Former Austin police officer Christopher Taylor has been acquitted of all charges after his conviction was overturned by an appeals court.
A jury convicted Taylor of deadly conduct in Oct. 2024 after three days of deliberations. He was charged in connection with the officer-involved shooting of Dr. Mauris DeSilva in 2019.
Taylor was sentenced to two years in prison and was originally not determined eligible for probation.
Austin Police Association President Michael Bullock released a statement about the acquittal, saying:
“The Austin Police Association was notified this evening that Texas’ 7th Court of Appeals has REVERSED and ACQUITTED the wrongful conviction against Austin Police Department Detective Christopher Taylor. This once again shows that District Attorney Jose Garza manipulated the criminal justice system by repeatedly trying cases against Detective Taylor, until the jury pool was so tainted, that an impartial decision could not be made. Thankfully, the 7th Court of Appeals saw through this and did their part by reversing and acquitting Detective Taylor. They showed that Travis County and District Attorney Garza cannot create their own version of justice deviating from and manipulating state law, while also ignoring standard police practices.
Governor Greg Abbott, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, and the Texas Legislature have done their part by remedying state law so that no peace officer can be charged under the Deadly Conduct statute that was used against Detective Taylor and the nearly 30 other officers that District Attorney Garza has gone after since taking office.
We call upon District Attorney Garza to immediately drop all remaining charges against Austin Police Officers, related to his political attacks. The men and women of the Austin Police Department must be allowed do the job they signed up for, protecting the citizens of Austin and the State of Texas, without fear of these countless political prosecutions. The Austin Police Association will always stand alongside Detective Taylor and every officer who wears the uniform of the Austin Police Department. With this ruling, the madness must end, and common sense must prevail.”
Snip.
The misguided nature of this case is apparent in the District Attorney’s Office dismissal of charges against co-defendant Officer Karl Krycia. This action underscores that the prosecution was not about seeking justice but rather DA Garza exploiting tragic events for political gain at the direction of the Wren Collective. Before even taking office, Garza publicly vowed to target Detective Taylor.
The Wren Collective is a radical leftwing social justice organization that never met a minority criminal it didn’t love, nor a cop it didn’t hate.
On July 31, 2019, Austin Police received several 911 calls around 5 p.m. from the Spring Condominiums in downtown Austin about a man having a mental health crisis holding a knife to his own throat.
Neighbors reported a man banging loudly on emergency doors who sounded like he was having a mental breakdown.
One officer arrived and was told by staff that the man was a resident and had been holding a knife to his throat while walking around. The officer went inside, got on the elevator and went to the fifth floor gym.
Austin police at the time of the incident said they were told he was waving his knife at the camera, which sped up their need to respond. Four officers and a security guard got on the elevator and when they arrived at the fifth floor, the officers’ body cameras caught the rest of the incident.
APD says the officers began giving the man commands and he turned around. The man is seen on body camera footage pulling the knife down towards his side and walking towards the officers. As he took a step or two toward them, two of the officers fired their guns and one fired a Taser.
Naturally, Garza is going to appeal, because he hates APD officers far more than the criminals he seems determined to keep out on the streets.
Via Holly Hansen in The Texan News comes a culture war skirmish that checks off a lot of this blog’s interest boxes: Williamson County GOP Chair Michelle Evans had her phone seized documenting a man using the women’s restroom, and now she has a powerful ally in the war against transsexual madness.
Social media giant X announced it will provide legal backing to a Texas Republican activist who faces felony prosecution for posting a photo of an alleged biological male in the women’s restroom at the Texas Capitol.
In the midst of a 2023 debate at the Capitol over legislation prohibiting gender modification procedures for minor children, Williamson County Republican Party Chair Michelle Evans posted the photo of a clothed person at a public bathroom sink on X in May 2023 and wrote that she had to tell the “man to stop using the women’s restroom at the Capitol.”
Hours later, police detained Evans and confiscated her phone, and Travis County District Attorney Jose Garza launched a criminal investigation into whether Evans had violated a state law prohibiting taking photographs or videos of individuals in bathrooms or changing rooms.
Although Garza has not indicted Evans, the Travis County District Attorney’s Office (TCDAO) still has possession of her phone.
“I just want my phone back,” Evans told The Texan. “I’m not worried about anything in particular, but I’m not going to give up anytime soon. Garza can continue to investigate me, charge me. But what I can do is make sure that it’s on the record that this was a safety issue for the women that were in that bathroom.”
Garza, of course, is Travis County’s Soros-backed lefty DA, who seems far more interested in defending men in women’s bathrooms than protecting Austinites from criminals.
Evans has maintained that the person in the photograph is a biological male who was in the Capitol to testify on Senate Bill (SB) 14, and she told The Texan that said person had publicly announced as a candidate for Texas House District 64.
Several weeks after the confiscation of her phone, Evans filed a federal lawsuit accusing Garza of violating her free speech rights, but a lower court rejected Evans’ request for an injunction. Earlier this month, a three-judge panel of the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals issued a split opinion on Evans’ appeal of the case with two justices affirming the lower court’s decision.
The majority noted that Garza had not yet filed charges against Evans and thus the lower court had appropriately applied a legal doctrine that limits federal intervention in state matters, but in his dissent, Justice Andrew Oldham argued that the court had created a “Catch-22” for Evans that would prevent her from seeking an injunction at all, and that the mere threat of criminal charges had already created an injury and inhibited her First Amendment right to free speech.
“Evans has undoubtedly suffered an irreparable injury,” wrote Oldham. “While Garza decides whether to charge Evans, her First Amendment rights hang in ‘limbo.’ She must ‘self-censor’ from further publishing the purportedly illegal photograph.”
In support of Evans’ right to injunctive relief, Oldham asserted that “the loss of First Amendment freedoms from Day 1 is an irreparable injury.”
He also noted that the Texas law prohibited collection of images with the “intent to invade the privacy of a person,” but that Evans’ posted photograph was of a fully clothed person at a sink, not in an “intimate” setting.
“Insofar as we have to guess, it should be obvious that DA Garza will not be able to prove that Evans had the ‘intent to invade the privacy of the other person,’” wrote Oldham.
Evans is now asking for an en banc consideration of her case that would allow all 17 justices of the 5th Circuit Court to weigh in.
She will have additional legal representation provided by X itself.
X owner Elon Musk, a self-described “free-speech absolutist,” purchased the social media platform in 2022, citing many users’ complaints of censored content as one of his motivations.
True, but an even more basic reason for Musk’s intervention is social justice sorts turning his son Xavier trans. This was probably the key moment in which Musk started his journey from vaguely libertarian leftist to a Trump ally.
Evans said she has not communicated with Musk himself but that members of X’s legal team contacted her earlier this month.
X’s Global Government Affairs released a statement Monday morning in support of Evans.
Evans has a strong case on First Amendment ground, but an even stronger case in the court of public opinion, where insisting men can use a women’s restroom just because they’ve declared they’re women remains deeply unpopular. Tranny bathroom mandates were an early sign of just how far Democrats were willing to go to impose radical social justice on the nation under Obama, and have proven widely loathed everywhere they’ve been imposed. When put to a vote in Houston (hardly a deep red city), tranny bathrooms went down in flames.
Bill by bill, lawsuit by lawsuit, the transsexual madness social justice-infected Democrats tried to inflict on America is being rolled back, and women across the across the country can breathe a sign of relief.
