Happy Anti-Communism Week everyone! (In addition, of course, to May 1st being one of two Victims of Communism Day.) The #SchumerShutdown ends with a whimper, a whole lot of SNAP fraud has been uncovered, more Democrats committing fraud, Chip Roy wants a complete immigration halt, Ukraine hits a bunch more Russian oil refineries, some semiconductor shenanigans, another company leaves Delaware for Texas, some tech companies in trouble, an interesting new pistol design, and a novel theory on “AI-related layoffs.”
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
As a side note, the mosquitos have been brutal the last few days. Possibly because it’s been a very warm (though largely dry) November, and the bats have already migrated south.
President Donald Trump on Wednesday night signed a continuing resolution at the White House that ends the record-breaking 42-day federal government shutdown.
The Senate passed the resolution on Monday and the House passed it earlier Wednesday evening. The resolution will keep the entire government funded through Jan. 30, and extends funding for military construction, Veterans Affairs, the Department of Agriculture, and Congress beyond that, through Sept. 30.
Trump slammed Democrats for causing the shutdown by refusing to go along with a clean continuing resolution for over a month, and urged voters to remember the party responsible for causing the six-week-long chaos during next year’s midterms.
“Republicans never wanted a shutdown and voted 15 times for a clean continuation of funding,” Trump said. “The Democrats shutdown has inflicted massive harm … So I just want to tell the American people, you should not forget this when we come up to midterms and other things. Don’t forget what they’ve done to our country.”
The resolution gives backpay to many federal workers and reinstates employees who were fired during the shutdown, but does not include an extension of Affordable Care Act subsidies despite it having been a key Democratic demand in the shutdown. The subsidies are set to expire at the end of the year.
And what did Chuck Schumer get for shutting down large portions of the federal government for more than a month? Two things: “Jack” and “Squat.”
I hear that if you call Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s office, the hold music is Cheap Trick’s “Surrender.”
Last Tuesday night, Democrats were jubilant, convinced they had just inflicted the first of many consequential defeats upon their detested foes, President Trump and the Republican Party. And now here we are, six days later, and Democrats are once again disappointed, infuriated, and at each other’s throats.
For the past 41 days, Republicans have had 53 senators willing to reopen the government, joined by Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, and “independent” Angus King of Maine, who caucuses with the Democrats. But it requires 60 votes to cut off debate and bring the legislation to the floor for a vote, and thus to reopen the government, Republicans needed at least four more Democrats to change their mind.
Last night, five additional Democratic senators agreed to vote to reopen the government — and in the eyes of their fellow Democrats, effectively surrendered. Tim Kaine of Virginia, Dick Durbin of Illinois, Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, Jacky Rosen of Nevada, and Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire shifted their positions.
Those eight agreed to reopen the federal government at current funding levels through January 30, and in exchange, all they needed was a pledge from Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota to hold a vote on legislation to extend the Obamacare exchange premium subsidies by the second week of December.
There are one or two other deal-sweeteners in there for Kaine, notably an attempt to reverse more than 4,000 federal layoffs the Trump administration announced in the shutdown, and language to prevent future layoffs through January 30.
Snip.
Republicans just got the government reopened in exchange for a promise of a vote — not even promise of passage! — and rehiring government workers who were on the job on September 30. That’s a very small price to pay, and Republicans didn’t have to get rid of the filibuster, the ultimate short-term gain, long-term loss for Republicans in the Senate.
Across three-fifths of the United States, the Trump administration has found half a million people receiving SNAP benefits twice over and 5,000 dead people receiving them. In deep blue states, the fraud is probably much worse.
It is important to clarify that 20+ states out of the 50 did not comply with the federal government’s request for information on SNAP beneficiaries, likely because they are trying to hide how many illegal aliens are illicitly receiving food stamps. So the horrifying numbers revealed by U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins on Laura Ingraham’s Fox News show, The Ingraham Angle, are actually incomplete, and will probably be much higher if the administration can make radical Democrat states provide the necessary data.
Snip.
The secretary continued to list off food stamp recipient statistics: “80% [are] able-bodied Americans, meaning they can work, they don’t have small children at home, they’re not taking care of an elderly parent. They can work, and they choose not to work, of course, because they’re getting significant benefits from the taxpayer.”
We need to restore shame to able-bodied adults living on the public dole.
(Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
A Texas congressman is proposing a “freeze” on all immigration until the federal government fixes the country’s broken system.
U.S. Rep. Chip Roy (R–TX) said Wednesday he is introducing a bill called the “Pause Act” that will freeze all immigration until Congress achieves certain objectives, including reforming chain migration and birthright citizenship and ending H-1B visas.
He said the nation’s record-high foreign-born population is creating “a cultural problem about who we are as Americans.”
Roy, who is in a four-way race to be the Republican nominee for Texas attorney general in 2026, explained his proposal on The Benny Show.
In addition to the immigration freeze and related reforms, Roy called for revisiting Plyler v. Doe, a case originating in Texas that resulted in a 1982 U.S. Supreme Court decision requiring states to fund the education of illegal alien children.
Roy also said his bill would require vetting people for their adherence to Sharia law.
“Why are we importing any human being that is adherent to Sharia law, which is totally contrary to the Constitution, and our values, and Western civilization?” Roy asked host Benny Johnson.
“In Texas, we’ve been dealing with the brunt of the illegal immigration influence. But now we’re seeing, I think, the ramifications of the H-1B system and how it has been abused, in addition to chain migration and diversity visas, which we’ve been trying to fix for a long time, and we’ve been unable to do so,” said Roy.
Mostly agree with this, though there would probably have to be a way for individual exceptions to be made (say, a foreign Christian under a death threat from jihadists, or a Russian or Chinese defector, or a foreign NBA draft choice). But it should be so narrow as to require the personal approval of DHS Director Kristi Noem…
There are Somalis in Minnesota who wouldn’t vote for far leftist Somali Omar Fateh because he was from a different Somali clan, and they want members of the rival clan kicked out of the country…
They also hit multiple targets in Novorossiysk, including both the oil terminal and the S-300/400 system defending it. Also, there’s no way I can donate €100 right now, but I really want one of those “This Is Fine” patches…
Orchestrating Over 180 Anti-Trump Lawsuits Through CREW: As co-founder of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), Eisen led hundreds of ethics complaints and lawsuits against the Trump administration, often perceived as partisan harassment that politicizes oversight and strains constitutional separation of powers.
Snip.
Involvement in USAID Funding Scandal: Accused of ties to $17M misappropriation via family-linked NGO, raising corruption concerns in foreign aid.
Plenty more at the link.
(Heavy sigh) Look, I’ve been avoid the whole stupid Tucker Carlson thing because he hasn’t been a particularly important part of the mediascape for a while, and plenty of other people were already dog-piling him. Yet, this week he seemed to turn up some pretty interesting information on would-be Trump assassin Thomas Crooks. Namely that he was a pro-Trump supporter…until he radically changed his tune in early 2020.
On July 19, 2019 Crooks writes: “Ilhan Omar and others are invaders and should honestly be killed and their dead bodies sent back.”
On July 20, 2018, Crooks writes: “If youre saying trump is a bad president you arent a patriot as trump is the literal definition of Patriotism”
Seven hours after that comment, Crooks writes: “I hope a quick painful death to all the deplorable immigrants and anti-trump congresswoman who dont deserve anything this countru [sic] has given them”
Later that evening he wrote: “Everyone of the Trump hat-ing democrats deserve to have their heads chopped of and put on steaks for the world to see what happens when you fuck with America”
These types of comments continued for months, “and became increasingly violent.”
“If any of the democratic candidates win. They wont be in there for long. Because unlike the dems we have guns and lots of them”
He also quoted Mao – writing “The only real political power comes from the barrel of a gun.”
The Change:
In early 2020 as the pandemic shifted into the headlines, crooks “radically” changed – writing of “trumps stupidity.”
He then began to mock the idea of the deep state – writing that “The deep state is simply made up of anybody who dis-agrees with the right wing. Conversation over.”
In Feb. 2020, Crooks called out Trump supporters as “brainwashed,” and a “cult.”
Later that day, Crooks called Trump a racist.
And in April 2020 when the COVID panic was in full swing, Crooks became pro-lockdown, writing “It seems that you people don’t understand that sometimes Public safety comes before your Personnel rights.”
He then wrote: “…going to a chinese new years party in america isn’t putting you at risk for corona virus because believe it or not viruses don’t spread through race like Tucker Carlson probably told you.”
In May of 2020, Crooks called Republican concerns over voter fraud “ignorant.”
He then wrote a comment that sounded like a “digital manifesto,” Carlson reports.
“they only way to fight the gov is with terror-ism style attacks, sneak a bomb into an essential building a set it off before anyone sees you, track down any important people/politicians/military leaders etc and try to asasinate them. Any sort of head fight is suicide and even ambush/surprise attacks likely aren’t going to end well.”
Sounds like another “known wolf,” doesn’t it? And the assertion that “there’s no deep state” (combined with what else we know about the assassination) makes you go “Hmmm.”
Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) is pushing back on the idea that the Affordable Care Act (ACA), known as Obamacare, has made health insurance costs more affordable, saying, “Obamacare makes everyone else poor.”
Lee shared a graphic, first posted by President Trump on Truth social, showing how major health insurance company stocks have performed since the ACA was enacted in 2010 to November 2025.
The seven major health insurance companies depicted on the graph show gains of anywhere from 414% to 1177% in their stock prices between March 2010 and November 2025.
Health insurance companies are making money hand over fist—not because they’ve discovered new & innovative ways of making Americans healthier, but because Obamacare insulates them from competition while giving them massive subsidies
Lee called out the insurance providers, noting that they’re “making money hand over fist” but not because they are providing “new & innovative ways of making Americans healthier.”
Instead, Lee says, these health insurance companies are prospering due to the bureaucratic barriers that prevent new competition and from massive subsidies from the federal government.
The Saudis are getting ready to purchase 48 F-35s.
California Governor Gavin Newsom’s former chief of staff Dana Williamson was arrested Wednesday in an FBI corruption probe and charged with multiple counts of bank and wire fraud.
Federal authorities accused Williamson, 53, of participating in a scheme to funnel campaign money from former federal Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra into a personal account. Sean McCluskie, Becerra’s former chief of staff, was named as a co-conspirator.
“This is a crucial step in an ongoing political corruption investigation that began more than three years ago,” U.S. Attorney Eric Grant said in a statement. “As it always has, the U.S. Attorney’s Office will continue to work tirelessly with our law enforcement partners to protect the people of California from political corruption.”
Williamson and McCluskie stole $225,000 between February 2022 and September 2024 from Becerra’s dormant state campaign fund, the federal indictment says. The Department of Justice investigation into the matter began three years ago, under former President Joe Biden’s administration, FBI Sacramento Special Agent in Charge Sid Patel said.
“The news today of formal accusations of impropriety by a long-serving trusted advisor are a gut punch,” Becerra told local outlet KCRA 3.
