The left doubles down on crazy, Trump gets creative in cutting more foreign aid, we start kicking illegal aliens out of public housing, Google skates on monopoly remedies, more Russian refineries go boom, Ryan George examines ghost jobs, and the crazy story behind a classic American film.
From the indigenous LGBT woman’s land acknowledgement that opened the Democratic National Committee’s summer meeting in Minneapolis to reaffirming the party’s commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, Democrats sent a clear signal to Americans: Despite last year’s electoral drubbing and the dismal polling that has followed, they have no intention of recalibrating.
One speaker told attendees that migrant crime and carjackings “don’t matter to that many Americans.” She sees President Donald Trump’s crackdown on crime as a “power grab” and a “political liability.”
Remarks from DNC Chairman Ken Martin showed they’ve learned nothing from their defeat or their time in the wilderness. “I’m sick and tired of this Democratic Party bringing a pencil to a knife fight,” he said. “We cannot be the only party that plays by the rules anymore. We’ve got to stand up and fight. We’re not going to have a hand tied behind our back anymore.”
Does Martin even hear himself?
After an alleged transgender person opened fire during a worship service at a Minneapolis Catholic School on the third day of the meeting, killing at least two children and wounding 17 other people, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey made a remarkable statement to reporters: “I have heard about a whole lot of hate that’s being directed at our trans community. Anybody who is using this as an opportunity to villainize our trans community, or any other community out there, has lost their sense of common humanity.”
The reality is that Democrats have been ignoring the rules since Trump declared his candidacy in 2015. After failing to prevent his victory, they sought to undermine his presidency. They used lawfare to try to jail and bankrupt him, and even tried to remove his name from the ballot in several states. It turned out the public noticed, and a majority of voters rejected those tactics at the ballot box.
Dan Turrentine, cohost of the 2WAY Network podcast The Morning Meeting, once worked for the DNC. He attended the first day of the summer meeting and later told Fox News’s Laura Ingraham that his party “keep[s] doing the same thing over and over again,” which he notes is “the definition of insanity. And as a Democrat, it’s maddening that we’re still not serious.”
“We haven’t lost 4.5 million voters, nor is our brand at a historic low, because we don’t fight hard enough,” he told Ingraham. “It’s because we remain completely culturally disconnected and we have absolutely no agenda.”
He concluded, “We are not in good shape.”
Turrentine was citing a recent analysis from the New York Times showing that, over a four-year span, Democrats lost 2.1 million registered voters while Republicans gained 2.4 million. Multiple polls now suggest the party’s approval rating is in free fall, and its policies are increasingly out of step with everyday Americans.
But rather than course-correct, Democrats appear to be doubling down, clinging to a sense of moral virtue while defending principles most Americans reject. The result is a party that no longer even pretends to represent the working-class voters it once championed. Instead, it now serves a narrow circle of progressive elites concentrated in coastal cities and urban enclaves.
Without the sword of Damocles hanging over Trump’s head in the form of a weaponized Department of Justice, an aggressive FBI, and the ever-leaking Mueller team, as was the case during his first term, Democrats now find themselves operating from a position of weakness. Unable to rein him in, aside from occasional blows delivered by district court judges, Trump now sits firmly in the catbird seat.
President Donald Trump on Aug. 28 proposed the cancellation of $4.9 billion in appropriated funds for foreign aid spending, using a maneuver that could effectively bypass the congressional approval process normally required to rescind the funds.
The funds were allocated to the Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development—which is in the process of being closed by the Trump administration—during the Fiscal Year 2025 appropriations process.
Under the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, the government must make a rescission request to Congress, which then has 45 days to approve the cancellation of appropriated funds. A “pocket rescission,” however, refers to such requests made within 45 days of the end of the fiscal year, which is Sept. 30. In these cases, the funds are withheld during the 45-day congressional review period, and if Congress doesn’t act before the fiscal year ends, the funds expire.
“Last night, President Trump cancelled $4.9 billion in America Last foreign aid using a pocket rescission,” the Office of Management and Budget, a cabinet-level agency in the Executive Office of the President, wrote on X on Aug. 29.
Pocket rescissions are uncommon, and the last one attempted was in 1983, when President Ronald Reagan sought to cut $2 million appropriated to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Trump, during his second term, has successfully requested some rescissions from Congress. A rescissions bill canceling $9.4 billion in funding for foreign aid and public broadcasters was approved by Congress in July.
Rescission requests, when presented to Congress, may be enacted through legislation with simple majorities voting in favor in both houses, meaning that the minority has no leverage to stop or alter the process. Democrats in Congress, who are the minority in both houses, have thus protested against Trump’s rescissions, but often to no avail.
For all that stocks are soaring, we’re still feeling the effects of the Biden Recession. “Putrid Payrolls: Job Growth Collapses To Just 22K, Unemp Rate Rises To 4.3% Putting 50bps Rate Cut In Play.”
Ahead of today’s jobs report, consensus was that a print between 40K and 100K is largely priced in and greenlighting a 25bps rate cut by the Fed in two weeks, and that we would need a real outlier number for the Fed to either cut 50bps… or not hike. Well, we got a real outlier when moments ago the BLS reported that in August the US added only 22K jobs, a big drop from the upward revised 79K (from 73K previously) but more importantly June was revised from 27K to -13K, ushering in the first negative jobs print since 2020.
The systemic falsification of economic data to boost Biden has left the economy in a much bigger hole than most people realize.
No longer will illegal aliens be able to leave citizenship boxes blank or take advantage of HUD-funded housing, riding the coattails of hardworking American citizens,” [Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Scott] Turner wrote.
The secretary stressed that weak enforcement under previous administrations left thousands of American families on waiting lists.
“Currently, HUD only serves one out of four eligible families due, in part, to the lack of enforcement of prohibition against federally funded assistance to illegal aliens,” Turner continued.
HUD warned that noncompliance could lead to an “examination” of federal funding. Turner told Fox News’ Charles Hurt on Jesse Watters Primetime that Washington, D.C., has already been placed on notice and that more than 3,000 other public housing authorities will face the same requirements.
“American citizens will be prioritized,” Turner said.
No one should come to America to go on welfare, period. So this is a good start, but not as good as completely eliminating subsidized housing entirely.
Anger is boiling over in the UK pressure cooker, and it is hard to see anybody in power finding the courage to use the steam release valve before it explodes. On the issue of immigration, it now boils down to the state vs its citizens.
What began as a flag protest–English people putting up the St George’s flag as an act of defiance against government indifference to their anger–has spread to Wales and Scotland. Larger and larger crowds are gathering, and confrontations with police are becoming common.
It seems that Keir Starmer’s Labour government would rather risk actual outright revolt that deport unassimiliated Muslim rapists. The real question is why. (Hat tip: Irons in the Fire.)
“Trump Administration Warns 40 States To Remove ‘Gender Ideology’ From Sex Education Or Lose $81 Million.” If the purpose of sex education is to prevent out-of-wedlock births, it doesn’t seem to have been a rousing success. Maybe schools should eliminate it altogether.
Today, the decade-long campaign to stop big tech from dominating our society took a significant step backwards, as the judge hearing the search case against Google, Amit Mehta, chose not to meaningfully constrain the firm’s illegal behavior. And to engage in such deferential behavior, he openly ignored Supreme Court precedent.
You don’t have to take it from me. It’s Mehta who last year found Google to have violated the law. “Google is a monopolist,” he wrote, “and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly. It has violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act.” It’s also Mehta who found the Supreme Court mandated what he called the “remedial objective” in monopolization cases, to “terminate the illegal monopoly.” But, Mehta wrote, “remedies designed to eliminate the defendant’s monopoly—i.e., structural remedies—are inappropriate in this case.”
So there we go. Mehta understood the law mandates he terminate Google’s monopoly, but he just decided against doing so.
Snip.