Lots of American Presidents have claimed they’re against censorship here and abroad, but both the Obama and Biden administrations carried out vindictive censorship campaigns against their ideological enemies. (Remember the rodeo clown? Remember the debanking campaign against conservative media?) However, President Trump and his entire administration are fighting Eurocratic censorship against American free speech with more than words.
The Trump administration has slapped visa bans on former EU Commissioner Thierry Breton and four other ‘anti-disinformation’ activists, accusing them of coercing American social media companies to censor viewpoints they dislike.
The move signals a zero-tolerance policy toward extraterritorial censorship, especially after the EU’s recent assaults on Elon Musk’s X.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio laid it out clearly: “For far too long, ideologues in Europe have led organized efforts to coerce American platforms to punish American viewpoints they oppose. The Trump Administration will no longer tolerate these egregious acts of extraterritorial censorship.”
Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Sarah B. Rogers stated “These sanctions are visa-related. We aren’t invoking severe Magnitsky-style financial measures, but our message is clear: if you spend your career fomenting censorship of American speech, you’re unwelcome on American soil.”
The list includes Thierry Breton, who notoriously threatened Elon Musk over hosting a 2024 interview with Donald Trump on X. Others barred are Imran Ahmed, CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), who worked with Democrats like Amy Klobuchar to “kiII Musk’s Twitter”; Joan Donovan, founder of The Critical Internet Studies Institute; Kate Starbird, co-founder of the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public; and Jim Davey, co-founder of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue.
Others mentioned as sanctioned in Rogers tweets include Clare Melford, leader of the Global Disinformation Index (GDI), and Anna-Lena von Hodenberg and Josephine Ballon, leaders anti-right censorship outfit HateAid.
The EU’s infamous Digital Services Act would never pass constitutional muster in the United States, given act’s blatant viewpoint discrimination and prior restraint. The Euroelite seem desperate both to shove social justice down the throats of resistant voters, as well as to continue importing unassimilated Muslim illegal aliens, either for cheap labor or to ensure that left wing parties never lose elections. The DSA was designed as a weapon to stifle any opposing viewpoints.
There’s not a whole lot the United States can do when Eurocrats censor their own people for #WrongThink, but the Trump47 team sure as hell aren’t taking illegal European attempts to censor the free speech of Americans lying down.
Senator Rand Paul (R., Ky.) released a report Tuesday detailing $1.6 trillion in government waste, in keeping with his annual “Festivus” tradition of airing grievances against wasteful federal spending.
A whopping $1.2 trillion of that wasteful spending is interest payments on the ballooning national debt, according to the report, which contains numerous examples of government programs Paul considers to be useless and fiscally irresponsible.
“Last Festivus, we clamored over the national debt reaching over an astronomical $36 trillion. Shockingly, in one short year, the career politicians and bureaucrats in Washington have managed to reach nearly $40 trillion in debt, without so much as a second thought. When asked who’s to blame for our crushing level of debt, the answer is ‘Everyone.’ This year, Congress voted to raise the debt ceiling by $5 trillion, the most we ever have,” Paul’s report reads.
“Congress keeps shoveling money toward pet projects and special interests while hardworking Americans pay the price through inflation and crushing interest rates – even after President Trump took action to end most foreign aid programs.”
Festivus origins snipped, because everyone’s familiar, or they can click that first link.
Paul’s report cites numerous examples of bizarre experiments and training programs the U.S. taxpayer is funding. For instance, the National Institutes of Health spent $5 million to give dogs cocaine.
I bet Hunter Biden would have carried out that research on a “cost plus” basis.
Similarly, NIH spent $13.8 million on beagle experiments pioneered by former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Dr. Anthony Fauci.
The Department of Health and Human Services is spotlighted several times in Paul’s “Festivus” report. HHS spent $1.5 million to combat drug use in “latinx” communities through influencer marketing campaigns and $1.9 million on a mobile phone intervention meant to help reduce obesity among latino families in the Los Angeles area. Another L.A.-focused HHS program was a $936,000 marketing campaign towards certain LGBT subcultures to inform them about STD testing and treatment.
HHS had another drug-oriented project in New York City, where the agency spent $2.1 million to collect saliva and conduct surveys at EDM clubs and festivals. Additionally, HHS gave $3.3 million to Northwestern University to create “scientific neighborhoods,” hire “safe space ambassadors” and form committees with the purpose of dismantling “systemic racism.”
No discussion of budget pork be complete without covering the social justice graft.
A major HHS expense that previously drew scrutiny was the $22.6 billion it spent on welfare and other expenses for illegal immigrants during the Biden administration. Likewise, Paul’s report mentions the $7.5 billion of congressional funds allocated for the Biden administration’s EV charger network, which only built 68 charging stations nationwide.
The National Science Foundation is also highlighted in the report for its spending on questionable research. NSF and other agencies spent $14 million to have monkeys play a video game inspired by the Price is Right game show. Moreover, the NSF spent $2.4 million on programs that promote bugs as food for human consumption.
Skipping over the DoD’s dolphin training program, which people adjacent to it have told me is very effective.
Two of the largest expenses Paul’s report features are nearly $200 billion of Covid-19 relief funds for schools and $187 billion the Federal Reserve paid to banks for interest on funds the banks maintain at the Fed.
Flu manchu is the fraudcow insiders continue to milk.
For all the Trump47 Administration’s manifest successes, it has not enjoyed overwhelming success cutting the budget. DOGE was a great start, but then they shut it down. For the survival of America, DOGE needs to be the beginning of Trump47’s budget cutting efforts, not the totality of them.
Thursday I got back from a trip to visit my mother and shop for books. Before my sister left my mother’s place to visit her daughter, she changed the WiFi password and neglected to write it down, making blogging a bit more challenging, but I persevered.
Hard evidence that the 2020 Presidential Election was stolen, more details on those vast Minnesota Somali/Democrat fraud networks, the illegal alien hiding judge was convicted, big banks admit to debunking people in the name of ESG, Ford takes a huge write-down on EVs, and Asmongold offers dating advice.
Earlier this month, Fulton County admitted that approximately 315,000 early votes from the 2020 election were illegally certified but were nonetheless still included in the final results of that election.
The admission came during a Dec. 9 hearing before the Georgia State Election Board (SEB) stemming from a challenge filed by David Cross, a local election integrity activist. Cross filed a challenge with the SEB in March 2022. Cross alleged that Fulton County violated Georgia statute in the handling of advanced voting ahead of the November 2020 election, counting hundreds of thousands of votes even though polling workers failed to sign off on the vote tabulation “tapes” critical to the certification process.
And Fulton County admitted to it.
Ann Brumbaugh, attorney for the Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections, told the SEB in the hearing that while she has “not seen the tapes” herself, the county does “not dispute that the tapes were not signed.” Brumbaugh continued, “It was a violation of the rule. We, since 2020, again, we have new leadership and a new building and a new board and a new standard operating procedures. And since then the training has been enhanced. … But … we don’t dispute the allegation from the 2020 election.”
Georgia’s Secretary of State Office investigated the alleged failure to sign tabluation tapes and “substantiated” the findings that Fulton County “violated Official Election Record Document Processes when it was discovered that thirty-six (36) out of thirty-seven (37) Advanced Voting Precincts in Fulton County, Georgia failed to sign the Tabulation Tapes as required [by statute],” according to a 2024 investigation summary. In addition to probing the unsigned tabulation tapes, the investigation also found that officials at 32 polling sites failed to verify their zero tapes.