Williamson was hit with 23 charges, including conspiracy to commit fraud, conspiracy to defraud the United States and obstruct justice, subscribing to false tax returns, and making false statements, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
Democratic political consultants are so money-hungry they’ll rake graft off other Democrats. Big fleas have little fleas…
Man, it sure seems like a lot of prominent Democratic politicians are committing mortgage fraud. ‘Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) was hit with a federal criminal referral for alleged mortgage and tax fraud related to his purchase of a $1.2 million home in Washington, DC, that he claimed as a primary residence.” As Dwight notes: “You may remember Eric Swalwell for such hits as ‘banging a Chinese spy‘” and “threatening to use nuclear weapons against gun owners.”
So a Chinese fraudster connected to Communist intelligence services wandered in from Canada and bought a trailer park next door to a stealth bomber base in Missouri.
This is not the opening line of a surreal joke.
Whiteman Air Force Base is home to our tiny fleet of B-2 bombers, and yet an RV park just a mile away “is one of several properties near U.S. military interests acquired by a web of shell companies, which are ultimately owned by a couple who live in Canada and belong to organizations controlled by disgraced Chinese tycoon and self-described former CCP intelligence ‘affiliate,’ Miles Guo,” according to a bombshell Daily Caller report.
Someone in the federal government needs to get this fixed. Get a warrant to toss the entire trailer park to see what spectrum warfare equipment they might be using, then seize the place under eminent domain for national security reasons.
BREAKING: The Attorney General of Kansas just charged Mayor Jose Ceballos of the City of Coldwater for illegally voting as a noncitizen in several elections.
Not only did he get elected city councilman & mayor as a noncitizen, he also voted. WOW! The six charges come immediately… pic.twitter.com/amhsJJvaZW
‘We now have tools, thanks to the current White House, that we haven’t had in over 10 years,’ said Kansas Secretary of State Scott Schwab, ‘that we can check through the SAVE program, to find out if folks end up on our voter rolls. And they could be a legal resident, but they’re not a citizen. We want to make sure that gets clarified.’
Deport him.
Least you think I’m never critical of President Trump, I want to note that his trial balloon for 50 year mortgages is a really bad idea. It’s not a way to build wealth, and the only party getting rich off that deal is the banks. Financially, you’d be better off living in a van for a few years until you can afford a real mortgage.
This certainly has a whiff of scandal: “Houston ISD Sues Texas Attorney General to Block Release of Emails with California PR Firm. The district wants to keep communications with a PR firm from becoming public.”
Houston Independent School District (ISD) filed a lawsuit against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to block the release of emails between the district and Los Angeles public relations firm Bryson Gillette.
Bryson Gillette is former Obama aide Bill Burton’s public relations firm run by Democratic operatives. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was a senior adviser there.
Bryson Gillette was involved with the district’s rebranding in May. Houston ISD’s Chief of Public Affairs and Communications Alex Elizondo told an advisory committee that the district had a brand identity that “isn’t inviting or super compelling.”
A Houston ISD spokesperson said the rebrand came at no additional cost to the district and coincided with the rollout of new district and campus website designs scheduled for August.
According to the suit, ABC13 News requested one month of emails between Houston ISD and Bryson Gillette on May 8, which the district received on May 9. On May 21, the district asked Paxton to withhold documents and submitted the required materials to the Office of the Attorney General (OAG) asserting attorney-client privilege.
The OAG issued a ruling on August 12, ordering Houston ISD to release the records and stating that attorney-client privilege did not apply.
Houston ISD filed a lawsuit in Travis County on September 11, looking to block the emails from release.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom has repeatedly slurred a federal judge by name, echoing President Trump’s history of diatribes against judges even before the current Democrat started copying the former Democrat’s social media style and insulting nicknames.
The perceived contender for the 2028 Democratic nomination for president may cluck his tongue again when he sees the latest order from U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez in a lawsuit against The Golden State’s alleged mandate on school districts to hide from parents their children’s asserted gender identity at odds with sex.
The President George W. Bush nominee ordered state Attorney General Rob Bonta and the California Department of Education to “show cause” on why they should not be sanctioned for “misleading” Benitez so he would remove them from the suit by teachers who allege their school district muzzled them and parents of “gender incongruent children.”
The state defendants’ motions to dismiss and opposition to the plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment claimed that CDE had “withdrawn and conclusively replaced” an FAQ page that contained the challenged policies, which they claimed was the “only basis” for being named defendants and thus made the case moot, Benitez wrote.
“However, evidence demonstrates that the CDE may have merely moved the challenged content of the FAQ page to a new, required ‘PRISM’ training module,” as documented by the plaintiffs’ lawyers at the Thomas More Society, the judge said, ordering state defendants to explain their behavior Nov. 17 in court.
“From day one, officials from the local school district all the way to the governor’s mansion have tried to deflect responsibility” but “have now been caught not only lying to California taxpayers but attempting to mislead the Court to escape accountability,” TMS Executive Vice President Peter Breen said in a statement.
Based on early voting and some voting day results, no candidate secured over 50 percent of the votes cast, so the two highest vote recipients will move on to the runoff election, the date of which remains to be set by Gov. Greg Abbott.
The North Texas Senate seat was vacated when former state Sen. Kelly Hancock (R-North Richland Hills) resigned and was appointed by Abbott to fill the vacancy as the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts.
Snip.
Wambsganss was endorsed early on in the race by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who has vocally opposed expansion of casino gambling in Texas. She has also received support from Texans United for a Conservative Majority (TUCM), which opposes gambling expansion as well. Texans for Lawsuit Reform, a group not frequently on the same side of an electoral battle as TUCM, has also supported Wambsganss.
The Substrate startup has been doing the rounds in the news lately, thanks to its proposition of making chips using particle accelerators and X-rays instead of conventional EUV lithography, claiming it can eventually have angstrom-sized features at only $10,000 per wafer—in U.S. fabs, no less.
Oooo, where to begin? IBM tried experimenting with x-ray lithography in the 1980s and 90s, and found the rays were too energetic to use because they damaged wafers.
And technically, semiconductor equipment manufacturing already has particle accelerators: they’re called ion implanters and they’re used for gate dopants. Axcelis (formerly Eaton Semiconductor) and Applied Materials (both companies I worked for in the 1990s) make good money selling them, and there are a whole bunch of limits-of-physics reasons why you can’t use them for lithography. (Historical trivia: Applied Materials used to have their own in-house designed ion implanters, but their current offerings trace back to a competitor named Varian they bought in 2011.)
Those are bold claims, and an article by Fox Chapel Research (FCR) is seriously questioning whether they pay off.
The write-up is the first of two parts, and takes aim at not just the seemingly outlandish technological claims, but also at the track record of the venture’s founders, as well as the overall messaging on Substrate’s website. The start-up is backed by various investment funds, namely but not only Founders Fund, of whom Peter Thiel is part of.
The report says the founders are James and Oliver Proud, who reportedly have no experience in the semiconductor industry, nor do any of the investor funds. James’ latest venture was apparently the Sense sleep tracker, a product that had its inception on Kickstarter to the tune of $2.5m, but didn’t materialize until funding rounds raised over $50m. After release, the tracker was found to be borderline useless by reviewers and drew many comparisons to a scam.
ClowfishTV floats an interesting theory: A lot of those “AI-related” layoffs are just companies using that as an excuse to purge the woke from the ranks.
For more than half a century, Delaware stood as America’s corporate capital, renowned for its business-friendly laws, respected Chancery Court, and consistent legal rulings. But in recent years, leftist activist lawmakers and politicized judges have undermined that very foundation, sparking an exodus of major companies seeking stability and fairness to more welcoming states like Texas and Nevada.
On Wednesday morning, Coinbase joined the growing exodus, announcing on its website and in a Wall Street Journal op-ed by Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal that it is moving its state of incorporation from Delaware to Texas.
“For decades, Delaware was known for predictable court outcomes, respect for the judgment of corporate boards, and speedy resolutions,” Grewal wrote in the op-ed.
However, he pointed out that recent inconsistent Chancery Court rulings and reliance on ad hoc legislative fixes do not create a sustainable business environment.
“Our decision to leave is about ensuring more predictable opportunities for the company, our shareholders, our customers and the new on-chain ecosystem we’re building,” he noted, adding, “Texas offers efficiency and predictability, in part thanks to recent corporate-law reforms that enhance governance flexibility and legal predictability.”
Grewal concluded, “Delaware wasn’t always the go-to choice for companies. At one point it was New Jersey, and before that New York. We’ve reached another inflection point in corporate law. The more states that can credibly attract companies, the better—and we’d like to see Delaware step up to stay in the mix. But as for Coinbase, you can find us in Texas….”
The exodus list from Delaware increases:
Tesla: Moved to Texas.
SpaceX: Moved to Texas.
Trump Media & Technology: Moved to Florida.
Dropbox: Moved to Nevada.
TripAdvisor: Moved to Nevada.
Roblox: Moved to Nevada.
Pershing Square: Moved to Nevada.
The Trade Desk: Moved to Nevada.
AMC Networks: Moved to Nevada.
Madison Square Garden Sports: Moved to Nevada.
Fidelity National Financial: Voted to move to Nevada.
So was a Delaware judge letting Elon Musk know how much he hated him for supporting Trump worth it?
“750-meter-long Chinese bridge partially collapses just weeks after opening.” From a landslide, but I’m betting the usual Chinesium/tofu drugs construction quality didn’t help…
At its Midlothian Data Center, alongside a number of state officials, Google announced a $40 billion data center infrastructure investment in Texas.
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and its parent company Alphabet, said that the investment will go toward the construction of three data center campuses located in Armstrong and Haskell counties.
Armstrong County is southeast of Amarillo. Haskell County is north of Abilene. Both counties have a whole lot of nothing there.
“They say that everything is bigger in Texas – and that certainly applies to the golden opportunity with AI,” Pichai stated.
“This investment will create thousands of jobs, provide skills training to college students and electrical apprentices, and accelerate energy affordability initiatives throughout Texas.”
Gov. Greg Abbott said the new Google AI data center announcement is “a Texas-sized investment in the future of our great state.” U.S. Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Ted Cruz (R-TX) were also in attendance, along with Congressman Jake Ellzey (R-TX-06) and a number of other local officials.
“Google’s $40 billion investment makes Texas Google’s largest investment in any state in the country and supports energy efficiency and workforce development in our state,” Abbott added. “We must ensure that America remains at the forefront of the AI revolution, and Texas is the place where that can happen.”
Google has already officially broken ground on two other data centers in the state: one in Midlothian in 2019, and the other in Red Oak in 2023. The technology company has since announced further investments into data and cloud infrastructure to the tune of $2.7 billion.
This most recent announcement of a $40 billion investment will focus on building out infrastructure to support the three new data centers. Some of that investment includes building up new and existing energy storage facilities, advanced water use operations, and partnering with universities to offer technology training and education.
My reservations about Google’s AI notwithstanding, that will offer a bunch of real jobs for real Texans…assuming the AI bubble doesn’t burst before they get built.