So what’s Mehta’s actual remedy? To understand that, we have look at the root of Google’s monopoly, as Mehta saw it. I characterized the case as follows, that the search giant had “bought up all the shelf space for search engines, aka paid Apple and browsers like Mozilla to be the default search provider instead of any of its rivals. It created Chrome so it could control that channel of distribution, and it bought Android for the same reason.” The goal of the remedy that the Antitrust Division sought was to terminate that monopoly, confiscate the fruits of its illegal behavior, and make sure monopolization would not recur. Here’s what I noted the DOJ sought:
The DOJ asked to remove the defaults that automatically place Google as the search choice for most browsers, an end to search-related payments, a spinoff of the Chrome browser which was itself a big search access point, as well as regulation of the mobile operating system Android. It also asked for syndication of Google’s search results and data to approved rivals, which is a way of forcing Google to not enjoy the illegal “fruits” of its monopoly by offering rivals some access to the secret sauce.
There were other requests, but those were the big ones. So what did the judge do? Mehta rejected both a Chrome spinoff and regulation of Android, since that’s a structural separation and he got nervous about that. But more insanely, he didn’t even say that Google had to stop paying Apple $20B+ a year to be the default search engine, it just had to limit such default payment agreements to one year terms. Mehta found that Google was doing illegal things to maintain its monopoly, but he didn’t force the company to stop doing those illegal things.
Why not? Well, he said that new companies like OpenAI had emerged to potentially challenge Google, and he didn’t want to, and I’m not kidding, hinder Google’s ability to compete with them. (“It also weighs in favor of “caution” before disadvantaging Google in this highly competitive space.”).
Beyond that, Mehta wrote that “cutting off payments from Google almost certainly will impose substantial—in some cases, crippling— downstream harms to distribution partners, related markets, and consumers, which counsels against a broad payment ban.” Here he’s talking about… Apple. Yes there are others, but Mehta could have blocked the contract with Apple, and let the other payments continue. But he didn’t. Mehta even wrote that if he restores competition in search, it could hurt Apple’s ability to invest in making phones better. It is quite problematic for a judge to refuse to break an illegal monopoly on the premise that an adjacent non-relevant market might be harmed. I can’t emphasize how crazy that is, it’s like, as my colleague Nidhi Hegde stated, finding someone guilty for bank robbery and then sentencing him to write a thank you note.
Google has been abusing it’s monopoly position for a long time now, and deserves much harsher than a slap on the wrist. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Chalk up a win for the First Amendment. “California’s ‘Deepfake’ Election Ad Ban Is Unconstitutional, Federal Court Rules. ‘Just as the government may not dictate the canon of comedy, California cannot pre-emptively sterilize political content.'”
“St. Louis cop-killer released on bond after paying only $5,000…Accused of shooting and killing an off-duty campus police officer in 2008, Brandon Levy was inexplicably allowed to walk after being required to pay only 10% of a $50,000 bond set by the court.” Thanks a lot, Associate Circuit Judge Michael Colona. I know you’ll be shocked to learn he’s a Democrat.
On that same theme: “Following reports that Texas was not complying with a presidential executive order requiring English proficiency for commercial truck drivers, Gov. Greg Abbott has directed the Texas Department of Public Safety to enforce the requirement for the safety of all drivers.”
Florida just ended all vaccine mandates. Mixed feelings. There is zero reason for children to be forced to take vaccines for Flu Manchu, but skipping polio vaccines is probably a mistake. Still, Florida is a laboratory for democracy. Nobody is forced to skip vaccines, now they merely have a choice. Let’s see if autism experiences a drop in Florida a decade hence…
They also hit the Ryazan oil refinery, again. “Ukraine has so far reduced about 20% of Russia’s refining capacity in the past month or so. This won’t add to that because this refinery was already offline. This is Ukraine doing its new tactic of just constantly hitting the refineries as often as possible to ensure that they remain offline.”
“Electromagnetic Weapon Destroys Drone Swarm In Seconds.” “Defense contractor Epirus quietly tested its latest electromagnetic weapon, Leonidas, against a swarm of 49 quadcopters, neutralizing them in seconds at Camp Atterbury, Indiana.” We previously talked about that system here.
“Pennsylvania Democrat County Commissioner Arrested In Massive Multi-State Drug Bust.” “Lehigh County Commissioner Zachary Cole-Borghi, a Democrat, was arrested at Bethlehem City Hall where he worked as an open records officer. The charges: possession of marijuana and possession with intent to deliver a pound of marijuana.” While you should definately move to a state where the devil’s cabbage is legal to do that sort of thing, the email teaser for this story (“Top Democrat Arrested in Massive Drug Bust”) did rather over-promise and under-deliver…
Ryan George tackles ghost jobs. Since I’m looking for a job (still), I can tell you that there are a lot of them out here…
Universal Music Group continues to attack Rick Beato…even to the point that they’re violating YouTube’s terms of service.
Looks like a clip job. “Kawhi Leonard reportedly paid $28 million for ‘no-show job’ with Clippers as way to get around salary cap, NBA investigating.”
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has signed into law a Republican plan to make the state’s congressional district map “more red” ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
“Today, I signed the One Big Beautiful Map into law,” Abbott announced in a Friday afternoon video post on X.
The Republican redistricting plan adds five new GOP-opportunity congressional districts.
Republicans currently hold 25 of the state’s 38 U.S. House seats.
Recent legal decisions cleared the way for Texas Republicans to redraw district boundaries based on partisan political performance and increase the party’s advantage in future elections to reflect voting shifts seen in 2024, when President Donald Trump won support from unprecedented numbers of minority voters.
To explicate those “recent legal decisions” for readers coming into this story tableau rasa: Democrats launched the Petteway v. Galveston County lawsuit trying to save one Galveston County commissioner’s seat, whereupon the Supreme Court ruled that those black/Hispanic coalition minority districts carved out to benefit the Democratic Party were unconstitutional. So Democrats have hoist themselves on their own petard, and nobody should have the slightest bit of sympathy for them.
Abbott said the new map “ensures fairer representation.”
The governor also thanked “all of the legislature who stayed in the Capitol and got this law to my desk.”
Texas lawmakers passed the Republican redistricting plan last week on party-line votes, after House Democrats delayed the inevitable by breaking quorum for two weeks.
Thrice Democrats have used the quorum break tactic in an effort to thwart redistricting, and thrice they have failed. Other than vainglorious virtue signaling, you wonder what they get out of the tactic and why they keep deploying it.
“Texas is now more red in the United States Congress,” said Abbott after signing the measure, known as House Bill 4.
Several Democrat-aligned groups filed legal challenges to the new congressional map before it was signed into law.
Organizations suing include the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), and the Mexican American Legislative Caucus (MALC). A group of Texas residents is also suing.
Plaintiffs claim the new map is racially gerrymandered to eliminate majority-minority districts required by the Voting Rights Act, unconstitutionally diluting the voting strength of minority voters, and is “intentionally discriminatory.”
The author and sponsor of HB 4, State Rep. Todd Hunter (R–Corpus Christi) and State Sen. Phil King (R–Weatherford), assured lawmakers that the map is “legal under all applicable law” and meets the requirements of “one person, one vote” and compactness.
Both Hunter and King repeatedly emphasized that the new district lines were drawn based on partisan political performance, which the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled permissible, not racial data.
State Sen. Adam Hinojosa (R–Corpus Christi) said the map represents a political shift in the state, including South Texas, which he represents.
“This is not a racial shift. This is a values shift, and no amount of shouting ‘racism’ is going to change that,” argued Hinojosa on the Senate floor.
Despite all the talk of lawsuits, Democrats are already announcing which of the new districts they’ll be running for, and the chances of lawsuits overturning them, the occasional rogue judge notwithstanding, would seem to be extremely slim. Indeed, the Supreme Court seems more likely to sweep away all creaky Voting Rights Act considerations of race as unconstitutional than to toss districts drawn in a colorblind manner aside because they don’t elect enough Democrats.