Georgia law requires that election officials have each ballot scanner print three closing tapes at the end of each voting day. Poll workers must sign these tapes or include a documented reason for refusal. Voting laws also require poll workers to begin each day of voting by printing and signing a “zero tape” showing that voting machines are starting at zero votes.
If there is no record of whether the tabulator was set at zero at the start of polling, there is no way of telling whether ballots from a previous election (or ballots from a test run) were left on the memory card and might later be counted. Notably, this happened in Montana, where officials discovered more votes than were cast and believe the votes were leftover sample data that had not been cleared.
“These signed tapes are the sole legal certification that the reported totals are authentic,” Cross told the SEB at the Dec. 9 hearing. “Fulton County produced zero signed tabulator tapes in early voting.”
Cross stated that he obtained 77 megabytes of election records from Fulton County through an open records request that cost $15,800. According to Cross, these included 134 tabulator tapes, representing 315,000 votes. Each signature block on these tapes was blank, Cross said.
So, just like everyone in the conservative blogsphere has contended for five years, Democrats stole the 2020 Presidential election for Biden. When do we get our apologies from Conservatism Inc.? (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Americans were stunned last month to learn that members of Minnesota’s Somali community had scammed state taxpayers out of hundreds of millions — possibly even billions — of dollars.
The question on everyone’s mind was how did this go undetected for so long?
Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) may have provided the answer in remarks delivered earlier this month that have only recently come to the media’s attention.
The always entertaining senator from Louisiana read a particularly damning portion of an internal memo written by a fraud investigator from the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office. Kennedy told his colleagues that those benefiting from the Feeding our Future program [Emphasis added.]:
[W]ent to the state and said, ‘If you stop giving us this money, we’re gonna call you racist and we’re gonna sue you. And you don’t want to be in the news.’
Well, why didn’t the employees do something? They did. They told the people higher up — the people with the flags in their office, and you know what they did? Nothing. You know why? Here’s what the legislative auditor in Minnesota said: He said that the threat of litigation and the negative press affected how the state politicians used their regulatory power.
Here’s what a fraud investigator in the Attorney General’s office said. She said, ‘There is a perception that’ — I’m quoting now — ‘that forcefully tackling this issue would cause political backlash from the Somali community, which is a core voting block for Democrats.’
Senator John Kennedy reads an internal memo from the Minnesota Attorney General’s office
They openly say they did not stop the Somalia immigrant fraud because Democrats would lose votes.
More: They lied to the state government lied to the Feds about it as well.
Still more: “Taxpayers’ Money Still Flowing To Indicted Fraud Suspect.”
A Minnesota lawmaker alleged on Dec. 17 that a man awaiting trial on federal charges that he laundered $1.1 million in taxpayer dollars and his wife continue to collect payments from other government programs, a state lawmaker said Dec. 17.
hat’s concerning, state Rep. Kristin Robbins told the fraud-fighting committee that she chairs.
“This is just one example of how potential fraudulent activity is being allowed to continue in Minnesota,” she said during a hearing at the state Capitol in St. Paul, Minnesota. Later, she alleged on social media that the state government “continued to pay a fraudster who was indicted.”
With the help of whistleblowers, a public-records researcher uncovered an intertwined web of people and entities allegedly tied to the man. Those connections are still receiving taxpayer dollars for assisted-living facilities and adult day services despite multiple “red flags” indicating possible fraud, Robbins said.
These revelations show that state agencies are failing to employ “the most basic checks and balances” to prevent and detect fraud despite state agencies promising reforms, Robbins told fellow members of the Fraud Prevention and State Agency Policy Committee.
The committee—five Republicans and three Democrats—has met regularly since February, trying to get a handle on the state’s burgeoning fraud scandals. In recent weeks, Minnesota fraud cases have drawn national attention and multiple federal investigations. The scandals mostly involve federal programs that state programs administer, with matching state contributions in some instances.
The defendant, whom Robbins dubbed Person One, allegedly received $49 million from state-run programs from 2019 to 2024 on top of the $1.1 million he is accused of laundering, she said.
He is among 78 people charged since 2022 in the Feeding Our Future (FOF) scandal. Fraudsters connected to that now-defunct nonprofit agency reaped a total of nearly $250 million from the Federal Child Nutrition Program after falsely claiming to provide 91 million meals to needy children.
Robbins alleged that Person One “changed his name months before he was indicted” for FOF, and used his new name to purchase two homes that are operating as an assisted-living facility that receives government money.
One of those homes, Robbins alleged, was bought under the same business name tied to alleged money laundering in the FOF case.
Lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday narrowly passed the Protect Children’s Innocence (PCI) Act which would criminally charge medical providers who perform so-called gender-affirming care on minors.
The Act prohibits permanent genital mutilation surgeries such as mastectomies or phalloplasties on otherwise physically healthy minors and also outlaws administering cross-sex hormones or puberty blockers for patients under 18.
The bill, which cleared the House by a vote of 216 to 211, would impose fines and up to 10 years in prison on medical providers who perform sex-change surgeries or administer hormone therapy to minors, with exceptions for rare medical conditions or the reversal of prior procedures.
The bill was introduced by retiring Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) who explained, “Protecting children is not optional, it’s our duty.”
MTG may frequently dance on the edge of clownshowdom, but she’s not wrong here.
The arrests include aliens with criminal histories, including those convicted of murder, kidnapping, sexual assaults, and other violent crimes, according to officials.
Officials underscored that their operations have been consistently undertaken amid assaults on agents by protesters who have thrown projectiles and firebombs, as well as attempted to interfere with agents in the middle of detaining suspects.
“In the face of violence from rioters and demonization by sanctuary politicians, DHS law enforcement has made over 10,000 arrests in Los Angeles since operations began in June. Some of the most heinous criminal illegal aliens arrested include murderers, kidnappers, sexual predators, and armed carjackers,” Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement.
She said that California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass failed the people of California, alleging that the state allows criminals to roam free.
“Thanks to our brave law enforcement, California is safer with these thugs off their streets,” McLaughlin said. “Instead of thanking our law enforcement for removing criminals from their communities, Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass repeatedly demonized our brave law enforcement during these operations.”
Among the criminal illegal aliens arrested are Alireza Hashemi, from Iran, convicted of rape, aggravated assault, domestic violence, burglary, and driving under the influence, according to the statement.
Andres Velasquez-Ocampo, from Mexico, was convicted of armed carjacking, vehicle theft, and vandalism, it said.
Juan Carlos Tamayo, from Mexico, was convicted of homicide, conspiracy to commit homicide, and multiple counts of attempted murder, it stated.
Ambartsoum Pogosium, from Armenia, was convicted of kidnapping, homicide, fraud, burglary, larceny, and forgery, it said.
Rene Reyes-Miranda, from Cuba, was convicted of a sex offense against a child, sex offender registration violation, harassing communication, cocaine possession, robbery, burglary, larceny, probation violation, property crimes, possession of stolen property, and possession of burglary tools, the statement said.
Akop Jack Kantrozyan, from Armenia, was convicted of identity theft, burglary, multiple counts of conspiracy to commit a crime, larceny, multiple counts of fraud, receiving stolen property, shooting at an inhabited dwelling/vehicle, possession of a firearm, grand theft of access cards, violation of parole, battery, and conspiracy to defraud the United States, it said.