Speaking of tech firms in trouble, video game maker Ubisoft (makers of Prince of Persia and Assassin’s Creed games) has not only postponed an earnings report, they’ve suspended stock trading. I can’t recall a single instance where that was a good sign. The last time we mentioned Ubisoft, they were pissing off Japanese gamers for including a black samurai in one of their games…
Ian McCollum looks at the new Rideout Arsenal Dragon, a low-bore-axis, lever-delayed pistol. It’s funky looking and has some interesting features, including complete non-tool disassembly. However, the price point would make it way too expensive to consider even if I had a job, he experiences several firing malfunctions testing it (though it is a prototype), and I fear the tiny little tabs it uses may not hold up under heavy use. Still a pretty interesting design.
It seems obvious to everyone except Democrats that when a government spends money, it should be to provide essential services, or at least benefit, American citizens. But “a Harris County program [uses] taxpayer dollars to provide legal defense to illegal immigrants facing deportation.” Hence the lawsuit.
“The Harris County Commissioners Court is filled with traitors who are robbing Texans to prevent illegals from being deported by the Trump Administration,” said Paxton in a statement released Tuesday.
Come on Ken, stop holding back! Tell us what you really think!
In October, the Harris County Commissioners Court voted 4 to 1 to add another $1.3 million to the Immigrant Legal Services (ILS) fund created by the court in 2020. The funds are slated to go to several groups providing services, including BakerRipley, the Galveston-Houston Immigrant Representation Project, Justice for All Immigrants, KIND, Inc., Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Service, and the county’s Housing and Community Development Department.
Even if they never prevent a single alien from being deported, that’s $1.3 million of taxpayer money siphoned directly into the pockets of radical open borders social justice warriors.
A press release from the Office of the Attorney General (OAG) called the designated recipient organizations “radical open-border activist groups,” and said the program violates a state constitutional prohibition on giving gifts or conferring private benefits to individuals and groups that do not serve a legitimate public end.
“Beyond just being blatantly unconstitutional, this is evil and wicked,” said Paxton. “Millions upon millions of illegals invaded America during the last administration, and they must be sent back to where they came from.”
In 2020, commissioners also voted along party lines to join the Vera Institute for Justice’s Safety and Fairness for Everyone (SAFE) Network, which now includes 55 cities, counties, and states — including Austin and San Antonio — that use taxpayer funds to provide deportation defense services.
SAFE Network participants commit to providing “universal representation” for any immigrant “regardless of income, race, national origin, or history with the criminal legal system.” The group’s stated goal is to make publicly-funded representation for all illegal residents a federal mandate and describes the country’s immigration system as “racist.”
Of course they do.
Harris County has spent at least $8 million on the ILS program since 2020.
Keeping illegal aliens from getting deported doesn’t serve the interests of the American people, only the political interests of the Democrat Party.
Pam Bondi and the Justice Department should be filing lawsuits against all the entities involved in spending taxpayer dollars to prevent illegal aliens from lawful deportation.
Attorney General Ken Paxton has filed a lawsuit seeking to dissolve the nonprofit JOLT Initiative, accusing the Democrat-aligned voter-registration group of orchestrating what he calls a “systematic, unlawful voter-registration scheme” designed to “sabotage Texas election integrity and allow illegals to vote.”
Not that one.
The suit, filed October 23 in Tarrant County district court, invokes the state’s quo warranto authority—a constitutional power allowing the attorney general to ask a judge to revoke a corporation’s charter if it is violating Texas law.
According to the filing, undercover investigators from Paxton’s office observed Jolt volunteers stationed outside Department of Motor Vehicles offices instructing people how to fill out voter-registration forms in ways that violated the Texas Election Code, including offering to register individuals who were not present. The state alleges those practices could enable non-citizens without valid identification to submit unlawful voter-registration applications.
“The left constantly tries to cheat and rig elections because they know they can’t win honestly,” Paxton said in announcing the suit. “Any organization attempting to register illegals, who are all criminals, must be completely crushed and shut down immediately. JOLT is a radical, partisan operation that has, and continues to, knowingly attempt to corrupt our voter rolls and weaken the voice of lawful Texas voters. I will make sure they face the full force of the law.”
Paxton’s office is asking the court to order the forfeiture of Jolt’s corporate privileges, dissolution of its charter, and appointment of a receiver to wind down the organization’s operations.
In the petition, the state cites “systematic, knowing, willful, deliberate, and reckless” violations of election statutes and argues that criminal conduct under the election code constitutes “sufficient cause” for revocation of Jolt’s corporate status.
JOLT, which describes itself as a nonprofit working to “increase civic participation among young Latinos,” has argued in federal court that its volunteer deputy registrars are trained according to secretary of state guidance and must submit all applications they receive—eligible or not—for counties to determine eligibility.
There’s no election fraud vector Democrats won’t try. With some blue states handing driver’s licenses out like candy in a ploy to get illegal aliens onto the voting roles, Paxton is wise to nip this particular fraud attempt in the bud.
Illegal aliens continue raking in welfare benefits, the #SchumerShutdown continues, a look at the Democrats’ foreign paymasters, a jihad attack thwarted, cartels are enslaving American Indians in California in the name of weed, some Joe Rogan interviews, Nasty Nancy bows out, Kill Bill returns to theaters, and Bass Pro Shop Fight Club.
It’s astounding, the things we learn when the money runs out and governments actually have to start prioritizing for a change. As the Schumer Shutdown drags through Week Five with no end in sight, the country’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) — aka “food stamps” — ran out of money on Saturday. And given who was taking, it’s a miracle that there was any money left at all.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins reported yesterday that earlier this year, “we told every state to send us their SNAP data so we could make sure illegal immigrants aren’t getting benefits meant for American families. 29 states stepped up. 21 blue states refused — and two SUED US FOR ASKING!”
That’s because we’re spending billions on benefits to illegal aliens.
My guess is that the Center for Immigration Studies — which bills itself as “low-immigrant” yet “pro-immigration” — was being a bit ironic with this headline: Illegal Immigrants To Be Hit Hard As SNAP and WIC Benefits Expire.
The organization’s 2023 analysis of government data showed that “households headed by illegal immigrants make extensive use of the welfare system, particularly food assistance programs.” CIS estimated that 59% of households headed up by an illegal are on one or more welfare programs, whether it’s cash, food assistance, Medicaid, or housing.
Read that again. We’re giving cash, food, healthcare, and housing to people who aren’t even supposed to be here.
Millions of them, in fact. Even though I could have sworn that Democrats insisted up and down that sort of thing never happened. No wonder 21 blue states didn’t want Rollins looking at their books.
Houston, we have a problem. A very expensive problem.
His suggestions: Require proof of citizenship for all welfare benefits, and ban junk food from purchase with EBT.
The Schumer Shutdown continues. Democrats offered a one year ObamaCare extension and Republicans told them to get stuffed. Republicans should counter-offer an extension of the subsidies for American citizens…but none for illegal alien, plus states are required to submit their benefits database so illegal aliens can be kicked off the program and deported. That would make it even more painfully clear Democrats favor illegal aliens over citizens when they refuse…
Foreigners not only are paying to promote liberal causes and by extension liberal candidates but foreigners are running their own candidates. The Squad has a couple of them and Minneapolis is about to get a Somali mayor.
Foreigners are funding the Indian who was born in Uganda and sent to New York City at some point. Now he’ll a jihadist-friendly communist—but if justice prevails, he may end up in prison instead of being in City Hall.
The New York Post reported last week, “Zohran Mamdani was hit with two criminal referrals Tuesday filed by a campaign finance watchdog accusing the lefty socialist of accepting illegal contributions from foreign donors.
“The Coolidge Reagan Foundation filed the referrals—alleging Mamdani may have violated the Federal Election Campaign Act and New York Election Code—with the Department of Justice’s Criminal Division and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office on Tuesday.
“The referrals were filed after The Post reported earlier this month Mamdani’s campaign raked in nearly $13,000 in contributions from at least 170 donors with addresses outside the U.S.—including one from his mother-in-law in Dubai.”
Ed Morrissey:
The Democrat Party has turned into the Globalist Party. Their constituency isn’t American voters; it’s the international cognoscenti, who want an America that submits to the “global community.” That is why Democrat leaders do not adapt their policies and positions to the clear consensus in the American electorate, because they have already adapted to constituencies outside the United States.
That isn’t the only institution orienting itself away from American constituencies, and for the same reason. Over the last several decades, Academia has seen billions of dollars flow into its coffers from places like China, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere. There too, the money has pushed institutions to indoctrinate students into radical-Left globalist values and agendas. Universities have largely stopped providing foundational Western-civilization values and education in favor of revisionist propaganda about Western imperialism and colonialism. This in turn colors all of the institutions into which radicalized graduates enter and rise within those structures.
Jonah Goldberg, from 2009 (back before Trump broke his brain):
Liberalism has openly yearned to “Europeanize” American social policy for decades. Liberals point to European health-care systems, union rules, tax policies, industrial policy, foreign policy, and even sexual mores, and say: “We need to be more like them.”
This is a very old story. The founders of modern liberalism, led by Woodrow Wilson and the two Roosevelts, were quite open about their effort to adopt a more European approach to political economy. The progressive leader William Allen White said in 1911: “We were parts, one of another, in the United States and Europe. Something was welding us into one social and economic whole with local political variations. It was Stubbs in Kansas, Jaures in Paris, the Social Democrats in Germany, the Socialists in Belgium, and I should say the whole people in Holland, fighting a common cause.”
But it was FDR’s New Deal that truly aimed to “assimilate the American into the ‘European’ political experience,” according to historian Daniel Boorstin.
After years of Democrats telling the American people that former President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act (ACA) was a thriving system, the glaring truth revealed now during the government shutdown is that not only has the ACA resulted in widespread fraud and allegations of kickbacks to insurance companies, the American people are footing the bill for subsidies to hide the fact that Obamacare is broken.
“Everything Obama told us was a complete lie,” E.J. Antoni told John Solomon during a special report on the government shutdown sponsored by the Association of Mature American Citizens.
Antoni, who serves as chief economist at the Heritage Foundation, continued: “When he said, ‘If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.’ No you couldn’t. Obamacare made a lot of those health care plans illegal. He said, ‘If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.’ No, it forced a lot of doctors out of business, and it forced a lot of doctors to no longer take most insurance.”
President Barack Obama repeatedly promised Americans during the rollout of the ACA — commonly known as Obamacare — that “if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor,” a claim intended to reassure Americans about the ACA’s impact on existing healthcare arrangements. However, millions of people lost access to their preferred and established physicians due to narrowed insurance networks and cancellations of plans which did not comply with the law’s new requirements, leading even left-leaning PolitiFact to name it the “Lie of the Year” in 2013.
Rep. Jack Bergman, R-Mich., revealed the latest scandal within Obamacare. Bergman, speaking to Just The News, laid out the timeline for subsidies which were meant to lighten the burden for Americans but when unused, were pocketed by the insurance companies.