A Republican plan to redraw Texas congressional districts ahead of the 2026 midterm elections is on its way to the governor’s desk after passing the Senate early Saturday morning, paving the way for a shake-up in the state’s U.S. House delegation.
Senators passed the congressional redistricting plan on a party-line, 18-11 vote, following hours of debate and a threatened filibuster that fizzled.
The new map, drawn to improve Republican political performance, adds five new GOP-opportunity seats.
State Sen. Phil King (R–Weatherford) sponsored the redistricting plan, House Bill 4 by State Rep. Todd Hunter (R–Corpus Christi), which the House passed on Wednesday.
“The area of redistricting law is very robust and gets very complex, very quickly,” King opened Friday morning. “We’re not in a courtroom today.”
Yet throughout the day, Democrats pressed King on specific redistricting legalities and made clear they intend to challenge the map in court.
King said HB 4 is “legal under all applicable law” and meets the requirements of “one person, one vote” and compactness.
He repeatedly emphasized that the map was drawn based on partisan political performance, which the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled is permissible, not racial data.
“In contrast to the complications that are involved with race-based redistricting, political performance is really a pretty easy map to draw, and it’s absolutely permissible as a basis for drawing electoral districts,” said King.
The map flips five congressional districts from Democrat- to Republican-leaning: CD9 in Houston, CD28 in the Rio Grande Valley, CD32 in Dallas, CD34 in coastal South Texas, and CD35 in San Antonio.
I analyzed the effects of district movement on their incumbents here.
“There’s no question Democrats are not in favor of this map… because it elects more Republicans,” said King. “It was also very clear from testimony that a lot of people want us to create maps that reflect specific percentages of ethnic groups, and that’s illegal. We can’t do that.”
State Sen. Adam Hinojosa (R–Corpus Christi), the first Republican to hold Senate District 27 since Reconstruction, said the new map—which increases majority-minority voting districts—gives South Texas Hispanics “a voice that reflects their values, not outdated assumptions about race or party.”
“This is not a racial shift. This is a values shift, and no amount of shouting racism is going to change that,” said Hinojosa.
For over half a century, Democrats have used the Voting Rights Act as a tool to racially gerrymander themselves legislative majorities. More recently, Republican have flipped the script on them, concentrating minority voters in deep blue urban districts to make other districts more favorable to Republicans while fulfilling the letter of the Voting Rights Act. Then Democrats launched the Petteway v. Galveston County lawsuit trying to save one Galveston County commissioner’s seat, whereupon the Supreme Court ruled that those black/Hispanic coalition minority districts carved out to benefit the Democratic Party were unconstitutional.
Depending on only partisan affiliation date, Texas Republicans have now produced districts that are notably more compact than logical than many Democratic Party racially gerrymandered maps. Texas Republicans have garnered five additional Republican seats and helped America move closer to colorblind society. I count that as a win-win.
Trump tackles mail-in ballot fraud, the Democrat Party sinks (and sinks, and sinks), millionaires and billionaires pump money to the same lefties who decry them, a kangaroo verdict gets slapped down, a platoon of swamp creatures get smacked down, Ukrainian drones are producing gas shortages in Russia, Lebanon declares itself Iranian influence-free, a heavyweight joins the Texas AG race, Dade bows out, a neo-Nazi expertly trolls the German justice system, and Facebook’s AI wants to have sexytime with your children.
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
The next voting fraud vector President Trump is ready to tackle: mail-in voting fraud.
President Donald Trump has been warning for years that mail-in ballots and voting machines are riddled with vulnerabilities that invite fraud and undermine trust in elections. We’ve discussed these vulnerabilities here at PJ Media extensively, and now Trump is taking action on them. On Monday morning, President Trump announced on Truth Social that he will issue an executive order to put an end to mail-in ballots before the 2026 midterms and restore “honesty and integrity” to America’s elections.
In a lengthy post on Truth Social, Trump announced, “I am going to lead a movement to get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS, and also, while we’re at it, Highly ‘Inaccurate,’ Very Expensive, and Seriously Controversial VOTING MACHINES.” He argued that such machines cost “Ten Times more than accurate and sophisticated Watermark Paper, which is faster, and leaves NO DOUBT, at the end of the evening, as to who WON, and who LOST, the Election.”
Trump said the United States stands alone in continuing to use widespread mail-in voting. “We are now the only Country in the World that uses Mail-In Voting. All others gave it up because of the MASSIVE VOTER FRAUD ENCOUNTERED,” he wrote.
The president made clear that he intends to act quickly, pledging to use executive authority to move the plan forward. “WE WILL BEGIN THIS EFFORT, WHICH WILL BE STRONGLY OPPOSED BY THE DEMOCRATS BECAUSE THEY CHEAT AT LEVELS NEVER SEEN BEFORE, by signing an EXECUTIVE ORDER to help bring HONESTY to the 2026 Midterm Elections,” Trump said.
Snip.
In 2021, Democrats in Congress tried to ram through a series of radical bills — the Freedom to Vote Act, the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, and the For the People Act — that would have federalized state elections and permanently undermined election integrity. These schemes included universal mail-in ballots, counting votes up to ten days after Election Day, automatic voter registration, granting felons the right to vote, and even laying the groundwork to abolish the Electoral College altogether. It was a brazen attempt to lock in Democrat power forever by destroying the safeguards that protect free and fair elections.
Trump’s announcement proves that election integrity will be a central priority of his presidency as the 2026 midterms approach.
Some think Trump will run into states rights issues. We’ll see…
A federal appeals court handed the Trump administration a decisive 2-1 victory Wednesday, ruling that the president can proceed with cutting nearly $2 billion in previously approved foreign aid payments. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia overturned a lower court’s order that had required the administration to continue sending taxpayer funds abroad.
How the Working Families Party sells itself as “grassroots” — with IRS-documented, publicly admitted “common control” revealing it’s really a Soros-financed political money washer.
In New York politics, there’s one machine that towers above the rest. No, not the Democratic Party—it’s the Working Families Party, the most powerful minor party in America. Its name sounds wholesome enough—who doesn’t support “working families”? But behind that branding lies a $2 billion tax-exempt laundromat that’s anything but local, grassroots, or honest.
Take Zohran Mamdani, their current belle of the ball.
Easy answer: Zohran Mandani is the product of a grassroots washing syndicate of 501c3 and 501c4 entities funded by George Soros and Silicon Valley billionaires. He is their manufactured product.
Easy answer: Zohran Mandani is the product of a grassroots washing syndicate of 501c3 and 501c4 entities funded by George Soros and Silicon Valley billionaires. He is their manufactured product.
After winning his race, he announced on NBC: “I don’t think we should have billionaires.” Hilarious considering Mamdani’s “grassroots” revolution was fueled by over $2 million in PAC and organizational spending, much of it courtesy of the very billionaire class he allegedly opposes.
This is the theater of modern politics: denounce wealth while being powered by it. And the actors know their audience. They’ve learned that if you slap “grassroots” on the packaging, voters won’t check the label.
But let’s check it anyway.
The money trail revealed in Sam Antar’s breaking report is straightforward enough. Soros donates to the Open Society Institute, a $4.5 billion “charity” that enjoys generous tax deductions. OSI then transfers millions to other “charities” like Tides Foundation, which mysteriously claims to run a $350 million operation with zero employees. From there, the money “converts” into political cash: Tides passes funds to the Working Families Organization, a 501(c)(4), which then wires millions to PACs that bankroll candidates like Mamdani.
What you have is billionaire money dressed up in “working families” clothing, masquerading as the will of the people while being anything but.
Drawing on data from the nonpartisan data firm L2, the New York Times’s Shane Goldmacher conducted an in-depth analysis of the changes in these numbers over the past few election cycles. His findings paint a stark picture for the Democratic Party. It is in the midst of what he calls a “voter registration crisis,” with the party “hemorrhaging voters long before they even reach the polls.”