Everado Garcia Martinez, from Mexico, was convicted of vehicle theft, armed carjacking, and amphetamine possession, according to the statement.
Jose Manuel Perfecto Hernandez Corrales, from Mexico, was convicted of possession of stolen property and attempting to import methamphetamine into the United States, it said.
Yonic Telles-Sosa, from Mexico, has been previously removed from the United States on five occasions. He received a final order of removal in 2013 and has been convicted three times of knowingly and unlawfully entering the United States, robbery, marijuana possession, and aggravated sexual assault of a child, it said.
Mohamed Chekchekani, from Kenya, was convicted of facilitating interstate commerce in aid of a racketeering enterprise, larceny, stolen property, and drug possession, it continued.
A Wisconsin judge who helped an illegal immigrant flee federal immigration enforcement officials was found guilty of obstruction by a jury on Thursday, after six hours of deliberation.
Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan was previously charged with felony obstruction and concealing an individual to prevent arrest, a misdemeanor charge, after she ushered a Mexican illegal immigrant, Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, away from federal agents, according to the criminal complaint.
The jury convicted Dugan of the felony obstruction charge, but dropped the misdemeanor. Dugan could serve up to five years in prison, although her sentencing has not been scheduled yet.
Hopefully leftwing judges will learn the lesson that the law can’t be waived because it hurts their precious feel-feels, but I think it will take a lot more felnoy convictions for thqat idea to stick.
In September then-Acting United States Attorney Joe Thompson sent up one of his red flags about Minnesota’s massive public-programs fraud committed by an almost exclusively Somali cast of perpetrators, The Star Tribune reported Thompson’s shout-out to the state powers-that-be:
“Let’s be honest, you can see it,” he said. “You see all the types of health care companies all over the place. Why are there adult day cares all over the city? What the hell is an adult day care?”
The era of denial needs to end. “I think people didn’t want it to be true, seeing this level of fraud. It was an uncomfortable truth,” Thompson said, adding that it “didn’t match our self-image” of good government.
Two months later Minnesota Department of Human Service Temporary Commissioner Shireen Gandhi has “issue[d] a temporay adult day care licensing moratorium” (letter here). She’s temporary. The moratorium is temporary. It’s a sort of bombing pause in one of Minnesota’s 14 “waivered” Medicaid programs that Thompson has called out.
“President Trump on Thursday signed an executive order aimed at reclassifying marijuana to be a schedule three, rather than a schedule one, controlled substance in order to create new research opportunities.” One does not need to be a user or booster of marijuana to believe that this reclassification is long overdue. Clearly marijuana is not as dangerous as heroin, nor is it more dangerous than fentanyl (schedule 2). As I’ve argued before, federal marijuana prohibition is unconstitutional under the Tenth Amendment, especially when it comes to people growing and consuming their own marijuana, as it rests on a tendentiously expansive reading to the commerce clause in Wickard vs. Filburn.
“OCC Says 9 Big Banks Took Part In ‘Inappropriate’ Debanking Practices.”
According to Bloomberg, the banks involved are accused of restricting access to firms in numerous sectors, including oil and gas exploration, coal mining, firearms, private prisons, payday lending, tobacco and e-cigarette manufacturers, adult entertainment, political action committees and digital assets.
The OCC said that many of the banks had publicly disclosed their policies, which were often tied to environmental, social and governance (ESG) goals.
All should have to answer for their illegal, unconstitutional participation in Operation Choke Point.
“Valero’s Billion-Dollar Exit: Newsom’s Regulations Fuel California’s Gas Crisis. Valero’s $1.1 billion Benicia refinery exit by April 2026, driven by Newsom’s regulations, threatens 8.6% of California’s gasoline supply, job losses, and $1.21-per-gallon hikes. Economists warn of shortages and $8 spikes amid Phillips 66’s parallel closure.”
California’s energy sector is reeling from Valero Energy Corp.’s decision to shutter its Benicia refinery by April 2026, a move that underscores the mounting toll of stringent state regulations on the industry’s viability. The Texas-based refiner announced it would absorb a staggering $1.1 billion write-down rather than navigate Governor Gavin Newsom’s escalating mandates, citing prohibitive costs and regulatory pressures. This closure eliminates 8.6% of the state’s gasoline production capacity overnight, threatening severe supply disruptions and price surges for drivers already burdened by the nation’s highest fuel costs.
The Benicia facility, processing 145,000 barrels of crude oil daily into gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, and asphalt, has been a cornerstone of Solano County’s economy since Valero acquired it in 2000. Its impending idling will axe 400 direct jobs and 200 contractor positions, while slashing 17% of Benicia’s municipal budget. Local leaders, including City Manager Mario Guiliani, expressed shock, likening the blow to the devastating Mare Island naval shipyard closure in nearby Vallejo.
More Blue State self-inflicted wounds.
Not just Minnesota: Haitians in Massachusetts managed to run $7 million Food Stamp fraud ring out of a tiny store. “Apparently, they traded SNAP benefits for cash, sometimes pulling in upwards of $500,000 per month. The scammers are Antonio Bonheur and Saul Alisme, both migrants from Haiti.”
“Gartner Group is the largest IT trend analysis firm, used by essentially all large corporations. They just recommended blocking the installation and use of AI browsers.” No doubt they were depending on research from the No Duh Foundation.
The 33-page legal filing accuses the BBC of making “a false, defamatory, deceptive, disparaging, inflammatory, and malicious depiction of President Trump … that was fabricated and aired by the Defendants one week before the 2024 Presidential Election in a brazen attempt to interfere in and influence the Election’s outcome to President Trump’s detriment.”
The BBC aired an episode titled “Donald Trump: A Second Chance?” on Oct. 28, 2024—one week before the presidential election.
The suit claims that in its episode, produced by “Panorama,“ the BBC ”intentionally and maliciously sought to fully mislead its viewers“ by ”splicing together” clips of remarks that Trump made ahead of the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol breach.
It asks for $10 billion in damages, citing the value of Trump’s personal brand and “the injury to President Trump’s business and personal reputation inflicted by these Defendants, and their efforts to falsely, maliciously, and defamatorily portray President Trump as a violent insurrectionist.”
The legal action was expected, coming hours after Trump announced from the White House on Dec. 15 that he planned to imminently file a lawsuit over the alleged defamatory edits.
“Literally, they put words in my mouth. They had me saying things that I never said coming out. I guess they used AI or something,” Trump said from the Oval Office on Monday.
The edits at issue center around remarks Trump made to his supporters at the Ellipse in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021.
In the BBC program, editors spliced together two clips from the speech, creating the impression that Trump had said, “We’re gonna walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be with you and we fight, we fight like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not gonna have a country anymore.”
In reality, the clips came from separate portions of the speech, including one in which Trump said, “We’re going to walk down, and I’ll be with you … we’re gonna walk down to the Capitol,” and another 54 minutes later, in which he said, “We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”
Girlboss has meltdown on Tik-Tok about being alone despite all her high achieving. Asmongold has the perfect advice for her: “You should go to a Warhammer 40K convention.”
Hollywood director Rob Reiner and his wife were evidently murdered by their own drug-addict son. Certainly he was a leftist TDS sufferer, but the vast majority of Hollywood directors will never direct films as great as This Is Spinal Tap or The Princess Bride.
