanders of Iran’s air force into gathering at a single location before taking them out in a targeted strike, an Israeli Channel 12 commentator has said.
In a statement confirmed to the JC by Israeli sources, Amit Segal told the Call Me Back podcast on Monday: “What Israel did was create a fake phone call for 20 members of the air force senior staff an calling them to a specific bunker in Tehran.”
This meant there was no one to give the order to fire the initial salvo of 1,000 ballistic missiles as Iran had previously threatened to do, he added.
According to sources familiar with the operation, Mossad initiated a targeted disinformation effort days before the strike.
Using falsified communications through Iranian channels, they triggered what appeared to be an emergency meeting.
The ruse successfully drew the entire senior leadership of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Aerospace Force, including Commander General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, his deputies, and key technical personnel, into a fortified bunker outside Tehran.
Moments before the strike began, that bunker was hit in a precision airstrike, eliminating Iran’s top missile command.
Border Czar Tom Homan dropped a bombshell on X Tuesday night that should have every American asking why we tolerated four years of Biden’s border catastrophe.
“In the last 24 hours the Border Patrol encountered a total of 95 illegal aliens across the entire southern border,” Homan posted. “That is the lowest number EVER recorded. Compare that to the Biden administration, who surpassed more than 10,000 per day.”
Read that again. Ninety-five. That’s not a typo. For the first time in recorded history, we’re seeing double-digit border encounters. Meanwhile, Biden’s administration was routinely processing more than 10,000 illegal crossings daily. The contrast couldn’t be more stark or more damning for the previous administration.
“Since taking office, my administration has launched the most sweeping border and immigration crackdown in American history. And we quickly achieved the lowest numbers of illegal border crossers ever recorded,” he said. “The media and our friends in the Democrat party kept saying we needed new legislation, we must have legislation to secure the border. But it turned out that all we really needed was a new president.”
But here’s where it gets even worse for Biden’s defenders. Homan revealed that the Biden administration released the “vast majority” of illegal immigrants back into American communities. How many were released under Trump in May? “Zero,” Homan revealed.
The numbers are staggering. In May 2024 alone, Biden released 62,000 illegal aliens into the country. Let that sink in: 62,000 people who crossed illegally were simply turned loose on American streets in a single month. This wasn’t immigration policy; it was an authorized invasion.
While ICE arrests and deportations have grabbed headlines, President Trump is also running a separate but complementary “mass deportation” program — one that encourages aliens here unlawfully to go home voluntarily.
And if reports are correct, that plan is more successful than anyone could have imagined.
Based on government data, my organization, the Center for Immigration Studies, has conservatively estimated there are about 15.4 million illegal aliens in the United States, a 50% increase over the four tumultuous years of the Biden administration.
That’s no surprise, given how Biden and his Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas ignored congressional detention mandates and ushered millions of illegal migrants into the United States.
Trump rode a wave of concerns about the costs those migrants are imposing on schools, hospitals, housing, and essential government services in cities and towns across the United States to a second term.
Now that he’s back in the Oval Office, it’s up to him, “border czar” Tom Homan, and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem to drive the unauthorized population down and restore credibility to our immigration system.
They’ve implemented a two-track plan to tackle this onerous task.
One of those tracks relies on arrests and deportations of aliens unlawfully here, which at the outset has focused mainly on criminals (the “worst first” strategy).
The other track is more subtle but also cheaper for taxpayers and arguably much more effective —encouraging illegal migrants here to self-deport.
It began with an Inauguration Day Trump directive requiring DHS to ensure all aliens present in the United States — legal and otherwise — have registered with the federal government, and to prosecute those who don’t comply.
By late February, Noem had implemented that registration program.
DHS next launched a multimillion-dollar ad campaign warning migrants not to enter illegally or, alternatively, to leave voluntarily now and possibly “have an opportunity to return and enjoy our freedom and live the American Dream.”
Noem also rebranded the notorious CBP One app — which the Biden administration used to funnel hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants into our country — as “CBP Home,” which aliens can use to “notify the U.S. Government of their intent to depart.”
That rebranding coincided with an offer of financial incentives for aliens who leave voluntarily, a stipend of $1,000. That’s in lieu of costly physical deportation, which can cost taxpayers $17,100 per person on average.
How effective has self-deportation been?
One way to track the program is by checking employment numbers. One financial whiz cited by the Wall Street Journal calculated a decline in the immigrant population of 773,000 in the first four months of Trump II.
The Washington Post claims “a million foreign-born workers have exited the workforce since March.” The Post frames this as “a sign of the weakening labor supply.” Yet the paper also notes, “Average hourly wages accelerated, rising by 0.4 percent over the month, to $36.24 in May, as earnings continue to beat inflation in a boost to workers’ spending power.”
In other words, with fewer illegal immigrants, businesses have had to raise wages to attract workers.
Win-win-win for everyone except Democrats, illegal aliens, and the businesses addicted to cheap, illegal labor.
ICE raid nabs more than 100 illegal aliens at a meat packing plant. Americans applying for jobs ensues. The “jobs Americans won’t do” canard was always a lie.
Kash, who just shared the documents with Congress, then shared the accompanying article from Just the News to shed more light:
Officials who have seen the documents told Just the News the FBI had a relatively new confidential source who provided information in summer 2020 that the Chinese government was manufacturing and exporting fake U.S. driver’s licenses as part of a plot to create voter identities for Chinese residents living in the United States so they could vote with fake mail-in ballots.
The intelligence source claimed the plot was specifically designed to benefit Biden, officials said.
Wait, you’re telling me that China wanted “10% for the Big Guy” Joe Biden, a man whose family made money by peddling political influence with Chinese businessmen, to be the US president?
🚨 BREAKING 🚨
In a 2018 email, a bank flagged serious concerns about the China money Hunter Biden received – $40,000 of which ultimately landed in Joe Biden’s bank account.
In the email, the bank’s money laundering investigator highlighted:
Hmmm. “The U.S. Navy now has five guided-missile destroyers in the eastern Mediterranean, according to U.S. defense officials. This is a significant increase. Earlier this week, the U.S. had just one in the eastern Med.” (Previously.)
Even God has taken a crack at Iran. “A 5.2 magnitude earthquake has just struck Central Iran as Israel continues its attack on Tehran. The quake’s epicentre was just outside the city of Semnan, around 210km east of the capital.”
The Democratic Party is struggling. In every way a political party can be dysfunctional, the Democrats are careening toward an implosion.
Riven by poisonous factionalism, running out of cash, and devoid of purpose and plan, the oldest political party in the Western World is falling apart right before our eyes.
How bad is it? When the New York Times gives space to a 1,800-word, five-alarm article giving excruciating detail about your party’s travails, you know it’s not time to pop the champagne cork and celebrate.
To make matters worse for the Democrats, on the same day the Times aired the party’s soiled panties for all to see, the other Democratic Party house organ, Politico, laid 1,600 words of criticism on party chairman Ken Martin.
The media couldn’t be quiet about it. With 17 months to go before the 2026 midterm elections, the Democrats find themselves in an existential crisis. Half the party wants to abandon the radical left, while the radical left wants to give the heave-ho to anyone to the right of Karl Marx.
Let’s start with Ken Martin as a point of contention. Barely four months into the job, he’s already made plenty of enemies. Worse, those enemies aren’t going quietly into that good night. They are sniping at him from the sidelines, drawing blood with criticisms no party chair has ever heard before.
David Hogg section skipped. Judging by Kolby Duhon (see below), Hogg really was too masculine for the DNC.
“This is worse than some high school student council drama,” said Wisconsin Democrat Representative Mark Pocan. I’d say that’s right on the mark.
One DNC member told Politico that Martin looked “weak and whiny,” and another said he has been “invisible.” Similar sentiments were expressed by other DNC members.
These aren’t Republicans talking about their leaders. It’s the supposed leadership caste of the Democratic Party.
Awesome, isn’t it?
Snip.
The biggest blow to the party may have been the recent exit from the DNC of American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten and AFSCME President Lee Saunders. Together, they represent millions of members and tens of millions of dollars in contributions.