Goldmacher first looked at how these figures shifted between 2020 and 2024. In the span of four years, Democrats lost roughly 2.1 million registered voters across the 30 states and the district that track party affiliation, while the GOP gained approximately 2.4 million.
As the map below shows, Democrats fell behind in each one of these states. This includes blue states such as California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, and Rhode Island, as well as the swing states of Arizona, New Hampshire, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania.
NEW at NYT: The Democratic Party is facing a voter registration crisis in red, blue and battleground states alike — losing ground to the GOP everywhere.
My deep dive into the numbers and what it reveals about the party's brand.
The shift in Pennsylvania has been dramatic. In November 2020, Democrats held a registration advantage of 517,310 active voters. Today, that margin has shrunk to just 53,303.
A similar scenario has played out in North Carolina, where Democrats once enjoyed a 400,000-voter edge. Their lead now stands at less than 17,000.
Goldmacher noted that, in percentage terms, Democrats’ advantage over Republicans narrowed from nearly 11 points in 2020 to just over 6 points in 2024.
President Donald Trump was still able to win because so many Democratic votes are concentrated in deep-blue strongholds such as California and New York. By contrast, large red states such as Texas don’t allow voters to register by party affiliation — and thus aren’t reflected in the data.
In some cases, Democrats still retained an edge over Republicans (such as in Pennsylvania). But the majority of new registrations in other states, such as Florida, shifted from Democrats to the GOP. Goldmacher expects more states to follow.
Moreover, between 2018 and 2024, new young voters have shifted noticeably toward the Republican Party. In 2018, 66% of voters under 45 registered as Democrats, but by 2024 that share had fallen to just 48%.
Goldmacher reported that, last year, for the first time since 2018, new voter registrations nationwide favored Republicans over Democrats.
That was a long time ago and today Democrats’ image is significantly worse and over a wider range of cultural issues than it was back then. The animus toward the party among working-class voters has reached epic proportions and Democrats appear clueless on how to overcome that. The reigning theories seem to be talking more about economics (“kitchen table issues” or, more daringly, “abundance”), insisting they’re “fighters” and cussing a lot. Damon Linker gets to the heart of how absolutely hopeless this approach is.
[W]hat liberals need to do to defeat right-wing populism…[is] to moderate on culture. That means on policies and moral stances wrapped up with the old culture war (like trans and other gender-related issues) as well as in other areas of policy that have a strong cultural valance—like crime, immigration, and DEI. This isn’t just necessary because Democratic positions on these issues are unpopular at the moment. It’s also crucial because culture is more fundamental than politics: It sends a signal to voters about where a politician or party stands on base-level moral questions. When voters become convinced that a specific politician or party has bad (or just sufficiently different) moral judgment, they lose trust in that politician or party. And then other, more superficial policy commitments don’t matter…
The area surrounding the Texas-Arkansas border has been solidly Republican for a while, but the Biden people wanted to demonstrate that federal dollars are available to all, regardless of political leanings, and they hoped they might be able to tilt the area’s partisan alignment a bit back toward the Dems if those dollars were used to jump-start a solar-panel-construction industry in the region, creating jobs and boosting the local economy in other ways…The money arrived, but in the 2024 election, the region voted even more overwhelmingly for Donald Trump than it had in the previous two election cycles…The effort failed because the voters in Texarkana, like voters in rural and exurban communities around the country, have learned to distrust the Democrats on fundamental issues of morality and culture, making them disinclined to trust them on anything else…
The way to [reach these skeptical voters] is for the party to make an effort to distance itself from the leftward cultural stances associated with its most animated progressive activists, but also often affirmed by many millions of well-educated upper-middle-class white and often female professionals. Since people fitting this description frequently hold top jobs in the Democratic Party itself, this is a hard ask…
This, I’m convinced, is the top challenge facing liberalism and the Democratic Party today.
Exactly. This is the top challenge facing the Democrats today. Yet they are shockingly M.I.A. in dealing with it. Democrats overwhelmingly would rather do anything than do what is needed: two, three many Sister Souljah moments. Consider how Democrats have handled culturally-inflected issues since their 2024 election defeat.
Trans? A few peeps, quickly slapped down by the Groups and party activists.
Immigration? Everything Trump’s doing is wrong. We’ll only cooperate with federal law enforcement when we feel like it.
Crime? Not a problem. Everything’s going great—especially in D.C.! Democratic House leader Hakeem Jeffries: “The crime scene in D.C. most damaging to everyday Americans is at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.” Trump’s turning D.C. into a police state!
Race? DEI is wonderful and we’ll defend it to our dying breath. Same thing with racial preferences. Those who oppose these policies are racists and white supremacists.
The list could go on. Using the traditional 0-10 Sister Souljah scale, where zero is doing nothing at all, 5 is barely adequate, and 10 is what Bill Clinton did, I’d give today’s Democrats a 1 for the occasional grudging admission in interviews and the like that maybe the Democrats have overdone their noble commitments a little bit (though of course their heinous opponents are 100 percent wrong). And the 1 might be generous.
Teixeira is 100% right on the problem, and on Democrats complete inability to address the problem. Sister Souljah is the Democratic Party. The insane wing is in the process of driving out the last remnants of the Corrupt Wing, the latter of which foolishly believes that actually winning elections is somehow more important than the perpetual virtue signaling festival to remind those inbred redneck freaks of JesusLand that Democrats are the Good People, and anyone who disagrees is a hetronormative racist transphobic white supremacist who must be cancelled at all costs.
Social Justice controls the ideological core of the Party hook, line and sinker. Opposing social justice is heretical #WrongThink that must be punished. Social justice warriors cannot be argued out of their convictions by logic, as logic had nothing to do with forming them. Social justice is a religious imperative, and the only way to free the party from the grip of social justice is to burn it to the ground. The Democrat Party needs to go the way of the Whigs. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard announced Tuesday that she will be revoking security clearances for 37 current and former intel officials for allegedly abusing the public’s trust by manipulating information and conducting political activities.
The officials on Gabbard’s list includes former top aides to Obama Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who was involved with a discredited intelligence assessment that claimed Russia favored once-and-current President Donald Trump to win the 2016 election over Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.
Gabbard has accused the 37 officials accused of politicizing and weaponizing intelligence, failing to safeguard classified information, or other instances of failing to follow standards.
Andrew Cedar: Former Senior Director for Global Engagement at the National Security Council
Andrew P. Miller: Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Israeli-Palestinian Affairs
Benjamin A. Cooper: Associate Scholar in the Eurasia Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute
Beth E. Sanner: Former Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Mission Integration
Brett M. Holmgren: Former Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research
Charles A. Kupchan: Professor of International Affairs at Georgetown University and former Senior Director for European Affairs at the National Security Council
Christopher Center: Former intelligence analyst and official
Corinne A. Graff: Former Senior Advisor at the United States Institute of Peace
Dipreet K. Sidhu: Former intelligence and policy official
Edward Gistaro: Former National Intelligence Officer for Europe
Emily J. Horne: Former Spokesperson and Senior Director for Press at the National Security Council
Harry Hannah: Former intelligence official
Heather R. Gutierrez: Former intelligence analyst
Jamie S. Jowers: Former intelligence and policy advisor
Jeffrey M. Prescott: Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Agencies for Food and Agriculture
Joel T. Meyer: Former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Strategic Initiatives at the Department of Homeland Security
Joel Willett: Former CEO of Cybermedia Technologies
John W. Ficklin: Former Senior Director for Records and Access Management at the National Security Council
Julia S. Gurganus: Former National Intelligence Officer for Russia and Eurasia
Julia Santucci: Former Director for Egypt at the National Security Council
Loren DeJonge Schulman: Former Deputy Director of Studies at the Center for a New American Security
Luke R. Hartig: Former Senior Director for Counterterrorism at the National Security Council
Maher B. Bitar: Former Coordinator for Intelligence and Defense Policy at the National Security Council
Mark B. Feierstein: Former Assistant Administrator for Latin America and the Caribbean at USAID
Mary Beth Goodman: Deputy Secretary-General of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
Megan F. Doherty: Former Deputy Assistant Administrator for the Middle East at USAID
Michael P. Dempsey: Former Acting Director of National Intelligence
Perry Blatstein: Former intelligence analyst
Richard H. Ledgett: Former Deputy Director of the National Security Agency
Samantha E. Vinograd: Former Assistant Secretary for Counterterrorism and Threat Prevention at the Department of Homeland Security
Sarah S. Farnsworth: Former intelligence official
Shelby L. Pierson: Former Intelligence Community Election Threats Executive
Stephanie O’Sullivan: Former Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence
Thomas W. West: Former Special Representative for Afghanistan
Thom X. Nguyen: Former intelligence analyst
William J. Tuttle: Former intelligence official
Yael Eisenstate: Former Vice President of Global Affairs at the Anti-Defamation League
I’m including the entire list here because I think it’s important to name and shame. Also, having this posted and tagged lets me keep track when one of those swamp creatures pops up in a new role, and helps track the corruption of previously important institutions (I’m looking at you, ADL).
