President Trump (and parents) rack up Supreme Court wins, more Iran nuke damage assessments, a whole lot of Democrats want to die on the hill of taxpayer subsidies for mutilating your children, and some fast cars. Plus a weird assortment of violent lunatics.
The Supreme Court on Friday handed the Trump administration a win by limiting the ability of federal judges to issue nationwide injunctions blocking the president’s agenda.
The justices ruled 6-3 along ideological lines in Trump v. Casa, siding with the Trump administration’s challenge to the scope of nationwide injunctions issued against Trump’s birthright citizenship executive order. The Court did not, however, weigh-in on the legality of the birthright-citizenship order itself.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote the majority opinion, finding that universal injunctions exceed the authority Congress has given to federal courts. Barrett was joined by the Court’s five other conservative justices.
The High Court ruled that lower courts cannot prevent the federal government from enforcing its policies against nonparties to the specific case they’re ruling on. For the time being, the justices have partially halted the nationwide injunctions against Trump’s executive order. They halted the injunctions in areas where their authority is too broad and prevent the executive branch from developing public guidance related to Trump’s executive order.
They punted on birthright citizenship, but a win is a win, and hopefully lower courts will now stop trying to reimport convicted and deported illegal alien felons.
Suchomimus has clear satellite images of the damage Operation Midnight Hammer did to the Isfahan and Natanz nuclear complexes.
UN Nuclear Watchdog Chief: ‘Night and Day’ Difference Between Iran’s Nuclear Capabilities Before and After US Strikes. ‘It is clear that there is one Iran—before June 13, nuclear Iran—and one now,’ says IAEA’s Rafael Grossi.
The U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities set back the Islamic Republic’s program “significantly,” the head of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog organization said Tuesday.
“I think the Iranian nuclear program has been set back significantly, significantly,” International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director general Rafael Grossi said in a Fox News interview. He noted that “it is clear that there is one Iran—before June 13, nuclear Iran—and one now,” describing the difference as “night and day.”
Just before the Tuesday afternoon interview, the IAEA revealed that it detected “extensive damage at several nuclear sites in Iran, including its uranium conversion and enrichment facilities.” That damage caused a radioactive release, according to the organization.
“Our assessment is that there has been some localized radioactive as well as chemical release inside the affected facilities that contained nuclear material—mainly uranium enriched to varying degrees—but there has been no report of increased off-site radiation levels,” Grossi said in the IAEA statement. The organization observed “two impact holes from the U.S. strikes” at Iran’s Natanz enrichment site above “the underground halls that had been used for enrichment as well as for storage,” according to the statement, in which Grossi also said he saw “extensive damage at several nuclear sites in Iran, including its uranium conversion and enrichment facilities.”
After a week’s worth of pounding from the Israel Defense Forces, the Iranian regime was disoriented and defenseless, helplessly exposed to Israeli and American air superiority, like a turtle flipped on its shell and baking underneath the pitiless desert sun. Now was the time to finish the job, not two weeks from now, after (what was left of) the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps command structure had time to regroup.
So we finished the job. It was the right thing to do. In fact, I will go further than that: If Donald Trump’s finest moment as a politician is forever destined to be that dark day when he arose bleeding from an assassin’s bullet to throw a reassuringly defiant fist to a terrified crowd, then there is good reason to think that Saturday will ultimately rank second. Not because of any one image or moment from the day’s events — although Trump’s charmingly direct invocation of the Creator at the end of his press conference (“I just want to say, we love you, God,”) has immediately entered my bedtime prayer rotation — but because of the foreign policy legacy it has the potential to represent.
I operate by rather simple logic, myself. The Iranian regime — whose unofficial motto is “Death to America,” and which openly calls for the destruction of Israel, our sole true ally in the region — seeks a nuclear weapon to achieve this goal. I have yet to see anyone other than Ben Rhodes, or those quietly receiving funding from Qatar, argue that Iran should be allowed to acquire or build one. That point having been settled, the question then turns to what cost would be worth paying in order to prevent such a thing from happening.
If the price is merely a few bombs from a B-2, then the question is easily answered. Iran’s nuclear program has either been destroyed permanently or set back decades. The mullahs are very upset, as one imagines murderous religious fanatics tend to be, but also seemingly powerless to do much more than cause a temporary economic ruction by laying mines across the Strait of Hormuz. (Note: In a late-breaking development after this piece had gone to press, Trump announced last night that he had in fact brokered a cease-fire between Iran and Israel.)
This is an unalloyed victory for the forces of sanity and civilization. To those who point to the inevitability of unforeseen “blowback,” I will remind you that Iran and its proxies have been engaging in low-level conflict with America for well over a decade now — who do you think was funding and training the people killing our boys in Iraq and Afghanistan all those years? — and now it is free to try its hand at more of the same, if it wishes, this time without a looming nuclear threat to back it up. America has come out ahead on this in concrete, measurable, and hugely valuable geostrategic ways.
Most importantly of all, none of this would have happened if Kamala Harris were president. Think about that for a moment; think about the road not taken. One can only speculate about hypotheticals, but . . . c’mon now. Look into your heart, you know it to be true. Imagine a President Harris, sitting uneasily atop a Democratic coalition barely held together at the seams: Would she have encouraged Netanyahu in his initial campaign against Iranian military and nuclear assets? Would she have provided the final air support and ordnance necessary to get the job done? With people such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, David Hogg, and Zohran Mamdani calling the shots among large segments of her base?
To ask the question out loud is to answer it: no. For that reason alone, it is no exaggeration to say that the shape of the world perceptibly turned for the better on the outcome of last November’s election. You can draw a straight line between Donald Trump’s winning the 2024 race and Iran’s nuclear weapons program now being best described as a series of variably sized craters. If you supported Donald Trump and voted for him in 2024, you should feel proud of it today: Saturday is the most obvious evidence yet of why your vote mattered.
It is hard even to digest the incredible train of events of the last few days in the Middle East.
Iran had been reduced to an anemic, performance-art missile attack on our base in Qatar—the last Parthian shot from a terrified regime, desperate for an out—and a ceasefire.
Iran would have been better off not launching such a ceremonial but ultimately humiliating proof of impotence.
Even worse for the theocracy, Iran’s temporary reprieve came from the now magnanimous but still hated Donald Trump.
So ends the creepy mystique of the supposedly indomitable terror state of Iran, the bane of the last seven American presidents over half a century.
For Supreme Leader Khamenei, it was hard to swallow that U.S. bombers got their permission to fly into Iranian airspace from the Israeli air force.
A good simile is that Trump put a pot of water on the stove, told Iran to jump in, put the lid over them, then smiled, turned up the heat—and will now let them stew.
As postbellum realities now simmer in Iran, the theocracy is left explaining the inexplicable to its humiliated military and shocked but soon-to-be-furious populace. All the regime’s blood-curdling rhetoric, apocalyptic threats against Israel, goose-stepping thugs, and shiny new missiles ended in less than nothing.
A trillion dollars and five decades’ worth of missiles and centrifuges are now up in smoke. That money might have otherwise saved Iranians from the impoverishment of the last fifty years.
How about the little Satan Israel, to which Iran for nearly 50 years promised extinction?
Israel had destroyed Iran’s expeditionary terrorists, Iran’s defenses, its nuclear viability, and the absurd mythology of Iranian military competence. And worse, Israel showed it could repeat all that destruction when and if it is necessary.
So, the most hated regime in the world crawled into the boiling pot because it looked around in vain for someone to void Trump’s ultimatum for a cease and desist.
But there were no last-minute saviors to rescue them.
The dreaded decades-long Iranian nuclear threat?
It is either gone for now, or if it resurfaces, it will be again far easier to vaporize at will than to rebuild a lost trillion-dollar investment.
Russia? Its former Obama-Kerry re-invitation back into the Middle East lasted only a decade.
It will now cut its losses like it did with the vanished Assad kleptocracy in Syria. Putin exits the Middle East not entirely displeased that his lunatic Iranian client did not get a bomb—but did get its just desserts. A tense Middle East tends to prop up Russian export oil prices.
Did China come to the mullahs’ aid?
No, they were not shy about ordering their Iranian lackey to keep the Strait of Hormuz open, through which 50 percent of Chinese-purchased oil passes.
For President Xi, the Iranians are treated as little more than Uyghurs with oil.
The world decided that it was tired of a half-century of crybully terrorism, empty nuke threats, mindless mobs screaming scripted banalities, cowardly murdering, and medieval theocrats threatening the general peace.
So, the world turned its back on Iran. And with a wink and nod, it let Israel and the U.S. do what they must.
We recently learned of a previously concealed tranche of documents likely to shed new light on the past decade of American political controversies. This potentially earth-shaking information is known as “Prohibited Access.”
It was only recently discovered that the FBI’s information system, called Sentinel, had a level of access previously unknown to anyone outside the Bureau and known only to a select few inside. In essence, this was a concealed cache used to hide documents the FBI wanted hidden from discovery.
There is one part of the Sentinel system that is devoted to classified and confidential information, termed “Restricted Access.”
It turns out there is a higher, more secretive level called “Prohibited Access.” To any outside observer or investigator, it would appear that there was no record of Prohibited Access information, even though the existence of Restricted Access documents would be shown.
Accordingly, when prosecutors like John Durham or investigators such as Congressman James Comer were investigating various potential misdeeds, they would not have learned of the existence of documents relevant to their investigation that were kept in Prohibited Access.
Although it remains unclear, there is reasonable suspicion that even FBI Inspector General Michael Horowitz was not aware of this document cache. Alternatively, Horowitz may have known about it but also may have agreed to keep its existence secret, a dismaying possibility for one charged with enlightening Congress and the public.
Logic tells us that, broadly, there could be only two related purposes for this concealed tranche because it prevents those investigating the FBI or its favored parties from even knowing about the existence of the documents; such suggests concealment of information inculpatory to the senior levels of the FBI and/or its favored politicians, as well as exculpatory information about the targets of its biased investigations.
If, by way of a wild hypothetical example, James Comey and Andrew McCabe broke laws to make an innocent Donald Trump appear guilty of “Russian Collusion,” they would not wish a trail of their ugly misconduct to see the light of day, nor reveal proof of Trump’s innocence.
Pam Bondi and Kash Patel should shine a lot of disinfecting sunlight here.
Winning: “Supreme Court Allows States to Cut Off Medicaid Funding to Planned Parenthood.”
The Supreme Court is allowing South Carolina to cut off Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood, a win for pro-lifers that will likely clear the way for red states across the country to stop taxpayer dollars from funding abortion.
The justices ruled 6-3 along ideological lines Thursday to permit South Carolina to cut off Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood. Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the majority opinion for the Court, siding with the state against a private challenge brought by the abortion provider and a patient.
The plaintiffs in Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic argued that Medicaid patients should be free to sue in order to choose their own health-care providers, while the state claimed they lacked the right to sue.
“By rejecting Planned Parenthood’s lawfare, the Court not only saves countless unborn babies from a violent death and their mothers from dangerously shoddy ‘care,’ it also protects Medicaid from exposure to thousands of lawsuits from unqualified providers that would jeopardize the entire program,” said Katie Daniel, director of legal affairs at Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America.
The 1965 Medicaid Act grants patients the ability to choose a willing and qualified provider. Medina dealt with whether patients have the right to sue to go to their preferred provider and whether Planned Parenthood qualified as a provider. Planned Parenthood operates two clinics in the state and argued the case was about healthcare access, not abortion.
South Carolina stopped allowing Planned Parenthood to participate in its Medicaid program in 2018 because of state law barring the public funding of abortion. The move was immediately blocked in court in response to a challenge brought by Julie Edwards, a South Carolina woman who claimed she preferred Planned Parenthood for gynecological care and needed Medicaid coverage.
“States should be free to fund real, comprehensive care and exclude organizations like Planned Parenthood that profit off abortion and distribute dangerous gender-transition drugs to minors,” said Alliance Defending Freedom senior counsel John Bursch. The Alliance Defending Freedom represented the South Carolina Department of Health in the case.
Abortion is not “woman’s health care” and should not be treated as such.
SB 12 includes a prohibition on schools assisting in the “social transitioning” of students and also restricts the instruction of “sexual orientation or gender identity,” while providing that it does not “limit a student’s ability to engage in speech or expressive conduct protected by the First Amendment … that does not result in material disruption to school activities.”
In a press release Monday, the ACLU of Texas, along with Students Engaged in Advancing Texas (SEAT), called SB 12 “one of the most extreme education bans in the country.”
“This ban on education harms Texas schools by shutting down important discussions and programs that mention race, ethnicity, gender identity, and sexual orientation,” Brian Klosterboer, senior staff attorney for ACLU Texas, stated in the press release.
“Students should be free to learn about themselves and the world around them, but S.B. 12 aims to punish kids for being who they are and ban teachers from supporting them.”
Another Supreme Court win: “Supreme Court Rules in Favor of Maryland Parents in Challenge to Mandatory LGBTQ Curriculum.” Which part of “Get your groomer hands off children” was unclear?
Immigrations and Customs Enforcement recently carried out a multi-state operation targeting eleven Iranian nationals in the U.S. illegally as the threat of Iranian terror cells attacking the U.S. intensifies.
Over the last 48 hours, federal agents arrested the eleven Iranians and a U.S. citizen who harbored an illegal immigrant from Iran, a Department of Homeland Security official told NR.
“Under Secretary Noem, DHS has been full throttle on identifying and arresting known or suspected terrorists and violent extremists that illegally entered this country, came in through Biden’s fraudulent parole programs or otherwise,” DHS assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement.
“We have been saying we are getting the worst of the worst out—and we are. We don’t wait until a military operation to execute; we proactively deliver on President Trump’s mandate to secure the homeland.”
ICE agents arrested former Iranian army sniper Ribvar Karimi in Alabama on June 22. Karimi possessed an Iran army identification card upon his arrest and is currently being held in ICE custody. He entered the U.S. in October 2024 under a K-1 marriage visa but never updated his immigration status.
In Houston, ICE agents arrested Behzad Sepehrian Bahary Nejad, an illegal alien who was armed with a loaded pistol at the time of his arrest. Nejad was previously arrested in August 2017 for assaulting a family member and had a final order of removal prior to his latest arrest. Also in Houston, ICE arrested Hamid Reza Bayat, who a judge had ordered removed from the U.S. 20 years ago. Bayat was convicted twice on drug charges and again for driving with a suspended license.
In Tempe, Arizona, where they nabbed Mehrzad Asadi Eidivand, an Iranian convicted of threatening a law enforcement officer and possessing a firearm as an illegal alien, and U.S. citizen Linet Vartaniann for threatening law enforcement and harboring Eidvand. The pair were arrested after ICE obtained a search warrant and they now face federal charges.