“The DNC is weaker than I have ever seen it… They have shown zero ability to chart a post-24 vision for Democrats,” a Democratic strategist with close ties to labor unions, told Politico.
Weingarten and Saunders couldn’t “in good faith continue to rubber-stamp what was going on with the DNC,” the strategist said.
Instead of developing a strategy for 2026 and preparing the battlefield for 2028, Martin and the DNC are bogged down in the minutiae of organizational warfare. There’s no plan, no purpose behind the DNC’s pronouncements. Martin is too busy putting out political brushfires and soothing bruised egos to get anything organizationally done.
No one is going to wave a magic wand and put the party back together.
Unspoken in this piece: The Social Justice hard left would literally rather kill the Democrat Party than give up control of it. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
“The Supreme Court upheld the state of Tennessee’s ban on irreversible transgender procedures for minors, a major victory for parental rights advocates and those seeking to protect distressed children from harmful operations. The justices ruled 6-3 in United States v. Skrmetti, with all of the conservative justices opting to allow Tennessee’s ban to remain in place and the liberal justices dissenting. The ruling will likely allow similar bans in more than 20 other red states to be upheld in the face of legal challenges.” Decision by decision, the transsexual madness is finally being beaten back.
The man suspected of assassinating a Minnesota Democratic state lawmaker and attempting to kill another is being brought up on federal murder and stalking charges and could face the death penalty, prosecutors said Monday, hours after he was arrested following a days-long manhunt.
Acting U.S. Attorney for Minnesota Joe Thompson said during a press conference that Vance Luther Boelter went to the homes of four Minnesota lawmakers with the intent of killing them….
Boelter, 57, is facing six federal counts: two stalking charges, two firearm offenses for the non-fatal shooting of State Senator John Hoffman and his wife Yvette, and two murder charges for the killing of former State House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark. He faces anywhere from 20 years in prison to a potential death sentence for the federal murder charge.
The case had a lot of weird aspects to it, from him being a Tim Waltz appointee to the suspect’s wife being stopped with cash and passports in her car to the supposed anti-abortion motive to the No Kings flyers in his car to the murdered lawmaker being the only Democrat to vote for repealing taxpayer frunded illegal alien health care. A bunch of things don’t add up, especially how quickly the story seemed to disappear off news radar…
Finally. “Feds Crush Violent Antifa Uprising Outside Portland ICE Facility.” Now the feds need to start looking into RICO charges against Antifa funders…
Speaking of antifa behaving badly, they just attacked two more journalists, Cameron Higby and Brandi Kruse.
“DOJ charges another Chinese researcher with smuggling ‘biological materials’ into US. The new case accuses Chinese researcher Chengxuan Han of trying to smuggle packages containing concealed biological material related to round worms into the country by sending multiple packages that contain the material to a lab in the U.S.” It looks like we need to check the lab of every Chinese national studying biology in the U.S. for possible biological warfare material. Indeed, given these arrests, we may already be doing so. (Hat tip: TPPF.)
“New Law Protects Property Owners, Assists in Removing Squatters.” Good to see Texas getting ahead of the issue.
We don’t cotton to cop killers in Texas. “El Salvadoran Illegal Alien Receives Death Penalty for Murder of Harris County Deputy. Oscar Rosales never disputed that he killed Deputy Corporal Charles Galloway in a January 2022 shooting.” El Salvador, eh? Maybe we can pay El Salvador to keep him in CECOT while his appeals play out, then fly him back to execute him…
Trigger warning: Another case of two gay men adopting a baby and raping it to death.
That’s the face (and haircut) Democrats want to put forward as representing their party.
Over the weekend, Texas Democrats elected Kolby Duhon as their new vice chair for finance. The position is responsible for a variety of duties related to the party’s raising and spending of money.
Duhon filled a vacancy that opened when the previous vice chair, Kendall Scudder, was elected party chairman in March.
His X feed reveals his radical views.
Duhon describes himself as a “pansexual.” Advocates claim “pansexuals” do not take gender or sexuality into account when choosing a partner. In 2020, Duhon tweeted his admiration for State Rep. Mary Gonzalez (D–San Elizario) and claimed she inspired him to run for a position with the Texas Young Democrats on an “openly Pan” platform.
By “pansexual” I assume he strikes out with both men and women. And what self-respecting gay would want to be seen with someone with that hairstyle?
Duhon uses “they/he” pronouns and helped found the Socialist Caucus of the Texas Young Democrats in 2017.
Beyond his lifestyle choices and political affiliations, Duhon has expressed views on subjects including Israel, policing, and racism that place him on the far-left end of the political spectrum.
Duhon has repeatedly posted in favor of pushing gender confusion on so-called “trans kids.”
Of course he has.
Here’s the perfect face for the modern Democratic Party: A freakshow all the way down…
More signs of the decline of the Democratic Party in Texas. “Tarrant County Democratic Party Chair Resigns Months After All Staff Laid Off. [Crystal Gayden] will continue as chair until July 7 when an election will take place to decide her successor.”
Just a couple months after laying off all of its paid staff, the Tarrant County Democratic Party will need to find a new party chair as incumbent chair Crystal Gayden announced her resignation at the beginning of June.
Gayden, who became party chair back in July 2023, stated in her announcement that she had overseen the strengthening and re-energizing of the party, which had expanded its precinct chair network, prioritized turnout in local elections, grown its supporter base, and increased party visibility, among other things.
For those outside Texas, Tarrant County is home to Ft. Worth and is the third largest county in the state, so the Democrats having no staffers there is a kind of big deal.
As far as “prioritizing turnout,” it’s certainly not visible in national elections. Biden’s recorded vote total in Tarrant County in 2020 was 411,567, edging Trump by just under 2,000 votes. In 2024, it was 384,501 votes, or more than 40,000 votes under Trump’s total. Some triumph of turnout…
“State Sen. Kelly Hancock has officially entered the race for Texas Comptroller with the backing of Gov. Greg Abbott, resigning from the Senate and being sworn in as chief clerk of the agency by outgoing Comptroller Glenn Hegar.”
The move is designed to sidestep a 2002 legal opinion from then-Attorney General Abbott, which held that a sitting state senator cannot be appointed to a position requiring Senate confirmation during the term for which they were elected.
By resigning and taking on the role of “chief clerk,” Hancock avoids triggering the Senate confirmation process while still stepping into the agency’s top position for the remainder of Hegar’s term—through January 2027.
Hegar, who will officially take over as chancellor of the Texas A&M University System on July 1, praised Hancock as his successor.
Snip.
In 2023, Hancock was one of only two Republican senators who sided with Democrats to attempt to remove Attorney General Ken Paxton from office following his impeachment trial. During this most recent legislative session, he was one of seven Republican senators who voted to water down Senate Bill 19—intended to ban taxpayer-funded lobbying—by supporting an amendment that exempted organizations like the Texas Association of School Boards from the ban.
Snip. Don Huffines:
“The political elite are manipulating the system to install another go-along-to-get-along lap dog as State Comptroller, because they know President Trump’s DOGE-style transparency would expose everything. But they don’t just fear me. They fear you—the taxpayers, the grassroots. And they should. The conservative base in Texas is wide awake, fed up, and ready to take back control. And they know we will win,” said Huffines, pointing to endorsements from U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, Charlie Kirk, Riley Gaines, Ron Paul, and a majority of the State Republican Executive Committee.
Another declared candidate, current Railroad Commissioner Christi Craddick, responded by pointing to her statewide record.
“No matter who else enters the race, I’ll put my record up against anyone,” said Craddick. “I’m the only candidate in this race with statewide experience and a proven record running one of Texas’ most important agencies, cutting red tape, generating billions in revenue from oil and gas, and delivering results that fund our schools, roads, and first responders.”
Been a while since we had a juicy crazed poisoner story, so here’s one. Did it not occur to to supergenius (accused) perp that two former lovers both being poisoned by cyanide was pretty handily going to mark him as a suspect?