Speaking of swamp creatures: “Kash Patel’s FBI raids John Bolton’s home, office in probe over sending classified documents to family.” Bolton reminds me of Mark Felt, Watergate’s “Deep Throat,” in that both stabbed metaphorical knives in the President they served over being denied the influence and deference they felt they deserved. Bolton was actually a pretty good UN ambassador, where he served the useful function of scaring the shit out of America’s foreign enemies. Alas, he Peter Principled himself to National Security Advisor, where he never got on the same page with Trump’s unorthodox (but effective) diplomacy.
“LaToya Cantrell, the mayor of New Orleans, has been indicted on Federal charges….The indictment alleges that [Cantrell] and Jeffrey Paul Vappie, a member of her Executive Protection Unit (EPU), developed a personal relationship in October 2021. To conceal their relationship and maximize their time together, they allegedly created a scheme to defraud the City of New Orleans by engaging in personal activities while Vappie was on duty and being paid for providing protection.” They were canoodling on the taxpayer’s dime. (Previously: “It’s the mayor’s exorbitant travel spending that has people up in arms. She traveled to sister cities Ascona, Switzerland, and Juan Antibes-les-Pins on the French Riviera this summer, costing the City of New Orleans close to $45,000, including first-class international airfare with lie-flat seating.”)
“The Unecha pumping station which is part of the Druzhba pipeline has been hit for the second time this week by drones.” This is near to the border with Belarus.
“Unprecedented Shift In Lebanon’s Attitude Towards Iran: Our Government’s Decision To Disarm Hizbullah Stands; We Will Not Tolerate Your Intervention In Our Internal Affairs; Relations With Lebanon Must Be Conducted Via State Institutions, Not Via Hizbullah,” MEMRI, August 14, 2025:
On August 13, 2025, during his visit to Lebanon, the head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, Ali Larijani, heard unequivocally from Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam that Lebanon is no longer under Iranian patronage and will not tolerate Iranian dictates or interference in its internal affairs.
Larijani’s visit came amid tension between the two countries that followed the historic August 5 decision by the Lebanese government to disarm Hizbullah by the end of the year – a decision that sparked rage in Hizbullah’s patron Iran. Iranian officials, among them Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, as well as Ali Akbar Velayati, top advisor to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, and Iraj Masjedi, deputy commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Qods Force, expressed their vehement opposition to the Lebanon’s sovereign decision, claiming that it reflected not the will of the Lebanese people but only Israeli and American aspirations. These senior Iranian officials voiced support for Hizbullah’s refusal to comply with the demand to disarm, and warned that Hizbullah could thwart this plan because it had already rebuilt itself following the war with Israel and is now “at the height of its powers.” They added that Iran would support the organization in this matter.
Lebanon was quick to respond to these statements, perceiving them as direct and blatant interference in its domestic affairs. In a notable response, the Lebanese Foreign Ministry issued, unprecedentedly, not one but two harsh condemnations of “the violation of Lebanon’s sovereignty, unity, and stability.”
More condemnation and criticism came from the anti-Hizbullah and anti-Iran camp in Lebanon, which called on the Lebanese government to take diplomatic measures against Iran, such as expelling the Iranian ambassador and even severing relations with Iran, in addition to filing a complaint with the UN Security Council.
Israel’s decision to crush Iran’s terrorist catspaws continues to reap benefits across the region.
The Texas Attorney General’s race just got a major shake up.
Conservative firebrand and U.S. House Freedom Caucus member Congressman Chip Roy (R-TX-21) will run for Texas attorney general, the four-term legislator told The Texan.
“It has been my honor to represent the 21st Congressional District of Texas — the best part of the best state in the greatest country in the history of the world. I am particularly proud of our work to deliver on President Trump’s agenda and fight to drain the swamp. I could do it forever and be fulfilled professionally. But representatives should not be permanent,” Roy said in a release.
“And my experience watching Texans unite in response to the devastating Hill Country floods made clear that I want to come home. I want to take my experience in Congress, as a federal prosecutor, and as First Assistant Attorney General to fight for Texas from Texas.”
Roy’s 21st Congressional District stretches from Austin to San Antonio and west of Kerrville. During the devastating Hill Country flooding last month that killed over 130 people, Roy, who represents the area, was on the ground in the community more than most other state officials responding to the disaster.
He joins a field that includes state Sens. Mayes Middleton (R-Galveston) and Joan Huffman (R-Houston), as well as former Department of Justice appointee Aaron Reitz. Polling released by Texas Southern University on Thursday morning, which did not include Roy, put Huffman at 12 points, Middleton at eight, and Reitz at seven with nearly three-quarters of respondents undecided.
Previously Ted Cruz’s chief of staff before getting elected to congress, Roy has to be considered the immediate favorite to win the Republican nomination.
Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party stripped the party’s endorsement of radical leftist Minnesota state Sen. Omar Fateh in the Minneapolis mayoral race over “brazen cheating.” The emerging election cheating scandal hilariously occurred amongst Democrats. Awkwardly, this comes from the same party of woke leftists that insists U.S. elections are the “safest in the world” and free from manipulation. Clearly, this corrupt party that serves progressive elites – not the working class – wants a do-over in this local election.
On Thursday, Minnesota DFL chair Richard Carlbom wrote in a statement, “After a thoughtful and transparent review of the challenges, the Constitution, Bylaws & Rules Committee found substantial failures in the Minneapolis Convention’s voting process on July 19, including an acknowledgement that a mayoral candidate was errantly eliminated from contention.”
Carlbom added, “Now it’s time to turn our focus to unity and our common goal: electing DFL leaders focused on making life more affordable for Minnesotans and holding Republicans accountable for the chaos and confusion they’ve unleashed on Minnesotans.”
A series of challenges were submitted to the Minnesota DFL after last month’s convention, citing serious issues with the electronic voting system and raising questions about election integrity in Fateh’s endorsement over incumbent Jacob Frey. The Minneapolis DFL also recognized it had erroneously eliminated DeWayne Davis after the first round of voting due to 176 undercounted votes.
Funny how Democrats swear up and down that there’s absolutely no voting fraud…until they accuse a fellow Democrat.
Trump is calling on Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook to resign over mortgage fraud allegations, namely claiming two separate homes as her primary residence.
Moribund lefty legacy outlet MSNBC is rebranding as MS NOW. Until that woke hive of scum and villainy is entirely purged, no sane American will ever trust it.