Likewise, ICE arrested two Iranian nationals living together in Colorado Springs, Mahmoud Shafiei and Mehrdad Mehdipour. Shafiei was ordered removed decades ago and has criminal convictions related to drug crimes, and arrests for assault and child abuse. Border patrol encountered Mehdipour in June 2023 and processed him for expedited removal. Both are now in ICE custody as they undergo removal proceedings.
Another Iranian national ICE nabbed is Mehran Makari Saheli, a former member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps who was located in St. Paul, Minnesota. Sahei was previously convicted for being a felon in possession of the firearm and was illegally staying in the U.S. after a judge ordered him removed in 2022.
ICE agents arrested several other Iranian nationals in numerous other states and localities, almost all of whom had criminal convictions for various offenses and are now in federal custody.
How many Democrat district judges had decisions half-written forbidding deportations when the Supreme Court decision came down?
Moderate Democrats, business leaders, and Republicans — concerned about the prospect of a Mayor Zohran Mamdani — are plotting ways to keep the Democratic Socialist out of Gracie Mansion.
Shocked by the 33-year-old state assemblyman’s upset win in the Democratic mayoral primary last night against a former New York governor, Andrew Cuomo, these Cuomo backers, reluctant Cuomo backers, independents, and Republicans say the only way to beat Mr. Mamdani is to all back one candidate.
“The horse they’re going to back is Eric Adams,” a grocery store magnate and former Republican candidate for New York City mayor, Jon Catsimatidis, tells The New York Sun. “He is backed by the White House, by Washington, and he’ll make sure crime is cleaned up.”
When asked what that means for the Republican nominee for mayor, Curtis Sliwa, whom Mr. Catsimatidis employed at his radio station, the billionaire replied, “He’ll clean up the crime.”
Mr. Catsimatidis ended the call. He didn’t respond to a text asking if he is personally planning to back Mr. Adams. He said to tune into his radio show this evening.
Mr. Catsimatidis told the press earlier this month that he may sell his grocery store empire or move his business out of the city if Mr. Mamdani becomes mayor.
Always with the trannies: “Zohran Mamdani Wants To Spend $65 Million on Medical Gender Treatments for Minors and Adults.”
Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic Socialist candidate for New York City mayor, has quietly proposed channeling tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer funds to pay for medical gender-transition treatments for residents of all ages – including for minors. This city spending would counteract the sustained assault on these medical interventions – coming from the Trump administration and Congressional Republicans – which threatens treatment programs even within blue cities and states.
The controversial method of providing puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and sometimes gender-transition surgeries — such as breast removal — to minors in particular is now at the apex of the culture wars. It has also become a flashpoint in Democrats’ battle to redefine themselves in the wake of their brutal losses in the November election.
Authorities in Austin, Texas, have arrested Brian Johnson, known online as the social media influencer “Liver King,” according to jail records.
He faces one charge of terroristic threat, a Class B misdemeanor.
Snip.
The so-called Liver King rose to viral fame with social media posts depicting a barbarian-like “ancestral lifestyle,” including the consumption of raw animal organs, as depicted in the recent Netflix documentary “Untold: The Liver King.”
His persona and the story behind the physique fell apart in December 2022, however, when he admitted in a YouTube video to using steroids.
Speaking of crazy, violent lunatics: “51-year-old Adam Christopher Sheafe has now confessed to crucifying and killing Pastor William Schonemann in Phoenix in the early hours of Easter Sunday, 2025.”
“U.S. Department of Justice Closes Investigation into Muslim-Centric EPIC City, No Charges Filed.” As I’ve mentioned before, while investigation was certainly warranted, right now EPIC City looks more like a failed speculative real estate venture than an actual Muslim city in the offing, especially now that the developers have sworn up and down that they won’t discriminate against buyers based on religion. Awful nice of them to agree to obey the law…
This is breach of contract action against Mr. Biden for unpaid legal fees,” reads the complaint filed in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia by Winston & Strawn LLP – which notes that the 55-year-old bagman-in-chief hired the firm “to represent him in several complex matters, including criminal trial in the United States District Court for the District of Delaware,” and that the firm provided him “with extensive legal services in those matters which generated a substantial amount of fees.”
According to the law firm, Hunter has dodged “repeated” efforts to collect those fees.
“Morrissey cancels Stockholm show, saying he and band are ‘travel-weary beyond belief’, citing “’bsolutely zero music industry support’ for full Scandinavia tour.”
“No label will release our music, no radio will play our music … and yet our ticket sales are sensational. What does this tell us about the state of Art in 2025?”
Last year, he said he had bought back the rights back to the album, as well as his 2014 record ‘World Peace Is None Of Your Business’. He later told Medium that “there are two albums” that he has completed but is unable to release, the other being ‘Without Music, The World Dies’.
“The second one was re-recorded in France in late 2023, and given a new title. We scrapped half of the tracks and we recorded six new ones, and so it is not the album from the beginning of 2023.”
He added: “Labels say that they are both fantastic high-quality pop albums but they say that they can’t release them because they don’t want the wrath of The Guardian making their lives hell. The harassment campaign against me by The Guardian is worldwide knowledge now, and it is effective in the sense that labels do not want to become involved with this Gotcha! Journalism.”
Evidently Morrissey figured out that unlimited, unassimilated Muslim immigration to the UK was a bad idea way back in 2019. Obviously The Guardian must punish him for his #wrongthink.
I’m not a Morrissey fan, and a significant percentage of my impression of him is everyone from MST3K to Mojo Nixon making fun of him. I can certainly see a musician cancelling a show due to exhaustion, and Morrissey is no spring chicken. But as for “zero music industry support,” dude, it’s 2025. Major labels don’t support anyone unless they can own your entire output, or at least get their sticky fingers into every possible revenue stream. Just pay to have your own CDs pressed and sell them at your (evidently successful) shows.
Israel continues to pummel Iran’s nuclear program, President Trump sets a deadline, illegal alien border crossings are down radically, Democrats are bankrupt (financially, not just morally), more horrifying sex offenders, and a new face for the Texas Democrat Party.
The big news of Wednesday, reported in the Wall Street Journal and elsewhere: “President Trump told senior aides late Tuesday that he approved of attack plans for Iran, but was holding off to see if Tehran would abandon its nuclear program, people familiar with the deliberations said.” This feels like a strategic leak to reinforce to the Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that he faces the choice of giving up his country’s nuclear weapons program or war with the
There’s an important distinction between approving the attack plan and ordering the attack plan. Our military forces are poised to strike, but at least as of Tuesday, no U.S. fighters are in Iranian airspace, according to Pentagon officials.
“I don’t know how much longer it’s going to go on,” Trump said. “They’re totally defenseless. They have no air defense whatsoever, totally captured. We totally captured the air.”
There’s that “we” again. One of the reasons people keep wondering if the U.S. is covertly helping Israel in an offensive manner as well as the revealed defensive manner (helping shoot down incoming ballistic missiles) is that Trump keeps using “we” to describe Israel’s actions in the war. “We now have complete and total control of the skies over Iran.” “We are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now.”
I know, I know, everybody’s obsessed with which pronouns you use these days.
Yesterday at the White House, Trump continued:
Q: What does unconditional surrender mean?
Donald Trump: Well, you know what it means, unconditional—
Q: Can you explain—
Donald Trump: Two very simple words, very simple: unconditional surrender. That means I’ve had it. Okay, I’ve had it, I give up, no more. Then we go blow up all the nuclear stuff that’s all over the place there. They had bad intentions. For 40 years, they’ve been saying death to America, death to Israel, death to anybody else that they didn’t like. They were bullies. They were schoolyard bullies and now they’re not bullies anymore, but we’ll see what happens. Look, nothing’s finished until it’s finished. War is very complex, a lot of bad things can happen, a lot of turns are made. So, I don’t know. I wouldn’t say that we won anything yet. I would say that we sure as hell made a lot of progress and we’ll see. The next week is going to be very big, maybe less than a week, maybe less.
Snip.
The Economist has a scoop about the Israeli intelligence that spurred its decision to launch this military operation:
We understand that the information presented by Israel includes a detailed account of a recent, more urgent, push by Iranian scientists towards “weaponization”, or the creation of an explosive nuclear device. The dossier provides two key pieces of reported evidence for this claim. The first is that an Iranian scientific team has squirrelled away a quantity of nuclear material, of unclear enrichment status, that is unknown to the monitors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), a UN watchdog (on June 9th the IAEA assessed Iran had official stockpiles of over 400kg of highly enriched uranium). The second piece of reported evidence is that the scientists have accelerated their work and were about to meet commanders of Iran’s missile corps, apparently to prepare for the future “mating” of a nuclear warhead with a missile. . . .
In a report published on May 31st, the IAEA noted that in 2003 Iran had planned to conduct what the Institute for Science and International Security, a think-tank, calls a “cold test” — a simulated nuclear weapon which uses natural or depleted uranium rather than weapons-grade uranium. . . .
The Israeli intelligence dossiers also contain information that, if correct, is genuinely new. They suggest that roughly six years ago the scientists formed a secret “Special Progress Group”, under the auspices of the former AMAD director, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. This group’s aim was to prepare the way for a much quicker weaponisation process, if and when a decision was made by Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, to rush for a bomb. Mr Fakhrizadeh was assassinated by Israel in November 2020. On June 13th in the first hours of the war, the Israeli government published slides describing this backstory. But we have been told that it also shared further assessments with allies that suggest the Special Progress Group stepped up its research at the end of last year. Iran had a new incentive to advance to a bomb. It was reeling from the limited impact of its missile attacks on Israel, and the depletion of its air defenses by Israeli strikes in October 2024. And it was facing the collapse of its proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah, in Gaza and Lebanon.
Bonus:
Israel secret services used a fake phone call to trick the top commanders of Iran’s air force into gathering at a single location before taking them out in a targeted strike, an Israeli Channel 12 commentator has said.
In a statement confirmed to the JC by Israeli sources, Amit Segal told the Call Me Back podcast on Monday: “What Israel did was create a fake phone call for 20 members of the air force senior staff an calling them to a specific bunker in Tehran.”
This meant there was no one to give the order to fire the initial salvo of 1,000 ballistic missiles as Iran had previously threatened to do, he added.
According to sources familiar with the operation, Mossad initiated a targeted disinformation effort days before the strike.
Using falsified communications through Iranian channels, they triggered what appeared to be an emergency meeting.
The ruse successfully drew the entire senior leadership of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Aerospace Force, including Commander General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, his deputies, and key technical personnel, into a fortified bunker outside Tehran.
Moments before the strike began, that bunker was hit in a precision airstrike, eliminating Iran’s top missile command.
Border Czar Tom Homan dropped a bombshell on X Tuesday night that should have every American asking why we tolerated four years of Biden’s border catastrophe.
“In the last 24 hours the Border Patrol encountered a total of 95 illegal aliens across the entire southern border,” Homan posted. “That is the lowest number EVER recorded. Compare that to the Biden administration, who surpassed more than 10,000 per day.”
Read that again. Ninety-five. That’s not a typo. For the first time in recorded history, we’re seeing double-digit border encounters. Meanwhile, Biden’s administration was routinely processing more than 10,000 illegal crossings daily. The contrast couldn’t be more stark or more damning for the previous administration.
“Since taking office, my administration has launched the most sweeping border and immigration crackdown in American history. And we quickly achieved the lowest numbers of illegal border crossers ever recorded,” he said. “The media and our friends in the Democrat party kept saying we needed new legislation, we must have legislation to secure the border. But it turned out that all we really needed was a new president.”
But here’s where it gets even worse for Biden’s defenders. Homan revealed that the Biden administration released the “vast majority” of illegal immigrants back into American communities. How many were released under Trump in May? “Zero,” Homan revealed.
The numbers are staggering. In May 2024 alone, Biden released 62,000 illegal aliens into the country. Let that sink in: 62,000 people who crossed illegally were simply turned loose on American streets in a single month. This wasn’t immigration policy; it was an authorized invasion.
While ICE arrests and deportations have grabbed headlines, President Trump is also running a separate but complementary “mass deportation” program — one that encourages aliens here unlawfully to go home voluntarily.
And if reports are correct, that plan is more successful than anyone could have imagined.
Based on government data, my organization, the Center for Immigration Studies, has conservatively estimated there are about 15.4 million illegal aliens in the United States, a 50% increase over the four tumultuous years of the Biden administration.
That’s no surprise, given how Biden and his Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas ignored congressional detention mandates and ushered millions of illegal migrants into the United States.
Trump rode a wave of concerns about the costs those migrants are imposing on schools, hospitals, housing, and essential government services in cities and towns across the United States to a second term.
Now that he’s back in the Oval Office, it’s up to him, “border czar” Tom Homan, and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem to drive the unauthorized population down and restore credibility to our immigration system.
They’ve implemented a two-track plan to tackle this onerous task.
One of those tracks relies on arrests and deportations of aliens unlawfully here, which at the outset has focused mainly on criminals (the “worst first” strategy).
The other track is more subtle but also cheaper for taxpayers and arguably much more effective —encouraging illegal migrants here to self-deport.
It began with an Inauguration Day Trump directive requiring DHS to ensure all aliens present in the United States — legal and otherwise — have registered with the federal government, and to prosecute those who don’t comply.
By late February, Noem had implemented that registration program.
DHS next launched a multimillion-dollar ad campaign warning migrants not to enter illegally or, alternatively, to leave voluntarily now and possibly “have an opportunity to return and enjoy our freedom and live the American Dream.”
Noem also rebranded the notorious CBP One app — which the Biden administration used to funnel hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants into our country — as “CBP Home,” which aliens can use to “notify the U.S. Government of their intent to depart.”
That rebranding coincided with an offer of financial incentives for aliens who leave voluntarily, a stipend of $1,000. That’s in lieu of costly physical deportation, which can cost taxpayers $17,100 per person on average.
How effective has self-deportation been?
One way to track the program is by checking employment numbers. One financial whiz cited by the Wall Street Journal calculated a decline in the immigrant population of 773,000 in the first four months of Trump II.
The Washington Post claims “a million foreign-born workers have exited the workforce since March.” The Post frames this as “a sign of the weakening labor supply.” Yet the paper also notes, “Average hourly wages accelerated, rising by 0.4 percent over the month, to $36.24 in May, as earnings continue to beat inflation in a boost to workers’ spending power.”
In other words, with fewer illegal immigrants, businesses have had to raise wages to attract workers.
Win-win-win for everyone except Democrats, illegal aliens, and the businesses addicted to cheap, illegal labor.
