More proof of widespread Biden Administration abuse and fraud uncovered, more news from the Iran war, the Trump Administration fights welfare fraud, LA displays both welfare and voting fraud, more lefty sorts stealing funds to feather their own nests, Muslim EPIC City development runs into more roadblocks, and some weird video game news.
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Thanks for everyone who contributed to the Pay For Buddy’s Vet Bill Fund. He’s already doing so much better that you can’t tell he was hurt, though some of that is probably the pain pills.
Newly released records in the Senate investigation into the weaponization of government raise questions about whether the FBI went on a fishing expedition targeting Trump advisors who were never charged with crimes and whether Special Counsel Jack Smith’s prior testimony to Congress was truthful.
The documents were made public by Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, before a Senate Judiciary Committee subcommittee hearing into alleged abuses by the Biden-era FBI and Justice Department in their investigations into then ex-president Donald Trump before and during the 2024 presidential election during its probe code-named “Arctic Frost.” Just the News previously reported that Biden’s FBI paid anti-Trump ‘Sedition Hunters’ as informants in the Arctic Frost probes.
“If Watergate taught us anything, it is that even a single abuse of power carried out by a handful of individuals can shake the foundations of our Republic,” said Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Tex., Chairman of the Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Federal Courts, Oversight, Agency Action, and Federal Rights.
“What we confront today, the Biden administration’s Arctic Frost scheme, is not a single act,” he continued in his opening remarks. “It is a modern Watergate trading a break-in at one office for a digital sweep into approximately 100,000 private communications, more than a dozen senators and 1000s of individuals lives.”
Cruz said that ultimately, “just like Watergate,” the judges, FBI and Justice Department officials involved should be “investigated, tried, impeached, and brought to justice.”
The scope of Smith’s probe, which centered on Trump’s challenge to the 2020 election results and the events of January 6, 2021, was truly expansive. Grassley previously released records showing that Smith’s office issued nearly 200 subpoenas in his sweeping Arctic Frost-linked case, secretly seeking records on more than 400 Republican personalities and groups. This included more than 160 Republicans–many closely connected to Trump.
The Arctic Frost was one of four separate probes that targeted Trump and his allies stretching from summer 2016 to January 2025. The other probes were code-named Crossfire Hurricane, Round River, and Plasmic Echo, Just the News reported earlier this month.
As FBI Director, Patel has personally led the effort to review those probes, uncovering evidence of a far-reaching dragnet that in some cases may have been predicated on false, misleading or uncorroborated justifications, officials previously told Just the News.
The newly-disclosed records show that the FBI ordered two sweeping subpoenas of FBI Director Kash Patel’s phone records, while he was a private citizen in Trump’s orbit. Each subpoena covered an approximately two-year time frame.
The FBI’s requests for information included demands for highly personal data of Patel’s, including Patel’s addresses (“mailing addresses, residential addresses, business addresses, and e-mail addresses”), a “call detail record” which lists inbound and outbound calls, text messages and voicemail messages, as well as sources of payment for the phone service, including credit card and bank account numbers. The FBI also demanded expansive internet session data including exact IP addresses, the document shows.
The FBI also sought–and was granted–non-disclosure orders (NDOs) from federal judges, shielding the existence of the subpoenas from Patel and his lawyers on the grounds that revealing them could result in his “flight from prosecution, destruction of or tampering with evidence, intimidation of potential witnesses and serious jeopardy to the investigation.”
Susie Wiles, Donald Trump’s then campaign manager and future chief of staff, was also targeted in the probe. The Biden-era FBI reportedly even went so far as to record a private phone call between Wiles and her lawyer in 2023 while she was actively managing the campaign of President Joe Biden’s chief political rival, according to Reuters.
U.S. intelligence intercepted Ukrainian government communications discussing a plot to route hundreds of millions of American tax dollars earmarked for clean energy in the war-torn country and move them to the United States to enrich then-President Joe Biden’s 2024 re-election campaign and the Democratic National Committee, according to a declassified intelligence report summarizing the intercepts that was obtained by Just the News….
‘The Ukrainian Government and unspecified U.S. Government personnel, through USAID in Kyiv, reportedly developed a plan that would provide hundreds of millions of US taxpayer dollars to fund an infrastructure project for Ukraine that would be used as a cover to send approximately 90% of funds allocated to the DNC to fund Joe Biden’s reelection campaign,’ the declassified summary of the intercepts stated.
Every American involved in the scheme should be prosecuted. Still doesn’t justify taking Russia’s side in their illegal war of territorial aggression.
Long overdue: “Trump Administration Launches Whole-of-Government Effort to Fight Welfare Fraud.”
Vice President JD Vance and Federal Trade Chairman Andrew Ferguson convened members of the administration’s newly created anti-fraud task force on Friday to lay out the administration’s hopes for rooting out fraud in public programs across the country.
Established by President Trump via executive order earlier this month, the task force includes newly confirmed fraud-focused Assistant Attorney General Colin McDonald and spans multiple government agencies tasked with implementing new fraud detection and reporting protocols, investigating Biden-era policies regarding fraud prevention, proposing new legislative and regulatory tools to combat fraud, and prosecuting illegal behavior when necessary to recover as much in improperly obtained funds as possible.
According to a task force memo authored by Vance and Ferguson and shared with National Review, the White House will focus primarily on high-spend, low-verification programs that “pay out large sums of money with low confidence or limited information about the ultimate recipients and uses of those funds.” Key programs that fall into this category include benefits administered through Medicare, Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and Small Business Administration loans.
The task force divides fraud into four main categories, according to the memo. The first category is so-called “ghost” billing where there is no real beneficiary and no real service provided, a prime example being a fake business that applied for Paycheck Protection Program relief during the Covid-19 pandemic. The second category are low-quality services provided to real beneficiaries, such as substandard medical care provided to elderly patients at nursing homes or memory-care facilities.
The third category is “upcoding” or “overbilling,” where fraudsters hand patients manipulated bills. “When hospitals commit fraud, for example, there are often real patients receiving necessary hospitalizations but with exaggerated diagnoses purporting to justify more expensive services than the patient actually needed or received,” the memo reads.
And the final category outlined by the task force is “necessity” fraud, where a real service is provided to an unqualified beneficiary. “Medicare fraud, for example, often involves real doctors giving real people treatments they don’t need, such as a person who can walk getting a wheelchair or a patient getting a lab test they don’t need,” the memo adds.
During a brief news conference on Friday, the vice president spotlighted egregious practices by autism daycare programs in Minnesota, where earlier this month one defendant, a Somali man named Abdinajib Yussuf, pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud in a $6 million Medicaid reimbursement scheme.
“The first tragedy is that you have people who pay into the federal government, who pay into the IRS, who pay their taxes, expecting that those taxes will go to help their fellow citizens, and it’s not going to. It’s going to help fraudsters,” Vance said in remarks to the press before leading a closed-door strategy meeting with cabinet members and other senior administration officials working on the effort.
And the more important tragedy is that you have families who need these services who are unable to get them because people are getting rich off of fraud schemes, instead of making sure that autistic children and their families get access to these resources,” he added.
The task force has already cracked down on blue states and cities like Los Angeles, where the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid recently suspended 70 home-health providers and hospice centers identified as high-risk fraudulent medical programs.
Another target is also Minnesota, where federally funded nutrition-assistance fraud and state-agency-related mismanagement ran rampant during Democratic Governor Tim Walz’s tenure while somehow failing to disqualify him from Vice President Kamala Harris’s running-mate shortlist. The White House paused $259 million in federal Medicaid payments to Minnesota earlier this month as part of the administration’s response to the state’s baffling degree of fraud.
Over the coming months, task force members are also looking to highlight lax verification protocols at the state level that amplify this problem, particularly in states run by Democrats.
“I think that most citizens probably assume that there’s some verification process that takes place for the receipt of most federal benefits,” said White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller. “The reality is that there is not. This is particularly true in blue states — willfully true in blue states in which all of these programs are operating entirely on the honor system, no verification takes place before individuals are enrolled in or receive these benefits.”
“Vance’s Anti-Fraud Task Force Suspends 70 Hospices in Los Angeles. The Senate also confirmed federal prosecutor Colin McDonald to lead the DOJ’s anti-fraud division.”
Yesterday the Telegraph told us about a “sinister new power” pulling the strings in Iran: “Ahmad Vahidi is the key cog in the regime’s chain of command.”
Unlike [Mohammad Bagher] Ghalibaf, Vahidi has remained in the shadows since the war. This is not without reason: our analysis suggests he is likely to be operating as the key cog in the regime’s chain of command and his survival is essential to its continuity. Long before the war, Ali Khamenei had entrusted Vahidi to draw up plans to further militarise the regime. If he outlasts this conflict and the regime survives, he will finally be able to implement this vision – a design that will produce a far more radical and extremist Islamic Republic.
Vahidi has unmatched experience and influence across the regime’s military, intelligence, and bureaucracy. His career began in the 1980s in the IRGC’s Intelligence Bureau, made up of the regime’s most ideologically loyal operatives. As the IRGC’s deputy for intelligence, he was hand-picked to join a secretive cohort to accompany Khamenei to visit North Korea – a trip designed to acquire missile and nuclear technology.
During the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988), Vahidi was also one of the original members of the Ramadan Headquarters, a unit within the IRGC created to form Islamist terrorist groups globally and overseen by Khamenei.
Upon assuming the supreme leadership in 1989, Khamenei created the notorious Quds Force – the IRGC’s extraterritorial terror branch – and appointed Vahidi as its first commander. It was a testament to his loyalty. Vahidi demonstrated in that role that his vision to export terrorism was far more global than his notorious successor Qasem Soleimani.