How many of these classic prog rock intros can you name? Harder than you might think, though I got “The Musical Box” off Genesis’ Nursery Crime on the very first note…
Another week, another investigation by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton into more of that illegal alien voting fraud that Democrats swear up and down doesn’t exit.
Texas has opened investigations into 33 alleged noncitizens who voted in the November 2024 general election, following Secretary of State (SOS) Jane Nelson’s referral of the cases to Attorney General Ken Paxton.
After Nelson gained access to a federal citizenship database, which she used to cross-reference the voter rolls, her office reported on June 5 that it had found evidence that 33 individuals who voted in the previous election are not U.S. citizens.
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service’s (USCIS) Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database, an online service utilized by government agencies for verifying immigration and naturalization status, was made available to the SOS after an executive order by President Donald Trump — which laid out a variety of directives and requirements to state agencies related to ensuring election integrity across the nation. One of these was an order given to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), requiring it to ensure that all state and local officials receive free access to information regarding voters’ citizenship and naturalization statuses.
“Noncitizens must not be allowed to influence American elections, and I will use the full weight of my office to investigate all voter fraud,” Paxton said in a press release on Tuesday morning.
“In order to be able to trust the integrity of our elections, the results must be determined by our own citizens — not foreign nationals breaking the law to illegally vote.”
Paxton had originally called on Nelson in September 2024 to request access to the SAVE database, in order to confirm that the upcoming November 2024 general election would be free of illegal voting by individuals who are not U.S. citizens.
Shortly after Paxton’s initiative, Nelson sent her own letter to the USCIS demanding its collaboration with her office and outlining the department’s responsibilities in collaborating with local government agencies to ensure the integrity of elections. She requested access to the information by October 2, 2024.
The SOS reported on June 5 that it had identified the 33 potential noncitizens who voted in the 2024 November general election, “within weeks” of gaining access to the SAVE database.
One wonders if that’s all the Texas illegal alien voters in the database, or if this is just the tip of the iceberg…
It’s no secret that when leftists carry out widespread “peaceful protests,” a whole lot of non-peaceful riots, arson and looting ensue, especially if they’re happening in Democrat run cities where they know public officials sympathetic to their cause-of-the-week will keep police away and give them “space to destroy.”
Texas Governor Greg Abbott isn’t putting up with such nonsense, and is nipping it in the bud…
As riots erupt in cities like Los Angeles and protests targeting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) are planned for this weekend, Gov. Greg Abbott is deploying the Texas National Guard across the state to deter potential violence and maintain order.
“Texas National Guard will be deployed to locations across the state to ensure peace & order,” Abbott posted on social media. “Peaceful protest is legal. Harming a person or property is illegal & will lead to arrest. [Texas National Guard] will use every tool & strategy to help law enforcement maintain order.”
Under both the Texas Constitution and federal law, governors have broad authority to activate their state’s National Guard in response to emergencies, including civil unrest. In his role as commander-in-chief of the Texas National Guard when not federalized, Abbott can deploy troops to assist law enforcement, protect property, and respond to threats to public safety.
“The State of Texas stands ready to deploy all necessary personnel and resources, including Texas Department of Public Safety troopers, to uphold law and order across our state,” Abbott’s press secretary, Andrew Mahaleris, told Texas Scorecard earlier this week. “Peaceful protests are part of the fabric of our nation, but Texas will not tolerate the lawlessness we have seen in Los Angeles. Anyone engaging in acts of violence or damaging property will be swiftly arrested and held accountable to the full extent of the law.”
After one demonstration earlier this week in Austin that turned destructive, Abbott noted that more than a dozen protesters were arrested.
“Peaceful protesting is legal. But once you cross the line, you will be arrested. FAFO,” Abbott posted.
Abbott’s approach stands in sharp contrast to that of California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has opposed efforts by President Donald Trump to bring in federal troops or National Guard units to restore order in cities such as Los Angeles. Newsom has called such deployments provocative and unnecessary, even as violent protests and property destruction continue nightly across the state.
Meanwhile, Republican attorneys general across the country, including Texas’ Ken Paxton, are supporting Trump’s deployment of the National Guard.
“If you set police cars on fire, throw Molotov cocktails at law enforcement, and loot businesses, you must be held accountable,” posted Paxton on X. “We stand with law enforcement, we support President Trump’s action, and we will not let chaos take hold in our states.”
Seems entirely logical. So why don’t Democratic governors take similar precautions to prevent “peaceful protests” from turning into the usual riot, arson and looting sprees we keep seeing over and over again?
Simple: Many Democrats want to see the riots happen. From Ferguson to Minneapolis to the current LA riots, Democratic office holders seem to sympathize with far left goals and seem perfectly happy to let those riots sweep across their city in bursts of revolutionary violence.
What they hope to accomplish by letting such violence flourish I leave as an exercise for the readers…
Just like in 1992 or 2020, another bout of “mostly peaceful protest” in a Democrat-run city has turned into a multi-day spree of rioting and looting. So here’s a roundup of leftwing riot news from the pro-illegal alien felon riots in Los Angeles and elsewhere:
The mayor of Los Angeles is imposing a nighttime curfew to curtail the continuing anti-ICE riots and combat looting and vandalism amid the chaos.
L.A. Mayor Karen Bass (D.) announced a curfew beginning at 8 p.m. Pacific time in downtown Los Angeles and lifting at 6 a.m. She warned violators that law-enforcement officers would arrest them.
“I issued a curfew starting tonight at 8pm for Downtown Los Angeles to stop bad actors who are taking advantage of the President’s chaotic escalation,” Bass said.
“If you do not live or work in Downtown L.A., avoid the area. Law enforcement will arrest individuals who break the curfew, and you will be prosecuted.”
Bass and California Governor Gavin Newsom (D.) have faced criticism for allowing the riots against Immigration and Customs Enforcement to get out of hand and for taking a soft-handed approach. Both Democrats have attacked President Trump and his administration for quickly sending in the National Guard to quell the violence after local law enforcement was overwhelmed.
“If I didn’t ‘SEND IN THE TROOPS’ to Los Angeles the last three nights, that once beautiful and great City would be burning to the ground right now,” Trump said Tuesday morning on Truth Social.
Trump and Newsom have exchanged heated rhetoric over Newsom’s handling of the rioting and Trump’s decision to quickly intervene. Newsom has cast Trump as an authoritarian, wannabe dictator for mobilizing the National Guard to stop the violence.
How dare Trump enforce public order and deport illegal alien felons?
In the coming days, you’re going to see an enormous effort by the Democrats and large swaths of the media to declare that if U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had never tried to enforce immigration law in Los Angeles, the city would not be beset by so much widespread violence and unrest this past weekend. Implicit in that argument is the idea that Los Angeles city and county are so primed for violence, such a powder keg of anarchic malcontents, that the U.S. government must simply throw up its hands and concede that it cannot enforce immigration law there. You see, this reflects how the likes of Governor Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass approach governing — when a task is too difficult, they just don’t even make the attempt.
In the minds of the progressive Democrats who run the city and county of Los Angeles and the state of California, ICE efforts to arrest and deport those who have entered the country illegally are unpopular among their constituents and, therefore, must be illegitimate.
That is not how it works, of course.
I sometimes think that news organizations in Los Angeles don’t want to give their audiences and readers a clear picture of what’s actually happening in their city. Here’s the opening sentence of an article published online by the Los Angeles NBC affiliate Friday afternoon: “A group of people were seen outside of a business named Ambiance in the Fashion District of downtown Los Angeles.”
Hey, remember those basics of journalism, the who, the what, the when, the where, the why, and sometimes the how? Are we just not doing any of that anymore?
The next sentence reads, “Essayli tells NBC4 that the FBI was working along with other federal agencies to serve a search warrant, which were [sic] signed by a judge, because they have probable cause to believe this employer is using fictitious documents for some of its workers.”
There’s nothing indicating to readers that “Essayli” is Bilal A. “Bill” Essayli, the U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California, the chief federal prosecutor for the region.