ICE raid nabs more than 100 illegal aliens at a meat packing plant. Americans applying for jobs ensues. The “jobs Americans won’t do” canard was always a lie.
Kash, who just shared the documents with Congress, then shared the accompanying article from Just the News to shed more light:
Officials who have seen the documents told Just the News the FBI had a relatively new confidential source who provided information in summer 2020 that the Chinese government was manufacturing and exporting fake U.S. driver’s licenses as part of a plot to create voter identities for Chinese residents living in the United States so they could vote with fake mail-in ballots.
The intelligence source claimed the plot was specifically designed to benefit Biden, officials said.
Wait, you’re telling me that China wanted “10% for the Big Guy” Joe Biden, a man whose family made money by peddling political influence with Chinese businessmen, to be the US president?
🚨 BREAKING 🚨
In a 2018 email, a bank flagged serious concerns about the China money Hunter Biden received – $40,000 of which ultimately landed in Joe Biden’s bank account.
In the email, the bank’s money laundering investigator highlighted:
Hmmm. “The U.S. Navy now has five guided-missile destroyers in the eastern Mediterranean, according to U.S. defense officials. This is a significant increase. Earlier this week, the U.S. had just one in the eastern Med.” (Previously.)
Even God has taken a crack at Iran. “A 5.2 magnitude earthquake has just struck Central Iran as Israel continues its attack on Tehran. The quake’s epicentre was just outside the city of Semnan, around 210km east of the capital.”
The Democratic Party is struggling. In every way a political party can be dysfunctional, the Democrats are careening toward an implosion.
Riven by poisonous factionalism, running out of cash, and devoid of purpose and plan, the oldest political party in the Western World is falling apart right before our eyes.
How bad is it? When the New York Times gives space to a 1,800-word, five-alarm article giving excruciating detail about your party’s travails, you know it’s not time to pop the champagne cork and celebrate.
To make matters worse for the Democrats, on the same day the Times aired the party’s soiled panties for all to see, the other Democratic Party house organ, Politico, laid 1,600 words of criticism on party chairman Ken Martin.
The media couldn’t be quiet about it. With 17 months to go before the 2026 midterm elections, the Democrats find themselves in an existential crisis. Half the party wants to abandon the radical left, while the radical left wants to give the heave-ho to anyone to the right of Karl Marx.
Let’s start with Ken Martin as a point of contention. Barely four months into the job, he’s already made plenty of enemies. Worse, those enemies aren’t going quietly into that good night. They are sniping at him from the sidelines, drawing blood with criticisms no party chair has ever heard before.
David Hogg section skipped. Judging by Kolby Duhon (see below), Hogg really was too masculine for the DNC.
“This is worse than some high school student council drama,” said Wisconsin Democrat Representative Mark Pocan. I’d say that’s right on the mark.
One DNC member told Politico that Martin looked “weak and whiny,” and another said he has been “invisible.” Similar sentiments were expressed by other DNC members.
These aren’t Republicans talking about their leaders. It’s the supposed leadership caste of the Democratic Party.
Awesome, isn’t it?
Snip.
The biggest blow to the party may have been the recent exit from the DNC of American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten and AFSCME President Lee Saunders. Together, they represent millions of members and tens of millions of dollars in contributions.
“The DNC is weaker than I have ever seen it… They have shown zero ability to chart a post-24 vision for Democrats,” a Democratic strategist with close ties to labor unions, told Politico.
Weingarten and Saunders couldn’t “in good faith continue to rubber-stamp what was going on with the DNC,” the strategist said.
Instead of developing a strategy for 2026 and preparing the battlefield for 2028, Martin and the DNC are bogged down in the minutiae of organizational warfare. There’s no plan, no purpose behind the DNC’s pronouncements. Martin is too busy putting out political brushfires and soothing bruised egos to get anything organizationally done.
No one is going to wave a magic wand and put the party back together.
Unspoken in this piece: The Social Justice hard left would literally rather kill the Democrat Party than give up control of it. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
“The Supreme Court upheld the state of Tennessee’s ban on irreversible transgender procedures for minors, a major victory for parental rights advocates and those seeking to protect distressed children from harmful operations. The justices ruled 6-3 in United States v. Skrmetti, with all of the conservative justices opting to allow Tennessee’s ban to remain in place and the liberal justices dissenting. The ruling will likely allow similar bans in more than 20 other red states to be upheld in the face of legal challenges.” Decision by decision, the transsexual madness is finally being beaten back.
The man suspected of assassinating a Minnesota Democratic state lawmaker and attempting to kill another is being brought up on federal murder and stalking charges and could face the death penalty, prosecutors said Monday, hours after he was arrested following a days-long manhunt.
Acting U.S. Attorney for Minnesota Joe Thompson said during a press conference that Vance Luther Boelter went to the homes of four Minnesota lawmakers with the intent of killing them….
Boelter, 57, is facing six federal counts: two stalking charges, two firearm offenses for the non-fatal shooting of State Senator John Hoffman and his wife Yvette, and two murder charges for the killing of former State House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark. He faces anywhere from 20 years in prison to a potential death sentence for the federal murder charge.
The case had a lot of weird aspects to it, from him being a Tim Waltz appointee to the suspect’s wife being stopped with cash and passports in her car to the supposed anti-abortion motive to the No Kings flyers in his car to the murdered lawmaker being the only Democrat to vote for repealing taxpayer frunded illegal alien health care. A bunch of things don’t add up, especially how quickly the story seemed to disappear off news radar…
Finally. “Feds Crush Violent Antifa Uprising Outside Portland ICE Facility.” Now the feds need to start looking into RICO charges against Antifa funders…
Speaking of antifa behaving badly, they just attacked two more journalists, Cameron Higby and Brandi Kruse.
“DOJ charges another Chinese researcher with smuggling ‘biological materials’ into US. The new case accuses Chinese researcher Chengxuan Han of trying to smuggle packages containing concealed biological material related to round worms into the country by sending multiple packages that contain the material to a lab in the U.S.” It looks like we need to check the lab of every Chinese national studying biology in the U.S. for possible biological warfare material. Indeed, given these arrests, we may already be doing so. (Hat tip: TPPF.)
“New Law Protects Property Owners, Assists in Removing Squatters.” Good to see Texas getting ahead of the issue.
We don’t cotton to cop killers in Texas. “El Salvadoran Illegal Alien Receives Death Penalty for Murder of Harris County Deputy. Oscar Rosales never disputed that he killed Deputy Corporal Charles Galloway in a January 2022 shooting.” El Salvador, eh? Maybe we can pay El Salvador to keep him in CECOT while his appeals play out, then fly him back to execute him…
Trigger warning: Another case of two gay men adopting a baby and raping it to death.
That’s the face (and haircut) Democrats want to put forward as representing their party.
Over the weekend, Texas Democrats elected Kolby Duhon as their new vice chair for finance. The position is responsible for a variety of duties related to the party’s raising and spending of money.
Duhon filled a vacancy that opened when the previous vice chair, Kendall Scudder, was elected party chairman in March.
His X feed reveals his radical views.
Duhon describes himself as a “pansexual.” Advocates claim “pansexuals” do not take gender or sexuality into account when choosing a partner. In 2020, Duhon tweeted his admiration for State Rep. Mary Gonzalez (D–San Elizario) and claimed she inspired him to run for a position with the Texas Young Democrats on an “openly Pan” platform.
By “pansexual” I assume he strikes out with both men and women. And what self-respecting gay would want to be seen with someone with that hairstyle?
Duhon uses “they/he” pronouns and helped found the Socialist Caucus of the Texas Young Democrats in 2017.
Beyond his lifestyle choices and political affiliations, Duhon has expressed views on subjects including Israel, policing, and racism that place him on the far-left end of the political spectrum.
Duhon has repeatedly posted in favor of pushing gender confusion on so-called “trans kids.”
Of course he has.
Here’s the perfect face for the modern Democratic Party: A freakshow all the way down…
More signs of the decline of the Democratic Party in Texas. “Tarrant County Democratic Party Chair Resigns Months After All Staff Laid Off. [Crystal Gayden] will continue as chair until July 7 when an election will take place to decide her successor.”
Just a couple months after laying off all of its paid staff, the Tarrant County Democratic Party will need to find a new party chair as incumbent chair Crystal Gayden announced her resignation at the beginning of June.
Gayden, who became party chair back in July 2023, stated in her announcement that she had overseen the strengthening and re-energizing of the party, which had expanded its precinct chair network, prioritized turnout in local elections, grown its supporter base, and increased party visibility, among other things.
For those outside Texas, Tarrant County is home to Ft. Worth and is the third largest county in the state, so the Democrats having no staffers there is a kind of big deal.
As far as “prioritizing turnout,” it’s certainly not visible in national elections. Biden’s recorded vote total in Tarrant County in 2020 was 411,567, edging Trump by just under 2,000 votes. In 2024, it was 384,501 votes, or more than 40,000 votes under Trump’s total. Some triumph of turnout…
“State Sen. Kelly Hancock has officially entered the race for Texas Comptroller with the backing of Gov. Greg Abbott, resigning from the Senate and being sworn in as chief clerk of the agency by outgoing Comptroller Glenn Hegar.”
The move is designed to sidestep a 2002 legal opinion from then-Attorney General Abbott, which held that a sitting state senator cannot be appointed to a position requiring Senate confirmation during the term for which they were elected.
By resigning and taking on the role of “chief clerk,” Hancock avoids triggering the Senate confirmation process while still stepping into the agency’s top position for the remainder of Hegar’s term—through January 2027.
Hegar, who will officially take over as chancellor of the Texas A&M University System on July 1, praised Hancock as his successor.
Snip.
In 2023, Hancock was one of only two Republican senators who sided with Democrats to attempt to remove Attorney General Ken Paxton from office following his impeachment trial. During this most recent legislative session, he was one of seven Republican senators who voted to water down Senate Bill 19—intended to ban taxpayer-funded lobbying—by supporting an amendment that exempted organizations like the Texas Association of School Boards from the ban.
Snip. Don Huffines:
“The political elite are manipulating the system to install another go-along-to-get-along lap dog as State Comptroller, because they know President Trump’s DOGE-style transparency would expose everything. But they don’t just fear me. They fear you—the taxpayers, the grassroots. And they should. The conservative base in Texas is wide awake, fed up, and ready to take back control. And they know we will win,” said Huffines, pointing to endorsements from U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, Charlie Kirk, Riley Gaines, Ron Paul, and a majority of the State Republican Executive Committee.
Another declared candidate, current Railroad Commissioner Christi Craddick, responded by pointing to her statewide record.
“No matter who else enters the race, I’ll put my record up against anyone,” said Craddick. “I’m the only candidate in this race with statewide experience and a proven record running one of Texas’ most important agencies, cutting red tape, generating billions in revenue from oil and gas, and delivering results that fund our schools, roads, and first responders.”
Been a while since we had a juicy crazed poisoner story, so here’s one. Did it not occur to to supergenius (accused) perp that two former lovers both being poisoned by cyanide was pretty handily going to mark him as a suspect?
How many of these classic prog rock intros can you name? Harder than you might think, though I got “The Musical Box” off Genesis’ Nursery Crime on the very first note…
Memorial Day weekend looms, $96 billion in green fraud, two terminal cases of prostate cancer revealed, Bernie admits Democrats are a threat to democracy, the Supreme smacks down the idea than transsexual rights are more important than democracy or free speech, plus Chinese doctor hanky-panky, revenge porn, a weed heist and a Nazi Muslim Only Fans model.
Former President Joe Biden, the oldest president in U.S. history, has been diagnosed with prostate cancer, his personal office announced on Sunday afternoon.
Biden, 82, was diagnosed last week after he had dealt with increased urinary symptoms and is currently reviewing treatment options.
“Last week, President Joe Biden was seen for a new finding of a prostate nodule after experiencing increasing urinary symptoms. On Friday, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, characterized by a Gleason score of 9 (Grade Group 5) with metastasis to the bone,” a spokesman for Biden’s personal office said in a statement….
The Gleason score of 9 in Biden’s diagnosis suggests an aggressive form of cancer likely to spread quickly. He will likely require chemotherapy, hormone therapy, and forms of pain management to tackle the illness.
What are the odds they’ve known he had cancer for years and didn’t tell the American public so the ghost in the machine could keep pumping out billions in graft? Speaking of which…
During a blistering Senate Appropriations Committee hearing, Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) was visibly floored after Energy Secretary Christopher Wright dropped a bombshell: the Department of Energy handed out a staggering $93 billion in loans and commitments during the final 76 days of the Biden administration, a figure that more than doubled the loan total from the previous 15 years combined.
Kennedy, in classic fashion, drilled in with precision. “The 76-day period you’re talking about, that’s the period between the time that President Trump was elected and President Biden left office. Is that right?”
“That is correct,” Wright confirmed.
Kennedy didn’t mince words when he asked how any agency could properly vet such massive spending in such a short window. “How do you do due diligence on one loan, much less $93 billion?” he asked.
Wright’s answer was damning.
“I think it’s probably pretty clear it wasn’t done in many cases,” he said. “There were commitments made from businesses that provided no business plan, no numbers about their own financial solvency, or how this project actually worked.”
The senator appeared almost incredulous and asked for clarity: “So, so you’re telling me that the Department of Energy in the 76-day period before their boss was gonna leave office, gave or loaned money to, to entities that had no business plan?”
Andrew: Over the last four elections, Democrats – we felt – that we didn’t have a say on who could be president … I felt like the Democratic Party completely removed the democratic process from its constituents, and I think they need to have some accountability of that.
Bernie: No argument here.
Andrew: 2016 … it felt like they stole it from you. And I’ll be honest, it broke my heart when you supported them.
…
Akassh [Singh]: Could we not also say ostensibly there hasn’t been a fair primary for the Democrats since 2008, are they not also a threat to democracy?
Bernie: Yes. Fair enough. That is, yeah. I’m not gonna argue with that point.
The Supreme Court ordered the Maine House of Representatives on Tuesday to restore the vote of a Republican lawmaker who was censured after she wrote an online post defending fairness in women’s sports and criticizing the intrusion of a trans-identifying male athlete into female competition.
Maine Representative Laurel Libby filed the emergency appeal to the Supreme Court while a lawsuit over the social media post plays out. In the post written earlier this year, Libby criticized a male high school athlete who won a girls’ track meet, and included in the post the male student’s name.
The Democrat-controlled Maine House decided that Libby’s post violated ethics in identifying the student, and when she chose not to apologize, Libby was subsequently banned from speaking and voting on the House floor.
Supreme Court justices sided with Libby 7-2 with Associate Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissenting.
