Happy Friday the 13th, everyone! Good job numbers drop, a court win for Trump on deportations, more California fraud, more Chinese researchers stealing secrets, and the cure for global warming is global warming.
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Naturally, a week after I blog about the “no hire, no fire” economy, it comes out that the economy added 130,000 in January, the most since December 2024. “However, the report shows the U.S. only added 181,000 jobs in 2025.” And the numbers for previous months keep getting revised downwards.
As I’ve said before, I’ll believe we’re out of the Biden Recession when I have a job again…
Petitions for Habeas Corpus to release illegal aliens from detention, or at least grant them bond hearings, have overwhelmed the federal courts, with most district court judges who have ruled on the subject siding with the detained aliens. It was the practice of prior administration from both parties to grant bond hearings. But is it a legal requirement?
A ruling by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers critical border state Texas, has rejected the argument that a bond hearing and release is required by law. To the contrary, it held that the applicable legislation passed by congress does not require such bond hearings or release. That prior administrations did not exercise their full powers of detention under the law did not mean the present Trump administration could not do so, the court ruled.
Another win for secure borders and the rule of law in the face of massive leftwing judicial resistance.
The House of Representatives on Wednesday night passed the new Republican-led Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act, which requires individuals to present proof of citizenship to register to vote and requires Americans to show ID when voting.
The House passed the legislation, which combined two bills, in a 218-213 vote. The bill saw little support from House Democrats, with Texas Rep. Henry Cuellar being the sole Democrat to join Republicans in passing the legislation.
“It’s just common sense,” House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters of the legislation. “Americans need an ID to drive, to open a bank account, to buy cold medicine, to file government assistance. So why would voting be any different than that?”
Senate Democrats, of course, with the exception of John Fetterman, will do anything to prevent it from being passed. If they can’t cheat, they can’t win…
Stephen Green: California raked off $370M in taxpayer money to bankroll leftwing activism.
1. Californians voted to fund youth drug prevention through the Cannabis Tax. Instead, $370M in revenue is bankrolling leftwing activism.
2. The money flows through a single unelected nonprofit – The Center at Sierra Health Foundation’s Elevate Youth program.
3. The Center has gotten rich off this arrangement – growing from $11.8M in 2018 to $197M in 2024. The CEO makes over $600K.
4. The Center runs Prop 64 dollars through to a web of NGOs, including the Jakara Movement, Young Invincibles, and Asian Refugees United – for activism, organizing, and voter registration.
5. This is not drug prevention – it’s a taxpayer funded pipeline from the governor’s office to leftwing political organizing.
Snip.
“The state does not pick who gets the grants,” CAL DOGE said. “The intermediary does, bypassing the rigorous procurement processes mandated for direct government contracts under the Department of General Services and State Controller oversight.”
That’s a multimillion-dollar slush fund, in other words, in which tax dollars pass through to the well-connected for the purpose of maintaining Democrat control of the state. And, one presumes, lining pockets along the way —allegedly including Newsom’s:
According to the California Fair Political Practices Commission’s Behested Payment Transparency Report (pg.19-20), in 2020 alone, Sierra Health Foundation was the third-largest payor of behested payments statewide at $14,747,724 and the single largest payee of behested payments statewide at $30,869,901 — payments Newsom solicited from private companies.
“Newsom himself was the top behesting official in the state that year at $226.8 million total,” the report continued, “and Sierra Health Foundation ranked among his top three financial partners in the system.
Los Angeles spent about $418 million on homelessness programs in 2025, yet only a small share went toward helping people leave the streets for good, according to the New York Post. A recent City Hall report suggests most of the money supports short-term services that manage homelessness rather than resolve it.
The review, released as the city prepares major budget cuts, shows that hundreds of millions were directed to hygiene facilities, outreach teams, temporary housing, and vehicle-living programs with limited long-term success. These efforts often keep people in transitional situations instead of moving them into permanent homes.
The Post noted that councilwoman Monica Rodriguez condemned the system, saying, “We’re hemorrhaging money on a homelessness system that was never designed to succeed — and no one is being held accountable for the failure.”
She also argued that ineffective programs are protected instead of evaluated: “If we really wanted to do something about this crisis, we would be advancing real oversight, demanding results, and shutting down programs that don’t work — not protecting a system that keeps spending more while delivering less.”
It’s not designed to end homelessness, its designed to line the pockets of the Homeless Industrial Complex and leftwing activists.
Indeed, California’s entire NGO funding structure is designed to avoid scrutiny.
The money moves smoothly, the explanations pile up, and the ability to see end-to-end quietly disappears. The deeper the look went, the more consistent the pattern became. California doesn’t struggle to explain where the money goes. It has arranged things so the explanation never quite arrives.
Snip.
When the information is pulled in its entirety and organized outside the state’s presentation layer, the scope becomes impossible to miss. More than 1,100 vendors associated with humanitarian-related contracts. Roughly $8.8 billion flowing through them. Not scattered grants. Not pilot programs. An economy of vendors, operating continuously, funded at scale. The dashboard never highlights that universe. It doesn’t need to. It only needs to make seeing it difficult enough that most people never try.
At the same time, at the federal level, the Small Business Administration acknowledged what everyone working in procurement already understands. Billions of dollars under review. Tens of thousands of entities flagged for potential fraud exposure. Large systems, large sums, limited verification, delayed audits. The numbers don’t have to match perfectly to rhyme. They already do. When separate data streams begin pointing toward the same structural vulnerabilities, the story stops being about isolated actors and starts being about architecture.
Requests for clarity meet resistance long before they reach conclusions. Public records requests stall. Narrow questions expand into bureaucratic negotiations. Specific funding totals become “unavailable.” Amy Reihart’s experience in San Diego fits neatly into this rhythm. The data is said to be public, but pulling it cleanly proves elusive. The formal channels exist, but they lead nowhere quickly. What’s left is a familiar posture from the state: the information is technically available, practically unreachable, and always just one more step away.
The same rhythm shows up in how California moves money on the ground. Childcare subsidies offer a clean example. In many states, the government pays providers directly. The path is short. Attendance aligns with eligibility. Eligibility aligns with reimbursement rates. Payments can be checked against records without heroic effort. In California, that line bends. Funds are routed through intermediary NGOs charged with administering the program. The state pays the intermediary. The intermediary interfaces with providers. Documentation flows inward. Payments flow outward.
Following that path takes work. First, identify which NGO controls which geography. Then locate its audit filings, assuming they are current and complete. Then reconcile those filings with procurement records that are already difficult to interrogate. Only after that does the provider level come into view. Each step adds distance. Each handoff adds discretion. Sources describe monthly subsidy flows exceeding $1,400 per child with minimal verification. Whether every dollar is misused is unknowable from the outside. What is visible is how easily the structure absorbs misuse without producing alarms.
That same opacity shows up beyond childcare. Walk through downtown Los Angeles and the conversations repeat. Not policy debates. Observations. Barbers, bartenders, people who work late and walk home early. The homeless system comes up unprompted. Everyone knows how much money moves through it. Everyone knows how little seems to change. Deliveries arrive at storefronts with no customers. Benefits circulate with minimal identification. Stories circulate about organized applications and quiet laundering through approved channels. None of this appears on a dashboard. It doesn’t need to. It lives in the gap between official narratives and daily experience.
The system doesn’t rely on secrecy. It relies on diffusion. Money enters labeled as humanitarian assistance, housing support, community partnership. It passes through nonprofit layers that soften scrutiny and multiply explanations. By the time it reaches the ground, responsibility is spread thin enough that no single ledger tells the whole story. Each participant can point upward or downward and remain technically correct. Oversight exists everywhere in theory and nowhere in practice.
Organizations operating at the intersection of activism and public funding sit comfortably inside this environment. The Solidarity Research Center in Los Angeles, connected to broader political networks, is one example drawing attention. Not because of slogans or mission statements, but because proximity to power and insulation from scrutiny tend to travel together. When funding, politics, and moral language overlap, questions are framed as attacks and audits become optional. The structure does the work long before anyone has to defend it.
The contrast between damage and response is hard to ignore. Drive through the Palisades fire zone and the destruction remains visible. Burned properties. Long stretches untouched. The rebuild lags. The NGO signage does not. Clean placards promise recovery, resilience, and renewal, often paired with donation links. The messaging arrives faster than the materials. The branding arrives faster than the permits. Money is already being organized, even as the outcomes remain distant. It’s a familiar sight in California: urgency in fundraising, patience in results.
None of this happens by accident. The systems are too consistent. The barriers appear in the same places. Presentation layers substitute for access. Intermediaries substitute for accountability. Requests for detail meet friction rather than answers. The result is a machine that keeps moving regardless of whether anyone outside it can explain how. For the people inside, it works. For the public, it produces impressions instead of records.
The report’s overview notes the beaming confidence of Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on the morning after the election. Appearing on the Today Show, Raffensperger said a record 4.7 million Georgia voters cast a ballot in the election. More importantly, the secretary of state said only 2 percent of the ballots remained to be counted. Trump, at that time, led Biden by nearly 104,000 votes, seemingly more than enough for a Georgia win. Raffensperger, at the time, said about 94,000 ballots had yet to be counted.
“We can see where the candidates are right now in both presidential, congressional, senatorial. When you look at how many votes are out there, even if one of the candidates got 100 percent it probably wouldn’t be enough to move it on way or another,” the elections official told the Today Show crew. He should know, the report notes. The secretary could see the numbers in real time through the state elections database.
Raffensperger added that his office would wait until everything was done.
When the dust settled, the confident secretary turned out to be very wrong. The final vote count — at least then — was an incredible 5.023 million. Between the time Fulton County’s polls closed on Election Day and the final ballot was tallied, the number of absentee ballots soared from 74,000 to more than 148,000, according to the report.
Trump went from the verge of winning a key battleground state to losing it. Just like that.
“At the time of this writing, no known explanation has been provided to justify” the surge in ballots, the report states.
Snip.
The number of absentee ballots counted doesn’t match the number of credited voters, the report notes. It draws from Fulton County and state records that show 148,318 ballots were counted in the 2020 election, although only 125,784 voters were recorded as casting an absentee ballot. That’s a difference of 22,534 votes between the absentee ballots tallied and the number of individuals given credit for voting.
“Remember: the margin between President Trump and Joe Biden was 11,779 votes…and that was the THIRD certified number and didn’t match either of the first two counts….the counties could not get their numbers to match from the first count to the second to the third…..
Ukraine also hit a GRAU arsenal in Volgograd with multiple missiles. GRAU is the umbrella organization for Russian logistics.
While Russia has continued to eek out ever smaller territorial gains at high cost, Ukraine just liberated 100 square kilometers of territory in Huliaipole, Zaporizhzhia oblast. “Ukrainian forces have liberated the towns of Dobropillia, Pryluky, Olenokostiantynivka and part of Varvarivka in an assault south on the Zaporizhzhia Frontline.”
Scientists at the University of California, Irvine have discovered that climate change is causing nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas and ozone-depleting substance, to break down in the atmosphere more quickly than previously thought, introducing significant uncertainty into climate projections for the rest of the 21st century.
A recent watchdog report revealed that several top-ranked American universities have brought in Chinese academics who have links to Chinese military-linked technology firms like tech behemoth Huawei and other Chinese firms linked to the CCP’s state security endeavors.
A conservative non-profit watchdog group, the American Accountability Foundation, reported that it found nearly two dozen Chinese academics working at elite U.S. schools and labs “who, because of the dual-use threat of their research, close ties to the military research sector in China, and/or clear ties to the Chinese Communist Party” and as such “should be expelled from the United States or never be re-admitted.”
The new AAF report pointed out that multiple Chinese students working at American universities had previously collaborated on projects with researchers at Huawei, including working with researchers at the Internal Cybersecurity Lab at Huawei.
Just the News also found that at least one of the Chinese academics had also worked at iFlytek — a similarly blacklisted Chinese company which often collaborates with Huawei. The U.S. National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence stated in 2021 that “national champion” firms such as Huawei and iFlytek help “lead development of AI technologies at home” and “advance state-directed priorities that feed military and security programs.”
Snip.
The AAF report argued that Guangyao Chen “poses a high national-security and dual-use risk due to his expertise in adversarial machine learning” and that “this risk is amplified by his training at Peking University, PRC government funding, and collaborations with PRC universities and Huawei, placing his work squarely within China’s military-civil fusion ecosystem.”
Chen currently appears to be affiliated with Cornell. The ResearchGate page for Chen says that his “top co-authors” include Lin Du, a researcher at Huawei. Chen appears to have conducted multiple research projects with the Huawei researcher. The Huawei scientist’s ResearchGate profile lists Du’s skills and expertise as being “computer vision,” “object recognition,” and “machine learning.”
Snip.
Meng Wanzhou, Huawei’s CFO and the daughter of the company’s founder, was arrested by Canadian authorities in December 2018 at the request of the U.S., indicted in the Eastern District of New York in January 2019, and charged with bank fraud and wire fraud as well as conspiracy to commit both, but was allowed to walk free by the Biden Administration in 2021 in a deferred prosecution agreement wherein she admitted violating U.S. law.
Snip.
Fengqui You, a Cornell professor, leads the Fengqui You Research Group at Cornell, which is “pushing the boundaries of systems engineering, artificial intelligence, and data science.”
Chen is listed as a member and Fengqui You is listed as the principal investigator for the lab. You attended Tsinghua University, which the House Select Committee on the CCP has warned about. You did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Snip.
The report by AAF said that Cen Zhang’s “prior work with Chinese entities and his influential role at Georgia Tech is highly concerning given the nature of computer science’s impact on U.S. national security.”
Zhang co-authored a 2021 paper on “Practical Binary Fuzzing Framework for Programs of IoT and Mobile Devices” — related to security vulnerabilities for mobile phones and other smart devices — with co-authors Xiaoxing Luo and Miaohua Li from the Internal Cyber Security Lab at Huawei Technologies.
Zhang has also conducted research with Hongxu Chen, who now lists himself as a lead engineer at Huawei, and who also went to Nanyang Technological University.
Zhang’s personal curriculum vitae also says he was previously an algorithm and engine development engineer for iFlytek. Zhang says on his GitHub page that he won the “Best New Employee Award of Year” at iFlytek in 2017.
The firm has long received state support and recognition from China’s government. The company was named a national “AI champion” by the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology in 2018.
The Commerce Department said in October 2019 that iFlytek was among more than two dozen Chinese entities added to a U.S. blacklist, saying they were “implicated in human rights violations and abuses in the implementation of China’s campaign of repression, mass arbitrary detention, and high-technology surveillance against Uighurs, Kazakhs, and other members of Muslim minority groups.” Liu Qingfeng, iFlytek’s founder and CEO, is also a deputy to the National People’s Congress, the CCP’s rubber-stamp national legislature.
There are problems with how this piece is organized, but I wanted to capture the names (some of which are are already familiar) to keep track of them. At this point, any organization that hires a Chinese national for scientific research should assume they’re stealing data.
The legislation raises the current $10 billion asset threshold that caps debit card fees for banks and index annually to inflation.
Sen. Cruz said, “The Durbin Amendment was not designed for the current economic and regulatory reality and subjects community banks to fee limits that the original language intended for much larger institutions. My legislation modernizes the interchange fee cap to reflect inflation, helping small banks support local economies while lowering banking costs for Americans.”
Sen. Britt said, “As we’ve seen in so many instances, countless regulations in the Dodd-Frank Act were not only onerous but set fixed thresholds that have become outdated over time, and the Durbin Amendment is no exception. The largest burden is on our smallest financial institutions who provide vital sources of credit to Main Streets that drive our local economies. This commonsense legislation would simply index, to both inflation and COLA, the outdated threshold in this provision of Dodd-Frank, ultimately providing relief for our community banks who were never intended to be burdened by this regulation.”
Companion legislation was introduced in the House by Rep. Andy Barr (R-KY-6).
Rep. Barr said, “The Durbin Amendment was sold as a win for consumers in the Dodd-Frank Act by Democrats. Instead, it’s hurt Kentucky’s community banks and credit unions that do so much for underserved communities by limiting their ability to grow and compete with larger financial institutions. I’m working with Senator Cruz to fix this — because Washington shouldn’t be picking winners and losers at the expense of our local banks and the families they serve.”
This bill is supported by Americans for Tax Reform, Independent Bankers Association of Texas, and the Texas Bankers Association.
A new political organization has launched with the stated goal of countering one of Austin’s most powerful and long-standing special interest groups.
Republicans Against Texans for Lawsuit Reform, a 501(c)(4) organization, announced its formation this week. It is positioning itself directly against Texans for Lawsuit Reform (TLR), the influential tort reform group that has played a major role in Texas politics for decades.
On its website, Republicans Against Texans for Lawsuit Reform (RATLR) accuses TLR of abandoning its original mission and becoming what it describes as a major player in the “Austin swamp.” The group argues that TLR, which began in the mid-1990s advocating civil tort reform, now prioritizes the interests of “big business, big pharma, and big insurance” over conservative policy outcomes and Texas citizens.
RATLR also points to millions of dollars in political donations—including contributions to Democrats and Republican incumbents it labels as “RINOs”—as evidence that TLR wields outsized influence at the Texas Capitol.
“Protecting big business, big pharma, and big insurance should never override protecting you, Texas’ citizens,” the group states.
RATLR says it plans to focus on grassroots education and outreach, including speaking engagements with conservative groups across the state. The executive director is James Wesolek, the former communications director for the Republican Party of Texas.
So here’s a longish essay by Hugh Hendry on gold, Bitcoin and fiat money. I don’t necessarily agree with everything, but he has a provocative argument that creation of fiat money was justified to keep the entire economic system from breaking down.
he defining monetary lesson of the twentieth century was not ideological. it was traumatic. it emerged not from debates about socialism versus capitalism, or keynes versus hayek, but from the lived experience of what happens when economic systems impose rigidity on societies already under extreme stress.
after the first world war, germany was not a failed society. it was bruised, diminished, politically unstable, and deeply resentful, but it remained functional. industry existed. labour existed. institutions existed. the system was strained, not yet broken. the collapse came later, and it was not inevitable.
versailles changed that.
the treaty was not merely punitive. it was vindictive and economically illiterate. reparations were demanded in hard terms, payable in gold, at precisely the moment germany’s productive capacity was being constrained. forgiveness was absent. flexibility was absent. economic reality was ignored.
when germany struggled to meet those obligations, the response was not renegotiation but enforcement. in 1923, french and belgian forces occupied the ruhr valley, seizing control of germany’s industrial heartland, its coal, its steel, its metal production, while still demanding gold payments to the allied victors. output was taken. gold was still required. rigidity was imposed from both ends.
this was the breaking point.
what followed was not ideological radicalisation in the abstract, but economic paralysis in practice. unemployment surged. production collapsed. a growing share of the adult population became economically useless. not inefficient. not underpaid. useless. idle. watching. waiting. that condition does not produce reflection or moderation. it produces rage. and hyper-inflation.
hard money did not cause the collapse of weimar germany. but it failed catastrophically to absorb the trauma. and when institutions fracture under mass unemployment, money fractures with them. hyperinflation wasn’t softness. it was panic. it was the monetary expression of legitimacy evaporating in real time.
that sequence mattered. and it was remembered.
a decade later, the world faced another shock that threatened to replay the same pattern at a far larger scale. the crash of 1929 produced mass unemployment, collapsing demand, and the genuine possibility that the american system would follow germany down the same path. the ingredients were familiar: idle men, shuttered factories, political stress, and a rigid monetary framework that transmitted pressure rather than absorbing it.
this time, the response changed.
gold was abandoned as the governing constraint, not because it was immoral or discredited, but because it was brittle. too rigid to cope with systemic trauma. under gold, pressure concentrates until something snaps. under fiat, pressure disperses. elasticity replaced purity. monetary doctrine abandoned to keep the system intact.
the response was ugly. it was unfair. it produced deserved anger. but it worked.
the united states survived intact. unemployment was brutal, but the political centre held. extremism remained marginal. fiat didn’t heal the trauma, but it prevented it from metastasising. that became the lesson: in moments of economic shock, hardness accelerates entropy, while monetary elasticity buys time. and time, in stressed societies, is the difference between repair and collapse.
this was not an argument against scarcity. it was an argument against rigidity in the wrong place, at the wrong time. fiat emerged not as an ideological triumph, but as an adaptive response to the catastrophic failure of hard constraints under conditions of mass unemployment.
that distinction matters, because bitcoin did not arrive to overturn this lesson. it arrived long after, in its aftermath.
fiat’s ugly success.
over the subsequent century, that logic has been tested repeatedly, and each time it has been reaffirmed under pressure.
the global financial crisis of 2008 was not a scare or a stress test. it was a system-wide cardiac arrest. the banking system was insolvent in any meaningful sense. the only open question was whether circulation could be restarted before institutional damage became permanent. the response was not elegant. rules were bent. balance sheets were expanded. losses were socialised. hard constraints were suspended to keep the system alive. it was ugly, unfair, and morally nauseating to me and many others. it also worked.
the same pattern repeated during the pandemic. supply chains froze. borders closed. hospitals filled. the phrase “human extinction” escaped the laboratory and entered the bloodstream of culture. belief alone was enough to threaten collapse. once again, fiat leaned in. too much some say. money expanded. credit expanded. time was frozen. people were paid to stay home while the system was held upright. once again, rigidity was rejected in favour of elasticity. once again, the worst tail events were avoided.
this is what fiat does well.
it absorbs shocks that hard systems transmit. it disperses pressure instead of concentrating it. it allows societies to survive periods of mass dislocation without forcing immediate liquidation of people, institutions, or legitimacy. in a world repeatedly exposed to financial crises, pandemics, and geopolitical shocks, this has proven to be a feature, not a bug.
elasticity, however, is not free.
the cost shows up as inflation. not as a temporary inconvenience, but as a ratchet. prices spike, settle, and then remain elevated. grocery bills do not return to their old levels. this is the mechanical consequence of pushing risk forward in time. fiat smooths the present by borrowing from the future.
this matters most for those without assets. for the disenfranchised, inflation is not a macroeconomic abstraction or a debate about models. it is a daily budgetary pressure. rent before wages. food before leisure. energy before dignity. when prices ratchet higher, there is no portfolio adjustment, no rebalancing, no clever hedge. there is only less room to breathe.
modern financial systems are exceptionally effective at protecting those who already participate in them. the franchise holders. equities rise with nominal growth. property absorbs inflation and then some. credit, leverage, index-linked instruments, real assets, productive ownership. the menu is broad, liquid, and proven. elasticity doesn’t destroy capital for insiders. it often enriches them. asset prices inflate faster than wages precisely because the system is designed to keep capital mobile and solvent.
the burden falls elsewhere.
what inflation punishes is not thrift in some moral sense, but exclusion. money left idle because it must be. capital that cannot move because it does not exist. patience without agency. this is not a judgment about behaviour. it is a structural outcome. fiat rewards participation and mobility, not fairness. and over long periods of sustained monetary elasticity, that distinction compounds into something corrosive. something unfair.