Mayor Karen Bass issued a statement Friday afternoon declaring, “We received reports of federal immigration enforcement actions in multiple locations in Los Angeles. As mayor of a proud city of immigrants, who contribute to our city in so many ways, I am deeply angered by what has taken place. These tactics sow terror in our communities and disrupt basic principles of safety in our city. My office is in close coordination with immigrant rights community organizations. We will not stand for this.”
Throughout the day, Bass issued one statement after another that kept referring to “immigrants” — refusing to even acknowledge the distinction between legal immigrants and illegal immigrants.
California Governor Gavin Newsom issued a statement Friday contending, “continued chaotic federal sweeps, across California, to meet an arbitrary arrest quota are as reckless as they are cruel. Donald Trump’s chaos is eroding trust, tearing families apart, and undermining the workers and industries that power America’s economy.”
What makes these law enforcement actions “chaotic” and “reckless”?
The following morning, ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons contended that an angry crowd of Los Angeles residents had assaulted federal agents, and the Los Angeles Police Department had an inexplicably delayed response:
As rioters attacked federal ICE and law enforcement officers on the L.A. streets, Mayor Bass took the side of chaos and lawlessness over law enforcement.
Our brave officers were vastly outnumbered, as over 1,000 rioters surrounded and attacked a federal building. It took over two hours for the Los Angeles Police Department to respond, despite being called multiple times. The brave men and women of ICE were in Los Angeles arresting criminal illegal aliens including gang members, drug traffickers and those with a history of assault, cruelty to children, domestic violence, robbery, and smuggling.
The protest was outside the Edward R. Roybal Federal Building. The headquarters of the Los Angeles Police Department is three-tenths of a mile away, an eight-minute walk.
If you are a Californian, the current LA riots are an example of your tax dollars hard at work.
The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Right—CHIRLA—is one of the key players in fomenting the violent response to immigration enforcement actions. It’s an LA-based nonprofit with a… pic.twitter.com/PSzSsdu0hg
Another downtown Los Angeles press conference on Friday featured speakers from Unión del Barrio and Centro CSO, Facebook video shows. Unión del Barrio’s Ron Gochez told his audience about the need to resist ICE “by any means necessary.”
“If we organize, we can kick their asses out of every single ghetto, every single barrio, anywhere where our people are,” Gochez said, drawing applause.
“Who gives a damn about legality, when these people have their boot to our neck,” Gochez said, referencing immigration law. “We have … every single obligation, moral, historical, we have every reason to defend our people, to defend our community, to defend our families by whatever means necessary.”
Unión del Barrio describes itself as “entirely self-financed through membership dues, community contributions, and local fundraising” on its website, while Centro CSO says it is a member-funded grassroots group. The organizations did not respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment.
Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)
The Los Angeles chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) helped spread SEIU’s graphic about CHIRLA’s Friday press conference on X. “Citizens who know their rights can disrupt and slow ICE incursions, as well as pressure local authorities to take action,” another Friday X post from the group reads. The DSA chapter did not respond to a request for comment.
Snip.
The 50501 Movement, formed in response to the second Trump administration, promoted the protests on Bluesky throughout the weekend, including the Friday 4 p.m. gathering. 50501 National Press Coordinator Hunter Dunn posted about being personally among the protesters.
LAPD did the meme and called the leftwing arson and looting sprees “mostly peaceful.”
More mostly peaceful: “Illegal alien charged with attempted murder for throwing Molotov cocktail at officers in LA riots.”
The Other McCain looks at the left’s current love for illegal alien criminals, and reaches back into history to remember Sweden-Kampuchea Friendship Association.
Voters elected Donald Trump for a reason, and if Chris Van Hollen, Will Bunch or anyone else thinks they’re going to fool the electorate into sharing their sympathy for Kilmar Abrego Garcia, they’re simply delusional. But we have often seen the Left enthralled by such delusions.
Jan Myrdal, Marita Wikander, Gunnar Bergström and Hedvig Ekerwald were Swedish socialists who enthusiastically supported Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, a widespread sentiment in Sweden at the time:
The Indochinese revolutionary movements enjoyed widespread support in Swedish society, particularly among supporters of the Swedish Social Democratic Party. When the Khmer Rouge captured Phnom Penh [in April 1975] and expelled its inhabitants, 15,000 Swedes greeted their victory by spontaneously celebrating in the center of Stockholm.
The arrival of Year Zero in Democratic Kampuchea was, as we now know, the beginning of one of the most murderous tyrannies in all human history. The best estimates are that Pol Pot’s communist regime killed about 1.5 million people, nearly 25% of the country’s population.
The first widely noticed account of the ongoing massacre in Cambodia was published by the Reader’s Digest in February 1977, and immediately sparked widespread controversy. The Left, having embraced the Communist regime in Cambodia, denounced the Reader’s Digest account as “propaganda.” To quote Wikipedia:
According to Joel Brinkley, “Khmer Rouge apologists [among Western academics] easily outnumbered those who believed a tragedy was under way.” . . .
[H]uman-rights activist David Hawk . . . claimed that the West was indifferent to the atrocities taking place in Cambodia due to “the influence of anti-war academics on the American left who obfuscated Khmer Rouge behavior, denigrated the post-1975 refugee reports, and denounced the journalists who got those stories.”
In the prevailing worldview of the intelligentsia, the Communists must be good, because America was bad. Therefore, reports about atrocities in Cambodia (based on accounts from those who had escaped) must be false or exaggerated. Such was the background of the August 1978 trip to Cambodia by Myrdal, Wikander, Bergström and Ekerwald as a delegation from the Sweden-Kampuchea Friendship Association (SKFA). They spent two weeks as guests of the Khmer Rouge, even having dinner with Pol Pot, and “returned to Sweden where they undertook a speaking tour and wrote articles in support of the Democratic Kampuchea regime.” Bergström expressed the belief that, under the Khmer Rouge, Cambodia could become “a very special model for the third world … an ideal society with no oppressors.” And this, keep in mind, was a brutal regime that killed a higher percentage of their national population than any known dictatorship in all human history. Among the victims were Marita Wikander’s husband. She had married a Khmer Rouge diplomat, who returned to Cambodia in 1977. During the SKFA trip to Phnom Penh in 1978, she asked to see her husband. The request was denied. It wasn’t until years later that she learned he had been executed by the regime shortly after his return to Cambodia. Such an “ideal society“!
The analogy to current liberal politics is obvious enough. Viewing Trump as the Sum of All Evils, liberals reflexively attack any policy advocated by Trump. Therefore, if Trump wishes to deport criminal illegal aliens, liberals must defend criminal illegal aliens: “Free Kilmar!”
It just wouldn’t be a “mostly peaceful” leftwing riot without widespread looting:
Evidently looting Apple stores is now so common that iPhones now have a store setting that sets alarms and tracking off if stolen, rendering them useless to looters:
Los Angeles is grappling with a wave of violence and destruction that has left local business owners reeling, as captured in a viral TikTok video from NewsNationNow, posted on 10 June 2025.
The video features a furious LA business owner, Monty, owner of Bargain2Perfumes, whose store was ransacked during protests against US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids. ‘This is ridiculous.
This doesn’t look like they’re protesting ICE or anything… Just looting the stores,’ he told NewsNation, echoing sentiments shared across X posts.
Yet, California Governor Gavin Newsom has repeatedly called these events ‘peaceful protests,’ a stark contrast to the reported £80 million ($107 million) in property damage since 6 June 2025, including looted stores, torched vehicles, and vandalised buildings.
So President Trump chose criminal deportation, law and order, and tough on crime.
California Democrats Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass chose lawsuits and states’ rights.
Who do you think won this latest round? I’d say Mr. Trump 10, Democrats zero.
It’s just hard to believe that removing illegal alien criminals who have committed sexual assault and murders would be attacked by one of our two major political parties.
But that’s the state of play among Democrats. Shame on Governor Newsom in particular.
And good for Senator Fetterman for being just about the only Democrat to stand up and say that peaceful free speech is good, but violent protest is not. And Democrats should not be defending violent protests.