“The U.S. Supreme Court just restored the voice of 9,000 Mainers!” Libby said on X. “After 2+ months of being silenced for speaking up for Maine girls, I can once again vote on behalf of the people of House District 90. This is a win for free speech — and for the Constitution.”
A Mexican national was charged for allegedly providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization by the Western District of Texas — the first indictment of its kind in the nation.
Maria Del Rosario Navarro-Sanchez allegedly assisted the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG) with obtaining grenades, as well as trafficking humans, firearms, and narcotics “on behalf” of the criminal organization.
The 39-year-old Mexican woman was charged by the court with “conspiracy to smuggle and transport aliens in the United States, straw purchasing and trafficking in firearms, bulk cash smuggling conspiracy, and conspiracy to possess a controlled substance with intent to distribute,” the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) shared on Friday afternoon.
Navarro-Sanchez was joined in her indictment by two other co-defendants: Luis Carlos Davalos-Lopez and Gustavo Castro-Medina, also both Mexican nationals facing similar smuggling, trafficking, and straw purchasing charges.
Three hundred years ago, the remarkable satirist Jonathan Swift wrote, “When a true Genius appears in the World, you may know him by this infallible Sign; that the Dunces are all in Confederacy against him.”
Now, you might not be President Trump’s biggest fan. Perhaps you are glad that he has returned to the White House but look forward to one of his capable lieutenants succeeding him in four years. But I would argue that never has a larger collection of absolute idiots assembled to oppose an American leader, and for that reason alone, Donald J. Trump is probably a genius. (And a very stable one at that!)
Right now, Democrats are waging a public relations campaign in support of criminal illegal aliens. They are trying to make military-aged males with gang tattoos look sympathetic. Sure, many of them have been accused of engaging in human-trafficking, drug-smuggling, identity theft, and fraud, but Democrats say these “new” Americans are just like us. Sure, foreign nationals are regularly accused of rape and murder across the United States, but Democrats are quick to point out that “old” Americans commit heinous crimes, too. Sure, illegal aliens are a huge financial burden to the prison system, welfare programs, health care, public schools, and local communities, but Democrats insist that it’s “racist” to tell the truth out loud.
While President Trump is rounding up violent criminals who have no right to be in the United States, Democrats are crying in front of cameras and promising to bring them back to a neighborhood near you. In four months, they’ve shown more love for foreigners who broke into our country than they’ve ever shown for American victims of transnational cartels!
In a Monday bipartisan vote of 133 to 8, House members approved Sen. Joan Huffman’s (R-Houston) Senate Joint Resolution (SJR) 5 that allows judicial officers the discretion to deny bail to defendants charged with murder or capital murder, aggravated kidnapping, aggravated robbery, aggravated sexual assault, indecency with a child, trafficking of persons, and continuous trafficking of persons.
Bail may also be withheld for aggravated assault if the person caused serious bodily injury or used a weapon.
Hopefully this will result in fewer citizens being killed by the criminals that Soros-backed prosecutors love letting back out on the street.
Congressman Kevin Kiley’s resolution to save gas cars from extinction in 2035 in California has passed Congress and heads to President Trump’s desk, where he will sign the measure.
The resolution revokes the EPA waiver secured in 2020 by California Gov. Gavin Newsom and eleven other states, aimed at getting rid of gas cars and attempting to switch to all-electric vehicles.
Guess which party rules over the woke states blindly following Newsom’s disastrous proposal.
California-Socialist
Colorado-Democrat
Delaware-Dummocrat
Maryland-Dummocrat
Massachusetts-Taxocrat
New Jersey-Democrat
New Mexico-Democrat
New York-Democrat
Oregon-Socialist
Rhode Island-Democrat
Vermont-Communist
Washington-Communist
District of Columbia-Stupidcrat
Newsom sought the waiver from the Executive Branch. Now he’s suing the Executive Branch to say it doesn’t have the right to take away his waiver.
Curioser and curioser: “Father Of DC Shooting Suspect Was Democrats’ Honored Guest At Trump Congressional Address.”
The father of the suspected gunman in the murder of two Israeli Embassy staffers at the Capital Jewish Museum on Wednesday, was the honored guest of a far-left lawmaker at President Trump’s joint address to Congress back in March, the New York Post reported.
Eric Rodriguez is an anti-Trump SEIU member who also spoke at a Democrat press conference ahead of Trump’s address.
His son, accused killer Elias Rodriguez, 30, has been charged with two counts of first-degree murder after allegedly gunning down Yaron Lischinsky, 28, and Sarah Milgrim, 26, who were about to become engaged.
“Eric Rodriguez was our guest during the President’s Joint Speech to Congress, but we don’t know his family,” a spokesperson for Rep. Jesús “Chuy” García (D-Ill.) told the Post Thursday night.
“Trump Signs Cruz’s ‘TAKE IT DOWN’ Act Banning ‘Revenge Porn’ Into Law. Both President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump threw their support behind the bill prior to its passage.” Like many attempts to regulate cyberspace, the bill is long on good intentions and shorter on the ability to actually regulate a global Internet.
Five Supreme Court justices recuse themselves from a case because they all had publishing deals with one of the companies involved. The last time that happened, Learned Hand was writing decisions…
“Gun Owners of America Endorses Ken Paxton for U.S. Senate.” That’s a good endorsement, as anyone challenging an incumbent senator needs all the help they can get. It’s also insufficient; Jerry Patterson had the pro-gun vote locked up in his four-way Lt. Governor’s race against David Dewhurst, Dan Patrick and Todd Staples in 2014, and he still came in fourth place…
Interesting story about a leading married doctor in China who just got kicked out of his job and the CCP because he pulled strings for not one but two of his would-be baby mommas.
Was social justice games ruiner Sweet Baby Inc. created by the Canadian government? Some evidence suggests so, but this seems far from conclusive.
Bill Maher and Woody Harrelson’s Hollywood weed shop ransacked by thieves. Is this enough to finally make Maher vote Republican?
Asmongold has been highlighting the case of pro-jihad Twitch streamer Hasan Piker for quite some time now, saying that his support for terrorism could be a big danger to Twitch’s advertising revenue screens. Following the DC jihad shooting, Piker was called out by name on CNN
Be honest, I bet you didn’t guess fairy wings was the 2nd accessory this pup likes!
The way she brings it over to her HuDad & pats it, the little lip quiver as she asks so politely for him to help her put them on 🥹 She looks so happy! See the row of bags!… pic.twitter.com/hneFKdUoxb
More Biden jobs number fakery, more green graft exposed, everyone knew about Slow Joe, the DNC butchers David Hogg, Gun Jesus weighs in on Sig Saur, and Shoeless Joe gets a shot at redemption.
The Biden administration’s phony jobs boom just went up in smoke. For months, it paraded numbers around like everything was fine, telling Americans the economy was roaring back, that job creation was on fire, and that “Bidenomics” was working. But the truth, long suspected by anyone trying to pay the bills, is now confirmed by the government’s own data: those jobs never existed.
According to new figures released this week, the 399,000 jobs the Biden team claimed were created between July and September of last year have completely vanished. Not only did the economy not add those jobs, but it also lost 1,000 private-sector jobs during that period.
“This more accurate dataset was just released by the BLS for the third quarter of last year,” EJ Antoni, a research fellow and the Richard Aster Fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Grover M. Hermann Center for the Federal Budget, explains over at Townhall. “In stark contrast to the monthly job reports showing an increase of 399,000 jobs during the third quarter, these new numbers show a decline of 1,000 private-sector jobs.”
Nearly 400,000 phantom jobs were quietly wiped off the books. And this isn’t just a one-time discrepancy. Month after month during Joe Biden’s term, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) published inflated job estimates, only to revise them downward later, long after the headlines had already done their PR damage for the White House.
Antoni breaks it down further: “Under Biden, these revisions were abnormal in magnitude and direction, being revised down with unusual frequency.” No kidding. In fact, the BLS’s more comprehensive annual benchmark, released earlier this year, revised down Biden’s job numbers from March 2023 to March 2024 by a jaw-dropping 598,000 jobs.
That’s not just bad math; that’s deception on a national scale.
The Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GRF), passed as part of the “Inflation Reduction Act” in 2022, has proved to be a cornucopia of graft for Biden’s Democratic Party favorites and green non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
The GRF rushed $20 billion in grants out the door in the waning days of the Biden administration to just six organizations. As The Free Press reports, the EPA employees charged with vetting the NGOs who were to receive that $20 billion raised numerous objections to the grants. Despite their concerns, the money was doled out.
We’re just now finding out how corrupt the process of throwing $20 billion to the Democratic Party’s friends actually was.
I’ve written extensively about former Georgia candidate for governor Stacey Abrams’ ties to one NGO that received $2 billion from the GRF despite having only $100 in the bank when they applied for the grant. The $20 billion fund became a one-stop shop for climate graft as hundreds of smaller non-profits joined coalitions of grifters to get millions of dollars despite many having no experience handling that kind of money.
The Free Press obtained documents that include the reviews of the applications for grants from the organizations requesting money from the GRF. Some of them are eye-openers.
One of the reasons for the grant review is for the grantee to justify expenses, including the salaries of top executives. The federal employee who reviewed the application for Power Forward Communities, the Stacey Abrams-linked NGO that was selected to receive $2 billion, questioned the salaries and estimated expenses in the grant application.
“For such an important section, it was pithy, though not always in a good way. Many of the costs were just presented, but little or no explanation as to why they are reasonable. I would have preferred they omitted the travel discussion and explained why they need to pay the CEO $800,000, growing to $948,000 in year 7. And chief operation officer $455,000 per year.”
Anyone who has ever completed an application for a government grant knows that this is a slipshod job that wouldn’t pass muster with any number of federal agencies. But Biden’s EPA just handed $2 billion taxpayer dollars to these incompetent bozos.
Another nonprofit, Appalachian Community Capital, applied for $1 billion from the fund, even though it had never managed anywhere near that much money. In 2023, the latest year for which it has filed tax forms, it spent less than $4.5 million. Two reviewers noted this lack of experience in their comments, saying “The amount of money managed under previous agreements was much less than what is being proposed under this grant opportunity.”
A reviewer also noted that Appalachian Community Capital planned to use $215 million to finance 600 zero-emission vehicles and $105 million to finance 700 charging stations. “This is $358,333 per EV vehicle,” the reviewer wrote, adding that $150,000 per charging station “seems too high.”
Appalachian Community Capital was ultimately granted $500 million from the EPA.
The reviewers were from several different agencies, including the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of the Treasury, and the EPA. A panel of judges based their recommendations for grant approval on the written application and a 40-minute interview.
Not surprisingly, the criteria for receiving the funds included “equity and environmental justice” and “labor and equitable workforce.” They could have been groups of serial killers and still gotten a grant if they were woke enough.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has vowed to recover the $20 billion after a secretly recorded video made by Project Veritas showed a former EPA employee likening the deployment of the funds to “throwing gold bars” off the Titanic. He added that the goal was to “get the money out as fast as possible” before the Trump administration took over.
Meanwhile, the litigation over the $20 billion continues. Late last month, Politico obtained government emails in which an EPA lawyer noted the Trump administration could be on the hook for billions of dollars in damages if the court finds that the EPA has no legal grounds to recoup the grant money or block it from being disbursed to the nonprofits.
“We gave them everything they needed to provide for their independence,” Biden said of Ukraine, “and we were prepared to respond more aggressively if Putin moved again.”
Hogwash.
It was only in late February of last year — just about two years to the day from the outset of Russia’s second invasion of Ukraine — that the Biden administration reluctantly dropped its objection to providing Kyiv with long-range ordnance for use in Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS). Biden wouldn’t authorize the use of that ordnance against Russian targets outside the Ukrainian theater for another nine months. Indeed, the former president didn’t consent to providing Ukraine with ATACMS at all until September 2023, even though Ukraine had requested access to those platforms from the start of Russia’s campaign of conquest.
That story — one defined by the Biden administration’s persistent self-doubt and halting, qualified, often insufficient support for Ukraine’s cause, only to be abruptly reversed after the damage had already been done — repeated throughout the war. The same sequence of events describes the administration’s withholding and eventual reluctant provision of High-Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), heavy artillery, tanks, fixed-wing aircraft, cluster munitions, antipersonnel mines, and so on.
The administration’s first thought was always about how the Russians would respond to America’s furnishment of weapons platforms and ordnance that Moscow was already using on Ukraine’s battlefields. The Biden administration’s concern wasn’t irrational, but the president and his subordinates refused to revisit their assumptions. Moscow would draw a red line, Washington would observe that red line, and when that red line was crossed without broader incident, the White House would move on to obsess over the next illusory red line. Biden declined to revise this doctrine even when it became obvious that Russia’s table-pounding objections to America’s support for Ukraine would amount to just that.
Biden failed to deter Russia’s war. Indeed, it responded to months of provocative indications that Putin was ready to attack by rewarding the Russian despot with bilateral summitry. And when Putin’s forces poured over the Ukrainian border anyway, the former president didn’t just fail to hand over “everything they needed to provide for their independence.” Rather, the administration provided Ukraine with just enough to prevent it from being wholly subsumed into the Russian Federation — and that only after losing an unnecessarily public argument with itself.
In fact, we can safely conclude that the Biden administration never trusted the Ukrainians to provide for their own defense. Instead, the president signaled to the Kremlin that the U.S. would not respond to a “minor incursion” into Ukrainian territory, and his instinct in response to Moscow’s full-scale invasion was to establish a Ukrainian government in exile. “The fight is here,” Volodymyr Zelensky said in his famous rejection of Biden’s pusillanimity. “I need ammunition, not a ride.”
Mass delusion gripped the entire Democratic Party, and they talked themselves into believing they could carry a senile president over the reelection finish line, Weekend at Bernie’s–style, if everyone just tried hard enough to gaslight the public. And as far as we can tell, at no point did any of them pause to contemplate the potential consequences for the country.
There’s something grimly satisfying about the bitter recriminations laid out in the concluding pages of Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes’s new book Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House, as the Democrats grapple with the fact that their own leaders misled them about the reality of the 2024 presidential race every step of the way.
Three weeks after Election Day, top Kamala Harris campaign staffers appeared on Pod Save America and contended their internal polling always showed the vice president trailing. “It was hard for Democratic voters to tell what was real,” Allen and Parnes write. “They had been led to believe that Joe Biden was in fighting shape. But he wasn’t. They had been led to believe he was locked in a dead-heat race with Trump. But he wasn’t. They had been led to believe that [Kamala] Harris was in a position to win. But she wasn’t. And now they were being led to believe she never had a chance. That wasn’t really true, either.”
And in the preceding 287 pages, we keep getting anecdotes indicating things had gone terribly, glaringly, obviously wrong in the Democrats’ world, but no one wanted to admit it and confront the problems.