Bergman explained that “In 2010, the Democrats passed the Affordable Care Act. Then in 2014, ACA premium tax credits became available, meant to help families earning 100 to 140% of the federal poverty level – that was designed to help those folks. In 2021, through the ARPA (American Rescue Plan Act), Democrats temporarily extended and expanded those subsidies to everyone, regardless of income, for one year. In 2022, the IRA (Inflation Reduction Act), they extended the expansion again, but only through January 1 of 2026.”
Bergman emphasized that the expiration imposed by Democrats implicitly meant that the extension was not meant to be permanent. That extension expires and is what Democrats have shut down the government over. As Bergman puts it, “They’re blaming us, the Republicans, for letting their own temporary extensions expire.”
The largest surprise regarding these subsidies, is that they haven’t been going directly to patients. They’ve been going to insurance companies, according to Bergman. “Insurance companies’ profits right now are up something like 240+ percent. There’s something morally wrong with that. Not only is it shamefully wrong, but morally wrong.”
Bergman did not name any specific insurance companies.
“Millions of these so-called ghost enrollees, people who are technically eligible, but are unaware of it, never use these subsidies. The insurers pocket the difference.”
OpenSecrets reported that in 2012, the health insurance industry donated roughly $9.6 million to Democrats. In 2024, the industry donated almost $40 million to Democrats.
Five people between the ages of 16 and 20 were arrested Friday, CBS News has learned. Authorities say they were inspired by a former member of the Michigan Army National Guard who was arrested in May for allegedly planning an ISIS-inspired attack against a U.S. Army site in suburban Detroit.
(Just a reminder that Detroit suburbs like Dearborn Heights are majority-Muslim.)
The men were inspired by another “Michigan man” who was arrested in May:
Ammar Abdulmajid-Mohamed Said, 19, was accused of providing support for a planned attack on the U.S. Army’s Tank-Automotive and Armaments Command facility at the Detroit Arsenal.
Democrats have been importing unassimilated Muslims into America for, what, 30 year now? 40? Who initiated the plan, and why?
Over 1,500 alleged criminal illegal aliens were arrested during a 10-day operation in Southeast Texas — including documented gang members, a convicted murderer, and over a dozen sexual offenders.
The Houston branch of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) conducted the operation between October 22 and 31, arresting a total of 1,505 alleged criminal illegal aliens.
Among the arrests were 17 “documented gang members,” including an alleged Mexican Mafia gang member, who was convicted for raping and impregnating his minor sister and is wanted in Honduras for murder. A suspected MS-13 gang member was also among the arrested, after he “ran inside a local washateria, climbed through the ceiling panels to get on the roof and became wedged in a sign on the side of the building,” before being captured by Houston ICE.
Forty “aggravated felons” were reported as being among the 1,505 arrested, as were 13 sexual predators.
One of the arrested is Vongphachan Phothisome of Laos, who was convicted of sexual exploitation of a child. Similarly, an illegal alien from Honduras, Rony Andy Martinez Lopez, was convicted of “lewd and lascivious acts with a minor and cruelty towards a child.”
A comparable week-long operation conducted by Houston ICE in early September yielded about half the arrests as this October one, with 822 alleged criminal illegal aliens arrested last month.
Native American sovereignty and California’s policies that shield illegal immigrants have allowed Mexican drug cartels to swoop in on tribal lands of the Round Valley Indian Tribes, a confederation of several tribes, the sheriff said.
The valley, known for illegal marijuana grows on tribal lands, is remote and surrounded by forested mountainous terrain. It’s a patchwork of tribal lands and those sold off to private owners years ago.
[Mendocino County Sheriff Matt] Kendall, 56, grew up here in the 1970s. During the drive to Covelo, an isolated town in the valley, he talks about how the times have changed over the decades.
“Back in the ’60s and ’70s, it was a beautiful place—a lot of freedom here,” he said. “When we were kids, we’d be riding our horses and having fun. Every kid in this valley had a horse. We’d go out to the river. All of us had summertime jobs, hauling hay and cutting firewood.”
His nostalgic journey ends abruptly as he passes a burned-out building with murals of missing women on its walls—a stark reminder of the violence that plagues the valley. Other banners along the road display their names and faces, including that of Khadijah Rose Britton, a native American woman who, according to the FBI, was last seen in Covelo being kidnapped at gunpoint in 2018.
Today, Kendall says, “there’s a little bit of farming, and then just tons and tons of marijuana, and pretty much all of it is illegal.”
“We see a lot of Hispanics here when there is no work, no sawmill jobs, no grapes, no vineyards and not much logging. They’re all here taking orders to grow marijuana, and a lot of it’s happening on tribal lands.”
He estimates up to 80 percent of the illegal marijuana in Mendocino County is grown on tribal lands, based on aerial surveillance and satellite imagery revealing a vast network of illegal grow ops.
A blow against tranny madness. “Supreme Court Reinstates Trump Admin Requirement That Passports Reflect Biological Sex.”
Joe Rogan interviews Elon Musk, again. I have not remotely watched all three hours of it, but I don’t rule out posting clips from it in the future.
Speaking of Musk, Telsa shareholders just approved a $1 trillion pay package for him, assuming he hits certain metrics over the next decade. My guess is that’s a whole lot of pie in the sky, even for him…
Speaking of three hour Joe Rogan interviews, he did one with Billy Bob Thorton that just dropped. I’m sure I’ll watch all of that one as well…
Nancy Pelosi announces her retirement. She was able to force the abomination that was ObamaCare over the line, and grab a lot of taxpayer-funded pork for Democrats, but it’s doubtful her terms as Speaker resulted in lasting achievements for Democrats. She was bad, but if another Democrat manages to be Speaker in my lifetime, my default assumption is that they’ll be much, much worse…
A Washington Parish grand jury in Louisiana has indicted Democratic Bogalusa, Louisiana Mayor Tyrin Z. Truong on charges of malfeasance in office, public intimidation, and theft, according to the Bogalusa Daily News.
The indictment is part of what officials describe as an ongoing multi-agency investigation involving federal, state, and local authorities. Prosecutors allege Truong intentionally carried out his official duties unlawfully and knowingly allowed other city employees to ignore theirs. His arraignment is scheduled for November 10, 2025.
According to prosecutors, the case centers on claims that Truong misused Bogalusa taxpayer funds to pay a personal legal debt from a 2023 Louisiana public records lawsuit in which a judge ruled that Truong personally owed attorney fees and penalties after refusing to release public documents.
When the Bogalusa City Council denied his request to use public money, prosecutors say Truong threatened retaliation, vowing to overwhelm council members with records requests. Investigators allege he then pressured a city insurance vendor to issue a check labeled as a “reimbursement,” had it deposited into a city account, and ordered another check for the same amount to be written to himself.
Rookie mistake. Graft pros always have the check written to an intermediary cutout who withdraws the money and pays them in cash…
In 2022, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI) announced a plan to give $715 million in taxpayer cash and tax incentives to lure Gotion, a Chinese battery maker, to rural central Michigan. She did it in the midst of a reelection campaign so she could fire off a press release claiming credit for 2,600 “good-paying jobs.”
She didn’t mind the fact that this proposed one-square-mile plant would be located less than 100 miles from an Army and National Guard training facility called Camp Grayling. The real irony is that the U.S. military has been training the Taiwanese military at Camp Graying for years to repel a Chinese invasion. Our governor was going to pay the CCP to operate a plant in the middle of the state. Genius!
Local residents rose up. Yes, of course, because they objected to the possibility of Chinese spies roaming around their community. But also because they resented the way in which the project was unveiled. Elected officials signed nondisclosure agreements with economic development agencies and then said they were legally bound from sharing details with the residents footing the bill.
The more questions citizens had, the more obstinate company, township, and state officials became. Green Charter Township is made up of normal people: farmers, small business owners, and the like. James Chapman, the chief project proponent and former township supervisor, quickly lost his patience in meetings and yelled at the rubes who had the temerity to attend and voice their opinions. They would yell right back. The massive project, shrouded in arrogant secrecy, bitterly divided the small community.
It reached a boiling point when township officials who were supporting the project either resigned or were overwhelmingly recalled. A new board was elected, and they went about doing the due diligence that taxpayers expect elected officials to pursue for such an expensive and disruptive project.
The CCP-linked company sued the new board, driving up massive legal bills for the tiny community. The company didn’t want to wait for environmental approvals, tearing down trees and homes. The community continued fighting, even employing President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance. Trump publicly opposed the project. Vance held a campaign rally across the street.
When they took office in January, they changed former President Joe Biden’s scam electric vehicle mandates, and the whole racket collapsed. It was the beginning of the end for the Gotion project.
Last week, the state of Michigan announced it was withdrawing the promise of $175 million in taxpayer cash, although $50 million had already been delivered. It’s unclear whether taxpayers will receive an accounting of where that money went.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
Voting fraud alert. “North Carolina Republicans say texts show that local Democrats are paying for people’s votes.”
The North Carolina Republican Party referred an alleged vote-buying scheme to the State Board of Elections for investigation on Friday, claiming that a voter had been offered $100 to vote for Democratic candidates in the Wilmington City Council election.
‘This is a troubling allegation and an egregious affront to our democracy and an attempt to buy votes in exchange for cash,’ NC GOP Chair Jason Simmons said in a press conference. ‘The North Carolina Republican Party stands committed and steadfast in its determination for free, fair and transparent elections.’
“FAA Orders Flight Cuts at Texas Airports as Democrat-Led Shutdown Deepens. The FAA will cut flights by 10 percent at 40 of the nation’s top airports due to staffing shortages among air traffic controllers.”
The Department of Energy (DOE) and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) recently signed Addendum No. 9 to their 2019 Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), paving the way for faster follow-on licensing of advanced nuclear reactors and nuclear fuel technologies.
This agreement, signed Oct 24th and effective immediately, comes as major concerns have been raised by reactor development companies and industry observers regarding the double work that may be required of developers when they bring their tested products over to the NRC. Demand for clean, reliable energy by data centers and major industrial companies has created a stronger need for change in the path to reactor design commercialization, with companies like Microsoft, Google, and Amazon signing long-term offtake agreements with reactor operators Constellation, NextEra, and Talen.
The addition to the MOU comes from the directives out of Trump’s executive orders signed back in May of this year. From section 5.d of the executive order “Ordering the Reform of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission”:
“Establish an expedited pathway to approve reactor designs that the DOD or the DOE have tested and that have demonstrated the ability to function safely. NRC review of such designs shall focus solely on risks that may arise from new applications permitted by NRC licensure, rather than revisiting risks that have already been addressed in the DOE or DOD processes.”
Surprisingly, the DOE and NRC took the executive order one step further and included a streamlined licensing process for nuclear fuel facilities as well. It becomes less surprising when we remember the current administration has highlighted multiple times the desire to reduce the reliance on foreign nuclear fuel supplies. Even with the Russian uranium import ban, the US is still importing over a fifth of the required enriched uranium from Russia through last year. The US government is looking to expand the domestic capacity of every step in the fuel chain as quickly as possible.
Faster, please.