And Mr. Trump’s border tsar, Tom Homan, is absolutely right that Mr. Newsom and Ms. Bass should be thanking ICE for making California a safer place.
In an interview with Greta Van Susteren, Mr. Homan said, “What angers me the most” is that “people aren’t looking at the facts. ICE arrested significant public safety threats in the last few days in L.A. We arrested a murderer — a Vietnamese national who murdered teenagers at a graduation party.”
He added that “we arrested several sexual predators — child sexual predators — we arrested people convicted of armed robbery, arrested people for domestic violence and all sorts of public safety threats.”
And as protesters and trouble makers turn to violence to oppose ICE’s safety actions, remarkably the Democrats chose to support the rioters committing arson, and looting, smashing police cars, throwing rocks at ICE agents, spitting on the American flag and setting it on fire, and spray-painting “Death to America” graffiti on government buildings.
Mr. Trump’s rapid action to protect public safety and avoid a truly vast insurrection by bringing in the National Guard and Marines was a stroke of genius.
The chaotic anti-ICE riots aren’t just confined to California; anti-ICE agitators have taken their lawlessness to the East Coast. On Saturday, New York City joined Los Angeles in becoming a flashpoint for radical protests, as demonstrators clashed with law enforcement after a mob of nearly 150 people tried to block federal officials from conducting an immigration raid in Manhattan.
More than 20 anti-ICE protestors were arrested after interfering with immigration authorities trying to carry out lawful operations. The activists were actively obstructing the removal of criminal illegal immigrants. At one point, the mob attempted to block a white van from exiting the area. It successfully forced it back into the building’s parking garage after agitators threw themselves at the vehicle. The New York Police Department (NYPD) arrived and started pushing protesters back onto the other side of the street. Authorities warned protestors to disperse or get arrested
Even here in Austin, protestors were demonstrating the usual left-wing idea of “peaceful”:
While the Austin protest was largely peaceful, it ended with a dozen arrests and a standoff between demonstrators and state and local police who deployed tear gas and pepper ball projectiles against a smaller group of protesters after they graffitied a federal building and threw rocks at officers.
Snip.
Laiba Khan, an organizer with the Austin chapter of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, said the group organized the protest specifically because of the Trump administration’s response to the LA demonstrations.
Quoting that not because it’s important, but just so I have the tags ready the next time these Austin commies burn something else down.
Trace Gallagher on Fox News sums out just how bad these riots look for Democrats:
“If the goal is to lose elections in perpetuity, they have devised the perfect plan.”
The Babylon Bee appreciates illegal alien rioters making things easier for ICE:
Remember to stay away from riot areas, and make sure your carry gun is properly oiled and loaded…
“Turning Texas blue” is an idée fixe for Democratic Party operatives, and it’s easy to see why. Securing Texas’ 40 (and soon to be 43 or 44) electoral votes would go a long way toward ensuring presidential election dominance for the donkeys. Indeed, one (of many) big driving factors behind the headless Biden Administration opening the border was to secure enough illegal alien votes via amnesty to do just that. (Ironically, what it actually seem to do was turn the Rio Grande Valley red and add millions of Hispanics to the Trump coalition.) But the idea never goes away, and now moneybag social justice funder George Soros is trying to turn Texas blue.
A Democrat-aligned political group backed by billionaire George Soros is once again setting its sights on Texas, aiming to flip the reliably red state with a new multimillion-dollar campaign.
According to a Wall Street Journal report, Texas Majority PAC—bankrolled heavily by Soros—has launched a new initiative dubbed “Blue Texas,” partnering with the Texas Democratic Party and several county parties to organize volunteers, recruit candidates, and boost voter turnout ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
Campaign finance records show Soros gave $2.1 million to Texas Majority PAC in 2024 and another $1 million in April.
The move marks the latest in a long line of efforts by Democrats to make inroads in Texas, a state Republicans have dominated for decades. Despite shifting demographics and repeated national predictions of a “blue wave,” Democrats haven’t won a single statewide race in Texas since 1994.
Soros and his political allies tried a similar approach in the last election cycle—pouring millions into Texas Majority PAC in an attempt to build a Democrat ground game—but came up short. In 2024, Republicans not only held their ground but made gains in both the Texas House and Senate. President Donald Trump, meanwhile, won 12 of the state’s 14 border counties and defeated Kamala Harris by nearly 14 percentage points.
I covered last year’s Soros funding attempts here.
The Texas Majority PAC, which describes its mission as growing the Democrat majority and winning statewide elections, is hoping for a different result this time.
Organizers say they’ll hold rallies across the state in June and visit more than two dozen cities in July to recruit candidates.
Rallies. Yeah. That will do the trick. I do wonder if they don’t actually mean “riots,” since that seems to be what Soros is best at funding.
Their long-term goal is to make Texas a competitive battleground state by 2032, when a new round of redistricting could further increase the state’s electoral significance.
“If a win is on the table in 2026, we don’t want to leave it there by not being organized,” Katherine Fischer, deputy executive director of Texas Majority PAC, told WSJ.
A win for Democrats is “on the table” in the same sense that a World Series championship is “on the table” for the Colorado Rockies in 2026: It’s theoretically possible, but no one is betting that way.
But past efforts like Battleground Texas—formed over a decade ago with similar ambitions—have largely failed.
Battleground Texas was a particularly spectacular flameout. And that was staffed with Obama retreads, i.e. the last actually successful Democratic presidential campaign that didn’t rely on mysterious 3 AM ballot dumps. What election experts are they going to bring in to turn Texas red? The supergeniuses behind the Kamala Harris campaign? What pearls of wisdom are Soros-funded cadres going to dispense on their presumably benighted Texas counterparts? They need to burn more police cars? They need to buy more Palestinian flags?
Texas Republicans are quite lucky nationwide liberals seem clueless about how to wisely allocate money to boost Democrats in Texas. Just think if that $160+ million Bobby Francis “Beto” O’Rourke wasted on his two losing statewide campaigns had been channeled into effective grassroots organizing instead of ill-fated media ad buys. Texas might look a lot more purple right now. Of course, that assumes it’s even possible for Democrats to carry out effective grassroots organizing, instead of shoveling money into the insatiable maws of hordes of social justice locusts looking to foment their own brand of self-serving revolution.
I think that literally just Scott Presler, by himself, has moved the electoral needle more than all the millions of dollars national Democrats have dumped into Texas all this century combined…
Today’s the 81st anniversary of D-Day. Trump and Musk fight over the “big beautiful bill,” the Dutch government collapses, a whole lot of megacorps decide that “Pride Month” is over, hot Skynet on Skynet action, a fake Titanic, “nose ring theory” and a white Black Panther.
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Elon Musk is not a fan of the “big, beautiful bill.”
Elon Musk, the former head of the Department of Government Efficiency, on Tuesday dismissed President Trump’s “big, beautiful” spending bill as a “disgusting abomination.”
“This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination,” he said in a post on X.
“Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it,” he added.
Musk’s comments on Tuesday represent an even harsher reaction to the bill than his previous criticisms. Last month, he said he was “disappointed” by the House passage of the bill because it undermines the work he has done as the head of DOGE.
“The president already knows where Elon Musk stood on this bill,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Tuesday. “It doesn’t change the president’s opinion.”
While the bill aims to cut $1.5 trillion in government spending, it also increases the debt limit by $4 trillion. The U.S. government is more than $36 trillion in debt.
The bill would extend the 2017 tax cuts, introduce new tax cuts such as Trump’s signature “no tax on tips” policy, and add work requirements to Medicaid, among other provisions.
The measure passed 215 to 214 in the House, largely along party lines after Speaker Mike Johnson was able to overcome opposition from members of his caucus who argued the bill should include further spending cuts to offset tax cuts that will add to the country’s deficit.
Musk thoughts mirror my own. They should not have used reconciliation on a bill that doesn’t balance the budget.