More fraud in California, Homan declares victory in Minnesota, Virginia declares war on lawful gun owners, a lefty drops the N-Word on a black ICE agent, Musk shuts off bootleg Starlink to the Russian army, NOPD hires an illegal alien, and Illinois declares that no Democrat can express #WrongThink about trannies.
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
I did get that second check from my closing 401K, so I have a few months worth of food and utilities in the bank.
The massive hospice fraud racket thriving under California’s lax oversight is finally getting the spotlight it deserves, as the Trump administration’s CMS chief Dr. Mehmet Oz hits the streets of Los Angeles to call out the billions in stolen taxpayer dollars.
With organized crime rings, including Russian-Armenian mafia elements, infiltrating the system through ghost patients and fake companies, the scam highlights how globalist policies have opened the door to foreign exploitation of U.S. resources. As fraudsters traffic beneficiaries like commodities, real Americans suffer denied care while the deep state looks the other way.
Los Angeles County alone accounts for 18% of the entire country’s home health care billing, a staggering figure that screams foul play.
One California physician billed the government $120 million in a single year, claiming to oversee 1,900 patients—a workload that defies logic and reeks of corruption.
The county boasts almost 2,000 hospice agencies, more than 36 states combined and 30 times the number in Florida or New York.
Dr. Oz, administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, was forthright during his on-the-ground tour: “Hospice is crazy here… You’ve got hospice that’s grown seven-fold in the last five years. They represent about three and a half billion dollars of fraud, we believe, just in LA County.”
California Attorney General Rob Bonta has admitted the problem’s scale, calling it “an epidemic in California, specifically in the greater Los Angeles area.”
The fraud operates through recruiters who lure seniors with freebies like walkers or cash, harvest their Medicare numbers, and sell them to providers for $1,000 to $3,000 each. Providers then bill the feds $260 per day per patient, often for nonexistent services, while shuffling enrollees between sham outfits to evade detection.
In LA’s San Fernando Valley, particularly Van Nuys, the density is absurd: 210 agencies crammed into one square mile, with one building listing 112 hospices showing no actual operations.
Vice President JD Vance is poised to chair a new White House task force aimed at rooting out potential fraud and abuse in government programs in California, according to CBS News.
Andrew Ferguson, chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, is expected to serve as the task force’s vice chairman and handle day-to-day operations, CBS News reports. President Donald Trump is anticipated to issue an executive order in the coming days to formally establish the group, the news outlet said.
The White House task force would operate separately from a related Justice Department effort led by Colin McDonald, a Trump nominee for a new fraud-investigation role at the department. McDonald is expected to also probe fraud in Minnesota uncovered by YouTuber Nick Shirley and other independent journalists.
California has long grappled with documented issues of waste, fraud, and weak oversight in state and federally funded programs. State auditors have for more than a decade flagged problems including persistent cost overruns, inadequate internal controls, and unimplemented reform recommendations across various initiatives, CBS News reported last month.
California’s Employment Development Department faced acute criticism during the pandemic, when unemployment-insurance fraud resulted in an estimated $20 billion or more in improper payments, while many eligible claimants endured lengthy delays in receiving benefits, according to NPR News.
Separately, federal officials have recently scrutinized fraud risks in hospice and home-health services, particularly in Los Angeles County. Last week, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz visited the area to draw attention to the issue, citing the rapid proliferation of hospice providers and potential billions in improper billings.
See above. Given the vast scale of graft Democrats rake in from various fraud schemes, I can only imagine they’re experience quiet panic at the prospect…
Tom Homan declares victory, says city and state officials in Minnesota will now cooperate with ICE and turn over illegal aliens. Just think of the deaths that could have been avoided if they had only done this in the first place.
California Democrats are taking a victory lap, celebrating the fact that their election system has no way of verifying that the people who are casting votes are legitimate, registered voters.
The Supreme Court of California effectively struck down Huntington Beach’s voter ID law, refusing to review a lower court decision that blocked the law. The city argued that it could impose a voter ID requirement for citywide elections, but California Democrats passed a law in 2024 banning localities from requiring voter ID in elections. California law not only does not require you to prove you are who you say you are when you vote, but it actively prevents cities and localities from having that requirement in place at all.
The Trump administration will publish a notice in the Federal Register on Friday that will demolish the slow-moving process of deporting illegals. The proposed rule aims to streamline the current process and reduce the backlog of cases that has nearly brought the system to a screeching halt. That said, we know it faces an uphill fight as federal judges, acting without jurisdiction, will certainly declare the changes improper at some point.
The Federal Register notice titled RIN 1125-AB37, Appellate Procedures for the Board of Immigration Appeals, extensively overhauls the current process that could lead an immigration case to the Supreme Court.
The first part of the system seems to remain intact. An apprehended illegal is brought before an Article 2 Immigration Judge and given a hearing. The judge either lets them stay or tells them to go home. If ordered deported, a removal order is entered. As we’re seeing from the cases popping in the news, it is not uncommon for an illegal apprehended today in Minneapolis, perhaps a contractor working for the Quality Learing Center, to have a removal order dating back two decades.
Breaking the logjam at the Board of Immigration Appeals is the target.
The filing lays out how Trump 1.0 tried to fix the problem.
Among other changes, the Appellate Procedures NPRM proposed: (1) simultaneous briefing schedules for both detained and non-detained appeals before the Board; (2) shortening the reply brief deadline; (3) limiting briefing extensions; (4) harmonizing the 90- and 180-day Board adjudication timelines to both start from when the record is complete; (5) limiting the Chief Appellate Immigration Judge’s ability to hold a group of cases while awaiting certain outside actions; and (6) removing the process for Immigration Judge review of proceeding transcripts.
Snip.
The new regulation will “change the deadline for filing an appeal with the Board from 30 to 10 days, except for cases involving certain asylum applications.” This is not as trivial as it could appear. The current filing fee for the BIA is $1,030. There are provisions for filing “in forma pauperis.” This requires jumping through more hoops to prove you are indigent. The illegal now has 10 days to find representation and prepare an appeal, as well as pony up money. Historically, claiming you are broke is a good way to get the next flight back home.
Once you appeal, there is no requirement that the BIA will hear the case. Rather, “the default will be summary dismissal unless a majority of current Board members vote to consider the appeal on the merits.” There is an expedited hearing process that will “require simultaneous briefing within 20 days of the Board setting the schedule in all cases not summarily dismissed, with no reply briefs and limited extensions.”
Plus, there are deadlines for the BIA: “the Board shall dispose of all cases assigned to a single Board member within 90 days of completion of the record, or within 180 days of completion of the record for all cases assigned to a three-member panel.”
So an appeal is no longer a way to buy time before a final decision is rendered. The 10-day window makes it difficult prepare, and the BIA will focus on “selecting decisions for review that present novel issues warranting the Board’s attention.” If you are lucky enough for your case to be heard by the BIA, it has no more than 180 days to render a judgment. There is still an appeal to a federal appeals court; however, this requires representation and a $600 filing fee.
Attorney General Ken Paxton has announced a wide-sweeping investigation into alleged abuse of the federal H-1B visa program by Texas businesses, issuing civil investigative demands to three North Texas companies suspected of operating sham enterprises to fraudulently sponsor foreign workers.
Paxton said his office has issued the demands—known as Civil Investigative Demands, or CIDs—seeking documents identifying company employees, records detailing the products or services provided, financial statements, and communications related to business operations.
Standing outside a single-family home listed as the office address for one of the companies highlighted in recent reporting, Paxton credited BlazeTV and Texas Scorecard personality Sara Gonzales with prompting the investigation.
“Thanks to you, we’re here today,” Paxton said during an interview with Gonzales. “We’ve started an investigation of three different companies that we think might be scamming people with these H-1B visas.”
Paxton did not publicly identify the three companies that received CIDs. However, his office said the investigation includes “entities identified in videos that were widely circulated online.”
A portion of Paxton’s interview with Gonzales was filmed outside a residential home listed as the office address for 3Bees Technologies Inc., a location that Gonzales reported appeared vacant, despite the company’s sponsorship of multiple H-1B visa holders.
According to Paxton’s office, reports indicate that businesses under investigation may have created sham companies featuring websites advertising nonexistent products or services while listing residential homes or unfinished buildings as offices. Despite those irregularities, the companies allegedly sponsored numerous H-1B visas in recent years.
“Any criminal who attempts to scam the H-1B visa program and use ‘ghost offices’ or other fraudulent ploys should be prepared to face the full force of the law,” Paxton stated. “Abuse and fraud within these programs strip jobs and opportunities away from Texans.”
Attorney General Ken Paxton is asking a court to shut down Bexar County’s taxpayer-funded deportation-defense program for illegal aliens, arguing it violates state law and the Texas Constitution.
The Bexar County Commissioners Court voted on December 16, 2025, to allocate $566,181 in county funds to provide legal services to individuals unlawfully present in the United States through the county’s Immigration Legal Services fund.
Paxton’s office noted that, with additional commitments, total spending on the program could ultimately exceed $1 million.
The money is earmarked to pay lawyers to represent illegal aliens in federal deportation proceedings—a role typically handled either by private counsel or nonprofit organizations, not county governments. Paxton’s lawsuit names Bexar County, the Commissioners Court, and multiple county officials as defendants.
Paxton’s petition argues that subsidizing deportation-defense work for people in the country unlawfully “confers no public benefit,” serves “predominantly private radical interests,” and falls outside any lawful power granted to counties under Texas law.
He framed the program as an attempt by local officials to interfere with federal immigration enforcement while using statewide taxpayers as the funding source.
“Leftists in Bexar County have no authority to use taxpayer dollars to fund their radical, criminal-loving agenda,” Paxton said in a statement, adding that “state funds cannot underwrite deportation-defense services for individuals unlawfully present in the country.”
Not just Minnesota: “HS Reports More Than 180 Vehicle Attacks On Law Enforcement.”
Immigration officers have faced 182 vehicular attacks since President Donald Trump took office last year, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said in a Feb. 3 statement.
Out of the 182 attacks between Jan. 21, 2025, and Jan. 24, 2026, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers faced 114, up by 124 percent from the 51 attacks during the same time period the previous year. The remaining 68 attacks were faced by officers from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Attacks on ICE are up by 3,300 percent from two assaults previously, according to the DHS.
So part of the huge Epstein data dump includes a conversation with former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak from 2014, discussing bringing Russians (I assume Russian Jews) to Israel. Weirdly, I think it makes it less likely Epstein was Mossad (or at least current Mossad). In 2014, Barak’s left wing (Labor/One Israel/etc.) had been out of power for a while and Benjamin Netanyahu was in the midst of a long run as Prime Minister, despite Obama’s best efforts. It just seems unlikely that a Mossad asset would just be shooting the shit with a former PM of an out-of-power party. (Of course, maybe he was team Barak/Barack.) And the message “Goyim were born to only serve us,” that’s so outlandish it could have come from The Protocols of Elders of Zion. Like the LARP Nazis chanting “Blood and Soil!” at Charlottesville, it reeks of someone trying too hard to fit in with a culture they’re largely ignorant of.
The Epstein revelations might indeed topple one world leader: Keir Starmer.
Already-struggling UK Leader Keir Starmer is facing mounting pressure to step down over the latest scandal involving his former ambassador to America’s shocking close links to Jeffrey Epstein.
The prime minister, whose popularity was already at a near-record low since his 2024 election, faced revolt even from his own party over the fresh revelations about former diplomat Peter Mandelson, who was even seen in his underwear with an unknown woman in photos in the latest Epstein files.
Starmer went into a desperate damage-control mode Thursday, accusing his one-time close ally of “deceit” — even though Mandelson’s friendship with the now-deceased pedophile was well known when Starmer gave him the cushy role as the UK’s ambassador to Washington in December 2024.
Starmer is indeed a nasty piece of work, but the sad truth is that any replacement Labour PM is likely to be every bit as committed to importing unassimilated illegal alien Islamic rapists as Starmer is.
It took almost a year, but the White House finally chalked up its first objective in implementing the newly revitalized Monroe Doctrine. Or, as we call it, the Donroe Doctrine.
Its very first manifestation came almost immediately after Donald Trump’s inauguration. Secretary of State Marco Rubio met with Panama president Jose Raul Mulino and told Mulino in no uncertain terms that the US would not allow China to control ports on the Panama Canal any longer. On February 3, 2025, Muloino repudiated Panama’s Belt and Road Initiative agreements with China and would force the sale of control of those ports. China began a two-front strategy to reverse that decision, with parallel diplomatic and legal tracks. Diplomacy gave way to trade negotiations, which ultimately proved fruitless.
Late yesterday, so did the legal challenge. Panama’s top court annulled the country’s contracts with China’s CK Hutchinson to operate both ports, effectively severing China from control of the Panama Canal.
A woman who received a double mastectomy at the age of 16 under the guise of transgender-related healthcare was just awarded $2 million in the first successful medical-malpractice lawsuit brought by a detransitioner.
Fox Varian sued her New York-based psychologist and plastic surgeon for facilitating her gender-transition double mastectomy in 2019, independent reporter Benjamin Ryan who attended Varian’s recent trial, said. Although a host of detransitioners have sued doctors who rush to “affirm” gender confusion with life-altering surgeries, Varian’s is the first known successful lawsuit.
Claire Deacon, Varian’s mother, was led by her daughter’s psychologist to believe that breast removal was the only way to heal Varian’s gender dysphoria, she told the jury. At first Deacon told Varian’s psychologist Kenneth Einhorn that top surgery was “never gonna happen” if she could help it.
“This man was just so emphatic, and pushing and pushing, that I felt like there was no good decision,” she said, according to an Epoch Times report. “I think it was a scare tactic: I don’t believe it was malice, I think he believed what he was saying … but he was very, very wrong.”
Democrats for an Informed Approach to Gender opposes the Democratic Party’s general elevation of gender identity over sex in public policy, especially subjecting gender-confused people to the lifelong consequences of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgical interventions so they more closely resemble the opposite sex.
The nonprofit’s leaders could allegedly be fined or go to prison in Illinois if they register as “Democrats” without the state party’s permission.
The Land of Lincoln’s bespoke “party name provision” in its 40-year-old General Not for Profit Corporation Act, which Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias repeatedly invoked to deny DIAG’s applications to solicit charitable contributions in the state, is the target of a First Amendment lawsuit on DIAG’s behalf by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.
“Not only would they likely face an uphill battle in getting approval from the Illinois Democratic Party, they refuse on principle to seek permission from the very party they plan to criticize,” a flagrantly unconstitutional condition on protected speech, said FIRE, which also filed a motion for preliminary injunction.
While the state party officially supports so-called gender affirming care as “health care,” without age or other restrictions, DIAG opposes throwing “gay, lesbian, and gender non-conforming/gender-distressed children and vulnerable adults under the wheels of a regressive ideological bus” through “predatory medical harm.”
It portrays the standard Democratic position on medicalized gender transitions as pseudoscientific and harmful to both physical and mental health.
The Illinois Democratic Party told Capitol News Illinois it hadn’t received a request from DIAG, but “the fact that they’re proudly anti-transgender does not align with the Democratic Party of Illinois’s values” of “progress and inclusivity.”
Evidently men who believe they’re women have replaced black people in the Democrat Party’s Victimhood Hierarchy.
Canadian comedian with a solid international fanbase just watched six sold-out shows vanish in Minnesota. Ben Bankas lost his gigs at Laugh Camp Comedy Club in St. Paul after clips of his routine on Renee Good’s death blew up online – the routine hit raw nerves in a city still reeling from the January 7 shooting.
Club owner Bill Collins cited threats, media frenzy, and street chaos as the reasons for the cancellation.
Snip.
Bankas opened his bit by calling for a moment of silence for Good, then pivoting to say he hoped “that dog’s okay…and her pet,” a reference to Good’s dog, who was in the car with her, and her wife, Becca, who had been in the vehicle but left shortly before she told Renee to drive off while the agent was in front of her car.
“That’s what you don’t want when you’re dealing with the police — your lesbian wife saying ‘drive, baby, drive,’” he told the crowd. “Her last name was Good; that’s what I said after they shot her in the face,” he continued. He then backed off slightly, saying, “I’m not a liberal, so I don’t celebrate the death of people that I… I didn’t hate her, I didn’t know her, but now that I know her, I hate her”.
Old and busted: Leftists demanding police bodycams to prove they’re killing innocent black people. The new hotness: Leftists demand we stop using bodycams because they’re showing police shootings are justified.
“Couple Sentenced After Fake ID Bust by Dallas ICE. According to ICE, the manufacturing of fake identification documents by the couple took place from August 2020 until their arrest in February 2025. ”
A Mexican couple living in Oklahoma has been sentenced for manufacturing fake identification documents for illegal aliens, a scheme uncovered by ICE Homeland Security Investigations in Dallas.
Karina Garcia-Salazar, 47, was sentenced to 60 months in federal prison and three years of supervised release for Conspiracy to Transfer Identification Documents and Conspiracy to Possess with Intent to Use or Transfer Five or More Documents.
Her partner Jorge Augusto Prieto-Gamboa, 41, was sentenced in December to 15 months in federal prison and three years of supervised release following conviction for Conspiracy to Possess Five or More Documents with Intent to Transfer.
The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma reported that Garcia holds a Lawful Permanent Resident card, while Gamboa has been living illegally in the U.S. since 2002.
Sounds like authorities have reason to strip Garcia of their green card and deport them.
Winning: “Texas A&M Ends Women’s & Gender Studies Programming. The university cited low enrollment as the reason for the decision.”
Ukraine said last week it was working with Elon Musk’s SpaceX to block the use of Starlink terminals used on Russian attack drones and was trying to compile a “white list” of all Ukraine’s terminals so the Russian ones could be turned off.
“Starlinks included in the ‘white list’ are working — Russian terminals have already been blocked,” Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, who took office last month, wrote on Telegram, adding that the list was still being updated.
SpaceX did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Musk said on Sunday that moves by SpaceX to stop the unauthorised use of Starlink by Russia seemed to have worked.
Russia used to be home to space-faring superpower capable of launching its own communication satellites. Now its dependent on western COTS technology that can be turned off by Elon Musk.
Russian GRU military intelligence General Vladimir Alexeyev shot in assassination attempt in Moscow. No word if Ukraine or internal enemies attempted the hit. Alexeyev is a nasty piece of work with several planned assassinations and war atrocities laid at his feet, so he’s exactly the sort of person Putin would assassinate if he feared internal dissent.
Please note that nowhere does he say the Washington Post should stop doing this:
· ‘Melania’ Doc Is a Box Office Flop Hoax · The Rural America Can’t Live Without NPR/PBS Hoax · The ICE Detains Five-Year-Old Hoax · The Hegseth ‘Kill Everybody’ Hoax · Trump “Destroying” White… https://t.co/KvkR7nfdcj
Follow-up: Louis Rossmann’s war against Austin paying for AI cameras in its parks has paid off in the form of a new proposal. “If you go down to item 61, approve a resolution directing the city manager to return to council with an ordinance regulating the city’s use of surveillance technology. Mayor Pro Tem Jose Cheto Vela, Council Member Mike Siegel, Council Member Vanessa Fuentes, Council Member Krista Laine, Council Member Jose Velasquez are involved and sponsors of this.”
Except … it’s not the John my husband remembers. My husband was confused and said the following things were odd:
– John has different hair and now wears glasses.
– John is talking extensively about working in a garage because his three children and wife are home. In the interview, he made references to being single and was visibly in an indoor desk area.
– John can’t answer a number of questions that they previously discussed in the interview, things pretty pivotal to the position.
– Husband describes John as being aloof and pretty timid whereas John was confident and articulate when they interviewed him.
He is convinced this is not the person they hired.
Snip.
They heard back from legal … who are less than thrilled about the situation! They approved HR to have a conversation with John regarding what has been reported (more in the vein of “there’s been some concerns about performance and you overselling abilities” and less of the We Think You Are a Liar route).
Snip.
As soon as HR got on the call with him, before they could get through their first question, John said the words “I quit” and hung up the calls. He has since been unreachable!!
Uncle Sam assembles another big stick for Iran, the radical leftwing networks in Minnesota continue to get exposed, silver shatters, two state Democrats get clipped in separate forgery cases, the rise of the Amelia memes, Microsoft update breaks everything (again), and are malls actually reviving?