“Top 20 Theories on Why the EU Committed Cultural Suicide.” They’re not mutually exclusive. And the piece needs an entry for cultural relativism/Frankfurt School and a Gramscian “war of position” against civil society.
Digital media hasn’t become the antidote to television. Digital media, empowered by the serum of algorithmic feeds, has become super-television: more images, more videos, more isolation. Home-alone time has surged as our devices have become more bottomless feeds of video content. Rather than escape the solitude crisis that Putnam described in the 1990s, we now seem to be more on our own. (Not to mention: meaner and stupider, too.)
It would be rash to blame our berserk political moment entirely on short-form video, but it would be careless to forget that some people really did try to warn us that this was coming. In Amusing Ourselves to Death1, Neil Postman wrote that “each medium, like language itself, makes possible a unique mode of discourse by providing a new orientation for thought, for expression, for sensibility.” Television speaks to us in a particular dialect, Postman argued. When everything turns into television, every form of communication starts to adopt television’s values: immediacy, emotion, spectacle, brevity. In the glow of a local news program, or an outraged news feed, the viewer bathes in a vat of their own cortisol. When everything is urgent, nothing is truly important. Politics becomes theater. Science becomes storytelling. News becomes performance. The result, Postman warned, is a society that forgets how to think in paragraphs, and learns instead to think in scenes.
Snip.
Short-form video is indistinguishable from what today’s youth consider the definition of American success. For five straight years, Gen Z has told pollsters that the thing they most want to be when they grow up is an “influencer.”
When literally everything becomes television, what disappears is not something so broad as intelligence (although that seems to be going, too) but something harder to put into words, and even harder to prove the value of. It’s something like inwardness. The capacity for solitude, for sustained attention, for meaning that penetrates inward rather than swipes away at the tip of a finger: These virtues feel out of step with a world where every medium is the same medium and everything in life converges to the value system of the same thing, which is television.
I’m not free from guilt myself. I only turn on my TV one day a week, but I watch waaaaaaay too much YouTube. (Previously.) (Hat tip: Greg Ellifritz via Dwight.)
GM to iPhone users: Drop dead. “General Motors is dropping Apple CarPlay and Android Auto support across all of its brands—Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, and GMC.”
“Microsoft just revealed that OpenAI lost more than $11.5B last quarter.” “If Microsoft owns 27 percent of OpenAI, it stands to reason under equity accounting that it bears 27 percent of OpenAI’s losses. Microsoft’s admission that it shaved $3.1 billion off its net income to account for its share of OpenAI losses therefore suggests OpenAI lost about $11.5 billion during the quarter.”
“Quentin Tarantino’s KILL BILL: THE WHOLE BLOODY AFFAIR unites Volume 1 and Volume 2 into a single, unrated epic—presented exactly as he intended, complete with a new, never-before-seen anime sequence.”
Coming to theaters in December. If I wasn’t in financial turtle mode, I’d probably go out and see it…
Happy Halloween! Biden’s FBI turned January 6 investigations into a vast monitoring program aimed at Republicans, the Schumer Shutdown continues, a whole of disturbing illegal alien sex offenders, Milei wins again in Argentina, Russian floating crane does what Russian ships do best, the autopen scandal deepens, and one really weird gun.
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Arctic Frost was an operation by the Biden FBI to use the half-assed January 6 riot to turn the federal government into a Stasi aimed at Republicans, including “Nearly 200 Subpoenas Targeting 400 GOP-Linked Individuals, Entities.”
The Biden-era FBI’s “Arctic Frost” investigation into President Trump and the broader GOP’s role in the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot was more wide-ranging than previously known, according to newly released documents showing the bureau issued nearly 200 subpoenas targeting more than 400 Republican entities and individuals as part of the probe.
Senator Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) released records on Wednesday showing 197 subpoenas were issued to individuals and businesses during the FBI’s “Arctic Frost” investigation targeting 430 GOP individuals and entities. He obtained the records through protected whistleblower disclosures.
Financial institutions, Trump-aligned political organizations and operatives, conservative think tanks, and payroll companies were among the subpoena recipients, according to a list compiled by the Senate Judiciary Committee. Federal investigators sought communications between the targeted individuals and media companies, prominent Trump-world officials, and legislative staff. The investigative efforts also encompassed MAGA fundraising efforts and donors.
Several GOP members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the panel Grassley leads as chairman, spoke at a press conference Wednesday afternoon unveiling the new information.
“What is revealed in those 1700 pages of documents, those 197 subpoenas, is nothing short of a Biden administration enemies list,” Senator Ron Johnson (R., Wis.) said.
ohnson said he knew most of the 38 individuals from his state on the Biden administration’s “enemies list” and urged his fellow lawmakers to assist the Trump administration with getting to the bottom of the FBI’s conduct.
“This extended far beyond President Trump and extended to President Trump’s supporters not only here in the United States Senate but more broadly,” Senator John Cornyn (R., Texas) lamented.
“Merrick Garland was a member of Joe Biden’s cabinet. He was willing to do whatever Joe Biden and his political operation wanted him to do, including destroying President Trump,” Cornyn added.
The “Arctic Frost” investigation looked into the role President Trump played in the Capitol riot. The probe eventually morphed into special counsel Jack Smith’s Washington, D.C., criminal case against Trump. Then-Attorney General Merrick Garland and then-FBI Director Christopher Wray personally signed off on the investigation when it was launched in 2022, according to a decision memo Grassley divulged last week.
Snip.
A ninth GOP Senator, Ted Cruz of Texas, was also targeted during the “Arctic Frost” investigation, Axios first reported. Several of the GOP lawmakers in the FBI’s crosshairs promoted Trump’s false claims about the 2020 presidential election being stolen from him. The attempts by Trump’s allies to contest the 2020 election formed the basis of Smith’s D.C. criminal case and criminal prosecutions in the swing-states Trump lost to former President Biden. Numerous individuals targeted in “Arctic Frost” later faced criminal charges for their failed attempts to overturn the 2020 election results.
“Jack Smith was a fundamentally corrupt prosecutor. This was a political enemies list from the beginning,” Cruz said. “This is an executive who believes it is justified spying on their opponents in the legislature because they convinced themselves the ends justified the means.”
Smith attempted to subpoena AT&T to obtain Cruz’s cellphone communications and the company’s legal counsel declined to comply, Cruz said. He praised the company for standing its ground against Smith’s attempt to gain his phone records. Cruz said that Washington, D.C., federal Judge James Boasberg signed an order prohibiting AT&T from informing Cruz of the subpoena for a year because of the potential for Cruz to destroy evidence or intimidate witnesses.
And Cruz has sent me three fundraising emails based on it this week alone.
Victory in Portland. “Antifa Retreats From Portland ICE Facility After Police Dismantle Encampment.”
The decentralized anti-fascist warriors in the Portland-area cell, aligned with the radical Democratic Party, were in full retreat overnight after officers from the Portland Police Department cleared out their encampment in front of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in the Portland metro area.
Nick Shirley, who is an independent journalist and who met with President Trump at the White House earlier this month for a round table on Antifa, wrote on X, “ANTIFA HAS BEEN DISMANTLED IN PORTLAND After 140 days of controlling and camping on this street in Portland, Antifa has officially been cleared out as the police FINALLY stepped in and cleared the encampment.”
“Inside the encampment, they had loads full of medicine, medical gear, party supplies, a fridge, BBQ, etc ANTIFA’s 140 days of control have officially come to an end,” Shirley said, with an accompanying video showing inside the encampment that housed gender-confused purple-haired people who hate the Western world and capitalism.
Federal Reserve drops interest rates by a quarter point. Feel the excitement…
Democrats have badly weakened their party with left-leaning ideas and rhetoric, growing only with self-described “white liberals” while losing ground with other voters, according to a new center-left group’s report shared first with Semafor.
The group, called Welcome, consulted hundreds of thousands of voters over six months for its broad findings, including that 70% of voters think the Democratic Party is “out of touch.” Most voters, the group found, believe the party over-prioritizes issues like “protecting the rights of LGBTQ+ Americans,” and “fighting climate change” while not caring about “securing the border” or “lowering the rate of crime.” (Welcome began as a PAC in 2022, then founded a nonprofit with the same name for political research.)
Elected Democrats will receive copies of the report after its Monday publication, followed by events to promote it in DC and New York. The report urges party members to abandon some of the progressive language about race, abortion, and LGBTQ issues that Democrats began using after the 2012 election — and recommends the nomination of more candidates willing to vote with Republicans on conservative immigration and crime bills.
“The Democratic Party had better listen — for the good of our nation,” former Illinois Rep. Cheri Bustos, who ran the party’s House campaign committee when it lost seats in 2020, wrote in her endorsement of the report.
Inspired by The Politics of Evasion, an influential 1989 paper that inspired the party’s more centrist shift under Bill Clinton, the 70-page Deciding to Win document argues that Democrats must be “willing to break with unpopular party orthodoxies.” Its prescription for getting the party out of its current wilderness isn’t simple: avoidance of “both a pivot to corporate centrism and the pursuit of progressive ideology purity.”
Greg Schultz, who managed Joe Biden’s 2020 primary campaign but was replaced for the general election, worked with Welcome to shape the report.
“For the last 20 years, Democrats have just misunderstood how you actually win elections,” he told Semafor. “I thought Biden had proven in the 2020 primary that the base of the Democratic Party is a 58-year old woman without a college degree. But when you hear people in DC say ‘the base,’ they mean white intellectuals that live in a few coastal cities.”
The report directly challenges Democrats’ predilection for the interests of “highly educated and affluent voters,” arguing that their influence “may be responsible” for the party’s closer association with left-wing politics.
Sort of sounds like Weigel’s friends are finally noticing what Republicans were saying at least as far back as Obama’s first term. But wait!
“We have much to learn from the relentless focus of Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Zohran Mamdani” on those fronts, the authors write.
The risk they see is in Democrats moving left on other progressive policies, which even some in the party establishment have done while criticizing Mamdani and other democratic socialists. From 2013 to 2024, between the beginning of Barack Obama’s second term and the end of Joe Biden’s sole term, the report offers clear metrics to show how the party changed its language and gave support to left-wing bills that had little chance of passage.
So they only want the Democrat Party to be a little bit pregnant with socialism and social justice. Yeah, good luck with that, heretic. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Two rogue Democrat judges think they can bypass the executive and judiciary branches and order specific programs funded during the Schumer Shutdown. “On Friday, US District Judge John McConnell of Rhode Island announced that he would order the US Department of Agriculture to distribute a pool of contingency funds ‘as soon as possible.’ While minutes before, Boston US District Judge Indira Talwani ruled that the US government must announce by Nov. 3 whether they would authorize at least partial funding for the program using around $6 billion in contingency funds – and if so, when will they do it.”
Mexican authorities in August, with the use of DNI intelligence, captured an infamous human trafficker who would lure pregnant women to steal their babies and organs.
She would then sell the stolen babies and organs on both sides of the border, which is how the United States got involved.
Aguilar was part of the Jalisco New Generation drug cartel.