WNBA players authorize a strike. It’s like the setup for a Bill Burr punchline. Do the players really want to give the NBA to just pull the plug on their money-losing league?
ObamaCare bites the dust, Eurocensors try grind Twitter under its bootheel, a lot of Ukrainian drone and missile strikes, Keir Starmer’s fingerprints are all over lots of censorship efforts, some homegrown Austin fraud, and the history of human occupation of north America just got a radical update.
On Thursday afternoon, the Senate rejected extending Obamacare subsidies, refusing to let taxpayers mask the skyrocketing costs of health insurance premiums caused by Barack Obama’s 2010 signature legislation.
“Senators rejected a Democratic bill to extend the subsidies for three years and a Republican alternative that would have created new health savings accounts — an unceremonious end to a monthslong effort by Democrats to prevent the COVID-19-era subsidies from expiring on Jan. 1,” the Associated Press reported. “Ahead of the votes, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York warned Republicans that if they did not vote to extend the tax credits, ‘there won’t be another chance to act,’ before premiums rise for many people who buy insurance off the ACA marketplaces.”
Just a reminder that Schumer and the Democrats got absolutely nothing from their shutdown stunt. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Europe is ramping up its war on free speech by targeting X with fines for not submitting itself to censorship regulations demanded by the European Union.
The EU levied a fine of $140 million against X, the first-ever penalty under Europe’s Digital Services Act. Europe decided that the website’s blue checkmark symbol is misleading, that it won’t give Europe access to data that will help it investigate free speech on the platform, and that it does not have a proper catalog of the ads available on the platform for Europe to examine.
This has been part of a two-year pressure campaign against X, as Europe does not believe in free speech, and X CEO Elon Musk has reduced the level of censorship on the platform. Europeans can claim that this isn’t about free speech but “transparency” all they want, but the 2023 investigation opened into X was focused on “disinformation” and “illegal content.” Now, Europe wants access to a list of X’s advertisers, wants its “researchers” to have access to the website’s algorithm to scrutinize “algorithmic bias” and “hate speech,” and to alter how the website runs with respect to its blue checkmark system.
“Note the Soros connection. As Mike Benz has repeatedly highlighted, the co-mingling of Soros and the Blob is real.”
Revelations that aren’t even shocking anymore: “Black Lives Matter Director Spent Millions in Donations on Homes, Shopping, Vacations, Indictment Alleges.”
Oklahoma City Black Lives Matter Executive Director Tashella Sheri Amore Dickerson has been charged with 20 counts of wire fraud and five counts of money laundering after allegedly spending millions in donations on personal indulgences.
Dickerson took over as the director of Black Lives Matter OKC (BLMOCK) in 2016 and since 2020 has raised more than $5.6 million for what donors believed was a national bail fund. The bail fund was also supplemented by grants through the Community Justice Exchange, Massachusetts Bail Fund, and Minnesota Freedom Fund.
The indictment alleges that from June 2020 to October 2025, Dickerson used at least $3.15 million in bail fund donations and grant money to supplement her lifestyle. Dickerson allegedly embezzled the funds to pay for personal shopping sprees, $50,000 in food and grocery delivery, trips to Jamaica and the Dominican Republic, as well as a personal vehicle and six Oklahoma City properties registered in her name.
The indictment explains that Dickerson allegedly used interstate wire communications to send false reports to Alliance for Global Justice, a fiscal sponsor to BLMOCK, which only permitted the group to use its funds in ways compliant with its 501(c)3 nonprofit status. Dickerson, however, did not disclose how she was allegedly using the funds for personal gain.
If convicted, Dickerson faces up to 20 years in federal prison and a $250,000 fine per count of wire fraud. For each count of money laundering, she faces ten years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000, or twice the amount of criminally derived property.
So was there any #BlackLivesMatter director who wasn’t using donated money as their personal piggy bank?
The scientific journal Nature has retracted a paper published in April 2024 that overestimated the economic effects of climate change and influenced central banks worldwide to create risk management scenarios.
The article predicted a 62% drop in worldwide economic output by 2100 if carbon emissions were to continue without reduction.
On Wednesday, the three scientists who worked on the study retracted it, citing “substantial” issues with the paper.
The climate study’s findings were undermined by an article published by a separate team of economists earlier this year in Nature, calling into question problems with the data for Uzbekistan that skewed the climate study’s conclusions.
According to the New York Post, if the numbers for the Central Asian nation were excluded from the data set, the projected economic decline of 62% would actually be a far less catastrophic 23%.
The problem is that the faulty numbers, which was nearly 3 times typical estimates, had generated headlines and excitement among policymakers around the world including the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development and the World Bank.
The study was also used last year, to model the expected impact of climate change by the Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS).
The NGFS is a worldwide network of central banks and financial supervisors with more than 150 members across nearly 90 countries.
Members of the NGFS include the People’s Bank of China, the European Central Bank, the Bank of England – and, until earlier this year, the Federal Reserve.
The climate study’s authors, Maximilian Kotz, Anders Levermann and Leonie Wenz of the Potsdam Institute in Germany, reviewed and amended their paper over the summer in light of the discrepancy and the retracted the study after acknowledging that their errors were “too substantial for a correction.”
“Oopsie! Sorry to make you destroy your economy over nothing!”
“Clandestine Campaign To Defund ZeroHedge, The Federalist & Breitbart Traced To Kier Starmer Operation.”
Very early into the COVID-19 pandemic, ZeroHedge suggested that a little-known Chinese lab in Wuhan might know something about the novel coronavirus sweeping the globe. As a result, and as you know, we were subject to an intense demonetization / deplatforming campaign that included getting kicked off of Twitter, PayPal, Facebook and other platforms, dropped by our advertisers, and targeted by MSM hit pieces which colluded with foreign ‘watchdogs’ to inflict maximum damage.
These same groups also targeted outlets including The Federalist and Breitbart over various reporting, which suffered similar fates.
Now, thanks to a new book by investigative journalist Paul Holden that builds on reporting by Matt Taibbi, Paul Thacker and others, we learn that the origin of these campaigns, launched years before the pandemic, was none other than UK Prime Minister Kier Starmer’s political machine, which began targeting left-wing outlets speaking critically of Starmer such as The Canary, and then went after conservative outlets in America – just in time for the 2020 US election.
Documents and internal accounts, many drawn from newly disclosed materials, reveal a coordinated project that operated behind a veil of anonymity, misdirection, and unreported political financing.
This murky operation known as the Stop Funding Fake News (SFFN) was launched and resourced through a think tank, Labour Together, that would later be fined for failing to declare £739,000 in donations between 2018 and 2020. Said funds helped underpin this clandestine anti-media strategy which affected news outlets from the UK to the United States.
At the center of the effort was Morgan McSweeney, a political strategist who has since become Starmer’s chief of staff and, according to public commentary by prominent journalists, one of the most powerful unelected figures in the modern Labour Party.
The newly disclosed materials reveal that SFFN was not in fact some grassroots, anonymous activist collective it claimed to be, but a political weapon forged by senior Labour figures and funded by millionaire donors, including individuals active in pro-Israel political advocacy.
The goal: destabilize independent media ecosystems aligned with Labour’s left under Jeremy Corbyn, elevate Starmer’s leadership bid, and delegitimize outlets – domestic and foreign – that threatened the faction’s consolidation of power.