And Neville Roy Singham’s fingerprints are visible everywhere.
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
As of right this moment, America hasn’t gone kinetic on the Mullahs yet, but we’re assembling an awful big stick.
USS Abraham Lincoln has gone dark, with no transponder or communication, signaling possible preparation for action against Iran.
A third US carrier strike group, USS George H.W. Bush (CVN-77), is moving into the Middle East theater.
Snip.
Some very interesting developments in the last 48 hours indicate something big is about to happen.
The EU all of a sudden has decided the next thing on their agenda is to declare the IRGC a terrorist group. Curious timing, that.
Minnesota agitators, including elected officials, have been organizing efforts to stalk, harass, and even hunt ICE agents in a Signal group chat that was infiltrated by Cam Higby and others.
It has been insane looking at the messages and the actual people involved.
And now DataRepublican has the donor list … you know, the people actually paying to make sure this all happens.
DataRepublican has also helpfully linked to their social media profiles.
You can download he data yourself. And DataRepublican has already turned in all the captured information to the Feds…
This is the story of how Minnesota became a political laboratory—first for the 2020 George Floyd protests, then for a sustained campaign against federal immigration enforcement. The players are the same. The money flows through familiar channels. And the strategy, according to those who designed it, was always meant to be replicated.
Snip.
Understanding how The People’s Forum operates requires following the money. And the money leads to Shanghai.
Neville Roy Singham is an American tech entrepreneur who sold his software company, ThoughtWorks, for approximately $785 million in 2017. He now lives in Shanghai, where, according to a 2023 New York Times investigation, he “works closely with the Chinese government media machine and finances propaganda worldwide.”
The Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI), a Rutgers University-affiliated research organization, published a comprehensive report in May 2024 documenting what it calls the “Singham Network”—a web of nonprofits, fiscal sponsors, and alternative media outlets that share funding, personnel, and messaging.
According to NCRI, The People’s Forum received over $20 million from Singham and his wife, Jodie Evans (co-founder of the anti-war group CODEPINK), between 2017 and 2022. The money moved through a complex network of donor-advised funds and shell companies, including the Justice and Education Fund, the United Community Fund, and the Goldman Sachs Philanthropy Fund.
The People’s Forum has acknowledged receiving Singham funding. In a December 21, 2021 post on X (then Twitter), the organization defended its financial relationship with Singham against critics.
Congressional investigators have taken notice. On September 4, 2025, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith sent a formal letter to [People’s Forum Executive Director Manolo] De Los Santos demanding records and alleging that The People’s Forum had “acted as a foreign agent of the Chinese Communist Party” while enjoying tax-exempt status.
“Public reporting suggests that The People’s Forum has received over $20 million from Mr. Singham and his wife,” Smith wrote. “Multiple reports have found that The People’s Forum is part of Mr. Singham’s network of non-profit organizations that serve as his conduits to spread pro-CCP narratives.”
The Senate Judiciary Committee separately requested that the Department of Justice investigate whether The People’s Forum should register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
De Los Santos himself has deep ties to Cuba. According to his biography at the Black Alliance for Peace, he “was based out of Cuba for many years” and “worked toward building international networks of people’s movements and organizations.” The New York Post reported that De Los Santos first traveled to Cuba in 2006 and was there as recently as March 2024. He has been photographed meeting with Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel.
Footnotes excised. Snip.
What makes Minnesota different from other immigration flashpoints is the degree to which organizers have been explicit about their strategy.
The NCRI report notes that activists in the Singham network view the 2020 protests as proof that “the ability for mass struggle now exists inside the United States.” This framing treats George Floyd’s death not as a singular tragedy but as a tactical validation—evidence that the right combination of outrage, infrastructure, and outside support can produce transformational results.
De Los Santos’s April 2024 call to recreate “the violent protests of the summer of 2020” was not a slip of the tongue. It was a statement of doctrine.
The IDN’s establishment before Operation Metro Surge began—funded by nearly $1 million from the Bush Foundation—demonstrates pre-positioning rather than organic response. The explicit training of thousands in “rapid response” and “legal observation” tactics, the encrypted communication networks, the coordinated media strategies: none of this materialized spontaneously after Good’s death.
It was waiting.
The evidence assembled here—from congressional investigations, foundation records, tax filings, academic research, and organizers’ own statements—establishes that what is happening in Minnesota is neither spontaneous nor accidental.
The same network that helped turn George Floyd’s death into a national uprising has spent five years building the capacity to do it again. They have studied what worked in 2020, professionalized their operations, secured substantial funding, and pre-positioned infrastructure across Minnesota.
When Renée Good was killed on a Minneapolis street, that infrastructure activated precisely as designed.
Minnesota was chosen—first as the place where 2020 proved the model, then as the laboratory where that model would be refined and redeployed. The current crisis is not an accident of geography or politics.
A collection of far-left groups — led by a Communist activist network tied to CCP-linked millionaire Marxist Neville Roy Singham — is attempting to organize a nationwide anti-ICE school and business shutdown, with anti-Israel activist Linda Sarsour declaring that “we will bring this country to a halt.”
The general strike effort, scheduled for this Friday, is an attempt to replicate a Minnesota-wide anti-ICE shutdown which occurred last Friday and which was organized by many of the same far-left groups — but now with designs to do so on a national scale. The planned “National Shutdown” announced early this week includes plans for large-scale marches and a day of “no work, no school, no shopping” around the country.
The Manhattan-based Marxist revolutionary People’s Forum, the left-wing BreakThrough News media outlet, the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), the far-left Code Pink anti-war group, and the Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (ANSWER) Coalition are all involved in either promoting or organizing the nationwide shutdown effort.
Just the News recently reported on how the forum, its propaganda machine, and the PSL were key players in pushing last week’s Minnesota-focused shutdown effort. Just the News also previously reported on how these and other radical activist groups have leadership links or financial ties to the funding network backed by Singham, whom others in his network call “Comrade.”
Social media used as organizing platform
The plans for Friday allegedly started with calls by a number of student groups at the University of Minnesota — the Somali Student Association, the Liberian Student Association, the Ethiopian Student Association, and the Black Student Union — who called for “Justice for Alex Pretti & Renee Nicole Good — NATIONWIDE SHUTDOWN” on Instagram on Sunday.
An investigation by Just the News shows that the forum was likely involved in creating the “National Shutdown” website which is now serving as an organizational hub for the coming Friday strike.
Did anyone notice a “nationwide shutdown” today? Mother Nature did a 100,000% better job shutting things down with Winter Storm Fern…
You gotta hand it to those Soros-sponsored district attorneys across the nation because when it comes to playing with fire, they play like they’ve never been burned.
The latest example is Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner. Not exactly a household name across the country,
But one that should be well-known to BattleSwarm readers.
Soros-linked groups have been his single largest financial backing source — helping him bypass traditional party fundraising and local contribution limits.
About a decade ago, Soros contributed about $1.7 million to the Philadelphia Justice and Public Safety PAC while Krasner was still a relative unknown in a seven-candidate race for district attorney. The Philly PAC is part of Soros’s nationwide Justice and Public Safety groups that fund “progressive” DAs in blue city contests.
According to public sources, in 2017, Soros’s donation to just one candidate accounted for nearly 30% of all campaign spending in the seven-person race. For his 2021 reelection, Soros groups gave Krasner another $1.2 million, including $259,000 for Philadelphia Justice and Public Safety PAC to run ads on Krasner’s behalf. Soros supported Krasner again last year, although I wasn’t able to find the dollar amounts before going to press.
Prior to getting all that Soros money to run for D.A., Krasner defended Black Lives Matter and Occupy Philadelphia members in court — and let’s just say Soros got his money’s worth. Or maybe it’s our money, given how intermingled Soros’s private funds are with taxpayer-funded NGOs purpose-tuned to push his causes.
Snip.
Here’s the quick and dirty transcript of Krasner talking about ICE officers: “This is a small bunch of wannabe Nazis — that’s what they are — in a country of 350 million. We outnumber them… If we have to hunt you down the way they hunted down Nazis for decades, we will find your identities, we will find you, we will achieve justice.”
What have I been repeating since the first attempt on President Donald Trump’s life last summer?
The left paints its enemies — we are no longer mere political rivals — as enemies, over and over, until some crazy decides to take justice into his own hands.
The FBI raided a Fulton County election office, evidently looking for evidence of the elction fraud carried out against president Trump in 2020. And it might be connected to…Nicolas Maduro?
Silver prices just plunged plunged over $30 an ounce today after a huge run-up. This means I’m either a genius when I sold a small amount of it last week (when prices were above where they are now), or an idiot for not selling all of it…
For three years, the world has waited for the Russian economy to implode. Instead, we watched a “Kalashnikov economy” defy gravity, fueled by high oil prices and a “friendship without limits” with Beijing. But as of January 2026, the gravity of basic math has finally caught up with Vladimir Putin.
The catalyst isn’t just the stalemate on the front lines; it’s a legislative “kill shot” from Washington and a quiet betrayal from the East. Between the new Graham-Trump Sanctioning Russia Act and a mounting domestic liquidity crisis, the Kremlin isn’t just running out of options—it’s running out of time.
The most significant development of 2026 isn’t a new missile system; it’s a tariff. The Graham-Trump Bill, greenlit by the White House on January 7, has fundamentally rewritten the rules of economic warfare. By threatening a mandatory 500% tariff on any country—including China and India—that continues to purchase Russian petroleum or uranium, the U.S. has finally weaponized the one thing Russia’s allies value more than cheap crude: access to the American consumer.
The shockwaves were instantaneous. On January 15, reports emerged that China’s largest state banks, including ICBC and Bank of China, began halting Ruble-denominated settlements. They aren’t waiting for the bill to be signed into law; they are pre-emptively cutting Russia loose to save their own export margins. When Beijing chooses its $500 billion trade surplus with the U.S. over its “strategic partner” in Moscow, the Russian war machine loses its primary life support system.
While the external walls are closing in, the internal floor is rotting. On New Year’s Day, Russia’s VAT officially jumped to 22%. This isn’t a sign of strength; it’s an act of desperation. The Kremlin is cannibalizing its own middle class to plug a federal budget revenue gap that fell 20% short of targets in 2025.
We are now seeing the first signs of a systemic banking fracture. In cities like Yekaterinburg and Novosibirsk, reports of ATM shortages are no longer fringe rumors—they are the physical manifestation of a “liquidity trap.” When the state raises taxes while inflation remains double-digit and interest rates hover near 20%, the result is a “medically induced coma” for the civilian economy.
Federal officials have charged two contractors with conspiring to disrupt Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in Knoxville earlier this month.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Tennessee unsealed a multi-count indictment on Friday against Tyler Shane Wells, 33, of Morristown, and 18-year-old Alexander Bonilla Servin of Smyrna.
They are charged with conspiracy to conceal and harbor illegal aliens, conspiracy to forcibly impede federal agents while engaged in performance of official duties, and conspiracy to prevent, by force, intimidation, or threat, federal agents from discharging their official duties from January 5 through January 13.
Bonilla-Servin is also charged with forcibly impeding federal agents engaged in the performance of their official duties.
Wells appeared in court on Friday and pleaded not guilty to the charges and a detention hearing is set for Monday. A trial date has been set for March 31, 2026.
Federal authorities accuse the two of plotting to block the entrance to a Hardin Valley construction site with Bonilla-Servin’s pickup truck in an effort to impede ICE agents. According to a Department of Justice release, the vehicle was put in position after federal agents were seen surveilling the site. Servin is also accused of hitting agents’ vehicle with the truck as it attempted to enter the site on January 13.
After more than a year of digging, Statehouse candidate Bailey Templeton’s most public records collection shows 1,085 Illinois children under 18 without SSNs had Medicaid bills of $66 million in 2025. That’s up 725% from $8 million for 450 children in 2021.
“It’s roughly $40 million spent on inpatient treatment, that’s a lot of time for children to be in hospitals,” Templeton told The Center Square Friday.
The data only generates more questions for Templeton.
“It raises questions about what would be called medical trafficking, where things are conducted on to children when they’re too young to be able to consent to these things,” she said.
Why, it’s almost like Democrats imported millions of illegal aliens and put them on welfare rolls…
Man tries to kill mayor in the Philippines with an RPG. (Never mind that The Sun calls it a bazooka.)
Idiot Hawaiian Democrat Senator Brian Schatz asks Marco Rubio a really stupid question, and Rubio hands him his ass:
“That’s statutory. The Helms Burton Act, the US embargo on Cuba, is codified. It was codified in law and it requires regime change in order for us to lift the embargo.”
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy just dropped what I’ve been calling the nuclear option.
In an appearance on Katie Pavlich Tonight Thursday, Duffy made clear that withholding $200 million in federal funding isn’t the end of this fight. If California doesn’t come into compliance on the non-domiciled CDL issue, Duffy said, “we will eventually pull their ability to issue commercial driver’s licenses to anybody in California.”
Not just the 17,000 non-domiciled CDLs at the center of this fight. Every single CDL in the state.
I’ve written extensively about this standoff since the FMCSA released its audit findings last September, which showed that roughly 25% of California’s non-domiciled CDLs were improperly issued. I’ve covered the $160 million funding hit. I’ve warned about the decertification authority in 49 U.S.C. 31312 and 49 CFR 384.405, which most people in this industry didn’t even know existed.
This didn’t start with the Trump administration’s September 2025 emergency rule restricting non-domiciled CDLs to certain visa categories. That rule, which limited eligibility to H-2A, H-2B, and E-2 visa holders, has been stayed by the D.C. Circuit since November. The court found that petitioners were “likely to succeed” on their claims that the FMCSA violated federal law in its rulemaking.
The California problem predates all of that.
FMCSA’s August 2025 Annual Program Review found California had been violating federal regulations that existed long before Duffy took office. The state was issuing CDLs with expiration dates extending years beyond drivers’ lawful presence documentation. In one case that still makes my blood boil, California issued a driver from Brazil a CDL with passenger and school bus endorsements that remained valid months after his legal presence expired.
That’s not a new rule problem. That’s a California screwed-up problem.
California agreed in November to revoke all 17,000 improperly issued licenses by January 5, 2026. Then, on December 30, the California DMV unilaterally announced a 60-day extension to March 6, citing the need to ensure it doesn’t wrongfully terminate licenses for drivers who actually qualify.
Duffy’s response on X was blunt: “Gavin Newsom is lying.”
FMCSA never agreed to the extension. California proceeded anyway. On January 7, DOT made good on its threat and withheld approximately $160 million in National Highway Performance Program and Surface Transportation Block Grant funds. That’s on top of the $40 million already withheld over California’s refusal to enforce English language proficiency requirements.
California has more than 700,000 CDL holders. The state is home to the nation’s largest trucking workforce, with over 138,000 truck drivers moving freight through the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, the agricultural heartland of the Central Valley, and every retail distribution center feeding the country’s largest consumer market.
Under full decertification, California would be prohibited from issuing, renewing, transferring, or upgrading any commercial learner’s permits or commercial driver’s licenses until FMCSA determines the state has corrected its deficiencies. Previously issued CDLs would technically remain valid until their stated expiration dates, but here’s where it gets ugly.
Other states could refuse to recognize California credentials during the noncompliance period. FMCSA could issue guidance declaring CDLs issued by a noncompliant state invalid for interstate commerce. The Commercial Driver’s License Information System, which enables interstate verification, could flag every California license.
For the 700,000 CDL holders in the Golden State, decertification wouldn’t just be an administrative headache.
It would effectively ground them from operating in interstate commerce.
Blue state governors should stop trying to protect their precious illegal aliens and start following federal law.
TikTok has finalized a deal to create a new American entity, avoiding the looming threat of a ban in the United States that has been in discussion for years on the platform now used by more than 200 million Americans.
The social video platform company signed agreements with major investors including Oracle, Silver Lake and the Emirati investment firm MGX to form the new TikTok U.S. joint venture. The new version will operate under “defined safeguards that protect national security through comprehensive data protections, algorithm security, content moderation and software assurances for U.S. users,” the company said in a statement Thursday. American TikTok users can continue using the same app.
Tesla North America announced the completion of a major lithium refinery in Robstown, Texas, with Elon Musk calling it “the most advanced lithium refinery in the world.”
Robstown is just west of Corpus Christi.
In the promotion video, Jason Bevon, the site manager at the Gulf Coast lithium refinery, explains that the refining process used in Robstown is “inherently much more environmentally friendly.” The company claims that the process used by the refinery eliminates hazardous byproducts of the refining process and is more sustainable than traditional methods.
Bevon explained that the refinery “enables us to have access to the critical minerals for energy storage, for battery manufacturing, and ultimately for [electric vehicle (EV)] growth.”
“It enables us to accelerate Tesla’s mission by regionalizing supply chains for battery minerals and materials, by providing jobs, by cutting emissions from the transportation network that is required for these supply chains.”
“It really allows us to usher in energy independence for North America.”
Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy explains that raw lithium needs to be processed into a “chemical in the form of lithium carbonate or lithium hydroxide, before being used in batteries,” which is done through refining. Currently, China dominates the global trade and production of key minerals, and leads the world in lithium refinement capabilities.
The need for lithium batteries has grown exponentially in recent years, with lithium batteries being required for EVs, smartphones, laptops, and renewable energy receptacles such as solar panels.
Also, you’re partially paying for it:
This political shift and the operation of the refinery are complemented by recent grants through the Texas Semiconductor Innovation Fund (TSIF), which was established when the Texas CHIPS Act, House Bill 5174, was signed into law in 2023. The TSIF totals “approximately $948 million in total appropriations” and is used for “semiconductor manufacturing and design,” according to the Texas Economic Development and Tourism Office.
Webb County’s sheriff and his assistant chief are facing federal charges for allegedly using office resources to create and profit from a disinfecting business during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Sheriff Martin Cuellar Jr., 67, and Assistant Chief Alejandro Gutierrez, 47, have both appeared before a federal grand jury after turning themselves in. Their indictments have now been unsealed, revealing that they both are accused of misappropriating Webb County Sheriff’s Office funds between 2020 and 2022.
Cuellar is the brother of U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Laredo).
According to the indictment, around April 2020 Cuellar opened a for-profit business called Disinfectant Pro Master (DPM), which used resources belonging to the WCSO. He reportedly enlisted Gutierrez and Ricardo Rodriguez, an assistant chief, to assist in the start of the venture that provided disinfecting services to local businesses, residents, and the local school district.
Federal prosecutors allege none of the three made any personal investments in the startup company but used county resources, vehicles, and equipment. DPM also reportedly used county funds on multiple occasions to purchase supplies for the company. Staff from the sheriff’s office were often utilized to conduct the company’s operations during their regularly scheduled shifts according to the indictment.
The indictment also claims records show that payroll was not ever issued from the company to compensate the staff that was utilized to carry out its business.
During its operation, DPM received multiple contracts with local businesses, including a $500,000 contract with the United Independent School District, where Rodriguez served on the school board.
The company eventually closed in August 2022 after UISD did not renew its contract following media coverage and public scrutiny at a school board meeting over the contract being awarded to a board member’s company.
During the duration of the company’s operation, Cuellar, Gutierrez, and Rodriguez each reportedly received over $175,000. It is alleged in the indictment that Cuellar used his revenue to purchase a 10-acre property in Laredo.
As you might expect, Martin Cuellar is a Democrat.
Dwight documents not one but two of state-level Democrat congresscritters (state rep Ayshia “Ajay” Pittman in Oklahoma and former state senator Sonya Jaquez Lewis in Colorado) being involved in forgery scandals.
Nose-ringed leftist “Grace Carol Brown is charged with arson and burglary, and is ‘accused of smashing an exterior window, unlawfully entering the Comal County (TX) Republican Party headquarters, and starting a deliberate fire inside the building’ overnight on January 13/14.”
Oh, for fuck’s sake! “Parents say their trans son killed himself because his church employer wouldn’t let him wear French maid outfit, cat ears.”
Simon Whistler on Every Saudi Gigaproject in Vision 2030. Neom is still a ridiculous pipe dream, and Whistler is far too easily impressed with “zero carbon” claims, but some of these projects are actually worth doing and on-track.
Keir Starmer’s Labour government created the character of Amelia, a purple-haired nationalist Goth girl, for a lame Flash-style game to “combat far right extremism” (i.e., anyone who objects to importing illegal alien Islamist rapists into the UK), but now that she’s been adopted and memed by the right, that move backfired big time.
Louis Rossmann reports that downgrading to an earlier operating system bricks the latest OnePlus Android phone. I’d never heard of OnePlus, but it turns out it’s a Chinese brand, so you shouldn’t be buying it in the first place…
Surprise! American shopping malls aren’t dying off.
Shopping malls, long an economic and cultural fixture of American life, are facing sustained pressure but are not disappearing altogether.
Instead, the sector is undergoing creative destruction, as traditional mall formats give way to new concepts that reflect shifting consumer behavior and market conditions, according to recent industry data.
A research report by Capital One Shopping (COS) outlines the magnitude of the challenge facing the mall sector, citing rising mall closures that remain vacant for an average of nearly four years, as well as vacancy rates that are 112 percent higher than the overall retail vacancy rate.
COS also estimates that as many as 87 percent of large shopping malls could close over the next decade.
At the same time, COS data indicate a reversal of earlier trends. From 2021 through 2025, mall openings exceeded mall closures, suggesting adaptation rather than terminal decline. In 2025 alone, 9,410 new mall stores opened, nearly double the number that closed.
Additional evidence of revival appears in a recent article published by Growth Factor. Author Clyde Christian Anderson reported that indoor mall foot traffic in March 2024 rose 9.7 percent year over year, open-air shopping center traffic increased 10.1 percent, and outlet mall traffic climbed 10.7 percent—each exceeding pre-COVID-19 pandemic levels.