Under Vahidi’s command, the IRGC orchestrated the bombing of a Jewish cultural centre in Argentina in 1994, the 1996 Khobar Towers attack in Saudi Arabia, and secretly dispatched operatives to Europe to train Islamist Mujahideen – including members of al-Qaeda – during the Bosnian war. This résumé would earn him a spot on Interpol’s wanted list in 2007.
Today:
🚨🇮🇷BREAKING: General Ahmad Vahidi who was appointed as commander-in-chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) on March 1, 2026, reporadaly has been ELIMINATED in U. S. & Israel strikes. pic.twitter.com/7wuxWVRV6X
US signals to allies no ground invasion coming, with thousands of troops still en route: Iran denies requesting Donald Trump’s 10-day halt; Israel attacks steel & industrial sites. Also, Khondab Heavy Water Research Reactor, part of the Arak Nuclear Complex, targeted. Yellow Cake factory in Yazd province hit.
Escalation on all fronts: IRGC HQ targeted by US-Israsel; Iran signals expansion by naming UAE targets, hitting Kuwait ports and sending drones on Riyadh. Iran newly warning it will hit Gulf industry.
Rubio tells G7 foreign ministers war will continue for another 2-4 weeks.
Israel doubles down amid reports of manpower strain: IDF chief warns of manpower pressure even as Defense Minister Katz vows to “intensify and expand” strikes.
Risk rises that Iran is holding back more advanced missiles for a prolonged war: WSJ writes “The US and Israel are pounding Iran’s missile-launching sites… But Tehran’s missiles keep flying.”
The last seems tinged with ZeroHedge’s usual Iran war pessimism. Ever fewer missiles have been flying as time goes on, and the places they’re manufactured have been hammered.
“Iranian Atomic Energy Organization: US and Israeli airstrikes target uranium processing plant.” Good. Bomb every nuclear-related facility twice-over, then make the rubble bounce.
A special House Ethics Committee found Representative Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick guilty of 25 total ethics violations, after a three-year investigation into allegations that the Florida Democrat stole millions in federal relief funds.
Following a seven-hour televised trial, members deliberated through the night before voting, finding Cherfilus-McCormick guilty of almost all the charges against her — 25 of the 27.
“I’m as pure as the driven snow!” denials snipped.
In November, a federal grand jury indicted Cherfilus-McCormick, alleging she stole $5 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Cherfilus-McCormick’s family operates a health care company, Trinity Healthcare Services, and received FEMA funds for a Covid vaccination contract.
According to the DOJ, the $5 million payment was an overpayment, and the congresswoman and her brother never paid back the funds to the government. Rather, the pair funneled the funds through various accounts and used the money to back Cherfilus-McCormick’s 2022 special election campaign, which she ultimately won.
Snip.
Cherfilus-McCormick and her siblings “funneled more than $500,000 originating from Trinity into various outside organizations that made expenditures on behalf of the campaign,” Sydney Bellwoar, the committee’s lawyer, said.
Further, Bellwoar said “the most egregious example” was when Cherfilus-McCormick received $2 million directly from Trinity Health into her campaign in July 2021, to forge the appearance of a robust campaign infrastructure.
Seize everything she owns to pay back and sentence her to extended prison time.
Sen Rand Paul offers up a simple, elegant solution that Democrats will fight tooth and claw against:
DataRepublican says that John Thune is trying to pull a sneaky maneuver to kill the SAVE Act.
Hello Senator Thune,
Let’s expose what you’re really doing with “reconciliation.”
You announced it yesterday, eleven months after the House passed the SAVE America Act. You’re not trying to pass this bill. You’re trying to kill it in a way you can blame on process.
Here’s how we know:
Reconciliation requires the Senate parliamentarian to rule that provisions are “budgetary.” Citizenship verification is not budgetary. Photo ID mandates are not budgetary. The parliamentarian will gut the bill. Then you’ll shrug and say “we tried.” We see through you.
Meanwhile, you WON’T use the tools that actually work:
Rule XIX limits each senator to two speeches per legislative day. Keep the Senate in continuous session, file cloture daily, and the filibuster exhausts in ~12-20 days. You dismissed it as “complicated.” Because if you tried and succeeded, you’d have to actually pass the bill.
Harry Reid nuked the filibuster in 2013 when he wanted results.
Mitch McConnell changed Senate rules THREE times and canceled the August recess.
Chuck Schumer used reconciliation within months on a 50-50 Senate.
You have 53 seats. You’ve changed nothing, canceled nothing, and waited eleven months.
Now let’s talk donors:
• Goldman Sachs: $150K to you – top H-1B user
• Google: $75K – lobbies against E-Verify
• Meta: $72.5K – Zuckerberg’s FWD[.]us pushes mass immigration
• Wells Fargo: $90K – banks undocumented immigrants
Same corporations sponsor Punchbowl News, where you sit for “Fly Out Days” which nobody watches except Congress staffers and K Street lobbyists who pays premium bucks for legislative intelligence. Their reporter then telegraphs to the audience the SAVE Act “will ultimately fail.”
Corporate money flows to you AND to the outlet that frames your inaction as inevitable.
We see the loop.
You called grassroots anger a “paid influencer ecosystem.” YOU are the paid influencer. You take the wrong side of a 80% issue because you are indistinguishable from a K Street mouthpiece, and an ineffective one to boot who won’t bend the rules to get anything passed.
What we want:
1. Force a real talking filibuster.
2. Stop hiding behind process.
3. Pass the SAVE America Act.
YOU will become the reason that we will have our butts kicked in midterms. Not Candace Owens, not Nick Fuentes, not anyone else. You and you alone, and all because you want to make the 200 or so viewers of Punchbowl Fly Out Days happy. You’re living in a K Street information bubble, addicted to the comforts and praises of lobbyists masquerading as journalists. You mistake the steak and martini dinners you get invited to as your own constituents.
You are not “moderate.” The SAVE America Act has 98% support among Republicans. Name one other thing that has 98% support. You are an extreme minority who prides himself on being a calm leader, when in reality you are well in the running for the most ineffective Majority leader of all time.
Prove me wrong. Do the bare modicum of effort. Not symbolic. Actual effort. Cancel the recess. Get SAVE America Act passed.
Paid activists in Los Angeles, California, have been caught on hidden camera paying homeless people on skid row to forge signatures of registered voters on ballot initiatives.
O’Keefe Media Group (OMG) released part Two of its undercover investigation into the Democrats’ blatant election fraud operation in L.A. on Tuesday.
California’s Republican gubernatorial frontrunner Steve Hilton commented on X: “They paid homeless people cash and drugs on Skid Row to forge your signature. Your name. Your vote. Stolen by a crackhead with a clipboard — while Gavin Newsom looked the other way.”
Hilton added: “This isn’t a conspiracy theory. It’s on tape. And not one Democrat is outraged. That’s because THEY DID IT ON PURPOSE.”
Part One showed petitioners offering cash to homeless people and drug addicts for their signatures. The shocking new video shows the activists, armed with printed lists of voter names and addresses, taking the scheme to another level.
“Fraudulent petitioners on Skid Row are now paying the homeless people to forge names, forge addresses and forge signatures of registered voters,” O’Keefe says at the beginning of Part Two.
Rather than registering the Skid Row denizens to vote, activists gave them $2–$3 in cash to commit forgery and election fraud in what OMG called “a coordinated system.”
O’Keefe stated that the operation was observed on nearly every street corner in downtown Los Angeles.
“The scheme appeared to be present in whatever direction we walked,” he noted.
The goal of the operation, according to OMG, is to “ensure the information matches official records so he signature passes verification.”
The workers handed out post-it notes with the names of a single voter written on them to each of the homeless dupes.
Lots of “activists” need to go to prison.
“‘Not a done deal‘: Democrats start to sweat over Virginia’s redistricting referendum. The unique nature of the April special election and the state’s recent redistricting history have presented challenges for Democrats, even as they hold a financial edge in the race.” “Some supporters of the Virginia referendum acknowledge the challenge of convincing voters to back a gerrymandered map when Democrats, who several years ago backed the formation of the state’s bipartisan redistricting commission, have criticized Republicans for similar moves.” Ya think? (Hat tip: Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit.)
Democrats have been hyping their wins in very specialized races. And the Left has been declaring that it’s going to finish devouring and digesting the Democrats.
On paper, it should be looking good. The public is dissatisfied. The Left’s program of socialism disguised as economic populism and antisemitism disguised as anti-Zionism should be selling. Except the Illinois wipeout suggests it’s not.
Again, on paper Obamaville, where the dead vote and the unions run everything, should have been a good choice. Plenty of leftists have been elected here. And the Democrat primaries in many urban areas are virtually owned by the Left.
But 6 potential Squaddies, including two Muslim candidates, lost Democrat congressional primary races.
The media and the Left (but I repeat myself) are blaming AIPAC and the newly combative pro-Israel lobby, which sees itself being NRA’d out of the Democrats, is happy to take credit, but its results were mostly mixed.
So what does explain the Left taking a beating in primaries it should have been able to dominate?
Despite all the anti-ICE hysteria, radicalism fatigue may be setting in. Enough Democrat primary voters showed no interest in voting for the ‘podcast class’, the Bernie Brats, Hamas fan girls and the rest of the radicals.
The Left was hoping that Mamdani’s victory was a bellwether, but just like Obama’s win what it really showed was that a smooth radical isn’t supposed to sound like one. Democrats didn’t want. The Bernie people, the Justice Dems and that ilk lost badly in Illinois because maybe radicalism isn’t what the Democrat voter wants right now.
They also hit the Ust-Luga oil terminal in the same general area, and it was still burning 24 hours later. They also hit two oil tankers in the same strike.
But that’s not all! They hit the same Ust-Luga oil terminal again less than a day later. “Russia has lost 40% of its oil export capacity.”