California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom’s pimp shield law, pushed by Democratic legislator Rep. Scott Weiner, has helped foster a disturbing new sex market on Figueroa Street in Los Angeles, featuring prostitutes as young as 12 and 13 years old. For far too long, the “kiddie stroll,” as it’s known, has gone unreported because major media outlets refused to cover it, allowing it to flourish under the watch of Democratic politicians.
But now it’s time to shine a light in the darkness and expose the truth about what’s happening to these poor young girls and why nothing has been done to bring the harrowing evil to an end.
An article from the New York Times Magazine is finally covering this horrific scene in Los Angeles, though they’ve conveniently neglected to cover anything concerning the prostitution law Newsom’s administration passed.
“For the 77th Street Division, which covers the northern half of the Figueroa Corridor, prostitution had always been a problem. But in recent years, the officers had seen the magnitude of child sex trafficking explode,” wrote reporter Emily Baumgaertner Nunn.
“Gangs that had long sold drugs began to take advantage of Figueroa’s lucrative opportunity. With a dozen girls, one trafficker could easily make $12,000 a night. ‘Drugs are sold once and gone forever, but girls can be resold indefinitely,’ said [police sergeant Alvaro] Navarro, who had been in the division for two decades. Motel owners who noticed the parades of customers but feared the gangs’ retribution kept quiet,” Nunn continues.
There’s little doubt that much of the silence and fear of gang retaliation for speaking out against this vile form of human trafficking stems from the lack of police presence on California streets, particularly in Los Angeles. Democrats in the state slashed funding for police and tied officers’ hands, making it harder to pull these girls — who are just children — out of sex trafficking.
In fact, Nunn points out that the sex-trafficking unit in the city was disbanded due to budget cuts, which means each division within the police department has fewer resources available to tackle the issue. There are supposed to be a total of six investigators looking into human trafficking. Now there’s only one.
Children suffer abuse in ways too sick and twisted to imagine, and thanks to anti-cop policies from radical leftists trying to appease minorities for votes, leaders ignore it instead of acting. This is truly a miscarriage of justice. It’s immoral and evil.
“Their jobs grew even more challenging when California repealed the law allowing the police to arrest women who loitered with the intent to engage in prostitution. The repeal, known as SB 357, was intended to prevent profiling of Black, brown, and trans women based on how they dressed. But when it was implemented in January 2023, the effect was that uniformed officers could no longer apprehend groups of girls in lingerie on Figueroa, hoping to recover minors among them.
Now officers needed to be willing to swear they had reason to suspect each girl was underage — but with fake eyelashes and wigs, it was nearly impossible to tell. One girl told vice officers that her trafficker had explained things succinctly: ‘We run Figueroa now,’ he said,” Nunn writes in her article.
By the end of 2023, the city attorney started referring to Figueroa as the “Kiddie Stroll” because many of the girls working the street were under 13.
The Democrat Party is now objectively pro-rape and pro-pedophilia.
“ICE continues arresting ‘worst of the worst‘ illegal migrants accused of sexual crimes.”
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on Tuesday told Just The News exclusively that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials are continuing to arrest the “worst of the worst” illegal migrants, despite a government shutdown.
The latest arrests include illegal migrants who have been convicted of crimes such as lewd and lascivious acts on a minor, aggravated criminal sexual assault with bodily harm, aggravated kidnapping and possession with the intent to distribute.
Monday’s arrests include a Cuban illegal migrant in Florida who was convicted of lewd and lascivious act on a minor, a criminal illegal migrant from Mexico, convicted of aggravated criminal sexual assault with bodily harm, and aggravated kidnapping in Illinois, and an illegal migrant in Tennessee who was convicted of sexual assault.
“Nothing—not even the Democrats’ government shutdown—will slow us down from arresting the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens,” Assistant DHS Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement. “Yesterday, the brave men and women of ICE arrested pedophiles, rapists, and kidnappers. These are the types of predators ICE is taking off of America’s streets every single day. DHS will stop at nothing to make America safe again and remove these violent illegal offenders from our streets.”
Another illegal migrant from Mexico, identified as Adan Martinez-Gonzalez, was arrested in Texas after being convicted of aggravated kidnapping. Mexican illegal migrant Nicanor Hernandez-Gutierrez was apprehended by ICE and was previously convicted of possession with intent to distribute a quantity exceeding five kilograms of cocaine.
Former DOE nuclear engineer Matt Von Swol notices something that’s been floating around for years; the insane number of minorities (mexicans and blacks) who are booked as “WHITE” when they get arrested – something which obviously manipulates ‘inconvenient’ crime stats – something that TPUSA’s Andrew Kolvet noted have been “widely corrupted to serve a racist agenda.’
“I searched through thousands of arrests in my county and every single Hispanic individual who has been arrested is labelled as “WHITE”” Van Swol posted on X.
We cannot trust crime stats in America. They have been widely corrupted to serve a racist agenda. https://t.co/UEpwDbnv2F
It’s axiomatic in Washington, D.C., that changes that are undertaken by administrative action alone are easy to reverse.
There’s no doubt that if a Democratic president wins next time, he or she will undo much of what Trump has done through executive action, but will he or she be able to take it all the way back to where it was before?
I don’t think so. It will certainly be goodbye to the Gulf of America and the Department of War, and ICE raids will stop immediately. But Trump has struck blows against long-standing progressive priorities that were pursued in a piecemeal fashion, meant to build up and become irreversible over time. On these, it will be hard for the left to recover — in other words, Trump has broken the progressive ratchet.
How does the ratchet work? It begins with small, unobjectionable, or perhaps even salutary steps, coupled with assurances that potential downsides or extreme outcomes will never come about. Then, over time, incremental moves are made in the same direction until the unreasonable policy that we’d been assured would never happen is entrenched reality.
It is the work of decades, and it depends on no one ever pushing things back in the other direction (that would be reactionary) and everyone’s accepting the endpoint as a fait accompli.
To wit: First, women flying in combat roles. Then, women in ground combat roles, with the proviso that training and standards will stay the same. Then, gender-normed physical fitness tests and lower standards for everyone.
First, race-neutral civil rights laws, then temporary affirmative action, then permanent quotas and set-asides, then a widespread corporate and educational architecture devoted to promoting racialist practices and ideology.
First, respect and rights for gay people, then respect and rights for trans people, then everyone in America having to designate their pronouns, people getting shamed and fired for “misgendering” trans people, “gender-affirming” surgeries for minors, males competing in female sports, and the active encouragement of nonconforming sexual identities in the schools.
Trump has yanked the other way so far on these ratchet issues that it’s not clear when or how the left can get them back to the status quo ante.
It took so long to get there in the first place that snapping back to politicized training standards, pervasive DEI, or the most outlandish forms of the trans agenda will be very difficult.
Also, the sense of inevitability that the ratchet created, and the sense of helplessness on the part of opponents, has now been shattered.
Finally, there’s the problem that plausible deniability has been lost. The ratchet allowed for radical social change to be sheathed in incrementalism and in the righteousness of the starting point — DEI was on a continuum with civil rights; watered-down physical standards on a continuum with the inclusion of women in combat roles who needed no special accommodation.
Now, a revanchist Democratic administration would have to proceed directly to the most controversial and unpopular parts of the left’s agenda.
Top Biden administration officials misused executive authority and took actions without then-President Joe Biden’s authorization as his mental acuity declined, a House investigation found.
President Biden’s inner circle hid the extent of his mental decline from the American people and exercised executive authority by abusing the presidential autopen and taking advantage of a lax chain-of-command, according to a report released Tuesday by the House Oversight Committee.
“The Biden Autopen Presidency ranks among the greatest scandals in U.S. history. As President Biden declined, his staff abused the autopen and a lax chain-of-command policy to effect executive actions that lack any documentation of whether they were in fact authorized,” the report reads.
“The Committee has found that there was, in fact, a cover-up of the president’s cognitive decline and that there is no record demonstrating President Biden himself made all of the executive decisions that were attributed to him,” the report adds.
The Biden White House worked to conceal the extent of his mental decline through scripted messaging, controlled public appearances, and limited access. Staffers controlled Biden’s daily activities, appearances, and workload to prevent the public from seeing his diminishing mental capacity, the report says.
For the most part, Biden’s staff dismissed the possibility that the American people were concerned about his mental faculties. In a similar manner, Biden’s staff attributed his disastrous June 2024 debate performance to a bad cold and minimized Biden’s struggles on that fateful night.
The Oversight Committee investigated the coverup of Biden’s mental capacity with a specific focus on the Biden administration’s autopen usage at the end of his term. According to the committee, Biden officials used presidential authority and initiated executive actions without direct authorization from Biden himself, including using the autopen to sign executive orders without written approval.
Top Biden administration officials misused executive authority and took actions without then-President Joe Biden’s authorization as his mental acuity declined, a House investigation found.
President Biden’s inner circle hid the extent of his mental decline from the American people and exercised executive authority by abusing the presidential autopen and taking advantage of a lax chain-of-command, according to a report released Tuesday by the House Oversight Committee.
“The Biden Autopen Presidency ranks among the greatest scandals in U.S. history. As President Biden declined, his staff abused the autopen and a lax chain-of-command policy to effect executive actions that lack any documentation of whether they were in fact authorized,” the report reads.
“The Committee has found that there was, in fact, a cover-up of the president’s cognitive decline and that there is no record demonstrating President Biden himself made all of the executive decisions that were attributed to him,” the report adds.
The Biden White House worked to conceal the extent of his mental decline through scripted messaging, controlled public appearances, and limited access. Staffers controlled Biden’s daily activities, appearances, and workload to prevent the public from seeing his diminishing mental capacity, the report says.
For the most part, Biden’s staff dismissed the possibility that the American people were concerned about his mental faculties. In a similar manner, Biden’s staff attributed his disastrous June 2024 debate performance to a bad cold and minimized Biden’s struggles on that fateful night.
The Oversight Committee investigated the coverup of Biden’s mental capacity with a specific focus on the Biden administration’s autopen usage at the end of his term. According to the committee, Biden officials used presidential authority and initiated executive actions without direct authorization from Biden himself, including using the autopen to sign executive orders without written approval.
National Review previously reported on internal emails showing the White House’s process for deciding on commutations for violent criminals was chaotic and insular. The Biden administration did not consult with the families of the victims of the violent criminals as part of its clemency process.
Another instance the report mentions is the pardons Biden issued in the final hours of his presidency to members of his family. No records exist for the in-person meeting that led to the decision to grant those pardons.
Rather, Zients verbally authorized the use of the autopen after an aide of his transmitted the decision to issue the pardons. Zients did not know who actually applied the autopen and did not confirm with President Biden that he approved the pardons. The aide sent an email on Zients’s behalf expressing approval of the Biden family pardons.
If Biden didn’t issue the pardon, the pardon is invalid.