Every book I bought in 2025, most from early in the year when I still had a contract job and money in the bank…
The Russo-Ukrainian War continues to accelerate military innovation at a furious rate. The latest innovation isn’t a better drone or newer hardware, but introducing a fundamentally new organizing principle: the gamification of combat.
The tall, bearded officer, code-named Prickly—like all Ukrainian fighters, he uses a call sign to protect his identity and his family from wartime retaliation—is proud as a peacock of what he has done in six months at the helm of his frontline drone unit. In an interview with me, Prickly gave some of the credit to Kyiv’s new “e-point” system, called the Army of Drones Bonus.
He and several of his men explained how the system works in an conversation near a former farmhouse in eastern Ukraine. The yard is littered with military equipment and junk, including the farmer’s much-worn living-room furniture, now arranged around a makeshift fire pit. Several stray cats and a mangy dog wandered around as we talked. “We’ve improved our performance by a factor of 10,” Prickly said. “We know that thanks to the drone points system, which measures how many men we kill and how much equipment we destroy.”
Snip.
The top brass in Kyiv struggle to keep up with this innovation—both the new technology and its use on a highly decentralized battlefield. Drone production is scattered and diverse, with the Ukrainian drone company DroneUA estimating that as many as 700 companies and 500 suppliers are now churning out UAVs of every description. Active-duty units control their own budgets. With drones and other military kit in short supply, most fighters supplement what they get from the government with items they buy themselves—their own clothing and vehicles, for example—crowdsourcing, and donations from charity foundations. Some units say they count on donations for more than two-thirds of their drones, and most modify the devices they receive to suit their unique battlefield circumstances.
Kyiv is working to tame this chaos with organizational reform—a corps-based command system aligned with NATO practices. But the armed forces also strive to take advantage of decentralization, harnessing it to drive innovation and effectiveness on the battlefield. That’s where the point system comes in—allowing fighters to bypass the bureaucracy in Kyiv and buy weapons directly from manufacturers.
Frontline commander Prickly said that drone pilots save video clips of the damage they do—whether destroying machinery or killing Russian soldiers. The unit prepares a daily montage and sends it to the Ministry of Defense, where experts comb over the footage to confirm the unit’s claims and confer points for verified destruction.
The allocation changes regularly, but as of June 2025, Business Insider reported that destroying a tank was worth eight points. A multiple launch rocket system counted for 10. Killing a regular Russian soldier earned 12 points. Wounding a drone pilot was valued at 15 and eliminating him netted 25. In the final step, the payoff, units use the points they’ve earned to purchase equipment—drones, drone jamming devices, ammunition, and other goods—on Brave1 Market, an online shopping platform not unlike Amazon.
For some battalions, including Prickly’s, this represents a sea change. In mid-summer, his unit, part of the 54th Separate Mechanized Brigade, ranked fifth in the nation in total points earned. “It keeps the weapons coming,” he said. “What’s different isn’t just how much you get. It’s also the choice available on the marketplace.” In the past, Kyiv sent what it sent—often the most rudimentary equipment—and units struggled to upgrade it for use on the changing battlefield. “Now we’re in direct contact with producers,” Prickly says. “We order exactly what we need, and it comes ready to use.”
Ukraine’s government-run media platform, United24, also reported that the Ukrainian government reaps data from the point system, enabling it to make better decisions about strategy. Varying the allocation—how many points, say, for a destroyed tank or for killing a drone pilot—gives Kyiv a new tool of command and control. Signals from the field about changing demand—what kinds of drones are selling best on the marketplace—help the armed forces make procurement decisions, and the system is a boon for manufacturers, who can lock in larger, longer-term contracts, enabling them to invest for the future.
Denys Davydov explains in more detail:
“The long-awaited reforms of Ukrainian army are being introduced just right now into the system under the new defense minister of Ukraine, Mykhailo Fedorov, who is a very talented young guy and who thinks absolutely openly towards the introduction of the new technologies, drones and every sort of the new features which could help to save the lives of Ukrainian soldiers and help Ukrainian army to win in this war.”
Fedorov was previously head of Digital Transformation of Ukraine where he oversaw creation DIIA, a digital app for Ukrainians to interact with a variety of government services. “It is not just useful and saves time for people, but it also helps to eliminate, or reduce it’s better to say, corruption, because you don’t have those bureaucrats, officials. Everything is happening automatically and digitally.”
“Fedorov is now ahead of the defense minister of Ukraine. He’s the fourth defense minister who got his position from the start of the war, full-scale war of Russia against Ukraine.”
“He applied E-points, [so-called] electronic points which our soldiers obtain if they target Russian soldiers, Russian BMPs, tanks, helicopters, rocket artillery systems. So the higher the price of the destroyed vehicle equipment, the more E-points they obtain.”
“They might spend those E-points for new drones or some special equipment that particular soldiers need in a special unit, brigade, regiment, whatsoever.”
“It’s similar to the gaming industry. [You] fight against virtual enemies. You earn the points which you spend for the better gear in the game. But it is happening in real life in Ukrainian army.”
“And it is very effective because total equality among all of the Ukrainian soldiers is not possible. Some units are more effective than others, and they should obtain better equipment and more drones. For example, Magyar Birds [414th Unmanned Strike Aviation Brigade], one of the most effective units, they have the most of those E-points. So the analogy is the same as with the game. The better the player, the better gear it usually has. But instead of each player fights its own separate enemy, now all of the players, all of the soldiers in Ukraine, all of the regiments, they fight against the common enemy.”
“So all of the people are interested for the top players to have this better gear. Like for example, vampire drones, also called Baba [Yaga] drones. It doesn’t mean that the rest of the brigades will obtain absolutely nothing. No, everyone has this chance to be successful to hurt lots of the Russian soldiers in some of the particular direction and earn those E-points.”
“For example, each Russian soldier costs [i.e., earns] six points. Each Russian tank costs 40 points. A Russian rocket artillery system, as for example, book 60 points. Before Russian soldier price was two points but then the price rose up to six, well, Russia start to lose way more of the infantry.”
He explains how Brave1 works. “You may buy the special gear out there on the shop order. The government itself, the defense ministry, will send it for you. They directly purchase drones from the developers. For now, this system works just for the drones, but it seems like it will be also implemented for artillery. And of course, commanders of brigades, they’re very interested.”
“So the system has been taken from video games and it is damn effective. Actually lots of the stuff is been taken from the video games, and the most successful drone operators, they used to be gamers before, they have this muscle memory. Then they used to play lots of the video games for them to get used to the flight controller. It’s way way easier than to teach from the scratch. and you have to put all of those neurons here to the small muscles and fingers. Well, gamers here as a rule are more successful than average guys just taken from the streets.”
Science fiction has been predicting video gamers making effective warriors for decades, from Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game to Michael Bishop’s “The Last Child Into the Mountain.” But I don’t think anyone ever thought up video game reward systems as the basis for advanced weapon distribution.
Britain had one of the best professional military systems in the world, but by the end of World War II they found an American system focused on logistics and speed surpassing their results on actual battlefields. (Montgomery spent two months preparing to cross the Rhine in the meticulously planned Operation Plunder; Patton did it in one night using small boats without asking permission.) In the modern world, America’s “pull” logistical system runs rings around the Soviet/Russian “push” system. We’ve already covered how Ukraine now has a direct feedback loop between front-line units and MilTech equipment manufacturers.
Ukraine’s gamification approach represents another potential logistics revolution, with the best units potentially making use of the best gear. But a significant amount of the gamefication approach’s effectiveness may be unique to the static, atomized, defense war of attrition Ukraine is fighting, as the system seems less suitable to, say, big offensive pushes. And there have to be guardrails in place to prevent drone operators from “going Rambo” rather than supporting more important mission objectives.
Still, the ability of front-line units to interface directly with manufacturers for new gear is an approach I could see the U.S. military undertaking for some units.
And if Russians are outraged about their soldier’s deaths being used in a video game-like scoring system, 1.) They sure don’t seem to have cared enough about their soldiers being killed in wasteful “meat wave” assaults and endless undermanned probing attempts, and 2.) Maybe they should have avoided launching an illegal war of territorial aggression in the first place…
The Apple Weather app is finally catching up with the National Weather Service and, holy crap, things are not looking good:
Austin Weather forecast 1/23/26
Yeah, it’s going to get above freezing, so the city will run again, but I’ve got to keep my plants inside for a week or more. Any any potential power loss is really gonna suck. Here’s that Austin energy outage map again.
My own 401K travails and money woes continue. I did receive the money I tried to transfer to my checking account in December. But I had only split it up to get half of it into 2025 for tax purposes. I was also going to have to transfer more more into my bank account this month to cover my property taxes. They assured me would only take a day to transfer funds after my IRA got set up. Surprise! It might be a day for most people, but because my phone doesn’t receive text messages, I had to request they send me a check, which is going to take 15 days. (Funny how they seem to be able to transfer money in instantaneously, but you have to jump through hoops to get your own money in 2+ weeks.) Yesterday, I had to sell some silver rounds to cover the last bit of property taxes and living expenses for two weeks (including a vet appointment for my two dogs). Fortunately, silver is at at an all-time high. I sold mine when it was just under $100 an ounce, and now it’s over $103.
Oh, yeah, some other stuff happened this week: More Minnesota fraud, more California fraud, Don Lemon joins the KKK (as a subject of federal scrutiny), more commie ties for left wing agitators, more of Russia’s shadow fleet comes a cropper, and William Shatner eats cereal.
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Just like we already knew: “California: Newsom’s ‘National Model’ for Homeless Wracked by Fraud.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom has made reducing the homelessness crisis in California a top priority, saying the scale of the state’s efforts is “unprecedented” and calling for the continued expansion of his signature effort – Project Homekey – that has already cost $3.75 billion.
But in a state with more than 181,000 homeless individuals, or about one-third of the U.S. total, Homekey has been marred by failures and scandals, including a lack of government oversight and accountability as well as a federal investigation into allegations of fraud in Los Angeles.
Lack of government oversight isn’t a bug for Governor Hairgel, it’s a feature.
Newsom, who appears to be preparing for a presidential bid in 2028, could make Homekey, which he calls a “national model,” a talking point in his campaign. The state claims the program has created almost 16,000 permanent housing units that will serve over 175,000 people. But since the state doesn’t track outcomes – whether people placed in housing saw their lives improve or if they returned to the streets – the program’s effectiveness is unclear, according to a critical 2024 state auditor’s report.
“[Our budget] is bloated with homeless spending, a bottomless pit and taxpayer boondoggle that doubles down on failure year after year,” the Republican-turned-Democrat Los Angeles Councilwoman Traci Park said at a meeting in May. “Hundreds of millions of dollars on bridge homes and Homekeys and interim housing sites, and no one can even tell us which ones are operational.”
What is clear is that homelessness in California has skyrocketed in the five years Homekey has been in place, growing by more than 20%, according to the Public Policy Institute of California. That’s an increase of some 36,000 people between 2019 and 2024.
Homekey has been touted by officials as a more cost-effective way to house the homeless. By hiring developers to convert excess motel and hotel rooms and other existing structures into permanent housing, the costs are two to three times lower than building new units, according to the auditor’s report.
But with huge contracts available to developers and very little oversight of their activities, some of that cost savings was lost to fraud, according to federal prosecutors. First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli for the Central District of California launched a fraud and corruption task force to find out where the money went, and in October filed criminal charges involving two developers who allegedly defrauded the system.
My guess is that not a single leftwing activist in California will be indicted by the state government for their own role in the fraud…
The videos coming out of Minneapolis, of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers apprehending illegal immigrants in the streets while having to fight off aggressive and sometimes violent anti-ICE activists, are the predictable result of a Democrat strategy that amounts to nullification.
I mean nullification in the historical sense, like the Nullification Crisis of 1832 when South Carolina declared federal tariffs to be null and void within the boundaries of the state, and President Andrew Jackson threatened to send in the U.S. Army to enforce federal law.
What the Democrats of South Carolina did back then is essentially what the Democrats of Minneapolis are doing today, fomenting a 21st century nullification crisis by making it nearly impossible to enforce federal immigration law in the territory under their jurisdiction. Trump, who has ordered 1,500 active duty troops stationed in Alaska to prepare for a possible deployment to Minnesota, is well within his rights (and within historical precedent) to respond in the same vein as Jackson did to what amounts to a nullification crisis.
Indeed, the whole point of so-called sanctuary laws is to make it difficult or impossible to enforce federal immigration laws — to nullify them. Sanctuary policies like the ones operative in Minneapolis (and many other Democrat-controlled cities) prohibit state and local law enforcement from working with federal immigration authorities.
Under normal circumstances, when an illegal immigrant commits a crime the local authorities notify federal immigration officials before the offender is released, so that ICE can take custody and begin the process of deportation. The handover occurs between law enforcement agencies in a controlled, orderly, safe manner.
But in places where Democrat lawmakers have created sanctuary jurisdictions, local law enforcement is barred from cooperating with federal immigration enforcement in this way. Instead of handing over illegal immigrants to ICE, the police simply release them. That means ICE agents have to go out into the community, into neighborhoods and businesses, to track down and arrest illegal immigrant criminals wherever they might be.
This is obviously a much more volatile and dangerous way to enforce federal immigration law. And in Minneapolis, it’s even more volatile and dangerous thanks to anti-ICE activists and vigilante mobs attempting to disrupt, impede, and in some cases attack ICE agents. Indeed, it’s a recipe for violent clashes between ICE and anti-ICE mobs. A cynic might say that’s the entire point, to make federal immigration enforcement as chaotic and tense as possible in hopes of exactly the kind of confrontations that led to the death of Renee Good, the woman who was fatally shot earlier this month when she tried to ram an ICE agent with her vehicle.
The goal of fomenting such mayhem is straightforward: to thwart the enforcement of federal immigration law. Keep in mind, ICE is not doing anything beyond the scope of federal law in Minneapolis. It is not exercising any new or novel powers not authorized under federal statute. As Gregory Bovino, the Border Patrol commander in charge in Minneapolis said at a press conference this week, the operations and tactics of Border Patrol and ICE agents in the city are “born out of necessity” but are nevertheless “legal, ethical, and moral.”
“Our operations are lawful. They’re targeted. They’re focused on individuals who pose a serious threat to this community. They are not random and they are not political,” he said. The “necessity” Bovino refers to is that which has arisen as a direct result of Democrat sanctuary policies. Ordinarily, we wouldn’t see the very public, visible ICE operations now underway in Minneapolis and other sanctuary cities simply because criminal illegal aliens would be transferred to federal custody by local law enforcement.
But that’s not happening because Democrats don’t like federal immigration laws. Since they don’t have the political power to change them, they have decided, like Democrats in South Carolina in the 1830s, simply to declare them null and void in their territory.
I would suggest Minnesota Democrats should reconsider before Trump decides to do to Minneapolis what Sherman did to Savannah in 1864, but knowing Minneapolis, all he probably needs to do is hand out gasoline and matches to the #BlackLivesMatter/Somali set and let them burn it down themselves…
A collection of far-left activist groups — including the Democratic Socialists of America, major labor unions, explicitly Communist groups, and a CCP-linked protest network — have all organized a strike scheduled for Friday which aims to “shut down” schools and businesses statewide in Minnesota in an effort to push ICE out.
The planned shutdown was announced early last week — “ICE Out of MN: Day of Truth and Freedom” — include plans for a large-scale march in Minneapolis and a day of “no work, no school, no shopping.”
The radical Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), the left-wing BreakThrough News media outlet, and the Manhattan-based Marxist revolutionary People’s Forum are all involved in either promoting or organizing the Minnesota shutdown effort. Just the News previously reported on how these and other radical activist groups have leadership links or financial ties to a funding network backed by wealthy businessman and self-avowed communist Neville Singham.
The GOP-led House Oversight Committee voted this month to subpoena Singham for information about this sprawling activist network. The Freedom Road Socialist Organization, the Revolutionary Communists of America, and the Twin Cities chapter of the Communist Party USA — all avowedly Marxist groups — are also listed as co-sponsors of the Friday protest.
The DSA — which helped propel Zohran Mamdani to Gracie Mansion in NYC — including the national organization and the local Minnesota chapter — are listed as backing the anti-ICE effort scheduled for Friday.
Major labor unions such as the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) are listed as co-hosts of the shutdown effort, while the United Auto Workers (UAW) also endorsed the strike.
Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon told conservative podcaster Benny Johnson that former CNN host Don Lemon has been put “on notice” by the Justice Department and could face charges under federal civil-rights laws, including the Ku Klux Klan Act, for his role in storming a church service in Minnesota. Lemon allegedly joined a far-left mob that was on the hunt for a pro-ICE pastor at a St. Paul church.
“The Klan Act is one of the most important federal civil rights statutes. Its a law that makes it illegal to terrorize and violate the civil rights of citizens. Whenever people conspire to do this, the Klan Act can be used,” Dhillon told Johnson.
Dhillon continued, “Everyone in the protest community needs to know that the fullest force of the federal government is going to come down and prevent this from happening and put people away for a long time.”
“There is zero tolerance for this kind of illegal behavior and we will not stand for it,” she emphasized.
Johnson wrote on X, “DOJ confirms Don Lemon has zero ‘journalism’ protections against FACE Act violations. Lemon was fully aware of the violations and may face KKK Act conspiracy charges.”
But others got indicted. “FBI Arrests Left-Wing Activist Who Led Mob of Protesters into Minnesota Church.”
Federal authorities have arrested the woman who led an anti-ICE mob into a Minnesota church last week.
Nekima Levy Armstrong is facing charges related to violating the FACE Act, which prohibits interfering with the exercise of religion at a place of worship.
Minutes ago at my direction, HSI and FBI agents executed an arrest in Minnesota. So far, we have arrested Nekima Levy Armstrong, who allegedly played a key role in organizing the coordinated attack on Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota,” Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote in a post on X.
“We will share more updates as they become available. Listen loud and clear: WE DO NOT TOLERATE ATTACKS ON PLACES OF WORSHIP,” she added.
Armstrong led a group into the Cities Church in St. Paul on Sunday, believing that one of the church’s pastors works for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Dozens of demonstrators interrupted the service shouting, “ICE out” and “Justice for Renee Good.”
Armstrong is a civil rights lawyer and “scholar-activist,” according to her website. She previously played a key role in organizing boycotts against Target over its decision to walk back its diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, according to Fox News.
Homeland Security Secretary Krisit Noem announced on Monday that immigration officers have arrested more than 10,000 illegal immigrants in Minnesota.
“PEACE AND PUBLIC SAFETY IN MINNEAPOLIS!” Noem exclaimed in a post to X. “We have arrested over 10,000 criminal illegal aliens who were killing Americans, hurting children and reigning terror in Minneapolis because Tim Walz and Jacob Frey refuse to protect their own people and instead protect criminals.”
The figure includes about 3,000 “criminal illegal aliens” arrested by federal authorities in just the last six weeks, the secretary said.
Snip.
“There is MASSIVE Fraud in Minneapolis, at least $19 billion and that’s just the tip of iceberg,” Noem asserted in the same post. “Our Homeland Security Investigators are on the ground in Minneapolis conducting wide scale investigations to get justice for the American people who have been robbed blind.”
Indeed.
“Abbott Offers State Assistance to HUD for Fraud Identification Program. HUD Secretary Turner identified $5 billion in potentially erroneous payments.”
Gov. Greg Abbott has volunteered Texas assistance to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in identifying fraud in federal housing programs after the agency identified at least $5 billion in potentially erroneous payments last year.
According to a letter sent to HUD Secretary Scott Turner on Monday, Abbott offered state participation in a pilot fraud identification program through the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs (TDHCA).
“We will gladly work with you to develop fraud-prevention measures that ensure federal taxpayer funds, like those in the rental-based assistance programs, are not taken advantage of by bad actors,” wrote Abbott.
Turner, a former Texas state representative who was appointed by President Donald Trump to head HUD last year, published a financial analysis of the agency that warned of fraud and a lack of internal controls.
Using AI, HUD reported finding more than 30,000 deceased persons either actively enrolled in a rental assistance program or who had received assistance after they died.
Turner’s financial report also warned that his staff had identified examples of non-compliance with standards of internal controls under the Biden administration.
“The reviews determined that under the prior Administration, HUD experienced a deterioration in financial controls and governance and identified a material weakness affecting internal controls and financial governance across multiple program offices.”
Multiple federal agencies launched or extended investigations in Minnesota after new revelations of widespread fraud in the state last month. Last week, Abbott directed the Texas Workforce Commission and the Health and Human Services Commission to investigate potential childcare fraud in Texas.
A member of the violent Latin Kings gang was arrested after allegedly stealing government property from an FBI vehicle vandalized during unrest in Minneapolis Wednesday night, federal authorities said.
Fox News confirmed that Raul Gutierrez, 33, was arrested Thursday in a joint operation involving the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).
The FBI said multiple government vehicles were vandalized and broken into Wednesday night in Minneapolis while agents were responding to a reported assault on a federal officer, adding that federal property was stolen from inside the vehicles.
“One individual who allegedly stole federal government property out of an FBI vehicle in Minneapolis last night has been arrested,” FBI Director Kash Patel wrote on X, adding that the suspect was a member of the Latin Kings gang with a violent criminal history. “FBI personnel are continuing to pursue other subjects involved. There will be more arrests.”
Is their any doubt the left will treat this gang banger scumbag as a hero?
A few weeks ago, I noted that California was losing over $160 million due to improper management of its commercial driver’s license program.