One of Russia’s newest warships, a Project 23550 icebreaker, is now damaged and listing heavily after drone strike.
“U. North Texas Cutting up to 70 Programs in Effort to Trim Deficit” including “women’s and gender studies, LGBTQ studies, Mexican American studies, Africana studies, Asian studies as well as dance, geology and special education.” Most of those sound like they should be killed, and the rest are unnecessary luxuries if no one is taking them.
Attorney General Ken Paxton has obtained a court order halting actions by an EPIC City-linked municipal utility district.
The case centers on allegations that the Double R Municipal Utility District No. 2A has been used to advance a controversial development project organized by the East Plano Islamic Center by skirting state oversight and standard MUD-creation procedures. The project, originally known as EPIC City, has been rebranded as the Meadow.
Judge Christine Nowak’s order blocks the district and its board from taking further steps to support the development while the litigation continues.
The state’s lawsuit focuses on a 2025 special meeting where the Double R MUD board allegedly resigned en masse, installed new directors at a remote roadside location identified only by GPS coordinates, and then quickly voted to annex more than 400 acres tied to the EPIC project.
State lawyers say that maneuver effectively transformed the MUD into a vehicle for EPIC City’s backers, allowing them to expand taxing authority and infrastructure support without going through the process of forming a new district.
After the annexation, regulators requested documents to confirm that the new board members met legal requirements to hold public office and levy taxes on residents inside the district.
According to the suit, records submitted by Double R MUD showed the individuals did not meet statutory qualifications—a finding the attorney general’s office said casts doubt on every action the board took, including the EPIC City annexation.
The state is asking the court to remove the disputed board members, unwind the 402.5-acre annexation tied to EPIC City, and restore what Paxton describes as lawful governance of the utility district.
More: “Hunt County Rejects Plans for Controversial EPIC City. Commissioners disapproved the Islamic development based on deficiencies in the plat application.”
“Monica Cannon-Grant, a Black Lives Matter activist who was named ‘Bostonian of the Year’ by the Boston Globe, was ordered to pay back every dime she stole from her nonprofit, unemployment benefits, and other fraudulent practices, amounting to almost $225,000. U.S. District Court Judge Angel Kelley sentenced Cannon-Grant to four years’ probation, six months of home detention, and 100 hours of community service. Federal prosecutors, however, recommended 18 months in prison. Although Cannon-Grant dodged time behind bars, she must return all of the money she managed to bilk from her nonprofit.” Kelley was appointed by Biden, and I bet if Cannon-Grant hadn’t been a leftwing political activist, she would have received prison time.
Important tip: “Ultra-pure copper” bought from China shouldn’t stick to a magnet. Plus, make sure the Chinese companies you’re buying materials from actually exists…
Just hours after Irish rappers Kneecap blasted the amps and turned a Havana concert into a rave for Code Pink activists chanting anti-blockade slogans, reports claim local hospital went dark and ventilator patients died.
Meanwhile, members of the communist flotilla stayed in 5-star hotels with the lights blazing and AC running.
No one cashes in on capitalism faster than the clowns preaching communism.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York has charged associates of an unidentified U.S. server maker with illegally diverting billions of dollars in Nvidia-powered servers to China.
The U.S. government has been trying to figure out how high-powered chips have reached China without authorization, as American artificial intelligence companies such as Anthropic and OpenAI face challenges from DeepSeek and other Chinese rivals.
In an indictment unsealed Thursday, the U.S. government alleged that Yih-Shyan “Wally” Liaw, Ruei-Tsan “Steven” Chang and Ting-Wei “Willy” Sun worked together to violate the Export Control Reform Act.
The server company’s products containing Nvidia chips “are subject to strict U.S. export controls barring their sale to China without a license,” the plaintiff said in the indictment. “Those controls are in place to protect U.S. national security and foreign policy interests, among other things.”
Artificial intelligence may well be the most important technological development of the coming decade-and that is exactly why the current capital surge around it warrants skepticism. History is littered with transformative innovations that were nonetheless disastrously overbuilt and mispriced in their early phases. Austrian Business Cycle Theory was never a children’s story in which every boom ends with clowns, ashes, and worthless machinery; its real claim is subtler and nastier. When the price of time is falsified-when interest rates are pushed below their natural rate-often proxied, however imperfectly, by modern estimates of the neutral rate-entrepreneurs are encouraged to undertake projects that are more roundabout, more capital-intensive, and more time-sensitive than underlying saving and final demand can actually support. The neutral rate is a policy construct; the natural rate is an economic reality. Some of those projects may still embody genuine innovation.
The problem is not that AI must be fake; it is that a very real technological advance can be financed, priced, and physically built in ways that are wildly uneconomic.
That distinction matters because AI is about as roundabout as modern capitalism gets. This is not a boom in apps and slogans alone; it is a boom in data centers, power, cooling, transformers, specialized semiconductors, fiber, land, and the commodities and construction needed to house and feed all of it. Reuters reports that Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft are expected to spend more than $630 billion combined on AI-related infrastructure in 2026, up sharply from 2025, while separate Reuters reporting says Amazon alone projects roughly $200 billion of 2026 capex. Analysts also expect the hyperscalers’ debt issuance to keep climbing, with BofA lifting its 2026 forecast to $175 billion after Amazon’s jumbo deal and Reuters noting that these firms issued $121 billion in bonds in 2025 versus a 2020–2024 annual average of just $28 billion. In Austrian terms, this is not consumption drunkenness; it is higher-order production marching deep into the structure of capital with a flamethrower and an Excel model.
Snip.
The most charitable case is that AI is a genuine general-purpose technology whose economics are merely messy in the early innings. OpenAI says ChatGPT had more than 900 million weekly users as of late February, and Bloomberg reports OpenAI’s annualized revenue topped $20 billion in 2025 while Anthropic is tracking near that level as well. There are also signs of real productivity gains in narrow use cases, especially coding and selected support tasks. But the bill is arriving much faster than the profits: Bain estimated the industry would need roughly $2 trillion in annual revenue by 2030 to support projected compute demand, yet expected a gap of about $800 billion. That is not a business model; that is a promissory note written in GPU ink.
The more worrying Austrian angle is not simply overvaluation in public equities, but miscoordination in the capital structure. If chips depreciate economically faster than accountants admit, if grid interconnections lag by years, if open models compress pricing power, and if customers love AI demos more than they love paying enterprise invoices, then the industry has a classic ABCT problem: complementary capital arrives in the wrong proportions and at the wrong times. And though not easily captured in formal models, technological history is clear: infrastructure-heavy systems rarely stay that way for long, and early capital often pays the price. The New York Fed warns that r-star is an estimate, not an oracle, but the larger point survives that caveat: if market rates were held too low relative to the economy’s true intertemporal balance, then the resulting investment pattern will look profitable only until bottlenecks, replacement cycles, and cost of capital reassert themselves. Bloomberg reports OpenAI has discussed infrastructure commitments above $1.4 trillion, while Anthropic has announced a $50 billion U.S. data-center push; meanwhile, the IEA has warned of grid-connection queues, transformer shortages, and permitting delays for the power build-out data centers require. A boom can survive many indignities, but not all of them at once.
So: does AI constitute malinvestment? The best answer is that AI almost certainly contains both real innovation and a large malinvestment component.
Barksdale Air Force Base (BAFB), a major U.S. strategic bomber installation in northwest Louisiana, has just experienced an unusually serious series of unauthorized drone incursions over its most sensitive areas.
More than a dozen unsanctioned drones repeatedly swarmed a US Air Force base that is home to a nuclear bomber fleet — and were able to resist efforts to bring them down via jamming technology, according to military officials.
The restricted airspace of Barksdale Air Force Base in Bossier City, Louisiana, was infiltrated by “multiple unauthorized drones” between March 9 and March 15, a base spokesperson told The Post.
The 22-acre installation located east of Shreveport, hosts a fleet of B-52 bombers which can carry out nuclear strikes with “worldwide precision,” according to the Air Force.
As an Air Force Global Strike Command base, Barksdale also plays a crucial role in the Air Force’s nuclear defense capabilities…
Military officials report that more than 12 to 15 unauthorized drones swarmed the base, which hosts the U.S. nuclear B-52 bomber fleet.
The drones resisted jamming efforts, with multiple waves detected.
Snip.
The briefing includes a determination that the drones were different than what the typical consumer could purchase off the shelf. They appeared to be custom built and required “advanced knowledge” of signal operations.
The analysts said “with high confidence” they expected unauthorized drones to continue to operate in and around Barksdale Air Force Base in the immediate future.
“The drone incursions at BAFB pose a significant threat to public safety and national security since they require the flight line to be shut down while also putting manned aircrafts already inflight in the area at risk,” the document said.
Maybe his hatred for the police will finally be his undoing. “Resignation Demands Mount for Travis County DA Garza over Prosecutorial Misconduct Allegations.”
Travis County District Attorney Jose Garza is facing calls for his resignation over accusations that he withheld evidence in prosecuting a police officer for actions taken during a 2020 Black Lives Matter protest in Austin.
“Jose Garza’s habitual misconduct and his lack of prosecutorial experience puts our entire community at risk,” said Austin Police Retired Officers Association (APROA) President Dennis Farris in a statement.
“Felony cases, when properly handled, present opportunities for the innocent to be absolved of serious allegations, for the guilty to be held accountable and for the residents of Travis County to have confidence in the judicial system. In order for these principles to be upheld, Travis County needs a new district attorney.”
Farris was responding to recent revelations about Garza’s prosecution of Austin police officer Chance Bretches.