Beyond entitlement reform, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget offers users an option in a fix-the-debt-yourself game. Among the options are medical-malpractice reform (saving the U.S. government $40 billion over ten years), allowing private plans to compete with Medicare ($360 billion over ten years), banning state Medicare matching gimmicks ($830 billion over ten years), rescinding Inflation Reduction Act climate tax credits ($780 billion over ten years), and repealing and replacing student-debt cancellation ($320 over ten years). Enact all of those, and that’s another $233 billion per year or so.
The administration of California Governor Gavin Newsom held closed-door talks on trade cooperation with Chinese officials on Monday, ahead of the anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party’s massacre at Tiananmen Square.
The meeting will take place on the sidelines of the China-California Business Forum, an annual summit hosted by the Chinese consulate general in Los Angeles at the city’s ritzy Biltmore Hotel. That annual gathering gives local and state politicians an opportunity to rub shoulders with their Chinese counterparts.
The Newsom administration’s participation in the meeting comes just ahead of the June 4 anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, which is commemorated by Chinese pro-democracy advocates and human rights advocates.
Should we be relieved that Newsom isn’t actually sleeping with any of them?
You know that illegal alien scumbag gangbanger Democrats were all outraged over his getting deported to El Salvador? Well, Kilmar Abrego Garcia is being returned to the U.S….to face charges on human trafficking.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador, has returned to the United States to face criminal charges for allegedly transporting illegal immigrants within the U.S., the Department of Justice said Friday.
Last month, a federal grand jury in Tennessee indicted Abrego Garcia, who was deported two months ago from Maryland to El Salvador.
Prosecutors say Abrego Garcia was involved in a nearly decade-long conspiracy to transport thousands of illegal immigrants from Texas to other areas around the country. The illegal immigrants, some of whom were members of the MS-13 gang, came from Mexico and Central America.
“The grand jury found that over the past nine years Abrego Garcia has played a significant role in an alien smuggling ring,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said Friday. “They found this was his full-time job. Not a contractor. He was a smuggler of humans and children and women. He made over 100 trips, the grand jury found, smuggling people throughout our country.”
While the allegations were not included in the May 21 indictment, Bondi said that Abrego Garcia also solicited nude images from a minor and was linked to the murder of a rival gang member’s mother. Co-conspirators also accused Abrego Garcia of assaulting women whom he transported across the country and claimed he was also involved in trafficking firearms and narcotics.
No wonder he’s a poster child for Democrats…
There’s not an Alanis Morissette joke big enough: “A once-prominent Harvard University professor was stripped of her tenure and fired this week for outright fabricating data on numerous academic studies of dishonesty and unethical behavior.”
Francesca Gino was regularly cited as an authority by prominent left-leaning outlets such as National Public Radio and the New York Times. Both outlets now admit that Gino’s research was likely fabricated. Disturbingly, the flaws in her research were exposed not by the allegedly robust university system of peer review, but by a series of posts by science bloggers.
No professor has had tenure revoked at Harvard since the 1940s, when the rules for doing so were formalized, according to the Harvard Crimson. This is the academic nuclear option.
Gino’s first retracted study showed evidence of data fabrication all the way back in 2021, and an investigation into her academic dishonesty lasted for the following two years.
“Paxton Smokes Cornyn 50-28 Percent in Latest 2026 GOP Primary Poll.” Only 600 Republican primary voters, which is on the small side for a poll sample.
Is wokeness dying? A whole lot of Fortune 500 companies have decided that they can now sit “Pride Month” out, including IBM, Microsoft, Cisco, Disney, Target, Starbucks, BMW, Bank of America, and even Google. I think most Americans were willing to let adult “LGBs” go off and do their own thing, but every single letter they’ve added to that acronym since (especially the “T”) has marked them as enemies of the people.
Despite the power-sharing cabal ruling the Texas House, a lot of conservative priorities did get get passed and sent to Abbott’s desk. Here’s a roundup.
The Texas Senate succeeded in pushing a majority of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s legislative priorities through both chambers during the regular legislative session. Patrick released a list of 40 pieces of priority legislation in the first three months of the year, covering a variety of issues.
Here is the status of the Senate priority bills in the 89th Legislative Session:
Senate Bill 1 – Senate’s Budget for Texas: Passed both chambers.
Senate Bill 2 – Providing School Choice: Signed into law.
Senate Bill 3 – Banning THC in Texas: Sent to Gov. Greg Abbott.
Senate Bill 4 – Increasing the Homestead Exemption to $140,000 ($150,000 for Seniors): Sent to Abbott.
Senate Bill 5 – Combatting Dementia and Alzheimer’s – Establishing DPRIT (Dementia Prevention and Research Institute of Texas): Signed into law.
Senate Bill 6 – Increasing Texas’ Electric Grid Reliability: Sent to Abbott.
Senate Bill 7 – Increasing Investments in Texas’ Water Supply: Sent to Abbott.
Senate Bill 8 – Requiring Local Law Enforcement to Assist the Federal Government’s Deportation Efforts: Passed both chambers.
Senate Bill 9 – Reforming Bail – Keeping Violent Criminals Off Our Streets: Sent to Abbott.
Senate Bill 10 – Placing the Ten Commandments in School: Sent to Abbott.
Senate Bill 11 – Protecting the Freedom to Pray in School: Sent to Abbott.
Senate Bill 12 – Establishing a Parental Bill of Rights in Public Education: Passed both chambers.
Senate Bill 13 – Guarding Against Inappropriate Books in Public Schools: Passed both chambers.
Senate Bill 14 – Texas DOGE – Improving Government Efficiency: Signed into law.
Senate Bill 15 – Removing Barriers to Housing Affordability: Passed both chambers.
Senate Bill 16 – Stopping Non-Citizens from Voting: Left in House Calendars Committee.
Senate Bill 17 – Stopping Foreign Adversary Land Grabs: Sent to Abbott.
Senate Bill 18 – Stopping Drag Time Story Hour: Left on House General State Calendar.
Senate Bill 19 – Stopping Taxpayer Dollars for Lobbyists: Left in the House State Affairs Committee.
Senate Bill 20 – Stopping AI-Generated Child Pornography: Sent to Abbott.
Senate Bill 21 – Establishing the Texas Bitcoin Reserve: Sent to Abbott.
Senate Bill 22 – Establishing Texas as America’s Film Capital: Sent to Abbott.
Senate Bill 23 – Removing the Cap on the Rainy Day Fund to Secure Texas’ Long-term Financial Future: Sent to Abbott.
Senate Bill 24 – Educating Texas Students on the Horrors of Communism: Sent to Abbott.
Senate Bill 25 – Making Texas Healthy Again: Sent to Abbott.
Senate Bill 26 – Increasing Teacher Pay: Left in the House Public Education Committee.
Senate Bill 27 – Establishing a Teacher Bill of Rights: Passed both chambers.
Senate Bill 28 – Banning Lottery Couriers: Left in House Licensing and Administrative Committee.
Senate Bill 29 – Texas: Open for Business: Signed into law.
Senate Bill 30 – Curbing Nuclear Verdicts: Conference committee appointed.
Senate Bill 31 – Life of the Mother Act: Sent to Abbott.
Senate Bill 32 – Business Tax Relief: Left in the House Ways and Means Committee.
Senate Bill 33 – Stopping Taxpayer-Funded Abortion Travel: Sent to Abbott.
Senate Bill 34 – Wildfire Response: Sent to Abbott.
Senate Bill 35 – Competing for Quality Roads: Left on House General State Calendar.
Senate Bill 36 – Establishing a Homeland Security Division within [the Department of Public Safety]: Sent to Abbott.
Senate Bill 37 – Reforming Faculty Senates: Passed both chambers.
Senate Bill 38 – Stopping Squatters: Sent to Abbott.
Senate Bill 39 – Protecting Texas Trucking: Left in the House Judiciary and Civil Jurisprudence Committee.
Senate Bill 40 – Stopping Taxpayer-Funded Bail: Sent to Abbott.
Not every conservative priority passed, and I don’t agree with every bill (much less every part of every bill), but a lot of progress was made this legislative session. Dan Patrick’s senate seems much better at delivering conservative results than David Dewhurst’s senate ever was.