And well, Governor Gavin Newsom asserted his current budget would only have a $2 billion deficit, the state’s shortfall is actually estimated to be over $17 billion according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office.
The budget reports a $2.9 billion deficit, described as a “modest shortfall” by Department of Finance staff. This estimate differs markedly from the Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) projection of a $17.6 billion deficit—a gap of $14.7 billion. According to department staff, the governor’s proposal incorporates $31.5 billion in additional revenues not included in the LAO forecast and excludes the risk of a stock market downturn that the LAO elected to factor into its analysis. Overall, the state budget totals $348.9 billion, including $248.3 billion in General Fund expenditures and $23 billion in total reserves.
Now, the gap may even widen.
California is facing federal demands to repay more than $1 billion in Medicaid funds that Dr. Mehmet Oz, the head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), says were improperly used for health care for illegal aliens.
The Trump administration is planning to claw back over $1 billion in federal Medicaid dollars it says are being spent by blue states on healthcare for illegal immigrants, including some with violent criminal records for murder and rape.
A preliminary audit by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services found that, over the last few years, mostly during 2024 and 2025, California; Washington, D.C.; Illinois; Washington; Colorado; and Oregon improperly spent a combined $1,351,204,127 in federal Medicaid funds to help pay for healthcare for illegal immigrants.
While federal Medicaid dollars are supposed to be prohibited broadly from being used to cover healthcare for illegal immigrants, they can be used by states for emergency treatment regardless of a patient’s citizenship or immigration status.
While 5 other states were also investigated for illegal alien-oriented Medicaid abuses, California was by far the most egregious.
Virginians asked for it, and if the flurry of bills introduced in the 72 hours since Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s inauguration pass — and with a Democratic supermajority, they likely will — residents of the Old Dominion are going to get it “good and hard.” If enacted, these proposals would raise taxes substantially, shorten sentences for violent criminals, and erode election integrity statewide.
Virginia voters delivered Spanberger a landslide victory in November over her Republican opponent, then–Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears. Despite presenting herself as a moderate during the campaign, Spanberger’s congressional voting record — nearly 100% aligned with the Democrats’ progressive agenda — suggested her governance would be anything but.
Let’s start with the tax increases: HB979 would create two new tax brackets. Currently, Virginians are taxed at 5.75% for all income over $17,000. If this bill passes, residents earning between $600,000 and $1 million will be taxed at 8%, and those earning over $1 million will pay 10%.
Before anyone argues that these taxpayers can well afford it, remember that this group includes farmers, small businesses, and sole proprietors — many of whom are about to be “crushed” by the impact.
The advocacy group Americans for Tax Reform sounded the alarm on the proposed new taxes in a piece titled Democrats Pounce On Virginia Taxpayers. ATF noted, “Under unified Democrat control, Virginia is poised to become a tax-hiking outlier in a region full of states that are phasing out their income taxes.”
The article highlights some of the most shocking tax proposals now being advanced by state Democrats.
HB 378 – Imposes a 3.8% net investment income tax on individuals, trusts, and estates beginning in taxable year 2027. If enacted, HB 378 would raise VA’s top marginal income tax rate on portfolio and passive income to 9.55%.
HB 900 – Authorizes sales tax hikes in various transportation districts, imposes a new tax on each and every retail delivery in Northern Virginia (Amazon, Uber Eats, FedEx, UPS, etc.), similar to the one imposed in Minnesota by Gov. Tim Walz (D).
HB 919 – Imposes a firearm and ammunition tax equal to 11% percent of the gross receipts from the retail sale of any firearm or ammunition by a dealer in firearms, firearms manufacturer, or ammunition vendor, as such terms are defined in the bill.
HB 978 – Extends the retail sales and use tax to dry cleaning, landscaping, and other previously exempt services.
Democrats now control the legislature and Governor’s office in Virginia.
Here are just a few of the bills they’ve introduced
– New 4.3% sales tax on Uber Eats, Amazon, etc deliveries.
– New sales tax on admissions to a wide variety of businesses.
– Create two new higher tax…
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) January 19, 2026
NEW retail and sales taxes coming to Virginia introduced by Virginia Democrats in a single bill:
“Levies the retail sales and use tax on the following services: admissions; charges for recreation, fitness, or sports facilities; nonmedical personal services or counseling; dry… pic.twitter.com/ki96Ngpj6T
— NOVA Campaigns (@NoVA_Campaigns) January 19, 2026
This legislative blitz has something for everyone — including convicted criminals in the state.
HB863 would “eliminate mandatory minimum sentencing for rape, manslaughter, assaulting a law enforcement officer, possession and distribution of child pornography, and all repeat violent felonies.”
Funny how Democrats are now objectively and reflexively pro-rape…
Here at Davos, I’ve heard numerous versions of this sentiment: “We Europeans/Canadians stood up to Trump and forced him to retreat. This is a major victory for the rules-based international order.”
This is a very wrong take. The reality is that Trump won Davos, hands down. And not only did he win it; he owned it. I have never before seen a single individual so completely dominate this vast bazaar of the powerful, the wealthy, the famous, and the self-important.
Snip.
Davos Man—I should say Davos Person—worries a lot more about such things than he—they—used to. The latest edition of the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report, which is based on surveys of business executives and academics, ranks “geoeconomic confrontation” and “state-based armed conflict” as the No. 1 and No. 2 risks most “likely to present a material crisis on a global scale in 2026.” On a two-year time horizon, geoeconomic confrontation remains top of the list. Asked to characterize “the global political environment for cooperation on risks in the next decade,” 68 percent of respondents picked a “multipolar or fragmented order in which middle and great powers contest, set, and enforce regional rules and norms.”
All of this is just a series of Davosy euphemisms for the one big risk that Davos Person fears above all others: Donald Trump. This is funny when you consider last year’s mood, which—in the wake of Trump’s reelection—was very bullish about the United States under Trump 2.0. “Almost everyone at Davos is long U.S., short EU,” I wrote in these pages this time last year. “The new Davos consensus is that Europe cannot get its economic act together and never will, whereas America is rocking and rolling, and if you don’t own the big U.S. tech stocks, then the FOMO may kill you.”
My long-standing contrarian rule is that the Davos consensus is always wrong. In last year’s case, I added, Davos Person should be very careful what they wished for. Sure enough, in 2025 European stocks outperformed U.S. stocks. And, of course, Trump 2.0 has turned out to be every good European’s worst nightmare.
In the run-up to Davos 2026, Trump did his utmost to wind up Europe’s elite, not to mention Canada’s. On social media and in interviews, he insisted that he was determined to get Greenland for the United States. “Greenland has to be acquired,” he wrote on the eve of his arrival in Switzerland. “Denmark and its European allies have to DO THE RIGHT THING.” He did not rule out military action. He threatened to impose new 10 percent tariffs on all countries that resisted. And he posted memes of maps of Denmark (and Canada) cloaked in the Stars and Stripes and an AI-generated image of himself planting an American flag on “Greenland—U.S. Territory Est. 2026.”
To stoke up the crowd ahead of the president’s arrival, Trump’s cabinet members chimed in. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s anti-European trash-talking so enraged the president of the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde, that she stormed out of a Davos dinner. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent drolly wondered if European leaders might unleash their “most forceful weapon,” the “dreaded European working group.”
Snip.
This was vintage Trump, part real-estate pitch, part reality TV. “All we’re asking for is to get Greenland,” he riffed, “including right, title, and ownership, because you need the ownership to defend it. You can’t defend it on a lease. Legally, it’s not defensible that way, totally. And number two, psychologically, who the hell wants to defend a license agreement or a lease[?]”
As for the haters, “Canada lives because of the United States,” Trump declared. “Remember that, Mark, the next time you make your statements.” And: “Here’s the story, Emmanuel. The answer is you’re going to do it. You’re going to do it fast. And if you don’t, I’m putting a 25 percent tariff on everything that you sell into the United States. And a 100 percent tariff on your wines and champagnes.”
Except that, almost as an aside, Trump then called the whole Greenland thing off. “We never ask for anything [from NATO],” he rambled, “and we never got anything. We probably won’t get anything unless I decide to use excessive strength and force where we would be, frankly, unstoppable. But I won’t do that. Okay? Now everyone’s saying, ‘Oh good.’ That’s probably the biggest statement I made because people thought I would use force. I don’t have to use force. I don’t want to use force. I won’t use force.”
Later that evening, following a “very productive meeting” with NATO secretary general Mark Rutte, Trump announced on Truth Social that he would not impose the additional tariffs on European countries he had threatened. He and Rutte had “formed the framework of a future deal with respect to Greenland and, in fact, the entire Arctic Region.”
Snip.
The problem with all of this is the premise that Trump ever seriously meant to annex Greenland or to impose new tariffs on the Europeans. Why would he when a) the United States already enjoys (under a 1951 treaty with Denmark and a 2004 agreement with Greenland) all the military access to the frigid island it could every possibly need, while the Danes pay for the heavily subsidized inhabitants of the island; and b) Trump means what he says on Truth Social only about half the time, according to The Wall Street Journal’s recent analysis of 2,700 substantive Truth posts. I’ll say it again: Half the time he’s bluffing. And it was the same when he was on Twitter in series one.
Snip.
Ten years ago, Europeans made the mistake of taking Trump neither seriously nor literally. Now they make the opposite mistake of treating him both seriously and literally. But, as Saleno Zito explained nearly 10 years ago, the correct approach is to take him seriously but not literally. The fact that Trump carries out only around half the threats he makes on social media is a feature, not a bug—and it’s certainly not a sign of weakness. It is a deliberate tactic designed to leave counterparties uncertain. On this occasion, Trump was bluffing, and the administration never had the remotest intention of imposing new tariffs on Europe, much less taking military action to annex Greenland.
So Trump asked for the moon, threatened to disastrous sanctions on his negotiating counterparts, and then settled for what he actually wanted all along.
Cue the tiny violins: “Eric Swalwell Could Be Ineligible for Governor or Face Jail Time.”
Eric Swalwell’s political ambitions just hit a major snag. Swalwell, most famous for public flatulence and bedding a Chinese spy, wants to be the next governor of California, but he is now the target of a court challenge that could blow his entire gubernatorial campaign out of the water before it even gets started.
The accusation? He doesn’t actually live in the state he wants to govern.
Conservative activist and filmmaker Joel Gilbert dropped a legal bomb on January 8, filing a petition in Sacramento Superior Court arguing that Swalwell is constitutionally barred from seeking the governor’s office.
Gilbert has a strong case.
California’s constitution requires gubernatorial candidates to live in the state for five years before the election. Gilbert says Swalwell has been living in Washington, D.C., not California, which makes him legally ineligible to run for office.
“Swalwell is ineligible to run for governor of California because the California constitution requires that a candidate live in the state for five years before an election,” Gilbert told PJ Media. “Swalwall has no home address in California; that’s why he committed perjury on his candidate statement form 501 by providing his attorney’s office for his home address. Swalwell has a sworn Deed of Trust on his Washington, D.C. home where he declared that location as his primary residence.”
The complaint gets more interesting from there.
Public records searches allegedly show that Swalwell has no ownership or lease of any California property — his congressional financial disclosures from 2011 through 2024 back this up, listing zero California real estate holdings. When Swalwell filed his campaign paperwork on December 4, he listed an address on Capitol Mall in Sacramento. The problem is that the address isn’t a residence; it’s the office of his Sacramento lawyer, Greenberg Traurig, located in a high-rise.
Swalwell owns a $1.2 million, six-bedroom home in northeast Washington, D.C., where he lives with his wife, Brittany Watts, and their three kids. Mortgage documents from April 2022 list that D.C. property as his “principal residence.”
There are really only two possibilities here, according to Gilbert: Swalwell either committed mortgage fraud — a serious crime that could result in prison time — or he’s ineligible to run for governor.
New Labor Department filings reveal the National Education Association (NEA), the nation’s largest teachers’ union, has been channeling millions in taxpayer dollars to far-left political outfits, including Soros-backed networks and shadowy activist groups.
Instead of bolstering education, these funds are propping up anti-American causes, from anti-Israel protests to rigging electoral maps.
The bombshell underscores the deep rot in union leadership, where public money meant for schools is weaponized against conservative values and national security.
The filings, obtained by Fox News Digital, paint a damning picture of misdirected priorities. “The NEA’s last fiscal year report showed it sent $300,000 to the 1630 Fund, the liberal dark money group Fox News has been reporting on extensively, and in most cases exclusively — Tens of thousands of dollars to the (George Soros’) Tides Foundation Network,” according to the report.
These aren’t voluntary donations from union members’ pockets—these are taxpayer dollars funneled through the system. The Tides Foundation has ties to anti-Israel activism, while the Sixteen Thirty Fund operates as a hub for progressive dark money, influencing elections without transparency.
The NEA didn’t stop there, the report notes, adding it “was also involved in several state issues. It backed a campaign to end standardized testing in Massachusetts and fight gerrymandering in Ohio, to the tune of half a million dollars for each of those and it sent hundreds of thousands of additional money to groups committed to racial and education justice movements.”
One of the biggest payouts was a whopping $3.5 million to Education International, a global teachers’ federation where NEA President Becky Pringle serves as vice president. Critics call it a cozy self-dealing arrangement, with American tax dollars flowing offshore to international agendas.
The subpoenas went to the offices of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Attorney General Keith Ellison and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, according the outlets, including Reuters, the New York Times and Fox News, which cited anonymous sources.
The subpoenas come days after the Department of Justice announced it was launching an investigation into Walz and Frey in connection with a suspected conspiracy to impede federal immigration enforcement in the state.
I am hoping there are also subpoenas in the works for several years of their bank records, to see how much they participated in the Somali fraud…
Over the past several days, it appears that Minneapolis police officers have quietly kind of quit in another way.
From Alpha News:
Around 100 Minneapolis police officers could soon be off duty for weeks to months from an already critically understaffed police department, and just as the city faces a serious public safety crisis with protesters inciting confrontations with the surge of federal agents working in the city.
Multiple sources confided to both Alpha News senior reporter Liz Collin and to Crime Watch Minneapolis that 60 to 100 officers from the Minneapolis Police Department have applied or plan to apply for the state’s new paid leave program. The Paid Family and Medical Leave (PFML) program was signed into law by Gov. Tim Walz during the 2023 DFL trifecta and went into effect on the first of this year.
This won’t end well: “Japanese Yields Soar To All Time High After PM Takaichi Calls Snap Election Seeking More Spending, Less Taxes.” Doubling down, yet again, on Abenomics, won’t solve Japan’s continuing problems.
New York has finally ended its nearly decade-long campaign to force Catholic nuns and other religious ministries to fund abortions.
The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty announced on Tuesday that New York agreed to enter into a settlement with their clients after a lengthy court battle over a state abortion mandate that went to the Supreme Court twice. Plaintiffs in the case, Roman Catholic Diocese v. Harris, included a group of Catholic and Anglican nuns, Catholic dioceses, Christian churches, and faith-based social ministries.
“For nearly a decade, New York bureaucrats tried to strong-arm nuns into paying for abortions because they serve all those in need,” said Lori Windham, senior counsel at Becket and an attorney for the religious groups. “At long last, the state has given up its disgraceful campaign. This victory confirms that the government cannot punish religious ministries for living out their faith by serving everyone.”
In a press release, AG James, who had previously worked to shut down the NRA because she disagreed with its politics, announced that she had closed down Betar, a pro-Israel group , for appearing at synagogues to defend them from Muslim mobs, for claiming that “that all devout Muslims ‘hate America’, and for making derogatory remarks about Islam and Gaza.
Did Howard University not cover the unconstitutionality of viewpoint discrimination back when James was obtaining her law degree there? (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Nick Shirley sat down with YouTuber Andrew Callaghan, and caught Callaghan deceptively editing the interview just like the MSM does.
Microslop 365. “Microsoft has invested tens to hundreds of billions of dollars into AI, okay? And so AI is not allowed to be the problem. And so it has to be you.”
More Somali fraud in Minneapolis, Democrats have always been at war with Hamas, the Caspian Sea is no longer safe for Russian assets, Texas tops the U-Haul destination list (again), MST3K gets sold, and Scott Adams departs this simulation.
FA phase: “Somali Suitcase Stash: Feds say $130 million moved from Ohio airport to Minnesota on way overseas.”
Federal agents investigating a Somali immigrant operation that moved massive amounts of cash in suitcases from the Minneapolis airport to overseas have uncovered a new leg of the courier journey: the Columbus, Ohio airport.
Homeland Security Department officials told Just the News that Transportation Security Administration officers tracked and flagged about $136 million in bulk cash in outbound luggage at the passenger checkpoints at John Glenn Columbus International Airport since November 2023.
The cash movements were made by U.S. citizens of Somali origin who flew out of the Columbus airport en route to either the airports in Minneapolis or Atlanta, and the couriers always declared the cash as legally required on documents, officials said.
“Typically, when they go to Minneapolis, they drop off the cash and then a subsequent courier travels abroad from Minneapolis to Dubai through Amsterdam,” one official familiar with the investigation told Just the News on Tuesday, speaking only on condition of anonymity.
The officials said they appear to have uncovered a massive cash movement operation that gathered money from multiple Somali immigrant communities in the West, Midwest and South that eventually brought luggage filled with currency to Minneapolis for flights overseas.
Just the News reported exclusively last week that TSA detected nearly $700 million in cash in luggage leaving the Minneapolis airport in 2024 and 2025, frequently headed on a route to Amsterdam and then Dubai where U.S. officials lost the tracking. The TSA agents routinely alerted investigators during the Biden years, but there was little interest in probing the money movements further until President Donald Trump took office last year.
Find Out phase beginning: “Congress moving quickly to investigate cash-in-luggage exodus from U.S. airports. Sen. Rand Paul also revealed that federal agents are probing the massive cash transfers that move through a network centered in the Minneapolis airport.”
Federal agents investigating a Somali immigrant operation that moved massive amounts of cash in suitcases from the Minneapolis airport to overseas have uncovered a new leg of the courier journey: the Columbus, Ohio airport.
Homeland Security Department officials told Just the News that Transportation Security Administration officers tracked and flagged about $136 million in bulk cash in outbound luggage at the passenger checkpoints at John Glenn Columbus International Airport since November 2023.
The cash movements were made by U.S. citizens of Somali origin who flew out of the Columbus airport en route to either the airports in Minneapolis or Atlanta, and the couriers always declared the cash as legally required on documents, officials said.
“Typically, when they go to Minneapolis, they drop off the cash and then a subsequent courier travels abroad from Minneapolis to Dubai through Amsterdam,” one official familiar with the investigation told Just the News on Tuesday, speaking only on condition of anonymity.
The officials said they appear to have uncovered a massive cash movement operation that gathered money from multiple Somali immigrant communities in the West, Midwest and South that eventually brought luggage filled with currency to Minneapolis for flights overseas.
And the fraud isn’t limited to Minnesota: “Two scammers plead guilty to $68M Brooklyn adult day care fraud scheme.”
Two Brooklyn scammers pleaded guilty on Thursday to defrauding a whopping $68 million from the state’s controversial Medicaid home care program by paying health care kickbacks for services they didn’t provide at three Big Apple businesses.
Manal Wasef and Elaine Antao, both 46, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit health care fraud for referring Medicaid recipients to two Brooklyn social adult day cares and a home health company in exchange for illegal kickbacks and bribes, the US Department of Justice announced on Thursday.
The latest iteration of the Democratic Party’s color-revolution-style operation was on full display in recent days as tensions erupted following the fatal shooting of a left-wing activist by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent during a federal enforcement sweep in Minnesota. This incident demonstrates that the protest industrial complex, funded by left-wing billionaires, has been on standby, waiting for a catalyzing event to ignite mass mobilization.
MSM, the Democratic Party, and left-wing nonprofits are working hard to manufacture another ‘George Floyd’-type protest or riot by omitting key context about the woman shot and killed by an ICE agent. They conveniently left out her social justice “warrior” role in Minneapolis, including her reported involvement with “ICE Watch” and other operations to disrupt ICE raids in the sanctuary city. These details matter because MSM attempted to manufacture an outrage news cycle, while nonprofits create artificial multi-city protests aimed at shifting public opinion on ICE operations nationwide.
More find out: “Trump Threatens To Invoke Insurrection Act As Left-Wing Chaos In Minneapolis Spreads.”
This is a good question: “Why did all the Dems suddenly become anti-Hamas over the weekend?”
Something very weird happened with the Democrats this past weekend.
I first noticed when I saw this post on X from Governor JB Pritzker of Illinois which was, let’s just say, not exactly subtle.
Apropos of apparently nothing, we’re getting a Shabbat Shalom from Pritzker on a random Friday night. That by itself that would be odd, but whatever.
A whole lot of Democrats followed suit in their 180:
Videos like that are a dime a dozen. If you’ve followed the anti-Israel campus protests over the past 2 years, you’ve seen leftwing mobs openly supporting Hamas proudly and loudly. Democrat politicians, meanwhile, have unequivocally supported the Palestinian Authority and Gaza Health Ministry, which are controlled entirely by Hamas. The support was so strong and so unanimous that Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania made headlines for breaking party lines with his support of Israel!
Legal Insurrection on a similarly mysterious flip. “Having Flipped Against Hamas, Dem Pols In Unison Now Back Iranian Protesters.”
Something’s happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear.
We covered how Democrats politicians in unison and contrary to every message they’re sent since the October 7 Massacre, declared that public support for Hamas was unacceptable and antisemitic. We asked, What’s Behind the Democrats’ Sudden Pivot on Hamas and Antisemitism?
The talking points just dropped.
Now they’re condemning Hamas.