In 2022, Garza charged Bretches with Aggravated Assault, two years after an anti-police demonstration spurred by the death of George Floyd. During the protest, Bretches fired a “less lethal” bean bag round, resulting in severe injury to a woman who said she was a volunteer providing medical assistance to protestors.
In 2024, Garza brought additional charges against Bretches for Aggravated Assault by a Public Servant, Deadly Conduct, and Assault.
Although prosecutors are required to provide the defense with exculpatory evidence in accordance with a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brady v. Maryland and Texas’ Michael Morton Act, Garza did not disclose alleged “secret” meetings in 2023 with city officials to discuss the possibility of charging the City of Austin.
Last week, attorney Doug O’Connell asked Travis County District Court Judge Karen Sage to dismiss the case on the grounds that Garza violated Bretches’ constitutional due process rights and violated the law by not disclosing the meetings or related communications. O’Connell also argued that Garza’s actions are part of a pattern of misconduct.
“This goes to the issue of why dismissing the case is the only solution, because how will the judge ever know whether they turned over all the evidence,” O’Connell told The Texan.
Courts previously sanctioned Garza for withholding evidence in the manslaughter prosecution of two Williamson County Sheriff’s deputies, and an investigator also accused the DA of hiding evidence in the trial of Daniel Perry.
Perry was convicted in 2023 of murdering Air Force veteran and Black Lives Matter protester Garrett Foster. Gov. Greg Abbott pardoned Perry in 2024.
In addition to APROA, the Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas (CLEAT) has also called for Garza’s resignation, and the incoming president of the nonprofit Central Texas Public Safety Commission, Jennifer Stevens, told CBS Austin that Garza’s prosecution of police officers instead of criminal defendants is contributing to division between the Travis County District Attorney’s Office (TCDAO) and law enforcement.
“There can be no worse violation of the oath taken by a district attorney than to intentionally deny a defendant a fair trial. It is a direct violation of their constitutional rights,” said CLEAT Executive Director Robert Leonard in a statement.
In December, a Texas appeals court overturned the conviction of Austin police officer Christopher Taylor, who had been prosecuted by Garza over the 2019 shooting death of Mauris DeSilva.
Abbott responded to the new allegations against Garza in a social media post.
“All of this will be taken into consideration when I have the final say on the fate of the police officer. This DA’s failure to prosecute murderers & repeatedly letting dangerous criminals go free, while prioritizing prosecuting police, will have consequences,” wrote Abbott.
The sooner Garza is gone, the sooner citizens can stop dying because he let criminal scumbags back on the street.
“Dallas and Williamson County GOPs to Return to Countywide Voting After Primary Election Day Confusion. At least 13,000 Dallas residents reportedly showed up to the wrong polling place on March 3.”
America’s most prolific serial killers now burns in hell. Kermit Gosnell dies in prison at 85.
A Philadelphia grand jury, in its investigation of Gosnell’s Women’s Medical Society abortion center, labeled it a ‘house of horrors’ and initially sought charges for hundreds of murders of babies born alive and then killed.
Charges were ultimately limited to seven murder counts ‘after pressure from senior political and law enforcement officials,’ according to accounts from those covering the case.
The facility functioned as a ‘pill mill by day and an ‘abortion mill’ by night,’ federal authorities noted….
Witnesses described shocking details: Baby A was large enough that employees took photos after the killing, with Gosnell joking the baby was ‘big enough to walk around with me or walk me to the bus stop.’
Other infants showed signs of life, including breathing and movement, before being killed.
Gosnell was also convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the 2009 death of 41-year-old patient Karnamaya Mongar, a Bhutanese refugee who died from an overdose of anesthesia during a botched abortion.
He faced more than 200 additional counts and was found guilty on most, including 21 felony counts of performing illegal abortions beyond Pennsylvania’s 24-week limit and violations of the state’s 24-hour informed-consent law.
Finally. “International Olympic Committee Bans Male Athletes from Women’s Sports.” Pretty soon the only place radical transsexism will still hold sway is among 2028 Democratic Presidential candidates…
The House Select Committee on Governmental Oversight will have over a dozen members, with state Rep. Cody Vasut (R-Angleton) serving as the chair and state Rep. Armando Walle (D-Houston) as co-chair.
The other representatives on it will be state Reps. Richard Hayes (R-Denton), Brooks Landgraf (R-Odessa), Mitch Little (R-Lewisville), AJ Louderback (R-Victoria), Christian Manuel (D-Beaumont), Eddie Morales (D-Eagle Pass), Richard Raymond (D-Laredo), Shelby Slawson (R-Stephenville), Carl Tepper (R-Lubbock), Ellen Troxclair (R-Lakeway, and Erin Zwiener (D-Driftwood).
“Meta to Pay $375 Million Penalty After Jury Finds Company Endangered Children in Landmark Case.”
A jury in New Mexico determined on Tuesday that Meta misled consumers about the safety of its platforms and put children in harm’s way by failing to protect them from sexual predators.
The jury ordered meta to pay a $375 million penalty, significantly lower than the $2.2 billion that New Mexico sought, based on the total number of violations and a $5,000 fine per violation. Meta was found to have violated New Mexico’s unfair-practices act
Adam Savage reorganizes his storage drawers. I’m not saying everyone should watch all 40 minutes of this, but if you have a workshop full of tiny components you have trouble organizing, you might find his method useful.
Tom Scott returns to YouTube after a two year absence. I’m not necessarily super excited for the particular shows he’s returning with (a tour through all of England’s counties, with something interesting in each), but I’ll probably dip into it because I liked his previous work, where he traveled around the world and explained interesting things.
Jobs are down, more Minnesota fraud uncovered, a bunch of military action outside the Persian Gulf, an Austin jihad shooter, Noem gets the Old Yeller treatment, Bill Clinton remains Bill Clinton, and Microsoft, amazingly, manages to get even worse.
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Also consider this your “Iran Strikes: Day 7” update with a smattering of news as well. There are reports that Kurdish forces have entered Iran from Iraq, but I’m not seeing sufficient evidence for that yet.
Interesting chart showing Iran has likely “blown its wad” on missiles and drones, as day by day fewer and fewer are being launched.
Update Numbers as of Mar. 6, 12.00 AM The numbers are rounded and compiled from various media reports, with a margin of error of ±10% 15% **Corrected previous Post there was a Mistake https://t.co/eDlVfc3nzApic.twitter.com/UiHAU0yNHe
The Supreme Court upheld the standard for reviewing asylum cases, keeping it in the hands of immigration agencies.
Yes, even the leftist justices agreed. 9-0.
“We granted certiorari to determine whether the Court of Appeals applied the appropriate standard of review under the INA [Immigration and Nationality Act],” wrote Justice Ketanji Brown-Jackson. “We conclude that the statute requires application of the substantial evidence standard to the agency’s conclusion that a given set of undisputed facts does not constitute persecution.”
Top officials in Minnesota were made aware of fraud concerns surrounding government assistance programs as early as 2019 but failed to take action as billions of dollars were stolen and warnings piled up.
Former Minnesota state officials testified to the House Oversight Committee that Governor Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison were first informed that the state’s social services programs had been compromised by widespread fraud in 2019 and 2020, according to a new report from the committee.
“Testimony obtained by the Committee reveals that Governor Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison were aware of widespread fraud in social service programs, lied about their knowledge of the fraud, and retaliated against employees who dared to raise concerns. Instead of protecting vulnerable Americans, they handed over billions in taxpayer dollars to fraudsters and threw their own state employees under the bus,” said House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer (R., Ky.).
Several different entities and state-level programs are implicated in Minnesota’s fraud scandal. The most prominent program is Feeding Our Future, which fraudsters targeted during the Covid era to steal $300 million from the Minnesota Department of Education that had been designated to provide food to poor children. Feeding Our Future is now dissolved and dozens of defendants have been convicted in connection with the scheme since 2022.
According to the committee report, Minnesota Department of Education officials first received allegations of fraud against Feeding Our Future from the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 2019. The USDA alleged Feeding Our Future was created with forged signatures and misled sponsored food distribution sites about certain federal requirements. Minnesota officials dismissed the allegations at the time. By April 2020, Walz and Ellison’s offices were briefed about the Minnesota Department of Education’s concerns regarding Feeding Our Future, Assistant Commissioner Daron Korte testified to the committee. State officials contacted the USDA about Feeding Our Future in late 2020, but the agency’s inspector general did not act, a failure that emboldened the scammers at Feeding Our Future.
The Oversight Committee report asserts that Minnesota officials could have suspended payments to Feeding Our Future but chose not to because of potential litigation and racism accusations. Minnesota officials blamed the USDA and Feeding Our Future for perpetuating the large-scale fraud. In March 2021, the Minnesota Department of Education stopped payments to Feeding Our Future, but resumed payments voluntarily the following month after a court hearing on the matter. A court order was never issued requiring the payments, contradicting Walz’s 2022 assertion to the contrary. The lack of a court order was confirmed during the course of the Oversight Committee’s investigation.
In early 2019, Walz’s administration became aware of fraud tied to two programs administered by Minnesota’s Department of Human Services, former agency commissioner Tony Lourey testified. Another former commissioner, Jodi Harpstead, testified that Walz’s administration believed fraud connected to a child care program run out of the Department of Human Services had already been resolved. But the Oversight Committee report references two auditor reports showing otherwise, both of which were issued in 2019. The Department of Human Services lacked fraud mitigation mechanisms and felt pressure to get money out the door to justify state appropriations, the committee found. Despite credible allegations of fraud, the agency failed to act on the warnings and unilaterally stop making payments to the social services programs in question.