Free marketeers have good reason to cheer, or at least sigh with relief, with Milei’s party doing well in the Argentinian midterm elections…
In the middle of the month, this newsletter explained why the Trump administration traded $20 billion in U.S. dollars for the equivalent amount in Argentinian pesos. The Argentinian currency, which had already lost a lot of its value, was dropping perilously over fears President Javier Milei’s party might lose the midterm elections and the country would revert to its previous reckless big-spending habits. The currency trade, spearheaded by U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, represented an economic lifeline to Argentina and a metaphorical bet that Milei’s party would do well in the midterms, and keep the country on a smaller-government, more free-market-oriented path.
Secretary Bessent, collect your winnings. From the Wall Street Journal:
With nearly 99 percent of votes counted, Milei’s Freedom Advances party won almost 41 percent of the national vote, more than doubling its representation in Congress. That means his party and allies secured at least one-third of the seats in both chambers — the critical threshold that allows Milei to preserve his veto power and defend his sweeping decrees.
The result, stronger than most polls had predicted, gives Milei fresh political momentum after months of unrest over deep spending cuts and a grinding recession last year. It also shores up his standing with Washington and the International Monetary Fund, which have tied future financial support to the survival of his austerity experiment. Market analysts expect Argentine bonds and the peso to rally when trading opens Monday, reflecting relief that Milei still has political traction after taking office two years ago.
“Ukrainian drones hit the Mariysky oil refinery in Mari El, the Stavrolen chemical plant and the Novospasskoye oil depot.”
Greece sends Ukraine the big guns. “Greece is transferring 60 U.S.-made M110A2 203mm self-propelled howitzers to Ukraine, along with 150,000 shells and thousands of Zuni rockets.”
Finally: “Texas Higher Ed Board Officially Bans In-State Tuition for Illegal Aliens.” Rick Perry was a very conservative governor in many ways, but backing subsidized tuition for illegal aliens was one of his stupidest ideas.
Ken Paxton takes a scalp. “Dallas Doctor Surrenders License After Texas AG Sues For Prescribing Gender Transition Drugs To Minors.” “Paxton announced on Oct. 24 that Dr. May C. Lau has given up her state medical license but that the legal case over her alleged violation of Texas’s ban on gender transition treatment for minors is still ongoing.”
“California’s Retirement Fund Lost 71% Of $468M Investment In Clean Energy And Won’t Say How.” “According to state records analyzed by the Center Square, the CalPERS Clean Energy & Technology Fund (CETF), launched in 2007, has seen its value fall from a total commitment of $468.4 million to $138 million as of March 31, 2025. That represents a loss of more than $330 million, even after paying $22 million in fees and costs to private equity managers.” I’m sure the right pockets got lined. For Democrats, losing taxpayer money is ephemeral, but virtue signaling is forever.
Oklahoma: “State Rep. Ajay Pittman suspected of embezzling campaign funds, forgery, court records show.” Guess the party.
The Peace President keeps on winning. “President Trump participates in a peace treaty, trade and critical mineral agreement signing with the Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Cambodia and the Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Thailand.”
“A staffer for Democratic Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey was hit with drug trafficking charges after authorities intercepted eight kilograms of cocaine being delivered to a state office building. LaMar Cook, who has served as deputy director of Healey’s western Massachusetts office since 2023, was charged with trafficking over 200 grams of cocaine, unlawful possession of a firearm, and unlawful possession of ammunition related to the bust, Hampden District Attorney Anthony Gulluni announced Wednesday. Multiple parcels containing about 21 kilograms of cocaine have been seized by Massachusetts State Police throughout the investigation into Cook.” Why yes, eight kilos of Peruvian Marching Powder is indeed more than 200 grams. Indeed, that’s the sort of quantity that might keep Hunter Biden supplied into the spring…
Biden’s autopen pardons are the gift that keeps giving. “Thirty-one-year-old Khyre Holbert—a convicted felon whose 20-year crack cocaine and firearm-possession sentence was commuted by former President Joe Biden at the end of his term—was slapped with a felon in possession of a firearm and ammunition charge following his alleged participation in a shooting in Omaha, Nebraska.”
Slam Frank is “Holocaust victim Anne Frank reimagined as a pansexual Latina with non-binary lover and neurodiverse family in controversial NYC musical.” Maybe NYC deserves Mamdani…
Senate Democrats, lead by Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, keep blocking a continuing resolution that would reopen large swathes of the federal government because they insist on continuing ObamaCare subsidies for illegal aliens. To this end, they’ve voted to keep the government shut down thirteen times. Republicans all voted to reopen the government, as well as “Democratic Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada and John Fetterman of Pennsylvania” and “Independent Sen. Angus King, who caucuses with Democrats.” That makes the Republican bill to reopen the government the bipartisan bill.
In response to Democratic senators keeping the part of the government that supplies them with free food shut down, several Democrats on Tik-Tok, many visible obese, are threatening to loot grocery stores. Like the many businesses burned down during the #BlackLivesMatter/#Antifa riots of 2020, the businesses so looted would no doubt be stores in deep blue areas of deep blue cities, meaning the people they would overwhelmingly be harming would likely be other Democrats. (Or people too apathetic to vote. Or non-voting felons.)
Now, I am making the assumption that the people pledging to commit crimes to support their perceived absolute right to free stuff from American taxpayers are, in fact, Democrats. There may indeed be a few down-on-their-luck Republicans impacted by the lingering effects of the Biden Recession that have had to rely on government handouts to feed their children, but they don’t seem like the type threatening to break the law. I’m also assuming those would-be looters are not Libertarians, as none of them strike me as the sort to have Milton Friedman books in their apartments.
So unless Republicans give in on subsidizing illegal aliens, Democrats will continue to hurt Democratic voters by refusing to let the federal government subsidize food for Democrats.
Hell of a plan there, Chuck.
But it’s clear that the crazy Tik-Tokers will be getting free food one way or another. if they carry through on their threats, many of them might be getting fed via their three hots and a cot down at the local hoosegow…
In the wake of the social justice madness that metastasized across America in the Biden years, a whole lot of things past generations took for granted now have to be spelled out. Things like: “There are only two sexes, male and female, biologically determined before birth.” Or “official government discrimination based on race is wrong.” Or “facial tattoos are not an advantage when seeking gainful employment.” Add to that list “Only American citizens should be allowed to vote.” You would think that would be a given, but blue states like Minnesota are handing our driver’s licenses like candy and accept that as proof of citizenship for voting. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, along with a lot of other state AGs, is trying to do something about it.
Attorney General Ken Paxton has joined with 13 other states in support of a rulemaking petition that would require proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections.
Paxton filed a multistate comment with the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) backing a petition by America First Legal Foundation (AFL) to amend federal voter registration regulations. The proposed change would tighten election integrity rules under the National Voter Registration Act by mandating documentary proof of U.S. citizenship on federal voter registration forms.
“It’s imperative that only eligible U.S. citizens are registering and voting in our elections,” Paxton said. “Free and fair elections are the cornerstone of our Republic, and every illegal vote dilutes the voice of law-abiding American citizens. We must require proof of citizenship to protect the voice of the true American people, which is why I’m leading this national coalition in supporting AFL’s rulemaking petition.”
The filing argues that the current voter registration process—based on self-attestation of citizenship—fails to adequately safeguard voter rolls from ineligible registrations.
Paxton and the coalition of attorneys general urged the EAC to revise its regulations to allow states to verify citizenship status more effectively and maintain accurate voter lists.
Paxton also referenced President Donald Trump’s Executive Order 14248, Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections, issued earlier this year. The order directs federal agencies to strengthen election security and prevent unlawful voting.
Snip.
The attorneys general of Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, and West Virginia joined Paxton.
Again, that only citizens should vote in American elections should go without saying. But even here in Texas, a state with strong voter ID laws the state government tries to actively enforce, over 2,000 non-citizens were registered to vote.
After running its entire list of more than 18 million voters through the SAVE database, Texas has identified 2,724 potential noncitizens who are registered to vote in the state.
Secretary of State Jane Nelson announced Monday that her office had completed a full comparison of the state’s voter registration list against data in the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ SAVE database.
SAVE (Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements) is an online service for government agencies to verify the immigration status and naturalized/acquired U.S. citizenship of applicants seeking benefits or licenses.
“Only eligible United States citizens may participate in our elections,” stated Secretary Nelson. “The Trump Administration’s decision to give states free and direct access to this data set for the first time has been a game changer, and we appreciate the partnership with the federal government to verify the citizenship of those on our voter rolls and maintain accurate voter lists.”
Nelson announced in June that Texas had become one of the first states to partner with USCIS to compare its voter list with SAVE data. In its initial review, the agency found 33 potential noncitizens who may have voted illegally in the November 2024 election and referred them to the Office of the Attorney General.
In a state that had 18.6 million registered voters in 2024, 2,724 may seem like a tiny sum. But Texas is a deep red state that takes voting fraud very seriously. How many orders of magnitude worse is the situation in blue states where Democrats have actively destroyed safeguards with the explicit goal of getting more illegal aliens registered to vote?
Another off-year local and Texas Constitutional Amendment election has snuck up again, and early voting for it started today.
Let’s take a look at those amendments and whether you should vote for or against them. And, what do you know, Texas Scorecard has already done a roundup incorporating analysis from of Texans for Fiscal Responsibility, True Texas Project, Texas Policy Research, and Texas Eagle Forum. There’s a lot of unanimity, with a few notable exceptions. Scorecard’s links are to the bill’s legislative tracking page, but I’ve drilled down slightly deeper to link to the actual text of the bills in question.
Proposition 1 (SJR 59): Creating funds to support the capital needs of educational programs offered by the Texas State Technical College System.
TFR: Oppose
TTP: Oppose
TPR: Oppose
TEF: Oppose
My analysis: Texas higher education has done a poor job with the money they’ve already been allotted, and shouldn’t get big new piles of it, especially until the taint of social justice has been completely eradicated from the system. My recommendation: Oppose.
Proposition 2 (SJR 18): Banning taxes on the realized or unrealized capital gains of an individual, family, estate, or trust.
TFR: Support
TTP: Support
TPR: Support
TEF: Support
My analysis: This is a preemptive strike against the loony left idea of taxing unrealized capital gains, an absolutely insane idea guaranteed to discourage investment and destroy the economy. My recommendation: Support.
Proposition 3 (SJR 5): Denying bail under certain circumstances to persons accused of certain offenses punishable as a felony.
TFR: Neutral
TTP: Support
TPR: Oppose
TEF: Oppose
My analysis: This amendment has the most split verdict of any of them. Conservatives see law and order breaking down in blue cities thanks to Democrat judges letting repeat felons out on trivial bonds. Libertarians see this measure as possibly violating due process rights. But the problem we’re seeing on places like Harris County stem from letting criminals walk rather than too many innocent citizens being denied bail. My recommendation: Support, but I expect any gains in keeping more dangerous repeat offenders off the streets will be minimal as long as those same (frequently Soros-backed) Democrat judges are in office.
Proposition 4 (HJR 7, enabling legislation HB 16): Dedicating a portion of state sales and use tax revenues to the Texas water fund and to provide for the allocation and use of that revenue.