The Democrats are pure phonies. pic.twitter.com/TUzc1ocsAJ
— Gina Milan (@ginamilan_) January 10, 2026
I think it’s an election set up, they are going to use the “Woke Right” against Republicans not only in the 2026 midterms, but particularly if JD Vance is the Republican nominee in 2028. His proximity and friendship with Tucker Carlson and the Groypers will be a major Democrat theme, but that can’t work unless Democrats switch gears from their anti-Israel, pro-Hamas — and yes antisemitic — persona.
So they are up so to something. No one believes they had a change of heart.
And now Democrats have come out supporting the protesters in Iran, despite doing everything dating back to Obama to keep the Mullahs in power.
Snip.
Little history on AOC and Iran:
-She condemned Trump for killing top Iranian regime terrorist Qassem Soleimani
-She condemned Trump for blowing up Iran’s nuclear facilities
-She co-sponsored legislation to prevent the U.S. military from taking action against Iran
Did Iran’s check to Soros bounce? Or does Iran’s hyperinflation and currency collapse mean that they can no longer keep paying off useful idiots?
This account from a Venezuelan security guard loyal to Nicolás Maduro is absolutely chilling—and it explains a lot about why the tone across Latin America suddenly changed.
Security Guard: On the day of the operation, we didn’t hear anything coming. We were on guard, but suddenly all our radar systems shut down without any explanation. The next thing we saw were drones, a lot of drones, flying over our positions. We didn’t know how to react.
Interviewer: So what happened next? How was the main attack?
Security Guard: After those drones appeared, some helicopters arrived, but there were very few. I think barely eight helicopters. From those helicopters, soldiers came down, but a very small number. Maybe twenty men. But those men were technologically very advanced. They didn’t look like anything we’ve fought against before.
Interviewer: And then the battle began?
Security Guard: Yes, but it was a massacre. We were hundreds, but we had no chance. They were shooting with such precision and speed… it seemed like each soldier was firing 300 rounds per minute. We couldn’t do anything.
Interviewer: And your own weapons? Didn’t they help?
Security Guard: No help at all. Because it wasn’t just the weapons. At one point, they launched something—I don’t know how to describe it… it was like a very intense sound wave. Suddenly I felt like my head was exploding from the inside. We all started bleeding from the nose. Some were vomiting blood. We fell to the ground, unable to move.
Interviewer: And your comrades? Did they manage to resist?
Security Guard: No, not at all. Those twenty men, without a single casualty, killed hundreds of us. We had no way to compete with their technology, with their weapons. I swear, I’ve never seen anything like it. We couldn’t even stand up after that sonic weapon or whatever it was.
Interviewer: So do you think the rest of the region should think twice before confronting the Americans?
Security Guard: Without a doubt. I’m sending a warning to anyone who thinks they can fight the United States. They have no idea what they’re capable of. After what I saw, I never want to be on the other side of that again. They’re not to be messed with.
Interviewer: And now that Trump has said Mexico is on the list, do you think the situation will change in Latin America?
Security Guard: Definitely. Everyone is already talking about this. No one wants to go through what we went through. Now everyone thinks twice. What happened here is going to change a lot of things, not just in Venezuela but throughout the region.
Judicial Watch sued in 2025 to clean up Oregon’s voter rolls.
Confirmed by Portland’s Willamette Week, Secretary of State Tobias Read is now cleaning up those records, and the scope of the clean-up is HUGE.
That process could lead to the cancellation of as many as 800,000 registrations. That’s the number of voters Read says are currently classified as ‘inactive’ on the voter rolls. To be clear, inactive voters do not receive ballots, but their names remain on the rolls.
The cleanup comes as Oregon’s first-in-the-nation vote-by-mail system is under intense scrutiny. President Donald Trump, who blamed mail-in ballots, among other bogeymen, for his defeat in 2020, has amplified historical criticism of Oregon’s system.
There’s nuance here. Essentially, because these voters haven’t cast a ballot in a certain number of years, they no longer get a handy-dandy mail-in ballot sent directly to their home.
That doesn’t mean, however, that they can’t vote, or that they haven’t been involved in some level of electoral shenanigans.
There are reportedly 167,000 people who haven’t voted since 2017 and will be taken off the rolls beginning this month. Another 640,000 are classified as inactive and will be reviewed after that.
Remember that in 2024 President Trump only lost Oregon by some 320,000 votes…
For the first time in 50 years, the U.S. experienced negative net migration in 2025 because of the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal border crossings and heightened deportation efforts, an enormous victory for the White House as it faces renewed backlash against its heavy-handed enforcement tactics.
The U.S. had net migration of -10,000 to -295,000 due to a combination of deportations, self-exits, and a significant drop in illegal immigration resulting from increased border security measures, according to a new Brookings Institution analysis. Those numbers represent a significant victory for President Trump, whose successful campaign focused primarily on his vow to reverse the record illegal immigration numbers facilitated by President Biden’s lax border policies.
Brookings observes a decline in green cards issued, refugee inflows, temporary visas, paroles and notices to appear, and entries without encountering a border official in 2025 due to the Trump administration’s stricter approach. Those trends will likely continue in 2026 as the administration tightens green card eligibility, further limits visa issuances, and continues to reject applications for asylum or refugee status.
The State Department announced Wednesday that it would pause immigrant visa processing from 75 countries “whose migrants take welfare from the American people at unacceptable rates,” the latest in a series of moves designed to decrease immigration from impoverished countries.
Funny what you can do when you actually obey the law and implement the desires of actual citizens rather than Democrat Party elites…
President Donald Trump put another dent in the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) movement, withdrawing the United States from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and 65 other international organizations dedicated to climate and social justice.
Trump’s order caps a recent trend in which many corporations have also canceled their decades-long commitments to left-wing global alliances, undermining what had been a highly influential worldwide movement that once included the world’s largest nations and companies.
According to a White House statement, Trump’s Jan. 7 executive order directs “all Executive Departments and Agencies to cease participating in and funding 35 non-United Nations (UN) organizations and 31 UN entities that operate contrary to U.S. national interests, security, economic prosperity, or sovereignty.”
On Jan. 8, the U.S. Treasury Department announced it would no longer provide funding to the Global Climate Fund, which financed many of the U.N.’s climate initiatives. The United States originally joined more than 190 other nations in the UNFCCC in 1992, when the U.S. Senate ratified the treaty.
This was followed by the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, in which countries committed to CO2 limits and reduction targets, and the 2015 Paris Agreement, which accelerated national governments’ commitments and spending to reduce global temperatures. The U.S. Senate did not ratify either of these subsequent accords.
Thereafter, a number of net-zero corporate alliances emerged to align the private sector with climate initiatives. At its peak, this network included financial and corporate alliances, such as the Net Zero Banking Alliance, the Net Zero Insurance Alliance, the Net Zero Asset Managers initiative, and others.
These alliances operated under the umbrella of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, a U.N.-backed multi-trillion-dollar coalition. The Glasgow Alliance focused on financial institutions because they were not only financiers but also dominant shareholders of publicly traded corporations, and thus a critical means of leverage over the private sector.
Net Zero Asset Managers members, for example, included BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street, the world’s largest asset managers. These three firms alone are collectively the largest shareholders in more than 40 percent of publicly traded U.S. firms, and 88 percent of the S&P 500, according to a study by George Mason University business professors Sebahattin Demirkan and Ted Polat.
Over the past several years, however, members have begun to exit these organizations amid a conservative backlash and allegations of conflicts of interest and collusion. Much of this backlash occurred in conservative U.S. states, where Republican lawmakers, treasurers, and attorneys general launched boycotts and antitrust investigations of banks and fund managers accused of colluding against oil, gas, and coal companies and of violating their fiduciary duties to investors.
Vanguard quit Net Zero Asset Managers in 2022, and BlackRock quit in January 2025, after which the initiative announced it was suspending activities. In 2023, half of the Net Zero Insurance Alliance’s members quit en masse, facing risks of antitrust prosecution.
“Huge Missile/Drone Strike on Atlant Aero Drone Factory in Taganrog.” “This has been hit twice before.”
They hit the Nevinnomyssk Azot chemical plant with drones, and it’s been hit before. “It has the only units in Russia for the production of methylacetate and high purity acetic acid.”
Ukraine attacks four tankers with drones in the Black Sea. One wonder how much of Russia’s shadow fleet is even left…
Cargo ship Rona, possibly carrying weapons from Iran to Russia, sinks in the Caspian Sea. Looking at that rust bucket, you can well believe it sank without any help from Ukraine. Also, shouldn’t the mullahs be saving those weapons to use on their own people?
Despite breathless headlines warning of a robot takeover in the workforce, a new research briefing from Oxford Economics casts doubt on the narrative that artificial intelligence is currently causing mass unemployment. According to the firm’s analysis, “firms don’t appear to be replacing workers with AI on a significant scale,” suggesting instead that companies may be using the technology as a cover for routine headcount reductions.
In a January 7 report, the research firm argued that, while anecdotal evidence of job displacement exists, the macroeconomic data does not support the idea of a structural shift in employment caused by automation. Instead, it points to a more cynical corporate strategy: “We suspect some firms are trying to dress up layoffs as a good news story rather than bad news, such as past over-hiring.”
he primary motivation for this rebranding of job cuts appears to be investor relations. The report notes that attributing staff reductions to AI adoption “conveys a more positive message to investors” than admitting to traditional business failures, such as weak consumer demand or “excessive hiring in the past.” By framing layoffs as a technological pivot, companies can present themselves as forward-thinking innovators rather than businesses struggling with cyclical downturns.
In a recent interview, Wharton management professor Peter Cappelli told Fortune that he’s seen research about how, because markets typically celebrate news of job cuts, firms announce “phantom layoffs” that never actually occur. Companies were arbitraging the positive stock-market reaction to the news of a potential layoff, but “a few decades ago, the market stopped going up because [investors] started to realize that companies were not actually even doing the layoffs that they said they were going to do.”
When asked about the supposed link between AI and layoffs, Cappelli urged people to look closely at announcements. “The headline is, ‘It’s because of AI,’ but if you read what they actually say, they say, ‘We expect that AI will cover this work.’ Hadn’t done it. They’re just hoping. And they’re saying it because that’s what they think investors want to hear.”
“Trump greenlights Bill proposing 500% tariff over Russia oil trade. US Senator Lindsey Graham said the Russia sanctions bill will allow US President Donald Trump to punish countries that ‘buy cheap Russian oil, fueling Putin’s war machine.'” This seems aimed at India in particular.
The struggle over control of information, censorship, and economic dominance in the digital space is increasingly becoming a fundamental civilizational question. That the European Union now sees not only the EU Commission but also national governments and security apparatuses siding with information diktats, against the fundamental principle of free speech, sends a dangerous signal to the world. The EU has effectively withdrawn from the circle of freedom-oriented state actors.
Into this picture fits a recent report from Italy. A tweet by the founder and CEO of the internet infrastructure provider Cloudflare, Matthew Prince, has caused a stir.
Yesterday a quasi-judicial body in Italy fined @Cloudflare $17 million for failing to go along with their scheme to censor the Internet. The scheme, which even the EU has called concerning, required us within a mere 30 minutes of notification to fully censor from the Internet any… pic.twitter.com/qZf9UKEAY5
Prince reports that Cloudflare has been hit with a $17 million fine by a — as he calls it — clandestine cabal in Italy. The accusation: Cloudflare refused to participate in an Italian censorship mechanism at the behest of this group.
Specifically, this concerns a system controlled by the Italian media authority AGCOM (Autorità per le Garanzie nelle Comunicazioni) called the “Piracy Shield.” This blocking system is officially aimed at combating illegal sports and media streaming services. The main targets are the economic interests of major players such as Italy’s Serie A football league, Sky Italia, DAZN, Mediaset, and other large European media and rights corporations.
Private actors, comparable to the so-called “Trusted Flaggers” now familiar in Germany, operate on behalf of the Italian media sector within this system. They report websites, IP addresses, or suspicious domains to the Piracy Shield. The authority then compels internet service providers and infrastructure operators like Cloudflare to implement the corresponding blocks within just 30 minutes. Every advertising minute counts; piracy is indeed a dangerously significant economic factor. The question is: How do states and affected companies enforce copyright? Do they operate under the rule of law and avoid collateral damage, such as backdoor state censorship?
According to Prince, all of this happens without a judicial order or prior review, bypassing due legal process entirely. The measures affect not only allegedly illegal content but also deeply intrude into the technical infrastructure of the internet.
“A middle school band director in the Abilene Independent School District has been busted for possessing child sexual abuse material. Lance Carl Mosley was arrested and charged with possession of child pornography.”
“U-Haul Growth Index: Texas Back on Top as No. 1 Growth State of 2025. Florida ranks 2nd for net gain of one-way customers; California last for sixth year in a row.” (Hat tip: Ted Cruz on Facebook.)
Life in deep blue Seattle: “McDonald’s rolls out store ‘no door’ policy – and bans ALL diners from eating in…The McDonald’s restaurant is located in downtown Seattle and it has been nicknamed ‘McStabby’s.’ And, it is situated in an area that has been plagued with crime in recent years.” This is your city on Democrats…
Yes, Democrats are totally rational: “Nebraska Democrat, best known for filibustering trans surgery ban, rips down America 250 exhibits at Capitol.”
Cartoonist, author and political commentator Scott Adams died Tuesday after a battle with prostate cancer. He was 68.
His ex-wife and caregiver, Shelly, made the announcement on Adams’ livestream Tuesday morning.
“Unfortunately, this isn’t good news,” Shelly said. “Of course, he waited ’til just before the show started, but he’s not with us anymore.”
Shelly read aloud a “final message” that Adams “wanted to say” on the livestream.
“If you’re reading this, things did not go well for me,” the message began. “I have a few things to say before I go. My body fell before my brain. I am of sound mind as I write this January 1, 2026.”
After speaking about Christianity, Adams’ message said, “For the first part of my life, I was focused on making myself a worthy husband and parent as a way to find meaning. That worked — but marriages don’t always last forever, and mine ended in a highly amicable way. I’m grateful for those years and the people I came to call my family.”
Snip.
In his last decade and a half, however, Adams achieved wide influence through his business advice and political analysis.
His 2013 best seller, “How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big,” is one of the most influential and entertaining business books of recent years.
In it, Adams introduced the concept of using systems, rather than goals, to achieve success in life. He also advised readers to accumulate skills — a “talent stack” — rather than traditional credentials.
In 2015, Adams began commenting on politics after observing the first Republican presidential primary debate. When then-candidate Donald Trump responded to a moderator’s question that accused him of mistreating women by interjecting, “Only Rosie O’Donnell,” Adams took notice.
A trained hypnotist, Adams predicted that Trump, then a huge underdog, would win the nomination — and the presidency.
Adams drew ridicule for his bold claim. But he looked increasingly prescient as Trump dispensed with his opponents, the Republican establishment and — eventually — Hillary Clinton.
Adams used what he called the “persuasion filter”: Rather than judging whether political rhetoric was true or false, he simply evaluated it based on whether it was persuasive.
Snip.
While he excelled at explaining Trump’s tactics to a growing audience of Trump-supporting fans, Adams was also interested in explaining how Democrats, and the left-leaning media, interpreted events.
He explained that the country was often watching “two movies on one screen,” and argued — with great empathy for his opponents — that voters who felt genuinely frightened by Trump’s ascent had been led into an emotional cul-de-sac by cynical leaders.
Snip.
While he excelled at explaining Trump’s tactics to a growing audience of Trump-supporting fans, Adams was also interested in explaining how Democrats, and the left-leaning media, interpreted events.
He explained that the country was often watching “two movies on one screen,” and argued — with great empathy for his opponents — that voters who felt genuinely frightened by Trump’s ascent had been led into an emotional cul-de-sac by cynical leaders.
Leftists suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome forget just how funny and influential Dilbert was, and would have done much better listening to Adams’ explanation of how Trump works than their continuing full bore freakout. But that wouldn’t let them assuage their wounded ego with the certainty that they’re simply smarter and better people than Trump and his his deplorable followers in JesusLand…
Radial Entertainment, the entertainment company formed from the merger of Shout! Studios and FilmRise, has obtained full ownership over the “Mystery Science Theater 3000” brand from creator Joel Hodgson’s Alternaversal.
“MST3K” had been jointly owned by Alternaversal and Shout! Studios since late 2015. Radial’s purchase includes all brand assets and intellectual property and follows nearly two decades of Shout!’s multichannel distribution of “MST3K” content. The amount of the final buyout was undisclosed.
Also: “Hodgson will remain involved with the property as brand ambassador and consultant.”
I hope they can keep it going and not screw it up…
New woke Star trek is such garbage people won’t even watch it for free. “Paramount only hit 1,300 live viewers during free YouTube premiere.”
Iran teeters, Walz falls, more Russia’s shadow fleet has an epically bad week, more Minnesota Somali fraud fallout, more computer security vulnerabilities, and a policeman transformed into a frog using the power of AI! Plus the Austro-Hungarian and Achaemenid empires. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Personally, this week has been deeply frustrating, as I’ve been trying to withdraw money from my 401K account to pay my property taxes, a process I began mid-December, and it’s still not done. “Oh, these things take time,’ says 401K company. Then it’s “Oh, we haven’t heard back from your former employers.” Former employer: “Oh, we haven’t received the request from your 401K company.” Then: “Oh, the third party company we hired to handle 401K requests hasn’t received the request.” Now it’s “Oh, they’ve just started working on it, but they’re always slow at the end of the year.” It’s frustrating to have to jump through so many hoops to access my own money.
On to the LinkSwarm!
From the outside, it’s hard to tell how serious the chances of protesters are to free their own country, but they’re so fed up with the mullah’s rule that they’re burning mosques.
Iranian protestors demonstrating against the theocratic regime will face harsh punishment with absolutely zero leniency, Iran’s top judge has warned — as footage emerged Friday of mosques burning on the streets of Tehran amid the ongoing riots.
Chief Justice Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei, the head of Iran’s judiciary, issued the stark warning after President Trump vowed to back those peacefully demonstrating across the country.
Signaling a potentially violent crackdown, Ejei vowed the punishment for rioters would “be decisive, maximum and without any legal leniency.”
Protesters gather as vehicles burn in Tehran, Iran.
Things in Iran seem to be moving very fast indeed…
“Authorities report that Mahmoud Haqiqat, a police station commander in Iranshahr, Iran’s southeastern Sistan and Baluchestan Province, was shot and killed by unknown assailants this week in a drive-by attack. Video circulating online appears to show gunmen firing on Haqiqat’s vehicle before it crashed. Social posts and video descriptions identify him as the former head of the city’s intelligence and allege that he was involved in operations targeting anti-regime Baluch groups in the area.” Add Balochs to Kurds and Lurs as ethnic minorities pissed at the mullah’s government. There’s also a substantial Baloch population in Pakistan, and they don’t like the Pakistani government either. Hell, history records the Balochs rebelling against the Achaemenid Empire three millennia ago…
With constant pressure from liberal activists, some states now dispatch mail-in ballots 45 to 60 days before Election Day and allow the counting of such absentee votes as many as three weeks afterward, creating an election trimester that causes vote tallies to wildly fluctuate days after polls close and increasingly erodes Americans’ trust.
But conservatives are now fighting back, first with an executive order by President Donald Trump requiring all ballots to be counted on election night, followed by a challenge to Mississippi’s counting process that has not reached the U.S. Supreme Court and then the Ohio legislature’s vote to require all its ballots to arrive on election night to be tallied.
“It’s common sense that ballots should arrive by Election Day,” Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose told Just the News this week after his state became the 35th to require mail-in ballots to arrive by Election Night in order to be counted. Previously, the state had a four-day grace period for ballots to arrive after Election Day.
“I think that trying to reduce complexity should be our goal in government, and certainly when it comes to the rules for how elections run,” LaRose said in a wide-ranging interview with the John Solomon Reports podcast. “If you were to stop the average person on the street last year and say, what’s the deadline for your ballot to get back to the board of elections, they would not know that it’s four days after. It’s kind of an arbitrary date.”
The National Conference of State Legislatures reported that many states now mail out ballots as early as 45 days to two months before Election Day and about a dozen states allow them to be counted days later — as long as three weeks afterward in Washington state, 14 days in Illinois, 10 days in Maryland and seven days in California and New York.
Tim Walz is dropping his bid for a third term as governor of Minnesota amid a national political firestorm sparked by the identification of massive welfare fraud in the state’s Somali community.
Walz released a statement Monday morning ahead of a late morning press conference announcing his withdrawal from the race.
“But as I reflected on this moment with my family and my team over the holidays, I came to the conclusion that I can’t give a political campaign my all. Every minute I spend defending my own political interests would be a minute I can’t spend defending the people of Minnesota against the criminals who prey on our generosity and the cynics who prey on our differences,” Walz said. “So I’ve decided to step out of the race and let others worry about the election while I focus on the work.”
Translation: “I got caught, and I need to see if I can get away from this giant pile of graft as quickly as possible.”
Walz and fellow Minnesota Democrats have been subjected to withering attacks at the hands of Trump and his allies over the staggering scale of welfare fraud that’s taken place under their noses in recent years. Federal prosecutors announced last month that the cost of the welfare fraud perpetrated against state-run Medicaid services alone could exceed $9 billion, half or more of the $18 billion paid out since 2018.
A federal probe into the matter has been initiated, and Minnesota officials have until January 9 to provide the administration with more information regarding who is receiving the welfare benefits in the state.
It’s amazing that anyone can give Gavin Newsom a run for the title of America’s Most Incompetent Governor, but Walz is just that special.
It’s been going on a while. “Minnesota Inspector General [Carolyn Ham] covered up hundreds of millions in Somali childcare fraud in 2018.”