The Oversight Committee’s report is based on testimony from nine top current and former state officials, documents and communications, and briefings with federal and state officials. The Minnesota U.S. Attorney’s office recently speculated that the interwoven fraud schemes totaled nearly $9 billion in misallocated funds. Of the fraud defendants, 85 percent of them come from Minnesota’s Somali-American immigrant community. Social services programs that provide food, child care, housing, and special education have all come under scrutiny as federal investigators unravel the fraud scheme.
I know it’s been easy to overlook in all the other military news this week, but Afghanistan and Pakistan have been going at it as well, though only at a border skirmish level rather than a full-scale conflict. Since the Pakistani ISI helped create the Taliban, this is what’s known as “blowback.”
Rene Campos, a registered sex offender, is seeking elected office in California – launching a campaign for Fresno City Council amid fierce backlash and renewed questions about whether someone with his record should hold public office.
Campos was arrested in 2018 following a cyber tip to the Central California Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force. He was found in possession of child sex abuse material, according to court records. In 2021 he entered a no-contest plea to a single misdemeanor charge of possessing and controlling child pornography/child sex abuse material (likely under California Penal Code § 311.11). He served only one month in prison and a two year probation period.
Campos describes himself as a gay man who is running for office on the platform of “reduced crime and rehabilitation.”
Possession of child pornography is typically treated as a felony, even in a woke haven like California. How the Fresno candidate was able to make a deal for a misdemeanor charge and spend only one month in prison is a mystery, but this does help to confirm ongoing suspicions that California’s legal system is falling into steep decline.
California is notoriously soft on child sex abusers. Recently, a Sacramento parole board released Daniel Allen Funston, who was convicted in 1999 of sixteen counts of kidnapping and child molestation after a horrific crime spree in Sacramento County, during which he kidnapped, raped, and beat eight children ages 3 to 7.
Funston was originally sentenced to three consecutive life terms plus 20 years, but was set free at age 64 due to a California elderly inmate program (maybe he’ll run for office, too).
Data from 2022 shows that the Golden State released over 7000 child sex offenders after less than one year of incarceration. Interestingly, “digital blocks” were added to the Megan’s Law website that prevent more recent analysis.
Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger is demanding that Immigration and Customs Enforcement provide warrants before violent illegal criminals are turned over to federal authorities, following the stabbing of a Virginia woman by an illegal immigrant with a long and violent criminal history.
Abdul Jalloh was charged with second-degree murder after Stephanie Minter was brutally stabbed in the neck at a Virginia bus stop. Jalloh had previously been charged more than 40 times, including for egregious crimes such as aggravated assault, malicious wounding, and rape. Prosecutors dropped 20 of the 43 charges against Jalloh. The Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney’s office said the charges were dropped because Jalloh often chose victims who did not have permanent addresses, making the proceedings more difficult.
The Department of Homeland Security said Jalloh is an illegal immigrant from Sierra Leone. He entered the United States in 2012.
“ICE previously lodged a detainer against Jalloh in 2020, and he was granted a final order of removal by a judge who found he could be removed to any country other than Sierra Leone,” DHS said in a statement. “This case illustrated the importance of third country removals to get criminal illegal aliens out of the U.S.”
Spanberger insists that in order for Virginia to work with federal authorities, ICE must provide a signed judicial warrant, regardless of the alien’s criminal history. DHS requested cooperation with Virginia and Spanberger to deport Jalloh following his alleged involvement in the fatal stabbing.
“We are calling on Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger and Virginia’s sanctuary politicians to commit to not releasing this murderer and violent career criminal from their jail without notifying ICE,” Deputy Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis said in a statement. “This illegal alien’s murder of an innocent, beautiful American woman came less than 24 hours before Governor Spanberger’s demonization of ICE law enforcement. This heinous criminal is a perfect example of why we need cooperation from sanctuary jurisdictions and the importance of third country removals for the safety of the American people.”
What the Trump administration has done on the DEI front represents the beginning of a general reorientation of our politics away from wokeness. One need only survey what prominent leaders of the Left are saying about the political price the Democratic Party has paid on that score. What they are saying indicates a large political change, even if the Dems prove incapable of unmooring themselves from woke politics for the near future.
The first sign of this reorientation is a general shift in the popular mindset: the spell of woke politics has broken. This matters because it was always the way in which woke politics commanded assent in the citizens’ hearts and minds that was crucial. That assent has been questioned or denied now in a broad way, with the backing of public authority (Supreme Court decisions, executive orders, agency directives), and with widespread public support. Wokeness’s public hectoring, punitiveness, and censoriousness, and the extremism of many of its positions on the issues, is unpopular at the level of 70–30 or 80–20 opinion poll divides.
We ought to be confident, therefore, that the broken spell of wokeness augurs a permanent shift in our public life. What that means precisely, however, depends very much on how we understand wokeness and what is done going forward to ensure that woke excess does not return. Now, if, as many say, wokeness was the product of cultural Marxism (Christopher Rufo and a host of followers) or postmodernism (Jordan Peterson and another host of followers), then all that needs to be done is to combat bad ideas. On these interpretations, our universities in particular, and other cultural institutions where the influence of such ideas holds sway, need our attention. Certainly, cultural Marxism and postmodernism represent bad ideas, and the world would be a better place without their influence.
But if what wokeness represents above all is the explosive power of the civil rights revolution and the influence of an aggressive leftist interpretation of anti-discrimination politics, as another band of interpreters claims (I among them), then the task ahead is much bigger and much more difficult.
Trump’s anti-DEI measures, on this view, would represent only the first step in a broader campaign of civil rights reform. One could look long and hard without seeing much in the way of evidence for any such thing so far. Are these current efforts against DEI an illusion, a brief moment of political opportunism that will recede as public hatred of wokeness recedes—only to return in a few years when the next wave of anti-discriminatory passion rises up?
I don’t think that worry is justified. The anti-DEI campaign to date will have enduring consequences because even if it is not yet clear that what is at stake in DEI is civil rights politics, the current reorientation can only have the effect of raising our awareness of the role of anti-discrimination in our public life. This has begun on the all-important moral plane of civil rights politics. Precisely by breaking the spell of its puritanical commands, our anti-woke moment is reworking something essential to civil rights politics. Because public morality is the crucial filter of the human mind, a shift at this level will change what we see, what we think, and what we think we can say. Anti-woke sentiment, backed by changes in the law, is providing a moment of political, cultural, and mental freedom that will necessarily lead, after many decades during which this was not possible, to a general reappraisal of the moral power and the meaning of the civil rights revolution.
Sources have identified the alleged gunman as 53-year-old Ndiaga Diagne to Nexstar’s KXAN and The Associated Press…
Diagne is originally from Senegal, according to multiple people briefed on the investigation. One of the people told the AP that Diagne came to the U.S. in 2006 and was a naturalized U.S. citizen…
Austin mass killer captured on video wearing ‘Property of Allah’ hoodie during rampage.
“Dallas Democrats Decide To Let DA Creuzot Go. With no Republican in the race, Democrat primary winner Amber Givens will become Dallas County’s next district attorney.” Creuzot was yet another Soros-backed DA, so maybe Dallas Democrats are ever so slowly moving back to sanity.
I’m just going to embed this Asmongold clip of Bill Clinton’s Jeffrey Epstein deposition without comment.
President Trump announced Thursday that Senator Markwayne Mullin (R., Okla.) will replace Kristi Noem as Homeland Security Secretary.
The announcement comes after Noem struggled to stand up to a public grilling by members of the Senate Judiciary Committee who pressed the former South Dakota governor on Tuesday about a $220 million ad campaign contract that was subcontracted to one of her longtime allies. Trump was furious at Noem for insisting during the hearing that he had personally approved the contract and began floating Mullin’s name as a potential replacement, National Review first reported early Thursday.
Mullin will replace Noem effective March 31. It’s unclear whether Trump plans to nominate Mullin to serve in the position permanently or whether he will serve in an acting capacity, sparing him the necessity of Senate confirmation.
“I am pleased to announce that the Highly Respected United States Senator from the Great State of Oklahoma, Markwayne Mullin, will become the United States Secretary of Homeland Security (DHS), effective March 31, 2026,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “The current Secretary, Kristi Noem, who has served us well, and has had numerous and spectacular results (especially on the Border!), will be moving to be Special Envoy for The Shield of the Americas, our new Security Initiative in the Western Hemisphere we are announcing on Saturday in Doral, Florida. I thank Kristi for her service at ‘Homeland.’”
Already under significant scrutiny due to bipartisan criticism of her handling of Trump’s deportation agenda, Noem ran into further trouble this week during a series of hearings in which multiple lawmakers, most notably Republican Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana, asked her to explain why the agency had awarded a $220 million contract to a firm that was founded just days before, without ever opening up the bid to a competitive process. Kennedy also pointed out that part of that ad campaign was subcontracted to a strategy firm owned by Ben Yoho, the husband of former DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin.
A $220 million no-bid ad contract isn’t just wasteful, it’s actively criminal.
More defeats for the gambling lobby: “Two House Chairs Defeated by Challengers. State Reps. Cecil Bell and Stan Kitzman were ousted by Kristen Plaisance and Dennis Geesaman respectively.”
Plaisance ran on a platform of fiscal responsibility, securing Texas’ elections, and defending state sovereignty.
Bell’s campaign and allied groups—including the Las Vegas Sands–backed casino lobby and Texans for Lawsuit Reform—reportedly spent more than $1 million attempting to defend the incumbent.
Bell, who chairs the Intergovernmental Affairs Committee, had been censured by the Montgomery County Republican Party last year.
Incumbent State Rep. Stan Kitzman of Brookshire has been defeated by Dennis “Goose” Geesaman for the GOP nomination for House District 85. Kitzman served as chair of one of the House’s subcommittees on appropriations.
Geesaman, a pilot and Air Force Academy graduate, retired as a Lt. Colonel. He served five terms on the Flatonia City Council and later served as mayor.