TFR: Oppose
TTP: Oppose
TPR: Oppose
TEF: Oppose
My analysis: Water is a largely local issue, and should be handled at the local level, not using a statewide slush fund. My recommendation: Oppose.
Proposition 5 (HJR 99, enabling legislation HB 1399): Exempting from ad valorem taxation tangible personal property consisting of animal feed held by the owner of the property for sale at retail.
TFR: Support
TTP: Support
TPR: Support
TEF: Support
My analysis: For those outside of Texas, most food you buy in a grocery store here isn’t taxed (save junk food like candy, etc.). This adds animal feed to the sales tax exemption list, which will help out Texas farmers. My recommendation: Support.
Proposition 6 (HJR 4): Prohibits the Legislature from imposing an occupation tax on certain entities that enter into transactions conveying securities or imposing a tax on certain securities transactions.
TFR: Support
TTP: Support
TPR: Support
TEF: Support
My analysis: This makes sure that security trading venues like the new Dallas Stock Exchange don’t get hit with transaction taxes that would drive them away. My recommendation: Support.
Proposition 7 (HJR 133): Providing for an exemption from ad valorem taxation of all or part of the market value of the residence homestead of the surviving spouse of a veteran who died as a result of a condition or disease that is presumed to have been service-connected.
TFR: Support
TTP: Oppose
TPR: Support
TEF: Neutral
My analysis: Another split decision. While theoretically an extension of the war widow exemption, it gets off into the weeds, especially when it specifies that the surviving spouse cannot have remarried. My recommendation: Neutral.
Proposition 8 (HJR 2): Prohibiting the Legislature from imposing death taxes applicable to a decedent’s property or the transfer of an estate, inheritance, legacy, succession, or gift.
TFR: Support
TTP: Support
TPR: Support
TEF: Support
My analysis: If we could fund the entire government off death and land taxes instead of income taxes, I could get behind that. But that’s not the world we live in. Texas doesn’t have an estate or inheritance tax, and doesn’t need one, and that fact provides incentive for wealthy individuals in state that do have those (New York and Illinois among them) to move here. My recommendation: Support.
Proposition 9 (HJR 1, enabling legislation HB 9): Exempting from ad valorem taxation a portion of the market value of tangible personal property a person owns that is held or used for the production of income.
TFR: Support
TTP: Support
TPR: Support
TEF: Support
My analysis: This is a big, welcome jump from the current $2,500 exemption, and will help small businesses keep more of their own money. My recommendation: Support.
My analysis: Stands to reason you shouldn’t be taxed for property that burned down, but this seems oddly specific. Maybe it’s a result of the screwage that California property owners are getting after the Pacific Palisades fire. My recommendation: Support.
My analysis: Interestingly, the institutes oppose this because it isn’t broad-based tax reform. True, but I favor it because you can’t let the best slay the better, and because I’ll be eligible for it entirely too soon. My recommendation: Support.
Proposition 12 (SJR 27, enabling legislation SB 293): Relating to the authority of the State Commission on Judicial Conduct, the tribunal, and the Texas Supreme Court to more effectively sanction judges and justices for judicial misconduct.
TFR: Neutral
TTP: Support
TPR: Support
TEF: Support
My analysis: This effectively removes two seats appointed by the Texas State Bar Association and replaces adds those seats to those appointed by the governor. Bar Associations all across the country have been infected by social justice, and this removes another potential infection vector. My recommendation: Support.
My analysis: Once again the think tanks are bellyaching that this isn’t the broad-based elimination of the property tax they wanted. Get over it, and don’t let the best slay the better. And this one will benefit me personally. My recommendation: Support.
My analysis: Important cause, but let individual institutions and foundations pay for the research on this, not create a state-run slush-fund for the connected. My recommendation: Oppose.
My analysis: This is to head off those radical leftists that declare that children belong to the state, and those states using that power to oppose transsexual madness on children behind parent’s backs. True Texas Project opposes it because it doesn’t think it should even have to be stated, but a lot of obvious things now have to be spelled out thanks to the madness of social justice here in the crazy years. My recommendation: Support.
Proposition 17 (HJR 34, enabling legislation HB 247): Providing an exemption from ad valorem taxation of the amount of the market value of real property located in a county that borders the United Mexican States that arises from the installation or construction on the property of border security infrastructure and related improvements.
TFR: Support
TTP: Support
TPR: Support
TEF: Support
My analysis: This just means that property owners can’t be taxed extra for the border wall. My recommendation: Support.
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…
Here’s a provocative Substack essay that argues that the 2020 Census was systemically, algorithmically polluted by a single data scientist.
The 2020 census was marketed as an “actual enumeration,” a neutral count of people for apportionment and funding. It was not. The same official who helped block a basic citizenship question in 2018, John M. Abowd, then the Census Bureau’s Chief Scientist, pushed through a new, opaque methodology in 2020 called differential privacy. The new system deliberately injected mathematical noise into every block count in America, turning the census from a headcount into a model with knobs. The knob that mattered most was a single parameter, epsilon, a secrecy shroud known only to a small inner circle. Abowd argued that a single added question about citizenship posed an intolerable risk to data quality because there was, he said, not enough time to test it. Then he rushed an untested algorithm that altered every count in every neighborhood. The irony is so sharp it cuts: the man who warned that one question might distort the census approved a method that guaranteed distortion.
Start with the record. On January 19, 2018, Abowd sent Commerce a technical memo urging rejection of a citizenship question. He then testified for several days in federal court. The transcript, nearly 700 pages, cemented a narrative that any citizenship question would degrade data and impede participation. The courts cited this drumbeat of doubt, and the question was blocked. The administration lost the public fight. But the inside fight over how to publish the data was only beginning. Abowd immediately advanced a quiet revolution in disclosure avoidance, adopting differential privacy for the first time ever in a US census. That choice, made outside the glare that attended the citizenship question, had far more sweeping consequences.
Differential privacy sounds harmless. In truth, it is a mechanism that turns correct data into false data according to a secret recipe. Abowd did not merely suppress a few cells in tiny places. Instead, he ran an algorithm across the map that perturbed the population of every census block, and it postprocessed the results so the fabricated numbers looked tidy. The output retained familiar columns, but the counts were no longer the counts. Abowd convinced his colleagues in the Bureau that implementing differential privacy was merely compliance with 13 U.S.C. § 9, its duty to protect confidentiality. Privacy is important. But privacy, as a constitutional matter, follows the enumeration, it does not negate it. A 2021 Harvard analysis of Abowd’s manipulation showed what this means in real life. When researchers simulated the Abowd’s algorithm using public test data, they found that differential privacy moves people around on paper, shifting them from one neighborhood to another in ways that make communities look less diverse and change their apparent political makeup. In plain terms, the system can make a mixed neighborhood look whiter or more uniform, and a balanced district look more partisan than it is. The study also showed that the noise makes it impossible to meet the Supreme Court’s “One Person, One Vote” rule, which requires legislative districts to have nearly equal populations. If each district’s population count is warped by secret noise, some citizens’ votes end up weighing more than others. When a method, by design, destabilizes the precise block totals that redistricting depends on, it stops being disclosure avoidance and becomes statistical alteration. The framers mandated counting people, not blurring them.
The core lever in differential privacy is epsilon, the privacy loss budget. Abowd kept this number secret throughout 2020. Cities, states, researchers, and map drawers who saw the early demonstration files warned that the counts were veering away from reality. They had no way to tell whether errors in their communities were genuine undercounts or synthetic artifacts of the algorithm. Abowd’s system also crippled the ability of local governments, analysts, and other record‑keepers to find and fix mistakes. Normally, if a city discovers a counting error that affects federal funding, it can appeal through the Count Question Resolution (CQR) Program. With differential privacy, that safeguard collapses, because the published data are wrong on purpose, no one can separate genuine miscounts from the algorithm’s fake ones. This nullifies the traditional oversight process and leaves states helpless to correct funding or representation errors. Alabama tried to challenge this secrecy in State of Alabama v. U.S. Department of Commerce (2021), arguing that differential privacy was unconstitutional and illegal, but the court dismissed the case for lack of standing cost the state billions in lost federal funding. Lawsuits and FOIAs followed. Only in 2021 did the Bureau reveal that its chosen global epsilon was 19.61, and even then, the design of the system prevented outsiders from verifying that this figure was actually used. The system was structured so that no one, not even Congress, could audit the dial that governed the size and allocation of the noise across the nation. Abowd’s answer was simply, “Trust me.”
Epsilon is not a philosophy, it is a number with consequences. The average census block contains about 105 people. With an epsilon of 19.61 and the Bureau’s noise allocation strategy, the algorithm effectively invented or erased on the order of ten to thirty people in many small areas. A block of 105 real residents could be published as 95, 115, or even further off, depending on postprocessing and the way the privacy budget was spent in that region. Across millions of blocks those errors do not cancel. They compound in the design of wards, precincts, and districts. Redistricting is a sum of blocks. Distort the blocks, and you distort the districts, the legislatures, and the House. This practice is not merely bad policy; it is plainly unconstitutional. The Supreme Court’s opinion in Department of Commerce v. House of Representatives (1999) made clear that statistical sampling for apportionment is illegal on statutory grounds. Abowd’s algorithmic manipulation is statistical sampling by another name, an unlawful substitution of estimated data for an actual enumeration required by the Constitution.
The proof arrived in March and May of 2022 when the Bureau’s own quality checks exposed a lopsided pattern. Fourteen states had statistically significant coverage errors, eight with overcounts and six with undercounts. The tilt was unmistakable. Democratic-leaning states were widely overcounted. Republican-leaning states were widely undercounted. Florida’s undercount was roughly three quarters of a million people. Texas’s undercount was on the order of a half million. Minnesota and Rhode Island kept seats they would have lost under an accurate count. Colorado gained a seat it did not deserve. Florida and Texas each missed multiple seats they should have gained. Analysts estimate the net effect was a shift of nine House seats away from Republican-leaning states and toward Democratic-leaning states. The Electoral College moved with them. More than $86 billion in federal formula funds followed.
Defenders say the pandemic caused the problem. That explains some fog, not the direction of the wind. The pattern of overcounts and undercounts tracked politics too cleanly to dismiss as random. A privacy method that was sold as neutral in theory coincided with partisan advantage in practice, and the guardians of the method refused to allow a transparent audit of its settings or its state by state allocation. Abowd, a Democrat donor, insisted that publishing epsilon values and the allocation mechanics would let bad actors reverse engineer the data to identify individuals. That claim collapses under basic scrutiny. If the risk of disclosing individuals is truly so sensitive that even the budget of the noise must be hidden, then differential privacy is the wrong tool for a decennial census that decides representation. The constitutional priority is accuracy of the count for apportionment. Privacy can be protected with targeted suppression or an “undetermined” flag for sensitive attributes. What cannot be justified is injecting falsity into the total number of people who live in each place.
If all this is true, President Trump’s call for a mid-decade census is more than justified. The constitution calls for an enumeration of citizens, not an algorithmic approximation poisoned by partisan pollution. A new count is needed to restore accuracy and remove illegal aliens from the census.