You know how the Somali childcare fraud has been a big thing, kind of an open secret in Minnesota for years now?
Well, not only has this been happening for at least a decade, but, according to this report, the state has known about it for at least that long.
Check out these receipts from Maze on X detailing a nine-year-old investigation into the fraud at Minnesota’s Child Care Assistance Program — an investigation that went nowhere.
The Minnesota child care fraud saga is so strange because years ago it was fully investigated, documented, and reported on by a team of state investigators set up to catch and stop child care fraud.
They spent years gathering evidence including many hours of surveillance footage. In 2018 they compiled a detailed report and delivered it to their boss, the DHS Inspector General.
Directly from the report: ‘Investigators, as well as the Supervisor and Manager of this unit believe that the overall fraud rate in this program is at least 50% of the $217M paid to child care centers in CY2017.’
What did the Inspector General do with this information? She refused to meet with her own team, refused to discuss the findings of the report, and then spent $90,000 of taxpayer money to have an outside company write a report saying the fraud isn’t quite as bad as her own team of investigators was claiming.
Woke is a heckuva drug, isn’t it?
So is corruption, scamming, and Democratic politics in general.
Former Wall Street Journal reporter Asra Nomani, now at Fox News, is investigating the left-wing, billionaire-funded dark money networks in the nonprofit world and offering much-needed coverage for mainstream Americans on how these NGOs influence protest movements, unleash riots, and conduct sophisticated political pressure campaigns.
Snip.
Key details from the report:
MacKenzie Scott disclosed sending at least $5 million in a new round of donations to the Solidaire Network, on top of a $10 million gift in 2021 via her philanthropy vehicle, Yield Giving.
Solidaire funds a network of radical anti-Israel activist groups, including Students for Justice in Palestine and American Muslims for Palestine, both of which are under House and Senate investigation for alleged coordination with Hamas-linked activities.
Other Solidaire-backed groups include the Palestinian Youth Movement and the US Palestinian Community Network, which publicly justified Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
Scott’s grants are unrestricted, allowing recipients to spend funds freely. Solidaire used this flexibility to finance campaigns promoting “Palestinian liberation,” campus protests, and direct-action activism, including efforts to block U.S. military logistics supporting Israel.
Funding was often routed through fiscal sponsors such as WESPAC Foundation and Tides Foundation, structures that have drawn scrutiny from Republican lawmakers investigating possible links to extremist groups.
Scott’s cumulative charitable giving has reached roughly $26 billion since 2019, surpassing the lifetime donations of George Soros, and placing her at the center of growing political controversy over billionaire-funded activist networks.
The Somali ambassador to the United Nations, Abukar Dahir Osman, who is tied to a daycare company in Ohio under investigation in Washington, might have acquired an American citizenship fraudulently, according to a source in Somaliland.
Ambassador Osman, who currently serves as the rotating president of the UN Security Council, first entered America in the mid-1980s and again in 1989. He claimed to be a refugee of a minority in Somaliland persecuted by the Somali regime at the time, a Somaliland ambassador at large who tweets under the name of Haggoogane, tells the Sun via text.
Haggoogane, whose real name is Mustafa Osman but is unrelated to the ambassador, says that the current Somali UN ambassador was far from a refugee fearing extermination by the Somali regime. Instead, he tells the Sun, the UN ambassador was part of that regime in the late 1980s. “His job was to identify anyone the regime saw as a threat,” Haggoogane says.
Between 1960 and 1991 the government of Somalia killed hundreds of thousands of ethnic Isaaq and others in Somaliland, which declared independence of Mogadishu in 1991.
Following Israel’s recognition of Somaliland last month, the Israeli foreign minister, Gideon Sa’ar, visited its capital, Hargeisa, on Tuesday, and met with President Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi. After Israel became the first UN member to recognize Somaliland’s independence, Mr. Osman, the Somali UN ambassador, convened an “emergency session” of the security council.
At Washington on Tuesday, the deputy secretary at the Department of Health and Human Service, Jim O’Neill, confirmed a rumor regarding the Somali ambassador, which has long been whispered in UN corridors.
“I can confirm public speculation that Ambassador Abukar Dahir Osman, Permanent Representative of Somalia to the UN and President of the Security Council, is in fact associated with Progressive Health Care Services, a home health agency in Cincinnati,” Mr. O’Neill wrote on X. “HHS has previously taken action against Progressive in response to a conviction for Medicaid fraud. More to come.”
The United States seized a Russian-flagged oil tanker in the North Atlantic this week while also intercepting a separate stateless “dark fleet” vessel tied to Venezuelan oil exports, US officials said, marking a significant escalation in Washington’s enforcement campaign against sanctioned energy shipments.
According to US officials, the Russian-flagged tanker Marinera, previously known as Bella-1, was seized on Wednesday near Iceland after being tracked for more than two weeks across the Atlantic, reports Reuters. The operation occurred as Russian military assets, including a submarine, were operating in the general area, though officials said there were no signs of confrontation.
In a post on X, US European Command said the tanker was seized for violating US sanctions. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth responded, writing, “The blockade of sanctioned and illicit Venezuelan oil remains in FULL EFFECT — anywhere in the world.”
Two US officials said the operation was carried out by the US Coast Guard with support from the US military. The Coast Guard declined to comment. Russian officials have not issued a response, though Russian state media outlet RT published an image showing a helicopter hovering near the ship.
The Marinera had previously evaded US enforcement efforts in the Caribbean and refused boarding attempts. After those encounters, it re-registered under a Russian flag and changed its name, officials said. Sources indicated the vessel may now be heading toward British territorial waters, though its final destination has not been confirmed. The UK Ministry of Defence declined to comment.
Separately, US Southern Command confirmed that the Coast Guard intercepted another tanker, the Panama-flagged M/T Sophia, in Latin American waters early Wednesday. The vessel was described as a “stateless, sanctioned dark fleet motor tanker” linked to Venezuelan oil shipments.
U.S. First Assistant Attorney Bill Essayli Thursday called California Gov. Gavin Newsom “the king of fraud,” accusing him of a lack of oversight on spending to address homelessness.
Essayli made the comments on the “Fox and Friends” telecast, during which he discussed the federal fraud charges that were filed in October against real estate executives Steven Taylor and Cody Holmes for allegedly misusing grant money meant for homeless housing.
Holmes, 31, of Beverly Hills was charged with mail fraud charge that was allegedly linked to millions of dollars in grant money that the state paid Shangri-La Industries to purchase, build and operate homeless housing in Thousand Oaks, just north of Los Angeles. Holmes was Shangri-La’s chief financial officer.
Taylor, 44, of Brentwood, was charged with seven counts of bank fraud, one count of aggravated identity theft and one count of money laundering.
Essayli Thursday said the charges are the “tip of the iceberg” in an investigation he launched with a task force in April. He said more charges would be coming, probably later this month.
The state spent $24 billion in the last five years to address homelessness and can’t account for where the money went, Essayli said on “Fox and Friends.”
California Democrats: “Hey, let’s institute a wealth tax on billionaires!” California billionaires: “See ya!”
A ballot measure that could tax the wealthiest people in California may reportedly push billionaires Larry Page and Peter Thiel to leave the state, while other wealthy residents have condemned the idea, whose supporters claim could generate up to $100 billion—though the measure has yet to be considered by state officials or voters.
Thiel, who cofounded PayPal and Palantir, and Google cofounder Page have held discussions to reduce their ties to California by the end of the year because of the billionaire tax proposal, The New York Times reported, citing people familiar with their thinking.
Thiel operates the investment firm Thiel Capital and may open an office for the company in another state, with plans to spend more time outside of California, while Page has filed documents to incorporate three limited liability companies in Florida, according to the Times.
Bill Ackman weighed in, calling California “on a path to self-destruction,” adding, “Hollywood is already toast and now the most productive entrepreneurs will leave, taking their tax revenues and job creation elsewhere.”
Billionaire Chamath Palihapitiya wrote on X the proposed ballot measure would result in an “exodus of the state’s most talented entrepreneurs” who would opt to “build their companies in less regressive states,” and argued the middle class would be the worst hit by the tax.
Dear Fleeing Billionaires: Welcome to Texas! Please be sure to discard any liberal ideas you brought with you in the nearest trash receptacle…
“Major train crash on key route used to feed Putin’s war machine with North Korean military equipment…A freight train hauling 35 wagons spectacularly derailed in Russia’s remote Amur region on the Transbaikal Railway – a strategic line linked to the famed Trans-Siberian route.”
Ukraine also hit Russian shadow fleet tanker Elbus in the Black Sea off the coast of Turkey. It’s been a bad week all around for Russia’s shadow fleet…
France and UK bomb Islamic State targets in Syria. This isn’t the first time France has bombed Islamic State terrorists, as they also participated in Operation Chammal in 2014, back when the would-be caliphate was much closer to the extremely short zenith of its limited powers.
Minnesota woman tries to run over ICE agent, immediately enters find out phase.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers fatally shot a woman during an operation in Minneapolis Wednesday.
As videos of the incident went viral, the Department of Homeland Security justified the shooting on self-defense grounds, calling the slain woman a “violent rioter” who “weaponized her vehicle” by driving towards federal agents.
Today, ICE officers in Minneapolis were conducting targeted operations when rioters began blocking ICE officers and one of these violent rioters weaponized her vehicle, attempting to run over our law enforcement officers in an attempt to kill them—an act of domestic terrorism. An ICE officer, fearing for his life, the lives of his fellow law enforcement and the safety of the public, fired defensive shots,” said DHS assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin.
“The alleged perpetrator was hit and is deceased. The ICE officers who were hurt are expected to make full recoveries. This is the direct consequence of constant attacks and demonization of our officers by sanctuary politicians who fuel and encourage rampant assaults on our law enforcement.”
She wasn’t the only idiot dirtnapped trying to run over ICE agents. A Tren de Aragua scumbag tried the same trick, and met the same fate, in Portland. Naturally, the usual leftist idiots there rioted.
Yesterday, Border Patrol officers had to shoot a dangerous criminal gang member in self-defense after he committed a vehicular assault on them to evade arrest. Leftists in the sanctuary city of Portland, Ore., promptly turned out to protest his shooting — and apparently to try to accomplish his deadly intention against federal officers.
In case you still have any illusions that the Democratic Party is not essentially a criminal organization, just look at the fury and violence the last few days in blue cities over the shootings of individuals who deliberately tried to seriously injure or kill Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or Border Patrol officers. Renee Good in Minnesota and the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua member in Oregon were both violently and dangerously ramming their vehicles into officers at the time they were shot. That makes them leftist heroes and martyrs, it seems.
The American left is trying to do a repeat of the summer of love and mostly peaceful protests in 2020. They want to burn down what is still standing after their previous riots. With Democrat politicians and media lying to fuel violence and their followers cheering for murder, how can we avoid the conclusion that the Democratic Party is acting like a terror organization?
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has suspended the funding for Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley (CCRGV) pending an investigation into whether or not the charity is complying with federal grant requirements.
According to CCRGV, the charity learned of the suspension in late November 2025. It claims that it is “committed to compliance with federal grant requirements and will work expeditiously with DHS to resolve the matter.”
The charity stated that all of its funding was used to care for people brought to CCRGV by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) — individuals who were “released by CBP with a document that gave them permission to travel to their points of destination with instructions on where to follow up with their immigration proceedings.”
CCRGV runs the Humanitarian Respite Center in McAllen, a place that offers food and shelter to immigrants who are awaiting court hearings.
According to reporting by Fox News, CCRGV was suspended after a DHS investigation revealed what the outlet called “major grant violations.”
The suspension follows “months of warnings and data reviews that auditors say uncovered sweeping inaccuracies, large gaps in migrant records, and significant billing outside federally allowed timeframes,” Fox News reported.
The investigators also reportedly found 248 instances in which CCRGV billed the federal government for services to immigrants outside of the 45-day window allowed by federal rules.
Surging liquefied natural gas exports from new North American export plants likely pushed global LNG shipments in 2025 by the most since 2022, Kpler data showed on Tuesday.
The annual rise in 2025 would be the steepest increase in global LNG exports since 2022, when shipments grew by 4.5% compared to 2021, the data showed.
North America was the key supplier of new LNG volumes, as Canada’s first-ever export facility, LNG Canada, started shipments in the middle of 2025, and Plaquemines LNG in Louisiana launched operations and ramped up shipments throughout the year.
Thanks to rising capacity and volumes, the U.S. is set to become the first LNG exporter in the world to have passed in 2025 the threshold of 100 million tons of LNG exports in one year.
Additional LNG supply is poised to hit the market between 2026 and 2030 as more U.S. export plants come online and Qatar begins shipments from its huge capacity expansion of the North Field export facilities.
The U.S. is set to export 14.9 billion cubic feet per day of LNG in 2025, up by 25% from 2024, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) said in its latest Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO) for December. With new projects ramping up, the EIA expects U.S. LNG exports to jump to an average of 16.3 billion cubic feet per day in 2026.
President Donald Trump on Friday blocked the Delaware firm HieFo Corporation from acquiring assets in New Jersey-based aerospace and defense specialist Emcore for $3 million, citing national security and China-related concerns.
The president claimed HieFo was “controlled by a citizen of the People’s Republic of China,” and that there was evidence to believe HieFo, through the merger, may “take action that threatens to impair the national security of the United States.”
“The Transaction is hereby prohibited,” Trump said and ordered HieFo to “divest all interests and rights in the Emcore assets, wherever located,” within 180 days.
Snip. “HieFo purchased Emcore’s chips business and indium-phosphide wafer-fabrication operations for $2.92 million.” Indium-Phosphide is a pretty exotic wafer material used in optics and photonics chips.
Leprino Foods, the world’s largest mozzarella producer and a vital supplier to major pizza chains like Domino’s, Pizza Hut, and Papa John’s, moved its operations from California to Texas. “For over a century, the Lemoore plant in California’s Central Valley served as a cornerstone of the dairy industry, but the company is now shifting billions of dollars and hundreds of jobs into a new $870 million facility in Lubbock, Texas.”
Progress! “Corporation for Public Broadcasting votes itself out of existence. The private agency, which has distributed federal funding to PBS, NPR and hundreds of local television and radio stations across the country for more than a half-century, saw its appropriations from Congress eliminated this past summer.” They promised Big Bird and delivered leftwing propaganda.
I get an incredible sense of deja vu all over again looking at Mitre’s list of top 25 exploits for 2025.
The top 4 are all very, very old. I myself demonstrated #4 when I taught a computer security class (with corporate IT Security present) back in 1994. That’s three decades ago.
And what’s with numbers 11 and 14? One of the classic papers on software security is Smashing The Stack For Fun And Profit – from 1996.
Numbers 3, 6, and 22 are web server vulnerabilities that are over 20 years old, and I’ve posted about them before.
17, 19, and 21 have been known since before I was in this industry. Call it the 1980s, although it’s likely older.
Russia decided to attack a Ukrainian position “manned” by a robot (OK, technically an unmanned, remote-operated combat vehicle rather than a real robot) with troops on horseback.
The assault went every bit as well as you would expect.
“Ukraine just completed an operation where a ground drone held a position for weeks, implementing innovative technologies for full frontline rotations aimed at replacing infantry. Russia, on the other hand, has introduced an outdated tactic and reintroduced cavalry, with soldiers riding horses to attack Ukrainians over open fields.”
“This contrast was laid bare as Ukraine’s Third Army Corps continued scaling robotic warfare, demonstrating that ground drones are not only for assaults but can also hold defensive lines for extended periods. One striking example came when a DevDroid ground robot was equipped with a 12.7 mm Browning M2 machine gun.” That’s .50 BMG in Freedom Units, AKA “Ma Deuce.”
“For 45 consecutive days, the robot held a frontline position instead of infantry, suppressing enemy movement and repelling assaults without a single Ukrainian casualty. Operated remotely from cover and equipped with thermal vision, the system detected Russian movements in complete darkness, turning night assaults into one-sided engagements where attackers stood no chance.”
“Such operations are sustained by an efficient, decentralized system, with Ukrainian drones remotely controlled from bunkers or armored vehicles and operating in close coordination with aerial drones that scout, jam, and strike targets. With operators positioned behind the contact line and maintenance handled in small frontline workshops embedded within brigades, where technicians repair tracks, sensors, and electronics within hours using mobile tools and 3D-printed components. From there, moving into positions where Russians were detected, using relays from air drones to extend operational range, the ground drones would then return just for a swift swap of batteries, together with the ammo to achieve quick turnaround times and ensure constant defense of the sector.”
“While Ukraine is moving forward technologically, Russia is moving backward. On the Pokrovsk front, where Moscow has concentrated the highest number of soldiers and some of its most capable units, Ukrainian soldiers from the 92nd Separate Assault Brigade documented Russian troops advancing on horseback. The first time they were spotted, the Ukrainian operators had no idea what to do and had no choice but to unfortunately hit both the rider and the horse.”
Poor horsies.
“However, immediately afterwards, Ukrainian operators devised and shared a plan that was soon realized, when they deliberately frightened the horses with flybys, causing them to bolt and throw their riders, before neutralizing the dismounted soldiers while sparing the animals. More footage confirms that Russian forces are increasingly using horses in assaults, a tactic unseen on European battlefields for more than a century.” Reporting from Ukraine is mistaken here. Polish cavalry mounted a charge against German infantry at Krojanty in September of 1939, a mere 87 years ago. (However, despite the myth, Polish cavalry did not attack German tanks.)
“This return of cavalry is not symbolic but driven by necessity, as Russian losses in vehicles and armored transport have been so severe that even elite units are forced to rely on animals to move troops and supplies; yet against drones equipped with thermal sensors and precision munitions, the clash is brutally uneven, and the Russian command appears willing to repeat these futile attacks regardless of the cost.”
“The contrast between the two armies could not be clearer, with Ukraine using drones to solve its manpower challenge by deliberately building a force where technology absorbs risk and preserves lives, as shown by the recruitment of 10,000 new drone operators in less than a month under Magyar’s leadership, while Russia lacks any real way to compensate for its losses and instead falls back on attrition, improvisation, and tactics pulled from the past.”
There’s still a small role for horses in warfare in places where vehicles can’t go (such as Afghanistan, where U.S. special forces employed horses in the mountainous terrain). Ukraine’s notoriously flat and muddy terrain would seem ill-suited for beasts.
Happy New Year! The Somali welfare fraud scandal just grows and grows, Ukraine hits more Russian oil refineries, Iran revolts against the Mullahs, and Austin steels itself for an .0825% budget cut.
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Here’s the original Nick Shirley video exposing child care fraud in Minnesota:
🚨 Here is the full 42 minutes of my crew and I exposing Minnesota fraud, this might be my most important work yet. We uncovered over $110,000,000 in ONE day. Like it and share it around like wildfire! Its time to hold these corrupt politicians and fraudsters accountable
A 42-minute bombshell video by journalist Nick Shirley and a local private investigator documents an on-the-ground investigation in Minneapolis that alleges massive, ongoing fraud in government-funded social services. The main focus is on Somali-owned businesses in child daycare, adult/autism care, home healthcare, and non-emergency medical transportation programs that draw from the taxpayer-funded Child Care Assistance Program.
Shirley claims his team uncovered more than $110 million in questionable payments to Somali-owned businesses on just the first day of their investigation, as part of a broader welfare fraud scandal totaling upwards of $9 billion.
Shirley and the investigator visited several childcare facilities that had no visible children, toys, or activities during peak hours. Staff could not answer basic questions about rates or licenses. Both were denied entry to the reception areas of these facilities:
Quality Learing Center: Licensed for 99 children; received $4 million over two years. Sign misspells “learning” as “learing”; no children visible, doors locked, no playground.
Future Leaders Early Learning Center: Licensed for 90 children; received $6.67 million over two years. Facility empty; staff evasive when asked about child numbers.
Mako Child Care and Mini Child Care Center (combined): Licensed for 120 children; received $1.3M (2020), $987K (2021), $714K (2022), $1.6M (2025). No children observed.
ABC Learning Center: Licensed for 40 children; nearly $3 million over three years. Blacked-out windows, no activity.
Sweet Angel Child Care: Licensed for 74 children; $1.26 million in 2025 alone.
Millions of taxpayer dollars went to one daycare company that could not even spell “learning” correctly…
Agents with Homeland Security Investigations, the primary investigative arm of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, are on the ground in Minneapolis Monday morning, conducting what DHS Secretary Kristi Noem described as a “massive investigation into childcare and other widespread fraud.”
Snip.
While allegations of Somali-linked welfare fraud in left-wing-controlled Minnesota have been known for years, the timing of Nick Shirley’s bombshell investigation suggests the federal government needed positive sentiment in the news cycle to begin the action phase on the ground. That’s usually how these types of operations work.
* * *
A viral video that has topped 76 million views on X within 48 hours has significantly heightened public scrutiny of multiple Minneapolis daycare centers linked to Somali operators that received millions in state and federal funding despite showing minimal operational activity. The apparent mismatch between allocated taxpayer funds and observable services strengthens a recent report by Christopher F. Rufo, which alleges that Somali-linked fraud in the left-wing-controlled state may involve front companies potentially diverting taxpayer funds to at least one overseas terrorist network.
Update: And according to FBI Director Kash Patel, the agency will “continue to follow the money” in Minnesota, and their investigation is “ongoing.” (And why did it take Chris Rufo cracking the case before they took action?)
“To date, the FBI dismantled a $250 million fraud scheme that stole federal food aid meant for vulnerable children during COVID. The investigation exposed sham vendors, shell companies, and large-scale money laundering tied to the Feeding Our Future network,” Patel said on Sunday.