While Texans for Lawsuit Reform and casino-funded PACs backed Kitzman’s reelection campaign, Geesaman ran on a platform of ending magnets for illegal immigration, DOGE-ing Texas, and supporting parental rights.
Kitzman also recently came under investigation for his paid work for a local governmental entity while serving in the Legislature.
Kitzman also voted to impeach Paxton, so I think we’re well rid of both of them.
The war against tranny madness continues. “Paxton Opinion Targets Therapists Behind Child ‘Psychological Transitioning.’ Psychiatric providers who help facilitate prohibited treatments may be barred from receiving public funds and could risk losing their licenses.”
Samsung Electronics America Inc. is one of five companies that have been accused by Attorney General Ken Paxton of collecting and monetizing consumers’ viewing data on smart TVs.
Following the agreement, Samsung will now make changes to not only halt the collection of viewing data without consent, but also update their TVs to include disclosures and consent screens.
Heard from some state agency people that this was coming: “Texas Dismantles DEI-Oriented HUB Network. The comptroller’s office has ended race- and sex-based preferences in state contracting.” Good.
“Former Warren Campaign Worker Says the U.S. Must Be ‘Abolished’ to Atone for Death of Ayatollah Khamenei…Calla Walsh, the communist activist who campaigned for Elizabeth Warren, Ed Markey, Bernie Sanders, and others, said the only way to exact “justice” is the complete deconstruction of the U.S. and Israel.” What percentage of the ideological core of the Democrat Party are actively communist?
One thing that reportedly helped kill Netflix’s acquisition of Warner Brothers: GOP congressmen visiting Netflix headquarters and discovering tampons in the men’s room.
Microsoft seems to be going from bad to worse: “Microsoft Copilot to hijack your browser… for your own convenience, embeds Edge into AI assistant, ignores questions about opt-in.”
Microsoft is rolling out a Copilot update to Windows Insiders that embeds web browsing directly into the assistant, opening links in a side panel rather than launching your default browser.
The plan is that users of the Copilot app in Windows will show content in the assistant’s window “so you don’t lose context.”
Copilot will also (with permission) have access to the context of tabs opened in that conversation, so the assistant can look across them when responding to user prompts. Opened tabs will be saved with the conversation so that they can be returned to, and, if a user chooses to enable it, passwords and form data can be synchronized.
Enabling password and form data synchronization might give some users pause for thought, particularly after the Windows Recall fiasco, but users worried about Redmond slurping data should probably consider an alternative to Windows anyway.
At first glance, it looks like embedding Edge into Copilot via the WebView2 control is an attempt to steer the user away from their default browser. Convenient, yes. Good for competition, possibly not. We asked Microsoft whether this would be an opt-in experience and which browser was being used, but, other than acknowledging receipt of our questions, the company did not respond.
It looks like this is going to be limited to corporate users for now, but launching web links without user control strikes me as a huge attack vector for malicious code. (Previously.)
New Zealand “Lesbian Navy Captain Faces Court Martial After $100M Ship Ran Aground, Caught Fire, Sank.” Since that happened all the way back in 2024, they’re certainly not rushing to justice…
Apple has some new computers out, so here’s M5 Pro vs. M5 Max benchmarks. My trailing edge consumer ass is still on an Intel-based MacBook Pro…
“Japanese companies are paying older workers to sit by a window and do nothing—while Western CEOs demand super-AI productivity just to keep your job.” Seems like there should be a happy medium between those two extremes…
Most of yesterday’s primary races went exactly as you would expect, but there were a few surprises among the results, so let’s dig in.
At the top of the ticket, incumbent John Cornyn and Attorney General Ken Paxton head to a runoff for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate. Right now, Cornyn is leading Paxton by less than 1.5%, which isn’t a very comfortable position for a longtime incumbent, and I suspect there are plenty of Wesley Hunt voters dissatisfied with Cornyn.
For much of the count, scandal-plagued U.S. 23rd Congressional District incumbent Tony Gonzales led challenger Brandon Herrera by a slight margin, but with 96% of the vote in, Herrera leads Gonzales by just under a thousand votes. Herrera almost knocked off Gonzales in 2024, but with undeniable evidence that Gonzales had an extramarital affair with a staffer who killer herself, Gonzales is clearly toast. He should save everybody a lot of time, money and embarrassment and not only bow out of the race, but resign his congressional seat in disgrace so Gov. Greg Abbott can appoint Herrera to replace him for the remainder of his current term as well.
Speaking of Abbott, both he and Lt. Governor Dan Patrick cruised to easy victories, Abbott with 82% of the vote against ten opponents, Patrick with 85% of the vote against three.
In the closely-watched Attorney General race, State Senator Mayes Middleton and U.S. Congressman Chip Roy are headed to a runoff, with Middleton leading by over 150,000 votes. That’s a pretty big gap for Roy to make up.
In the three-way Comptroller race, Don Huffines won outright over Kelly Hancock and Christi Craddick. It’s tempting to think that President Trump’s endorsement of Huffines lifted him to an outright win rather than a runoff, except:
President Trump also endorsed incumbent Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller over challenger Nate Sheets, but Sheets won by 5%. I think this may be the only case where an Abbott-endorsed candidate defeated a Trump-endorsed candidate, unless I’m overlooking a down-ballot race.
Indeed, it was a rare outright victory for Abbott endorsed or appointed candidates this cycle, as Abbott appointees Aaron Reitz (Attorney General) and Kelly Hancock (Comptroller) both went down to defeat.
As predicted, Gina Hinjosa easily secured the right to be slaughtered by Greg Abbott in the Governor’s race, defeating Chris Bell and seven other candidates.
With 48% of the vote, Vikki Goodwin looks headed to a runoff with Marcos Velez in the Lt. Governor’s race.
With 48.1% of the vote, Nathan Johnson looks headed for a runoff in the Attorney General race with Joe Jaworski.
With 48% of the vote, Sarah Eckhardt looks headed to a runoff with Savant Moore in the Comptroller race.
It’s always possible the underdogs in those races might just save themselves time and money and drop out.
The Democrat primary turnout totals should be a wake-up call for the Texas GOP. Usually they run far behind Republican numbers, but this year they’re about at parity, an ominous sign for an off-year election with a Republican in the White House.
Those were the races I was paying attention to. If you noticed others with interesting results, feel free to share them in the comments below.
Endorsements issued by President Donald Trump in recent days for Texas statewide races displayed a split between Gov. Greg Abbott and the president, as the two put support behind different candidates in a handful of contests.
These include one of the more fiery Republican primaries — the race for Texas Agriculture Commissioner. President Donald Trump threw his support behind incumbent Sid Miller, breaking from Abbott’s selection of Nate Sheets as his favored candidate.
Abbott endorsed Sheets in January, with strong words about his capability to lead the Texas Department of Agriculture and Miller’s alleged inability to do so. Abbott and Miller have repeatedly clashed over issues throughout both their tenures in office, spanning back to 2020 when Miller joined a lawsuit against the governor regarding the extension of the early voting period during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In Trump’s endorsement on Friday night, he described Miller as a “MAGA Warrior who has been with me from the very beginning,” and “is doing a terrific job as Agriculture Commissioner for the Great State of Texas…”
“An Eighth Generation Farmer and Rancher, Sid is an incredibly effective Voice for Texas Agriculture, and our amazing Farmers and Ranchers,” Trump added.
Leading up to this, Abbott has been traveling across the state alongside Sheets for several “Get Out The Vote” rallies, emphasizing his support for the challenger.
Trump also endorsed former state senator Don Huffines for Texas Comptroller, over Abbott’s pick: former state Sen. Kelly Hancock and current Acting Comptroller, after he joined the agency as an employee to avoid a constitutional issue.
Huffines has been a frequent critic of Abbott’s, particularly over his response to COVID-19, also challenging him in the GOP gubernatorial primary in 2022.
Trump similarly described Huffines as a “MAGA warrior” in his endorsement issued via a Truth Social post, adding that “as a successful Businessman, Don knows the America First Policies required to Grow our Economy, Create GREAT Jobs, Cut Taxes and Regulations, Promote MADE IN THE U.S.A., and Unleash American Energy DOMINANCE.”
The President also issued a number of key congressional candidate endorsements earlier in the week, splitting from Abbott in two distinct primaries: one for Congressional District (CD) 9, and another in CD 35.
Trump threw his support behind Republican candidate Alex Mealer in her bid for Congressional District (CD) 9, against state Rep. Briscoe Cain (R-Deer Park), who is endorsed by Abbott.
Cain and Mealer are running in the district currently held by U.S. Rep. Al Green (D-TX-9), which was heavily impacted by the GOP-favored redistricting map that passed the Texas Legislature during the summer of 2025 — legislation initiated at the White House’s request and voted for by Cain in the Texas House.
Trump also endorsed one of the Republican primary opponents to State Rep. John Lujan (R-San Antonio) — Carlos De La Cruz, brother of Congresswoman Monica De La Cruz (R-TX-15), in his bid for CD 35. Lujan was endorsed by Abbott for CD 35 in January.
Super PAC “Forge The Future,” founded by California-based tech giant Meta, reported $1.3 million in Texas expenditures ahead of the upcoming March 3 primary.
Formed earlier this year, Forge The Future is one of four super PACs controlled by Meta. The PAC’s Texas site states an objective of supporting “conservative candidates” with favorable stances on tech policy issues.
Three specific focuses listed are support for domestic tech companies, advocacy for an AI-friendly regulatory environment, and increased parental control over children’s online activities.
Of Forge The Future’s Texas contributions, $800,000 went to a slate of three Texas Senate and eight Texas House candidates, including Rep. Trent Ashby (R-Lufkin) and Rep. David Cook (R-Mansfield) for Senate Districts 3 and 22, respectively.