Columbia U finally gets to the “find out” stage: “Columbia University Failed to Meet Accreditation Standards, Department of Education Finds.”
Columbia University failed to meet accreditation standards due to its inability to uphold civil rights law and punish harassment against Jewish students, the Department of Education announced Wednesday.
Office of Civil Rights (OCR) officials have notified the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, the body that sets Columbia’s accreditation standards, that the university is “in violation of federal antidiscrimination laws and therefore fails to meet standards.” Administrators’ unwillingness to address months of anti-Israel activism on Columbia’s campus created an unsafe environment for Jewish students, the department added, putting the university in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
“The Dutch government collapsed on Tuesday after the Party for Freedom led by Geert Wilders pulled out of the coalition over the government’s asylum policy. Wilders had been adamant leading up to the collapse that without strict restrictions on immigration, his party would leave the coalition government. Wilders made good on those threats Tuesday.” Europe’s political elites evidently love unassimilated Muslim immigration more than they love life itself.
Marcos Lopez, the Democratic sheriff of Osceola County, Florida decided that, instead of busting an illegal gambling operations, it was a lot more profitable to run it.
Someone asked me why UK Labour PM Keir Starmer was suddenly sounding like an uberhawk, talking about expanding UK’s nuclear submarine building program, etc. Actually, this is nothing particularly new, as he made similar points in February, and even last year. But I think the release of the 2025 Strategic Defence Review is driving much of the current chatter. A lot of it just the usual high-minded blather and buzzwords you find in any such doc, but there’s some meat here. Such as this “list of technologies redefining warfare” on page 27:
Artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and data science, improving the quality and speed of decision-making, the resilience of
digital networks, and operational effectiveness. Forecasts of when Artificial General Intelligence (Where AI matches or surpasses humans’ ability to understand, learn, and apply knowledge across a range of situations unaided) will occur are uncertain but shortening, with profound implications for Defence.
Robotics and autonomy, with armed forces increasingly using uncrewed and autonomous capabilities to generate mass and lethality.
Enhanced precision weapons that mean targets can be struck with greater accuracy from ever
greater ranges.
Directed energy weapons, such as the UK’s DragonFire, which have the potential to reduce collateral damage and reliance on expensive ammunition.
Hypersonic missiles, which, travelling at over five times the speed of sound, may offer greater range and greater ability to evade defences.
Space-based capabilities that enable all aspects of modern operations. States are rapidly developing ways to disrupt military and civilian assets in and from space.
Quantum. Advances in quantum computing offer the potential to break encryption, making secure communications much more difficult. Quantum technologies have the
potential to reduce dependence on satellite-based GPS, which may be vulnerable to interference.
Cyber threats that will become harder to mitigate as technology evolves, with AI, quantum technology, and the increasing dependence on satellite communications likely driving the most disruptive changes to the cyber threat landscape.
Engineering biology that creates the potential to enhance the capacity of the armed forces through advances in medicine, healthcare, and wellbeing, possibilities for new energetic and explosive materials, as well as avenues for enormous harm in the shape of new pathogens and other weapons of mass destruction.
A nice list of science fiction story ideas, some even with near-term defense applications.
They’re also buying more subs and planes…
Speaking of future warfare, Lockheed Martin has launched AI “fight club” to test AIs against each other. This is a god idea, if they have their little Forbin Projects properly sandboxed, and if they remember that the map is not the territory. There are always radical surprises in warfare… (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Ono, who curiously was the only finalist advanced by the search committee for the job, came with their unanimous recommendation on May 4 and was unanimously approved by the university’s Board of Trustees on May 27. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who has pledged that Florida is “where woke goes to die,” remained oddly reticent about Ono—stating first that he trusted the process, and later that the governors (15 of the 17 governors were appointed by DeSantis), should follow their consciences in deciding Ono’s fate.
Other Florida conservatives, including Senator Rick Scott and Congressmen Greg Steube, Byron Donalds, and Jimmy Patronis, denounced the appointment and outright called for a negative vote.
Ono’s rejection by the Florida Board of Governors is an unprecedented, but legally and procedurally correct, use of its powers. Ono’s demise followed a polite but charged meeting in Orlando on the campus of Central Florida University. Public comments included scathing denunciations and trenchant questions about his candidacy based on his well-documented record for supporting DEI, critical race theory, and radical gender ideology, among other leftist shibboleths.
DeSantis should have done more to nip this candidacy in the bud.
The New Harbor Bridge in Corpus Christi is about to open after years of delay. It has numerous innovative features, and I’m including it here for the blog’s bridge and infrastructure enthusiasts (you know who you are).
Speaking of which: “‘Andor’ Creator Says Disney Spent ‘$650 Million for 24 Episodes’ and ‘We Fought Hard’ for Money After Being Told in Season 2: ‘Streaming Is Dead. We Don’t Have the Money We Had Before.’”
Just two days after the Texas Legislature adjourned without passing legislation to end in-state tuition for illegal aliens, the Trump administration’s Department of Justice filed a federal lawsuit against the state of Texas.
Now, the state has settled, ending the discounted tuition for illegals for now.
Filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, the lawsuit challenges longstanding provisions of the Texas Education Code that allow certain illegal aliens to pay in-state tuition at public colleges and universities—rates that are significantly lower than those charged to U.S. citizens from other states.
“Federal law prohibits illegal aliens from getting in-state tuition benefits that are denied to out-of-state U.S. citizens,” the DOJ complaint reads. “There are no exceptions. Yet the State of Texas has ignored this law for years.”
The lawsuit cited a federal statute that bars states from offering postsecondary education benefits based on residency to illegal aliens unless the same benefit is available to all U.S. citizens regardless of residency. The DOJ argued Texas law is in direct violation of that statute and therefore preempted under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution.
Since 2001, Texas has allowed illegal alien students to qualify for in-state tuition if they attended Texas high schools and resided in the state for a certain period. At the time, the policy received bipartisan support and was signed into law by then-Gov. Rick Perry.
During his 2012 presidential campaign, Perry defended the law and infamously called critics of the policy “heartless” during a nationally televised debate.
It was a stupid idea then. Government benefits should be reserved for American citizens. Giving them to illegal aliens is not only morally wrong, it encourages other aliens to break the law by coming here illegally.
Senate Bill 1798 by State Sen. Mayes Middleton would have repealed that provision and barred state-funded financial aid from going to illegal aliens. Despite being placed on the Senate intent calendar, the bill was never brought up for a vote.
Curious.
Now, with the legislative session over and the bill dead, the Trump administration stepped in to accomplish what the Legislature didn’t.
The DOJ asked the court to declare the Texas provisions unconstitutional and to permanently block the state from enforcing them.
Hours after the lawsuit was announced, a settlement was announced, with the state agreeing not to offer discounted tuition to illegal aliens.
“In-state tuition for illegal immigrants in Texas has ended. Texas is permanently enjoined from providing in-state tuition for illegal immigrants,” wrote Gov. Greg Abbott in a social media post.
Funny how you can get things done when Republicans control both the state and national executive branches.
Slowly but surely, common sense is returning to government, and official government preferences for illegal aliens are being stripped away.
Six Frio County officials and campaign workers were indicted on felony vote harvesting and evidence tampering charges after a year-long investigation into paid ballot collection targeting elderly voters.
“Good afternoon. This is what I’ll be charging for the election: 2,100 each.”
Four Frio County candidates received this identical text message from Cheryl Denise Castillo on February 27, 2023.
“I want 1000 up front and then you will have 2 months to pay me the rest of the 1000,” she added. “This is the lowest I could go … and I will take turns with y’all for gas and stamps.”
Frio County Sheriff Peter Salinas (D) received one such message.
He later called her in December while speaking with investigators, where she again offered her services on the spot.
As a professional vote harvester, Castillo contacted local Frio Democrat candidates and offered her services to collect votes and help them win their races.
And there’s The D Word. In the previous story, you had to do a little digging to discover that Democrats were involved. I’m glad this one is more explicit.