“Texas Is Preparing To Cut Off Power To Data Centers During Grid Emergencies.” Well, yeah. If it’s data centers or people’s homes and apartments, people should generally win. Data centers should have backup power and orderly shutdown procedures, not to mention redundant arrays of backups and rotating off-site backups…
Texas Democratic State Rep. James Talarico (TX-50) decries the effects of money on politics while taking “a whopping $59,000 in donations from a billionaire’s PAC last year. The Texas Sands PAC, which is pushing for the Lone Star State to legalize casino gambling, gave Talarico the donations to encourage him to lead that initiative.”
“Senator launches investigation into Meta over allowing ‘sensual’ AI chats with kids.” It seems that all the billions Facebook has been sinking into AI has only made the world worse. Much like Facebook itself…
Flesh-eating bacteria is on the rise again. Avoiding swimming in the ocean or eating raw oysters seems to be the key to avoiding it.
Dwight has a swell obit up for RAF Flight Lt. John Cruickshank, a Catalina pilot who was so shot up by a U-boat, with blood soaking through his flight suit, that his crewmembers thought he wouldn’t make it on the five hour flight home. Not only did he make it back to help land the plane, he lived to be 105.
“U.S. Agriculture Secretary Rollins, Gov. Abbott Announce $850 Million to Combat New World Screwworm Threat. Hundreds of millions will be appropriated by the federal government to build a sterile fly facility.”
German neo-Nazi claims to be a woman so he can serve his time in a women’s prison. ‘Sven Liebich, who now goes by ‘Marla-Svenja,’ was convicted of “slander and incitement to hatred’ and lost his bid to appeal. Now that he’s headed to jail, he has suddenly identified as a woman, despite previously calling transgender people ‘parasites.'” Liebich appears to be an actual neo-Nazi rather than just an AfD member, and neo-Nazis are scum, but you have to admire the brazenness of the hustle, especially not even bother to shave off his mustache, and actually demanding kosher meals.
After weeks of gridlock, the Texas House has approved a new congressional redistricting plan that Republicans say will strengthen their hold on Washington, adding five GOP-leaning seats across the state.
The issue has been a priority for Gov. Greg Abbott, who placed congressional redistricting on the call during the first special session earlier this summer. But Democrats brought the chamber to a standstill when they broke quorum and fled to Illinois and other states to prevent the map from advancing.
Their walkout effectively killed the first special session, but with Abbott calling lawmakers back for a second 30-day session, Democrats returned on Monday. By Wednesday, Republicans had rushed the proposal out of committee and onto the House calendar, where it passed on a party-line vote.
State Rep. Todd Hunter (R–Corpus Christi), who carried the legislation, defended the process while laying out the plan on the floor.
“This plan originated in the first called special session before the chamber left a quorum,” said Hunter. “In that session, we held three public hearings—we were not required to hold those hearings. At these hearings, we heard testimony from members of Congress and citizens alike. The underlying goal of this plan is straightforward: improve Republican political performance.”
The map, which reshapes districts in Dallas and Houston as well as Central and South Texas, is designed to reflect population growth while giving Republicans an even stronger advantage. Each new district is required to be nearly equal in population, with the ideal congressional size sitting around 766,900 residents.
Democrats blasted the proposal as “illegal and racially discriminatory.”
President Donald Trump, meanwhile, cheered the move on Truth Social, calling it “ONE BIG, BEAUTIFUL CONGRESSIONAL MAP!” He praised Abbott and House Speaker Dustin Burrows for restoring a quorum, writing, “With the Texas House now in Quorum, thanks to GREAT Speaker Dustin Burrows, I call on all of my Republican friends in the Legislature to work as fast as they can to get THIS MAP to Governor Greg Abbott’s desk, ASAP.”
The detailed county-by-county breakdown maps of the new districts can be found here. On a personal note, I am thankfully being moved out of Democrat Lloyd Doggett’s District 37 and into Republican August Pfluger’s District 11.
Here’s a snapshot of the new districts from The Texan.
“The final vote was 88 ayes — all Republicans including House Speaker Dustin Burrows (R-Lubbock), who normally doesn’t vote on legislation — to 52 nays.”
Republicans drew this new map at the behest of President Donald Trump and with his 2024 election performance top of mind, ensuring that each of the projected five GOP pickups were areas the president won last year by at least 10 points.
Those five seats are the 9th, 28th, 32nd, 34th, and 35th congressional districts; two are in South Texas, one in Dallas, one in Houston, and one on the outskirts of San Antonio.
The Democrats currently representing those districts are Al Green of Houston (9th), the currently indicted Henry Cuellar of Larado (28th), Julie Johnson of Farmers Branch (32nd), Vicente Gonzalez of McAllen (34th), and infamous commie twerp Greg Casar of Austin (35th).
My guess is that Cuellar and Gonzalez are simply gone, since the Rio Grande Valley was already trending Republican and there are no friendly districts anywhere nearby for them to run in. Green could quite conceivably run in the now-vacant 18th congressional district, previously represented by the deceased Sylvester Turner, and before that by the daughter of the also-deceased Sheila Jackson Lee, and before that by Lee. While Johnson could theoretically run in neighboring Marc Veasey’s 33rd congressional district, that’s a Hispanic and black majority district (and I suspect it’s getting even more so in the current redistricting), which is a tough hill to climb for any white candidate, much less a gay white girl in a suburban district, so I suspect she’s toast as well. The redistricting sets up a Thunderdome showdown between Doggett and Casar for the Austin-based 37th, unless Doggett (who is 79) retires.
Now on to the Texas Senate, where which passed its own redistricting bill handily in the first special session and will likely pass this one in quick order.
I have been (and will continue to be) quite critical of House Speaker Dustin Burrows’ membership in the Straus-Bonnen-Phelan cabal that stays in power thanks to Democrat votes and special interest/gambling money, but in this instance he has delivered on a very important Republican priority.
Remember: All this was set in motion by Petteway v. Galveston County, a lawsuit Democrats filed in order to save one Galveston County commissioner’s seat, whereupon the Supreme Court ruled that “black/brown” coalition minority districts carved out to benefit the Democratic Party were unconstitutional. So instead of saving one county commissioner’s seat, they’re going to lose five U.S. Congressional seats.
Democrats did this to themselves, and have no one else to blame…
Since the Constitution talks about having a census every ten years, some have interpreted this to mean redistricting can only occur every ten years, making Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s mid-decade redistricting plan unconstitutional. You know who says that idea is bunk? The United States Supreme Court.
Texas finds itself once again embroiled in a familiar political storm. Republicans control both chambers of the legislature and the governor’s office and are considering revising the state’s congressional map before the next census.
Democrats and their allies in the press are portraying the move as a threat to democracy. “Mid-decade redistricting!” they cry. “Republican partisans drawing Republican seats is an outrage!”
But Republicans are simply engaging in the same political hardball Democrats themselves played for decades when they were in charge, and the courts have repeatedly stated that the practice is perfectly legal.
In 2003, the Republicans gained the majority in the Texas Legislature after 150 years of Democrat rule and Democrat favored district lines. Texas Democrats had redrawn district lines in 2001 to send as many Democrats to Congress as they could. When the legislature flipped in 2003, the Republican majority wanted to draw a new congressional map that would send more Republicans.
To thwart the will of the legislature, more than 50 Democratic House members fled across state lines to Oklahoma to prevent a quorum and stop the redistricting bill from advancing. Their absence stalled the process for weeks and forced Gov. Rick Perry to call multiple special sessions.
The spectacle drew national media attention but ultimately failed. The Democrats returned, the map passed, and, of course, they sued.
When that case, LULAC v. Perry, reached the Supreme Court in 2006, the justices addressed the core question directly: Is there anything in the Constitution that limits redistricting to once per decade? The answer was a resounding no.
The Court concluded that “nothing in the Constitution prevents a state from redrawing its congressional districts more than once during a census cycle,” so long as it complies with equal population and federal voting rights requirements.
The ruling didn’t just settle the Texas dispute but confirmed that mid-decade redistricting is a legitimate tool available to any legislature with the votes to pass a new plan.
Snip.