Those districts’ proximity to the greater Dallas-Fort Worth area makes them a key early target for placement of AI-friendly legislators, as the area has been a long-time hotbed of Texas technology interests and currently hosts several ongoing data center developments.
The remaining $500,000 was spent on digital advertising campaigns supporting former state senator and now Acting Comptroller Kelly Hancock’s bid for a full term as Texas comptroller. The ads focus on Hancock’s efforts to lower taxes and improve education, making no specific mention of tech-related issues.
Forge The Future is one of two super PACs formed by Meta this year, alongside Making Our Tomorrow, which is dedicated to similar technology issues but instead supports Democratic candidates. Making Our Tomorrow has initially focused on contributing to candidates in Illinois, another key state for Meta’s infrastructure.
Meta’s super PACs, all formed within the last year, represent an overall $65 million investment in political activity and mark a distinct shift from the company’s previous, mostly neutral stance on political spending. This new investment from the tech giant comes at a time of increased scrutiny from legislators and the general public alike on many tech policy issues, including social media, artificial intelligence, and data centers.
Aside from AI, social media regulation could also pose a problem for Meta. The Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp parent company has been in and out of court in relation to child safety concerns on its platforms; CEO Mark Zuckerberg was most recently called to testify in a landmark tech addiction lawsuit in California court on February 18.
Meta isn’t the only large tech company ramping up its political spending. Last August saw the formation of Leading The Future, an AI-focused super PAC boasting Silicon Valley backing, which includes names from OpenAI, Perplexity, and Palantir Technologies.
Lots of outside money is being poured into Texas races, but Texans are the ones with the power in their hands. Go vote!
Today’s Ken Paxton lawsuit falls at the intersection of a lot of this blog’s interests: Drone technology, Chinese infiltration, and fraud. The Texas Attorney General has filed a lawsuit against “Austin-based” Anzu Robotics, claiming its “American” drones are made in China.
Attorney General Ken Paxton has filed a second lawsuit this week targeting companies he says are tied to the Chinese Communist Party, this time accusing a drone manufacturer of deceptively marketing products that allegedly pose national-security risks to Texans.
The lawsuit, filed against Anzu Robotics, alleges the company misled consumers by presenting its drones as a secure American alternative to Chinese-made devices while allegedly relying on technology from Shenzhen-based DJI, a manufacturer that federal agencies have flagged for security concerns.
DJI are the makers of the Mavic 3T drone, used heavily by both sides in the Russo-Ukraine War, as covered here.
According to the petition, Texas officials contend Anzu’s drones are effectively rebranded versions of DJI products, using identical hardware, firmware, and software while marketing themselves as free from the risks associated with Chinese-manufactured drones.
State attorneys argue that the company’s representations about its independence, data security, and software protections were false or misleading, potentially exposing Texans to surveillance risks or supply-chain vulnerabilities tied to the Chinese Communist Party.
“Anzu Robotics products are nothing more than a 21st century trojan horse linked to the CCP,” Paxton said in a statement. “My office is taking several targeted actions against CCP-aligned companies this week to protect the people of Texas and stop Communist China’s influence in Texas. No company will be allowed to deceive Texans and serve as a pathway for foreign adversaries to exploit American markets, access personal data, or threaten our national security.”
The lawsuit seeks civil penalties, consumer restitution, and court orders requiring the company to disclose its ties to DJI and to halt allegedly deceptive practices.
I’m not sure Anzu Robotics is precisely hiding its ties to DJI, as they’re mentioned in this blog post, supposedly from 2024, where they admit the drone technology is licensed from DJI and claim the drones are built in Malaysia. The Malaysian bit might well be a lie, and even if true, it doesn’t ease the concerns about all the tech being Chinese. Anzu also claims “Powered by Aloft Technologies software and with all data hosted on US-based servers, Anzu puts security at the forefront of operations.” But Aloft seems to make situational awareness apps that run on your phone, not the software that actually controls the drone. Anzu also claims “Anzu is headquartered and operated within the United States, giving you the peace of mind that your solution is delivered by your neighbors.” That part may be technically correct (“the best kind of correct”), but there’s a lot of semantic slight of hand going on there. And yes, the Anzu Raptor and Raptor T bear a striking resemblance to the DJI Mavic 3 Classic and Mavic 3 pro.
The most likely explanation is that they are indeed merely relabeled DJI drones, but even if they are manufactured in Malaysia, that doesn’t reduce the potential threat of using Chinese-controlled hardware, firmware, and software, nor does it make the drone any more “American.”
There’s definitely something fishy going on Anzu Robotics, and it highlights the grave risks involved in offshoring so much of our technology and manufacturing to China.
I’d sort of stopped paying attention to the Muslim EPIC City land development northeast of Dallas because it no longer seemed even a dead horse, but merely a moist red spot in the road. It’s looking less and less like a speartip of jihad and more like a classic speculative land swindle. But this week brought not one, but two entirely new sets of legal scrutiny for EPIC City.
Attorney General Ken Paxton has filed a lawsuit against Double R Municipal Utility District No. 2A of Hunt and Collin Counties and individuals claiming to serve on its board, alleging unlawful actions intended to skirt state oversight and benefit a controversial North Texas development tied to the East Plano Islamic Center.
According to Paxton’s office, the lawsuit was filed after evidence surfaced that Double R MUD held a “highly unusual” special meeting on September 12, 2025—scheduled at noon at a remote location marked only by GPS coordinates.
At that meeting, the existing board members allegedly resigned, were immediately replaced by new individuals, and the newly formed board then approved an expansion of the district’s boundaries.
Does sound shady, doesn’t it?
The board’s rapid approval reportedly annexed more than 400 acres described as “The Meadow,” previously known as “EPIC City,” into the Double R MUD.
The attorney general contends that this maneuver was designed to help EPIC City developers evade state review by expanding an existing district rather than going through the legal process of forming a new one.
Paxton’s office further alleges that some or all of the new board members do not meet the legal qualifications required to hold office within a municipal utility district. When state regulators sought documentation verifying their eligibility, Double R MUD delayed producing records, and those eventually provided reportedly confirmed the individuals were unqualified to exercise taxing authority or serve as directors.
“I will not allow individuals to cheat the system to advance an illegal development and destroy beautiful Texas land,” Paxton said in a statement announcing the suit. “If EPIC City’s developers or operatives are attempting to illegally take over local governmental structures in North Texas, my office will do everything in our power to stop their scheme.”
It does indeed seem like EPIC City is trying to pull a fast one on the state, even after Collin County rejected their development plans.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Department of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity (FHEO) announced on Friday, February 13 the launch of an investigation into East Plano Islamic Center (EPIC) Real Properties Inc and Community Capital Partners, LP.
The investigation centers around the allegedly Muslim-centric community called “The Meadow” — previously known as EPIC City — and HUD’s allegations state that the entity “may have violated the Fair Housing Act by engaging in religious and national origin discrimination.”
HUD Secretary Scott Turner stated, “It is deeply concerning the East Plano Islamic Center may have violated the Fair Housing Act and participated in religious discrimination,”
“As HUD Secretary, I will not stand for illegal religious or national origin discrimination in housing and will ensure that this matter receives a thorough investigation so that this community is open to all Texans.”
The Texas Workforce Commission (TWC) submitted a complaint to HUD “detailing a large-scale pattern of religious discriminatory conduct by the developers of The Meadow.” Last year, the federal government was investigating the development through the Department of Justice, which closed its investigations into EPIC in July 2025, finding The Meadow to be consistent with the Fair Housing Act.
The TWC alleged that EPIC was using marketing materials aimed exclusively at Muslim populations and leveraging “discriminatory financial terms” which required lot owners in The Meadow to also subsidize a mosque and Islamic education centers. The TWC also alleged that lot sales were subject to a two-tier lottery system, which favored those in the first tier by granting “lot access to Tier-One buyers.”
The Meadow is a planned multipurpose development Northeast of Dallas, that aims to house a K-12 school, 402 acres of land, shops and retail centers, and 1,000 homes. The build has amassed attention, lawsuits, and investigations from state officials in the last year, including Gov. Greg Abbott, Senator John Cornyn (R-TX), and Attorney General Ken Paxton. It has become a choice issue for some candidates on the Republican ballot for the March 3 primary elections.
Abbott lauded the recent investigation by HUD in a press release, stating that he initiated the TWC’s investigation into EPIC. “Together,” stated Abbott, “we will hold anyone involved in violating the law accountable. The Meadow will remain just that — an empty field.”
Silly me. I thought all the scrutiny and existing lawsuits were enough to keep EPIC City dead in the water, but then the developers go and pull shady MUD maneuvers just two months ago to try to keep the project moving.
So it appears that horse isn’t quite dead after all, so more beating is probably in order…
Texas early voting started today, so here’s a roundup of Texas primary links, along with something that might vaguely resemble endorsements in a “one-eyed man in the land of the blind” sort of way, since I haven’t been paying terribly close attention to this year’s primaries. But the top of the ticket endorsements are easy:
Ken Paxton for Senate. I’ve said about Paxton before what Abraham Lincoln said about Ulysses S. Grant: “I cannot spare this man. He fights.” Yesterday I talked to a lawyer who thinks Paxton is a crook, and he’s still going to vote for him over Cornyn.
Greg Abbott for Governor. National conservatives may not realize it, but for a long time inside Texas, Abbott was considered a bit of a squishy, consensus-driven Republican, more competent technocrat than conservative firebrand. But the school choice fight with seems to have screwed his courage to the sticking place, and he’s now rightly regarded as one of the country’s most conservative governors.