Publicly, SFFN claimed to be run by anonymous activists. Privately, it was shaped by McSweeney and operated from the same small office suite in South London that housed Labour Together.
SFFN ultimately migrated under the umbrella of the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), an organization that grew out of a corporate shell once controlled solely by McSweeney.
British political operative and CCDH head Imran Ahmed
CCDH would later present SFFN as one of its signature initiatives.
Three Fronts of a Political Offensive
The documents reported by Holden reveal a three-part strategy that reshaped the British political landscape – and reverberated into U.S. media and politics. In a nutshell, this is how the sausage was made:
Destabilizing Jeremy Corbyn’s Leadership
SFFN’s narrative interventions were designed to amplify an “antisemitism crisis” that dogged Corbyn, boosting controversies and legitimizing a media ecosystem hostile to Labour’s left. This influence work aligned directly with the political interests of the centrist faction preparing for a post-Corbyn future.
Engineering Starmer’s Rise
Labour Together later claimed credit for helping deliver Starmer’s 2020 leadership victory, with McSweeney acting as his campaign chief. After Starmer won the July 2024 general election, McSweeney formally became chief of staff, solidifying the faction’s institutional dominance.
Silencing Dissenting Media
SFFN’s most aggressive project was an astroturf campaign against media outlets perceived as ideological threats. Targets spanned both the left (such as The Canary and Evolve Politics) and the right, as noted above.
In each case, the tactic was the same: identify advertisers appearing on targeted sites, publicly shame them through social media threads, and provide tools – including downloadable blocklists – to automatically exclude those outlets from programmatic advertising networks. The effort succeeded in devastating the business model of some targets; others survived but saw sustained pressure.
Corbyn is a dirty commie fossil who would have been a disaster as PM, but it looks like Starmer is a far nastier piece of work.
More UK rape gang coverup: “A former Metropolitan Police officer was accused of being involved in a London paedophile ring while serving with the force, but the case was ‘brushed under the carpet’ and ‘covered up,’ an LBC investigation has discovered.”
The Met launched a criminal investigation at the time into the allegations made by one of the complainants. She said the officer had abused her multiple times as a child and shared her with other “important men” at a hotel in Park Lane in central London. LBC understands the other men included an MP and a judge.
The victim also claimed that the officer targeted other “pretty girls” who were in the care system over several years.
LBC can reveal the officer was allowed to retire as a Custody Sergeant while under investigation. In 2012, officers under criminal investigation could only retire with permission from a senior officer.
LBC used to be London Broadcasting Company. (Hat tip: Instapundit.”)
The U.S. seized a large oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela as it traveled to Cuba.
“As you probably know, we’ve just seized a tanker on the coasts of Venezuela, large tanker, very large, largest one ever seized, actually, and other things are happening, so you’ll be seeing that later, and you’ll be talking about that later with some other people,” President Donald Trump said at the White House.
President Trump: “As you probably know, we just seized a tanker on the coast of Venezuela — a large tanker, very large.” pic.twitter.com/I51NenxoIP
— CSPAN (@cspan) December 10, 2025
One reporter asked Trump what would happen to all the oil.
“We keep it, I guess,” responded Trump.
Attorney General Pam Bondi said the FBI, DHS, and the Coast Guard, with help from the Defense Department, executed the search warrant:
Today, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Homeland Security Investigations, and the United States Coast Guard, with support from the Department of War, executed a seizure warrant for a crude oil tanker used to transport sanctioned oil from Venezuela and Iran. For multiple years, the oil tanker has been sanctioned by the United States due to its involvement in an illicit oil shipping network supporting foreign terrorist organizations. This seizure, completed off the coast of Venezuela, was conducted safely and securely—and our investigation alongside the Department of Homeland Security to prevent the transport of sanctioned oil continues.
Today, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Homeland Security Investigations, and the United States Coast Guard, with support from the Department of War, executed a seizure warrant for a crude oil tanker used to transport sanctioned oil from Venezuela and Iran. For multiple… pic.twitter.com/dNr0oAGl5x
— Attorney General Pamela Bondi (@AGPamBondi) December 10, 2025
The U.S. placed sanctions on Venezuela’s oil company years ago.
More blue city fraud: “Austin Energy employee allegedly paid $980K to ‘fictitious vendors,’ city auditor says.”
The Austin City Auditor’s Office released a report Tuesday accusing a local couple, both of whom previously worked for the city, of defrauding the city for approximately $980,000 by sending payments to allegedly fictitious businesses.
The report focuses on the alleged actions of Mark Ybarra, who worked as a facility service specialist for Austin Energy. He was issued a city credit card by his superiors for the procurement of necessary tools and materials, the audit said.
According to the report, he used the card to “pay fictitious vendors approximately $980,000 and fraudulently reported these transactions in City records.”
“The falsified invoices he submitted were ultimately discovered by his management in Austin Energy. Some of the fictitious vendors used contact information like addresses that connected them to relatives of Mark Ybarra, or Mark himself,” reads an email to KXAN from the auditor’s office.
According to the city auditor’s report, Ybarra allegedly made payments to 22 fictitious businesses using the card. He resigned from his job in October 2023.
A grand jury indicted Ybarra on Aug. 23. He now faces a felony charge of theft greater than $300,000.
His wife, former Austin Watershed Protection employee Ambrosia Ybarra, “refused to answer questions” from city auditors. She was indicted on Sept. 15 and charged with felony theft between $150,000 and $300,000. She resigned from her job in November, the report states.
Paramount looks at the proposed Netflix-Warner Brothers merger and says “not so fast.”
Paramount Skydance has made another offer to buy Warner Bros Discovery as it seeks to trump a rival plan from Netflix to buy the company’s studio and streaming networks.
Paramount, which is backed by the billionaire Ellison family, said it was making a direct offer to shareholders of $30 (£22.50) per share to scoop up the whole of Warner Bros, including its traditional television networks.
It said its proposal was a “superior alternative” to Netflix’s, delivering more cash upfront to shareholders and greater prospect of approval by regulators.
I don’t think either of them have the best interests of movie viewers at heart…
Speaking of Netflix, remember Carl Rinsch, the director hired to produce a science fiction TV show who instead took the money and plowed it into cryptocurrency? Guilty on all counts.
“Hundreds of Porsches in Russia were rendered immobile last week, raising speculation of a hack, but the German carmaker tells The Register that its vehicles are secure. According to reports, local dealership chain Rolf traced the problem to a loss of satellite connectivity to their Vehicle Tracking Systems (VTS). This meant the systems thought a theft attempt was in progress, triggering the vehicle’s engine immobilizer. Porsche HQ was unable to help or diagnose the nature of the problem.”
Draw Mohammed winner Bosch Fawstin write to say that Patreon has frozen his account and gives different answers as to why. If anyone has a good contact there you might drop him a line. He also put up a PayPal link for donations.
Scottish comedian and actor Stanley Baxter, who also served the British Army in Burma during World War II, has died at age 99. (Previously.)
The Democratic side of the 2026 Texas Senate got a shake-up just five hours before the filing deadline, when U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett filed for the race right after Colin Allred dropped out.
Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett (D-TX-30) has made official her long-awaited run for U.S. Senate — entering the mix with several other high-profile Republican and Democratic challengers to U.S. Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), about five hours before the filing deadline.