“Redistricting is an inescapably political enterprise,” the Justices wrote, “which federal courts should make every effort not to pre-empt.” In Abbott v. Perez (2018), the Court went further to say that redistricting is a “local function” and “federal-court review of districting legislation represents a serious intrusion on the most vital of local functions.”
And to reinforce the right of legislatures to complete their constitutional duties, the Supreme Court in 2024 declared the obvious: the good faith of state legislatures “must be presumed” in matters of redistricting.
In Alexander v. S.C. State Conference of the NAACP, the Court ruled that state legislators have taken the same oath of office to uphold the Constitution as judges and every other office holder and have a “strong presumption” of acting on good faith. If the redistricting plans do not involve a constitutional or statutory defect, the lower courts must let the plan stand unaltered.
If that’s not enough for anxious Democrats, the Court in Rucho v. Common Cause (2019) held that state legislatures may redistrict on the basis of partisanship. Partisanship does not involve constitutional issues for the courts to review.
So that’s that.
For over two centuries, legislatures have gerrymandered congressional districts for partisan advantage. Indeed, the word “Gerrymander” dates all the way back to 1812, named after a district created under the leadership of Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry.
For the overwhelming majority of that two century history, Democrats have been the ones wielding the gerrymander pen, reaping the partisan advantage of lopsided representation. Now that Republicans are finally in a position to do the same, they want to cry foul.
The Texas National Guard is mobilizing to support U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations across the state, sources confirmed to Texas Scorecard.
The deployment will reportedly center on managing large-scale detention facilities designed to facilitate mass deportations, with judge advocate general officers potentially deputized to streamline legal processes.
Hundreds of National Guard troops from across the nation will also be deployed to protect and support ICE agents in the field amid a heightened threat environment for federal immigration enforcement officers.
Under Operation Lone Star, launched in 2021, Texas has already deployed thousands of National Guard troops to the southern border in response to the Biden administration’s lax enforcement policies. According to officials in border counties, some of those assets have already been pulled back, as U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers are now being empowered to do their jobs.
Texas has reportedly eased off of arresting illegal aliens and charging them with criminal trespassing as the federal government assumes responsibility for border security operations.
Maybe there’s less need now that they’re not crossing the border in such huge numbers.
Operation Lone Star is now expected to be refocused from securing the southern border to assisting with mass deportations.
Texas National Guard troops were previously activated in June to maintain order during statewide protests against federal immigration enforcement efforts.
Abbott’s office has emphasized collaboration with federal partners, including a February agreement allowing guard members to make arrests under CBP supervision.
Weirdly, Texas is a state where the government follows the law and works for the benefit of actual citizens, not shadowy transnational conspiracies bound and determined to import as many illegal aliens into the country as possible.
It must be very frustrating for those who saw Biden’s illegal alien invasion as the key to finally turning Texas blue…
Texas fundraising reports for the first half of 2025 are out, and Republicans continue to out-raise Democrats by a considerable margin, and sometimes orders of magnitude.
Gov. Greg Abbott continues to show off his fundraising prowess and flaunt his status as the financial king of Texas politics. He raised $20 million in just a couple of weeks and has $87 million in his war chest between his cash on hand account and his Texans for Greg Abbott PAC.
“Support from thousands of donors across the state reflect the unwavering trust Texans have in Governor Abbott’s strong leadership,” said Campaign Manager Kim Snyder. “The broad backing we’ve received proves that Texans are committed to keeping our state strong, secure, and prosperous.”
In the last two reporting periods, Abbott has raised $43 million, and with a re-election bid next year, he has the capacity to bring in far more. His advisors have stated they want to put $20 million into flipping Harris County back to red, and a similar attempt is in the works to continue the momentum Republicans gained in South Texas last year.
And all of that will take money — lots of it. Abbott doesn’t yet have an opponent, but if he doesn’t draw a top-level challenger, Republicans across the state will depend on him and his money to be the rising tide that lifts all of their boats up and down the ballot. The governor has also hinted at a Texas House crusade on property tax reform similar to his school choice push that succeeded in 2024.
In 2022, Abbott had what should qualify as a “top tier” challenger in Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke, who actually managed to outraise him by $3 million. This managed to reduce his 2018 margin of victory from 13.3% to 10.9%. And for all his goofiness and the malleability of his “principles,” O’Rourke did the work. Against Cruz in 2018 and Abbott in 2022, he was an indefatigable campaigner who built effective, tech-fueled campaign teams that raised tons of money. It wasn’t enough, but O’Rourke in 2022 was undoubtedly better funded, organized and motivated than the Lupe Valdez campaign in 2018 or the Wendy Davis campaign in 2014, and will probably be better than whatever token opposition Democrats can dredge up against him in 2026. Barring a self-funding billionaire jumping in (which seems unlikely), Abbott should have an overwhelming funding advantage against anyone running against him.
If reelected, Abbott would surpass Rick Perry’s record of 5143 days as Governor on February 19, 2029.
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick can play a similar role with his $37 million cash on hand. So far, his only declared opponent is state Rep. Vikki Goodwin (D-Austin) who raised $36,000 and has $219,000 cash on hand. Patrick will have plenty at his disposal to fend off Goodwin and at the same time play a role in the elections for the currently four open Senate seats, and more if he so chooses.
Two orders of magnitude less funding and an Austin liberal is hardly a recipe for success running statewide in Texas.
Patrick is closer to the end of his time as the state’s second in command than the beginning, and speculation has buzzed about him ultimately not seeking re-election next year. But in addition to maintaining publicly that he’s running, he’s raising money like it, too.
“More miles traveled, more media coverage, more meetings held, and more money raised than anything I have ever seen in Texas. He has set the pace for the 2026 reelection campaign, and it is fast!” said Allen Blakemore, Patrick’s political consultant.
Being the two biggest elephants in the room, Abbott and Patrick can affect a lot of other races if they choose to, and both are very much eyeing their post-office legacies.
In the Year of Beto, Democrats got within 5 points of Patrick, and then in 2022 were back to losing by ten points.
Texas politics is a prolific business; there were 18 seven-figure or higher contributions made in this reporting period. Another 15 were half a million dollars or more.
Among these include $10 million from the law firm Arnold & Itkin into their new Texans for Truth and Liberty PAC; $9.1 million from Las Vegas Sands owner Miriam Adelson into her Texas Sands PAC; $5 million from Tim Dunn into his Texans United for a Conservative Majority; $3 million from Phillip Huffines into his brother Don’s comptroller campaign; and $2 million from Elon Musk to Texans for Lawsuit Reform and one of their arms.
Sands PAC is a big supporter of the Straus-Bonnen-Phelan-Burrows cabal. Texans for Lawsuit Reform used to be a powerful force, before a series of missteps (such as backing the Paxton impeachment effort) diminished their influence. Musk is theoretically starting a third political party (based on a Twitter poll), but I haven’t seen any signs it’s actually happening. He’s one of the few individuals wealthy enough to run a successful statewide race, but probably not against Abbott, with whom he’s evidently a big pen pal.
Abbott himself pulled in four million-dollar checks during the brief fundraising period.
Given the lack of contribution limits and its political importance nationally, it’s easier to raise jaw-dropping amounts of money in Texas than anywhere else.
Democrats are farther away from winning anything statewide than they were in 2018, and while offyear elections typically favor the party out of the White House, Democrats just seem to keep falling further and further behind.
Maybe I’ll have a chance to look at some of the other races later…
People were wondering what agenda items Texas Governor Greg Abbott would lay out for the forthcoming special session, and now we know.
Gov. Greg Abbott has officially released the agenda for the upcoming special legislative session, identifying 18 items for lawmakers to tackle when they return to Austin on Monday, July 21.
The announcement ends weeks of speculation about what issues would be included on the call and contains a mix of responses to both recent events and long-standing conservative priorities.