Vote harvesting is a third-degree felony that can result in prison sentences of up to ten years and fines of up to $10,000.
Castillo will not face any such charges, as she died in October of last year.
Six others in Frio County, however, received grand jury indictments on May 1, including County Judge Rochelle Camacho (D), her sister Adriann Ramirez (Pearsall ISD trustee), city council members Ramiro Trevino and Racheal Garza, former elections administrator Carlos Segura, and campaign worker Rosa Rodriguez. All bonded out after arraignment.
“This is voter suppression 101,” responded Gabriel Rosales, Texas director for the League of United Latin American Citizens. “There’s no vote harvesting going on. There’s nobody creating these ballots. That’s a lie.”
According to search warrant applications from investigator Sgt. Donald Smith, Castillo and others collected, advised, and sometimes mishandled ballots, often targeting elderly or ineligible voters.
Yep, that’s the Democrat Vote Harvesting MO: Getting votes from illegal aliens and preying on the elderly.
The case began after Mary Moore, who lost to Camacho in 2022, reported a tip about paid ballot collection. Moore and others have a history of political disputes in Frio County.
In 2015, the former Frio County judge, city manager, county attorney, and local deputy targeted Moore by improperly accessing her criminal record. The four abruptly resigned and made plea bargains.
Moore suspected the four targeted her for attempting to recall former Mayor Davina Trevino-Rodriguez and her uncle, City Councilman Roy Trevino.
Both names appear on a growing Frio County suspect list with at least twelve others.
According to search warrants, investigators seized the cell phones of several others they believe either gave or received money for vote harvesting:
Cheryl Denise Castillo, a primary vote harvester. Castillo died in October 2024, but allegedly still received texts requesting her services while under investigation.
Maria del Carmen Vela, another primary ballot harvester. According to records, she admitted to helping her brother Joe.
Joe Vela, Frio County commissioner – Precinct 1. He allegedly paid his sister Maria to help him win the 2024 Democrat primary and runoff.
Louisa Martinez, a Pearsall ISD candidate who lost her race in 2023. According to records, Martinez paid Vela in Dr. Pepper, cigarettes, and gas for ballots.
Raul Carrizales III, Frio County commissioner – Precinct 3. Castillo received $3,000 to secure votes for Carrizales, despite Castillo saying she was under investigation.
Mari Benavides, Pearsall ISD board member and secretary, allegedly paid Castillo $2,100 for vote harvesting in 2023 for the school board election. Reports show that she also offered to help Castillo with the vote harvesting process.
Davina Trevino Rodriguez, a former Pearsall city mayor and niece of indicted Pearsall City Council Member Ramiro Trevino, allegedly paid Castillo to secure ballots on her behalf in 2023. Castillo reportedly texted her and three others to offer her vote harvesting services.
None have yet received indictments or arrests.
The records show a detailed text and call history between the competing vote harvesters and their respective candidate clients.
A woman working for Martinez allegedly told investigators that the team knew the election would be tough to win and admitted to providing Vela with sodas, cigarettes, and gas in exchange for collecting ballots on Martinez’s behalf.
Some will point out that these are merely small time Democrat vote hustlers working their hustle on small time local elections in a small Texas county. To which I reply: Exactly. Despite the relatively small stakes of a local ISD election, they were still willing to commit felony vote fraud. In light of that, do you really think Democratic vote hustlers would hesitate to do the same in higher-stakes, big money races?
This guy is pushing Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson “Abundance Agenda,” which aims to offer an alternative to the Democratic Party’s current downer social justice agenda. I’m not going to cover that much, since I don’t think the “Abundance Agenda” has a snowball’s chance in hell of being adopted by the Party’s current ideological core. But I am posting this for his (admittedly incomplete) critique of how Democrats grievously harmed the very people they’re claiming to be working for by destroying the quality of life in the cities they run.
“Democrats, plain and simple, need to change not only to win elections, but also to help the people they claim to support.”
“Working and middle-class American families are leaving places like California, New York and Illinois by the hundreds of thousands, often relocating to conservative regions.” Just like I talked about earlier this week.
“In the words of progressive journalist Ezra Klein: ‘You cannot claim to be the party of working families when the places you govern are places working families cannot afford to live.'” Sure you can! You just need to deploy the time-honored Democratic Party rhetorical device known as “lying your ass off.”
“Donald Trump partly won the 2024 election due to scarcity in the most essential aspects of people’s lives: affordable health care [What, ObamaCare didn’t make health care affordable? I’m shocked… -LP], energy, food, and most importantly housing.”
“For much of America, housing is simply far too expensive. In American cities, especially the liberal progressive ones, there’s an artificial scarcity of housing, and little to none of the available housing is affordable.”
“In 1970 Los Angeles, homes were 2.5 times the median family income, according to Redfin. But in 2022, LA house prices reached over nine times that of median family incomes, requiring families to earn over $220,000 to afford a home.”
“Home ownership is increasingly out of reach for the average worker, and high housing costs have led to financial instability for far too many Americans.”
“Housing supply is partly constrained by zoning restrictions…When more and more individuals and families compete for a near fixed supply of housing stock, prices typically rise making cities unaffordable for existing residents.” You mean like, say, importing millions of illegal aliens to compete with American citizens for limited housing stock?
“Many of America’s most prosperous cities, from New York and Boston to Seattle and San Francisco, heavily restrict the construction of new housing, especially the taller, denser buildings which could house more people, but that’s not the case in all of them.”
“Houston, Texas for example, has some of the most affordable housing and lowest homelessness rates in the country, despite its metro region holding over 7 million residents. This is in part because Houston has essentially no zoning. As a result, because it is extremely easy to build apartments and homes in much of the city, market forces can provide new housing at a variety of price points.”
“In liberal cities attempts, at building housing and infrastructure are often so expensive and inefficient that very little is actually built for low-income Americans. Take San Francisco, for example. The city’s numerous requirements for using public money add millions of dollars to the cost of construction, causing the typical publicly subsidized apartment to take six years to complete with a price tag of 600K per unit.” So affordable!
“San Francisco requires separate reviews from the city’s arts commission and Office of Disability, mandates electricity come from a city-owned utility company, and demands preferential treatment to small local contractors, meaning builders are discouraged from working with contractors who operate at scale.”
“Individually each requirement may seem well-meaning and progressive, but together they cause delays increase costs and ultimately limit the construction of housing for the poor, which clearly is not a progressive outcome.”
“Obstacles aren’t restricted to liberal cities like San Francisco these days building anything in America often requires jumping through a multitude of veto points, allowing interest groups, organizations and hyper local concerns to stop critical projects in their tracks.” Oh, that’s very “progressive” and by design, because every obstacle, every bureaucratic touch-point, provides opportunities for rent- and graft-seeking opportunities to grease the palms of progressives. Look at Austin’s “Reimagining Public Safety” and how just about every recommendation amounts to “take money away from the police and give it to us. This death by a thousand cuts doesn’t deserve the assumption of “good intentions.” It’s a racket that rakes off graft for the hard left.
At this point the author wanders off into more “good intentions, bad outcomes” examples, like environmentalism etc., but non-lefties no longer assume good intentions on the part of the Democratic Party.
Things he fails to mention: How high crime in blue cities with Soros-back prosecutors ruin the quality of life for poor and middle class Americans, and (again) how the huge influx of illegal aliens raises housing prices and sucks up resources that used to benefit American citizens.
Toward the end he states “Democratic doctrine often focuses so much on redistribution rather than growing the pie as a whole,” sounding rather like Jack Kemp or Newt Gingrich in 1994. And I’m pretty sure Democrats at the time either ignored them or called them Nazis.
But the baseline truth is that the ideological core of the Democratic Party wants nothing to do with your white boy “abundance agenda” because it directly conflicts with their primary goals of increasing their own abundance of wealth and power, taking full control of the Democratic Party and using it to destroy Americas existing structures to rebuild them into their imaginary socialist utopia.
You can’t make someone see the advantages of your “abundance agenda” if their entire likelihoods are predicated on not seeing it.