Her filing on Monday afternoon followed several campaign shifts as the filing deadline on Monday night approached, including former Congressman Colin Allred (D-TX-32), who dropped his bid for U.S. Senate despite having been last year’s nominee for the same position the morning prior to Crockett’s campaign launch.
You may remember Allred from such hits as “I lost to Ted Cruz by over 900,000 votes“; which, being only 8.5% of the vote, was actually quite respectable by post-Betomania standards.
Crockett is a regular in national news headlines, often highlighted for sparring with other similarly-robust GOP members and for her unfiltered rhetoric typically targeted at the Republican Party’s leadership.
She flirted with a potential run for the U.S. Senate as various candidates jumped into the race, including Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, Congressman Wesley Hunt (R-TX-38), and Democratic candidates Allred and state Rep. James Talarico (D-Austin). Crockett indicated on numerous occasions that she’d only consider jumping into the ring for U.S. Senate if she was shown general election polling that proved she has a path to victory, and teased the possibility on various media hits leading up to Monday night.
I suspect that people outside of the state haven’t heard of Talarico, who fills the Beto O’Rourke mold as a white guy with a vaguely Hispanic name. But he’s clearly the anointed choice of Texas Democratic Party insiders, to the point that he has been out-fundraising Allred (the man who raised over $94 million in his futile attempt to oust Ted Cruz last year) by more than $1 million, which was probably a contributing factor in Allred dropping out.
Among the polls in the field measuring Crockett’s potential success in the race was one released in early October, conducted by both the University of Houston and Texas Southern University. It found that in a four-way primary matchup between Crockett, Talarico, O’Rourke, and the now-null Allred, Crockett led the Democratic field with 31 percent, with Talarico and O’Rourke tied behind her.
It also showed her as a viable general election candidate when placed against Republicans Cornyn, Paxton, and Hunt — ranging from a six-point deficit to as low as a two-point deficit when placed in a hypothetical November 2026 general election against each of the three. Her best shot at winning the general appeared to be against Paxton, who held only a two-percent lead against her. Hunt led against her at five percent, while Cornyn proved to be the most difficult at six percent.
Usual poll caveats this far out apply.
Per reporting from CNN over the weekend, Allred, Talarico, Beto O’Rourke, and Congressman Joaquin Castro (D-TX-20) conducted a meeting to plan a statewide slate of Democratic candidates — to which Crockett was not invited — but it yielded no concrete plan and concluded with no set U.S. Senate candidate.
Does rather suggest that Crockett is on the outside looking in, doesn’t it?
The reaction from inside the Democratic tent was twofold. First came cheers about her stardom and visions of her being the one to flip the seat. Second came frustration about her high negatives and potential to crash and burn on the general election ballot in an R-58% state, per The Texan’s Texas Partisan Index.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the aisle, reactions to her candidacy only took one form: elation.
Republicans now have their foil in Texas, serving much the same purpose as Zohran Mamdani does nationwide going into next year. The National Republican Congressional Committee instantly put out messaging hitting border Congressman Vicente Gonzalez (D-TX-34) as Crockett’s “best friend.”
The Crockett-Talarico winner will face either U.S. Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), Attorney General Ken Paxton, or Congressman Wesley Hunt (R-TX-38), who are currently bloodying each other up over in the GOP primary.
Republicans in Texas — who are staring down the barrel of a very difficult midterm cycle — would be overjoyed for Crockett to be the Democratic name at the top of the ticket in November.
Indeed.
Someone who believes that 80% of crime comes from white supremacists suggests a candidate way out of touch with the Texas electorate, and a hothouse flower more suited to the confines of her overwelmingly Democratic black majority south Dallas district than someone suited to run statewide.
The Texas Democrat political establishment fears a wipeout of down-ballot candidates if they nominate a “terminally online” lefty candidate like Crockett at the top of the ticket. Long before she jumped into the race, they had already picked Talarico as their designated candidate. A Texas state rep who’s checklist positions aren’t a world away from Crockett’s, he still presents quite a different cultural profile as a “Presbyterian seminarian.” The “Christian nationalists” he rails against may be as thin on the ground as Crockett’s white supremacists, but someone who actually speaks the language of Christian belief is quite a different profile than the social justice warriors the national party has been lionizing.
Can he win in November? Barring a Great Depression-level economic crisis, no. Neither can Crockett. It’s simply a matter of protecting down ballot races, as Crockett is so far to the left of the Texas electorate that she might face a Wendy Davis style wipeout against whichever Republican captures the nomination.
Crockett’s has also jumped into the race very, very late. When O’Rourke ran against Ted Cruz, he jumped into the race April of the year before, not December. It will be very hard to build out a statewide campaign organization in a mere three and half months. It will also be hard to hire the best staffers, as the vast majority will already have signed on with other candidates in other races. And it’s likely most of the big in-state Democrat money was already betting on Talarico, and that seems unlikely to change.
She may be able to tap out-of-state lefty donors. But, then again, they may be tired of sending their money to Texas to die without noticeable effect. Also, unlike O’Rourke, there’s not enough time to write a million fawning magazine profiles of her, assuming half the magazines that fluffed O’Rourke are even still publishing.
Also, say what you want about O’Rourke, he did the work, “campaigning hard all across the state with a grueling personal appearance schedule that rivaled similar hard work put in by Cruz in his winning 2012 race. He also built out a competent campaign infrastructure and a national fund-raising apparatus to channel in the huge sums of cash national Democrats were throwing into the race.” I have my doubts that Crockett will prove overly capable in either of these areas.
I’ve long assumed that Talarico was the state Democratic Party’s favored` candidate based on the highly unscientific but usually accurate metric that a few yard signs had popped up in my neighborhood for him and no one else. Thus far, I see no reason Crockett’s entry into the race should change that assumption.
Minnesota just provided an example of how wild and expensive welfare state fraud can metastasize in Democrat-run states where leftwing officials either turn a blind eye to it in the name of “social justice,” or actively facilitate it for vote buying and to participate in the graft. So naturally, the Trump Administration wants to validate the data used by state on providing Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits to weed out the fraud and abuse, by illegal aliens or otherwise. And, just as naturally, blue states are balking.
U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins says she will be moving to stop federal funding to 21 non-compliant states that have refused to provide data from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
In February, the Trump administration had asked all states to provide their SNAP data to the federal government as part of the administration’s efforts to root out waste and fraud in the welfare program.
29 mostly Republican-led states provided the data and revealed 500,000 cases of duplicate benefits as well as 186,000 deceased individuals’ Social Security numbers in use.
But 21 mostly Democrat-led states, including California, Minnesota and New York, have dug in their heels and refused to provide the information, citing concerns over privacy.
Secretary Rollins told reporters that if a state refuses to share data on criminal use of SNAP benefits, “it won’t get a dollar of federal SNAP administrative funding.”
Snip.
Speaking at a Cabinet meeting Tuesday, Rollins said, “We asked for all the states for the first time to turn over their data to the federal government to let the USDA partner with them to root out this fraud, to make sure that those who really need food stamps are getting them, but also to ensure that the American taxpayer is protected.”
Rollins accused former president Joe Biden of trying to “buy an election” by ramping up food stamp funding by 40% last year.
Roughly 42 million recipients currently use SNAP benefits to help buy their groceries, at an annual cost to taxpayers of nearly $100 billion a year.
Democrat-run states evidently find it an unthinkable affront to screen the welfare roles for fraud.