After his disastrous debate performance, President Biden attempted to reassure a group of unnerved Democratic governors by telling them he would no longer plan to appear at events past 8 in the evening. Allen and Parnes say one governor later quipped, “Somebody better tell the Chinese when they can attack us, because I don’t want them to wake him up.”
If the president can’t physically or mentally function well in the evening hours, why is he still president? How would he handle a sustained emergency like the Cuban Missile Crisis, where he’d need to make tough decisions after long days?
Allen and Parnes describe Biden aides calling up doubtful Democratic donors before his withdrawal and threatening them, “You want her? Look at her polling. No one wants her. Forget it.” One donor tells the authors, “They were aggressively saying that we would wind up with the vice president and that would be a mistake.” The argument that Harris is a self-evident disaster was characterized by Biden staffers as their “ace in the hole.”
If nominating Harris was such an obvious catastrophe . . . why was she vice president? At any moment, the 82-year-old Biden could keel over or have an aneurysm, and she would be the nominee anyway. For that matter, didn’t anybody on the president’s staff foresee any potential downside to trashing the veep?
If, as Allen and Parnes report, in the weeks leading up to the debate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz was so nervous that he couldn’t sleep at night and his aides had to remind him to eat, wasn’t that a glaring sign that this guy wasn’t ready to be a heartbeat away from the presidency? The duties of the vice-presidency include tasks even more intimidating than debating JD Vance.
No one in any position of leadership in the Democratic Party in 2024 should have been there. None of them were up to the task before them.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Monday aimed at lowering prescription drug prices, instituting a “most favored nation’s policy” that would push drug companies to charge Americans the same price other nations pay.
Trump signed a similar measure during his first term to institute price controls for fifty drugs paid for with Medicare Part B, but a court blocked its implementation, ruling that the administration had skipped key administrative steps in trying to institute the proposal.
Monday’s executive order is broader in scope, focusing on all prescriptions drugs where the price disparities between the U.S. and foreign nations are the widest. But according to the White House, this executive order is not focused on a particular class of pharmaceutical drugs.
The order — which is likely to run into legal challenges as well — is in keeping with the administration’s broader trade war strategy, which relies on a suite of policy tools to address what officials say is an uneven global economic playing field.
“What’s been happening is we’ve been subsidizing other countries throughout the world,” Trump said on Monday morning before signing the executive action. “Our country is the highest drug prices anywhere in the world, by sometimes a factor of five, six, seven, eight times.”
I have no idea what the ramifications of this may be, but it will be fun to watch Democrats try to explain why driving down Big Pharma prices is bad…
She’s now in the “find out” phase: “Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan was indicted by a federal grand jury earlier this week on charges of obstruction and and concealing a person of arrest, for which she faces up to six years in prison if convicted.’
Another week, another Trump win in court. “Federal Judge Rules IRS May Share Illegal Alien Data With DHS.”
The order by U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich came amid a lawsuit by Centro de Trabajadores Unidos, an immigrant-rights aid group, against Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
“At its core, this case presents a narrow legal issue: Does the Memorandum of Understanding between the IRS and DHS violate the Internal Revenue Code? It does not,” Friedrich wrote in his order.
“(Note: Friedrich, a Trump appointee, is a woman, so that would be her order.)” (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
Trump ends sanctions on Syria. We’ll see if the new government can respond to carrots and put their jihadi past behind them. They probably won’t, but nothing else has worked in Syria (except backing the Kurds), so the risk is pretty low.
Illegal aliens admitted across the border in April 2024: 68,000. In 2025: Four.
More good news: “ICE Arrests 422 in Houston Sweep, Including Murder and Arson Suspects.”
The felonious, anti-democratic Democratic National Committee has decided to purge the odious, gun-grabbing fetus David Hogg from his vice-chairmanship, and National Review‘s Jeffrey Blehar is here to chortle.
The Parkland shooting survivor bootstrapped his way from anti-gun youth activist to recent election as one of the vice-chairs of the Democratic National Committee — and all this despite having forearms that look like they were carved out of balsa wood. But instead of being the easily controlled patsy the DNC’s grandees and voters expected, Hogg promptly began using the DNC’s fundraising lists and prestige to raise money for his own outside super PAC — one designed to take down “asleep-at-the-wheel” Democratic incumbents. Keep in mind that most Democratic incumbents sleep (and sometimes at the wheel) in a perpetual cold sweat about being primaried by the next wave of “Squad”-like radical lefties; now their own vice-chairman is promising to help unseat them. (The calls to get them out of the House are coming from inside the house.)
Snip.
The DNC has instead approved a resolution challenging the validity of Hogg’s election on pretextual grounds and is set to nullify the race later this month and bounce the little chiseler out of office altogether. He got too greedy with his power too fast. As both farmers and politicos will tell you: Pigs get fed, but hogs and Hoggs alike get slaughtered.
As much as I enjoy making jokes about the Democratic Party nullifying its own democratic internal processes because democracy elected the wrong person, I speak as an adult when I say Hogg had it coming, and then some. His pitch to “firewall” himself away from races where he is fundraising for enemy insurgents was the sort of farcical fantasy-world pitch that could only come from a spectacularly self-centered youth, one who believes his personal project is more important than the corporate enterprise he has joined. As another current vice-chair says in the piece, “it is not the DNC’s job to create a firewall for one officer — it is the officer’s responsibility to create a firewall.”
And the way the Democratic National Committee is doing it is so splendidly pathetic that I can barely believe my good fortune. Remember: The DNC voted for Hogg as vice-chair a mere three months ago. Upon what grounds do they propose to undo that vote? (“Behaving like a traitorous weasel” was apparently insufficient under current DNC bylaws.) Upon grounds of wokeness, as it turns out.
It’s always nice to have a splendid reminder of the sort of work the NRO crew used to be able to do before their terminal case of Trump Derangement Syndrome made so much of it unreadable.
House Republicans took major step on Wednesday afternoon towards codifying President Donald Trump’s efforts to protect children from transgender procedures during a marathon markup session for the “one, big, beautiful bill” working its way through Congress.
After a 26-hour budget hearing, the House Energy and Commerce Committee passed a provision from Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) that would block federal dollars funding transgender procedures. This means that Medicaid, Affordable Care Act, and Children’s Health Insurance Program money will no longer be allowed to fund procedures like removing the breasts of girls who identify as boys or putting children on cross-sex hormones, if the provision makes it through the rest of the reconciliation process.
Crenshaw receives a lot of criticism from conservatives, some of it justified, but he’s done well here.
Chris Rufo unearths documented evidence that Harvard, as a policy, systemically and illegally discriminated against white men in hiring. This is no longer a “cutting off aid” concern, this is a “people need to good to jail for violating people’s civil rights” matter.
More protections for lawful gun owners. ‘Texas senators have approved a measure strengthening the state’s protections for justified use of force or deadly force in self-defense situations. Senate Bill 1730, filed by State Sen. Bob Hall (R–Edgewood), passed 26-3-2 on Monday. The measure would prevent a claimant from recovering civil damages for personal injury or death if a grand jury has declined to pursue, thrown out, or acquitted the defendant of criminal charges. In addition, if the claimant is found to be prohibited from seeking civil action, the proposal would require them to pay court costs and the defendant’s attorney fees.”
“Texas House Approves Bill Expanding State Medical Cannabis Program. The bill expands the medical conditions that allow access to the Texas’ medical cannabis program.”
The Texas Compassionate Use Act, enacted in 2015, allows physicians to prescribe low-dose THC for patients with specific medical conditions such as incurable neurodegenerative diseases, cancer, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
With HB 46, TCUP will be expanded to new qualifying medical conditions, including glaucoma, traumatic brain injuries, Crohn’s disease, or any terminal illness or condition where a patient is receiving hospice or palliative care. The bill will also allow for “medication” that is “aerosolized” or “vaporized,” and the TCUP program will be expanded to include veterans “who would benefit from medical use to address a medical condition.”
The legislation also expands access by increasing the number of dispensing licenses, authorizing satellite locations across all public health regions.
[Rep. Ken] King adopted a perfecting amendment that would “grandfather” in existing satellite TCUP locations, revise the THC content limits to exceed the “one percent by weight” provision, and establish timelines for approving medical inhalation devices.
Rep. Tom Oliverson (R-Cypress) also had his amendment adopted, which will require physicians prescribing low-THC cannabis to report prescription data to the Texas State Board of Pharmacy.
The states that have experimented with uncontrolled complete legalization of marijuana seemed to have suffered a lot of harmful effects, from sketchy potheads in broken RVs trashing formerly respectable neighborhoods to state and national forests trashed by illegal grow operations, maybe because a lot are also one-party Democratic soft-on-crime blue states and deep blue cities. Oklahoma, which isn’t, has suffered from Chinese mob control of the marijuana trade. Whatever it’s flaws, Texas extremely slow medical marijuana legalization program seems to have at least avoided those problems.
Patrick McGee has a new book out, Apple in China, that’s getting a lot of attention. “The two numbers that really stick out at me are that the number of people they have trained in China since 2008 is 28 million.” I think there’s a real story there, but i also think those numbers are grossly inflated. Apple wasn’t the only company shifting contract manufacturing to China, and that 28 million only makes sense if you count every employee at every company in China that had any role in producing any part for Apple, which is (to put it mildly) an extremely tendentious claim.
“In a historic, sweeping decision, baseball commissioner Rob Manfred on Tuesday removed Pete Rose, “Shoeless” Joe Jackson and other deceased players from Major League Baseball’s permanently ineligible list…Manfred ruled that MLB’s punishment of banned individuals ends upon their deaths.” (Hat Tip: Dwight.)
Democrats still want to trans your kids, censorship shellgames squashed, Google is declared a monopoly, socialists behave badly, more illegal alien depravity, some 2026 contenders jump in, pie-in-the-sky plans for high speed rail in Texas bite the dust, more Cybertruck drag-racing, and a Very Good Boy indeed.
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Yes, Democrats are still all in on transing your kids. “Dad shares horrifying story of his daughter being groomed and transitioned behind his back at school.”
Just yesterday, a dad named Dustin Gonzales in the Jeffco Public School District of Colorado spoke at a school board meeting and shared a heartbreaking story that’s now all too familiar: his daughter was groomed by teachers and gender-transitioned behind his back.
Dad claims his daughter changed her gender identity secretly with a school therapist, who kept him in the dark about it.
The school didn’t ask me or inform me, they replaced me. By the time I found out, I was already labeled ‘the problem.’ My objections weren’t treated as concerns, they were treated as opposition. my voice was dismissed as ‘hateful,’ my presence undermined.
The father claims the school then got the therapist and an investigator involved, to separate the girl from her dad.
I’m here to make sure what happened to me, to my family, never happens to another parent in this district.
The father is now at risk of losing his daughter as a result of a new Colorado bill that would take kids away from parents who aren’t “affirming.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has just killed the Biden administration’s last-ditch effort to shelter the government’s Ministry of Truth, the Global Engagement Center (GEC).
In a new op-ed published by The Federalist (a target of the GEC along with yours truly), Rubio writes;
GEC was supposed to be dead already. But, as many have learned the hard way, in Washington, D.C., few things ever truly die. When Republicans in Congress sunset GEC’s funding at the end of last year, the Biden State Department simply slapped on a new name. The GEC became the Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (R-FIMI) office, with the same roster of employees. With this new name, they hoped to survive the transition to the new administration.
Today, we are putting that to an end. Whatever name it goes by, GEC is dead. It will not return.
Alphabet’s Google illegally dominates two markets for online advertising technology, a judge ruled on Thursday, dealing another blow to the tech giant and paving the way for U.S. antitrust prosecutors to seek a breakup of its ad products.
U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema in Alexandria, Virginia, found Google liable for “willfully acquiring and maintaining monopoly power” in markets for publisher ad servers and the market for ad exchanges which sit between buyers and sellers.
The decision clears the way for another hearing to determine what Google must do to restore competition in those markets, such as sell off parts of its business at another trial that has yet to be scheduled. It is the second court ruling that Google holds an illegal monopoly, following a similar judgment in a case over online search.
Publisher ad servers are platforms used by websites to store and manage their digital ad inventory. Along with ad exchanges, the technology lets news publishers and other online content providers make money by selling ads. Those funds are the “lifeblood” of the internet, Brinkema wrote.
“In addition to depriving rivals of the ability to compete, this exclusionary conduct substantially harmed Google’s publisher customers, the competitive process, and, ultimately, consumers of information on the open web,” Brinkema wrote.
However, antitrust enforcers failed to prove a separate claim that the company had a monopoly in advertiser ad networks, she wrote.
U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi called the ruling “a landmark victory in the ongoing fight to stop Google from monopolizing the digital public square.”
“A 13-year-old boy in California was allegedly sexually abused and murdered by his soccer coach and, as it turns out, the soccer coach was an illegal alien. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has lodged a detainer with the Los Angeles County jail for Mario Edgardo Garcia-Aquino, a 43-year-old Salvadoran citizen living unlawfully in the United States, the agency confirmed Wednesday to the Daily Caller News Foundation. Garcia-Aquino is accused of killing 13-year-old Oscar ‘Omar’ Hernandez, a San Fernando Valley, California, resident found dead earlier in April.”
Evidently the cartels have expensive taste. “A federal grand jury has charged two men who allegedly tried to smuggle five high-caliber sniper rifles to Mexico last month, and prosecutors are seeking the forfeiture of the firearms, five .50-caliber Barrett long guns and four magazines for .50-caliber bullets. Wednesday’s charges of unlawful smuggling of goods from the United States stem from the March 12 arrest of Oscar Sanchez Gonzalez and Arturo Martinez Aguilar as they allegedly attempted to drive to Mexico over the Calexico West port of entry.” (Hat tip: Dwight.)
Smith says people asking him to run is an indictment of the Democratic Party.
“I have no choice, because I’ve had elected officials, and I’m not going to give their names, elected officials coming up to me. I’ve had folks who are pundits come up to me. I’ve had folks that got a lot of money, billionaires and others that have talked to me about exploratory committees and things of that nature. I’m not a politician. I’ve never had a desire to be a politician,” Smith told ABC News’ “This Week” co-anchor Jonathan Karl.
Smith reiterated that because of the number of people asking him to consider a run, he has to leave the door open.
Smith usually strikes me as a moderately annoying “hot take” artist, but he has been condemning the Democrat Party about their lurch to the right on several issues, and has discussed that with the likes of Dave Rubin. Smith has no business running for President, but would be immediately be a more sane alternative than anyone else named as a Democratic front-runner.