Meanwhile, the Democratic Party and its PR machine across left-wing corporate media outlets, including CBS, PBS, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NBC, 60 Minutes, The New York Times, and the Associated Press, have largely remained silent on citizen journalist Nick Shirley’s investigation.
And the “Quality Learing Center” has been shut down…
Moreover, it’s obvious that the fraudulent child care facilities were always fraudulent, and yet the checks kept coming.
Daycare centers with millions of dollars in government funding and no children inside, and neighbors who say they’ve never seen children going in or coming out. This is a slam dunk, and I couldn’t possibly love it any more.
He names the daycare centers he visits, so you can start to find out how much the State of Minnesota knows about the scam without getting off the couch. Daycare centers are licensed and inspected: government inspectors regularly show up with a clipboard and look around. So go look at the record of inspections for Quality Learning Center of Minneapolis, the one in the video with the misspelled sign over the door. The whole thing instantly becomes darkly funny, because there’s no way anyone has ever believed that this is a functioning daycare center running at anything near its declared and funded capacity of 99 children.
He then supplied a list of 29 code violations just from May of 2022. And there are lists of violations from 12 other visits.
This inspection implies that there have been some children on site at some point, possibly family, but the inspector couldn’t identify anyone in the building: “The program did not have a file for each child,” and, “The program did not have a file for each staff person.” No training, no equipment, no records. This place has never been a functioning daycare center. No one has ever believed that it was. But the government checks kept coming, and government inspectors kept coming around and playing make-believe.
Spending in Minnesota has risen 19% per person since 2019.
As government does more and spends more, government does less. Explosive budget growth leads to declining effectiveness and quality. Low-tax red states pave the roads. High-tax blue states slop cash around to friends. Progressive elected officials view the task of governance as a series of costumed performances.
They’re not trying to run anything. They intend to make faces for the camera and steer money to their friends, the end.
The “Nick Shirley Effect” has begun, with Muckraker founder Anthony Rubin on the ground in Columbus, Ohio, home to the second-largest Somali community in the U.S., investigating daycare centers. This development comes less than a day after Ohio attorney Mehek Cooke said federal investigators are examining allegations that elements within Ohio’s Somali community defrauded millions of dollars from the state’s Medicaid system.
“The first Somali-affiliated daycare facility that we knocked on after landing in Columbus, Ohio, today did not answer,” Rubin wrote on X, alongside a video showing the daycare center, Great Minds Learning Academy.
Rubin continued, “A neighbor across the street told us, ‘I’ve never seen anybody come out of the building or go into the building.'”
On Sunday, Breitbart News published an interview with Ohio attorney Mehek Cooke, who alleges that members of the Somali community in Ohio have defrauded millions of dollars from the state’s Medicaid program. She said that authorities at the highest levels are investigating “what is happening in Ohio.”
Since Ohio is a red state, at least there’s a chance that officials there will actually investigate the fraud…
“Could Democrat Tim Walz Face Criminal Charges Over Growing Somali Fraud Scandal in Minnesota?”
The growing social services scandal in Minnesota — now reckoned to amount to billions of dollars — raises the possibility that the state’s two term Democratic governor, Tim Walz, could face criminal jeopardy.
Congressman James Comer, who leads the House Oversight Committee, is widening his probe into the scandal, which is centered on Minnesota’s Somali community. This week he took to Fox News to declare that “The walls are caving in on Tim Walz,” who was Vice President Kamala Harris’s choice as a running mate in the 2024 election. They lost to President Trump.
While regular citizens are not usually required to report crimes, public officials like Mr. Walz are usually held to a higher standard. They are generally seen to have a fiduciary duty to protect state assets. Actively concealing a felony could amount to the crime of “misprision of felony” or, alternatively to obstruction of justice. A failure to report could —theoretically — even lead to a charge of conspiracy, with the silent party accused of being an accessory to a crime.
Mr. Walz has a national reputation due to his service as Ms. Harris’s running mate, and has become a lightning rod for criticism of how such staggering fraud could have gone unnoticed for years until two New York-based publications, the New York Post and City Journal, an outlet of the conservative Manhattan Institute, published investigations.
Earlier this month, Mr. Walz sought to deflect negative attention from the Somali community, telling reporters that society “should be holding a lot of white men accountable for the crimes that they have committed,” rather than focusing on one ethnic group. Mr. Walz has also said he is accountable, as the fraud occurred “on my watch.” He added that “I am accountable for this, and more importantly, I am the one that will fix it.”
Mr. Comer announced his intention to invite whistleblowers to testify under oath and subpoena banks that operate out of Minnesota. He added that “hopefully we’ll have some criminal referrals at the end of this investigation.” Once a criminal referral is issued by Congress, it is up to the Department of Justice — led by Attorney General Pam Bondi — to seek indictments, perhaps of the governor himself.
Snip.
Mr. Comer, in a statement last week, declared that “The House Oversight Committee is aggressively investigating widespread fraud in Minnesota’s social services programs and the failures of Governor Walz’s administration that allowed taxpayer funds to be funneled to terrorist networks responsible for the deaths of Americans.” The reference is to allegations that stolen money made its way to the coffers of Al-Shabaab, a Somali terrorist group.
Longtime critics of Minnesota’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party – what the state’s Democratic Party is known as — accuse Mr. Walz of looking the other way at misconduct in the Somali community since they wield significant political power as a voting bloc.
Snip.
Prosecutors claim that more than half of the $18 billion in taxpayer funding spent on 14 Medicaid programs in Minnesota since 2018 was stolen. More than 90 people have been charged, the vast majority of Somali ancestry. The lead federal prosecutor, John Thompson, said in a statement earlier this month that “What we see in Minnesota is not a handful of bad actors committing crimes. It is staggering industrial-scale fraud.”
The question, of course, is whether Walz is merely grossly incompetent, or an active participant in the fraud and the cover-up.
And why do Somalis keep getting away with all this fraud? Because Social Justice infected Democrat judges let them.
Meet three AWFL (Affluent, white, female, liberal) Minnesota judges who are making headlines for the most predictable reasons imaginable.
These ladies have recently dismissed cases against Somali fraudsters in Minnesota, even overturning jury verdicts, allowing the immigrants stealing millions from Americans and Minnesotans to walk free.
🚨 BREAKING: Multiple corrupt Minnesota judges are under fire for dismissing a FLURRY of recent Somali fraud cases
– Judge Sarah West: Abdifatah Yusuf – Judge Amber Brennan: Yusuf's wife Lul Ahmed – Judge Hilary Caligiuri: co-defendant Abdiweli Mohamud
Each of these judges found small, technical prosecutorial errors, resulting in the cases being tossed.
Snip.
Here’s local reporting in Minnesota on the case where Judge Sarah West tossed the jury verdict:
Jurors who were chosen for the case were shocked by West’s decision.
‘I am shocked,’ jury foreperson Ben Walfoort told KARE 11 News.
‘I’m shocked based off of all of the evidence that was presented to us and the obvious guilt that we saw based off of the said evidence.’
When the one case was tossed, these other lady judges decided to toss the related cases.
More Minnesota reporting:
… Judge West’s decision stems from a strict review standard for cases that involve mostly circumstantial evidence. A jury is not asked to consider that standard, but appeals courts do, and Young said in this case, Judge West based her decision on it …
Judges analyzing these cases look not just at proof beyond reasonable doubt but whether guilt is the ‘only reasonable hypothesis.’
‘In other words, if there is another reasonable explanation, that could be the reasonable doubt,’ Young said.
So Somali fraudsters haven’t been convicted because Democrat judges don’t want the fraudsters convicted.
In Iran, the people have launched massive protests against the theocratic government in the wake of the currency collapsing. “Protests come as the country deals with economic instability and declining living standards. Not to mention, citizens might just want to be a regular country instead of being the world’s terrorist state.”
In the videos, protesters chant anti-regime slogans and confront security forces in crowded streets.
Footage included scenes of screaming and apparent gunfire, with demonstrators throwing objects and shouting, ‘Death to the Dictator’ and ‘Proud Arakis, support, support.’
What proud Arakis might look like
Additional footage shared by MEK shows crowds chanting, ‘Death to Khamenei!’ and ‘Shame on you, shame on you!’ as anger appears to spread across the country, with a particular focus on bazaar-led protests in Tehran.
The four days of protest have left at least one Revolutionary Guard member dead and the country was at a “near standstill” for about a day due to the unrest. In the city of Fasa, protesters stormed the governor’s office, forcing the Revolutionary Guard to open fire on the insurrectionists. The military then flew helicopters over the city to intimidate the protesters.
Moreover, President Trump is threatening dire consequences if the regime starts killing protestors.
President Donald Trump warned early Friday that the U.S. would intervene if Iran started killing protesters.
Writing on Truth Social, the president said if Iran shoots and “violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue.”
“We are locked and loaded and ready to go,” Trump said.
Trump’s warning comes as demonstrations triggered by Iran’s deteriorating economy expand beyond the capital and raise concerns about a potential heavy-handed crackdown by security forces. At least seven people — including protesters and members of Iran’s security services — have been reported killed during clashes, according to international reporting.
(Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.) It’s possible that hostile regimes in Iran, Venezuela and Cuba could all be swept aside before the end of 2026.
Moscow suburb blacks out after Ukrainian drone strike on power sub-station.
Australia donated a number of M1A1 tanks to Ukraine, and they’ve already arrived and entered key fights.
Massachusetts: “When we said ‘life without parole’ we didn’t mean it.”
The Massachusetts Parole Board has granted parole to 39 individuals convicted of murder who were originally sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, following a landmark state Supreme Judicial Court decision that upended sentencing practices for a specific group of offenders.
Under the 2024 Commonwealth v. Mattis ruling, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court held that it is unconstitutional to impose life-without-parole sentences on people who were 18, 19 or 20 years old at the time of their offense. The court defined those in that age range as “emerging adults.”
If you’re old enough to vote, you should be old enough to hold accountable for murder.
As a result, individuals who previously had no opportunity for release were made eligible for parole hearings. In recent months, the Parole Board has processed dozens of cases under that framework, ultimately approving the release of 39 murder convicts while denying parole to a dozen others.
Murderers seem to be one of the social justice Democrats most respected constituencies.
Italian prosecutors said on Saturday they had arrested nine people on suspicion of financing Hamas through charities based in Italy, in an operation coordinated by anti-mafia and anti-terrorism units.
The suspects are accused of “belonging to and having financed” the Palestinian group – classified as a terrorist group by Israel, its top ally the U.S. and the European Union – prosecutors in the northern Italian city of Genoa said in a statement.
Those arrested allegedly diverted to Hamas-linked entities around 7 million euros ($8.2 million) raised over the last two years for ostensibly humanitarian purposes, prosecutors said. Police seized assets worth more than 8 million euros.
In another statement, police said officers had seized 1.08 million euros in cash found in the offices of a pro-Palestinian charity and in suspects’ homes, as well as material supportive of Hamas, Israel’s foe in the two-year Gaza war.
At this point it’s safer to just assume that every “Islamic charity” is funding terrorism.
Are you eating slave sushi? “Feds say Chinese brothers ran sushi slavery ring in Arizona that forced illegal aliens to work 7 days a week.” “Court documents allege Yung Lau, a naturalized U.S. citizen originally from China, along with two managers, including his brother, kept dozens of undocumented immigrants in four “stash houses” and forced them to work at restaurants seven days a week with no days off. The restaurants involved were Sakura Sushi in Gilbert, Mesa, and Phoenix and Akita Sushi in Scottsdale.”
Austin’s municipal government is poised to cut its social services budget by approximately $5.3 million.
According to a memo from City Manager T.C. Broadnax, the city plans to “reallocate” social services contracts from a series of city departments. Affected departments include economic development, homeless strategies and operations, Austin community court, and public health.
The $5.277 million in proposed reductions represents a .0825 percent decrease from the record-setting $6.3 billion budget the city council passed in August.
This curtailment follows the landslide defeat of Proposition Q last November. Had it passed, Proposition Q would have represented a record-setting tax increase.
The council had previously approved $95 million in emergency budget cuts following Prop Q’s defeat.
The reductions come as a coalition of citizen groups has launched a petition drive to amend the city charter, requiring an independent audit of municipal finances before any future tax increases. If successful, this petition drive would place the proposed charter amendment on the May 2026 ballot.
A .0825% decrease isn’t enough. All the social justice items in Austin’s budget need to be removed with a chainsaw.
And speaking of Austin, groundbreaking on a planned downtown condo hes been delayed until market conditions improve.
Part 2 of the Professor of Rock’s interview with Rick Beato.
Matt of Diesel Creek once again exposes his junk to the camera. If you ever thought you’ve just got too many projects going on, here’s the ultimate “hold my beer.”
For some reason, Vladimir Putin seems to think he can force NATO to back down from supporting Ukraine against his illegal war of territorial aggression by launching various provocations. Here’s a roundup of recent NATO country responses to Russia.
First up: Cappy Army on NATO beefing up it’s defensive line against Russia:
“NATO is racing to build a multi-billion dollar 2,000 mile long defensive line that stretches across the entire European continent.”
“There are several names for the new fortification depending on the section you’re standing at. In the Baltics, it’s officially known as the Eastern Flank Deterrence Line, which is a 500 mile long network of bunkers and fortified border zones.”
“The Eastern Flank Deterrence Line is not mainly physical barriers, because the distance is far too great. Instead, it’s a network of computer sensors to fill these physical gaps. It’s not designed to completely defeat a potential Russian conventional advance. It’s made to slow down and channel the enemy’s forces into these predetermined kill zones.”
“The Army and NATO’s focusing their efforts at the places deemed most vulnerable in the Baltics. Here they’re deploying a layered modular barrier system that runs 30 miles deep.” First they hit sensors lines, then get a dose of HIMARS and artillery, then drone swarms in the air and on the ground. “Estimates are these methods will have to kill or wound 70% of the attacking force to be successful.”
The length of the entire defensive line is roughly the length of the U.S.-Mexico border.
“It’s designed this way to cover large sections of land that may not already have trenches pre-plotted artillery and mortar kill zone are linked to a network of sensors and then anything that makes it past that runs into rows of landmines, then physical obstacles, including anti-vehicle ditches and rows of concrete dragons teeth. These are strategically placed at the high-speed avenues of approach that lead directly to the Baltic state capitals.”
“The second line of defensive positions in the network is over 600 bunkers of distributed firing positions, trenches, and roadblocks. Infantry and anti-tank javelin teams fight from here.”
“The European Deterrence Initiative in the United States requested $2.9 billion from America in 2025 to deter Russia. Poland’s portion of the defensive line will cost over $50 billion with much of that funding coming from the EU. And the Baltics and Finland are spending a combined billions of dollars more as well.”
“Similar to the Cold War doctrine, [Baltic forces are] a kind of tripwire force here. Troops stationed here jokingly refer to themselves as tactical speed bumps.” The idea is to buy time until reinforcements arrive.”
“In Estonia, there’s only 127 miles from the border with Russia to the capital city.”
“The defining issue along the defensive wall is manpower. The shortage of manpower is what has shaped all of the decisions for how this fortification is being built. The Estonian army has roughly 6,000 active soldiers with a NATO force of 2,000 UK and French troops also deployed here. And if we look across the whole Baltics, we see that there’s roughly 29,000 active duty soldiers total here. This does not fully take into account reserve forces or air power advantages, but it outlines the basic tactical problem.”
In Poland the defensive line continues under the name Eastern Shield. “This runs from the Kalinigrad enclave down along Belarus and towards Slovakia, which is another 500 miles.”
“Poland’s Eastern Shield has an entirely different strategy than the Baltics. They expect to absorb the first hit and then fight a long, protracted war on their own soil if they have to. The shield here does not have the benefit of being built around geographic obstacles like in the Baltics. This is why you see full-length anti-tank ditches and multi-mile long trench systems laid out in depth.”
“The scale of the project is gigantic, with 8,000 combat engineers working to lay 10,000 concrete dragon’s teeth and over 800 miles of layered anti- vehicle barriers backed up by massive amounts of artillery. Terrain denial is the focus on this stretch.”
“Manpower and mass is less of a problem on this section of the front, because in Poland there’s 280,000 well-trained and equipped active forces with an additional 10,000 American soldiers already stationed there before reinforcements arrive.”
“The defining piece of this part of the puzzle is the anti-air assets, with 48 Patriot air defense launchers provide a protective umbrella for forces massing here.”
“The logistics backbone is being built here. Poland would be the transit region into the Baltics and much of the large stockpile of fuel and ammo are positioned here because they have the space.”
NATO has a more difficult problem defending Poland than the Warsaw Pact did when Moscow called the shots. “Today’s NATO and EU is an alliance of sovereign states that must coordinate instead of obey. This makes rapid unified action more difficult.”
“The US Army themselves acknowledge Russia has the advantage in manpower and equipment on this front, and that Russia can choose the time and place of the attack.” I sincerely doubt Russia has the equipment or manpower advantage now that Vlad’s Big Adventure has run through Soviet-era tank stockpiles and slaughtered Russian manpower to gain tiny slivers of Ukrainian territory.
A history of static defenses snipped and Cold War defensive realities snipped.
NATO General Chris Donahue: “The massive momentum problem that Russia poses to us, we’ve developed the capability to make sure that we can stop that mass and momentum problem.”
In their panic over Ukraine slowly destroy both their Black Sea fleet and their shadow fleet, Russia has managed to piss Turkey off:
“After Russian forces increased their activity and provocations over [the Black Sea] and NATO country’s airspace, Turkey was the first to act and shot down Russian surveillance drones without warning.”
“As more accidents followed, the Russians are now at risk of facing the Turkish wrath, getting all their trade cut off outright without any strikes needed.”
A Russian drone with transponder equipment was found on the ground in a Romanian forest. “With a wingspan of roughly 2 meters, Romanian authorities assessed that the device had been used to monitor NATO facilities or track military aid deliveries to Ukraine.”
“Three separate Russian drones violated Turkish airspace, pushing the country closer to decisive action. The first incident occurred when a Russian drone entered Turkish airspace from the Black Sea. Turkish air defense reacted swiftly and F-16 fighter jets intercepted the target, ultimately shooting it down with an M9X sidewinder missile.”
“The second incident was even more alarming when a Russian Orlan reconnaissance drone crashed near the city of Izmit just 50 kilometers from Istanbul.”
“The third case involved debris from a Russian Merlin reconnaissance drone discovered in western Turkey. The Merlin can remain airborne for up to 10 hours flying at altitudes of up to 5 kilometers and carrying advanced opto-electronic sensors. Its presence again pointed to sustained intelligence gathering activity rather than an isolated malfunction.”
“If Ankara were to sight repeated Russian drone incursions as a security threat, it could even restrict civilian Russian shipping through the Bosphorus in retaliation. The consequences would be severe as such a move would devastate Russia’s Black Sea trade and challenged the 1936 Montreux Convention, guaranteeing free passage for merchant vessels.”
“Russian drone operations continue, Ankara appears willing not only to shut down the sky over the Black Sea, but also to potentially escalate further and close the boss for us, making it clear that spying on NATO members in the region will carry real and costly consequences.”
“Russia’s shadow fleet is coming under mounting pressure in the Baltic, as interceptions increase and European states move more aggressively against sanctioned vessels. However, now Russia is responding by placing Wagner mercenaries on board these ships, bringing one of its most violent forces directly into Nato-monitored waters.”
“The European Union has just released a new sanctions package targeting forty-one additional shadow fleet vessels, bringing the total to more than six hundred ships now barred from European-linked ports, insurance, and services. These ships are losing access to harbors, maintenance, and technical certification, which forces Moscow to rely on improvised routes that squeeze through increasingly narrow corridors.”
“Beyond oil, these vessels also move sensitive cargo linked to Russia’s war effort, which makes each interception far more consequential than a financial loss alone, and as enforcement tightens, the risk shifts from paperwork violations to direct seizure.”
This shift became visible when Swedish authorities detained the Russian cargo vessel Adler after it entered Swedish waters with unresolved documentation issues. The ship’s owner is sanctioned for transporting materials linked to Russia’s weapons production, and when Adler suffered engine trouble in Swedish waters, the crew could not produce clean documentation. Swedish authorities boarded immediately, as the detention came amid growing reports that Russia has begun placing Wagner mercenaries on board shadow fleet vessels, raising the stakes for any inspection or boarding operation, and signaling that European states are no longer intimidated by the possibility of armed Russians on these vessels.”
“According to Danish maritime pilots, once Wagner personnel are on board, they often restrict access to the bridge and interfere with communication between captains and port authorities, and push for routing that avoids areas where inspections are common.”
“For Moscow, Wagner functions as a last-line enforcement tool. Their role is to ensure that vessels keep moving even when legal and operational risks become unacceptable by normal commercial standards. Crews bullied, beaten, or threatened by the mercenaries may even quietly signal nearby NATO ships for help, or attempt to sabotage equipment to force an emergency stop in Western waters, with the Adler’s crew possibly sabotaging the engine before they reached a Russian port, and Wagners would come on board. On top of that, owners of leased ships may object to hosting armed Russian soldiers, whose presence massively increases legal liability and operational danger.”
The case of Adler matters because it highlights how the shadow fleet is being used not only for oil, but for moving weapons and military-linked cargo. Western officials assess that a substantial portion of Russia’s imported ammunition components, explosives precursors, and sanctioned industrial equipment now arrives by sea, precisely because land routes and air transport are more exposed to interception. If vessels like Adler are increasingly detained or disrupted, Russia does not just lose revenue but risks bottlenecks in the supply chains that feed its weapons production.”
NATO hasn’t been backing down in the face of repeated Russian provocations. Putin is playing an increasingly weak hand badly.