Dan Patrick for Lt. Governor. Patrick has proven to be a very competent, very conservative Lt. Governor who’s had Texas Senate Republicans passing conservative priorities like clockwork, only to see half of them die in the Texas House.
I already covered the narrow case for picking Mayes Middleton over the also acceptable Chip Roy.
Here’s Texas Scorecard’s Campaign Finance Tracker. The fact that Gina Hinojosa has such a huge lead over Andrew White for the Democratic nomination for governor suggests that primary is already over, which is pretty much how I figured it.
NRA PVF ratings for Texas candidates. At least they had the decency not to endorse anyone in TX-23, instead of endorsing incumbent Tony Gonzales over Brandon Herrera…
Gov. Greg Abbott endorsed Nate Sheets for Texas agriculture commissioner in the 2026 GOP primary against incumbent and fellow statewide elected Republican Sid Miller.
Texans for Greg Abbott campaign manager Kim Snyder described Sheets as “the only candidate in the race who has the integrity to lead the Texas Department of Agriculture,” in a statement to the Texas Bullpen.
“The current Texas Department of Agriculture commissioner has a history of corruption and, as a state legislator, he previously voted to grant in-state tuition for illegal immigrants,” Snyder said.
Miller has a long history of public disagreements with Abbott, dating back to 2020 when he joined a lawsuit against the governor and then-Texas Secretary of State Ruth Hughs over the extension of the early voting period during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In April 2022, Miller condemned the governor’s directive for enhanced vehicle inspections at the border, saying, “You cannot solve a border crisis by creating another crisis at the border. These Level 1 inspections serve as a ‘clog in the drain’ and divert commerce and jobs to more western ports of entry.”
Their endorsements are split in interesting ways as well, with Brandon Herrera and several U.S. Republican reps endorsing Miller, but Gun Owners of America, Texas Gun Rights, The Kingwood Tea Party, True Texas Project and Texas Eagle Forum. I think I may be leaning toward Sheets at this point, if only because he seems to be emphasizing border security over Miller.
If you hadn’t heard, incumbent liberal fossil congressman Lloyd Doggett retired rather than face commie twerp Greg Cesar in the newly redrawn Texas 37th congressional district. Doggett first entered the Texas Senate in 1973…
Also retiring: Texas Republican U.S. Congressman Troy Nehls of the 22nd Congressional District. The leading candidate to replace him: His brother Trever Nehls, who’s been endorsed by President Trump. So I’ve got to think that the chances of primary opponent Rebecca Clark are pretty slim.
Also retiring: Democratic State Rep. Bobby Guerra of McAllen from Texas House District 41. Tempting to write this off as another Democrat retiring due to Republican inroads into Rio Grande Valley, but the guy is 72.
Also retiring: Republican Texas House District 1 incumbent State Rep. Gary VanDeaver. “The East Texas Republican was one of only two Republican House members to vote against school choice legislation championed by Gov. Greg Abbott—the other being former Speaker Dade Phelan, who has also recently announced he won’t be returning.” VanDeaver barely survived a primary challenge in 2024, and Abbott-endorsed opponent Chris Spencer is running again.
Nine Republicans are on the primary ballot for the newly redistricted Congressional District 32 that has been held by U.S. Rep. Julie Johnson (D-TX-32) since 2025 and previously held by Colin Allred before his U.S. Senate bid.
The district map has a portion in Dallas and then stretches out and widens into more eastern regions of the state. It includes portions of Dallas, Collin, and Rockwall counties in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, then extends east to take in parts of Hunt, Rains, Wood, Camp, and Upshur counties.
Redrawn by the Texas Legislature in 2025, this district flipped from a Democratic-leaning district to a Republican-leaning one. According to The Texan’s Texas Partisan Index, it had a pre-redistricting rating of D-62% and is now rated R-60%.
The field of nine Republicans vying to fill the seat are listed on the ballot in the following order: Jace Yarbrough, James Ussery, Darrell Day, Paul Bondar, Ryan Binkley, Gordon Heslop, Monty Montanez, Abteen Vaziri, and Aimee Carrasco.
Yarbrough, who is endorsed by both President Donald Trump and Gov. Greg Abbott, is a U.S. Air Force veteran and constitutional law attorney. He emphasizes his fight as a member of the military against the mandate that he take the COVID-19 vaccine as a demonstration of his courage and willingness to “fight for constitutional freedoms and the America First Agenda in Washington.” He ran for Texas Senate District 30 in 2024, but lost in a runoff to now-state Sen. Brent Hagenbuch (R-Denton).
Well, I guess the race already has an overwhelming favorite, then. Here are a few tidbits on the other candidates:
Ussery points out that he is an East Texas native with a longtime career in the oil and gas industry. His campaign promises include protecting Social Security for seniors and fighting to protect the First and Second Amendments.
Day is a small business owner who says he “understands real-world challenges.” He has previously served as a precinct chair, election judge, and Arlington City Council member. Day has been endorsed by groups such as Moms for Liberty, Collin County Patriots, and Red Wave Texas. He also has a list of community leader endorsements on his website.
On his website, Bondar introduces himself as a former Division I football player and successful business leader, adding that the issues he cares about are “driven by real life”: secure borders, safe communities, economic opportunity, strong families, and a “government that respects our freedoms instead of controlling our lives.”
Binkley, who formerly ran for president in 2024, is the pastor of Create Church and is also the CEO of mergers and acquisitions advisor Generational Group. He jumped in the race with a kickoff event in September. He is endorsed by leaders such as the First Liberty Institute’s Kelly Shackelford and Faith and Freedom Coalition founder Ralph Reed, along with other pastors and community leaders.
Former educator Heslop claims he wants to “Make America Normal Again” by strengthening the middle class and reducing the national debt. He said in a candidate survey that he would focus on government policies to help the “ordinary citizen.”
Veteran and entrepreneur Montanez announced his candidacy for the seat in June before the maps were redrawn. His priorities include public safety, jobs and the economy, healthcare, and veterans’ affairs.
Vaziri is a hedge fund manager, a real estate investor, and an attorney, who says his life represents the “American dream.” Born in Iran, Vaziri is a convert to Christianity who “vehemently opposes Sharia law.”
Carrasco describes herself as a U.S. Marine Corps veteran, a community leader, and a mental health advocate. Her top priorities are securing the border, strengthening the economy, and leading with integrity and compassion.
I want to timebox this post to keep it from sprawling all over the place, so I’m going to cut it off here and try to do a separate post on the Comptroller and Railroad Commissioner races.
Remember Colony Ridge, the housing development northeast of Houston evidently pitched to illegal aliens that boasted such “features” as high crime rates and substandard infrastructure? A settlement between the state and the developer means no more home sales to illegal aliens there.
A sweeping settlement between the State of Texas, the federal government, and Colony Ridge will require buyers in the controversial Liberty County development to present Texas-issued identification or valid immigration documents—effectively shutting down future direct land sales to individuals unlawfully present in the United States.
Filed Tuesday in federal court, the agreement resolves multiple enforcement actions brought by the U.S. Department of Justice, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who had accused Colony Ridge of deceptive sales practices and discriminatory, predatory lending. Colony Ridge denies any wrongdoing but agreed to the terms to settle the litigation.
Under the settlement, Colony Ridge must require purchasers to present an unexpired Texas-issued driver’s license or identification card, or a valid passport and visa, as well as take steps to confirm buyers are not on terrorism watch lists or affiliated with transnational criminal organizations. The company is also required to verify compliance with Texas laws restricting certain real estate transactions tied to designated foreign countries.
If actually enforced, the driver’s license requirement alone should halt the vast majority of home sales to illegal aliens. Unlike certain Democrat-run states, Texas doesn’t hand out driver’s licenses to illegal aliens like party favors.
The agreement halts Colony Ridge’s business model that fueled its explosive growth. For three years, the developer is barred from seeking approval for new residential plats intended for direct-to-consumer land sales. Limited exceptions apply, but new subdivisions must include deed restrictions, county permitting compliance, architectural controls, and in many cases require a home to be constructed before resale.
In addition, Colony Ridge is required to spend at least $48 million on infrastructure improvements within existing subdivisions, including $18 million dedicated to drainage and flood control and $30 million for roads, water, sewage, and other public-safety infrastructure.
Independent Texas-based engineering firms must reevaluate drainage systems, design improvements capable of handling major storm events, and conduct recurring inspections, with existing deficiencies prioritized ahead of new development.
Another $20 million must be allocated to increasing law enforcement presence in the area over the next decade. Those funds may be used for local patrols, construction of DPS or county law enforcement substations, additional officers, equipment, and expanded immigration enforcement partnerships. Annual spending is capped, and any unused funds must be redirected to public safety infrastructure.
The settlement further imposes strict consumer-protection requirements. Colony Ridge must adopt formal underwriting standards, implement a default-avoidance plan to reduce foreclosures, and provide buyers with expanded disclosures regarding utilities, flood risks, permitting timelines, and the true total cost of ownership. Future buyers will also receive a limited rescission window allowing them to unwind a purchase within two payments and receive a refund under certain conditions.
Colony Ridge seemed designed as a corner-cutting development meant to be marketed to illegal aliens from the get go. It first started pulling its antics way back in 2011, which suggests that several county and state functionaries were woefully late in sounding the alarm, as it didn’t really attract much attention until the Texas Public Policy Foundation published a report on it until 2020. Paxton didn’t file a lawsuit until 2024, and it wasn’t swept for illegal aliens until 2025.
The backlash over Colony Ridge probably encouraged state officials to take a more aggressive and pro-active approach to the planned Muslim EPIC City enclave northeast of Plano before construction actually started. But it’s still going to take several years to clean up the mess created by Colony Ridge developer Houston Terrenos.
Illegal aliens are no longer going to be allowed to buy houses in Texas anymore…
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…