When police raided a factory in Georgia, they found dozens of Chinese nationals being kept in near slave-like conditions, and authorities say they were pressed into service by a forced labor trafficking ring.
Last month, agents from several agencies raided Wellmade Industries in Cartersville, Georgia, 40 miles north of Atlanta, and what they found shocked them, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Federal officials said that around 60 Chinese nationals were being held in tiny rooms and forced to work long hours in the flooring manufacturing plant. The exploited workers at Wellmade are just a few of the many exploited workers the Trump administration has rooted out.
ICE Homeland Security Investigations Atlanta Special Agent in Charge Steven N. Schrank said the conditions these workers were living in was “horrific,” and noted that he and his fellow agents were investigating eight other locations for similar offenses.
Three Wellmade Industries officers were arrested, including company owner, Zhu Chen, his nephew, Jiayi Chen, and company associate Jian Jun Lu.
At the bond hearings for the suspects, assistant district attorney Austin Waldo claimed that officials of the company immediately confiscated the workers’ travel and ID documents as soon as they arrived at the plant to make it harder for them to leave.
Well, this would have made my Nvidia roundup had it dropped a day earlier, and not in a good way. “Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang boarded a private jet to Beijing shortly after the U.S. Commerce Department announced new export licensing requirements for the company’s H20 AI chips for the Chinese market. Once there, Huang met with the head of a Chinese state-backed trade body, where he reaffirmed Nvidia’s commitment to the Chinese market despite a deepening trade war.”
Baltimore student: “Hey, doesn’t Maryland law require a United States flag in every classroom?” Baltimore County Board of Education: “Hey, you’re suspended and we’re calling the cops on you.”
The East Plano Islamic Center’s planned development faces continued scrutiny from Texas officials.
U.S. Sen. John Cornyn is calling on the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate EPIC for potential religious discrimination.
In a letter to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and Assistant U.S. Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, Cornyn expressed concern that a “master-planned ‘community of thousands of Muslims’” could violate the Fair Housing Act of 1968 by discriminating against Christians, Jews, and other non-muslim minorities.
“Religious discrimination, whether explicit or implicit, is unconstitutional under the First and Fourteenth Amendments,” wrote Cornyn. “Religious freedom is a cornerstone of our nation’s values, and I am concerned this community potentially undermines this vital protection.”
Sanity in the UK: “U.K. Supreme Court Rules Males Don’t Qualify as Women Under Anti-Discrimination Law, in Landmark Ruling.”
The United Kingdom’s supreme court ruled Wednesday that males who identify as women do not fall qualify as women under anti-discrimination law, a monumental decision that will have major consequences for British law.
The high court defined “woman” based on sex rather than gender identity, keeping it within the bounds of scientific reality rather than giving into the demands of left-wing activists. The ruling specifically addressed the question of whether transgender-identifying males who obtain a gender recognition certificate — a legal document acknowledging them as women — enjoy the same protections extended to females under Britain’s 2010 Equality Act, an anti-discrimination law that covers nine protected characteristics and applies to various sectors of British life.
“The unanimous decision of this court is that the terms ‘woman’ and ‘sex’ in the Equality Act 2010 refer to biological women and biological sex,” said Lord Patrick Hodge, deputy president of the United Kingdom’s Supreme Court, in announcing the ruling.
Bad news: A house exploded two miles from me. I actually heard it, and thought that one of my dogs had run into a wall or something. Worse news: The house belonged to Sara Felix, who I know from the Austin science fiction community, and her husband was in the house at the time. The silver linings are that he’s now out of surgery, though badly burned, and that the family hadn’t actually moved into the house, and were still living in their old house in the same general area.
When your band name stops being ironic: “New Pornographers Drummer Joe Seiders Arrested for Possession of Child Porn.” I have a few of their albums I bought 15 years ago. I considered embedding “Breakin’ the Law” for ironic effect, but it’s a lousy song. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
A foster mom in Missouri is facing multiple charges of abuse and is accused of trading a teenage girl she was guardian of for a pet monkey, authorities said.
Brenda Ruth Deutsch, 70, of Lincoln County, was charged with two counts of abuse or neglect of a child and one count of endangering the welfare of a child, according to Lincoln County Prosecutor Mike Wood. She was taken into custody last weekend.
Deutsch has fostered more than 200 children for about 15 to 20 years, Wood told NBC News.
While it’s tempting to chalk this up to more “annals in human depravity,” given the age of the alleged perp, I have to wonder if some mental illness/senility/Alzheimers was involved.
Anderson Ronaldo Reyes Giron — a member of the “Most Wanted” list — was taken into custody on April 2 by the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) and the Texas Highway Patrol for charges related to deadly conduct from shooting a firearm in Travis County, as well as theft of property in Williamson County. He’s originally from Honduras, from which he came illegally, and was arrested by the Austin Police Department in August 2024 for the afore-listed charges before being let out on bail.
Thanks again, Austin.
“Governor Greg Abbott, the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS), and the Texas National Guard continue to work together with the Trump Administration to secure the border; stop the smuggling of drugs, weapons, and people into Texas; and prevent, detect, and interdict transnational criminal activity between ports of entry,” a press release from Abbott’s office stated upon announcement of Giron’s arrest.
Giron has been wanted since February 2025 when Travis County issued a warrant for his arrest following the firearm violation, and then when Williamson County similarly filed a warrant after his theft incident.
Former Texas Congresswoman Mayra Flores has officially thrown her hat into the ring to challenge the indicted Congressman Henry Cuellar (R-TX-28) and his 20-year-plus tenure representing Texas’ 28th Congressional District in Washington, D.C.
“I am deeply honored to announce my candidacy for Congress—a chance to serve the people and uphold the values that make our nation great,” Flores posted on X upon announcement of her challenge to Cuellar’s seat.
The first female Mexican-born former congresswoman, Flores comes to the drawing board with experience in Texas elections — first scoring a seat in a special election to represent the Lone Star State on the federal stage after Democratic Congressman Filemon Vela resigned in 2022, allowing her to flip the historically Democratic 34th Congressional District. Flores flipped parties from Democratic to Republican in the early 2000s, primarily citing pro-life motivations.
She also ran against Rep. Vicente Gonzalez twice (D-TX-34), losing first in the 2022 general election and second in 2024, although she notched her numbers up significantly the second time around — losing the election by a 2 percent margin.
Cuellar maintained his seat during the 2024 general election against Republican candidate Jay Furman with nearly 52 percent of the vote — a race rumored as potentially dangerous for Cuellar due to his indictment by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) that year after an FBI investigation in 2022 for alleged bribery and money laundering in coordination with his wife, Imelda Cuellar, and the country of Azerbaijan.
TX-28 favors Democrats with a rating of D-51% per The Texan’s Texas Partisan Index, although President Donald Trump made history in the district during the November election — winning Webb County’s presidential vote, the first Republican president to claim victory there in a century.
Until Flores’ announcement, the only other notable contender for Cuellar’s seat was Webb County Judge Tano Tijerina, who flipped parties in December 2024.
For more on Cueller’s indictment, see here and here.
“With Attorney General Ken Paxton officially running for U.S. Senate against Sen. John Cornyn, the race to replace him is heating up. After former U.S. Attorney John Bash became the first to enter the race, State Sen. Mayes Middleton has now launched his own campaign for Texas attorney general, pitching himself as a conservative fighter ready to take the reins.” I regularly get press releases from Middleton’s office, and he seems a pretty solid conservative.
The U.S. Department of Transportation officially terminated a $63.9 million federal grant intended for the planning and development of a high-speed rail line between Dallas and Houston.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the move will save taxpayers millions while allowing Amtrak to focus on improving existing operations.
Personally, I’d kill Amtrack and hand the assets to the states to subsidize if they felt like.
Originally pitched as a private venture, the Texas Central Railway project aimed to connect two of Texas’ largest cities with a 205-mph bullet train, promising a 90-minute travel time.
The project has faced strong opposition from landowners and lawmakers since it was proposed in 2009.
As cost estimates soared from $12 billion to over $40 billion, the project became increasingly reliant on federal funding.
Duffy was blunt in his assessment: “Underwriting this project is a waste of taxpayer funds and a distraction from Amtrak’s core mission of improving its existing subpar services.”
“If the private sector believes this project is feasible, they should carry the pre-construction work forward, rather than relying on Amtrak and the American taxpayer to bail them out,” Duffy added.
State Sen. Charles Schwertner (R-Georgetown) posted on X, “Thank you to President Trump and Secretary Duffy for standing up for taxpayers and terminating the $63.9 million grant to Amtrak for the proposed high-speed rail project between Houston and Dallas.”
Even the $10 billion version was a boondoggle that wouldn’t have made money and required taxpayer subsidies to stay afloat, and more likely never would have been completed anyway. High speed passenger rail works in Japan because they already had high urban density and an existing rail system and culture to support it. Texas has none of those things, and even if it was built it would never be profitable here (or just about anywhere else).
And just to drive the point home: The highest density high speed rail in Japan seats 1,634 passengers. Assume passengers pay $100 a ticket each way, the train is entirely full, and the Texas high speed rail train runs six times a day (all optimistic and unlikely assumptions), 365 days a year, and you get $357,846,000 a year in gross revenue, which means, even without the including the cost to run the train, it would take just under 112 years to make back the initial investment.
Despite his new position as a vice chair of the DNC, gun control weasel David Hogg wants to primary old Democrats. In this particular task I wish the little weasel the best of luck.
This is your mayor on social justice. “The mayor of South Fulton faces an eviction action at an Atlanta apartment complex, Fulton County court documents show, adding another development to what’s been a turbulent year so far for the city leader. Mayor Khalid Kamau, who has gone recently by Mayor Kobi, has had eviction proceedings initiated against him in Fulton County Magistrate Court by an apartment complex at 6200 Bakers Ferry Rd. Court documents show the complex filed to initiate eviction after alleging Kamau failed to pay rent in March.”
Snip.
Documents show the amount of past due rent was listed at $1,663.77. A late fee of $100, utilities of $39.77 and “other fees” amounting to $175 are also being sought.
Kamau has been at odds in recent weeks and under scrutiny from the South Fulton City Council over his spending and alleged “abuse” of the position.
He in turn has defended himself from what he has termed the City Council’s “overreach” after his access to city buildings was revoked and his budget frozen in February, and said he has faced resistance from the council throughout his tenure.
The move by the city council came after reports on the mayor’s trips — which spanned four continents in four months — as well as updates at City Hall that included a film studio and refurbished conference/pool table room. The City Council voted to redistribute several pieces of new electronic equipment to the city IT department and send back the film studio.
I know you’ll be shocked, shocked to learn that Kamau is a Democratic Socialist…
Your feel-good dog story of the week: A dog named Buford kept a two-year old boy safe after the latter wandered seven miles from his home. Another article states that Buford is an Anatolian Pyrenees.
I’m still between jobs. Feel free to hit the tip jar if you’re so inclined.
Set the Wayback Machine for the 1980s, and Houston’s law enforcement and criminal justice community had a very different reputation than it does now. Back then, Houston was known as a shooting city, one where the police would indeed shoot you if you tried something particularly stupid. In some ways, this reputation was a follow-on to incidents from the days of desegregation up to the Joe Torres murder, but, good or bad, Houston had the reputation that, if you were a criminal, Houston had zero tolerance for you stepping out of line.
Mayor John Whitmire said that 900 people charged with murder are free on bond in Houston during a city council meeting this week.
If true, the mind boggles. Houston had 320 murders in 2024, so that’s just under three years worth of alleged murderers walking the streets.
The 248th District Court has been the subject of repeated criticism for releasing people charged with violent crimes, including capital murder, back into the community on bond.
“There are multiple people that have been murdered by people who were out on bond from this court,” said Councilmember Fred Flickinger at the meeting.
An analysis performed by KHOU 11 showed that about a third of those released are arrested for additional crimes committed while on bond.
Flickinger added that it was time to start naming the judges responsible for releasing dangerous criminals.
The National Police Association has done so.
In an article published in 2021 by the NPA, Doug Wylie explained that “Judge Hilary Unger is unapologetic about a philosophy—no matter how flawed—that compels her to release into the world individuals who have shown a propensity for violence and a callous carelessness for human life.”
The article details how district court judges regularly grant bonds to dangerous criminals who go on to victimize more people.
Social justice is the gift that keeps on giving…
One example occurred last week following a SWAT standoff when Houston police recovered the bodies of Austin Collette and his girlfriend. Authorities say he likely shot her before killing himself.
Collette pleaded guilty to murder in 2019, but Judge Unger authorized his release and had not scheduled a sentencing hearing.
“More blood is on Judge Hilary Unger’s hands. Austin Collette pled guilty to another murder in December of 2024, yet he was still allowed to be free before sentencing. Now he murdered his girlfriend and killed himself. This senseless tragedy was 100% preventable,” posted the Houston Police Officers’ Union on X.
Earlier this year, Unger released on bond a man accused of murdering a Harris County Sheriff’s deputy.
I previously covered Unger bonding out the accused murderer of Harris County Sheriff’s Deputy Fernando Esqueda here.
Elections have consequences. Letting social justice Democrats run your criminal justice system, and electing George Soros-backed DAs, is a surefire recipe for higher crime and greater disorder. And now that DA Kim Ogg (originally Soros-backed, but who later broke with him to pursue more sane policies) has been replaced with hard left Soros-backed Sean Trende Teare, law abiding Houston residents can look forward to more murderers walking Houston’s streets.
Government leftists at USAID call to break the law to cover their tracks, DOGE uncovers still more outrageous examples of government waste, Democratic bagman john Podesta showered billions on newly created NGOs, billions in LA homeless funds are unaccounted for, Syrian jihadis slaughter civilians, more pedo teachers get caught, lobbyists rake in big bucks, and the heart-stopping thrills of a man…baking.
A senior USAID official on Tuesday ordered the agency’s remaining staff to report to their now-former headquarters in Washington DC for an “all day” group effort to destroy documents, many of which contain sensitive information, Politico reports.
The materials marked for destruction include “classified safes and personnel documents” at the Ronald Reagan Building, according to an email sent by USAID’s acting executive director, Erica Carr.
“Shred as many documents first, and reserve the burn bags for when the shredder becomes unavailable or needs a break,” read the email instructing staff to label the burn bags with “SECRET” and “USAID/B/IO” (which stands for “bureau or independent office”) in dark sharpie.
Again, how is this not breaking the The Federal Records Act and other laws against destroying evidence?
Legal Insurrection readers may recall that late last year, Brent Efron, an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) special advisor implementing Biden’s climate agenda, made many controversial statements during an undercover video about the agency’s actions in anticipation of a potential Trump administration.