One of those blue states that don’t want to see their precious illegal aliens kicked off the government teat is Oregon.
It was one of the key debates that led to the longest government shutdown in US history: The Trump Administration wanted to close the loopholes that allowed non-citizens access to government subsidies like ACA healthcare and free food through SNAP.
Democrats claimed that “illegal migrants” don’t have access to such programs.
Yet, the Democrats were willing to drag out the government shutdown for 35 days just to stop Trump from implementing cuts that would apparently affect no one.
Why?
Because leftists are liars.
If they are not telling a direct lie, they are lying by omission or by using semantics and carefully crafted language so that if they get caught they can say “That’s not what we meant…” ‘
When Republicans moved to block subsidies for migrants this included the millions of asylum seekers that entered the US illegally and then took advantage of Joe Biden’s lax policies, including “catch and release.”
Democrats, however, categorize asylum seekers as residing in the US “legally”.
It’s a dishonest way to bypass the debate and pretend as if Trump is living in a fantasy land.
Snip.
After months of Democrats asserting that “illegal” non-citizens don’t receive government subsidies, Oregon is suing the Trump administration over changes to the nation’s food assistance program, arguing that new federal guidance unlawfully blocks certain groups of “legal” immigrants from accessing food aid. When Democrats mention “legal immigrants” they are referring to all asylum seekers.
In other words: The Biden Administrations illegal decision to let millions of illegal aliens flood into the country means they can wave a wand and declare those millions of illegal aliens “legal asylum seekers” so they can be illegally subsidized and taxpaying American citizens can go pound sand.
Twenty-one other states joined Oregon in filing the lawsuit Wednesday in federal court in Eugene, arguing that the U.S. Department of Agriculture overstepped its authority when it issued an Oct. 31 memo telling states to cut off benefits for people who have long been eligible for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.
The dispute centers on changes Congress made in July through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which limited SNAP eligibility for certain noncitizens in temporary immigration categories.
Snip.
Their definition of “legal” non-citizens, however, is irrelevant. The federal government has broad authority to determine who is here legally and who gets access to federal subsidies including SNAP. Migrant aliens who flooded into the US during the Biden regime and took advantage of wide open asylum policies do not necessarily qualify.
Furthermore, there needs to be a national discussion about who should be allowed access to American taxpayer dollars. Progressives exploit subsidies as a way to lure migrants to the US and buy their votes once they become naturalized. The Democrat agenda is clearly to upend the demographics of the country in their favor. Why would native born Americans allow their money to be used against them as a means to steal their country from them?
No migrants, legal or illegal, should ever qualify for government subsidies. If they can’t support themselves, they should not be traveling to the US in the first place. At the very least, there needs to be a set moratorium on immigrant applications for benefits; perhaps 5-10 years after they gain residency. This would weed out any parasites looking to feed on the American system rather than contribute and assimilate.
Elected Democrats obviously feel otherwise. Or as this cartoon tweet linked by Instapundit put it:
Feeling that they’re keys both to raking off graft and rigging elections, Democrats would rather risk losing federal funding for SNAP recipients than let their precious illegal aliens get kicked off the government teat.
Why shouldn’t taxpaying American citizens conclude that Democrats love illegal aliens far more than them when all the evidence suggests it’s so?
Pirate’s Cove has some nice coverage of a Washington Post story I don’t feel like trying to wrest from behind the paywall. The upshot is that illegal alien deportations are actually affecting country clubs.
My heart bleeds.
Border Patrol’s Charlotte sting reaches into country clubs, upscale shops
The gourmet pasta shop surrounded by million-dollar Colonials might not be the most obvious spot for clues about how hundreds of U.S. Border Patrol officers have swept across this city in recent days.
Pasta & Provisions, a longtime local favorite in the Myers Park neighborhood, is more popular among well-to-do bankers who populate the city’s soaring financial office buildings than with the working-class immigrants who flocked here to help build that skyline. There is little Spanish spoken outside the shop’s kitchen.
But as armed federal agents in unmarked SUVs poured into North Carolina’s largest city, the store was not immune from the Trump administration’s targeted immigration enforcement operation that launched Nov. 15. (snip)
The effect on George’s business is emblematic of how the Border Patrol operation has rippled across the lines of race and class that have long divided this city, spilling into tony neighborhoods where many residents gave little thought to how President Donald Trump’s deportation push would affect them.
It’s a real shame that the Elites won’t have all these folks to cook for them and wash the dishes
As authorities have searched for them, federal officers have raided a local country club, stopped by at least two hospitals and been spotted on highways and roads across Mecklenburg County, which includes Charlotte. (snip)
Not that one.
Pockets of the city’s Eastside, typically filled with fruit vendors and tamale stands, were noticeably empty. So were construction sites in the “wedge,” the triangle-shaped section of Charlotte with the highest concentration of White and affluent residents.
Snip.
The reach of federal operations into upscale neighborhoods was exemplified by reports that Border Patrol agents had entered the Myers Park Country Club, an invitation-only, century-old institution with opulent grounds that include an 18-hole golf course and an Olympic-size pool.
It seems that WaPo thought the most natural way to elicit sympathy from their overwhelmingly liberal, overwhelmingly affluent and overwhelmingly white readership was to note that Trump’s illegal alien crackdown would directly impact the quality of service at country clubs. You can’t possible expect to replace Enrique with a 20-year old white guy who doesn’t know how to properly make a Mojito, now can you?
Won’t someone please, please think of the country clubs?
You can’t tell the radical left social justice NGOs without a scorecard, and now one of the biggest NGOs is shapeshifting again.
Nearly three months after the New York Times revealed that the Gates Foundation had decided to sever ties with philanthropic advisor Arabella Advisors, which engineered a sprawling “dark money” network of nonprofit entities, including the New Venture Fund (NVF), Sixteen Thirty Fund, Hopewell Fund, and Windward Fund, that continues to wage color-revolution-style operations against President Trump in an effort to crush the populist movement through the protest-industrial complex, there is news that the powerful far-left philanthropic consulting firm that handles money for rogue progressive billionaires or their foundations is being rolled into a new vehicle.
“Stick a fork in Arabella Advisors. The powerful progressive philanthropic consulting firm is no more,” New York Times reporter Teddy Schleifer wrote on X, adding, “Instead, Arabella’s managed funds are investing in a new vehicle that will effectively bring Arabella’s services in house to each of the funds. And Arabella Advisors won’t exist anymore.”
Schleifer pointed to a press release stating that Sunflower Services, a newly spun-up Public Benefit Corporation backed by NVF with support from the Windward and Hopewell Funds, has acquired Arabella Advisors’ fiscal sponsorship servicing business.
“Arabella Advisors will cease operations, and Sunflower Services will ensure continuity for clients and staff,” the press release stated.
The deal transfers Arabella’s operational infrastructure and staff to Sunflower, which will now provide administrative and operational services for NVF, Windward, Hopewell, and numerous other nonprofit projects. The nonprofits handled more than $1.179 billion across nearly 200 projects in the last year.
Even though Arabella claims neutrality, overwhelming evidence from Peter Schweizer & Seamus Bruner of the Government Accountability Institute shows that through the Arabella network, some of these funds have supported organizations linked to left-wing, anti-capitalist, anti-police, anti-Israel, and at times anti-American agendas.
Click through to see the various org charts for both the old and new hydra head, all with founder Eric Kessler on each.