“We delivered on historic legislation in the 89th Regular Legislative Session that will benefit Texans for generations to come,” said Abbott. “There is more work to be done, particularly in the aftermath of the devastating floods in the Texas Hill Country. We must ensure better preparation for such events in the future.”
Included in the call are several flood-related items aimed at improving early warning systems, emergency communications, and local relief funding. The agenda also includes a sweeping review of rules related to disaster preparation and recovery.
Abbott is also calling for legislation to eliminate the STAAR test, cut property taxes, and overhaul regulations on THC products—an issue that has divided state leadership since Abbott vetoed a proposed ban last month. Instead of an outright ban, the governor is asking for new restrictions on potency and synthetic compounds without “banning a lawful agricultural commodity.”
We covered the issues surrounding marijuana and THC regulation here. The law that was vetoed would likely have clashed with federal legislation on the issue.
Several conservative priorities also made the list, including a ban on taxpayer-funded lobbying, a constitutional amendment granting the Attorney General the power to prosecute election crimes, and protections for women’s privacy in sex-segregated spaces. Legislation to further protect unborn children by strengthening the state’s ban on abortion-inducing drugs also made the cut.
Other agenda items include measures to protect victims of human trafficking from criminal liability, protections for law enforcement personnel files, and action on title theft and deed fraud. Abbott also called for legislation addressing judicial department operations and incentives for water conservation in building projects.
As expected, redistricting is officially on the agenda, following pressure from President Donald Trump’s team to secure additional Republican seats in Congress. The item calls for revisions to Texas’ congressional maps “in light of constitutional concerns raised by the U.S. Department of Justice.”
I have mixed feelings about redistricting. On the one hand, it would be nice to give House republicans a little more breathing room. On the other, Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution of the United States of America states that “The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct,” and it has not been ten years since the last census and redistricting. Still, plenty of states have had to perform redistricting based on court orders, and for decades Democrats used them for partisan advantage, so this is a case of what’s good for the goose in good for the gander.
My understanding is that the Fifth Circuit Court ruling in Petteway v. Galveston County opens the door for redistricting to be performed in light of an altered reading of Voting Rights Act remedies (no longer need black and Hispanics be combined into the same district for “coalition” majority districts, much to the annoyance of the Democrat Party). Indeed, that is the precise outcome we discussed the last time we covered Petteway v. Galveston County. And Democrats were the ones who filed the lawsuit to try to save save one commissioners court seat in Galveston County.
We told them over and over again that they weren’t going to like living under the “New Rules” they instituted, and now they get to find out why, good and hard…
In a dramatic last-minute move, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) vetoed a total ban on recreational cannabis that had been backed by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R), causing a rare rift between the state’s top elected officials.
Abbott signed the veto of Senate Bill 3 on Sunday just one hour before its deadline, calling for a special legislative session in mid-July to address the state’s wild-west cannabis market.
The move came one day after Abbott signed House Bill 46, which dramatically expanded the state’s medical cannabis program to include a wide range of new conditions, put dispensaries across the state and allow the sale of new products such as vaporizers.
Senate Bill 3, which passed last month after a bitterly contested fight, represented what the Houston Chronicle has called a “civil war” between medical and recreational cannabis, in which medical — until Sunday — appeared to have won.
In a Sunday statement, Patrick blasted the veto — and Abbott. “His late-night veto, on an issue supported by 105 of 108 Republicans in the legislature, strongly backed by law enforcement, many in the medical and education communities, and the families who have seen their loved ones’ lives destroyed by these very dangerous drugs, leaves them feeling abandoned,” Patrick said.
Allowing Senate Bill 3 to become law — knowing that it faces a lengthy battle that will render it dead on arrival in court — would hinder rather than help us solve the public safety issues this bill seeks to contain. The current market is dangerously under-regulated, and children are paying the price. If Senate Bill 3 is swiftly enjoined by a court, our children will be no safer than if no law was passed, and the problems will only grow.
He further states that because SB3 bans any amount of THC, it falls below the federal threshold. “It therefore criminalizes what congress expressly legalized and puts federal and state law on a collision course.” He also notes the possibility of abusive private property seizures under the bill.
“Abbott urged lawmakers to consider an approach similar to the way alcohol is regulated, recommending potential rules including barring the sale and marketing of THC products to minors, requiring testing throughout the production and manufacturing process, allowing local governments to prohibit stores selling THC products and providing law enforcement with additional funding to enforce the restrictions.”
The 89th Texas Legislature will gavel back in for a special session on July 21 — called by Gov. Greg Abbott an hour after he vetoed the hotly-debated Senate Bill (SB) 3 banning THC-derived products on Sunday night.
Abbott specified five bills that he intends for the Legislature to address besides SB 3: SB 1758 by Sen. Brian Birdwell (R-Granbury), related to the operation of cement kilns;
SB 1253 by Sen. Charles Perry (R-Lubbock), regulating certain water projects;SB 1278 by Sen. Tan Parker (R-Flower Mound), on affirmative defense in cases of human trafficking;SB 2878 by Sen. Bryan Hughes (R-Mineola), concerning the operation of the state judicial branch; and SB 648 by Sen. Royce West (D-Dallas), related to recording requirements of real property.
“At this time, the Governor has identified several bills that were vetoed or filed without signature that will be placed on the upcoming Special Session agenda for further consideration,” his press release read.
“Working with the Texas Legislature, we delivered results that will benefit Texans for generations to come,” said Abbott in a press release shortly after midnight — the 20-day deadline for the governor to take action on bills passed during the regular session.
He noted that all seven of his emergency priorities passed during the regular 89th session, which spanned from January 13 to June 2 — property tax relief, generational investment in water, raising teacher pay, expanding career pay, school choice, bail reform, and creating the Texas Cyber Command.
The clash between Abbott and Patrick is interesting, because the state’s two highest elected officials rarely feud so publicly. (Privately is a different matter; those two are not best buds, but they have an effective working relationship.)
It’s also interesting because of the clash between conservative and libertarian impulses. Neither Texans nor the legislature have ever voted for full marijuana or THC legalization. It seems that Dan Patrick and the legislature are merely instructing localities to actually enforce existing state law. But, as Abbott notes, the threshold apparently clashes with federal law.
There’s a case to be made for marijuana legalization on the ground of personal autonomy, but both de facto and de jure marijuana legalization in other states have brought along with them considerable negative externalities, from sketchy potheads in broken RVs trashing formerly respectable neighborhoods to state and national forests trashed by illegal grow operations. Oklahoma has suffered from Chinese mob control of the marijuana trade. legalization seems to have made these problems notably worse, by making law enforcement disinclined to go after any grow operations.
In other states, the “medical marijuana” loophole has been expanded so far that you can drive several weed-filled 18-wheelers through it.
The Austin-area quasi-legal “three smoke shops in a half mile stretch” status quo (which SB3 would theoretically eliminate) probably isn’t socially healthy. But it’s entirely possibly that they’re less unhealthy than current full legalization regimes in other states.
On the other hand, marijuana prohibition at the federal level should be repealed because it violates the 10th Amendment, and the idea that the federal government can prohibit what someone can grow and consume on their own land is absurd, unconstitutional, and rests on the horrible precedent of Wickard vs. Filburn.
Polls seem to show a majority of Texas voters oppose a THC ban, but want to see it more heavily regulated. Usual poll caveats apply, and transient public opinion is not the final arbiter in representative government, but I think it’s safe to say that the majority of Texans are considerably less enthused about a THC ban than Dan Patrick.
I’m not entirely sure of the best way forward. Abbott’s suggestion for alcohol-type regulation going forward is probably better (and more likely to withstand legal challenge) than Patrick’s more heavy-handed approach. Whatever law is settled on, Austin and a few other locals will almost certainly continue to under-enforce it.
Marijuana legalization has often been cited as a slippery slope to full drug legalization, and we have seen much of that in deep blue hellholes like San Francisco. But in Texas, while there does indeed appear to be a slope, it doesn’t seem particularly slippery…