Efron reportedly told Project Veritas that the EPA was rapidly distributing billions of dollars in grants to nonprofits as an “insurance policy” against Trump winning the election. He described the situation as “throwing gold bars off the Titanic,” referring to the urgency with which the agency allocates funds.
Now the Trump Administration has followed those gold bars. An exclusive report by the New York Post indicates the trail of those bars led back to Deep State Obama/Biden minion, John Podesta.
The story began in September 2022, when Biden named Podesta to helm the $375 billion climate fund, which resulted from the Inflation Reduction Act, a 2022 law that was basically “Green New Deal” poison hidden beneath a wrapper of sweet economic promises.
Here is how The New York Times announced the 2022 fund creation:
As a senior adviser to Mr. Biden on clean energy innovation, Mr. Podesta will shape how the government disburses billions of dollars in tax credits and incentives to industries that are developing wind and solar energy, as well as to consumers who want to install solar panels, heat and cool their homes with electric heat pumps or buy electric vehicles.
..In an interview, Mr. Podesta described his new job as “throwing the weight of federal government policy behind a cycle of investment and innovation that we haven’t seen before in the United States, and that is almost unique in the world.”
There was absolutely no questioning by The New York Times as to where these monies would go, or how the funds would be used to help either our climate or energy industry.
On the other hand, the New York Post has a map of the gold bar trail. Apparently, billions went to “Non-Governmental Organizations” that were founded after the fund was created.
The Biden administration funneled at least $20 billion dollars into environmental groups, most of which had only recently been founded, The Post has discovered.
In one case, former Vice President Kamala Harris handed over a check for nearly $7 billion to Bethesda, Maryland, based group Climate United Fund, which does not appear in the IRS’s charities database, and has no federal filings.
The non-profit fund had only been incorporated in Delaware on November 30, 2023, according to public records, five months before Harris handed over the cash in April 2024.
The Climate United Fund then announced “the historic investment” in a press release, noting the group’s work “delivers benefits like cleaner air…and increased energy security.”’
However, because the company is so new, there is no publicly published accounting of how it plans to spend the $7 billion.
Climate Fund, which received nearly $7 billion in Biden Climate Gold, was just one of eight similarly set-up entities. Others are:
Coalition for Green Capital: Received $5 billion
Power Forward Communities: Received $2 billion
Opportunity Finance Network: Received $2.29 billion
Inclusiv: Received $1.87 billion
Justice Climate Fund: Received $940 million
Appalachian Community Capital: Received $500 million
“Exposed: Secret Pact Between 14 Blue States, Left-Wing Groups, and NYC Law Firms.”
Well, well, well. It’s hardly a surprise to discover that the wave of lawsuits against Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is no coincidence. The Oversight Project at the Heritage Foundation has obtained a copy of a secret agreement outlining a coordinated legal offensive—an alliance between 14 blue states, left-wing activist groups, and prominent NYC law firms—all targeting DOGE and Musk himself.
What is surprising, however, is that they actually formalized their nefarious intentions.
Signed less than a month after DOGE began operations, this agreement is yet another example of the Democrats’ “whatever it takes” brand of political warfare.
The document begins:
This Common Interest Agreement (“Agreement) is made and entered into by and between the States of New Mexico, Arizona, Michigan, Califomia [sic], Connecticut, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington and State Democracy Defenders Fund (the “Parties”). The Parties have agreed that they have a common interest in developing legal strategies to challenge the creation and actions of the Department of Government Efficiency (“DOGE) and the actions of Elon Musk as a special government employee and a common interest in existing or future investigative, regulatory, administrative, and judicial actions or inactions, including but not limited to any administrative or judicial proceedings related to or arising from those legal strategies (“Matters of Common Interest”).
“The Democrats are on the wrong end of an 80-20 issue, fighting tooth and nail to block a federal government audit that has already uncovered more than $105 billion in fraud, waste, and abuse. A recent Harvard/Harris poll shows that 76% of voters support DOGE’s efforts, yet Democrats—whose job is to represent the interests of their constituents—have gone to extraordinary lengths to obstruct it, even putting their opposition in writing.”
1. Billions in “Dark Money” Outpacing Political Parties
Arabella’s network raised $2.4 billion in the 2020 election cycle, dwarfing the combined fundraising of the Democratic and Republican National Committees. This tax-exempt cash, hidden from public scrutiny, fueled anti-Trump campaigns and progressive agendas, all while average Americans had no clue their tax system enabled it. It’s a shadow operation that makes traditional political spending look like pocket change.
2. Fake Grassroots “Pop-Ups” Everywhere
The Sixteen Thirty Fund, an Arabella spoke, spins up temporary “pop-up” groups like Floridians for a Fair Shake or Opportunity Wisconsin, which vanish after their mission—say, attacking a senator or pushing a ballot measure—is done. These tax-exempt fronts, funded by anonymous donors, masquerade as local movements while redirecting millions to sway elections, leaving taxpayers blind to the manipulation. It’s a conveyor belt of synthetic activism, exploiting 501(c) loopholes.
3. Funding Supreme Court Protests
Demand Justice, birthed by the Sixteen Thirty Fund, spent millions opposing Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation, complete with costumed activists and aggressive ad blitzes. This tax-exempt war chest didn’t just influence public opinion—it tried to bully the judiciary, all subsidized by a tax code Americans fund. Most folks never connected the dots to Arabella’s puppet strings behind the chaos.
4. Zuck Bucks’ Election Meddling
Arabella’s New Venture Fund funneled $25 million to the Center for Tech and Civic Life, which then got $350 million from Mark Zuckerberg to “administer” 2020 elections—read: juice Democratic turnout in swing states. Tax-exempt dollars turned local election offices into partisan tools, and the public was none the wiser about this backdoor power grab. It’s a masterclass in using charity status to rig the game.
5. Foreign Billionaires Pulling Levers
Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss has pumped at least $208 million into the Sixteen Thirty Fund since 2016, exploiting tax laws that let foreigners bankroll U.S. political causes through “dark pools.” This foreign cash—untouchable by direct campaign finance rules—shapes American policy, yet taxpayers footing the system’s bill don’t even know his name. It’s a loophole so big you could drive a Swiss bank vault through it.
he report painted a grim picture of Los Angeles’ homeless program managed by Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA), which was established in 1993.
“Repetitive information gaps, coupled with a lack of accurate and complete data and documentation, posed significant obstacles to this assessment,” the report states.
“Insufficient financial accountability led to an inability to trace substantial funds allocated to the City Programs. Fragmented data systems across LAHSA, the City, and the County and inconsistent reporting formats made it challenging to verify spending and the number of beds or units reported by the City and LAHSA, track participant outcomes, and align financial data with performance metrics.”
The report also cites a paucity of uniform data standards and real-time oversight, which limited the ability of the auditor to fully assess the true impact of homeless programs and raised concerns of resource misallocation.
A&M found that key stakeholders failed to monitor homelessness programs, and that LAHSA was unable to identify relevant service provider contracts and expenses. It also found gaps in documentation.
Of course there are gaps in documentation. That’s to hide the graft disappearing into leftwing pockets…
Crimea, Sevastopol, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk, Luhansk — these are regions of Russia. They are written into the constitution. This is a given fact,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. That amounts to one-fifth of Ukraine’s legitimate, internationally recognized pre-war territory. Putin demands that Ukraine permanently renounce any claim to these territories.
Ukraine must disarm itself of any NATO weapons. Of course, the top suppliers of the Ukrainian military are the United States with $69.7 billion worth of weapons systems and ammunition since the start of the war, Germany with $13.7 billion worth, the United Kingdom at $10.8 billion worth, Denmark at $8.1 billion worth, Sweden at $5.1 billion worth, Poland at $3.9 billion worth, France at $3.8 billion worth, and Canada at $2.8 billion worth. (All figures from the Kiel Institute’s Ukraine support tracker, converted from Euros to dollars, and as of December 31, 2024.) All those countries are NATO members, and thus, under the Russian demands, Ukraine would have to give up all weapons systems received from those countries. This amounts to a unilateral disarming of the Ukrainian military, in exchange for a promise from a former KGB lieutenant colonel that he will not start the war again.
Putin also demanded that Ukraine cap its military size. Previously, Putin had demanded Ukraine limit the size of its army to 50,000 troops. As of January, the Ukrainian army is 880,000 troops, meaning that Russia wants the Ukrainian army to be reduced to less than 6 percent of its current size.
According to CNN, “Putin also suggested that Ukraine halt mobilization and any training of its troops, and that other nations stop supplying weapons to Kyiv during the ceasefire.” Halt any training of troops.
Putin insisted no foreign peacekeepers can enter Ukrainian territory.
Ukraine must abandon the idea of NATO membership. While the Trump administration had already made this concession before negotiations began, note that Putin is establishing a system where he gets a veto over which countries NATO can accept.
The U.S. must return six diplomatic compounds that Russia contends were seized illegally by the United States between 2016 and 2018.
All Western economic sanctions upon Russia are illegal and must be lifted.
Bob [Robert B.] Laughlin, who’s a physics professor at Stanford, he got a Nobel Prize in Physics 1998. And he suffered from the extreme delusion that once he got a Nobel Prize in Physics, he’d be free to look at anything he wanted to. And the area of science that he went after was: he was convinced that most scientists, even at a place like Stanford, weren’t really doing very much work, weren’t doing very much science, were stealing money from taxpayers…This was a more this was a more taboo question, more taboo topic, than just going narrowly after climate science, or, you know, or any of these things. And obviously, he got promptly defunded and his grad students couldn’t get PhDs anymore. [My] sort of hermeneutic of suspicion is that if there’s a topic you can’t discuss, if there ideas you aren’t allowed to articulate, my shortcut is they’re just true.
Remember all the way back in 1986, when the New York Times blithely asserted as fact that evangelicals are “more easily led than other kinds of voters?” Well, just last we they asserted that “a majority of gun owners are white, conservative, male and from rural areas.” The first three are probably true, and the fourth definitely not, and no one who was even passingly familiar with gun culture would make that mistake…
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz pinned the massacre on the country’s new leader, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, the leader of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) terrorist group, which was an offshoot of Al-Qaeda and was close to ISIS.
“Al-Julani took off his [robe], put on a suit, and presented a moderate facade,” Katz wrote in a post on X that included a video of scores of people who had been massacred. “Now, he has removed the mask, revealing his true face: a jihadist terrorist from the Al-Qaeda school, committing atrocities against the Alawite civilian population.”
Murdering members of other religions is never far from the average jihadi mind.
Just a day after the rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) had seized Damascus, and Bashar Assad had fled to Moscow, Assad’s army crumbled into dust, with soldiers ripping off their uniforms so as to avoid being killed by vengeful, and now triumphant, rebels. Those soldiers left largely unattended huge quantities of weaponry. The IDF seized the occasion to improve its defensive posture against Syria. There was a brief window of just a few days, between the fall of Assad and the regime in Damascus stabilizing and taking control of those abandoned weapons, during which the IDF did two things. First, it moved Israeli soldiers into Syria, where they established two new military outposts, one on the Syrian side of Mt. Hermon, and one extending further into Syria from the pre-existing buffer zone separating Israeli and Syrian troops on the Golan. Now the IDF controls the commanding heights that extend into Syria; the Israelis have a clear unimpeded view of Damascus — now literally in their sights — far below.
The second undertaking, which began just as soon as Assad had left for Russia, was the IDF’s systematic destruction of the Syrian army’s weaponry. The Israelis knew exactly where the weapons were located; they had long been preparing for a possible war against Assad, and had their target bank ready.
The IDF announced on December 10 that its air force and navy had conducted over 480 strikes in Syria in the span of 48 hours, 350 of which targeted airfields, anti-aircraft batteries, missiles, drones, fighter jets, tanks, and weapon production sites, destroying between 70% and 80% of Syria’s strategic weapons. It also sank Syria’s navy. And there was nothing that Ahmed al-Sharaa and the men of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham could do about it. Now Israel has not only made itself much safer, having removed Syria as a viable military threat to the Jewish state, but also has “demilitarized” the Jihadists in Damascus.
We have just seen that after al-Sharaa’s repeated promise that Syria’s minorities had nothing to worry about, decently, the jihadist “security services” — as they call themselves — entered Latakia to capture or kill Alawite members of Assad’s army. They were apparently ambushed by Alawite veterans of Assad’s army, and suffered a loss of 125 men. At that point, they decided to take revenge on the civilian population, killing more than 1,000 Alawite civilians — some reports claim up to 4,000 civilians have now been killed, and they also have been killing Christians — mostly Greek Orthodox but including some Melkites — because, of course, that’s what jihadists like to do. More than a thousand civilians, possibly as many as 4,000 according to some Alawite sources, have been killed in the space of two days.
The Texas Association of School Boards is a lobbying organization that is funded almost exclusively by Texas taxpayer dollars through school district dues.
According to TASB’s most recent 990 form, at least 16 of its employees make more than the governor of Texas, who earns just over $153,000 each year.
TASB paid a combined total of $927,644 to just two of its employees during fiscal year 2023.
Executive Director Dan Troxell was paid $412,101 in direct compensation by TASB. Another $64,154 is listed as “other compensation from the organization and related organizations.”
Similarly, TASB paid First Public Managing Director William Mastrodicasa $351,224 in direct reportable income. He was also paid an additional $100,165.
Nice work, if you can get it…
Mess with the bull, get the horns. “Trump admin cancels $400 million in grants to Columbia University.” How’s that pro-Hamas antisemitism working out for you?
“US House Members Push for Ban on Student Visas for Chinese Nationals.” “U.S. Rep. Riley Moore (R-WV) is spearheading the push to secure higher education institutions against espionage and intellectual theft.” I’m sure universities will panic over having to give up all that sweet commie dough…
“X Takes Down Network Of Chinese Accounts Amplifying NYT Attacks On Dissident Arts Group. The accounts, which exhibited inauthentic activity, had been used to boost articles published by The New York Times that targeted a religious group persecuted in China. One of the articles, a Chinese-language version of an attack piece on Shen Yun Performing Arts, was boosted so much it became the most shared New York Times article on X in more than a year, according to data from BuzzSumo, a social media analytics tool.” The question is, why was the NYT so eager to carry the CCP’s water attacking Falun Gong?
“Texas Awards SpaceX Over $17 Million Grant for Semiconductor R&D.” My opposition to the CHIPS Act has been noted before, but this may be already allocated money that the state is contractually obligated to award. Why would SpaceX need semiconductor research? My guess would be for advances in space radiation hardened (“rad hard”) chips. This was traditionally property of Gallium Arsenide (GaAs) rather than silicon-based chips. GaAs chips are generally orders of magnitude more radiation resistant than consumer grade chips, but GaAs is extremely brittle and difficult to work with, so much so that 6″ (150mm) wafers are the largest size for GaAs, and there still a number of older 4″ (100m) fab lines running GaAs out there. GaAs is such a pain that a lot of different substrates have been explored over the years, but I’m not sure any match GaAs’ extreme rad hard properties.
During a tornado warning, a Florida news station broadcasting the warning is hit by a tornado.
Critical Drinker didn’t care for Micky 17. “We’ll just make it dumb as fuck and hammer home the messaging with as much subtlety as a dump truck full of retarded sledgehammers.”
Travis County having a Soros-backed DA just keeps garnering dividends. And by “dividends” I mean “dead bodies.”
Austin police said all five men arrested for the November 2024 murder of Xavier Jones were out on bond at the time of the killing.
Community leaders are outraged and are calling for reform.
Six people are behind bars facing capital murder charges.
Austin police said Jon Willard was the planner and leader of the operation. They said he wanted to rob Xavier Jones for his money and a watch, but Willard was on a court-ordered GPS tracking device, so he brought up the idea to his known gang associates, Judaren Forbes, Lorance Jones, Corey Keazer, and Cameron Perkins.
Investigators said they started two weeks of planning, which included conducting surveillance on Xavier Jones’ home and at least one failed attempt.
The Austin Police Department is investigating an overnight homicide at an apartment complex in the 400 block of East Wonsley Drive.
On the night of Nov. 25, 2024, police said Lorance Jones’ girlfriend, Rhianna Farillas, drove at least three of the men to Xavier Jones’ home.
When they got there, investigators said the men shot through the sliding glass door, hitting Xavier Jones, then one of the men held a gun to Xavier Jones’ girlfriend’s head, another pointed a gun at her child, and another took money and a watch off Xavier Jones’ wrist.
Jones died from his injuries, police said.
Surveillance, cell phones, social media, and even a court-appointed GPS tracking device connected the suspects to the murder.
Committing murder while wearing a GPS tracker indicates that we’re not exactly dealing with the creme de la creme of criminal masterminds here.
They are known to Austin police as documented gang members and four previous violent cases show the men working together.
The suspects are being held in the Travis County Jail. Their bonds range from $75,000 to $500,000.
“Gangs exist for the purpose of terrorizing communities, of committing crimes with impunity and of operating outside the law. So, you know, I wish this district attorney would take gang activity seriously,” Save Austin Now Matt Mackowiak said, “That’d be a great place to start if you just took gang members off the streets. By convicting them when they commit a crime, which is what they do, you would have our crime rate go down considerably because a huge percentage of the crime that’s occurring in Austin right now and across Travis County is habitual offenders.”
During the incident, all five men were out on bond.
The gang had another accomplice making sure they were on the streets where they could kill people: Soros-backed prosecutor Jose Garza. Since getting into office, Garza has instituted a revolving door policy to put violent felons back on the streets due to “social justice” or other left-wing garbage ideas. And just this week we found up that taxpayer money was illegally being used to help elect Soros prosecutors.
Until Garza is defeated, or federal and state pressure is brought to bear to clean up the mess, expect more revolving door murders.
Congratulations on making it to the end of a difficult but exhilarating 2024, and I hope you had a Merry Christmas! Christmas week is always slow, so this will be a smaller LinkSwarm than usual, and thank goodness for that. More Biden misdeeds, lots of Russian stuff blows up, two horrible gay pedophiles go to prison forever, and Democratic judges going out of their way to punish the victims. Let’s dig in!
President Joe Biden is transferring more student loan debt onto American taxpayers with only weeks left until he departs the Oval Office.
The Biden administration announced Friday that it is giving $4.28 billion of student debt relief to almost 55,000 more public service workers including teachers, nurses, and law enforcement officials.
“From Day One of my Administration, I promised to make sure that higher education is a ticket to the middle class, not a barrier to opportunity,” Biden said in a statement.
“Because of our actions, millions of people across the country now have the breathing room to start businesses, save for retirement, and pursue life plans they had to put on hold because of the burden of student loan debt.”
The Department of Education is forgiving the debt through the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, a policy that permits the forgiveness of remaining student loans for public employees who have made 120 monthly payments.
Federal bureacurats are simply more equal than mere citizens…
Remember how Biden commuted and pardoned some of the worst people in the world earlier this month? Well, he found worse ones still.
President Joe Biden on Monday commuted the sentences of 37 of the 40 men on federal death row, reclassifying their sentences to prevent President-elect Donald Trump from allowing their executions when he returns to office in January.
The 37 men were all convicted of murder. Their sentences will be reclassified from execution to life in prison without the possibility of parole, according to the White House.
The men whose sentences are being reclassified include Shannon Agofsky, who murdered a bank president, dumped his body in a lake, and then killed another man in prison; Brandon Basham and Chadrick Fulks, who escaped from prison and killed two women while on a 17-day crime spree; Ricky Allen Fackrell, a white supremacist who killed a prison inmate; and Daryl Lawrence, who killed a police officer during a bank robbery.
“Make no mistake: I condemn these murderers, grieve for the victims of their despicable acts, and ache for all the families who have suffered unimaginable and irreparable loss,” Biden said in statement. “But guided by my conscience and my experience, . . . I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level.”
Biden only left three men on federal death row: Robert Bowers, the gunman who shot and killed eleven worshipers at the Pittsburgh Tree of Life synagogue in 2018; Dylann Roof, a white supremacist who killed nine people at a black church during a Bible study in 2015; and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the 2013 Boston Marathon bomber.
Biden’s so opposed to the death penalty he only refused to commute sentences for those criminals the public would pay attention to…
Do blue state Democratic officials think they can defy the federal government on deporting illegal aliens? A hard rain is gonna fall.
Hoover Institution senior fellow Victor Davis Hanson said Thursday that incoming border czar Tom Homan is starting with Democratic Chicago to deport illegal immigrants in order to set a precedent for other cities threatening to block his efforts.
Since President-elect Donald Trump’s nomination of Homan as border czar, the former Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) acting director has warned Democratic mayors to step aside as some have threatened to refuse cooperation with ICE on mass deportations.
Snip.
Hanson argued that Homan’s focus on Democratic Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson will set a precedent, emphasizing that the incoming border czar is listening to Democratic constituents concerned about illegal immigration in their city.
Snip.
I know the most obnoxious, the most crazy, the most nullification advocate in one of the second or third largest cities is Chicago, that crazy Mayor Johnson,’” Hanson continued. “‘So we’re going to tell him first, you try to stop the federal government and you think you’re South Carolina 1832 or you think you’re firing on Fort Sumner. You’re going to regret it because you were breaking federal law and we have a lot more federal laws that you would want us to follow in your interest than you do federal laws to break.’”
“That’s going to be interesting because what Homan is basically doing is talking over the mayor’s head to the black constituencies of Chicago and saying, don’t worry, your mayor doesn’t, he’s going to break the law, but I’m going to follow it and I’ll put him in jail for your benefit so that you don’t have to worry about Venezuelans and Colombians shooting you or taking over your social services,” Hanson added.
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump plans to continue military support for Ukraine, the Financial Times reported on Dec. 20, citing undisclosed sources.
Three officials familiar with discussions revealed that Trump intends to keep supplying US military equipment to Ukraine after his inauguration.
Trump’s foreign policy team also informed European officials that he plans to push NATO allies to raise their defense spending to 5% of their GDP. NATO member states currently follow a goal of allocating 2% of their GDP to defense spending.
A Georgia couple was sentenced to 100 years in prison without parole after adopting two boys and sexually abusing them.
William and Zachary Zulock will each spend the rest of their lives behind bars, after pleading guilty to aggravated sodomy, aggravated child molestation, incest, and sexual exploitation of children. Each were sentenced on Dec. 19.
Sanders said he first encountered some of these services while investigating Kremlin-funded disinformation efforts in Ukraine, as they are all useful in assembling large-scale, anonymous social media campaigns.
According to Sanders, all 122 of the services he tested are processing transactions through a company called Cryptomus, which says it is a cryptocurrency payments platform based in Vancouver, British Columbia. Cryptomus’ website says its parent firm — Xeltox Enterprises Ltd. (formerly certa-pay[.]com) — is registered as a money service business (MSB) with the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC).
Sanders said the payment data he gathered also shows that at least 56 cryptocurrency exchanges are currently using Cryptomus to process transactions, including financial entities with names like casher[.]su, grumbot[.]com, flymoney[.]biz, obama[.]ru and swop[.]is.
These platforms are built for Russian speakers, and they each advertise the ability to anonymously swap one form of cryptocurrency for another. They also allow the exchange of cryptocurrency for cash in accounts at some of Russia’s largest banks — nearly all of which are currently sanctioned by the United States and other western nations.
An analysis of their technology infrastructure shows that all of these exchanges use Russian email providers, and most are directly hosted in Russia or by Russia-backed ISPs with infrastructure in Europe (e.g. Selectel, Netwarm UK, Beget, Timeweb and DDoS-Guard). The analysis also showed nearly all 56 exchanges used services from Cloudflare, a global content delivery network based in San Francisco.
“Purportedly, the purpose of these platforms is for companies to accept cryptocurrency payments in exchange for goods or services,” Sanders told KrebsOnSecurity. “Unfortunately, it is next to impossible to find any goods for sale with websites using Cryptomus, and the services appear to fall into one or two different categories: Facilitating transactions with sanctioned Russian banks, and platforms providing the infrastructure and means for cyber attacks.”
“Wells Fargo Exits Net-Zero Banking Alliance After Texas Probe Into Anti-Energy Policies Attorney General Paxton has ended a review of the bank and allowed state governmental entities to do business with Wells Fargo again.”
Another day, another fake hate crime hoax. “A Tennessee college revealed that racist messages found written on campus were fabricated by a student in an apparent attempt to make Donald Trump supporters look bad. Rhodes College confirmed to Fox News Digital that a student had admitted to leaving the messages strewn about campus that were found over Thanksgiving break and were being investigated as a hate crime. Instead, it turned out to be yet another race hoax.”
Georgia woman arrested for evicting squatter from her house. And then the judge scolded her for her “privilege.” Sounds like a whole lot of people need federal equal protection lawsuits filed against them. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
The Trump witchunt trial is suspended, PA Democrats give up the steal, the ruble collapses, a real estate developer is busted for bribery, thrash metal TDS, and an unexpected voice of sanity and reason from…Cenk Uygur?
Judge Juan Merchan indefinitely postponed the sentencing hearing in President-elect Donald Trump’s New York criminal case, which had been planned for next week, in light of Trump’s election.
Merchan is giving Trump’s legal team more than a week to file its motion asking for a dismissal under the argument that his return to office provides him a new host of immunity-related defenses.
Trump’s lawyers will be required to file by December 2, after which Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg will have until December 9 to respond.
Snip.
While Trump could face up to four years in prison, the more likely sentence in the case — should it move forward — would be probation, which could include some combination of a fine or community service, as the former and future president is a first-time offender.
“Just as a sitting President is completely immune from any criminal process, so too is President Trump as President-elect,” Trump’s lawyers wrote in a letter filed Tuesday.
Trump’s team had requested a December 20 deadline to file.
Bragg, for his part, has argued in favor of freezing the case for the entirety of Trump’s term in office, and then revisiting the sentencing at the end of Trump’s tenure.
But Trump attorneys Todd Blanche and Emil Bove have argued dismissal of the case “is necessary under the Constitution and federal law to facilitate the orderly transition of Executive power — and in the interests of justice — following President Trump’s victory in the Electoral College and the popular vote in the 2024 Presidential election.”
To paraphrase Instapundit, we’ve entered some sort of hellworld where Cenk Uygur is a voice of moderation and reason, calling out far left pollster Allan Lichtman for blowing his election call, whereupon Lichtman shrieks that Uygur is committing “blasphemy” against him. Everyone and their dog has posted this, but I’m linking to the Asmongold clip because his seems to be the shortest.
US President-elect Donald Trump’s administration is preparing to reinstate its “maximum pressure” strategy against Iran, targeting Tehran’s economic stability and its ability to support militant proxies and nuclear development, The Financial Times reported on Saturday, citing sources close to the transition team.
The sources revealed that the administration plans to impose stricter sanctions, particularly on Iran’s oil exports, which serve as a critical revenue source.
The anticipated sanctions could drastically reduce Iranian oil exports, which currently exceed 1.5 million barrels per day, up from a low of 400,000 barrels per day in 2020. Experts suggest that these measures would severely impact Iran’s economy. Bob McNally, an energy consultant and former US presidential adviser, indicated that reducing exports to a fraction of current levels would leave Iran in a far worse economic position than during Trump’s first term.
In a followup to yesterday’s story, Texas Governor Greg Abbott has ordered state entities to divest from investments in Communist China. “One investment group specifically highlighted in Abbott’s letter is the University of Texas/Texas A&M Investment Management Company (UTIMCO), which manages billions of dollars in assets for both university systems. UTIMCO has come under scrutiny after a Texas Scorecard investigation revealed its investments in more than 50 Chinese companies.”
El Salvador’s gang prison doesn’t play around. A whole lot of this would (rightfully) be considered cruel and unusual punishment, but we should veer more in this direction rather than putting illegal alien rapists up in hotels…
Sherman Roberts, who led the City Wide Community Development Corporation, was indicted four years ago for a bribery scheme involving former Mayor Pro Tem Dwaine Caraway and former City Council Member Carolyn Davis for their support of loans and low-income housing tax credits for his apartment projects.
He now faces up to five years in prison and is expected to be sentenced in March.
Roberts paid Davis several thousand dollars in cash, and promised future payments after her council tenure ended, in return for Davis’ support of his projects — Serenity Place, Runyon Springs, and Patriot’s Crossing — according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Texas.
Roberts was a Democratic Party donor, but in fairly piddling amounts for a real estate developer…
The DOJ wants Google to sell off Chrome. Well, that would be a start in addressing their monopoly position in Internet searches, but would hardly be sufficient. They should also have to spin off YouTube. And because consumers were directly harmed by their monopoly, they should be required to add 2GB of storage a year for every Gmail user for 20 years, he said self-interestedly. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
The time of the turning: “Sold-out NYC crowd ERUPTS, chants USA as President Trump attends UFC 309 with Elon Musk, RFK Jr, Speaker Johnson.”
Shocking news from the world of science: Weed isn’t good for you. “According to their findings, exposure to cannabis was associated with a range of cancers – breast, pancreatic, liver, thyroid, testicular and lymphoma – that also develop quickly and are more aggressive.”
Sweden’s Gender Equality Minister Paulina Brandberg is deeply afraid of…bananas.
